The French language has two words for the future: le futur and l"avenir. Le futur refers to something distant or remote, possible, or probable, therefore to something that is not necessarily inconceivable or unimagin- able. Le futur supposes in fact the possibility of projection, predictions, and prophecies. As such, le futur is essentially hypothetical, wishful, or delusory: interstellar space travel, for example. It is often referred to in sentences such as "one day, the world will be a better place". It is therefore what will or might be (a better world) as its Latin root clearly indicates: futurus, the irregular future participle to esse, to be. The word le futur thus implies the being of the future. l"avenir, by contrast, is imminently closer to us and is usually translated into English with futurity or what is "yet-to-come". It is that which arrives (as we have seen in the Foreword, winning horses, scientific breakthrough, retirement) and is best exem- plified by questions such as "What are you doing?" "Breeding horses." Or "What are you expecting?" "I"mwinning the race." L"avenir — or futurity understood in its traditional sense — is also easily captured with expres- sions such as "I"m dreading it" or "I"m looking forward to it", therefore to situations of hope or despair. As Jacques Derrida remarks, "[l"avenir] is nothing other than ... the condition of all promises or of all hope, of all awaiting, of all performativity, of all opening towards the future".² The difference between le futur and l"avenir is therefore that one focuses on what the future does or what we do with the future [l"avenir] and the other concentrates on what the future is or holds [le futur].