"For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, counter gift, or debt. If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of a long term deferral or difference. This is all too obvious if the other, the donee, gives me back immediately the same thing...
For there to be a gift it is necessary that the donee not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract and that he never have contracted a debt... The donee owes it to himself even not to give back, he ought not to owe, and the donor ought not count on restitution. Is it thus necessary, at the limit, that he not recognize the gift as gift? If he recognizes it as gift, if the gift appears to him as such, if the present is present to him as present, this simple recognition suffices to annul the gift. Why? Because it gives back, in the place, let us say of the thing itself, a symbolic equivalent." -- Derrida, Given Time 1: Counterfeit Money, p. 12-13
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