Abstract

In the late 1990s I was introduced to Continental philosophy. I was particularly drawn to Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on the gift. As many of you will know, Derrida’s Given Time scandalously problematized one of our most treasured and – one would think – straightforward phenomena: gift-giving. 2 For those of you unfamiliar with this argument, it goes something like this: the gift is a problem or aporia because, while it is ordinarily understood as that which is given gratuitously , there is nevertheless always an exchange of some kind, ranging from responses like gratitude, thanksgiving, counter-gifting, indebtedness, and so on