306 Derrida 1963–1983
B.-H. Lévy: I am amazed to see that when somebody (I’ve been
given leave to speak, so I will) starts to explain something
here, to put on trial the institut ion of philosophy, to put on
trial those men who for years have benefi ted from this system
and who react only when they feel threatened, that person
is told to shut up. [.. .] I’m amazed that, when I myself am
given leave to speak, a certain number of men come over to
grab the mike from me and trigger an incident. As far as I’m
concerned, that’s what I wanted to say: I’ve been amazed
ever since yesterday to hear people putting the media on
trial: do you think it was the philosophy professors who were
the fi rst to denounce the Gulag? It was television and the
media. Do you think that it’s in his capacity as a philosophy
professor that, a year ago, when Brezhnev came to Paris,
Glucksmann opened his ‘opinion column’ to three dissidents
from the East and caused a scandal? That was the media. It
wasn’t the Estates General of philosophy. I’m amazed that
today, as 76,000 Vietnamese are castaway by the Malaysian
government, nobody even mentions the fact. I’m amazed
that, the day before Corsican militants are scheduled to
appear in the State security court, including a philosophy
teacher, Mondoloni...
Derrida: We’ve discussed him already. Stop talking rubbish.
B.-H. Lévy: Perfect. My apologies. In that case let me say I’m
amazed that people have been talking about anti-media vigi-
lance. They used to talk about anti-fascist vigilance. If that’s
why you’re holding Estates General of philosophy, I’m not
just amazed, I’m extremely disappointed.
S. Agacinski:. I’d just like to say a word to B.-H. Lévy: he was
here yesterday, but he didn’t feel like speaking out since
he’d come alone. Today, he’s turned up with friends who’ve
started yelling from their seats to sabotage the assembly and
take over this whole enterprise.^17There are divergent accounts of what happened next, and the
book that records the interventions and debates of those two days
allows us to build up only a partial idea of this confrontation,
several ‘inaudible’ passages of which could not be transcribed. Lévy
now claims that he was ‘expelled from the hall’ and then ‘thrown
into the rue de la Sorbonne’. At a panel discussion organized by
the review Esprit a few months after these events, Derrida gave a
very diff erent version, mentioning ‘a brief and minor scuffl e’, before
adding:
I would not linger over this incident, which, by the way, is very
illuminating, if I had not just learned that, if we are to believe