34 Jackie 1930–1962
view, Sartre’s work was not great literature either, Nausea apart, but
it remained ‘unrivalled’ for its impact on his own personal history as
on that of his whole generation.
Sartre’s view of commitment also corresponded to Derrida’s fi rst
real politicization. We must of course avoid any anachronism: even
if the terrible Sétif massacres in May 1945 appeared in retrospect to
mark the beginning of the Algerian War, Jackie’s positions at that
time were not anti-colonialist, but traditionally reformist, as indeed
were those of the French Communist Party:
When I was in hypokhâgne in Algiers, I was starting to belong
to ‘left-wing’ Algérois groups. There was Mandouze at that
time, in the years 47–48–49. [.. .] I belonged to groups that
took up positions, I was politically more enlightened. Without
being in favour of Algerian independence, we were against the
hard-line policies of France. We were militating for a decoloni-
zation via the transformation of the status which Algerians had
been allotted.^41In many respects, hypokhâgne seems to have been a happy year.
Surrounded by a group of young men and women, many of whom
shared the same interests as he did, Jackie was not subjected to the
pressures of the least exam. But his results overall were good, and in
philosophy he came second out of seventy. His friend Jean-Claude
Pariente, the most brilliant boy in the class, took the exam for the
rue d’Ulm, but failed – badly. This convinced Derrida not to try to
do the same thing. If he was to have any serious chance of getting
into Normale Sup, he would need to be in metropolitan France,
he told himself. Like Pariente and Domerc, he gained a place
at Louis-le-Grand, the most prestigious of Paris lycées, the one
which had been attended by Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire,
Alain-Fournier and Paul Claudel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. Even though these studies imposed a great fi nancial
sacrifi ce on Jackie’s parents, they were ready to support the brilliant
student that he had become since his fi nal year in lycée. Of course,
there was no question of his renting a room in Paris; he would be a
boarder at Louis-le-Grand. Not for a moment did Jackie imagine
what that could mean.