outshone by the radiant, many-colored light of the Phaedrus.
Instead of wishing for simple and unambiguous speech, as
Derrida claims, Plato studies the psyche in its nuances. But
Derrida eliminates this psychological dimension from his por-
trait of Plato.
The early seventies were a time of significant changes for Der-
rida. His father, Aimé, died in 1970 ; the next year, he returned
to Algeria to teach for a few months at the University of Al-
giers. Now in his forties, he was becoming increasingly well
known in France, part of a set of exciting cutting-edge theo-
rists. But, as always, Derrida resisted being assimilated to any
group. In 1972 , he broke with Tel Queland its editor, Philippe
Sollers, over the journal’s Maoist politics. He had long felt
alienated from the doctrinaire leftism of French intellectual
life, evident in Tel Quel’s Communist proclamations. Now he
separated himself more explicitly from his colleagues. In 1971
and 1972 , Derrida taught at Oxford and at Johns Hopkins. He
was expanding his intellectual reach to include not just ancient
Greek and modern German thought but also contemporary
approaches to philosophy in the English-speaking world.
From Plato, Derrida turned to another of his influences,
this time a current rather than an ancient figure, and one as-
sociated with Oxford, where he was teaching: J. L. Austin. Like
Plato, Austin is a psychological thinker in the broad sense: pre-
occupied with what we say and how we say it because, in his
view, our conversation tells us who we are. As in the case of
Plato, Derrida decides to overlook this aspect of Austin, in-
stead seeing in him the wish for univocal meaning typical of
the logocentrist.
In August 1971 , three years after “Plato’s Pharmacy,” Der-
rida delivered, at a conference in Montreal, a lecture called “Sig-
156 Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud