ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Jacques Derrida's political attacks are based on his earlier critiques of metaphysics. It focuses on Derrida's claim that all language possesses an irreducible metaphoricity through two other interrelated Derridean notions, that of the trace and iterability. Certain metaphysical discourses on language have trapped this irreducible metaphoricity within the identity of concepts; deconstruction aims to free it. The law is a trace, a sort of metaphorical resource, from which he borrows. The chapter also focuses on only one further aspect of deconstruction, what Derrida calls paleonymy, the reutilization of old names. Deconstruction also attacks the economic, social, and political institutions within which metaphysical discourse takes place. In Derrida's rendering, Mandela's admiration equals the deconstructive practice. In the same way as a deconstruction of a philosophical text borrows certain philosophical terms in order to oppose normativity, homogeneity, univocity, Mandela's admiration borrows certain aspects of white political institutions in order to oppose repression and exclusion.
