Notes on Derrida and politics

Without the opening of an absolutely undetermined possible, without the radical abeyance and suspense marking a perhaps, there would never be either event nor decision. Certainly. But nothing takes place and nothing is ever decided without suspending the perhaps while keeping its living possibility in living memory... In the order of law, politics or morality, what would rules and laws, contracts and institutions indeed be without steadfast... determination, without calculability and without violence done to the perhaps, to the possible that makes them possible? We insist on the decision in order to introduce the aporia in which all theory of decision must engage itself, notably in its apparently modern figures--for example, that of Schmittian decisionism, of its "right-wing" or "left-wing" or even neo-Marxist heritage... Such a decisionism, as we know, is a theory of the enemy. And the figure of the enemy, condition of the political as such, takes shape in this century against the backdrop of its own loss: we would be losing the enemy, and thereby the political.

-The Politics of Friendship, 67-8

Whether or not this is a valid reading of Schmitt (and Derrida's reading of him is extremely rigorous) is not as important here as the link established between calculability, decision, and the figure of the enemy. Calculating or establishing a political decision for Derrida cannot be the calculating of who it is made against: it is the undermining of precisely this setting-up of an enemy, which means that, since all calculation inevitably fixes and determines and thereby always heads in the direction of establishing an enemy, is the interruption of calculation or decision-making itself. I'll elaborate on these notes later, but one can already see that the insistence of Derrida is against establishing a space in opposition to decisionism, but rather that interrupts decisionism from within it--that is, is always a call for more calculation (there is never enough of it in the political). How would anything get done? This is also a question, of course, but Derrida is emphasizing that no political decision ever takes place such that only after it there is action on it or that brings it into effect. Deciding is already bringing about its results. But, at the same time, this pre-decision never is itself the real, authentic locus of the deciding: we do not jump into a sphere where all that matters is the condition of the possibility of deciding--this essentially constitutes Derrida's opposition to (and faithfulness to) Marxism.