They play out the encounter with the other. The first is by Derrida on the dream of an ant that Cixous recounted to him over the phone, which leads him into a meditation on difference, fable and gift, and movements of separation and reparation, or s par union, in her work. Cixous and Derrida grew up near each other in Algeria, although they did not meet until 1962, and there are many similarities in their philosophical projects. On ne part pas, on ne revient pas, to find the interplay of gender that is so pervasive and important in Cixous's work. Switching masculine and feminine articles is not simply a game but a systematic opening of doors, of passages between the two.
Love is a scale Cixous plays in the constantly changing key of living and writing the moment.
Calle-Gruber seems to watch all this and then offer a view from the margin, wherever the margin is. The impossibility of knowing or speaking the other adds surplus to the already overflowing text. This passage enriches our knowledge of the very real roots of Cixous's multiplicitous approach in the plural genealogies of family, neighborhood, city. The double of that relation is found in her own daughter and son. She has been translated into at least a dozen languages.