Excerpt from an Interview with Jacques Derrida, 1995, after a lecture entitled “Applied Derrida”

Q.: What happens when you apply yourself to a thinker, in writing?

Derrida: I will try to answer your question - later. First: I am applied Derrida. A conference on me, where I am here... why do they want me to be here, to listen to my name? Let me postpone the answer to this question. [...] It is not application, but dissemination. I learned a lot from the papers. But why did I come here unprepared, with fake notes [holds up an empty sheet of paper]? I didn't want to apply something already, I wanted to come as naked as possible [takes off jacket]. Nakedness: purity and pornography. As usual, Geoff has said everything before I open my mouth, and I try to be unpredictable, which is impossible after him. When you come to a conference on APPLIED YOU, it is as if you're dead. I would like to see what it is like when I am dead. That's why I came.



Requiescat in pace,  J.D.