I've been wrestling with Derrida's massive, somewhat disturbing essay "Force of Law" for a week or so, not only reading the essay but turning over its questions and its analysis in my head--I must have started and stopped about five or six posts on it (a rare instance where what is on my mind won't directly make it to this blog). The essay attempts two tasks, really, or situates itself between them, in the space and time in which they both overlap and exclude each other: first, an analysis of the relation of deconstruction(s) to law and justice, second, an analysis of Walter Benjamin's "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Critique of Violence") that interprets his work on violence in the light of what it could or could not say about the Holocaust.
Like I said, these tasks intertwine, so that the analysis of Benjamin proceeds mainly through issues of law and justice. But I don't think that one can dissociate the analysis of Benjamin from the focus on the Holocaust, and this is not only because Derrida says his analysis of Benjamin could not have proceeded other than with the Holocaust in view. Nor is this the case (in fact, it is absolutely not the case) because the critique of Benjamin that Derrida engages in is due only to an inability of the positions of Benjamin to comport themselves towards something like the Holocaust, as an insane remark that I read somewhere said (Derrida does not critique Benjamin because "Benjamin's position could not account for the Holocaust"). No, the issue remains one of how we read today. That is, the issue remains precisely how we today take up the writings of Benjamin and "use" them: critics, theorists, philosophers, activists use them, simply put, to critique the fascism that culminated in that unbelievable atrocity. In other words, one of the main things the essay tries to do is understand how we still are acting towards the Holocaust, and with the use of Benjamin. To this end, it takes up what we already do (use Benjamin, follow Benjamin, and attempt to comport ourselves to the atrocity that haunts us) in its deepest coherence, and shows what we must do if we are really to respect our own intentions. And what we must do is be willing to critique Benjamin, especially in the interest of the law and justice (as much as we are willing to critique Marx--see my post on Marx and Derrida below). In still other words, Derrida is trying to have us respect the fact that one simply does not read Benjamin without reading what happened after his death into his writings. This is a symptom of the fact that, more fundamentally, one does not read anything before atrocity without reading atrocity into it, remembering it--that is, looking at what is being read and its possible (direct or indirect) complicity in this atrocity.
This perhaps makes Derrida's condemnation of Benjamin's conclusions sting all the more. For this is the main experience of reading the article: a certain bitterness, not unlike that bitterness experienced reading Specters of Marx (or, perhaps, the Politics of Friendship with respect to Carl Schmitt or even Of Spirit with respect to a Heidegger that could be construed as Marxist), at the fact that we are losing a figure that we thought could fight fascism and the horrors of modernity. We cry out when we read Derrida: "Oh no! Can't the thinkers against fascism, against destruction band together for once or compromise?" If I focus more on this right now instead of returning directly to the question of deconstruction(s), law, and justice as I intended, it is because I think this digression contains what is necessary to understand Derrida's comments on law and justice (legal scholars/theorists focus upon the first part of the article--and it should be noted, political theorists and philosophers like Agamben on the second--and I think this is missing something). The experience of reading Benjamin is one of the possibility of a critique so powerful or forceful in the compactness and brilliance of its ideas that they seem like bullets. But what Derrida shows us is that we must reread over and over when confronted with such ideas, such "audacity," as he says in the essay. This is not due to the "style" of them, though this is crucial of course, but because they make a demand upon the reader to take up a position. We will develop this more in a second. But, regardless, the willingness to submit to the personality of Benjamin, to stop reading and simply (or not so simply) become a member of the "cult of Benjamin," as it is often called, is huge (though not as huge as the willingness to submit to the call of Marx). The temptation to reject Derrida's conclusions about "Critique of Violence" as contained to this early period in Benjamin, or to the influence of chance encounters with "inadequate" thinkers like Sorel, or more simply to accuse him of misreading Benjamin (without rereading Benjamin against him), is massive.
But ultimately unproductive, I think, even if one disagrees with Derrida's conclusions. In Derrida's willingness to critique Benjamin (and extend by suggestion this critique to some central concepts within Benjamin's oeuvre), he reminds us that this is reading (or not-reading) against Benjamin's own theses on the identification with a personality-figure at the head of fascist states. But in a deeper manner, he reminds us that the real desire to identify with the cause of someone like Benjamin really lies in a desire for solidarity in a politico-juridico-ethical position against forces that destroy life without legitimacy or even with legitimacy. Foremost in this desire for solidarity that brings forth the personality of Benjamin instead of his texts is a desire, then, for a position. And specifically a position as a guarantee, a guarantee that "I am just," (237) or even (and perhaps especially) "we, and not they, are just." Here is the link back to the law and to justice I suggested that this digression would somewhat elucidate, and the reason why ultimately Benjamin needs to be not just followed but always reread. The guarantee against the risk of a destruction of life of even immense proportions: this is what is sought in a "position" that would refuse to think the somewhat aberrant nature of Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" with the rest of his texts (if not with the larger concerns like fascism that we use his critiques to critique), that would preserve the figure of Benjamin above and beyond all concern for whether what Benjamin says could be said more coherently, that would pit the guarantee in the name of Benjamin against the real possibility that in covering up the sight of the risk one could become complicit with it. This risk, Derrida reminds us, is essential in any position that could deserve the status of a "position:" to dilute its reality through a guarantee would indeed mean that a position could become perhaps more stable and opposed to the destruction of life, but it does not mean that it can interrogate it more responsibly and in fact remember, mourn, and prevent it. The position, for Derrida, must deconstruct itself: it cannot be a position at all, but must be a continual insistence on rereading, a love of rereading. This does not mean that any position is problematic, but only that a position that could do what it professes to do would be impossible. (Thus compromising within the politico-juridical-ethical domain Derrida does not oppose: when it takes the form of a compromise to "take up a position," however, he sees it as dangerous, because it comes with the clause that we do away with rereading, with the singular risk.)
Situating himself within this impossibility as much as he can, Derrida reads Benjamin against Benjamin, shows how the discourse of Benjamin itself refuses to engage this impossibility, this risk, and thus becomes complicit with the type of destruction that a position as clearly articulated as Benjamin's is supposed to prevent: the destruction of someone thinking "I am just" or "we are just." It is for this very specific reason that he reads Benjamin within the context of the Holocaust.
I apologize if I moved too quickly, especially with regard to how Derrida thinks of "complicity:" obviously Derrida is not saying that we need to submit thinkers to a test, the criterion of which would be atrocity. He is trying to show that complicity means a shutting down of reinterpretation, of deconstruction, through the setting up of a position that would supposedly be fixed and stable and just. The link then between a figure like Benjamin and an event like the Holocaust would hinge on the proscriptive "positioning" of several of Benjamin's articulations, how his discourse is actually inconceivable without a fixing of a position on a particular issue. That is, Benjamin's concepts must foreclose at a certain point a their own coherency in order to use them to give a position: Benjamin's articulation itself is inseparable from this foreclosure. This is what Derrida means when he says, in a postscript to the essay, that Benjamin mobilizes a discourse of authenticity too much for him. It is not that the authentic is itself bad, but that there is too much of it: enough that it ends up sacrificing coherence for the setting up of a politico-juridical-ethical position. Here the this preliminary sketch would expand, but perhaps another time--let's move on. All this noted, this does not mean that Derrida is saying that fluidity must be preserved for its own sake. He is arguing in favor of an accountability for a risk which is the condition of justice and also of injustice, the individual event in its undecidability. I also apologize for moving too quickly with such sensitive issues, and for not getting to the law an justice as much as I should. I'll take these up later, perhaps. I hope though that I've somewhat shown the interconnectedness of both concerns of the essay in some way. This is all not yet to agree with Derrida and what he says, but to prepare a better reading.
But ultimately unproductive, I think, even if one disagrees with Derrida's conclusions. In Derrida's willingness to critique Benjamin (and extend by suggestion this critique to some central concepts within Benjamin's oeuvre), he reminds us that this is reading (or not-reading) against Benjamin's own theses on the identification with a personality-figure at the head of fascist states. But in a deeper manner, he reminds us that the real desire to identify with the cause of someone like Benjamin really lies in a desire for solidarity in a politico-juridico-ethical position against forces that destroy life without legitimacy or even with legitimacy. Foremost in this desire for solidarity that brings forth the personality of Benjamin instead of his texts is a desire, then, for a position. And specifically a position as a guarantee, a guarantee that "I am just," (237) or even (and perhaps especially) "we, and not they, are just." Here is the link back to the law and to justice I suggested that this digression would somewhat elucidate, and the reason why ultimately Benjamin needs to be not just followed but always reread. The guarantee against the risk of a destruction of life of even immense proportions: this is what is sought in a "position" that would refuse to think the somewhat aberrant nature of Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" with the rest of his texts (if not with the larger concerns like fascism that we use his critiques to critique), that would preserve the figure of Benjamin above and beyond all concern for whether what Benjamin says could be said more coherently, that would pit the guarantee in the name of Benjamin against the real possibility that in covering up the sight of the risk one could become complicit with it. This risk, Derrida reminds us, is essential in any position that could deserve the status of a "position:" to dilute its reality through a guarantee would indeed mean that a position could become perhaps more stable and opposed to the destruction of life, but it does not mean that it can interrogate it more responsibly and in fact remember, mourn, and prevent it. The position, for Derrida, must deconstruct itself: it cannot be a position at all, but must be a continual insistence on rereading, a love of rereading. This does not mean that any position is problematic, but only that a position that could do what it professes to do would be impossible. (Thus compromising within the politico-juridical-ethical domain Derrida does not oppose: when it takes the form of a compromise to "take up a position," however, he sees it as dangerous, because it comes with the clause that we do away with rereading, with the singular risk.)
Situating himself within this impossibility as much as he can, Derrida reads Benjamin against Benjamin, shows how the discourse of Benjamin itself refuses to engage this impossibility, this risk, and thus becomes complicit with the type of destruction that a position as clearly articulated as Benjamin's is supposed to prevent: the destruction of someone thinking "I am just" or "we are just." It is for this very specific reason that he reads Benjamin within the context of the Holocaust.
I apologize if I moved too quickly, especially with regard to how Derrida thinks of "complicity:" obviously Derrida is not saying that we need to submit thinkers to a test, the criterion of which would be atrocity. He is trying to show that complicity means a shutting down of reinterpretation, of deconstruction, through the setting up of a position that would supposedly be fixed and stable and just. The link then between a figure like Benjamin and an event like the Holocaust would hinge on the proscriptive "positioning" of several of Benjamin's articulations, how his discourse is actually inconceivable without a fixing of a position on a particular issue. That is, Benjamin's concepts must foreclose at a certain point a their own coherency in order to use them to give a position: Benjamin's articulation itself is inseparable from this foreclosure. This is what Derrida means when he says, in a postscript to the essay, that Benjamin mobilizes a discourse of authenticity too much for him. It is not that the authentic is itself bad, but that there is too much of it: enough that it ends up sacrificing coherence for the setting up of a politico-juridical-ethical position. Here the this preliminary sketch would expand, but perhaps another time--let's move on. All this noted, this does not mean that Derrida is saying that fluidity must be preserved for its own sake. He is arguing in favor of an accountability for a risk which is the condition of justice and also of injustice, the individual event in its undecidability. I also apologize for moving too quickly with such sensitive issues, and for not getting to the law an justice as much as I should. I'll take these up later, perhaps. I hope though that I've somewhat shown the interconnectedness of both concerns of the essay in some way. This is all not yet to agree with Derrida and what he says, but to prepare a better reading.
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