524 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
too late’. He even accused Jean-Luc Nancy of spreading the news
of his illness. This was far from being the case, the latter assured
him,
but of course it is no coincidence if people are asking me
whether what they have heard elsewhere is true. And since
you told me: ‘it’s not a secret, but let it all be kept discreet’ (in
short), I’ve followed that rule. And above all, I haven’t induced
those morbid messages you’re getting, and that revolt me as
much as they do you.^15Throughout that diffi cult summer of 2003, Derrida was rarely left
alone. When Marguerite was not there, his friends took it in turns to
be at his side: Hélène Cixous on Mondays, Marie-Louise Mallet on
Tuesdays, Safaa Fathy on Thursdays. More than ever, Derrida pre-
ferred to phone rather than write. He did not conceal the seriousness
of his state from his friends. ‘We had regular conversations,’ relates
J. Hillis Miller. ‘He told me he could no longer write, just carry out
simple tasks like correcting proofs.’^16
However, Derrida was far from having stopped working com-
pletely. In a letter sent to David Wills on 5 July 2003, while still
undergoing treatment, he made a series of highly specifi c remarks
about the English translation of La contre-allée (i.e., Counterpath).
He apologized for his handwriting, ‘even more illegible than usual.
It’s one of the eff ects of chemotherapy that makes my hand tremble
a bit.’^17 With this same trembling hand, which would soon become
a source of refl ection, he wrote on 10 July to the organizers of the
‘Comité Radicalement Anti-Corrida’, which was dedicated to the
outlawing of bullfi ghting, that he agreed to become the honorary
president of their movement: the animal cause was becoming ever
dearer to his heart.
Throughout the summer, even though some people thought he
was dying – he had been obliged to cancel the stay in New York
scheduled for the autumn, as well as a conference –, Derrida con-
tinued to battle with cancer. After the fi rst session of chemo and a
new scan, the doctor told him that the tumour had shrunk. Derrida
was still very weak, but he felt a little better. Towards the end of the
summer, he even envisaged resuming his seminar in 2003–4, before
fi nally giving up the idea.
But out of friendship for Elisabeth Weber, who was also suff ering
from cancer, he did not abandon a trip to Santa Barbara, on the
West Coast, for the conference ‘Irreconcilable Diff erences? Jacques
Derrida and the Question of Religion’ at the end of October. Weber
remembers: ‘Over the spring and summer of 2003, we spoke several
times by phone to talk about this conference, but also about the
chemotherapy that we were both undergoing.’^18 The title he chose