408 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
Jean worked in philosophy more than me, but he, too, went
into areas that were almost entirely safe from Derridean com-
mentaries. He didn’t become a professor and found his own
fi eld, pursuing personal research, especially into Plotinus and
neo-Platonism.^16Over the following years, Pierre Alféri and Olivier Cadiot set up
the Revue de littérature générale and published ten or so works with
Éditions P.O.L.; these included Le Cinéma des familles, a novel
fi lled with autobiographical details – Derrida would recommend it
to several of his friends. But Derrida would continue to be worried
by his oldest son’s professional situation. ‘I’ve had all sorts of small
jobs,’ says Pierre.
I’ve been a bookseller, I’ve worked in publishing, I’ve written
lyrics for songs. When I translated several parts of the Bible for
Éditions Bayard, this wasn’t just for the pleasure of writing, it
was also my main source of income... If the paternal model
has played any role in my development, it was that I took over
his desire to be a writer. In my own way, I’ve perhaps taken his
desire forward. One evening, he came to the Fondation Cartier,
to a performance I’d organized with Rodolphe Burger. There
were images projected, readings, music. At the end he came
up to congratulate me and said: ‘Basically, we’re doing more
or less the same thing.’ He was aware that he was practising
philosophy more and more as an artist. He often felt closer to
writers, painters, or architects than to academics.^17Nonetheless, Derrida still had to deal with professors of philo sophy
- not always a happy experience. A Commission of Refl ection on
the subject matter to be taught had been set up at the end of 1988
by Lionel Jospin, then Minister of Education. It was chaired by
Pierre Bourdieu and François Gros, and given the task of revis-
ing the material being taught while making it more coherent. It
was in the framework of this commission that the Commission
for Philosophy and Epistemology was established, co-chaired by
Jacques Bouveresse and Jacques Derrida and comprising Jacques
Brunschwig, Jean Dhombres, Catherine Malabou, and Jean-
Jacques Rosat. This small group met for six months, from January
to June 1989. In Derrida’s view, it was a question of extending the
work started in 1974 with the Greph and continued at the beginning
of the 1980s with the Collège International de Philosophie. But if he
was to gain acceptance for the ideas he felt most strongly about, one
of the challenges was to reach some understanding with Bouveresse,
who for years had regularly been attacking him; he had said some