ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the sense in which Jacques Derrida can be said to assume responsibility, and relate this thinking of incalculable responsibility both to considerations of deciding substantive ethico-political issues and to debates about what 'ethics' and 'politics' might mean today. It offers some observations in light of Derrida's thinking about justice and democracy. The chapter deals with the question of justice as that which has a special proclivity to political transformation. It aims to show how Derrida's interrogation of philosophical foundations disrupts the assurance with which we generally assume moral and political responsibility. For Derrida, the rhetoric of responsibility will have been necessary to show that assuming responsibility enjoins equivocation and contradiction. The difficulty Derrida encounters in trying to speak on matters ethico-political parallels the predicament wherein he aspires to interrogate logocentric discourse with the means afforded by the language of metaphysics.
