For May Ee

Whose presence has always already been necessary for a certain éventualité:

Are events merely possible? That is, conditioned by conditions of possibility? If they are possible, already possible, then in some important sense, they do not happen as events for the first time, but rather as the unfolding of a possibility that was already there, already in place, a potential that came to be realized in an actual place and time. In which case, nothing happens, nothing comes; there is only realization of what might, could take place, or even a programming of the “event.” But an event that merely unfolds an expectation or a probability is not an event that befalls us without our seeing it coming. The event comes, if it does, from an unforseeable future, without horizon of expectation as Derrida insists over and over. It comes, in other words, as what is radically impossible, beyond or outside the limits of known, foreseeable possibility. To think the event is to think this im-possibility or rather this im-possible. Which is not to say it is impossible thinking, but to convince you of that is what this seminar will be about: that it is possible to think the impossible. Not only is it possible; it is necessary, something else I hope this seminar will convince you of (Kamuf, 'First Seminar Lecture: Derrida's Impossible Events," 2-3).