454 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
This alliance with a new generation of ‘supersexy, bold, bizarre
women [who] showed up like surfers on the waves of “French
Theory” ’ was, in Ronell’s eyes, one of the keys to the move-
ment’s success: they found this theory was one they ‘could live and
breathe, whereas departments of philosophy – but not only these
departments – are relatively unlivable for women and minorities’.^13
One of the fi rst such women was Gayatri Spivak: having translated
and prefaced Of Grammatology, she became the founding mother of
postcolonial studies on minorities – black, Mexican, Asian or ‘sub-
altern’. Her ideas – like those of Drucilla Cornell, Cythnia Chase,
and Shoshana Felman – were of great importance for major theor-
eticians such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler, who
created gender studies and then queer studies, attempting to explore
‘all the intermediary zones of sexual identity, any place where it
became blurred’.^14
Quite apart from any academic question, ‘French Theory’ seems
fi rst and foremost to have brought to America a hitherto unknown
heterogeneity, an openness to racial and political minorities, to
feminism and homosexuality, in a typically American form of
appropriation. One of the most remarkable cases was indisputably
the way in which Homi Bhabha took from Derrida the concept of
dissemination, developed in the context of thinking about literature,
and forged DissemiNation, a way of undoing the nation to deliver
it over more eff ectively to its minorities. This was much more than
a deformation: it was a real reinvention, a creative translation,
perfectly Derridean in spirit.^15
As his ideas spread, sometimes in unexpected ways, Derrida himself
was a distinctly active presence on the American scene. Since he had
started teaching at the École des Hautes Études, starting his semi-
nars in November and ending at the end of March, trips abroad had
been easier to organize. From the mid-1980s, he went to the United
States at least twice a year: to the West Coast in spring, and the East
Coast in autumn. As well as teaching in the major universities, he
also took advantage of his travels to take part in conferences or give
important lectures in many other cities. Even though he still had a
slight accent, his mastery of English had become impressive. In dis-
cussions, he was now fully able to improvise. According to Andrzej
Warminski, ‘he was less confi dent in English than he should have
been. His way of translating himself on the spot was impressive. His
English became more and more idiomatic. He could have written
directly in English, but he refused, since the question of language
seemed so essential in his eyes.’^16
At the University of Californi a, Irvine, one post had been shared
out between three professors: Jean-François Lyotard came in the