Segment originally excised form the first edition of The Ideology of Tyranny
ABSTRACT
At the École Normale —France’s State-factory of intellectuals,—Derrida (1930-2004) had been an “admiring and grateful disciple” of Foucault. But after building a momentum of his own, he resolved to part from the master by reneging him in public, on the occasion of a lecture on the relation between Descartes and the history of madness. This took place in the mid-sixties. Directing his attack against Madness and Civilization, Derrida argued that to let“madness speak for itself” was the “maddest aspect[of Foucault’s] project.”