In Life and in Death 2003–2004 531
as if they had forgotten the presence of the audience. And death
was present in everything Derrida said, in a way at once tragic and
serene:
In my anticipation of death, in my relation to the death to
come, which I know will annihilate me and destroy me utterly,
there is, beneath the surface, the desire to leave a testament, in
other words the desire that something survive, be left behind,
passed on – a heritage or something to which I do not aspire,
which will not be mine [qui ne me reviendra pas], but which,
perhaps, will remain... And this is a feeling that haunts me
not only as regards what are called works or books, but for
any daily or common gesture that will have been the witness
of that and which will retain the memory of that when I am no
longer there. Now, I have said that this was part, not of death,
of the impossible experience of death, but of my anticipation of
death. So for me, this has always assumed an obsessional char-
acter, which does not concern merely, to say it yet again, things
which are in the public domain, writing, but even private things... [.. .] These kinds of thoughts, which I call ‘testamentary’
thoughts, and which I have tried to link to the structure of the
trace – and every trace is essentially testamentary – have always
haunted me. Even if it does not take place, if it is not accepted,
there is a testamentary desire that is part of the experience of
death.^36
On 22 June 2004, past midnight, it was a relaxed Derrida, in
rather good shape, who with Régis Debray took part in the last
programme of the season of Cultures et dépendances, chaired by
Franz-Olivier Giesbert. Introduced as ‘the greatest living philo-
sopher’, Derrida launched into a challenging dialogue with Debray,
on mainly political themes. Reassured by the calibre of his conver-
sation partner and the benevolence of the chairperson, he expressed
himself clearly and fl uidly, without the least coquetry: ‘I don’t have
anything against the media. I have a problem with my image as it is
framed by the media.’ And also: ‘As always in politics, I’m a man of
transaction.’
In spite of this, Derrida still maintained really radical political
positions. Defending a new idea of the political, he again spoke in
support of a deterritorialized Europe, at the cutting edge of alter-
mondialisation. And when the journalist Élisabeth Lévy asked him,
not without a hint of aggression, whether it was ‘the same Derrida
who had signed Of Grammatology and the petition for gay mar-
riage’, he was not in the least thrown off his stride, explaining that
he had supported whole-heartedly the initiative of Noël Mamère
but that, on a deeper level, he would like the word ‘marriage’ to