NEWS
Deconstruction and the Political
(or how not to speak, while still speaking,
of deconstruction and politics)
More than two decades ago, in one of Jacques Derrida’s first
Derrida’s concepts of hegemony. Aletta Norval investigated
interviews, Jean-Louis Houdebine advanced the ‘first sketch
the ‘hybridity’ of subjective identity in relation to post-
of a question: what relationship do you think is developing
colonial discourses. Focusing on Homi Bhabha’s ambiguous,
between [the] economy of a dialectical materialist logic and
albeit ground-breaking, use of the term, Norval articulated
the economy that you have based on a problematic of
her own position, linked to Laclau and Mouffe’s theories: ‘to
writing?’ This two-day conference at the University of Essex
think of hybridity as an experience of thinking the in-
(27-28 October 1994) set itself the task of treating the issue
between, the borderline itself’. Jelica Sumic-Rihajuxtaposed
anew, especially now that Derrida’s long-awaited Spectres
modernist and post-modernist theories of justice. Rawls’
of Marx has appeared. In his opening remarks, Ernesto Laclau
Theory of Justice was sized up against Lyotard’s Differend,
implicitly recast and generalized Houdebine’ s question to
but the comparison was heavily weighted in Lyotard’s
Derrida by asking: ‘What does it mean to take a decision in
favour, as Sumic-Riha opted to portray the relation between
an undecidable terrain?’ The conference took the form of
the two in Lyotardian terms, as a differend.
three panels, each dedicated to a different facet of the theme:
Laclau’s own contribution proved more daring, as he
‘Spectres of Marx’, ‘Deconstruction and Hegemony’, and
outlined a ‘new step’ in a deconstructive approach to political
‘Deconstruction, Politics, and Ethics’.
decisions which expands ‘the logic of undecidability to wider
Richard Beardsworth opened the first session by
and wider fields, and consequently to the terrain in which a
declaring that we are already in the twenty-first century,
decision has to be taken and a political, hegemonic, moment
faced with new and pervasive technologies that put at risk
has to intervene’ .
our understanding of time and temporalisation. While
The third and final panel seemed rather arbitrarily put
accepting much of Derrida’s argument in Spectres on a
together. Hent de Vriess’ paper was based on a close reading
strategic level, Beardsworth nevertheless wished tentatively
of Derrida’s essay ‘Donner la mort’. It displayed great skill
to criticize it for failing to re-articulate Marxian ontology in
in delineating the issues of ethics and messianicity, but failed
terms of a genealogy of the relation between humanity and
to draw them together to form any satisfying conclusions.
technology’. Simon Critchley raised similar questions,
Rodolphe Gasche unassumingly but perspicaciously
concentrating on the concepts of the messianic, the political,
proposed that Derrida reinterprets the categorical imperative
and the ‘New International’ at work in Spectres. According
through ‘invention’, whereby ‘thinking must invent the
to Critchley, while Derrida sketches ‘the preconditions for a
universal law’ in the singular event of a response to the
new socialist hegemonic articulation’ , he fails to explain how
aporia. The final paper, ‘Virtual Derrida’, was, alas, a brief
the New International might actually be hegemonized.
and baffling attempt to reflect on a word – ‘necessity’ –
Samuel Weber’s contribution was more optimistic in tone.
whose nature, it was claimed, has been lost to us, by
‘Piece-work’ detailed the possibilities of a deconstructive
analyzing it along the ‘virtual axes’ of ghosts and promises.
approach to the political by way of comparison with Marx
One might suspect that there was a certain madness at
and Carl Schmitt. It concluded that the spectral and the
work over the course of these two days, for it was not politics
messianic provide ‘a way of thinking the relationship of past,
of which the participants spoke, but ‘messianicity’, ‘aporia’,
present, and future that might not be based on the ontological
‘the promise’, and ‘the spectral’. But at its best, and given
priority of the present, of sameness over alterity’.
the limitations of the day, such discussion conceals
The second session concentrated largely on Ernesto
something within its own admittedly inadequate gestures,
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s work on hegemony, to which
something that (as Polonius remarks of Hamlet) ‘madness
Derrida refers in Spectres. Taking Derrida’s book as his
often hits on, which reason and sanity could not so
starting point, Egidius Berns tirelessly catalogued a wide
prosperously be deliver’d of’.
range of similarities and differences between Laclau’ sand
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Ra die a I Ph it 0 sop h y 70 (M arc h / A p r it 1995)
lain Macdonald