*

In October 1915, Marcel Duchamp wrote a text in English entitled The, in which every appearance of the article the is replaced by a star. According to Francis M. Naumann, « Duchamp apparently regarded the as something as immovably fixed in language as everyday objects are in the space they occupy (in other words, as a literary ready-made). » (Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp. L’Art à l’ère de la reproduction mécanisée, Paris, Hazan, 1999, p. 61)

In October 1916, the text was published in the magazine Rogue and the stars were replaced by asterisks.

In October 2021, following an invitation to participate in an issue of the Polish aesthetics journal Sztuka i dokumentacja dedicated to Marcel Duchamp, I applied the same process to each occurrence of the name Duchamp in the text of the issue’s directors, Leszek Brogowski and Aurélie Noury, « RozpakowywanieZielonego pudełka. Druga połowa pytania: Zielone pudełko z kolekcji Ernesta T ». Issue forthcoming.