The Derrida International 1996–1999 481
Bourdieu’s On Television was published. The sociologist’s analysis
was quite close to Derrida’s, but more radical and more militant in
style.^10
While he was open to new areas, Derrida stayed faithful to most
of his old passions. This was why he was happy to agree to speak
in the prestigious setting of the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, on the occasion of the fi rst major exhibition of paintings
and drawings by Artaud: ‘Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper’. In
the lecture he gave on 16 October 1996, he tried once again to
get closer to the man who nicknamed himself ‘Artaud le Mômo’
(‘Artaud the Kiddy’). But he also pondered the ‘strange event
represented, in 1996, by the exhibition of Artaud’s works in one
of the greatest museum institutions in the city of New York –
and the world’. The title chosen by Derrida, Artaud le Moma,
was unfortunately not deemed ‘presentable or decent’ by the
directors of MoMA. And so the talk was given without any real
title: ‘Jacques Derrida... will present a lecture about Artaud’s
drawings.’^11
It was at this lecture that Derrida made the acquaintance of
Serge Malausséna, Antonin Artaud’s nephew, now his benefi ciary.
A serious legal dispute had embroiled them for years over the
book that brought together the Dessins et portraits, published by
Gallimard and Schirmer-Mosel in 1986. In 1991, Malausséna had
also used a subpoena to block the publication of volume XXVI of
Artaud’s complete works by Gallimard. So relations were more
than strained. However, the fi rst contact with Malausséna was
quite cordial. Derrida was struck by the astonishing physical resem-
blance between Artaud and his nephew, and by his evident passion
for Artaud’s work. Malausséna, for his part, greatly admired the
lecture.
‘Jacques Derrida struck me as being as charming as he was
brilliant,’ Malausséna recalls,
but relations between us had been poisoned by Paule Thévenin.
At this meeting in New York, and more particularly during a
long meeting in Paris, I gave him my version of the story: the
way Paule Thévenin had seized the papers, notebooks, and
drawings on the very same day Artaud had died, and cleared
out his room; the way she had concealed them for years with
diff erent people, fobbing off questions by alluding to myster-
ious collectors... Derrida was embarrassed by what I told
him: ‘I’d never seen things from that point of view,’ he said.
But he still insisted on his debt towards Paule Thévenin. Since
she had passed away in 1993, he probably felt even more bound
by loyalty.^12