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“Democracy to Come” in the Political Thought of Jacques Derrida

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“Democracy to Come” in the Political Thought of Jacques Derrida THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA “Democracy to Come” in the Political Thought of Jacques Derrida A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Politics School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Andrew Kaufmann Washington, D.C. 2014 ! “Democracy to Come” in the Political Thought of Jacques Derrida Andrew Kaufmann Director: David J. Walsh, Ph.D. This dissertation is a study of Jacques Derrida’s political theory as it develops in his later period. It focuses in particular on what Derrida calls the aporia, the experience of the possibility of the impossible. It is argued that Derrida uses aporia as a logical tool by which he views the world. He observes its operation in parallel sets of dualities: among others, he finds aporias at work between the measurable and immeasurable, the conditional and unconditional, the same and other, and the guest and host. In each of these cases, Derrida develops an analysis that does not seek to resolve dualities according to a Hegelian Aufhebung. Rather, aporias are impossible difficulties—paradoxes—that must be experienced and endured without resolution. Existence does not seek to transcend aporias; rather, aporias constitute our existence. The study takes special aim at several categories of thought that illuminate the aporias of his political theory: foundations, the event, sovereignty, hospitality, and democracy. In each of these areas, Derrida observes that instead of living in paradoxical opposition--a more conventional way of defining aporia--the categories of our thought contaminate and haunt each other. In particular, he shows that inside the sovereign self—whether in its personal or political forms—is always already the parasite of the other. After observing that we live upon a foundation of political authority that exceeds determination, we are then free to invent impossible new forms of political life. He argues that political sovereignty divides itself in an impossible gesture of hospitality toward the other, such that even political enemies receive a welcome. The study culminates in an examination of democracy, which is the best political regime precisely because within it is the aporia of measurable equality and immeasurable freedom. This dissertation by Andrew Kaufmann fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in political theory approved by David J. Walsh, Ph.D., as Director, and by Stephen F. Schneck, Ph.D., and Dennis Coyle, Ph.D., as Readers. ____________________________________ David J. Walsh, Ph.D., Director ____________________________________ Stephen F. Schneck, Ph.D., Reader ____________________________________ Dennis Coyle, Ph.D., Reader ! ii! To Andrea ! iii! Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Aporias of Derrida ............................................................................................... 10 Aporia Pervasive in Derrida’s Philosophy ........................................................................ 11 The Aporia of Death ......................................................................................................... 15 The Aporia of Iterability ................................................................................................... 25 The Aporia of Invention .................................................................................................... 32 Conclusion and Implications ............................................................................................. 39 Chapter 2: Foundations of Political Authority .............................................................................. 44 Derrida’s Declarations of Independence ........................................................................... 46 The Countersignature ........................................................................................................ 53 The Mystical Foundation of Authority ............................................................................. 59 Before the Law .................................................................................................................. 62 Khora ................................................................................................................................. 67 Derrida and the Apocalypse .............................................................................................. 75 Chapter 3: The Event to Come ...................................................................................................... 84 The Aporia of the Decision and the Event ........................................................................ 90 The End of Marxism? ..................................................................................................... 104 The Specter of Liberalism ............................................................................................... 112 Chapter 4: Sovereignty and its Other .......................................................................................... 122 Sovereignty as Selfsame Ipseity ..................................................................................... 123 Sovereignty as First ......................................................................................................... 126 Sovereignty as the Exception .......................................................................................... 131 Sovereignty as Outside the Law and Violent .................................................................. 136 Sovereignty as Divisible ................................................................................................. 144 Sovereignty as Sharing ................................................................................................... 149 The University and Sovereignty ..................................................................................... 150 Conclusion: The Sovereign as Snake .............................................................................. 154 Chapter 5: Hospitality ................................................................................................................. 156 Hospitality as Governing Metaphor ................................................................................ 159 Hospitality as Substitution .............................................................................................. 164 The Passage from Ethics to Politics ................................................................................ 169 Hospitality of the Third ................................................................................................... 173 Cosmopolitanism ............................................................................................................ 178 Forgiveness as Hospitality .............................................................................................. 183 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 189 Chapter 6: Democracy ................................................................................................................ 191 The Free Concept of Democracy .................................................................................... 193 ! iv! Democracy and Autoimmunity ....................................................................................... 200 Democracy as Homogeneity? ......................................................................................... 205 Democracy as Heterogeneity .......................................................................................... 210 The Problem of Democracy and Sovereignty ................................................................. 219 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 224 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 225 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 234 ! ! ! v! Introduction Jacques Derrida was born in 1930 to Jewish parents in the Algerian city of El-Biar. After suffering through a childhood marked by anti-Semitism, he moved to Paris to pursue education at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Although he did write The Problem of Genesis in the Philosophy of Husserl in 1956, it was not until the 1960’s that his publication production increased significantly. It was during that decade that many of the essays that would form the triumvirate of Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, and Of Grammatology (each of which came out in French in 1967) were written. These three volumes established Derrida as an intellectual force in France, effectively launching his career. Also notable was his delivery of the lecture, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. This lecture established his presence in the United States, where he became even more famous later in his career. The publications continued in the 1970’s, with volumes like Dissemination, Margins of Philosophy, and the inventive Glas, all of which in their own ways
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