Language, racism, and beyond

Jacques Derrida says in "Racism's Last Word" (a short text from 1983 on apartheid) something extremely interesting with respect to how we try to hold racism and especially racist language accountable: he says, "no racism without a language." But Derrida means by this something more precise:

The point is not that acts of racial violence are only words but rather that they have to have a word.

-"Racism's Last Word" in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume 1, 379.

Two things are being said here: first, words are never "only words"--Derrida could have put the two words in quotes. The point here should be obvious, but the text--in particular its lack of quotes, which must be supplemented--indicates that it should be remembered: language, and in particular racist language, says something. It never says nothing, never is "mere" language. But second, this sentence in a different register (and along the trajectory of its most forceful thrust) indicates that racial violence never just manifests itself in words. Words are not the only way racial violence manifests itself. So, in a way, what is being said is that words are "only words." But at this point it is crucial to read these two points together, so that we come up with the following: words are not merely the only manifestation of racial violence, but they are not this only insofar as they are never "without a language." That is, racial violence never just manifests itself in ("mere") words because it is never without language. This paradox is expressed in the last part of the sentence: racial violence is more than mere words because it "has to have" words.

The crucial thing for Derrida is this "has to have," the necessity of the linguistic, and not the linguistic itself. Many, many people still make the mistake that Derrida simply applies what one critic called once by the name of "semiological reductionism:" that is, a reduction of everything to movements of the signifier and to language more generally. For Derrida, however, racism does not have to have words because everything is words--that is, because racism and acts of racism can be understood under a broad definition of language. Indeed, this is the main thing I wanted to stress here, for though the paradox we just delimited is interesting, it can be absolutely misunderstood and misapplied if we understand it this way. Racial violence never just manifests itself in mere words because it is never without language--but this is not because racial violence is just another name for language. This cannot explain language being "mere" language for Derrida, "only language:" that is, being a limited set of something larger, more expansive--"racial violence." In Derrida, language still maintains its limited sphere of operation, refusing to open itself out into the model on which everything operates. This does not mean that everything does not need, like racial violence, the structures of language in some way. If this is grasped, the crucial distinction has just been made.

The necessity of racial violence having to have words, having to have recourse to language, is not because racial violence is just language, but because racial violence cites the structures and movements of language in order to be different than language, in order to be itself as other than language, to be more than mere language.

Thus, there is no racism without language. But racism is not just merely words. It is the citation of the structure of language, and thus needs words in such a way that words cannot be viewed as "only words" if we see this citation at work. Any of these words then will be bigger than just words, signs, but will indicate something larger than themselves that gets performed on their model.

Practically, it is obvious what is at stake: the fate of a category of law that could punish hate speech as an act (cf. Only Words by Catherine MacKinnon). Derrida would be gutting this category if he asserted everything is language: all racial violence would be hate speech. And many people act like this is what Derrida is saying. But what is really being addressed by Derrida here is how a juridical notion of hate speech does not and will not adequately do what it wants to do--get rid of racisim. This is because there is indeed something other than this speech--acts of racial violence. But these, according to Derrida, are not without recourse to words, to hate speech. So everything revolves around not just deterring hate speech: racism will not be combated if one merely deals with only words. We have to deal with the necessity in racism that invokes language, that cannot be without words. So punishing hate speech as an act like terrorism, as MacKinnon (brilliantly, and with much justification) suggests, doesn't yet get at the complexity of the acts of violence involved in racism and in hate (and thus makes her disturbingly ignore hate when it occurs in other forms than heterosexual sexual abuse--most notably, in instances of homophobia: for a better analysis of the legal ramifications of speech read Judith Butler's Excitable Speech).

I moved fast here because I have a lot to do--but I hope it is clear that the challenge Derrida is leveling here is to not merely see how what he says just reduces everything to language. This injunction to (re)reading Derrida is found in the lack of the quotes, and amounts to the following: if you can't go some lengths to account for the lack of these quotes, you might want to think about whether you are making things too simple regarding the relationship of language to social action and justice, politics, or anything beyond (should I have put this beyond in quotes?) language.

I'll leave you with what Derrida continues with:

...but rather that they have to have a word. Even though it alleges blood, color, birth or, rather, because it uses this naturalist and sometimes creationist discourse, racism always betrays the perversion of a human "talking animal." It institutes, declares, writes, inscribes, prescribes. A system of marks, it designs places in order to assign forced residence or to close off borders. It does not discern, it discriminates.