152 Derrida 1963–1983
leçon, which is why I’d telephoned him to give him some encourage-
ment. [.. .] Lacan’s daughter came fi rst too, equal with Rabant’s
wife. There it is. I always fi nd this agrégation atmosphere diffi cult to
breathe in, you need to see the comedy of the fi nal results.’^22
Among the candidates whose success was a matter of some
importance to Derrida was Briec Bounoure, Gabriel’s grandson.
Even though he was not a normalien, Derrida had helped him at a
distance to work towards the exam throughout the year. ‘You must
especially reach the exam with the necessary freedom and fl exibility
to spot the exact specifi c nature of the subject, so as not to rush down
some well-known, reassuring path, and to organize your discussion,’
he impressed on him.^23 But Briec disappeared off to Brittany the day
after the written exams, without even waiting to fi nd out the results,
wondering whether he should not rather opt for a life as a deep-sea
fi sherman. Canguilhem, who knew that Derrida was friendly with
this young man, told him to get in touch with him as soon as possi-
ble: ‘Tell the boy that he can do whatever he wants in the oral. Given
the marks he got in the written exam, he’s going to pass, come what
may.’ A few weeks later, Derrida was pleased to be able to write to
Gabriel Bounoure that his grandson’s leçon had been judged ‘the
most philosophical heard so far’. Derrida had really been hoping he
would pass, and ‘it would have been heartbreaking if any words of
discouragement had deprived him of success’.^24
In October 1965, For Marx and the collective Reading ‘Capital’
launched the ‘Théorie’ series published by Maspero, which aroused
considerable interest, fi rst in France and then in several other
countries. Over the following months, Althusser was the object
‘of a passion, an infatuation, and an imitation evoked by no other
contemporary fi gure’.^25 To many people, he appeared as ‘the secret
pope of world revolution’.^26 In November 1966, Jean Lacroix
reported in Le Monde that the two most-cited names in papers
handed in by candidates for the philosophy agrégation were those
of Althusser and Foucault; it was not uncommon to fi nd the names
of very young philosophers such as Rancière, Balibar, or Macherey
mentioned.^27
At Normale Sup, the UEC – Union des Étudiants Communistes
(Union of Communist Students) – was tearing itself apart. The
‘Italian’ tendency – the most open, like the PCI – had hardly any rep-
resentatives at the École. The struggles took place mainly between
the orthodox wing, favourable to the Party and the USSR, and the
‘Maos’ or Maoists, led by Robert Linhart. The ‘Maos’ soon left
the UEC, which they viewed as ‘revisionist’, founding instead the
UJCml – Union des Jeunesses Communistes Marxistes-Léninistes
(Union of Communist Marxist-Leninist Youth). Althusser, who
made no bones about his interest in Mao Zedong’s theoretical texts,