An Open-ended Song of the New International: (How) Can It Be Invented?

Abstract

Focusing on the paradoxical refrain in Derrida's autobiographical text, Monolingualism of the Other, namely, ‘Yes, I only have one language, yet it is not mine (Je n'ai qu'une langue, ce n'est pas la mienne),’ this article sets out to unravel points of connection between formal logic, natural language, bureaucratic violence, imperial politics and, most importantly, emancipatory practices and possibilities musically sustained by the contrapuntal temporality of postcolonial future and hope; demonstrated, with and against Derrida, is a way in which performative self-contradiction becomes a textual prosthesis for the originarily dispossessed that, this article stresses further, embody the psycho-political topos of inventive life. A certain philosophical freedom from position and possession, this very ‘excluded middle’: that is something else.