Warning: relatively longish and somewhat wandering thoughts on Jacques Derrida*
There are cultures or individuals who believe that via various means of magic other people can capture/control/immobilize one’s soul or at least one’s subconscious. We’ve all heard of the “primitive” tribe that won’t allow themselves to be photographed or the way a lock of one’s hair in the hands of a certain Neapolitan potion maker can be used to direct one’s affections. Less famous perhaps, but just as outrageous, is the story of how Jean-Paul Sartre supposedly sapped the French writer Jean Genet’s ability to write novels via his brutal psychoanalysis of Genet in what’s now billed a “biography”: Saint Genet. The legend goes that upon reading the manuscript in Sartre’s apartment, Genet was so outraged he threw the pages into the fireplace. The text was still eventually published (and makes for riveting reading if you’re into that kind of thing), but forever afterward Genet (who never wrote another novel) blamed Sartre for stealing his novelist soul, for revealing his secret literary device and thereby neutering him.
I was obsessed with this story in my younger days. Was it possible? Could someone peer so deeply into another’s mind that they could find the “off” switch and shut them down? As an individualist, this struck me as the most horrifying of powers, and I spent years reading Freud and others to try and find a defense against it. I’ve since calmed down quite a bit, none the least because Edmund White, who later wrote the definitive biography on Genet, told me that there was more myth than truth to the legend. According to White’s research, Genet had already exhausted what he was able/interested in doing in the novel format (though he went on to write many plays and poetry) and used the Sartre book as an excuse. Genet was not at all allergic to a touch of melodrama, you see. Further, adding to my comfort is the fact that much of psychoanalysis, as it existed in Sartre’s day, has been debunked.
This all came rushing back to me when I read the New York Times’ obituary on the Algerian-French “father of deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida. He was 74.
Derrida was infamous for his nebulous writings, but he was nearly as enigmatic at times when he spoke in public.
As a lecturer, Mr. Derrida cultivated charisma and mystery. For many years, he declined to be photographed for publication. He cut a dashing, handsome figure at the lectern, with his thick thatch of prematurely white hair, tanned complexion, and well-tailored suits. He peppered his lectures with puns, rhymes and enigmatic pronouncements, like, “Thinking is what we already know that we have not yet begun,” or, “Oh my friends, there is no friend…”
Now it’s difficult to understand, let alone critique the complexity of, many of Derrida’s writings, so I generally cull what I can from them and give him the benefit of doubt on the rest (I first read his two-columned comparison/contrast extravaganza on Hegel and Genet—Glas—as part of my research on the “neutered” writer). But why he would be so “nuanced” when speaking in public (yes, there’s a potential political tie in here if you look for it…but I’m a bit too lazy today) struck me as gratuitous.