522 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
on fulfi lling his commitments. Though taken aback, the doctors
agreed to the postponement.
On 22 May 2003, the fi rst day of the conference on Hélène Cixous
organized on the occasion of her gifting her archives to the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Derrida told his friends about
his illness. He had so often claimed to be ‘marching towards death’
(il marche à la mort: but also ‘running on death’ – in Derrida’s
words ‘as an engine runs on petrol’); now he was showing, in spite of
himself, how true this was. He had just received the terrible results
of his analyses, but, overcoming his own turmoil, calmly delivered
his long lecture ‘Geneses, genealogies, genres and genius’.^10
The next day, he fl ew to Jerusalem, where he was to be given
an honorary doctorate. To limit the fatigue of this brief journey,
he asked for a car to come and meet him on the tarmac of the
airport and requested that he be spared the tiresome Israeli pass-
port formalities, on arrival and departure. On 25 May, before
Derrida gave a lecture on Paul Celan – probably a variation of
Béliers, his homage to Gadamer –, Dominique de Villepin, still
bathing in the afterglow of his speech against military interven-
tion in Iraq, paid him a warm tribute at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem:
Jacques Derrida, you give density back to the strongest and
most simple words of Humanity [.. .]. You are in the forefront
of those who have opened the path to a new thinking. [.. .]
‘Deconstruction’ is an attentive, scrupulous, activity, a think-
ing which takes shape as it tests out its object. An extremely
creative, and liberating, activity. Undoing something, without
destroying it, so as to go further.^11The minister also emphasized the continuity between this ‘discourse
on method’ and Derrida’s many public interventions: ‘against the
oppression of dissidents in the former Czechoslovakia, against
racism in South Africa, or against the prison system in the United
States’. He referred to Derrida’s ‘tireless vigilance’ against injustice,
and against anti-Semitism. And he concluded: ‘You are in the tra-
dition of intellectuals of honour, in love with the universal, on the
path opened by Voltaire, Bernanos, Zola, and Sartre.’
On his return to France, Derrida also insisted on keeping
another engagement. On the evening of 27 May, he and Mustapha
Chérif chaired the closing session of the conference ‘Algeria–
France, a Homage to the Great Figures in the Dialogue between
Civilizations’, held at the Institut du Monde Arabe. The main
lecture hall was packed; André Miquel, André Mandouze, and
Jean-Pierre Chevènement were in the audience. On his arrival,