another Derrida anecdote

Critical Animal repeats a Derrida story that I’ve heard as well:

“A telling (if apocryphal) Kansas appearance: An audience member stood up and recounted the scene from The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy and her friends finally meet the wizard, who is powerful and overwhelming until Toto pulls away the curtain to reveal a very small man. ‘Professor Derrida, are you like that?’ the audience member asked. Derrida paused before replying, ‘You mean like the dog?'”

But I actually heard a bit more to the story than this.

This Derrida lecture was given at the University of Nebraska. The questioner from the audience didn’t just recount “one scene” from the Wizard of Oz, but spent 10 minutes summarizing the entire plot of the film before asking the question to which Derrida so pithily responded.

But my favorite part of the story, hopefully not apocryphal, is this…

Remember, the lecture was held in Nebraska. The questioner had begun the whole lengthy plot summary by saying: “The film is supposedly about Kansas, but I would argue that it’s really more relevant to Nebraska.”

What I heard is that a couple of Kansas graduate students had the wit to corner the questioner afterwards and pretend to be outraged that the claim about Nebraska had insulted Kansas state mythology.

I really hope it happened. Should have happened.