This article examines how affect allows us to view the relational form of dialogue, as built upon the work of Derrida and Levinas, to be a site of transformative possibility for students as they encounter and address issues of social justice and difference in the classroom. The understanding of affect that attends this form of dialogue demands from educators a re-visioning of how their educational arrangements and pedagogies might facilitate the transformative capacities of their students. Accordingly, the relational conception of (...) dialogue cannot be viewed as providing educators with another strategy or method for addressing issues of social justice and difference or for tapping into the transformative capacity of their students. Instead, it would be better viewed as pointing educators towards a different orientation towards education which is not focused upon producing particular outputs or outcomes, but does still indicate the need for a responsible response from the educator. (shrink)

In seeking to answer the question "How does that which is other become evil?" the author provides a discussion of four entwined aspects of the issue at stake: difficulty in achieving clarity on the grammar of evil; genocide as a striking illustration of otherness becoming evil; the challenge of postnationalism as a resource for dealing with otherness in the socio-political arena; and the ethico-religious dimension as it relates to the wider problem of evil.

In seeking to answer the question "How does that which is other become evil?" the author provides a discussion of four entwined aspects of the issue at stake: (1) difficulty in achieving clarity on the grammar of evil; (2) genocide as a striking illustration of otherness becoming evil; (3) the challenge of postnationalism as a resource for dealing with otherness in the socio-political arena; and (4) the ethico-religious dimension as it relates to the wider problem of evil.

The ill?named debate between postmodernists and postlibertarians should be transcended; this requires the abandonment of both foundationalism and its converse, without abandoning common sense as well (which is no mean trick). Similarly, the debate over ?minimal statism? versus the planned economy is outdated. Instead of claiming to be in possession of foundations of our scientific?cum?political knowledge in broad terms, and instead of severely limiting our knowledge to given proofs, we offer the putative heuristics of critique in general and the critical (...) evaluations of contexts in particular. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern deconstruction and ethics by elaborating upon the ethico-political dimensions of deconstructionism. It embarks on a critical assessment of postmodern discourse on ethics in view of its political implications by analyzing Jacques Derrida''s and Richard Rorty''s arguments with an assumption that their positions represent a certain logic in the postmodern discourse on ethics. Postmodern ethics is based on incredulity with regard to traditional metanarratives, and it defines ethics in terms of (...) sensitivity or responsibility to otherness and difference. Its proponents believe that the negation of modern metanarratives opens a way to the Other which has been marginalized and suppressed both in thought and in social practice. Derrida and Rorty represent this position with their emphasis on the ethical nature of deconstruction and the need to elaborate new languages for ethics. Despite postmodern appeal to ethics of this sort, however, postmodern thinking shows its limits in dealing with most ethical-political matters in the contemporary world. The postmodern approach to ethics, being restricted within the perspective of the individual, does not provide any determinate framework for deciding how to adjudicate conflicting ethical claims or how to link the unconditional affirmation of emancipatory ideals, enlightened social criticism, and democratic accountability in determinate political terms. In the main, this paper contends that philosophical deconstruction and responsibility to otherness undermine each other in the public sphere. (shrink)

Neither philosophy in general, nor deconstruction in particular, should be thought of as a pioneering, path-breaking, tool for feminist politics. Recent philosophy, including Derrida's, helps us see practices and ideas as neither natural nor inevitable—but that is all it does. When philosophy has finished showing that everything is a social construct, it does not help us decide which social constructs to retain and which to replace.

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to (...) liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

In the 1980s and 1990s the predominant metatheories in development analysis were cast into doubt by their apparent failure in practice. One response to this impasse in development theory was to turn to postmodern ideas to explain their failure. In particular many analysts utilized Foucauldian discourse theory to critique development as a discourse of power. Such analysis gave rise to a post-development school of thought that condemned development as harmful to people in the Global South and advocated its abandonment. This (...) paper argues that most such attempts at a discourse analysis of development were characterized by serious flaws related to skepticism, notably problems of performative contradiction and relativism. Consequently, the paper argues for an alternative approach in the form of a development ethics drawing on aspects of deconstructionist and critical realist thought. (shrink)

In this article I explore some points of convergence between Habermas and Derrida that revolve around the intersection of ethical and epistemological issues in dialogue. After some preliminary remarks on how dialogue and language are viewed by Habermas and Derrida as standpoints for departing from the philosophy of consciousness and from logocentric metaphysics, I cite the main points of a classroom dialogue in order to illustrate the way in which the ideas of Habermas and Derrida are sometimes received as well (...) as the actual relevance of ethical and epistemic concerns within educational settings. I claim that such concerns cannot be sidestepped without cost and that they can be approached by combining rather than rigidly separating Habermas and Derrida. Beyond the consolidated polemics, emancipatory politics and Enlightenment priorities of truth and justice bring Habermasian reconstruction and Derridean deconstruction closer than it is typically assumed. Attention to such a convergence can enrich the teaching material of higher education courses which usually comprises either Habermasian or Derridean texts but rarely both. It can also stave off some of the risks involved in some versions of constructivism as they occur in school practice. (shrink)

The series friends, rivals, enemies is a seemingly ‘natural’ classification for the relations of states, while the parallel series kin, neighbors, strangers functions as an informal classification system for social relations in general. That we may owe foreigners the hospitality due to strangers has become a matter of discussion among normative theorists, thanks to Kant's Perpetual Peace. Thus the conjunction of friendship and hospitality calls for a conceptual assessment. This assessment uses Aristotle's treatment of friendship (and Derrida's treatment of Aristotle's (...) ‘familial schema’) to establish three primary models of social relations (father to sons, husband to wife, brother to brother). Only ‘brothers’ (agents modeled as brothers) can be friends, rivals, or enemies. Only ‘fathers’ can be hosts who offer strangers the hospitality of the household. By the same token, only ‘fathers’ can be guests or take hostages. Such an assessment brings the conceptual concerns of two fields — international relations and political theory — closer together. In so doing, it rejects anarchy's conceptual hegemony in the field of international relations. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jacques Derrida and Meister Eckhart both construe love as a gift that is entirely free of economic exchange, and both conclude on this basis that love cannot be grasped or identified. In my reading, Eckhart and Derrida do not rule out consideration of one’s own well-being, but their accounts do entail that calculated self-protection is external to love. For this reason, they suggest, lovers should not expect to balance love against a prudential restraint: although both demands (...) are indelible, they function at different levels. A gift of this sort is ineluctably dangerous, but Derrida and Eckhart suggest that unsettling darkness must be endured in order to preserve the possibility of love. (shrink)

In order to illuminate the very complex relationship between ethics and politics in the thought of Jacques Derrida, this paper stages the (dis)encounter between Hegel's and Derrida's notion of forgiveness. It will be shown how for these two authors forgiveness is closely related both with certain ‘impossibility’, and with the disclosure of a condition for rethinking the ethico-political realm. Both Hegel and Derrida seem to suggest that forgiveness opens up a realm in which something must remain ‘absolute’, that is to (...) say, ‘intact, inaccessible to law, to politics, even to morals’. And, for both, it seems to be precisely there, where something arrives at the verge of politics, that a thinking (and a re-thinking) of the ‘political’ becomes possible. The paper explores what kind of impossibility is staged in each case, and how can each one bring into light the risks and limits, but also the scope and significance of the other. (shrink)

After beginning by situating the author's (possible) relation to Derrida's expression, ‘democracy to come’, the article proceeds from the position that Derrida's phrase is to be understood as part of a political intervention. Indeed, the inseparability of democracy and deconstruction confirms this. After setting out some of the pertinent features of ‘democracy to come’ – seen, in part, in the General Will – the notion of political community in the thought of Hannah Arendt is brought into question, if not deconstructed. (...) Political community as presented by Arendt is seen to limit the inclusiveness of democracy. In the final section, the article suggests that Agamben's critique of the very structure of the nation-state opens the way for a renewal of the notion of the human in the ‘community to come’. (shrink)

Does democracy lead to more ethical or just systems of welcoming, of hospitality? Derrida considers an analysis of sovereignty as pivotal to any re-evaluation of contemporary politics and ethics, tying such a project in with deconstructions of democracy and hospitality: ‘what is “living together”? …must one live together only with one's like, with someone semblables?’ he asks in Rogues, prompting us to think through what it means to be, at once, democratic and hospitable. In this paper I propose that Derrida (...) provides us with a way of re-orienting democracy and hospitality that complicates conditions of citizenship and belonging, of the nation-state and sovereignty and of justice and unconditionality. It is the contention of this paper that deconstructing sovereignty is essential for any re-orientation of practices of hospitality within liberal democratic countries. The figure of the foreigner and questions of hospitality reveal a deep ambivalence at the core of democracy in the sense that it provokes the desire for openness and closure simultaneously. In closing, I raise questions concerning the potential for deconstructive practice to engage in a future politico-ethics of the border in light of this critical evaluation of democracy. In so doing, I consider the role of deconstruction in relation to liberal modalities of hospitality. (shrink)

In previous essays (1973, 1975, 1977) I have praised Derrida's contributions to philosophical dialogue and also insisted on their limitations. The considerations raised in this present essay do not lead me to a position that is less ambivalent. Philosophy is a particular language-game. Like any other, it has its constitutive rules; or, perhaps better: its practice has certain distinctive features by means of which we recognize philosophizing and distinguish it from other linguistic activities. None of this can be set down (...) in the form of necessary and sufficient conditions, and there always will be large areas of controversy about the paradigms themselves. Nonetheless there are philosophers, and they generally acknowledge Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Hume, and even some of their colleagues as also being philosophers. This acknowledgement holds even where there is philosophical disagreement - as must inevitably be the case, in view of the dialogical character of philosophical discourse. Derrida occasionally enters into the dialogue, as do many others - poets, novelists, critics, diplomats, attorneys, cooks, barbers, and babysitters. These occasional contributions to philosophical dialogue differ in focus, in style, and in lack of self-referentiality from the works which constitute the main corpus of philosophy. Some might wish to say, as if the matter were paradoxical, that such contributions are both philosophical and not philosophical, or that they are neither philosophy nor not-philosophy. That might be as good a thing to say as anything. The practice of philosophy is complex and has many levels. Those who are acknowledged as its finest practitioners have a focus, a style, and a respect for where questions begin and end. Derrida does not share these qualities, and does not care to share them. That is no reason to ignore his work, but it is sufficient to explain why philosophers do not recognize it as a contribution to the central corpus of philosophy. (shrink)

In the face of the ever-growing effect the actions of the present may have upon future people, most conspicuously around climate change, democracy has been accused, with good justification, of a presentist bias: of systemically favouring the presently living. By contrast, this paper will argue that the intimate relation, both quasi-ontological and normative, that Derrida's work establishes between temporality and justice insists upon another, more future-regarding aspect of democracy. We can get at this aspect by arguing for two consequences of (...) the deconstructive affirmation of sur-vivre, of the alterity of death in life. Firstly, justice is not first of all justice for the living, but intergenerational from the start. This is so because no generation coincides with itself; rather, it dies and is reborn at every moment, and so – and this is the second consequence – consists in taking turns. Affirming life as living-on means affirming that it involves exchanging life's stations, as the young become the old, and the unborn become the dead. In this sense, the justice of living-on, I will argue, shares an essential feature with democracy, whose principle of exchanging the rulers with the ruled led Derrida to characterize it in terms of the wheel. Democracy consists in the principled assent to power changing hands, a switchover life demands of every generation at every turn. This assent further requires an acceptance of the gift of inheritance without which no life can survive. But as the gift can also never be fully acknowledged or appropriated, it must be passed on to the indefinite, unknown future, in a turning that is the time of life. (shrink)

Responding to Derrida's Death Penalty Seminar of 1999–2000 and its interpretation by Michael Naas, in this paper I argue that Derrida's deconstruction of the theologico-political concept of the sovereign right over life and death in view of abolishing capital punishment should be understood in terms of the unconditional renunciation of sovereignty that dominates Derrida's later political writings, Rogues (2005) in particular. My reading takes seriously what I call the functional need for a “theological” moment in sovereignty beyond a merely historicist (...) or genealogical interpretation of the European monotheistic heritage. Further, I ask how Derrida can follow through on his goal of developing the allegedly first principled philosophical stance against capital punishment. To this end, I assemble some ingredients of this complex but “unconditional” abolitionism, one that doubts our comprehension of and active relation to death to the point of questioning the commonsense distinctions among murder, suicide, and legal putting to death. I conclude that, for Derrida, letting another die of hunger or AIDS may be understood as a form of a death sentence, so that a deconstructive abolitionism leaves no room for the development of a good conscience. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

For Derrida, the ‘‘as if’’, as a regulative principle directly appropriated and modified from its Kantian context, becomes the central lynchpin for understanding, not only Derrida's philosophical system as a whole, but also his numerous seemingly enigmatic references to his ‘‘jewishness’’. Through an analysis of the function of the ‘‘as if’’ within the history of thought, from Greek tragedy to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, I hope to show how Derrida can only appropriate his Judaic roots as an act of (...) mourning that seeks to render the lost object as present, ‘‘as if’’ it were incorporated by the subject for whom this act nevertheless remains an impossibility. As Derrida discerns within the poetry of Paul Celan, bringing a sense of presence/presentness to our experiences, and as a confirmation of the subject which the human being struggles to assert, is the poetic task par excellence. It is seemingly also, if Derrida is to be understood on this point, the only option left to a humanity wherein poetry comes to express what religious formulations can no longer justify. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to engage with Charlotte Brontë as both a teacher and a philosopher. In her depiction of two impoverished gentlewomen as teachers Brontë is, as is often pointed out, drawing on her own history, but she is also exploring two conflicting contemporary philosophic notions: the romantic ideal and the ideal of rationality, as they are played out in the lives of women. Brontë uses the plot device of taking her teachers into new environments, from where as (...) strangers they can report to the reader on the conditions they experience. But the teachers are also strangers in the teaching environments of their employment and, moreover, as individuals are stripped of all familial and social support. While her pedagogic strategies may not be appealing to twentieth century tastes, Brontë and her creations still have something to say about the issues, choices and constraints faced by young and inexperienced teachers, and the available subject-positions teachers may construct for themselves as they grapple with their own foreignness in their classrooms or other teaching situations. (shrink)

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant's view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.

Trust has been widely investigated both theoretically and empirically. Whether thought of as the result of a calculation of costs/benefits, a shared identity, or a leap of faith, there always seems to be an ‘as if’ rhetorical gesture which is ultimately needed to explain how actors move from the base of trust to expectations of trust via suspending judgment on uncertainty and fear of vulnerability to betrayal and exploitation — the actors ultimately act ‘as if’ they do not fear uncertainty (...) and vulnerability to betrayal. Yet this ‘as if’ element has remained seriously under-theorised. Drawing on Derrida's deconstruction, I propose a way of thinking this ‘as if’ element of trust. I thus argue that the decision to trust occurs in a terrain of structural undecidability. The latter is thought of as the possibility condition of trust as well as the subject of trust and a sense of responsibility for this trust. The aporiatic nature of undecidability makes this trust an auto-immune trust which obeys the tripartite logic of ‘without’ which both negates and affirms trust. (shrink)

Neither philosophy in general, nor deconstruction in particular, should be thought of as a pioneering, path-breaking, tool for feminist politics. Recent philosophy, including Derrida's, helps us see practices and ideas (including patriarchal practices and ideas) as neither natural nor inevitable-but that is all it does. When philosophy has finished showing that everything is a social construct, it does not help us decide which social constructs to retain and which to replace.