Risking Responsibility: A Politics of the Émigré

Abstract

The nature of the deconstructed subject is one of the central concerns which currently occupies those involved in the contemporary philosophical debate. Jacques Derrida’s attempt to rethink the traditional theories of the self and, in so doing, problematize what identity-theorists had for so long taken for granted, has led either to a realization and acknowledgment of the value of such alternative modes of reflection,¹ or to dismissal and, in some instances, contempt.² Whatever reactions it has engendered notwithstanding, ‘deconstruction’ from the outset I believe has been attentive to the ethical, juridical and political demands which such a reconsideration of traditional values requires. Although in recent years it would seem that Derrida, through his works on friendship, law and national identity, is attempting to answer the call of his critics to provide a justification for having the notion of ‘undecidability’ at the heart of responsible action, a notion that some have claimed leads inevitably to irresponsibility. However, it is equally arguable that the aim of these texts is merely to make more explicit what has always figured implicitly. Whatever his reasons for placing such themes at the forefront of his current contributions, the pressing questions in response must, it seems to me, focus on the political shape that the self which emerges from deconstruction will take; that is, can we claim because Derrida states that he has ‘never succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing political codes and programmes’³ that he is apolitical, or that as Richard Bernstein has remarked, ‘for all the evocative power of the very idea of a “democracy to come,” the idea of such a democracy can become an impotent, vague abstraction’?⁴ Further, is it inevitable that Derrida’s text on, and allusions to, justice as being the ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’,⁵ will, as Drucilla Cornell remarks, ‘succumb to the allure of violence, rather than help us to demystify its seductive power’?⁶ The claim that ‘deconstruction is justice’ can never, it seems, be uttered complacently or with a sense of security.

[W]herever deconstruction is at stake, it would be a matter of linking an affirmation (in particular a political one), if there is any, to the experience of the impossible, which can only be a radical experience of the perhaps.

(Jacques Derrida)

But perhaps the law itself manages to do no more than transgress the figure of all possible representation. Which is difficult to conceive, as it is difficult to conceive anything at all beyond representation, but commits us perhaps to thinking altogether differently.

(Jacques Derrida)