418 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
‘Jacques was permanently overworked,’ explains his son Pierre.
Too many conference papers and trips, too many commitments
and obligations, too many texts and books to write. He com-
plained about being overburdened almost every day, like a kind
of basso continuo. At the same time, if he was always on the
breach, he coped with things, he kept going forward. He had to
answer, most often as a matter of urgency.^2Quite unlike Melville’s Bartleby and his celebrated ‘I would prefer
not to’, Derrida was the man who preferred to say ‘yes’. He had
made this into a way of life, a mode of being. The more the years
passed, the more projects piled up, the more letters he had in his
in-tray, and the more trips there were to organize. He ‘overfl owed’,
writes Michel Deguy, one of the few people who followed his career
from beginning to end. ‘The “too-much” was his moderation. But
too much what? Too long, for example. When a “participation”
by Jacques Derrida was announced, his friends’ smiles insinuated:
“How long is he going to speak for?” You never know. If he’s said
he’ll be brief, you’d better make sure he has two or three hours... .’^3
Excessive and wholehearted: this was also how Derrida was in
his relationships, in his sudden enthusiasms as well as his resent-
ments. His kindness, his availability, his friendly ear sometimes had
a reverse side – sudden, intense outbursts of anger. A disagreement
or a momentary clumsiness was enough for you to be disgraced, to
be consigned to the enemy camp. ‘He could be hurt very easily,’ says
his son Jean. ‘There were wounds which the slightest incident could
be enough to reopen. When someone had brushed him up the wrong
way, or attacked him in a text, he never forgot.’^4 In those cases,
he could be harsh and implacable, and even unfair. Claire Nancy
witnessed this: ‘Fragile and tormented, Derrida sometimes saw the
world as a football pitch. One day, he drew me a kind of map of the
world: there were countries where he was recognized, those where
his enemies were dominant, and fi nally those where he was still
unknown.’^5
This occupation of a terrain on which he was both attacking
and defending made him cautious, mistrustful, and even somewhat
paranoid. However great his successes, he saw nothing but threats.
And even when he occupied the position of master, he still saw
himself as the victim he had on more than one occasion been, espe-
cially in institutions. ‘There was something childish in his attitude,’
acknowledges Bernard Stiegler. ‘An infi nite demand for love.’ But
there was nothing one-sided about this permanent desire to feel
loved. Derrida was also terribly sentimental and generous to a fault.
He was attentive towards the people he mixed with, interested in
their lives and the lives of their friends. However busy he was, he