198 Derrida 1963–1983
Communistes Marxistes-Léninistes (Union of Communist Marxist-
Leninist Youth), went into a sleeping cure, as he too had fallen
prey to psychological problems. As for Sollers, May 1968 was the
moment when he decided to align himself with the positions of the
Communist Party, which was overall very hostile to the student
movement: according to the collective texts published in the summer
number of Tel Quel, May 1968 corresponded merely to the fl eeting
emergence of a non-Marxist, even ‘counter-revolutionary’ leftism.
Even though it would have immense repercussions, the movement
had started to lose impetus by 30 May. Nearly a million demonstra-
tors marched down the Champs-Elysées in support of General de
Gaulle. A few weeks later, the general elections gave him a crushing
majority. On 10 July 1968, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou was
dismissed and replaced by Maurice Couve de Murville.
During this time, the Derrida family were fi nally able to move
into the brand-new detached house they had bought in Ris-Orangis,
a good twenty or so kilometres south-east of Paris. They would
not be moving again. For Derrida, keeping his distance from the
capital was not due merely to economic necessity. To the Paris
apartment, which for him was synonymous with promiscuity, he
preferred a house with a garden, in countryside which was not really
countryside.
He spent the beginning of summer in Nice, without Marguerite or
the children. After the upheaval of the previous months, these days
seemed to be doing him good, as he told Henry Bauchau:
In this silence and idleness, it’s a welcome return, even a
welcome regression: there’s the Mediterranean of my child-
hood, in which my body can really immerse itself. And then- another return to the mother. I’m living alone with my
parents, something I haven’t done for twelve years... I know
you can understand this strange experience...^36
Derrida was contemplating writing a whole book about Plato.
But meanwhile, he was mainly busy with Numbers. His enthusiasm
for Sollers’ novel was as intense as before and he regretted, after
all these months, that he had still not fi nished the text he wanted
to devote to it: ‘This book is extraordinary and I don’t feel able
to measure up to it, especially in an “article”. “Dissemination”,
however, is making progress, it’s already too long and, and as I’d
foreseen, it will need two issues of Critique.’^37
After reading this article, almost as long as the fi ction that
had inspired it, Sollers again thanked Derrida, however derisory
this might seem after such a gift: ‘I’ll insist for a simple reason:
you’ll enable me, if I’m strong enough, to advance further into