482 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
A few months before their second meeting, Derrida wrote to
Malausséna saying that he wished to publish Artaud le Moma with
reproductions, ‘most in small format, and in colour’,^13 which the
benefi ciary agreed to. But in 2002, when he saw the dummy of the
book, Malausséna expressed his great shock on reading a note added
in the defi nitive version, in which Derrida paid emphatic homage to
Paule Thévenin. Malausséna wrote to tell him that, contrary to
rumour, he had never opposed the publication of Artaud’s works,
but that he had wished to protest against the ‘defective edition’ of
the unpublished notebooks, which in his view had been ‘massacred’
by Thévenin. ‘Retaining the manuscripts for half a century has
allowed their possessor to act however she wanted, without any
control, wielding absolute power over an oeuvre that Artaud never
entrusted her with.’ Looking forward to a new generation of scholars
being able to work tranquilly ‘without being subjected to the pres-
sure of those men and women who had commandeered Artaud,’
Malausséna concluded his letter by questioning Derrida’s role in all
this more explicitly: ‘My brutal frankness in no way diminishes the
esteem in which I hold you. I will simply note that you are setting
yourself up as the high priest of a memory, conferring a sacred aura
on someone who behaved, all her life long, as an autocrat.’^14
The disagreement ran too deep to be resolved, and Derrida could
merely acknowledge this. Regretting that the note he had added had
off ended Artaud’s nephew, he agreed to alter it at proof stage.
As for Paule Thévenin, without being either willing or able to
engage in a fundamental debate (it would be too diffi cult in a
letter), I can’t deny what, like so many others, I personally owe
to her work, what my reading of Artaud owes her, what I owe
to the attentive friendship she showed towards me for a quarter
of a century, especially in the (long) story of my little pieces
on Artaud. You are well aware of this. So it was an impulse of
respect and loyalty that I felt I had to obey each time I named
Paule Thévenin in the fi nal revisions of my text. I hope that, in
spite of so many disagreements, you will understand what this
gesture dictated.^15The diffi culties that Derrida himself had experienced with Thévenin
at the time he was writing Glas – and the problems Genet had
related – could have led him to defend her in less unconditional
terms. But, like de Man, Thévenin had become sacrosanct now that
she was no longer there to defend herself.*
- The Artaud aff air would take on a new lease of life during the last weeks of
Derrida’s life, when the big volume of Artaud’s works came out in the ‘Quarto’
series. This anthology had been conceived, introduced, and annotated by Évelyne