180 Derrida 1963–1983
his talent to a wider public by publishing three books in six
months, including Of Grammatology. Through the attention
he brings to bear on the problem of language, he seems close
to the ‘structuralists’. He does them justice and acknowledges
that thinking, across the world, has been given a formidable
impetus by a sense of disquiet over language, which can only
be a disquiet of language and within language. He distances
himself from this tendency, however, insofar as – like the
iconoclast he is –, far from deriving inspiration from a scien-
tifi c model, he is still in thrall to the philosophical demon. [.. .]
Derrida’s aim is not the destruction, but the ‘deconstruction’ of
metaphysics. The foundational concepts of philosophy enclose
the logos, and reason, within a sort of ‘closure’. This ‘closure’
needs to be smashed, we need to attempt a break-out.^34The concept of ‘diff érance’ was also introduced in this reliable,
positive analysis, as were those of ‘gramme’ and ‘trace’. Jean Lacroix
underlined the crucial link between Derrida’s philosophy and those
of Nietzsche and Heidegger, while avoiding several of the misunder-
standings that would later come about. ‘Derrida’, he emphasized,
‘does not want to privilege writing at the expense of speech.’
Three days previously, in La Tribune de Genève, Alain Penel had
enthusiastically hailed an author who ‘questions Western thought’.
This time, the emphasis was on Writing and Diff erence. The praise
was unreserved and sometimes uncritical:
After him, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Saussure,
Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, etc, appear dull. This is because
Derrida shows himself to be more radical than they are, insofar
as his thinking puts all others to the test, aiming successfully to
be a refl ection on contemporary refl ection. By showing thereby
that metaphysics continues to poison Western thought, Jacques
Derrida makes his mark as the boldest contemporary thinker.
His works cannot fail to constitute a new, superior fi eld for the
refl ections of all those – critics, philosophers, teachers, students- who are interested by developments in our culture.^35
The book had been eagerly waited and brought its author a huge
postbag. Sollers, who had already read the complete manuscript
in the summer, had immediately called it ‘a quite brilliant text’.^36
Kristeva was very touched to have received a signed copy of the
book, as a ‘sign of complicity’: she thanked Derrida for all that she
already owed to his work and for all that she would continue to draw
from it.^37 She would soon be sending him a series of questions, which
he would answer at length in writing, under the title ‘Semiology and
grammatology’.^38 As for Barthes, he was in Baltimore when he