ABSTRACT
I suggested in the book’s introduction that Derrida’s thought on democracy and justice is held together by deconstruction. The first chapter explored Derrida’s assertion that there is no democracy without deconstruction. The chapter suggested that in disclosing the différance that constitutes the core of democracy, deconstruction reveals democracy to be a regime unable to gather around a single origin or definitive meaning, and one inherently (and particularly) self-critical and self-delimiting. Derrida’s distinct conception of democracy, I argued, is thus indeed dependent on deconstruction – and so, for Derrida, no democracy without deconstruction. This final chapter considers Derrida’s contention that justice constitutes
both the possibility and limit of deconstruction,1 and enquires into the relationship between democracy and justice. As I noted in the first chapter, whilst one can never be certain of what deconstruction will reveal, it will always reveal that différance determines and inhabits all discursive and nondiscursive structures. It is for this reason, I hinted in Chapter Four, that Derrida is able to conceptualize justice as both the driving force and limit of deconstruction. In arguing that, unlike law, justice necessitates a singular response that preserves the singularity of that to which it responds, Derrida makes justice contingent on the différance revealed by deconstruction and deconstruction motivated by the (just) pursuit of différance – hence justice as both the possibility and limit of deconstruction. The deconstructive link that binds democracy and justice enables Derrida
to inherit democracy as democracy-to-come. Constituted by différance and having the structure of a promise, Derrida inherits democracy(-to-come) as an event, an opening towards, irruption of, and interruption by, an unforeseeable and singular other. In inheriting democracy as democracy-to-come Derrida stresses its constative, but also performative injunction: its demand to act in and for the present by unsettling the foundations and limits of existing democracies. Enacting democracy-to-come in and for the present demands, in turn, a reconceptualization of community as grounded in singularity, and thus indeed, justice. Chapter Four began to explore Derrida’s work on community and justice, suggesting that a community of singularities and a just comportment to ‘fellows’ and strangers is both necessary for and
intrinsic to democracy-to-come. This final chapter is dedicated to elaborating on what this might entail by working more explicitly through Derrida’s conceptualization of justice and exploring the significance of imagining democracy-to-come as a ‘just democracy’. The chapter first considers Derrida’s commitment to democracy(-to-come).
What Derrida conceptualizes as the political choice, and indeed political act2
of inheriting the concept of democracy has been the object of some debate, much of it grounded in broader discussions on the normative possibilities of deconstruction. The chapter begins from the premise that Derrida sides with democracy. Derrida’s commitment to democracy, I suggest, is a commitment to democracy inherited as ‘to-come’. In inheriting democracy as democracyto-come Derrida imagines and defends a ‘just democracy’, a democracy always already grounded in his understanding of justice. The chapter proceeds to explore the contours of this democracy, focussing on the significance of Derrida’s articulation of undecidability to both the inheritance and enactment of a ‘just democracy’.
