PART I
Jackie
1930â1962
1
The Negus
1930â1942
For a long time, Derridaâs readers knew nothing of his childhood or youth. At most, they might be aware of the year he was born, 1930, and the place, El Biar, on the outskirts of Algiers. Admittedly, there are several autobiographical allusions in Glas and even more in The Post Card, but they are so woven into various textual games that they remain uncertain and, as it were, undecidable.
Only in 1983, in an interview with Catherine David for Le Nouvel Observateur, did Derrida finally agree to proffer a few factual details. He did so in an ironic, vaguely tetchy way, somewhat telegraphic in style, as if in a hurry to get shot of these impossible questions:
In 1986, in a dialogue with Didier Cahen broadcast on France-Culture (âLe bon plaisir de Jacques Derridaâ), he restated his previous objections, while acknowledging that writing would doubtless enable him to tackle these questions:
Derridaâs references to his childhood gradually became less reluctant. In Ulysses Gramophone (first French edition published in 1987), he mentioned his secret forename, Ălie,* the name that was given to him on the seventh day of his life; in Memoirs of the Blind, three years later, he described his âwounded jealousyâ of the talent for drawing that his family recognized in his brother RenĂ©.
The year 1991 was a turning-point, with the volume Jacques Derrida coming out in the series âLes Contemporainsâ, published by Ăditions du Seuil: not only was Jacques Derridaâs contribution, âCircumfessionâ, autobiographical from beginning to end, but in the âCurriculum vitaeâ that followed Geoffrey Benningtonâs analysis, the philosopher agreed to submit to what he called âthe law of genreâ, even if he did so with an enthusiasm that his co-author described, delicately, as âunevenâ.3 But childhood and youth were by far the most heavily emphasized parts of his life, at least as regards any personal reflections.
Thereafter, autobiographical references in Derridaâs written work became increasingly frequent. As he acknowledged in 1998: âOver the last couple of decades [. . .], in a way that is both fictitious and not fictitious, first-person texts have become more common: personal records, confessions, reflections on the possibility or impossibility of confession.â4 As soon as we start to fit these fragments together, they provide us with a remarkably precise narrative, albeit one that is both repetitive and full of gaps. They constitute a priceless source â the main source for that period, and the only source that enables us to describe Derridaâs childhood empathetically, as if from within. But these first-person narratives, of course, need to be read, first and foremost, as texts. They should be approached as cautiously as the Confessions of Saint Augustine or Rousseau. And in any case, as Derrida acknowledges, they are belated reconstructions, both fragile and uncertain: âI try to recall, through documented facts and subjective pointers, what I might have thought or felt at that time, but, more often than not, these attempts fail.â5
The material traces that can be added to, and compared with, this wealth of autobiographical material are, unfortunately, few and far between. Many of the family papers seem to have disappeared in 1962, when Derridaâs parents left El Biar in some haste. I have not found a single letter from the Algerian period. And, in spite of my efforts, I have not been able to locate even the least document from the schools that Derrida attended. But I have been lucky enough to have access to four valuable witnesses from those distant years: RenĂ© and Janine Derrida â Jackieâs older brother and his sister â and his cousin Micheline LĂ©vy, as well as Fernand Acharrok, one of his closest friends from that period.
In 1930, the year of Derridaâs birth, Algeria celebrated in great pomp the centenary of its conquest by the French. During his visit there, French President Gaston Doumergue made a point of lauding âthe admirable work of colonization and civilizationâ that had been carried out over the previous century. This was seen, by many people, as the high point of French Algeria. The following year, in the Bois de Vincennes, the Colonial Exhibition received thirty-three million visitors, whereas the anti-colonial exhibition organized by the Surrealists met with the most modest of successes.
With its 300,000 inhabitants, its cathedral, its museum, and its broad avenues, Algiers, the âwhite cityâ (âAlger la Blancheâ), was a kind of display window for France in Africa. Everything in it was deliberately reminiscent of the cities of metropolitan France, starting with the street names: there was the avenue Georges-Clemenceau, the boulevard Gallieni, the rue Michelet, the place Jean-Mermoz, and so on. The âMuslimsâ or ânativesâ â as the Arabs were generally called â were slightly outnumbered by the âEuropeansâ. The Algeria in which Jackie would grow up was a profoundly unequal society, as regards both political rights and standards of living. Communities coexisted but barely mingled â in particular, there were few mixed marriages.
Like many Jewish families, the Derridas had come over from Spain long before the French conquest of Algeria. Right from the start of colonization, the Jews had been considered by the French forces of occupation as useful people, potential allies â and this distanced them from the Muslims with whom they had hitherto lived. Another event separated them even more markedly: on 24 October 1870, French minister Adolphe CrĂ©mieux gave his name to the decree granting French citizenship, en bloc, to the 35,000 Jews living in Algeria. This did not stop anti-Semitism from breaking out in Algeria after 1897. The following year, Ădouard Drumont, the notorious author of Jewish France, was elected as dĂ©putĂ© for Algiers.6
One of the consequences of the CrĂ©mieux Decree was an increase in the level of assimilation of Jews into French life. Of course, Jewish religious traditions were maintained, but in a purely private space. Jewish forenames were Gallicized or, as in the Derrida family, relegated to a discreet second place. People referred to the âtempleâ rather than the âsynagogueâ, to âcommunionâ rather than âbar-mitzvahâ. Derrida himself, much more attentive to historical questions than is often thought, was keenly aware of this change:
Derridaâs father, HaĂŻm Aaron Prosper Charles, was called AimĂ©; he was born in Algiers on 26 September 1896. When he was twelve, he was apprenticed to the wine and spirits company Tachet; he was to work there all his life, as had his own father, Abraham Derrida, and as Albert Camusâs father had done â he too was employed in a wine-shipping business in Algiers harbour. Between the wars, wine was the main source of revenue for Algeria, and its vineyards were the fourth biggest in the world.
On 31 October 1923, AimĂ© married Georgette Sultana Esther Safar, born on 23 July 1901, the daughter of MoĂŻse Safar (1870â1943) and FortunĂ©e Temime (1880â1961). Their first child, RenĂ© Abraham, was born in 1925. A second son, Paul MoĂŻse, died when he was three months old, on 4 September 1929, less than a year before the birth of Jacques Derrida. This would make of him, he later wrote in âCircumfessionâ, âa precious but so vulnerable intruder, one mortal too many, Ălie loved [aimĂ©] in the place of anotherâ.8
Jackie was born at daybreak, on 15 July 1930, at El Biar, in the hilly suburbs of Algiers, in a holiday home. Right up until the last minute, his mother refused to break off a poker game: poker would remain her lifelong passion. The boyâs main forename was probably chosen because of Jackie Coogan, who had the star role in The Kid. When he was circumcised, he was given a second forename, Ălie, which was not entered on his birth certificate, unlike the equivalent names of his brother and sister.
Until 1934, the family lived in town, except during the summer months. They lived in the rue Saint-Augustin, which might seem like too much of a coincidence given the importance that the saintly author of the Confessions would have in Derridaâs work. He later retained only the vaguest images of this first home, where his parents lived for nine years: âa dark hallway, a grocerâs down from the houseâ.9
Shortly before the birth of a new child, the Derridas moved to El Biar â in Arabic, âthe wellâ â quite an affluent suburb where the children could breathe more freely. The parents plunged themselves into debt for many years when they bought their modest villa, 13, rue dâAurelle-de-Paladines. It was located âon the edge of an Arab district and a Catholic cemetery, at the end of the chemin du Reposâ, and came with a garden that Derrida would refer to later as the Orchard, the Pardes or PaRDeS, as he liked to write it, an image of Paradise and of the Day of Atonement (âGrand Pardonâ), and an essential place in kabbalistic tradition.
The birth of Derridaâs sister Janine gave rise to an anecdote that was constantly being retold in the family, the âfirst wordsâ of his that have come down to us. When his grandparents beckoned him into the bedroom, they showed him a travelling bag that probably contained the basic implements used in deliveries in those days, and told him that his little sister had just come out of it. Jackie went up to the cot and stared at the baby before declaring, âI want her to be put back in her bag.â
At the age of five or six, Jackie was a very charming lad. With a little boater on his head, he would sing Maurice Chevalier songs at family parties; he was often nicknamed âthe Negusâ as his skin was so dark. Throughout his early childhood, the relation between Jackie and his mother was particularly intense. Georgette, who had been left with a childminder until she was three, was neither very affectionate nor very demonstrative towards her children. This did not stop Jackie from completely worshipping her, almost like the young Narrator of Ă la Recherche du temps perdu. Derrida later described himself as âthe child whom the grown-ups amused themselves by making cry for nothingâ, the child âwho up until puberty cried out âMummy Iâm scaredâ every night until they let him sleep on a divan near his parentsâ.10 When he was sent to school, he stood in the schoolyard in tears, his face pressed against the railings.
The future author of âTympanâ and The Ear of the Other mainly suffered from repeated attacks of earache, which aroused considerable anxiety in his family. He was taken from one doctor to another. Treatment at the time was aggressive: rubber syringes filled with warm water that pierced the eardrum. On one occasion, there was even talk of removing his mastoid bone, a very painful but in those days quite common operation.
A much more serious and dramatic event occurred during this period: Derridaâs cousin Jean-Pierre, who was a year older, was run over by a car and killed, outside his home in Saint-RaphaĂ«l. The shock was made even worse by the fact that, at school, Jackie was at first wrongly told that it was his brother RenĂ© who had just died. He would always be scarred by this first bereavement. One day, he would tell his cousin Micheline LĂ©vy that it had taken him years to understand why he had wanted to call his two sons Pierre and Jean.
At primary school, Jackie was a very good pupil, except when it came to his handwriting, which was deemed impossible to read, and would remain so. âAt break, the teacher, who knew that I was top of the class, would tell me, âGo back and rewrite this, itâs illegible; when you go to the lycĂ©e youâll be able to get away with writing like this; but itâs not acceptable now.ââ12
In this school, doubtless like many others in Algeria, racial problems were already very much to the fore: there was a great deal of brutality among the pupils. Still very timid, Jackie viewed school as hell â he felt so exposed there. Every day, he was afraid that the fights would get worse. âThere was racist, racial violence, which spread out all over the place, anti-Arab racism, anti-Semitic, anti-Italian, anti-Spanish racism . . . All sorts! All forms of racism could be encountered . . . .,â13
There were many ânativeâ youngsters at primary school, but they tended to disappear when it was time to enter the lycĂ©e. Derrida would describe the situation in Monolingualism of the Other; Arabic was considered to be a foreign language, and while it was possible to learn it, this was never encouraged. As for the reality of life in Algeria, it was kept completely out of the picture: the history of France taught to pupils was âan incredible discipline, a fable and a bible, yet a doctrine of indoctrination almost ineffaceableâ. Not a word was said about Algeria, nothing about its history or its geography, whereas the children were required to be able to âdraw the coast of Brittany and the Gironde estuary with our eye...