426 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
sometimes held his head in his hands, as if he were lost in
thought. In actual fact, he was taking a brief nap, which didn’t
stop him addressing a highly relevant remark to the speaker at
the end of the paper.^27Television played an important role in his life, especially when he
was travelling. He was happy to admit this: ‘I’m more frightened
of a hotel room without a television than a house without running
water.’^28 This dependency came with a certain sense of guilt:
I spend much too much time, I think, watching television, and
I reproach myself at the same time, naturally, for not reading
enough anymore or for not doing other things. [.. .] Sometimes
I watch bad soap operas, French or American, or programs
that give me a greater cultural awareness, such as those on the
Arte channel. Political debates, spectacular political encounters
in general, L’Heure de vérité, 7 sur 7, or old movies. I could
spend twenty-four hours a day watching good political archives... And so I watch a little of everything.^29
On Sunday mornings, while having a workout on the exercise
bike, he followed with close interest the Muslim and Jewish religious
broadcasts, between 8:45 and 9:50 a.m.^30 In the United States, he
could watch televangelists for hours on end, with a kind of fascina-
tion. But what gripped him even more, as Peggy Kamuf relates, was
the direct broadcast of Congress hearings. Around 1987, at the end
of Ronald Reagan’s second mandate, he spent a great deal of time
watching the procession of witnesses speaking about the aff air of the
‘Contras’ sent into Nicaragua, and the American hostages in Iran.
All this, of course, had some infl uence on the seminars he gave on
bearing witness, or perjury.^31
On the culinary level, Derrida was still infl uenced by family tradi-
tion. He continued to like the cuisine of his childhood. Marguerite
learned to cook Algerian couscous without meat: couscous with
butter, peas, fromage blanc, and hard-boiled eggs. He enjoyed good
cooking, even if his tastes remained quite simple. Avital Ronell
- a committed vegetarian – relates that one day, at a dinner with
Chantal and René Major, she let one dish go by without taking
a helping, which caused a certain embarrassment. When she said
she had perfectly decent philosophical reasons for not eating meat,
Derrida turned to ask her what they were. So Avital told him what
it meant to her to incorporate the body of the other. Shortly after-
wards, Derrida, who was extraordinarily receptive to this kind
of thing, started to speak of carnophallogocentrism rather than
phallogocentrism.