190 Derrida 1963–1983
to give a paper. ‘As a great admirer of your works, I am sure that
you will fi nd in Germany a large and important audience.’ He was
convinced that Derrida’s ideas could have ‘a highly favourable
infl uence on the development of the human sciences in Germany’.^10
Shortly thereafter, Derrida’s fi rst visit to Berlin gave rise to a
revealing misunderstanding. Sam Weber came to meet him in the
small airport of Berlin-Tegel, situated just outside the city. One
of Weber’s friends had already met Derrida: she described him as
‘looking a bit like a young rogue in a black jacket’. But reading
Derrida’s fi rst texts must have played at least as big a part in Sam
Weber’s image of Derrida:
I was imagining a sort of revolutionary. In the concourse,
I spotted a handsome man who looked a bit like Vittorio
Gassmann, with a velvet shirt open at the chest and a series of
thriller magazines under his arm. I told myself: ‘Well, that’s
what the philosopher of the future looks like.’ I went up and
greeted him; he thanked me for coming to fetch him and we
headed off towards my Beetle convertible. His fi rst question
somewhat surprised me: ‘Is there a swimming pool at the
hotel?’ I was impressed. ‘We’re really in the post-philosophical
era,’ I thought. But I told him, a bit embarrassed, that he prob-
ably wouldn’t have time to go swimming before the conference.
‘What conference?’ my passenger asked. ‘I’ve come about a
fi lm. I’m a producer.’ Finally realizing my mistake, I turned
back and spotted outside the airport a gentleman in a grey suit,
looking lost and sheepish, trying vainly to hail a taxi. Derrida- the real one – looked up, saw me, saw my passenger – who
was laughing heartily at the situation – and understood what
had happened. A little later, he asked me how I had managed
to confuse him with the other man. ‘Er... You know... The
violence of metaphysics.. .,’ I told him. He was hurt, and
retorted: ‘Violence perhaps, but not brutality!’... The story
doesn’t end here: when I took him back to the airport, on the
Sunday, we saw the false Derrida at the bar, surrounded by
several pretty girls he must have been recruiting for his fi lm. He
indicated us with his eyes, and leaned towards them, tittering,
as he told them what had happened.... The fact of the matter
is that, in those days, Derrida was still not very sure of himself.
He dressed rather drably, like a traditional professor, and was
ill at ease in social situations. Only gradually did he free himself
up, inventing a public persona for himself and a form of erotic
identity that he made his own.^11
This story left its mark on Derrida, and he often mentioned it on
his later trips to Germany. But this fi rst stay in a Berlin that was