She has a squarish face, a neat student haircut, and the look of a teacher’s pet from Sciences Po, except that she is a radical feminist who is not far from thinking, like Monique Wittig, that a lesbian is not a woman, since a woman is defined as the supplement of a man, to whom she is, by definition, subject. In a sense, the myth of Adam and Eve is the original performative function: from the moment it was decreed that the woman came after the man, that she was created from the man’s rib, and that she committed the sin of biting into the apple, that it was all her fault, the slut, and that she fully deserved to give birth in terrible pain, she was, basically, screwed. What next? Would she refuse to look after the kids?
Bayard arrives: he missed the Cixous seminar, preferring to go to see the ice hockey team train so he could, he says, drink in the campus atmosphere. He is holding a half-empty beer and a packet of chips. Judith looks at Bayard with curiosity but, contrary to what Simon might have expected, without any apparent animosity.
“Lesbians aren’t women, and they screw you and your phallogocentrism.” Judith laughs. Simon laughs with her. Bayard asks: “What’s all this about?”
68
“Take off those black glasses. You can see perfectly well that it’s not sunny. The weather is foul.”
In spite of his reputation, Foucault is pretty groggy after his exploits last night. He dips a huge pecan cookie in a remarkably drinkable double espresso. Slimane sits with him, eating a bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese.
The restaurant is at the top of the hill, at the campus entrance, on the other side of the gorge spanned by a bridge where depressed students commit suicide from time to time. They are not really sure if they’re in a bar or a tearoom. To find out, the ever-curious Foucault orders a beer despite his throbbing head, but Slimane cancels it. The waitress, probably used to the caprices of visiting professors and other campus stars, shrugs and turns on her heel, reciting mechanically: “No problem, guys. Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’m Candy, by the way.” Foucault mutters: “Hello, Candy. You’re so sweet.” The waitress does not catch this, which is probably for the best, thinks Foucault, noting in passing that his English has returned.
He feels something touch his shoulder. He looks up and, from behind his glasses, recognizes Kristeva. She is holding a steaming paper cup the size of a thermos flask. “How are you, Michel? It’s been a long time.” Foucault composes himself instantly. After rearranging his features, he takes off his glasses and offers Kristeva his famous toothy smile. “Julia, you look radiant.” As if they saw each other just the night before, he asks her: “What are you drinking?”
Kristeva laughs: “Some godawful tea. The Americans have no idea how to make tea. Once you’ve been in China, you know…”
In order to conceal even a hint of the state he’s in, Foucault says quickly: “How did your conference go? I wasn’t able to make it.”
“Oh, you know … nothing revolutionary.” She pauses. Foucault hears his stomach rumble. “I keep the revolutions for special occasions.”
Foucault pretends to laugh, then excuses himself. “The coffee here makes me want to piss.” He gets up and walks as calmly as possible toward the toilets, where liquid will gush from every orifice.
Kristeva takes his seat. Slimane looks at her but does not say a word. She noticed Foucault’s paleness, and she knows he won’t return from the bathroom until he thinks he can fool her about his physical state, so she guesses she has two or three minutes to play with.
“I am told that you have in your possession something that may find a buyer here.”
“You must be mistaken, madame.”
“On the contrary, I think it is you who is about to make a mistake. A mistake that would be regrettable, for everyone.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, madame.”
“Nevertheless, I am prepared to purchase it myself, for a substantial compensation, but what I want, more than anything, is a guarantee.”
“What sort of guarantee, madame?”
“The assurance that no one else will benefit from this acquisition.”
“And how do you imagine you will obtain this guarantee, madame?”
“That’s for you to say, Slimane.”
Slimane notes the use of his first name.
“Listen to me carefully, you stupid bitch. This isn’t Paris, and your two lapdogs aren’t with you now. Talk to me again and I’ll bleed you like a pig and throw your body in the lake.”
Foucault returns from the toilets. He has obviously splashed water on his face, but his bearing is impeccable. The illusion would be perfect, thinks Kristeva, were it not for a waxy look in his eyes. You would swear he was ready to give a talk—and in fact that is exactly what he is going to do, just as long as he can remember what time his lecture is supposed to take place.
Kristeva excuses herself as she gives him back his seat. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Slimane.” She doesn’t offer him her hand because she knows he won’t take it. He won’t drink from bottles that have already been opened. He will not use the salt cellar on the table. He will avoid all physical contact of any kind whatsoever. He’s deeply suspicious, that one, and he’s right to be. Without Nikolai, things are going to be a bit more complicated. But nothing, she thinks, that she can’t deal with.
69
“Deconstructing a speech consists in showing how it undermines the philosophy to which it lays claim, or the hierarchy of oppositions to which it appeals, by identifying within the text the rhetorical operations that confer on its contents a presumed foundation, its key idea or premise.”
[Jonathan Culler, organizer of the conference Shift into Overdrive in the Linguistic Turn.]
70
“We are, so to speak, in the golden age of the philosophy of language.”
Searle is making his speech, and all of American academia knows it is going to be an all-out attack on Derrida to avenge the honor of his master, Austin, whose reputation the American logician believes was seriously damaged by the French deconstructionist.
Simon and Bayard are in the room, but they don’t understand anything, or not much anyway, because the talk is in English. It mentions “speech acts,” and they get that part. Simon gets “illocutionary” and “perlocutionary.” But what does “utterance” mean?
Derrida didn’t come, but he has sent emissaries, who will report back on the speech’s contents: his faithful lieutenant Paul de Man, his translator Gayatri Spivak, his friend Hélène Cixous … In truth, everyone is there, except for Foucault, who did not feel like leaving his room. Maybe he is relying on Slimane to give him a summary, or maybe he just doesn’t care.
Bayard spots Kristeva, along with all the people he saw in the cafeteria, including the old man in the wool tie.
Searle repeats several times that it is not necessary to restate this or that, that he will not insult his esteemed audience by explaining such and such a point, that there is no need to dwell here on what is so blindingly obvious, etc.
In spite of this, Simon gathers that Searle thinks you must be really, really stupid to confound “iterability” with “permanence,” written language with spoken language, a serious discourse with a fake discourse. Essentially, Searle’s message is: Fuck Derrida.
Jeffrey Mehlman leans down to whisper into Morris Zapp’s ear: “I had failed to note that the charmingly spiky Searle had the philosophical temperament of a cop.” Zapp laughs. Students in the row behind shush him.
When the speech is over, a student asks a question: Does Searle think that the dispute between himself and Derrida (because, even though he took care not to name his adversary, everyone realizes the Frenchman was the subject and the target of his ire—murmurs of approval in the lecture hall) is emblematic of the confrontation between two great philosophical traditions (analytic and continental)?
Searle responds in tones of suppressed anger: “I think it would be a mistake to believe so. The confrontation never quite takes place.” The understanding of Austin and his theory of speech acts by “some so-called continental philosophers” has been so confused, so approximate, so filled with errors and misinterpretations, “as I just demonstrated,” that it is pointless to dwell on the subject any longer. And Searle adds, like a severe clergyman: “Stop wasting your time on those lunacies, young man. This is not the way serious philosophy works. Thank you for your attention.”