Living Memory 1988–1990 415
later become a whole book. As if, more than anyone else,
he had chosen Jean-Luc as his heir. Because he wasn’t just a
mimic. Because his work was close and singular at the same
time, creating an opening towards Christianity.^36In spring 1991, Jacques was in California for several weeks when
Jean-Luc announced that he was going to have the operation that
same evening. Distressed at being so far from th e man who had
become his closest friend, Derrida impulsively replied: ‘Don’t
worry, I’ll wake up with you.’^37 The operation was a success. Over
the next years, in spite of his serious health problems, Nancy would
enjoy an unusually active life for someone with a heart transplant.
In the autumn of 1990, Derrida had to mourn another signifi cant
death. On 22 October 1990, Louis Althusser died in the hospital
de la Verrière, in the department of Les Yvelines. The two men
had been linked for almost forty years, and their relationship had
been, as we have seen, extremely complex. At the burial, in the little
cemetery of Girofl ay, it was Derrida who spoke in front of the last
faithful friends. While he did not hide what had separated them and
sometimes put then on opposite sides, he reiterated how dear this
relationship had been to him:
And what remains most present in my eyes, most alive today,
closest and most precious, is, of course, his face, Louis’s so very
handsome face, that high forehead, his smile, everything that,
in him, during the moments of peace – and there were moments
of peace, as many of you here know – radiated kindness, the
need for love and the giving of love in return [.. .].^38Five years earlier, Althusser had been deeply hurt by a column
in Le Monde in which Claude Sarraute had compared him to the
Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa who had killed and eaten a young
Dutch woman: charges against him had been dropped on grounds
of insanity. Shortly afterwards, Althusser started to write his auto-
biography, The Future Lasts a Long Time. Right at the start of his
narrative, he refers to the ‘ambiguous’ eff ects of the fact that he
had been declared ‘unfi t to plead’ – which had condemned him to
being ‘placed beneath a tombstone of silence’.^39 The title chosen
would turn out to be prophetic: in 1992, this posthumous publica-
tion would have immense repercussions. Over the following years,
the publication of several unpublished works by Althusser would
bring about a complete revaluation of his life and his work. The
Future Lasts a Long Time is a quasi-clinical document at the same
time as being an attempt at self-analysis; it also constitutes, in little
details here and there, an extraordinary posthumous homage to the