This is a false start. And even several false starts. First, the epigraph that is talking about false starts, but which also, like all epigraphs, is itself a false start (so this one is a double false start, a false start about the false start). But also, secondly, this paper itself may well turn out to be a false start for our conference, ‘Deconstruct, he says …’, at least in the sense that my title was dictated (we'll see in a moment that that's the word for it) by a little moment of bad temper. As though something or someone in me wanted to refuse or at least take some distance from the overall conference title, or wanted at least to react to its Durassian feel (as far as I know, Duras was not an author to whom Jacques felt particularly close), and above all to take a stand against what tended, in this quasiquotation, to pull the verb ‘deconstruct’ towards Duras's ‘destroy’, whereas Jacques's most constant effort, when he did indeed say or write ‘deconstruct’ or ‘deconstruction’ (that word that he said one day in Montreal rather unpleasantly surprised him with its worldwide success) was constantly to separate it from that. No, I said to myself, certainly too quickly and reactively, he did not say ‘deconstruct’ in that way.