412 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
without destroying, too. It wasn’t a very elegant expression, it
sounded downright woggish [.. .]. What exactly did it mean,
‘condestruction’? The formerly timid Saïda broke down every
word into its minutest elements, and from these seeds produced
shoots so fl exible he could weave them into his own dreams,
his own literature, rather ponderous but as profound as it was
inaccessible. This was how he started to acquire his reputation
as a guru, which was to overwhelm the United States and the
American feminists, who all became ‘condestructivists’ out of
aff ection for Saïda and endogenous dissatisfaction.^26A second crisis erupted a few weeks after the conference. Badiou
was furious that Major and Derrida had alluded several times in
their papers to the controversy that had set them at loggerheads with
him. Feeling that too many privileges had been granted to Derrida
for the proceedings not to be unbalanced, he wished to withdraw
his text. After a new mediation on the part of Lacoue-Labarthe, a
meeting that brought together all those involved took place on 10
August 1990. Yet again, a compromise was found: Badiou agreed to
let his text be published, on condition that all the letters and docu-
ments relating to the controversy be published as an appendix to the
work.
This would all be a matter of mere anecdote if it had not led to
a more than passing tiff between Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida.
According to Philippe Beck, who knew all the protagonists well,
Badiou was isolated just then. He needed to form alliances
and drew very close to Lacoue at that time, since both of them
were concerned to criticize Heidegger. Lacoue, who was actu-
ally very critical of Badiou on certain important points, was
torn between Derrida’s patient and attentive deconstruction
and Badiou’s polemical and philosophical manoeuvres. So
he decided to show his solidarity with the latter rather than
with René Major, which Derrida never forgave him for. But
in Lacoue there was, at least at the time, a primacy of politi-
cal critique at the heart of poetics. The fact that Badiou and
Derrida drew close later on obviously puts the whole business
in a strange light.^27But these events were of course merely a trigger. Many other
factors had been leading up to this crisis between two men linked for
nearly twenty years by a close friendship. From Heidegger, Art, and
Politics onwards, Lacoue-Labarthe was overcome by a kind of rage
against Heidegger. He could no longer fi nd words harsh enough to
describe him. Without saying so explicitly, he held a grudge against
Derrida for not condemning him suffi ciently. The de Man aff air