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On Derrida's Politics

if deconstruction is justice, then...

M. Naas: “‘Alors, qui êtes-vous?’ Jacques Derrida and the Question of Hospitality”November 30 2007

Michael Naas engages Derrida’s notion of hospitality and inheritance by looking at Derrida’s writings and reflecting on his own personal encounters with Derrida. The central question “Alors qui êtes-vous?”or ‘who are you?’ marked the beginning of Naas’ first interaction with Derrida. Naas views this question as an invitation, not ‘who are you’ as in ‘what are you doing here’, but rather, ‘what is your name’ and ‘tell me more’.
Naas argues that for Derrida the inquiry as to someone’s name is central to hospitality. For Derrida the problem of hospitality is how you accept the other. Do you accept her/him unconditionally, or do you question them by asking their name and anything else? This is a significant problem. Does one question the other upon arrival, implying that hospitality is contingent upon their answers? Derrida contends that this would not be true hospitality. Hospitality requires an unconditional welcoming of the other. Derrida says that hospitality is “exposure to an arrivant, to someone who arrives or comes even before he or she can even be identified or greeted as ‘our guest’” (Naas quotes Derrida, 9). The other is a surprise, an “absolute arrivant” (9). Therefore, the other lacks identity; to ask about the other’s identity is to take away the hospitality. On the other hand, if one does not ask then one is not welcoming the singular other but rather an anonymous being. Derrida des

D. Perpich: Universality, Singularity, and Sexual Difference: Reflections on Political CommunityNovember 30 2007

This article is useful for any of you seeking to bring dimensions of gender into Derrida’s discussions of political community, specifically the impasse between universality and singularity, and the undecidability of justice. For Diane Perpich, critical engagement with the notion of sexual difference in relation to political desire opens up possibilities to move beyond (if not fully overcome) the conceptual impossibility of justice, and to resolve the impasse between universality and singularity in relation to political belonging. Despite the author’s intentions, I personally felt the article served as a compelling illustration of the difficulty of getting beyond these aporias. However, it is smart and incisive, and worth reading for anyone interested in engaging these questions.

Summary:

In “Universality, Singularity, and Sexual Difference” Diane Perpich reads Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray (among others) to reflect on political community and explore the links she perceives between problems of universality, singularity, justice, and sexual difference. Structuring her discussion into three sections, she begins by developing the problematic of singularity and universality in Derrida’s The Politics of Frienship. She proceeds to question the implications of this discussion for Derrida’s understanding of justice as impossible and necessary. Finally, she considers Luce Irigaray’s contention that “the most appropriate conte

C. Wise: “Saying ‘Yes” to Africa: Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx.”November 30 2007

In “Saying ‘Yes” to Africa.” Wise critiques Derrida from an African perspective while critiquing the conference “Whither Marx?” at which he spoke. He speaks of the haunting of the conference by the absence of black African Marxist voices, at this “international” conference.According to Christopher Wise, Derrida deconstructs the form of the book itself with Spectres of Marx, because he is Judeo-African, and thus inherits a different logic that undermines the Western literacy of academia and of the book. He views Derrida’s position as a critique of “white European ethnocentrism”. However, he feels that his perspective is somehow too idiosyncratic for Africans and Jews alike.

Wise sees Derrida as a potential representative of alternative, more oral and aural modes of knowing and learning and, though very “literate” in the European, white sense of the word, de-stigmatizes illiteracy as it exists in Africa and elsewhere. He goes on to argue that Judeo-Muslims are skeptical of the written word, and find truth in the non-visually identifiable and non-reifiable God. The word of God or the prophets is heard not seen.

Wise compares the Judeo-Mulsims’ privilege of aurality paired with the misconception of slavish devotion to literacy to common misunderstandings of Derrida’s work which deconstructs Christian philosophical skepticism of the written word. Wise’s intention in this essay is to locate Derrida as a

S.A. Chambers: “Ghostly Rights”November 30 2007

Discourse within modern day liberal democracies is increasingly imbued with rhetoric and discussion concerning rights. While the incentive for the acquisition of certain rights may be understood or interpreted in various ways from differing perspectives across the political spectrum, as demonstrated by Samuel A. Chambers in the early pages of his essay, “Ghostly Rights”, a fundamental quality influencing the nature of rights is ultimately excluded from the rights dialogue: the spectralquality of rights themselves. However, as Chambers illustrates, rights dialogues are indeed inextricably linked to a ghostly presence, to a hauntology which renders rights themselves as unreal.Staging the argument around the issue of same-sex marriage and the broader issue of queer rights, Chambers claims that, when made in the language of rights, certain particular struggles by disenfranchised groups, such as the struggle for the right to gay marriage, can serve as hegemonic articulations which point and aim ultimately to a larger universal political goals towards equal distribution of constitutional privileges. It is the rights dialogue which initiates the hegemonic articulation; it serves as the conductor from the particular to the broader universal. In this case, the particular or local struggle for gay marriage takes on the role of the “empty signifier”, or a term which has the potential to be impregnated with signified content th

C. Delacampagne: The Politics of Derrida: Revisiting the PastNovember 30 2007

Delacampagne writes a bird’s eye view of Derrida the political figure, through which his philosophy seems subject to a deconstruction similar to the one he practiced himself. The essay proclaims itself a check of Derrida’s politically active coherence, but the lens through which Delacampagne connotes judgment on his political character seems to violate the solidarity of the text while dismissing Derrida’s own textual explorations on the ethics of political action.

The essay introduces young Derrida through a social networking. He was linked, as a student, to Louis Althusser—the department chair of philosophy in the ENS. The men became friends over the faults of existentialism and a shared doubt as to whether Sartre’s readings of Husserl and Marx contained any “conceptual rigor” (the lack of which could lead to poor action in the public sphere). Sartre laid bare (for Derrida) an inconsistency in the combination of phenomenology and Marxism. The three men each spoke through a separate political move—Althusser pledging to “pure “ Marxism in the hopes of escaping ambiguity (he went insane) while Sartre and Derrida traveled around the periphery of the French Communist Party—Sartre preaching an inconsistency that matched his assignment, Derrida shadowing him politically while feeling himself “divided”. Delacampagne’s outline of Althusser’s breakdown, induced by the enunciation of his own contradictory actions in critiq