Derrida’s “democratic intellect” in The Little Prince (1943) and The Little Black Fish (1967)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Jacques Derrida, “Ethics and Politics Today,” in Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971–2001, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 300.2. Mustapha Tlili, “The Meaning of an Act of Compassion and Rigor: Preface to the American Edition,” trans. Franklin Philip, in For Nelson Mandela, ed. Jacques Derrida and Mustapha Tlili (New York, NY: Seaver, 1987), x. An earlier translation of “Admiration of Nelson Mandela,” by Mary Ann Caws and Isabelle Lorenz, appeared in this volume under the title “The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration,” and later in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. II, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). Likewise, the French text was also published in Psyché. Inventions de l’autre, vol. II (Paris: Galilée, 1987-2003). I will take this opportunity to note that my own effort has doubtless benefited from the consultation of Caws and Lorenz's translation, though many of my own decisions have, of course, for better or for worse, differed from theirs. I should also note, moreover, that behind the idea of retranslating this text there lay no polemical intention; in other words, this new translation is by no means intended to “replace” what is all in all, in my opinion, an excellent, a rigorous and an attentive, rendering.3. Jacques Derrida, “Racism's Last Word,” trans. Peggy Kamuf. Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 290–9. For the debate that followed, see Ann McClintock and Rob Nixon, “No Names Apart: The Separation of Word and History in Derrida's ‘Le Dernier Mot du Racisme,’” Critical Inquiry 13 (1986): 140–54; and Jacques Derrida, “But, Beyond… (Open Letter to Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon),” trans. Peggy Kamuf. Critical Inquiry 13 (1986): 155–70.4. Tlili, “The Meaning of an Act of Compassion and Rigor,” xi.5. I note in passing that this gesture already anticipates Derrida's 1999–2001 seminar on the death penalty, in which he will attempt to ally, in a philosophically rigorous fashion, “the reasons of the heart” – compassion, for example – with those of principle, in other words, with “reason itself”; Jacques Derrida, The Death Penalty, vol. I, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013). See also Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow … A Dialogue, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 89f.6. Benoît Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 375.7. Jacques Derrida, “Before the Law,” trans. Avital Ronell with Christine Roulston, in Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 210; my emphasis.8. Cf. Paul de Man, “The Concept of Irony,” in Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 184. “Irony and history seem to be curiously linked to each other,” notes de Man, “but this can only be tackled when the complexities of what we could call performative rhetoric have been more thoroughly mastered.”9. Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 84.

<p><b>The core argument of this thesis is on the aporetic moment/space of decision and the poetics of the to-come in John Milton's works, with the fundamental importance of the individual. For Milton, this moment/space is radically critical and free, and individually problematic, which goes beyond the usual private/public space even though the public aspects and responsibilities of the person's decision demonstrate exceptional significance in the form of public enactment. In Milton's terms, the experience of such an aporetic moment/space of decision is indispensible for those who want to become a "fit reader" and develop the essential qualities and attributes. I will argue that Milton has always written with the desire to highlight and exemplify the absolute singularity of such a moment and experience throughout his life and works, both prose and poetry.</b></p> <p>The thesis will represent its arguments in two sections. The first section, through a consideration of Derrida's arguments in his works (in particular: "The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration," "The Future of the Profession or the Unconditional University," "Force of Law: 'The Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" and "This Strange Institution Called Literature") together with a selection of Milton's writings, mainly prose (including: Areopagitica, Eikonoklastes, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and Paradise Lost), will examine and identify possible continuities and convergences between the two writers. Such an intimate juxtaposition and close reading of their works has promisingly offered recognition of continuities, convergences, and affinities in their thought in terms of the qualities and attributes of the "fit reader" and the "democratic intellect." In the opening five chapters, the interactive reading highlights fundamental questions and notions for both writers, including the question of exemplarity or singularity, the notion of public space without conditions, the question of justice beyond the law, the critique of violence, and the question of literature as a lawless institution, providing me with the essential terminology to formulate new interpretations of Milton's works, in particular, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.</p> <p>The second part of the thesis uses the conceptions and terms developed in the opening chapters to read the two late poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, as singular examples of Milton's fit reader, the aporetic moment/space of decision, and the poetics of the to-come by setting out the general comparative points between them. The focus of my arguments in these chapters will be on the hypothesis that Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are both demonstrating the aporetic moment/space of decision - confusingly replete with uncertainties, complexities, and indeterminacies - and the dominant poetics of the to-come as well as arguing for the singularity of the moment, decision, and enactment of the decision in each poem. I will argue that Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes provide outstanding exemplifications of Milton's notion of the "fit reader" developing similar qualities and attributes in common with Derrida's "democratic intellect."Milton's works represent the aporetic moment/space of decision as an ongoing process; it is a singular moment in which uncertainties and indeterminacies produce unresolvable choices, but where a decision must nonetheless be made; it is a moment of "trial" the result of which cannot be known to the individual "fit reader" in advance. Milton's late poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, explore the critical significance of this moment and demonstrate that no certain, fixed, pre-programmed, or predetermined model or frame can be applied to the resolution of aporetic moments of decision in different times, places, and contexts. The "fit reader" is one who radically and critically reads and re-reads aporetic situations, full of inescapable indeterminacies and unresolved choices, and expresses his individual judgement in the singular form of a true decision (not calculation) to advance the possibilities of truth, justice, and humanity.</p>

<p><b>The core argument of this thesis is on the aporetic moment/space of decision and the poetics of the to-come in John Milton's works, with the fundamental importance of the individual. For Milton, this moment/space is radically critical and free, and individually problematic, which goes beyond the usual private/public space even though the public aspects and responsibilities of the person's decision demonstrate exceptional significance in the form of public enactment. In Milton's terms, the experience of such an aporetic moment/space of decision is indispensible for those who want to become a "fit reader" and develop the essential qualities and attributes. I will argue that Milton has always written with the desire to highlight and exemplify the absolute singularity of such a moment and experience throughout his life and works, both prose and poetry.</b></p> <p>The thesis will represent its arguments in two sections. The first section, through a consideration of Derrida's arguments in his works (in particular: "The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration," "The Future of the Profession or the Unconditional University," "Force of Law: 'The Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" and "This Strange Institution Called Literature") together with a selection of Milton's writings, mainly prose (including: Areopagitica, Eikonoklastes, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and Paradise Lost), will examine and identify possible continuities and convergences between the two writers. Such an intimate juxtaposition and close reading of their works has promisingly offered recognition of continuities, convergences, and affinities in their thought in terms of the qualities and attributes of the "fit reader" and the "democratic intellect." In the opening five chapters, the interactive reading highlights fundamental questions and notions for both writers, including the question of exemplarity or singularity, the notion of public space without conditions, the question of justice beyond the law, the critique of violence, and the question of literature as a lawless institution, providing me with the essential terminology to formulate new interpretations of Milton's works, in particular, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.</p> <p>The second part of the thesis uses the conceptions and terms developed in the opening chapters to read the two late poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, as singular examples of Milton's fit reader, the aporetic moment/space of decision, and the poetics of the to-come by setting out the general comparative points between them. The focus of my arguments in these chapters will be on the hypothesis that Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are both demonstrating the aporetic moment/space of decision - confusingly replete with uncertainties, complexities, and indeterminacies - and the dominant poetics of the to-come as well as arguing for the singularity of the moment, decision, and enactment of the decision in each poem. I will argue that Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes provide outstanding exemplifications of Milton's notion of the "fit reader" developing similar qualities and attributes in common with Derrida's "democratic intellect."Milton's works represent the aporetic moment/space of decision as an ongoing process; it is a singular moment in which uncertainties and indeterminacies produce unresolvable choices, but where a decision must nonetheless be made; it is a moment of "trial" the result of which cannot be known to the individual "fit reader" in advance. Milton's late poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, explore the critical significance of this moment and demonstrate that no certain, fixed, pre-programmed, or predetermined model or frame can be applied to the resolution of aporetic moments of decision in different times, places, and contexts. The "fit reader" is one who radically and critically reads and re-reads aporetic situations, full of inescapable indeterminacies and unresolved choices, and expresses his individual judgement in the singular form of a true decision (not calculation) to advance the possibilities of truth, justice, and humanity.</p>

This essay explores the challenge ofarticulating ethical discourse in an age cognisant of perspective, intentionally, through Jacques Derrida’s admiration for Nelson Mandela in ‘The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, In Admiration.’ For Derrida, Mandela affirms anoriginary trace of human dignity, yet performatively reconceived through perspectival testimony and conscience, drawing from heterogeneous headings in Tribal lore and European law. Mandela exemplifies admiration for those legal traditions endorsing human rights and dignity, yet his testimony is a performance of ethical imagination invoking the spectre of ‘justice to come,’ which will always contest legal conventions and implicit circumscriptions of human dignity. Using additional works from Derrida, I propose that the challenge ofarticulating ethical values with traction, while affirming difference within an age cognisant of perspective, has exemplary focus in Derrida’s Mandela, with his spectral reflection of human dignity and difference. This ‘spectral reflection’ is a haunting silhouette of what is yet to come in the law, passing through mandela as through a mirror—from invisibility to visibility and vice versa. In ‘The Laws of Reflection,’Mandela is a metonym for anethicity of ethics (Derrida) that risks imaginative responsibility for an incalculable future, which, in the name of justice, calls into question any legal or ethical convention. This may have particular significance for articulating ethics in theological discourse.

This essay engages with aspects of the lives of two key figures in the Rivonia trial. The first is Nelson Mandela, one of the accused. The second is Bram Fischer, leader of the defence team. The engagement with Mandela and Fischer will unfold in five sections under the following headings: Mandela and the Laws of Reflection; The Performative, the Constative and the Impossible Foundation; The Gift and the Secret; The Renegade Moment; Bram Fischer’s Madness. The first section consists of a re-reading of the essay Jacques Derrida published on Nelson Mandela when Mandela was still in jail. It engages with the way Derrida situates Mandela within the play of the laws of reflection and how he then moves to contemplate a Mandela who cannot be reduced to or captured and imprisoned by these laws of reflection. The second section moves on to two further themes that Derrida raises in the essay on Mandela, the relation between the performative and the constative in speech acts and the impossibility of foundations or origins. These are key themes in Derrida’s thought to which he returns many times in his work. The engagement with these themes in the Mandela essay is significant because of the way it highlights the relation between these themes in Derrida’s work, but also because of the way it allows one to trace the boundaries of speculative reflection and to follow a trace to the Mandela who can ultimately not be contained by these boundaries of reflection. The third section marks these boundaries of reflection with reference to the secret and the gift or the secret of the gift. The concepts of the secret and the gift play a pivotal role in the strand or tradition of philosophical thought that first became known as phenomenology and later as deconstruction. They stand in as reflection-resistant or reflection-resisting articulations of the boundaries of epistemological and normative reflection on and through which existing worlds and their pro- and inhibiting confines are constructed. As such they also point us to a freedom beyond these pro- and inhibiting confines of existing worlds. This freedom cannot be named, but a certain allusion to it is possible through invocation of moments of sheer madness that resist, challenge and rebel against all normative conceptions and ideals of freedom. The fourth section describes these moments as renegade moments, moments that differ from revolutionary moments because they cannot be reduced to the endorsement, postulation and revolving of ancient normative conceptions – the hallmark of revolutions according to Arendt. Ultimately, they simply erupt as instances of an absolute freedom to act. ‘Madness beyond insanity’, Foucault calls this freedom. The section on the Secret and of the Gift (third section) already invokes a remarkable renegade moment in the life of Mandela. The last section, ‘Bram Fischer’s Madness,’ turns to a life that was ultimately consumed by a renegade moment. In view of Arendt’s assessment of revolutions in terms of the revolving or recycling of ancient normative ideals, renegade moments should be considered as the real or essential inauguration of the newness and new worlds that Arendt’s reflections on revolutions and politics also contemplate profoundly. The renegade moment – in the instant of its withdrawal into the madness of absolute freedom – is not concerned with ancient norms and values. It is not concerned. It is simply and exclusively an eruption of unprecedented action. It is the eruption of the unprecedented. If at all related to revolutions, they might be considered as the very seeds from which revolutions ultimately spring. But they ultimately also withdraw from revolutions – and the stale language of revolutions – to return to that which always occurs much earlier. They withdraw to the absolutely unprecedented opening or giving of time from which new times and new worlds derive in the very final or first analysis. They take part in the pure performative, the pure act of withdrawal that ‘is’ or ‘gives’ time and through which time gives itself to new times and new worlds by withdrawing from them.

Nelson Mandela’s struggle and personality are exemplary and admirable, but what is most admirable and exemplary is that Mandela served law; and law is what is to be respected over individuals, although only in the understanding of its contradictory constitution. The contradictory aspects of law arise when dealing with the struggle against an unjust constitution and unjust laws. For Jacques Derrida, the name ‘Mandela’ cannot be separated from theoretical reflection on history, culture and jurisprudence. ‘Admiration’ is not an accidental or trivial word in Derrida’s title. The question of ‘admiration’ is identified as a classical philosophical problem, so that the ‘admiration for Nelson Mandela’ is an inquiry into ‘admiration’ rather than the pretext for an uncritical eulogy of Mandela. Mandela is admired and he is admirable because he admires law. In his ‘admiration’ for Mandela, Derrida brings out ambiguities in Mandela’s discourse, which are also ambiguities in the anti-Apartheid struggle, reflected in the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress.

A translation of Jacques Derrida's “Admiration de Nelson Mandela, ou Les lois de la réflexion,” first published in Pour Nelson Mandela (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry conceived of and edited by Derrida and Mustapha Tlili, and later in Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, II (Paris: Galilée, 1987–2003), is given. In part a tribute to the iconic leader of the struggle against apartheid, “Admiration of Nelson Mandela” also presents a sustained analysis of Nelson Mandela's thought and practice through close readings of his speeches and writings, notably the statements that Mandela delivered in his own defense during his trial of 1962 and the Rivonia trial of 1963–64. In addition, “Admiration of Nelson Mandela” represents a significant articulation within the series of reflections that Derrida devoted throughout his career to questions of law and justice, ethics and politics, and democracy. The present translation includes a translator's introduction which situates the essay within this broader constellation of writings and elaborates a number of the problems and concepts central to Derrida's approach to legal theory.

In “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’,” Jacques Derrida argues that the law’s authority is mystical, unattainable in its origins, theforce of law therefore precipitating conditions for its perpetual contest. The force of Derrida’s “Force of Law” is illustrated in his study of Nelson Mandela (“The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, In Admiration”). Derrida’s Mandela reflects the law’s divisibility, and therefore its iterability in representation beyond the force of its founding letter—of which apartheid was an extreme example. Mandela makes visible the need for the law’s supplement, as performative justice in the face of inherent violence in the law’s conserving force. Mandela’s performativeforce of law, contesting the inaugural violence of law, is inseparable from an implicit warp and weft of historical and theological influences.

‘Something is Happening Here and You Don't Know What it is’: Jacques Derrida Unplugged

This papyrus suggests that penal abolitionism without forgiveness of the unforgiveable may be a license for self-help or vengeance. The papyrus offers a radical deconstruction of the essay, 'On Forgiveness', by Jacques Derrida, to reveal that contrary to popular misinterpretations, Derrida was demonstrating that forgiveness is more common in African traditions than in Abrahamic traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This papyrus goes beyond Derrida's examples from the recent history of South Africa and delves back to classical African civilization to demonstrate that the forgiveness of the unforgivable is indeed a long-running African tradition as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, among others, suggested. The papyrus ends with a call for people of African descent to apply this philosophy of forgiveness to one another and demand that the principle be integrated into public policy along with policies for reparations of historic wrongs.

Derrida and the Cinematograph:Or the Culture That We Don’t Have Joana Masó (bio) I saw everything, the French films made during the Occupation, and especially the American films that returned after 1942. I would be totally incapable of listing the titles of the films, but I remember the sort of films I saw. … I have a passion for the cinema; it’s a kind of hypnotic fascination, I could remain for hours and hours in a theater, even to watch mediocre things. But I have not the least memory for cinema. It’s a culture that leaves no trace in me. It’s virtually recorded, I’ve forgotten nothing, I also have notebooks where I keep reminders of the titles of films from which I don’t remember a single image. … During periods when I go to the movies a lot, particularly when I’m abroad in the United States where I spend my time in movie theaters, a constant repression erases the memory of these images that nonetheless fascinate me. —Jacques Derrida (2001) [End Page 63] I have watched all kinds of movies, but I would not be able to quote them. I haven’t forgotten anything of those movies, yet their memory has left no traces. Thus, from this memory, the memory of cinema, traces did not remain. Through this aporetic rhetoric, Derrida confesses that when he remembers films, he retains a memory of the past, although the explicit traces of this past disappear. He confesses this by suggesting that cinema would be the privileged medium that enables memory not to leave traces. What is interesting in Derrida’s interview with Antoine de Baeque and Thierry Jousse in Cahiers du cinéma is not only his avowal concerning cinema—he doesn’t possess a mastery over the heritage of the cinematic culture but does enjoy an intense familiarity with dark movie theaters—but also the very singular role of the cinematic image within the deconstruction of visual arts. Since the trace is one of the major figures of writing Derrida constantly uses in texts that discuss visual arts in general, such as painting, drawing, and photography, one should be surprised to learn that cinema, singularly, leaves no traces, whereas in deconstruction “the arts” are generally discussed in terms of the trace. The cinematic image, as Derrida elucidates in this interview, seems to entail a radical exteriority vis-à-vis this singular form of inscription. In other words, not only does the cinematic image not leave traces, not only does it not trace (as drawing and painting or photography do) but, according to Derrida, it appears to be deeply divergent from the writing model that he had proposed based on a concept of trace or text that was not reducible to alphabetic writing, to writing on the page, to writing in a book. … I’ve said that everything is trace, that the world was trace, that experience was trace, that this gesture is trace, that voice is a writing, that voice is a system of traces, that there is nothing outside the text, and that in a certain sense nothing borders, from the exterior, this experience of the trace.1 If “everything is trace,” if “the world [is] trace,” if “experience [is] trace,” how do we think through the absence of cinema’s traces? Does it mean that cinema doesn’t strictly belong to a type of scriptural model—that of the trace—and escapes from the borders of that which Derrida tells us is borderless, that is, the logic of writing? Within this generalized and archi-global logic of trace, where nothing borders and thus exceeds the text to an exterior, how is it that the cinematic image alone can be an exception to this law? How does one understand Derrida’s conception of cinema as a type of medium, a medium of the impermanence of images, one that he says produces “an emotion that is completely different from [End Page 64] that of reading, which imprints a more present and active memory in me”?2 “Books,” he admits, “didn’t do the same thing for me.”3 Instead of the backdrop of writing’s “active memory...

‘The Final “Thank You”’ uses the work of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to think the occasion of the 1995 rugby World Cup, hosted by the newly democratic South Africa. This paper deploys Nietzsche's Zarathustra to critique how a figure such as Nelson Mandela is understood as a ‘Superman’ or an ‘Overhuman’ in the moment of political transition. The philosophical focus of the paper, however, turns on the ‘thank yous’ exchanged by the white South African rugby captain, François Pienaar, and the black president at the event of the Springbok victory. It is the value, and the proximity and negation, of the ‘thank yous’ – the relation of one to the other – that constitutes the core of the article. 1

Cool Beats and Timely Accents

Neste trabalho, desenvolvemos a ideia de que a filosofia hermenêutica contempla uma atitude moral de empatia, de colocar-se no lugar do outro, através da leitura do texto literário. Sob essa perspectiva, discorremos acerca da situação de opressão de duas personagens ficcionais – Popróshin, de “Diário de um louco”, narrativa de Nikolai Gógol, e o louco do Cati, da obra de mesmo título de Dyonelio Machado. Os seres humanos apresentados nestas histórias são levados à loucura por realidades sociais opressoras, injustas e violentas, o que sensibiliza o leitor. Consideramos que, ao debruçar-se sobre as questões da natureza humana, a hermenêutica aponta para as possibilidades que o ser tem de existir e permite ao intérprete a oportunidade de outrar-se na construção da compreensão, ampliando seu horizonte de sentidos. Tal ponto de vista interpretativo requer que o leitor se coloque na obra para poder escutá-la, já que o que é pesquisado não se separa daquele que pesquisa. Assim, como aporte teórico, baseamo-nos nos pressupostos da filosofia hermenêutica, sobretudo de Hans-Georg Gadamer e de Ernildo Stein, nas ideias concernentes ao tema da tradução de Jacques Derrida, além de autores que possam contribuir para uma reflexão acerca da violência e da loucura.

Verne Harris offers a reflection on legacy and the archive through three intersecting enquiries, on: the South African tradition of ‘archives for justice’, deconstruction’s insistence that the work of archives is justice; and the legacies of Nelson Mandela and Jacques Derrida. He makes a case for an open-ended making and re-making of legacy and for a more radically transformative agenda in the work of archives in South Africa.