330 Derrida 1963–1983
and teaching to be weakened or destroyed.’ So it was important to
defi ne ‘the conditions of survival and then the development of the
Literary School’. Up until now, Derrida stated, the latter had never
been given the means to live up to the research vocation laid down
in the offi cial texts. Without weakening the traditional recruitment
by competitive examination and the system of khâgnes, it would
be a good idea in his view to open up as soon as possible ‘another
space’ by recruiting independent researchers ‘at another level and
following diff erent criteria’. Research centres should also be created,
preferably looking towards new disciples or original themes, and
leading to a specifi c diploma. After adding some initial details on
the way these centres would operate, Derrida concluded that such a
development was in his view the only future for the Literary School:
‘This very ambitious project will have no chance unless people are
determined to invent the following: new forms of work, new courses
and atypical “careers”, research themes that hitherto have not been
investigated in the university system, in other institutions, or even
anywhere in France.’^64
The project garnered several reactions – mainly positive, at least
as far as the basic idea was concerned – and led to several meetings.
But in the meanwhile, a real rebellion was being fomented against
Derrida: at the beginning of December 1981, Emmanuel Martineau,
an alumnus of the ENS and a Heidegger specialist, turned against
his old teacher, launching a ten-point appeal to his ‘comrades’. He
asserted that Derrida was using the agrégation seminar as a pretext
‘for “cunning” verbal acrobatics deprived of any seriousness and
any philosophical sense, and, what is more, perfectly inadequate
for preparing a candidate for the agrégation exam, which is notori-
ously diffi cult’. He also judged that Derrida’s personal production,
which was ‘pure literature and had nothing to do with philosophy
in general, nor with the history of philosophy in particular’, con-
stituted a ‘case history both depressing and over-abundant’ for all
those who respected ‘our doctrinal tradition’. In consequence, he
called on the students to ‘resist’.^65 The fi rst eff ect of this appeal was
the drawing up of a petition in support of Derrida.
However grotesque, this polemic hurt Derrida and reinforced
even more his desire to leave Normale Sup as soon as he could, espe-
cially since the project of reform that he had attempted to launch
soon got bogged down. It had become diffi cult for him to give his
seminar in a place where, he thought, students could not in any case
quote him or follow his working methods if they wanted to pass the
agrégation.‘They didn’t even need to be warned, they just knew,’
and so they protected themselves from any form of contagion.
And so I alienated myself, I forgot myself. I tried to forget
myself whenever I corrected an essay. When I was giving a class