Who Was Jacques Derrida?: An Intellectual Biography

(Greg DeLong) #1

ally read very little of Marx’s work. Already in the sixties
Althusser was suffering from severe manic depression, and he
often failed to show up for his classes at the ENS.
Althusser was a fervent Communist Party member, un-
bending in his loyalty to Moscow. The literary theorist Gérard
Genette, who shared his friend Derrida’s political misgivings,
recalls going to see Althusser in 1956. Genette was troubled
by the Soviets’ brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt.
Althusser, baffled by Genette’s criticism, remarked, “But if
what you’re saying is true, the Party would be in the wrong!” A
defect in Communism was as unthinkable for Althusser as
a flaw in God would be for a Christian believer. Struck by
Althusser’s instinctive support of tyranny, Genette immedi-
ately left the Communist Party. The exchange between Genette
and Althusser had a marked effect on Derrida who, while per-
sonally fond of Althusser, became increasingly skeptical of his
political allegiances ( 164 ).
Derrida was not a member of the Communist Party, un-
like most of his colleagues at the École. When he was a student
there, Derrida later noted, the Party “dominated in a very tyran-
nical manner” ( 151 ). There was an atmosphere of “intellectual,if
not personal,terrorism”: a relentless “theoretical intimidation”
on the part of the Marxists ( 152 ). Discussion of phenomenology,
even the mere mention of Husserl or Heidegger, was considered
reactionary, the mark of a counterrevolutionary. As a student
and then an instructor at the École, Derrida felt isolated and
unhappy, a victim of political persecution ( 153 – 56 ). For the rest
of his life, he was to remain a liberal rather than a radical in
politics.
Against this background of conformist thinking, Derrida
readied his declaration of independence. In the summer of
1965 Derrida wrote the two essays that were to become the core


70 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology

Free download pdf