Seeing the Event: Irruption or Attention? Between Derrida, Malabou, and Stiegler

If the event is that which does not manifest itself, how can the event be seen? At first glance, one might respond that it cannot be seen. But does the fact that the event cannot be seen imply that nothing of it can be seen? To answer this question, the intention is to explore two developments of Derridean intuitions about the coming of the event: irruption, with Catherine Malabou, and attention, with Bernard Stiegler. In Donner le temps, Derrida insists that the event interrupts the course of time without being noticed, except après-coup. In Dire l’événement. Est-ce possible?, Derrida questions the possibility of saying the event, while keeping ‒ as a paradoxical condition ‒ that the event cannot be seen. Catherine Malabou, for her part, reflects on the wholly accidental nature of the event, that is, its sudden eruption which transforms not only the form but the very substance of what changes. On the other hand, Bernard Stiegler evokes the role of attention in the impossible experience of the event’s arrival. An experience understood not as purely accidental, but as one of waiting and resisting impulse. Although attention may seem to suggest an opposing stance to eruption, even Malabou’s thinking arises from the problem of waiting for what comes, as testified by her doctoral thesis. There, as Derrida says in Le Temps des Adieux, Malabou invents an idiom: she 'recovers and brings to light' the ambivalence of the French locution le voir venir. An expression that refers at the same time to both waiting without expectation (waiting and seeing) and expecting what is coming (seeing and waiting). Starting from these considerations, the initial question will be rethought: if it is not possible to see the event, is it possible, by waiting, to see it coming?