476 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
at the time of Anti-Oedipus and the Nietzsche conference at Cerisy,
especially as Deleuze’s long friendship with Foucault complicated
things. Nevertheless, the two philosophers had a great mutual
esteem and there were real philosophical affi nities between them.
Derrida recognized this:
From the very beginning, all of his books (but fi rst of all
Nietzsche and Philosophy, Diff erence and Repetition, The Logic
of Sense) have been for me not only, of course, strong provo-
cations to think but each time the fl ustering, really fl ustering,
experience of a closeness or of a nearly total affi nity concerning
the ‘theses’, if you will, across very obvious distances, in what I
would call – lacking any better term – the ‘g esture’, the ‘strategy’,
the ‘manner’ of writing, of speaking, of reading perhaps.^46Deleuze rarely referred to Derrida in his works, but he some-
times sent him signals of esteem and complicity – as, for example,
when Derrida’s commentary on Drawings and Portraits of Antonin
Artaud, ‘Maddening the subjectile’, came out: Deleuze wrote to tell
him of his admiration for this ‘splendid’ text, which ‘goes further
than anyone has been before in Artaud’s work’.^47 For his part, in
the seminars of his last years, Derrida returned on several occasions
to Deleuze’s works – including A Thousand Plateaus, which Deleuze
wrote with Félix Guattari. It was as if the dialogue between them
could take place only posthumously.
Emmanuel Levinas, now a great age, although he had been ill for
years, died on 25 December 1995. His death came as no surprise,
but it deeply aff ected Derrida. And yet again, on 27 December, in
the cemetery at Pantin, he was the one who spoke:
For a long time, for a very long time, I’ve feared having to say
Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas.
I knew that my voice would tremble at the moment of saying
it, and especially saying it aloud, right here, before him, so
close to him, pronouncing this word of adieu, this word à-Dieu,
which, in a certain sense, I get from him, a word that he will
have taught me to think or to pronounce otherwise. [.. .]
Whom is one addressing at such a moment? And in whose
name would one allow oneself to do so? Often those who come
forward to speak, to speak publicly, thereby interrupting the
animated whispering, the secret or intimate exchange that
always links one, deep inside, to a dead friend or master, those
who make themselves heard in a cemetery, end up addressing
directly, straight on, the one who, as we say, is no longer, is no
longer living, no longer there, who will no longer respond.^48