226 Derrida 1963–1983
The fi rst weeks were basically given over to tourism. With their
fi rst car, a white Citroën Ami 6 which they had brought on board
the France, Marguerite and Jacques wanted to show as many things
as possible to Martine and their children – Pierre was eight, and Jean
would celebrate his fourth birthday during their stay in America.
‘We stayed in New York for a few days,’ relates Martine Meskel.
‘Jacques was happy and proud to show me round this city, which he
already knew very well. He insisted on us driving through Harlem;
at times, he fi lmed it all as he drove. He said we shouldn’t stop off
there, as it was dangerous, but he still thought it was important to
take us there.’
They stopped over in Boston, and then all travelled on
together to Montreal, where the fi fteenth congress of French-
speaking philosophical societies took place, from 29 August to
2 September. Paul Ricoeur gave the inaugural lecture. Derrida
spoke just afterwards, giving the paper ‘Signature, event, context’,
a reading of Austin that would give rise, a few years later, to a
polemic with John R. Searle that would create many ripples. But
for now, it was with Ricoeur that Derrida had a long and lively
discussion that subsequently continued through their respective
writings.^53
Martine left shortly after, to enter terminale. Over the follow-
ing months, during a very mild autumn, Jacques, Marguerite,
and their two sons rediscovered Baltimore and their friends from
Johns Hopkins. They were put up in a huge apartment where Scott
Fitzgerald had lived. Jacques’s mother and one of his aunts came
to join them for a few weeks. Even though Derrida had a heavy
teaching load, the fi rst weeks were very pleasant:
Professors and students very welcoming, university adminis-
tration incredibly ‘well-oiled’, easy-going. The comfort and
‘user-friendliness’ of everything constitute – in the library, for
instance – a spectacle, an object in themselves. Of course, the
bathload of dough in which everything happens makes every-
thing easier. And then this is, apparently, one of the most
peaceful of the American universities: politically, socially.
Some students complain about this. They’re the ones, too, who
know Paris, have spent a year there, and are following politico-
literary events in Paris on a daily basis, as if they lived between
Gallimard, Maspéro and Le Seuil.^54Among these students, there were some who already knew
Derrida’s work well as they had attended the Parisian seminar he
gave to a select few, in an annex of Cornell and Johns Hopkins on
the Place de l’Odéon. This was the case for Alan Bass, who became
one of his best American translators: