The Soldier of Koléa 1957–1959 103
cially mentally draining, but life in Le Mans is not much fun.’^22
After a few months, Genette himself had given up the attempt to live
in Paris.
In spite of the friendly tone of the correspondence, the two young
men as yet hardly knew each other. When they had both been at
the École, Genette had been both a specialist in literature and a
Communist militant, thus not very close to Derrida. When Soviet
tanks rumbled into Budapest in 1956, Genette left the Party.* He
had just got married, and his wife, Raymonde, nicknamed ‘Babette’,
said she was eager to meet a man who had been described to her as
‘gentle and complicated’. However, in order for Derrida actually to
be taken on at Le Mans, a rather traditional headmaster still had to
be reassured. As Genette explained, maliciously:
Of course, as a philosopher, you are by defi nition suspected
of many things, in particular of believing in philosophy – they
can hang you for that. Take the opportunity to tell him that
you only believe in results, i.e., of course, in exams. [.. .] As for
the moral climate, re-read the episode [in Stendhal’s Red and
Black] where Julian Sorel enters the seminary, while bearing in
mind the progress made by science and the police over the last
century.^23Jackie and Marguerite viewed this appointment as quite a posi-
tive thing. It was fl attering to be given a hypokhâgne post at the
fi rst attempt. The Genettes seemed to be potentially pleasant com-
panions, and were already busying themselves to help the Derridas
move. And above all, Le Mans was only two hundred kilometres
from Paris: Marguerite, who was hoping to take up her ethnology
studies again, would be able to make one or two return trips a week
without too much diffi culty.
But a more exciting prospect suddenly seemed to open up. On 16
January, the day after his twenty-ninth birthday, Derrida received
- Derrida mentions this episode in his interview with Michael Sprinker concern-
ing Althusser: ‘With the repression in Hungary in 1956, some of those Communist
intellectuals began to leave the Party. Althusser didn’t and, I think, never would
have. Gérard Genette, who was a Party member until 1956, told me that he went to
see Althusser after the Hungarian uprising to tell him of his worries, his anxieties,
his reasons, and probably to ask his advice. Althusser apparently told him: “But if
what you say is right, then the Party would be wrong.” And this seemed impossible,
demonstrating ex absurdo that what Genette was saying needed to be corrected.
And Genette told me with a laugh: “I drew the conclusion from this extraordinary
formulation, and immediately left the Party.” (I am translating from Derrida’s tran-
scription, unpublished in French, preserved at IMEC.) [See also the translation in
E. Ann Kapler and Michael Sprinker, eds, The Althusserian Legacy (London: Verso,
1993), p. 199. – Tr.]