A Period of Withdrawal 1968 189
philosophical style’, wondering whether it was not the symptom of
a ‘lack of humility in one’s way of saying what needs to be said’. She
was annoyed by Derrida’s mode of expression: it would be better
if ‘the way of saying things went unnoticed’. What bothered her
even more, in a concept such as diff érance, was a way of using the
language that had entered French philosophy only under the infl u-
ence of German. Derrida replied that this expression, which had not
passed unnoticed, was exactly the subject that he had been focusing
on. Then he added, ironically: ‘Perhaps I am indeed under the infl u-
ence of this German philosophy which you mentioned. [.. .] But in
the fi eld of philosophy, is German infl uence a bad thing?’^7
A few days later, Georges Canguilhem wrote to Derrida to say
that he had gone home fi lled with delight, and enthusiasm, from the
conference, even though it was far removed from his own preoc-
cupations, but he confi rmed that his colleagues had really not liked
it. This was probably the moment when the breach between Derrida
and French philosophical institutions started to open. Considered
up until then as talented and promising, Derrida had now become
a real pain, with his three books published in one year, his articles
in non-specialist reviews, and the aura that was starting to surround
his name, in France and abroad.
On 31 January, he set off for London, at the instigation of his
former student Jean-Marue Benoist. He spoke at a conference on
Rousseau, on 3 and 4 February, and gave a paper that later became
‘The linguistic circle of Geneva’. During this fi rst visit to Britain,
he also went to Oxford, where he again gave his paper on ‘La dif-
férance’. But his British audience were even less impressed than
the members of the Société Française de Philosophie. The words
‘deconstruction’ and ‘diff érance’ were deemed to be ugly, and the
paper as a whole created a ‘chilly consternation’, rapidly followed
by an explosion of wrath on the part of Alfred Jules Ayer, the great
fi gure of logical positivism, who lost his cool. Derrida would never
forget this fi rst incident: he would remember it when he met with
similar misadventures in Oxford and Cambridge later on.^8
Even though Derrida found the rhythm of all these journeys and
requests for papers was ‘becoming absurd’ and felt that it would
‘have to stop’,^9 his lectures and classes abroad were only just start-
ing. His name was circulating more and more, and articles on his
work were starting to be published in several countries, including in
the prestigious Times Literary Supplement. The fi rst concrete pro-
posal came from Germany. Samuel Weber had discovered Derrida
thanks to Paul de Man two years previously. He was currently
teaching at the Free University in Berlin, and Peter Szondi, the head
of department, had asked him to organize a seminar on structuralist
literary criticism and very much hoped that Derrida would agree