316 Derrida 1963–1983
election would be a mere formality. An opportunity like this would
probably not come by again for a long time.
The fi rst stage in applying for the post was to submit a state
thesis sur travaux as quickly as possible. Jean-Toussaint Dessanti,
whose work Derrida admired even though it was far removed from
his own, assumed the role of thesis supervisor, and Maurice de
Gandillac was to chair a jury which also included Pierre Aubenque,
Henri Joly, Gilbert Lascault, and Emmanuel Levinas. The title
chosen to subsume the ten publications submitted was ‘The inscrip-
tion of philosophy: research into the interpretation of writing’. To
make his work more likely to ‘pass’, Derrida decided to leave out his
most risky works: Glas, Spurs, and The Post Card.
The viva took place on Monday, 2 June 1980 at 2 a.m., at 46,
rue Saint-Jacques. The room was packed and the weather was
scorching. Derrida, wearing a blue suit, shed his jacket before
speaking.^27 Summarizing his intellectual career in the very fi ne text
‘Punctuations: The time of a thesis’, he did not seek to disguise his
extremely ambivalent relations with the university system, acknow-
ledging that he had long neglected his thesis, before deciding not to
submit one. On his change of attitude, of course, he could give only
a veiled and allusive explanation:
Only a few months ago, taking account of a very wide number
of diff erent factors that I cannot analyze here, I came to the
conclusion, putting an abrupt end to a process of deliberation
that was threatening to become interminable, that everything
that had justifi ed my earlier resolution (concerning the thesis,
of course) was no longer likely to be valid for the years to come.
In particular, for the very reasons of institutional politics that
had until now held me back, I concluded that it was perhaps
better, and I must emphasize the ‘perhaps,’ to prepare myself
for some new type of mobility. [.. .] Perhaps because I was
beginning to know only too well not indeed where I was going
but where I was, not where I had arrived but where I stopped.^28In his opening statement, Pierre Aubenque, rather irritated by
the celebrity of the candidate and the crowd that had thronged into
the room, announced that he would play ‘without demur his role
as judge, in accordance with all the academic criteria in force’.^29 In
contrast, with great generosity, Levinas hailed the event which this
viva constituted, assuring the listeners that it was ‘an exceptional
ceremony’ and so could not ‘obey the consecrated rites’:
The signifi cance of your oeuvre, the extent of your infl uence,
your international audience, the number and quality of the
pupils and disciples gathered around you in Paris, have long