A Period of Withdrawal 1968 197
Obscure and The Space of Literature, whose health had been precar-
ious for years, even seemed to fi nd a kind of renewed vigour in the
movement: he was at all the demonstrations, all the general assem-
blies, and took part in composing pamphlets and motions, and
suggesting one of the fi nest slogans of May ’68: ‘Be realistic, demand
the impossible.’ For the radical Blanchot, there was nothing to be
lost and so nothing to be saved. He was impelled by an exultation
of pure revolt, intensifi ed by a fascination for anonymous writing, a
sudden act of vengeance against ‘the misery of the isolated mind’.^33
In an interview with François Ewald, Derrida later recognized
that he personally had not been ‘what they call a soixante-huitard’:
Though I then participated in demonstrations and organized
the fi rst general meeting of the time at the École Normale, I
was on my guard, even worried in the face of a certain cult of
spontaneity, a fusionist, anti-trades-union euphoria, in the face
of the fi nally ‘freed’ speech, of restored ‘transparence’, and so
forth. I never believe in those things... [.. .] I was not against
it, but I have always had trouble vibrating in unison. I didn’t
feel I was participating in a great shake-up. But I now believe
that in this jubilation, which was not very much to my taste,
something else happened.^34Admitting that his distance probably contained ‘a sort of
crypto-Communist legacy’, Derrida spoke in more detail about his
attitude to the student movement in his interview with Maurizio
Ferraris:
I did not say no to ‘68’, I took part in the demonstrations, I
organized the fi rst general assembly at the École Normale. Still,
rightly or wrongly, my heart was not ‘on the barricades’. What
really bothered me was not so much the apparent spontaneity,
which I do not believe in, but the spontaneist political elo-
quence, the call for transparency, for communication without
relay or delay, the liberation from every sort of apparatus,
party or union. [.. .] Spontaneism, like workerism, pauper-
ism, struck me as something to be wary of. I wouldn’t say my
conscience is clear on this matter and that it’s as simple as that.
These days [.. .], I would be more cautious about formulating
this critique of spontaneism.^35Derrida was not alone in his failure to grasp the full extent of
the events. Althusser, who had pushed many of his students into
politically radical positions, including Maoism, was completely at
a loss; he spent the spring and part of the summer shut away in
a clinic. Robert Linhart, the founder of the Union des Jeunesses