Uncomfortable Positions 1969–1971 221
The text of the author of Capital was ‘stratifi ed, diversifi ed, has
no “truth” ’, but it was currently being subjected to an interpreta-
tive strategy that Derrida deemed, ‘in the main, metaphysical and
regressive’. However, he did not wish to attack this strategy head-
on, since in the circumstances it would be a reactionary move. ‘I’ll
never fall into anti-Communism, so I’m shutting my mouth. And
I know this annoys everyone, and that certain people don’t much
care, as you do, to “respect” my silence.’
Acknowledging that his attitude ‘may wrongly give the impres-
sion of apoliticism, or rather “apraxia” ’, Derrida fi nished this long
letter by announcing, as it were, what would twenty-two years later
become Specters of Marx:
I will never emerge from this silence until I have done the
work. And this work, I can sense, knowing as I do my style
and my rhythms, will never give rise to a ‘conversion’, but to
oblique incisions, sideways shifts, following this or that unno-
ticed vein in the Marxist text or the ‘revolution’ of which it is
the discourse. [.. .] Meanwhile, what else should one do than
work within the limits of the rigour of which one is capable
[.. .] and to act ‘on the left’ every time one can, in the fi eld one
perceives or looks over, when the situation is clear enough for
this, without having too many illusions about the microscopic
eff ects of any such ‘action’.‘To act “on the left” every time one can’: this would continue to
be Derrida’s line of conduct, even though he was accused by some
people of taking a stance only belatedly. When the situation seemed
‘clear enough’ to him, he would reply without wavering to requests
made of him. On 12 November 1970, he signed the petition against
the censorship to which Eden Eden Eden by Pierre Guyotat had
fallen;* co-signatories included Jérôme Lindon, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Boulez, Michel Foucault, and a great
number of writers, those of the New Novel and Tel Quel among
others. Two weeks later, he replied, along with four hundred
French intellectuals, to the appeal launched by La Nouvelle Critique
demanding that Angela Davis be set free. On 19 January 1971,
in L’Humanité, he signalled for the fi rst time his support for the
Palestinian cause: after the repeated acts of bloody aggression by
the Jordanian army, he signed an appeal ‘against any attempt to
and bring together my ideas about him in a few minutes on the basis of a few ques-
tions. I sincerely regret this: please understand my scruples’ (letter from Derrida to
a representative of the RTB, 13 December 1969).
- This attracted controversy for its linguistic experiments and alleged obscenity.
- Tr.