Of Deconstruction in America 457
by book, etc. – but boxes and folders had to be opened and a full
inventory made.
‘It had been agreed right from the start that Jacques Derrida
would keep a copy of everything that could be of use to him,’
remembers Tom Dutoit.
So I photocopied a huge number of things, but not everything,
not the proofs, for example. As I worked, Derrida would
often be there at home, but he kept only a distant eye on my
work. He’d initially told me that I could interrupt him when
I wanted to ask him about something: ‘All interruption is the
promise of a new start.’ But when I asked him about some
document, he soon started to get impatient. Sometimes, he
told me, ‘it’s killing me’, since it forced him to go back over his
past too often... I had the key to the house, I could go any-
where I wanted, open all the drawers. I learned to decipher his
handwriting quickly; I was never stumped by dates; for a few
weeks, I was the person who knew his archives best... When
the van came to pick up the documents, once a year, around
September, Derrida was always troubled: ‘Okay... It was my
decision. I’m not going back on my word.’ When he’d agreed
to his donation, he wasn’t really aware of what he was doing.
Everything suggests that he had his regrets. One day, in the car,
on the new road between Irvine and Laguna Beach, the light of
the sunset was particularly beautiful and he said: ‘After all, it’s
not such a bad idea that my papers will be here.’^22From 1992, New York became the main place where Derrida
taught on the East Coast. The New York University buildings are
in Washington Square, right in the middle of Greenwich Village.
Ever since he had fi rst discovered and marvelled at the city, in 1956,
Derrida had been a real lover of New York, and his visits there every
autumn were linked to a series of rituals.
I now land every year on a Saturday afternoon at JFK. The
sweetness of this eternal return is like a blessed ecstasy for my
soul, my eff usion soothed, the fi rst Sunday morning in Central
Park. Then, almost out loud I speak to all the poets in Poets’
Alley, cousins of my friends the birds of Laguna Beach. Not to
be missed and something I wait all year for, this moment has to
retain fi rst of all the traits of a return, already. [.. .]
Another moment of autumnal euphoria, often the day before
I leave: a promenade in Brooklyn Heights. In the interval, I
retrace all my migrations, from Battery Park to Columbia,
one end of Manhattan to the other. A city I venerate – that’s