Abstract
Undertaking a reexamination of some of Derrida’s writings on mourning, this chapter explores the ways in which an ‘ethics-of-the-other’ position broadly associated with deconstructive or poststructuralist analysis is seen to impede emancipatory possibility in the sphere of politics. Such an ethical standpoint is thereby often depicted as regressive, bound by the repetition of trauma, and given to a sense of redemptive entitlement, notably in regard to the worst horrors of the twentieth century. It broadens the reading of contemporary theoretical disputes to look at ways in which, in the writings of Rancière, such a critique of an ‘ethics-of-the-other’ position as ultimately politically conservative is targeted on the work of Lyotard.
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Notes
- 1.
Since Derrida’s death in 2004, a concerted effort has been made to bring unpublished seminar materials into the public domain. The Derrida Seminar Translation Project, led principally by Peggy Kamuf and Geoffrey Bennington but based on a larger team including David Wills, Pascale-Anne Brault, Michael Naas, Elizabeth Rottenberg, and others, has worked to prepare several editions for publication in French and English translation, beginning with late material not substantially reflected in other published works. The Beast and the Sovereign and The Death Penalty, both published in two volumes by Chicago University Press from 2009 onwards, have generated a fresh critical literature in the field of Derrida studies. Examples include a special issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy (Spindel Supplement) 50 (2012), ‘Derrida and the Theologico-Political: From Sovereignty to the Death Penalty’, and a special issue of the Oxford Literary Review 35.2 (2013), Death Sentences (both of which include essays by authors connected with the DSTP), as well as a number of edited collections such as The Animal Question in Deconstruction, edited by Lynn Turner (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). However, this literature is sufficiently extensive and critically compelling on its own terms that, rather than exhaustively list and summarize such writings here, I will simply refer the reader indicatively and instead attempt to offer some other remarks and commentary on deconstruction today as outlined in the introduction to this chapter, notably against a broader critical background.
- 2.
Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning, ed. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
- 3.
In The Work of Mourning, Derrida writes that ‘death obligates’ in a form that is ‘unconditional’ to the extent that, in contrast, ‘one can always negotiate conditions with the living’. Death, however, ‘ruptures’ this ‘symmetry’ (223–24).
- 4.
Derrida notes that, perhaps alone among their peers, he and Lyotard eschewed the ‘tu’ and instead retained the ‘vous’ as a therefore anomalous form of interchange, a ‘secret code’ with ‘transgressive value’, a practice of ‘exception’ or ‘contravention’, a ‘grammatical contraband’ that ‘left open its destinal singularity’ (226–28).
- 5.
Derrida gives reasons why he may speculate that the phrase in fact addresses him, although of course this falls well short of an assertion or proof.
- 6.
Not to mention the forms and borders of internality and externality that, post-mortem, introjection and incorporation struggle to maintain or negotiate.
- 7.
Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, trans. Steven Corcoran (Cambridge: Polity, 2012).
- 8.
Rancière makes such arguments across a number of his texts, often centring on Lyotard. He is fond of reprising his critique of the Lyotardian sublime. See the Foreword to The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2004), and those sections of the chapter on ‘Artistic Regimes and the Shortcomings of the Notion of Modernity’ in which the comments included in the Foreword are further worked out (see esp. 29). See also Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. Steven Corcoran (London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2010), esp. 59–60, 72–74, 182.
- 9.
To be more specific regarding Lyotard, in Aesthetics and its Discontents, Rancière argues that Lyotard contrasts the ‘positivistic nihilism of aesthetics as a discourse which, under the name of culture, delights in the ruined ideals of a civilization’ with just this ‘negative task’ of bearing impossible witness to the ‘unpresentable’ (89).
- 10.
Although Rancière argues otherwise, Lyotard of course knows this. For instance, in Heidegger and ‘the Jews’, trans. Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 45, he writes: ‘Art is an artifact; it constructs its representation. At cannot be sublime; it can “make” sublime….’ If nothing else, this points to Rancière’s haste in wanting to present a reductive image of the Lyotardian project.
- 11.
Jean-François Lyotard, ‘The Other’s Rights’, in On Human Rights, ed. Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1993), 135–47.
- 12.
Lyotard therefore continues: ‘The likeness that they have in common follows from the difference of each from each’ (136).
- 13.
Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). The premise of this book is that the scene of teaching is characterized by an equal intelligence shared by teacher and student alike and thus that the beginnings of education are to be found in such ‘equality’.
- 14.
Fittingly, if ironically, the term is also used by Lyotard (even if its meaning is not identical with that of Rancière), for instance, at the very close of Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988), where Lyotard writes that ‘the only consensus’ we should concern ourselves with pursuing is ‘one that would encourage … heterogeneity or “dissensus”’ (45).
- 15.
Slavoj Žižek, The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan, trans. Thomas Scott-Railton (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014). Page references will be given in the main body of the chapter.
- 16.
See Jodie Matthews’ review for the LSE online at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/10/16/book-review-the-most-sublime-hysteric-hegel-with-lacan-by-slavoj-zizek/
Bibliography
Derrida, Jacques. 2001. The Work of Mourning. Edited by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1988. Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
———. 1990. Heidegger and ‘the Jews’. Translated by Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1993. The Other’s Rights. In On Human Rights, ed. Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, 135–147. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Matthews, Jodie. 2016. Review of The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan by Slavoj Žižek. LSE Blogs. Review of Books. Accessed January 10, 2017. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/10/16/book-review-the-most-sublime-hysteric-hegel-with-lacan-by-slavoj-zizek/
Rancière, Jacques. 1991. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Translated by Kristin Ross. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
———. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London and New York, NY: Continuum.
———. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Translated by Steven Corcoran. London and New York, NY: Continuum.
———. 2012. Aesthetics and its Discontents. Translated by Steven Corcoran. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2014. The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan. Translated by Thomas Scott-Railton. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Morgan Wortham, S. (2018). Deconstruction: Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_19
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