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In November 1983, an exhibition was opened in Paris containing paintings and sculpture by eighty-five of the world's most celebrated artists. The artworks would travel round the world until the day had come when the itinerant museum thus constituted could be "presented as a gift to the first free and democratic government of South Africa to be elected by universal suffrage". I presume that in the meantime this gift has been offered, but I don't know whether it has been accepted. And in reading over the touching piece on "Racism's last word" which was Derrida's contribution to the catalog of that travelling exhibition, I cannot but wonder whether it should have or even could have been accepted. "A memory in advance", that is how Derrida back then had called "the time given for this exhibition" (291): "if one day the exhibition wins, yes, wins its place in South Africa, it will keep the memory of what will never have been, at the moment of these projected, painted, assembled works, the presentation of some present" (298, italics Derrida). Will one ever be able to accept such a memory? Can one accept it without rendering loquacious the "silence" with which that exhibition "called out unconditionally" as long as it did not "take place", did not take "its place" (293) ? Would accepting it not suggest that we have reached that "future for which apartheid will be the name of something finally abolished"³?

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4467-4_11

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