Abstract

Derrida, especially in his late work Politics of Friendship (1997), has introduced the concept of ‘a‐humanist’ politics in the context of his general project of the deconstruction of politics as following upon his showing all such words as state, nation, democracy, justice, law, community et al to be fundamentally breached by their own opposites. All these notions may be retained at one level but also transcended and transgressed by confronting them with their binaries. Derrida’s entire discursive endeavour indeed is characterized by the motifs of transgression and extratranscendence. All the notions of rationality, sanity, normality, morality etc. need to be aporetically transcended and breached. Even the ‘humanity’, the least innocuous of the terms, would be supplanted by the opposite of ‘ahumanity’. ‘Is it possible’, asks Derrida, ‘without setting off loud protests on the part of militants of an edifying or dogmatic humanism, to think and to live … the experience of a certain ahumanity, beyond or below the commerce of gods and men?’ The politics, here, ‘exceeds the measure of man, without becoming a theologem’ (p.294). What could one say about this politics which resists becoming a ‘theologem’ but is still a politics, a politics beyond politics, politics of mysticism in other words. Itcertainly saves us from the dangers of certitude, of dogmatism, even of opinion. But does it also not deprive us of our own selves i.e. our humanity, our community and nation, our values and our God. Is the commitment to a voluntary death our only fate. Is the messiah of Derrida a saviour who saves or is he one who facilitates our death by coming into life himself? Is he the symbol of life or death – death of others, and then of himself.