I would first like to state that the questions in this interview have been prepared based on the version of the work rendered into Turkish; therefore, the differences in tone or minor nuances that may have occurred in the text along with the translation process form the basis of these questions. (Y.Y)
The title of the book, Je me touche (I touch myself), suggests both absolute privacy and a philosophical self-awareness; in the text, inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy, you say, "a subject feels (se sentir): this is its characteristic and definition." Where did you intend to catch the reader and at which threshold of "feeling" did you aim to stop them when choosing this title?
First of all, and above all else, thank you dear Yasemin for sharing your time with my work, for taking the time to chat with me about Je me touche: I don’t take these things for granted and remain always grateful.
In many ways, share is a very important notion to me; in terms of reading, writing, thinking, being-with each other. Community in the sense of a togetherness which shares (obligations, joys, mournings, trials, and the very fact of being in the same spaces as each other) and, as importantly, a coming together which doesn’t merge into sameness, in which our radical singularities are preserved (the privacy which you allude to). For, if a community is a coming together of people through what is shared, and all of us are singular beings, then surely what is common is precisely the differences between us. And where the very notion of coming together (another possible name is love, both eros and philia) is the opening of oneself to the possibility of another.
Which is where, I suspect, reading lies: an opening of ourselves to the possibility of a text.
Which is why, as you so cogently read, thresholds and feeling are so crucial to this work: for approaching a text (without subsuming it under your own stances) entails trying to meet it on its own terms, at its skin as it were — without the rupturing of skin (touch, gentle touch) — while opening yourself to being touched by it. And where whenever you think you might have some grasp of a work, any text, this is only a matter of feeling (both in terms of touch, and one not quite in the realm of certainty, fleeting).
Where even if you momentarily feel you understand a text, « understanding », as my dear teacher, the late great reader Werner Hamacher, would say, « understanding is in want of understanding ».
In the first part, you examine a man's being seized by the "idea" of becoming a train through Flann O'Brien’s story. For you, does the act of writing carry the risk of turning into something other than oneself — an object or a "nothingness" — like John Duffy’s brother?
Mmm seized is the perfect verb for what happens to him: for if you open yourself to ideas, thoughts, notions, texts, you always also open you yourself to its disseminations, inseminations, contaminations.
First and foremost, though, I see myself as someone who reads; reading being an encounter, so « a relation prior to any attempt at assimilating what is being read to the one who reads » (with infinite thanks to Werner Hamacher for this particular formulation). Which means that not only can I never quite claim to know what I’ve read, but that in opening myself to what I am reading can never quite ascertain how it has changed me, perhaps even after it has done so (as it inevitably does).
Writing is my primary mode of not just expressing thought but of thinking itself. And I try to maintain the possibility of conceiving writing as scribere, scratching — onto, into, out of — tearing, opening; as an attempt, perhaps even a quest, at maintaining the question in what is inscribed. And this relationship — between what is posited and the question which remains — is something that I attempt to explore intensely, to intensely explore.
Or, in the better, certainly more eloquent, deeply-generous, words of my dear friend, the Singaporean writer Adibah Mustafa: « at the heart of Fernando’s approach is the exaltation of citation and annotation: each one constitutes in itself a longing to remember and to relate, manifesting as an act of translation, for it gathers something from ‘there’ and carries it over ‘here,’ where it quickens, as much as it’s quickened by, a new fit and form ».
Perhaps, one might also say: writing explores me and I writhe.
You read Bartleby’s response "I would prefer not to" not just as a resistance, but also as a "love story." In this relationality established with authority, how would you define the secret "yes" and the touch within that "no"?
I love, without any modicum of irony, the fact that you have here opened the relationship between love and authority. And that love — particularly if we maintain that it is a relationship which entails opening ourselves to the possibility of another — that love always already runs the risk of us becoming-other to ourselves, becoming strange (bearing in mind that ‘a stranger on the threshold’ is always also the beginning of the possibility of hospitality, of an ethical relationship) becoming strangers to ourselves. Which also suggests that this opening of ourselves on a threshold might well be us putting ourselves before the law.
Which also bring us back to the questions of reading and writing: especially if we open the register (and for this, I have to send my thanks to my dear teacher Avital Ronell who first attuned me to this resonance) of the relationships between authority, auctor, and author. All three bringing with them claims to origin: in this sense, one might even say that the concept of authorship is more an economic notion (so always also one of power) than an intellectual one: after all, ideas don’t belong to, nor come solely from, any one; and as Jacques Derrida continues to teach us « la langue, c’est n’appartient pas », language does not belong.
As interestingly though — and here, once again I must proffer my thanks to Avital who continues to tease out the differences between power and authority (in her seminars at The European Graduate School; and in Loser Sons, among other texts) — even as power and authority cannot be fully divorced from each other, one crucial difference is that while power is enforced, is enacted upon others, authority must be granted. In fact, the moment someone attempts to enforce their authority, they have lost it (one example being: the moment a teacher has to yell at their class, they have forfeited any authority they might have had; it is not too difficult to extend this to political leaders who threaten their people in any way shape or form). On the contrary, religions are a good example of authority: they have no power over anyone, and the only reason they have sway over anyone’s life is if and when they have granted them the authority (through belief) to do so (this also means that figures of authority will always have far greater influence over people than those who obsessed with power will ever).
Which brings us really nicely to the dossier that you have opened: that of the no, the rejection; and the simultaneous yes which opens (exposes even) ourselves to that relationship. For, to reject (even if this rejection is absolute) always entails first having something (or someone) to oppose oneself to.
And Bartleby’s line is one foregrounding this duality — and its constant duel — beautifully.
While discussing the Occupy movement and its echoes in Singapore, you speak of the radicalism of demanding the "impossible" from the system. How can art and philosophy offer an "imaginary response" against the "empty signifier" of capitalism in the political arena?
Art itself is fundamentally useless.
Which is precisely why those in power have always been fearful of it.
For, one should try not to forget that the first to be shot are almost always poets, painters, writers. Not because they actually do anything, but that precisely by doing nothing they give — allowing all echoes of gift to resound here — they open, the space for us to imagine something else, something other.
And by entwining art with use, all that is done is to tie it down to, enchain it to, the state.
And here, we should try never to forget that we are in a relationship with what we read, what we see, what we stand before. For, even before this encounter happens — prior to the act of encountering — one has to open oneself to the possibility of the encounter, open oneself to the work.
Without necessarily knowing what encountering a work of art itself even is, let alone means.
Thus, to claim that art has a use is to diminish it, to enchain it to value, production, logic, ratio, reason.
It is to do nothing other than to attempt to erase art.
And the gamble that is taken each time one picks up a book, looks at a painting, watches a film, stands before something that is made, created, brought forth, the risk one runs in attempting to attend to a text, is the possibility of falling — along with all the potential disasters this entails — of falling in love.
Thus, the stake in art is one’s very self.
Which might be why Milan Kundera calls it the unbearable lightness of being: for, it is the refusal to be grounded, to be pinned down, to be known, that is unbearable, that continually provokes us, challenges us, perhaps even tears us apart.
And, it is perhaps symptomatic that there is a ‘crisis’ in art whenever states are obsessed about, and with, concocting an identity. For, if art is about an openness to the unknown, is about possibilities, it is of the order of difference rather than identification, sameness.
In other words, art is always anti-stasis, anti-state.
And more than that, it is always also a challenge to the self, to our selves: it is a call to attend to the possibility of another, of something that is more important than us.
And like any call, might well lead us to dash ourselves on the rocks.
Herein lies its danger.
And its beauty.
[And if philosophy is about the love of and for wisdom, is about opening oneself to the possibility of something beyond ourselves, the same could well be said of it.]
Referring to Nietzsche, you state that every act of writing (schreiben) probably brings a cry (schreien) with it. Where is that silent cry in your text hidden within the academic or theoretical language?
Oh, that is a lovely, and impossible, question!
And I really wish I knew.
For, being open to possibilities means that I have to concede I am never fully in control of my thoughts, my writing. Sometimes whatever is written is strange, unfamiliar, other, to me … a fragment of me, sometimes it also fragments me.
Nor can I ever quite control how it will be read: I can only write, read, and leave it to be read.
All I am attempting to do when I write is to translate the thoughts that come to me — so, transform them with all of the inherent risks that to translate (traduire) is always also to potentially become a traitor (un traître) — to transport them into a form proper to the encounter.
For, it is my belief that form and thinking are intertwined, perhaps even indivorceable, that each medium brings forth possibilities in and of thought which are proper to itself — such that, over the years, I have been led into different media, including film, music, performance-readings, and the visual arts; all of which are nothing but attempts to pay homage to what is appropriate to the thought itself, to the thoughts themselves.
And, with a bit of luck, in being able to find — there is always a touch of luck involved (hello Tykhe) — the appropriate form (one that speaks to the thought without claiming it for itself, appropriating it, smothering it) the thought, idea, notion, might find the space, place, freedom, to shout shout, let it all out (I could never resist a bow in the general direction of Tears for Fears).
You say, "forgetting is both the condition and the limit of memory." While constructing a text or recording a thought in the archive, what do you knowingly leave out or choose to "forget"?
Mmm I don’t think we can choose to forget, even as we might attempt to do so (particularly when the memory is a painful one). If we could, we might — as Nietzsche might say — finally be happy.
Which is not to say that, in making a texts, things are not cut-out, refined, moulded, sculpted, fashioned, given contours, pruned: that is part and parcel of any process of editing, reading (at some point one has to choose one reading over another, thus, at least temporarily leaving all other possibilities aside) and writing. For, to give shape is to add and to take away, often in the same gesture.
However, since we cannot choose what, or when, we forget, this means it can happen to us at any given moment. Which means every act of remembering and all attempts to inscribe reminders — so both knowledge and writing are here implicated — are haunted by the possibility of forgetting.
Which is why, as Werner Hamacher, dear Werner, continually reminds us, « ellipsis is the rhetorical equivalent of writing: it depletes, or de-completes, the whole so as to make conceptual totalities possible. And yet every conceivable whole achieved on the basis of ellipsis is stamped with the mark of the original loss. Ellipsis eclipses (itself). It is the “figure” of figuration: the area no figure contains ».
You speak of rubbing our words against the other, recalling Roland Barthes’ words "language is a skin." Do you feel as if you have fingers at the tips of your words while writing?
Oh how I wish i did!
All I can really say is writing comes to me: from somewhere else, everywhere else, anywhere else; often-times in spite of me. Hence, even as the writing happens through me — and despite J. Hillis Miller’s beautiful reminder that « literature depends not just on the right to say anything but also on the right not to be held responsible for what one says », I also have to take responsibility for what I have written: quod scripsi scripsi — I am, and can only be, the medium (allowing all echoes of ghosts, spirits, and hauntings, to resound here) through which it occurs.
And, the only thing I can do is attempt to respond, attend to, the possibility of writing itself.
By being in front of a keyboard, by having a notebook on me.
By reading.
So, perhaps at best, attuning myself as best as I can — and for me, that also entails distracting myself so I get out of my head, out of my own way — so that thoughts, notions, phrases, possibilities, can come to me, rub themselves onto me … after which I scribble … and see where it go, leads me … quod scripsi scripsi.
You define love as a life made no longer from the perspective of the One, but from the perspective of the Two, and place it at the point where music explodes. In your text, when does philosophy turn into music, and when does it turn into a pure "moment of ecstasy"?
To be fair, and to give credit where it is rightly due, that is a thought which comes from Alain Badiou, and in particular his conversation with Nicolas Truong in Éloge d’amour / In praise of love. A beautiful thought that has since written itself into me.
If I were to hazard a guess — not yet brave enough to make this a position! — I would say that ‘philosophy turns into music’ (to borrow your lovely formulation) when it recognises poetry is both the limit and foundation of its love of, and continual search of, wisdom.
Or, in Avital Ronell’s more elegant formulation: « the poet, irremediably split between exaltation and vulgarity, between the autonomy that produces the concept within intuition and the foolish earthly being, functions as a contaminant for philosophy — a being who at least since Plato, has been trying to read and master an eviction notice served by philosophy. The poet as genius continues to threaten and fascinate, menacing the philosopher with the beyond of knowledge. Philosophy cringes. »
And cringes from nothing other than the beyond (not necessarily an abyss nor void; it could well be glimpseable, even as one might remain blind to it) of knowledge; where wisdom is quite possibly nothing other than, as Maurice Blanchot might say, un pas au-delà.
And, from having to open oneself to the possibility of another — a we, if you prefer; but a coming-together which doesn’t flatten the radical singularities of all involved.
And, where philosophy is about opening ourselves to a possession beyond cognitive knowledge; to the whispers of a daemon, if that suits your fancy; a muse if you’re feeling Roman; a poiesis in the sense of making, creating, bringing forth something in the world that wasn’t there prior to this genesis.
My old teacher Alain Baudiou would probably call this an event. So, in his formulation, an « opening of a new world in an old world ».
We could think of it as a little bang … so a pop … the beginnings of the possibility of music.
Your work was brought into Turkish by Feridun Özül. In the text, you see quoting not as an "appropriation" but as a "curatorship" and "mourning." In the process of your own text being "engraved" again in another language with the translator's voice, how did that "touching" relationship with your text transform?
For which — that is, Feridun Özül bringing my words into the worlds of their beautiful Turkish — I will be eternally grateful.
Here, we could here return to the kind kind words of Adibah Mustafa on how citation and annotation lie at the heart of my approach to making works. And so, the fact that someone had wanted and chosen to translate my words — after all, what even compels someone to do something like that, particularly in this day and age where such endeavours barely count in accounting ledgers, hardly register as productive, are often even frowned upon as indulgent — is something very precious (not the sense of being fastidious, zealously-guarding, and any of that staking-claim-to-a-work nonsense) very dear to me; is a gesture, act, and work, I deeply cherish and am very appreciative of.
A few moons ago, Chris Kraus wrote, very generously, about one of my works: « composed of quotes, notes, writings, messages, and drawings, I wish we were lovers moves tentatively but eagerly across these pages to explore, and finally minimize, the distance between ‘you’ and ‘I’ and thought and feeling ».
I think the same could be said here: in the care shown by Feridun Özül during the movement, carrying-over, transportation of Je me touche into their Turkish, the distance between them and me — between the ‘you’ of the reader-translator-(co)writer and the ‘I’ of the text (and perhaps the ‘I’ of the reader who has written, of the one who has inscribed what is read) has been minimised in the bringing forth of the work that is Kendime Dokunuyorum
And, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, even worse affectatious, opening Kendime Dokunuyorum for the first time, and encountering my words in Türk alfabesi was a very moving experience.
At the end of the book, there is the expression "this is not a pipe..." nodding to Magritte. When Je me touche is finished, is what remains in the reader's hand a "book," or just an "echo" or a "void"?
Mmm I do hope that the book remains in their hands, and that they haven’t flung it away!
And we must try not to forget that there is a materiality to books, a tactility to — a what is being touched in — reading: a something that changes (not necessarily for better or for worse, but certainly changes) when we are reading in other media, off a screen for instance.
That said, you can never quite control how your work, a text, how you (whatever that might even mean: that might somewhat depend on how much weight you put on, how much faith you have in, Roland Barthes’ claim « the author is dead » ; and how closely you conceive of the relationship between writer and author, between the one who writes and the name signed on the book, the name who signs-off, perhaps even underwrites, the book ) how you, will be read.
As for me, I can only write, read, and leave it to be read.
For, it has taken me years to admit, perhaps only to myself, that I don’t care about writing something important, something significant. That my only hope, wish — dream even — is to write something beautiful.
Then again, as Sophie Calle, in her inimitably-direct way might say, « it’s incredible how easy it is to believe your own stories even when you know how arbitrary they are ».
Yasemin Yücel
29 April 2026
If you might wish to read the interview in the Turkish, you can find it here.
To get your copy of Kendime Dokunuyorum, çeviren: Feridan Özül (Istanbul: Yedinci Kat Yayınları, 2026), please go to : https://www.yedincikatyayinlari.com/product-page/kendime-dokunuyorum