In the Shadow of Althusser 1963–1966 153
followed a complex strategy: he pushed his students into radical
positions, but did not for a moment envisage leaving the Party
himself.^28
Several little reviews were set up in the École in the space of a
few months. The fi rst, the Cahiers marxistes-léninistes, opened
with a formula of Lenin’s that was hardly likely to arouse much
enthusiasm in Derrida: ‘Marxist theory is all-powerful because it
is true.’ After an issue which, in Linhart’s view, devoted too much
space to literature, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, and
François Régnault broke away and set up the Cahiers pour l’analyse.
This review was run by the ‘circle of epistemology’ and followed a
line that might be called ‘Althussero-Lacanian’.^29 Derrida would
publish his fi rst text on Lévi-Strauss in it – a chapter of the future
Grammatology –, and the Essay on the Origin of Languages by
Rousseau, on which his seminar that year was focusing, would also
be republished in it.
While his prestige remained vastly inferior to that of Althusser,
Derrida was starting to make a name for himself at the École, and
several students were following his courses avidly. ‘There were soon
two opposite sides,’ remembers Bernard Pautrat.
Althusser reigned over a dogmatic and sometimes contemptu-
ous side. Derrida represented the other side: more open, he
was suspected of idealism by many. But there were still a good
twenty or so of us following his courses. His highly novel way
of reading philosophical texts enthralled me. I became a fol-
lower of his quite quickly. In 1964, he advised me to do my
master’s dissertation on Nietzsche, under the supervision of
Paul Ricoeur. Without realizing it, I became something like the
fi rst Derridean.^30Even among the most highly politicized students, some, such as
Dominique Lecourt, whom Derrida would encounter several times
over his career, followed his teaching with great interest.
Initially, I was planning on becoming an archaeologist. It was
Derrida who determined my path, after a fi rst essay written at
his request. ‘You’re a philosopher,’ he wrote at the top of my
piece when he had marked it. For fi ve years, I never stopped
being his pupil and following his seminar, in spite of the
sarcasm of my comrades on the Cahiers marxistes-léninistes,
who viewed him as a useless and woolly-headed metaphysi-
cian. Personally, I never wanted politics to drive me away from
Derrida and I think he was quite grateful for that. Althusser
and Canguilhem were my two main reference points, but with
Derrida I could sense that something very important was going