The French Derrideans: Politicizing Deconstruction or Deconstructing the Political?

Abstract

In the summer 1980, a conference entitled The Ends Man: Spinoffs the Work ofJacques (Lesfins de l'homme: apartirdu travail de Jacques Derrida) was held at C6risy, France. Participants included many French philosophers in and around the Derridean circle as well as a number American literary critics. Readers the proceedings this event' are likely to find that the most interesting and, as it subsequently turned out, the most fruitful portion the meeting was the Political Seminar. Here, at last, were raised explicitly all the questions which have long been bugging those who have followed the career Derrida's writings and their peculiar reception in the United States: Does deconstruction have any political implications? Does it have any political significance beyond the byzantine and incestuous struggles it has provoked in American academic lit crit departments? Is is possible and desirable to articulate a deconstructive politics? Why, despite the revolutionary rhetoric his circa 1968 writings,2 and despite the widespread, taken-for-granted assumption that he is of the left, has Derrida so consistently, deliberately and dextrously avoided the subject politics? Why, for example, has he danced so nimbly around the tenacious efforts interviewers to pin