Derrida and the time of the political Edited by Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 2009ca Should Democracy Come? Ethics and Politics in Derrida JACQUES RANCIBRE ‘What isthe place of politics in Derride’s thinking? We know that he was among the French philosophers most constantly involved in politcal issues: the reform of the university, the dssdence in communist Czechoslovakia, the apartheid in South Aca, the situation in Algeria, the new international coder —or disorder. He supported alot of eases with generosity and disce- tion, and, unlike many French intellectuals ie would be ard to charge him ‘with having supported bad or dubious causes. We aso know that, from the beginning ofthe 1990s he wrote several books devoted to politcal isues and notions. ‘The question was often raised: Are those engagements and reflections of the 19908 consistent with the apparently apolitical discourse of Writing and Difference or Of Grammatoagy? Dervida contended against the skeptic that oiial commitments were the straighe consequence of the seemingly tical concepts of difference and deconstruction. Whether the conten- tion is right or wrong might not be the right question. What is worth whether the link between the concepts of deconstruction and hus commitments defines a political thinking a thinking ofthe specificity of pal are two ways of dealing with the fsue. The fist one consists ping the concepts that define the kere of deconstraiv thought Meat. ceussing whether end how they entail a specific understanding of politics and account for the specificity of his political engagement. I am thoroughly unable to do that. This és why I must try another way, which is ‘more modest and more presumpruous, more cautious and more risky: What ‘can dois focus on the texts where Derrida openly tackled political issuesin order to examine what isues he considered to be strong political problems, voided in his way of adaessng thems and bull up to form his judgments. From this point to determine whether his categories fame a specific subsume political maters under another form of what concepts he ser to theoretical frame ick up some signifiers which seem to define his [BTHIOS AND POLITICS IN DERRIDA + 275 ‘understanding of politics, confront them with what I understand to be the intelligibility of politics, and, on this basis, propose some hypotheses con- cerning the place or the nonplace of political thinking in Derrida’s philoso- phy. Ie should come as no surprise that I concentrate on the notion of the democracy to come?” which is obviously the key notion in his approach to politics, “Democracy to come”: this means democracy with something more, on condition of that “Something more” Iti clear that chis supplement is not something that should be added to democracy from the outside. Its also clear that the “to come” does not refer to the future. It does not mean “the democracy that we expect” It means “democracy. as democracy to come” From then on, several questions must be raised: Why a supplement, and more precisely, why a supplement that cannot be separated from the thing itself? What is the exact nature of that supplement to democracy? supplement of politics ora supplement to politics? Te seems easy to give an answer to the first question. The supplement is necessary because the relationship between the word “democracy” and the thing designated by this word has always been problematic, The chief ofthe Athenian democracy, Pericles, stated, in democracy by name that was in consider the present time, the si that it was a a government of the elite. If we looks even more puzzling. Our ‘governments are called democracies and purport to enact the government of the people, by che people. Bur, on the one hand, they send armies to bring to ‘government of the people; on the other hand, they unrelentingly complain ‘that democracy is ungovernable, that the democratic government is ened bya mortal danger which is the excess of democrat ‘ways of understanding that duplicity. You can attribute: ‘and draw the conclusion either that duplicity and lies or that such a democracy i a false o democracy —a democracy that would be true to - which means the power of the people. Alternatively, you can take a different view of that nd think that it points to something more fundamental, that it points toa difference inherent in the concept of democracy itself, a difference that prevents clemocracy from ever being achieved asa form of government. In that case, you have to assume that democracy is something more than one form of government among others, that {san excess with respect to any {form of government.276 + JACguig RANCERS 1c quesfig then takes on a new shape: How should we understand this, ‘this Fapplement? I believe that there are ewo main answers. Either ‘you understand it as the the supplement which sets up politics as something which is imeducible to the practice of government. Or you understand it as the excess of something that exceeds the rationality of politics and makes it dependent upon another law, which is generally conceived of as the ethical law—no matter, a this stage, how you understand ethics. This alternative ties in with another one: cither you make sense of the literal meaning of the word “democracy” the ‘power ofa subject named the people, which is the political way, or you make ro sense oft, which i the ethical way. Inthe fits case, you assume thatthe “power of the people” isthe excess or supplement which consticutes politics as such. You seck the principle of politics and of its supplementary nature in the conjunction, or disjunction, of the two terms “people” and “power” Such is the way I followed in my attempt to rethink politics. I tied to understand how the concept of the demos was implied in the very attempt to define politics as the act of a specific subject. The political subject, of the polite, was defined by Aristotle as the one who “takes part in the fact of ruling and the fact of being ruled” I argued that we should pay closer attention to that strange capacity to occupy ‘vo opposite places and play T assumed that such a of the “natural” legiti- more virtuous, and so on. Thisis the logic ofthe ark, the logic according ro ‘which the exercise of power is anticipated in the capacity to exercise it, and. 1n verified by the exercise led that if we took seriously the definition of the citizen, or the fof the arkhe. That definition set at the basis of symmetry of positions. Now this is exactly ‘The demos does not mean the popula the lower classes. It means those who have no peculiar qualification, no reason for ruling rather than being raled, for being ruled rather than ruling. Democracy means this astounding prin- ciple: those who rule do it on the grounds that there is no reason why some the notion of a demos Nor does it mean the. persons should rule over the others, excepr the fact that there is no reason, ‘This is ehe anarchical principle of democracy, which is the disjunctive junc: tion of power and demos. The paradox is that this anarchical principle of, democracy turns out to be the only ground for che existence of something. like a politcal community and a political power. This is what che democratic supplement or excess means: there isa variety of powers that work at the social level, in families, tribes, schools, workshops, and so on, the pareats lover the children, the elder over the younger, the rich over the poor, the teachers over the students, But as long as the community is made up of the conjunction of those powers and as long asi is ruled, as a whole, according. ‘to one oF a combination of those powers, it is not yet political. In order for any community to be a politcal community, there must be one more p ciple, one more entitlement which serves as the basis forall the others ‘here is only one principle left in addition to all the others: the democratic principle or entilement, the qualification of those who have no qualification, s 1¢ meaning of the democratic supplement as [understand it: the ae « supplement to the collection of social differentiations. It is the supplementary part made of those who have no qualification, who are not counted as units in ies calculations, I called i the part of those without part, which does not mean che underdogs but anyone, no matter whom. The power of the demos is the power of whomever. It means the principle of infinite substitutability, or indifference to difference, the dental of any prin- ciple of dissymmetry at the ground of the community. The demos is the fs inasmuch as it srogeneous to the calculation of the mn, but a heteron of a specific kind, of a society It is a that make up a social order, The democratic heterogeneity means the disjunctive junction of two logics. What is designated as “the political” is made of two antagonistic logics. On the one hand there are men who rule over others because they are—or they play the part of —the elder, the richer, the wiser, because they are entitled to rule over those who have not their status or competence. There are pattems and procedures of ruling predicated on this kind of distribution of places and ‘competences. This is what I call the rule of police, But on the other hand, that power has to be supplemented by another one. To the extent that their power is a political power, the rulers rule on the ultimate ground that there is ‘no reason why they should rule. Their power rests on its own absence of