72 Jackie 1930–1962
meanings. But the unconscious is not just a confusion or an
opacity. It is mainly a mixture.^30The mark Althusser wrote on the fi rst page of the essay was dismiss-
ive: 7/20. Admittedly, this was purely a guideline. The main verdict
was contained in the comments, which assumed the form of a four-
page, warmly worded letter:
Derrida, we’ll have a look at the details of this essay together. It
would never ‘get through’ the agrégation. I’m not questioning
the quality of your knowledge or your conceptual intelligence,
or the philosophical value of your thinking. But these will be
‘recognized’ by the examiners only if you perform a radical
‘overhaul [conversion]’ in the exposition and the expression.
Your current diffi culties are the price you’re paying for a year
devoted to reading and thinking about Husserl, who, as I have
to tell you again, isn’t a ‘familiar thinker’ for the jury.More fundamentally, Althusser thought it was essential that Derrida
accept ‘the artifi ce essential to the essay’: ‘In your piece, it’s easy to
see that your enemies have been condemned in advance, in fact it’s
too easy: the dice are loaded against them right from the start. To
reach this verdict you need to deploy the forms of an ideal court of
law: the court of philosophical rhetoric.’ Still, Althusser’s conclud-
ing remarks were encouraging: ‘That’s enough negative comments.
I owe you as much. I’ll just add that I think you can take them on
board today, so as to avoid deserving them... tomorrow.’
For the following essay, ‘explanation using simple ideas’, the
comments were signifi cantly more positive. Althusser criticized
the introduction, but thought that the ‘discussion of Descartes–
Leibniz–Kant’ was ‘excellent. (Indeed, the fl uency and confi dence
of your analyses increase as you go on!)’ But he still encouraged
him to avoid going on at length: ‘Don’t be over-dutiful towards the
classical philosophers.’
At this time, Derrida was drawn between the demands of the
looming exam, and his growing interest in Heidegger, already very
clear from his dissertation on Husserl. Even though Jean Beaufret
sometimes came to lecture at the École, he made no reference
at all to Heidegger, despite the fact that he was the latter’s main
French interpreter. Thus it was with Gérard Granel – who had
already passed the agrégation but regularly came back to the École
- that Derrida started studying Heidegger in the original German.
Although ‘quite protective’ towards Derrida, Granel was a member
of a small group of ‘precious, esoteric Heideggerean aristocrats’
who fascinated and irritated Jackie at the same time. Derrida would
remember this when Granel died: ‘I was easily intimidated by pretty