was forced to a crisis over the question of psychology. He in-
sisted that de Man’s accusers could not know his inner life, and
therefore should not judge his involvement with fascism. In
the very effort to place de Man’s psyche off-limits to others,
however, Derrida claimed it for himself. He described a noble
struggle within de Man, who (as Derrida imagined it) secretly
resisted the Nazism that he outwardly collaborated with. Der-
rida’s anguished writings on de Man mark a turning point in
his career because they demonstrate that the purification of
philosophy from psychological interest cannot hold. Despite
declarations that the self cannot be known, and therefore in a
sense does not exist, we still yield to the inclination to imagine
this unknowable self. Under the pressure of his attachment to
de Man, Derrida was impelled to psychologize. The unwilling
implication of Derrida’s writings is that these two disciplines,
philosophy and psychology, cannot be made separate. The
desire for separation is a symptom, sometimes well worth
studying (as when, working from the other side, Freud un-
convincingly declares that he is not a philosopher). But the
philosopher can never accomplish the separation any more
than the psychologist can.
Psychology in the de Man affair stands for the presence
of the real world, which tampered with the judiciously defined
project of Derrida’s thought and required him to imagine the
inner life of another person. That such interventions occurred
makes Derrida’s long career a rich object of study. The other
main instance of reality’s interruption of thought was brought
on by Derrida himself, when he assumed the stance of a
prophet rather than just a careful analyst of intellectual his-
tory. Starting in the mid-sixties, Derrida cast his enterprise of
deconstruction as a revelation, or a compelling message. This
act was not merely a search for wider appeal and authority, but
4 Introduction