272 Derrida 1963–1983
together with J. Hillis Miller, started working at having Derrida
‘transferred’ to Yale, for much shorter stays. By the end of April
1974, de Man assured him the arrangements were essentially all in
place: ‘Enthusiasm for your presence, however intermittent, in Yale
will not fail to triumph over the administrative obstacles.’^17
If this project could be envisaged, it was mainly because, the pre-
vious year, Derrida had started fl ying again, overcoming the phobia
from which he had been suff ering since autumn 1968. This was an
essential condition for him to appear at seminars in Berlin every
fortnight, at Samuel Weber’s invitation. He had managed to cope
with the fi rst plane fl ights only by stuffi ng his face with pills, but
he gradually grew calmer. So it was now possible to envisage rela-
tively short stays in the United States. During this transitional year,
Derrida went there for two weeks in October 1974, dividing his time
between Johns Hopkins and Yale.
In January 1975, de Man was able to confi rm offi cially Derrida’s
appointment for three years to a post as visiting professor at Yale.
The conditions were excellent: Derrida’s arrival was scheduled for
September, before the new academic year at Normale Sup, for a
stay of about three weeks. He was to give a seminar to a group of
graduate students, on the subject of his choice, in twenty or so ses-
sions: the six or seven fi rst ones were in Yale, the others in Paris
with the American students who were doing an additional course.
He was paid an annual sum of $12,000 (the equivalent, these days,
of about 33,000 euros) – a signifi cant amount, even though Derrida
would have to pay for his accommodation and most of his travel.^18
This engagement ended his previous contract with Johns Hopkins,
but the students of that university, like those from Cornell, could
continue to attend the Paris seminar.
Yale, situated in New Haven, Connecticut, some 120 kilometres
north-east of New York, was one of the richest and most prestigious
universities in the United States. In the fi eld of literary studies, it
was also the cradle of the New Criticism, the dominant current from
the 1920s to the beginning of the 1960s. But the deciding factor in
Derrida’s eyes was the role played there by de Man. Ever since their
fi rst encounter in 1966, based on their common interest in Rousseau,
the bond between the two men had continued to deepen. Although
he was in charge of a literature department, de Man gave philo-
sophy an essential place: for him, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger
were essential reference points. The great mutual esteem between
the two men soon turned into a ‘rare experience of friendship’. As
Derrida wrote, shortly after returning home from his fi rst stay:
Those three weeks in Yale, with you, now seem even more
like a paradise lost, already somewhat unreal, violently tugged
away by everything that harasses me and tears me to pieces