360 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
foundation of this power – its discourse, its axiomatics, its pro-
cedures, its theoretical and territorial limits, etc. In the course
of this campaign, they grasp at straws*; they forget the elemen-
tary rules of reading and of philological integrity in whose
name they claim to do battle. They think they can identify
deconstruction as the common enemy.^13The war extended beyond American soil. Ruth Barcan Marcus,
an open enemy of the Yale School, went so far as to write to Laurent
Fabius, the French Minister of Industry and Research, to protest
against what she thought was Derrida’s ‘appointment’ as director of
the Collège International de Philosophie. She claimed:
To found a ‘Collège International de Philosophie’ with Derrida
as director is a sort of joke or, more seriously, raises the ques-
tion of whether the Minister of State has fallen victim to a piece
of intellectual fraud. Most of those who are informed about
philosophy and its interdisciplinary connections [sic] would
agree with Foucault when he describes Derrida as someone
who practises ‘terrorist obscurantism’.^14The Minister merely sent a copy of the letter to Derrida, advising
him ‘never to walk down a staircase in front of this lady’.
With or without Mrs Marcus, it was proving tricky to establish the
Collège International de Philosophie. At the beginning of 1984,
the CIPh, as it is often known, really did kick off. Seventy working
groups or seminars were set up. But as Derrida explained in the very
long letter he wrote to all the organizers, ‘these initial successes have
been possible thanks to an exceptionally heavy workload that many
of us have found crushing’. There were permanent tensions at play.
Hoping to overcome them, Derrida proposed a signifi cant change
in the internal regulations: in his view, the director of the Collège
properly speaking should also head the Haut Conseil de Réfl exion,
its governing body. This suggestion met with a scathing reply from
Jean-Pierre Faye. And yet Derrida was not after any increase in his
personal power. As he explained at the end of his letter:
On 10 October 1984, one year after my election, I will give up
my responsibilities as director. I have already decided to do this
in any case, wherever we have got with the process envisaged.
[.. .] I have been forced to take these decisions for deontologi-
cal reasons, suffi cient in themselves, and for personal reasons:- More literally, everything is grist to their mill. – Tr.