99 Derrida, Girard, and the Involvement of Personal Life in Theory Berry Vorstenbosch Dutch Girard Society, he Netherlands Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 23, 2016, pp. 99–116. ISSN 1075-7201. © Michigan State University. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION T here are many touch points between the work of Jacques Derrida and René Girard. To me, as a student of literature, these two writers particu- larly stand out as great readers or great exegetes. 1 he way they handle and combine texts, the way they dare to break with reading conventions, has proved to be really fruitful. Some time ago I watched a documentary about Derrida, made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, published in 2002, carrying the simple title Derrida. 2 I found that this experimental documentary at the same time relected Derrida’s many reservations, not to say his skepticism, as to the pos- sibility of making portraits— and— proved to be far more revealing, even inti- mate, than a conventional documentary ever could be. his experience said to me that the many complaints about deconstruction in the sense of sterility or of being merely a game with words—complaints also made by René Girard—are to a certain degree unjust. he Derrida documentary is very much alive, full of biographical and referential energy. Personal life and theory are not to be kept This work originally appeared in Contagion 23, 2016, published by Michigan State University Press. This work originally appeared in Contagion 23, 2016, published by Michigan State University Press.