370 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
of philosophy and who now persists in losing himself in the
thickets of a disconcerting hermeticism. [.. .] His books have
always been diffi cult, but at least in the old days you knew what
he was talking about: philosophy. Since, let’s say, The Post
Card, we don’t know any more. He claims that philosophy is
also transmitted in the form of love letters, postage stamps,
telephone kiosks. He mixes everything up! Let’s say no more
about him...^45For her part, David was convinced that, while it is diffi cult to
interpret Derrida, he can perfectly easily be read:
For this, you need to agree to read him the same way you
dream, without any instruction manual, with jumps, drops,
lapses, open questions. Patiently... [.. .] It’s not, as it would be
for an ordinary reading, about ‘understanding’. [.. .] It’s about
something else, a meticulous path of thought, a contemplation
of the detail, the letter, the time of silence. [.. .] In this period
with its love of straight lines and short cuts, when common
sense has re-established its dominion over the kingdom of
thought, slowness and curves as magnifi ed by Derrida have
become the modern form of philosophical courage.While nobody much bothered about Derrida in France, his fame in
the United States continued to grow. Deconstruction had moved
from departments of French to those of comparative literature,
then of English, which enabled its infl uence to spread dramatically.
But resistances developed at the same speed. On 9 February 1986,
The New York Times magazine declared war on the Yale School
and Derrida, ‘the man who invented deconstruction’. ‘The tyranny
of the Yale critics’ was the headline on the cover. The tone of the
article was equally strident, claiming that, ever since the 1970s, a
so-called ‘hermeneutical mafi a’ had extended its sway over literary
studies in Yale, and won many of the most prominent critics over to
Derrida’s ideas.^46
But at that time, the Yale School was no more than a memory.
Ever since the death of Paul de Man, the university in New Haven
had lost its main source of attraction. Only the presence of J. Hillis
Miller still drew Derrida there. But in summer 1985, Miller told the
latter privately that he was not intending to stay at Yale.
After Paul de Man’s death, I felt that a page had been turned.
The attack on what we represented was getting fi ercer the whole
time. We could no longer ensure that any of our colleagues got
tenure. It was even getting more and more diffi cult to invite