532 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
disappear from the Civil Code, since the notion was in his view too
tied to the religious sphere.*
In spite of the late hour of its broadcast, this very eloquent
programme had, for the fi rst time, a real impact on the sales of
Derrida’s books.
On 6 July, he went to Queen Mary College, London, for a new
honorary doctorate. This was his fi rst in Britain since Cambridge,
in 1992; it was also to be his last. If Derrida undertook the journey,
this was not to add yet another honour to an already long list, but
to please Marian Hobson, a long-standing friend and the author of
a book about him, and so as not to let down the principal and vice-
principal of the university, who had been making preparations for
the ceremony for a long time. It was also an opportunity to meet
up with faithful friends such as Peggy Kamuf, Nicholas Royle, and
Geoff rey Bennington. But the weather was very hot that day and
Derrida was initially tired, something he blamed on the busy weeks
he had just lived through. ‘At fi rst, I thought he had really aged,’
says Alexander García Düttmann. ‘But at the seminar and the
questions-and-answers afterwards, as ever, he found his old form.
There was even a certain gaiety about him. And then, at the dinner,
fatigue got the upper hand and he asked to be driven back to his
dear Russell Hotel.’^37
All the same, he set off again almost immediately, for the Avignon
Festival. On 9 August, with Gianni Vattimo and Heinz Wismann,
he took part in a debate entitled ‘The “old Europe” and ours’,
reading as a preamble a short letter with the title ‘Double memory’.
Several of his favourite themes came together in these three pages:
Old Europe,
I have never addressed you familiarly. I’ve spent many years
saying what certain people interpreted as bad things about
you. [.. .] Today, the situation has changed. I see in you what- In his interview with Jean Birnbaum, Derrida went into more detail on this ques-
tion: ‘If I were a legislator, I would propose simply getting rid of the word and
concept of “marriage” in our civil and secular code. “Marriage,” as a religious,
sacred, heterosexual value – with a vow to procreate, to be eternally faithful, and so
on –, is a concession made by the secular state to the Christian church, and particu-
larly with regard to monogamy, which is neither Jewish (it was imposed upon Jews
by Europeans only in the nineteenth century and was not an obligation just a few
generations ago in Jewish Maghreb), nor, as is well known, Muslim. By getting rid
of the word and concept of “marriage,” and thus this ambiguity or this hypocrisy
with regard to the religious and the sacred – things that have no place in a secular
constitution – one could put in their place a contractual “civil union,” a sort of gen-
eralized pacs, one that has been improved, refi ned, and would remain fl exible and
adaptable to parties whose sex and number would not be prescribed.’ (Learning to
Live Finally, pp. 43–4.)