Uncomfortable Positions 1969–1971 215
marked by the infl uence of the philosophy of Heidegger and by what
is, in that philosophy, already a blindspot, an ideological stain [tache]
whose origin lies in the most regressive elements of German ideology
between the wars’.^23 From now on, the relationship between Derrida
and Faye would be one of permanent hostility – and this would have
far from negligible consequences a decade or so later.
One result of these dark quarrels was that Derrida became close to
Jean-Louis Houdebine. He was a member of the Communist Party,
ran the review Promesse, and was a friend of Sollers and Kristeva.
He published articles frequently in La Nouvelle Critique, and was
eager to open it up more to modern trends. This was not always
an easy task: while a new gathering at Cluny was being organized,
Houdebine wrote to Derrida to say how much his philosophy was
‘sidelined, repressed’ within the Party. ‘This is due to very deep
resistances that are diffi cult to overcome,’ as Sollers had warned
him.^24
The second Cluny conference, held from 2 to 4 April 1970, took
as its theme ‘Literature and Ideologies’. Derrida, who had not taken
part in the fi rst conference, missed this one as well, but his work
often came up, leading to a violent clash on this occasion between
Tel Quel and Action poétique, the review edited by Henri Deluy that
was also linked to the Communist Party but was much more eclec-
tic. Tensions ran so high that one of those present actually fainted.
The young linguist Mitsou Ronat, a close friend of Faye, was given
the task of attacking Kristeva, with no holds barred. Élisabeth
Roudinesco laid into Derrida, comparing his work with Jung’s.
When he heard about this, Derrida was fl abbergasted.
Roudinesco still remembers these quarrels vividly:
That evening, the telqueliens complained to the organizers about
the violence of the attacks. Mitsou Ronat and I were given an
offi cial rap on the knuckles and we had to negotiate for much of
that night to ensure it wouldn’t be made public. Christine Buci-
Glucksmann and Catherine Clément were chosen to respond
to us the following day. We seemed to be in a minority, but in
actual fact Tel Quel had lost its battle for intellectual and liter-
ary control of the Party. They’d been trying to impose a ‘line’, a
single, rigid theory, something we absolutely wanted to avoid.
It was largely because of this setback that Sollers became more
radical and moved towards Maoism the following year.^25These quarrels may have attacked Derrida’s work but they did not
really involve him, and were far removed from the questions that he
was really interested in. In 1969 and 1970, he started to form new
alliances.