168 Derrida 1963–1983
philosophers in a really new way. In a few powerful paragraphs, the
whole programme of deconstruction was set out.
In the debate that followed Derrida’s paper, Jean Hyppolite
confessed that he was both admiring and lost: ‘I can’t see exactly
where you’re going,’ he told him. ‘I too was wondering whether
I know where I’m going,’ replied Derrida. ‘So in response I’ll say
that I’m trying to get to the point where I myself don’t know where
I’m going.’ As for the sociologist Lucien Goldmann, a humanist
Marxist, he saw Derrida’s remarks as the most radical version of the
questioning of the subject. This inspired a strange comparison, in
rather poor taste:
I feel that Derrida, whose conclusions I do not share, is playing
the role of a catalyst in French cultural life, and I pay homage
to him for this reason. He reminds me of when I fi rst arrived in
France in 1934. At that time there was a strong royalist move-
ment among the students; and all of a sudden there appeared
a group that was also defending royalism, but by demanding a
Merovingian king!^41Derrida had not fi nished with Lacan. A few weeks after his return
from Baltimore, he received the great tome of the Écrits, with a
signed dedication: ‘To Jacques Derrida, this homage, which he
can take however he pleases.’ Derrida, usually so prolix, reacted a
few weeks later with a short letter, the only one he would ever send
Lacan:
I have received your Écrits, and would like to thank you very
much. The dedication which came with them could not, as you
knew, fail to surprise me. An impregnable text, I thought at
fi rst. On second thoughts, adding, as your overture invites us
to, my own ideas, I changed my mind: this dedication is true
and I should receive it as such. ‘True’ is a word about which I
know that you have your own ideas.
As for the book, rest assured that I am very much looking
forward to having the time to read it. I will do so with all the
attention of which I am capable.^42But before he could fu lfi l his promise, a personal incident was to
complicate a relationship that had already got off to a bad start.
Derrida related it in detail to Élisabeth Roudinesco, for her Lacan &
Co. The anecdote is signifi cant; let me quote it at length:
A year after Baltimore another dinner took place in Paris, at
the home of Jean Piel. Lacan clasped Derrida’s hand warmly in
his oily palms and asked him what he was working on. Plato,