September 3, 1986
Dear M. Althusser,
If the picnic basket is always animated by a spirit, one wonders who would dare speak of a spirit of picnics, or, more serious still, of a spirit of light lunches. The picnic basket is a paradoxical incorporation, at once conjuring gastronomy and mobility, gesturing to the (in)effable collapse/erection of opposing binary structures. If the site of consumption, and by consumption I attempt to signify the “gobbling up” of “yummy treats,” is indeed the café, or, more colloquially, the “gastronomie,” then the picnic basket becomes a site of rupture, or, to put it less obliquely, “decentralization,” which threatens the edifice of Western philosophy and letters. And by “edifice,” I mean “façade,” a term I use to signify “edifice.”
Everything is made to fall into place in terms of the question of being, which is, the Treaty of Westphalia notwithstanding, an allusion to Hamlet, from whom the term “omelet” or “omelette” is derived, plenty of which I pray (though, let’s be honest, by “pray,” I merely suggest “hope” or “bidet”) will be present at this illustrious picnic. The ghost of Marxism still lingers over Europe, and while our sojourn into the park, together with our ubiquitous (some would erroneously suggest “eponymous”) picnic basket will occur in Europe, I hope (and “pray”) to avoid its presence, for the specter tends to devour all of the snacks. Which would suck for the rest of us.
Because Heidegger does not acknowledge the plurality of Nietzsche’s style, not allowing Nietzsche the privilege of being a philosopher of the “sous rature,” I have decided not to invite the former, and am in fact reluctant to invite the latter. This, in turn, has produced in me a desire—of equal force and opposing direction— to invite both of them and un-invite both you and myself to our esteemed congregation. I thus propose the neologism “un-un-in-vite-vite,” which is intended to disrupt the aufheben of a simulacrum of metaphysics, suggesting both a lack and a “transcendental” presence, or the lack of a lack of a lack, for lack of a better term. In other words, if Heidegger shows up, I’m splitsville.
The Americans have devised a substance, a “neologism,” if you will. This new term is “peanut butter,” or “pea-nut-butt-er.” Contrary to the way I have sliced this term, peas are not omnipresent at all in this curious substance. Neither are butts. This confusion is signaled by the final syllable: “er.” While they call it “butter,” this substance is not extracted from livestock. I have a vision: that our picnic shall contain loaves of bread (pardon the biblical allusion) adorned with this substance, preferably augmented with straw/berry jelly.
Technics in the service of picnics: I am not invoking a general essence which would be always already familiar to us, one that might be helpful in understanding the narrow and historically determined concept of picnics. It would be more accurate to propose that “basket,” as a mode of transportation of foodstuffs, delineates and demarcates the reification of beverages. As such, it may be more convenient to place all beverages in a “cooler” to keep them more temperate; such is the sun’s repression. Of course, you may ask why I refer to it as “cooler,” which would suggest an unfolding, an elliptical ontico-ontological difference between “basket” and “cooler.” My response, naturally, would be to quote Homer: “d’oh.”
With aporia,
Jackie
P.S.
JP Sartre insists that we play ultimate Frisbee, so bring your Nikes. As you may have surmised, by “ultimate Frisbee,” I mean “chess,” and by “Nikes,” I mean “a plurality of Greek goddesses.”