Abstract
This paper argues that Derrida’s aporetic conclusions regarding moral and political concepts, from hospitality to democracy, can only be understood and accepted if the notion of différance and similar infrastructures are taken into account. This is because it is the infrastructures that expose and commit moral and political practices to a double and conflictual (thus aporetic) future: the conditional future that projects horizonal limits and conditions upon the relation to others, and the unconditional future without horizons of anticipation. The argument thus turns against two kinds of interpretation: The first accepts normative unconditionality in ethics but misses its support by the infrastructures. The second rejects unconditionality as a normative commitment precisely because the infrastructural support for unconditionality seems to rule out that it is normatively required. In conclusion, the article thus reconsiders the relation between a quasi-transcendental argument and its normative implications, suggesting that Derrida avoids the naturalistic fallacy.
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Notes
While Gasché’s use of the word ‘infrastructure’ derives from Derrida’s own at the time of Of Grammatology, Derrida indicated later he preferred to speak of the quasi-transcendental “limitless generality of différance, the trace, the supplement, etc.” (Derrida 1992d, p. 71). In referencing Derrida, I will give the page number of the French text only where I departed from the English translation or inserted in the latter original terms or phrases for ease of comprehension.
Rancière (2009, p. 274).
Derrida (2005, p. 39).
In texts of this period, Derrida is quite willing to give such lists himself, pointing out the manifold connections among these concepts in order to help readers, especially those unwilling ‘to do their homework’; Derrida (2005, p. 172 note 12); see also Derrida (2002a, p. 353ff.); Derrida (1994, p. 178 note 3); with regard to aporia, see Derrida (1993, p. 15ff.).
Derrida (1992b, p. 41).
In this way, the aporia of responsibility connects with the aporia of law and the aporia of decision, the latter also having been discussed, in terms strikingly similar to Derrida’s, in the context of sociological systems theory. What Niklas Luhmann calls the paradox of decision (Luhmann 1993) has been expressed by Heinz von Foerster, in a manner akin to Derrida (1992a, p. 24), in the following way: “Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide”; Foerster (1992, p. 14). If a decision was not undecidable, but rather ranked by criteria outside of (though at the disposal of) the deciding agent, the criteria would decide for the agent, and the agent could not make the decision her own. In addition to its reference to norms of accountability, there must be an unpredictable and subjective moment in a decision qua decision (Luhmann 1993, p. 295). The relation between Luhmann and Derrida around law has recently been explored in Teubner (2008).
Derrida (2005, p. 30).
We may also apply this line of thinking to the more recent issue of post-Baathist Iraq, with regard to which the US invasion, in part under the banner of spreading democracy, imposed some serious questions: Should Islamic fundamentalists be allowed to vote and stand for elected office if their express aim is to end democratic rule? Must a democracy not, as the Algerian state did in 1992, halt, by sovereign decision, democratic elections that threaten to overthrow democracy, thus deferring democracy to a better time? Should this not have been done in 1933 in Germany, for example? A further example Derrida gives, this time as a “more visibly auto-immune process,” concerns the reaction of the US and other Western democracies to the 2001 terrorist attacks: the restrictions of democratic freedoms in order, allegedly, to protect itself against the enemies of democracy (Derrida 2005, p. 39ff.). If democracy is the only quasi-regime that is open to its own historical transformation (Derrida 2005, p. 25), this openness can extend itself to the point of risking democracy’s own abdication. As Derrida puts it: “the alternative to democracy can always be represented as a democratic alternation” (Derrida 2005, p. 31).
Derrida (2005, p. 48).
Derrida (2005, p. 34; cf. p. 48).
Derrida (2001, p. 45).
Derrida (2005, p. 100).
Derrida (2005, p. 150).
Derrida (1992a, p. 24).
Cf. Derrida (1991, p. 65).
For further explorations of the similarities in argument between Adorno and Derrida, see the recent collection of essays in Waniek and Vogt (2008).
The distinctions that follow are similar to, but also different from, Christoph Menke’s. Menke distinguishes what I call the semantic from the functional interpretation, but the point of the latter, which he argues is superior, is for him to precisely avoid appeal to the ‘purity’ or unconditionality of concepts (Menke 2002, p. 246), which he finds spurious (cf. Menke 2000: Chap. 2). As the passage from Rogues on unconditionality cited in the text above—a passage Menke could hardly have known in 2002—and its surrounding context (Derrida 2005, p. 148ff.) make clear, doing away with the necessity of such an appeal to purity would run counter to Derrida’s express intent. What renders the purity so suspect, however, is its semantic interpretation coupled with a historicist claim, according to which we have inherited strong, pure concepts that govern our practices and that we cannot shake off, at least not easily. But this historicist-semanticist (Menke calls it ‘theoreticist’) misunderstanding should not lead us to abandon the unconditional concept Derrida often insists upon; rather, we should ask whether the ‘purity’—which is not the same as the purity of a signature, Menke’s initial example (Menke 2002, p. 246)—is not rendered less suspect by its (un)grounding in an infrastructural account of the singularity, and thus unpredictability, of every event. Significantly, Menke’s motivation for abandoning the semantic interpretation is that the third of the aporias Derrida discusses in “Force of Law” cannot be covered by that interpretation. It cannot because the aporia results from the conflict between the urgency of a justice here and now, and the “countermovement of a deferral” (Menke 2002, p. 250; my translation), which cannot be understood as part of the normative semantic content of a concept. We should notice at this point, then, that the temporality of deferral, so extensively discussed in Derrida’s earlier work, and precisely in relation to singularity, plays a critical role in the argument for an open-ended justice in “Force of Law,” the text on which Menke focuses.
Derrida (2005, p. 149).
Derrida (2005, p. 152).
Derrida (1992a, p. 27).
In fact, a certain emphasis placed on the proximity of Derrida to Levinas yields another, and highly significant, reason for commentators to neglect the connection of Derrida’s infrastructures with the later ‘ethical’ work, and to stress in particular the need for unconditionality without reference to différance and other infrastructures. One has the impression that the more a commentator is disposed to accept unconditionality in ethics, often though not always as a result of studying Levinas, the less she tends to pay attention to the role of the infrastructures in Derrida. Conversely, the more critical of Levinas the commentator is, or the more he insists on the difference between Levinas and Derrida, the more the infrastructures, and the inevitability of ‘violence’ they bring to ethics and politics, tend to be stressed even in Derrida’s later work. For the second alternative in particular, see Hägglund (2008), Laclau (1996), and Beardsworth (1996).
Patton (2004, p. 31).
Caputo (1997, p. 111).
Derrida (2005, p. 149).
In fact, Caputo’s “Commentary” responds to a roundtable in which Derrida discusses hospitality and the gift without bringing up the infrastructures explicitly, although he does reference the relation between justice and non-identity (Derrida in Caputo 1997, p. 17); between hospitality and the quasi-ontological khôra (p. 18); as well as between the gift and the limits of phenomenal appearance as such (p. 19). In his written texts on moral and political aporias, these references are more motivated and less indirect; I refer the reader to the corresponding references in the body of this article. Later in the same book, in his commentary on the roundtable, Caputo also notes the relation between justice and time (Caputo 1997, p. 153), notices that Derrida’s discussion of the gift references différance (Caputo 1997, p. 143), and calls the gift a “quasi-transcendental” (Caputo 1997, p. 141). However, he does not discuss the quasi-transcendental infrastructures as being required for the conditions or for unconditionality that make up aporias in their conflictual indissociability, nor does he note that, for instance, the gift or hospitality is, as Derrida says, another way of thinking the event (Derrida 2002a, p. 94; Derrida 2005, p. 148). Rather, his account of the need for unconditionality in the context of the gift is consistent with the one he gave for hospitality: the aporia (which he equates with a tension or self-limitation) is said to demand that gift-giving go beyond itself, exceed itself toward a pure gift (Caputo 1997, p. 144; cf. Caputo 1998, p. 160 ff.). One might wonder whether this account is again circular, as if a practice were impossible by definition: if the aporia consists in the ‘tension’ between the conditional and the unconditional, and this aporia—the impossibility of the gift—is used as a premise to infer the demand for the unconditional excess, then it seems the unconditional could not already figure in the premise. The purity of the gift would have to be supported otherwise, for instance, by what we mean by the ‘gift’ in ordinary language or by différance.
Bonacker (2002, p. 270).
Rawls (1996, p. 385ff.).
Caputo (1997, p. 111).
Bernasconi (1997, p. 261).
Bernasconi (1997, pp. 262–263).
Bernasconi (1997, p. 269).
Hénaff (2009, p. 219). To avoid aporias, Hénaff (2010) helpfully distinguishes further between ceremonial, free or pure, and solidary gifts, though it is not clear that Derrida’s account of the gift would not be relevant to all three. See also the discussion, edited by Dirk Quadflieg, of Hénaff’s work in WestEnd 2010, 7:1, 63–132, including essays by Hénaff and Axel Honneth.
Derrida (1991, p. 12), French original (p. 24).
Derrida (1991, p. 11).
That is, after Derrida had identified the time that Mauss says is required for a gift in the cultures he studies (the recipient will return a gift but only later) with the différance that requires a deferral to an indefinite time, a time from which no return could be calculated or expected (Derrida 1991, p. 39).
Derrida (1991, p. 48).
Derrida (1991, p. 48); French original (p. 69).
Derrida (1991, p. 50).
Derrida (1991, p. 52).
Derrida (1991, p. 50).
Derrida (1991, p. 11, 101).
Hitz (2005).
Derrida (2005, p. 39).
Derrida (1994, p. 167).
Cf. the passage at Derrida 2002a: 94, where Derrida puts the point carefully (in view of the fact that his thought may be said to revolve around precisely the impossibility he names here): “[I]t is almost impossible to think the absence of a horizon of expectation.”
Derrida (1981, p. 28).
Derrida (1976, p. 61). Derrida uses this word in Of Grammatology just before introducing différance of which he says that, as non-present non-origin, there cannot be a science of it. By contrast: “Of course, the positive sciences of signification can only describe the work and the fact of différance, the determined differences and the determined presences that they make possible” (1976, p. 63).
See e.g. Derrida (1997, p. 47, 81).
If speaker and hearer did not even assume that they intended the same meaning, it is hard to see how understanding could be reached. This is why Apel and Habermas, for instance, treat this assumption as a “transcendental-pragmatic presupposition” of argumentation, and thus of meaning on an inferential-semanticist account. See Habermas (1990, p. 87), following Robert Alexy (1978). In the “Afterword” to Limited Inc, Derrida claims as well that strong assumptions of this sort—for instance, that concept use must be governed by the logic of non-contradiction—are required for meaning. See in particular Derrida (1988, pp. 114–130), where Derrida speaks of a “structural idealism” (p. 120) that seems to me to be comparable to, though also different from, Habermas’ universal pragmatics and its analysis of inevitable idealizations.
Derrida (1991, p. 12).
Derrida (1992a, p. 27).
Derrida (2002a, p. 94).
Derrida (1992a, p. 28).
Cf. Fritsch (2010).
Derrida (1991, p. 11, 101).
Derrida (1991, p. 16ff.).
Derrida (1991, p. 17).
Derrida (1991, p. 1).
Derrida (1991, p. 62; transl. modified); French original (pp. 85–86).
Derrida (1993, p. 8).
Derrida (1979).
Derrida (1991, p. 11).
Derrida (1991, p. 101).
Derrida (1992a, p. 31ff.).
Derrida (2005: 7).
In Fritsch (2005, chap. 3), I attempted a different reading of Benjamin in this regard.
Derrida (1992a, p. 43).
Derrida (1994, p. 141).
Derrida (1992a, p. 10).
Derrida (2005, p. 84).
Derrida (1982, p. 11, p. 12, p. 16).
Derrida (1982, p. 7, p. 27).
Derrida (1991, p. 62).
“No doubt, as with every ‘il faut,’ this law of the ‘il faut’ is that one must—il faut—go beyond [déborder] constatation and prescribe… One cannot be content to speak of the gift and to describe the gift without giving and without saying one must give [qu’il faut donner], without giving by saying one must give, without giving to think that one must give but a thinking that would not consist merely in thinking but in doing what is called giving, a thinking that would call upon one to give in the proper sense, that is, to do more than call upon one to give in the proper sense of the word, but to give beyond the call, beyond the mere word.” Derrida (1991: 62), French original (p. 85).
Derrida (1992a, p. 27).
Derrida (1998).
Derrida (2005, p. 148).
Derrida (2002a, p. 94-5).
Derrida (1994, p. 141).
Derrida (1992a, p. 28).
Derrida (2002b, p. 86f.).
Here is one of the passages in which Derrida says most clearly that “the trace or différance” implies an injunction, so that the “il faut” is both quasi-transcendental and normative: “Language has begun without us, in us, before us. This is what theology calls God, and it is necessary, it will have been necessary, to speak. This “it is necessary” is at once the trace of an undeniable necessity…and of a past injunction… Order or promise, this injunction commits (me), in a way that is rigorously asymmetrical, even before I myself have been able to say I, and to sign—in order to reappropriate it for myself, to restore the symmetry—such a provocation. This in no way mitigates responsibility, on the contrary. There would be no responsibility without this forecoming [prévenance] of the trace, and if autonomy were first or absolute. Autonomy itself would not be possible, nor respect for the law (the sole ‘cause’ of this respect) in the strictly Kantian sense of these words” (Derrida 2008, p. 166; Derrida’s emphases; French original p. 561).
Derrida (2004, pp. 5–6). That is why, for Derrida, seeking to achieve scientific neutrality in a meta-language that would speak merely constatively of its object risks denying the fact that our discourses, including scientific ones, are always indebted (endetté) to that to which they are responding, and already from the start a part of the discourses they are commenting on (Derrida 1991, p. 62; cf. Derrida 1996b, p. 67f.). This also the reason why, for example, Marcel Mauss’ The Gift cannot just describe the gift, but must call for it, and why Derrida prefers to advance his theses in the style of a commentary on others that does not hide its indebtedness (Derrida 1991, p. 100).
Derrida (2002b, p. 86f.).
Derrida (1995a, p. 276).
Derrida (1997, p. 249).
Derrida (1997, p. 231).
Derrida 1997, p. 214).
“No politics, no ethics, and no law can be, as it were, deduced from this thought [of the khôra as the spacing of the coming event]. To be sure, nothing can be done [faire] with it. And so one would have nothing to do with it. But should we then conclude that this thought leaves no trace on what is to be done—for example in the politics, the ethics, or the law to come?” (Derrida 2005, p. xv). Derrida then goes on to specify that the trace this thought of unconditionality leaves on the politics to come is one of a kind of motivating hope without redemption. This should be linked to what he says about the justice that motivates the perfectibility of law (Derrida 1992a, p. 27f.) despite the inevitability of violence. A well-known passage in Of Grammatology distinguishes three levels of violence (Derrida 1976, p. 112 ff.) without thereby relieving us of the difficulty of deciding for “the lesser violence” (Derrida 1978, p. 313) in each context. Space constraints do not permit to respond to the debates around what the lesser violence might mean here; see Hägglund’s (2008, pp. 231–232) and Haddad’s (2008) critique of my earlier work and that of John Caputo and Richard Beardsworth. Suffice it to say that for Derrida, as the passage cited in the text makes clear, the inevitability of de facto violence does not rule out the normativity of the “promise of nonviolence” Derrida (1996a, p. 83).
Derrida (1993, p. 64).
In Being and Time Heidegger anticipates the aporetic structure of selfhood: “The Self, which as such has to lay the basis for itself, can never get that basis into its power; and yet, as existing, it must take over Being-a-basis” (Heidegger 1962, p. 330, German original, p. 284; Heidegger’s emphasis). For a further exploration of the Heideggerian roots of Derrida’s notion of responsibility, see Raffoul (2010). For a lucid reading of Derrida’s Aporias, notably around the contested relation between death and an open future, see Beardsworth (1996, Chap. 3).
Cassam (1999, p. 40).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Samir Haddad, who commented on an earlier version of this paper, and to an anonymous reviewer for this journal. For institutional support during the time of completing the manuscript, I thank the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, Germany.