## 1. Life and Works



Derrida was born on July 15, 1930 in El-Biar (a suburb of Algiers),
Algeria (then a part of France), into a Sephardic Jewish family.
Because Derrida's writing concerns auto-bio-graphy (writing
about one's life as a form of relation to oneself), many of his
writings are auto-biographical. So, for instance in *Monolingualism
of the Other* (1998), Derrida recounts how, when he was in the
"lycee" (high school), the Vichy regime in France
proclaimed certain interdictions concerning the native languages of
Algeria, in particular Berber. Derrida calls his experience of the
"interdiction" "unforgettable and
generalizable" (1998, p. 37). In fact, the "Jewish
laws" passed by the Vichy regime interrupted his high school
studies.



Immediately after World War II, Derrida started to study philosophy.
In 1949, he moved to Paris, where he prepared for the entrance exam in
philosophy for the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure.
Derrida failed his first attempt at this exam, but passed it in his
second try in 1952. In one of the many eulogies that he wrote for
members of his generation, Derrida recounts that, as he went into the
courtyard toward the building in which he would sit for the second
try, Gilles Deleuze passed him, smiling and saying, "My thoughts
are with you, my very best thoughts." Indeed, Derrida entered
the Ecole Normale at a time when a remarkable generation of
philosophers and thinkers was coming of age. We have already mentioned
Deleuze, but there was also Foucault, Althusser, Lyotard, Barthes, and
Marin. Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Levi-Strauss, Lacan,
Ricoeur, Blanchot, and Levinas were still alive. The Fifties in
France was the time of phenomenology, and Derrida studied closely
Husserl's then published works as well as some of the archival
material that was then available. The result was a Masters thesis from
the academic year 1953-54 called *The Problem of Genesis in
Husserl's Philosophy*; Derrida published this text in 1990.
Most importantly, at the Ecole Normale, Derrida studied Hegel
with Jean Hyppolite. Hyppolite (along with Maurice de Gandillac) was
to direct Derrida's doctoral thesis, "The Ideality of the
Literary Object"; Derrida never completed this thesis. His
studies with Hyppolite however led Derrida to a noticeably Hegelian
reading of Husserl, one already underway through the works of
Husserl's assistant, Eugen Fink. Derrida claimed in his 1980
speech "The Time of a Thesis" (presented on the occasion
of him finally receiving his doctorate) that he never studied
Merleau-Ponty and Sartre and that especially he never subscribed to
their readings of Husserl and phenomenology in general. With so much
Merleau-Ponty archival material available, it is possible now however
to see similarities between Merleau-Ponty's final studies of
Husserl and Derrida's first studies. Nevertheless, even if one
knows Merleau-Ponty's thought well, one is taken aback by
Derrida's one hundred and fifty page long Introduction to his
French translation of Husserl's "The Origin of
Geometry" (1962). Derrida's Introduction looks to be a
radically new understanding of Husserl insofar as Derrida stresses the
problem of language in Husserl's thought of history.



The 1960s is a decade of great achievement for this generation of
French thinkers. 1961 sees the publication of Foucault's
monumental *History of Madness* (*Madness and
Civilization*). At this time, Derrida is participating in a
seminar taught by Foucault; on the basis of it, he will write
"Cogito and the History of Madness" (1963), in which he
criticizes Foucault's early thought, especially Foucault's
interpretation of Descartes. "Cogito and the History of
Madness" will result in a rupture between Derrida and Foucault,
which will never fully heal. In the early 60s, Derrida reads Heidegger
and Levinas carefully. The recently published lecture course from
1964-1965, *Heidegger: The Question of Being and
History*, allows us to see how Derrida developed his questions to
Heidegger. In 1964, Derrida publishes a long two part essay on
Levinas, "Violence and Metaphysics." It is hard to
determine which of Derrida's early essays is the most important,
but certainly "Violence and Metaphysics" has to be a
leading candidate.



What comes through clearly in "Violence and Metaphysics"
is Derrida's great sympathy for Levinas's thought of
alterity, and at the same it is clear that Derrida is taking some
distance from Levinas's thought. Despite this distance,
"Violence and Metaphysics" will open up a lifetime
friendship with Levinas. In 1967 (at the age of thirty-seven), Derrida
has his "annus mirabilis," publishing three books at once:
*Writing and Difference*, *Voice and Phenomenon*, and
*Of Grammatology*. In all three, Derrida uses the word
"deconstruction" (to which we shall return below) in
passing to describe his project. The word catches on immediately and
comes to define Derrida's thought. From then on up to the
present, the word is bandied about, especially in the Anglophone
world. It comes to be associated with a form of writing and thinking
that is illogical and imprecise. It must be noted that Derrida's
style of writing contributed not only to his great popularity but also
to the great animosity some felt towards him. His style is frequently
more literary than philosophical and therefore more evocative than
argumentative.



Certainly, Derrida's style is not traditional. In the same
speech from 1980 at the time of him being awarded a doctorate, Derrida
tells us that, in the Seventies, he devoted himself to developing a
style of writing. The most clearest example is his 1974 *Glas*
("Death Knell" would be an approximate English
translation; the current English translation simply uses the word
"glas"); here Derrida writes in two columns, with the left
devoted to a reading of Hegel and the right devoted to a reading of
the French novelist-playwright Jean Genet. Another example would be
his 1980 *Postcard from Socrates to Freud and Beyond*; the
opening two hundred pages of this book consist of love letters
addressed to no one in particular. It seems that sometime around this
time (1980), Derrida reverted back to the more linear and somewhat
argumentative style, the very style that defined his texts from the
Sixties. He never however renounced a kind of evocation, a calling
forth that truly defines deconstruction. Derrida takes the idea of a
call from Heidegger. Starting in 1968 with "The Ends of
Man," Derrida devoted a number of texts to Heidegger's
thought. But, it is really with the 1978 publication of *The Truth
in Painting*, and then throughout the 1980s, that Derrida
intensified his reading of Heidegger. In particular, he wrote a series
of essays on the question of sex or race in Heidegger
("Geschlecht I-IV"). While frequently critical,
these essays often provide new insights into Heidegger's
thought. The culminating essay in Derrida's series on Heidegger
is his 1992 *Aporias*.



While Derrida's intensive work on Husserl and phenomenology was
primarily limited to the late 1960s, and to the publication of
*Voice and Phenomenon* in 1967, this one book produced many
criticisms of his reading of Husserl. Most notable is J. Claude
Evans' *Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of
the Voice* in 1991 (for other criticisms, see Bernet 1988, Brough
1993, Mohanty 1997, and Zahavi 1999). Although throughout his career
Derrida would mention Husserl in passing, he surprisingly wrote a
chapter on Husserl in his *Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy*. One of
the places where he mentions Husserl is his 1971 address to a
communication conference in Montreal, "Signature Event
Context." He publishes this article as the final chapter of
*Margins of Philosophy* in 1972. While "Signature Event
Context" contains a short discussion of Husserl, its real focus
is Austin's speech act theory. The connection Derrida makes
between Husserl's phenomenology and Austin's speech act
theory is that both reject citations from the realm of meaningfulness
(Husserl) or of the performative (Austin). (Speech theory had a
substantial influence on French philosophy at this moment, and Derrida
would continue to refer to the constative/performative distinction
throughout his career.) In any case, the English translation of
"Signature Event Context" appeared in the first volume of
the new journal *Glyph* in 1977. The editor of *Glyph*,
Sam Weber, invited John Searle to write a response to "Signature
Event Context." In his response, "Reiterating the
Differences: A Reply to Derrida," Searle points out a number of
flaws in Derrida's argumentation and his understanding of
Austin. For the second volume of *Glyph* (also published in
1977), Derrida contributed a response to Searle's
"Reply" called "Limited Inc a b c." In
contrast to Searle's ten page "Reply,"
Derrida's "Limited Inc" ran to ninety pages.
Derrida's "Limited Inc" is an almost merciless
criticism of Searle, whom he calls "Sarl." For instance,
he points out that Searle in his "Reply" hardly mentions
signature, event, or context. "Limited Inc" indicates
Derrida's growing frustration with the reception of his work,
especially in the Anglophone world. His frustration must have
culminated when he was offered an honorary degree at Cambridge
University in 1992. A group of analytic philosophers wrote an open
letter
 (available online)
 to the *Times of London*, in which they objected to Derrida
receiving this honorary degree. Despite the letter, Cambridge
University awarded Derrida the degree.



Throughout the Sixties, having been invited by Hyppolite and
Althusser, Derrida taught at the Ecole Normale. In 1983, he
became "Director of Studies" in "Philosophical
Institutions" at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in Paris; he will hold this position until his
death. Starting in the Seventies, Derrida held many appointments in
American universities, in particular Johns Hopkins University and Yale
University. From 1987, Derrida taught one semester a year at the
University of California at Irvine. Derrida's close relationship
with Irvine led to the establishment of the Derrida archives there.
Also during the Seventies, Derrida associated himself with GREPH
("Le Groupe de Recherche sur l'Enseignement
Philosophique," in English: "The Group Investigating the
Teaching of Philosophy"). As its name suggests, this group
investigated how philosophy is taught in the high schools and
universities in France. Derrida wrote several texts based on this
research, many of which were collected in *Du droit a la
philosophie* (1990, one part of this book has been translated into
English as *Eyes of the University. Right to Philosophy 2*). In
1982, Derrida was also one of the founders of the College
Internationale de Philosophie in Paris, and served as its first
director from 1982 to 1984.



In the 1990s, Derrida's works went in two simultaneous
directions that tend to intersect and overlap with one another:
politics and religion. These two directions were probably first
clearly evident in Derrida's 1989 "Force of Law."
But one can see them better in his 1993 *Specters of Marx*,
where Derrida insisted that a deconstructed (or criticized) Marxist
thought is still relevant to today's world despite globalization
and that a deconstructed Marxism consists in a new messianism, a
messianism of a "democracy to come." But, even though
Derrida was approaching the end of his life, he produced many
interesting texts in the Nineties and into the new century. For
instance, Derrida's 1996 text on Levinas, "A Word of
Welcome," lays out the most penetrating logic of the same and
other through a discussion of hospitality. In his final works on
sovereignty, in particular, *Rogues* (2003), Derrida shows that
the law always contains the possibility of suspension, which means
that even the most democratic of nations (the United States for
example) resembles a "rogue state" or perhaps is the most
"roguish" of all states. Based on lectures first presented
during the summer of 1998,*The Animal that Therefore I am*)
appeared as the first posthumous work in 2006; concerning animality,
it indicates Derrida's continuous interest in the question of
life. We see this interest in life also in Derrida's lectures on
the death penalty, where he questions the meaning of cruelty (which is
more cruel, the death penalty or life in prison?). Animal life and
power is the theme of Derrida's last lecture courses on
"The Beast and the Sovereign." (For a study of this final
course, see Krell 2013.)



Sometime in 2002, Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He
died on October 8, 2004. Since his death two biographies have appeared
(Powell 2006 and Peeters 2013).


## 2. "The Incorruptibles"



As we noted, Derrida became famous at the end of the 1960s, with the
publication of three books in 1967. At this time, other great books
appear: Foucault's *Les mots et les choses* (*The
Order of Things* is the English language title) in 1966;
Deleuze's *Difference and Repetition* in 1968. It is hard
to deny that the philosophy publications of this epoch indicate that
we have before us a kind of philosophical moment (a moment perhaps
comparable to the moment of German Idealism at the beginning of the
19th century). Helene Cixous calls this
generation of French philosophers "the incorruptibles." In
the last interview Derrida gave (to *Le Monde* on August 19,
2004), he provided an interpretation of "the
incorruptibles": "By means of metonymy, I call this
approach [of 'the incorruptibles'] an intransigent, even
incorruptible, *ethos* of writing and thinking ...,
without concession even to philosophy, and not letting public opinion,
the media, or the phantasm of an intimidating readership frighten or
force us into simplifying or repressing. Hence the strict taste for
refinement, paradox, and aporia." Derrida proclaims that today,
more than ever, "this predilection [for paradox and aporia]
remains a requirement." How are we to understand this
requirement, this predilection for "refinement, paradox, and
aporia"?



In an essay from 1998, "Typewriter Ribbon," Derrida
investigates the relation of confession to archives. But, before he
starts the investigation (which will concern primarily Rousseau), he
says, "Let us put in place the premises of our question."
He says, "Will this be possible for us? Will we one day be able
to, and in a single gesture, to join the thinking of the event to the
thinking of the machine? Will we be able to think, what is called
thinking, at one and the same time, both what is happening (we call
that an event) and the calculable programming of an automatic
repetition (we call that a machine). For that, it would be necessary
in the future (but there will be no future except on this condition)
to think both the event and the machine as two compatible or even
in-dissociable concepts. Today they appear to us to be
antinomic" (*Without Alibi*, p. 72). These two concepts
appear to us to be antinomic because we conceive an event as something
singular and non-repeatable. Moreover, Derrida associates this
singularity to the living. The living being undergoes a sensation and
this sensation (an affect or feeling for example) gets inscribed in
organic material. The idea of an inscription leads Derrida to the
other pole. The machine that inscribes is based in repetition;
"It is destined, that is, to reproduce impassively,
imperceptibly, without organ or organicity, the received commands. In
a state of anaesthesis, it would obey or command a calculable program
without affect or auto-affection, like an indifferent automaton"
(*Without Alibi*, p. 73). The automatic nature of the inorganic
machine is not the spontaneity attributed to organic life. It is easy
to see the incompatibility of the two concepts: organic, living
singularity (the event) and inorganic, dead universality (mechanical
repetition). Derrida says that, if we can make these two concepts
compatible, "you can bet not only (and I insist on not only)
will one have produced a new logic, an unheard of conceptual form. In
truth, against the background and at the horizon of our present
possibilities, this new figure would resemble a monster." The
monstrosity of this paradox between event and repetition announces,
perhaps, another kind of thinking, an impossible thinking: the
impossible event (there must be resemblance to the past which cancels
the singularity of the event) and the only possible event (since any
event in order to be event worthy of its name must be singular and
non-resembling). Derrida concludes this discussion by saying:
"To give up neither the event nor the machine, to subordinate
neither one to the other, neither to reduce one to the other: this is
perhaps a concern of thinking that has kept a certain number of
'us' working for the last few decades" (*Without
Alibi*, p. 74). This "us" refers to Derrida's
generation of thinkers: "the incorruptibles." What Derrida
says here defines a general project which consists in trying to
conceive the relation between machine-like repeatability and
irreplaceable singularity neither as a relation of externality
(external as in Descartes's two substance or as in
Platonism's two worlds) nor as a relation of homogeneity (any
form of reductionism would suffice here to elucidate a homogeneous
relation). Instead, the relation is one in which the elements are
internal to one another and yet remain heterogeneous. Derrida's
famous term "differance" (to which we shall return
below) refers to this relation in which machine-like repeatability is
internal to irreplaceable singularity and yet the two remain
heterogeneous to one another.



Of course, Cixous intends with the word "incorruptibles"
that the generation of French philosophers who came of age in the
Sixties, what they wrote and did, will never decay, will remain
endlessly new and interesting. This generation will remain pure. But,
the term is particularly appropriate for Derrida, since his thought
concerns precisely the idea of purity and therefore contamination.
Contamination, in Derrida, implies that an opposition consisting in
two pure poles separated by an indivisible line never exists. In other
words, traditionally (going back to Plato's myths but also
Christian theology), we think that there was an original pure state of
being (direct contact with the forms or the Garden of Eden) which
accidentally became corrupt. In contrast, Derrida tries to show that
no term or idea or reality is ever pure in this way; one term always
and necessarily "infects" the other.



Nevertheless, for Derrida, a kind of purity remains as a value. In his
1992 *The Monolingualism of the Other*, Derrida speaks of his
"shameful intolerance" for anything but the purity of the
French language (as opposed to French contaminated with English words
like "le weekend"). Derrida says, "I still do not
dare admit this compulsive demand for a purity of language except
within boundaries of which I can be sure: this demand is neither
ethical, political, nor social. It does not inspire any judgment in
me. It simply exposes me to suffering when someone, who can be myself,
happens to fall short of it. I suffer even further when I catch myself
or am caught 'red-handed' in the act. ... Above all,
this demand remains so inflexible that it sometimes goes beyond the
grammatical point of view, it even neglects 'style' in
order to bow to a more hidden rule, to 'listen' to the
domineering murmur of an order which someone in me flatters himself to
understand, even in situations where he would be the only one to do
so, in a tete-a-tete with the idiom, the final
target: a last will of the language, in sum, a law of the language
that would entrust itself only to me. ...I therefore admit to a
purity which is not very pure. Anything but a purism. It is, at least,
the only impure 'purity' for which I dare confess a
taste" (*Monolingualism*, p. 46). Derrida's taste
for purity is such that he seeks the idioms of a language. The idioms
of a language are what make the language singular. An idiom is so pure
that we seem unable to translate it out of that language. For example,
Derrida always connects the French idiom "il faut,"
"it is necessary," to "une faute," "a
fault" and to "un defaut," "a
defect"; but we cannot make this linguistic connection between
necessity and a fault in English. This idiom seems to belong alone to
French; it seems as though it cannot be shared; so far, there is no
babble of several languages in the one sole French language. And yet,
even within one language, an idiom can be shared. Here is another
French idiom: "il y va d'un certain pas." Even in
French, this idiom can be "translated." On the one hand,
if one takes the "il y va" literally, one has a sentence
about movement to a place ("y": there) at a certain pace
("un certain pas": a certain step). On the other hand, if
one takes the "il y va" idiomatically ("il y
va": what is at issue), one has a sentence (perhaps more
philosophical) about the issue of negation ("un certain
pas": "a certain kind of not"). This undecidability
in how to understand an idiom within one sole language indicates that,
already in French, in the one French language, there is already
translation and, as Derrida would say, "Babelization."
Therefore, for Derrida, "a pure language" means a language
whose terms necessarily include a plurality of senses that cannot be
reduced down to one sense that is the proper meaning. In other words,
the taste for purity in Derrida is a taste for impropriety and
therefore impurity. The value of purity in Derrida means that anyone
who conceives language in terms of proper or pure meanings must be
criticized.


## 3. Basic Argumentation and its Implications: Time, Hearing-Oneself-Speak, the Secret, and Sovereignty



Already we are very close to Derrida's basic argumentation. The
basic argumentation always attempts to show that no one is able to
separate irreplaceable singularity and machine-like repeatability (or
"iterability," as Derrida frequently says) into two
substances that stand outside of one another; nor is anyone able to
reduce one to the other so that we would have one pure substance (with
attributes or modifications). Machine-like repeatability and
irreplaceable singularity, for Derrida, are like two forces that
attract one another across a limit that is indeterminate and
divisible. Yet, to understand the basic argumentation, we must be, as
Derrida himself says in *Rogues*, "responsible guardians
of the heritage of transcendental idealism" (*Rogues*, p.
134; see also *Limited Inc*, p. 93). Kant had of course opened
up the possibility of this way of philosophizing: arguing back (Kant
called this arguing back a "deduction") from the givenness
of experience to the conditions that are necessarily required for the
way experience is given. These conditions would function as a
foundation for all experience. Following Kant (but also Husserl and
Heidegger), Derrida then is always interested in necessary and
foundational conditions of experience.



So, let us start with the simplest argument that we can formulate. If
we reflect on experience in general, what we cannot deny is that
experience is conditioned by time. Every experience, necessarily,
takes place in the present. In the present experience, there is the
kernel or point of the now. What is happening right now is a kind of
event, different from every other now I have ever experienced. Yet,
also in the present, I remember the recent past and I anticipate what
is about to happen. The memory and the anticipation consist in
repeatability. Because what I experience now can be immediately
recalled, it is repeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates
me to anticipate the same thing happening again. Therefore, what is
happening right now is also *not* different from every other
now I have ever experienced. *At the same time*, the present
experience is an event and it is not an event because it is
repeatable. This "at the same time" is the crux of the
matter for Derrida. The conclusion is that we can have no experience
that does not essentially and inseparably contain these two agencies
of event and repeatability.



This basic argument contains four important implications.
*First*, experience as the experience of the present is never a
simple experience of something present over and against me, right
before my eyes as in an intuition; there is always another agency
there. Repeatability contains what has passed away and is no longer
present *and* what is about to come and is not yet present. The
present therefore is always complicated by non-presence. Derrida calls
this minimal repeatability found in every experience "the
trace." Indeed, the trace is a kind of proto-linguisticality
(Derrida also calls it "arche-writing"), since language in
its most minimal determination consists in repeatable forms.
*Second*, the argument has disturbed the traditional structure
of transcendental philosophy, which consists in a linear relation
between foundational conditions and founded experience. In traditional
transcendental philosophy (as in Kant for example), an empirical event
such as what is happening right now is supposed to be
*derivative* from or founded upon conditions which are not
empirical. Yet, Derrida's basic argument demonstrates that the
empirical event is a non-separable part of the structural or
foundational conditions. Or, in traditional transcendental philosophy,
the empirical event is supposed to be an accident that overcomes an
essential structure. But with Derrida's argument, we see that
this accident cannot be removed or eliminated. We can describe this
second implication in still another way. In traditional philosophy we
always speak of a kind of first principle or origin and that origin is
always conceived as self-identical (again something like a Garden of
Eden principle). Yet, here we see that the origin is immediately
divided, as if the "fall" into division, accidents, and
empirical events has always already taken place. In *Of
Spirit*, Derrida calls this kind of origin
"origin-heterogeneous": the origin is heterogeneous
immediately (*Of Spirit*, pp. 107-108). *Third*,
if the origin is always heterogeneous, then nothing is ever given
*as such* in certainty. Whatever is given is given as other
than itself, as already past or as still to come. What becomes
foundational therefore in Derrida is this "as": origin as
the heterogeneous "as." The "as" means that
there is no knowledge as such, there is no truth as such, there is no
perception, no intuition of anything as such. Faith, perjury, and
language are already there in the origin. *Fourth*, if
something like a fall has always already taken place, has taken place
essentially or necessarily, then every experience contains an aspect
of lateness. It seems as though I am always late for the origin since
it seems to have always already disappeared. Every experience then is
always not quite on time or, as Derrida quotes Hamlet, time is
"out of joint." Late in his career, Derrida will call this
time being out of joint "anachronism" (see for instance
*On the Name*, p. 94). As we shall see in a moment, anachronism
for Derrida is the flip side of what he calls "spacing"
(*espacement*); space is out of place. But we should also keep
in mind, as we move forward that the phrase "out of joint"
alludes to justice: being out of joint, time is necessarily unjust or
violent.



So far, we can say that the argument is quite simple although it has
wide-ranging implications. It is based on an analysis of experience,
but it is also based in the experience of what Derrida has called
"auto-affection." We find the idea of auto-affection (or
self-affection) in ancient Greek philosophy, for example in
Aristotle's definition of God as "thought thinking
itself." Auto-affection occurs when I affect myself, when the
affecting is the same as the affected. As we said above, Derrida will
frequently write about autobiography as a form of auto-affection or
self-relation. In the very late *The Animal that Therefore I
am*, Derrida tells us what he is trying to do with auto-affection:
"if the auto-position, the *automonstrative autotely* of
the 'I,' even in the human, implies the 'I' to
be an other that must welcome within itself some irreducible
hetero-affection (as I [that is, Derrida] have tried to demonstrate
*elsewhere* [my emphasis]), then this autonomy of the
'I' can be neither pure nor rigorous; it would not be able
to form the basis for a simple and linear differentiation of the human
from the animal" (*The Animal that Therefore I am*, p.
95). Always, Derrida tries to show that auto-affection is
hetero-affection; the experience of the same (I am thinking about
myself) is the experience of the other (insofar as I think about
myself I am thinking of someone or something else at the same time).
But, in order to understand more fully the basic argumentation, let us
look at three of these "other places" where Derrida has
"attempted" to show that an irreducible hetero-affection
infects auto-affection.



The first occurs in *Voice and Phenomenon*, Derrida's
1967 study of Husserl. While this is a small book, it aims to
criticize what Husserl calls the "principle of all
principles" for phenomenology, that is, that evidentness is
based in an intuition, intuition being different from a sign (Husserl
2014, 43-44, paragraph 24). In *Voice and Phenomenon*
Derrida recognizes that perception, for Husserl, is that of
adumbrations, with an intentional meaning unifying the different
profiles. However, Derrida sees in the principle of all principles and
in Husserl's introduction of an Idea in the Kantian sense
(Husserl 2014, 284-285, paragraph 143) the imposition of a telos
for perception towards a pure intuition, pure presence or givenness,
uncontaminated by signification.



More specifically, Derrida argues that, when Husserl describes
lived-experience (*Erlebnis*), even absolute subjectivity, he
is speaking of an interior monologue, auto-affection as
hearing-oneself-speak. According to Derrida, hearing-oneself-speak is,
*for Husserl*, "an auto-affection of an absolutely unique
type" (*Voice and Phenomenon*, p. 67). It is unique
because there seems to be no external detour from the hearing to the
speaking; in hearing-oneself-speak there is self-proximity. It seems
therefore that I hear myself speak immediately in the very
*moment* that I am speaking. According to Derrida,
Husserl's own description of temporalization however undermines
the idea that I hear myself speak immediately. On the one hand,
Husserl describes what he calls the "living present," the
present that I am experiencing right now, and yet Husserl also says
that the living present is thick. The living present is thick because
it includes phases other than the now, in particular, what Husserl
calls "protention," the anticipation (or
"awaiting," we might say) of the approaching future and
"retention," the memory of the recent past. As is well
known, Derrida focuses on the status of retention in *Voice and
Phenomenon*. Retention in Husserl has a strange status since
Husserl wants to include it in the present as a kind of perception and
at the same time he recognizes that it is different from the present
as a kind of non-perception. For Derrida, Husserl's descriptions
imply that the living present, by always folding the recent past back
into itself, by always folding primary memory into the present
perception, involves a *difference* in the very middle of it
(*Voice and Phenomenon*, p. 56). In other words, in the very
moment, when silently I speak to myself, it must be the case that
there is a minuscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and
into the hearer. There must be a hiatus that differentiates me from
myself, a hiatus or gap without which I would not be a hearer *as
well as* a speaker. This hiatus also defines the trace, a minimal
repeatability. And this hiatus, this fold of repetition, is found in
the very moment of hearing-myself-speak. Derrida stresses that
"moment" or "instant" translates the German
"Augenblick," which literally means "blink of the
eye." When Derrida stresses the literal meaning of
"Augenblick," he is in effect "deconstructing"
auditory auto-affection into visual auto-affection. When I look in the
mirror, for example, it is necessary that I am "distanced"
or "spaced" from the mirror. I must be distanced from
myself so that I am able to be *both* seer *and* seen.
The *space* between, however, remains obstinately invisible.
Remaining invisible, the space gouges out the eye, blinds it. I see
myself over there in the mirror and yet, that self over there is other
than me; so, I am not able to see myself as such. What Derrida is
trying to demonstrate here is that this "spacing"
(*espacement*) or blindness is essentially necessary for all
forms of auto-affection, even tactile auto-affection which seems to be
immediate.



Now, let us go to another "other place," which can be
found in "How to Avoid Speaking." Here Derrida discusses
negative theology by means of the idea of
"denegation," "denegation" or
"denial." The French word
"denegation" translates Freud's term
"Verneinung." Both words' prefixes imply an emphasis
of negation (although the French prefix also implies a negation of a
negation). Yet, within psychoanalysis and in particular in Freud, the
term ,"Verneinung" implies that when the patient denies a
desire or wish, he or she has indicated to the analyst precisely what
he or she unconsciously desires or wishes. The denial then functions
as a sort of disguised confirmation of the analyst's
interpretation of the patient's symptoms or problem. In short,
and this is what Derrida is most interested in, psychoanalysis has
isolated a negation which is in fact an affirmation. The fundamental
question then for negative theology, but also for psychoanalysis, and
for Derrida is how to deny and yet also *not* deny. This
duality between not telling and telling is why Derrida takes up the
idea of the secret. In "How to Avoid Speaking," Derrida
says, and this is an important comment for understanding the secret in
Derrida: "There is a secret of denial
[*denegation*] and a denial
[*denegation*] of the secret. The secret *as
such*, as secret, separates and already institutes a negativity;
it is a negation that denies itself. It de-negates itself"
(*Languages of the Unsayable*, p. 25, my emphasis). Here
Derrida speaks of a secret *as such*. A secret as such is
something that must not be spoken; we then have the first negation:
"I promise *not* to give the secret away." And yet,
in order to possess a secret *really*, to have it
*really*, I must tell it to myself. Here we can see the
relation of hearing-oneself-speak that we just saw in *Voice and
Phenomenon*. Keeping a secret includes necessarily auto-affection:
I must speak to myself of the secret. We might however say more, we
might even say that I am too weak for this speaking of the secret to
myself not to happen. I must have a conceptual grasp of it; I have to
frame a representation of the secret. With the idea of a
re-presentation (I must present the secret to myself *again* in
order to possess it really), we also see retention, repetition, and
the trace or a name. A trace of the secret must be formed, in which
case, the secret is in principle shareable. If the secret must be
necessarily shareable, it is always already shared. In other words, in
order to frame the representation of the secret, I must negate the
first negation, in which I promised not to tell the secret: I must
tell the secret to myself as if I were someone else. I thereby make a
second negation, a so to speak "de-" or
"un-negation," which means I must break the promise not to
tell the secret. In order to keep the secret (or the promise), I must
necessarily not keep the secret (I must violate the promise). So, I
possess the secret and do not possess it. This structure has the
consequence of there being no secret *as such*. A secret is
necessarily shared. As Derrida says in "How to Avoid
Speaking,"



> 
> This denial [*denegation*] does not happen [to
> the secret] by accident; it is essential and originary. ... The
> enigma ... is the sharing of the secret, and not only shared to
> my partner in the society but the secret shared within itself, its
> 'own' partition, which divides the essence of a secret
> that cannot even appear to one alone except in starting to be lost, to
> divulge itself, hence to dissimulate itself, as secret, in showing
> itself: dissimulating its dissimulation. There is no secret as such; I
> deny it. And this is what I confide in secret to whomever allies
> himself to me. This is the secret of the alliance. (*Languages of
> the Unsayable*, p. 25)
> 



Now, finally, let us go to one of the most recent of Derrida's
writings, to his 2002 "The Reason of the Strongest," the
first essay in the book called *Rogues*. There Derrida is
discussing the United Nations, which he says combines the two
principles of Western political thought: sovereignty and democracy.
But, "democracy and sovereignty are at the same time, but also
by turns, inseparable and in contradiction with one another"
(*Rogues*, p. 100). Democracy and sovereignty contradict one
another in the following way. And here Derrida is speaking of pure
sovereignty, the very "essence of sovereignty"
(*Rogues*, p. 100). On the one hand, in order to be sovereign,
one must wield power oneself, take responsibility for its use by
oneself, which means that the use of power, if it is to be sovereign,
must be silent; the sovereign does not have to give reasons; the
sovereign must exercise power in secret. In other words, sovereignty
attempts to possess power indivisibly, it tries *not* to share,
and not sharing means contracting power into an instant--the
instant of action, of an event, of a singularity. We can see the
outline here of Derrida's deconstruction not only of the
hearing-oneself-speak auto-affection but also of the auto-affection of
the promising-to-oneself to keep a secret. On the other hand,
democracy calls for the sovereign to share power, to give reasons, to
universalize. In democracy the use of power therefore is always an
abuse of power (see Haddad 2013, pp. 51-65). Derrida can also
say that sovereignty and democracy are inseparable from one another
(the contradiction makes them heterogeneous to one another) because
democracy even though it calls for universalization (giving reasons in
an assembly) also requires force, freedom, a decision, sovereign
power. For Derrida, in democracy, a decision (the use of power) is
always urgent; and yet (here is the contradiction), democracy takes
time, democracy makes one wait so that the use of power can be
discussed. Power can never be exercised without its communication; as
Derrida says, "As soon as I speak to the other, I submit to the
law of giving reason(s), I share a virtually universalizable medium, I
divide my authority" (*Rogues*, p. 101). There must be
sovereignty, and yet, there can be no use of power without the sharing
of it through repetition. More precisely, as Derrida says,
"Since [sovereignty] never succeeds in [not sharing] except in a
critical, precarious, and unstable fashion, sovereignty can only
*tend*, for a limited time, to reign without sharing. It can
only tend toward imperial hegemony. To make use of the time is already
an abuse" (*Rogues*, p. 102, Derrida's emphasis).
This tendency defines what Derrida calls "the worst," a
tendency toward the complete appropriation or extermination of all the
others.


## 4. Elaboration of the Basic Argumentation: The Worst and Hospitality



Throughout his career, Derrida elaborates on the basic argumentation
in many ways. But Derrida always uses the argumentation against one
idea, which Derrida calls "the worst" (*le pire*).
We can extract a definition of the worst from "Faith and
Knowledge" (*Religion*, p. 65). It revolves around an
ambiguous phrase "plus d'un," which could be
translated in English as "more than one," "more of
one," or "no more one." On the one hand, this phrase
means that in auto-affection, even while it is "auto," the
same, there is more than one; immediately with one, there is two, the
self and other, and others. On the other hand, it means that there is
a lot more of one, only one, the most one. The worst derives from this
second sense of "plus d'un." The worst is a
superlative; it is the worst violence. Derrida, it seems,
distinguishes the worst violence from what Kant had called
"radical evil." Radical evil is literally radical, evil at
the root. It consists in the small, "infinitesimal
difference" (see *Of Grammatology*, p. 234) between me
and an other, even between me and an other in me. Derrida would
describe this infinitesimal hiatus as the address, the
"a" or the "to"; it is not only
difference, across the distance of the address, it is also repetition.
And, it is not only a repetition; this self-divergence is also
violence, a rending of oneself, an incision. Derrida's
appropriation of Kant's idea of radical evil has led certain
commentators to stress a kind of fundamental atheism in Derrida
despite the fact that he seems very interested in religion and faith
(see Hagglund, 2008, pp. 112-113; for an opposing
viewpoint, see Caputo, 1999, p. 312). Despite this controversy around
Derrida's alleged theism or atheism, it looks as though, for
him, radical evil is not absolute evil (see *Philosophy in a Time
of Terror*, p. 99). The *worst* violence occurs when the
other to which one is related is *completely* appropriated to
or *completely* in one's self, when an address reaches
its *proper* destination, when it reaches *only* its
proper destination. Reaching *only* its proper destination, the
address will exclude more, many more, and that "many
more," at the limit, amounts to all. It is this
*complete* exclusion or this extermination of *the most*
- there is no limit to this violence--that makes this
violence the worst violence. The worst is a relation that makes of
more than one simply one, that makes, out of a division, an
indivisible sovereignty. We can see again that the worst resembles the
"pure actuality" of Aristotle's Prime Mover, the One
God: the sphere, or better, the *globe* of thought thinking
itself (*Rogues*, p. 15).



What we have just laid out is the structure of the worst in
Derrida's thinking. But the structure, for Derrida, can always
happen as an event. Derrida thinks that today, "in a time of
terror," after the end of the Cold War, when globalization is
taking place, the fragility of the nation-state is being tested more
and more. Agencies such as the International Criminal Court, the
demand for universal human rights encroach on nation-state
sovereignty. But the result of this universalization or
"worlding" ("mondialisation" is the French
word for globalization) is that the concept of war, and thus of world
war, of enemy, and even of terrorism, along with the distinctions
between civilian and military or between army, police, and militia,
all of these concepts and distinctions are losing their pertinence. As
Derrida says here in *Rogues* "what is called September
11 will not have created or revealed this situation, although it will
have surely media-theatricalized it" (*Rogues*, pp.
154-55). Now, with globalization, there is no identifiable enemy
in the form of a "state" territory with whom one (in
*Rogues* Derrida uses this phrase: "the United States and
its allies") would wage what could still be called a
"war," even if we think of this as a war on international
terrorism. The balance of terror of the Cold War that insured that no
escalation of nuclear weapons would lead to a suicidal operation,
Derrida says, "all that is over." Instead, "a new
violence is being prepared and in truth has been unleashed for some
time now, in a way that is more visibly suicidal or auto-immune than
ever. This violence no longer has to do with *world* war or
even with *war*, even less with some right to wage war. And
this is hardly re-assuring - indeed, quite the contrary"
(*Rogues*, p. 156).



What does it mean to be "more suicidal"? To be more
suicidal is to kill oneself *more*. The "more"
means that, since there is only a fragile distinction between states
(there is no identification of the enemy), one's state or self
includes more and more of the others. But, if one's self
includes others that threaten (so-called "terrorist
cells," for example), then, if one wants to immune oneself, then
one must murder more and more of those others that are inside. Since
the others are *inside* one's state or one's self,
one is required to kill more and more of oneself. This context is very
different from the rigid and external opposition, symbolized by the
so-called "Iron Curtain," that defined the Cold War. There
and then, "we" had an identifiable enemy, with a
*name*, which allowed the number of the enemies to be limited.
But here and now, today, the number of "enemies" is
potentially unlimited. *Every* other is wholly other
("*tout* autre est tout autre" [cf. *The
Politics of Friendship*, p. 232]) and thus every single other
needs to be rejected by the immune system. This innumerable rejection
resembles a genocide or what is worse an absolute threat. The absolute
threat can no longer be contained when it comes neither from an
already constituted state nor even from a potential state that might
be treated as a rogue state (*Rogues*, p. 105). What Derrida is
saying here is that the worst is possible, here and now, *more
possible than ever*.



As I said, Derrida always uses the basic argumentation that we have
laid out against the idea of the worst; today the tendency towards the
worst is greater than ever. The purpose in the application -
this purpose defines deconstruction--is to move us towards, not
the worst violence, not the most violence, but the least violence
(*Writing and Difference*, p. 130). How does the application of
the argumentation against the worst work? Along with globalization,
the post-Cold War period sees, as Derrida says in "Faith and
Knowledge," a "return of the religious"
(*Religion*, pp. 42-43; see also Caputo 1997, pp.
152-159). So, in "Faith and Knowledge," Derrida lays
out the etymology of the Latin word "religion" (he
acknowledges that the etymology is problematic). The etymology implies
that there are "two sources" of religion:
"religio," which implies a holding back or a being
unscathed, safe and sound; and "re-legere," which implies
a linking up with another through faith (*Religion*, p. 16). We
can see in this etymology the inseparable dualities we examined above:
singular event and machine-like repeatability; auto-affection as
hetero-affection. Most importantly, Derrida is trying to understand
the "link" that defines religion prior to the link between
man as such and the divinity of God. What we can see in this attempt
to conceive the link as it is prior to its determination in terms of
man and God is an attempt to make the link be as open as possible.
Derrida is attempting to "un-close," as much as possible,
the sphericity or englobing of thought thinking itself - in
order to open the link as wide as possible, open it to every single
other, to any other whatsoever. Throughout his career, Derrida is
always interested in the status of animality since it determines the
limit between man and others. As his final book demonstrates,
*L'animal que donc je suis*, Derrida is attempting to
open the link even to animals. Animals are other and, because
"every other is wholly other" (*tout autre est tout
autre*), the link must be open to them too. Here despite the
immense influence they have had on his thought, Derrida breaks with
both Heidegger and Levinas both of whom did not open the link this
wide (see *Points*, p. 279). Here, with the "door"
or "border" open as wide as possible, we encounter
Derrida's idea of "unconditional hospitality," which
means letting others in no matter what, without asking them for
papers, without judging them, even when they are uninvited. All are to
be treated not as enemies who must be expelled or exterminated, but as
friends. Nevertheless, as Derrida constantly stresses, we cannot
really identify the friend as such. Unconditional hospitality is
dangerous.



This danger explains why unconditional openness of the borders is not
the best (as opposed to what we were calling the worst above); it is
only the less bad or less evil, the less violence. Indeed, it looks as
though the unconditional opening is not possible. There always seems
to be factual conditions. Among all the others we must decide, we must
assign them papers, which means that there is always, still,
necessarily violence at the borders. At once, in hospitality, there is
the force that moves towards to the other to welcome and the force to
remain unscathed and pulled back from the other, trying to keep the
door closed. Here too, in hospitality, we see Derrida's idea of
a "messianicity without messiah." Because letting all the
others in is impossible (but we must note that Derrida's concept
of possibility or virtuality, of the "perhaps," is
complicated; see in particular *Politics of Friendship*, p.
29), this de-closing is always to come in the future like the messiah
coming or coming back (Derrida plays on the French word for the
future, "l'avenir," which literally means "to
come," "a venir"). We must make one more
point. The impossibility of unconditional hospitality means that any
attempt to open the globe completely is insufficient. Being
insufficient, every attempt therefore requires criticism; it must be
"deconstructed," as Derrida would say. But this
deconstruction would be a deconstruction that recognizes its own
insufficiency. Deconstruction, to which we now turn, never therefore
results in good conscience, in the good conscience that comes with
thinking we have done enough to render justice.


## 5. Deconstruction



As we said at the beginning, "deconstruction" is the most
famous of Derrida's terms. He seems to have appropriated the
term from Heidegger's use of "destruction" in
*Being and Time*. But we can get a general sense of what
Derrida means with deconstruction by recalling Descartes's First
Meditation. There Descartes says that for a long time he has been
making mistakes. The criticism of his former beliefs both mistaken and
valid aims towards uncovering a "firm and permanent
foundation." The image of a foundation implies that the
collection of his former beliefs resembles a building. In the First
Meditation then, Descartes is in effect taking down this old building,
"de-constructing" it. We have also seen how much Derrida
is indebted to traditional transcendental philosophy which really
starts here with Descartes' search for a "firm and
permanent foundation." But with Derrida, we know now, the
foundation is not a unified self but a divisible limit between myself
and myself as an other (auto-affection as hetero-affection:
"origin-heterogeneous").



Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But three
definitions are classical. The *first* is early, being found in
the 1971 interview "Positions" and in the 1972 Preface to
*Dissemination*: deconstruction consists in "two
phases" (*Positions*, pp. 41-42,
*Dissemination*, pp.4-6). At this stage of his career
Derrida speaks of "metaphysics" as if the Western
philosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times he
also speaks of "Platonism," as Nietzsche did. Simply,
deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the
belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate
substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with
one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. The
*first phase* of deconstruction attacks this belief by
*reversing* the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies
between the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible;
between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; between
living memory and rote memory; between *mneme* and
*hypomnesis*; between voice and writing; between finally
good and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction's "two
phases," let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition,
the opposition between appearance and essence. Prior to Derrida,
Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition, and it is criticized in
a lot of Twentieth Century philosophy. So, in Platonism, essence is
more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse
this, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here we could
resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that show that
all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experience of
what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essence
and appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositional
poles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence can
be reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles of
memory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we can
call "immanence," which carries the sense of
"within" or "in." So, we would say that what
we used to call essence is found *in* appearance, essence is
mixed *into* appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in the
history of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of the
essence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction to
immanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhaps
impossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of the
metaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy of
essence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. This
decision is what really defines Platonism or
"metaphysics." After this retrospection, we can turn now
to a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is the
second "phase" of deconstruction. The previously inferior
term must be *re-inscribed* as the "origin" or
"resource" of the opposition and hierarchy itself. How
would this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here we
would have to return to the idea that every appearance or every
experience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there is
always a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the past
and the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had already
discovered this small difference when, in the *Treatise*, he
speaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimal
difference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also it
is a difference that is, as Derrida would say,
"undecidable." Although the minuscule difference is
virtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in fact
notice it, we *cannot* decide if we are experiencing a memory
or a present perception, if we are experiencing a present perception
or an anticipation. (Bergson makes a similar claim in his
"Memory of the Present and False Recognition"
[*Mind-Energy*, pp. 109-151] and Deleuze extends
Bergson's insight in his "The Actual and the
Virtual" [*Dialogues*, pp. 148-152].) When we
notice the difference, we are indeed experiencing the present, but the
present is recognized as "contaminated" by the past and
future. Insofar as the difference is undecidable (perception -
what we see right now - contaminated with memory or the present
contaminated with the past: the experienced difference is an
experience of what Derrida would call the "trace"), the
difference destabilizes the original decision that instituted the
hierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term,
Derrida usually changes the term's orthography, for example,
writing "difference" with an "a" as
"differ*a*nce" in order to indicate the
change in its status. Differance (which is found in appearances
when we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to the
undecidable resource into which "metaphysics"
"cut" in order to makes its decision. In
"Positions," Derrida calls names like
"differance" "old names" or
"paleonyms," and there he also provides a list of these
"old terms": "pharmakon";
"supplement"; "trace"; "hymen";
"gram"; "spacing"; and "incision"
(*Positions*, p. 43). These names are old because, like the
word "appearance" or the word "difference,"
they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophy
to refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they are
being used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in
"metaphysics"; they are being used to refer to the
resource that is indeed "older" than the metaphysical
decision.



This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to the
refinement we find in the "Force of Law" (which dates from
1989-1990). This *second* definition is less metaphysical
and more political. In "Force of Law," Derrida says that
deconstruction is practiced in two styles (*Deconstruction and the
Possibility of Justice*, p. 21). These "two styles" do
not correspond to the "two phases" in the earlier
definition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is the
genealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of a
concept or theme. Earlier in his career, in *Of Grammatology*,
Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept of
writing. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On the
other hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style of
deconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In
"Force of Law," Derrida lays out three aporias, although
they all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstable
relation between law (the French term is "droit," which
also means "right") and justice.



Derrida calls the *first* aporia, "the *epoche* of
the rule" (*Deconstruction and the Possibility of
Justice*, pp. 22-23). Our most common axiom in ethical or
political thought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise
justice, one must be free and responsible for one's actions and
decisions. Here Derrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the
one hand, freedom consists in following a rule; but in the case of
justice, we would say that a judgment that simply followed the law was
only right, not just. For a decision to be just, not only must a judge
follow a rule but also he or she must "re-institute" it,
in a new judgment. Thus a decision aiming at justice (a free decision)
is both regulated and unregulated. The law must be conserved and also
destroyed or *suspended*, suspension being the meaning of the
word "epoche." Each case is other, each decision is
different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no
existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge
programmatically follows a code, he or she is a "calculating
machine." Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other
is unjust, but they are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot
say that a judgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the
"re-institution" of the law in a unique decision is a kind
of violence since it does not conform perfectly to the instituted
codes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence.
The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is
impossible. Derrida calls the *second* aporia "the ghost
of the undecidable" (*Deconstruction and the Possibility of
Justice*, pp. 24-26). A decision begins with the initiative
to read, to interpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a
decision, one must first of all experience what Derrida calls
"undecidability." One must experience that the case, being
unique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore
a decision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for
Derrida, is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is the
experience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, is
still obligated. We are obligated - this is a kind of
duty--to give oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking
account of rules and law. As Derrida says, "A decision that did
not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free
decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding
of a calculable process" (*Deconstruction and the Possibility
of Justice*, p. 24). And once the ordeal is past ("if this
ever happens," as Derrida says), then the decision has again
followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just.
Justice therefore is always to come in the future, it is never
present. There is apparently no moment during which a decision could
be called presently and fully just. Either it has not followed a rule,
hence it is *unjust*; or it has followed a rule, which has no
foundation, which makes it again *unjust*; or if it did follow
a rule, it was calculated and again *unjust* since it did not
respect the singularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why
the ordeal of the undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like
a "phantom," which "deconstructs from the inside
every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would
assure us of the justice of the decision" (*Deconstruction
and the Possibility of Justice*, pp. 24-25). Even though
justice is impossible and therefore always to come in or from the
future, justice is not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us
to the third aporia. The *third* is called "the urgency
that obstructs the horizon of knowledge" (*Deconstruction and
the Possibility of Justice*, pp. 26-28). Derrida stresses
the Greek etymology of the word "horizon": "As its
Greek name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and limit that
defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting." Justice,
however, even though it is un-presentable, does not wait. A just
decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with
unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite
moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then
the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and
non-rule. Once again we have a moment of irruptive violence. This
urgency is why justice has no horizon of expectation (either
regulative or messianic). Justice remains an event yet to come.
Perhaps one must always say "can-be" (the French word for
"perhaps" is "peut-etre," which
literally means "can be") for justice. This ability for
justice aims however towards what is impossible.



Even later in Derrida's career he will formalize, beyond these
aporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition of
deconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called "Et
Cetera." Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that
defines deconstruction:



> 
> Each time that I say 'deconstruction and X (regardless of the
> concept or the theme),' this is the prelude to a very singular
> division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X,
> *an impossibility* that becomes its proper and sole
> possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the
> 'same' X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of
> homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account....
> For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already
> attempted ..., gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so
> many other things) can be possible only *as impossible*, as the
> im-possible, that is, unconditionally (*Deconstructions: a
> User's Guide*, p. 300, my emphasis).
> 



Even though the word "deconstruction" has been bandied
about, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstruction
engages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end.
Justice - this is undeniable - is impossible (perhaps
justice is the "impossible") and therefore it is necessary
to make justice possible in countless ways.



Finally, with the publication of the death penalty lectures, we have
another definition of deconstruct, one also dating from 2000 (lecture
dated March 1/8, 2000). Here is what Derrida says:



> 
> To deconstruct death, then, that is the subject, while recalling that
> we do not know what it is, if and when it happens, and to whom. ...
> The dream of deconstruction, a convulsive movement to have done with
> death itself. Not to put into question again the question, what is
> death? when and where does it take place? etc. What comes afterward?
> and so forth. But to deconstruct death. Final period. And with the
> same blow, to come to blows with death and put it out of action. No
> less than that. Death to death (*The Death Penalty* (Volume 1),
> pp. 240-241).
> 



"No less than that. Death to death": This shows us that
perhaps even more than justice deconstruction values (if we can speak
of a moral value) life more than anything else. But, this life is not
unscathed; it is life in its irreducible connection to death. Thus
what deconstruction values is survival.