term in the sixties, since it implies the psychological element
that he tries to exile from philosophy. Instead, he chooses writ-
ing, celebrated in Of Grammatology.
By 1963 , Derrida and Foucault already had a long per-
sonal history. In the early fifties, Derrida had been a student in
Foucault’s course on psychology at the École. Their most sig-
nificant encounter came in 1955 , after Derrida gave a paper he
had written on Husserl to his supervisor, Louis Althusser. Der-
rida wanted the paper to count for his degree. Althusser con-
fessed that he was unable to evaluate Derrida’s work on
Husserl (“It’s too difficult, too obscure,” he remarked). So he
gave the paper to Foucault, who commented, “Well, it’s either
an F or an A”(Negotiations 148 ). Foucault, like Althusser, re-
sisted any public acknowledgment of Husserl’s importance.
Derrida, the budding Husserl scholar, was not to forget, or for-
give, his teacher Foucault’s blind spot.
Two years before Derrida’s lecture, in 1961 , Foucault had
published his landmark History of Madness in the Age of
Reason.(In English the book is more commonly known as
Madness and Civilization, the title of Richard Howard’s
abridged translation.) Foucault argued that insanity, which
had been an accepted, if frightening, power in the ancient
world, was stigmatized during the Enlightenment, when it be-
came the “other” of reason. Madmen were confined to asy-
lums, whereas in the Middle Ages and earlier they had run free
in the streets: reviled and feared, but also sources of a fierce
oracular wisdom.
Derrida begins his essay, entitled “Cogito and the History
of Madness,” by circling warily around his prey, his old teacher
Foucault. “Having had the good fortune to study under Michel
Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grate-
ful disciple,” he remarks uneasily (Writing 31 ). Derrida then
66 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology