“Archive et brouillon,” an extensive roundtable discussion on the relation between rough drafts and the archive in 1995, with Michel Contat, Daniel Ferrer, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Louis Hay, appeared in Pourquoi la critique génétique? Méthodes, théories, edited by Michel Contat and Daniel Ferrer (Paris: CNRS, 1998), 189–209.

Michel Contat: Our gathering— which will be improvised, per your wish— is focused on a theme that is crucial for us: the rough draft. It leads off a year-long seminar over the course of which we will be attempting to interrogate the foundations of the concepts we employ. We wanted to begin, however, by opening ourselves up to a philosophical critique in a dialogue that has involved you, Jacques Derrida, since very early on— in our minds, at least. A question came to me while reading your recent work: could one substitute for the concept of avant-texte that of the archive? Nearly every time our work sees the light of day, that is, gets published, the legitimacy of our scholarly attention to rough drafts is called into question. The publication of the initial outlines of Madame Bovary dumbfounded some people: “What's the point? What use are manuscripts?” Talking with some journalist friends, I came up with the provocative formulation that the addressee of the draft is the genetic critic, which is a way of underscoring the cultural gratuitousness of what we do. But I will leave this idea for you to consider.