Potlatch is the name of the practice of certain indigenous groups of the Pacific Northwest. It is a ritual whereby wealth, prestige and power is demonstrated through gift-giving. In order to affirm or confirm power and legitimacy, a leader ritually dispenses with or destroys material. Enrichment through impoverishment, rising in stature by ejecting or even destroying what is materially valuable. And yet unlike the ritual of surrender, potlatch commonly takes the form of a competition. During the ritual one of the honoured guests takes the role of the recipient of gifts, and yet in the closed logic of the ritual the beneficiary is expected to match the sacrifice of value. Giving or destroying in equal or greater amounts, the value given by the host. The greatest honour and recognition falls to the one who is most able to dispense with the material value held.
Gift-giving thus never ends with the closing of an equation of value. We never find a gift that is given in order to balance some actuarial books. No bookkeeper, no accountant, can balance the books of the gift. This strange reality has been observed by sociologists and anthropologists: the gift without exception has a function that reaches beyond the giving the receiving, beyond a simple giving or receiving. Nothing can simply be given in such a way that our ties to the gift clearly and completely cut. We can never completely release the gift given, it always remains attached to us, a part of us in a non-material way. By the same token, the beneficiary never simply receives the gift without attachment, without emotion, without some form of emotional reaction or spiritual tie.
Some have described this relationship, this remainder, this invisible holy connection, as one of power. This is certainly a good attempt at trying to grasp the forces that are concentrated in the gift, in the giving, in the receiving. Some of its powers resemble forms of debt or obligation, including complex forms of psychological guilt, and chains of emotional accountability. n the potlatch the gift transfers the value of the gift to a kind of political power, structuring and organising the social hierarchy. Power is also flowing in forms long to requirement also shows itself through These power functions are translation functions. They transfer the material value of the gift given and received to a different register, some times higher, more noble, more moral plane, to some higher level of emotion, purer, stronger, or more authentic.
This brings us back to surrender. This is the structure of the gift, of giving. Surrendering is a kind of gift-giving. It follows these rules of experience, but takes them farther, beyond simply giving and receiving. It most often reflects the structure of a giver, a gift and a given. And this is the relation in which every gift must start, whether it is the gift of oneself or of a dozen apples. As givers we surrender, of course, when we choose to surrender, when we intend and want to surrender. We surrender when we have set on surrendering. Surrender lies in this strange space between the giving and the receiving. Only through this mystical surplus can a gift be given or taken. If the gift-giving doesn’t contain this moment of mystery, this minute bewilderment at the why and the where-for, than there would be no gift, no giving. Everything would stay in the hands where they started, there would be no impulsion to give, no humility to take, and now thing—a gift—commonly understood as give-able, as worthy of giving or of receiving. The surrender which consists of giving away a thing, is surrender to the impossible in-between, the force of objectless, intention-less, pretence-less renouncing of a thing. There is something more in the geometry of giving, something that cannot be placed into the economy of the transfer of value, of me transferring my value to you, or the contrary. If spiritual surrender is some kind of giving oneself up to the being of the universe, then the kernel of this experience lies in every act of giving, lies in every act of service without cause or value, without want or need.
Surrender lies in this mystical surplus, this mysterious kind of giving that envelops and fills the mystic surplus of giving. There is always something more in the gift, something extra, something that drives it and lifts it,
We would be tempted to call this kernel the impossibility of the gift because it is the core where are inclinations to give or to receive are set aside, all pushes and pulls fall away. It is made up by gathering the same condition under which the gift would be impossible or at least entirely implausible. If giving a gift is setting in motion this strange and mystical logic, then surrender brings together the giver and the gift. I give myself.