“interrupts” and “shames” the ego, “disrupt[s] that free, au-
tonomous self that through its reasoning and consciousness
thinks it can construct the world out ofitself, or know the
world fromitself.”^2 In this manner, Lévinas throws down the
gauntlet to philosophy, which has relied so often on solitary
consciousness as the arbiter of meaning. Lévinas’s critique of
metaphysics, up to this point, is in line with Derrida’s, but
Derrida has (as I have pointed out) an attachment to the soli-
tary, unreachable self. Derrida’s political-ethical turn in the
nineties coexists with an idea of privacy that Lévinas would
never accept.
Derrida’s main base of operations in the 1990 s was still
America rather than Europe. He continued teaching at Irvine,
along with his friend Hillis Miller. (Other French theorists,
notably Jean-François Lyotard, also visited Irvine during the
decade.) At Irvine, Derrida gave both lectures for a large audi-
ence and more informal seminars to small groups of students
whom he selected for admission to the class. One graduate stu-
dent from Derrida’s Irvine years, Michael Fox, remembers him
as being warm and approachable in his seminars, open to con-
flicting opinions and frequently funny. But Derrida remained
stiffand poised in front of his large lecture audiences: careful
of his formulations, as if speaking for posterity.
At Irvine, Derrida was a stickler for the rules, refusing to
admit to his class students who had not followed the proper
registration procedures. At the Irvine student center café be-
fore his seminars, he was invariably accompanied by a small,
attentive crowd of admirers. Surrounded by students who
mimicked his turns of phrase and his arguments, Derrida kept
his distance, making clear his dislike of their obsequious man-
ner. “He performed for the sycophants, but he didn’t really like
them,” Michael Fox recalls.^3 Derrida preferred independent-
224 Politics, Marx, Judaism