cannot match. Joyce’s reliance on many-faceted ambiguous
meaning remains secondary to Husserl’s effort at solid trans-
parency. Logocentrism, with its home in philosophy, remains
the alpha and omega; literature, the vast wandering space in
between.
For the Derrida of the introduction to Husserl’s Geome-
try,the logocentric was not yet doubtful. But it was about to
come under his far-reaching suspicion. Never again would
philosophy be able to assert its superiority over the oblique
and playful twisting of meaning that is literature’s habit. And
Derrida himself was poised to become a Joycean corrupter of
words.
For the five years before the introduction appeared in
1962 , Derrida had moved between America, Europe, and North
Africa, often restless and uncertain of the future. For more
than two years, beginning in 1957 , he served France in the
Algerian war, teaching at a school for soldiers’ children at
Koléa, near Algiers. In 1959 and 1960 ,afflicted with a serious
depression, he taught at a lycée in Le Mans with his friend
from the École, the future literary theorist Gérard Genette.
In 1960 began a happier time, the decade of Derrida’s
greatest achievements. Back in Paris and teaching at the Sor-
bonne, he took a trip to Prague with Marguerite in a “tiny Cit-
roen deux cheveux” (Counterpath 291 ). He returned to Algeria
in 1962 , the year of the Husserl Introduction,to help his parents
relocate to Nice (he had tried, without success, to convince
them to remain in Algeria after the revolution). In 1963 a first
son, Pierre, was born to Jacques and Marguerite Derrida; the
second, Jean, would follow in 1967. In between, in 1965 , the
Derridas took a memorable trip to Venice and spent a month
on the Lido. Derrida was settling into his role as a rising intel-
lectual presence, cemented in part by his triumphant appear-
48 From Algeria to the École Normale