Postcards and Proofs 1979–1981 325
At the beginning of March 1981, [Derrida and I] were both
subjected to the same ordeal. It so happened that I had to go
into the interview just after him. I saw him coming out looking
as white as a sheet: ‘I’m never setting foot in this institution
again. You can do what you like, but as far as I’m concerned,
it’s all over.’ Later on, he told me that certain members of
the jury had amused themselves by reading extracts from his
books out aloud, in as sarcastic a manner as possible. Several
colleagues hated him for his brilliance, his strangeness and his
total absence of concessions. With the Greph and the Estates
General, he had brought the wrath of the Inspection Générale
down on his head. This audition was a sort of vengeance for
them.^49When it came to the vote, Derrida had only one supporter. And it
was Georges Labica, a specialist in Hegel and Marx, who obtained
Ricoeur’s old position, thereby also inheriting the Laboratory for
Phenomenology, ‘even though he had never attended the least
session at the seminar in the rue Parmentier’.^50 For Derrida, the
failure was compounded by humiliation: after many hesitations, he
had decided to defend a thesis sur travaux only because he had been
assured that the job was being kept for him.^51
In this period of electioneering, in which the race between Giscard
and Mitterrand was turning out to be particularly close, the aff air
was reported a great deal in the French press and even abroad. And
Derrida received several letters from friends and colleagues who
were indignant at this ‘stupid decision’ that would merely increase
‘the divorce between living thought and the university’.^52 But it
would take more than this to calm him down. For several weeks,
health worries, which he hoped were not serious, had left him feeling
tired and listless. Above all, Marguerite and he had just found out
that their son Jean was suff ering from diabetes, a piece of news that
distressed and alarmed them.
On 8 May 1981, Derrida told Paul de Man of the many various
diffi culties he had just gone through:
The Nanterre aff air ended in the worst possible way, probably
the most predictable, too, and I don’t know what my brief uni-
versity future in this country is going to consist of. For the time
being, I’m staying at the École in the hope that the political
change (I hope it happens but am not convinced) that’s perhaps
been in the air for some days will allow me at least some respite
there.
The winter was tough, at least since February, since I’ve been
‘paying for’ a great number of things [.. .] with a fatigue (physi-
cal and mental) of a kind I haven’t experienced for a long time.