372 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
set foot in the United States. The situation struck him as being much
more open than in France, now that ‘French Theory’ was all the rage.
He wanted their careers to benefi t and was always ready to write
enthusiastic and eff ective letters of recommendation. In 1985, Nancy
went to teach for two years at the University of San Diego, not far
from Irvine, which made it easier for them to meet. To support the
publication of Lacoue-Labarthe’s Typography by Harvard University
Press, Derrida wrote a forty-page preface, stating his admiration for
‘the force and the exigent character’ of his thought:
What I share with Lacoue-Labarthe, we also both share,
though diff erently, with Jean-Luc Nancy. But I hasten imme-
diately to reiterate that despite so many common paths and
so much work done in common, between the two of them and
among the three of us, the experience of each remains, in its
singular proximity, absolutely diff erent; and this, despite its
inevitable impurity, is the secret of the idiom. The secret: that
is to say, fi rst of all, the separation, the without-relation, the
interruption. The most urgent thing – I will try to work on
this – would be to break here with the family resemblance, to
avoid genealogical temptations, projections, assimilations, or
identifi cations.^49Just after reading this superb text, Lacoue-Labarthe sent Derrida
a letter that showed how touched he was. The powerful impact
of the pages his friend had just devoted to him left him almost
speechless.
The only word that comes to mind is that I am overwhelmed.
Apart from ‘mere’ narcissism, even though I won’t deny that:
this is the fi rst time that I can see someone reading me, and
that someone is you, not just what you represent, but the fact
that my debt towards you in philosophical matters cannot
be measured and, as you know, I obstinately consider you to
be the master of a school at which I consider myself still to be
learning, even though I was never really in the position of being
your pupil. But apart from that narcissism, because of what
you give to these texts about which, in spite of the appearance
of the tone, I have always felt so unsure. You show them a trust
that I would never have thought possible and I have just started
to understand what they were trying to say and what I wasn’t
able to say.^50This period was also marked by meetings with several young
philosophers who would go on to have brilliant careers.
Bernard Stiegler contacted Derrida in really quite unusual