dangerous, important elements are overlooked in his attempt
to establish the truth. Consider the aspects of life addressed in
Antonin Artaud, or Nietzsche, or Lévinas: terror, anxiety, guilt.
Philosophy starts from such emotions, too, not just from the
calm wonder and thoughtful abstraction that Husserl pre-
ferred to dwell on.
In spite of his temperamental differences, Derrida was
profoundly drawn to Husserl. He saw Husserl not merely as a
benighted opponent, but as a thinker who investigated the
connection between history and philosophy with unprece-
dented originality. For Derrida, again, Husserl represented an
antidote to Sartrean theatricality. He stood for a more studied
approach to the question of how thought and history intersect,
in opposition to the heated Sartrean emphasis on engagement.
Derrida, while still at the École Normale, wrote his dis-
sertation on Husserl (although the dissertation remained un-
defended until 1980 , when the fifty-year-old Derrida finally
received his doctorate of letters). A distillation of that disserta-
tion was given in Derrida’s first lecture at an academic confer-
ence, after he came back from his work on Husserl during his
Harvard year. The talk, “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenom-
enology,” was delivered by the twenty-nine-year-old Derrida
in 1959 at a conference in Cérisy-la-Salle, a picturesque town in
Normandy. (Since 1980 , Cérisy has hosted a series of academic
meetings devoted to discussion of Derrida’s work.) “Genesis
and Structure,” first published in 1964 and then reprinted in
Writing and Difference( 1967 ), is by any measure a remarkable
work. It is especially ambitious and challenging for a scholar
still in his twenties.
In “Genesis and Structure,” Derrida aptly sums up the
peculiar strength of Husserl’s inquiry. Husserl, Derrida writes,
returns to the things themselves, as philosophy should. He re-
From Algeria to the École Normale 41