504 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
same time as an absolute betrayal. I have to confess: this is exactly
what I feel.’^27
In 2001, Derrida travelled particularly widely, and this excessive
activity sometimes made him melancholy. In April, he wrote to
Catherine Malabou from Florida, from where he was due to set
off the following day for Los Angeles. Soon, he told her, it would
be a conference in the château at Castries, near Montpellier, then
Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, then back to the United
States. ‘More than ever, I wonder where I am, where I’m going and
why I’m doing all this.’ Sometimes, he was overwhelmed by despair
on all sides: it rose and fell within him ‘like hemlock’.^28 But he
worked intensely all summer, correcting the proofs of three books
that were due to come out in the autumn – For What Tomorrow
.. ., The University without Condition, and the major collection of
essays, Paper Machine –, while writing his speech for the reception
of the Adorno Prize and the lectures he was due to give in China in
September.
This was a trip that had been planned at the end of the 1980s, but
the events in Tiananmen Square had led to its being cancelled. Since
that time, seven of Derrida’s books had been translated into Chinese,
but most of them had been translated from the English version,
which created a series of misunderstandings. Derrida hoped to fi nd
in situ good conversation partners to relaunch things on a better
basis. Before he left, his old friend Lucien Bianco gave him some
practical advice and assured him that, at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong, the students would appreciate it if he talked to them
about the death penalty.^29 Derrida would like to have discussed it in
other cities too, but so as to avoid an open breach with his hosts, he
agreed not to make it the direct theme of his lectures. He referred to
the issue every time he could, however.
His fi rst lecture, delivered on 4 September at the University of
Beijing, took the theme ‘Forgiveness, the unforgivable and the inde-
feasible’. Two other lectures, several seminars, and several interviews
punctuated his journey, from Beijing to Nanjing, Shanghai, and
Hong Kong. Derrida was fascinated by the power and modernity
of China, the gigantic size of its hotels and the huge building sites
to be seen in this rapidly developing country. His travelling condi-
tions were excellent; he was greeted almost like a head of state and
could not take a single step without being photographed. His hosts,
in mandarin fashion, soon announced that ‘all of Derrida’ would be
translated into Chinese.
Suddenly it happened, the unforeseeable event that would turn
everything upside down. Derrida experienced 11 September as ‘a
personal blow’. In Shanghai, he spent practically the entire night in
front of the television.