The Territories of Deconstruction 1984–1986 371
Derrida. I sensed that the next few years would be much less
pleasant and interesting than those we had just lived through.
Murray Krieger, a remarkable character, suggested that I move
to Irvine, a new university to the south of Los Angeles. He was
a professor of English and comparative literature, but in par-
ticular he ran the institute of Critical Theory. I was tempted to
accept his off er, but I still hadn’t made my mind up. In August
1985, I spoke to Jacques in the garden of his home in Ris-
Orangis. I can still hear him telling me: ‘If you go to Irvine, I’ll
gladly go too. It will recharge my batteries.’ He tended to leave
institutions in case he became associated with them for too
long and got trapped. But he probably also had, more or less
consciously, a desire to ‘win the West’... When I mentioned
the possibility of getting Derrida to come to Irvine, Murray
Krieger reacted enthusiastically, understanding the aura this
would give to the humanities as a whole. And as he was a close
friend of William Lillyman, the university vice-chancellor, the
administrative obstacles were dealt with in the twinkling of an
eye. When I asked about how much Derrida would be paid,
Lillyman immediately asked me what he had been earning at
Yale, and then added: ‘We can go 50% better and give him
tenure for a part-time post as a distinguished professor.’ So the
transfer happened in 1986.^47On moving to Irvine, Derrida took the decision that he would
henceforth teach in English, which would enable him to reach much
bigger audiences. When it was a rather more formal lecture, he read
out a previously translated text. But for seminars, this would have
been much too onerous. So Derrida simply annotated the French
version and translated his own words directly, initially rather
slowly, but soon very fl uently. It didn’t stop this change of language
being a problem for him, theoretically even more than practically.
As Samuel Weber remembers:
One day, one of his listeners tried to reassure him: ‘Your English
is excellent, we can understand everything.’ And Derrida
replied: ‘That’s just the problem: I’m merely making myself
understood.’ He had played with the resources of the French
language like a virtuoso; for a long time, he suff ered from being
able merely to ‘communicate’ once he started to express himself
in English. But his mastery became increasingly more refi ned.
In his last years, he was able to devote a lecture to the shades of
meaning between maybe and perhaps.^48Even though they were much less at ease in English than he was,
Derrida also encouraged Kofman, Nancy, and Lacoue-Labarthe to