- Richard Rorty,Philosophy and Social Hope(New York: Penguin,
2000 ), 213. - Marshall Berman’s stimulating All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982 ) notes that
Marx, even in his vigorous protest against capitalism, also endorses its en-
ergy and its capacity to dissolve and remake social bonds in a radical way.
Marx does not, as Derrida seems to imply, seek a remedy for capitalism’s ills
by repealing the phenomena characteristic of modernity. - Derrida in his lectures on hospitality is also intent on forging con-
nections between Judaism and Islam. He points out that the tradition of
Islamic hospitality often cites the example of Abraham. Islam is “the most
faithful heir, the exemplary heir of the Abraham tradition,” he comments. He
goes on to cite a passage in Lévinas’s book of Talmudic lectures,Difficult
Freedom,which refers to the action of Mohammed V, the prince of Morocco,
who shielded French Jews from the Vichy government (Acts 368 ). - The question of sexual harassment was to play a major role in Der-
rida’s posthumous legacy. In 1990 , Derrida willed his archives to UC–Irvine.
Some material, including letters and manuscripts, is actually housed at
Irvine. But in his will Derrida withheld any further documents unless the
university dropped sexual harassment charges against Russian studies pro-
fessor Dragan Kujundzic, who taught a popular course on vampires. Evi-
dently, UC’s Vampire Sex Scandal, as newspapers quickly christened it, was
deeply disturbing to Derrida; the evidence against Kujundzic did in fact
seem quite ambiguous. For several years after Derrida’s death Irvine at-
tempted to negotiate with Derrida’s widow Marguerite, who continued to
refuse to hand over Derrida’s archives. The university sued Derrida’s heirs in
2006 , then finally dropped the lawsuit in February 2007 , without regaining
control of the archives. - For Roudinesco, by contrast, Chomsky was “perverse” in defend-
ing Faurisson (For What 132 ). She added, “I wonder what unconscious rea-
son there could be for a Jewish intellectual like Chomsky... to adopt such a
position” ( 133 ). - Said, after long membership in the PLO’s political branch, had
finally split with Arafat over the latter’s signing of a peace agreement with Is-
rael at Oslo in 1993. In an interview given shortly before his death with the
Israeli journalist Ari Shavit (printed in Haaretz,August 8 , 2000 ; and then as
“The Palestinian Right of Return” in Raritan 20 : 3 [ 2001 ]: 34 – 52 ), he defined
Israel as “a set of evil practices” ( 42 ) and strangely announced, “I’m the last
Jewish intellectual” ( 52 )—after insisting that Israel must be transformed into
a non-Jewish state with a Muslim majority ( 46 , 48 ). Said’s belief that the
256 Notes to Pages 229 – 36