338 Derrida 1963–1983
down. He was taken to a room where he rested as well as he could,
rereading the Prague sections of Chateaubriand’s Memoirs from
Beyond the Grave. The following afternoon, he took the train for
Paris, accompanied by an employee of the embassy to the German
border. At Stuttgart, he was met by a team from Antenne 2 and the
journalist Sylvie Marion interviewed him at length.
On his arrival at the Gare de l’Est, on 2 January at 7:30 a.m.,
Derrida was assailed by journalists and photographers. Diplomats,
colleagues, students, and friends had all come to see him. But
Derrida hardly had time to say hello. He left with Marguerite
and Jean for the studio of Antenne 2 to view, with the journalist,
the interview that had been fi lmed in the train: it was a delicate
matter and he was anxious not to compromise anyone by a clumsy
phrase.^11
For a contemporary TV viewer, the sequence broadcast on the
12:45 p.m. news is very strange, especially since the philosopher was
given an unusual amount of time, seven minutes, to relate what had
happened to him. Derrida expressed himself slowly, especially to
start with, and without looking at the camera. After describing the
context of his visit to Prague, he agreed to relate the facts, but tried
hard to avoid sensationalism and self-pity:
So I was thrown, I think that’s the right word, into a dungeon.
[.. .] I hesitate to describe the brutality of the thing, which in
one sense was commonplace and in another was reserved for
me alone, I think. Then, it was the kind of day any common law
prisoner spends. For the same reason, I won’t describe it, but
for me it was extremely intimidating to experience something –
starting with the door of the cell closing on you, the prisoner’s
uniform – that I knew only through pictures or books. And so
it was in the middle of the following night that, this time with a
great deal of courtesy and academic deference for Monsieur le
Professeur, they came to free me. In between, I had no idea of
what was going on outside. [.. .]
I couldn’t know whether the French authorities, my family,
etc., had been informed, or even knew where I was. And it was
intimated to me it could take at least a few days, at least until
the end of the holiday period, before the embassy was told and
could make contact with me, and that the trial could take, after
a preliminary inquiry of two months, for an indefi nite period,
and that the sentence laid down for this type of accusation was
two years, involving both myself and other Czech intellectu-
als, in a trial which could be imagined as following all sorts of
scenarios.
Personally, what I wish to remember from this sequence
and what I wish other people to remember is that this was a