Derrida: A Biography

In the Shadow of Althusser 1963–1966 151

I could see in this fl ight a failure, whether in thought or poli-

tics. Inseparably. [.. .] The fact that ‘fundamental’ questions or

questions about foundations, about its own premises, its very

axiomatics, were not being asked [.. .], this was something that

I saw as a lack of radicalness and a still too dogmatic contribu-

tion to its own discourse, and this could not be without political

consequences in the short or long term. [.. .] Their concepts

were not sophisticated, diff erentiated enough, and there’s a

price to be paid for that.^20

These debates all took place within a small coterie of people ‘over-
educated in the art of interpretation’. As in a virtual game of chess,
everyone tried to anticipate the opponent’s moves, attempted to
‘guess the other’s strategy to the fi nest detail’:

There were camps, strategic alliances, manoeuvres of encircle-

ment and exclusion. [.. .] The diplomacy of the period, when

there was any (war by other means) was the diplomacy of

evasion: silence, you don’t quote [.. .]. Personally, there I was,

the little youngster, to some extent, it wasn’t altogether my

generation. But at the same time, there was no open hostility.

In spite of these diff erences and disputes, I was part of one and

the same big ‘camp’, we had common enemies, a lot of them.

When he came across this late interview with Michael Sprinker,
Étienne Balibar realized how much Derrida must have suff ered
at being marginalized and practically silenced in this way. But he
acknowledged that, in the mid-sixties, a sort of fortress had formed
round Althusser, creating a quite intolerable situation.

In reality, it didn’t bother us that Derrida wasn’t a Marxist,

we had a great deal of esteem for him, both as a philosopher

and as a person. In fact several of us spent an evening with

him in Fresnes. We felt there was a certain complicity between

Althusser and him, without either of them being in hock to the

other. It was a pedagogic, but not an ideological team.^21

On the pedagogic level, Derrida’s role was still crucial, since
Althusser, exhausted by running the seminar ‘Reading Capital’ and
fi nishing For Marx, had suff ered a nervous breakdown at the end of
spring 1965. Only in July was he able to show any concern for the
results of the agrégation, especially for Régis Debray. Though he
had entered the École at the top of his year, this brilliant student –
already highly active politically – had attended it only intermittently.
Derrida quickly informed Althusser of the results: Bouveresse was
fi rst, Mosconi fourth, and Debray fi fth. ‘I’d been reassured after his