was Western metaphysics; the institutions of modernity since
the Enlightenment played a similar role in Foucault. In the six-
ties, both thinkers sought a radical alternative to the system,
one that would give an outsider’s perspective: for Derrida, the
apocalyptic Nietzsche (and his echo in the announcements of
avant-garde writers like Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud);
for Foucault, the madness that could be repressed, but not
contained, by Western disciplinary practices. As an antidote,
an “other” to the reign of the same, such exuberance opened
onto a realm of free play (even if it was doomed free play, like
the madness that Foucault celebrated).
But Nietzsche was not enough. The reintroduction of re-
sponsibility by way of a Lévinasian emphasis on extremes—so
that I become a hostage to my fellow human, who is threatened
with destruction—provided, for Derrida, a way to avoid the
anarchic recklessness of Foucault. Obligation became more
necessary than Nietzschean freedom. Lévinasian responsibility
was, in the end, also a way for Derrida to escape from psychol-
ogy, since in Lévinas the other person becomes a sheer pres-
ence, without history or personality.
But Lévinas and Derrida lose sight of our complexity.
Even in extreme situations like the ones Lévinas describes, we
are psychological beings, fantasizing and inventing our lives.
There is, then, an alternative to Derrida’s approach. The Ro-
mantic idea, which still animates so much of fiction and po-
etry, demands that we ally ourselves with the soul-making
movements of thought and language—rather than unmasking
these gestures as mere appearances, in the skeptical way of de-
construction.^3 Life depends on the contingent, the exultant
and necessary building of a fiction. By exposing the world as
merely contingent, and therefore insufficient, Derrida reduces
our powers. Harold Bloom’s notion of misreading, based as it
Introduction 9