Living Memory 1988–1990 407
the fact that one is not the father. [.. .] [p]aternity is neither a state
nor a property.’^13 And he insisted even more on the question ‘of the
name one receives or the name one gives oneself’ in the short book
Passions, transforming it into a fully fl edged philosophical theme:
Suppose that X, something or someone (a trace, a work, an
institution, a child) bears your name, in other words your title.
A naïve translation or a common fantasy: you have given your
name to X, so everything that belongs to X [revient à X], directly
or by a circuitous route, in a straight or an oblique line, belongs
to you, like a surplus for your narcissism. [.. .] Conversely,
suppose that X does not want your name or your title; suppose
that, for one reason or another, X frees himself from it and
chooses another name, eff ecting a sort of repeated weaning from
the originary weaning; then your narcissism, doubly wounded,
will ipso facto fi nd itself all the more enriched: what bears, has
borne, will bear your name appears suffi ciently, powerful, crea-
tive, and autonomous to live alone and dispense radically with
you and your name. He returns to your name, to the secret of
your name, so as to be able to disappear in your name.^14His eldest son’s career worried Derrida for other reasons. He
had always admired him, was thrilled by his precocious successes,
and was delighted to see him taking up philosophy. But, rather as
Jacques had done in Le Mans, Pierre had a breakdown in the middle
of his probationary year. And he very soon decided to leave philo-
sophy so as to move into literature, which did not reassure his father,
who was as traditional as many others when it came to his children.
Derrida explained the problem to Michel Monory: ‘Pierre, who
couldn’t take it any more, has, if I understand correctly, made an
attempt to escape from teaching. He has a CNL [Centre National du
Livre] bursary for the year, is writing, busying himself with several
things and doesn’t seem to be much worried about a profession.’^15
‘When I gave up philosophy,’ acknowledges Pierre,
he was extremely worried about my professional future. For
one thing, he considered that being a university professor was
a nice job. Deeper down, he must have regretted the fact that
I was moving away from philosophy and practically no longer
reading it. Even his own books, I have to admit that I’ve read
them in a very fragmentary and rather intermittent way. I felt
overwhelmed by the increasingly rapid rhythm of his publica-
tions: no sooner had I started one that I was receiving one or
two more. My personal philosophical development had been
very un-Derridean: the texts I was most interested in didn’t
at all come from him. After studies in ethnology, my brother