422 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
But many people knew that ‘the feminine’ was, for him, always in
the plural. If Derrida vaunted faithfulness in his reply to the Proust
questionnaire, this was because every relationship was for him a
unique, irreplaceable event; so he felt capable of faithfulness to
many people. Among all the women he knew, Sylviane Agacinski
occupied a special place. Never again would he expose himself to
that degree; never again did he want to suff er or make someone else
suff er as much. But he remained a great seducer, and if he valued
his own success and fame, this was also because they made things
easier. His immense respect for women, and especially his great
willingness to listen to them, rather like an analyst, were redoubt-
able weapons. As Marguerite Derrida puts it: ‘I’ve always thought
that it was mainly through his capacity for listening that Jacques
could seduce women.’ This quality, rare in a man, even rarer in a
personality as strong as his, impressed many of the women he fre-
quented. His friend Marie-Claire Boons is happy to say as much: ‘I
found in him an absolute ability to listen that I’ve never come across
in anyone else. An abstention from all moral judgement. In every
situation, he wanted to go where life was.’^15
‘Love of women was there even before puberty,’ he confi ded one
day to Hélène Cixous. ‘It was already a mixture of identifi cation
and compassion. I felt I was on their side.’^16 As the years went by,
he increasingly preferred the company of women to that of men, and
indeed he thought that women were his best readers. All the same, in
spite of his theoretical alliance with feminists, Derrida loved women
who affi rmed their femininity and assumed it without hysteria. A
woman who did not attract him physically had a hard time trying to
interest him, however great her intellectual abilities. ‘When we fi rst
got to know each other,’ says Alan Bass, ‘he would often describe
himself as “a horrible Mediterranean macho man”.’
In spite of ups and downs, the union between Jacques and Marguerite
remained essential and indestructible. Nothing could undermine it
over the forty-eight years of their life together. According to Avital
Ronell, ‘Marguerite never considered anyone to be a rival. She
always had something nice to say about the women who were close
or too close to Jacques, which does not mean that she did not suff er
because of them.’^17
From their earliest encounters, Marguerite had been convinced
that Jacques would be the greatest philosopher of his generation.
And so her admiration, present right from the start, did not have
to keep being restated. And if Jacques was amazed that his wife
was not more dazzled by the marks of external recognition that
he received, this was because she had not waited for him to meet
with success before believing in him. Honours, to which Derrida
himself was quite drawn, since he viewed them as a recompense for