174 Derrida 1963–1983
what was happening over in Israel’. This certainly helped to bring
him closer to Levinas.
After commenting on the texts which Levinas had just sent him
- probably the enlarged edition of the work Discovering Existence
with Husserl and Heidegger –, Derrida set out, in this long letter
as perhaps on no other occasion, his conception of philosophical
dialogue: a diffi cult, demanding dialogue, which can take place only
through texts. It is not a matter of trying to bring things together
when this is impossible, and even less a matter of ‘discussing’, but
of posing the conditions of a face-to-face that is as respectful as it is
intransigent:
You know, through the texts which you write and those which
I write, and through the attention they bring to bear on one
another, if I may say so, what diff erence and what proximity
comprises their ‘dialogue’. And this too is ‘fraternal’. And more
is said in this exchange than we can hope to get into a letter.
More in this exchange and in our day-to-day work: as far as
I’m concerned, in everything I do your thinking is in a certain
way present. It is doubtless diverted from its course, in some
way, but it is necessary. Sometimes contested, as you know,
but in some way necessary at the very time thinking breaks in.
Without being able to explain it here, I’d say that for two or
three years, through a certain movement that ‘Violence and
metaphysics’ does not yet show, I have felt, in another way,
both closer to you and further away.^13Derrida was much less thrilled by the more academic issues that
needed to be addressed. The very traditionalist Henri Gouhier was
to be chairing the jury and writing the report on the viva for the
thèse de troisième cycle. The reader will perhaps remember that in
1951 he had gratifi ed Derrida with a mark of 5/20 in a licence exam,
assuring him that he could come back and take it again the day he
agreed to ‘accept the rules and not invent where he needs to be better
informed’: with Of Grammatology, his wish was granted! Derrida
hoped for more attention and goodwill from the second member of
the jury, Paul Ricoeur, but the latter would do no more than give the
text a quick read-through. He apologized to Derrida... thirty-three
years later: ‘I disappointed you when I greeted the thesis that you
submitted to me with silence, as I later learned.’^14
As for Maurice de Gandillac, he acknowledged a few weeks
before the viva that he had not ‘really read’ the work, but he said he
sensed how he wanted the discussion to go. In any case, they would
not have a great deal of time to study the work, since the session
could not last for more than two hours. So it would be impossible to
discuss the whole thing seriously: