cult of spontaneity, a fusionist, anti-unionist euphoria, in the
face of the enthusiasm of a finally ‘freed’ speech, of restored
‘transparence,’ and so forth, I never believed in those things”
(Points 347 ). While supporting the students, Derrida was
appropriately wary of their utopian ebullience, which saw
world-changing political import in an outpouring of excited
speech. The students, Derrida implied in his 1991 interview,
had inherited the logocentric idea that language can be utterly
decisive and self-aware, a “transparent” expression.
In spite of Derrida’s criticism, confessed many years later,
“The Ends of Man” shows, in a rather covert manner, that Der-
rida has a positive interpretation of May 1968. For him, the
student revolt points a way beyond logocentric humanism
(beyond the ends of man). The events of 1968 nourish Der-
rida’s prophetic inclination.
Derrida intends his title to suggest the conclusion or
overcoming of the humanist tradition. Sartre had also allied
himself with the striking students. But Derrida makes us
reflect on whether Sartrean activism was reaching its apogee in
the late sixties or instead breathing its last. Derrida implies that
there might be a posthumanist era on the horizon, that the
revolution of the sixties might bring into being a new con-
sciousness, one that would render passé both Sartre’s Com-
munism and Raymond Aron’s liberalism. Derrida hints, then,
that he understands the antilogocentric import of 1968 as
Sartre does not.
If there was an antihumanist aspect of the ’ 68 revolt, it
must be linked with the name Michel Foucault. Foucault, ear-
lier than Derrida, had heralded a “beyond” of the human. For
Foucault, it was irrelevant to think in terms of man’s essence or
dignity. Foucauldian man is simply material (though at times
recalcitrant material) for ideological transformation. The
132 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology