Seven Red

I was wracking my brains for a non-cliched response to Thanksgiving – one that wouldn’t require me to give thanks and praise for something to the universe or whatever. I do like the idea that all this stuff around us is a gift, because the gift, unlike the commodity, does not offer up its exchange value, at least not quantitatively. As the many writings on gifts (Mauss, Bataille, et. al.) have amply demonstrated, the gift leaves the receiver in a bit of a quandary, since no matter how small or insignificant its perceived “value,” it cannot be paid for; it’s exchange value is a mystery (all the recent babblings about high tech gift economies have seemingly missed this point, largely because they incessantly repeat capitalist exchange logics). So we give thanks as a pseudo-exchange, just as in the potlatch the “exceeding” of the previous gift – all the way to utter waste and destruction of fortunes – served only as a pseudo-exchange. This is also why the defense of capitalism on the basis of the Great Philanthropists (from Carnegie to Bill and Melinda Gates) is always a little pathetic. If the gift is a true gift, it escapes the logic of exchange, and is therefore utterly non-capitalist (even pre-capitalist and residual, if one believes Bataille); if, on the other hand, the gift assumes some return on investment (however abstract), then it is not really a gift.

So I like the logic of the gift as such, but – of course – I don’t like the way a subject gets tacked on to the verb: the one who gives. In finance, they even invented the verb “to gift,” and this is the time of year that everyone starts using that term – not because of Christmas, but because the chance to “gift” off some taxable revenue for 2007 is fast coming to a close. So everybody’s busy “gifting,” with the obvious return on investment in the form of tax write-offs making the whole operation more comical than this silly word. But there’s your subject of “gifting,” waiting hungrily for the accountant to announce the recompense. In the larger, Thanksgiving sense, the subject of gifting is our fabulous Yahweh & Son Ltd., or maybe Spinoza’s God, that infinite substance with its wondrous modes and attributes. The world worlds, and the universe doth gift for tax credits. In this latter version, not only is the value of the gift infinite, but to whom we offer thanks is likewise mysterious.

So, with these provisos, I’ll gift thanks and praise to the universe or whatever (or rather, gifting happens). Because I wasn’t really wracking my brain, and I’m far less ashamed of cliches than I used to be. Primarily, then, for these two, whose value the insurance industry can calculate precisely, lo and verily unto the eighteenth decimal, but whose gift to me is completely infinite, as is my debt.

Che faccia!

And finally:

Hat OFF!, babygirl says.

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