6 Of Deconstruction in America
The vogue for deconstruction may have peaked in the mid-eighties,
just before the de Man aff air, but interest in Derrida’s work and
person in the United States was still considerable at the start of the
1990s. The West Coast was just as enthralled by him as the East;
however, the major universities of Northern California, Stanford
and especially Berkeley – the fi ef of John R. Searle –, were still
mainly hostile.
In July 1991, in the Los Angeles Times, Mitchell Stephens pub-
lished a detailed portrait of the Irvine professor, after spending a
whole day accompanying him on his various activities. Under the
rather banal title ‘Deconstructing Jacques Derrida’, the article
attempted to fi nd a way into his work. The journalist was amazed
that he could meet ‘the world’s most controversial living philo-
sopher’ on the terrace of a snack bar and listen to him defending his
‘diabolically diffi cult theory’. Derrida’s ideas had borne infl uence in
the most varied fi elds, he explained, and everyone had been aff ected
by them in one way or another.
[Deconstruction] is becoming, like existentialism before it, a
part of the language – to the point where a State Department
offi cial can speak of a plan for the ‘deconstruction’ of part of
the American Embassy in Moscow, and where Mick Jagger can
ask, ‘Does anyone really know what deconstructivist means?’
[.. .] But the main impact of Derrida’s method has been felt on
college campuses.^1On the evening of the interview, in the Hemingway restaurant in
Newport Beach, Derrida started to divulge more personal details
to the journalist. He, the prophet of complexity, who refused to
accept hard-and-fast distinctions, confi ded in Mitchell Stephens
that he sometimes dreamed of writing a naïve, straightforward
book, a ‘simple’ book. Perhaps a novel, more probably an auto-
biographical narrative. Setting out the basis of what later became