From Husserl to Artaud 1963–1964 133
The publication of The Origin of Geometry enabled Derrida to
resume contact with several of his old classmates from Louis-le-
Grand and Normale Sup. Michel Deguy, already the author of four
works, including two collections of poems published by Gallimard,
suggested that Derrida send some texts to the prestigious review
Critique. Founded by Georges Bataille in 1946, the review had been
edited since his death in July 1962 by Jean Piel, his brother-in-law,
who had set up an editorial committee comprising Roland Barthes,
Deguy, and Foucault.
For a young intellectual at the beginning of the sixties, Critique
was an ideal place for publication. Other former fellow pupils of
Derrida’s, such as Abirached, Granel, and Genette, had already
contributed to it, as had most of the signifi cant authors of that gen-
eration. Unlike Les Temps modernes, Esprit, or Tel Quel, Critique
did not issue forth from any clique or clan. As Bataille had wished,
the review was a general one. Month by month, it off ered, on the
books published in France and abroad, studies that aimed to be
more than mere reviews: ‘Through [these studies], Critique seeks to
give an overview, as complete as possible, of the various activities
of the human mind in the fi elds of literary creation, philosophical
research, and work in history, science, politics and economics.’^19
Deguy – who published the fi rst article on Derrida in this review,
‘Husserl in a second reading’^20 – could off er ‘almost as much space
as you wish’ in Critique.^21 With Derrida, he did not yet know that
the ‘almost’ would be appropriate. The latter initially thought of
writing a review of Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infi nity. But as
he sensed that he would need the peace and quiet of the summer to
write it, he fi rst envisaged an article on an essay by Jean Rousset that
had recently been published by José Corti, Form and Signifi cation:
An Essay on Literary Structures from Corneille to Claudel. Foucault
was also pleased about this fi rst collaboration with Critique.
For Derrida, at this time, writing was a serious business, requiring
total commitment. After accumulating notes, he wrote the text by
hand, in a ritual of great solemnity:
For the texts that mattered to me, the ones I had the slightly
religious feeling of ‘writing’, I even banished the ordinary pen.
I dipped into the ink a long pen holder whose point was gently
curved with a special drawing quill, producing endless drafts
and preliminary versions before putting a stop to them on my
fi rst little Olivetti, with its international keyboard, that I’d
bought abroad.^22He completed the article at the end of April 1963 and sent it
to Jean Piel, who reacted almost immediately, with both enthusi-
asm and perplexity. The text was of such high quality and raised