Uncomfortable Positions 1969–1971 211
Bernard-Henri Lévy entered in 1968. In his book Comedy, he
gave a colourful account of his fi rst meeting with Derrida:
Then came the beginning of the academic year. The master
received, in private, the new students in that offi ce in the rue
d’Ulm of which we had all dreamed. There he was. In fl esh and
bones. Younger than I had imagined. Pleasanter, too. Almost
friendly. Good heavens! The philosopher, the giant, the pitiless
deconstructor, the mysterious writer of whom I could never
have guessed that he had a doctrine on such trivial questions as
a ‘thesis outline’, a ‘topic for a Masters’, a ‘syllabus for a licence
or for the agrégation’ – could it be him, that immense person-
ality, that travelling companion of Tel Quel, that artist, just
like, quite simply, taking the time to welcome his new pupils
and talking to them in a language that was the same as that of
all normal professors? Yes. It was indeed him. I could weep at
the thought. I was so moved that I was speechless. ‘Who are
you? What do you do? Are you a Germanist? A Hellenist? A
Kantian or Nietzschean? A dialectician à la Hegel or à la Plato?
An idea, in a word? A concept?’^13Lévy was so intimidated to fi nd himself at last face to face with
the master, all of whose books he had read, that he could manage
no more than to introduce himself as a friend of Benesti: a cousin
of Derrida’s, a prosperous chemist in Neuilly, from whom Lévy
obtained his supply of amphetamines. The allusion to this cousin
- who considered ‘Jackie’ as the family failure, even though he was
apparently a ‘dab hand’ in his fi eld – caused a considerable chill
and brought this fi rst meeting to an end. Having ‘mixed up Plato’s
pharmacy with Benesti’s’ was an ‘unforgivable gaff e’, a mistake
which, in Lévy’s view, compromised his relationships with Derrida
for good.
However, they got on better over the next few months. Like many
students at the École, the future ‘BHL’ felt a priori more drawn to
Althusser. But Derrida was more present and much more accessible.
During one conversation, he helped the future author of Barbarism
with a Human Face to avoid a dreadful mistake.
Derrida did me an enormous favour in 1970! I’d reworked the
papers on Artaud and Nietzsche that I’d given at his seminar
and I really wanted to turn them into a book. In Le Monde, I’d
seen an advert for a publisher who was looking for manuscripts
to publish... La Pensée universelle! I sent them my text, my
heart beating. They replied that they were interested. But they
needed 10,000 francs to defray costs. When I told him this,
Derrida burst out laughing: ‘You’re mad – it’s a con!’^14