In Life and in Death 2003–2004 519
dematerialization into the grieving survivor who can merely
allow himself to be invaded by a dead person who now has no
place outside of himself – this is both the greatest fi delity and
the greatest treason, the best way of keeping the other while
getting rid of him.^2These intimate refl ections did not stop Derrida from being more
preoccupied than ever by the political issues of the moment. In
January 2003, he was one of the fi rst signatories of the petition ‘Not
in our name’ protesting against likely military intervention in Iraq.
It was in this context that Rogues, the immense lecture he had given
at Cerisy the previous summer, came out.
On 19 February, on the initiative of René Major, a debate entitled
‘Why War?’ – inspired by the celebrated exchange between Einstein
and Freud in 1933 – allowed Baudrillard and Derrida to compare
their views on the subject. There was nothing academic about the
exercise. Five days earlier, Dominique de Villepin, the French
Minister of Foreign Aff airs, had given his celebrated speech to the
UN, calling for Iraq to be disarmed rather than subjected to military
intervention. It was in front of a packed auditorium that Derrida
began with a profession of humility: ‘Faced with such diffi cult and
intimidating questions, I realize that it’s the fi rst time in my life, in
spite of so many other experiences of political discussions, that I’ve
taken part in a discussion on burning political issues.’ Expressing
his pleasure that, for two days, millions of people across the world
had been demonstrating against the imminent war, he rejoiced at
‘the German–French opposition to American enthusiasm’, even if
he did not feel ‘any more chiraquien than saddam-hussénien’.^3 The
debate was lively but courteous. There was some argument over the
signifi cance of 11 September. In Baudrillard’s view, the forthcoming
intervention was a direct eff ect of this. Without wishing to minimize
the event, Derrida felt that ‘the Iraq sequence is to some extent inde-
pendent’, and that the war on Iraq, long desired by George W. Bush
and his entourage, would probably have happened anyway. He was
later proved right.
The next day, 20 February, Derrida learned that Maurice Blanchot
had died. This was a huge shock. His refl ections on cremation for-
mulated a few days previously at his seminar could not have been far
from his thoughts as he attended, on 24 February, the cremation of
this friend, so close and yet so distant. Apart from Jean-Luc Nancy,
the other mourners were mainly Portuguese – friends and rela-
tives of Cidalia Fernandez, Blanchot’s adoptive daughter, who did
not understood much French. In this really gloomy crematorium,
Derrida did speak, as Blanchot had wished: