Between Justice and Legality: Derrida on Decision

• Author: William W. Sokoloff
• Date: 01 June 2005
• Published date: 01 June 2005
• DOI: 10.1177/106591290505800213
• Subject Matter: Articles

In this essay I summarize and offer an interpretation of

Jacques Derrida’s concept of decision (Derrida 1990:

947, 961-967; 1992: 80-81; 1993a: 15, 17; 1995: 53-

81; 1996: 84; 1997: 67-69). More so than any other con-

cept, decision reveals how deconstruction engages the ques-

tion of politics in ways that have been overlooked by his

critics and advocates. Analyzing decision in Derrida’s work

also promises to shed new light on the problem of political

judgment since decision and judgment imply each other.

The elucidation of decision is therefore relevant for scholars

explicitly engaged with Derrida’s writings on politics as well

as for those grappling with the question of judgment inso-

far as decision clarifies the conditions under which politics

and judgments are possible.

In my reading, decision is Derrida’s attempt to redefine

the political core of politics in order to produce a reflective

and vibrant liberalism based on the interaction between

legality and justice conceived as respect for others. As

opposed to the view that he rejects law and suspends action

in an aporetic conception of justice, decision creates an

interface between justice and legality in order to energize

citizenship and make political action responsible. Hence, I

contest the accusation made by Derrida’s critics that his

writings on politics are irresponsible, but I acknowledge

that decision may be at odds with current modes of politi-

cal practice. Even in the face of its unconventionality, liber-

als could learn something about politics from Derrida’s deci-

sion. Specifically, the interaction between justice and law in

his political writings enables a critique of Rawls’s consensus

liberalism and points to a new ethical-political horizon that

should be taken seriously.

DECONSTRUCTION AND POLITICS

Critiques of Derrida’s work are plentiful. Turning politics

into nothing, immobilizing political action and judgment,

and rendering the traditional vocabulary of politics unus-

able are only some of the accusations directed against his

enormous oeuvre. He generates a great deal of nervousness

in the academy about the impact of his writings on ethics

and politics and has become a sort of post-structuralist Anti-

Christ, interpreted as nihilistic, relativistic, and potentially

authoritarian. It becomes immediately clear while reading

his texts on political themes that Derrida does not approach

politics in a conventional way. In terms of his methodology,

he suspends the traditional meanings of fundamental polit-

ical categories and engages in an unrelenting philosophical

questioning that forces them to their conceptual limit result-

ing in aporia, impossibility, and paradox. He even suggests

that questioning politics may not be political:

The question of the political, for this question is not nec-

essary, nor in advance, political. It is perhaps not yet or

no longer thoroughly political, once the political is

defined with the features of a dominant tradition. (Der-

rida 1997: 28.)

The fact that deconstruction took inspiration from the

writings of Martin Heidegger was always a source of con-

tention given his brief collaboration with the Nazi regime

and his subsequent silence about his involvement. Compli-

cating this matter further, “L’affaire de Man,” or the revelation

in 1987 that Derrida’s friend and fellow practitioner of

deconstruction Paul de Man (1919-1983) wrote collabora-

tive war-time articles between 1940 and 1942 in the Belgium

newspaper Le Soir supported the suspicion that deconstruc-

tion, despite its persistent claim that it was on the side of

progressive political ends, was a reactive ideology willing to

lend a hand to political evil. Deconstruction quickly made

academic headlines as an opportunistic criminal ideology.

341

Between Justice and Legality:

Derrida on Decision

WILLIAM W. SOKOLOFF, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA; UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Recent critiques of Jacques Derrida have misunderstood his contribution to political theory and dismiss his

work as apolitical or nihilistic. In contrast to this trend, I argue that Derrida’s concept of decision is the most

explicitly political moment of deconstruction. Through readings of “Force of Law” and Politics of Friendship as

well as some of his other writings, I argue that Derrida’s re-conceptualization of decision expands the way pol-

itics is conceived and enables a robust critique of Rawls’s consensus liberalism. Decision energizes citizenship

through strategic interfaces between justice and law and foregrounds respect for others in order to make pol-

itics more ethical and lively. Derrida does not paralyze political action by taking the ground away at the

moment of action but makes political actors more reflective and responsible by shaking up the stability of all

political foundations. Not only have critics of Derrida overstated their case but liberals could learn something

from his writings on politics.

NOTE: I would like to thank Subrata K. Mitra and three reviewers for

their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (June 2005): pp. 341-352