At the Frontiers of the Institution 1991–1992 449
before, when agreeing to the basic idea behind this conference,
Derrida had expressed the wish that it should be dominated by the
idea of renewal:
Of course, the 1992 décade would be open to all those who took
part in the 1980 one who wished to return to join in the discus-
sions and refer to the memory of the previous conference. This
would be a great boon in many ways. But should not a rule
be imposed that everything else be new? I mainly have in mind
the principal organizers and coordinators, then the general
and less general themes, those responsible for the introductory
presentations, etc. I am sure that one can (and so, in my view,
one must) invite new French and foreign participants, mainly
young people, in diff erent fi elds or on other themes.^27Initially, the project was entrusted to a collective that included
René Major, Charles Alluni, and Catherine Paoletti. But in actual
fact, the heavy burden of getting the conference off the ground was
taken on by Marie-Louise Mallet, whose ‘smiling effi ciency’ worked
miracles.^28 The programme was exceptionally rich: the mornings
were fi lled by three simultaneous seminars – philosophy, literature,
and politics – between which it was often diffi cult to choose; in the
afternoons, there were two lectures; and even the evenings were
mainly taken up with work. Even if this packed programme turned
out to be a bit too much, the hundred and twenty participants would
take away memories of a friendly and enthusiastic ambiance. It was
a privilege to be invited: the chateau was fi lled to the rafters, and
many people had not been able to get their proposals accepted.
Derrida, in demand from all sides, demonstrated an extraordinary
ability to listen and respond. As Geoff rey Bennington recalls: ‘He
paid close attention to all the papers and then managed to fi nd
the right thread to tug so as to fi nd the interest in something that
wasn’t necessarily all that thrilling. He had the gift of responding
in a generous and inventive way to banal questions and simplistic
objections.’^29
Derrida’s own paper, given on 15 July, his sixty-second birth-
day, was called ‘Aporias’. For many years ‘this tired word’ had
‘often imposed itself’ upon him, and recently it had ‘done so even
more often’.^30 An aporia is a way of ‘thinking “the possibility of
impossibility” ’: rejecting any binary logic, Derrida increasingly sets
contradiction at the very heart of the object he is trying to think
through. This was a principle to which he would constantly return,
via themes such as pardon, hospitality, or auto-immunity. But the
1992 lecture focused mainly on the supreme frontier, the aporia of
aporias: death. ‘Is my death possible?’ wondered Derrida, scrutiniz-
ing texts by Diderot, Seneca, and especially Heidegger, but also