In Support of Philosophy 1973–1976 269
refl ection, image, idol, icon, simulacrum, mimicry, double, mask,
identifi cation, etc.’^6 Derrida suggested to the four people in charge
of the series two other authors: Bernard Pautrat and Sylviane
Agacinski. All six of them got together at the end of June 1974
to decide on the volume’s contents. As Nancy recalls: ‘This was
when Philippe and I realized that the relationship between Jacques
and Sylviane was not just philosophical.’^7 Mimesis, which Derrida
placed great faith in, was the young woman’s fi rst publication, and
he was obviously keen to highlight it. But he proceeded with some
subtlety, and did not impose his will on his fellow authors:
Have you thought about the order of texts in the volume?
Personally, I’m not happy with any choice that presupposes an
interpretation or hierarchy, I’m strongly tempted by putting
the authors in alphabetical order – it’s arbitrary enough to
neut ralize the question of semantic or systematic order. That
way, it would start with the least ‘public’ name, and I can see
all sorts of advantages in this. Tell me frankly what you think.^8Derrida hoped that the volume could come out very quickly
and devoted the beginning of summer to writing his own text,
‘Economimesis’, a provocative reading of a few fragments from
Kant’s Critique of Judgement. He wrote to Lacoue-Labarthe:
I’m looking forward to reading your texts, and this common
publication – like everything we do together – gives me great
pleasure. [.. .] With Mimesis, we should trigger a real uproar
around the beast, stir/scare the theoreticalizing populace, make
it chase after the cattle as if we were unleashing merry hell at a
cattle market or opening wide – to the exit, I mean – the doors
of a country show. I can just see this scene.^9This agitprop tone and these banal metaphors are extremely rare in
Derrida’s correspondence, and confi rm that, in his view, Mimesis
was a real war machine and a sort of continuation of Glas. But for
all sorts of reasons, the volume was held up.
Derrida devoted the rest of summer 1974 to the text that Nancy and
Lacoue-Labarthe had requested for the special number of Poétique
that they were preparing with the title ‘Literature and philosophy
mixed’. He chose to rework his 1971 lecture on Lacan’s ‘Seminar on
The Purloined Letter’. But the article started to grow much longer
than anticipated, which – together with the actual contents of the
text – caused him some anxiety. When he sent it to the two authors
of The Title of the Letter, he asked them to tell him ‘quite frankly
and brutally’ if anything struck them as ‘false, grossly mistaken or