make-or-break example, exhibit A for the prosecution: de
Man’s essay “The Jews in Contemporary Literature” (Le Soir,
March 4 , 1941 ). The essay seems, as Derrida remarks, to con-
tain “an antisemitism that would have come close to urging
exclusions, even the most sinister degradations” ( 142 ). Here,
Derrida’s use of the conditional tense works to soften the
ground before the deconstructive assault. De Man’s article
“would have come close to urging exclusions”: an ameliora-
tion of the piece’s actual tone. Somberly, slowly, Derrida cites
the conclusion of “The Jews in Contemporary Literature,”
with its reference to “a solution to the Jewish problem,” to “the
creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe,” to the Jews
as a “foreign force” alien to European culture.
Now Derrida stalls. He considers for a moment, sus-
pending the drama like an orator before a breathless, rapt
crowd. Could there possibly be a defense of the de Man who
wrote such sentences? “Will I dare to say ‘on the other hand’
in the face of the unpardonableviolence and confusion of these
sentences? What could possibly attenuate the fault?” ( 142 ).
Yes, Derrida will say it, and boldly: on the other hand. On
the other hand, in spite of all appearance to the contrary, de
Man was not a collaborator, not a racist. He resisted.Derrida
does not merely “attenuate” de Man’s “fault,” his collaboration.
He eliminates it, turning it into its opposite, resistance. (Such
is the deconstructionist’s sleight of hand.)
Derrida then rapidly, surprisingly, shifts his ground: he
suddenly insists that we do know what de Man meant. “The
wholearticle,” Derrida emphasizes, “is organized as an indict-
ment of ‘vulgar antisemitism.’ It is, let us not forget, directed
against that antisemitism, against its ‘lapidary judgment,’
against the ‘myth’ it feeds or feeds on” ( 143 ). De Man in “The
Jews in Contemporary Literature,” Derrida concludes, actually
Gadamer, Celan, de Man, Heidegger 203