486 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
In Michel Deguy’s view, the way Derrida’s work developed should
be seen almost as a kind of enterprise: the ‘Derrida International’.
Over the last fi fteen or twenty years of his life, there were thirty
or so people working round him and contributing to spread the
infl uence of deconstruction across the world: professors, heads
of university departments, directors of reviews and publishers,
conference organizers and editors of Festschriften. Their names
varied somewhat over the years, but many of the faithful had
been there for a long time. You just need to look at the lists
of those who took part in the diff erent conferences at Cerisy
to realize this. Translators were among the most important
mediators: Derrida’s work was translated by associates of
his, people who had come into translation because they were
devotees of his work and could dialogue with him.^25Since the end of the 1960s, the United States had, of course, been
Derrida’s real stamping ground: the place where his presence had
always been most evident, and from where most of its worldwide
infl uence stemmed. From 1995, thanks to the three new works –
Specters of Marx, Force of Law, and Archive Fever – that rapidly
assumed classic status, there was a real upsurge of interest for his
work in the United States. Even though Derrida registered a certain
irritation when there was talk of a ‘political turn’ or ‘ethical turn’ in
his work, there is no denying that new themes now occupied centre
stage: justice, witness, hospitality, forgiveness, lying... There was
no real break, as there was in Wittgenstein or Heidegger, but it is
diffi cult not to see a series of infl ections and slippages. The de Man
aff air had probably helped him to overcome his reserve.
I am simply trying to pursue with some consistency a thinking
that has been engaged around the same aporias for a long time.
The question of ethics, law, or politics hasn’t arisen unexpect-
edly, as when you come off a bend. And the way in which it
is treated is not always reassuring for ‘morale’ – and perhaps
because it asks too much of it.^26The triumph of ‘French Theory’ and deconstruction sometimes
had its downsides. As if he were a victim of the eff ects of his own
thinking, Derrida now found himself accused of being too con-
servative and insuffi ciently committed. Avital Ronell emphasizes this
aspect: ‘He was a male, a white, a seducer, a philosopher: all potential
fl aws that might lead to him being seen as on the side of traditional
power. He was starting to become the victim of his own categories,
his own war on phallogocentrism.’ His alliance with several radical
women seems, in this respect, to have been a valuable plus.^27