172 Derrida 1963–1983
I’ve just read Badiou’s text. Like you yourself and Barthes,
I fi nd it at least irritating in its tone, the author’s pomposity,
the ‘marks’ he hands out to everyone as if it were prize-giving
or the Last Judgment. I still think that it’s important. [.. .] I
don’t think there’s any doubt of this, and am all the more pre-
pared to grant it this importance because I am far from feeling
‘philosophically’ ready to follow him in his arguments or his
conclusions.^5Piel quite naturally suggested that Derrida enter the review’s
ed itorial board, together with Deguy, Barthes, and Foucault.
Decisions would continue to be reached on an informal basis: meet-
ings were often held at Piel’s home, in Neuilly, and included lunch or
dinner. But while Critique did not want to follow any public ‘line’,
the review was, in those days, remarkably lively, with a good grasp
of current issues. The series of books that started coming out under
its name in 1967 increased its infl uence and prestige.
Even though typing the text took longer and was more diffi cult
than expected, Derrida and Piel still hoped to see Of Grammatology
come out before the summer, at the same time as Writing and
Diff erence, which Sollers was preparing for publication by Seuil, in
the series ‘Tel Quel’. For Of Grammatology ̧ the dates were compli-
cated: the work had to be printed before the beginning of May, so
as to be submitted offi cially to the three members of the doctoral
jury, but in no case was it to come out in bookshops before the viva,
scheduled for June.
Derrida soon had to inform Sollers that Of Grammatology would
after all not come out before September. He wondered whether it
might also be necessary to delay Writing and Diff erence so that the
two works would not be separated. He was anxious about them
seeming too fragmented if published apart – the various references
from one volume to the other might fall fl at. For him, it would
even be better to publish on the same date the ‘little Husserl book’
whose proofs he was expecting: ‘I am increasingly inclined to think
that it would be to everyone’s advantage if the whole lot came out
in September.’^6 This was not Sollers’ opinion: he preferred not
to change what had been agreed on and to publish Writing and
Diff erence in spring.
This book, one of Derrida’s most famous, was a big tome of 436
pages, which brought together, in a slightly revised form, most of
the texts he had published in reviews since 1963, respecting the chro-
nology of their fi rst publication and readers to ‘join the dots’ when
it came to what linked one text to another. The volume opened
with the article on Jean Rousset, ‘Force and signifi cation’. It was
followed by ‘Cogito and the history of madness’, ‘Edmond Jabès
and the question of the book’, ‘Violence and metaphysics, an essay