CHAPTER 55
Another year, another homage: In 1967, François Fédier proposed a collective volume in honor of Jean Beaufret, whose prestige was considerable at the time. Of all French philosophers, he was the closest to Heidegger, and the one who had worked most after the war to rehabilitate the German thinker and recognize his greatness. Fédier asked for contributions from Kostas Axelos, Maurice Blanchot, René Char, Michel Deguy, Jacques Derrida, Roger Laporte, and Roger Munier. All initially agreed to contribute to the volume that would eventually be named L’endurance de la pensée.
Over lunch, however, Laporte informed Derrida of the deep unease that had quelled his admiration for Beaufret since he had heard him make an anti-Semitic remark in private.1 The remark related to nominations for a post in philosophy at the university in Clermont-Ferrand, and Beaufret had stated, “If I had to choose between Clémence Ramnoux, X, Y, and a Jew, naturally I would vote for Clémence Ramnoux.” Beaufret’s known antipathy for Ramnoux, and his various subsequent denials that he had intended to vote in such a way, did not—in Derrida’s eyes—alter the seriousness of the situation: a man, what’s more a professor in the educational establishment and a close ally of Heidegger, had qualified such a leaning as “natural.” Paying homage to him suddenly became unthinkable. And what’s more: beyond its racist generality and lack of attention to detail (“a Jew”), the statement was particularly aimed at a Jewish philosopher whose fate could not leave Derrida indifferent: Emmanuel Levinas.2
As surprised as he was absolutely shocked, Derrida immediately informed Fédier. “It is absolutely impossible for me, despite my stupefaction, to call into question the authenticity of what has been reported to me,” he stressed, without revealing the name of the informant. Thinking the statement both serious and vulgar, without any possible ambiguity, he decided (he said irreversibly) to withdraw the text he had already submitted.3
It was November 27, 1967. Having known Derrida for some time (he especially admired Voice and Phenomenon but felt more negatively about Of Grammatology), Fédier responded the following day. With an equally weighty feeling of affliction, he protested the allegation of anti-Semitism, which he interpreted as a sign of a new, warped plot against Beaufret, of whom he painted an astonishingly angelic portrait based on his innocence and radical opposition to all forms of fanaticism and of ill-feeling. Meanwhile, Laporte had written to Beaufret, who informed Fédier: The “informant” (this was the term both used) was uncovered. Beaufret also wrote to Derrida, lamenting that with his blind faith in Laporte’s assertion he had not taken the trouble to ask Beaufret for his account. Fédier then relayed to those he had in mind for the collection news of what became, by that very token, “the affair.” Those close to Fédier immediately accused Laporte of slander.
In December, a first meeting was held in Derrida’s office at the École Normale Supérieure in the Rue d’Ulm, featuring Laporte and Beaufret, who continued to deny the accusations. At the end of December or beginning of January, another meeting brought together various contributors to the work in the apartment of Michel Deguy, who, although he was not part of Fédier’s entourage, had offered to “mediate.” The discussion took a more general turn, calling into question Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and the intolerable political extremism inscribed in his philosophy. At this juncture, the true roots of the conflict were revealed: Wahl and Levinas’s attacks on the anti-Semitism of which Heidegger’s philosophy was accused, condemnations that Beaufret, Fédier, and those close to them could not stand, and therefore rejected as lies. For these figures, the entire affair flowed from the tyrannical, delirious capacities they attributed to Laporte’s “mind.” Feeling pressured from all sides, and experiencing a real sense of persecution, the writer was less and less able to bear the fact that his word was doubted (this affair, he would say later, would remain the most painful of his life). Someone close to him therefore approached Maurice Blanchot on January 23.
Protected by the silence surrounding him, Blanchot was not aware of anything; nobody had yet contacted him. When they did, he wrote immediately to Fédier and received a response whose vehemence he found troubling. He therefore contacted Derrida and asked to see him. Thus the first meeting took place, in late January or early February, between Blanchot and the young philosopher he had been reading for several years. For a year they continued to see each other regularly, most often in Derrida’s office at ENS Ulm.4
When he learned that the statement in question related to Emmanuel Levinas, and thus struck, via anti-Semitism, at the heart of friendship—this friendship, which was closer to him than he himself was—Blanchot decided to respond to Fédier. However, he did not wish to do so without considering Laporte and Derrida, to whom he sent copies of his letter and whom he asked for their opinions on this response. While he was considering withdrawing his text, he had not yet made any decision, and above all wanted to act in concert with his two friends. This letter, sent by Blanchot in mid-February, received no response from Fédier.
In March, the question of whether to publish or withdraw was far from decided. The proofs of the volume were sent to all the contributors. Laporte wrote to Fédier informing him that he would not be sending back the “Notes on Giacometti” that he had initially intended to contribute, even while saying that he was ready to reconsider his position, which was due more to the aggressive attitude of Fédier and those close to him than to Beaufret’s statement; he still considered Beaufret his friend and recognized what he owed him intellectually. As for Blanchot, he returned to Fédier the proofs of “The Fragment Word,” a text addressing René Char that had already appeared in Italian in the issue of Il Menabò given over to the International Review.5 Along with the article he sent a letter or rather a warning, which took an exceptionally severe, unfriendly, and inflexible tone. It gave two conditions for the article being published: that it be accompanied by a dedication to Emmanuel Levinas,6 and that all the authors of the volume be sent a letter explaining what actually happened, as well as the aim of his own participation in the project. At the same time, Derrida sent Fédier a similar letter in which he declared that he would cosign with Blanchot the future letter of explanation, whose definitive version of April 2 reestablished—over and against the rumors spread by Fédier—the “full confidence” that the authors had always had in Laporte.7 The letter bore witness to a concern for friendship just as it did to the impossibility of knowing the whole truth. It therefore justified the choice to continue with publication; faced with the gap between (even absolute) confidence and the proof that was lacking, the only intervention that could be made was in the form of texts accompanied by preambles that changed their orientation in a striking way.
Once more, authority belonged to friendship alone and, as with the failure of the International Review, this new mode of division and sharing (partage) would be destined to secrecy. At least Blanchot experienced this “affair” in happy proximity to Derrida. He wrote to him on March 23:
In any case, I shall be happy to sign this letter alongside you, for what together we are carrying today is fairly heavy, and I am sure that later (if our lives allow a “later”) it will belong to the truth and perhaps to the fortune of friendship
To this, Derrida responded the following day:
I am about to try to write this project of the shared letter, and then will send it to you. Among all the marks that this story will have left behind it, this shared signature will be the only gesture that I shall recognize in full.
A few days later, Blanchot left Paris for a period. “Sign in my name the text that you will write,” he reassured Derrida, adding an extra chapter to the story of giving and receiving, of the effacement and sharing of authority.
Among all the impersonal justifications and unavowable dignity, the honor of secrecy and wariness over creating a stir, Blanchot and Derrida faced a question: should Emmanuel Levinas be informed of the affair? On the one hand, it was a question of not upsetting him, not creating a fanfare over the demand for justice that takes its strength from discreet responsibility and shared reflection. On the other, it was a matter of giving truth its due and of showing that they remained vigilant, as the affair seemed to be coming to an end, and could have become known to Levinas. In the face of Beaufret’s “unavowable,” which was unavowable in its essence or its nature, Blanchot and Derrida proposed a different sort of purely Levina-sian unavowable, consisting in an ethical necessity. In Blanchot’s life, the refusal to communicate pieces of information was not new. Until this point, he had always pulled back from speech that sees itself as transcending acts and works, which perverts responsibility by claiming subjectivity and by making compromises with the demand for public knowledge, which claims to break out of the silence of meditation; he had always preferred “to give [him]self over to silent awaiting.” This is what he wrote to Derrida on March 27, citing an ethical demand: “We have to accept that we will not be personally justified.”
Both therefore decided to wait; their “silent awaiting” that would not last long, as a few weeks later, Levinas was informed of the situation in an incomplete and indirect way. Meeting with him was now a necessity, making any scruples impossible.
Blanchot and Derrida went to see Emmanuel Levinas at home. It is probable that Blanchot had not seen his Strasbourg friend for almost seven years, since the defense of the thesis that became Totality and Infinity.8 After this, he would not see him often, perhaps ever. In any case, their paradoxical proximity was complete. Whether it was personal or public, no event in the life of one would pass without a sign from the other. Michaël Levinas, the philosopher’s son, would bear witness to the “sacred character” of a correspondence that would never end between his father and Maurice Blanchot.
In Blanchot’s trembling, anguished, and solemn presence, Levinas showed little external reaction to an affair that, despite himself, made him smile. His position was simple: All drama was to be avoided, even while vigilance was to be retained; the texts ought to be published, in order that Beaufret not be tainted with anti-Semitism. Blanchot and Derrida’s position was just as simple: they had to bear witness on behalf of their friends, as well as for one another and for themselves. Beaufret’s denials continued. Blanchot and Derrida were the only ones who were still confident in Laporte’s account, Char and Munier having dropped away. Others had agreed to believe him even as they played down the nature of the language in question. Those who were closest to Fédier were still proclaiming their outrage.
The book was published by Plon in October 1968; even though his text was included in it, Laporte’s name had been erased from the table of contents. “The Fragment Word” opened as foreseen with a dedication to Emmanuel Levinas. On receiving the book, Blanchot sent the publisher the cosigned letter, to be forwarded to all the volume’s contributors; none ever received it.
The encounter with Emmanuel Levinas had taken place at the beginning of May. The weight of the unavowable was exploding in France. Other forms of authority and of community were being sought, and Blanchot was taking part in these revolutions.