ABSTRACT

The dissertation presents a constructive proposal for re-envisioning the

relationship between the religious and the political in light of the conceptual displacement

of normative secularism. The first chapter briefly outlines the way what I call “normative

secularism” has provided the legitimation of modern western political theory and how it

has been conceptually called into question by the global politicization of religious

identity (i.e., the “return of religion). This conceptual displacement requires that the

relation of the political and the religious be reconceptualized, which is the aim of the rest

of the dissertation.

The second chapter presents the alternative conceptualization outlined by

theologian Graham Ward, who advances a metaphysical and theological model in which

the social analogically participates in the Being of God. The chapter argues that Ward‟s

metaphysical proposal is flawed, leading either to violent identitarian conflict or

theocracy. Chapters three and four present the political theorist Ernesto Laclau‟s

conception of “radical democracy” as an alternative, arguing that he develops a concept

of universality which provides the basis for reconceiving the structuring of the social

without falling into the dangers which appear in Ward‟s proposal. Significant emphasis

is given to Laclau‟s theory as a form of political ontology. Chapters five and six

demonstrate the continuity of Laclau‟s thought with that of philosopher Jacques Derrida,

arguing that Derrida outlines a conception of democracy (the “democracy to come”)

which may itself be described as a form of religious affirmation. The chapters identify

the religious aspect of Derrida‟s work with an affirmation of an experience of

phenomenological disruption.
 The dissertation concludes by arguing that Laclau‟s own theory of radical

democracy, given its structural similarities with Derrida‟s theory of democracy, may

itself be understood as a form of religious affirmation. What emerges from these

considerations is a vision of the social in which the religious and the political emerge as

co-implicated and irreducibly intertwined, rather than as discreet, separable segments of

the social.
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Copyright 2010 Daniel D. Miller

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 CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ix

Preface x

CHAPTER ONE:
CONTEXT AND CONSIDERATIONS 1

CHAPTER TWO:
THE SOCIAL AS PARTICIPATION IN GOD:
GRAHAM WARD‟S SOCIO-POLITICAL THEORY 64

CHAPTER THREE:
THE SOCIAL AS OPEN TOTALITY:
THE SOCIO-POLITICAL THEORY OF ERNESTO LACLAU 120

CHAPTER FOUR:
ONTOLOGY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE POLITICAL:
RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND ITS ALTERNATIVES 175

CHAPTER FIVE:
HAUNTOLOGY: JACQUES DERRIDA‟S
ONTOLOGY OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL NEGATIVITY 236

CHAPTER SIX:
HAUNTOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS AFFIRMATION 308

CONCLUSION 360

BIBLIOGRAPHY 375

VITA 399

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 149

Figure 2 161

vii
 Preface

For the past several years, within certain circles in the disciplines of academic

theology, religious studies, and Continental philosophy, all disciplines within which I

work to one degree or another, I have heard an increasingly common refrain that the

present moment in the post-industrial Western world is best described as “post-secular.”

My personal evaluation of the claims implicit in this refrain has varied and developed

over time, and this dissertation originated out of a desire to further explore these issues.

Not surprisingly, I now think that questions of the “secular” and the “post-secular” are

more complicated than many of these accounts suggest. While the following chapters

will make it clear that I depart strongly from what I have termed normative secularism,

and that, in my view, this departure demands a significant reconceptualization of the

categories of the secular and the political, I have also come to the conclusion that the

term “post-secular” is too blunt an instrument to describe what might emerge from such a

reconceptualization. I therefore offer what follows as a modest effort to think through the

effects of the “return of religion” on the configuration of the religious, the secular, and

the political, with the realization both that what emerges is too complex to be described

as “post-secular” and that much more remains to be said.

It might be helpful to say a word about some of the chapters in what follows. The

first chapter represents a kind of extended introduction, and it could easily have been a

book-length treatment in its own right; indeed, the literature on the topics it addresses is

legion. As it stands, it represents an attempt to lay out the basic perspective presupposed

in the rest of the dissertation.

viii
 Chapter two focuses on what I call the “theo-politics” of the British theologian

Graham Ward who, together primarily with John Milbank, is recognized as one of the

founding figures of the theological movement known as “Radical Orthodoxy.” Given

that Milbank is the more well known of the two, the fact that I have chosen to focus the

chapter on Ward, rather than Milbank, requires some comment. In my view, Ward and

Milbank ultimately advance essentially the same theological and political project. Ward

differs from Milbank, however, insofar as he places a much greater value on critically

engaging cultural and intellectual forms which, in his view, stand opposed to the

Christian tradition. By way of contrast, Milbank has demonstrated a pronounced

tendency to simply dismiss such forms out of hand. The result of this is that Ward‟s

project has been marked by a sophistication and complexity which is generally lacking in

Milbank‟s own, and this is one of the primary reasons I have chosen to focus on Ward. A

second reason, not unrelated, is simply a consideration of space. Any treatment of the

differences that do exist between Ward and Milbank would require a chapter of much

greater length than the present context allows.

Chapters three and four, which provide a basic account of the political theorist

Ernesto Laclau‟s political ontology and his theory of “radical democracy,” are very

expository in nature (this is particularly true of chapter three). While my interest in

Laclau exceeds simple exposition, particularly in chapter four, my focus has largely been

on exposition because of what I presume will be an overall lack of familiarity with

Laclau‟s thought on the part of readers within the areas of religious studies and theology.

While there has been a recent and notable uptick in interest in various forms of “political

theology,” resulting in a refreshing consideration of political theory by theologians and

ix
scholars of religion, consideration of Laclau‟s work remains largely absent from these

discussions. The result of this is that I have felt it necessary to present Laclau‟s thought

in a different manner than I would better-known theorists such as John Rawls or Jürgen

Habermas. I hope to see Laclau‟s thought play a more prominent role in theology and

religious studies in the future.

It will no doubt be clear to most readers that chapters five and six, which focus on

the thought of Jacques Derrida, form the heart of the dissertation. My primary

intellectual debt is to Derrida, and this is no doubt clear in these chapters, which hinge on

my proposed understanding of Derrida‟s concept of alterity. While these chapters take

the form, primarily, of exposition, I think that they in fact advance a very constructive

reading of Derrida. Those familiar with Derrida‟s thought will recognize that my account

differs from what I think is a dominant, and oversimplified, understanding of Derrida in

relation to the issue of alterity. My close attention to Derrida‟s texts in these chapters

represents my effort to demonstrate the overall defensibility of the reading of Derrida I

advance.

Mention of Derrida also brings up some brief considerations of language and

translation. For the most part, I have made use of English translations of works not

originally published in English. The primary exception to this rule is in those contexts

having to do with the issue of alterity in the work of Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel

Levinas, and Derrida. All references to texts in original languages other than English

have been explicitly noted, as have instances in which I have chosen to modify the

English translation of specific texts. I have at times chosen to leave specific terms and

phrases untranslated in the main text (e.g. différance, tout autre est tout autre); however,

x
I have done so only after offering an English rendering of such phrases and explaining

my reasons for leaving subsequent occurrences untranslated. All non-English terms and

phrases have been highlighted for the sake of easy recognition. I have standardized the

spelling of all occurrences of the French term différance, even in cases where this has

resulting in changing the form of the term in titles of texts; likewise I have rendered all

quotations in standard American English, including most notably those originally written

in standard British English.

I owe my thanks for help in completing this dissertation to more people than I can

possibly hope to name; I will nevertheless try to hit the high points. I would first like to

thank the examiners and chair of my dissertation defense committee, the Reverend

Professor Paul S. Fiddes, Professor R. Gustav Niebuhr, and Dr. Frederick Beiser, for their

commitment of time and effort. I would also like to thank the dissertation committee,

Drs. Zachary Braiterman, Mehrzad Boroujerdi, and John Caputo, (my dissertation

advisor) for their longsuffering perseverance through multiple chapter drafts and for their

valuable comments and feedback. Finally, I thank Dr. Kenneth Baynes for his valuable

comments and insights concerning chapters three and four. The dissertation has been

much improved as a result of their comments and feedback, and whatever might emerge

out of it in the future will be the better for their comments and criticisms.

I cannot conceive of how I could have completed this project without the support

of both Jack Caputo and Paul Fiddes, whose contribution to my academic development

far exceeds the scope of the dissertation. I want to thank Jack Caputo for serving as my

advisor for last five years, for excellent courses and critical feedback on writing

assignments, and for uncounted conversations over Tuesday night dinners. My grasp of

xi
Derrida‟s thought and Continental philosophy more generally has grown exponentially as

a result of his mentorship. Paul Fiddes served as the advisor for my master‟s degree at

the University of Oxford, and it was under his tutelage that I first encountered Derrida‟s

thought and began to explore its relationship with theology and religion. I am grateful for

his continued interest and participation in my academic and professional development.

I have received more support from friends and family than I can begin to recount.

I would particularly like to thank Drs. William Robert and Heath Thomas, who have both

given generously of their time as I worked to get myself out of a number of intellectual

thickets during the process of writing the dissertation. For all of their encouragement, I

am extremely grateful to (in no particular order) Airen Hall, Jill Petersen Adams, and

Rosanne Morici. And, saving the most important for last, I want to thank my wife Nicole

and my son Tristan. Without Nicole‟s support (financial and emotional!) through a

decade of graduate school I certainly never would have completed this project; and I

found adequate time to research and write only thanks to Tristan‟s frequent naps.

xii
 1

CHAPTER ONE

CONTEXT AND CONSIDERATIONS

What if religio remained untranslatable?

--Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge”

Introduction

This dissertation as a whole represents a cumulative attempt to think how the

relation between “religion” and “the political” might be conceived once this very

structuring bifurcation has been called into question. Chapters two through six, together

with the Conclusion, represent the substance of this effort. The focus of this chapter is to

address core issues which, while not an explicit object of focus in the chapters which

follow, provide the presumed background for reading and interpreting those chapters. It

consists of three sections dealing with, in order: An issue of context (the conceptual

displacement of normative secularism); a structuring theoretical issue (why I continue to

articulate the proposal that follows in terms of “religion” once this concept has been

called into question); and a procedural or methodological issue (why, in the next chapter,

I choose to consider the theo-political proposal advanced by a contemporary British

theologian, rather that a “non-Western” alternative).

Context: Secularism’s Loss of Normative Status

The focus of this dissertation is neither secularism nor secularization (more on the

distinction between these terms shortly). However, secularism is a defining part of the

context for understanding everything that follows, which is why I devote significant

attention to it here. Concisely stated, the presumed context of this dissertation is that

secularism has lost its normative status, and so can no longer serve as a universal basis
 2

for political theory. On the contrary, secularism‟s loss of normative status necessitates a

reconfiguration of the relationship between religion and political theory.

The first point to note in this regard is that I am making an important distinction

between three related but analytically distinct terms: Secularization, conventional

secularism, and normative secularism.1 Stated most basically, secularization, as I use the

term, is descriptive, while secularism, whether normative or conventional, is not. As

Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini note,

Secularization can be defined in a number of ways—as the progressive shift of

theological concepts into nonreligious forms and contexts (such as the idea of the
sovereign God moving into the idea of the sovereign state) or simply as the
decline of religion, that is, the progressive retreat of religion from social
significance.2

They point out that the question of whether or not, or to what extent, secularization is

taking place has been the focus of intense debate.3

My primary concern in this chapter is with what I am calling normative

secularism, understood as a narrative with normative force concerning dominant modern

“Western”4 views of the relation between religion, the social, and the political. Though

1
To the best of my knowledge, the distinction I am making between normative and conventional
secularism is my own.
2
Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, “Introduction: Times Like These,” in Secularisms, ed. Janet R.
Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 6.
3
Ibid., 6-7. For significant examples of this debate, see the essays collected in Steve Bruce, ed. Religion
and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992); Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and Its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998);
William H. Swatos, Jr. and Daniel V. A. Olsen, The Secularization Debate (New York: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 2000); Peter Berger et. al., Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and
Variations (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008).
4
The scare quotes around “Western” are intended to convey my awareness that this term is problematic.
As William Cavanaugh points out, the West is not a geographical description, but “a construct, a contested
project, not a description of a monolithic entity” [William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence:
Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7]. S. Sayyid
highlights the contested notion of this “project,” noting that the “West” has been decentered as a
discursively structured entity, and is therefore more contested at present than ever before [see S. Sayyid, A
Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism, 2nd Ed. (London: Zed Books, Ltd,
2003), xv-xvii; 109-110]. The present context doesn‟t allow the space to address this complex issue, so in
what follows I will simply refer to the “West,” with the knowledge of readers‟ awareness that I understand
 3

they don‟t present the issue in precisely these terms, a number of contemporary scholars

understand secularism in terms of what I am calling normative secularism. To give just a

few examples: Jakobsen and Pellegrini define secularism as “a discourse that invokes

powerful moral claims and evinces manifold political effects;”5 Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

describes secularism as “a political authority;”6 and Talal Asad refers to secularism as a

“doctrine.”7

Normative secularism, as I use the term, refers to a universalizing narrative which

has structured Western modernity and which, precisely as universal, has had a normative

status. Normative secularism, as universalizing narrative, presumes to lay out the nature

of rationality, modernity, and the political as such, which have a common teleology

culminating in the extreme marginalization, if not the total disappearance, of religion

from these areas of human experience. An increasing body of scholarship has made it

clear that normative secularism has also helped to secure the conceptual space for the

emergence of the modern nation-state. The primary focus of these points a demonstration

of these points is a primary concern of the first main section of this chapter.

the issues involved with the term. In speaking of the West, as well as “Europe,” in what follows, it is
generally safe to assume that I follow Charles Taylor in envisioning “the North Atlantic World” [Charles
Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 1]. Due to
their distracting nature, I will not continue to employ the scare quotes.
5
Jakobsen and Pellegrini, 7. Of relevance to this point is Jeffrey Stout‟s comment to the effect that
“secularization,” understood in a certain “pragmatic” sense, is not simply equivalent to “secularism.” See
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 93. Such a
distinction is also implicit in the comments of other theorists. James Sweeney, for example, argues that
secularization theory is “unsustainable” because of the combination of descriptive and normative elements
within it. See James Sweeney, “Revising Secularization Theory,” in The New Visibility of Religion:
Studies in Religion and Culture, ed. Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (London: Continuum, 2008), 26.
6
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008), 1.
7
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2003), 191.
 4

Excursus: Secularization and Conventional Secularism

As I have stated, my primary concern in the first section of this chapter is

normative secularism, and its displacement constitutes the primary context within which

the rest of this dissertation should be understood. However, I do want to devote some

time to a brief discussion of secularization and what I am calling conventional

secularism. To begin, I use the term secularization to refer to questions concerning the

relative place of religion within the social and, with particular reference to questions of

the political, of the relative place of religion within public, social life. Secularization

involves a necessarily historical dimension, insofar as it poses the question of the relative

place of religion within the social in comparison or contrast with the relative place of

religion in society in a different time. While my own views concerning secularization are

complicated, I have found the account recently provided by Charles Taylor to be both

useful and compelling.8 Taylor advances a conception of secularity which is related to

pluralization, and therefore understood in terms of “a move from a society where belief in

God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be

one option among others, and frequently not the easier to embrace.”9 Taylor takes it as

undeniable, and I with him, that this shift marks “a titanic change in our western

civilization.”10 Insofar as this is the case, it seems obvious to me that, in many ways, the

modern western world has experienced a high degree of secularization

One advantage of Taylor‟s account is that it amounts to more than a “subtraction

theory” of secularization, which I think differentiates his view from the models and

8
Taylor, Secular Age.
9
Ibid., 3.
10
Ibid., 12.
 5

accounts of secularization which dominate empirical sociological accounts.11 That is,

Taylor formulates an account of secularization which does not simply consist in the loss

(or overcoming) of religion in modern society. On the contrary, Taylor provides an

account of the transformation of religion in the modern period, detailing how it takes on

novel forms which cannot be properly understood through a consideration of institutional

forms. Specifically, he outlines the way in which traditional religions in the West take on

a “post-Durkheimian” form which is typical of other social movements; as he puts it, for

example, “belief in God isn‟t quite the same thing in 1500 and 2000.”12 As Richard King

states the point, “the secularization process that has occurred in modern Western societies

since the Enlightenment has not led to the inevitable decline of religion, as some

sociologists had prophesied, but rather to the erosion of the authority of institutional

religions in the modern era.”13 Despite the erosion of such social forms, what is

conventionally called “religion” (this term will become more complicated as our

discussion progresses) continues to play a significant role in both public and private life

in the form of searches for wholeness and authenticity, grounded in forms of

“spirituality” which are opposed to “religion.”14 All in all, Taylor outlines a compelling

vision of secularization understood in terms of the diminishment of the forms of religion

11
I think that most such accounts suffer from specific deficiencies, the most glaring of which, in my view,
is that, insofar as they seek quantifiable data, they tend to focus on visible, institutional, and therefore
measurable, aspects of religion (e.g., levels of church attendance, numbers of new churches, etc.). This
poses a number of problems. First, not all social formations which could be, and are, meaningfully
described as religions have manifested themselves in a visible, institutional form, and are therefore
effectively overlooked in such approaches. Second, and closely related to this first point, the focus on
institutional religion has taken a Western European model of the social, and with it Christianity, as the
universal form of “religion” as such. What this means is that these theories presuppose an unduly
circumscribed notion of religion. Additionally, as I indicate below, many purportedly empirical accounts
of secularization exceed the descriptive and participate in the narrative of normative secularism.
12
For Taylor‟s discussion of post-Durkheimian social forms, see in particular Taylor, Secular Age, 487-
492; for the quotation see 13.
13
Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and the “Mystic East” (London:
Routledge, 1999), 13.
14
Cf. Taylor, Secular Age, chs. 13-14.
 6

which dominated the West prior to the modern era accompanied by the transformation of

the religious traditions in which these forms were situated and the emergence of novel

religious forms.

The second issue I want to briefly consider is what I am calling conventional

secularism. I have chosen the descriptor “conventional” to distinguish this form of

secularism from normative secularism. Both conventional and normative secularism

articulate what we might think of as the desirability of a process of secularization; that is,

both of them name positions that take a certain diminution of role of religion in social

life, and particularly its differentiation from the political, as a positive and desirable

feature in modern society. They differ, however, insofar as conventional secularism does

not presuppose the totalizing scope of normative secularism; stating the issue in a

Rawlsian idiom, if normative secularism represents an example of a comprehensive

doctrine, conventional secularism represents a political conception of secularism.15

I choose the descriptor “conventional” to name forms of secularism which

understand secularization as some sort of social convention which is desirable, but which

is not understood to imply the teleological end of emergent rationality, modernization, the

complete disappearance of religion, etc. Conventional secularism names those forms of

secularism which advance some form of secularization but understand the resulting social

form to be contingent, open to contestation, etc. In this sense, we might say that the

scope and aims of conventional secularism are narrower than that those of normative

secularism. Conventional secularism can take a variety of forms, a point which is easily

15
For Rawls‟s distinction between comprehensive and political doctrines, see chapter four, p. 197ff.
 7

illustrated by briefly considering a range of liberal theories of the relationship between

religion and the political.16

As our examples, let us consider Richard Rorty, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas,

Jeffrey Stout, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, who represent a range from more stringently

(conventionally) secular to less stringently (conventionally) secular. Rorty famously

insists that religion is a “conversation-stopper” when it comes into public political

discourse.17 For Rorty, the only way to ensure ongoing conversation in public is to

preserve the “happy, Jeffersonian compromise” between religion and the Enlightenment,

in which religion is secularized in exchange for the guarantee of religious freedom.18 In

contrast to Rorty, Rawls argues that citizens may appeal to comprehensive doctrines,

including religious doctrines, when engaged in public reasoning, “provided that in due

course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient

to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support.”19 Stout

nicely summarizes Rawls‟s position, noting that “a citizen may offer religious reasons for

a political conclusion, but only if he or she eventually supplements those reasons by

producing arguments based in the social contract. The amended Rawlsian view is that

religious reasons are to contractarian reasons as IOUs are to legal tender.”20 We can see

that Rawls‟s position is that religious reasons for a political conclusion are valid insofar

16
As I indicate below, secularism and liberalism are not equivalent. However, at present liberalism is not
only the dominant political theory but is also widely associated with secularism; a consideration of a range
of liberal expressions of conventional secularism is therefore appropriate.
17
Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-stopper,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin
Books, 1999), 171.
18
Ibid., 169, 170-171.
19
John Rawls, “Introduction to the Paperback Edition,” in Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2005), xlix-l.
20
Stout, 69. Stout‟s reference to Rawls‟s view as “amended” has to do with the fact that view presented in
the “Introduction” represents a development in Rawls‟s thought subsequent to the initial publication of
Political Liberalism. Rawls states that his newer formulation is more permissive than that originally
presented in his thought; see Rawls, “Introduction,” ln25.
 8

as they are later supplemented with secular reasons that all reasonable people would

endorse.21 Jürgen Habermas argues, in explicit contrast with Rawls, that citizens

“should…be allowed to express and justify their convictions in a religious language even

when they cannot find secular „translations‟ for them.”22 To limit the provision of

religious reasons in the manner advanced by Rawls represents, in Habermas‟s estimation,

a violation of the liberal principle of citizens‟ freedom of religious expression.23

Secularism enters into Habermas‟s account at the level of political institutions: Given that

“the exercise of political authority must be neutral toward competing worldviews”

(including religious worldviews), it is necessary that a “translation” of religious reasons

be accomplished in the transition from “the „wild‟ political public sphere” to the “formal

proceedings within political bodies.”24

Writing from a pragmatist-expressivist perspective, Stout argues, in opposition to

Rawls, that it might well be ideal “if we could resolve any given political controversy on

the basis of reasons that none of us could reasonably reject,” but that this is only an ideal

and it has been unduly reified in Rawls‟s formulation.25 He therefore argues that Rawls‟s

contractarianism is overly concerned with conceptually stabilizing the norms of social

cooperation in advance, thereby lapsing into a “program of social control.”26 In contrast,

Stout advances the claim that the cultivation of “a form of social life that celebrates

21
It is worth noting that my use of the term “secular” here differs from Rawls‟s own. He notes that “I
define secular reason as reasoning in terms of comprehensive nonreligious doctrines.” See John Rawls,
“The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” in Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005), 452. For Rawls‟s understanding of “reasonable people,” see chapter four, p. 197ff.
22
Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the „Public Use of
Reason‟ by Religious and Secular Citizens,” in Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays,
trans. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 130.
23
Ibid., 131.
24
Ibid., 130, 131.
25
Stout, 75.
26
Stout, 80-81.
 9

democratic individuality” is itself a positive good, which can only be advanced if limits

for the reasons given in public discourse (e.g. reasons concerning the advancement of

religious reasons) are not determined in advance.27 Finally, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues

that the limitation of religious reasoning in public political discourse represents an

unnecessary limitation on the rights of religious citizens. He argues that “it belongs to

the convictions of a good many religious people in our society that they ought to base

their decisions concerning fundamental issues of justice on their religious convictions,”

and that “their religion is not, for them, about something other than their social and

political existence.”28 In light of this, he poses the following question: “Given that it is of

the very essence of liberal democracy that citizens enjoy equal freedom in law to live out

their lives as they see fit, how can it be compatible with liberal democracy for its citizens

to be morally restrained from deciding and discussing political issues as they see fit?”29

For Wolterstorff, the right of appeal to religious arguments extends even to political

legislators.30

My point in this brief survey is neither to enter into detailed discussions of these

thinkers‟ views nor to evaluate them or consider their critiques of one another. My only

point is to highlight the possible range of positions within what I am calling conventional

secularism, and all of these thinkers avoid my category of normative secularism. Rorty,

the most rigorously secularist of the group, cannot be understood as a normative

secularist because he denies the centrally defining elements of that outlook (e.g.,

27
Stout, 84-85.
28
Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues,” in Religion
in the Public Square: The Place of Religions Convictions in Political Debate (New York: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1997),105
29
Ibid., 94.
30
Ibid., 117f.
 10

secularism as the effect of emergent rationality, historical teleology, etc.). Rawls

advances a secularist position but, on the contextualist reading I outline in chapter four,

does not make the totalizing claims which define normative secularism. Habermas

certainly advances a form of rationalist political theory, in the form of a “comprehensive

doctrine,” but argues that religion may legitimately play a public role in religious debate.

Stout and Wolterstorff, both of whom work from explicitly Christian perspectives (this is

most pronounced in Wolterstorff), argue for religion‟s role in public politics, but both

ultimately affirm a secular model of the social in which no one group can claim final

authority over all others.31

The distinction between normative and conventional secularism is theoretically

significant, even in cases where this might not be immediately evident. The difference

lies in the relative import accorded to a secular social order. Even in the case of the most

secularist of conventional secularists (e.g., Rorty in our example), a conventional

secularist will not be able to consistently make that claim that non-secular social

configures are more “primitive,” “irrational,” or “archaic” than their own. While

conventional secularists obviously understand a secular social order as preferable to a

non-secular social order, there is no universalist pretention precisely insofar as they

understand secularism to be conventional, which is to say, as one social form to be

advanced over against others, but without the simplistic assumption that all others are

inherently inferior or that a secular order is, in fact and despite all appearances, the end

toward which all social orders develop.

31
Though my idiom of expression would differ markedly from their own, I would identify my own position
as broadly consonant with that of Stout or Wolterstorff.
 11

The Narrative of Normative Secularism

Having dealt briefly with questions of secularization and conventional secularism,

I want to turn our attention to a consideration of normative secularism. I begin with a

consideration of the “secularization thesis,” which is, as José Casanova remarks, “the

main theoretical and analytical framework through which the social sciences have viewed

the relationship of religion and modernity,”32 and has been given its most standard

articulation by sociologists of religion, primarily and 1950s and 1960s.33 I take the

secularization thesis as my starting point because, as Asad notes, “the secularization

thesis in its entirety has always been at once descriptive and normative;”34 a

consideration of the secularization thesis will therefore help us to transition to a

consideration of normative secularism.

There is no one authoritative or accepted version of the secularization thesis;35

for my purposes, it is sufficient to cite a couple of representative formulations. Peter

Berger sums up the thesis in one sentence: “The idea is simple: Modernization

necessarily leads to a decline in religion, both in society and in the minds of

32
José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1994), 211.
33
For this basic dating of the term, see Peter Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global
Overview,” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter L.
Berger (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 2. See also William H.
Swatos, Jr. and Kevin J. Christiano, who note that “by the early 1970s, secularization was the reigning
dogma in the field.” See William H. Swatos, Jr and Kevin J. Christiano, “Secularization Theory: The
Course of a Concept,” in The Secularization Debate, ed. by William H. Swatos, Jr. and Daniel V. A. Olson
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 1-2.
34
Asad, Formations, 181.
35
Critics have often noted the diversity of formulations of the thesis. Jeffrey Hadden famously quipped
that “a critique of secularization theory itself uncovers a hodgepodge of loosely employed ideas rather than
a systematic theory.” Others, such as Sharon Hanson, have attempted to explain the apparent disagreement
of various theoretical statements, while Olivier Tschannen argues that there is an underlying order to the
diverse formulations of the theory. See Jeffrey K. Hadden, “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory,”
Social Forces, 65, no. 3 (March, 1987): 598; Sharon Hanson, “The Secularization Thesis: Talking at Cross
Purposes,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 12, no. 2 (1997): 159-179; Olivier Tschannen, “The
Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no. 4
(December, 1991).
 12

individuals.”36 Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce state the thesis in this way: “Stated briefly,

the secularization thesis asserts that modernity…brings in its wake (and may itself be

accelerated by) „the diminution of the social significance of religion‟,” where “social

significance” “seeks to capture the extent to which religion makes a difference to the

operation and standing of social roles and institutions…and to the beliefs and actions of

the individual.”37

While such formulations may appear to be a straightforward matter of empirical

investigation, I want to highlight the normative component lodged in the secularization

thesis. Taylor has provided a useful way for getting at what he calls “the unthought” of

secularization theory.38 He likens “mainstream secularization theory” (represented for us

in Bruce‟s “orthodox” model) to a three-story building. Accordingly,

The ground floor represents the factual claim that religious belief and practice
have declined….The basement contains some claims about how to explain these
changes….These add a story above the ground floor, about the place of religion
today. Where has the whole movement left us? What is the predicament, what are
the vulnerabilities and strengths of religion and unbelief today?39

If the ground floor corresponds to the descriptive category I am calling secularization,

then the basement corresponds to the normative narrative for which I reserve the term

secularism, while the upper story describes not simply the present, but involves predictive

claims about the future of religion. What we will find as we proceed is that the normative

account of how secularization has come about (the basement level) heavily codes

36
Berger, “Desecularization,” 2. Berger‟s significance lies in his position as a “defector” from the camp of
the secularists. After helping to define and advance the secularization thesis, Berger has since become
convinced that the secularization thesis is false. For an early treatment of the issue, see Peter L. Berger,
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
37
Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, “Secularization: The Orthodox Model,” in Religion and Modernization, ed.
Steve Bruce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 11. Steve Bruce is perhaps the most stalwart
defender of the secularization thesis at present. See his God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2002).
38
Taylor, Secular Age, 428.
39
Ibid., 431-432.
 13

predictive claims about what the place is religion is and will be (the upper story). My

primary concern, then, is with this “basement” level.

The claims concerning how to explain the changes, secularism, are most easily

presented in narrative form, and it will become clear as we continue that the narrative of

secularism is intertwined with other orienting narratives of the modern west, such as

those of rationalism, liberalism, and modernism. Several authors, all of whom are

interested in contesting normative secularism in important ways, offer distillations of this

narrative. William Connolly, for example, provides the following version:

Once the universal Catholic Church was challenged and dispersed by various
Protestant sects a unified public authority grounded in a common faith was drawn
into a series of sectarian conflicts and wars [the so-called “Wars of Religion”].
Because the sovereign‟s support of the right way to eternal life was said to hang
in the balance, these conflicts were often horribly destructive and intractable. The
best hope for a peaceful and just world under these new circumstances was
institution of a public life in which the final meaning of life, the proper route to
life after death, and the divine source of morality were pulled out of the public
realm and deposited into private life. The secularization of public life is thus
crucial to private freedom, pluralistic democracy, individual rights, public reason,
and the primacy of the state. The key to its success is the separation of church
and state and general acceptance of a conception of public reason (or some
surrogate) through which to reach public agreement on nonreligious issues.40

A number of issues flow together in this narrative, and it is worth taking a few moments

to highlight their relation to normative secularism.

The first point illustrated by Connolly‟s account is the linkage of secularism with

the Enlightenment critique of religion and emergent rationality.41 As Euben points out, it

was rationalist philosophers of the Enlightenment who advanced the idea that “reason is

40
William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1999), 20. For other, similar accounts, but also differentiated by specific concerns, see: José Casanova,
“Public Religions Revisited,” in Religion: Beyond a Concept, ed. Hent de Vries (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), 109; Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the
Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (New
York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 22-23; Cavanaugh, 123.
41
On the linkage of secularism to the Enlightenment critique of religion, see Casanova, Public Religions,
19; “Public Religions Revisited,” 110.
 14

both the means by which we come to know and master the world,” as well as the idea that

“facts about and actions in the world are legitimate because they are rational.”42 Thus,

“the course of history was reinterpreted as the development of reason,” and this

development was accomplished via opposition to “the domination of religion.”43

This notion of the “domination of religion” relates back to the “wars of religion”

(indicated in Connolly‟s account) and brings in the issue of what William Cavanaugh

calls the “myth of religious violence”44 and its relation to the secular nation-state.

Cavanaugh states this myth as follows:

What I call the “myth of religious violence” is the idea that religion is a
transhistorical and transcultural feature of human life, essentially distinct from
“secular” features such as politics and economics, which has a peculiarly
dangerous inclination to promote violence. Religion must therefore be tamed by
restricting its access to public power. The secular nation-state then appears as
natural, corresponding to a universal and timeless truth about the inherent dangers
of religion.45

The narrative of emergent rationality is therefore also a “soteriology,” insofar as the

narrative of the secular nation-state‟s emergence is “a story of our salvation from mortal

peril”46 posed by irrational religion.

As Casanova notes, this is a distinctly European narrative,47 and is intimately tied

to a further narrative of liberalism.48 Thus, through the experience of the Enlightenment

and the “wars of religion,”

42
Roxanne Euben, The Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern
Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 33.
43
Ibid., 34.
44
I make extensive use of Cavanaugh‟s text in the first portion of this chapter not only because of its value
as a well-written and well-researched resource, but also because I will raise a number of critical questions
about it in the second section.
45
Cavanaugh, 3.
46
Ibid., 123.
47
On the use of the term “European” here, see note 3 above.
48
It is important to note that, while being related to a narrative of liberalism, normative secularism and
liberalism are not simply equivalent (cf. Connolly, 10). “Liberalism” itself names a diverse range of
 15

Modern Europeans learned to separate religion, politics, and science. Most

importantly, they learned to tame religious passions and to dissipate obscurantist
fanaticism by banishing religion to a protected private sphere, while establishing
an open, liberal, secular public sphere, where freedom of expression and public
reason dominate.49

Not only is this emergence of the secular nation-state with its rational public sphere a

fulfilment (albeit partial) of human rational capacities,50 we see that it is also, in Scott

Thomas‟s words, part and parcel of “the political mythology of liberalism.”51 Thomas

offers yet another narrative construal which highlights the connections in question:

The state—the liberal or secular state, is needed to save us from the cruel and
violent consequences of religion. The modern state, the privatization of religion,
and the secularization of politics arose to limit religion‟s domestic influence,
minimize the affect of religious disputes, and end the bloody and destructive role
of religion in international relations. Thus, the political mythology of liberalism is
the myth of the modern secular state as our savior from the horrors of modern
wars of religion or clashes between civilizations (emphasis added).52

We see here the connections between secularism, rationality, liberalism, and the state, all

articulated as an account of our salvation from religion. Religion represents “an irrational

and dangerous impulse” which stands in distinction to “rational, secular forms of

power.”53 “Fundamentalism” is the result of the failure to maintain this distinction,

political-theoretical perspective which are not homogeneous. Not all forms of liberalism represent forms of
normative secularism (and vice versa). Connolly, for example, is an explicit critic of normative secularism,
yet he says he “aspire[s] to a critical liberalism” (10). Likewise, Rawls‟s political liberalism, at least on the
contextualist reading I advance in chapter four, need not be understood as a form of normative secularism
(though it is certainly a form of what I have called conventional secularism). On the other hand, and
staying with Rawlsian terminology, I think comprehensive forms of liberalism would be very difficult to
disentangle from normative secularism. For good discussion of the diverse forms of liberalism and the
difficulty of defining liberalism as a coherent political-theoretical paradigm, see: Alan Ryan, “Liberalism,”
in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, s.v. “Liberalism,”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism (accessed March 26, 2010).
49
Casanova, “Public Religions,” 109.
50
Vincent P. Pecora, Secularization and Cultural Criticism: Religion, Nation, and Modernity (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 30.
51
Thomas, 22.
52
Ibid., 22-23.
53
Cavanaugh, 4.
 16

thereby allowing irrational religion to overflow its boundaries within the private domain

and to take on an illegitimate public function.54

Thankfully, we can rest assured that this is not simply the narrative of

Europe‟s salvation; rather, it is the very definition of what it is to be “modern,” not

merely for Europe, but for the world. This narrative is, as Casanova notes, “so

intrinsically interwoven with all the theories of the modern world and with the self-

understanding of modernity” that to question it is necessarily to question the category of

“modernity” as well.55 In Grace Davie‟s memorable phrasing, secularism “assumed

(among other things) that whatever characterized Europe‟s religious life today would

characterize everyone else‟s tomorrow.”56

The connection between secularism and modernization is nowhere as clear as in

modernization theory, which is understood as laying out the means of achieving “the

complete transformation of the economic, social, cultural, and political infrastructure of

developing countries”57 and is the “policy expression” of the normative secularist

expression of the state.58 Thomas draws our attention to three main assumptions

operative in modernization theory. One of these assumptions is none other than

secularism,59 and the secularist orientation of modernization theory is clearly evident in

the other two assumptions. The first of these is that “a „modern society‟ can be clearly

distinguished from a „traditional society.‟”60 “Traditional” meant, in crucially important

respects, “religious,” and named any society in which “an ongoing, public role for

54
Ibid., 203.
55
José Casanova, Public Religions, 18.
56
Grace Davie, Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
1.
57
Thomas, 51.
58
Hurd, 31-32.
59
Thomas, 52.
60
Ibid., 51.
 17

religious personnel and religious institutions” was still common practice.61 A “traditional

society,” then, was a society which had not yet learned the lessons of the European wars

of religion. The second remaining assumption is that “modernization is conceived to be a

linear, progressive conception of social change, a universal theory, applicable to all non-

Western societies that were in the process of becoming „modern‟” (emphasis added).62

Such societies were “making an inevitable transition toward a common end” (emphasis

added).63

The italicized terms in the previous two sentences highlight the fact that

normative secularism represents a narrative with claims to universality, necessarily

involving a progressive, teleological development. As Casanova remarks, “the story of

secularization was embedded within an even broader narrative of general teleological

processes of social modernization and progressive human development.”64 The notion of

secularization, and therefore the secularization thesis, may, in principle, be “value free.”65

In reality, however, secularism defines not only (an idealized) European identity,66 but

the teleological trajectory of “civilization” as such. To cite Casanova once more, “the

West simply showed the future to the rest of the world.”67

The Critical Displacement of Normative Secularism

This broad narrative, and the more narrowly stated secularization thesis

formulated by sociologists, has sustained heavy criticism from a number of quarters and

61
Ibid. In a point which will be of some relevance later, Thomas also notes that this conception of
“traditional” depended upon a notion of “religion” as “static and monolithic,” in contrast to “something
dynamic and changing.”
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid., 51-52.
64
Casanova, “Public Religions,” 109.
65
Berger, “Desecularization,” 3.
66
Casanova, “Public Religions,” 109. Again, see note 3 above.
67
Ibid.
 18

for a number of reasons. The most significant factor spurring this reevaluation has been

the so-called global “return” or “resurgence” of religion.68 Hurd nicely summarizes the

significance of this resurgence:69

The problem of how religion fits with politics has become a significant topic not
because it was identified as theoretically important in international relations, but
because real-world events forced it back into the consciousness of international
relations theorists….It has now become impossible to maintain that religion is
irrelevant to international outcomes, as most conventional accounts would have
it.70

Berger, the one-time champion of secularism, states the issue sharply and concisely,

writing that “the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. The world today,

with some exceptions…is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more

so than ever.”71 Reflecting on the rise of “conservative or orthodox traditionalist

movements” which are resurgent “almost everywhere,”72 Berger notes that “the world

today is massively religious, is anything but the secularized world that had been predicted

(whether joyfully or despondently) by so many analysts of modernity.”73 Though the

signs of this religious resurgence are everywhere, Thomas usefully notes three which

have been the most significant in calling secularism into question in the areas of political

68
On this point, see Casanova, Public Religions, 19; Pecora, 26; Rajeev Bhargava, “Political Secularism,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 636. Though I will
continue using the term “resurgence” to describe this phenomenon, it is a highly misleading term, a point I
will address in the next section.
69
I reserve my critical comments concerning the language of “resurgence” for the next section.
70
Hurd, 134.
71
Berger, “Desecularization,” 2. For specific examples, see the individual chapters of Peter Berger, ed.,
The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 1999.
72
Berger, “Desecularization,” 6.
73
Ibid., 9.
 19

theory and international relations theory: The Iranian Revolution, the rise of Solidarity

and the Polish Revolution, and the events of September 11, 2001.74

Other relevant examples of religious resurgence could be provided (e.g. Islamism

beyond Iran, the rise of the Religious Right in the United States, the politicization of

Tibet, Hindu nationalism), but the three highlighted by Thomas serve to illustrate the

point. My concern is not to dwell on these examples, but only to note that such socio-

political eventualities and formations have served to foster critical reconsiderations of

secularism. To be sure, such reconsideration has not been an even or universal process.

But normative secularism, the secularization thesis, and even the question of

secularization as such, have all been called into question.

I take the “return of religion” to be an accomplished fact, and my aim is not to

demonstrate this. Rather, my point in noting this phenomenon was to highlight its role as

instigating critical reappraisals of normative secularism; it is to a consideration of these

that I now want to turn our attention. Referring once again to Taylor‟s metaphor of the

multi-storied structure, I want to consider some of the ways the basement and second-

story levels of the structure have been called into question in recent scholarship.

In my view, the most significant and compelling (though I will raise important

issues in this regard in the next section) line of questioning with regard to secularism has

been that which contests the universality of the concepts “religion” and “secular” as such

and, along with this, the presumed neutrality of the distinction. What is contested in this

line of question, repeating Cavanaugh, is the notion that “religion is a transhistorical and

transcultural feature of human life, essentially distinct from „secular‟ features such as

74
Thomas, 1-10. On the significance of the Iranian Revolution for calling secularism into question, see,
Jakobsen and Pellegrini, 9-10.
 20

politics and economics….”75 Within normative secularism, “religion” and “secular” are

presented as simply existent social spaces with the secular envisioned, in Asad‟s words,

as “the space in which real human life gradually emancipates itself from the controlling

power of „religion‟ and thus achieves the latter‟s relocation.”76

Following Asad‟s lead, we can affirm that part of the reason the narrative of

normative secularism no longer has the compelling force it once did is that “the

categories of „politics‟ and „religion‟ turn out to implicate each other more profoundly

than we thought.”77 As he notes earlier in the same work, distinctions such as “religion,”

“state,” “secular,” and so forth, as they are presently used, did not exist prior to the

nineteenth century.78 The significance of this point is nothing less than the ultimate

discrediting of normative secularism and the understanding of the social it legitimizes;

this discrediting, on the other hand, is what requires an effort to reconceptualize political

theory as it relates to “religion.”

75
Cavanaugh, 3. Fitzgerald emphasizes the same point when he states that “it is widely assumed that
religion and religions are and have existed universally at all times and in all places.” See Timothy
Fitzgerald, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25.
76
Asad, Formations, 191. See also Casanova, “Public Religions,” 104.
77
Asad, Formations, 200.
78
Ibid., 190-191. It is worth noting a number of recent studies which develop this and similar points,
primarily by employing methods of historicist genealogical critique. Some of the most notable of these
include: Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Russell McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion:
The Discourse of Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997) and The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (London: Routledge, 2003); King;
William E. Arnal, “Definition,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon
(London: Continuum, 2000); Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge,
and Ideology, trans. William Sayers (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Tomoko
Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions; or, How European Pluralism was Preserved in the
Language of Universalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology
of Religious Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Discourse; and Cavanaugh. Though
Asad is the best known of these contemporary commentators, Casanova is incorrect when he states that
Asad was “the first to call our attention” to these issues (Casanova, “Public Religions,” 103). On the
contrary, there are significant forerunners to these modern studies. For just two examples, see John Bossy,
Christianity and the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) and Wilfred Cantwell
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).
 21

The Historicity of “Religion” and “Secular”

Any full consideration of a critical counter-narrative to that of secularism is

impossible here. What follows is a consideration of some of the most significant points

of such a counter-narrative. I begin with a brief consideration of those terms which

would transform into the binary pair of “secular” and “religion”: Religio and saecularis,

from the noun saeculum.

Concerning the former, debate exists concerning the precise etymology of religio,

but the prevailing opinion seems to be “that it stems from the root leig meaning „to

bind‟.”79 Cavanaugh notes that, as such, religio was “only one of a constellation of terms

surrounding social obligations in ancient Rome,” referring to “a powerful requirement to

perform some action.”80 Smith notes that “the adjectival religiosus and the adverbial

religiose were cultic terms referring primarily to the careful observance of ritual

obligations.”81 In the patristic period, Augustine‟s Of True Religion was the only treatise

devoted entirely to the term,82 and in it religio defines worship. Augustine distinguishes

between true worship and false worship, arguing that true religion is directed toward God

as revealed in Jesus Christ.83 But, crucially, while there is true religio and false religio,

“Augustine‟s subject is not „Christianity‟ as a—or the—true religion alongside other

religions understood as systematic sets of propositions and rites.”84 In fact, in Book X of

City of God, Augustine comes to the conclusion that the term religio is inadequate as an

79
Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of
Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 180.
80
Cavanaugh, 62.
81
Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” 180. He goes on to note that “this sense survives in the English
adverbial construction „religiously‟ designating a conscientious repetitive action such as „She reads the
morning newspaper religiously‟.”
82
Cf. Cavanaugh, 62.
83
See, in particular, Augustine, Of True Religion 1-10.
84
Cavanaugh, 63.
 22

expression of the worship of God because in the “ordinary Latin speech” of both the

learned and ignorant “we say that religio is to be observed in human relationships,

affinities and friendships of every kind,” with the result that “the term…does not escape

ambiguity when used in discussing the worship of the deity.”85

In dominant medieval usage, religio still does not have the semantic range of the

contemporary term “religion,” and is less frequently used than in the patristic period.86

Asad points out that “„the secular‟ was [originally] part of a theological discourse” which

was in full effect in the medieval period.87 Bossy writes that “with very few exceptions,

the word was only used to describe different sorts of monastic or similar rule, and the

way of life pursued under them.”88 The same considerations hole for the “secular,”

which was simply the obverse of religio in this sense. For example, in thirteenth century

European Christianity, the secular was related to a monastic context89 and had to do with

“the legal (canonical) process whereby a „religious‟ person left the cloister to return to the

„world‟ and its temptations, becoming thereby a „secular‟ person.”90 The important point

here is that, at this time, both “religion” and “secular” are intelligible only within the

context of European Christianity.91

85
Augustine The City of God Against the Pagans X.1.
86
Cavanaugh, 64.
87
Asad, Formations, 192.
88
Bossy, 4.
89
Edward I. Bailey, “The Implicit Religiosity of the Secular: A Martian Perspective on the Definition of
Religion,” in Defining Religion: Investigating the Boundaries Between the Sacred and Secular, ed. Arthur
L. Greil and David G. Bromiley (Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd., 2003), 61. It is worth noting that this
usage of the concepts of “religion” and the “secular” is still technically applied in modern Catholic thought.
For brief but detailed examples of such usage, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.vv. “Religious Life” and
“Secularization of Clerics”; The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Religious Life.”
90
Casanova, Public Religions, 13. See also Hurd, 13; Asad, Formations, 192; Bailey, 61. John Keane adds
the point that the category of the “secular clergy” often carried negative connotations. See John Keane,
“Secularism?” in Religion and Democracy, ed. David Marquand and Ronald L. Nettler (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 2000), 6.
91
It is also worth noting, with Bailey, that “religious” and “secular” are already co-constitutive at this time:
“The „secular‟ was, simply, that which was not „religious‟—in this monastic sense” (Bailey, 61).
 23

Thomas Aquinas does consider the term religio in contexts other than those of

religious orders (though he treats the term in that context as well). But, significantly,

religio in these treatments is a virtue of justice, having to do with rendering God God‟s

due, though the virtue of religio falls short of perfect justice because human beings fail to

adequately render what is due to God.92 Further, religio is a moral virtue, rather than a

theological virtue, because the object of the latter is “the last end,” whereas religio “is

properly about things referred to that end.”93 That is, the object of religio is not God as

such, but the rites and practices devoted to the worship of God.94 In this regard, I also

find it instructive to note that, because it is a moral virtue in this sense, Aquinas

emphasizes that religio is not about belief; belief reaches out “to God Himself [sic],”

while religio does not.95

Casanova notes that the later transformation of the concept of the secular (and, by

implication, of religion) is related to the transformation of European Christianity initiated

by the Protestant Reformation.96 In this period, the term “„secularization‟ was first used

to signify the massive expropriation and appropriation, usually by the state, of

monasteries, landholdings, and the mortmain wealth of the Church after the Protestant

Reformation and the ensuing religious wars.”97 This basic transformation of the concept

is what prepares the ground for more distinctly modern conceptions of the secular.

Bailey captures the point nicely, and is worth quoting at some length:

92
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II.80.1.
93
Ibid,, II-II.81.5.
94
Cavanaugh, 65. It is notable that this notion of religion as a virtue is also still applicable in the context of
contemporary Catholicism. See: New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Religion, Virtue Of”; The Modern
Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Religion, Virtue Of.”
95
Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II.81.5.
96
José Casanova, “Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad,” in Powers of the Secular Modern:
Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, ed. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2006) ,21; “Public Religions,” 103.
97
Casanova, Public Religions, 13. See also Asad, Formations, 192; Keane, 6.
 24

Popular usage changes with (popular experience of) praxis. So “religious” came
to mean “ecclesiastical” rather than “monastic.” “Religion” comes to infer [sic] a
social organization focusing upon organized religion, largely expressed in a
conceptualized credo, formalized ritual, and deductive morals. “Secular”
therefore comes to mean freedom from religion (often seen as “church
interference”), in contrast to the monk‟s “freedom from the world‟s rule.”98

With such transformations, we come up against what Asad describes as an “ideological

inversion”:99 The “secular” now not only stands opposed to “religion,” but in fact

represents the “natural” sphere of the social world once liberated from oppressive

religion.

Significant conceptual transformations also attend the term religio. We have

already seen how the term related to clergy divisions in the medieval period. Cavanaugh

provides additional information concerning the use of the term in this period by

highlighting four meanings that religio did not carry:

First, religio is not a universal genus of which Christianity is a particular

species….The second thing that religio was not is a system of propositions or
beliefs….The third thing that religio is not…is a purely interior impulse secreted
away in the human soul….What religio is not for medieval Christians, fourthly, is
an “institutional force” separable from other nonreligious, or secular, forces.100

By way of contrast, “religion” came to be defined in precisely these terms in the modern

period.101 Cavanaugh narrates how the concept of religion developed: In the Renaissance

period religion came to name a universal, interior impulse which underlies a diversity of

98
Bailey, 62. See also Keane, 7.
99
Asad, Formations, 192.
100
Cavanaugh, 65-67.
101
“Religion in modernity indicates a universal genus of which the various religions are species; each
religion comes to be demarcated by a system of propositions; religion is identified with an essentially
interior, private impulse; and religion comes to be seen as essentially distinct from secular pursuits such as
politics, economics, and the like” (69). In addition to the works in note 5 above, Robert J. Baird highlights
many of these points; see Robert J. Baird, “Late Secularism,” in Secularisms, ed. Janet R .Jakobsen and
Ann Pellegrini (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). Fitzgerald also highlights the “genus/species”
relationship in the terms of “essence” and “manifestation,” according to which determinate religions
“incarnate” “Religion” (Fitzgerald, Discourse, 30).
 25

external rites;102 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries religion came to be defined as

a system of beliefs or doctrines, and so to be defined as essentially internal;103 after 1600

it became possible to speak of “religions” in the plural and of a general, universal, and

abstract category of “religion.”104

Cavanaugh concludes his historical survey by noting that, far from being

transhistorical, “the idea of religion has a history,” and adds that “there was a time when

religion, as modern people use the term, was not, and then it was invented.”105 While I

would quibble about Cavanaugh‟s use of the term “invented” as a description of this

process, his basic point nevertheless stands: “Religion” is not simply a descriptive

category naming an existent phenomenon. Similar considerations obviously hold for the

concept of “the secular” as well. Numerous scholars note that the modern concepts of

“religion” and “secular” are co-constitutive. Swatos and Christiano, to give just one

example, write that “secularization, secularity, or the secular is always relative to some

definition of religion or the religious.”106 The concept of the secular therefore shares the

same history of invention as that of religion; as Asad puts it, like “religion,” then,

“secularism as political doctrine arose in modern Euro-America.”107

The result of these considerations, together with the “return of religion,” is to

render unconvincing the secularist account of a rational secular sphere progressively

102
Cavanaugh, 70-71.
103
Ibid., 72-74.
104
Ibid., 74-77.
105
Ibid., 81.
106
Swatos and Christiano, 5. In addition, see Baird, 164; Fitzgerald, Discourse, 32; Asad, Formations,
200. Bailey helpfully points out that the co-constitution of “religion” and “secular” has attended the pair
of terms since at least the medieval period: “The meaning of each term (religious and secular) retains its
basic parameters [in the transition from the medieval to the modern period], as the counterterm of its
opposite” (Bailey, 62).
107
Asad, Formations, 2.
 26

liberating itself from oppressive and irrational religious forces.108 This narrative,

particularly as it arose in the context of the discussions of secularism in the 1960s and

1970s, is best understood as a retroactive explanation of modern developments as they

were perceived at that time,109 rather than as a descriptive account.

The Socio-Political Legacy of Secularism

Having made the previous statement, however, the fact remains that secularism

represents much more than a simple misunderstanding or ignorance of historical matters.

Secularism has had enormous concrete sociopolitical effects, and it continues to

constitute a legitimating discourse for the most significant geo-political form in the

modern world: The nation-state. In our discussion to this point, we have seen that

secularism is linked to the state in terms of rationality and, by extension, peace: The

secular, and especially liberal, state is that which protects and preserves in the face of

irrational violence, which is to say, in the face of religion. A closer consideration of

these issues will show that, on the contrary, secularism is complicit with, indeed

legitimates, the violence of the modern state. My interest in detailing this aspect of

normative secularism can be stated as follows: If the “return of religion” and the

historicity of the concepts “religion” and “secular” demonstrate how and why secularism

108
Here and throughout the discussion in this chapter I have described the narrative of normative
secularism as being “displaced,” “rendered unconvincing,” etc. I want to be clear that I am not claiming
that normative secularism has been “disproven,” for the simple reason that I do not think it is possible to
disprove any metaphysical or teleological schema which is not, by definition, open to empirical
verification. To emphasize the point once again, then, this narrative of secularism has lost its normative
force, but this does not mean it has been disproven.
109
On the point of secularism as a retroactive account, see Stout, 102. Bailey argues that participants in the
debates in the 1960s and 1970s were largely ignorant of the medieval and later historical development of
the concepts they were employing (Bailey, 61). In light of this, Cavanaugh is probably correct to urge that
secularist discourse is best not seen as a form of grand conspiracy (Cavanaugh, 206).
 27

is no longer compelling, recognition of the legitimating role of secularism in the violence

of the modern nation-state makes it clear why secularism should not be compelling.

We can begin by exploring in more detail the connection between secularism and

the emergence of the modern state. Hurd draws our attention to the fact that secularism is

far from simply neutral or rational, arguing that “secularist boundaries between politics

and religion” exist “as a result of historical and political processes that create distinctions

and then lean upon these distinctions to maintain power.”110 In a similar vein, Cavanaugh

writes that “in the West, the religious-secular distinction has been used to marginalize

certain practices as inherently nonrational and potentially violent, and thus to be

privatized, in order to clear the way for the more „rational‟ and peace-making pursuits of

the state and the market.”111

This latter point returns us to the issue of the “wars of religion.” While we have

seen something of the way these conflicts figure into the narrative of normative

secularism, it is instructive to take a closer look at how they relate to secularism.

Cavanaugh forcefully argues that the modern state did not save Europe from the wars of

religion, but that, on the contrary, “the absorption of church into state…began well before

the Reformation” and that this was a contributing factor, rather than a response, to wars

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.112 As he argues, “the transfer of power from

the church to the state [the expanded concept of „secularization‟ we have already

considered] was itself at the root of these wars,”113 a position in marked contrast to

110
Hurd, 16.
111
Cavanaugh, 10.
112
Ibid., 166. On the fact that the consolidation of the church by the emergent state had been going on
since before the wars of religion, see Heinz Schilling, “War and Peace at the Emergence of Modernity:
Europe Between State Belligerence, Religious Wars, and the Desire for Peace,” in 1648, War and Peace in
Europe, ed. Klaus Bussman and Heinz Schilling (Münster, s.n., 1999), 14.
113
Cavanaugh, 162.
 28

secularist accounts which were present in nascent form as early as the seventeenth

century and which persist to the present.114

It is not possible to reproduce Cavanaugh‟s detailed considerations here; once

again, we will have to limit ourselves to the highlights.115 In what sense, then, does

Cavanaugh understand the emergence of the secular state to lie at the root of the wars of

religion? Cavanaugh adheres to the “confessionalization thesis,” which holds that “the

building of strong confessional identities among Protestants and Catholics in this period

was part of the state-building project.”116 An important aspect of state-building was “the

absorption of the church by the state,”117 which effected a unified populace marked by

sharp territorial boundaries which coincided with sharp confessional boundaries.118 The

territorializing of the modern state therefore took place through the exacerbation of

ecclesial differences, thereby contributing to conflict between Catholics and

Protestants.119 It is important to keep two main points in view. First, to make the point

once again, that the division between “religion” and “secular” was a historical effect of “a

new configuration of Christian societies in which may legislative and jurisdictional

powers and claims to power…were passing from the church to the new sovereign

state.”120 Second, that the historical emergence of the modern nation-state is much more

complex than the “soteriological” version outlined above would allow, with the result

114
For excellent and representative examples of such accounts, see Ibid., 124-141.
115
One of the most compelling portions of Cavanaugh‟s presentation is his refutation of the notion that
participants in the “wars of religion” opposed each other based on religious difference. By marshalling
example after example of historical evidence, Cavanaugh demonstrates that the actual workings of these
conflicts were much more complex, varied, and shifting than an account of “Protestant-vs-Catholic” could
allow. For this presentation, see Ibid., 142-151.
116
Ibid., 168.
117
Ibid., 176.
118
Ibid., 170.
119
Ibid., 176.
120
Ibid., 161.
 29

that it is not credible to see the nation-state as having arisen as the solution to the “wars

of religion.”121

We can take this point a step further: It stands to reason that if the secular state

did not arise as a response to the wars of religion, then the same thing applies to the

specifically liberal state.122 On the contrary, Cavanaugh notes that “if „liberalism‟…is

taken to mean the secularization of government, then the very opposite is found in Europe

as the so-called wars of religion drew to a close.”123 What Cavanaugh has in mind is the

emergence of the European confessional, as opposed to secular, state which emerged out

of the “Westphalian settlement” which closed out the Thirty Years‟ War and provided the

basis for the modern international system of states.124

Thomas notes that one key aspect of the Westphalian settlement is the so-called

“non-intervention norm” in international relations. As he describes it,

both the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Treaty of Westphalia a century later,
by adopting the principle of „cuius regio, eius religio‟ (the ruler determines the
religion of his realm) made religious toleration and noninterference (on religious
grounds) in the domestic affairs of other states—in other words, pluralism among
states—one of the main principles of the modern international order.125

Casanova notes that cuius regio, eius religio is “not the formative principle of the modern

secular [and I would add „liberal‟] democratic state, but rather that of the modern

121
Ibid., 174. It is important to note that Cavanaugh is not arguing that the “wars of religion” were “really”
political rather than religious (162, 166). On the contrary, he recognizes that the churches were implicated
in the violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (166). To argue that these wars were “really”
political rather than religious would be to simply reverse the order of the religion/secular dichotomy, rather
than to call its naturalness into question, as Cavanaugh aims to do.
122
Cavanaugh cites a number of contemporary political theorists who advance precisely this claim. He
highlights such examples as Quentin Skinner, Jeffrey Stout, Judith Shklar, John Rawls, Kathleen M.
Sullivan, and Francis Fukuyama, among others. For his discussion on this point, see Ibid., 130-141.
123
Ibid., 174. See also Casanova, “Public Religions,” 110.
124
For a full-length and in-depth treatment of Westphalia and its significance, see Daniel Philpott,
Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001).
125
Thomas, 55. Cavanaugh (74) notes that the phrase “cuius regio, eius religio” was not coined until
around 1600, and so could not have appeared in the Peace of Augsburg. The significance of this is not
clear, insofar as it isn‟t clear that Thomas is stating that the explicit language appeared in the earlier treaty.
 30

confessional territorial absolutist state” (emphasis added).126 The result of the conflicts

in Europe at the time was “the confessionalization of the state and…the territorialization

of religions and peoples,”127 rather than the secular state. In other words, Westphalia

contributed to precisely the “confessionalized” state-building we have already

considered. In contrast, “the advent of liberalism in any strong form would come only a

century or more after the conclusion of the so-called religious wars.”128

These considerations make clear that, rather than representing stable, and separate

categories, “religion and [secular] politics do not belong to two distinct domains of power

and authority. The designation of the religious and the political is itself a political act”

(emphasis added).129 Or, as Cavanaugh puts it, “the attempt to say that there is a

transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion that is separable from secular

phenomena is itself part of a particular configuration of power, that of the modern, liberal

nation-state as it developed in the West.”130 The modern nation-state is a product, in part,

of the narrative of normative secularism.

Secularism, and the concept of “religion” structured by it, relates not only to the

emergence of the modern nation-state, but also with (indeed, it legitimates) the violence

of the modern state. Having demonstrated the relation of secularism to the emergence of

the modern state as such, I want to turn now to a fuller consideration of this complicity.

Cavanaugh points out that one effect of the secularization of church into state was the

“sacralization” of the state, with a resulting “migration of the idea of martyrdom from the

126
Casanova, “Public Religions,” 110.
127
Ibid.
128
Cavanaugh, 176.
129
Hurd, 153.
130
Cavanaugh, 9. It will become clear in what follows, particularly in chapters three and four, that I take
“the political” as equivalent to attempts to the shaping of the social as such, and so to be irreducibly related
to the exercise of power. It is not clear precisely what the scope of “power” is in Cavanaugh‟s thought.
 31

church to the state.”131 The overall result was “a shift in what people were willing to kill

and die for”132 and a concomitant legitimation of “the nation-state‟s monopoly on its

citizens‟ willingness to sacrifice and kill.”133 Henceforth, any violence other than that of

the secular liberal state would be rendered illegitimate. Contrary to the normative

account of secularism, then, the distinction to be drawn is not between violence and peace

(embodied in the rational, liberal, and secular state), but between legitimate and

illegitimate violence.

We can bring this latter point into sharper relief through a consideration of one of

Jürgen Habermas‟s points concerning the liberal state. As he puts it, “in the liberal view,

political power sheds its inherently violent character by virtue of its binding legal

connection to the exercise of power in accordance with principles capable of meeting

with universal agreement” (emphasis added).134 Habermas‟s point is that the coercive or

violent action of the state is ceases to be understood as “violent” insofar as it can meet

with universally applicable principles (in Habermas‟s formulation, the principles of

communicative reason). As John Rawls (whom Habermas quotes) puts the issue, “our

exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a

constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be

expected to endorse in the light of the principles and ideals acceptable to their common

human reason.”135 The implication of these formulations is that everyone upon whom

state coercion is levied is non-rational (in Habermas‟s communicative understanding of

131
Cavanaugh, 174-175.
132
Ibid., 175. It is worth noting that, in this portion of his discussion, Cavanaugh relies heavily on Ernst
Kantorowicz, The King‟s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957).
133
Cavanaugh, 4.
134
Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 134.
135
John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005),
137. Quoted in Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 134n.
 32

the term) or unreasonable (in Rawls‟s terms), and it is this irrationality or

unreasonableness that renders the state action in question non-violent, because legitimate.

It is precisely this ability of the state to “shed its inherently violent character” that

Cavanaugh (and others with him) calls into question by demonstrating the ways in which

the purported rationality or reasonableness of the state in fact serve the state‟s interests.136

I want to highlight three specific examples of the connection between religion, the

secular, and state violence (in addition to the violence implicit in the very emergence of

the state): The colonial history of powerful European states; the contemporary foreign

policy of states like the US; and way that modern liberal states relate religion and politics

within their own polities.

In relation to colonialism, Cavanaugh notes that, initially, colonizing powers

denied colonized populations‟ possession of “religion” as a means of denying their

essential humanity, and so of denying them rights.137 Once colonized, however, these

populations were routinely “discovered” to have had “religion” after all, a discovery

which also served the needs of the colonizing state: “When they were subdued,

attributing religion to indigenous peoples was at once a way of depoliticizing their

cultures and a way of entering their cultures into a comparative framework in which—

136
The discussion of chapters three and four, in particular, will highlight my own disagreement with
Habermas‟s discussion of the state and violence at this point. If, as I argue, any social formation is
irreducibly the result of a political articulation which does not operate according to a rationality or reason
anterior to it, then social formations are, in this sense, ultimately without rational justification. Contra
Habermas, then, there is an element of irreducible violence which marks any social sedimentation,
including the modern liberal state.
137
Cavanaugh, 86. Fitzgerald also highlights the complex role of religion as it related to European
colonialism, a discussion he analyzes in terms of the “discourse on civility and barbarity” which gives his
book its title. See, in particular, Fitzgerald, Discourse, chs. 4 and 10.
 33

compared to the norm of religion, Christianity—their practices would be found wanting”

(emphasis added).138

While the role of comparison in relation to the colonial encounter is an important

theme,139 our focus will be the attribution of religion as a form of depoliticization, which

is more directly related to our topic of secularism. The first movement in the

depoliticization of subject populations through the attribution of religion involved the

very universalization of secularism itself, which is to say the universalization of the

religion/secular binary. As we have seen with regard to the narrative of secularism, the

European “discovery” of the differentiation between “religion” and the “secular” was

taken to be universal in scope.140 With the West standing as the universal model, all

societies in which religion played an illegitimate role were rendered “parochial,” and

could therefore be classified as “primitive,” “strange,” or “unreasonable.”141 As Daniel

Dubuisson points out, within a discourse of universality, any departure from the universal

can only represent a threat, and must legitimately be removed;142 the universality of the

religion/secular dichotomy thereby legitimated, even demanded, the deliverance of light

into darkness, or the cultivation of the garden in the wilderness.143

In the context of colonial territories, “religion as such was identified with the

dematerialized relationship of the individual soul to God,”144 which is to say that religion

138
Cavanaugh, 86.
139
For a detailed discussion of the significance of comparison, see Masuzawa. None of this is to imply that
the attribution of “religion” to subject populations did not play a number of additional, related roles (e.g.
the definition of a territorial region, the maintenance of social stability, etc.).
140
This despite the fact that, in Cavanaugh‟s words, “this division [between religious and secular] is found
nowhere that has not been influenced by the West” (99).
141
Ibid., 100.
142
Dubuisson, 21.
143
Asad highlights these metaphors in relation to contemporary liberal discourse, and also notes that they
are used in the context of colonialism. See Asad, Formations, 59-60, 59n96.
144
Cavanaugh, 87.
 34

was defined as a matter of personal belief, with the result that any politicization of

religion was necessarily transgressive.145 “Religion” was constituted as a properly

private, individual matter, and so was not a matter for the publicity of the political.

The case of British colonialism in India as it relates to Hinduism provides a

compelling example of this process. As such, “Hinduism,” whether understood as a

negative or a positive form, was defined in accordance with the view that “a proper

religion should be essentially interior, a direct, ahistorical, and apolitical relation of the

individual soul to a larger, superhuman cosmic reality” (emphasis added).146 Hinduism

was inherently non-rational, thereby justifying the imposition of order in India by the

British, and because Hinduism belonged to the inner realm, it was separate from “the

essentially distinct realms of politics and economics.”147 This definition of religion

served the purpose of removing Hinduism from “the ambit of worldly power.”148

The constitution of Indian identity as essentially “religious” also had the effect of

rendering “authentic” Indian identity timeless and ahistorical. Authentic identity is

therefore “mimetic,” which is to say that identity is only authentic to the extent that it

identically repeats, and does not depart from, its “religious” origins.149 Such a rendering

of authentic colonial identity in terms of the ahistorical and depoliticized concept of

“religion” ensures that any politicization of colonial identity, as, say, opposed to colonial
145
Arvind-Pal Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the
Politics of Translation, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 55.
146
Cavanaugh, 90.
147
Ibid., 91; see also 88.
148
Ibid., 91.
149
Mandair, 295. Much of this discussion relies heavily on Mandair, pp. 293ff. Mandair‟s specific topic is
not colonialism per se, but actually how the dynamics involved in the “history of religions” approach to
India, Sikhism, Sikh scripture, and so on lead to the same consequences. However, one of Mandair‟s
central aims is to demonstrate that a purportedly “post-colonial” discourse like that of the history of
religions in fact reinscribes the same depoliticizing dynamics as colonialist discourse (on this point, see his
Introduction to the work). Given the ultimately compelling nature of his demonstration, his work on
religion and depoliticized social identity in the post-colonial context is equally relevant for a discussion of
the colonial context.
 35

order or policies, is a departure from, or a weakening of, this authentic identity.

“Indigenous” identity is thereby depoliticized.

More importantly, any such departure represents a form of violence perpetrated

against the colonial power. As Mandair notes, “this might happen when such

practitioners refuse conformity to a repetition of the same by assuming their historicity

and in so doing determine sovereignty in a different way. Such repetition…would

constitute an entry into the political, and will therefore be represented as violence”

(emphasis added).150 The reason such deviation can be represented as violent is that “the

kind of change [it initiates]…challenges the ontological order itself.”151 Any such non-

identical repetition of social identity will be unlawful by definition, having “deviated

from its proper place, namely the domain of privatized interiority,” thereby legitimating

the colonizer state‟s exercise of violence (recalling that only state violence can be

legitimate) against it.152

The connections between religion, the secular, the state, and violence are also

present in the international politics of powerful contemporary states, influencing relations

with the non-West, particularly Islam, defined by the “stubborn refusal to tame religious

passions in the public sphere,” the confrontation with which results in the reinforcement

of “a reassuring dichotomy between their violence—which is absolutist, divisive, and

irrational—and our violence, which is modest, unitive, and rational.”153 This is, of

course, consonant with the themes we have already considered. For example, the lessons

learned from “wars of religion” have been invoked to legitimate military action on the

150
Ibid., 296.
151
Ibid., 296-297.
152
Ibid., 297-298.
153
Cavanaugh, 183.
 36

part of the post-9/11 United States,154 while Roxanne Euben highlights the links between

the West‟s opposition to “Islam” and the Enlightenment elevation of reason through the

construction of an irrational “other”:155 The West represents reason and order, while

“Islam” represents violent religion. The broad narrative of secularism, entwined as it is

with narratives of modernism, liberalism, the “wars of religion,” and colonialism

therefore continues to have profound effects in new and contemporary socio-political

configurations. The irrationality of the non-West‟s (Islam‟s, etc.) violent religion

justifies the West‟s legitimate violence, undertaken with the end of enacting peace.

“They have not yet learned to remove the dangerous influence of religion from political

life. Their violence is therefore irrational and fanatical. Our violence, being secular, is

rational, peace making, and sometime regrettably necessary to contain their violence.”156

To echo Davie‟s point once again, the West necessarily becomes the future of the world.

154
Ibid., 204. Cavanaugh highlights statements made by Andrew Sullivan, who writes that “from the
Crusades to the Inquisition to the bloody religious wars of the 16 th and 17th centuries, Europe saw far more
blood spilled for religion‟s sake than the Muslim world did.‟ Unfortunately, „[f]rom everything we see, the
lessons Europe learned in its bloody history have yet to be absorbed within the Muslim world”; see Andrew
Sullivan, “This is a Religious War,” New York Times Magazine , Oct. 7, 2001. Bernard Lewis is perhaps
the best known advocate of the idea that what separates the secular or Christian West from the Muslim
world is the fact that the West has learned from religious wars which were lacking in the Muslim context.
Stating that one of the primary sources of secularism in the West was the experience of the “religious
wars,” he goes on to write that “Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing
remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which
devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in
desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state.” See Bernard Lewis, “The
Roots of Muslim Rage: Why So Many Muslims Deeply Resent the West, and Why Their Bitterness will
not Easily be Mollified,” The Atlantic Monthly: Digital Edition, September 1990,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/4643/ (accessed February
11, 2006).
155
Euben, 33-34.
156
Cavanaugh, 4. This logic is rendered explicit in, for example, the work of Leonard Binder in his
discussion of the presuppositions of liberalism which guide his work. Of the first six he lists, the sixth is
particularly telling: “1. Liberal government is the product of a continuous process of rational discourse. 2.
Rational discourse is possible even among those who do not share the same culture or the same
consciousness. 3. Rational discourse can produce mutual understanding and cultural consensus, as well as
agreement on particulars. 4. Consensus permits stable political arrangements, and is the rational basis of
the choice of coherent political strategies. 5. Rational strategic choice is the basis of improving the human
condition through collective action. 6. Political liberalism, in this sense, is indivisible. It will either
prevail worldwide, or it will have to be defended by nondiscursive action (emphasis added).” See Leonard
 37

Finally, the logic of secularism both legitimates and occludes the violence interior

to the liberal state. Few observers have noted this point as trenchantly as Asad.157 One

of Asad‟s primary targets is the notion that the state, because it is secular, is necessarily

rational and, by implication, non-violent. For example, against the view that

“persuasion” and “negotiation” are the reigning principles of public liberal reason,158

Asad argues that such a view is too “generous,” and notes that “the nation-state is not a

generous agent and its law does not deal in persuasion.”159 By way of contrast, he writes

that “the law never seeks to eliminate violence since its object is always to regulate

violence;”160 the issue, again, is legitimate violence, not non-violence. Thus, if citizens

are unwilling to compromise, if they “are not reasoned around in a matter deemed

nationally important by the government and the majority that supports it,” then “the threat

of legal action (and the violence this implies) may be used” (emphasis added).161

This general working of the state stands in a crucial relation with religion. As

Asad notes, “the idea of religious toleration that helps to define a state as secular begins

Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1988), 1.
157
Though in a different vein than Asad, Cavanaugh also provides a useful discussion of this aspect of the
religion/secular divide of the social. See Cavanaugh, 183-194. Though Asad is generally understood to be
offering a straightforward critique of liberalism, I think that his relation to liberalism is more complex than
such a reading allows. Given the diversity of “liberalisms,” it stands to reason that some will be more
exposed to Asad‟s lines of critique than others. It is easy to envision forms of liberalism which would
recognize the points highlighted by Asad, while nevertheless continuing to advance a broadly liberal
project. An obvious example of this point is Chantal Mouffe, who describes herself as “a radical liberal
democrat,” but also insists, as we will see in upcoming chapters, on the irreducible violence or force
necessary for any constitution of the social, liberal or otherwise. This is, in fact, one of her primary points
of criticism with regard to Rawls (discussed in chapter four). Rorty might well serve as another example of
this point. For Mouffe‟s self-description as liberal, see Chantal Mouffe, “Democracy—Radical and
Plural,” Centre for the Study of Democracy Bulletin 9, no. 1 (Winter 2001-2002), 12.
158
Asad develops this point, and so focuses on these terms, in conversation with Charles Taylor.
Specifically, he is responding to Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev
Bhargava (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); for Taylor‟s specific points concerning persuasion and
negotiation, see p. 50.
159
Asad, Formations, 6.
160
Ibid., 8.
161
Ibid., 6.
 38

with the premise that because belief cannot be coerced, religion should be regarded by

the political authorities with indifference as long as it remains within the private domain”

(emphasis added).162 In other words, the modern, secular, liberal nation-state requires the

privatization of religion. We return with this insight to the Mandair‟s observations

concerning religion, privatization, and politics: Any non-private expression of religion,

which is to say any expression of religion which trespasses into the sphere of public and

the political, is by definition transgressive, and therefore open to state censure and,

potentially, violence.

Asad‟s discussion of the liberal “public sphere” illustrates the further clarifies

these points. He notes that “enlightened intellectuals” who affirm that religion does have

a significant, valid, and important role to play in a secular, liberal society must limit their

affirmation to a particular kind of religion: What is intended is not that any religion can

play such a role, but “only to those religions that are able and willing to enter the public

sphere for the purpose of rational debate with opponents who are to be persuaded rather

than coerced.”163 Asad‟s point is that the so-called “public sphere” has never been

simply and straightforwardly open to “the public,” but is, and has always been,

exclusionary (e.g. of women, non-propertied subjects, members of religious

minorities).164 His emphasis is that “the public sphere is a space necessarily (not just

contingently) articulated by power.”165

162
Ibid., 205.
163
Ibid., 183.
164
Asad, Formations, 183. I think that in highlighting the actual functioning of the liberal public sphere,
Asad is not endorsing, for example, “coercive religion.”
165
Ibid., 184. Related to this point, Asad states, in the previous sentence, that It isn‟t enough to respond to
this criticism, as is sometimes done, by saying that although the public sphere is less than perfect as an
actual forum for rational debate, it is still an ideal worth striving for.” For more on the notion of the public
sphere as constituted by force or power, see the discussion of Chantal Mouffe in relation to John Rawls‟
theory of political liberalism in chapter four.
 39

Asad also makes this same point by focusing on the notion of free speech, arguing

that “free speech” involves not only the ability to speak, but also the ability to be heard,

“a condition without which speaking to some effect is not possible.”166 As he puts it, “if

one‟s speech has no effect whatsoever it can hardly be said to be in the public sphere.”

He goes on to specify the real, operative conditions for “free speech” within the public

sphere:

To make others listen even if they would prefer not to hear, to speak to some
consequence so that something in the political world is affected, to come to a
conclusion, to have the authority to make practical decisions on the basis of that
conclusion—these are all presupposed in the idea of free public debate as a liberal
virtue.167

But here is the punch line: “These performatives are not open equally to everyone

because the domain of free speech is always shaped by preestablished limits.”168

It is within these considerations on free speech and public sphere that the

considerations of religion enter into the equation. Asad‟s first point is that the

private/public distinction is conceptually unintelligible with regard to religion, both

because the “private” experience of religion will constitutively shape religious

individuals who are part of a larger “public” culture, and because “it determines not only

the „background‟ by which shared principles of that culture are interpreted, but also what

is to count as interpretive „background‟ as against „foreground‟ political principles.”169

Asad states his second point in the form of a question: “If the adherents of a

religion enter the public sphere, can their entry leave the preexisting discursive structure

166
Ibid.
167
Ibid.
168
Ibid.
169
Ibid., 185.
 40

intact?”170 his point is that conceiving of the public sphere as a kind of empty “space”

which can be filled with different contents is problematic; on the contrary, the public

sphere is constituted by the very participants who act “within” it.171 This means that “the

introduction of new discourses may result in the disruption of established assumptions

structuring debates in the public sphere.”172 This relates to the issue of “being heard”

which Asad previously introduced: “More strongly: they may have to disrupt existing

assumptions to be heard. Far from having to prove to the existing authority that it is no

threat to dominant values, a religion that enters political debate on its own terms may on

the contrary have to threaten the authority of existing assumptions.”173 We are once

again brought back to Mandair‟s point that any politicized religion is necessarily

transgressive from within a secularist liberal framework. Insofar as the state can take,

and reserves the sole right to take, various measures to forestall or shut down such

disruption, we see that violence inhabits the very structures of liberal polity, and this is

made very clear with regard to religion.

In sum, these considerations (the historicity of the terms “religion” and “secular,”

coupled with the recognition of their linkage to the nation-state and its violence) lead to

the conclusion that not only has normative secularism been displaced as a universalist

narrative, but that we should seek to displace this narrative further. The significance of

this displacement should not be missed: The displacement of normative secularism

amounts to nothing less than the displacement of the division of the social in terms of

“religion” and “secular.” The interrelation between normative secularism and liberalism

170
Ibid.
171
This point is consistent with the discussion of Ernesto Laclau‟s account of the constitution of the social,
provided in chapter three.
172
Asad, Formations, 185.
173
Ibid.
 41

(for example) also makes it clear the secularism has been one of the key universalizing

narratives underpinning modern political theory; this necessitates a critical reconception

of political theory. The remaining chapters of this dissertation will attempt to articulate

such a political theory.

Why “Religion”?

In the meantime, I want to devote this section of the present chapter to a

consideration of a significant theoretical and methodological issue of central importance

for understanding the rest of the dissertation. In the chapters that follow, particularly in

chapter six and the Conclusion, I will advance a political theory undertaken as an

affirmation of what I refer to as “an experience of phenomenological disruption which

can be meaningfully described as religious.” An obvious question presents itself at this

point: In light of the historicist considerations outlined in the previous section, given the

recognition that “religion” does not name a transcultural and transhistorical reality, and

given the legitimating role of “religion” in state violence, why do I persist in outlining a

political theory in terms of “religion,” rather than simply dropping the term altogether?

The answer, which I will develop in the remainder of this section, is that I think that

effective political intervention, which is to say a meaningful disruption of the socio-

political effects of the discourse of normative secularism, requires an articulation in

terms of “religion.”

My heavy reliance on broadly historicist scholars in the previous section should

make it clear that I place a high value on the results of this kind of research. I want, now,

to consider such approaches in more detail, highlighting what I take to be a central

weakness harbored within them. For a start, I think that the works produced by many
 42

such scholars are intended to be more than merely “scholarly” exercises, but actually aim

to perform a political intervention, an intention I share. However, I think that many

examples of contemporary historicist scholarship, particularly those which adopt a

genealogical approach, suffer from a significant deficiency with regard to this aim. I

think that these critiques ultimately represent a form of what I will call, adapting a phrase

from Arvind-Pal Mandair, “transcendental historicism,”174 and that this cripples their

potential for political efficacy. The crippling effect of this transcendentalism stems from

the fact that, in adopting it, historicist scholars rhetorically remove themselves from the

field of the socio-historical as such. In contrast, meaningful political intervention

necessarily takes place within the terrain of the socio-historical (indeed, as I hope to show

in chapters four and five, “the political” has to do with articulating the “shape” of the

social as such). By adopting a transcendentalist perspective, then, these scholars

effectively depoliticize their own discourse.

Because it is simply not possible to consider all of the scholars I might mention in

this regard (a number of whom have already been cited),175 I have chosen to focus on the

most recent books by Cavanaugh and Timothy Fitzgerald,176 both of which have already

figured in the preceding discussion. While I will make occasional reference to these

other scholars, taking these texts as my primary focus will allow me to develop my points

in more detail. Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald are also particularly relevant because their

texts clearly represent the political aims I have described. I want to proceed from this

point by, first, demonstrating why I describe Fitzgerald‟s and Cavanaugh‟s historicist

approaches as “transcendental;” second, demonstrating the effects of this

174
Mandair‟s term is “transcendental historicity;” see Mandair, 139.
175
See note 78 above.
176
Myth of Religious Violence and Discourse on Civility and Barbarity, respectively.
 43

transcendentalism; third, presenting an alternative approach, which will bring us to a

consideration of why I insist on continuing to make positive use of the term “religion.”

The Depoliticizing Effect of Transcendental Historicism

I want to focus primarily on Fitzgerald‟s and Cavanaugh‟s deployment of the

notion of “ideology” as a means of demonstrating the transcendental character of their

proposals.177 Despite a resolute, even positivistic, insistence on a historicist approach

(Cavanaugh insists on the genealogical178 and “resolutely historical”179 nature of his

investigation, while Fitzgerald presumes to speak from what he calls “the historical

perspective,”180 presenting his own offering as “a critical history of „religion‟ as a

category”181 and claiming to defer to the attestations of “history”182), neither Cavanaugh

nor Fitzgerald ever defines “ideology” or provides any genealogical or historical

consideration of the concept.183 Rather than defining the term, which occurs dozens of

times in these texts, “ideology” and its related cognates are simply deployed as if their

meaning was transparent or obvious. As I will show, their operative understanding of

177
My focus is not on the fact that Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald make use of a notion of ideology per se, but
of the way in which they use the term and of the meaning they seem to give the term. I am aware that there
is a vast literature on “ideology” with numerous operative definitions. To consider the notion of ideology
as such is far beyond the scope of this work, as well as my competence.
178
Cavanaugh, 7.
179
Ibid., 227.
180
Fitzgerald, Discourse, 23.
181
Ibid., 6.
182
Ibid., 64.
183
This is a telling omission, given that the subtitle of Cavanaugh‟s text is Ideology and the Roots of
Modern Conflict and the title of Fitzgerald‟s previous book is The Ideology of Religious Studies. The
concept also does not appear in the indices of either The Myth of Religious Violence or Discourse on
Civility or Barbarity. While there is an index entry for “ideology” in Fitzgerald‟s Ideology of Religious
Studies, none of the references listed direct the reader to a definition or genealogy of the term. This lacuna
is even more pronounced given that Fitzgerald manages to avoid defining the term in a sub-section of that
earlier book entitled “Religion as a Modern Ideological Construction” (27ff.). The same issues apply to
Dubuisson‟s The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology, which does not
provide an index entry for “ideology” and fails to provide any definition or history of the term. An
exception to this pattern is McCutcheon‟s Manufacturing Religion, in which “ideology denotes a process
for authorizing particular representations whose trace, history, or context is obscured (whether intentionally
or not)” (29).
 44

this term provides the means for understanding the transcendental nature of their

arguments.

Given their lack of definition, we are forced to try and piece together a meaning

of the term as it is used in their texts. In this regard, I have found the work of John

Thompson, who distinguishes between “neutral” and “critical” conceptions of ideology,

to be particularly useful.184 While Fitzgerald does occasionally give some indirect

indication that he employs the term “ideology” in such a neutral sense,185 the vast bulk of

both Fitzgerald‟s and Cavanaugh‟s uses of the term “ideology” are clearly critical in

Thompson‟s sense:

Critical conceptions are those which convey a negative, critical, or pejorative

sense. Unlike neutral conceptions, critical conceptions imply that the phenomena
characterized as ideology or ideological are misleading, illusory, or one-sided;
and the very characterization of phenomena as ideology carries with it an implicit
criticism or condemnation of them.186

It is clear that “ideology” in Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s uses of the term is “erroneous

or illusory” and “sustains relations of domination.”187 In light of these considerations, I

suggest that something like the following defines “ideology” as both Cavanaugh and

184
John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass
Communication (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 53-54.
185
For example, in Ideology, p. 27, Fitzgerald ambiguously links the term “ideology” to “what Louis
Dumont has called „the configuration of modern values‟.” The ambiguity lies in the fact that Dumont
defines ideology as “a system of ideas and values current in a given social milieu,” which implies a neutral
conception if we map it onto Thompson‟s typology. Within this framework, Dumont goes on to say that “I
am calling the system of ideas and values that characterizes modern societies modern ideology.” Herein
lies the ambiguity of Fitzgerald‟s reference: It is unclear whether he uses the term “ideology” in the neutral
sense implied by Dumont‟s general concept of ideology, or if he is specifically referencing Dumont‟s
notion of “modern ideology” and using the term in a critical sense. For Dumont‟s formulation, see Louis
Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 9.
186
Thompson, 53-54.
187
These are criteria “B” and “D” in Thompson‟s additional “criteria of negativity” for classifying critical
conceptions of ideology; see Thompson, 54.
 45

Fitzgerald use it: Ideology refers to the way that illusory conceptual categories are

deployed to establish and sustain relations of domination.188

Consideration of a couple of representative statements makes it clear that

“ideology” in Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald names a system of domination: Cavanaugh

describes the “myth of religious violence” as “an ideological construction that authorizes

certain uses of power” (emphasis added),189 including the exercise of state violence

against non-secular others; Fitzgerald writes that “instead of studying religion as though

it were some objective feature of societies, it should instead be studied as an ideological

category, an aspect of modern western ideology, with a specific location in history,

including the nineteenth-century period of European colonization.”190 In both of these

examples, the concept of “religion” is taken to be “ideological” precisely because it plays

the legitimating role we considered in the first section of this chapter.

The equation of “ideology” with “illusion” in Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald is more

subtle. It becomes clear, however, if we attend to series of equivalences in the texts of

both of them. The terms “ideology” and “ideological” in Discourse on Civility and

Barbarity are linked with a litany of phrases and concepts, a sampling of which includes:

“Reification” and “distortion,”191 “something that does not exist,”192 “illusion or

myth,”193 “rhetoric,”194 “invention,”195 and an “imaginary object.”196 Though less

188
This formulation is an adaptation of Thompson‟s own definition: “To study ideology is to study the
ways in which meaning serves to establish and sustain relations of domination.” Though Thompson
explicitly seeks a definition which avoids connotations of the illusory or erroneous, we shall see that
Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s use of the term clearly imply such notions. For Thompson‟s definition, see
Thompsons, 56.
189
Cavanaugh, 182.
190
Fitzgerald, Ideology, 4.
191
Fitzgerald, Discourse, 3.
192
Ibid., 7.
193
Ibid., 9.
194
Ibid., 16.
 46

pronounced than in Fitzgerald‟s case, Cavanaugh‟s text develops the same constellation

of equivalences. For example, he also relates the “ideological” notion of religion to the

notion of “myth,” a term which he chooses, in part, because it is “false.”197

That Cavanaugh understands “ideology” to be illusory is further demonstrated by

the metaphor of vision which runs through his text. To give a representative example, he

asserts that “the myth of religious violence should finally be seen for what it is…”198 and

notes the myth of religious violence “obscures” the violence of state and market

(emphases added).199 What these formulations have in common is application of the term

“ideology” to that which is taken to be illusory in the sense of hiding something essential

about social reality, either through obfuscation of a “false” account or through the

“invention” of an “imaginary object” called “religion.” “Ideology,” then, has to do with

the deployment of illusory conceptual categories for the purposes of establishing and

maintaining relations of domination. Thus, “the function of ideology” is to “present”

(emphasis added) contingent and contestable ideals and projects as “based on essential

realities that are simply there, part of the way things are.”200

As the previous sentence makes clear, the equation of ideology with illusion

indicates a fundamentally representational perspective. This operative

representationalism is also clear in Fitzgerald‟s statements concerning translation and

imposition. In discussing the very real problems concerning the “translation” of terms

cross-culturally, he states that “what I want to press here is that, when we apply modern

195
Ibid., 56.
196
Ibid., 69.
197
Cavanaugh, 6. For a similar statement regarding the myth of the wars of religion, see p. 226.
198
Ibid, 226.
199
Ibid, 10.
200
Ibid,120.
 47

concepts of „religion,‟ „politics,‟ or „economics‟ to virtually any culture at any time in

history, we are importing into the analytical situation a distorting medium” (emphasis

added).201 What is telling is not the assertion of the difficulty of translation, but the

apparent significance of this difficulty as Fitzgerald understands it. In this regard, we

come up against an operative positivism which describes historical or cross-cultural

analysis as simply “analytical,” as opposed to “distorting.” A properly “analytical”

approach is, Fitzgerald implies, one which is free of all “distortion,” which is to say that

it is an approach which properly represents the object of its inquiry. Given the inherent

difficulty of translation,202 the logic of Fitzgerald‟s representationalism seems to press

toward the conclusion that translation may be ruled out as such, insofar as it represents an

undue “imposition” or “distortion” within an “analytical” context.

This operative representationalism demonstrates that Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald

aim, in the words of Ian Angus, to show “that the form of [social] consciousness does not

accurately, or sufficiently, represent the social relations.”203 Their texts therefore

represent a form of “ideology critique,” insofar as they purport to show us social reality

as it truly is, free from ideological distortion. The difficulty with this perspective is that

any discourse which presumes simply to reveal the nature of social relations as they

“really are” must do so from a position external to those relations, with the result that

any such discourse presupposes, in Angus‟s words, “an extra-social, onto-theological

foundation for society.”204 I label Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s position as

201
Fitzgerald, Discourse, 58.
202
He writes, for example, that “it may be inevitable that any attempt to develop a standpoint in the English
language about other people‟s meanings, that is the meanings of people who think in non-European
languages, will distort what it is claiming to represent” (emphasis added) (Discourse, 73).
203
Ian Angus, (Dis) figurations: Discourse/ Critique/ Ethics (London: Verso, 2000), 8.
204
Ibid., 7.
 48

“transcendental” because they adopt this perspective of externality: Their simplistic

assumption of a contrast between appearance and reality, ideology and non-ideology,

historical and non-historical, indicates that when they write, it is with the authority of

those who are able to comprehend the historical as such, in a way other social actors

cannot (indeed, there is a sense in which Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald, as they rhetorically

position themselves, can no longer be considered “social actors” at all).

Their perspective, with its appeal to “history” without qualification or definition,

is the very definition of transcendental historicism offered by Mandair: “Having history,

being able to define „what history is‟ and yet remain outside of history in the sense of not

being affected by it.”205 Mandair points out that this notion of being able to speak

authoritatively about the movements and events of history, while remaining unaffected by

those movements, is “effectively the definition of transcendence”206 (this point is

obviously similar to Angus‟s linking of ideology critique to onto-theology).

Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald therefore both position themselves as occupying an

advantaged, authoritative position vis-à-vis the socio-political which is such that it can

only be understood as external to the social as such. When others offer historical

narratives, it is an issue of mythic, ideologically disorienting social power; in marked

contrast, when Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald speak with the authority of “history,” on the

contrary, they present the socio-political in a manner which is accurate, simply

transparent, and non-ideological. My point is not to argue that any and every appeal to

history or that every form of what might be called “historicism” necessarily adopts the

kind of transcendentalist position we find in Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald. Rather, the point

205
Mandair, 139.
206
Ibid.
 49

here is that Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald fall into a transcendental historicist position

because they fail, even within the context of an affirmed thoroughgoing historicism, to

historicize the conditions of their own critique. In contrast to the position Cavanaugh and

Fitzgerald rhetorically occupy, Angus points out that, barring an explicit appeal to occupy

to a supra-historical, theological perspective, any critique of a historical period must take

place from within that period, with the result that “its own location must be subject to the

critique itself.”207

This is what Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald systematically fail to do. While Fitzgerald

does occasionally indicate an implicit awareness of these issues, he fails to follow

through on this insight. For example, and most obviously, if it is “inevitable” that he

adopts a “rhetorical” position in his scholarly endeavors,208 in what sense can he equate

“rhetoric” with “ideology” and “illusion,” and contrast these terms with “fact-based” and

“analytic,” which is to say non-rhetorical, approaches? The same points hold for

Cavanaugh, though he demonstrates less sensitivity to these issues than Fitzgerald.209

Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald both speak, throughout these texts, with the full

authority of those whose identity is guaranteed through appeal to “history.” What they

fail to recognize is that “social critique itself constructs the identity of the critic—which

207
Angus, 35.
208
As an example, he writes, “I am trying to identify dominant paradigms of the powerful, while striving to
remain aware of my own positionality, which is also inevitably an act of rhetoric which attempts to
persuade” (Discourse, 44).
209
Dubuisson, like Fitzgerald, shows some limited awareness of the issue of the scholar‟s socio-historical
location. He writes that “writing or tracing the history of disciplines or fields of knowledge does not take
them beyond history nor shelter them from it. Nothing stops being historical simply because its history is
thereafter written or better known. For this history (the history or, better, the historiography of the history
of religions) is just as historical. That our science, to the first, second, or third degree, is reluctant to admit
that it is condemned to this endless encapsulation (each point of view, because it is historical and can only
be historical, will in turn become the object of a history that is itself historical, etc.) in no way modifies its
fundamentally historical nature…” (2-3). However, also like Fitzgerald, this awareness does not affect his
overall analysis in any significant way, insofar as he keeps pressing toward a properly “scientific”
expression of the discipline.
 50

can therefore not be assumed as known prior to the critical statement itself.”210 A

reflexive engagement with questions of what they take “history” to be, of the historical

conditions of emergence of their own discourse, of the fact that their discourse differs

from those of which they are critical not because it is “historical” rather than “interested,”

but because its interests differ from theirs, would bring them back into the flow of the

socio-historical. The cost, of course, would the assurance with which they write: Their

identity would no longer be simply that of the authoritative voice of “historical”

consciousness. Rather, they would be brought back into the play of opposed

performative utterances which can never find assured justification from a simple

exteriority.211

The significance of Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s transcendental historicism lies

in the fact that it renders their proposals too idealist to disrupt the all-too-real socio-

historical practices and institutions articulated around the concept of “religion.” By

referring to this position as “idealist,” I mean that Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald seem to

equate the illusory (which is to say “ideological”) character of “religion” and related

concepts (most notably “the secular”) with the irreality of their effects. Their tacit

assumption seems to be that “religion” is a ghostly apparition which can be exorcised,

banished, or dissipated when brought under the bright light of genealogical historicist

critique.212 This is clear, for example, in Fitzgerald‟s assertion that the category of

religion can be “defused” by “exposing” (note another reference to vision) its ideological

210
Angus, 41. See also Angus, 39, for a similar formulation.
211
Angus gets at this point when he writes that “utterances in this theoretical space are characterized by
constitutive paradox because they find no justification outside themselves” (46).
212
Though I am unable to pursue this particular avenue here, it is clear that we could examine this issue
from the perspective of Jacques Derrida‟s notion of “spectrality.” For a general discussion of this idea in
Derrida, see chapter five, p. 269.
 51

function213 and when he insists the “reified” binaries of religion and its other(s) need to

be “dissolved” if new paradigms are to emerge.214 Likewise, Cavanaugh holds that

“doing away with the myth of religious violence would help to eliminate one of the

justifications for military action against religious actors.”215 Ananda Abeysekara nicely

captures the point I am making here when he writes that the assumption of genealogical

critique is that “to understand how an object of knowledge [“religion,” in our case]

became a historical problem is to have performed a critical labor” (emphasis added).216

Stated in terms of political intervention, Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald seem to simply equate

genealogically historicist critique with political intervention as such: On this equation,

undertaking such critique is, in itself, tantamount to political intervention.

The difficulty in this assumption is this: Even if we were to accept Cavanaugh‟s

and Fitzgerald‟s specific understanding of ideology, it does not follow that calling it into

question constitutes political intervention because the socio-political effects articulated

by the ideology are themselves not illusory. Paraphrasing another well-known

genealogist (Talal Asad), the constructed category of “religion” is “no less real for being

ideological” insofar as “it articulates a world of actual objects and subjects” (emphasis

added).217 The social structures, institutions and practices, and political subjects

articulated around the concept of “religion” and “the myth of religious violence” are not

213
Fitzgerald, Ideology, 27.
214
Fitzgerald, Discourse, 38.
215
Cavanaugh, 227.
216
Ananda Abeysekara, The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2008), 3.
217
The full statement by Asad that I have in mind has to do with secular nationalism and is as follows:
“This construct is no less real for being ideological; it articulates a world of actual objects and subjects
within which the secular nationalist lives.” See Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam,
Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 194. Asad makes a similar, related point in his a
discussion on “terrorism” which, he notes, is “a constructed object (not an imaginary object)….” See Talal
Asad, On Suicide Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 27.
 52

illusory; on the contrary, they are all too real, as we saw in the previous section of this

chapter.

The real effects articulated around the constructed notion of “religion,” and

arguably of religion itself, cannot simply be conjured away through the narration of a

genealogical history. In Abeysekara‟s words, “critique/problematization does not attend

to the spectral pasts that haunt our present.”218 That is, the genealogical critique mounted

by Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh can do nothing to disrupt the real legacies of the past of

“religion” they narrate precisely because their discourse is aimed at that which is not real.

A meaningful disruption of these legacies will necessarily involve engagement within the

socio-political, and we have seen that Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh remove themselves from

that register. Hence, the transcendental nature of this historicism renders their discourse

ultimately idealist and forecloses the possibility of meaningful political intervention.

What is necessary, given the reality of these socio-political formations, is not

simply a counter-narrative of religion‟s past, but a means of “un-inheriting” the very real

effects of “religion.”219 What is needed is a means of moving forward, of traversing the

very real socio-political sedimentations in question, in a way which neither simply

accepts them nor, with Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald, naively assumes that doing away with

them is simply a matter of demystification. Abeysekara‟s notion of un-inheriting

highlights the active, and so politically engaged, process of disrupting these socio-

political structures.

218
Abeysekara, 111.
219
I am taking the notion of “un-inheriting” from Abeysekara, 18.
 53

The Re-politicization of Religion as Non-Identical Repetition

These considerations bring me to the alternative theoretical approach I promised

earlier. Adopting Abeysekara‟s terminology, I want to suggest that deconstruction

provides the means for theorizing a political engagement involving neither the removal of

oneself from the socio-political field nor the mere narration of the history of that field.

My proposal is that un-inheritance involves a kind of re-occupation of the very socio-

political field articulated by “religion” in such a way as to call that articulation itself into

question. The disruption of the socio-political articulated around “religion” therefore

involves not the rejection, but the embrace of the concept of religion, in spite of the fact

that it is a constructed category.

I take my orientation from the space opened up between two seemingly

incompatible statements on the part of Jacques Derrida. The first is a rhetorical question:

“What if religio remained untranslatable?”220 The second is a reference to a “thinking

that „repeats‟ the possibility of religion without religion‟.”221 The former of these

statements, obviously a rhetorical question, indicates Derrida‟s view that religio cannot

be translated. That is, with Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald, Derrida recognizes that there is no

transcultural or transhistorical essence which can simply named with the Latin/Western

religio or its derivative, “religion.”222 Yet, even in the face of this, Derrida continues to

speak of “religion,” but he does so in terms of “religion without religion,” which I want

220
Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of „Religion‟ at the Limits of Reason Alone,”
trans. Samuel Weber, in Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2001), 67.
221
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1995), 49.
222
Indeed, such is one of the main themes of “Faith and Knowledge.”
 54

to suggest is an indication that what is crucially at issue is the idea of a non-identical

repetition of religion, or of religion with a difference.223

The last sentence clearly requires some elaboration. The phrase “religion without

religion” adheres to the locutionary form of “X without X”224 which is forced upon us

when what is required is, in Derrida‟s words, “the unceasing neutralization of one

predicate by another;”225 such a neutralization is attained by a paradoxical non-identical

repetition of the same term (e.g., “religion”).226 Such a locution constitutes what Derrida

refers to elsewhere as an “interdict,”227 according to which the only way to displace or

disrupt the term in questions (e.g., religion, community, relation) is through the repetition

of the very term. One cannot not employ the very term one wishes to displace. The

question is, what forces this locutionary form upon us? Why, reading Derrida as I am, do

I insist that we cannot simply abandon the term “religion” but that, on the contrary, we

cannot not embrace that exact discredited term? I believe that the interdict is forced upon
223
When Derrida refers to a “thinking that „repeats‟ the possibility of religion without religion,” I take the
quotation marks around “repeats” as an indication that what Derrida has in mind here is his notion of non-
identical repetition, or “iterability.” What Derrida envisions with this term is a form of repetition which
renders that which is repeated as both recognizable (i.e., the same) and different (non-identical). This
notion in Derrida therefore implies a distinction between sameness and identity. Though the notion of
iterability appears in a number of Derrida‟s texts, see particularly Jacques Derrida, “Speech and
Phenomena: Introduction to the Problem of Signs in Husserl‟s Phenomenology,” in Speech and Phenomena
and Other Essays on Husserl‟s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1973) and Limited Inc, ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1988). There are a number of useful secondary treatments of Derrida‟s notion of iterability. See, for
example: Paola Marrati, Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005), ch. 1.2; Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of
Phenomenology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), ch. 7; Gasché, Tain, 212-217;
Christina Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999,
64-71.
224
For a good discussion of this locutionary form, see Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans.
George Collins (London: Verso, 2005), 46n15.
225
Ibid, 298.
226
Other examples offered by Derrida include “relation without relation” and “community without
community.” See ibid., 80-81.
227
For this term, see Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, or The Prosthesis of Origin, trans.
Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 32. In Monolingualism, Derrida applies the
notion to a prohibition of speaking a language, specifically Hebrew in the context of French colonial
Algeria. Here I am applying the term as a prohibition against not speaking in a certain manner, as the
experience of being forced to speak in a certain way.
 55

us by Fitzgerald‟s and Cavanaugh‟s depoliticizing transcendental and representationalist

historicism: The impossibility of a simple repetition of the “authentic” expression of

those social identities which have been occluded through secularism‟s normative

imposition of “religion” has the effect of rendering all meaningful socio-political

intervention impossible as well.

Fitzgerald‟s reduction of all translation to “imposition” illustrates this implicit

notion of authentic social identity. He writes that “subaltern peoples are compelled to

defend their traditional customs by renaming them „religion‟ and then lobbying for the

right of religious freedom under Western-style constitutions.”228 The implication of this

statement is that any present politicization on the part of these groups will only be

intelligible insofar as the identities of these groups are “translated” in terms of the

Western category of “religion,” as assigned to them via the legacy of colonialism related

to the socio-political effects of normative secularism. Any such politicization will,

therefore, require the “translation” of indigenous concepts, practices, etc. in terms of the

non-indigenous, and therefore distorting, category of “religion;” the authentic identities

of these social actors, in other words, will be occluded.229

This distortion of authentic identity therefore renders any present politicization

illegitimate: Only if these groups could enter the political arena with an authentic,

indigenous vocabulary would their politicization gain legitimacy. But, given the fact that

no such means of “native” politicization is available due to the dominance of Euro-

American categories, legitimate politicization is ruled out in advance. Cavanaugh‟s and

228
Fitzgerald, Discourse, 74.
229
Cavanaugh makes essentially the same point, essentially arguing that any such politicization amounts to
little more than a capitulation to the dominant Euro-American paradigm. For examples of this, see
Cavanaugh, 92, 95, 99.
 56

Fitzgerald‟s representationalism therefore results in a repetition of the issues surrounding

mimetic identity we discussed in the previous section: Just as the imposition of “religion”

upon colonial populations worked to depoliticize them, so Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s

understanding of authenticity plays precisely the same depoliticizing role.

As they stand, then, Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s proposals leave us at a dead

end. Indeed, I take Cavanaugh‟s statement that he does not have “an alternative

theopolitics” to offer as an alternative to the “myth of religious violence”230 as indicative

in this regard: his own theoretical presuppositions preclude the development of any novel

political intervention.

It is this conceptual dead end, then, that forces continued appeal to “religion”

upon us. Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald are correct in recognizing that everything hinges on

the notion of repetition; their mistake lies in conceiving repetition only in terms of

identity. That is, on their view, any appeal to “religion” can only involve an identical

repetition of the concepts of normative secularism, and so can only perpetuate their socio-

political effects. The Derridean notion of “religion without religion,” on the other hand,

is significant because it implies a non-identical repetition of religion, a repetition of

religion with a difference, which, because of this non-identity, disrupts the dominant

socio-political order and so constitutes a meaningful political intervention.

This is not only a theoretical consideration, but is well illustrated in Hurd‟s

concrete socio-political considerations. She notes that “„religious resurgence‟ [which I

have also termed the „return of religion‟] is a term that relies heavily upon particular

secularist epistemological assumptions.”231 That is, the notion of “resurgent religion”

230
Ibid., 14.
231
Hurd, 135.
 57

implies an understanding of the socio-political defined by the imposed concept of

“religion” as it relates to the modern nation-state; in other words, it implies precisely the

socio-political model outlined in our prior discussion of normative secularism.

According to this secularist logic, such “resurgence” could only be “protest against

modernization, a retreat to archaic traditional forms of political order, or a backlash

against „global modernity, authenticity, and development.‟”232 This would be to

understand the socio-political movements in question as an identical repetition of

“religion” as narrated in normative secularism: “Religion,” as that which is “irrational,”

“traditional,” and “archaic,” could only properly belong in the private sphere. As we

have seen, the politicization of religion embodied in the “resurgence” could only be read

as an inappropriate and excessive breach of boundaries.

Hurd, however, provides us with a different way of reading this “resurgence”:

What is identified as religious resurgence is actually a political contestation of the
most fundamental contours and content of the secular, a contest that signals the
disruption of preexisting standards of what religion is and how it relates to
politics. The apparent resurgence is evidence of the unsettling of convention and
the eruption of fundamental contention over the relationship between metaphysics
and politics that calls into question foundational secularist divisions between the
secular and the religious (emphases added).233

She describes what I am theorizing as “religion without religion,” or religion as non-

identical repetition. That is, the groups which embody the “resurgence” or “return” of

religion are disruptive of the dominant socio-political articulation of “religion,” but they

are disruptive precisely because their identities are articulated in terms of religion.

Rather than rejecting the imposed category of “religion” in an oppositional

manner, as Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh seem to suppose that an “authentic” social

232
Ibid, 136. Her quotation is taken from Thomas, 44.
233
Hurd, 136. This is essentially the same point we previously saw in Mandair, who describes politicized
religion as challenging “the ontological order itself.” See Mandair, 296-297.
 58

expression would do, they disrupt the sedimented socio-political forms by repeating the

category of “religion,” but in a non-identical manner. Insofar as these groups identify

with the category of “religion,” with a category which is of modern, Euro-American

provenance, they “repeat” religion; but insofar as it is precisely this repetition which

disrupts the dominant socio-political order, they repeat religion in a manner which is non-

identical with the imposed category. To try and better capture this point, we could write

our locution as religion without “religion,” where “religion” represents the normative

secularist concept.

What we find, then, is that Cavanaugh‟s and Fitzgerald‟s forced choice of either

authenticity or socio-political paralysis is false.234 What I am proposing as the non-

identical repetition of “religion without religion” sidesteps this false dilemma. The effect

of such “religious” political interventions is not, to repeat, a capitulation to the dominant

socio-political constellation, but rather a “challenge to the very claims of the secular

spheres to differentiated autonomy exempt from extrinsic normative constraints.”235

Referring back to Derrida‟s treatment of the “X without X” locution, such interventions

are examples of “religion without religion” in precisely the sense that these examples of

“resurgent” religion cancel out or attempt to “negate” the imposed secularist concept of

“religion” and, with it, the sedimented forms of the socio-political shaped by it.

We can also make the point by reconsidering Fitzgerald‟s idiom of translation.

Mandair, comes to our aid here, writing that

234
Though present space does not permit an adequate discussion of this issue, it should be clear that I
would contest Fitzgerald‟s and Cavanaugh‟s operative notion of authentic social identity not just on the
grounds of such a notions depoliticizing effects, but more generally as well. That is, I would argue that
social identity is always an affair of “construction” (to use Fitzgerald‟s term), and so is never “originary” or
“authentic;” this position follows from Laclau‟s account of social identity. For more on this and related
issues, see chapter 3 in particular.
235
Casanova, “Secularization Revisited,” 14.
 59

To pose the untranslatability of religion is not to halt the history of colonial

translation of religion as if it had never happened, or to ignore the very tangible
South Asian [Mandair‟s area of research] responses. Rather, it is to circumvent
the ideological relay, the programmed manner, in which translation happen
automatically. „Untranslatable‟ does not imply a refusal to translate, but rather
the need to take a step back in order to allow the work of translation to be seen as
being positively dependent on an inability to translate.236

By relating the translation of that which is untranslatable (his reference to the “inability to

translate”) to the circumvention of the “ideological relay,” Mandair highlights a point that

seems to be lost on both Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh: Translation, precisely because it is

work (and therefore not simply “automatic”) and must take account of that which resists

translation, need not be understood only in terms of a distortion forced on the language

being translated. On the contrary, such translation also affects the language into which

the translation is being made. Thus, for example, the definition of indigenous practices

as “religious,” and therefore not political, does not change the fact that, because the

practices are political, the definition of “religion” will itself be affected.

Summary

The complex and sometimes dispersed structure of the foregoing considerations

could understandably distract us from my main point in starting down this path to begin

with. By way of reminder, then, my initial point of entry into this detailed consideration

of Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh was the question of why, given my discussion of the loss of

the secularism narrative‟s normative status, the accompanying displacement of the

“religion/secular” shaping of the social, and the considerations from the first section of

this chapter, I will continue to employ a concept of “religion” in the work that follows.

In light of the foregoing discussion of this section, my reason can be simply stated as

236
Mandair, 429.
 60

follows: Attempting to articulate a notion of “religion without religion,” which is to say a

non-identical repetition of religion, promises greater political effectivity than the simple

abandonment of the term.

We have now seen the simple refusal of “religion” implied by Cavanaugh‟s and

Fitzgerald‟s analysis leads to a depoliticizing paralysis. What is required is the continual

“translation” of religion as non-identical repetition, rather than identical repetition or

simple refusal. To be sure, there are risks in this: It is always possible that repetition will

simply be identical, further hardening the forms of the socio-political articulated around

the secularist concept of “religion.” But the promise of such repetition is worth the risk:

The refusal to translate enjoined by Fitzgerald guarantees the ghettoization of the very

populations for which he is concerned, and leads to a silence which leaves the

instantiated socio-political forms unaffected.237 Likewise, from the “Western” side of the

equation, a refusal to speak about those on whom “religion” is imposed (a refusal which,

as a further indicator of their transcendental historicism, Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh never

actually enact) leads to the dangers of a xenophobia that is at least equally problematic.238

This overall concern with political effectivity should be borne in mind by the reader in

the chapters that follow, though I won‟t have the opportunity to explicitly address it again

until the Conclusion.

237
Derrida makes the point I am aiming at here in his discussion of discourse and alterity as it relates to the
thought of Emmanuel Levinas: “If light is the element of violence, one must combat light with a certain
other light, in order to avoid the worst violence, the violence of the night which precedes or represses
discourse” (emphasis added). In other words, applied to our case, if there is a certain irreducible “violence”
implicit in any application of the term “religion,” this minimal violence may in fact be much less violent
than the silence enjoined in the simple rejection of “religion.” For Derrida‟s statement, see Jacques
Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Writing and
Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 117.
238
This point was made recently by John Nemec in an article arguing for the production of new, unbroken
translations of Indian religious texts, despite the real dangers of Orientalism. See John Nemec,
“Translation and the Study of Indian Religions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77, no. 4
(December 2009): 761.
 61

Why a “Western” Counter-Example?

The chapters that follow represent my attempt to think through the possibility of

thinking a political theory informed by the “return of religion” and the attendant loss of

secularism‟s normative status. As I noted in the first section of this chapter, the

displacement of secularism as normative, as well as the concomitant displacement of

certain notions of rationalism, liberalism, and modernism, means that a significant

universalist narrative underlying modern political theory in the West has been undercut.

With the displacement of the universalizing narratives which emerged from the European

Enlightenment and its aftermath, at least two broad responses are open. The first is a

rejection of all claims to universality and the understanding of the political in purely

particularistic terms (I give this some attention in chapter three). The second involves the

effort to re-articulate a new form of universality and to re-construct political theory

around this new form. The chapters that follow relate to this second response to the

displacement of the universalizing narrative of secularism.

The next chapter presents one such effort at re-conceptualizing the political in

terms a robustly metaphysical account of universality. I have chosen the work of the

British theologian Graham Ward, a representative figure in a significant movement

within academic theology known as “Radical Orthodoxy,” as an example of this

response. While I will address a number of issues relating to Ward‟s proposal, including

my reasons for rejecting his model of universality, a question arises as to my choice to

consider Ward in the first place. I can put the issue in this way: Given that secularism

was (largely) a Western-European cultural achievement, stemming from a distinctly

Christian history, and enacted upon the non-Western world via a history of colonialism,
 62

the obvious contemporary example for a theo-political alternative to Western secularism

would seem to be Islamism.239 Why, then, have I chosen a Christian theological position

which is not only Western-European, but British, a nationality implicated in the very

heart of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonialist enterprise, as a counter-example?

Stated simply, I have chosen not to consider Islamism because of its

“obviousness.” That is, despite all good intentions, a consideration of Islamism as

alternative to Western secularism can too easily devolve into what I would call a “soft

Orientalism.” Rather than illustrating the displacement of secularism as universal

ground, my concern is that such an approach can too easily lapse into a simple

“recognition of difference” which does not touch on the changed terrain of the socio-

political. This involves a relatively simple adaptation, as opposed to a displacement, of

the conceptuality in question. Thus, for example, there is a shift in perspective from

understanding secularism as the universal future of humanity to a recognition that

secularism names the shape, and possibly the future, of Western society, but that the non-

Western world may well take on very different forms. Hence, Islamism would be

recognizably different from Western political thought, not necessarily more primitive,

particularistic, archaic, etc.

The difficulty with this understanding is that it still postulates a problematic

culturalist understanding of the social identities envisioned.240 Such an understanding

still presupposes the essentially uncontested identity of “our” “Western” culture as

opposed to “their” “non-Western” or “Islamist” culture. This is why I said that the

239
For the “obviousness” of Islam for this role, see Cavanaugh 109; Fitzgerald, Discourse, 10.
240
For a critique of “culturalist” understandings which informs my own, see Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam:
The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 9ff. My theoretical reasons
for rejecting such fixed notions of the social and social identity will be made clear in chapter three.
 63

problem is the very obviousness of Islamism as exemplar: The fact that it is obvious

indicates to me how easy it is to lapse into such culturalist understandings. Using

Graham Ward‟s proposal as an example therefore has the advantage of not only

illustrating an alternative conception of universality as it relates to the political, but also

of demonstrating the heterogeneity of “Western” culture and its political thought. 241

241
An emphasis on the heterogeneity of the “West” also guides Euben‟s consideration of Islamism.
Specifically, she seeks to highlight the way that central aspects of Islamist thought parallel critiques of
Western liberalism originating within “the West” itself. See, in particular, Euben, ch. 5.
 64

CHAPTER TWO

THE SOCIAL AS PARTICIPATION IN GOD:

GRAHAM WARD‟S SOCIO-POLITICAL THEORY

One might say, then, that while pursuing equality and freedom, the democrat is
always dreaming of the return of the king, the return of the body—and it is this
dreaming that makes all totalitarianisms possible.
--Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship

Introduction

The political theorist Claude Lefort insists that “no society, whatever it may be,

can be organized in terms of pure self-immanence.”1 I cite Lefort here not to enter in the

complexities of his own phenomenological reflections on the nature of the political,2 but

because the sentiment to which he gives voice is useful for orienting my procedure for

this chapter and the next. I argued in the last chapter that normative secularism has been

displaced as a universalist basis for political theory, and that this displacement

necessitates a reconsideration of the categories of “the political” and “religion.” Lefort‟s

point is that some reference to transcendence or universality which exceeds the

immanence or particularity of the social is necessary for its organization,3 with the

implication that the displacement of a particular account of universality (i.e. normative

secularism) does not diminish the role of universality/transcendence as such. In this

chapter and the next, I will consider two opposing ontologies of the social, those of

Graham Ward and Ernesto Laclau, respectively, both of whom seek to elaborate an

1
Claude Lefort, “The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?” trans. David Macey, in Political
Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 162.
2
For excellent discussion of Lefort‟s own complex political theory, see Oliver Marchart, Post-
Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2007O, ch. 4 and Bernard Flynn, The Philosophy of Claude Lefort:
Interpreting the Political (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005).
3
I use the pairs “transcendence/immanence” and “universality/particularity” in generally equivalent ways
in the following chapters.
 65

alternative understanding of universality as it relates to political theory.4 Their

alternative social ontologies also lead, as I will show in this chapter and in chapter four,

to very different conceptions and evaluations of democracy.

I focus the discussion of this chapter on the social ontology of the British

theologian Graham Ward, widely regarded as being, together with John Milbank, one of

the founding figures of the theological movement known as “Radical Orthodoxy.”5

Drawing on Augustinian, Hegelian, and biblical sources, Ward advances an ontology of

the social according to which what transcends the social must be understood in terms of

metaphysical plenitude and that democracy constitutes the de facto denial of any such

4
Ward and Laclau differ in terms of that to which their proposals serve as alternatives. Thus, Ward
explicitly advances his ontology of the social as a counter-response to normative secularism (though this is
not his specific term), while Laclau does not. Both of them, however, can fruitfully be read against the
backdrop of the displacement of normative secularism, outlined in the first chapter.
5
Stout describes Radical Orthodoxy as “the hottest topic being debated in seminaries and divinity schools
in the United States;” see Stout, 92. It is Milbank, rather than Ward, who receives the lion‟s share of credit
as the founding figure of Radical Orthodoxy (with theologian Catherine Pickstock running a distant third).
The publication of the first edition of Milbank‟s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason in
1990 is often taken as the inaugural moment of Radical Orthodoxy. However, the movement came to
greater prominence with the 1998 publication of Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, a manifesto-style
volume edited by Milbank, Ward, and Pickstock. For my choice to focus on Ward rather than Milbank, see
my comments in the Preface.
For Milbank‟s own social and political perspectives, see in particular the second edition of
Theology and Social Theory, together with a recently published collection of essays: John Milbank,
Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Second Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); The
Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Eugene, OR :Cascade Books, 2009). For the inaugural
essays of Radical Orthodoxy, see John Milbank et. al., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London:
Routledge, 1998). Radical Orthodoxy has also spawned an increasingly wide range of secondary literature,
both affirmative and critical. For an affirmative introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, see James K. A. Smith,
Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2004); for a more critical overview of the movement, see Stephen Shakespeare, Radical Orthodoxy: A
Critical Introduction (London: SPCK, 2007). For a number of essays from Radical Orthodox thinkers
defending and articulating the movement, primarily Ward, Milbank, and Pickstock, see John Milbank and
Simon Oliver, eds., The Radical Orthodoxy Reader (London: Routledge, 2009). For critical treatments of
Radical Orthodoxy see: Gavin Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy or
Nihilist Textualism? (Minneapolis, MN: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001); Rosemary Radford Ruether
and Marion Grau, eds., Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to “Radical Orthodoxy” (New York: T &
T Clark, 2006); Wayne J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley, eds. Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy:
Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).
 66

transcendence.6 Responding to Lefort‟s well-known formulation that “the place of

power” in modern democracy is “empty,”7 Ward asserts that democracy amounts to an

implicit totalitarianism at best or a nihilistic effect of late capitalism at worst; this

analysis of democracy is what leads Ward to reject it. In the remainder of this chapter I

will outline Ward‟s positive metaphysical determination of the social and highlight the

negative consequences which follow from his metaphysical social ontology.

Rejecting Democracy

Ward has been a trenchant critic of secular liberal democracy for some time,

offering an explicitly Christian theological counter-proposal for envisioning the social.

In one of his most direct and concise statements against democracy, he insists that,

despite all appearances to the contrary,

6
Ward consistently equates “democracy” with “liberal democracy,” and “liberal” seems to reduce,
essentially, to free market individualism. The reader should keep this in mind as we move through a
discussion of “democracy” in Ward‟s thought.
7
Lefort, “Permanence,” 159; Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David Macey (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 17; The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy,
Democracy, Totalitarianism, trans. Alan Sheridan et. al., ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 1986), 279. While his thought is not a focus of this chapter, it is worth pausing to give some
consideration of this notion of the “empty” place of power in democracy. In Lefort‟s view, the
“revolutionary and unprecedented feature of [modern] democracy” lies in a form of “disincorporation.”
Whereas, in the ancien régime, “power was embodied in the person of the prince” which gave society its
own proper embodiment, “democratic society is instituted as a society without a body, as a society which
undermines the representation of an organic totality” (Democracy and Political Theory, 17-18). In
democracy, “the legitimacy of power is based on the people; but the image of popular sovereignty is linked
to the image of an empty place, impossible to occupy, such that those who exercise public authority can
never claim to appropriate it” (Political Forms, 279). Thus, “democracy inaugurates the experience of an
ungraspable, uncontrollable society in which the people will be said to be sovereign, of course, but whose
identity will constantly be open to question…” (304). There is no proper embodiment; the body of the
social has been disincorporated. As Bernard Flynn puts this point, the source of legitimate power in
modern democracy is “the people,” but the identity of “the people” is itself a matter of continual debate;
this is what defines modern democracy (Flynn, xxv). Lefort‟s argument is not, as Marchart notes, that there
is no exercise of power or authority in modern democracies; obviously, there is. The point, rather, is that
the advent of modern democracy initiates a change in the ontology of the social as such, with the result that
the “place of power” can never be finally and definitively embodied, as in the ancien régime (see Marchart,
86). On my reading, and by way of anticipation, Lefort‟s reference to democracy as defined by the empty
place of power is consistent with Chantal Mouffe‟s principle of democracy‟s inadequation to itself and
Ernesto Laclau‟s definition of democracy as a matter of maintaining the ultimately undecidable shape of
the social (chapter four), as well as Derrida‟s reference to the “democracy to come” and democracy as
perpetual self-critique (chapter five).
 67

totalitarianism or absolute sovereignty, against which democratic polity defines

and legitimates itself, is actually latent within democracy‟s very possibility and
practice. While then proclaiming and enforcing the universal values of equality
and emancipation, democratic culture dreams, secretly, of the return of the king.8

Ward traces this latent dream within democracy directly to Lefort‟s theorization of the

“empty place” within modern democracy. Building off of Lefort‟s analysis, he writes

that, with the transition to a democratic polity, the body of the king is replaced by the

body of “the people.” The role of the body is to provide “the symbolic grounding for the

construal of oneness: difference contained within homogeneity.”9 With the transition to

democracy the role of the body remains the same, but the new body is unequal to the task

required of it. Thus, while “the people” are the new sovereign, the identity of the people

is constantly open to question, marked by a “permanent identity crisis.”10 Following

Lefort, Ward argues that totalitarianism arises as one response to this aspect within

democracy: “The egocrat or dictator offers his or her body as a materialization of

democracy‟s own need; he or she embodies the fantasy of democracy‟s own

coherence.”11 Ward then dismisses democracy because it is totalitarian per se; insofar as

this is not immediately self-evident, it is because of a dissimulation of the part of

democracy.12

8
Graham Ward, “Religion after Democracy,” in After Modernity? Secularity, Globalization, and the Re-
Enchantment of the World, ed. James K. A. Smith (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 213.
9
Ibid., 214.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid. While Ward develops his analysis from Lefort here, it is worth noting that he presses the point
further than Lefort, who articulates the possibility of totalitarianism opened by democracy, yet still
advances a democratic model of the social.
12
Lefort does not present the relation of democracy and totalitarianism in the manner presented by Ward.
Lefort understands totalitarianism to be a distinctly modern phenomenon (cf. Flynn, xxvi-xxvii) which
represents a response “to the questions raised by democracy” and as “an attempt to resolve its paradoxes”
(Lefort, Modern Forms, 305). Totalitarianism is therefore one possible response to the ontological
condition inaugurated with modern democracy, but it is not something latent in democracy as such, as
Ward supposes. Totalitarianism represents an attempt “to weld power and society back together again, to
efface all signs of social division, to banish the indetermination that haunts the democratic experience”
(305). While Lefort recognizes that “democracy itself already makes room for totalitarian institutions,
 68

In Ward‟s estimation, the totalitarianism implicit in democracy owes directly to

secularization. Citing Carl Schmitt and Alexis de Tocqueville for support, he argues that

the individualism espoused by liberalism and therefore present in democracy undermines

belief, which is necessary for proper social functioning. Ward makes his point via

Tocqueville:

When authority in the matter of religion no longer exists, nor in the matter of
politics, men are soon frightened at the aspect of [this] limitless independence.
This perpetual agitation of all things makes them restive and fatigues them. As
everything is moving in the world of the intellect, they want at least that all be
firm and stable in the material order; and as they are no longer able to recapture
their former beliefs, they give themselves a master.13

Ward concludes his reflection on Tocqueville by agreeing with him that “democracy

needs religious authority” and that freedom requires belief.14 And herein lies the problem

as Ward understands it: Insofar as freedom is defined as “being subject to no one,” the

result is that “the libertarian possibilities within democratic cultures require that masters

be found—require, that is, authoritarianism.”15

Theological Communities and Culture War

We are now in a position to consider Ward‟s alternative model of the socio-

political. In his view, the present cultural context of advanced capitalism has led to the

modes of organization, and modes of representation” (Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory, 20), he
does not take totalitarianism to be implicit within democracy. Whereas Ward seems to understand
totalitarianism as the trajectory of democracy, Flynn notes that totalitarian is a denial of democracy, insofar
as it involves an attempt to definitively fill the empty place of power and a refusal “of the fact that the
identity of a „body politic‟ exists only as deferred, which is to say, it is never given but always to be
sought” (xxv-xxvi).
13
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and tr. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 418. Quoted in Ward, “Religion after Democracy,”
213.
14
Ward, “Religion after Democracy,” 213.
15
Ibid.
 69

“collapse of society into culture, the social into the neo-tribal.”16 There is, in this cultural

context, a disappearance of meaningful sociability, and this can only be remedied by

“theological traditions”17 which constitute the sites of “resistance identities”18 in the

present context. The resistance in view here brings the question of immanence and

transcendence front and center: Only theological communities provide the resources to

transcend the “moral and political vacuum”19 which marks the social at present.

What is necessary, and the importance of this will become clear to us, is the “turn

to theology” represented by such theological communities;20 in other words, resistance

identities necessarily understand themselves in terms of theological traditions. Ward

therefore proposes a communitarian response to the present cultural malaise: “Theology”

is tasked with “articulating the theo-logic of a faith…” and constitutes “a reasoning that

takes place on the basis of an acceptance of the doctrine and disciplines of a believing

community.”21 As we will see, “belief” has to do, for Ward, not with libertarian notions

of freedom, but with a properly directed believing shaped by participation within

theological communities which are themselves constitutively related to that which

transcends the merely cultural. It is the relation of the community to this transcendence

which prevents the formation of the “empty place” in democracy thereby foreclosing any

return to authoritarianism.

What Ward envisions, then, is a social space populated by a number of

communities, each of which embodies and gives voice to a theological tradition. These

16
Graham Ward, True Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), ix.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 134.
19
Ibid., 138.
20
Ibid., ix.
21
Ibid., 133.
 70

communities will be plural22 and “irreducible,”23 each defined in terms of

“uncompromising assertions” incommensurable with those made by the others,

announcing “a certain fideism…of the faithful, the committed ones….”24 But this

relation to transcendence comes, it seems, at the cost of potentially violent conflict.

Ward summarizes this situation, stating that while “at the moment, the major culture wars

are between faith communities and the remnants of the secular, liberal worldview,” the

situation will change, with the result that “in their new self-awareness, these faith

communities might then turn upon each other.”25 While Ward insists on the necessity of

the turn to theology, then, he also insists that this turn “will…increasingly generate

culture wars.”26

Ward attempts to respond to this danger, insisting that theological traditions must

avoid the temptation to “fetishize their faith” and decrying the “neo-tribalism”27 of the

contemporary cultural context. He seems to hold out hope for a peaceful coexistence

stemming from the plurality of theological communities, writing,

Who knows…maybe as each active tradition recognizes their independence, and

the sacred spaces that each shares and lives (though differently understood), then
there will be fruitful interactions between communities, shared projects for mutual
flourishing, the slipping and sliding of interests.28

Yet he never provides an account of how this will happen, beyond this vague “who

knows.” All he seems to suggest is faith in the efficacy of a liberal cosmopolitanism

22
Ward insists that such communities are not only Christian. See True Religion, 134, 151.
23
For this language of the “irreducibility” of traditions, see Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and
Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 84.
24
Ward, True Religion, 153.
25
Ibid., ix.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 153.
 71

which, given his own dismissal of liberalism, we would expect him to reject out of hand

as being insufficient.

His proposal, then, leaves us with an account of the socio-political which seems to

exacerbate the very dangers against which he warns. This raises two questions for our

consideration. First, why does he propose this model of theo-political?29 Given that the

socio-political model of theological communities seems to easily devolve into a

dangerous form of identity politics, what drives Ward to propose this model? The second

question will emerge more clearly later in this chapter, and has to do with the following:

Given the dangers of Ward‟s proposal, might an alternative political proposal be able to

both articulate a theory of democracy which does not license totalitarianism and to make

reference to a transcendence of the social? The remainder of this chapter will explore

this first question, while the next two chapters will explore the second.

Ward‟s Kantian Problematic

Providing an account of why Ward proposes the particular model of the social he

does requires a good deal of effort. A series of linkages critical to Ward‟s thought will

lay out my agenda in this examination. Ward‟s entire project constitutes a response to a

broadly Kantian problematic which he believes decisively shapes contemporary cultural

formations. Stated in terms of this problematic, the present liberal, secular, democratic,

late capitalist culture is caught in the immanence of a play of cultural symbols analogous

to Kant‟s categories of the understanding, cut off from the reality transcending them,

which is analogous to Kant‟s noumenal realm. This cultural context lacks the resources

to transcend this play, and so is forever cut off from the real; the cultural therefore

29
I owe the language of the “theo-political” to Catherine Keller. See Catherine Keller, God and Power:
Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005).
 72

represents a phenomenal form of existence radically separated from noumenal reality. In

response to this Kantian problematic, Ward seeks to cut the Gordian knot by proposing

an alternative metaphysical and theological structure which effectively bridges the gap

between these analogs of the phenomenal and noumenal. According to this metaphysical

model, the created order, including human cultural production, itself analogically

participates in the life of God the creator. Cultural symbolic production and circulation,

the analogue of the Kantian phenomenal, is not radically separable from, but rather

participates in, the very Being of God, understood as the analog of the Kantian

noumenal.30 In a further twist, however, it is not human culture and activity per se which

participate in God, but a particular human community, the Christian Church. It is the

Church which is then tasked with providing the broader culture and world with its

interpretation as a part of the ongoing Being of God. The adoption of this explicitly

theological metaphysical model ultimately forces Ward to articulate his vision of the

social in terms of a kind of identitarian culture war. The bulk of what remains in this

chapter will be focused on elaborating these linkages, bringing Ward‟s position into

sharper focus and introducing the second of the two questions raised above.

The Kantian problematic around which Ward constructs his theory deserves a

fuller examination on our part. He first articulates the Kantian problematic shaping his

thought in his first major publication, Barth, Derrida, and the Language of Theology.31

In that text, he positions Karl Barth‟s theology and Jacques Derrida‟s philosophy32 as

30
It is no coincidence that this formulation sounds very Hegelian; as we shall see, Hegel provides one of
the means through which Ward develops these ideas.
31
Graham Ward, Barth, Derrida, and the Language of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).
32
In this early text, Ward views Derrida‟s philosophy as involved in providing a response to essentially the
same difficulty to which Barth‟s theology responds, and he is sympathetic to both Barth and Derrida at this
point in his intellectual development. In his major works after Barth, Derrida, and the Language of
 73

responses to a “crisis of representation”33 according to which “human words are

conventional and arbitrary” and “human thinking and speaking has only exchange value

in a market of representations.”34 Given this conventionality and arbitrariness, problems

emerge concerning both what is represented—“what was the „natural and objective

reality to which language referred?”—as well as how it is to be represented—“how could

language ever, adequately mirror (re-present) what was there?”35 It is clear from this

formulation that Ward is blending his Kantian model with a broadly Saussurian

conception of language; more specifically, he maps Ferdinand de Saussure‟s linguistic

model onto a neo-Kantian grid. Thus, he writes that “for Saussure, the model [of

language] describes the model of discourse within the realm of the phenomenal—it has

no access to objects in themselves, no access to the noumenal.”36 The merging of

Saussure and a form of neo-Kantianism is clear. The forms of signification are analogues

of the Kantian categories, while the world which is supposed to be mediated through

language is analogous to Kant‟s noumenal realm.37

The “crisis” comes through the unanswered question as to how this noumenal

realm can ever be adequately represented in the phenomenal. The theological nature of

this work also alerts us to the fact that the noumenal ultimately has to do with the divine,

and that the questions of relevance here have to do with theological language. In

theological terms, then, what is at issue is “the existence of two languages, each foreign

Theology, he reverse this position, offering a distinctly negative evaluation of both Barth and Derrida (as
will become clear below). However, while his evaluation of Derrida changes, his basic positioning of
Derrida on a particular neo-Kantian terrain remains consistent.
33
Ward, Barth, Derrida, 3.
34
Ibid., 206.
35
Ibid., 3.
36
Ibid., 203.
37
Many Kantians would doubtless contest the notion that the categories of the Understanding “mediate”
realm of noumenal “objects.” The focus here, however, is on Ward‟s reading, including the particular use
he makes of Kantian thought.
 74

to the other, each maintaining its own integrity, each involved in the dialectic: human

speech and God‟s Word,”38 raising the question of how to “forge a way” between them.39

The question is, in Barthian terms, how to relate the divine Word in human words, that is,

how to refer to God with human words which are not equal to the task.

In response to the question of how to forge a way between these disparate realms,

Ward follows Barth in explicitly rejecting any notion of an analogy of Being (analogia

entis) between God and the created order, divine Word and human words. He argues that

the Kantian epistemological difference operative in Barth is itself based upon a prior

ontological distinction between human beings and “a God who is totally other than

beings as we conceive them, a God beyond or otherwise than Being….”40 The

consequence of this ontological distinction is that

there is no ontological participation or correspondence which is other than by

faith. As such analogia fidei [analogy of faith] operates within both this
ontological and epistemological difference, and therefore has nothing to do with
analogia entis or the possibility of knowledge of God via the representations of
the human mind. The concept of the analogia entis has no purchase within the
ontological difference….41

What this means is that “analogia entis can only function in an onto-theology which the

ontological difference radically questions.”42 In other words, Ward rejects the notion that

the gap between the cultural/symbolic analog of the Kantian phenomenal realm and the

analog of the Kantian noumenal can be bridged by postulating a metaphysical analogy of

Being between these two levels, and this is due to the fact that this Kantian gap is both

ontological and epistemological.

38
Ward, Barth, Derrida, 26.
39
Ibid., 28.
40
Ibid., 101.
41
Ibid., 102.
42
Ibid.
 75

Ward reads both Barth and Derrida within the context of this rejection of the

analogy of Being.43 Ward‟s argument is that Derrida‟s notion of différance44

supplements Barth‟s own underdeveloped account of how God as wholly other can be

mediated via human representations45 by providing an account of the way in which

experience is “open, to some extent, to the outside.”46 On this reading, the “outside” is

the tout autre, understood as the “wholly other”47 which exceeds the play of human

symbolic constructions; that is, the phenomenal level of human symbolic constructions

opens beyond itself to the noumenal level of reality. It is clear that Ward understands

Derrida‟s concern with the tout autre [wholly other] in terms of Barth‟s own concern

with God as Ganz Andere [wholly other]. Thus, while Derrida (on Ward‟s reading) gives

evidence of a certain “agnosticism”48 concerning the identity of this other, Barth

supplements Derrida by providing a theological reading of Derrida‟s notion of différance,

according which it is read “in terms of the Christian word and its proclamation of the

Church.”49 On this early reading, then, Ward understands Derrida‟s concern to be the

development of an account of how the reality analogous to the Kantian noumenal can be

mediated via human signifying systems.50 As I will show, Ward‟s evaluation of what he

takes to be Barth and Derrida‟s response to this Kantian dilemma changes markedly as

43
This reading of Derrida is sharply at odds with the reading I will advance in Chapters Five and Six.
44
Différance is Derrida‟s neologism developed from the French verb différer, which carries the meaning of
both “difference” and “deferral.” As is now common scholarly practice, I have left the term untranslated
throughout the dissertation. For more on this term, see chapter five, p. 251.
45
Ward, Barth, Derrida, 247.
46
Ibid., 232.
47
“Wholly other” here should be taken as a provisional translation of the French tout autre. For a fuller
discussion of the provisionality of this translation, see chapter five, pp. 282-284. As noted in the Preface, I
have chosen to leave the term in French throughout the dissertation.
48
Ward, Barth, Derrida, 220.
49
Ibid., 251.
50
One additional point worth mentioning here is that this basic understanding of Derrida‟s notion of the
tout autre does not change, while Ward‟s evaluation of that understanding does.
 76

his thought develops; crucially, however, his overall understanding of this problematic as

determining the contemporary cultural context does not.

The Limitations of Mere Immanence

Before providing a fuller account of Ward‟s notion of analogical participation, I

want to return to the issue of the contemporary cultural context as Ward understands it. I

have already highlighted Ward‟s judgment that the present cultural context operates only

on the level of the Kantian phenomenal. I can now expand on this somewhat, adding that

culture‟s separation from the noumenal amounts to a failure to make contact with the

divine. As such, the present cultural context understands itself as a zone separated from

God and is, therefore, ultimately nihilistic.

It also becomes clear what Ward has in view when he warns against the dangers

posed by the collapse of the social into the cultural. Ward uses “culture” to refer to “a

symbolic world-view”51 which involves “semiotic systems;”52 the “cultural,” therefore,

names the merely phenomenal symbolic order. “Pantextualism,” which obtains when

“everything is viewed in terms of a text and the circulation of signs,”53 names the result

of such a collapse, when the movement of symbolic orders takes place with no reference

to the transcendent reality analogous to Kant‟s noumenal order. The significance of this

danger (we will see that it is more of an inevitability than simply a danger for Ward)

prompts Ward to assert that “the cultural is an expression and a development of the

fallen, the foundry in which so many idols and fetishes are cast to keep human beings

51
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 5.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid., 6.
 77

from coming to terms with the violence, anger, and alienation being perpetuated.”54 The

theological language of fallenness makes sense if we bear in mind Ward‟s ultimate

identification of the noumenal with the divine. To this fallen, pantextualist circulation of

signs, Ward contrasts “a strong notion of the „social,‟” which is “mediated through the

cultural” but not reducible to it.55 The implication of this, which I will develop more

fully in the elaboration of Ward‟s conception of analogical participation, is that the

properly social relates to the level of the noumenal which exceeds the play of cultural

symbols. Ward‟s fear, then, is that the properly social, which is to say a form of human

sociality which is related to the totality of what is, will devolve to the endless circulation

of cultural symbols with no reference whatsoever to that which is ultimately significant

and transcendent.

This is the collapse of the social into the cultural, immanence with no

transcendence, which is precisely what Ward finds when he considers the contemporary

cultural context. He speaks of this context as one in which “the nothing that subtends the

frenetic display of signs and gestures” (which is to say, “culture”) has itself become the

“ultimate concern.”56 The present cultural context, and the movements of advanced

capitalism which motivate it, is therefore defined by the endless play of human cultural

productions (i.e. the Kantian phenomenal) which no longer even pretend to make

reference to a reality exceeding that play (i.e. the Kantian noumenal). There is no longer

any depth of expression but, rather, a radical “commodification of value”57 in which “the

54
Ibid., 57.
55
Ibid., 4.
56
Ward, True Religion, 107.
57
Ibid., 115.
 78

simulations are to be enjoyed as simulations, the surfaces as surface,”58 determining the

contemporary cultural context as one of “special effect.”59 The culture of advanced

capital, which amounts to the celebration and affirmation of the pure immanence of the

interplay of cultural symbols, rests upon nothing, resulting in the endless production of

“pseudo-objects.”60 This commodification affects all “our cherished activities,”

including religion: “As a concept, religion implodes. Having radically dematerialized its

institutions and liturgies, sacred texts and solemn rites, confessions and invocations—true

religion becomes pantomime…it becomes simulation.”61

This ceaseless and depthless play of cultural signifiers is what also defines

democracy for Ward. The “limitless independence” of democracy, the “empty place”

figured by the body of “the people” who never have a stable identity, is itself an effect of

the positioning of democracy within the mere immanence of the cultural. Ward‟s claim

that freedom in liberal democracy is understood as “being subject to no one” is best

understood in terms of the Kantian problematic outlined here. Liberal democracy, for

Ward, makes no claim to reflect or mediate a reality which exceeds the play of cultural

symbolic significations; this is precisely why the place of power within democracy is

“empty.” It is also the cause, on Ward‟s reading, for the “nebulous and ungraspable”

nature of the social body:62 Because democracy contentedly exists on the level of the

merely cultural, there is no reality to ground or center the play of cultural symbols, so

such nebulosity is to be expected. The totalitarianism Ward understands to inhere in

58
Ibid., 123.
59
Ibid., 107.
60
Graham Ward, Christ and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 254.
61
Ward, True Religion, 117.
62
Ward, “Religion after Democracy,” 214.
 79

democracy stems from this reduction to the immanent and constitutes an artificial attempt

to provide a reference to a reality from which democracy is effectively blocked.

Democracy participates in and gives political expression to the fallen and

idolatrous movement of the cultural, and so cannot provide, in Ward‟s estimation, a

valuable or lasting political figuration of the social. Better stated, it is because

democracy is merely cultural, and not social at all, that it is inadequate as a social model.

Such is the price to be paid for affirming immanence at the cost of transcendence. What

is necessary, in Ward‟s estimation, is a social model which is defined by the reality which

transcends the play of cultural symbols, and it is this which directs us to a fuller

consideration of Ward‟s model of analogical participation in the divine.

Ward’s Model of Analogical Participation

Ward‟s response to the Kantian problematic which preoccupies his thought

changes dramatically in his work subsequent to Barth, Derrida, and the Language of

Theology. He comes to reject this model, referring in later work to the “negative

metaphysics predicated…on the Kantian divide between what is (the infinite indifference

of what is always and only tout autre) and the symbolic orders (a linguistic adaptation of

the Kantian categories) that create surfaces and façades.”63 More specifically, Ward

comes to argue, in marked contrast to his earlier position, that this Kantian gap is merely

epistemological and not ontological.

As a result, he comes to embrace a concept of the analogy of Being, arguing, for

example, that “a certain analogy…pertains between the uncreated God and creation,

63
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 106. Ward consistently maintains Derrida‟s language of the tout autre
to refer to this analogue of the Kantian noumenal as it pertains to this “negative metaphysics.” Chapters
Five and Six should make it clear that this is a highly problematic reading of Derrida.
 80

Christ and human beings.”64 This shift is first announced by Ward in a piece co-authored

with John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, published four years after Barth, Derrida,

and the Language of Theology.65 In that piece, which introduces the theological

movement known as “Radical Orthodoxy,” Ward explains that “the central theological

framework of radical orthodoxy is „participation‟ as developed by Plato and reworked by

Christianity.”66 Ward now comes to affirm that the gap between the phenomenal and the

noumenal is bridged by a participation of the former in the latter. The significance of this

shift is further evident when Ward writes that “revelation would only be compromised

[the by the irreducibility of cultural mediation] if it were totally „other‟ and external to

the social and interrelational such that the division between truth [the analog of the

Kantian noumenal] and its cultural expression [the analog of the Kantian categories] was

both ontological and epistemological” (emphasis added).67 It is clear that this gap now

pertains to the epistemological, but is not longer understood in ontological terms; on the

contrary, ontologically, the phenomenal is now understood by Ward to participate in the

noumenal.

This theological and metaphysical notion of participation is the central pillar

supporting Ward‟s intellectual endeavors since its enunciation in 1999, and the

significance of this notion must not be overlooked. In advancing a notion of analogical

participation, Ward is laying the groundwork for a program which necessarily exceeds

the discipline of theology narrowly understood, and which therefore constitutes, among

64
Ward, Christ and Culture, 17.
65
John Milbank et. al., “Introduction: Suspending the Material: The Turn of Radical Orthodoxy,” in
Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Catherine Pickstock (London:
Routledge, 1999).
66
Ibid., 3.
67
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 15. It is worth noting, of course, that Ward‟s original position was that
the difference was both ontological and epistemological.
 81

other things, a particular ontology of the social. As he says in the text co-authored with

Milbank and Pickstock, he adopts the conceptuality of analogical participation because

“any alternative configuration perforce reserves a territory independent of God.”68 The

guiding idea of Radical Orthodoxy is that “every discipline must be framed by a

theological perspective; otherwise these disciplines will define a zone apart from God,

grounded literally in nothing.”69 Without such an emphasis, reality reduces to mere

immanence,70 rendering any such perspective “nihilistic.”71 Ward‟s notion of analogical

participation represents the operative conception of transcendence in his work as it relates

to the socio-political, and therefore warrants further elaboration.

This notion of analogical participation is the cornerstone of Ward‟s thought, and

therefore permeates his writing, making it impossible to summarize all his discussions of

the notion here. Instead of attempting this sort of global summary, it is instructive to

consider examples of three discourses through which Ward develops this notion of

participation, which are also elaborated in three relatively discreet treatments: A Hegelian

discourse, an Augustinian discourse, and a biblical discourse. There are themes which

are common to all three of these discourses. The first is that the present Christian

community constitutes the locus of participation in the divine. The second is that this

participation is proleptic, with a full participation in the divine being an eschatological

reality which, while not yet present, nevertheless informs the present. The third, closely

related to the second, is the articulation of a particular notion of “eschatological

discernment.”

68
Milbank et. al., 3.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid., 4.
 82

Analogy in Hegelian Discourse

I will first consider Ward‟s use of Hegel in advancing his theo-political model of

the social.72 In his treatment of Hegel, Ward understands the Church in terms of the State

(Staat) as outlined in Hegel‟s Elements of the Philosophy of Right.73 Accordingly, he

writes that the “teleologically driven” movement of the Church in the world constitutes

“a positive dialectic tracing and performing what Hegel called „the march of God in the

world,‟”74 and insists that “Staat, for Hegel [means] something closer to the Christian

understanding of the Kingdom.”75 This identification of the Staat and the Kingdom is

given a distinctly Augustinian tone when Ward writes that Hegel‟s discussion of the State

as the actuality of concrete freedom “might have come from Augustine‟s City of God.”76

Ward also gives the notion of Geist a distinctly Christian, and Augustinian, spin, insisting

that Hegel‟s notion of Geist is “closer to Augustine‟s construal of God as the Just, the

True, and the Good.”77 These emphases play a dual role for Ward, emphasizing first the

resolutely theological character of Hegel‟s thought and, secondly, relating this Christian

character in terms of the orthodox “matrix” of Christian thought which, as we will see, is

normative for Ward.

In line with this, Ward argues that when Hegel, in his discussion of religion,

refers to the Church as “the ultimate unfolding of the Kingdom of God and its
72
Ward‟s is obviously not the only possible reading of Hegel, and there are notable significant
contemporary alternatives of his reading of Hegel in relation to theology and the social. For two important
recent examples, see Mark C. Taylor, After God (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007) and two
of Slavoj Žižek‟s more recent offerings: “The Fear of Four Words: A Modest Plea for the Hegelian
Reading of Christianity” and “Dialectical Clarity Versus the Misty Conceit of Paradox,” both in The
Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? ed. Creston Davis (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009).
73
G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
74
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 56. Ward‟s quotation is to Hegel‟s famous statement that “the State
[Staat] consists in the march of God in the world.” See Hegel, Elements, 279.
75
Graham Ward, Cities of God (London: Blackwell, 2000), 137.
76
Ibid., 141. Cf. Hegel, Elements, 282.
77
Ward, Cities, 140.
 83

citizenship,” this is also what he has in view when he refers to the State.78 With this as a

background, Ward follows Hegel when he writes that “the ethical life, the discrete

communities of spirit each express and maintain, is ultimately the one movement of the

one absolute and divine will unfolding itself through time.”79 Ward explicitly articulates

this emphasis on the oneness of the “absolute and divine will” in terms of an economy of

full return:80

In both accounts [given in Hegel‟s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and

Elements of the Philosophy of Right] Hegel‟s story ends (as indeed Augustine‟s
account of the city of God ends), by turning full circle, with the eschatological
judgment in which all ethical communities will not only recognize their oneness
but, in that recognition, come to the final knowledge of themselves as
communities of love (emphasis added).81

With the advent of eschatological judgment everything is brought into proper relation in

the perfect oneness and self-possession of the divine.

This formulation also responds to the danger of the social collapsing into the

cultural and, related to this, the inadequacy of reference to mere immanence. Indeed, one

of the points at which Ward departs from Hegel is precisely where he believes Hegel

loses his theological bearings, and therefore his relation to a transcendent revelation,

thereby lapsing into a form of immanentism. In this regard, Ward writes that “revelation

78
Ibid., 141-142. Ward cites Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Together with a Work on the
Proofs of the Existence of God, vol. III, trans. E.B. Spears and J. Burdon Sanderson (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1962), 84-90, 102-103, 109.
79
Ward, Cities, 141.
80
The notion of “economy” is pervasive in Ward‟s writings, where one finds economies of: Desire,
response and engagement, shared Being, representation, mimesis, the Spirit, recognition, eschatological
judgment, emptying and filling, and so forth.
81
Ward, Cities, 142. Ward‟s reading of Hegel in terms of Augustine is also rendered explicit in this
statement. While illustrative of Ward‟s thought, his linkage of Augustine and Hegel on this point is highly
debatable, to say the least. It is far from clear that Hegel affirms any form of “eschatological judgment”
parallel to Augustine‟s account in City of God XX in either Lectures or Elements. It is also far from clear
that Hegel would agree with Augustine‟s insistence that true happiness and peace are reserved for the
afterlife; see Augustine City of God XIX. Frederick Beiser sees Hegel‟s religious and political thought as
distinctly antithetical to that advanced by Augustine; see Frederick Beiser, Hegel (London: Routledge,
2005), 135-139. Nevertheless, it is Ward‟s actual reading of Hegel which is of primary importance in our
consideration, the potential idiosyncrasy of that reading notwithstanding.
 84

enables Hegel to think cosmologically,” and that “all too easily can the immanentalism of

Hegel‟s open-ended system be allowed to explain itself,” a direction in which he believes

Elements of the Philosophy of Right is moving.82 In this case Hegel‟s Idea is simply

identified with History, and all reference to divine movement is lost. Such a loss of

theological focus leads, on Ward‟s reading, to negative effects:

Hegel‟s community of the Spirit, stripped of the theological framework which

attempted to relate subjects of desire to ecclesiology, left intellectual attention
fixed upon dynamic principles (desire, will, time, power) that, like subatomic
particles, move here and there creating arbitrary orderings for an increasingly
insubstantial subject.83

Though he does not make the connection explicit, we can see that this reduction to

immanence is equivalent to a resignation to existence at the level of the merely cultural

and the sundering of any true sociality grounded in that which exceeds the cultural.

Indeed, this Kantian connection is clear when Ward decries the devolution of a properly

theological Hegelianism into “other more recent anonymous and transcendental

dynamics” as found in Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault.84 Ward therefore affirms a

notion of transcendence, which comes about through analogical participation in the

divine, which gives the merely cultural its properly social meaning and depth.

82
Ward, Cities, 145.
83
Ibid., 146.
84
Ibid., 145. Given Ward‟s use of the term “transcendental” with reference to these three thinkers, in
particular, it is worth pausing to note what Ward seems to mean by this term. He clearly does not use the
term in the sense of something‟s being a condition of possibility for something else (cf. 232, where he
affirmatively uses the language of “condition of possibility” in relation to Platonic forms). On the contrary,
he seems to use this term in reference to thinkers or schools of thought which he believes operate according
to the “negative metaphysics” discussed above. “Transcendental” therefore seems to refer, in Ward, to
reference to some level of reality which is radically separated from the level of cultural symbols and which
cannot be organically related to them.
 85

Analogy in Biblical Discourse

Ward also develops his theory of participation via reference to materials in the

New Testament. One of clearest examples of such development is given in Ward‟s

reflections on the biblical text of Colossians 1:24, which he renders as follows: “Now I

rejoice in suffering [en tois pathemasin] on your behalf and fill up in turn [antanaplero]

things lacking of the afflictions [thlipseon] of Christ in my flesh [sarx] on behalf of his

body [somatos] which is the Church.”85 The Church is again the locus of participation in

the divine, a point rendered explicit by Ward when he writes that “Paul draws attention to

Christ as a cosmic space filled with all the riches and treasures of wisdom and knowledge

(2.3), speaking repeatedly of Christians as living en Christo or en auto, employing a

locative use of the dative.”86 The Church is therefore considered the body of Christ

insofar as it marks the privileged site of human participation in the divine.

Echoing the Hegelian language noted above, Ward writes that “Jesus Christ‟s own

flesh opens up to enfold all things in earth and heaven in one body.”87 Stating the issue

in this way could give one the impression that “all things” properly participate in the

divine, thereby disrupting Ward‟s communitarian emphasis. Such a reading, however,

would be mistaken. This follows from the logic of Ward‟s overall position, but is

implicit in his statements as well. In this regard, Ward writes that

Jesus Christ as flesh (sarx) is no longer: „even though we once knew Christ from
the human point of view, we know him no longer in that way,‟ Paul tells the
Church at Corinth (2 Cor. 5.16). There remains the body of Christ as the Church
composed of flesh (sarx) of believers like Paul. Paul‟s suffering is, then, an
extension of and a participation in the suffering of Christ (emphasis added).88

85
Ward, Christ and Culture, 256.
86
Ibid., 257.
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid., 258.
 86

In a manner entirely consistent with Ward‟s thought to this point, his argument is not that

the cultural as such participates in God. Rather “believers like Paul” compose the body

of Christ, which is to say the Church. As he writes elsewhere, “the Christian tradition

[note the language of “the Christian tradition”] maintains that Christ reveals himself

today, in and through the work of the Church; which, following the Ascension and

Pentecost, became the body of Christ. Revelation is an ongoing activity, unfolding in the

world,”89 and it unfolds in the Church.

Two other important and related elements from Ward‟s Hegelian account also

inform this biblical rendering of his position. The first is the notion of an economy of full

return, and the second is the importance of a concept of eschatological judgment and

discernment. This economic aspect is clear in Ward‟s reflections on Colossians 1:24,

quoted above. Ward notes two moments of kenosis, or self-emptying, of God in relation

to Christ: Creation and the suffering of Christ, which come together in Christ‟s Passion

on the cross.90 In this event, Christ is himself subjected to the suffering of a sinful and

fallen created order: “Jesus is both the body at its most exposed and vulnerable, the body

that is given on behalf of sinful human beings, and suffering victim of the disrupted

orders of creation brought about by the lust to dominate.”91 Yet even this suffering is a

kenotic giving-over of Christ, which “assuages and reorients the powers of disintegration,

establishing grace as the principle of nature.”92 What this illustrates is Ward‟s insistence

on an irreducibly kenotic and sacrificial character to present, earthly existence, and that

this kenotic and sacrificial character itself marks a kind of movement of the divine.

89
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 14.
90
Ward, Christ and Culture, 255.
91
Ibid.
92
Ibid.
 87

This, however, is only half of the story for Ward. He notes that, in Colossians

1:24, the verb pleroō (“filling” or “filling up”) marks an opposition to “the important

word for Christ‟s descent from God in Paul‟s letter to the Philippians, kenoō—to empty,

to pour out.”93 It is in the counter movement to kenosis (emptying), the movement of

pleroma (filling up), that Ward detects the economic circularity of full return: “With

pleroō the economics of emptying that governed the incarnation are now reversed. The

lack that kenosis brought about is now being satisfied.”94 What the Church participates

in is this divine economy:

There is a filling and a fulfilling not only of Christ but of each believer with
respect to Christ. Paul works and prays for the Colossians that „you may be filled
[plerothete] with the full knowledge of the will of him in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding [en pase sophia kai sunesei pneumatika]‟ (1.9). The pleroma is
presented as the glory or the wisdom of God filling a space, defining a certain
sacred spatiality….95

The “sacred spatiality” of the divine is achieved in this economic movement of filling

and, as I have already noted, it is within this movement that the Church, understood as

being en Christo, participates in God. While the Church necessarily experiences a

kenotic suffering inseparable from that of Christ, this suffering is also “inseparable from

coming to the fullness of the stature of Christ or „being renewed in the full knowledge

according to the image of the creator‟ (3.10).”96 Ward writes that “kenosis and

completion, emptying and filling, are not two opposite, but two complementary

operations of the divine, like breathing out in order to breathe in….”97

93
Ibid., 257.
94
Ibid. Žižek has recently articulated a death-of-God account, heavily indebted to the work of Thomas
Altizer, in which he argues for a notion of kenosis with no return or “filling up.” See in particular Žižek,
“Dialectical Clarity,” 259ff.
95
Ward, Christ and Culture, 257.
96
Ibid., 258.
97
Ibid., 261.
 88

Ward contrasts the participation of the Church in this divine economy of kenosis

and pleroma with an alternative economy of sacrifice and suffering which corresponds to

“the cultural” as he has defined it. In contrast to the movement of suffering caught up in

this economy of pleroma and kenosis, Ward notes that there is “a suffering that is

meaningless because it has no part in redemption.”98 This is a “privative” suffering,

insofar as it “rejects and fights against redemption,” therefore having no positive being of

its own.99 As the language of privation makes clear, the claim that this suffering has no

part in redemption is equivalent to saying that it does not participate in the divine

economy of redemptive kenosis and suffering. Relating this back to Ward‟s consistently

Kantian framework, what Ward is describing here is the level of “the cultural,” cut off

from what it can only know as a noumenal, wholly otherness, trapped in the endless

circulation of immanent cultural symbols. This suffering, because it remains caught in

the movement of the semiotic,100 which is to say in the cultural, constitutes a kenosis

without the promise or potential of a corresponding pleroma. There is, at this level of the

cultural, a kind of sacrifice and giving, but it amounts to nothing more than an

“aneconomic trauma” insofar as all that is produced and reproduced is this movement

itself.101

This movement brings us back to the previous discussion of capitalism, insofar as

its end result is “the endless production of pseudo-objects” in an economy of sacrifice

which is “fundamental to capitalism itself.”102 In contrast to this, the Christian economic

movement of kenosis and pleroma “reaches beyond itself, so that time, spirit, and

98
Ibid., 260.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid., 265.
101
Ibid., 254.
102
Ibid.
 89

materiality are all distended. There is a surpassing of what is understood in the

understanding that is granted.”103 This language of going “beyond itself” captures the

reference to the transcendence of a movement exceeding the cultural, as well as to

Ward‟s notion of an economic movement of full circularity.

Finally, as in the Hegelian account, Ward insists that this fullness, the completion

of the movement of pleroma, is an eschatological event and, as such, is not fully achieved

at present. As he says, “there is no deliverance from suffering promised in the New

Testament before the Messianic return.”104 Or, again, “there is a „filling up‟ and

therefore an end, when „Christ is all in all [panta kai en pasin Christos],‟ but that „filling

up‟ is not yet concluded and we remain caught between contingent knowledges and truth;

intuition, ignorance, and hope.”105 Ward insists, as he did in his discussion of Hegel and

as he will in his discussion of Augustine, that even the Christian community‟s

participation in the divine is, as yet, only partial.

And yet, despite this, Ward seems to speak proleptically from within this

eschatological perspective. As he puts it, “the burden of my argument is that the

incarnational view of creation profoundly relates the theological and the historical—

bearing both forward…towards an eschatological discernment” (emphasis added).106

Ward‟s position is not that the Church exists in the present with no knowledge of the

future. Rather, there is a sense in which, for Ward, the eschatological is proleptically

figured in the Church. The Church speaks from the eschaton, discerning the times.

Indeed, we will find that Ward gives this vocation of discernment pride of place for the

103
Ibid., 265.
104
Ibid., 256.
105
Ibid., 261.
106
Ibid., 266.
 90

Church, defining its purpose as interpreting the world to itself. Despite the fact that the

eschatological consummation remains outstanding, then, Ward gives every indication that

the Church, as the community of divine participation, speaks and acts with a unique

assurance of authority which comes from this eschatological discernment.

Analogy in Augustinian Discourse

This brings me to a consideration of the third discourse through which Ward

seeks to articulate his theory of analogical participation: The thought of Augustine. On

Ward‟s own account, Augustine‟s thought makes the single most important contribution

to his own. Viewed with this in mind, all of Ward‟s work represents a certain kind of

Augustinianism.107 Obviously, it is not possible to attempt an examination of

Augustine‟s broad influence on Ward‟s work. I will instead focus on a rather streamlined

account, provided by Ward himself. In this account, which relates Ward‟s project to

Augustine‟s City of God, the same themes we saw in Ward‟s treatment of Hegel and of

biblical literature reappear: The emphasis on the Church as the locus of divine

participation; rejection of the immanence of a life lived solely at the level of “the

cultural;” emphasis on the eschatological perspective of the community‟s participation in

the divine.

107
There are, of course, very different Augustinian approaches to the relation between theology and the
political. Eric Gregory helpfully outlines four different types of contemporary political Augustinianism,
three liberal and one (that of Radical Orthodoxy) anti-liberal. Gregory himself advances a form of
Augustinian liberalism and provides a trenchant critical evaluation of Milbank‟s (and, by implication,
Ward‟s) anti-liberal political Augustinianism; see Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An
Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008). Charles
Mathewes has also recently produced another example of an Augustinian theology of the political. While
his offering has more in common with Ward‟s proposal than does Gregory‟s, it still differs in significant
respects; see Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007).
 91

Ward begins his reflections with a consideration of Augustine‟s account of the

quality of the earthly and heavenly cities:

The two cities were created by two kinds of love (civitates duas amores duo): the
earthly city was created by self-love (amor sui) reaching the point of contempt for
God, the Heavenly city by the love of God (amor dei) carried as far as contempt
of self…. In the former, the lust for domination (dominandi libido) lords it over its
princes as over the nations it subjugates; in the other both those put in authority
and those subject to them serve one another in love (serviunt inuicem in carite),
the rulers by their counsel, the subjects by their obedience. The one city loves its
own strength (diligit virtutem suam) shown in its powerful leaders; the other says
to its God, „I will love you (diligam te), my Lord, my strength. (XIV.28)108

In his reflections on this passage, Ward focuses on two central points which are in some

tension, the resolution of which (or lack of it) will be of some consequence as we

proceed.

The first of these points is that the earthly city is “virtual,” in the sense that it has

no proper being of its own, but exists only as a kind of “perverse imitation” of the

heavenly city.109 For Ward, this insistence on the nature of the earthly city as a mere

perversion of the heavenly city does not license a dualism postulating two different

kingdoms.110 Rather, the earthly city operates according to the same Augustinian notion

of privation we previously considered: “The civitas terrena, like Augustine‟s famous

understanding of evil itself, is a privatio boni—it has no real substance; it is virtual.”111

Insofar as God‟s providence actively directs both cities,112 this is possible because the

108
Ward, Cities, 227. The quotation is taken from Augustine, De civitate Dei, trans. Henry Bettenson
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972).
109
Ward, Cities, 227.
110
Ibid., 233.
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid., 229.
 92

earthly city has, in its valuable elements, the heavenly city as its “condition of

possibility.”113

I want to consider this latter point more closely. The earthly city, taken simply on

its own terms, constitutes a form of the merely immanent which Ward consistently

rejects. All that follows from the earthly city, in itself, is “pluralism, equivalence, and

relativism.”114 In “the saeculum,” which is to say in the earthy city, the meanings of all

concepts such as peace, love, justice, and community, as well as judgments of good and

bad, worse and better, worst and best, are rendered ultimately impossible because there

exists no possible reference or referent beyond the immanence of the earthly city. 115

Returning to the language which has guided us previously, Ward‟s point is that the

earthly city is equivalent to the merely cultural and immanent, constituted by the

interplay of cultural symbols.

The earthly city‟s analogical participation in the heavenly city is all that allows

the earthly city to refer beyond its own immanence, and what therefore allows divine

providence to act via the earthly city. Ward cites Augustine to the effect that

“communities come to be defined as „the association of a multitude of rational beings

united by a common agreement on the objects of their love‟,” and immediately makes

clear the necessity of reference to that which exceeds the immanent:

Each grouping would have its own languages, local customs, historical memory,
and shared values, but since only one object of love, for Augustine, is the true and
right object, namely God, the language of good and bad, worse and better, worst

113
Ibid., 230. The use of the phrase “condition of possibility” is interesting in this context, given the point
noted above concerning Ward‟s rather idiosyncratic use of the term “transcendental.” In common usage, of
course, to name one thing the “condition of possibility” of another is equivalent to naming it the
“transcendental condition.”
114
Ibid., 232.
115
Ibid.
 93

and best can only have reference internal to the organization and life of the
community. Pluralism, equivalence and relativism necessarily follow.116

The only way to exceed the immanent logic internal to such diverse earthly cities is

through reference to the “theological difference,” which is also to say through

transcendence. As he puts it,

The theological difference makes possible the figural reading of the city. It
establishes an analogical relationship because it establishes true difference with
respect to various similarities. It is an analogy based upon faith: „the association,
of people, of righteous men lives on the same basis of faith, active in love, the
love with which a man loves God, as God ought to be loves, and loves his
neighbor as himself‟ (City of God, XIX.23). Hence it is that the final relationship
that physical, social, ecclesial, and Eucharistic bodies have with the body of
Christ is an analogical relationship.117

The frame of reference for the evaluation of the shared life in the earthly city comes

through participation in the heavenly city, which itself participates in God. It is only

through reference, via analogical participation, to the reality of God that the possibility

exists of avoiding the dangers of pluralism equivalence, and relativism which stem from a

radical immanentism.

The point Ward makes regarding Augustine can be related to the difference

between the social and the cultural we considered above. Ward writes that “in accepting

the semiosis of postmodernity…Christian theology must also point to the divine order

which maintains this semantic drift of the sign.”118 This “semiosis of postmodernity” is

yet another description for the cultural play of symbols, and Ward‟s point is that if this

level of play, with the capitalistic commodification it implies, is not itself to become all

in all, this can only be achieved via reference to the divine order which transcends it.

Ward sums up the point as follows:

116
Ibid.
117
Ibid., 233.
118
Ibid., 232.
 94

The move from one meaning to the other, from the earthly city, peace, love,
justice, community to the heavenly forms which are the condition for their
possibility is not available by inductive reasoning or inference. In the saeculum
as such all meanings are equivalent—there is this use of love and that, this use of
peace and that, etc.—because all comparisons and contrasts are immanent. There
is no absolute difference, only relative differences. So that, any hierarchy of
values established between a series of family resemblances—this form of love,
peace, justice, society is better than that one—is based upon a judgment that is
also always established immanently.119

The only way to properly judge the forms of the earthly, cultural city is through reference

to the heavenly city which, owing to its participation in the divine, is theologically

differentiated from the earthly city. Yet, we must also recognize that when Ward speaks

of the “theological difference,” this does not refer to the Barthian style difference he

explicitly rejects; on the contrary, it is through its participation in the divine order that the

earthly order can have any lasting meaning at all and, as such, can embody a form of

sociality which does not immediately reduce to the cultural.

It is immediately evident that Ward‟s account here accords with the account he

has given with reference to Hegel. Just as the various ethical communities are ultimately

caught up in a movement of the one Geist, so here earthly communities are ultimately

given shape insofar as they analogically participate in the heavenly city. In both cases,

the diverse and scattered earthly communities find their true identity in the divine, and

through the heavenly city which itself models participation in God and, again returning to

an earlier formulation, interprets these other communities to themselves. This

Augustinian account also sheds light on the previous Hegelian account. Just as the

earthly city is “virtual” insofar as it receives its true being through the heavenly city, so

the individual ethical communities may be described as “virtual” insofar as their real

identity lies in the movement of the one, universal Geist.

119
Ibid.
 95

Summary

These three different discourses, the Hegelian, the biblical, and the Augustinian,

have provided a full enough view of Ward‟s model of analogical participation that a

number of points should now be clear. Ward‟s position is that incarnation “testifies to a

subsumption of the human by the divine,”120 and that, following the Ascension and

Pentecost, the Church has taken over this incarnational function, insofar as it is “the body

of Christ.”121 We have already seen that the Church is the privileged site of participation

in the divine and, insofar as Ward is willing to speak of the Church as “a means for the

dissemination of the revelation” of God122 and in terms of Hegel‟s “march of God in the

world,” the clear implication is that participation in the divine comes about through the

subsumption (Ward‟s Hegelian term) of other ethical communities, or earthly cities, in

this community which participates in the divine. This participation of the created order in

the creator is what allows for a form of sociability which is not simply reducible to the

cultural. Relating this to Ward‟s rejection of democracy, this form of sociality grounding

in the Being of God is one which cannot be formed around an irreducible emptiness.

Rather, it constitutes a true sociality precisely insofar as it gains its being from the

fullness of God. Again, Ward‟s rejection of democracy stems from the fact that it

operates at the level of the merely immanent interplay of cultural symbols.

The Church as Privileged Site of Divine Participation

Having outlined Ward‟s model of analogical participation, I want to draw

attention to another important aspect which has emerged in his work. We have already

120
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 58.
121
Ibid., 14.
122
Ibid., 58.
 96

seen in this chapter that specifically theological communities which hold the promise of a

form of sociality which exceeds the limits the limits of the cultural; Ward says nothing

about the possibility of any other forms of human sociality holding such promise.

Having seen that the cultural as such is fallen, and therefore does not properly participate

in the divine, what has emerged in the discussion of analogical participation is that the

Christian community, in fact, constitutes the site of analogical participation in the divine

(as we have previously seen). And, given his insistence that the cultural is fallen, it

makes sense for Ward to outline such a privileged site of participation.

One point which is significant in this privileging, which will be of some

consequence below, is that Ward demonstrates a reluctance or inability to formulate the

“theo-logic” of any communities other than the Christian community. In Christ and

Culture, for example, Ward addresses the reason why he does not engage “the question of

Christ with respect to our multi-faith culture,”123 citing as his answer the fact that he is

“quite simply not sure how to do this.”124 We have also seen that in True Religion he

does not explain how he envisions these multiple communities relating to each other, and

he makes another telling statement in that context. In the one-page “Afterword,” Ward

reflects on his silence concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and gives the following

candid reason for this silence, noting that while he was “convinced that something did

have to be said about „religion‟ in the contemporary world,” he was nevertheless unable

to “weave September 11 into my narrative as if I understood the part it played in the

unfolding logic of „true religion.‟”125 These are indications, to which I will return, that

while Ward insists on a plurality of theological communities, he is circumspect at best

123
Ward, Christ and Culture, 24.
124
Ibid., 25.
125
Ward, True Religion, 154.
 97

about discussing such a plurality in any substantive detail. On the contrary, he instead

emphasizes the responsibility that the Church, as privileged site of divine participation,

bears to the world around it. As Ward puts it in one particularly illustrative statement, it

is through the “acts of interpretation and discernment” undertaken from within the

Christian community that “the world is brought to an understanding of itself and each

member of the Christian community participates in the unfolding of a redemptive

operation through time.”126 People participate in God via participation in the Christian

community, which “performs” the “march of God in the world.”127

Ward‟s proposal, however, is even more narrowly focused than this allows. His

proposal is not that any and every community which self-identifies as “Christian”

constitutes a locus of analogical participation in the divine; on the contrary, what

consistently emerges in Ward‟s work is a normative vision of a very particular form of

Anglo-Catholic Christianity. As he says in the piece co-authored with Milbank and

Pickstock, Radical Orthodoxy is orthodox “in the most straightforward sense of a

commitment to creedal Christianity and the exemplarity of its patristic matrix” and in the

sense of “reaffirming a richer and more coherent Christianity which was lost sight of after

the late Middle Ages.”128 This particular Christian model is reinforced not only through a

positive emphasis on such obvious themes as analogical participation and a strong

Augustinian focus, but also negatively, via the systematic exclusion and marginalization

of other expressions from “authentic” Christianity. This exclusion is scattered throughout

126
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 96. This perspective on the role of the Christian community mitigates,
if not obliterates, the force of Ward‟s concession (noted above) that it is possible that the Church has to
learn from its “cultural other.” Cf. p. 54.
127
Ibid., 56.
128
Milbank et. al., 2.
 98

Ward‟s writings, ranging from condemnations of “non-confessional theology”129 the

liberal theologies of Tillich and Bultmann, to the postmodern theologies of Mark C.

Taylor and John Caputo, to the scripturalist theologies espoused by some forms of

conservative Protestantism. Concerning this latter group, for example, Ward writes that

“there have been believers in the verbal inspiration of Scripture, particularly among

conservative Protestants, but these have been a minority. They do not constitute a

continuing tradition in Christian orthodoxy.”130

Ward makes statements from time to time which would seem to disrupt the

normativity of any one form of the Christian tradition. He writes, to give a few

examples, that Christianity is not homogeneous but is “always hybrid, improvised,

syncretistic,”131 that “there is no one Christianity or Christian standpoint,”132 and that

“Christianity has never had a pure form.”133 But these are exceptions which prove the

rule of Ward‟s overall proposal. The vast majority of Ward‟s writing is informed by the

normative notion of Christianity outlined in the previous paragraph, which licenses Ward

to constantly use the language of simply “Christianity,” “the Christian standpoint,” and so

forth as references to Christianity as such, the significance of this fact being, of course,

that such language presupposed precisely the “as such.” Once again, Ward‟s theology

implies such a perspective, as when he writes that although “culturally there are diverse

forms of Christianity and therefore multiple inflexions of the Christian standpoint,

theologically there remains the belief in one Church and one baptism,” taking this to

indicate “a conformity with Christ that indicates there is formally (in Christ) only one

129
Ward, True Religion, 115.
130
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 14n2.
131
Ibid., 47.
132
Ibid., 85.
133
Ibid., 115.
 99

Christianity, though what is understood as „Christ‟ and being „in Christ‟ may vary

considerably.”134 What never emerges in Ward‟s writing is the “considerable variation”

implied here. He might well argue that this exclusion is not a real exclusion at all, insofar

as these alternative forms of Christianity are “virtual” at best insofar as they constitute a

sort of privative Christian expression, which is to say a Christian expression marked

precisely by the failure to properly participate in the Being of God; this would be

consistent with his formulations of the Church‟s analogical participation in God.

The Implicit Theocracy of Ward’s Proposal

The attentive reader will already have detected the emergence of a tension in

Ward‟s thought concerning his ontology of the social, and it is now time to render this

tension more explicit. Ward‟s discussion of Augustine is a fitting place to start, insofar

as it is in regard to Augustine that Ward gives voice to it.

Despite the description of the earthly city as “virtual,” as a “perverse imitation” of

the heavenly city, as having a form of meaningful existence only insofar as it analogically

participates in the earthly city, Ward insists that, in the present as we experience it, the

two cities are “inextricably bound each to the other.”135 He notes that, despite the fact

that “only in Christ can true justice be established and a common weal such that all goods

are being used in the same way…,” Augustine nevertheless

emphasizes the suspension of judgment in this world on eschatological grounds:

“Therefore do not pronounce judgment before time, before the Lord comes, who
will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the
purposes of the heart.” Distinctions are drawn, judgments rendered, by
Augustine, only to submit them subsequently to the hidden and inscrutable

134
Ibid., 85.
135
Ward, Cities, 227.
 100

operations of divine providence. A theology of commingling has to accept a

certain provisionality about its statements; preaches a necessary agnosticism.136

Given, then, that judgment is ultimately eschatological and, as such, outstanding, there is

a sense in which it must be suspended in the present, with the concomitant acceptance of

the commingling of the two cities.137 Due to this eschatological reticence, “Augustine

both resisted the translation of God‟s kingdom into sociological, historical and political

practices, and the temptation to identify the Church with the Heavenly City,” and

concludes his thought on this point by stating that “there is no room, therefore, for either

a theocracy or a theopolis.”138

The tension Ward introduces here relates to his emphasis on the ultimately

eschatological nature of theological judgments. In these reflections, he indicates that, due

to the fact that the eschatological as such remains outstanding, there is necessarily a

certain reticence on the part of Christian thinkers. What Ward seems to indicate here is

that, in an important sense, the Christian community must withhold judgment due to the

finally eschatological nature of analogical participation in the divine: Even in the case of

the Church, full participation in the Being of God remains outstanding, rather than

realized. This is the reason for Ward‟s insistence that Augustine does not and cannot

simply identify the Church with the heavenly city.

This is an interesting and significant point in Ward, and it makes its appearance in

his work in numerous places. For example, he insists that human knowing and speaking

are irreducibly situated and hermeneutical, writing, for example, that “there is no neutral,
136
Ibid., 229. The quotation is taken from Augustine, Letters of St. Augustine 130.2.4.
137
In a note on this point, Ward argues that this awareness of the provisionality of his own statements is a
point of contrast between Augustine and Hegel. See Cities, 277n4.
138
Ibid., 229. It is worth noting that Ward‟s position on the issue of theocracy appears to have shifted
significantly. In a recently published book, which appeared after this chapter was written, Ward explicitly
advances a theocratic political project. See Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming
Postmaterial Citizens (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 294ff.
 101

factual objective level called the pre-cultural or the raw experience of what is, upon

which standpoints operate—Christian or otherwise. Interpretation, therefore, is not

epiphenomenal: it constitutes and constructs lived experience.”139 At times, he even

allows for the disruption such an emphasis brings to conceptions of Christian identity. In

this vein he writes that “theology cannot leave out the possibility that in this cultural

other [anything which is not his normative model of the Church] God is at work, and

engagement with this other may mean it is not subordinated but allowed to challenge

radically the theological project. Cultural negotiation must run such a risk—the risk of

being disrupted.”140 The result is that “the theologian needs to cultivate a healthy

agnosticism with respect to what he or she knows.”141 Or, in another context, Ward

writes that “we must recognize that our knowing, thinking, and representing is time-

bound, situated and, therefore, incomplete, open to what is more and limited by that

which cannot yet arrive—the questions of tomorrow.”142 He continues in the same vein,

writing that

„I am a Christian‟ is not an identity statement. For my intellectual grasp upon

what it is to be a Christian is weak, hermeneutical. I follow. I do not know what
it is I say when I say „Christ.‟ I give myself over to that which I have come to
recognize is more than I and dearer.143

We can articulate these statements in terms of Ward‟s eschatological focus: Insofar as the

full participation of the Church in the divine is an as yet to be accomplished

eschatological reality, there is no basis from which the Christian community can speak

139
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 114. Though, as noted, Ward makes statements like this in numerous
contexts, Cultural Transformation presses these points further than his other works.
140
Ibid., 54.
141
Ibid.
142
Ward, Cities, 258.
143
Ibid., 259.
 102

with the full assurance of its own identity, yet again to claim that it fully embodies a

divine order as such.

Ward‟s political proposal might be much different if statements such as these

were allowed the central role in orienting his theo-political account, insofar as they would

call into question the notion of “resistance identities,” the role of the Church in

authoritatively interpreting the world to itself, the assurance that culture is “fallen,” and

so forth. Ward does not, however, move in this direction. In a manner which parallels

what we have seen in our discussion of his normative conception of the Church, Ward

seems at every point to mitigate the force of all such observations. In contrast to these

countervailing statements, Ward asserts that theology proceeds from a position which is

“transcultural and transhistorical,”144 insisting that “one cannot reduce the theological

practice to just a social activity,” because “there remains that within it that which justifies

and legitimates it by referring the local action to what is „ultimately significant.‟”145

What I believe to be Ward‟s actual position concerning the eschatological nature

of Christian participation in God has indirectly come into view already. The

transhistorical and transcultural position from which theology speaks, which is one of

discipleship and divine command,146 provides the basis for more fully thematizing

Ward‟s eschatological perspective. At least two clear possibilities of interpretation

present themselves concerning the claim that full participation in the divine is a matter of

“eschatological judgment.” The first, which would lead to a full acceptance of statements

such as those we are considering, is that the eschatological nature of divine participation

leads to a certain withholding of judgment, that it leads to the kind of “agnosticism”

144
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 56.
145
Ibid., 14-15.
146
Ibid., 56.
 103

Ward describes in these passages. We have seen, however, that this is not the position

elaborated in the major part of his work. Rather, his de facto position, elaborated

throughout his work, is that the eschatological reality of the Church‟s full participation in

the divine serves as the position from which Christian theology speaks, and the vantage

from which the Church does, in fact, judge the world. My interpretation is that Ward‟s

statement that theology speaks from a transcultural and transhistorical position of

discipleship and command is equivalent to saying that the Church speaks out of a

realization of the eschatological reality of divine participation. Once again referring to

one of Ward‟s own terms, the operative position in his work is that of “eschatological

discernment,”147 according to which the Church speaks and acts out of a full assurance of

what the eschaton will bring, which licenses the Church to act in a particular way. Such a

reading of eschatological judgment as it operates in Ward is consistent with his insistence

that it is the Church which interprets the world to itself and that the Church is

“teleologically driven”148 in a strong sense. The discipleship and divine command come

from a final end of full participation in the divine. I will show that this operative notion

of eschatological judgment not only robs his more reticent statements about “Christian

agnosticism” of their force, but that it also moves Ward in a particularly problematic

direction with regard to the socio-political.

Analogy and Theocracy

Once again, Ward‟s discussion of Augustine provides a way into these

considerations. Despite what he sees as Augustine‟s operative notion that “only in the

147
Ward, Christ and Culture, 266.
148
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 56.
 104

eschaton will we be able to judge rightly and understand rightly,”149 Ward registers

discomfort at what he sees as Augustine‟s actual emphases at the end of The City of God.

Ward is uncomfortable with Book XIX, which “ends by translating the two loves and the

two cities into „the final states of good and evil‟.”150 Ward‟s concern is that this

identification of the earthly city with good and the heavenly city with evil seems to cut

against the earlier emphasis he has made that Augustine does not, in fact, identify the

Church with the heavenly city. He summarizes the dilemma as he sees it: “As De civitate

Dei enters upon its final three books, the eschatological judgment become more

pronounced, the separation is developed in detail, and it becomes evident that analogy is

replaced by equivocity.”151 Ward reads these three books as marking a shift in Augustine

from his analogical concerns to an equivocal notion of language and being:

While the analogical relations can pertain while both cities share in time, space,
and materiality, come the eternal we have to recognize that the theological
understanding of love, peace, justice, community is absolutely distinct from any
social, historical, or political understandings of these terms.152

The questions this opens for Ward, which clearly disturb him, are as follows: “Is creation

simply to be eclipsed? Does the Christian life only begin when this life comes to an end

and the Christian is translated elsewhere?”153

Ward‟s explicit concern in these reflections is that Augustine has shifted from an

analogical perspective to an equivalential perspective, possibly indicating that “the

influence of Mani remains with Augustine: the pilgrim community now perfected as the

149
Ward, Cities, 233.
150
Ibid.
151
Ibid.
152
Ibid.
153
Ibid.
 105

heavenly city in another life.”154 Ward‟s response to these difficulties is to seek to

correct this seeming misstep through reference to an alternative Augustinian work which

he feels is more consistently analogical in its orientation: Augustine‟s On the Trinity.

The reason he turns to On the Trinity is that it treats many of the same themes as The City

of God, but “the model of analogy in this book is more Platonic.”155 What Ward is after

is a conception according to which there can be real love, justice, etc. in the earthly city

insofar as it participates in the heavenly city. He summarizes his point as follows:

“Several scholars have argued—though not necessarily with appeal to De trinitate—that,

for Augustine, civil society must possess inherent moral validity, and conclude, then, that

Augustine does not reject previous classical traditions (from Plato primarily) but baptizes

these traditions.156 Ward‟s solution to this perceived difficulty, then, is to argue that

Augustine remains more consistently analogical, and discusses the same topics,

elsewhere.

This line of argumentation on Ward‟s part seems to be a red herring. Though he

gives it only passing treatment, a much more significant problem, politically speaking,

arises in his consideration of Augustine, and appeal to analogy does not adequately

respond to it. What seems really to be at issue is not whether or not Augustine is

consistently analogical, but the nature of eschatological judgment as such. The difficulty

the final books of the City of God pose for Ward‟s position concerning the comingled

nature of the two cities stems from a perspective on eschatological judgment. What

seems to come through in Augustine‟s emphases is not that he shifts from a model of

analogy to equivocity, but rather that, despite his insistence that eschatological judgment

154
Ibid.
155
Ibid., 234.
156
Ibid., 235.
 106

is outstanding, he seems, in fact, to render precisely such judgment in the present.

Augustine seems, in other words, perfectly confident in judging the present from the

perspective of the eschaton, and in pronouncing that the Church is, in fact, to be

identified with the heavenly city. While the Church may, at present, represent a mixed

body, Augustine shows no hesitation in speaking with full assurance that the heavenly

city is embodied in the true Church, and that those who are not truly of the Church will

be removed.

In contrast to Ward‟s supposition, this position does not necessarily contradict the

notion of analogical participation. If one speaks, as in the end Augustine seems to, with a

full assurance of eschatological knowledge, there is no inconsistency in insisting that all

earthly communities and civil forms of society failed to properly participate in the divine.

One may perfectly well insist on a model of analogical participation in the divine and

nevertheless pass judgment, informed by an eschatological perspective, on those forms of

human sociality which do not properly so participate. Not only does this do away with

the tension Ward feels in Augustine, but it captures the actual position from which Ward

himself consistently speaks. The actual position Ward adopts in his writings is precisely

the position I am highlighting in Augustine (which might indicate why he himself seems

not to see it). We have already encountered Ward‟s argument that “the cultural” is

defined precisely by the fact that it does not properly participate in the divine, that it

therefore possesses, at best, a sort of privative being, and that theology speaks from a

transcultural and transhistorical perspective. What I am suggesting here is that the basis

of this perspective lies with the eschatological discernment Ward claims for the Christian

community (understood, of course, in the narrow terms outlined above).

 107

It should be clear by now that the identification of the Church with the heavenly

city is exactly the identification which follows from Ward‟s elaboration of the notion of

analogical participation in all three of its forms: Hegelian, biblical, and Augustinian.

What is operative in Ward‟s work, taken as a whole, is not a form of Christian

agnosticism marked by a kind of epistemic humility in light of the fact that eschatological

consummation remains outstanding. What is operative is a bold and polemical tone

which is able to effectively interpret the world to itself in light of an epistemic privilege

provided by the knowledge of what the eschatological consummation will consist. This

should not surprise us: If Ward is going to continue insisting on the transcultural and

transhistorical nature of theological activity, including his own writing, such an epistemic

privilege is required. While he can criticize Hegel for not speaking with the humility of

Augustine, he himself regularly speaks with precisely the kind of assurance one

encounters in Hegel, as his many references to Hegel indicate. To recall for emphasis, it

is Ward who writes that the movement of the Church in the world “is…teleologically

driven. It is…a positive dialectic tracing and performing what Hegel called „the march of

God in the world.‟”157 The way in which Ward breaks from the Hegelian immanentism

of which he is critical is via the eschatological discernment which governs his own

writing and theological claims. Ward, like Augustine and, on his reading, like Hegel, is

able to render judgment on the present (this is just another way of describing the

language of interpreting the world to itself) on the basis of eschatological knowledge.

157
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 56.
 108

Dangers of Eschatological Discernment

The eschatological perspective which is actually operative in Ward brings me to a

consideration of the political specters which haunt his work and to which he does not,

and, in my view, cannot, adequately respond. The eschatological knowledge to which

Ward consistently, even if largely implicitly, makes appeal brings devastating political

dangers with it, which Ward for the most part ignores or simply glosses over. Once

again, these come into view in Ward‟s discussion of Augustine. In the same paragraph in

which he insists that Augustine‟s proposal forecloses on the possibility of both theocracy

and theopolis, Ward gives a note that hints at the problems here:

One of the famous cruxes of Augustine‟s work manifests itself here. How can a
theologian support the forced conversion of people to the Christian faith and the
persecution of “heretics” (like the Donatists), when the Church was not to be
identified with the secular powers of this world?158

This is precisely the kind of question which will have occurred to many upon first

encountering Ward‟s insistent assertion of the impossibility of an Augustinian basis for

theocracy or theopolis. Yet one looks in vain for an attempt to answer this question in

Ward; he concludes his note by simply stating that “various answers have been proposed

by the scholars,”159 citing none of them.

He poses another unanswered question, similar to this one, in the context of his

discussion of Augustine. He sums up his discussion as follows: “I have spoken about the

Church and I have drawn attention to Augustine‟s fundamental trinitarian insight that

makes possible analogical relations between earthly cities and the heavenly city. The

earthly city is situated cosmologically.”160 But he follows this up with a question which

158
Ward, Cities, 277n6.
159
Ibid.
160
Ibid., 236-237.
 109

indicates, again, that the real difficulty with Augustine may not lie in a slippage from

analogy to equivocality. As Ward states it, “we are speaking here of one eternal city.

How is it possible to avoid the charge of imperialism with respect to those other belief

systems within which the Christian communities disseminate their gospel?”161 As with

his previous question, Ward provides no answer at this point. Rather, he simply notes

both that “we are not, as Augustine was…at the threshold of a new Christendom” and

that, alternatively, “we are also beyond pluralism.”162 He concludes the paragraph on this

note, writing that “we have moved beyond pluralism because there is no view from no

where [sic], no objective knowledge; the view from no where [sic] is itself a cultural

ideology—often Western, white, and male.”163 Ward then moves on to consider some

other final points in his presentation.

I am suggesting that Ward avoids these questions because his own theological

model of analogical participation coupled with eschatological discernment licenses

exactly the kind of theocratic or theo-political operations which disturb him in these

reflections. As he indicates, Augustine undertook his theology on the cusp of the

appearance of European Christendom, and that such a social formation follows very

easily from Augustine‟s theology. The fact that Augustine was able to speak judgment

upon the world from an eschatological perspective, that he was able, ultimately, to

identify the Church with the heavenly body, that he was therefore able to take for granted

that participation in the divine only occurred within the Church, legitmated his support of

the forced conversion of others and the persecution of heretics. It is not simply, as Ward

seems to assume here, that Augustine was not concerned with the problem of imperialism

161
Ibid., 237.
162
Ibid.
163
Ibid.
 110

because he stood on the verge of Christendom; rather, Augustine‟s theology licenses

precisely such imperialism, just as it licensed the formation of European Christendom.

Ward fails to address these issues because, insofar as his own theological proposal

operates according to the same logic as Augustine‟s, it in fact licenses the very theo-

political consequences which arise in consideration of Augustine. Similar considerations

hold with Ward‟s Hegelian formulation of his program. Ward insists that the Hegelian

account of how the individual will “co-operates with the movement of the Spirit of God

itself” and so comes to “externalize its own freedom as the Spirit of God” is not a

colonizing movement.164 In contrast, he states that “to represent it as colonizing, and

therefore acting in its dominant self-relation as a power which denies the alterity of the

other…fails to understand that all subjects are likewise engaged in such willful

determinations of their own, in accord with the universal.”165 In short, “the other is not

colonized.”166 Ward‟s understanding of the non-colonizing nature of this movement

depends upon the model of an economy of full return we have already considered. Thus,

he discusses how, in Hegel, the subject “can neither think nor represent without taking

into account otherness-other persons, other things external to itself.”167 The movement of

full return is implicit in Ward‟s further description of this: Subjectivity is “a relation to all

that is other, but given the temporal and geographical locatedness of each subject, then it

is a relation to all that is other in the specificity of its own property, family, civil life, and

state.”168

164
Ibid., 139.
165
Ibid.
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid., 138.
168
Ibid. I will advance a very different notion of otherness or alterity in chapters five and six.
 111

The question that arises, of course, is how the ultimate inclusion of everything, of

all subjects and all ethical communities, within the one community of God, is brought

about. Ward‟s insistence against an understanding of this process as a form of

colonization, together with his resistance to theocracy and theopolitics in the context of

Augustine, indicate that he envisions this as a non-violent process. As with Augustine,

however, it is not clear that his chosen account of analogical participation will allow him

to escape the implications of his own theological proposal. Ward is noticeably silent

concerning some of the more troubling aspects of Hegel‟s thought concerning the Staat

as the “movement of God in the world.” He never attends, for example, to Hegel‟s own

treatment of history as “this slaughter-bench, upon which the happiness of nations, the

wisdom of states, and the virtues of individuals were sacrificed.”169 In response to the

question concerning the goal of these “monstrous sacrifices,” Hegel writes that “the

events that present such a grim picture for our troubled feeling and thoughtful reflection

have to be seen as the means for what we claim is the substantial definition, the absolute

end-goal or, equally, the true result of world history.”170 This end result is, as Ward

himself affirms, the Staat or the Christian kingdom (I will have more to say on the idea of

the kingdom shortly) as the march of God in the world. Elsewhere, Ward seeks to avoid

the danger of providing a theological justification for suffering,171 and argues the

suffering is not “epiphenomenal” in the period of time prior to the messianic arrival.172

Yet I wonder if he finds this consistent with Hegel‟s own treatment when, for example,

169
G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1988), 24.
170
Ibid.
171
Ward, Christ and Culture, 262.
172
Ibid., 260. Having said this, however, we encounter another tension in Ward‟s assertion, on the same
page (and noted above), that “there is a suffering that is meaningless because it has no part in redemption.”
 112

Hegel discusses the “world-historical individual” who “must necessarily trample on many

an innocent flower, crushing much that gets in his way.”173 Here, of course, this

suffering is “redeemed” by the “Cunning of Reason,” which operates according to the

logic which is summed up by Hegel when he writes that “compared to the universal, the

particular is for the most part too slight in importance: individuals are surrendered and

sacrificed.”174 While Ward may not desire to dismiss the significance of suffering, one

could argue that this precisely what Hegel seems to do when he writes that

if…we say that universal Reason [Geist or Staat] does manifest itself in the world,
then this certainly has nothing to do with any empirical detail….There is much to
find fault with…in the details of the world of appearances. This subjective fault-
finding—which is concerned only with the detail and its shortcomings, and does
not recognize the universal Reason in it—is all too easy.175

I want to highlight how easily Ward‟s own position, based as it is upon an assurance of

eschatological knowledge, together with his metaphysics of participation, can be brought

into precisely this sort of dismissive pattern. That is, one can dismiss the significance of

any suffering, defining it as merely privative and therefore ultimately without substance,

by referring it to an eschatological event which, while yet to be achieved, already justifies

such dismissal. My argument here is not that this is, in fact, Ward‟s position; it may not

be. The argument is that Ward does not provide even consider these issues and, at times,

seems to not even be aware of them. My argument is that he cannot, in fact, meet these

challenges because they trace implications which follow quite naturally from the sources

he uses to articulate his own theological position.

This point also becomes apparent in his attempt to mitigate objections to the

equation of Hegel‟s Staat with the Church by asserting that Hegel‟s Staat has a meaning

173
Hegel, Introduction, 35.
174
Ibid.
175
Ibid., 38.
 113

similar to the Christian notion of the Kingdom.176 Given the discussion of Augustine

above, we should already be alert to the fact that Ward is not able to sidestep the issues

involved quite as easily as this statement supposes. The difficulty comes from the fact

that, rather than disrupting imperialistic notions, “kingdom” actually reflects them. New

Testament scholar Stephen Moore argues that the Greek basileia, the New Testament

term traditionally rendered “kingdom” in English, and from which the theological usage

of “kingdom” stems, is itself better translated as “empire.” As he puts it, “I believe that

basileia in Mark, as in other early Christian texts, is best rendered in English by the term

„empire‟ rather than by the more innocuous „kingdom,‟ a term whose political edge has

been all but rubbed smooth by centuries of theological usage.”177 As Moore notes on the

following page, “in any Roman province, the primary referent of basileia would have

been the imperium Romanum.”178 While such usage may indeed have been “parodic,”179

it nevertheless remains the case that the New Testament notion of basileia carries with it

strong imperialistic overtones insofar as its point of reference is the superpower of

imperial Rome. The Christian Empire might stand opposed to the Roman Empire, but it

is figured as an empire nonetheless.

This point concerning the Christian notion of Kingdom relates Ward‟s Hegelian

account to the biblical account we explored earlier. Ward unknowingly heightens this

problem of kingdom and empire when, in seeking to describe the moment of

eschatological judgment and Messianic arrival, he appeals to the New Testament book of

Revelation. He writes that “the closing lines of the New Testament resound with the call

176
Ward, Cities, 137.
177
Stephen D. Moore, Empire and Apocalypse: Postcolonialism and the New Testament (Sheffield,
England: Phoenix Press, 2006), 37n29.
178
Ibid., 38.
179
Ibid.
 114

for Messianic arrival: „the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let him who hears say,

“Come.”…He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus‟ (Rev. 22.17, 20).”180 Ward here refers, as his image of Christian

consummation, to what is without doubt the most violent book in the Christian New

Testament, and which most clearly illustrates the ideology of the Christian Kingdom as

Christian empire.

Moore again highlights the issues involved here, noting that, even given the

element of mockery in the Christian appropriation of basileia as an opposition to the

Roman basileia, “Revelation presents us with a reverse scenario in which parody or

mockery of the imperial order constantly threatens to topple over into mimicry, imitation,

and replication.”181 Indeed, at one point in the text of Revelation, voices from heaven

sing that “The empire [basileia] of the world has become the empire [basileia] of our

Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:5, NRSV,

translation modified). What is envisioned is the replacement of one empire by another;

what is never called into question in Revelation is the notion of empire as such. As

Moore correctly notes, “more than any other early Christian text, Revelation is replete

with the language of war, conquest, and empire.”182 He continues, providing a telling

litany of these elements of the text:

Note in particular…that the promised reward for faithful Christian discipleship in

Revelation is joint rulership of the Empire of empires soon destined to succeed
Rome (3.21; 5.10; 20.4-6; 22.5), a messianic Empire established by means of
mass-slaughter on a surreal scale (6.4, 8; 8.11; 9.15, 18; 11.13; 14.20; 19.15, 17-
21; 20.7-9, 15) calculated to make the combined military campaigns of Julius

180
Ward, Christ and Culture, 263.
181
Moore, 112.
182
Ibid., 114.
 115

Caesar, Augustus, and all of their successors pale to insignificance by

comparison.183

The point of these reflections is that the messianic arrival celebrated by Ward via the

biblical images of Revelation is achieved only as the consummation of this series of

events. Once again, Ward‟s own theo-logic, as articulated via the biblical materials,

moves very naturally in the direction he resists. Whether speaking in terms of basileia or

Staat, the thrust of the materials upon which Ward constructs his system is the same.

The upshot of these considerations is that each of the sources utilized by Ward to

develop his model of analogical participation, together with the operative presupposition

of eschatological discernment, lends itself easily to authoritarian and violent political

formations. What seems to emerge each time is precisely what Ward is eager to avoid:

Theocracy or theopolis. Whether we are considering Hegel, Augustine, or Ward‟s choice

of biblical materials, what seems to emerge in each case is an identification of the Church

with the divine kingdom/empire, an identification which is made on the basis of a

recognition of the participation of the Christian community in the divine, itself

legitimated via an eschatological perspective. Far from insulating Ward from advancing

a theocratic ontology of the social, such an ontology seems to follow naturally from the

discourses upon which Ward draws.

Ward’s Culture War: The Lesser of Two Evils?

These considerations bring us back, finally, to Ward‟s theo-political vision of the

social. The first significant issue confronting us as we return to a more direct

consideration of this topic is that there is a manifest tension between the theocratic

visions of the Church triumphant we have just considered, on the one hand, and the
183
Ibid.
 116

socio-political model Ward ultimately advances, on the other. My interest has been to

explore the ways in which Ward develops his notion of analogical participation and to

consider their theo-political consequences. From this perspective, Ward‟s proposal

seems to license some form or another of theocracy or theopolis.

As I discussed at the beginning of the chapter, however, Ward does not, in fact,

advance a theocratic model of the social. Rather, by way of reminder, he envisions a

social space populated by a plurality of irreducible theological communities, each defined

by its own theo-logic and its own uncompromising assertions, the very plurality of which

will increasingly generate culture wars. In the end, then, Ward does not embrace the

image of the Church triumphant marching in the world, subsuming all other theological

communities.

On my reading, this tension arises from what we might call Ward‟s theoretical

considerations as they relate to his theological considerations. That is, we have seen that

Ward advances the theoretical claim that every standpoint and every community is

irreducibly situated, with the implication that the claims of any group are necessarily

contextual. Theologically, on the other hand, Ward has insisted that, despite its supposed

situatedness, the Christian community speaks and acts with a “transcultural” and

“transhistorical” authority (again, these are Ward‟s terms) as well as, so I have argued, a

form of eschatological knowledge. His adoption of these competing theoretical and

theological perspectives leads him to advance incompatible claims: A Christian

community which is irreducibly situated and whose claims and practices are always

contextual, but which are at the same time transhistorical and transcultural due to the

epistemic privilege of the eschatological perspective. In the end, Ward‟s proposal of a

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plurality of incommensurable theological communities represents something of a

concession to his theoretical principles, presumably at the cost of his robust theological

claims.

However, this concession on Ward‟s part does not resolve this tension in his

work, with the result that his actual theo-political model continues to present significant

difficulties. I would suggest that the reason Ward does not consider the question of how

other faith traditions relate to the account of Christ he presents184 is that he takes each

tradition to be structured like the Christian tradition as understands it. From this

perspective, the Christian tradition understands the entire cosmos to be caught up in the

economic movement of the one God, from which nothing escapes or is ever lost; as Ward

noted with regard to his Augustinian account, “we are speaking here of one eternal

city.”185 If Ward understands the “theo-logic” of other theological traditions as

necessarily operating according to the same totalizing logic, as his language of

“uncompromising assertions” and “fideism” leads me to believe, then these traditions

cannot, on their own terms, allow for the possibility of the pluralism Ward finally

espouses. These traditions, then, can only relate to one another as “others” which are

radically exterior to one another and, given their absolutist claims, the potential for

violence is extremely high, approaching inevitability, as Ward himself recognizes.

Despite his concession to a form of pluralism and the fact that he shrinks from the

theocratic implications of his theological model, Ward‟s metaphysical theological model

still leads to seemingly irreducible violence.

184
Ward, Christ and Culture, 24-25.
185
Ward, Cities, 237.
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Conclusion

By way of reminder, I have offered the foregoing consideration of Ward‟s theo-

political proposal in the context of the displacement of normative secularism and the

resulting need to reconceptualize the relation of the religious and the political. As I noted

at the end of the previous chapter, Ward‟s proposal represents one effort to

reconceptualize this relation. We have seen that Ward‟s theo-political project amounts to

the articulation of a transcendent ground of the social which is understood in terms of a

metaphysical plenitude. Stated in terms of the issues raised there, I have considered

Ward‟s proposal as an effort to replace normative secularism as a universalist basis of

political theory with his metaphysical theology of analogical participation. In Ward‟s

presentation, the need for a transcendent ground of the social arises from the logic of

totalitarianism lodged within democracy; the threat of totalitarianism is what necessitates,

in Ward‟s view, the elaboration of a robustly metaphysical and transcendent ground of

the social. I have shown that, even accepting his account of totalitarianism (which I have

tried to make clear I do not), the cures Ward proposes seem at least as dangerous as the

disease to which they respond. Ward‟s proposal presents us with the choice of either

theocracy or identitarian culture war.

As I have tried to make clear, I think that the negative consequences of Ward‟s

model of the social stem from the totalizing metaphysical approach he adopts. Having

said this, and having noted my significant disagreements with Ward, there are points at

which I agree with him, or at least share his concerns: First, I agree with Ward that an

adequate account of the socio-political requires appeal to a form of universality which

exceeds social particularities; second, for reasons which will not be fully elaborated until
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the end of chapter four, I share his concerns regarding the potential emergence of

totalitarian or other non-democratic socio-political forms. My remaining task is to

respond to these two concerns.

The next two chapters respond specifically to the first of these. First, I will

advance the political theory of Ernesto Laclau, which provides us with a social ontology

which recognizes the need for a conception of universality but which, because it avoids

the robust metaphysics adopted by Ward, does so without leading the consequences of

Ward‟s own proposal. Following this presentation, chapter four will consider the relation

of Laclau‟s social ontology to questions of democracy.

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CHAPTER THREE

THE SOCIAL AS OPEN TOTALITY:

THE SOCIO-POLITICAL THEORY OF ERNESTO LACLAU

The universal is an empty place, a void which can be filled only by the particular,
but which, through its very emptiness, produces a series of crucial effects in the
structuration/destructuration of social relations.
--Ernesto Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony”

Introduction

I noted in chapter one that the displacement of normative secularism necessitates

two related theoretical tasks: The reconceptualization of the relation of “religion” and

“the political” and the formulation of an alternative account of universality suitable for

supporting a political theory. Chapter two considered one contemporary attempt to meet

these challenges, that of the Radical Orthodox theologian Graham Ward. We saw that

Ward advances a model of the social based upon a metaphysical theological

conceptuality according to which the socio-political is given its proper shaping through

participation in the fullness of God. The basis for reconceiving the relation of religion

and the political is, on this model, the unity of these two realms within an encompassing

metaphysical fullness. By way of evaluation, I tried argued that Ward‟s model of the

social leads to socially and politically dangerous consequences, and that an alternative

proposal should be sought.

This chapter represents the first of two chapters focused on the consideration of

such an alternative: Ernesto Laclau‟s political theory of “radical democracy.”1 My focus

1
I encounter something of a terminological difficulty here. While my primary focus in the discussion of
this chapter and the next is Laclau‟s political theory, his earliest and best-known articulation of that theory
was the result of a collaborative effort with Chantal Mouffe. While Laclau and Mouffe have subsequently
carried forward their individual projects in distinct ways, I will also draw from some of Mouffe‟s more
recent work on notions of democracy (to which Laclau himself defers at times), sometimes quite
 121

will be on Laclau‟s own political ontology and the resulting account of socio-political

articulation (this chapter) and the relation of that ontology to questions of democracy (the

next chapter). In this chapter, I will highlight, among other things, the way in which

Laclau also develops his political theory in terms of a concept of universality to which

social particularities necessarily appeal. In contrast to the kind of model represented by

Ward, however, Laclau advances a notion of universality understood as a constitutive

lack, rather than a metaphysical plenitude.

While this chapter and the next present Laclau‟s political theory and his account

of the “radical democracy” he advances, there is very little mention of religion. The

relation of Laclau‟s account of the political to religion will emerge as an outstanding and

pressing question at the end of the next chapter, and will propel us into the final two

chapters and the Conclusion, which deal with the thought of Jacques Derrida. Without

getting further ahead of myself, I only seek to emphasize at this point that it will take a

good deal of work to fully outline what I take to be the relation between the political and

religion as it relates to Laclau‟s thought, and I beg the reader‟s indulgence on this point.

Laclau‟s political theory is notoriously complex, and in what follows I attempt to

provide a necessarily brief overview of Laclau‟s political ontology (I will give my

reasons for this describing Laclau‟s work in these terms in due course). I cannot claim

that my presentation of Laclau in this chapter and the next is comprehensive, and I gladly

extensively. Thus, while it is not quite correct to speak simply in terms of “Laclau‟s political theory,”
describing the political theory I present as “Laclau and Mouffe‟s” political theory is therefore also not quite
accurate. The obvious solution to this problem would be to speak in terms of “discourse theory” (for
reasons which will become clear shortly), but this solution is complicated by the fact that I will present the
alternative “discourse theory” of Jürgen Habermas in the next chapter, thus creating further confusion.
Given these issues, and insofar as my present focus is primarily on the way in which Laclau develops and
employs the critical conceptuality collaboratively developed with Mouffe, I have chosen to refer to
“Laclau‟s political theory.” In instances where Mouffe is also in view, this will be clear either in the text or
in the references.
 122

direct the reader to a number of other secondary sources on Laclau.2 Laclau develops his

political theory in a broadly transcendental fashion. That is, in Laclau‟s view, a decisive

change in “the ontic content of a field of research” (in this case the configuration of the

socio-political) “leads also to a new ontological paradigm.”3 I want to proceed, then, by

considering the “ontic” change to which Laclau‟s political theory responds, discussing

the ontology which constitutes the substance of his response, and addressing the reasons

for describing this ontology as “political.” Following this presentation, I will then

provide a detailed account of the main theoretical concepts in Laclau‟s political theory.

The Ontic Situation: The Pluralization of Socio-Political Identities

The changed socio-political situation in response to which Laclau formulates his

political theory involves the dissolution of credible universalizing ideologies in the post-

Cold War period.4 Stating the issue in the terms of universality and political theory from

2
A number of people have provided expositions of Laclau‟s political theory, ranging from book-length
treatments to much shorter presentations. For examples of the former, see: Anna Marie Smith, Laclau and
Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary (London: Routledge, 1998); Jacob Torfing, New Theories of
Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). For a collection of excellent critical
essays on Laclau‟s political theory, see Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart, eds., Laclau: A Critical
Reader (London: Routledge, 2004). For shorter treatments of varying degree of detail, see: Louise Phillips
and Marianne W. Jørgensen, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method (London: SAGE Publications,
2002), ch. 2; Philip Goldstein, Post-Marxist Theory: An Introduction (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 2004); ch. 3; Simon Tormey and Jules Townshend, Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to
Post-Marxism (London: SAGE Publications, 2006), ch. 4; Göran Therborn, From Marxism to Post-
Marxism? (London: Verso, 2008); Stuart Sim, Post-Marxism: An Intellectual History (London: Routledge,
2001), chs. 2-3; Oliver Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy,
Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ch. 4; Paul Bowman,
Postmarxism Versus Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics and Intervention (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2007); Mark Devenney, Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory and
Post-Marxism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). Torfing‟s book includes a useful glossary
of Laclau‟s critical terminology; Critchley and Marchart provide an extensive (as of 2004) bibliography of
Laclau‟s publications.
3
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic
Politics, Second Edition (London: Verso, 2001), x.
4
Critchley and Marchart provide a good overview of the changed political situation to which Laclau‟s
theory responds, as well as the factors which led to these changes. They also provide a useful account of
Laclau‟s biography as it relates to the development of his political theory. See Simon Critchley and Oliver
Marchart, “Introduction,” in Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London:
Routledge, 2004, 1-2. Laclau also outlines the development of his own thought, with useful reflections on
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chapter one, Laclau understands the Cold War as having been “the last manifestation of

the Enlightenment,” which is to say, as the last manifestation of the broad bifurcation of

the social into two broad camps supposedly representing universal emancipatory

ideologies.5 He summarizes the significance of the end of the Cold War: “It is the

„globality‟ of these projects that is in crisis.”6 This crisis is illustrated, for Laclau, by the

proliferation of socio-political identities marking the post-Cold War period (and

discernible during its latter years):

A whole series of positive new phenomena underlie those mutations [which have
just been noted] which have made so urgent the task of theoretical
reconsideration: the rise of the new feminism, the protest movements of ethnic,
national and sexual minorities, the anti-institutional ecology struggles waged by
marginalized layers of the population, the anti-nuclear movement, the atypical
forms of social struggles in countries on the capitalist periphery….7

What has emerged with the displacement of these universalizing narratives has therefore

been the “autonomization of social struggles” embodied in “the so-called new social

movements.”8 This emergence constitutes a kind of performative demonstration that the

political categories operative in the Cold War (and earlier periods) no longer constitute

“the natural surface on which every new social and political demand can be inscribed,”

his own biography, in a 1988 Interview; see Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our
Time (London: Verso, 1990), ch. 7.
5
Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), vii.
6
Ibid.
7
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 1. This quotation comes from the Introduction to the First Edition of this
text, written in 1985; as such, some of the specific examples cited by Laclau may appear to be somewhat
dated. However, the overall social transformations outlined have, in Laclau‟s mind, only intensified. In the
Preface to the Second Edition, published in 2001, Laclau and Mouffe write, “we were surprised, in going
through the pages of this not-so-recent book again, at how little we have to put into question the intellectual
and political perspective developed therein. Most of what has happened since then has closely followed the
pattern suggested in our book, and those issues which were central to our concerns at that moment have
become ever more prominent in contemporary discussions” (vii).
8
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 17. Critchley and Marchart note that “while Laclau and Mouffe were not alone
in „discovering‟ what came to be known as the New Social Movements, they were certainly the most
consistent in spelling out the consequences of their appearance for a general political project of the left;”
see Critchley and Marchart, “Introduction,” 3. In this regard, it is also helpful to consider Thomas‟s
discussion of the way that the social sciences generally, and political theory specifically, long overlooked
the significance of “culture” and “religion,” two of the centrally orienting axes of many new social
movements; see Thomas, ch.2.
 124

with the result that “a range of inscription surfaces emerge that often contradict each

other.”9 This proliferation of new and often contradictory social identities constitutes the

new “ontic content” of the field of political theory, and this is what necessitates the

development of an alternative ontology to those presupposed in the displaced

universalizing narratives.

This changed socio-political configuration is what necessitates Laclau‟s

formulation of an alternative political ontology, and it marks the transcendental nature of

his considerations: “The strictly ontological question asks how entities have to be, so that

the objectivity of a particular field is possible.”10 That is, how must we conceive of the

social as such to account for a plurality of social movements and the shifting and unstable

nature of social identity? At this point, one point is clear in Laclau‟s thought: “Whatever

the sign of the new vision of politics which is emerging is going to be, it is clear that one

of its basic dimensions is going to be the redefinition of the existing relation between

universality and particularity” (emphasis added).11 In other words, the end of the Cold

War has resulting in the displacement of universalizing narratives which legitimated the

political theories (i.e., communism/socialism and liberalism) constructed around them.

Laclau‟s political theory is, then, a response to precisely the kind of theoretical

displacement I addressed in chapter one (though I chose to focus specifically on

secularism).

I noted in chapter one that one response to the displacement of universalizing

narratives has been to reject all claims to universality and to define the social in purely

particularistic terms. Laclau rejects this emphasis on “pure particularism and

9
Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections, 227.
10
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, x.
11
Laclau, Emancipation(s), vii.
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contextualism,” found in some forms of “postmodern” theorizing,12 and argues that the

proliferation of new social identities cannot be conceived of “simply in terms of

multiplicity.”13 On the contrary, he agrees with Lefort that “no human society, whatever

it may be, can be organized in terms of pure self-immanence.”14 I once again make

reference to Lefort to reiterate the point, noted in the previous chapter, that Laclau agrees

with Ward on the necessity for a concept of universality as it relates to political theory.

For the moment I want to consider why it is that Laclau insists on the necessity of

a notion of universality in political theory (reserving discussion of the specific nature of

his concept of universality for later), because this theoretical requirement on Laclau‟s

part is important for understanding why he advances the specific political ontology he

does. What Laclau seeks a conception of universality/transcendence which is not

exhausted in the notions of either “an essential objectivism” or a “transcendental

subjectivism.”15 If there is a formal agreement with Ward on Laclau‟s part concerning

the theoretical need for a concept of universality, the model of universality/particularity

Laclau ultimately advances is very different from Ward‟s, to the point of constituting a

direct refusal of Ward‟s proposed model.16

12
Ibid., viii. Laclau gives Lyotard as an example of this particularism “at its purest,” citing as examples his
“conception of society as consisting in a plurality of incommensurable language games” and “whose
interactions can only be conceived as tort…”; see Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, xiii. For examples of
what Laclau has in mind with Lyotard, see Jean-François Lyotard, “The Wall, the Gulf, the System,” in
Postmodern Fables, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1997); Jean-François Lyotard, excerpt from The Differend, in Jean- François Lyotard, Political Writings,
ed. Bill Readings, trans. Bill Readings and Paul Geiman (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1993).
13
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 21.
14
Lefort, “Persistence,” 162.
15
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 22.
16
Laclau surveys three significant historical forms in which the relationship between universal and
particular has been articulated. While Ward‟s specific proposal does not map neatly onto any one of them,
his model can be viewed as a sort of merging of the latter two models surveyed by Laclau. For Laclau‟s
discussion, see Emancipation(s), 22-26. Due to considerations of space, I am not offering a discussion of
 126

Laclau argues that any appeal to pure particularisms without any reference to

universality is “a self-defeating enterprise.”17 Any such appeal would necessarily amount

to an affirmation of relativism, insofar as every particular social group making political

demands would also have to accept, carte blanche, “the rights to self-determination of all

kinds of reactionary groups involved in antisocial practices.”18 However, paraphrasing

Richard Rorty‟s way of stating the issue, it is simply never the case that every form of

social practice is taken to be valid to all others.19 It is clear that the multiple and diverse

demands of the plurality of social groups inevitably clash, and are not simply accepted as

valid by all. In actuality, this clash requires them “to appeal…to some more general

principles [read: universal or transcendent principles] in order to regulate such clashes”20

such as, for example, the preservation or maintenance of “equal rights.” In other words,

particular social groups making political demands necessarily appeal to categories which

exceed their own immanent particularity.

The Response: Laclau’s Theory as Ontology

This appeal to universality, together with the increasingly pluralization of socio-

political identities, is what necessitates Laclau‟s development of an alternative political

ontology. What I want to do in this section of the chapter is to provide an overview of

the elements of Laclau‟s political ontology, with the specific aim of demonstrating why

these specific connections between Laclau‟s survey and Ward‟s thought, because the differences between
Laclau‟s and Ward‟s proposals will become evident as the chapter progresses.
17
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 26.
18
Ibid.
19
The specific reference I have in mind is Rorty‟s statement regarding the relation of his own position to
“cultural relativism”: “It is not relativistic, if that means saying that every moral view is as good as every
other.” Cf. Richard Rorty, “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (London:
Penguin Books, 1999), 15.
20
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 26.
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the term “ontology” is appropriate as a descriptor for his political theory. Following this

presentation, I will fill in this sketch with the more detailed elements of Laclau‟s theory.

I have already noted that Laclau explicitly describes his project in terms of

“ontology.” While this term might well raise concerns or engender suspicions, I refer to

Laclau‟s political theory as constituting a political ontology for a number of reasons,

usefully outlined by Oliver Marchart:

Three points are crucial. (1) The political logic of signification, as developed by
Laclau, applies to the construction of all meaning, not only to political
meaning…. (2) Since there is no social reality outside signification or beyond
meaning, a theory of signification amounts to a theory of all possible being, that is
to say, it amounts to an ontology…. And (3) if we put the political and the
ontological aspect of discourse theory together—the claim that discourse theory
constitutes a general theory of signification which is a political theory, and the
claim that the latter constitutes what a philosophically trained observer would call
an ontology—it follows that we are confronted with nothing other than a political
ontology.21

I think Marchart is correct in making these points (which will structure the discussion that

follows), as well as when he notes that Laclau‟s political thought represents a kind of

“first philosophy,” though this term requires qualifications, as we will see.22 For the next

several pages, I want to focus on the first two of Marchart‟s points, thereby outlining why

Laclau‟s theory constitutes an ontology. Following that discussion and a further detailing

of Laclau‟s theory, I will be in a position to address what, precisely, is in view when I

refer to Laclau‟s theory as a political ontology, thereby illustrating Marchart‟s third point.

The Political Logic of Signification

I begin, then, with a consideration of Marchart‟s first point, which has to do with

Laclau‟s account of signification and social identity. This account makes it clear why

21
Marchart, 147.
22
Ibid., 146, 166.
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reference to universality is irreducible. First, reference to social particularities as social

particularities implies a total field transcendent to those particularities, and in which they

take shape. Second, any focus on those social particularities not only implies this

transcendent field, but also the signification of that field. The elucidation of these two

points gives shape to Laclau‟s “discourse theory” of the political.23

Laclau argues that, even accepting that a radical plurality of particularistic social

identities could coexist without the clashes noted above, it nevertheless remains the case

that the affirmation of pure particularity assumes that the different groups “coexist one

with the other in a coherent whole.”24 Laclau applies the term “discourse” to “any

complex of elements in which relations play the constitutive role”25 and takes Saussure‟s

differential understanding of signifying systems as a starting point for developing this

point. In this regard, he writes that “we know, from Saussure, that language (and by

extension, all signifying systems) is a system of differences, that linguistic identities—

values—are purely relational and that, as a result, the totality of language is involved in

each act of signification” (emphasis added).26 Applied to the social field, Laclau‟s claim

is that every particular social identity is constituted through its differences from, which is

to say its relation to, the other groups within the social field. This means, in turn, that the

condition of possibility of identifying any particular social group is that it can be

distinguished from the context or background within which it is situated; hence the fact

that any assertion of social identity implies the recognition of “the context at the same

23
We will come across a very different “discourse theory” of the political in our consideration of Habermas
in the next chapter. As the remaining discussion of Laclau‟s political theory will make clear, these two
uses of “discourse” should not be conflated.
24
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 27.
25
Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), 68.
26
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 37.
 129

time.”27 In Laclau‟s view, then, the presence of any social group “presupposes not only

the presence of all the other identities but also the total ground which constitutes the

differences as differences” (emphasis added).28 Stated in summary form, identities are

differentially constituted, with the result that the entire signifying field is implied in each

signifying element.

Laclau develops this theory of discourse largely by building on Derrida‟s thought,

as he makes clear: “Derrida generalizes the concept of discourse in a sense coincident

with that of our text.”29 In particular, Derrida‟s theorization of the dissolution of the

transcendental signified marks the point at which Laclau highlights his work:

Derrida…starts from a radical break in the history of the concept of structure,

occurring at the moment in which the center—the transcendental signified its
multiple forms: eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia, aletheia, etc.—is abandoned,
and with it the possibility of fixing a meaning which underlies the flow of
differences.30

27
Ibid., 27.
28
Ibid.
29
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112. While Laclau‟s political theory draws on many sources other than
Derrida, deconstruction is one of its most central sources. Geoffrey Bennington, writing in 2001, describes
Laclau and Mouffe‟s work as “arguably the only political theory as such to have engaged with Derrida‟s
work” (a statement which was perhaps truer in 2001 than now, almost ten years later, as I will note in
chapter five); see Geoffrey Bennington, “Derrida and Politics,” in Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A
Critical Reader, ed. Tom Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 208n4. John Lechte,
seeming to find little of political value in Derrida‟s own work, notes that Laclau‟s political theory is
“indebted to the anti-metaphysical and anti-essentialist drive apparent in Derrida‟s philosophy,” and goes
on to write that “the astonishing thing about Laclau‟s thought is that he turns Derrida‟s insights into the
basis of how the political can finally claim its rights;” see John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers:
From Structuralism to Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1994), 193, 194. Critchley and Marchart,
themselves much more sympathetic to the political relevance of deconstruction, also note the way in which
Laclau‟s theory depends on and, in important aspects, supplements deconstruction: “Laclau and Mouffe‟s
overall strategy…was „deconstructive‟ in many respects….Yet, as Laclau made clear, deconstruction is in
need of being complemented by a theory of hegemony. If the deconstructive operation consists in laying
open the moment of ultimate undecidability inherent to any structure, hegemony provides us with a theory
of the decision taken on such undecidable terrain. Hence, post-structuralism encountered a political turn
initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and further developed by Laclau in his later work;” see
Critchley and Marchart, “Introduction,” 5.
30
Ibid., 111-112. It is also worth noting that this particular point of intersection between Derrida and
Laclau and Mouffe unites them on distinctively poststructuralist terrain. Marchart goes so far as to call the
essay by Derrida which is cited by Laclau and Mouffe [Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1967)] “the locus classicus of post-structuralism.” See Marchart, 15.
 130

What emerges is a “structured totality” of “differential positions,”31 the particular

elements of which do not pre-exist the “relational complex”32 of which they are a part.

For Laclau, then there is “no beyond the play of differences, no ground which would a

priori privilege some elements of the whole over others.”33

The differential constitution of social particularities means that no social

particularity can be merely self-referential. The identification of any particular social

group necessarily refers and defers one to the other particular social groups within the

total social field ad infinitum.34 Social particularities are not self contained, atomic

elements sharing a common field, but are, rather, co-implicated with one another in a

constitutive way and do not pre-exist the relational complex of which they are a part.

The effect of this is that any assertion of identity on the part of a particular group within

the social totality initiates a movement beyond their own particularity, to the other

elements of the social, and ultimate to the totality of the social as such, which is

transcendent in relation to them.

These considerations are sufficient to illustrate Marchart‟s first point. Building

off of Saussure‟s theory of signification, Laclau recognizes that all signifying systems are

differentially constituted. We can therefore amend Marchart‟s statement that “the

political logic of signification…applies to the construction of all meaning, not only to

political meaning”35 by noting that Laclau‟s point is that all social identity is

differentially constituted. Anticipating a point I will repeat in chapter five with reference

to Derrida‟s own ontology, Laclau‟s theory is not best understood as an “application” of

31
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 105.
32
Laclau Populist Reason, 68.
33
Ibid., 69. I will give a fuller discussion of Derrida‟s own formulation of these issues in chapter five.
34
For a further elaboration of this idea of deferral, see chapter five, p. 251.
35
Marchart, 147.
 131

Saussurian linguistics, but as itself constituting a form of semiology.36 This point can be

occluded in Marchart‟s language of “meaning,” leaving us with the impression that

Laclau is concerned with something much more immaterial or ephemeral than actually

existing social particularities. In fact, as we can now see, Laclau‟s focus is nothing less

than the constitution of social particularities as such.

A Theory of “All Possible Being”

These considerations bring me to a consideration of Marchart‟s second point:

“Since there is no social reality outside signification or beyond meaning, a theory of

signification amounts to a theory of all possible being, that is to say, it amounts to an

ontology….”37 We can introduce this point with an additional consideration of what

Laclau has to say about his concept of “discourse.” Laclau repeatedly insists that

discourse, as he uses the term, refers to “something that is not essentially restricted to the

areas of speech and writing….”38 On the contrary, he insists that discourse “is not…an

object among other objects…but rather a theoretical horizon,” and goes on to state that

“the discursive is coterminous with the being of objects—the horizon…of the constitution

of the being of every object” (latter emphases added).39 This statement alerts us to the

fact that Laclau‟s political theory and its account of the constitution of social identity is

not merely a “regional” account. This is the reason for Laclau‟s insistence, echoing the

point I made in the previous paragraph, on “the material character of every discursive

36
See chapter five, p 262.
37
Marchart, 147.
38
Laclau, Populist Reason, 68.
39
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies,” New Left Review 166
(November/December 1987): 86.
 132

structure”40 and his rejection of “the distinction between discursive and non-discursive

practices”41 precisely insofar as this distinction would imply “the mental character of

discourse.”42

It is possible to miss these emphases on Laclau‟s part. In response to charges that

his theory of discourse constitutes a form of idealism,43 Laclau insists that “the fact that

every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with whether there

is a world external to thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition,”44 and give the

impression that he, in fact, affirms a discursive/non-discursive distinction after all: He

distinguishes between the being (esse) of an object, which is “historical and changing”

and given discursively, and the existence (ens) of an object, which is not,45 and provides

the following illustration to distinguish between “physical facts” and “meanings”:

If I kick a spherical object in the street or if I kick a ball in a football match, the
physical fact is the same, but its meaning is different. The object is a football
only to the extent that it establishes a system of relationships with other objects,
and these relations are not given by the mere referential materiality of the objects,
but are, rather, socially constructed.46

However, things are not quite so simple: Immediately upon introducing this

distinction, Laclau writes that “in our interchange with the world, objects are never given

to us as mere existential entities [ens], they are always given to us within discursive

articulations [as esse].”47 While Laclau insists that the existence (ens) of objects is not

40
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 108.
41
Ibid., 107.
42
Ibid., 108.
43
For the source of these criticisms, see Norman Geras, “Post-Marxism?” New Left Review I/63 (May-June
1987). This essay has been reprinted in Stuart Sim, Post-Marxism: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1998).
44
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 108.
45
Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism,” 85.
46
Ibid., 82.
47
Ibid., 85.
 133

called into question by his theory,48 he also asserts that discussion of such objects is

speculative, amounting to “mere abstraction.”49 Questions about the mere existence of

objects (ens) effectively constitute a form of metaphysical speculation, which Laclau

clearly wants to avoid: “The basic illusion of metaphysical thought resides precisely in

this unawareness of the historicity of being.”50 By way of summary, I reiterate Laclau‟s

point that “the centrality we gave to the category of „discourse‟ derives from our attempt

to emphasize the purely historical and contingent character of the being of objects.”51

Stated differently, “no object is given outside every discursive condition of emergence.”52

My suggestion, in view of statements such as these, is that Laclau‟s proposal

amounts to a kind of phenomenological, as opposed to metaphysical, ontology.53 While

Laclau entertains some notion of the mere existence of objects in principle, he effectively

enacts a phenomenological bracketing of such considerations. What he formulates as an

alternative to such speculation is a broadly phenomenological account of the constitution

of objects, as well as the objectivity of objects as such.54 Stating the issue in Husserlian

48
Ibid., 82.
49
Ibid., 85.
50
Ibid., 97.
51
Ibid.
52
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 107.
53
Though not generally described primarily in terms of phenomenology, the application of the term
“phenomenology” as a descriptor for Laclau‟s project is not an undue imposition. Laclau himself states
that the three main “sources of inspiration” for the theory developed by him and Mouffe are
“phenomenology, post-analytic philosophy, and the various currents of thought that can generally be
characterized as post-structuralist.” He goes on to state that “as far as phenomenology is concerned…our
approach is very close to Derrida‟s critique of Husserl.” If my argument that Derrida‟s thought is best
understood in terms of phenomenology (outlined in chapter five) is at all convincing, then, the fact that
Laclau draws so heavily on Derrida‟s thought further licenses this reading of Laclau. For Laclau‟s
comments, see New Reflections, 212.
54
For reasons which will become clearer in the discussion of Derrida in the Chapter Five, recognition of
Laclau‟s broadly phenomenological emphases is accompanied by an awareness of his distance from
“orthodox” phenomenology as well, particularly insofar as the latter involves a so-called “metaphysics of
presence.” In relation to this, my use of the language of “objects” should not be misconstrued here.
Laclau‟s theory accounts for more than the constitution of “physical objects.” It also has to do, for
example, with the constitution of ideological “objects,” the political subject, etc., as I will show as this
chapter progresses.
 134

terms (for the sake of emphasizing the point), language of mere physical objects involves

little more than a form of “imaginative variation,” given that any and all interaction with

the world, including that which takes place in the physical sciences,55 is discursively

constituted; there simply “are” no merely physical objects with which there will ever be

any interaction. Laclau‟s dismissal of such notions as “mere abstraction” echoes

Husserl‟s own insistence that the postulation of “two worlds” (i.e. the world of being

[esse] and the world of existents [ens]) is an “absurdity” for which we simply have no

warrant.56 As Laclau‟s use of the term “horizon” in the preceding discussion should alert

us, “discourse” has to do with the field of phenomenological constitution as such. As

such, given that the field of discursivity is itself the condition of possibility of any

positively constituted objects, there can be no meaningful discussion of any positivity

“outside” of this field.57 This is the significance of Laclau‟s insistence on “articulation”

(to be discussed in what follows) as opposed to “mediation”58: Whereas the former

highlights the fact that objects (e.g. social identities) are constituted through discourse,

the latter implies the pre-existence of identities prior to their positioning within a

discursive field.

Returning to Marchart‟s point, it is therefore clear that Laclau‟s “discourse

theory” represents nothing less than a form of phenomenological ontology which is

55
For a similar point, inspired by Heidegger, see Gianni Vattimo, “Toward a Nonreligious Christianity,”
trans. Jeffrey W. Robbins, in After the Death of God, ed. by Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia
University Press 2007), 27-29.
56
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy:
First Book, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 219.
57
Mark Devenney makes a similar point, noting that Laclau departs from Kant insofar as he does not
entertain a notion of the thing-in-itself, noting that “the analysis of the discursive suggests that the
presupposition of a thing-in-itself is itself undermined, given that the being of the object is contingent;” see
Mark Devenney, Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory and Post-Marxism
(London: Routledge, 2004), 91. This, of course, is why it is significant that Laclau speaks of the
constructed “outside” of this field as a disruptive negativity, rather than any positivity.
58
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 94.
 135

directed, in its development, to an analysis of the socio-political. What I have identified

as the specifically phenomenological character of Laclau‟s ontology is also clear if we

consider the differences between Laclau‟s ontology and the ontology assumed by Ward

in the previous chapter. I demonstrated in that context that Ward adapts Kant‟s notions

of the phenomenal and the noumenal to advance a two-worlds view of reality predicated

“on the Kantian divide between what is (the infinite indifference of what is always and

only tout autre) and the symbolic orders (a linguistic adaptation of the Kantian

categories) that create surfaces and façades.”59 In other words, Ward adopts precisely the

kind of dualistic ontology Laclau rejects. This dualism is ultimately what marks Ward‟s

ontology as metaphysical, as opposed to Laclau‟s phenomenological ontology. As we

have seen, Ward adopts his metaphysical account of the analogy of Being as a solution to

the gap between his two ontological levels. Because Laclau phenomenologically

brackets such considerations, he is not forced to advance a metaphysical ontology of the

kind adopted by Ward.

Putting “Political” in Political Ontology

Complicating the Account: The Impossibility of the Social

I have shown why Laclau‟s political theory is best understood as a form of

phenomenological ontology. Laclau‟s theory is, however, more complicated than my

account to this point lets on. The understanding of signification I have attributed to

Laclau to this point is a distinctly structural one. We have seen Laclau‟s acknowledged

debt to Saussure and, as he puts it, “the great advance carried out by structuralism was the

59
Ward, Cultural Transformation, 106.
 136

recognition of the relational character of any social identity…” (emphasis added).60 A

structuralist understanding of social identity such as this requires systematicity. Laclau

writes that the limit of structuralism “was its transformation of those relations into a

system, into an identifiable and intelligible object” (emphasis added).61 This

transformation into system is not accidental to a relational understanding of social

identity; on the contrary, it is implied by it. The relational character of the social implies

that every element within it has the identity it has only by virtue of its relation to the other

elements. But if this is true of every element within the social (i.e., signifying) field, then

it follows that the identities of the elements, because they are relationally constituted, can

only be fixed by the limits of that field itself. Stated in linguistic terms, “the totality of

language is involved in each single act of signification.”62 That is, the relational

character of social identity means that every identity within the social field necessarily

implies the totality of that field. Thus, “the very possibility of signification is the system,

and the very possibility of the system is the possibility of its limits.”63 This means, as the

systematicity of structuralism implies, that “the structural totality [of the social] was

[able] to present itself as an object having a positivity of its own, which it was possible to

describe and define,” with the result that “the status of this totality was that of an essence

of the social order” (emphasis added).64 In this case, all relational identities would be

essentially fixed and, in an important sense, necessary.65 The phenomenological import

of this is highlighted by the italicized terms in the previous quotation: The elements

60
Laclau, New Reflections, 90.
61
Ibid.
62
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 37.
63
Ibid.
64
Laclau, New Reflections, 90.
65
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 106.
 137

within the social field will all be “objective,” in the sense of being fully constituted

phenomenological positivities, as will the totality of the social itself.

So, we see that the totality of the social (i.e., signifying) field is implied by the

very identity of the elements within it; the totality of the field is therefore necessary.

There is a significant problem with this formulation, however, and it is out of this

complication that the crux of Laclau‟s political theory and the distinctly political nature

of his ontology emerge. Here, concisely stated, is the difficulty: While the totality of the

social is necessary, it is also impossible. Laclau notes that a limit can only be thought by

envisioning that which lies on each side of it: “We can say, with Hegel, that to think of

the limits of something is the same as thinking of what is beyond those limits” (emphasis

added).66 But, if we attend to this point, it immediately becomes clear that “if what we

are talking about are the limits of a signifying system, it is clear that those limits cannot be

themselves signified….”67 This is because, as we have seen, the system of differences as

such is the “ground and condition of all differences,”68 with the result that (to repeat)

“there is no beyond the play of differences….”69 As the condition of possibility of all

objectivity or identity as such, the social field (i.e., the signifying system) itself cannot be

constituted as an objectivity or phenomenological positivity; it cannot become one object

among others, precisely because there is no positivity to its “outside.” In this sense then,

the totality of the social is impossible.70

66
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 37.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid., 39.
69
Laclau, Populist Reason, 69.
70
Much of my discussion in this section has been drawn from a short chapter of New Reflections entitled
“The Impossibility of Society;” see Laclau, New Reflections, 89-92.
 138

This impossibility is what marks Laclau‟s distance from both structuralism and

from “orthodox” phenomenology. In relation to the former point, Laclau states the issue

clearly: “If we maintain the relational character of any identity and if, at the same time,

we renounce the fixation of those identities in a system, then the social must be identified

with the infinite play of differences….”71 This understanding of the social in terms of the

infinite play of differences, which is to say, in terms of a play of differences which is not

ultimately subject to an order of rules exceeding or governing it, is what Laclau intends,

once again, with the term “discourse.”72 With regard to phenomenology, this aspect of

Laclau‟s theory alerts us to the fact that his proximity to phenomenology also implies his

distance from it.73 The unfixity of the social field is such that the constitution of the

elements within it is constantly disrupted; social identity, in other words, is irreducibly

unstable. Anticipating my discussion of Derrida in chapter five, and once again

concurring with Marchart‟s reading of Laclau, Laclau‟s phenomenological ontology

mirrors Derrida‟s own “hauntology”: “It is only in the sense of hauntology, that is to say,

as an ontology lacking its very object (being-as-ground), that the term ontology may still

be employed.”74 This lack of ground is, of course, what marks Laclau‟s distance from a

more “orthodox” phenomenological perspective.

Arresting the Play

Having further explored Laclau‟s theory as ontology, we are now in a position to

consider in precisely what sense Laclau‟s theory is a political ontology. In fact, the
71
Ibid., 90.
72
Ibid. By way of anticipation, this emphasis on the non-regulated play of differential relations once again
marks Laclau‟s appropriation of Derrida‟s own thought. I will address Derrida‟s own account of
differential play in Chapter Five.
73
Again, on my reading, Laclau‟s proximity-in-distance from phenomenology mirrors Derrida‟s own;
again, I will address this aspect of Derrida‟s thought in chapter five.
74
Marchart, 163.
 139

remainder of this chapter will be devoted to elaborating the distinctly political aspect of

Laclau‟s theory. What I want to do here, then, is introduce the irreducible political core

of Laclau‟s theory, which I will then seek to elaborate in some detail in the remaining

sections of this chapter.

While the previous section added some depth and complexity to my initial

discussion of Laclau‟s political theory as ontology, a further significant component of

Laclau‟s theory remains to be addressed. Given the impossibility of fixing the limits of

the social, we have seen that Laclau affirms an “infinite play of differences.” And yet, he

insists, the social cannot simply consist in the play of differences; if this were the case, all

meaningful social identity would cease to exist. As Laclau puts it, “a discourse in which

meaning cannot possibly be fixed is nothing else but the discourse of the psychotic.”75

Stated in phenomenological terms, the fact that objects are never fully constituted does

not lead to the dissolution of all objectivity as such; on the contrary, the disruption of

social identities necessarily implies the existence of social identities. Laclau and Mouffe

summarize the issue as follows: “The impossibility of an ultimate fixity of meaning

implies that there have to be partial fixations—otherwise, the very flow of differences

would be impossible. Even in order to differ, to subvert meaning, there has to be a

meaning” (first emphasis added).76 That is, insofar as “difference” is necessarily

“difference from,” even an “infinite play of differences” requires some notion of the

constituted elements between which differences circulate and the very constitution of

which such differences subvert.

75
Laclau, New Reflections, 90.
76
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112.
 140

It is at this point that the political enters into Laclau‟s theory. If the “first

movement” of discourse involves the impossibility of “fixing” the social, then “the

second movement…consists in the attempt to effect this ultimately impossible

fixation.”77 That is, social actors are involved in “the attempt to limit that play, to

domesticate infinitude, to embrace it within the finitude of an order.”78 While the social

may be impossible, it nevertheless “exists…as an effort to construct that impossible

object.”79 Social identities do exist and objects are constituted for Laclau, all such

identities and all such constitution is the effect of efforts to arrest the play of differences.

In his words, while “the social always exceeds the limits of the attempts to constitute

society,” it nevertheless remains the case that “„totality‟ does not disappear….”80

From where, if it is not a function of a pre-existing objectivity of the social as

such (and we have seen that it cannot be), does this “arresting” of the play of differences

come? It comes from those within the field of the social. Chantal Mouffe nicely captures

the significance of this when she writes that “any social objectivity is ultimately

political…” (emphasis added).81 Whatever order there is, is in her terms “the temporary

and precarious articulation of contingent practices,”82 which is to say that whatever social

identities do exist, exist as the effects of efforts to arrest the play of differences. This is

just to say that all social identity is an effect of power: “Power is constitutive of the social

because the social could not exist without the power relations through which it is given

shape.”83 Those within the social attempt to “suture” it, to arrest the play of differences,

77
Laclau, New Reflections, 90-91.
78
Ibid., 91.
79
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112.
80
Laclau, New Reflections, 91.
81
Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000), 21.
82
Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005), 18.
83
Ibid.
 141

and so to “proceed to a relative fixation of the social….”84 The totality of the social

remains no less necessary because of its impossibility, and so it is constituted through

efforts to arrest the very play which renders it impossible. Laclau refers to these

constituted, partial fixations as “descriptive/normative complexes” which “incarnate[s],

in a transient way, that universality—the elusive fullness” of the social.85 Though these

complexes are only ever partial fixations of the social, they can nevertheless attain a high

degree of stability (e.g. the democratic structures operative in the contemporary United

States). What is crucial to understand is that these are only ever the effects of efforts to

arrest the limitless play of differences within the social.

What I mean by stating that Laclau‟s ontology is “political” has to do precisely

with this ineliminable role of power. With Laclau, Mouffe, and others,86 I am trading on

a distinction between “politics” and “the political,” with an emphasis on the latter.

Playing on the same Heideggerian language we have already seen Laclau employ,

Mouffe describes the difference as follows: “Politics refers to the „ontic‟ level while „the

political‟ has to do with the „ontological‟ one.”87 “The political” for Laclau and Mouffe

refers to “the dimension of antagonism…constitutive of human societies….”88 Adapting

Simon Critchley and Marchart‟s formulation, “the political” names “the institution of the

social as such.”89 Laclau‟s ontology is “political,” then, precisely insofar as social

identity and objectivity is always and only an effect of power working to arrest the

84
Laclau, New Reflections, 91.
85
Ernesto Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political
Logics,” in Judith Butler, et. al., Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the
Left (London, Verso: 2000), 81.
86
For a detailed and highly recommended discussion of this distinction, see Marchart, ch. 2.
87
Mouffe, On the Political, 8. She also notes that political science is concerned with empirical issues of
“politics,” while political theory is concerned with the essence of “the political.”
88
Ibid., 9.
89
Critchley and Marchart, “Introduction,” 3. Though they state the issue in terms of an “extension” of
“politics,” I think the distinction between “the political” and “politics” is more helpful.
 142

“infinite play of differences.” We are now in a position to recognize the essential

correctness of Marchart‟s third reason for describing Laclau‟s political theory as a

political ontology:

If we put the political and the ontological aspect of discourse theory together—the
claim that a discourse theory constitutes a general theory of signification which is
a political theory, and the claim that the latter constitutes what a philosophically
trained observer would call an ontology—it follows that we are confronted with
nothing other than a political ontology.90

Laclau’s Theory of Universality

It is with the impossible necessity of the social that Laclau‟s unique understanding

of universality emerges, and it is in relation to this concept of universality that we can see

the critical apparatus of his political theory. We have seen that the limits of the

signifying system, as the very conditions of signification, cannot themselves be signified;

but we have also seen that the constitution of any social identity requires that they must

be signified. Given this dilemma, Laclau‟s novel solution is as follows: “If what we are

talking about are the limits of a signifying system, it is clear that those limits cannot be

themselves signified, but have to show themselves as the interruption or breakdown of

the process of signification” as such.91 What ensues is a “paradoxical situation” in which

“what constitutes the condition of possibility of a signifying system—its limits—is also

what constitutes its condition of impossibility—a blockage of the continuous expansion

of the process of signification.”92

We can understand what Laclau is aiming at with these complex formulations if

we remember the consequences of the necessary unfixity of the limits of the social: Every

90
Marchart, 147.
91
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 37.
92
Ibid.
 143

constituted social identity is unstable. Because the limits of the social are not fixed,

neither is social identity; the identities of those elements within the social field are not

fully constituted. This is evident in the very fact of social groups‟ making political

demands: If the identities of social actors were fully constituted, they would have no need

to make such demands. In making political demands, social actors experience their own

constitution as interrupted: This is the “blockage” of the expansion of signification of

which Laclau speaks.

This brings us back to the point I discussed in the beginning of the chapter,

concerning the impossibility of pure particularity: Any group making political demands

necessarily appeals to a totality, to a universality, which exceeds that group‟s

particularity. We can now add to that account, noting that the totality to which social

actors make appeal in leveling political demands represents the emancipatory ideal which

is not in effect. The universal to which appeal is made is therefore “the symbol of a

missing fullness…,” that is, the fullness denied the social particularities in question;93 it is

the totality of the social as it ought to be, as opposed to the social as it is. The totality of

the social is therefore experienced negatively, as the barrier to the full constitution of the

social groups making political demands. What is “beyond” the limit of the social is,

therefore, “the impossibility of what is this side of the limit,”94 which is to say the

impossibility of the full constitution of the social particularities leveling their political

demands.

The universal to which social particularities necessarily make appeal is not,

therefore, an ontological positivity or a metaphysical plenitude; on the contrary, Laclau

93
Ibid., 28.
94
Ibid., 37.
 144

sums up the situation by writing that “we are faced with a constitutive lack, with an

impossible object which…shows itself through the impossibility of its adequate

representation” (emphasis added).95 This lack or impossible object is what must be

signified, and it is what cannot be signified, precisely because it is neither a positivity or

plenitude.

Signifying the Universal: Empty Signifiers

Laclau‟s theoretical response to the impossible necessity of signifying the totality

of the social is his concept of “empty signifiers.” He develops this concept in terms of a

notion of substitutability which owes to Derrida. Speaking with reference to the

“rupture” of the concept of structure, Derrida writes that

It became necessary to think both the law which somehow governed desire for a
center in the constitution of structure, and the process of signification which
orders and the displacements and substitutions for this law of central presence—
but as a central presence which has never been itself, has always already been
exiled from itself into its own substitute. The substitute does not substitute itself
for anything which has somehow existed before it, henceforth, it was necessary to
begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the
form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed
locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-
substitutions came into play” (emphasis added).96

In the absence of a “true” or “natural” center to secure the “structurality of structure,”97 a

series of signifiers, of elements within the overall signifying structure, take up this

centering role in a movement of substitution,98 but a movement in which that for which

they serve as substitutes has never been present.

95
Ibid., 40.
96
Quoted in Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112. The reference is from Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and
Play,” 280.
97
For this phrase see Laclau, Emancipation(s), 90; Derrida, “Structure Sign and Play,” 278.
98
Cf. Ernesto Laclau, “Structure, History, and the Political,” in Judith Butler et. al., Contingency,
Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London, Verso: 2000), 193-194.
 145

This process of constitutive substitution is carried by empty signifiers. In the

absence of any fixed signifier for the limits which would secure the shape and status of

the social, an element from within the social space takes on this role of signifying the

impossible totality. The universal is signified via the “emptying” of one of the particular

signifying elements within the social, which then takes on the role of signifying the

impossible totality of the system itself. Thus, “the signifiers empty themselves of their

attachment to particular signifieds and assume the role of representing the pure being of

the system….”99

In order to for the “impossible object” of the social totality to gain a positive

identity, i.e. in order to be experienced as something more than disruptive negativity, a

particular signifier must be evacuated of its particular content and become the incarnating

body of the empty universality. The impossible universality of the system, which cannot

have its own proper signifier, therefore “borrows” one from an entity constituted within

the social field.100 This process follows the logic described by Derrida, whereby the

center becomes a function, rather than a locus: The “center” is the function carried out

by the incarnating body.101

This signification of the universal therefore constitutes “the subversion of the

process of signification itself”102 insofar as “universality exists only incarnated in—and

subverting—some particularity….”103 Laclau theorizes this incarnational function as

“hegemony:” The particular signifier that ceases to signify its particular signified and

99
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 39.
100
Ibid., 42.
101
This shift from “locus” to “function” also highlights Laclau‟s point of departure from Lefort, where
Laclau argues that the “emptiness” of power has to do with a “process,” rather than a “place.”
102
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 39.
103
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 56.
 146

instead signifies the fullness of the social thereby undertakes “what we might call a

hegemonic relationship” with the other elements of the social.104 Borrowed, with

significant adaptation, from Antonio Gramsci‟s political theory,105 “hegemony” here is

not a pejorative term. Rather, on Laclau‟s formulation the universal is always embodied

in the hegemonic action of a particular social group taking up this task of impossible

signification. As such, “hegemony” describes the manner by which “dispersed and

fragmented historical forces” are shaped into “collective wills.”106

The concept of hegemony and the formation of collective wills recalls our

previous discussion about the irreducibly political nature of the social, that is, the idea

that the social as such is constituted through political acts of partial fixation of the play of

differences. The hegemonic operation is the means of achieving this partial fixation. The

particular element of the social which takes on the function of representing the universal

constitutes what Laclau and Mouffe call a “nodal point,”107 borrowing from the Lacanian

notion of a point de caption, literally a “quilting point.”108 The empty signifier therefore

serves as a kind of anchor point which serves as the basis for fixing the social order. As

Laclau summarizes the issue, “without nodal points, there would be no [social]

configuration at all.”109 Laclau provides a simple illustration which will help illustrate

this point: Gold is a particular use value which nevertheless “assumes the function of

representing value in general;” gold therefore becomes a nodal point fixing and orienting

104
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 43.
105
For Laclau and Mouffe‟s discussion of the contribution of Gramsci‟s thought to their conception of
hegemony, see Hegemony, 65-71. For good secondary account of this contribution, see Torfing, ch. 1;
Anna Marie Smith, Laclau and Mouffe, ch. 2; David Howarth, “Hegemony, Political Subjectivity, and
Radical Democracy,” in Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London:
Routledge, 2004).
106
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 67.
107
Cf., ibid., xi; Laclau, New Reflections, 28, 90.
108
Laclau, On Populist Reason, 105.
109
Ibid.
 147

the notion of value as such. The social is irreducibly political, then, insofar as any shape

it has is the result of the hegemonic ordering of its elements around empty signifiers

which serve as nodal points.

The very possibility of the hegemonic ordering means that the identity of every

social particularity is constitutively split. On the one hand, a social group is defined in

terms of the particularity of its political demands; that is, the identity of that group is

given by the particularity of the missing fullness which is taken to disrupt its identity. On

the other hand, however, any particular group can come to signify or incarnate the figure

of the impossible universal as such (i.e., of the absent fullness of the social), which means

that they can be emptied of their particularistic contents and form a nodal point. As

Laclau puts it, “any concrete struggle is dominated by this contradictory movement that

simultaneously asserts and abolishes its own singularity.”110

The hegemonic operation is radically contingent; no social agent constitutes an a

priori site for the incarnation of transcendent universality.111 To say that the hegemonic

operation is contingent is not, however, to say that it is simply arbitrary or indifferent.

Laclau‟s point is that no logical or conceptual relation exists to determine the hegemonic

site. Any actually existing social field, however, develops “unevenly,”112 with the result

that not every particular social group is in an equally advantageous position for the

process of “transforming its own contents into a nodal point that becomes an empty

110
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 41.
111
This emphasis is one of the defining points which led Laclau and Mouffe to formulate their political
theory in “post-Marxist” terms. One of the main emphases of the first two chapters of Hegemony is that
there is no privileged agent who embodies the universality of the social (e.g. the working class or the
Party). For the language of “post-Marxist,” see Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, ix-x, as well as “Post-
Marxism.” It is also worth noting that this places Laclau at odds with Ward who, reading from within the
perspective of Laclau‟s theory, places the Christian Church in the position of privilege social agent.
112
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 54.
 148

signifier.”113 Any actually existing social space is defined by de facto limits as to which

particular social groups will be in position to vie for the role of hegemonic signifier.

The contingency of hegemonic formations is further heightened by the fact that an

empty signifier will always be “constitutively inadequate” to the task representing the

absent fullness of the social because, in the process of “emptying,” the particularities do

not simply cease to be particularities.114 Empty signifiers are only “tendentially empty,”

retaining an irreducible “remainder of particularity.”115 Any hegemonic formation

therefore remains inherently unstable, liable to dissolve back into a new sedimentation of

particularistic identities, making the way for new hegemonic articulations.116 As Laclau

states the issue, “the claim of a sector to rule will depend on its ability to present its own

particular aims as the ones which are compatible with the actual functioning of the

community….”117 This means that, it is never possible to fully formalize the social as

discursive space; the “fixity” of the social enacted by hegemonic operations always

remain only partial.

113
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 43.
114
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony, 56.
115
Ibid., 56-57.
116
I noted on p. 134 that Laclau uses the term “articulation,” highlighting the fact that social identities are
constituted through discourse, as opposed to “mediation,” which implies the pre-existence of social
identities within an objective social field.
117
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 54.
 149

Equivalence

Laclau provides a diagram, reproduced in a modified fashion here,118 which will

not only help me to clarify the concepts of the empty signifier, but also to introduce the

related concepts of equivalence and antagonism.

Øs

Figure 1

The individual figures “ө” represent the individual actors within the social space. The

series “D1, D2, D3,” etc. represent the particular social demands which render these actors

particular. The upper figure “D1” represents the hegemonic incarnation of the impossible

fullness of the social by one of the particularities within the social field.

The series “Ө = Ө = Ө…” represents what Laclau refers to as an “equivalential

chain.” In their particularistic identities, the individual elements of the social are

constituted as individual to the degree that their particular political demands differentiate

them from one another. However, we have seen that the full constitution of each of these

particularities is disrupted, as demonstrated by the fact that they make political demands

at all. This means that each of the social actors levels its demands against a political

regime, represented in Figure 1 by the null set (Øs);119 the null set therefore represents the

118
This is a modification of the diagram in Laclau, Populist Reason, 148.
119
I will have a good deal more to say about the null set in the discussion of antagonism below.
 150

system which denies the full constitution of each of the particularities (i.e., each figure

Ө).

This is a significant point, because it means that each particular social group is

equivalent to each of the other individual social groups, insofar as they all define

themselves in opposition to that which prevents their full constitution (Øs). Thus, from

this perspective, the social groups Ө “constitute between themselves a chain of

equivalences in so far as all of them are bearers of an anti-system meaning”120 (emphasis

added), which is to say, insofar as they all oppose the nullity preventing their full

constitution. The bar through each figure Ө therefore represents the constitutive split

defining the elements within the social, according to which they can either subsist in their

differential identity relative to each other (represented by the lower portion of the figure),

or subsist as an equivalential unity vis-à-vis a common structural opponent (represented

by the upper portion of the figure).

An illustration from contemporary politics can help me to illustrate these

points.121 I have chosen the US Republican Party as it has taken shape, and as its

constitution has been called into question, for approximately the past half-decade.

Accordingly, Laclau‟s notion of equivalential articulation can be illustrated through a

120
Laclau, “Constructing Universality,” in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary
Dialogues on the Left, by Judith Butler et. al. (London, Verso, 2000), 302.
121
Though Laclau‟s concerns are theoretical, focusing on the level of “the political” rather than on the level
of politics, a number of people have applied his theoretical model to concrete political issues from the
perspective of the “Essex School” of political theory (so-called because of Laclau‟s position at the
University of Essex, where he was Professor of Political Theory and Director of the doctoral program in
Ideology and Discourse Analysis). Torfing applies Laclau‟s theory in Part IV of his book, devoting three
chapters to issues of nationalism and racism, mass media, and the modern welfare state. For other
examples, see: Anna Marie Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain 1968-1990
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Aletta Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse
(London: Verso, 1996); Sayyid; and the essays collected in David Howarth et. al., ed., Discourse Theory
and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000). For a superb book-length application of Laclau‟s theory to the question of Islamism, see
Sayyid.
 151

consideration of the so-called “three legs” of the Reagan Coalition: Economic

conservatives, social conservatives, and national security conservatives.122

Taken individually, each of these three constituencies (we can conceive of each of

them as being represented by a Ө from Figure 1) has its own particularistic identity.

Each of these groups, in other words, has its own identity, marked by the specific

demands it makes within the social sphere (represented by the series D1, D2, D3, etc.).

Economic conservatives, for example, demand a balanced budget and minimal federal

spending, social conservatives demand the prohibition of abortion procedures, and

national security conservatives demand a robust military force. Each of these individual

social constituencies has a distinct identity vis-à-vis the other constituencies under

discussion; there is no necessary identification between them, nor is there any conceptual

reason why they would identity with one another‟s political demands. That is, to give

one example, there is no conceptual or logical reason demanding that someone who

supports the prohibition of abortion procedures must also demand a robust military force.

Quite the contrary, it is easy to envision instances in which the particularistic demands of

these groups would bring them into conflict, such as when the maintenance of a robust

military force advanced by national security conservatives leads to what economic

conservatives perceive to be excessive government spending.

However, we can also see that these individual constituencies can be (and

obviously have been) construed as equivalent to each other insofar as they all oppose the

social group which they see as threatening their own full social constitution: “Democrat,”

122
In the brief period of time between the US presidential election of 2008 and the drafting of this chapter,
Republicans seeking to re-energize their party after a decisive loss in that election, have commonly
appealed to this three-legged coalition. For one such example, see the op-ed by Ken Blackwell, “Refocus,
Rebuild, Win: A Party for the 21st Century,” OPED, The Washington Times, Nov. 25, 2008.
 152

“liberal,” etc. This group represents, in the view of each of these three groups, the

nullification of their own full constitution, and is therefore represented as the null set

(ØS). It is this common equivalence with regard to the null set that constitutes the split in

the identity of each of these groups: They are each marked by their particular identity

with regard to one another and by their equivalence with each other in opposition to the

null set.

This constitutive split in identity is centrally important for understanding the

dynamics of equivalential chains. The greater the degree to which social groups

equivalentially related to one another, “the less each concrete struggle will be able to

remain closed in a differential self” vis-à-vis those other groups.123 Putting this in terms

of my Republican example: If the three kinds of conservatives define themselves

primarily in terms of the particularity of their political demands vis-à-vis one another,

they will not functionally constitute a significant challenge to the null set (ØS). If the

movement is to remain politically effective and significant, then the three groups must

define themselves primarily in terms of their common opposition to the null set (ØS).

Their effective equivalential articulation therefore requires their being emptied of their

particularistic content. As Laclau notes, we see a movement from difference to

indifference: “These differential bodies are simply indifferent bodies [relative to one

another] incarnating something equally present in all of them…” (emphasis added),124

which is to say, the common opposition to the totality.

While equivalent elements are marked by the commonality of their opposition to

the null set (ØS), however, the fact remains that “the longer the chain of equivalences is,

123
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 42.
124
Ibid.
 153

the less concrete this „something equally present‟ will be.”125 The longer an equivalential

chain becomes, which is to say the larger the number of social groups included within it,

the emptier the signifiers for them will have to become. It is at this point that our issue of

hegemonic incarnation resurfaces: “The more extended the chain of equivalences, the

more the need for a general equivalent representing the chain as a whole.”126 That is, the

lack of a “common something” linking the elements of the chain raises the need to

signifier which can represent this absent commonality; the need for a signifier of the

impossible universality of the equivalential chain is required. A signifier is needed for

the representation of the equivalential chain itself, which can have no “natural” signifier:

“This is the strictly hegemonic move: the body of one particularity assumes a function of

universal representation.”127 What is required, in other words, is a nodal point which can

anchor and orient the equivalential chain.

The issue of universality is now front and center. As Laclau puts it, “the only

possible universality is the one constructed through an equivalential chain,”128 signified

by a particular element of that chain. The identity of one social element takes on the role

of signifying all of the elements within the equivalential chain; it takes on the task of

signifying the universal. Referring again to Figure 1, we see that D1 takes on the role of

serving as a nodal point for the equivalential chain. Considering our Republican example

once again, particularly in the post-9/11 US context, there is little doubt that the national

defence conservatives played this role of universal signification. That is, the entire

equivalential chain was defined by such concerns as the spread of democracy by means

125
Ibid.
126
Laclau, “Constructing Universality,” 302.
127
Ibid.
128
Ibid., 304.
 154

of military force, the “Bush doctrine” of unilateral military pre-emption, and so on.

Indeed, an extension of the equivalential chain occurred, precisely insofar as social

groups not normally considered “conservative” by any measure identified themselves

under this new form of universality.

It is important to be clear on the nuances of equivalential articulation as it relates

to political identity. The logic of equivalential articulation is not aggregative. In the case

of our Republicans, it is not simply the case that conservative political demands other

than robust military defense (e.g. economic conservatives‟ demands for reduced federal

spending) are subordinated to the concerns of national security conservatives. Rather,

what occurs is that the demands of the various constituencies are taken as equivalent to

the spread of democracy by military force, the Bush doctrine of unilateral pre-emption,

and so forth. That is, to say that these groups are equivalentially articulated is to say that

a novel social identity has been formed. To be a fiscal conservative is to support the

spread of democracy by military force, the Bush doctrine, and so on. This is what it

means to say that the individual links of the equivalential chain are emptied of their

particularistic content; we could say that these groups come to be defined simply as

“conservative” (the hegemonic nodal point) by losing their particularistic qualifiers

(“economic,” “fiscal,” “national defense”). The equivalential chain itself constitutes a

political identity which is something other than the sum of the links in the chain.

The process of equivalential emptying also affects the hegemonic signifier. As

Laclau puts it, “the more extended this chain is, the less its general equivalent will be

attached to any particularistic meaning,”129 which is to say that the nodal point (D1 in

Figure 1) is emptied of reference to its own particularity in the same manner as the
129
Ibid.
 155

elements of the chain. The longer the equivalential chain, the emptier the hegemonic

signifier D1 becomes.

Processes of hegemonic articulation are the means of establishing the partial

fixations of the social we have already considered. And, as such, they are only ever

contingent; as I noted previously, the social never achieves the status of objectivity. This

is due to what Laclau calls the “double movement”130 initiated by the particularistic

remainder of social identity. This remainder ensures that the movement toward

equivalence is always countered by the tendency of social groups to reassert their

particularistic identities. Thus, the equivalential logic is only a “tendential movement

that is always resisted by the logic of difference which is essentially non-

equalitarian….”131 The “suture” of the social enacted through the establishment of nodal

points is always, ultimately, impossible.132 In other words, articulated equivalential

chains can always dissolve into disparate particular identities which assert their identities

not only vis-à-vis a social system, but vis-à-vis one another as well. In such a case, in

contrast to Figure 1, one would encounter a situation in which Ө ≠ Ө ≠ Ө…, resulting in

the loss of D1‟s hegemonic status as incarnating universal.

We can once again illustrate this process through a consideration of our

Republicans. Most political observers note that the Republican Party has faced

something of an identity crisis in the wake of its decisive loss to the Democrats in the

2008 presidential and congressional elections.133 Stated in terms of the present analysis,

130
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 42.
131
Ibid., 43.
132
Laclau, New Reflections, 91.
133
This statement was truer when it was initially written, sometime in early 2009, than it is now, a quarter
of the way through 2010. This fact further illustrates the contingency of social formations, and gives some
small indication of how quickly things can change.
 156

one result of the coalition‟s failure to oppose the null set (ØS) in the 2008 presidential

election (that is, its failure to defeat the Democratic presidential candidate) is that the

constituent elements have begun to question the adequacy of the operative equivalential

chain.134 Economic conservatives have, for example, begun to insist that the reason for

the Republican loss in the election is that the Party has lost sight of fiscal responsibility.

This amounts to a reassertion of the particularistic identity of this link in the equivalential

chain, which threatens to disrupt the equivalential articulation which has been in place.

This rearticulation not only threatens the integrity of the equivalential chain, but the

adequacy of the nodal point “conservative,” without qualification, as a universal signifier

of that chain. Rather than one equivalential chain consisting of (among other elements)

economic conservatives, social conservatives, and national security conservatives, the

social would be populated by discreet social groups defined by their particularistic

interests and demands relative to each other; stated differently, the qualifications

“economic,” “social,” and “national security” come back to prominence. The result

would be that, for example, economic conservatives‟ demands for minimal government

spending might be opposed to, rather than equivalent to, national security conservatives‟

demands for a robust military capability. Once again this is an issue of social identity

formation: Rather than one large, hegemonically articulated social group, there are now

multiple smaller social groups, each defined in terms of their particular social demands

(D1, D2, D3, etc.).

134
Myriad news articles would serve as journalistic examples of this point. To give just a couple of
examples, see Ralph Z. Hallow, “Party Ponders Path of Return; Lacks Leaders, Clear Message,” Plugged
In—Election, Washington Times, November 5, 2008; Tim Shipman and Alex Spillius, “„Civil War‟ Looms
as Party Reflects on its Defeat,” News, Daily Telegraph (London), November 6, 2008.
 157

The conflicting logics of equivalence and difference are therefore always at work

within the social, deployed by different social actors in efforts to hegemonically articulate

different notions of universality. That is, as we can see with reference to the debates

within the Republican Party, it is not only a question of the re-emergence of multiple

social groups defined by their own particular demands. Rather, the loss of hegemonic

status by one social group leads to attempts on the part of the others to assert their own

hegemonic status.

As the events of 9/11 become more distant and the US is caught in a severe

economic crisis, for example, the demands of national security conservatives lose their

hegemonic status, paving the way for the demands of economic conservatives to make

their own bid for hegemonic status. The result of such new hegemonic formations, if

successful, would be the formation of a new social identity. As this illustrates,

continually “we will have either a struggle between different conceptions of universality,

or an extension of the equivalential logics to those very conceptions, so that a wider one

is constructed….”135 The result is that constituted equivalential chains “are always

disturbed, interrupted by other hegemonic interventions that construct meanings and

identities through different equivalential chains.”136

The unevenness of the social also comes into play at this point. Every actual

social field is marked by particularities affected by uneven distributions of power, and

“these uneven structural locations, some of which represent points of high concentrations

of power, are themselves the results of processes in which logics of difference and logics

135
Laclau, “Constructing Universality,” 305.
136
Ibid.
 158

of equivalence overdetermine each other.”137 Again, it is never the case that every

particular social group will be in a position to hegemonically represent the universality of

an equivalential chain. For this reason, it is “impossible to determine at the level of the

mere analysis of the form difference/equivalence which particular difference is going to

become the locus of equivalential effects….”138

Antagonism

We have now come some way in understanding the contours of Laclau‟s complex

theory of universality. However, in order to complete this outline, complexity must be

added to the model as it is represented in Figure 1. Specifically, I want to direct our

attention to the horizontal line demarcating the boundary between the null set (Øs) and

the equivalential chain represented by the hegemonic signifier (D1), and also to consider

the social actor(s) on the other side of the horizontal line (who do not even appear in

Figure 1).

The border between the equivalential chain and the null set (Øs) represents the

“antagonistic” limit between these two parties. The antagonistic limit is a “frontier of

exclusion”139 between the equivalential chain and the political regime threatening the

constitution of the elements within that chain. An “antagonistic” relation, in Laclau‟s

theory, is not simply a relation between two particular groups who make opposing

demands. Thus, for example, the particular groups leveling demands D1 and D2 do not

embody an antagonistic relation with regard to one another. Rather, a relationship of

opposition becomes antagonistic once the opponent becomes a threat to the very

137
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 43.
138
Ibid.
139
Ibid., 38.
 159

constitution of the particular social agent‟s identity. The “beyond” of the antagonistic

limit, on the other hand, represents the “pure threat”140 to the hegemonically articulated

equivalential chain. The reason it is a “pure threat” is that it is this “beyond” which

prevents the full constitution of the equivalential chain and of the particular identities

articulated within it.

The relation of antagonism must be understood in terms of the logic of negativity

and signification outlined above. That which lies on the far side of the boundary is

“reduced to pure negativity”141 and “becomes the signifier of pure threat, of pure

negativity, of the simply excluded….”142 This is the reason why, in Figure 1, it is

represented as a null set (ØS): It is the negativity disrupting the constitution of the social

actors as such. This nullity, as nullity, can have no proper signification because it is not

itself a phenomenological positivity. Yet it is, and must be, signified by the actors on the

other side of the antagonistic frontier; and so it is signified as the simple negation of the

equivalentially articulated identity.

Our Republican example can once again illustrate this point. When the

equivalentially articulated conservatives signify the null set as “liberals,” this nomination

acts as a kind of epithet naming the pure negation of their own identity. For example, if

the equivalential chain includes such constituencies as economic conservatives, social

conservatives, and national security conservatives, then the nullity labeled as “liberal” or

“Democratic” represents, to borrow the description of Jo Renee Formicola, “the safe

140
Ibid.
141
Ibid.
142
Ibid.
 160

haven of the godless, the elite, the effete, Northeastern intellectual snobs, and the

media,”143 which is to say, the safe haven of all that nullifies the conservatives‟ identity.

This is the point at which Figure 1 has to be further complicated. If the model of

the social represented in Figure 1 was perfectly embodied in the social, the social would

be divided into two opposing, antagonistic camps. On the one side we would find an

equivalential chain which, were it to be co-extensive with all the particular agents

opposed to the regime or group in question, would become “pure communitarian being

independent of all concrete manifestation.”144 On the other side of this barrier we would

find the null totality to which all actors on the other side of the line stand opposed, itself

represented as simple and without inner divisions of its own. Figure 1 therefore

represents something of an idealization (useful for heuristic purposes) of more complex

social processes.

The interplay of actual social forces is more complicated than this representation

allows; the ideal representation of Figure 1 never, in fact, holds (a point on which Laclau

himself insists). Adding complexity to this idealized account will allow me to provide a

fuller account of the null set (ØS) which is not, in fact, simple or unmarked by inner

division. To aid me in this account, I introduce Figure 2. 145

143
Jo Renée Formicola, The Politics of Values: Games Political Strategists Play (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2008), 101.
144
Laclau, Emancipation(s), 38.
145
The diagram is reproduced from Laclau, Populist Reason, 131.
 161

Figure 2

This more complicated diagram pictorially represents several points which add

complexity to Laclau‟s political theory. The first thing to note is that the frontier dividing

the social into a dichotomic space has been blurred, and is no longer solid, though it has

not disappeared.146

As Figure 2 makes clear, what lies on the far side of the antagonistic frontier (now

represented as a blurred, rather than solid, line),147 represented as the null set (ØS) in

Figure 1, is not in actuality an undivided nullity. On the contrary, if we consider the

social process outlined in Figure 1 from the side of the null set (ØS), we find another

equivalential chain (represented above the horizontal line in Figure 2), which is itself

defined by another political opponent (e.g., the original equivalential chain), which

would, in turn, be represented as another null set (ØS). My aim is not to confuse issues,

but to highlight the fact that the process of identity formation in question is complex and

is itself in a constant state of flux.

Recognition of this complexity and fluidity raises additional important points

concerning the articulation of social identities. First, just as there is the attempt

(represented in Figure 1) to articulate particular social groups in an equivalential chain,

there is also an attempt on the part of the opposed figure (represented in the null set) to

146
Ibid.
147
Ibid.
 162

disarticulate the equivalential chain.148 There are, in other words, always counter-

hegemonic operations at work. These work in at least two ways.

The first is to force the particular social agents comprising the equivalential chain

to reassert their differential identity vis-à-vis the other particular elements, thereby

disrupting their equivalence (so that, for example, ө ≠ ө ≠ ө ≠ ө). The result would

then be a social space marked my multiple social particularities which may all define

themselves as opposes to the null set (ØS), but which will also be defined by their

differences relative to one another. As a result, they would lack the political “critical

mass” to effectively oppose the null set (ØS). Returning to our Republican example, this

has been one effect of the criticism of deficit spending in the wake of George W. Bush‟s

presidency: It ceases to be clear to economic conservatives that their political demands

are simply equivalent to those of social conservatives or national defense conservatives,

particularly if meeting the political demands of the latter would further increase deficit

spending. The equivalential chain is in danger of losing one of its “links,” possibly even

to alternative hegemonic efforts (e.g., fiscal conservatives may determine that their

political demands are equivalent to those of libertarians). At any rate, the particular

demand D1 ceases to serve as a hegemonic nodal point anchoring the “conservative”

equivalential chain. This, in turn, is to the advantage of “liberals” (itself a hegemonically

articulated equivalential identity) insofar as their political opponent loses some of its

force.

The second means of disarticulation, clearly related to the first, is to form an

alternative equivalential chain by “stealing” links from the already articulated

148
Ibid.
 163

equivalential chain. If we consider Figure 2, this is represented by the Ө on the far left

(subscript α), which is now suspended between two equivalential chains, represented by

the solid lines connecting it to both. This figure Ө, with its particular demands (D1,

subscript α), is no longer clearly articulated with the lower equivalential chain, but is

being contested by another (composed of figures Ө, subscript b and c). The blurring of

the antagonistic frontier indicates that it is no longer clear which social identities are

equivalentially articulated in opposition to one another.

If an “empty signifier” is a signifier which is emptied of its particularistic content

so that it can represent an equivalential universality, then the indeterminate social

position we encounter in this situation is an example of a “floating signifier.”149 This

term refers to an element within the social which, while not strongly fixed in terms of its

particularistic identity, has also not been successfully articulated in terms of a hegemonic

universal, and so is “up for grabs.” The stakes in this battle of hegemonic articulation are

clear: Whichever equivalential identity manages to incorporate the floating signifier

simultaneously strengthens its own political position and weakens that of its opponent. In

actual social experience, as opposed to the representations offered in Figures 1 and 2,

floating signifiers will be the rule: The social space is never simply dichotomized, but is

strewn with unassigned elements which become the prizes over which hegemonic battles

are fought.

Another recent example drawn from the US political landscape will illustrate this

process. During the period between the 2004 and 2008 US Presidential elections,

prominent American Democrats increasingly came to the conclusion that, in order to gain

a strong enough social and political position to displace the Republican Party, and
149
Ibid.
 164

particularly to regain the Presidency, they would have to incorporate the language of

religion and “values” into their political lexicon. The incorporation of such language

involves an attempt to dis-articulate so-called “values voters,”150 another term roughly

equivalent to “social conservatives,” from the Republican chain of equivalences. That is,

Democrats increasingly recognized that the signifier “values” constituted an important

nodal point in contemporary American political discourse. Formicola usefully catalogues

telling instances of such attempts, including: Barak Obama‟s accusation that “the

religious right has „hijacked‟ faith and divided the country;”151 John Edwards‟ contention

that separation of church and state “does not mean that politicians have to be free from

their faith,” together with his assertion that “„my faith informs everything I think and do.

It‟s part of my value system;‟”152 and Nancy Pelosi‟s development of the Faith Working

Group in a Democratic effort to challenge “continued Republican attempts at further

denominational outreach,” together with her signing of a Catholic Statement of

Principles, “essentially agreeing to support the church‟s view on a variety of critical

moral issues while also ascribing to the undesirability of abortion.”153 Perhaps the most

visible of these efforts came with the participation of John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, and

Barak Obama in public forums concerning the role of faith in their personal lives and in

relation to their political affirmations.154

150
For a discussion of the formation and identity of the category of “values voters” (though not theorized in
the manner we are undertaking here), see Formicola.
151
Ibid., 104.
152
Ibid., 105. The quotation of Edwards is taken from David Kuo, “Interview with John Edwards,”
www.beliefnet.com/story/213/story_21312.html.
153
Formicola, 106.
154
The first of these events, involving all three of these then-presidential candidates, took place on June 4,
2007, was moderated by CNN‟s Soledad O‟Brien, and hosted by the progressive evangelical Christian Jim
Wallis. The second took place on April 13, 2008, involved only Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama, took
place on the campus of Messiah College, and was moderated by Campbell Brown of CNN and Jon
Meacham of Newsweek magazine. For discussions of these events, see Kate Phillips, “The Democrats
 165

My interest is not in the specific content of these statements, but in the fact that

they represent a clear example of one political group‟s efforts to disarticulate the

equivalential chain constructed by another political group. Success in these efforts would

result in the creation of a “floating” group of “values voters” who, while not necessarily

being equivalentially articulated in the Democratic chain of equivalences, would

nevertheless no longer be equivalentially articulated with national defense conservatives

and economic conservatives. In either case, this would represent a win for the

Democrats, insofar as it would weaken the Republicans. There is some evidence of

success in this regard, at least concerning Barak Obama‟s successful presidential

campaign for the 2008 election. Focusing on young, white, evangelical Christians in ten

swing states, Obama doubled the support of this demographic (aged 18 to 29) as

compared to John Kerry in the previous presidential election.155 While Obama only

gained three percentage points over Kerry‟s previous campaign among white evangelicals

nationally, his gains in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan,

Pennsylvania, and Virginia were much higher; in Colorado, for example, he gained ten

percentage points.156 My point in highlighting these facts is neither that these gains won

the election for Obama (they likely did not), nor that, as they seek to understand their

political identity and constitution in the wake of their election loss,157 Republicans should

Talk Faith on CNN,” New York Times Magazine,

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/faithforum/ (accessed April 21, 2009); Roland S. Martin,
“Commentary: Democrats Finally Getting Religion on Religion,” Cable News Network,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/08/roland.martin/index.html (accessed 21 April, 2009).
155
Laurie Goodstein, “Obama Made Gains Among Younger Evangelical Voters, Data Show,” National
Desk, New York Times Magazine, November 7, 2008, late edition.
156
Ibid.
157
For good, brief considerations of some of the complexities of this process, see David Usborne, “Party in
Search of a New Direction,” News, The Independent (London), November 7, 2008; Oliver Burkeman,
“International: Obama‟s Triumph: Aftermath: Palin in Spotlight as Republicans Turn on Each Other: Right
 166

conclude that evangelical Christians are more likely to vote for Democrats than

Republicans (they are not). The significance lies in the fact that the gains attained by

Obama represent a weakening of a key Republican constituency, calling into question the

long-term health of the Republican chain of equivalences. What is on display in this

example, then, is a successful initial attempt at strategic disarticulation.

Summary

Laclau‟s concept of universality is, as I have tried to show, quite complex and

nuanced. Before moving on to discuss our final consideration of the chapter, I want to

devote just a few lines to summarizing Laclau‟s main points concerning universality. I

want to take my cue here from the chapter epigraph: “The universal is an empty place, a

void which can be filled only by the particular, but which, through its very emptiness,

produces a series of crucial effects in the structuration/destructuration of social

relations.”158 We have seen that the universal, for Laclau, is nothing other than the shape

of the social as it ought to be; it is not, to reemphasize the point, an ontological positivity

or metaphysical plenitude. The significance of this is that the universal, precisely as

“void,” is both the “condition of possibility” and the “condition of impossibility” of the

social.159 This is why the universal produces the “crucial effects” of

Tears Itself Apart in Pinning Blame for McCain‟s Defeat,” Guardian International Pages, The Guardian
(London), November 8, 2008, final edition.
158
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 58.
159
Emancipation(s), 37. Though I have previously noted the broadly transcendental nature of Laclau‟s
political ontology, I have not addressed the nuances of his understanding of transcendentalism, which
emerge here with the language of both possibility and impossibility. It is clear that Laclau has adopted,
from “the deconstructionist tradition” (i.e., from Derrida) the notion of the “quasi-transcendental.” Laclau
states the issue as follows: “Most people would agree that transcendentalism, in its classical formulations,
is today unsustainable, but there is also a generalized agreement that some kind of weak transcendentalism
is unavoidable.” This dilemma is what the term “quasi-transcendental” is intended to communicate, but the
fact remains, for Laclau, that “most theoretical approaches are haunted by the perplexing question of the
precise status of that „quasi‟.” What Laclau attempts is to avoid either one of two “polar extremes”: “A
total hardening of those [transcendental] categories, which would thus become a priori conditions of all
 167

“structuration/destructuration” of the social. Because the universal has no “natural”

signifier of its own, yet must be signified, a particular element of the social must be

emptied of its particular content and take on the role of representing the universal. This

element, the “empty signifier,” thereby becomes a nodal point which can be used to

organize equivalential chains, which can themselves “harden” into normative complexes.

The “empty place” of universality is therefore the condition of possibility of any

positive or determinate structuration of the social. At the same time, however, the empty

place of universality is the condition of impossibility of the social: We have seen that no

hegemonic signifier is the privileged agent of social structuration, and that the

particularistic pole of social identities continually reasserts itself, thereby disrupting

articulated equivalential chains and eroding determinate normative complexes. This is

the moment of destructuration of the social, which allows for alternative hegemonic

structurations of the social, and so on. We can see, then, that if the universal were fixed,

if the social did constitute an objectivity, all social positions would be fixed, and social

change would be rendered impossible. Hence, in quasi-transcendental fashion, the empty

universality is the condition of the possibility of the social because it is the condition of

impossibility of the social.

possible human development,” on the one hand, “and a no less extreme historicism which sees in them only
contingent events, products of particular cultural formations,” on the other. Laclau‟s “quasi-” or “weak”
transcendentalism may therefore be understood as a “contaminated” transcendentalism, in which the
empirical and the transcendental play on one another in such a way as to render each impure. Applied to
the question of Laclau‟s universal, the empirical conditions of the actual shape of the social render any a
priorism concerning which social agents will hegemonically articulate the social, which signifiers will
become nodal points, what the shape of equivalential chains will be, etc. impossible. On the other hand, the
transcendental impossibility of ultimately signifying, and so closing, the social renders every empirical
social configuration contingent. For Laclau‟s discussion, see Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau, “The Uses
of Equality,” in Critchley and Marchart, 342; Ernesto Laclau, “Democracy Between Autonomy and
Heteronomy,” in Democracy Unrealized, ed. Okwui Enwesor et. al. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 386. I
will have more to say about Derrida‟s notion of quasi-transcendentality in Chapter Five.
 168

Political Subjectivity

The final major element of Laclau‟s political theory I want to address in this

chapter is his account of the political subject. It is worth recalling that Laclau seeks to

avoid any notion of “transcendental subjectivism” in his efforts to formulation an

alternative concept of universality with regard to political theory. He therefore seeks to

avoid formulating the subject as a fully autonomous, social objectivity, on the one hand,

or formulating the subject in such terms that there would be “only subject positions in the

general field of objectivity.”160

Because the social is essentially open and can never reach a point of true

objectivity, there can be no political subjectivity which simply pre-exists those

articulations the form the social. What Laclau proposes instead is a process of

“subjectivation”161 which involves a kind of becoming-subject of political actors. This

process involves an ethical moment of decision, which is “the experience of the fullness

of being as that which is essentially lacking” or “the experience of the presence of an

absence.”162 The “ethical moment,” in other words, is the experience of the constitutive

lack disrupting the social, which has occupied much of our discussion. This is the

experience of “the distance between what is and what ought to be…,”163 the distance

between the present, interrupted identity of the group in question and the absent fullness

of the social which represents the emancipatory ideal.

160
Laclau, New Reflections, 61. In an effort to emphasize that “subjects cannot be the origin of social
relations,” Laclau and Mouffe actually advance a notion of “subject positions” in Hegemony (cf. 115).
However, as Critchley and Marchart point out, Laclau comes to supplement the “rather structuralist idea of
„subject positions‟,” largely in response to a critique on the part of Slavoj Žižek; see Critchley and
Marchart, “Introduction,” 5. For Žižek‟s critique, see Slavoj Žižek, “Beyond Discourse-Analysis,” in
Laclau, New Reflections.
161
Laclau, New Reflections, 60.
162
Ernesto Laclau, “Glimpsing the Future,” in Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver
Marchart (London: Routledge, 2004), 286.
163
Ibid.
 169

On Laclau‟s formulation, the political subject is what is formed in the experience

of and response to this constitutive gap. Given the lack of an a priori calculable or

predetermined form of the social, Laclau adopts the ethical language of Derrida and

describes the social as “undecidable.”164 He therefore envisions the subject as “the

distance between the undecidability of the structure and the decision”165 taken by political

actors in this terrain. That is, the “subject” refers to the gap between the lack of fixity of

the social and the partial fixations which are actually enacted by social actors. This

decision involves “the moment of madness in which the fullness of society shows itself as

both impossible and necessary…,”166 a moment which is ethical on Laclau‟s terms,

because it “does not recognize a principle of grounding external to itself.”167 The ethical,

then, names the situation in which a social actor is forced to act with no assurance with

regard to what action to take. Relating this to our preceding discussion, the ethical

involves a social agent‟s decision whether to identify itself in terms of its particularity

vis-à-vis other social agents, or whether to identify itself in terms of equivalence with

those other social actors, and there is no deep logic to the social which determines this

decision.

These ethical decisions, these decisions taken in the moment of madness, are what

produce the normative complexes noted earlier, and are therefore the source of the

relative fixity of the social.168 In other words, “any normative order is nothing but the

sedimented form of an initial ethical event.”169 Any relative fixity of the social resulting

164
I will return to the relation of Derrida‟s understanding of the ethical in specific relation to the position
advanced by Laclau in Chapter Six.
165
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 79.
166
Ibid., 81
167
Ibid., 79.
168
Ibid.
169
Ibid., 82.
 170

acts of hegemonic articulation around empty signifiers or nodal points, is therefore the

result of the properly ethical moment anterior to it.

Subjectivation takes place in moments of ethical decision, which themselves

constitute “an ethical investment in particular social orders…,”170 which is to say in

normative complexes. That is, with regard to normative complexes, investment involves

identifying with a particular hegemonic articulation: “Any positive moral evaluation

consists in attributing to a particular content the role of bearer of one of the names of

fullness.”171 As he goes on to say, “here we use investment in an almost literal financial

sense: the relevance of the term is greatly increased by making it the embodiment of a

fullness totally transcending it.”172 For example, “if I say „socialism is just‟ I am not

putting together two perfectly defined concepts. What I am doing is identifying „justice‟

as one of the names of fullness with a content which cannot be logically derived from that

name (because there is no inherent conceptual content associated to that name).”173

Subjectivation therefore involves a process of identification with a particular normative

order which is invested with universal value.

It is clear how this theory of subjectivation avoids the difficulty of postulating the

political subject as simply a “subject position”: The formation of social totalities (i.e.,

normative complexes) in which such an “objectivism” could obtain is the effect of

subjectivation. But this opens up the question of how this account of ethical decision

avoids the decisionism inherent in a model of the sovereign subject. While there is a

necessary relation between normative complexes and the ethical, they remain irreducible:

170
Ibid., 81
171
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 287.
172
Ibid.
173
Ibid.
 171

There is “no normative order which is, in and for itself, ethical.”174 The result is that no

particular normative contents can be derived conceptually from the properly ethical

moment;175 on the contrary, particular normative social formations are the sedimented

results of ethical decisions taken on a radically undecidable terrain.

If there is no normative basis for ethical decision, and if subjectivation is anterior

to the relative fixity or objectivity of the social, then the question is whether or not, in

avoiding the pole of objectivism, Laclau has reaffirmed a notion of transcendental

subjectivism. This is a concern which Laclau himself addresses, posing the following

question: “If the investment is truly radical, doesn‟t that involve that anything goes, that

there is no possibility of objective criteria to choose one rather than another course of

action?”176 The difficulty is, of course, that we would then be involved in a “pure

decisionism,” with “the notion of the decision as an original fiat which, because it has no

aprioristic limits, is conceived as having no limits at all.”177 The political subject would

then constitute “a sovereign chooser who, precisely because he is sovereign, does not

have the ground for any choice.”178

Things are not, however, so simple in Laclau‟s theory; he is not a theorist of the

sovereign state of exception. The decisionism which is such a concern would only be in

effect if the ethical moment were the whole of the social. But this isn‟t the case: We have

already noted Laclau‟s recognition that the social develops “unevenly,” and we know that

the social is always populated by various sedimented normative complexes, some of

which have attained a high degree of stability. All of these are functional impediments to

174
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 81
175
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 286.
176
Ibid., 287.
177
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 82.
178
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 287.
 172

subjectivation, serving as de facto limitations. The result of this social complexity is that

“the ethical subject constituted through this investment is never an unencumbered moral

subject; it fully participates in a normative order not all of which is put into question at

the same time,”179 with the result that “not all ethical investments are possible at a given

time.”180 Thus, “if the radical investment looks, on one side, like a pure decision, on the

other has to be collectively accepted.”181 In actual practice, “moral choice [which is

distinct from ethical decision] finds its unique source in neither the ethical nor in the

normative, but in the endless negotiation between both.”182 Social actors, even powerful

equivalentially articulated social blocs, are rarely ever in a position to call the entire

sedimented form of the social into question all once, for the simple reason that the social

is collectively constituted.

Conclusion

The complexity of Laclau‟s political theory is such that we can easily lose our

bearings in the midst of examining its architecture so closely. I want to conclude, then,

by taking some time to orient this chapter in relation to both the previous chapter and the

chapters to follow. Regarding the previous chapter, I want to specify more clearly why I

think Laclau‟s political theory is preferable to the metaphysical account advanced by

Ward. Regarding the chapters to follow, I want to specify the further considerations

regarding Laclau‟s political theory that will structure the discussion to follow.

I concluded in the last chapter that Ward‟s robustly metaphysical account of the

social ultimately presents us with the choice of either theocracy or identitarian culture

179
Ibid.
180
Ibid.
181
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 82.
182
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 287-288.
 173

war. However, I also registered my agreement with Ward that an adequate account of the

social requires appeal to a form of universality which exceeds social particularities. The

task of the present chapter, then, was to articulate an alternative account of the social

which developed an account of universality while avoiding the negative consequences of

Ward‟s metaphysical proposal.

In my view, Laclau‟s political ontology and his account of universality meet these

demands. On the one hand, I find Laclau‟s account of the necessity of appeal to

universality on the part of particular social actors to be compelling. On the other hand,

what I have presented as Laclau‟s phenomenological ontology does not force us to

envision social conflict or culture war as virtually inevitable, as Ward‟s proposal seems to

do. This latter point requires some further clarification: Laclau‟s account of contingent,

hegemonically articulated instantiations of universality is entirely compatible with violent

social conflict. That is, efforts at hegemonic articulation and disarticulation can and do

take on violent forms. But, unlike the robustly metaphysical proposal advanced by Ward,

there is nothing in Laclau‟s theory which should lead us to conclude that such forms of

overt violence are necessary or inevitable. On the contrary, I would argue that we have

reason to adopt precisely the opposite conclusion. That is, as S. Sayyid points out, overt

violence represents the failure of a hegemonic articulation, rather than its imposition.183

That is, the explicit, violent imposition of order represents the attempt to maintain or

preserve a sedimented normative complex “externally,” is it were, rather than through the

maintenance or extension of an equivalential chain and the subsequent strengthening of a

hegemonic normative complex.

183
Cf. Sayyid, xvii.
 174

My point is not to argue that violence can be eliminated from the social: I am not

naïve enough to claim that it can, and Laclau‟s theorization of antagonism alerts us to the

fact of the ever-present possibility of overt violence. My point is that, on Laclau‟s

theory, there is no a priori determination concerning how efforts at articulation and

disarticulation will be carried out; thus, violent conflict cannot have the status of virtual

inevitability that I think it ultimately attains in Ward‟s metaphysical account of the socio-

political. Further, the centrality of contingency and the fluid nature of social identity in

Laclau‟s theory indicate that corporate identities, including those of “theological

communities,” cannot be understood as essentially fixed and, therefore,

incommensurable, as they are in Ward‟s model. The examples I have used in this chapter

should make it clear that Ward‟s particular communitarian proposal is not convincing as

a model of social identity.

In concluding the last chapter, I also registered a concern on my part which this

chapter has not addressed: The potential emergence of totalitarian or other inegalitarian

socio-political forms. The remaining chapters of the dissertation can be read as a

response to this concern, though it is not always their explicit theme. In the next chapter,

I specifically relate Laclau‟s political ontology to democracy, and I compare his

understanding of democracy as a socio-political form to some other significant

contemporary formulations. A full evaluation of Laclau‟s political ontology and its

relation to democracy will not be possible, however, until the Conclusion, after I have

explored the issues of religion and phenomenological disruption in chapters five and six.
 175

CHAPTER FOUR

ONTOLOGY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE POLITICAL:

RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND ITS ALTERNATIVES

If the community…is to be a democratic one, everything turns around the

possibility of keeping always open and ultimately undecided the moment of
articulation between the particularity of the normative order and the universality
of the ethical moment.
--Ernesto Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony”

Introduction

The last chapter dealt with, in a matter of speaking, the “nuts and bolts” of

Laclau‟s political ontology and the theory of the social which he develops out of it. As I

concluded there, the remaining task in this chapter is to relate this political ontology to

the specific question of democracy. I undertake that elaboration in this chapter. As a part

of this elaboration, I bring Laclau‟s understanding of democracy, as it relates to his

political ontology, into critical discussion with the democratic formulations in Jürgen

Habermas‟s model of deliberative democracy, John Rawls‟s theory of political liberalism,

and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri‟s formulation of “absolute democracy.” Following

these comparative discussions, which will bring the specific nature of Laclau‟s theory of

radical democracy into sharper relief, I conclude the main body of the chapter by

highlighting a concern that I think remains unresolved in his theory.

Political Ontology and Democracy

Laclau‟s political ontology provides an account of the freedom necessary to

articulate new socio-political forms:1 It is only because of the open nature of the social

that efforts at hegemonic articulation and the partial fixation of the social are possible.

1
Laclau, New Reflections, 60.
 176

There is not, however, any priori reason why this freedom would be exercised in such a

way as to articulate more egalitarian or pluralistic social spaces. On the contrary, the

political ontology he elaborates “opens the way for political logics as diverse as right-

wing populism and totalitarianism on the one hand, and radical democracy on the other.”2

The question under consideration is therefore how this political ontology relates

to democracy. In this regard, we can identify two intertwined reasons Laclau speaks in

terms of democracy: First, he finds conceptual resonances in the notion of democracy

which link it to his political ontology; second, the signifier “democracy” serves as a nodal

point for his own efforts at hegemonic articulation.

Conceptual Resonances of Democracy

Laclau and Mouffe situate their proposal within the context of the “democratic

revolution,” which marked a “decisive mutation in the political imaginary of Western

societies”3 roughly two centuries ago. What they mean to designate by this term is “the

end of a society of a hierarchic and inegalitarian type, ruled by a theological-political

logic in which the social order had its foundation in divine will.”4 Accordingly, “the

social body was conceived of as a whole in which individuals appeared fixed in

differential positions.”5 Stated in the terms of the previous chapter, the social body was

configured as a closed normative complex, the closure hegemonically brought about

through appeal to divine will. As long as such a conception formed the basis of the

dominant social imaginary, “politics could not be more than the repetition of hierarchical

2
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 168. In fact, one of the major reasons for Laclau and Mouffe‟s writing
Hegemony was as a response to the success of “new right” initiatives which gained currency under Reagan
and Thatcher. Cf. 169ff.
3
Ibid., 155.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
 177

relations which reproduced the same type of subordinated subject.”6 That is, the only

social positions articulable in such a fully closed social space would be those which

simply reproduced the necessity of given social positions.7

The democratic revolution marked a shift in this social imaginary, from

envisioning the social order as fixed and legitimated by immutable and incontestable

divine will to an “affirmation of the absolute power of its people…” oriented around the

democratic principles of liberty and equality.8 Laclau and Mouffe summarize the point:

“This break with the ancien régime, symbolized by the Declaration of the Rights of Man,

would provide the discursive conditions which made it possible to propose the different

forms of inequality as illegitimate and anti-natural, and thus make them equivalent as

forms of oppression” (emphasis added).9 For example, in a highly sedimented normative

complex such as that which displaced in the democratic revolution, social positions such

as “serf” or “slave” “do not designate in themselves antagonistic positions….”10 Rather,

in such a space, such subject positions would simply be “given” and static; in a closed

social system, the failed constitution of social identities is not acutely felt. It is only with

the appearance of “a different discursive formation, such as „the rights inherent to every

human being,‟” that “the differential positivity of these categories can be subverted and

the subordination [implied in such relations] constructed as oppression.”11 Only the

formation of alternative discourses, such as that of “democracy” or “the power of the

6
Ibid.
7
In different theoretical terms, such a model of the social would be “structuralist,” in the sense that it
would represent a full formalization and fixity of the differential relations of the social. Once again, the
social ontology outlined above is “poststructuralist” specifically insofar as the “structurality of structure”
has been called into question.
8
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 154-155.
9
Ibid., 155.
10
Ibid., 154.
11
Ibid.
 178

people,” disrupts the naturalness of social positions such as “serf,” “slave,” and so on.

The appearance of an alternative discourse constitutes the negativity of these previously

given social identities, calling their fixity and naturalness into question, thereby exposing

their contingency.

For these reasons, Laclau and Mouffe take democratic discourse to be marked by

“a profound subversive power”12 and radical potential because it unleashes “irradiation

effects” of democratic discourse. This is achieved by an initial critique of political

inequality effects a displacement according to which other forms of subordination (e.g.

ethnic, economic, sexual, etc.) are also put into question in the name of “liberty” and

“equality.”13 The democratic revolution not only calls a particular normative complex

into question, but also creates the terrain “which makes possible a new extension of

egalitarian equivalences, and thereby the expansion of the democratic revolution in new

directions.”14 Stated in the terms of the last chapter, “radical democracy” names an

operation of interminable construction and, more importantly, extension of equivalential

chains around signifiers such as “freedom” and “equality,” emptying these terms of their

particularistic, narrowly political content, and transforming them into universalized nodal

points around which complex equivalential chains form. To affirm “freedom,” for

example, is not simply to affirm political freedom narrowly concerned, but with it and

equivalent to it, to affirm the freedom of different ethnic groups vis-à-vis one another,

equality of the sexes, and so on.

The subversive force of the democratic revolution is what connects democracy to

Laclau‟s political ontology. Democracy, for Laclau, has to do with maintaining the social

12
Ibid., 155.
13
Ibid., 156.
14
Ibid., 158.
 179

as an open space, resisting precisely the kind of hegemonic closure which the democratic

revolution displaced. When one speaks of democracy, on Laclau‟s telling, “everything

turns around the possibility of keeping always open and ultimately undecided the moment

of articulation between the particularity of the normative order and the universality of the

ethical moment” (emphasis added).15 That is, “democracy” names a social space in

which the disruption of sedimented social structures is continually effected through the

production of empty signifiers and the extension of equivalential chains.16 As one

commentator astutely summarizes this point, “radical democrats in the post-structuralist

tradition…are concerned with the disruptive and dislocatory potential of democracy.”17

A brief consideration of Mouffe‟s more recent work is instructive in gaining a

firmer grasp on this notion of “radical democracy.”18 In Mouffe we again find the

emphasis on democracy as a fundamental disruption of sedimented social forms, and she

defines a social configuration as “democratic” precisely to the extent that “there is

conflict and that existing arrangements can be contested.”19 Thus, she writes that “the

moment we say democracy has been realized, we pretend to be in a situation in which we

15
Laclau, “Identity and Hegemony,” 85.
16
Mouffe explicitly links the democratic revolution with Lefort‟s notion of the “empty place” of power
within democracy. See Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 2005), 11.
17
Aletta Norval, “Democratic Decisions and the Question of Universality: Rethinking Recent Approaches,”
in Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London: Routledge, 2004), 151.
18
Mouffe gives more sustained attention in her work since Hegemony to questions specifically regarding
democracy than does Laclau. This is not to say that Laclau does not advance a “democratic” project. But
when he does directly address the issue of democracy, he often defers to Mouffe‟s more recent discussions,
using her formulations to set up his own reflections (cf. Laclau, On Populist Reason, 165-169). In addition,
he credits Mouffe with the primary elaboration of radical and plural democracy as developed in Hegemony.
Cf. Laclau, New Reflections, 180. A more sustained reflection on Mouffe, then, is of direct relevance and
application to the thought of Laclau.
19
Chantal Mouffe, “Articulated Power Relations: Markus Miessen in Conversation with Chantal Mouffe,”
University of Westminster,
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sshl/csd_mouffe_interview_with_miessen_ArticulatedPowerRelations.pdf
(accessed April 23, 2009).
 180

can say: what exists at the moment is a perfect democracy.”20 That is, the assertion that

an existing socio-political configuration has perfectly embodied democracy is an

affirmation of the closing over of the social, an affirmation of the final adequacy of a

particular sedimented normative complex, and therefore the denial of democracy.

“Democracy,” then, insofar as it involves the maintenance of the openness of the social,

can never be perfectly instituted.21

In the cases of both Laclau‟s understanding of democracy as the maintenance of

the gap between the ethical and the normative and Mouffe‟s insistence on the structural

impossibility of the instantiation of a perfect democratic regime, what is in view is the

impossibility of a democracy which is adequate to itself.22 The notion of an ultimate

inadequation of any concretely existing democracy, which is to say of any sedimented

normative complex, to the idea of democracy is what, in this formulation, sets the

destabilization of normative complexes in motion and, on Laclau and Mouffe‟s

formulation, this is what constitutes the “democratic revolution.” It is for this reason, and

in this sense, that they insist in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy that “the logic of

democracy is not a logic of the positivity of the social,” but “only a logic of the

elimination of relations of subordination and of inequalities.”23 Democracy refers to a

kind of negative logic, in the sense that it is primarily a logic of destabilization.

To speak in terms of a “negative” logic should not, however, occlude the

affirmative character of democratic logic for Laclau, Mouffe: The disruption enacted by

20
Ibid., 5.
21
Mouffe explicitly references Derrida‟s notion of the “democracy to come” in developing her notion of
democracy. For this idea in Derrida, see the next chapter, pp. 301-303.
22
This emphasis on Laclau and Mouffe‟s part resonates, on my reading, with Lefort‟s notion of the empty
place of power in democracy.
23
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 188.
 181

democracy is the very condition of possibility for the creation of more extensive

democratic relations, which is to say for the articulation of more expansive equivalential

chains. Positively stated, this disruption allows “the construction of a new „common

sense‟ which changes the identity of the different groups in such a way that the demands

of each group are articulated equivalentially with those of the others…,”24 with the result

that democracy, so understood, launches “new collective subjects into the historical

arena.”25 Much more than a political paradigm, understood in the narrow sense,

democracy therefore represents “a wider „way of living‟” which shapes a political

subjectivity constituted through “a plurality of practices and passionate attachments.”26

These considerations highlight a historical and conceptual resonance in the notion

of democracy which links it to Laclau‟s political ontology. Insofar as that political

ontology details the fact that any closure of the social can come about only as the result

of political acts of hegemonic articulation, leading to the formation of sedimented

normative complexes, democracy, as the logic of the disruption of such complexes, is

most intelligible against the background provided by this ontology. Democracy involves,

in an important sense, the maintenance or preservation of the “movement” described in

Laclau‟s political ontology.

“Democracy” as Nodal Point

These considerations all demonstrate Laclau‟s first reason for speaking in terms

of democracy, which is that he finds resonances between the concept of democracy and

the structure of his political ontology. Such resonances do not, however, tell the whole

24
Ibid., 183.
25
Laclau, On Populist Reason, 168.
26
Ibid., 169.
 182

story of his appeal to notions of democracy, which brings me to his second reason: The

signifier “democracy” clearly serves as a nodal point for Laclau‟s own efforts at

hegemonic articulation. We have seen that Laclau and Mouffe, in Hegemony and

Socialist Strategy, understand democracy to represent a kind of negative logic, and they

argue in that context that the democratic logic which undermines normative complexes

“cannot be sufficient for the formulation of any hegemonic project,”27 insofar as the latter

have to do with the construction of equivalential chains focused around nodal points

which take on a social positivity. Insofar as democratic logic is “negative,” then, it is

“incapable of founding a nodal point of any kind around which the social fabric can be

reconstituted.”28 While emancipatory social formations will begin from the negativity of

democracy, that is, from the disruption of normative complexes, it remains the case that

they will “only be consolidated to the extent that…[they] succeed in constituting the

positivity of the social.”29

My contention, in spite of statements such as these, is that democracy does in fact

serve as a nodal point for the formation of social positivities in Laclau and Mouffe‟s

thought, as I have indicated, and this is a significant part of the reason why thinkers such

as Laclau and Mouffe (and also Derrida) speak in terms of democracy at all. These

thinkers make appeal to the signifier “democracy” at least in part because it is a signifier

with nearly universal appeal, which is, for exactly this reason, floating and open to

alternative appropriations. A series of rhetorical questions posed by Derrida illustrates

my point:

27
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 188.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid., 189.
 183

Is it still in the name of democracy that one will attempt to criticize such a such a
determination of democracy or aristo-democracy? Or, more radically…is it still
in the name of democracy, of a democracy to come, that one will attempt to
deconstruct a concept, all the predicates associated with the massively dominant
concept of democracy…(latter emphasis added)?30

The conceptual resonances of the term are not all that make the term attractive; there is

also the “massive dominance” of the term as it operates in the contemporary context.

Laclau, Mouffe, and Derrida all undertake their theorizing on a terrain structured

by, to use Adrian Little‟s useful term, “democratic piety,”31 which is to say upon a terrain

in which the signifier “democracy” has itself attained the status of hegemonic nodal

point. In the context of Laclau, Mouffe, and Derrida‟s theorizing, the almost universal

appeal to “democracy” is such that virtually all political groups making political demands

do so by making reference to “democracy.” Derrida draws attention to this when he

writes that with the spread of “what is called the European tradition,” “the democratic

becomes coextensive with the political” (emphasis added).32 The result of this universal

appeal is that it is almost impossible to dislodge “democracy” as the name of the absent

fullness of the social, with the result that those who seek to enact counter-hegemonic

operations contesting the sufficiency of existing democratic regimes, such as Laclau,

Mouffe, and Derrida, are effectively put in the position of having to do so through an

appeal to “democracy” if their proposal is to win the identification of other social

actors.33 This is why Little writes that “in some ways, democracy has become a pre-

30
Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997), 103-104. We will
return to this passage, and to these points, in the next chapter.
31
Adrian Little, Democratic Piety: Complexity, Conflict, and Violence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2008).
32
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michel Naas (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2005), 28.
33
This is part of the reason why, for example, Derrida speaks in terms of “democracy to come” (a theme of
the next two chapters) rather than, say, the “socialism to come.” In a post-Cold War context, in which
democracy is widely proclaimed as the only viable political model, signifiers such as “socialism” do not
 184

eminent Master-Signifier such that attempts to deconstruct and disrupt the conceptual

underpinnings of the idea face implacable opposition at every turn.”34

This evaluation, however, misses the true significance of the ubiquitous appeal to

“democracy.” “Democracy” does not play its role of “master-signifier” because its

meaning is essentially fixed, as Little supposes; on the contrary, it can take on this

universal signification only because it cannot refer to a strictly specified content. This is

Derrida‟s point when he says that the reason “democracy” has become coextensive with

the political as such is “the indetermination and the „freedom,” the „free play,‟ of its

concept.”35 The nearly universal pressure to speak in terms of “democracy” is, in fact,

the condition of possibility for advancing alternative conceptions of democracy.

Alternative Theories of Democracy

Having considered the relation of democracy to Laclau‟s political ontology, I now

want to turn to a consideration of some significant contemporary alternative theorizations

of democracy and consider their relation to Laclau‟s own theory. One of my specific

points of emphasis will be the relation between the political and the social in these other

theories (I will consider those of Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Michael Hardt and

Antonio Negri). This will not only serve to introduce these theories, but to bring

Laclau‟s own political theory into sharper focus.

have the identificatory force necessary to effective serve as nodal points for the articulation of the social. I
think similar considerations also apply to the development of Laclau‟s and Mouffe‟s respective theories
subsequent to the publication of Hegemony. Initially published in 1985, at a time when socialism was still
considered a viable alternative to liberal democracy, a good deal of their theoretical articulation was
devoted to defending and articulating the compatibility of socialism and radical democracy. In their more
recent work, virtually all reference to socialism has disappeared.
34
Little, 164.
35
Derrida, Rogues, 28.
 185

Jürgen Habermas and Deliberative Democracy

In Laclau‟s estimation, Habermas‟s political theory represents “what is currently

presented as the most promising and sophisticated vision of a progressive politics…,”36

making of Habermas an obvious choice for inclusion in any discussion of the relation and

differences between Laclau and significant contemporary alternatives. Habermas‟s

scholarly output spans decades and is voluminous; the secondary literature it has spawned

is orders of magnitude more expansive. My considerations of Habermas are undertaken

with a specific view to the concerns of this and the previous chapter, and cannot even

begin to reflect the full range, topical or chronological, of his thought. I attempt here to

note some useful treatments of Habermas which offer a fuller treatment of the issues I

raise, as well as a treatment of some issues to which I cannot attend (I have limited

myself to treatments available in English). For interested readers, I particularly suggest

bibliographies provided by Joan Nordquist.37

36
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, xvii.
37
Joan Nordquist has compiled a useful three-part bibliography on Habermas. See Joan Nordquist, Jürgen
Habermas: A Bibliography (Santa Cruz, CA: Reference and Research Services, 1986); Jürgen Habermas
(II): A Bibliography, (Santa Cruz, CA: Reference and Research Services, 1991); Jürgen Habermas (III): A
Bibliography, (Santa Cruz, CA: Reference and Research Services, 1998). Several authors present good
treatments of Habermas is specific relation to Frankfurt School critical theory and its development: For
example, see the relevant sections of David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to
Habermas (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Alan How, Critical Theory (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); Joan Alway, Critical Theory and Political Possibilities: Conceptions of
Emancipatory Politics in the Works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1995); and Rick Roderick, Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory (New
York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1986). A number of general overviews and surveys of Habermas‟s thought are
also useful, and vary greatly both in length and complexity, as well as direct relevance for a consideration
of Habermas‟s most recent work, depending on their publication. For examples of these see: Michael
Pusey, Jürgen Habermas (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1987); Detlef Horster, Habermas: An
Introduction, with contributions by Willem van Reijen, trans. Heidi Thompson (Philadelphia: Pennbridge
Books, 1992); William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1994); Emilia Steuerman, The Bounds of Reason: Habermas, Lyotard and Melanie Klein on Rationality
(London: Routledge, 2000); Andrew Edgar, The Philosophy of Habermas (Montreal, Quebec, Canada:
McGill-Queen‟s University Press, 2005); and Uwe Steinhoff, The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas: A
Critical Introduction, trans. Karsten Schöllner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). In this vein, see
also the essays collected in Stephen K. White, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995). Of the myriad books dealing specifically with Habermas and the
 186

The basis for Habermas‟s own “discourse theory” of politics is his understanding

of “communicative action” which, as we will see, gives his political theory a strongly

universalist tone. Habermas seeks to develop a philosophy which stands in opposition to

“philosophies of consciousness,”38 which reflect what he sees as “the Western emphasis

on logos” which unduly and abstractly envisions logos as “free of language, as

universalist, and as disembodied.”39 These emphases represent a “systematic

foreshortening and distortion” of logos, which reduces the world to a collection of

entities.40

It is in opposition to any such philosophical understanding that Habermas poses

his theory of communicative action.41 As Giovanna Borradori notes, the aim of this

philosophy, for Habermas, is “to offer a reconstruction of the conditions that make

communication not only possible but also effective and productive, both at the individual

political, see the following: Robert C. Holub, Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere (London:
Routledge, 1991); Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1992); Simone Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Michael Rosenfeld and Andrew Arato, eds., Habermas on Law and
Democracy: Critical Exchanges (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); David S. Owen,
Between Reason and History (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002); René von
Schomberg and Kenneth Baynes, eds., Discourse and Democracy: Essays on Habermas‟s “Between Facts
and Norms” (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002); and Luke Goode, Jürgen
Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere (London: Pluto Press, 2005).
38
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 1987), 296.
39
Ibid., 311.
40
Ibid.
41
For a fuller elaboration of these themes, see Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical
Essays, trans. William Mark Hohengarten (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992). Habermas develops
his theory of communicative action in the monumental two-volume study by the same name. See
Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society,
trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985); and Habermas, The Theory of Communicative
Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1985). An additional, more concise and more recent collection of relevant essays is
contained in Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cook (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 1998).
 187

and social levels.”42 The theory of communicative action, then, begins with what is, for

Habermas, the obvious fact that communication takes place at all. Logos properly

understood is directed toward the telos of intersubjective understanding,43 which is what

we encounter, in a preliminary way, in ordinary communication.44

The theory of communicative action is a “paradigm of mutual understanding

between subjects capable of speech and action”45 which is “performative” in the sense

that it is a “model of action oriented to reaching understanding.”46 Because these

subjects are the products of intersubjectively constituted lifeworlds,47 this theory is non-

objectifying in the sense that the problematic distinction between the transcendental and

the empirical has been eliminated:48 There is no longer any “gap” between transcendental

subjectivity and the empirical “I.” Habermas understands his theory to be

“postmetaphysical,” then, in the sense that, while it appeals to notions of reason,

rationality, and universality, it nevertheless does not constitute a theory of “pure

reason”49 with the subsequent reduction of reality to objectivity.

Communication, in which we are constantly engaged, necessarily or constitutively

implies, for Habermas, a series of “idealizing performative presuppositions:”

The shared presupposition of a world of independently existing objects, the

reciprocal presupposition of rationality or “accountability,” the unconditionality
of context-transcending validity claims such as truth and moral rightness, and the
42
Giovanna Borradori, “Reconstructing Terrorism—Habermas,” in Philosophy in a Time of Terror:
Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003),
47.
43
Habermas, Philosophical Discourse, 311.
44
This constitutes Habermas‟s philosophy as a form of so-called “ordinary language” philosophy. Cf.
Jürgen Habermas, “From Kant‟s „Ideas‟ of Pure Reason to the „Idealizing‟ Presuppositions of
Communicative Action: Reflections on the Detranscendentalized „Use of Reason,‟” in Jürgen Habermas,
Truth and Justification, ed. and trans. Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 98.
45
Habermas, Philosophical Discourse, 295-296.
46
Ibid., 296.
47
Ibid., 299.
48
Ibid., 297ff.
49
Ibid., 301.
 188

exacting presuppositions of argumentation that force participants to decenter their

own interpretive perspectives.50

Habermas describes these presuppositions as “ideal” because, insofar as it is impossible

for those involved in communicative action to avoid making these presuppositions, they

necessarily “point beyond that limits of actual situations.”51 While it is clear that these

presuppositions bear a “family resemblance” to Kantian concepts,52 they have been

“detranscendentalized” and now represent a form of irreducibly situated, or embodied,

reason.53 Rather than being “transcendental,” they take on the “grammatical sense” of

“inevitability,” insofar as they stem from “a system of learned—but for us inescapable—

rule-governed behavior.”54

The presupposition concerning validity claims requires some additional comment

here, given its significance for an overall understanding of Habermas‟s thought. Agents

involved in communicative action necessarily, in Habermas‟s view, take a stance of

“criticizable validity claims,” the criticizable nature of which indicates that their validity

exceeds the limits of any particular lifeworld.55 Validity claims are, in other words,

universal claims. Thus, while such claims can only be tested discursively and can only

be accepted as rational insofar as they are convincing,56 it nevertheless remains the case

that “a proposition is agreed to by all rational subjects because it is true; it is not true

because it could be the content of a consensus attained under ideal conditions” (emphasis

50
Habermas, “From Kant‟s Ideas,” 86. Cf. pp. 88ff. for an account of the content and functioning of these
presuppositions.
51
Ibid., 85.
52
Ibid., 87.
53
Ibid., 84.
54
Ibid., 86.
55
Ibid., 99.
56
Ibid., 100-101.
 189

added).57 Here the notion of idealization appears again: The notion of a communicative

community so inclusive as to ensure the attainment of truth, as opposed to mere “rational

acceptability” is an idealization, but it is a goal to be asymptotically approached, ensuring

that the process of communication remains open-ended.58

This formulation of the justification of validity claims has introduced another

central aspect of Habermas‟s theory: That of discourse. If our considerations to this point

have had to do with communication as it takes place in the course of ordinary

intersubjective interactions, discourse names, for Habermas, a kind of formalization of

communication.59 Thus, discourse names “the process through which the assumptions

and claims made by participants in communication are subjected to discussion and

criticism, in order to be accepted or rejected.”60 If communication breaks down,

discourse provides the means of adjudicating competing validity claims. This is most

likely to occur when the statements being made are of a normative or regulative nature.

In cases of such breakdown, argumentation as discourse “must, if possible, allow all

relevant information and explanations to be brought up and weighed so that the stance

participants take can be intrinsically motivate solely by the revisionary power of free-

floating reasons.”61 This understanding of argumentation, which Habermas takes to be

“intuitive,” brings further presuppositions with it:

The four most important presuppositions are (a) publicity and inclusiveness: no
one who could make a relevant contribution with regard to a controversial validity
claim must be excluded; (b) equal rights to engage in communication: everyone

57
Ibid., 101.
58
Ibid.
59
On this point, see Andrew Edgar, The Philosophy of Habermas (Montreal: McGill-Queen‟s University
Press, 2005), 149. Habermas‟s primary understanding of “discourse” in terms of communication should
highlight the fact that his concept of discourse is significantly different from Laclau‟s, outlined in the
previous chapter. In addition, see my comments on p. 121n1.
60
Andrew Edgar, Habermas: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2006), 42.
61
Habermas, “From Kant‟s Ideas,” 106.
 190

must have the same opportunity to speak to the matter at hand; (c) exclusion of
deception and illusion: participants have to mean what they say; and (d) absence
of coercion: communication must be free of restrictions that prevent the better
argument from being raised or from determining the outcome of the discussion.62

These operative presuppositions are clearly “procedural,” insofar as they have

implications for the actual process of argumentative communication.

The background issue against which Habermas formulates his theory of

democracy concerns the question of how coercive state action can be legitmated. Such

state action, in the form of positive law, involving as it does “norms backed by the threat

of state sanction” and stemming from “the changeable decisions of a lawgiver,”63 is

legitimated by democratic procedure. Democratic procedure, in turn, involves a formal

institutionalization of discourse. Habermas makes these connections clear when he

writes that “everything depends on the conditions of communication and the procedures

that lend the institutionalized opinion- and will-formation their legitimating force”

(emphasis added).64 Habermas‟s model of “deliberative democracy” is therefore a

conception of democracy which is based on “those conditions of communication under

which the political process can be presumed to produce rational results because it

operates deliberatively at all levels.”65 As Habermas summarizes the issue, “in the liberal

view, political power sheds its inherently violent character by virtue of its binding legal

connection to the exercise of power in accordance with principles capable of meeting

with universal agreement” (emphasis added).66

62
Ibid., 106-107.
63
Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De
Greiff, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 254, 255.
64
Ibid., 245.
65
Ibid., 245-246.
66
Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 134. I drew attention to this same quotation from Habermas
in the discussion of the liberal state and violence in chapter one; see pp. 31-32.
 191

Habermas‟s political theory is immensely complex and nuanced, attempting as it

does to cut a middle path between liberalism and republicanism.67 What is most

significant in this attempted synthesis, for my present purposes, is his attempt to develop

a political theory which can account for both popular sovereignty (the republican

contribution) and human rights (the liberal contribution), which is achieved by

“translating” these into the terms of his discourse theory. Whereas “republicanism…has

always given the public autonomy of citizens priority over the prepolitical liberties of

private persons,” and “liberalism…has invoked the danger of tyrannical majorities and

postulated the priority of human rights,”68 Habermas seeks to give articulation to the

“intuition” that popular sovereignty and human rights are, in fact, internally related.

The assurance of the democratic legitimacy of positive law rests upon “an

elaborate communicative arrangement” and “depends on the conditions under which one

can legally institutionalize the forms of communication necessary for legitimate

lawmaking.”69 This is where rights enter into Habermas‟s formulation: “Human rights

themselves are what satisfy the requirement that civic practice of the public use of

communicative freedom be legally institutionalized.”70 Basic political civil rights are

necessary if people are to deliberate together “under communicative presuppositions,”71

and this deliberation constitutes popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty therefore

depends upon political rights. But it is also true that the establishment and protection of

political rights depends on popular sovereignty: “Citizens can make adequate use of their

67
For a concise account of the specific differences between his theory and those of liberalism and
republicanism, see Habermas, Inclusion, 244-252.
68
Ibid., 258.
69
Ibid., 259.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid., 260.
 192

public autonomy only if, on the basis of their equally protected private autonomy, they

are sufficiently independent; but…on the other hand, they can arrive at a consensual

regulation of their private autonomy only if they make adequate use of their political

autonomy as enfranchised citizens.”72 Habermas therefore relates liberalism and

republicanism in such a way that “democracy” names a procedural institutionalization of

discourse, which is itself a formalization of communicative action, according to which

participants work toward mutual understanding.

We can summarize Habermas‟s overall political vision as one of democratically

institutionalized procedures for reaching common understanding on the part of diverse

social actors undertaken against the background of an asymptotically approached ideal of

full deliberative inclusion, in which all citizens would constitute the authors of the same

coercive laws by which they would be bound. This formulation reflects, on a

political/institutional terrain, the four presuppositions of discourse outlined above. Thus,

for example, the presupposition of publicity and inclusiveness, which is to say, by way of

reminder, that “no one who could make a relevant contribution with regard to a

controversial validity claim must be excluded,”73 is given a political articulation through

the insistence that those who are subject to positive law retain their autonomy “only to

the extent that they can understand themselves as the authors of the laws to which they

are subject as private legal persons.”74 Normative law is valid only insofar as all who

could make a relevant contribution to its formation have the opportunity to do so.

Political rights are simply the political transposition of the discursive presupposition that

everyone must have equal rights to communication.

72
Ibid., 261.
73
Ibid., 106.
74
Ibid., 207.
 193

One of the most interesting aspects of the political institutionalization of

communicative/discursive presuppositions has to do with the presupposition that there

must be no coercion. In articulating an institutionalization of this element, Habermas

moves beyond a simple reliance on the adequacy of rights. Because “persons, including

legal persons, become individualized only through a process of socialization,” the

adequate functioning of rights “requires a political recognition that protects the integrity

of the individual in the life contexts in which his or her identity is formed” (emphasis

added).75 The preservation of individual rights, and therefore the guarantee of freedom

from coercion, requires the protection of the rights of communal or collective social

agents, not just individuals. As a result, “the democratic process of actualizing equal

individual rights can also extend to guaranteeing different ethnic groups and their cultural

forms of life equal rights to coexistence.”76

There are points of convergence between Laclau‟s notion of democracy and

Habermas‟s deliberative-discursive model, as Laclau himself recognizes.77 Concerning

these, Laclau writes that

Like them [advocates of deliberative democracy], we criticize the aggregative

model of democracy, which reduces the democratic process to the expression of
those interests and preferences which are registered in a vote aiming at selecting
leaders who will carry out the chosen policies. Like them, we object that this is
an impoverished conception of democratic politics, which does not acknowledge
the way in which political identities are not pre-given but constituted and
reconstituted through debate in the public sphere…..Moreover, we agree with

75
Ibid., 208.
76
Ibid., 221. This, of course, represents Habermas‟s attempt to reconcile the demands of individual and
corporate rights.
77
For an in-depth, critical study of the theories of Laclau and Habermas as they relate to one another, see
Mark Devenney, Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory and Post-Marxism
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).
 194

them on the need to take account of the many different voices that a democratic
society encompasses and to widen the field of democratic struggles.78

Despite these similarities, however, there are also significant divergences in their

respective positions:

The central role that the notion of antagonism plays in our work forecloses any
possibility of a final reconciliation, of any kind of rational consensus, of a fully
inclusive “we.” For us, a non-exclusive public sphere of rational argument is a
conceptual impossibility….To believe that a final resolution of conflicts is
eventually possible—even if it is seen as an asymptotic approach to the regulative
idea of a rational consensus—far from providing the necessary horizon for the
democratic project, is to put it at risk (emphasis added).79

This statement of the basic differences between their conceptions can serve as a useful

guide for our consideration of these issues, particularly Laclau‟s insistence that a fully

inclusive social space is a conceptual, and not merely an empirical, impossibility.

We can illustrate this difference through a consideration of the role played by

exclusion in Habermas‟s own political theory. Habermas takes “fundamentalism,” and

related movement like nationalism, to be incompatible with constitutional democracy

because they represent “rigid forms” of lifeworlds which “leave no room for reflection on

their relationship with the other worldviews with which they share the same universe of

discourse and against whose competing validity claims they can advance their positions

only on the basis of reasons.” As such, “they leave no room for „reasonable

disagreement‟”80 and “lack an awareness of the fallibility of their claims.”81 Habermas‟s

78
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, xvii. It is worth noting that this citation is drawn from the Preface to the
Second Edition, and is therefore much more recent than the original text of HSS. On these and similar
points, see also Laclau, Emancipation(s), particularly chapters four and six.
79
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, xvii-xviii. Laclau here implies a distinction between democracy defined
in terms of the maintenance of the openness and ultimate undecidability of the social, in which a “proper”
democracy remains unattainable in principle, and a notion of democracy as a Kantian ideal according to
which a “proper” democracy would be attainable in principle. Laclau shares Derrida‟s resistance to
conceiving of democracy in terms of a Kantian ideal, which is discussed in the next chapter; see in
particular pp. 305-306.
80
Habermas, Inclusion, 224.
 195

notion of an inclusive constitutional-democratic procedural system encounters a limit,

then, in those who reject participation in meaningful discourse, insofar as their concern is

not with mutual recognition. For Habermas, such failure constitutes a failure of reason as

such; such groups are simply unreasonable (i.e., in speaking they must performatively

presuppose what they explicitly deny), and this is the reason for their exclusion from such

processes and procedures of (political) discourse. Such movements constitute an

unacceptable threat to democracy.

Laclau would also view such movement as a threat to democracy as he defines it;

the difference between Habermas and Laclau, therefore, does not lie at the point of

seeking to exclude such forms. Rather, there are differences in their respective accounts

of this exclusion. First, what Habermas sees as the collision of an unreasonable lifeworld

with a plurality of reasonable lifeworlds is, from Laclau‟s perspective, the antagonistic

frontier between multiple discourses. “Fundamentalism,” from this perspective,

represents a socio-political movement marked by the dream of an ultimate fixity of the

social, with the ambition of extending that fixity, and the attending subject positions

within it, to the entirety of the social as such. The incompatibility of fundamentalism

with other alternative positions is not that fundamentalism is “unreasonable” or “invalid,”

but rather that “reason” and “validity” do not operate as nodal points in the same way

within the discourse(s) labeled under “fundamentalism.” The discourses Habermas takes

to be reasonable are simply alternative discourses which are constituted around such

nodal points; as Laclau insists, “any form of consensus is the result of hegemonic

articulation.”82

81
Ibid.
82
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, xviii.
 196

We can see that a movement like fundamentalism represents an alternative

discourse, rather than simply an embodiment of a lack of reason, when we consider the

very fact that accusations of such movements‟ “unreasonableness” will find little

purchase with the adherents of those movements. The obverse of this is not, on Laclau‟s

formulation, a “reasonable” political structure which opposes it because of that reason,

but a discourse which takes as a constitutive aspect of its own articulation the openness of

the social as such. What seems to naturally involve reason and context-transcending

validity claims to Habermas represents, from the perspective of Laclau‟s theory, the

nodal points of a particular, contingent discourse.

This brings us back to Laclau‟s insistence that “there cannot be a radical politics

without the definition of an adversary.”83 Groups such as the fundamentalists identified

by Habermas constitute, through their very existence, a constitutive threat to the identity

of those groups which participate within structures of communicative reason as he

envisions them. Habermas‟s own conception of the social requires the exclusion of those

who refuse to articulate themselves around the nodal points which play such a central role

in his own political theory. Exclusion, then, cannot be accidental, but is implied as a

condition of the possibility of the positive sociality he envisions. What we find, then, is

that Habermas must tacitly make the same theoretical moves as Laclau. The problem, of

course, is that he cannot account for the necessity of exclusion in terms of his own

political theory, and must therefore resort to claims of irrationality or unreasonableness to

justify this exclusion.

83
Ibid., xvii.
 197

John Rawls and Political Liberalism

John Rawls is widely recognized as having been the most significant modern

political philosopher in the English-speaking world. Given this fact, I want to be clear

that my own brief discussion of Rawls is intended to provide only the barest overview of

his thought, with a specific focus, as was the case with Habermas, on the relation of his

thought to my specific theoretical concerns. For much fuller treatments of Rawls‟s

thought, I gratefully defer to a host of other significant works.84

While Rawls is best known for his development of the theory of “justice as

fairness” and, in his mature work, for situating this theory within his overall model of

“political liberalism,” what I want to explore most centrally in relation to Rawls is the

84
For an excellent bibliography on Rawls and works devoted to his thought, see Joan Nordquist, John
Rawls: A Bibliography (Santa Cruz, CA: Reference and Research Services, 2003); for an older
bibliography, see J. H. Wellbank, et. al., John Rawls and His Critics: An Annotated Bibliography (New
York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982). Samuel Freeman provides very good overviews of Rawls‟s thought
as a whole, ranging from introductory length to book length. For the former, see Samuel Freeman,
“Introduction: John Rawls—An Overview,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. Samuel Freeman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); for examples the latter, see Samuel Freeman, Rawls
(London: Routledge, 2007). Kenneth Baynes also provides a good discussion of the relation between Kant,
Rawls, and Habermas regarding the question of the normative grounds of social criticism. See Kenneth
Baynes, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, Habermas (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1991). Freeman has also written a number of essays dealing with particular
works and themes in Rawls‟s thought. For a collection of these, see Samuel Freeman, Justice and the
Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
The bulk of responses to Rawls‟s political philosophy appeared in the wake of his Theory of
Justice and so, obviously, do not take into account the ramifications of his shift to a “political,” as opposed
to a “comprehensive,” doctrine of liberalism. Significant examples of these works, some of which bring
together critical essays from other significant contemporary political philosophers, include: H. Gene
Blocker and Elizabeth H. Smith, eds., John Rawls‟ Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Athens, OH: Ohio
University Press, 1980); Brian Barry, The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the
Principle Doctrines in A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Robert Paul
Wolff, Understanding Rawls: A Reconstruction and Critique of A Theory of Justice (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977); Norman Daniels, ed., Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls‟ „A Theory of
Justice,‟ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls: A
Theory of Justice and its Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
For good collections of critical essays on Rawls‟s later notion of political liberalism as well as his
theory of justice, see Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf, eds., The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on
Rawls (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Samuel Freeman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to
Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Perhaps the best known critics of Rawls‟s liberal
theory of justice have been communitarian political philosophers. For accounts of this debate, see Stephen
Mulhall and Adam Swift, “Rawls and Communitarianism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed.
Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift,
Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
 198

issue of whether and to what extent his political theory constitutes a universalist political

theory. I advance a contextualist reading of Rawls, according to which his political

theory is, in fact, not universal in scope. I advance this reading for two primary reasons.

First, the political nature of his theory of justice indicates that it does not make claims of

a universal scope, which would not be the case with a comprehensive doctrine of justice

(I will address the significance of these terms shortly). Second, Rawls‟s theory

represents the explication of what are taken to be basic intuitions occurring within a

particular normative context, namely a modern constitutional democracy.85

Rawls‟s distinction between political and comprehensive doctrines was not

operative in his first statement of his principle of justice, his influential A Theory of

Justice.86 The term “comprehensive doctrine” refers to a conceptuality which “applies to

all subjects and covers all values.”87 A fully comprehensive doctrine is therefore one

which covers “all recognized values and virtues within one rather precisely articulated

system…,”88 are “on a level with religion and first philosophy,” and may be either

religious or secular;89 we can add that comprehensive doctrines are universal in scope.

The liberalism Rawls seeks to articulate is, on the contrary, a political conception,

meaning that it “tries to elaborate a reasonable conception for the basic structure [of a

85
It is worth noting that my contextualist reading of Rawls, particularly as it relates to this second point, is
similar to that advanced by Richard Rorty, who understands the shift in Rawls‟s mature political theory as a
shift to a pragmatic position eschewing any attempt to make universalist claims. See Richard Rorty,
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 57-58.
86
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1971). In this regard, Rawls writes that “the reader [of Theory] might reasonably conclude [from that
book] that justice as fairness is set out as part of a comprehensive view that might be developed later were
success to invite;” see John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 186. It is this position from which Rawls came to
distance himself. For an early statement of this point, see the 1985 essay John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness:
Political not Metaphysical,” in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999).
87
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 14.
88
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13.
89
Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 452.
 199

democratic society] alone and involves, so far as possible, no wider commitment to any

other doctrine.”90 A political conception is therefore of much more limited scope than a

comprehensive doctrine.

Contemporary liberal democratic regimes are defined by, in Rawls‟s words, “the

fact of reasonable pluralism,” meaning that “reasonable persons do not all affirm the

same comprehensive doctrine.”91 This plurality of comprehensive doctrines is

irreducible: They cannot all be true, and there is no “public and shared basis of

justification that applies to comprehensive doctrines” in a contemporary liberal

democratic society.92 Within such a framework, a political doctrine is affirmed on the

basis of an “overlapping consensus” of citizens who reason from within diverse and

irreducible comprehensive doctrines.93 As Rawls puts the issue, “by this we mean that

the political conception is supported by the reasonable though opposing religious,

philosophical, and moral doctrines that gain a significant body of adherents and endure

over time from one generation to the next.”94

It is within this overall framework that Rawls‟s theory of justice as fairness,

articulated explicitly as a political doctrine, comes into play.95 Like Habermas, Rawls‟s

90
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13. For a fuller account of what Rawls understands by a political, as
opposed to a comprehensive, theory of justice, see Lecture 1, §2.
91
Ibid., 60-61. It cannot be overemphasized that Rawls understands the existence of a reasonable pluralism
of comprehensive doctrines to be a defining and constitutive feature of contemporary democratic regimes.
See Lecture II, §3; Justice as Fairness, 3-4.
92
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 60-61.
93
For Rawls‟s discussion of the idea of an overlapping consensus, see Political Liberalism, Lecture IV and
Justice as Fairness, §11.
94
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 32.
95
Though it is not our primary focus, it is worth saying just a word or two about the theory of justice.
Taking the issue of inequality to be of primary importance for a theory of justice, Rawls advances two
principles of justice: “(a) Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal
basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and (b) Social and
economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions
open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit
of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle)” (Justice as Fairness, 42-43). The
 200

concern is in the development of a notion of justice capable of legitimating the coercive

power of the state,96 and the political doctrine of justice as fairness is his candidate for

this role. Thus, Rawls understands “justice as fairness” as “working out a liberal political

conception of justice for a democratic regime: one that might be endorsed—so it is

hoped—by all reasonable comprehensive doctrines that exist in a democracy regulated by

it or some similar view.”97 His aim, then, is to “elaborate a reasonable conception for the

basic structure [of a democratic society],” which “involves, so far as possible, no wider

commitment to any other doctrine.”98

Thus, in contrast to his earlier position, Rawls‟s position in Political Liberalism

and later writings is that the limited, political conception of justice he outlines is adopted

by a plurality of citizens within democratic regimes who hold to a variety of

comprehensive doctrines which cannot be reduced to one another. This plurality of

citizens do not share the political theory of justice because it is a comprehensive doctrine

they hold in common, but because it is a political doctrine which they can all accept as

legitimate on the basis of the diverse comprehensive doctrines to which they do adhere.

first principle lays out the essentials of a constitutional regime, and so has priority over the second of the
principles, which exceeds the limits of constitutional essentials strictly speaking.
As Rawls notes, the two principles of justice, particularly the first, have been revised in this
formulation from their articulation in A Theory of Justice. For an account of the basic liberties involved
with the first principle of justice, as well as an account of their priority, see Political Liberalism, Lecture
VIII. For Rawls‟s fuller discussion, see the rest of Justice as fairness, Part II, as well as Part III, which
offers a much fuller defense of the principles of justice as they are derived from considerations made from
the original position.
96
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 41.
97
John Rawls, “Reply to Habermas,” in Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005), 375. This material constitutes Lecture IX of the Expanded Edition of Political
Liberalism and constitutes a reply to criticisms offered by Jürgen Habermas in an essay entitled
“Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls‟s „Political Liberalism‟”
(reprinted as the second chapter of The Inclusion of the Other). While this material has been added to
Political Liberalism, then, it also represents a very good and concise elaboration of many of the themes
Rawls develops in more detail elsewhere, making it ideal for our purposes. For this reason, many of our
references will be to this portion of Political Liberalism.
98
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13.
 201

Justice as fairness is a reasonable political doctrine to the extent that it is able to

“generate its own support in a suitable way by addressing each citizen‟s reason, as

explained within its own framework.”99 In other words, the political conception of

justice will be accepted as legitimate for a plurality of irreconcilable reasons owing to

differing comprehensive doctrines, and will be deemed reasonable insofar as it can

generate an overlapping consensus. Habermas, though critical of Rawls‟s position at this

point, nevertheless perceptively summarizes the relevant issues when he notes that

“Rawls advocates a division of labor between the political and the metaphysical that

leads to a distinction between what all citizens can agree upon and the reasons for their

individually accepting it as true.”100 The significance of this, as Habermas also notes

with clarity, is that “such a conception [as that of the overlapping consensus]

demonstrates its suitability to serve as a shared platform for a public justification of

constitutional essentials by the fact that it meets with the agreement of all participants on

the basis of nonpublic reasons.”101

Rawls‟s insistence on the political, as distinct from the comprehensive, scope of

his political theory is my first reason for reading his theory in contextualist terms.102 My

second reason for interpreting him in this manner is related, and has already come into

view indirectly: Rawls‟s whole theory is developed within the framework of a given

normative complex: That of a modern liberal democratic regime. This point is clear if we

99
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 186.
100
Jürgen Habermas, “„Reasonable‟ Versus „True,‟ or the Morality of Worldviews,” in The Inclusion of the
Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, trans. Ciaran Cronin
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 83.
101
Ibid., 84.
102
Those familiar with the reception of Rawls‟s political theory, early and late, will of course be aware that
not all of his critics agree that he has succeeded in articulating a theory which is political rather than
comprehensive, or even that such a feat is possible. This is most obviously the case with his
communitarian critics, who accuse Rawls of presupposing the priority of the right over the good from the
very start, and so of smuggling comprehensive commitments into his theory.
 202

attend carefully to what Rawls has to say at a number of points, and at the way in which

the points he makes serve his overall proposal.

For example, he writes that “what justifies a conception of justice is not its being

true to an order antecedent and given to us, but its congruence with our deeper

understanding of ourselves and our aspirations, and our realization that, given our history

and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine for us”

(emphasis added).103 Rawls begins, then, this notion of an established history, set of

traditions, and public life that “we” (i.e., citizens in a modern liberal democracy) share.

This point comes through in his appeal to six ideas he describes as “fundamental,” in the

sense that “it is assumed that citizens in a democratic society have at least an implicit

understanding of these ideas…” (emphases added).104 As with his theory of justice itself,

my concern is not with the content of these fundamental ideas,105 but with the role they

play in his overall theory. While citizens may not expressly formulate these ideas, or

even have the capacity to do so, they nevertheless “may play a fundamental role in

society‟s political thought and in how its institutions are interpreted.”106 Rawls‟s theory,

then, renders explicit what is already implicitly accepted by those living within the

context of a contemporary democratic regime. In this sense, Rawls‟s theory is

structurally similar to Habermas‟s, which also involves rendering explicit what he takes
103
John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 519. This
passage is also quoted in Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 58.
104
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 5.
105
The six fundamental ideas are the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation; the idea of a well-
ordered society; the idea of the basic structure of society; the idea of the original position; the notion of
citizens as free and equal persons; and the idea of public justification. This listing of the six fundamental
ideas is taken from John Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 14. For the account of these ideas in Justice as
Fairness, see Parts I and III. The full and original accounts of these notion can be found in Rawls, Theory,
§§1-10.
106
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 6. It should be obvious that, even granting Rawls‟s contextualism, it is not
obvious to all interpreters that these six ideas are, in fact, “fundamentally” implicit on the part of citizens
within a modern liberal democratic regime. For a good example of such disagreement, focused on the
contractualism of Rawls‟s theory, see Stout, ch. 3.
 203

to be already implicit (in the dynamics of ordinary communication), with the crucial

difference that Habermas understands the implicit assumptions he uncovers to be

universal, while Rawls understands that which he makes explicit to be limited to a

specific socio-political configuration.

A consideration of Habermas‟s own interaction with Rawls‟s thought will help to

better illustrate these points. The contextualist interpretation I am advancing for Rawls‟s

political theory clarifies the precise point at which Habermas struggles the most to make

sense of the textures of Rawls‟s proposal.107 The sticking point for Habermas is how

Rawls can deny that the political principles constitute truth claims, on the one hand, and

still claim a universal value for them, on the other. These points have to do with the

notion of the overlapping consensus. For Habermas, as we have seen already, “valid

statements deserve the acceptance of everyone for the same reasons,”108 which is to say

that they are recognizes as valid precisely because everyone will provide the same

account of their validity. Under an overlapping consensus, as Habermas clearly

recognizes, this is not the case. Rather, political conceptions such as the principle of

justice are taken to be valid by different social actors for different reasons, provided by

their diverse comprehensive views. In Habermas‟s view, political principles justified by

an overlapping consensus amount to no more than a “lucky convergence” of opinion,

rather than a “universally binding practical reason”109 (the aim, of course, of his own

theory). In further contrast to Rawls, Habermas insists that a meaningful notion of

107
In a statement with which I am in complete disagreement, Habermas insists that “even the present-day
Rawls, pace Richard Rorty, has not become a contextualist.” I think this is a fundamental
misunderstanding on Habermas‟s part, and I think it explains his frustration in seeking to make sense of
Rawls‟s thought: He assumes Rawls is advancing the kind of universalist theory that he himself puts
forward. For Habermas‟s statement see Habermas, “Reconciliation,” 60.
108
Habermas, “„Reasonable‟ versus „True‟,” 86.
109
Ibid., 83.
 204

practical reason is one “to which comprehensive doctrines must submit” because any

justification must be epistemic and universal, which is to say “independent of

worldviews.”110

But Rawls explicitly distances himself, both directly and indirectly, from

Habermas‟s form of universalism. In response to Habermas‟s critiques, Rawls writes that

“the first [difference between him and Habermas] is that his [position] is comprehensive

while mine is an account of the political and is limited to that.”111 To the extent that

“comprehensive” is another term for “universal” in Rawls‟s thought, he highlights the

fact that he is explicitly not proposing a universalistic political theory. To this rather

direct repudiation of Habermas‟s view, Rawls also offers a slightly more indirect

repudiation, writing that “a free democratic society well ordered by any comprehensive

doctrine [including Habermas‟s theory of communicative reason], religious or secular, is

surely utopian in the pejorative sense.”112 Such a society could only be affirmed, for

Rawls, by denying the fact of reasonable pluralism. The difficulty to which Habermas

gives voice dissipates if we recognize that Rawls is simply not making the kinds of

universal claims Habermas thinks he is.

Somewhat ironically, if Habermas is concerned that Rawls‟s position is no longer

properly universal, Chantal Mouffe gives voice to the opposite concern, which is that

Rawls‟s political theory remains overly indebted to universalistic concepts. Thus, while

she acknowledges Rawls‟s recognition that his theory is developed within the specific

context of democratic societies,113 she argues that Rawls still fails to recognize that the

110
Ibid., 93.
111
Rawls, “Reply,” 373.
112
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 187-188.
113
Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), 43.
 205

political subjects he envisions depend upon a particular social context for their very

formation.114 What Rawls fails to appreciate, on her reading, is that even his political

formulation presupposes the constitution of a collective identity of who “we” are115 and,

as such, a vision of the common good, which is to say, the vision of the social as

dominated by the political conceptions of freedom and equality as such.116

Mouffe‟s comment is off-target, but I think it nevertheless touches on something

of value. Rawls‟s repeated contextualization of notions such as reason, morality,

personality, and so on leads me to doubt that Rawls gives these notions the universalistic

import Mouffe finds in them. What we seem to find in Rawls is not that he does not

recognize that subjects are shaped within a determinative socio-political context, but that,

while he assumes this, he never explicitly thematizes it. Perhaps because he is eager to

develop a philosophically free-standing theory,117 Rawls assumes a particular social

shaping of subjectivity but avoids questions of what such a contextual shaping might say

about notions of subjectivity and subject formation as such.

This is the point that Mouffe, while missing her specific target of critique, hits

upon another issue of relevance with regard to Rawls, and this issue brings us to an

evaluation of Rawls from the perspective of Laclau‟s theory. Mouffe states her

agreement that “a theory of justice in a modern democracy should be focused on the

means whereby liberty and equality might be realized in our institutions,”118 but her

concern is with the broader issue of how this understanding of the social depends upon

114
Ibid., 46
115
Ibid., 50.
116
Ibid., 47.
117
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 374ff.
118
Mouffe, Return, 52.
 206

the “relative stabilization” instituted via a hegemonic articulation.119 What Mouffe brings

into view, then, is the need for analysis of the formation of the social and of social

identities as such, which is to say for an analysis which moves beyond the simple

acceptance of a particular sedimented normative complex.

The reason Rawls is able to develop his theory through reference to the basic

intuitions, or the “common sense,”120 of democratic regimes is that these regimes

represent relatively stable (highly stable at the present historical moment) sedimented

normative complexes which are structured around nodal points such as “freedom,”

“equality,” “fairness,” etc. What Rawls does not broach is the question of the social as

such: We find no discussion in Rawls of how political subjects are formed, about why or

if liberal democratic regimes are to be preferred over others (though I strongly suspect he

would affirm this), how the social takes shape, and so forth. The specific strength of

Laclau‟s political theory I want to highlight with reference to Rawls, then, is that his

theory can and does address these issues, which are left to the side in Rawls‟s theory.121

Hardt, Negri and Absolute Democracy

If Habermas and Rawls represent alternative political theories situated in the

“mainstream,” Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri‟s theory of “absolute democracy”

119
Ibid., 53.
120
Ibid.
121
This limited concern on my part should not be understood, however, as a simple endorsement of
Rawls‟s theory, given the normativity of liberal democracy. On the contrary, there are a number of points
at which I would pose additional concerns regarding his theory. To give just one example, I would
highlight the fact that, in affirming only a reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines, Rawls‟s
political theory necessarily poses the question of constitutive exclusion in a manner analogous to what we
saw in Habermas. This, in my view, necessarily complicates Rawls‟s claim to advance a political, rather
than comprehensive, doctrine.
 207

represents arguably the most provocative theoretical alternative to Laclau on the left.122

Defining their theoretical interest as the provision of a “new science” or theoretical

paradigm for understanding democracy against the backdrop of globalized capital,123

Hardt and Negri outline the resistance of what they call “the multitude” against the

omnipresence of globalized “Empire,” which will culminate in a direct democratic

movement of the “rule of everyone by everyone.” Following a brief outline of Hardt and

Negri‟s theory on these points, I will argue that their theory fails to adequately account

for the mechanisms involved in this resistance and resultant democratic formation, and

that Laclau‟s political theory in fact provides more adequate conceptual means for

understanding the points outlined by Hardt and Negri.

Hardt and Negri first announced their political theory ten years ago in Empire.

“Empire,” for Hardt and Negri, names the ubiquity of authority in the context of

globalized capital. Given the historical novelty of this context, Empire cannot be

understood in terms of other historical empires or exemplars of imperialism, but as a

concept defined by certain fundamental characteristics: Empire is unbounded spatially

and temporally, rendering it as the outside or end of history; it “operates on all registers

of the social order extending down to the depths of the social world;” and, finally, Empire

presents itself as peaceful despite the fact that it is founded and maintained through

violence.124 The “multitude,” on the other hand, names the site of resistance to Empire.

122
My considerations of Hardt and Negri are drawn from the first two volumes of their trilogy on Empire:
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin
Press, 2004). In the period subsequent to my completion of this chapter, their third volume has appeared,
and I have not had the opportunity to include relevant material from that volume in this discussion. See
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2009).
123
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 353.
124
Hardt and Negri, Empire, xiv-xv.
 208

The multitude cannot be conceived as standing outside of Empire, however, because the

exploitation and domination of Empire are “amorphous is such a way that is seems there

is no place left to hide.”125 In the context of Empire, then, “we are immersed in a system

of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or

measure.”126 Empire is the all-encompassing context of globalized capital.

This introduces what I take to be a crucial point in considering Hardt and Negri‟s

theory. They take it as an obvious fact that “disobedience to authority is one of the most

healthy and natural acts” and that “those who are exploited will resist and—given the

necessary conditions, rebel.”127 In the terrain defined by ubiquitous Empire, in which

there are no longer isolable locales of such exploitation, this means that such resistance

must also be ubiquitous: “If there is no longer a place that can be recognized as outside,

we must be against every place.”128 The result of this is the emergence of a “new nomad

horde” of those who “desert” Empire.129 This non-spatial being-against, defined by such

desertion, “becomes the essential key to every active political position in the world, every

desire that is effective—perhaps of democracy itself.”130

The globalized nature of Empire and multitude lead Hardt and Negri to formulate

the multitude‟s resistance in two of significant ways. First, the multitude is marked by

homogeneity, which stems from the ubiquity of Empire: Because Empire is everywhere,

it has no definable center, with the result that “the virtual center…can be accessed

immediately from any point across the surface.”131 Any point of contact with Empire is

125
Ibid., 211.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid., 210.
128
Ibid., 211.
129
Ibid., 212-213.
130
Ibid., 211.
131
Ibid., 58.
 209

equally contact with center and periphery, which means that each individual struggle

against Empire is a struggle against its omnipresent center, with the effect that “the

singular is presented as the multitude” (emphasis added).132 There is, therefore, no

differentiation of the social actors within the multitude. Second, the resistance of the

multitude is spontaneous. Hardt and Negri write that the nomad resistance of the

multitude constitutes “a spontaneous level of struggle”133 requiring, as a result, no

horizontal linkage of the struggles undertaken by the particular social groups within the

multitude.134 That is, just as all individual members of the multitude are the multitude, so

they all, spontaneously, oppose the Empire, thereby acting as the multitude.

In their follow-up volume to Empire, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age

of Empire, Hardt and Negri clearly adapt their theory in response to significant questions

raised by a number of critics.135 Most particularly, Hardt and Negri soften their

insistence on the spontaneity of spontaneity of the multitude‟s resistance to Empire,

insisting in Multitude that “the multitude is a project of political organization” which can

“be achieved only through political processes.”136 They also discuss the necessity of

132
Ibid., 73.
133
Ibid., 218.
134
Ibid., 58.
135
One such critic is Laclau, who highlights three specific emphases of the theory elaborated in Empire
with which he disagrees: “(1) That a set of unconnected struggles tend, by some kind of coincidentia
oppositorum, to converge in their assault on a supposed center; (2) that in spite of their diversity, without
any kind of political intervention, they will tend to aggregate with each other; (3) that they could never
have aims that are incompatible with each other.” See Ernesto Laclau, “Can Immanence Explain Social
Struggles?” Diacritics 31, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 7. In addition to this text, Laclau also offers consideration
of Empire in On Populist Reason, 239-244. Laclau‟s certainly does not represent the only cogent critical
discussion (not all of it negative, certainly) of Hardt and Negri‟s proposal. For other examples, see Mouffe,
On the Political, 107-115; the essays contained in Gopal Balakrishnan, ed. Debating Empire (London:
Verso, 2004); Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean, eds. Empire‟s New Clothes (London: Routledge, 2004);
and the articles included in Abdul-Karim Mustapha and Bülent Eken, eds, Rethinking Marxism, Special
Issue 13 no. 3-4 (2001).
136
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 226.
 210

extending individual struggles to other struggles137 and affirm the utility of forming

“possible alliances” with “global aristocracies.”138

What does not change in Hardt and Negri‟s reformulation is their insistence on

the immediacy of the multitude‟s resistance to Empire. In this regard, they both maintain

and clarify the position advanced in Empire. The immediacy of political struggle is, in

their view, implied by the structure of sovereignty: Within the context of globalization

there is no escape or exterior to the sovereignty of Empire; rather, the sovereignty of

Empire encompasses the global whole.139 The ubiquity of Empire‟s sovereignty has the

paradoxical effect of constituting the globalized whole into a site of political struggle.

This is because, on Hardt and Negri‟s formulation, sovereignty is, in fact, dependent

upon the ruled.140 The extension of sovereignty to the globalized whole, then, produces

the effect that “the entire global population tends to become necessary to sovereign

power…,”141 thereby heightening the dependence of sovereignty on the ruled. Wherever

sovereignty is exercised, there exists a potential struggle between the sovereign and those

who “may refuse their position of servitude;”142 the globalization of Empire‟s sovereignty

therefore expands the possible site of struggle to the globalized whole as such. The effect

of this is, in Hardt and Negri‟s estimation, that the ruled “now tend to become the

exclusive producers of social organization,”143 insofar as Empire is dependent on the

ruled at every point. The multitude, as a global totality, now has a power previously

denied by sovereignty, creating a new political opportunity for the globalized refusal of

137
Ibid., 212.
138
Ibid., 322.
139
Ibid., 335.
140
Ibid., 332.
141
Ibid., 335.
142
Ibid., 333.
143
Ibid., 336.
 211

sovereignty, which is to say, in the language of Empire, for the desertion of Empire as

such.

The globalization of Empire‟s sovereignty and the resulting globalization of

resistance is what renders such resistance immediate. There is now a global demand for a

new form of democracy and for a democratic world, a demand which has to do with an

“interminable list of grievances” which include “not only…poverty and starvation and

not only…political and economic inequalities and injustices, but also…the corruption of

life in its entirety” (emphasis added).144 The totalizing nature of Empire leads to the

result that any resistance to it is resistance to the corruption of life as such. Any and

every site of political resistance is stands in a non-mediated relation to the multitude,

insofar as every such form of resistance constitutes resistance to the totality of Empire as

such.

Hardt and Negri are insistent that the immediacy and ultimate commonality of

struggles against Empire do not, however, negate or overshadow the local nature and

singularity of particular groups and their struggles. On the contrary, “the communication

with other struggles, in fact, reinforces the power and augments the wealth of each

one.”145 The common object of resistance means, for Hardt and Negri, that there is

nothing discontinuous in insisting on a collective identity which in no way affects the

identity of its constituent elements. Empire is such a monolithic presence that resistance

to it on any register constitutes the resistance of the multitude as such; the particular

social demands of groups within the multitude are perfectly coincident with the demands

of the multitude as such.

144
Ibid., 353.
145
Ibid., 216.
 212

The successful political organization and its contestation of Empire‟s sovereignty

constitute Hardt and Negri‟s vision of true democracy. Consonant with their

understanding of the immediacy of multitude to all of its constituent groups, they advance

a form of direct democracy or “the rule of everyone by everyone,”146 understanding

representative forms of democracy as corruptions of this pure form.147 While Hardt and

Negri recognize that such a form of democracy was never successfully instituted and that

“skeptics” will argue that the present globalized scale is too large to make any such form

of direct democracy feasible, they assert that what is needed is nevertheless “an

audacious act of political imagination to break with the past, like the one accomplished in

the eighteenth century”148 and insist that “if they did it, then we can too!”149 The reason

for their insistence on a model of direct democracy is that any other form simply reenacts

a sovereign reduction of plurality.150 There is no (indeed, there cannot be) any political

directive in the form of “Form the multitude!”151 For Hardt and Negri, then, there is an

organic relation between direct democracy and their insistence on the irreducibility of the

singularity of social subjects within the multitude.

Before giving an account of the distance separating Laclau from Hardt and Negri,

it is worth noting the points of continuity. Laclau‟s disagreement with Hardt and Negri

will not be in the opposition of oppressive, globalizing forces, or even in the notion that

the social as such can be bifurcated into a dual space. It is also not, at least in Multitude,

simply in the fact that this is not automatic, spontaneous, or organic, insofar as Hardt and

146
Ibid., 240-241.
147
Cf. Ibid., 241ff.
148
Ibid., 308.
149
Ibid., 307. In this optimistic sloganeering Hardt and Negri seem not to be phased by the fact that these
thinkers never succeeded in actually instituting the political system they imagined.
150
Ibid., 330.
151
Ibid., 220.
 213

Negri come to recognize the formation of the multitude as a political task. Their distance

from Laclau lies in the fact that they fail to provide any account of the actual mechanism

of how this is achieved. This serious lacuna in their account means that, for all the

apparent adaptations presented in Multitude, Hardt and Negri ultimately fall back into an

implicit affirmation of the spontaneity and organicism presented in the earlier Empire.

This point is readily illustrated if we consider again Hardt and Negri‟s insistence

on the obviousness of resistance to authority. Immediately following upon their

statement regarding the obviousness of such resistance, Hardt and Negri go on to note

that “today…this [resistance] may not be so obvious,” and quote Spinoza to pose the

central question: “Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were

salvation?”152 They fail to offer an adequate response to this question, simply asserting

that, despite all appearances to the contrary, such “logical paradoxes” should not be

exaggerated and that resistance does, in fact, take place.153 Mouffe nicely summarizes

my criticism at this point: “All the crucial questions for a political analysis are avoided,

for instance those concerning the way in which the multitude can become a revolutionary

subject. We are told that this depends on its facing empire politically, but this is precisely

the question that, given their theoretical framework, they are unable to address.”154

Rather than addressing how this resistance takes place, how the multitude is constructed,

despite the apparent obviousness of its absence, Hardt and Negri resort to ad hoc

metaphysical formulations to fill in the gaps of their theoretical account. The multitude,

152
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 210. Hardt and Negri are here quoting from Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, themselves quoting Spinoza. See Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. by Robert Hurley et. al. (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 29.
153
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 211. Though these questions are explicitly raised in the earlier Empire rather
than the later Multitude, Hardt and Negri fail to address them in the latter work.
154
Mouffe, On the Political, 111.
 214

it turns out, is not a political directive (i.e., there can be no order to “form the

multitude!”) but the name given “to what is already going on;” the multitude‟s formation

represents a grasp of “the existing social and political tendency” (emphasis added).155

The political efforts to construct the multitude are, it turns out, related in a superstructural

fashion to a movement which preexists them. Thus, Hardt and Negri describe the “flesh”

of the multitude as “pure potential, an informed life force, and in this sense an element of

social being, aimed constantly at the fullness of life.”156 There is nothing generative in

the political construction of the multitude per se. Political construction is responsive,

rather than constitutive. Stated in different terms, political construction is only

epiphenomenal with regard to the “informed life force” which really determines the

social.

Hardt and Negri also develop these points in a linguistic idiom which, as we will

see, lends itself to differentiation from Laclau. They argue that the multitude is an

“expression” which functions, like the disparate elements of language, to give voice to

“real meanings” which are produced via the differential network of linguistic signs, with

the result that “expression gives a name to an event.”157 On this view, language is a “web

of meanings” which serves as a kind of window or aperture through which “real

meanings” emerge. Just as language gives expression to “real meanings” which must

pre-exist the differential network of linguistic elements, then, the political organization of

the multitude is an “expression” of the “real meaning” of the social, i.e., of the “life

force” to which Hardt and Negri make appeal. Language and politics are both,

ultimately, epiphenomenal.

155
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 220.
156
Ibid., 192.
157
Ibid., 339.
 215

In contrast to Hardt and Negri‟s ad hoc metaphysics, we find that Laclau‟s

political theory is, in fact, better able to address the issues Hardt and Negri‟s own theory

leaves underdeveloped (accepting for the moment that their general account of the

structure of Empire and the multitude is compelling in itself, an issue about which I have

additional concerns). We can see this if we compare Hardt and Negri‟s account of the

working of language to Laclau‟s. At first blush, there would seem to be a good deal of

similarity in their respective accounts, given that both Hardt and Negri and Laclau speak

of language in terms of a system of differences. However, we quickly see that this point

of similarity is more apparent that real: For Laclau, there is no “web of meanings” which

is “expressed” through the differential play of signifying elements. On the contrary

meaning is produced, not expressed, through the differential play of signifying elements;

there is no meaning which pre-exists the differential play of the elements themselves to

which “expression” could be given.158 Laclau rejects any conception of a deeper order of

meaning which is “expressed” through, or guides the actions of, social actors. In his

formulation, the social just is what emerges through acts of hegemonic articulation; such

articulation does not “express” anything anterior to the articulations themselves.

Laclau‟s political ontology is better equipped to explain the social situation

outlined by Hardt and Negri. First, despite their insistence on immanence and

particularity, Laclau demonstrates that Hardt and Negri, in fact, require a notion of

universality like the one outlined in the previous chapter. He notes that Hardt Negri, in

Empire, affirm three central demands that form the basic elements of a political program

for the multitude: A demand for global citizenship, a demand of a guaranteed income for

158
Recall once again that, for Laclau, “there is no beyond the play of differences….” See Laclau, On
Populist Reason, 69. See also chapter three, p.137.
 216

all, and the right to reappropriation.159 As we have seen in Multitude, Hardt and Negri

also speak in terms of democratic demands. The significance of this, aside from any

determination regarding the content of these demands, is precisely the fact that “these

three political aims are formulated in a language of demands and rights.”160 The

significance of this, following from the previous chapter, is twofold. First, such an

appeal demonstrates that the social particularities with which Hardt and Negri are dealing

are not, in fact, fully constituted; if they were, they would have no need to make political

demands, as we have seen. Second, the effort to achieve full constitution through the

leveling of social demands indicates that full constitution requires appeal to something

which exceeds, or transcends, the particularity of those social groups. Hardt and Negri,

in other words, incorporate a notion of universality into their schema.

This implicit appeal to a form of universality brings me to the second point at

which Laclau‟s theory better responds to the very issues raised by Hardt and Negri: The

very distinction between Empire and multitude. This distinction names nothing other

than the kind of antagonistic frontier described by Laclau in the previous chapter.

“Empire” names the nullity which, through its very existence, prevents the full

constitution of the identity of the multitude. But to affirm this is to affirm that Empire is,

in an important sense, “exterior” to the multitude.161

159
Laclau, “Can Immanence Explain,” 9. Cf. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 400-407.
160
“Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?” 9. Slavoj Žižek also criticizes Hardt and Negri for their
adoption of the language of rights, though for different reasons than Laclau. See Slavoj Žižek, “Have
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century?”
Rethinking Marxism, vol. 13 no. 3-4, 2001; 190-198.
161
Referring back to Figure 1 (chapter three, p. 148), Empire would be the null set (Øs) on the far side of
the antagonistic frontier from the multitude.
 217

Hardt and Negri therefore miss the point when they insist that theirs is an

immanentist model because “all the elements interact on the same plane.”162 It is not a

question of “transcendence” understood as the imposition of one plane upon another in a

dualistic sense. Rather, what we find is the construction of an antagonistic frontier which

forms a cut or cleavage in the one plane. It is only through the construction of such a cut

that political demands make any sense, as we saw in the previous chapter. The

bifurcation of the social into two parties, which is what Hardt and Negri are at pains to

describe, necessarily calls their own notion of immanence into question. Indeed, their

own use of spatializing language exacerbates the difficulties: If there is no exterior, one

wonders to where, exactly, those who “desert” Empire are going.

They also fail to recognize this issue when they contest the views of identity

advanced by “deconstructionist criticism” and claim that “the unlimited and indefinite

nature of distributed networks” exceeds the limits of identity and difference, with the

result that the identities of those within the multitude need not be exclusive.163 In actual

fact, the entirety of their proposal depends upon an identity/difference distinction: That

between Empire and multitude. There is neither Empire nor multitude without the

postulation of an absolute difference and, following from this, of an absolute identity.

I also think that Hardt and Negri too easily assume that the constitution of the

multitude leaves the identities of the particular social agents within it unaffected. First,

we have already seen that the appeal to rights and the making of demands indicates that

the identities of these social agents are not fully constituted. Hardt and Negri‟s insistence

that all particular demands made by any social group at any place in the world are

162
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 337.
163
Ibid., 225.
 218

equivalent insofar as they all represent responses to the “corruption of life” is also

problematic. Laclau gets at this point when he writes that “people are never just

„against,‟ but against some particular things and for others…” (emphasis added).164 This

means that not only is the constitution of the identities of social particularities disrupted,

but it is disrupted in particular ways. It simply seems incredible to claim that, for

example, the demands of migrant workers in the United States are in any straightforward

way identical to the demands for freedom of religion made by underground Catholics in

China. On the contrary, insofar as these particular demands cannot be identical, these

singularities seek to assert their identities in ways which differentiate them not only from

Empire, but from one another as well. In contrast to Hardt and Negri‟s assumption, then,

these singular demands will pit singularities against each other, at least a significant

amount of the time. To return to Laclau‟s formulation, “the construction of a wider

„against‟ [than that of individual social particularities]…can only be the result of a

protracted political war of position.”165 That is to say, the emergence of the demands of

the multitude in opposition to Empire can only be the result of hegemonic articulation

requiring the construction and extension of equivalential chains which affect the

identities of social agents involved (a process outlined in some detail in the previous

chapter).166

As we have seen, Hardt and Negri see the multitude as the expression of

something which precedes it, which is why they believe they can affirm both the

164
Laclau, On Populist Reason, 241.
165
Ibid.
166
It is worth noting that Hardt and Negri offer no account of the nature of subjectivity or subjectivization
as such. On the contrary, they simply deploy the notion of “political subjects” as if it needed no further
elaboration. Perhaps attention to this aspect of their theory would force them to deal with the kinds of
issues surrounding political subjectivity which Laclau raises. For similar points, see Mouffe, On the
Political, 111.
 219

multitude and the unchanged nature of singularities. For Laclau, on the other hand,

naming the “multitude” as that which opposes Empire is not a matter of “expressing”

something pre-existent, but involves the effort to constitute that which is named.167 As

Laclau puts it, “the unity of the object [the multitude] is a retroactive effect of naming it”

(emphasis added).168 Prior to naming the multitude there is nothing which simply

corresponds to “the multitude” awaiting expression. Rather, the nomination involves a

performative effort construct the multitude as such.169 This is why “the unifying element

[the name “multitude”] is not a neutral or transparent medium.”170 This is also the reason

why the formation of this social identity cannot simply leave particularistic identities

unaffected. On the contrary, the multitude is only successfully articulated to the extent

that processes of subjectivization and identification with the multitude are successful.

But this, in its turn, implies the transformative emptying of particularistic identities.

Other points could be made, but these considerations sufficiently demonstrate that

Laclau‟s political theory can better account for the social phenomena (again granting the

reality of these phenomena for the sake of argument) than can Hardt and Negri‟s own

analysis. A good way to wind down this discussion is to return to one question at which

Hardt and Negri faltered: Why does resistance to authority seem not to take place where

we would expect it? The answer, from the perspective of Laclau‟s political theory, is that

Hardt and Negri have illegitimately equated “authority” with “exploitation.” As we saw

in the first section of this chapter, pace Hardt and Negri, hierarchical relationships are not

inherently exploitative: As Laclau and Mouffe argue, in an immanent, which is to say

167
Cf. Laclau, On Populist Reason, 99.
168
Ibid., 108.
169
This is simply another way of emphasizing the explicitly political nature of Laclau‟s ontology,
according to which “what is” is an effect of partial fixations of the social.
170
Laclau, On Populist Reason, 99.
 220

simply differential, social arrangement, hierarchical relations are simply given and

static.171 To repeat our previous example, social positions such as “serfs” and “slaves”

are certainly hierarchically ordered, but this does not mean that they are “oppressive” or

“exploitative.” Rather, exploitation is itself a discursively constructed category, which

becomes operative only when a sedimented, naturalized hierarchical discursive

articulation is confronted with an alternative discourse such as, for example, that of

universal human rights and a certain conception of “equality.” Without this confrontation

(which, again, represents the imposition of a certain “cut” within the social), such

inegalitarian relations are simply not experienced as, which is also to say discursively

articulated as, exploitative. Stated in summary fashion, exploitation may lead to

resistance but hierarchy does not necessarily do so, and Hardt and Negri problematically

equate the two. Resistance arises only with successful articulations of alternative

discursive forms. The reason that subordinate groups do not naturally or inevitably rise

up is because their inegalitarian relations have not been effectively articulated as

“oppressive.”

Stating the Differences: Laclau and the Competing Models

This brief look at alternative models of democratic political theory has considered

their relation to Laclau‟s theory in a rather piecemeal fashion. Having now considered all

three of these alternatives, I want to provide some more overarching considerations of the

differences between these various political theories. My specific interest concerns the

relation of the social to the political as they relate to democracy in these different

theories. Viewed from this perspective, we will find that they all privilege the social over

171
Cf. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 108.
 221

the political and, as a result, are inherently depoliticizing as compared to Laclau‟s

political theory. An examination of this point will also lead us into a further brief

elaboration of the ontologies presupposed in these theories.

Depoliticization, Democracy, and the Social

By stating that these theories privilege the social over the political, I mean that

“politics,” as it operates within them, is an activity undertaken as a result of improper

social relations, with the goal of establishing proper social relations. By describing these

theories as depoliticizing, I mean that, on their own terms, the political dimension of the

social fades or becomes superfluous once proper social relations have been established.

They operate, in other words, according to the image of the social as a perfectly

reconciled and harmonious space in which the political no longer has any role to play.

Within this overall framework, “democracy” is the name given to this reconciled and

harmonious space, and is therefore organically related to the social. Proper sociality, in

other words, is necessarily democratic.

These points can be most clearly illustrated in Habermas and Hardt and Negri, but

they are also operative in Rawls, even, or perhaps as a result of, his contextualist

approach. I begin with what I take to be the clearest example of these points, Hardt and

Negri, and then move on to consider Habermas and Rawls, respectively. Hardt and

Negri‟s absolute democracy bears the marks (as we might expect, given their neo-Marxist

approach) of the Marxist notion of the withering of the State once the perfectly

reconciliation of society has been achieved. We have seen that, on their view, the

political is necessary for the construction of the multitude (though, again, they fail to

specify the nature of this construction) as it opposes Empire. The end goal of the
 222

multitude‟s revolution is the overcoming of all forms of sovereignty, understood as any

form of the rule of the one over the many, with absolute democracy, understood as the

rule of everyone by everyone. What we find in Hardt and Negri, then, is an opposition

between the current state of affairs in which the oppression of the multitude by the

sovereign Empire constitutes a disruption of the proper relationality of the social, on the

one hand, and the successful revolution against Empire by the multitude, resulting in the

achievement of proper sociality, on the other.

The political, then, is in the service of this proper sociality. And once this proper

sociality, understood as absolute democracy, is achieved, there will no longer be any need

for the political, insofar as the social will no longer involve, let alone be constituted by,

antagonistic relationships involving the exercise of force or power. So, for example, in

addressing the issue of how decisions will emerge from the absolute democracy of the

multitude, Hardt and Negri simply state that “the multitude also and most importantly

produces cooperation, communication, forms of life, and social relationships.”172 Making

reference to their expressivist model of language, they note that decisions “emerge” from

the multitude “just as expression emerges from language,” with the key difference that

while language requires the subjectivity of a speaker, “the multitude is itself an active

subject.”173 The social involves a kind of kind of organicism which is such that

antagonistic oppositions no longer play any role. In Marxist fashion, therefore, Hardt and

Negri present their image of the social as the sublation of a dialectical opposition: The

contradictions of Empire are externalized in the formation of the multitude, and the

opposition between the two is the reconciled society which emerges as a result of this

172
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 339.
173
Ibid.
 223

opposition. Opposition, then, ceases to play a role in this reconciled social space and,

precisely because of this, the political no longer plays any role.

The properly reconciled society is therefore not a political reality, but represents

the dissolution of the political as such. It is in this sense, then, that Hardt and Negri‟s

political theory is ultimately depoliticizing.174 In addition, insofar as absolute democracy

may simply be identified with this reconciled society, Hardt and Negri‟s conception of

democracy is also depoliticized. “Democracy” does not name a hyper-political activity,

as it does in Laclau (and, by way of anticipation, in Derrida), but simply the transparent

organicism of a society reconciled to itself. “Democracy,” in Hardt and Negri‟s sense, is

therefore indissociable from the social, insofar as it simply names proper sociality as

such.

Similar considerations hold when we consider Habermas. One of the key

conceptual, and therefore ontological, differences between Habermas‟s theory and Hardt

and Negri‟s is that Hardt and Negri envision their reconciled society of absolute

democracy as a real historical possibility, while Habermas recognizes that a perfectly

transparent society, defined by the full implementation of communicative reason, is a

goal to be asymptotically approached, but which will never actually be reached; it is a

Kantian ideal. In this sense, Habermas does preserve a more significant role of the

political: There will always be, in fact, impediments to the full enactment of

communicative action and the operation of communicative reason. This is precisely the

reason why the necessary assumptions of discursive exchange, outlined above, must be

institutionalized: Only properly institutionalized procedures will guard against these

174
For similar points I direct the reader to Mouffe‟s discussion in On the Political, 107ff.
 224

actual impediments, moving social interchange toward the goal of establishing the fully

transparent social order.

The same Kantian emphases which give the political broader scope in Habermas

than in Hardt and Negri, however, also ensure the ultimately depoliticizing nature of

Habermas‟s proposal. We can bring this point into view by contrasting his notion of

democratic procedures in the service of the transparent society understood as a regulative

ideal to Derrida‟s notion of the democracy to come in relation to Kantian ideals.175

Derrida is resistant to understanding the notion of the democracy to come as a Kantian

regulative idea for a number of reasons, one of which is particularly relevant in the

context of our considerations. One of his concerns is a use of the notion of the Kantian

regulative ideal according to which it “remains in the order of the possible, an ideal

possible that is infinitely deferred. It partakes of what would still fall, at the end of an

infinite history, into the realm of the possible….”176 My suggestion is that this is how the

notion of the transparent society operates in Habermas: Its achievement is impossible in

fact, and it thus remains a regulative goal we approach asymptotically; however, given

infinite time, infinite communicative interactions, and ever more complete

institutionalization of discursive procedures, what would be achieved would be the

transparent society. Such a society is not, in other words, a conceptual impossibility.

Democracy, for Habermas, therefore names the complex of procedures that advance

toward this goal. For thinkers like Derrida, Laclau, and Mouffe, on the other hand, the

achievement of a democratic society is a conceptual impossibility, for the reasons I have

175
I will address Derrida‟s notion of democracy to come in the next two chapters.
176
Derrida, Rogues, 83-84.
 225

outlined in this chapter. Radical democracy, in Laclau and Mouffe‟s terms, cannot be a

Kantian regulative ideal of the type presupposed in Habermas‟s political theory.

Ideally for Habermas, then, deliberative democratic procedures and practices

would culminate in the formation of a social space in which all actual impediments to the

operation of non-objectivizing communicative reason would be removed. Insofar as

democratic procedures are intended to minimize or reduce the effects of such

impediments, such procedures tend toward the establishment of a social space in which

they would cease to be necessary. Stated somewhat differently, in such an ideal social

space, insofar as communicative reason was operative, there would be no need for these

procedures, which would have served their purpose. As in Hardt and Negri, then, the

political operates in the service of the social, with the achievement of the latter

eradicating the need for the former. Though only an idealization, the goal of Habermas‟s

political theory is ultimately a depoliticized social space.

Another similarity between Habermas‟s political theory and that of Hardt and

Negri is that democracy is organically related to, and therefore flows naturally out of, the

social. To understand this, we have only to recall that, on his theory, democratic

procedures are only the institutionalization of the communicative presuppositions which

are necessarily operative in ordinary communication. Insofar as ordinary communication

necessarily takes place against the horizon of the “ideal speech situation,” the full

establishment and operation of communicative reason would require that all

communicative action was undertaken in a manner fully consistent with these

presuppositions. Thus, while democratic procedures would not have to be formally

institutionalized, there is a sense in which the fully transparent society envisioned by

 226

Habermas would still be deserving of the nomination “democratic.” Proper sociality is

therefore inherently democratic for Habermas, just as it is for Hardt and Negri.

Finally, we come to a consideration of Rawls. On my contextualist reading of

Rawls, he cannot be making the kinds of claims about democracy or the implicit

assumptions about the social and the political that we find in Habermas and Hardt and

Negri. In Rawls‟s terminology, all three of these thinkers are advancing comprehensive

doctrines and, insofar as he is not, he makes no claims about the nature of society or

democracy as such. Rather, as we have seen, his theory of political liberalism assumes

the context of a modern constitutional democratic regime, and his political theory

involves the rendering explicit of the implicit assumptions of the citizens of such a

regime.

Yet herein lies the depoliticizing moment and the privileging of the social over

the political in Rawls. I noted that Rawls simply avoids the question of the institution of

societal forms generally, and of democratic regimes specifically. From the perspective of

Laclau‟s political theory, according to which any such institution is necessarily political,

the avoidance of this question is the avoidance of the political as such. While Rawls

obviously gives a great deal of consideration to questions of politics in the narrower sense

of the regulating of citizens‟ relations within modern democratic regimes, his reflections

on politics ignore the political (as defined in the previous chapter).

Similar considerations hold for the operative relation of the social and the political

in Rawls‟s formulation. Precisely insofar as Rawls does not theorize about the institution

of the social as such, thereby presupposing a particular shape of the social, he necessarily

subordinates the political to the social. And it is almost tautological to note that, because
 227

the presupposed social structure is that of a modern democratic regime, democracy

becomes coextensive with the social in his formation. As in Habermas, Hardt, and Negri,

the social is integrally related to democracy.

By way of recapitulation, then, we see that Laclau‟s political theory stands in

contrast to all three of these models because as he prioritizes the political over the social,

insofar as any form of the latter necessarily depends upon the institutionalizing force of

the former. Given the political nature of the institution of the social, together with the

nature of decision as it defines the political, there is no “proper” social form within

Laclau‟s model (a point the importance of which I will revisit shortly). To assume such a

form would, in his view, involve a step back into essentialist or metaphysical notions of

something which pre-exists and guides the political articulation of the social; the political

would no longer be primary, and Laclau would have effectively abandoned a distinctly

political ontology.

Within Laclau‟s theory, then, democracy constitutes one possible political

articulation of the social, but not a necessary one. Likewise, democracy represents a

contingent configuration of the social, not the form of proper sociality. There is not, in

other words, an organic or analytic relation between democracy and sociality as such, in

marked contrast to Habermas, Hardt, and Negri. We can see in the light of this that one

reason Laclau‟s theory of democracy is “radical” is that it is not simply assumed as a part

of the social context (Rawls) and it does not represent a true or proper form of sociality

(Habermas, Hardt, and Negri), but is, rather, an irreducibly political task which rests on

no anterior foundation. Further, if these other theories all have an operative notion of
 228

democracy as a form of reconciliation, Laclau‟s notion of democracy is one of

dislocation.

Ontology as/and the Reconciliation of the Social

This latter point highlights the fact that the different political theories I have been

considering here also represent competing ontologies. Though we have examined the

ontological nature of Laclau‟s work at some length, space does not permit the same

analysis of these other thinkers; a few general observations will have to suffice. To

begin, Hardt and Negri‟s political theory builds from an obviously metaphysical

ontology; I have already noted the metaphysical nature of Hardt and Negri‟s proposal, as

indicated by their appeal to the “life force” permeating the social. The dialectical nature

of their proposal also demonstrates their metaphysical commitments. The shape of the

social, the direction of its development, and its ultimate shape seem, ultimately, not to be

contingent factors, but to be determined on the basis of the ineluctable unfolding of the

social according to the logic of dialectic: Contradiction moves to externalized opposition,

which is then necessarily resolved in a higher movement of reconciliation. Mouffe

captures the nature of this well:

Their belief that the desire of the multitude is bound to bring about the end of
empire evokes the determinism of the Second International with its prediction that
the economic contradictions of capitalism were bound to lead to the collapse of
capitalism. Of course in this case, it is not the proletariat any more but the
“multitude” which is the revolutionary subject. But despite the new vocabulary,
this is still the same old deterministic approach (emphasis added).177

177
Mouffe, On the Political, 111.
 229

Hardt and Negri clearly adopt a particular line of Marxist thought, according to which

emancipation amounts to the reconciliation of the social with its own proper essence,178

which itself depends upon the Hegelian notion of the unfolding of Absolute Spirit, albeit

inscribed in a “materialist” register, which effectively excludes all contingency. 179 Hardt

and Negri‟s proposal therefore operates according to a metaphysically deterministic

ontology which is universal in scope, implied in their adoption of a dialectical perspective

and explicit in their insistence on the virtual omnipresence of Empire and, as a result, the

multitude.

Habermas‟s theory, which is much more circumspect regarding issues of

metaphysics than that of Hardt and Negri, gives evidence of ontological nuances which

are also worth noting. Mark Devenney argues this point well, noting that, despite

significant differences, “Habermas‟ project is in many respects as fundamental as Kant‟s.

He claims to find the basic structure of humanity‟s relations to the world in the various

validity claims borne by communicative action.”180 His basic point is similar to the point

I made above concerning the scope of Laclau‟s own theory: What Habermas proposes is

not a regional perspective. As we have seen, this is precisely the point Habermas is at

pains to demonstrate in his interactions with Rawls‟s thought. While Habermas presents

the presuppositions he finds to be necessary for communication as pragmatic

assumptions, it remains the case that, again borrowing Devenney‟s phrasing, validity

claims “transcend all restrictions of time and place.”181

178
For Laclau‟s discussion of this aspect of Marx‟s thought, and his rejection of it, see Laclau, “Identity
and Hegemony,” 44ff.
179
For Laclau‟s interpretation of Hegel, with which I concur, see Ibid., 59ff. It is worth noting that such a
reading of Hegel, which Laclau advances in opposition to the interpretation offered by Slavoj Žižek,
accords with the interpretation of Beiser. See Beiser, 76ff.
180
Devenney, 83.
181
Ibid., 84.
 230

This is an important point, which we have seen in our considerations of

Habermas, and Devenney nicely spells out the precise, and unique, nature of this context-

independence in Habermas: While it is fallible, insofar as it is non-deductive and depends

upon testable hypothetical presupposition, it is not falsifiable because “the theory itself

claims to interpret what has to be presupposed in order for humans to experience

facts.”182 Likewise, neither the fallibilism of his theoretical positions, nor their ultimately

hypothetical nature, equate with contingency in Habermas‟s thought.183 Despite all the

differences which exist between Hardt, Negri, and Habermas, Habermas nevertheless

shares with Hardt and Negri an ontology which emphasizes or postulates an ultimate

reconciliation. These three theorists therefore share a common theoretical positioning

vis-à-vis Laclau at this crucial point.

The Normative Deficit of Radical Democracy?

I have taken the time to sharpen the presentation of Laclau‟s political ontology

and his theory of democracy through a critical consideration of a number of alternative

political theories. Throughout, I have attempted to highlight some of the points at which

I think Laclau‟s theory is preferable to these others, and to highlight why. These

considerations bring me, however, to what I think remains a significant concern with

regard to Laclau‟s theory. Critchley voices this reservation, which is insightful and

serves to introduce the issues to be explored more fully in the final chapter and

Conclusion.184 Stated simply, Critchley is concerned that Laclau‟s political theory is

182
Ibid.
183
Ibid., 85.
184
Critchley first voices this basic concern in his contribution to a volume edited by Chantal Mouffe and
exploring the relationship between ethical and political thought in pragmatism and deconstruction. See
Simon Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism—Is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Liberal?” In
 231

marred by a “normative deficit.” We have seen that, for Laclau, there is no necessary

relation between democracy and the social as such. This means that democracy, even

Laclau‟s “radical democracy” has no normative force; there is no reason why the social

must or should be articulated as democratic. Speaking in relation to Laclau‟s distinction

between the ethical and the normative, presented in the previous chapter, Critchley‟s

concern is that the ethical represents a kind of formalism which is detached from concrete

normative complexes in such a way that the decision to articulate the social in a

democratic form becomes not only contingent but simply arbitrary, with no possible

reason being given for such an articulation. This would lead, in his estimation, to

justified accusations of decisionism or voluntarism in Laclau‟s political theory.185 In

addition to these general concerns, I add the concern that, were this the case, the social

could be articulated in totalitarian terms with no more and no less justification than if it

were to be articulated in democratic terms. In response to this perceived shortcoming in

Laclau‟s theory, Critchley argues that his “theory of hegemony requires an ethical

dimension of infinite responsibility to the other.”186

Laclau defends himself against Critchley‟s charges of decisionism, but he still

insists that the ethical does not determine the shape of normative complexes in advance,

and that the ethical decision as ethical decision cannot be predetermined on the basis of

pre-existing normative complexes. Concerning this first point, he reiterates that those

Deconstruction and Pragmatism, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Routledge, 1996). His more fully
formulated concerns are presented in Simon Critchley, “Is There a Normative Deficit in the Theory of
Hegemony?” in Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London: Routledge,
2004).
185
Critchley, “Is There a Normative Deficit?” 116.
186
Ibid. Those generally familiar with Critchley‟s work will recognize this particular emphasis on the
ethical. For his fullest treatment of the idea of “infinite responsibility to the other” as it relates to the
political, see Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance
(London: Verso, 2007).
 232

who make ethical decisions on undecidable terrain are not simply unencumbered

subjects, but are de facto limited in myriad ways by the necessity of inhabiting particular

sedimented normative complexes.187 Social actors‟ implication in normative complexes

is the reason why “not all ethical investments are possible at a given time,” with the result

that “moral choice finds neither its unique source in the ethical nor in the normative, but

in the endless negotiation between both.”188

Nevertheless, and this brings me to Laclau‟s second point of response, insofar as

the experience of the ethical is “the experience of the fullness of being as that which is

lacking,” which is to say “the experience of the presence of an absence,”189 it is the

experience of “the distance between what is and what ought to be.”190 But this “ought,”

as a negation which is experienced with a positive force, so to speak, is “hors-signifié”

(outside or beyond signification).191 It has no “natural” signification and is therefore no-

thing; it is not a positivity.192 The experience of the ethical is therefore an experience of

“the unconditioned as lack in an entirely conditioned universe,” which means that “there

is no way of conceptually or logically moving from it to a particular normative order,”193

such as democracy. On the contrary, the moral affirmation of any particular normative

order involves, we will recall, an act of “radical investment,” in which a normative order

is given the role of incarnating that absent or lacking fullness.194 Concerning democracy,

then, Laclau insists that “there is no possibility of deriving a normative injunction to keep

187
Ernesto Laclau, “Glimpsing the Future,” In Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver
Marchart (London: Routledge, 2004), 287-288.
188
Ibid.
189
Ibid., 286.
190
Ibid.
191
Ibid., 288.
192
The significance of describing this as “no-thing” will be elaborated in the next chapter. See p. 254n75.
193
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 290.
194
Ibid., 287.
 233

open the gap between the ethical and the normative, from the ontological existence of

that gap.”195 Nothing, in other words, normatively directs the movement of political

articulation and hegemonization in a democratic direction, and democracy is neither

necessarily nor organically connected to Laclau‟s political ontology. While democracy,

as Laclau understands it, cannot support totalitarianism (contra Ward), the ethical

moment of the instituting of the social, which is anterior to democracy, may take a

totalitarian direction. My specific point of concern, then is that totalitarianism and

democracy may be equally justified according to the logic of Laclau‟s political ontology.

I find Laclau‟s distinction between the ethical and the normative convincing.196

However, I also broadly agree that, without some account of motivation, Laclau‟s theory

is susceptible to these concerns regarding voluntarism and the specter of totalitarianism.

As it stands, it is not obvious that Laclau‟s theory provides any cogent reason why his

hegemonic theory should be deployed in a democratic rather than a totalitarian (or any

other) direction.

My response to this difficulty will not, however, be the same as Critchley‟s: I do

not argue that what is lacking in Laclau‟s theory is an ethical notion of “infinite

responsibility to the other” (for reasons I outline in chapter six). Rather, I argue that

Laclau‟s advocacy of radical democracy represents an affirmation of a structure of

phenomenological disruption which may meaningfully be described as religious; radical

democracy, in other words, constitutes a form of religious affirmation. The development

of this position, which will draw heavily on the thought of Derrida, will be the focus of

the remainder of this dissertation.

195
Ibid., 291.
196
As I will show in the final chapter, Derrida‟s thought is consistent with Laclau‟s on this point. See
chapter six, pp. 351ff.
 234

Conclusion

A number of significant points have emerged from our consideration of Laclau‟s

specific theory of democracy. Perhaps the two most significant, for my purposes, are that

“democracy,” for Laclau, names something more than a set of institutions, procedures, or

a particular political structure. On the contrary, democracy names a certain configuration

within the ontology of the social as such: As the epigraph for this chapter makes clear,

Laclau‟s democracy is “radical” in the sense that it consists in maintaining the essential

openness of the social.

This latter point leads into the second significant point: Laclau insists that there is

no normative relationship between democracy and his political ontology is not normative.

Democracy, as he understands it, is integrally related to his political theory, but there is

nothing that determines the articulation of the social in terms of democracy. As I put the

issue in the chapter, Laclau privileges the political over the social (thus differentiating his

position from those of Habermas, Hardt, and Negri), with the effect that there is no

“proper” or normative shape of the social.

This latter point occupied my attention in the final section of the chapter, and the

remainder of the dissertation may be read as my attempt respond to the difficulties I think

follow from Laclau‟s insistence on this point. I think that Laclau‟s political theory, as he

presents it, fails to account for what motivates the articulation of the social in a

democratic (rather than, for example, a totalitarian) direction. I say that Laclau‟s theory

fails to account for its motivation in a democratic direction because I think, against

Critchley and possibly Laclau himself, that Laclau‟s theory does motivate the articulation

of the social in a democratic direction; this is a point which I think is only latent within
 235

Laclau‟s theory. Insofar as this motivation remains only implicit in Laclau‟s theory as it

stands, I think that Laclau is susceptible to the charges of voluntarism or arbitrariness

leveled by Critchley.

The final two chapters and the Conclusion, then, turn to the task of rendering this

motivational aspect of Laclau‟s theory explicit. Consideration of these issues also beings

us to the question of religion as it relates to Laclau‟s political theory. By way of

anticipation, I aim to demonstrate, in the remainder of the dissertation, that the

articulation of the social in terms of Laclau‟s radical democracy is motivated by an

experience of phenomenological disruption which can meaningfully be described as

“religious.” My development of this argument will constitute my own proposal for

understanding the relation of “religion” and “the political” in the wake of the

displacement of normative secularism. My primary resource for developing these points

is the thought of Jacques Derrida, who is therefore the focus of the final two chapters.
 236

CHAPTER FIVE

HAUNTOLOGY: JACQUES DERRIDA‟S ONTOLOGY OF

PHENOMENOLOGICAL NEGATIVITY

The inherited concept of democracy is the only one that welcomes the possibility
of being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving
itself.
--Jacques Derrida, “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides”

Introduction

In concluding the previous chapter I stated my position that the articulation of the

social in terms of Laclau‟s radical democracy is motivated by an experience of

phenomenological disruption which can meaningfully be described as “religious.” In this

chapter and the next my aim is to develop the conceptual basis for supporting this claim,

which will finally be fully articulated in the Conclusion. As I have noted previously, the

thought of Jacques Derrida provides the resources for developing this argument.

If chapter three presented the “nuts and bolts” of Laclau‟s political ontology, this

chapter presents the “nuts and bolts” of Derrida‟s own phenomenological ontology (a

description of Derrida‟s program which I will defend in due course). I devote a full

chapter to this elaboration for a number of reasons. The first is that my understanding of

what we could call the religious tonality of Derrida‟s phenomenological ontology

depends upon the basic continuity that I think marks Derrida‟s overall corpus; I therefore

expend a good deal of energy in this chapter demonstrating this continuity. The second is

that Derrida‟s phenomenological ontology is, on my reading, essentially the same as the

political ontology advanced by Laclau. This is not surprising: It is well-known that

Laclau‟s own political ontology builds heavily on Derrida‟s thought (as Laclau himself

acknowledges repeatedly). While I have structured the dissertation in such a way as to

 237

consider Laclau‟s political theory prior to addressing Derrida‟s thought, I could just as

well have outlined Derrida‟s own phenomenological ontology first and subsequently

demonstrated how Laclau‟s political ontology follows from it. At any rate,

demonstrating the continuity of Laclau‟s political ontology with Derrida‟s

phenomenological ontology will make my remaining task of demonstrating the religious

motivation of Laclau‟s theory of radical democracy simpler.

The Deconstruction of the “Metaphysics of Presence”

Derrida, in his early work, is best known for his “deconstruction” of the so-called

“metaphysics of presence.” Stated in the phenomenological terms to which I will be

making primary reference in this chapter, Derrida is concerned to demonstrate the failure

of the full constitution of present presences, which is to say of fully constituted

objectivities in the immediacy of the pure temporal moment. The result of this

deconstruction, which is essentially phenomenological in its undertaking, is the

emergence of Derrida‟s hauntology.

Derrida provides usefully succinct statements of the target of his inquiry in two

closely related early texts:

The historical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence, with

all the determinations which depend on this general form and which organize
within it their system and their historical sequence (presence of the thing to the
sight as eidos, presence as substance/essence/existence [ousia], temporal presence
as point [stigmè] of the now of the moment [nun], the self-presence of the cogito,
consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and of the self,
intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomena of the ego, and so forth).1

The systematic interdependence of the concepts of sense, ideality, objectivity,

truth, intuition, perception, and expression. Their common matrix is being as
presence: the absolute proximity of self-identity, the being-in-front of the object

1
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Corrected Edition, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 12.
 238

available for repetition, the maintenance of the temporal present, whose ideal
form is the self-presence of transcendental life, whose ideal identity allows
idealiter of infinite repetition.2

It is clear from these statements that with the phrase “metaphysics of presence” Derrida

intends a cluster of concepts and organizing thematics which have been prominent in the

history of Western thought.

We also need to be clear about precisely the kind of questioning Derrida

undertakes with regard to these themes. Derrida seeks to “deconstruct” the metaphysics

of presence via a passage through the philosophical notions he wishes to call into

question. As Derrida states the issue

To “deconstruct” philosophy…would be to think—in the most faithful, interior

way—the structured genealogy of philosophy‟s concepts, but at the same time to
determine—from a certain exterior that unqualifiable or unnameable by
philosophy—what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making
itself into a history of this somewhere motivated repression (emphasis added).3

Derrida‟s deconstruction of philosophy, including phenomenology, is undertaken by

passing through the very philosophical concepts and systems it seeks to call into

question.4

There are a number of potential points of entry into this deconstruction. I have

chosen the notion of the “trace,” particularly as it relates to consciousness and

temporality, as our point of entry because these concepts will be of central importance in

developing Derrida‟s concept of alterity. Two of the primary sites upon which Derrida

enacts this deconstruction in his early work are the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl

2
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 99.
3
Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 6.
4
This emphasis on Derrida‟s part is similar to the point I made concerning the necessity of appealing to
religion in order to call an inherited concept of religion into question.
 239

and the structural linguistics of Saussure and Derrida‟s interaction with these, particularly

Husserl‟s phenomenology, will be a focus of my considerations.5

I can take my initial orientation from a lengthy quotation:

I relate this concept of trace to what is at the center of the latest work of
Emmanuel Levinas [“The Trace of the Other”/ “La trace de l‟autre”] and his
critique of ontology: Relationship to the illeity as to the alterity of past that never
was and can never be lived in the originary or modified form of presence.
Reconciled here to a Heideggerian intention,—as it was not in Levinas‟s
thought—this notion signifies, sometimes beyond Heideggerian discourse, the
undermining of an ontology which, in its innermost course, has determined the
meaning of being as presence and the meaning of language as the full continuity
of speech. To make enigmatic what one thinks one understands by the words
“proximity,” “immediacy,” “presence,” (the proximate [proche], the own
[propre], and the pre- of presence), is my final intention in this book. This
deconstruction of presence accomplishes itself through the deconstruction of
consciousness, and therefore through the irreducible notion of the trace (Spur), as
it appears in both Nietzschean and Freudian discourse.6

I have chosen this particular quotation as my point of reference because it brings together

a number of themes which are central in ordering the analysis that follows. First,

Derrida‟s concern to question the values of “proximity,” “immediacy,” and “presence,”

captured under the shorthand of the “metaphysics of presence,” is on clear display.

Second, Derrida makes clear that the deconstruction of consciousness plays a central role

5
At least two reasons are apparent for Derrida‟s privileging of Saussure and Husserl in these early texts.
First, Husserlian phenomenology and structural linguistics were common currency in philosophy and the
social sciences (brought together under the rubric of the “human sciences”) in France in the 1960s. Second,
and more centrally, phenomenology and structural linguistics both purported to have dispensed with
metaphysical claims, presuppositions, and aims (Husserlian phenomenology through its emphasis on the
return to “the things themselves” and Saussurian linguistics through claims to an objectivizing
scientificity). Derrida takes aim at these movements, then, precisely because of the significance of finding
within them the broad and defining marks of the metaphysics of presence they ostensibly reject.
6
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 70. For the reference to Levinas‟s text, see p. 329n33; the French title of
essay is provided in the English note. Similarly, Derrida states in Speech and Phenomena that he chooses
this term because it marks “the juncture…of what has been most decisively inscribed in the thought of what
is conveniently called our „epoch‟: The difference of forces in Nietzsche, Saussure‟s principle of
semiological difference, differing as the possibility of [neurone] facilitation, impression and delayed effect
in Freud, difference as the irreducibility of the trace of the other in Levinas, and the ontic-ontological
difference in Heidegger” (130). He also makes explicit reference to Levinas‟s essay “The Trace of the
Other” in Jacques Derrida, “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” trans. Ruben Berezivin and
Peggy Kamuf, in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume 1, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 146.
 240

in this questioning. Third, the specific issue of temporality is given pride of place in this

formulation. Fourth, while Derrida notes multiple lines of filiation upon which his

thought draws, he specifically mentions the notion of the trace as it appears in the work

of Levinas, which will be important in this chapter and the next.

Husserl‟s Phenomenology and the Deconstruction of Consciousness

The Phonè and the Privilege of Consciousness

Derrida repeatedly insists, throughout his full body of work, that Husserl‟s

famous “principle of principles” (“to the things themselves!”)7 models the priority of

presence insofar as it insists upon “the original and self-giving evidence, the present or

presence of sense to a full and primordial intuition.”8 This emphasis on presence

necessarily leads Husserl to privilege ideality: Only that which is ideal can be said to be

presented immediately to consciousness and to be the same despite all empirical

repetition.9 Additionally, this presentation of ideality to consciousness takes place in the

undivided simplicity of the living present.10 Here we come across the defining themes of

presence and the present as they function in Husserl‟s thought.

But Husserlian phenomenology encounters a difficulty at this point: While it is

necessary that the eidos of the phenomenological object be presented to consciousness in

7
This phrase occurs in a number of Husserlian texts. For example, Husserl writes, in Ideas I, that “to judge
rationally or scientifically about things signifies to conform to the things themselves or to go from words
and opinions back to the things themselves, to consult them in their self-givenness and to set aside all
prejudice alien to them.” A fuller statement of this “principle of all principles” reads as follows: “No
conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originary
presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its
„personal‟ actuality) offered to us in „intuition‟ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but
also only within the limits in which it is presented there.” For these references see Edmund Husserl, Ideas
Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, trans. F. Kersten
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), §§ 19, 24.
8
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 5.
9
Ibid., 6, 9.
10
Ibid., 53.
 241

an unmediated fashion and in the living present, it is also necessary that be signified to

consciousness. In addition to presence, then, Husserl also insists on the irreducibility of

signification. What is necessary is a form of immediate mediation, a signification which

signifies in immediacy.

Husserl‟s two emphases (i.e., on presence and signification) stand in opposition

because the latter, for Husserl, represents a form of non-presence. What Derrida finds in

his exploration of Husserl‟s theory of signification is that it amounts to what he refers to

elsewhere as a “classical semiology,” according to which the sign represents a

substitution which is both secondary and provisional: “It is second in order after an

original and lost presence, a presence from which the sign would be derived. It is

provisional with respect to this final and missing presence, in view of which the sign

would serve as a movement of mediation.”11 The sign, then, necessarily attends the

absence of the thing itself, representing a kind of detour: “When we cannot take hold of

or show the thing itself…we go through the detour of signs” (emphasis added).12 Husserl

is therefore faced with the task of developing an account of the signification of

phenomenal objects to consciousness which avoids the “detour” that signification would

seem to entail.

Husserl‟s first response to this difficulty is to differentiate between two forms of

signification, eliminating one from consideration as true signification, and, finally, by

reducing all communicative function from the remaining notion of signification. In the

first step of this process, Husserl differentiates “indication” which is a form of

11
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl‟s Theory of
Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 138.
12
Ibid.
 242

signification without meaning [Bedeutung] or sense [Sinn],13 from “expression,” which is

a form of signification which bears meaning or sense because it is animated by an

intending consciousness.14

Expression, then, takes place only where there is “the pure active intention (spirit,

psyche, life, will) of an act of meaning (bedeuten) that animates a speech whose content

(Bedeutung) is present.”15 This understanding of expression, however, immediately

excludes all empirical acts of communication, insofar as the other person‟s lived

experience is not directly present to the hearer, but is always mediated.16 And, insofar as

lived experience is not present in communication, all communication is implicated in

indication. Expression therefore has to do only with “interior monologue” or “interior

mental life” which, because they take place in the absolute presence of “an „inner‟

intuition or perception,” free expression from all indicative entanglement.17

But if expression is to be purged of mediating indication, then this inner

monologue cannot be understood as a form of communication. Consciousness is, for

Husserl, “the self-presence of the living, the Erleben, of experience,” which is understood

as “simple and…in its essence free of illusion, since it relates to an absolute proximity”

(emphases added).18 Because there is no possibility of illusion in consciousness, all

indicative communication (which is to say communication as such) becomes superfluous.

As Derrida summarizes the point,

13
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 17.
14
Ibid., 32-33.
15
Ibid., 40.
16
Ibid., 38.
17
Ibid., 20-21.
18
Ibid., 58. Derrida supports this reading of living experience with the following quotation from Husserl:
“Every experience generally (every living one, so to speak) is an experience according to the mode „being
present.‟ It belongs to its very essence that it should be able to reflect upon that same essence in which it is
necessarily characterized as being certain and present.” See Husserl, Ideas 1, § 111.
 243

if the representation of indicative speech in the monologue is false, it is because it

is useless….If the subject indicates nothing to himself, it is because he cannot do
so, and he cannot do so because there is no need of it. Since lived experience is
immediately self-present in the mode of certitude and absolute necessity, the
manifestation of the self to the self through the delegation or representation of an
indicative sign is impossible because it is superfluous.19

The significance of this reduction of the extent of expression is that, despite his

insistence on two forms of signification, Husserl effectively understands only indication

as a form of signification, with expression representing the immediate presence of

meaning to consciousness in such a manner that signification is unnecessary.20 Derrida

demonstrates that Husserl‟s insistence on the irreducibility of signification represents a

sort of shell game, according to which signification in fact vanishes and only the

phenomenological emphasis on presence remains. Signs, then, become superfluous,

insofar as they can be eliminated from the presentation of meaning to consciousness.21

The medium by which the phenomenological eidos is immediately presented to

intending consciousness is the phenomenological voice or phonè, and it is this linkage

which leads Derrida to describe the metaphysics of presence in terms of

“phonocentrism.”22 Because the eidos is ideal, it is “nothing outside the world,” with the

result that “this ideal being must be constituted, repeated, and expressed in a medium that

does not impair the presence and self-presence of the acts that aim at it, a medium which

both preserves the presence of the object before intuition and self-presence, the absolute

proximity of the acts to themselves.”23 The phonè is suited to this role because it is

19
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 58.
20
Ibid., 42.
21
Ibid., 51.
22
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 12.
23
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 76.
 244

unnecessary for it to “pass through the world;”24 the worldliness which is foreign to the

eidos is equally foreign to the phonè. In the case of the phenomenological voice, as

opposed to all other signification, “the subject does not have to pass forth beyond himself

to be immediately affected by his expressive activity,”25 because “the phenomenological

„body‟ of the signifier seems to fade away at the very moment it is produced; it seems

already to belong to the element of ideality. It phenomenologically reduces itself,

transforming the worldly opacity of its body into pure diaphaneity” (emphasis added).26

Any worldly mediation of meaning to consciousness is eradicated with the phonè.

The metaphysics of presence is not only a phonocentrism, but is also a

“logocentrism,”27 insofar as there is a “necessary bond” between subjectivity and

expression as phonè,28 which, in turn, necessarily ties the phonè to logos. The linkage of

voice to consciousness is essential and constitutive: “De jure and by virtue of its

structure, no consciousness is possible without the voice. The voice is the being which is

present to itself in the form of universality, as con-sciousness [sic]; the voice is

consciousness.”29 This is because it is only through the exercise the voice that the subject

exercises the sovereign spontaneity, that auto-affectivity, which defines it. In the

exercise of the phonè, “the subject does not have to pass forth beyond himself to be

immediately affected by his expressive activity” (emphasis added).30 Unlike every other

form of auto-affectivity, the exercise of the phonè both preserves the absolute self-

proximity of the subject and maintains the ideal universality of the eidos presented to

24
Ibid., 75.
25
Ibid., 76.
26
Ibid., 77.
27
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 12.
28
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 76.
29
Ibid., 79-80.
30
Ibid., 76.
 245

consciousness.31 The phonè as the unique site of auto-affectivity is what links it to logos:

“The essence of the phonè would be immediately proximate to that which within

„thought‟ as logos relates to „meaning,‟ produces it, receives it, speaks it, „composes‟

it.”32 In Derrida‟s view, this privileging of logos in its auto-affectivity is one element of

Husserl‟s thought which ties it most definitively to all “metaphysical determinations of

truth,” insofar as these relate to a concept of logos.33

Temporality and the Deconstruction of Consciousness

What emerges from these considerations is the pride of place accorded to

consciousness in the metaphysics of presence, here presented through a consideration of

Husserl‟s phenomenology.34 Derrida carries out the deconstruction of consciousness, and

thereby of the metaphysics of presence, through a consideration of temporality, also

carried out in relation to Husserl‟s thought. As we would expect, given Derrida‟s own

description of deconstruction, he carries out this deconstruction through a consideration

of Husserl‟s own work on the phenomenology of time consciousness.

The phonè, and therefore consciousness, is integrally related to temporality, and

specifically to the idea of the temporal present: “When I speak, it belongs to the

phenomenological essence of this operation that I hear myself [je m‟entende] at the same

time that I speak.”35 Not only does the phonè not fall prey to the worldly detour of

signification, but it is also immune to temporal duration. In this connection, Derrida

31
Ibid., 78.
32
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 11.
33
Ibid., 10-11.
34
Derrida is well known for presenting his philosophical arguments through close, often dense readings of
specific thinkers and texts. It would be a mistake to conclude from this approach, however, that Derrida‟s
insights apply only narrowly to those specific thinkers and texts through which he develops them. As the
descriptions of “presence” on pp. 237-238 indicate, Derrida‟s insights have a much broader reach and more
general application.
35
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 77.
 246

notes Husserl‟s privileging of the “primal form” of consciousness as involving a concept

of temporality as “a nondisplaceable center, an eye or living core, the punctuality of the

real now,” and notes Husserl‟s complicity with the dominant formulations of Western

philosophy in assuming such a model of temporality.36 Further, this form of temporality

owes itself to the auto-affectivity of consciousness: Temporalization is produced through

the “spontaneous generation” and “primal creation” of the subject.37 Temporalization is

therefore itself a form of subjective auto-affection insofar as “the primordial impression

[of temporality] is here affected by nothing other than itself.”38

Derrida complicates this presentation by latching onto the fact that, in Husserl‟s

own elaboration of phenomenological temporality, the present is actually a constituted

effect of the non-present. What Derrida has in view here is Husserl‟s formulation of time

consciousness, according to which the present moment is itself constituted through the

retention of past moments and the protention of future moments.39 These moments of the

non-present “are neither added to, nor do they occasionally accompany, the actually

perceived now; they are essentially and indispensably involved in its possibility,” with

the result that “the presence of the perceived present can appear as such only inasmuch as

it is continuously compounded with a nonpresence and nonperception, with primary

memory and expectation (retention and protention).”40

It is crucial in this regard that Husserl insists upon the continuity between the

present and the non-present through the retention of the past, writing that “even this ideal

36
Ibid., 62-63.
37
Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, trans. John Barnett
Brough (New York: Springer, 2008), Appendix I. Quoted in Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 83.
38
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 85.
39
For a discussion of this, see Rudolf Bernet et. al., An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 102-103.
40
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 64.
 247

[of distinction between the present and retention of the past] is not something toto caelo

different from the not-now but continually accommodates itself thereto.”41 In retention,

“the past [is] constituted, i.e., not in a representative but in a presentative way.”42 That

is, retention involves a perception of the past which is not different in kind from that of

the present. The present is thus constituted through the trace of the past. The same basic

point holds for the protention of the future:

Différance is what makes the movement of signification possible only if each

element that is said to be “present,” appearing on the stage of presence, is related
to something other [autre] that itself but retains the mark of a past element and
already lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element.
This trace relates no less to what is called the future than to what is called the
past….43

The consequences of Husserl‟s formulation of temporality are of the utmost

significance for Derrida:

As soon as we admit this continuity of the now and the not-now, perception and
nonperception, in the zone of primordiality common to primordial impression and
primordial retention, we admit the other [l‟autre] into the self-identity of the
Augenblick [Husserl‟s colloquialism for the immediately present moment];
nonpresence and nonevidence are admitted into the blink of the instant.44

There is, then, an irreducible and constitutive role played by the non-present in the

constitution of presence; the present is a constituted effect on non-presence. As Derrida

puts it, “this pure difference, which constituted the self-presence of the living present,

41
Ibid., 65.
42
Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, § 17. Quoted in Derrida, Speech and
Phenomena, 64.
43
Derrida, “Différance,” 142. French: Jacques Derrida, “La Différance,” in Théorie D‟Ensemble,” ed.
Philippe Sollers (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968), 51.
44
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 65. French: Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1967), 73. I highlight the French of “other” here because it will be important in
the discussion of Derrida‟s concept of alterity.
 248

introduces into self-presence from the beginning all the impurity putatively excluded

from it.”45

The result of the constituted nature of the present moment is that “the theme of a

pure inwardness of speech, or of the „hearing oneself speak,‟ is radically contradicted by

„time‟ itself.”46 All the defining marks of the self-present phenomenological subject are

disrupted with this recognition. The constitution of the present by nonpresence is

“primordial,” and the structure of the trace cannot be reduced to a mere attribute: “The

trace [la trace] [of the retentional past and the protentional future] is not an attribute; we

cannot say that the self of the living present „primordially is‟ it.”47 The irreducible co-

implication of consciousness and signification also disrupts auto-affectivity: “Sense,

being temporal in nature, as Husserl recognized, is never simply present; it is always

already engaged in the „movement‟ of the trace, that is, on the order of signification.”48

This “movement” disrupts the very autos of the subject and of auto-affectivity by calling

into question the assumed proximity necessary to consciousness and Husserl conceives of

it:

Since the trace is the intimate relation of the living present with its outside, the
openness upon exteriority in general, upon the sphere of what is not “one‟s own,”
etc., the temporalization of sense is, from the outset, a “spacing.” As soon as we
admit spacing both as “interval” or difference and as openness upon the outside,
there can no longer be any absolute inside, for the “outside” has insinuated itself
into the movement by which the inside of the nonspatial, which is called “time,”
appears, is constituted, is “presented.”49

A certain “detour” which disrupts immediacy and proximity becomes the very condition

of possibility of the present, and therefore of consciousness, as such. Consciousness,

45
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 85.
46
Ibid., 86.
47
Ibid., 85.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid., 86.
 249

which is the central concept in Husserl‟s phenomenology, is seen to be a constituted

effect as a result of phenomenological temporality, and this on Husserl‟s own terms.

Synchrony and the Deconstruction of Objectivity

I have focused on Derrida‟s deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence in

relation to temporality and consciousness because of the significant role that temporality

will play in the considerations that follow. It is important to recognize, however, that

Derrida‟s questioning of the metaphysics of presence is “spatial” as well as temporal;50

his concerns are synchronic as well as diachronic, and it is worth considering this aspect

of his work as well. The reference to “spacing” in the block quote above alerts us to this

fact. Temporalization is also “spacing;” the constituted nature of the temporal present

implies as well the constituted nature of objective presence.

We can explore this point through a consideration of Derrida‟s deconstruction of

Saussure‟s structural semiology which is undertaken, as in the case of his work on

Husserl, by attending closely to Saussure‟s own system. He draws particular attention to

Saussure‟s two “principles of general semiology”: The arbitrariness of signs and the

differential character of signs.51 According to Saussure,

The conceptual side of value is made up solely of relations and differences with
respect to the other terms of language, and the same can be said of its material
side….Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in
language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally
implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language
there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified
or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the
linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued

50
As Derrida puts it, “in différance, it‟s not just about time but also about space.” See Jacques Derrida,
“Others are Secret Because They are Other,” in Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005), 150.
51
Derrida, “Différance,” 139. For Saussure‟s theory, see Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General
Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Fontana/Collins, 1959).
 250

from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less
importance than the other signs that surround it.52

Derrida carries out the deconstruction of objective presence by radicalizing Saussure‟s

realization that “this principle of difference affects the whole sign, that is, both the

signified and the signifying aspects.”53

Derrida expands Saussure‟s insight that “within the system of language, there are

only differences,” writing that “there is no presence before the semiological effect.”54

That is, any “present” element is a constituted effect of non-presence (the parallels with

the constitution of the temporal present are clear), which is to say, of the difference

between the various elements of the system. The meaning of a sign is constituted by its

difference from other signs: “The elements of signification function not by virtue of the

compact force of their cores (i.e., through „positive terms‟) but by the network of

oppositions that distinguish them and relate them to one another.”55 The fact that

meaning is constituted by a play of differences “without positive terms,” “supposes, in

effect, syntheses and referrals which forbid at any moment, or in any sense, that a simple

element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself.”56

The language of “syntheses and deferrals” brings me to a consideration of

Derrida‟s famous neologism différance, coined to capture the two meanings of the French

verb différer: To differ and to defer.57 Derrida‟s argument is that, in line with Saussure‟s

differential understanding of the sign, any present presence, which is to say whatever

“is,” is a differential effect of the other elements within a semiotic field. Différance is
52
Saussure, 117-118, 120. Quoted in Derrida, “Différance,” 140.
53
Derrida, “Différance,” 139.
54
Ibid., 141.
55
Ibid., 139.
56
Derrida, Positions, 26. We have also seen that Laclau makes extensive use of Saussure at this point. See
chapter three, pp. 128-129.
57
Derrida, “Différance,” 129.
 251

therefore the term Derrida applies to “the movement of play that „produces‟…these

differences, these effects of difference,”58 and it captures the situation in which “each

element that is said to be „present,‟ appearing on the stage of presence, is related to

something other than itself but retains the mark of a past element and already lets itself be

hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element.”59 We can hear the dual

emphases of diachrony and synchrony in this quotation, and this dual emphasis is what

requires the terminology of both difference and deferral: “On the one hand, it [différance]

indicates difference as distinction, inequality, or discernibility; on the other, it expresses

the interposition of delay, the interval or a spacing and temporalizing that puts off until

„later‟ what is presently denied, the possible that is presently impossible.”60 Without this

spacing and temporalizing, there would be no constituted effects of the signifying system,

which is to say that there would not be anything. It is this insight which “radically

destroys any possibility of simple self-identity,”61 which is to say, of the proximity that

defines the metaphysics of presence. It is clear that on Derrida‟s formulation the

temporally present and any presence are both constituted effects of non-presence.

The Structurality of Structure

While Derrida makes extensive use of Saussure‟s theory of signification, we must

also take account of the very significant departure from Saussure represented in his work.

For Saussure, and for the structuralism which developed out of his thought, the

differential play of signifying elements was ultimately regulated. We have already seen,

58
Derrida, “Différance,” 141.
59
Ibid., 142.
60
Ibid., 129.
61
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 65-66.
 252

in chapter three, that Derrida departs from Saussure at this point.62 Derrida makes this

clear in his famous essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human

Sciences,”63 where he locates his own work as taking off from the “rupture” of the

concept of “structure.”64 What Derrida calls into question is “the structurality of

structure,” that is, what we might call the regulation of the play of signifying elements,

has always been assured “through a process of giving it [the structure] a center or of

referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin,” which served the purpose of limiting

“what we might call the play of the structure.”65 That is, referring back to Laclau‟s brief

discussion of structuralism in chapter three, structuralism understood the differential

relations of signification to be systematic, to be regulated in such a way that their

differential play was ultimately limited.66

That which centered the structure was itself not subject to the differential play of

the elements of the structure itself; as Derrida puts it, “the center is at the center of the

totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality),

the totality has its center elsewhere.”67 The names of this center have varied, including

such concepts as “eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance,

subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth.”68 What has

centered the structure, and what governs the play of signification in Saussure, is therefore

62
This was a central part of my discussion of Laclau‟s theory of universality, particularly in relation to the
concept of empty signifiers. See, for example, p. 143ff.
63
This essay was originally an address delivered by Derrida on October 21, 1966 at the International
Colloquium on Critical Languages and the Sciences of Man, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
64
Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and
Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), 278.
65
Ibid.
66
See pp. 135ff.
67
Derrida, “Structure, Sign, Play,” 279.
68
Ibid., 279-280.
 253

the metaphysics of presence: “All the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to

the center have always designated an invariable presence” (emphasis added).69

In demonstrating the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, then, Derrida

has definitively called into question the “structurality of structure.” This brings us back

to the points we considered in chapter three: Calling into question the metaphysics of

presence made it necessary “to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center

could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural

site….”70 The result, as we have seen, is that “the absence of the transcendental signified

extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely” (emphasis added).71 It is with

the recognition that the play of signification, the play of traces, is not ultimately

systematic or regulated that Derrida moves beyond Saussurian structuralism into the

terrain of poststructuralism.72 I will highlight the significance of this point when come to

our discussion of alterity.

Deconstruction and the Logic of the Trace

These considerations invite a fuller examination of the logic of the “trace,” which

in turn will bring the nature of Derrida‟s constructive phenomenological account into

clearer focus. I have already mentioned the notion of the trace in passing, and Derrida

69
Ibid., 279.
70
Ibid., 280.
71
Ibid. Derrida also highlights his divergence from any theory in which the play of signification is
ultimately regulated in his discussion of Louis Hjelmslev in Of Grammatology. While he takes the
“formalism” introduced by Hjelmslev and the Copenhagen School of linguistics as a move in the right
direction, he is still critical insofar as their model is still plagued by “a scientifistic objectivism,” which is
to say “by another unperceived or unconfessed metaphysics.” The danger with this is that this will devolve
into a “naïve objectivism;” see Of Grammatology, 61. For Derrida‟s discussion of Hjelmslev, see Of
Grammatology, 57-62.
72
Derrida‟s work does not simply start from the point when the “structurality of structure” is called into
question. Rather, his work, including this seminal essay, plays a pivotal role in calling this structurality
into question. It is worth reiterating Marchart‟s description of “Structure, Sign, Play” as “the locus
classicus of post-structuralism.” See Marchart, 15.
 254

explicitly states the significance of the trace to temporality, stating that “the living present

springs forth out of its nonidentity with itself and from the possibility of the retentional

trace. It is always already a trace” (emphasis added).73 The present is, so to speak,

never present in self-proximity, but is constituted by the traces of the retentional past and

protentional future. To apply a formulation from a different context, any present

presence is a “fabric of traces,” in the sense of “referring endlessly to something other

than itself, to other differential traces.”74

Two related points are of central importance in understanding the logic of the

trace. First, the trace is neither “something” which could be rendered present nor is it an

“origin” or “ground” of presence. Second, the trace is nothing, which is to say that it is

no-thing, in a sense I will clarify shortly.75 Concerning this first point, we have seen that

the trace is not an “attribute” over which a subject or consciousness could exercise

control,76 but Derrida adds to this with a deceptively complex formulation: “The trace is

in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that

there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the différance which opens

appearance and signification” (emphasis added).77 If arche or origin represents absolute

73
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 85.
74
From Jacques Derrida, “Living On: Border Lines,” trans. James Hulbert, in A Derrida Reader: Between
the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 257. It should be clear that
same point applies for both diachronic constitution and synchronic constitution. The language of the
“trace” in regard to the constitution of the present is mirrored in the language of the “mark” in the
constitution of presence. As we noted previously, our primary focus in this and the next chapter will be on
the constitution of temporality because of its importance for developing our concerns. This should not,
however lead us to overlook the importance of objective constitution in Derrida‟s thought.
75
Despite its awkwardness, I have chosen to use the term no-thing when referring to the trace and related
phenomenological concepts in this chapter, which will be evident as we continue. I do this both for the
sake of consistently highlighting the same phenomenological structure and because I think that using the
simple term “nothing” unduly trivializes its phenomenological significance.
76
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 85.
77
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 65. We also encounter Derrida‟s famous neologism différance in this
quotation. While we will give some fuller discussion of différance below, we simply note here that it
captures the movement of endless deferral and difference implied in the notion of the “fabric of traces.”
 255

presence,78 then to say that the trace is the “origin” of all such notions is to say that they

are, in actuality, constituted effects, and therefore that, somewhat paradoxically, there is

no origin. “Trace” therefore names an unnameable non-origin.

Thus, as Derrida also puts this point, “the trace is not only the disappearance of

origin—within the discourse that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it

means that origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except

reciprocally by a nonorigin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin”

(emphasis added).79 The trace cannot therefore properly be considered the “cause” of the

differences which constitute presence as “effects,” because “cause” has classically been

understood according to the logic of presence.80 The result of this is that “if such a

presence were implied (quite classically) in the general concept of cause, we would

therefore have to talk about an effect without a cause, something that would very quickly

lead to no longer talking about effects. I have tried to indicate a way out of the closure

imposed by this system, namely, by means of the „trace‟” (emphasis added).81

Différance plays on the two meanings of the French verb différer, which means both “to defer” and “to
differ” simultaneously. Given that our focus has been on temporality, we have thus far emphasized the
notion of deferral. When we come to the issue of “objective” constitution in Derrida‟s thought, however,
the theme of difference will be more pronounced. For Derrida‟s fullest discussion of différance, see
Derrida, “Différance,” as well as the discussion which took place following Derrida‟s presentation of that
paper: Jacques Derrida, “The Original Discussion of „Différance‟,” in Derrida and Différance, ed. David
Wood and Robert Bernasconi (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 1988.
78
This is the logic of “a simple element” which would “be present in and of itself, referring only to itself”
(see p. 250 above).
79
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 61
80
Derrida, “Différance,” 141.
81
Ibid. Derrida‟s formulations of these issues highlights his point that deconstruction necessarily takes
place through or by means of the very system of concepts being deconstructed. As Derrida states the issue,
the “erasure” of concepts such as “origin,” “cause,” and “effect” necessarily leaves a “track” in the text
from which they have been taken, and necessitates their use, however modified. Cf. Derrida, Of
Grammatology, 61.
 256

Derrida directly states my second point when he writes that “the trace is nothing,

it is not an entity, it exceeds the question What is?”82 The trace is no-thing; it “does not

exist” and “is never a being-present outside of all plenitude.”83 As that which constitutes

all “being,” and which is therefore never constituted or rendered as a “being,” the trace is

neither a presence nor an absence which could in principle be rendered present. In

addition, and importantly, insofar as the trace is necessarily “anterior” to all constitution,

it is also not the trace “of” something else.84 Derrida summarizes this point well: “It is a

trace of something that can never present itself; it is a trace that can never be presented,

that can never appear and manifest itself as such in its phenomenon. It is a trace that lies

beyond what profoundly ties fundamental ontology to phenomenology. Like différance,

the trace is never presented as such.”85 The trace has no phenomenal being or presence,

which is why “effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would

not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance. In addition, and from the

start, effacement constitutes the trace” (emphasis added).86 In other words, as Derrida

puts it elsewhere (and in a much later context), “an ineradicable trace is not a trace.”87

The trace, then, is never something which could be rendered present; it is no-thing.

I have chosen to speak of the trace in terms of “phenomenological negativity” to

highlight its complex structure. On the one hand, it is a negativity in the sense that it is

no-thing, that it is radically non-phenomenal. Yet, at the same time, this no-thing

achieves what I will call a phenomenologically positive force; even as no-thing, it can be

82
Ibid., 75.
83
Ibid., 62.
84
Again by way of anticipation, this will be a crucially important point in developing Derrida‟s meaning
when he writes of “the trace of the other.”
85
Derrida, “Différance,” 154.
86
Ibid., 156.
87
“Others are Secret,” 159.
 257

“felt.”88 While, on the one hand, the play of traces is what constitutes objectivities, it is

also what prevents its constituted effects from ever attaining the status of full presence.

The trace, then, is “phenomenal” not in the sense of being a phenomenological positivity,

but in the sense that it represents an “irreducible nonpresence”89 at the heart of all

constituted presence, which continually calls that very constitution into question. The

trace, even as no-thing, therefore evidences the phenomenological positivity of “presence

effects.”90

The trace therefore “is” nothing other than the disruption of present presence, and

is a “negativity” in this sense: Derrida refers to différance as “the relation to an

impossible presence, as an expenditure without reserve, as an irreparable loss of

presence…” (emphasis added).91 The trace names, then, the irreducible incompleteness

of phenomenologically constituted totalities, an incompleteness the irreducibility of

which has to do with the fact that it affects (and effects) subjectivity, objectivity, and

temporality. The trace names non-identity, non-presence, rather than “something” which

could, even in principle, be an identity or a presence in its own right.

Derrida as Phenomenologist

If the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence represents the “destructive”

or critical moment in Derrida‟s thought, this should not occlude the point that, through

88
I will develop this point further toward the end of this chapter. See pp. 297 ff.
89
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 6.
90
Derrida develops this phrase in relation to the idea of the “remainder,” which is another term essentially
synonymous with “trace.” See “Others are Secret,” 151-152.
91
Derrida, “Différance,” 150. I want to be clear that, in referring to the trace in terms of “negativity,” I do
not employ this term in an evaluative sense. Rather, my point is phenomenological. The trace is both the
condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of phenomenological constitution. The reason I
am emphasizing the disruptive aspect of the play of traces, as opposed to its constitutive aspect, is that this
will be important as I outline Derrida‟s operative notion of alterity. I will turn to the constitutive value of
this phenomenological disruption in the next chapter.
 258

this deconstruction, Derrida also makes a constructive proposal. My position is that,

constructively stated, Derrida in fact advances a unique phenomenological ontology.

Those possessed of even a passing familiarity with Derrida‟s thought may be taken aback

by such a position. Did Derrida not attain his monumental status as a thinker precisely by

calling to question both phenomenology and ontology? Stated somewhat differently, is it

not the case that “metaphysics of presence” is broadly equivalent to “phenomenology”

and “ontology”? Have I not demonstrated this exact point through my consideration of

Derrida in relation to Husserl‟s thought? To be sure, Derrida‟s thought cannot be

described as “ontological” or “phenomenological” if these terms are taken in an

“orthodox” sense. However, I will demonstrate that, properly qualified, there is as much

good reason for applying these terms to Derrida‟s thought as for applying them to

Laclau‟s. Indeed, given the constitutive similarities between their two proposes, I would

be hard pressed not to apply the same descriptors to both.

Derrida‟s Distance from Phenomenology and Ontology

I turn, first, to a discussion of Derrida‟s distance from phenomenology. Given our

discussion of the logic of the trace, we can see that not only does the trace not have a

positive phenomenality, but that it is non-phenomenal: “There is no essence of [the

trace]; not only can it not allow itself to be taken up into the as such of its name or its

appearing, but it threatens the authority of the as such in general, the thing‟s presence in

its essence.”92 As a non-presence which “dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond

92
Ibid., 158. This calling into question of the “as such” marks Derrida‟s distance from phenomenology,
which operates according to the “law” “of the appearance as such of the as such, the as”; see Jacques
Derrida, “As If It Were Possible, „Within Such Limits‟,” in Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 93.
 259

itself,”93 the trace disrupts phenomenology, insofar as phenomenology is concerned with

“the things themselves,” which is to say with “things as such.”

This non-phenomenological formulation could be linked to many others on

Derrida‟s part. We have found that the logic of the trace disrupts the “as such” which is

constitutive of phenomenology, and it is this disruption which lead Derrida to state that

“the thing itself is a sign,” a proposition which, he says, would be “unacceptable” for

Husserl insofar as his “phenomenology remains…—in its „principle of principles‟—the

most radical and most critical restoration of the metaphysics of presence.94 The

unacceptability of this proposition is what related Husserl‟s phenomenology to the

“classical semiology” with which Derrida has identified it: It is only “when we cannot

take hold of or show the thing itself” that we are forces to “go through the detour of

signs.”95

This, then, represents the distance of Derrida from phenomenology: The logic of

the trace cuts out the heart of phenomenality as such, rendering impossible the full

presentation of any “thing itself” to consciousness. In contrast to the “living experience”

privileged in Husserl‟s phenomenology, Derrida describes deconstruction as “the

experience of the impossible,”96 in the sense that deconstruction is concerned with the

logic of the trace as that which disrupts or prevents full constitution, foreclosing in

advance any possibility of the bringing-to-consciousness of the things itself in its absolute

presence.

93
Derrida, “Différance,” 156.
94
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 49.
95
Derrida, “Différance,” 138.
96
Jacques Derrida, On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood et. al. (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995), 43. I will have more to say on the notion of the “experience of the impossible”
later in this chapter.
 260

Similar points hold for the notion of ontology, insofar as Derrida links ontology

and phenomenology. He insists that deconstruction is concerned with “a thinking of the

event (singularity of the other, in its coming that cannot be anticipated, hic et nuce [issues

I will address shortly]) that resists being appropriated by an ontology or a

phenomenology of presence as such.”97 Indeed, Derrida consistently resists the

application of the term “ontology” to describe his thought, equating metaphysics,

ontology, and the metaphysics of presence. One of the clearest examples of this is in his

response to a series of symposium papers on his own book Specters of Marx. Warren

Montag, in his contributing paper, notes that “ontology speaks only of what is present or

what is absent; it cannot conceive of what is neither” (emphasis added), and notes that,

for this reason, “the lexicon of ontology is insufficient” for Derrida‟s purposes.98

Ontology, in other words, deals in presence and absence, whereas the logic of the trace is

a logic of neither presence nor absence; the trace is not something “absent” which could

in principle be rendered “present.” If we accept Montag‟s description of ontology, then

he is correct to highlight the insufficiency of the lexicon of ontology for Derrida‟s work.

It is therefore not surprising when Derrida affirms Montag‟s statement99 while resisting

Antonio Negri‟s call, in his contribution to the same symposium, for the development of

a “new ontology.”100 The point at which Derrida departs from Marx, and a point which

he sees inherent in all ontology, is precisely in the effort “to recover the full, concrete

97
Derrida, “As if it Were Possible,” 96. Again, much more remains to be said about terms such as “the
other.”
98
Warren Montag, “Spirits Armed and Unarmed: Derrida‟s Specters of Marx,” in Ghostly Demarcations:
A Symposium on Jacques Derrida‟s “Specters of Marx,” ed. Michael Sprinkler (London: Verso, 2008), 71.
99
Jacques Derrida, “Marx and Sons,” in Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida‟s
“Specters of Marx,” ed. Michael Sprinkler (London: Verso, 2008), 244.
100
Ibid., 257.
 261

reality of the process of genesis hidden behind the specter‟s mask.” Such a desire is, in

his estimation, “still metaphysical, because it is ontological.”101

Derrida‟s Proximity to Phenomenology

The Scope of Derrida‟s Proposal

Despite these challenges, however, I still maintain that, properly qualified,

Derrida may be said to advance a phenomenological ontology.102 The first reason for

persisting in this claim is the same reason I have already agreed with Marchart in

describing Laclau‟s proposal as an ontology: Derrida‟s theory of signification, like

Laclau‟s, is not regional in scope but all-encompassing.103 This is true insofar as Derrida

provides an account of objective and subjective constitution, as well as of temporality.

It would be a significant understatement to say that this point has not been

obvious to all of Derrida‟s interpreters. This is due, in large measure, to Derrida‟s

apparent early focus on linguistics, as well as on the themes of “speech” and “writing.”

The overall impression for many has been that Derrida‟s program basically amounts to

101
Ibid., 258.
102
While Derrida‟s distance from phenomenology is often highlighted, a number of significant studies
highlight the complex relationship of Derrida‟s thought with Husserl‟s phenomenology. For two early
examples, see Radolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the philosophy of Reflection
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition,
Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). Interest
in Husserl‟s influence on Derrida‟s thought also seems to have undergone something of a resurgence
recently. For examples of this, see Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Husserl
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002); Tilottama Rajan, Deconstruction and the Remainders
of Phenomenology: Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002);
David Allison, “Husserl,” in Understanding Derrida, ed. Jack Reynolds and Jonathan Roffe (London:
Continuum, 2004); Paola Marrati, Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger, trans.
Simon Sparks (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Joshua Kates, Essential History: Jacques
Derrida and the Development of Deconstruction (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005);
Simon Glendinning, In the Name of Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2007). See also the individual
essays collected in William R. McKenna, ed., Derrida and Phenomenology (Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic, 2009).
103
See Marchart, 147.
 262

the extension of linguistics, a “regional” concern, beyond its confines. One reason I gave

attention to Saussure is that I take this to be a serious misreading of Derrida.

Derrida does not take the model of linguistics advanced by Saussure and apply it

more broadly. On the contrary, one of his main criticisms of Saussure (in addition to that

of assuming the programmability of the play of signification) was that he failed to follow

through on his own aims by focusing on linguistics in the first place. Saussure

envisioned “a science that studies the life of signs within society,” which he proposed to

call “semiology.” Of this proposed science he writes that “since the science does not yet

exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in

advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology.”104 Derrida‟s

central criticism of Saussure is that, despite statements such as these, he in fact subsumed

semiology under linguistics (which is what led to his own illegitimate privileging of the

phonic signifier). As Derrida summarizes this point, “even thought semiology was in fact

more general and more comprehensive than linguistics, it continued to be regulated as if

it were one of the areas of linguistics. The linguistic sign remained exemplary for

semiology, it dominated it as the master-sign and as the generative model…” (emphasis

added).105

The highlighted themes of generality and comprehensiveness are keys to

appreciating the significance of Derrida‟s proposals. Derrida writes that Saussure‟s

undue privileging of linguistics diverted his thought from “its most fruitful paths….”106

What Derrida advances, then, is a kind of semiological model which is not limited in

scope, and which seeks to fulfill the promise of Saussure‟s thought, as does his emphasis

104
Saussure, 16. Also quoted in Derrida, Of Grammatology, 51.
105
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 51.
106
Derrida, Positions, 21.
 263

on the unregulated play of signification. We can again sharpen this point by

reconsidering our earlier discussion of Laclau. Simply stated, the scope of the

semiological, of the play of différance, is as thoroughgoing as what we encountered in

Laclau‟s notion of “discourse.” By way of reminder, Laclau insists that discourse “is

not…an object among other objects…but rather a theoretical horizon,” and goes on to

state that “the discursive is coterminous with the being of objects—the horizon…of the

constitution of the being of every object.”107 My claim is that Derrida‟s proposal is every

bit as expansive.

Thus, for example, Derrida makes clear that différance does not name a regional

category but that, on the contrary, it names “the possibility of conceptuality, of the

conceptual system and process in general.”108 As with Laclau‟s insistence that there is

“no beyond the play of differences,”109 for Derrida we cannot meaningfully speak of

something “beyond” the play of différance. This is the import of Derrida‟s infamous

statement that “there is no outside-text,”110 insofar as “text” is another name for the

“fabric of traces” to which I previously drew our attention. Derrida renders the scope of

his proposal explicit, writing that “every referent, all reality has the structure of a

differential trace…,”111 and states that

The concept of text I propose is limited neither to the graphic, nor to the book, nor
even to discourse, and even less to the semantic, representational, symbolic, ideal,
or ideological sphere. What I call „text‟ implies all the structures called „real,‟

107
Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism,” 86.
108
Derrida, “Différance,” 140.
109
Laclau, Populist Reason, 69.
110
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158, translation modified. French: Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie
(Paris: Les Éditions de Minuet, 1967), 227. This is a preferable translation of the French il n‟y a pas de
hors texte as compared to “there is nothing outside the text.”
111
Jacques Derrida, “Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion,” trans. Samuel Weber, in Limited Inc, ed.
Gerald Graff (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 148.
 264

economic,‟ „historical,‟ socio-institutional, in short: all possible referents.

Another way of recalling once again that „there is nothing outside the text.‟112

Derrida also clarifies the fact that the statement that “there is no outside-text” is

equivalent to the statement that “there is nothing outside context.”113

Far from representing the (mis)application of a regional discipline beyond its

proper confines, then, we find that Derrida‟s proposal is as comprehensive in scope as

Laclau‟s. In line with this, “speech” and “writing,” as Derrida deploys these terms in

these early texts, are best understood as metonymical. “Speech,” phonè, represents the

whole network of privileged ideals of the metaphysics of presence, such as immediacy,

ideality, proximity, simplicity, etc. “Writing,” on the other hand, represents everything

putatively excluded or rendered secondary to these privileged terms.

As Derrida explains it, insofar as “writing” names “the signifier of the signifier,”

which is to say the signifier which is necessary in the absence of the thing itself, then it

becomes a fitting term insofar as “„signifier of the signifier‟ no longer defines accidental

doubling and fallen secondarity.”114 On the contrary, the logic of the trace and of the

endless differing/deferring of différance are such that the signified is always already a

signifier, necessarily pointed beyond itself. Thus, “the secondarity that it seemed

possible to ascribe to writing alone affects all signifieds in general, affects them always

already, the moment they enter the game.”115 All constituted objectivity and temporality

represents, on these terms, “writing.”

112
Ibid. This formulation on Derrida‟s part obviously parallels Laclau‟s own insistence that “discourse”
involves much more than merely the mental.
113
Ibid., 136.
114
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 7.
115
Ibid.
 265

Derrida‟s Phenomenological Approach

The broad scope of Derrida‟s program, then, serves as one basis for my

description of his thought as a phenomenological ontology. A second basis is the overall

phenomenological nature of the approach Derrida employs to investigate these different

issues. I can clarify this point by considering the fact that Derrida‟s statement that “the

thing itself is a sign” demonstrates his distance from phenomenology while at the same

time remaining a paradigmatically phenomenological statement. That is, if Derrida

reaches the conclusion that one never encounters the “things themselves,” he reaches this

conclusion by attending to the things themselves, which is to say that he reaches this

conclusion via a phenomenological methodology. In like measure, his description of

deconstruction as the “experience of the impossible” demonstrates his distance from

Husserl; but it nevertheless remains the case that Derrida, in formulating the issue in

these terms, continues to do with reference to “experience,” continuing to position

deconstruction in some continuous relationship with the very phenomenology he

displaces.

Just as he insists that deconstruction takes place as a certain passage through

philosophy, Derrida makes essentially the same point concerning phenomenology. He

states in an early text, for example, that “a thought of the trace can no more break with a

transcendental phenomenology than be reduced to it.”116 We find here the themes of both

distance and proximity, of deconstruction as a thought which cannot be reduced to

Husserl‟s phenomenology but which, nevertheless, cannot simply break with it and so be

understood without any reference to phenomenology. Significantly, this is a point

116
Ibid., 62.
 266

Derrida made throughout his career. To give just one example, Derrida makes the

following statement in a 2000 interview:

Husserl was not my first love in philosophy, but he left a deep trace on my work.
Nothing I do would be possible without the discipline of phenomenology, without
the practice of eidetic and transcendental reduction, without the attention given to
the meaning of phenomenality, and so on. It is like an exercise that precedes any
reading, any reflection, and any writing. Even if, having reached a certain point, I
think it necessary to ponder questions about the limits of this discipline and its
principles, and the intuitionist “principle of principles” that guides it.117

Derrida‟s very real distance from the phenomenological tradition cannot be understood as

a simple rejection of it.

Eschewing Metaphysical Speculation

Derrida‟s proximity-in-distance to phenomenology is perhaps most clearly

marked insofar as Derrida shares one other resolute conviction of phenomenology: The

desire to avoid metaphysical speculation. We have seen, for example, that the trace is the

disruption of phenomenological constitution, and is therefore no-thing. In formulating

the trace in this manner, Derrida avoids making any speculation as to a “who” or a

“what” of the trace. The very fact that the trace is not formulated as an ontological

positivity attests to the broadly phenomenological nature of Derrida‟s work.

This is the point of, to take one example, Derrida‟s refusal of the form of the

questions “who differs” or “what differs” with regard to the differing and deferral of

différance.118 As he states the issue,

if we accepted the form of the question in its own sense and syntax (“What?,”
“What is?,” “Who is?”), we would have to admit that différance is derived,
supervenient, controlled, and ordered from the starting point of a being-present,
one capable of being something, a force, a state, or power in the world, to which
we could give all kinds of names: a what, or being-present as a subject, a

117
Derrida, “Others are Secret,” 143.
118
Cf. Derrida, “Différance,” 145.
 267

who….In none of these cases would such a being-present be „constituted‟ by this

différance.119

This quote exemplifies Derrida‟s insistence that there is ultimately no center to the

structure of signification. What he rejects is, again, the metaphysics of presence, but he

does so as a result of the recognition of the phenomenality of present presence as

constituted effect. The kind of metaphysical ontologizing Derrida resists is precisely that

which would envision the trace as ontological positivity.120

Or again, Derrida acknowledges that one cannot preclude a reading which would

see in the logic of the trace, différance, and so forth, an ontotheological account of a

“supreme Being who remains incommensurate to the being of all that is, which is

nothing, neither present nor absent, and so on.”121 But this is not his response, precisely

because such a reading “is never necessary as such,”122 which is to say that a strictly

phenomenological attention neither requires nor licenses the postulation of a

metaphysically ontological “first cause” to which the logic of the trace would answer.

I retain the title of “phenomenology” as a descriptor of Derrida‟s program for

these reasons (and they could be multiplied). Overall, it seems fair to say that if Derrida

emphasizes his distance from phenomenology, there is a crucial sense in which he does

so precisely because deconstruction represents a kind of intensification of the central

concerns of phenomenology (e.g., accounting for subjective and objective constitution,

119
Ibid.
120
The trace also does not refer, in Derrida‟s thought, to a metaphysical plenitude. It is worth noting this
point because it is precisely the point at which Ward is critical of Derrida‟s emphasis on the infinite play of
differences. For Ward, this can only produce a “perpetual kenosis” of discourse. What is necessary, on
Ward‟s view, is that the play of signification ultimate be grounded in the eschatology of the metaphysical
plenitude in the form a divine “filling,” or pleroma, of this “empty movement.” To put the issue in
Derrida‟s terms, Ward ultimately insists on the “structurality of structure.” For these points, see Ward,
Christ and Culture, 252ff.,256ff.
121
Jacques Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” trans. Ken Frieden, in Derrida and Negative
Theology, ed. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 79.
122
Ibid., 77.
 268

avoiding metaphysical speculation, attending to “the thing themselves”). I understand

deconstruction as an effort to hold Husserlian phenomenology‟s feet to the fire (so to

speak) and, as such, to carry out its program more rigorously than Husserl did,123 a

position which echoes my point concerning Derrida and Saussure‟s general semiology.

Derrida‟s Hauntology

Recognition of the phenomenological nature of Derrida‟s overall program

virtually forces an acknowledgement of the ontological nature of this program as well.

However, this is true only insofar as we properly qualify what we mean by “ontology” as

in relation to Derrida‟s thought. To make this point, we can once again take Marchart as

a starting point. To recall, he argues that Laclau‟s proposal deserves the nomenclature of

“ontology” (which, by way of reminder, Laclau accepts) because “there is no social

reality outside signification or beyond meaning,” which is to say that the theory amounts

to “a theory of all possible being.”124 Insofar as Derrida proposes an account of the

constituted nature of subjectivity and consciousness, objectivity, and temporality, it

seems fair to say that such a description applies to him as well.

Our discussion to this point should have made it immediately clear, however, that

this must be conceived as a resolutely non-metaphysical ontology (as, again, we have

already seen with regard to Laclau). That is, it is an ontology which cannot constitute the

“being” of subjects, objects, or temporality in terms of “presence.” It is in view of this

that I reaffirm Marchart‟s own application of Derrida‟s notion of “hauntology” as a

123
For an example expressing a similar position, see Alan White, “Of Grammatology: Deconstruction as
Rigorous Phenomenology?” in Derrida and Phenomenology, ed. William R. McKenna (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2009).
124
Marchart, 147.
 269

descriptor of his proposal; Derrida proposes a “hauntology” in the sense of “an ontology

lacking its very object (being-as-ground)….”125

The term “hauntology” is not as frivolous as it may at first sound. The term refers

to Derrida‟s notion of “spectrality,” most definitively developed in Specters of Marx.

Playing on the theme of the “specter” as it appears in Marx, Derrida uses the notion of the

specter to name a kind of non-phenomenality which nevertheless has a phenomenological

force, and is therefore not simply “illusory” or “unreal.” Thus, he writes that “the specter

is a paradoxical incorporation, the becoming-body, a certain phenomenal and carnal form

of the spirit. It becomes, rather, some „thing‟ that remains difficult to name: neither a

soul nor a body, and both one and the other.”126

What is often overlooked in Derrida‟s deconstruction of the present and of

presence is the obvious fact that he never lapses into the absurd position of denying that,

in our everyday sense of the terms, there “are” presents and presences. His point is that,

when we attend to them, we always find them to be constituted effects of non-presence.

The present and presence, then, are “spectral;” they have a kind of embodiment and

“real” phenomenological force, yet lack phenomenological substantiality.127 Derrida

emphasizes spectrality precisely as a means of thinking past or beyond the distinctions

implied by the metaphysics of presence, such as the binary pair presence and absence: “A

traditional scholar does not believe in ghosts—nor in all that could be called virtual space

or spectrality. There has never been a scholar who, as such, does not believe in the sharp

distinction between the real and the unreal, the actual and the inactual, the living and the

125
Ibid., 163.
126
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New
International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), 6.
127
This broadly parallels Laclau‟s discussion of the relative fixity of social forms and identities in the midst
of the infinite play of differences.
 270

non-living, being and non-being…in the opposition between what is present and what is

not….”128 It is because of this that Derrida proposes the term “hauntology” for his

proposal.129

If I therefore describe Derrida‟s proposal as a “hauntology,” it is to name an

account of the temporal and objective “being” which is not governed by the logic of

presence; if, on the other hand, I describe Derrida‟s proposal as an “ontology,” it is with

the substantial proviso that it be understood in this qualified sense, and to avoid the

possible confusion brought about by invoking the neologism “hauntology.”130 In either

case, my ultimate purpose in adopting any such language is to make clear the scope of

Derrida‟s proposal.

Alterity, the Tout Autre, and the Experience of Phenomenological Negativity

One of my primary reasons for demonstrating that Derrida‟s constructive proposal

is fittingly described as a phenomenological ontology has been to prepare the ground for

a consideration of Derrida‟s concept of alterity, paradigmatically figured in the

“wholly/completely/absolutely other” (tout autre).131 An elaboration of Derrida‟s notion

of alterity will both sharpen our overall understanding of Derrida‟s constructive

hauntology and prepare the ground for next chapter‟s discussion of the “religious” nature

of that hauntology.

128
Derrida, Specters, 11.
129
Ibid., 51.
130
As an example of this latter concern, we can note the persistent misreading of the notion of spectrality
by most of the contributors to the symposium on Specters of Marx, who consistently read “spectrality” as
precisely that which is illusory or unreal, thereby missing the exact point Derrida is trying to make with the
adoption of this language. See Derrida‟s comments to this effect, particularly in “Marx and Sons,”244.
131
As I noted in chapter two (p. 75n47), there are multiple ways to translate the French tout autre, which
will be of considerable interest to us later in this chapter. Given the polyvalence of the term, I will
generally leave it untranslated.
 271

The issue of alterity in Derrida is quite complex, and I want to suggest that a

useful way of approaching it is through a consideration of what may be considered its

two aspects: The differential and the referential.132 I want to be clear at the outset of this

discussion, however, that this distinction is largely analytic: The differential and

referential aspects of alterity are, in the actuality of lived experience, inseparable and

mutually constituting. I will return to this point further following my discussion of each

of these aspects individually.

The Tout Autre as Disruptive Phenomenological Negativity:

The Differential Aspect of Alterity

Though I have not yet addressed the issue in these terms, we have already come

across what I am calling the differential aspect of alterity in our discussion of the

signifying trace. Relating this issue more directly to the question of alterity, we will see

that the tout autre, in its differential aspect, is broadly equivalent to the trace. This means

that the tout autre is itself a figure for the negativity of phenomenological disruption. My

reason for beginning with a consideration of the differential aspect of alterity is to

highlight the fact that the tout autre in Derrida‟s thought is not a phenomenological

positivity. Given that “reference,” which we will consider next, is typically reference to

such a positivity, an initial consideration of the differential aspect of alterity will help us

to avoid the mistake of understanding reference in this way with regard to the tout autre.

Our discussion of the referential aspect of alterity will, in other words, involve a

consideration of no-thing as referent.

132
My thanks to John Caputo for suggesting the language of reference with regard to alterity.
 272

The Tout Autre and the Trace

We have already considered the way in which the trace, as no-thing, constitutes a

phenomenological negativity which disrupts phenomenologically constituted presents

and the present. What I now want to highlight is that Derrida‟s notion of the other

(l‟autre) is equivalent to the differential trace. We can begin by reconsidering a passage I

highlighted above.133 Writing in the context of Husserl‟s discussion of the

phenomenology of time-consciousness, Derrida writes that:

As soon as we admit this continuity of the now and the not-now, perception and
nonperception, in the zone of primordiality common to primordial impression and
primordial retention, we admit the other [l‟autre] into the self-identity of the
Augenblick [ the “blink of an eye,” Husserl‟s colloquialism for the immediately
present moment]; nonpresence and nonevidence are admitted into the blink of the
instant.134

We can see that the (retentional and protentional) trace is, in this passage, equivalent with

l‟autre. Similarly, in the context of discussing the process of signification and the play of

traces, Derrida writes that “the „unmotivatedness‟ of the sign requires a synthesis in

which the completely other [tout autre] is announced as such—without any simplicity,

any identity, an resemblance or continuity—within what it is not” (emphasis added).135

The movement of signification, the play of traces, is here taken as equivalent with the

annunciation of the tout autre.

In passages like these, we see the equivalence of the tout autre with the trace,

which is to say that, as with the trace, the tout autre is the no-thing of phenomenological

disruption. Rather than being any sort of phenomenologically constituted positivity, it

“is” that which disrupts full phenomenological constitution. Like the trace, Derrida

133
See p. 247.
134
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 65/ La voix et le phénomène, 73.
135
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 47/ De la grammatologie, 69.
 273

insists that the other (l‟autre) is “nothing that may be given an origin or verifiable,

decidable, presentable, appropriable identity….”136

Levinas, Absolute Past, and Absolute Future

Alterity (in its differential aspect), then, has to do with the disruptive

phenomenological negativity which is the trace. And, importantly, it is precisely as

phenomenological disruption that Derrida borrows Levinas‟ notion of “the trace of the

other” (la trace de l‟autre) as I have already noted.137 What Derrida highlights in this

reference to Levinas is a notion of the trace as phenomenological disruption, insofar as

“the trace of the other” (la trace de l‟autre) is “relationship to the illeity as to the alterity

of a past that never was and can never be lived in the originary or modified form of

presence.”138

In “The Trace of the Other,” the specific essay to which Derrida repeatedly makes

reference, Levinas insists that the disruption of the Same enacted by the face of the Other

(L‟Autrui)139 does not indicate that the other comes from another “world,” a world behind

or beyond our ordinary world, but that, on the contrary, “the beyond is precisely beyond

the „world,‟ that is, beyond every disclosure….”140 “The other” (l‟Autrui) then,

“proceeds from the absolutely absent,” and this “absolute absence” constitutes the

136
Jacques Derrida, “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy,” trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in
Derrida and Negative Theology, ed. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1992), 66. French: Jacques Derrida, “D‟un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie,”
in Les fins de l‟homme: à partir du travail de Jacques derrida, ed. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc
Nancy (Paris: Éditions galilée, 1981), 477.
137
See 239n6.
138
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 70.
139
Levinas writes that “the phenomenon which is the apparition of the other (d‟Autrui) is also a face;” see
Emmanuel Levinas, “The Trace of the Other,” trans. A. Lingis, in Deconstruction in Context, ed. Mark C.
Taylor (Chicago: The University f Chicago Press, 1986), 351. French: Emmanuel Levinas, “La trace de
l‟autre” Tidjschrift voor Philosophie (September 1963), 613.
140
Levinas, “Trace of the Other,” 354.
 274

“trace”: “The beyond from which a face comes signifies as a trace. A face is the trace of

the utterly bygone, utterly passed absent…” (emphasis added).141 Thus, “the

signifyingness of a trace places us in a lateral relationship, unconvertible into rightness

(something inconceivable in the order of disclosure and being), answering to an

irreversible past” (emphases added).142 What Derrida therefore draws from Levinas is a

notion of the trace as that which disrupts phenomenological constitution (“being” in

Levinas‟s formulation), but which does so precisely insofar as it is no-thing in itself.

This is what renders it “inconceivable in the order of disclosure and being.” As Levinas

puts it, “a trace in the strict sense disturbs the order of the world” (emphasis added),143

which is to say, in the terms we have been using, the order of a constituted complex.

What we find in works such as Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena, and

“Différance” is the emphasis on the absolute past and the disruption of consciousness

brought about by this irretrievable past, which is precisely what we have seen in our

discussion of the retentional trace. The trace, then, “is” no-thing but the disruption of

phenomenologically constituted order.

This point remains to be developed further: In what sense, precisely, is that past

“absolute”? The retentional trace which constitutes the present indicates, for Derrida, an

“always-already-there that no reactivation of the origin could fully master and awaken to

presence.”144 Its nature as “always-already-there” is the basis of its being “absolute.” It

is the “absolute” nature of this past that marks it definitively as a trace, which is to say as

an effect of the movement of différance. Derrida clearly states the crux of the issue: “If

141
Ibid., 355/ “La trace de l‟autre,” 618.
142
Levinas, “The Trace of the Other,” 355.
143
Ibid., 357.
144
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 66.
 275

the trace refers to an absolute past, it is because it obliges us to think a past that can no

longer be understood in the form of a modified presence, as present-past” (emphasis

added).145 If the past “traced” in the constitution of the present were itself present-able, it

would not be an ineffaceable trace, which is to say that it would no longer be the trace at

all;146 rather, it would become one more constituted phenomenological positivity.

By way of contrast, the past, as “present-past” or past in the “ordinary” sense of

the term, is always a constituted effect of the interweaving of protentional and retentional

traces. There is, then, no possibility of reaching back to some sort of arche, to a primal

sort of Ur-past; indeed, any such arche would be possible only if differential play were

systematic, rather than “infinite.” The presence of every past is “always already” an

effect of retentional traces (and as such we have seen that it is an “effect” without

“cause”). Insofar as we speak of these traces, then, we speak of an “absolute past” which

is, like the trace, no-thing, precisely because it cannot be rendered present. This is why

the tout autre which is “announced…within what it is not” is announced “without any

simplicity, any identity, any resemblance or continuity….”147

Derrida‟s tout autre, in the figure as the absolute past, is a phenomenological

negativity both in the sense that it is no-thing and that it, in Levinas‟s terms, “disturbs the

order of the world.” The same considerations apply for protentional traces as retentional

traces: The tout autre also refers to the absolute future. Thus, the future traced in the

constituted present is also nothing present-able. For this reason, Derrida insists that “the

concepts of present, past, and future, everything in the concepts of time and history

which implies evidence of them—the metaphysical concept of time in general [i.e. time

145
Ibid..
146
See page 256.
147
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 47/ De la grammatologie, 69.
 276

as the now-point]—cannot adequately describe the structure of the trace.”148 To reiterate

once again, the tout autre as absolute past and absolute future has no positive

phenomenality. Rather, it gains, as I have said, a phenomenologically positive force

through the disruption of the constituted present.149 In its differential aspect, then,

Derrida‟s concept of alterity, figured paradigmatically in the tout autre, has to do with the

disruption brought about by phenomenological negativity, as evident in the logic of the

trace.

The Tout Autre as the Site of Phenomenological Disruption:

The Referential Aspect of Alterity

To this point I have been considering Derrida‟s tout autre in its relation to the

signifying trace, which I have described as the differential aspect of Derrida‟s concept of

alterity. While I take this aspect of Derrida‟s notion to be of vital importance, however, it

is incomplete on its own. Taken by itself, a differential understanding of alterity gives

the impression that alterity is simply difference as such or, in the phenomenological terms

of our discussion, that it is phenomenological disruption as such. However, this is a

perspective that Derrida explicitly rejects as incoherent. As Derrida takes pains to

demonstrate, phenomenological disruption, to be experienced at all, must take the form of

a disruption of a determinate phenomenological horizon. This means that alterity must

include a referential aspect, by which I mean a determinate site of phenomenological

disruption. Stated in terms from the previous two chapters, phenomenological disruption

is always experienced as the disruption of a sedimented normative complex, which is to

148
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 67.
149
While my primary focus to this point has been on the phenomenological disruption brought about by the
tout autre, this disruption is also the condition of possibility for the emergence of new social forms, etc., a
point to which I will give more attention later in this chapter.
 277

say, of a relatively stable phenomenological configuration. If this were not the case, it

would be impossible to differentiate one experience of disruption from another. It is

because of this that Derrida‟s concept of alterity necessarily includes a referential aspect.

What I am calling the referential aspect of Derrida‟s concept of alterity owes most

directly to Husserl‟s notion of the alter ego,150 and again highlights his proximity to

phenomenology (as we will see below). Tilottama Rajan notes that “the French reading

of Husserl parallels that of Hegel in focusing not on his ends but on the tools and means

to those ends by which his text reads itself against the grain,”151 and Derrida‟s reading of

Husserl concerning the alter ego is no exception to this general rule. Thus, he states in an

interview that what draws him to Husserl‟s formulation of the phenomenology of the

alter ego is that it represents “a break within phenomenology, with the principle of

phenomenology.”152

What, then, is the break that Derrida finds in Husserl‟s notion? He describes it as

follows:

I think it is still a very profound lesson that Husserl taught us, and even Levinas.
In the fifth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl insists that there is no pure intuition of
the other as such; that is, I have no originary access to the alter-ego as such. I
should go…through an analogy of appresentation. So the fact that there is no
pure phenomenon, or phenomenality, of the other or alter-ego as such is
something which I think is irrefutable.153

150
Derrida also points out that his initial interest in Levinas has to do with the latter‟s radicalization of this
Husserlian notion; see Jacques Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other,” in Debates in Continental
Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers, ed. and trans. Richard Kearney (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2004), 140.
151
Tilottama Rajan, Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology: Sartre, Derrida, Foucault,
Baudrillard (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 101.
152
He also attributes Levinas‟s interest in Husserl to this same “break” fracturing Husserl‟s phenomenology
from within; see Jacques Derrida, “Hospitality, Justice, and Responsibility: A Dialogue with Jacques
Derrida,” in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark
Dooley (London: Routledge, 1999), 101.
153
Ibid. As Derrida indicates, what he has in view is Husserl‟s discussion from the fifth of his Cartesian
Meditations. In particular, he highlights the discussion from §§49-51, where Husserl defines the “other
ego” (das Andere Ich) as the “first other” (das erste Fremde) or the first “non-Ego” (das erste Nicht-Ich)
 278

Importantly, Derrida immediately goes on to state that this “doesn‟t mean that we

subscribe to the whole context of Husserl‟s statement.”154 That is, to reiterate Rajan‟s

point, Derrida does not simply accept the “ends” of Husserl‟s own phenomenological

considerations of the alter ego.

The Necessity of Horizon and Reference

These points are well illustrated in one of Derrida‟s early essays, “Violence and

Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas.”155 The aspect of this

essay which interests us at present is Derrida‟s rejection of the notion that alterity can be

understood as difference as such, apart from any horizon of phenomenological

constitution, a point he develops in distinction from Levinas. On Levinas‟s formulation,

“the infinitely-other (l‟infiniment autre) cannot be bound by a concept, cannot be thought

on the basis of a horizon, for a horizon is always a horizon of the same…” (emphasis

added).156 On this account, any horizon “amortizes” alterity “as soon as it is announced

precisely because it has let itself be foreseen.”157 Thus, “the other (l‟autre) is the other

(l‟autre) only if his alterity is absolutely (absolument) irreducible, that is, infinitely

(§49), in the sense that, unlike other objects, the alter ego can never be fully given in our experience:
“Properly speaking, neither the other Ego himself (das andere Ich selbst), nor his subjective processes or
his appearances themselves, nor anything else belonging to his own essence, becomes given in our
experience originally” (§50). See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: In Introduction to
Phenomenology, trans. Dorian Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). German: Edmund
Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1950).
154
Derrida, “Hospitality, Justice, Responsibility,” 101.
155
Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics.” This essay is significant for a number of reasons, including: Its
early date (1964); Derrida‟s sustained treatment of Levinas‟s thought; and the fact that it represents, to a
large extent, an essential defense of Husserl‟s phenomenological philosophy against the reading proposed
by Levinas.
156
Ibid., 95. French: Jacque Derrida, “Violence et métaphysique. Essai sur la pensée d‟Emmanuel
Levinas,” in L‟écriture et la différence (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), 141.
157
Ibid.
 279

(infiniment) irreducible; and the infinitely Other (l‟infiniment-Autre) can only be Infinity

(l‟Infini)” (emphasis added).158

Derrida contests this notion of alterity as positive infinity, precisely on the

grounds that such refusal of horizon would preclude any encounter or reference to the

other. As Derrida puts it,

The infinitely other (l‟infiniment autre), the infinity of the other (l‟infinité de
l‟Autre), is not the Other (l‟Autre) as a positive infinity (infinité positive), as God,
or as a resemblance with God. The infinitely Other (l‟infiniment autre) would not
be what it is, other (autre), if it was a positive infinity (infinité positive)….The
positive Infinity (l‟Infini positif) (God)—if these words are meaningful—cannot
be infinitely Other (infiniment Autre) (emphasis added).159

This is true insofar as “if one thinks, as Levinas does, that positive Infinity tolerates, or

even requires, infinite alterity, then one must renounce all language, and first of all the

words infinite [infini] and other [autre].”160 Derrida‟s point, putting in the framework I

have adopted here, is that “difference as such” (i.e., infinite alterity) is not a conceivable

notion, because difference is always difference from. Without the referential, horizonal,

component of alterity, it becomes impossible to comprehend or speak of (i.e., to refer to)

alterity at all.

Thus, in contrast to Levinas (and in defense of Husserl‟s phenomenology on this

point), Derrida writes that “without the phenomenon of the other as other (l‟autre comme

autre) no respect would be possible.”161 That is, if alterity does not have a referent, there

can be no experience of the other (I will have more to say on the nature of this experience

as Derrida conceives it); and without a phenomenological horizon and a constituted state

of affairs, there can be no referent. Hence, Derrida argues that “the phenomenon of

158
Ibid., 104/ Ibid., 154.
159
Ibid., 114, translation modified / Ibid., 168.
160
Ibid./ Ibid.
161
Ibid., 121/ Ibid., 178.
 280

respect supposes the respect of phenomenality.”162 The thrust of Derrida‟s argument, for

my purposes, is that, even if alterity is understood in terms of phenomenological

disruption, this disruption is never experienced (indeed could not even be experienced) in

the abstract. Rather, there must be a determinate site of such disruption, which means

that such disruption is always the disruption of a determinate phenomenological

configuration. I will continue to maintain that the tout autre, in Derrida‟s thought

remains definitively unforeseeable and, in an important sense, nonphenomenal. But this

unforeseeability and nonphenomenality is not a result of the “positive infinity” or pure

difference of alterity.

Singularity and the Extension of Alterity: Tout Autre est Tout Autre

With this aspect of the referential aspect of alterity in view, I have now to relate

two apparently contradictory demands: To articulate the notion of a phenomenological

referent, on the one hand, which remains no-thing, on the other. The specific question

which imposes itself is this: How can the tout autre be understood as a referent and still

as no-thing? I want to approach this question here through a consideration of Derrida‟s

deceptively enigmatic formulation tout autre est tout autre.163 What this formulation

highlights is the point at which Derrida‟s affirmative appropriation of Husserl‟s

phenomenology of the alter ego remains a reading of Husserl against himself. Derrida

162
Ibid. Derrida‟s defense of Husserl, and contrast with Levinas, is pronounced on this point: “Husserl
gives himself the right to speak of the infinitely other [l‟infiniment autre] as such, accounting for the origin
and the legitimacy of his language. He describes the phenomenal system of nonphenomenality. Levinas in
fact speaks of the infinitely other [l‟infiniment autre], but by refusing to acknowledge an intentional
modification of the ego—which would be a violent and totalitarian act for him—he deprives himself of the
very foundation and possibility of his own language” (125/183).
163
For reasons to which I will attend presently, this apparently tautological French phrase would most
commonly be rendered along the lines of “every other is totally other” in English. However, there are
multiple possible English interpretations of the phrase, a fact which will be of decisive importance in what
follows. I will therefore ordinarily leave the phrase untranslated in this text.
 281

writes that the value of Husserl‟s insistence on the irreducibly non-originary experience

of the alter ego lies in the fact that it “betrays the principle of phenomenology [i.e., „to the

thing themselves‟]” and that it can be recontextualized.164 This recontextualization has to

do with Derrida‟s extension of the alterity Husserl reserves for the alter ego to all

constituted phenomena. As Leonard Lawlor notes, for Derrida “the indefinite iterability

of any sense structure necessarily implies the possibility of alterity, of non-presence, of

non-intuition.”165 That is, Derrida argues that the ultimately irreducible non-

phenomenality of the alter ego is a mark of all possible phenomena, with the result that

all phenomena become singularities.

As the quotation from Lawlor in the previous paragraph hints, the key for

understanding why alterity is irreducible in all constituted phenomena, and therefore

cannot be limited to the alter ego, has to do with “iterability” (a term which I introduced

in a different context in chapter one).166 Iterability names Derrida‟s concept of non-

identical repetition, and it is the irreducible possibility of repetition as non-identical

which extends singular alterity to every phenomenon.167 Non-identical repetition is itself

an effect of the infinite play of differences we have already discussed.168

This is clear if we recall that the identity of any element within a semiological

field is an effect of the other elements within that field and that, as such, the totality of the

identities within that field could only be ultimately fixed if the limits of that field were

164
Derrida, “Hospitality, Justice, Responsibility,” 101. In this regard, Derrida writes, in “Violence and
Metaphysics,” that “it seems incontestable to us that the themes of nonpresence (temporalization and
alterity) contradict that which makes phenomenology a metaphysics of presence, working it ceaselessly,
and we emphasize this elsewhere” (121).
165
Lawlor, 4.
166
See p. 54n223.
167
As in chapter one, I simply do not have the space to adequately develop Derrida‟s concept of iterability
here. For primary and secondary sources, see chapter one, p. 54n223.
168
See above, pages 252-253.
 282

themselves fixed. In other words, the stability of identity requires the “structurality of

structure.” We have seen, however, that both Derrida and Laclau highlight that this

structurality never holds. The result of this is that a repetition of “the same” element in

signifying fields that have varied in any way means that element will not be “identical” to

its occurrences in previous signifying chains. Because the context, both diachronic and

synchronic, of an element‟s repetition is never “saturated,” to use Derrida‟s term,169

repetition of “the same” element can never in principle be rendered identical.170

Stating the issue in phenomenological terms, the horizon of constitution of

phenomenological objects is such that “the same” object can never be guaranteed to be

“identical” with itself, insofar as it is always, in principle, possible for it to be repeated

differently. This means that, in an important sense, any and every phenomenological

object is tout autre (totally other). This is what Derrida captures with the phrase tout

autre est tout autre, which he develops in numerous contexts,171 and which is intended to

communicate the “radical heterology”172 implicit in any other. The phrase plays off of

the two senses of the French tout, which in turn brings about two senses of the French

autre. On the one hand, tout is an indefinite pronominal adjective, meaning “someone”

(quelque), “any” (quelconque), “any other one” (un quelconque autre).173 On the other

169
Cf. Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, in Limited
Inc, ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 3.
170
I would argue that this describes essentially the same process which, in Laclau‟s formulation, allows
signifiers to be “emptied” of their contents.
171
For occurrences and discussion of the phrase, see “Faith and Knowledge,” 70; Gift of Death, 68ff., 82ff.;
Specters, 173; “Force of Law: The „Mystical Foundation of Authority‟,” trans. Mary Quaintance, in Acts of
Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2001), 293; Jacque Derrida, “Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum),”
in On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood et. al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995),
74ff.
172
Derrida, Gift of Death, 83.
173
Derrida, Gift of Death, 82, translation modified. French: Jacques Derrida, Donner la mort (Paris:
Galilée, 1999), 115.
 283

hand, tout is an adverb of quantity, meaning “totally” (totalement), “absolutely”

(absolument), “radically” (radicalement), “infinitely other” (infiniment autre).174

Given this dual semantic range of tout, Derrida notes that “if the first tout is an

indefinite pronominal adjective, then the first autre becomes a noun and the second, in all

probability, an adjective or attribute.”175 In this case, possible renderings of the phrase

would include “every other [as a nominative] is totally other [attributive adjective].” If

the two instances of tout are reversed, then it could be rendered as something like the

following: “Total otherness [tout is best rendered adverbially in English] is every other

[nominal].” Relating our phenomenological reading of Derrida‟s tout autre to these two

broad renderings of tout autre est tout autre, we find that absolute or radical alterity (an

“expanded” translation of tout autre where tout is an attributive adjective) “is” every

other, where “other,” as a nominative, provisionally includes every possible referent.

Likewise, every/each/any other (tout autre as nominative) is absolute or radical alterity.

This means that the tout autre is tout autre precisely because it is absolutely singular.176

And, once again, I want to emphasize the scope of “every other” (tout autre): “These

singularities represent others, a wholly other form of alterity: one other or some other

persons, but also places, animals, languages” (emphasis added).177

174
Ibid./ Ibid., 115.
175
Derrida, Gift of Death, 82-83.
176
The linkage of singularity and the tout autre is pervasive in Derrida‟s writings. For some representative
examples, many of which we have already encountered earlier in quotations, see the following: Derrida,
“As if it Were Possible;” Gift of Death, 68; 91; “Force of Law,” 254; Specters, 28; “The Deconstruction of
Actuality,” in Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971-2001, ed. and trans. (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2002), 93; “Psyche: Invention of the Other,” trans. Catherine Porter, in Psyche:
Inventions of the Other, Volume 1, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2007), 5.
177
Derrida, Gift of Death, 71.
 284

Reference and the Tout Autre as No-Thing

Ordinary or mundane experiences are “ordinary” or “mundane” precisely because

they conform to a given horizon of expectation. We might say that the context in which

they occur is stable enough that their repetition as “the same” event seems to constitute

them as “identical,” which is to say as regular or predictable; they can easily be assigned

their proper place within the totality of our ordinary, day to day experience. Stated in the

terms from the previous two chapters, this is just to reiterate the point that the greater part

of our social existence takes place within constituted normative complexes which have

sedimented to the point that they are marked by a high degree of stability or relative

fixity.

It nevertheless remains the case that, as we have seen, such experiential regularity

is a constituted effect of an infinite play of differential traces. This means that every

seemingly foreseeable, anticipated, mundane, pre-programmed experience, everything

which fits comfortably within the sedimented normative complexes we inhabit, has the

destabilizing potential to disrupt the horizons of expectation against which it takes shape.

This is why Derrida insists that “every time something happens, even in the most banal,

everyday experience, there is something of an event and of singular unforeseeability

about it….”178 This is obviously not to say that in fact every ordinary occurrence will

radically disrupt a particular constituted order or institution; if this were the case, there

178
Jacques Derrida, “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides—A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida,” in
Philosophy in a Time of Terror, ed. Giovanna Borradori (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003),
91.
 285

would be no regularity of experience whatsoever.179 But it does highlight an irreducible

possibility inherent to tout autre (every other).

This brings me to my reason for insisting that, even if we must refer to the tout

autre (the referential aspect of alterity), it nevertheless remains the case that the tout

autre is no-thing (the differential aspect of alterity). Given that even the most seemingly

ordinary occurrences are the same as non-identical, we could say that singularity

contaminates particularity. The more the non-identity of a repeatable occurrence, object,

person, practice, etc. predominates over the sameness of that occurrence, object, person,

practice, etc., the greater the degree to which it is experienced as singular rather than as

the same. This is true until a point is reached at which it is experienced as only singular,

which is to say only as phenomenological disruption, and no longer as “the same” at all.

Given the singularity of each/every/any other (tout autre), therefore, any

seemingly ordinary (“ordinary” in the sense of “fitting in” to a constituted totality)

person, object, etc. has the potential to become the site of phenomenological disruption,

calling into question the normative complex in which they find their place. This

language is important: I say “site” of such a disruption, rather than simply “becomes such

a disruption,” because as totally/radically/completely other (tout autre), the singularity

has lost its status as simple phenomenological positivity, insofar as is not longer has a

“place” within the constituted totality which it disrupts. It therefore becomes

experienceable not as “what it is,” but as something traumatic and disruptive as such,

179
Laclau and Mouffe make essentially the same point, in a more semiological register, when they insist
that “the impossibility of an ultimate fixity of meaning implies that there have to be partial fixations—
otherwise, the very flow of differences would be impossible. Even in order to differ, to subvert meaning,
there has to be a meaning.” See Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 112; see also chapter three, pp. 138-139.
 286

precisely because it is no-thing identifiable within the totality.180 We find, then, that

every other (tout autre), no matter how banal or foreseeable, is potentially the site of

radical alterity or total otherness (tout autre).

Summary: The Tout Autre and the Co-Implication of Difference and Reference

I noted at the outset of this discussion that the distinction between the differential

and referential aspects of alterity, while useful to bringing into view the textures of

Derrida‟s theory, is ultimately artificial. While this artificiality has already come into

view in passing, I want to now take a few moments to note the co-implication of these

two aspects of alterity.

This co-implication is clear when Derrida writes that “there is no presence before

the semiological effect” (emphasis added).181 That is, without the differential spacing, the

play of traces, effective in signification, there would be no referent at all. This is the

same basic point as when he writes that “every referent, all reality has the structure of a

differential trace…” (emphasis added).182 If there can be no experience of

phenomenological disruption without a determinate site of such disruption, a horizon

against which it occurs, etc. (the referential aspect of alterity), there can be no such

determinate site without the differential play of traces (the differential aspect of alterity).

An emphasis on difference as such is, as Derrida argues, incoherent, while an emphasis

on the part of reference alone constitutes the referent as phenomenological positivity; the

differential and referential aspects are both crucial for an understanding of Derrida‟s

concept of alterity.

180
The impossibility of assigning a place to the tout autre does not, however, diminish the necessity of
doing so. I will address this issue in my discussion of nomination in the next chapter.
181
Derrida, “Différance,” 141.
182
Derrida, “Afterword,” 148.
 287

Alterity as Phenomenological Disruption: A Consistent Theme

Martin Hägglund notes that Derrida is often understood to have taken a

“religious” or “ethical” turn in his work in the 1980s or 1990s and beyond, and that this

turn is often traces to the increasing influence of Levinas and Levinas‟s notion of “the

other” on his own thought.183 My discussion of Derrida‟s notion of alterity to this point

should make it clear that I do not endorse this thesis. Indeed, the foregoing discussion

illustrates, first, that Derrida‟s concern with alterity dates back to his early published

works and, second, that he makes reference to Levinas in relation to alterity from the

beginning of his considerations of alterity.184

Derrida also denies in numerous instances that his thought undertook any such

“turn.” To take just one example from one of his later works, he insists that “there never

was in the 1980s or 1990s, as has sometimes been claimed, a political turn or ethical turn

in „deconstruction,‟ at least not as I experience it.”185 He goes on to elaborate on this

point, making it clear what he is and is not claiming in this statement:

183
Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2008), 76. Hägglund‟s book will be of concern to us further along in our discussion, and so some further
comment is required. While Hägglund‟s reading and interpretation of Derrida is, for the most part,
excellent, his development of Derrida‟s thought is too often carried out via very reductive and polemical
readings of other Derrida scholars, such as Critchley, Laclau, and Caputo. These readings are such that his
valid points concerning Derrida‟s thought are too often overstated, presenting Derrida‟s positions in starker
contrast to other thinkers than is warranted. As we will have occasion to note more fully in the next
chapter, this is particularly pronounced with regard to his account of Derrida‟s relation to religion.
184
This is not to say that I understand Derrida‟s notion of alterity as simply equivalent with that of Levinas;
I do not. I will address this issue more directly in the next chapter.
185
Derrida, Rogues, 39. In another, earlier, statement, Derrida writes that “I am more aware of the
continuity than of what has been called abroad the „political turn‟ or the „ethical turn‟ of deconstruction”
(“Others are Secret,” 153). Likewise, in another late essay he insists that “what I am putting forward here
is not the outline of some „ethical turn,‟ as it has been described…” (“As if it Were Possible, 89). A similar
sentiment is given voice when Derrida addresses the “systematicity” of his thought as involving “a sort of
consequence, coherence, and insistence—a certain gathering together...” in his work, and a certain
“recurrence of motifs and references from one text to another in my work, despite the differing occasions
and pretexts—a recurrence that, having reached a certain age, I find rather striking” (Jacques Derrida, “„I
Have a Taste for the Secret‟,” in Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, ed.
Giacomo Donis and David Webb, trans. Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 3.
 288

That is not to say, indeed quite the contrary, that nothing new happens between,
say, 1965 and 1990. But what happens remains without relation or resemblance
to what the figure that I continue to privilege here might lead one to imagine, that
is, the figure of a “turn,” of a Kehre or turning. If a “turning” turns by “veering”
round a curve or by forcing one, like wind in one‟s sails, to “veer” or change tack,
then the trope of turning turns poorly or turns bad, turns into the wrong image.186

I would not argue that Derrida‟s thought does not develop throughout the course of his

career, that he does not directly thematize topics such as religion, ethics, and the political

more directly in his later than earlier works, or that the idiom in which he expresses his

thought does not develop, at times significantly. I would argue, however, that these later

developments in Derrida‟s thought, as he indicates, do not represent a significant

departure from his thought as expressed in his earlier texts.

Specifically, my claim is that Derrida‟s concept of alterity, understood in terms of

the hauntological structure of phenomenological negativity, pervades his body of work,

early and late. This overall consistency is what I now want to consider; this consideration

will also help to further flesh out the nuances of the outline of alterity provided to this

point. Just as I gave primary attention to the diachronic aspect of Derrida‟s theory of

signification, I will give primary attention to the diachronic aspect of alterity in Derrida‟s

later work. My reason for doing so is that the essential continuity of Derrida‟s later work

with his earlier work is most easily demonstrated through a consideration of this aspect of

his thought.

One of the reasons people have postulated a “turn” in Derrida‟s later work is that,

generally speaking, a significant change in terminology occurs: For example, he is less

likely to speak in terms of différance, the trace, writing, text, etc. in his later work

(though these terms do not disappear) and more likely to speak in terms of concepts like

186
Derrida, Rogues, 39.
 289

the event, the arrivant, the to-come, justice, the messianic, hospitality, etc.187 On closer

inspection, however, we find that these terms all name the disruption of the

phenomenological present by the phenomenological negativity of the tout autre as

absolute futurity. This will make it clear that not only does the tout autre appear in

Derrida‟s earliest major published texts (as we have already seen), but the logic of the

tout autre as disruptive phenomenological negativity remains consistent throughout the

body of his work.

The relation of futurity and alterity is well stated in a statement from Specters of

Marx:

The relation of deconstruction…to what must…be rendered to the singularity of

the other [l‟autre], to his or her absolute precedence or to his or her absolute
previousness, to the heterogeneity of a pre-, which, to be sure, means what comes
before me, before any present, thus before any past present, but also, for that very
reason, comes from the future or as future: as the very coming of the event
(emphases added).188

The equivalence of alterity with futurity is clearly demonstrated in this passage,189 and is

reinforced when, a few pages later, Derrida simply identifies “the future,” understood as

absolute future, with “the other.”190 I emphasize this point to draw attention to the fact

that to speak of the absolute future, in whatever idiom, is to speak of the tout autre.

187
I will address the first three of these terms in this chapter; I will address the latter three in the discussion
of Derrida‟s relation to religion in the next chapter.
188
Derrida, Specters, 28. French: Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx: L‟État de la dette, le travail du deuil
et la nouvelle Internationale (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1993), 56.
189
It should be clear, from both this quotation and our previous discussion of the phenomenological
constitution of temporality, that alterity relates as much to the absolute past as to the absolute future. This
is particularly true with regard to the concept of the messianic (considered primarily in the next chapter).
Having said this, however, it is clear that Derrida gives pride of place to the notion of absolute futurity in
his work.
190
Derrida, Specters, 35.
 290

The Event

One of the concepts which plays a significant role in Derrida‟s later work is that

of “the event.” A consideration of this pervasive theme is useful insofar as it clearly

brings together the themes of alterity and absolute futurity, and also demonstrates the

overall continuity marking the chronological range of Derrida‟s thought. In a telling

formulation which links the tout autre, the event, futurity and différance, Derrida states

that

“At the same time” that différance marks a relation (a “férance”)—a relation to
what is other [Autre], to what differs in the sense of alterity, thus a relation to
alterity, to the singularity of the other [l‟autre]—it also relates, precisely because
of this, to what comes, to what arrives in a way that is both inappropriable,
unexpected, and thus urgent, unanticipatable: precipitation itself….The event, the
singularity of the event—this is what différance is about….Différance is a
thinking that tries to respond to the immanence of what comes or will come, to the
event, and therefore to experience itself.191

My primary point here is to note the continuity of one of Derrida‟s defining early themes

(différance) with a defining later them (the event), and to note that both are related to the

notion of futurity (to “what comes or will come”).

The futurity which defines and determines the event as event is the absolute

futurity of the trace and the tout autre more generally. The event is event only as

“singularity,” and only insofar as “its very singularity will produce the coming or the

coming about of something new.”192 The event is therefore an “invention,” a kind of

breaking-in or “advent” defined by novelty, and constitutively linked to the future: “In

every case and through all the semantic displacements of the word „invention,‟ this latter

remains the „coming,‟ the venire, the event of a novelty that must surprise, because at the

191
Derrida, “Deconstruction of Actuality,” 93. French: Jacques Derrida, “La déconstruction de l‟actualité,”
Passages 57 (September-October 1993), 64.
192
Derrida, “Psyche,” 5.
 291

moment when it comes about, there could be no status, no status, ready and waiting to

reduce it to the same” (emphasis added).193 The tout autre is again figured as no-thing,

that is, as having no place within a constituted normative complex. The event, precisely

as the “invention of the other” (invention de l‟autre) (the title of the essay from which I

draw these examples),194 has to do with a futurity which is novel and surprising because it

is unforeseeable.

The unforeseeability of the event is not only what defines the event for Derrida,

but it is also what connects the event to the structure of the absolute future. Speaking in

an interview concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Derrida states that “a major event

should be so unforeseeable and irruptive that it disturbs even the horizon of the concept

or essence on the basis of which we believe we recognize an event as such.”195 The

continuity of this language with the language of phenomenological negativity I have

previously highlighted is clear. The reference to the event‟s “disturbing” of any

phenomenological horizon of expectation illustrates both that it is no-thing but the site of

the disruption of a phenomenologically constituted complex.

Futurity and the notion of the arrivant also enter in at this point, insofar as the

unforeseeability and the phenomenological disruption of the event are related to what

comes/happens [arriver]:196

The undergoing of the event, that which in the undergoing or in the ordeal at once
opens itself up to and resists experience, is, it seems to me, a certain

193
Ibid., 24. It is worth noting the echoes of Levinas in the language of an event which cannot be reduced
to the same.
194
Derrida, “Psyche.” French, Jacques Derrida, “Psyché, Invention de l‟autre,” in Psyché: Inventions de
l‟autre (Paris: Galileé, 1987).
195
Derrida, “Autoimmunity,” 90.
196
One of the terms for the notion of “what comes” is the French arrivant, meaning that which arrives or
happens (cf. Jacques Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event,” Critical Inquiry 33,
no. 2 (Winter 2007), 451). Peggy Kamuf makes the point that the arrivant is “the one who or that which
arrives, or simply the arriving” (emphasis added) (see Specters, 181n4).
 292

unappropriability of what comes or happens. The event is what comes and, in

coming, comes to surprise me, to surprise and suspend comprehension: the event
is first of all that which I do not first of all comprehend. Better, the event is first
of all that I do not comprehend. It consists in that, that I do not comprehend: that
which I do not comprehend and first of all that I do not comprehend, the fact that I
do not comprehend: my incomprehension.197

The event is that which comes, hence the reference to futurity, but insofar as it is that

which defies all comprehension or appropriation, it is a kind of absolute futurity. We

once again encounter the disruptive logic of the tout autre, and the force of this is

captured when Derrida writes that “any event worthy of this name…has within it

something that is traumatizing [echoing a point I made above]. An event always inflicts a

wound in the everyday course of history, in the ordinary repetition and anticipation of all

experience” (emphasis added).198

The disruption of the “everyday course of history,” of “ordinary repetition,” of

ordinary “anticipation,” is nothing other than the sedimented normative complexes

outlined in the previous section. The phenomenologically absolute nature of this futurity

fundamentally relates the event to a certain non-knowledge, not in the sense of a lack of

knowledge which could be remedied, but in the sense of “something that is not the same

nature as knowing,”199 which is to say something which “is” no-thing.

A future which could be appropriated or known, which could be comprehended,

would be a future-present, which is precisely what the event is not. Derrida writes, for

example, that

the event, if there is such a thing, is not the actualization of a possibility, a

straightforward putting into action, a realization, an effectuation, the teleological
accomplishment of a capacity, the process of a dynamic dependent on „conditions
of possibility.‟ The event has nothing to do with history, if what we mean by

197
Derrida, “Autoimmunity,” 90.
198
Ibid., 96.
199
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 448.
 293

history is teleological process. It must in a certain way break off that type of
history” (emphasis added).200

“History,” in this formulation, refers to the future-present, that is to a future which will be

rendered present at another time, and can therefore be plotted from the past and through

the present. This is a future which can be known, appropriated, and assimilated. The

event, as the unforeseeable and that which exceeds knowledge, therefore refers to an

absolute future, to a future which can never be present (for all the reasons we have

already considered). The event, then, accords to the logic of the trace: It is no-thing,

precisely in the sense that it is a disruption of the phenomenologically constituted, and

not “something,” or perhaps more properly sometime, which could rendered phenomenal

or simply incorporated into an existing normative complex.

Absolute Futurity and the “To-Come”

The absolute and unforeseeable nature of the future Derrida envisions can be

brought out through a consideration of two more closely related terms Derrida employs:

The “to-come” and the messianic.201 In a useful sort of introductory statement, Derrida

writes that

What I mean by “messianicity” is the general structure of our relation to what is

coming. Usually we call this the future. This is an ambiguous name because, if
by “future” one understands a modality of the present, the present of tomorrow,
then we would find again some reduction to the living present that I would like to
avoid. So that‟s why I say “to come” rather than the future.202

On the next page Derrida continues, highlighting the theme of unforeseeability, when he

writes that “the messianic is a general structure in which the „to come‟ is absolutely

200
Derrida, “As if it Were Possible,” 91.
201
I will address Derrida‟s concept of the messianic in greater detail in the next chapter.
202
Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars, ed. Paul Patton and Terry Smith
(Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 67.
 294

undetermined, absolutely undetermined, and of course I cannot close, I cannot

circumscribe this relation to the „to come.‟”203 The first thing to note in this formulation,

which is a distillation of similar statements in other contexts, is Derrida‟s play on the

French avenir, or “future.” But when Derrida contrasts our ordinary concept of the future

with the “to come,” he is invoking the French à-venir, consisting of the preposition à (to)

and the verb venir (to come). The future then becomes the “to come,” which names the

absolute future, the future of the event and the tout autre.

The Impossible

I noted previously that Derrida‟s articulation of his program in terms of

experience marks one point of his proximity to phenomenology.204 But I also noted that

he defines deconstruction as the “experience of the impossible,”205 a formulation which

now requires the additional attention I promised above.206 Derrida insists that “the

impossible” as he conceives it is not simply the opposite of “the possible,” but rather

requires an effort at rethinking the concept of possibility as it has been produced and

reproduced in dominant strands of Western philosophical thought.207 To speak in terms

of the impossible is not claim that nothing ever happens. Rather, the “experience” of the

impossible” is nothing other than the experience of the impossibility of the full

constitution of phenomenologically present presence due the disruption

phenomenologically constituted complexes.

203
Ibid., 68.
204
See above p. 265.
205
Derrida, On the Name, 43.
206
See p. 259n96.
207
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 445.
 295

Derrida‟s concern is “the impossible, and the impossible as that which comes

about [arrive].”208 We can see that this formulation links “the impossible” to the

equivalent terms we have been considering (the event, arrivant, to-come, tout autre).

Derrida explicitly links the impossible to the event (which means that the impossible

linked to these other equivalent terms as well):

When the impossible makes itself possible, the event takes place (possibility of the
impossible). That, indisputably, is the paradoxical form of the event: if an event
is only possible, in the classic sense of this word, if it fits in with conditions of
possibility, if it only makes explicit, unveils, reveals, or accomplishes that which
was already possible, then it is no longer an event. For an event to take place, for
it to be possible, it has to be, as event, as invention, the coming of the
impossible.209

“The impossible” is clearly related to the event and its equivalents, and therefore names

the phenomenological structure of the absolute future we have been discussing.

Stated in phenomenological terms, then, the event (or the tout autre) is

“impossible” in the same sense that it is “unforeseeable”: It disrupts phenomenological

horizons of expectation and phenomenologically constituted totalities, and therefore has

no “place” within such totalities. It can only be “experienced” as impossible, which is to

say, because it is not a phenomenological positivity (i.e., it is no-thing),210 as the

disruption of a phenomenologically constituted complex.211 The theme of

phenomenological disruption is stated more clearly elsewhere:

208
Derrida, “Others are Secret,” 137.
209
Derrida “As if it Were Possible,” 90.
210
This also relates to another point I have emphasized in relating Derrida‟s thought to phenomenology.
For Derrida, to define “the impossible,” “the event,” the tout autre, etc. in terms of a phenomenological
positivity would be to fall back into metaphysical speculation, which is to say we would postulate
“something” beyond the experienceable phenomenal while denying, simultaneously, that that “something”
has a positive phenomenality. We have already seen that his refusal of such speculation is part of what
marks his work as phenomenological.
211
I can perhaps clarify this position by noting that we are suggesting that the event in Derrida is essentially
the opposite of the “saturated phenomenon” proposed by Jean-Luc Marion. In the latter case
phenomenological totalities are disrupted by a kind of phenomenological positivity of such intensity that
 296

If the structure of the field [i.e., of a sedimented normative complex] makes an

invention possible…then this invention is not an invention. Precisely because it‟s
possible. It merely develops and unfolds a possibility, a potentiality that is already
present and therefore it is not an event. For there to be an invention event, the
invention must appear impossible. What was not possible becomes possible. In
other words, the only invention possible is the invention of the impossible. This
statement may seem to be a game, a mere rhetorical contradiction. In fact, I
believe it is an irreducible necessity. If there is invention—and maybe there never
is…but if there is invention, it‟s possible only on the condition of being
impossible. The event‟s eventfulness depends on this experience of the
impossible. What comes to pass, as an event, can only come to pass if it‟s
impossible. If it‟s possible, if it‟s foreseeable, then it doesn‟t come to pass.212

The event is impossible insofar as it is that which radically disrupts a constituted

phenomenological field. If it could be foreseen, anticipated, adequately prepared for, it

would, of necessity, already belong to the phenomenological field in question; this is

what “possibility” means in Derrida‟s thought. This is also why, as with the trace, there

can be no “event as such”; such is the import of Derrida‟s oblique statement that “maybe

there never is” an event.213

Summary

Examples of the notion of alterity in Derrida‟s later work could be multiplied (and

will be to some extent in the next chapter). The examples I have considered should be

enough to demonstrate my point concerning the continuity of Derrida‟s thought regarding

the phenomenological structure cannot accommodate it. Here we are suggesting that the event is a kind of
negativity in the sense of representing the disruption of the phenomenologically constituted. For Marion‟s
fullest treatment of the saturated phenomenon, see Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a
Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. For an
abbreviated treatment, see Jean-Luc Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” in Phenomenology and the
“Theological Turn”: The French Debate, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (New York: Fordham University Press,
2000). For a presentation of Derrida and Marion in terms of their divergent “hyperbolizations” of
phenomenology, see John D. Caputo, “The Hyperbolization of Phenomenology: Two Possibilities for
Religion in Recent Continental Philosophy,” in Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, ed. Kevin
Hart (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
212
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 450-451.
213
I will return to this notion of the event as unforeseeable in the next chapter. Specifically, we will
address the other aspect of what is a dual emphasis in Derrida, which is that, despite the fact that the event
as event cannot be anticipated, it is nevertheless necessary to prepare for it. This will be of some relevance
for clarifying the significance of saying that there may never be an event.
 297

alterity, and it is worth reiterating these points in summary fashion. First, the fact that

Derrida retains a notion of alterity as phenomenologically disruptive negativity

throughout the course of his work renders suspect any strong claim of a “turn” in his later

thought.214 Second, and more specifically, Derrida‟s understanding of alterity is an

aspect of his thought which cannot be limited to his later work and attributed the

influence of Levinas. I have tried to show in this chapter that Derrida‟s complex

intellectual relationship with Levinas is evident in his earliest professional writings and

have given an initial indication of the difference between Levinas‟s concept of alterity

and Derrida‟s own; in the next chapter I will further clarify this latter point.

The Phenomenologically Positive Effectivity

of Phenomenological Negativity

We have now seen that Derrida‟s deconstructive program is not merely

“destructive,” but that it represents a constructive outline of a phenomenological

ontology, which I have chosen to call a “hauntology.” We have also seen that this

hauntology revolves around a phenomenological negativity (which I have argued is the

basis of Derrida‟s notion of alterity), “negative” in the sense that it is no-thing other than

the disruption of phenomenologically constituted totalities (Laclau‟s sedimented

normative complexes) as such. Finally, having concluded a brief survey of some of the

formulations of alterity in Derrida‟s later work, we have seen that this phenomenological

schema runs consistently throughout the full range of Derrida‟s literary production,

undercutting the notion that his later thinking is marked by a significant departure from

his earlier thought.215

214
By “strong claim” I mean claims of Heideggerian-style Kehre, as discussed above; see p. 287-288.
215
I will continue to highlight the issue of continuity in the next chapter.
 298

I now have one final issue to address in this chapter. I have stated in passing that

this phenomenological negativity, while not a phenomenality as such, nevertheless takes

on a phenomenologically positive force. The time has come to demonstrate what I mean

by this. I do so by considering two more formulations of absolute futurity in Derrida‟s

thought (justice and the “democracy to come”), and the way that these relate to law and

existing democratic structures as “undeconstructible” to “deconstructible.”

Law and Justice

I noted above Derrida‟s explicit linkage of deconstruction to the event and the

future. What I did not consider at that point was the way in which Derrida also relates

these ideas to that of justice, describing “the relation of deconstruction to justice” as the

relation to the event and the absolute future.216 “Justice,” in other words, becomes

another term of broad equivalence with the event, the to-come, the tout autre, etc.

This equivalence raises a question: Why would Derrida describe the “coming of

the other,” which is to say the phenomenological disruption of constituted normative

complexes, in terms of “justice?” The answer is that the phenomenological disruption of

the constituted present, and of present socio-political institutions, is the condition of

possibility for the development of new, and potentially better, social institutions and

practices. Stated somewhat differently, the possibility of improved normative complexes

lies in calling into question presently constituted complexes. The changes wrought in the

sedimented forms of the social via the disruption of phenomenological negativity are the

positive force taken on by phenomenological negativity.

216
Derrida, Specters, 27-28.
 299

A consideration of Derrida‟s discussion of the relation of law and justice, most

comprehensively elaborated in the well-known essay “Force of Law: The „Mystical

Foundation of Authority‟”217 provides the means for developing this point. The essay

constitutes a sort of provocation on Derrida‟s part, responding to what he sees as the

provocative title itself, which implies “a question that itself takes the form of a suspicion:

Does deconstruction ensure, permit, authorize the possibility of justice?”218 Against the

reasonable expectation that Derrida would propose that all forms of “justice” are

contingent and therefore deconstructible, he instead proposes a distinction between “law”

and “justice,” arguing that the latter is the “undeconstructible” “in the name of which”219

the former is deconstructed.

As Derrida puts it, “the law is essentially deconstructible, whether because it is

founded, that is to say constructed, upon interpretable and transformable textual strata

(and that is the history of law, its possible and necessary transformation, sometimes its

amelioration), or because its ultimate foundation is by definition unfounded.”220 And

this, as Derrida notes, is good news because it is in this that “one may even find…the

political chance of all historical progress.”221 As Derrida puts it in the context of another

lecture, laws “are deconstructible because we change them, we improve them, we want to

improve them, we can improve them,” with the result that “we can improve the law, the

legal system, and to improve means to deconstruct.”222

217
Derrida, “Force of Law.” This essay was presented at a colloquium on “Deconstruction and the
Possibility of Justice,” organized by Drucilla Cornell at the Cardozo Law School in 1989.
218
Ibid., 231.
219
“In the name of” is a common formulation in some of the most important of Derrida‟s later works.
220
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 242.
221
Ibid.
222
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 87.
 300

Justice, on the other hand, “if such a thing exists…is not deconstructible.”223

Derrida sets up a complex formulation of justice as undeconstructible and law as

deconstructible:

1. The deconstructibility of law (for example) makes deconstruction possible.

2. The undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstruction possible, indeed
is inseparable from [se confound avec] it.
3. Consequence: Deconstruction takes place in the interval that separates the
undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of law.
Deconstruction is possible as an experience of the impossible, there where,
even if it does not exist, if it is not present, not yet or never, there is justice [il
y a la justice]. Wherever one can replace, translate, determine the X of justice,
one would have to say: deconstruction is possible, as impossible, to the extent
(there) where there is X (undeconstructible), thus to the extent (there) where
there is (the undeconstructible).224

The deconstruction of law, which is to say the development of new and better structures

of law, has as its condition of possibility an “undeconstructible” justice. Justice is

undeconstructible because “it is in the name of justice that we deconstruct, and you

cannot deconstruct that in the name of which you deconstruct….”225

223
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 243. It is worth noting that Derrida raises the same point concerning the
“existence” of justice we saw in relation to the event, thereby highlighting another equivalence in his
thought. See p. 292 above.
224
Ibid.
225
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 88.
 301

The Democracy to Come

Derrida‟s notion of the “democracy to come”226 involves a similar structure of

thought. For Derrida, democracy is unique because it is, in principle, open to its own

critique. It is for this reason that “the expression „democracy to come‟ takes into account

the absolute and intrinsic historicity of the only system that welcomes in itself, in its very

concept…the right to self-critique and perfectibility,”227 and that “the inherited concept of

democracy is the only one that welcomes the possibility of being contested, of contesting

itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself.”228 While Derrida is well aware

that actual, existing democratic regimes do not adequately embody this ideal, it

nevertheless remains the case that such constitutive self-critique is implied in the concept

of democracy. For Derrida, then, “even in its most cynical mode,” democracy still “lets

resonate within it an invincible promise.”229

“Democracy to come” seeks to capture the resonances of this promise. When one

attempts “to deconstruct a concept [of democracy], [of] all the predicates associated with

226
Among the most significant texts for Derrida‟s discussion of the democracy to come are Derrida,
Politics of Friendship; Specters; and Rogues. In chapter three I noted Bennington‟s statement that Laclau
and Mouffe‟s political theory has been the only one to substantively engage Derrida‟s work (chapter three,
p. 128n29). While it remains the case that Laclau and Mouffe‟s discourse theory of the political remains
the only political theory substantively developed on the basis of Derrida‟s thought, a number of scholars
have given consideration to Derrida‟s political thought, particularly in recent years. For some examples of
this, in addition to Bennington, see: Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political (London: Routledge,
1996); Simon Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, and Contemporary
French Thought (London: Verso, 1999); Noah Horwitz, “Derrida and the Aporia of the Political, or the
Theologico-Political Dimension of Deconstruction,” Research in Phenomenology 32, no. 1 (2002); the
essays included in Martin McQuillan, ed., The Politics of Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Other
of Philosophy (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Vincent B. Leitch, “Late Derrida: The Politics of Sovereignty,”
Critical Inquiry 33, no. 2 (Winter 2007); W. J. T. Mitchell, “Picturing Terror,” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 2
(Winter 2007); Joanna Hodge, “Phenomenology as Democracy to Come,” in Derrida on Time (London:
Routledge, 2007); Michael Naas, “„One Nation…Indivisible?‟: Of Autoimmunity, Democracy, and the
Nation-State,” in Derrida from Now On (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); the essays included
in Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac, eds., Derrida and the Time of the Political (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2009); J. Hillis Miller, “Derrida‟s Politics of Autoimmunity,” in For Derrida (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2009).
227
Derrida, Rogues, 86-87.
228
Derrida, “Autoimmunity,” 121.
229
Ibid., 114.
 302

the massively dominant concept of democracy,”230 this deconstruction, this critique, is

still undertaken “in the name of democracy, of a democracy to come….”231 That is, when

any given democracy is critiqued, it is, for Derrida, the idea of the democracy to come

that “remains…in the deconstructed (or deconstructible) concept of democracy” and

“which guides us endlessly.”232 As with justice in relation to law, the “democracy to

come” is the undeconstructible on the basis of which, “in the name of which,” existing

democratic structures or practices are deconstructed. The promise of democracy is that

which motivates the critique of exiting democratic regimes.

As the phrase “democracy to come” makes evident, we find here another figure of

the absolute future, of the to-come outlined above. In deploying the term, “one is not

necessarily pointing out the future of a democracy that is going to come or that must

come or even a democracy that is in the future,”233 nor does “democracy to come” refer

to “a future democracy that will one day be „present.‟”234 In line with the logic of the to-

come, the locution “democracy to come” does not name a future-present democratic

regime. On the contrary, the “democracy to come” represents an “absolute future” of

democracy, which is to say that it represents the perpetual, structural inadequation of

democracy to itself.235 The notion of “the democracy to come” therefore “suggests the

incompletion and essential delay, the self-inadequation of every present and presentable

democracy, in other words, the interminable adjournment of the present of

230
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 104. The same passage is quoted in Derrida, Rogues, 89.
231
Ibid. The same passage is quoted in Rogues, 89.
232
Ibid. The same passage is quoted in Rogues, 89.
233
Derrida, Rogues, 90.
234
Derrida, “Autoimmunity,” 120.
235
I have intentionally phrased this in such a way as to highlight the convergence of Derrida‟s democracy
to come with the understanding of democracy advanced by Laclau and Mouffe. See chapter four, pp.
178ff., as well as p. 180n21.
 303

democracy.”236 The idea of the democracy to come highlights the impossibility of a

democracy which is adequate to itself.

“Justice” and “democracy to come” therefore serve as yet other equivalent terms

to nominate the phenomenological negativity of the absolute future which has been my

focus. My reason for giving specific attention to these two notions is to highlight the

constructive role that they play in Derrida‟s thought. Without the disruption of

sedimented normative complexes, there would be no possibility for alternative

articulations of the social. The contestation of existing democratic structures in the name

of a “democracy to come” or the contestation of legal structures in the name of “justice”

just is to respond to the experienced inadequation of existing democratic or legal

structures by constituting new structures. Such constitution, the new, living structures

which emerge, are the phenomenologically positive force attained by the

phenomenological negativity of the absolute future, by whatever name it goes.237 This

phenomenological negativity is “undeconstructible” precisely insofar as it is no-thing

constituted to begin with.

Understanding the “Undeconstructible”

I want to take some time to clarify this notion of the “undeconstructible” because

I think it lends itself to misunderstanding. In particular, I think it can be misunderstood

as representing either a return to a sort of “transcendental signified” or, perhaps related,

the notion of a Kantian idea of pure reason. If we understand justice and the democracy
236
Derrida, Rogues, 38. Derrida‟s insistence on the inadequacy of democracy to itself is the point at which
I find him in agreement with Lefort‟s notion of the empty place of power in democracy.
237
Derrida is not naïve on this point. He recognizes, as does Laclau, that while the inadequation of the
social to itself is the condition of possibility for better or more “progressive” social formations, there is
nothing which determines the direction in which the social will be articulated, and so no guarantee that the
novel social forms which emerge will, in fact, be better than those which preceded. These issues will
receive further attention in our discussion of the messianic in the next chapter.
 304

to come in terms of the phenomenological structure we have been considering, we will

see that these terms must be understood in consonance with notions such as the event, the

to-come, the tout autre, and so on. These resonances are not hard to hear: I have already

noted, to give just two examples, that Derrida speaks of justice in a manner that exactly

mirrors the language he deploys in relation to the event (i.e., “if such a thing exists) and

that the “to-come” of democracy echoes the theme of the “to-come” more generally.

Justice, like the democracy to come, also “remains to come.”238

With these considerations in view, let us consider the first possible misreading of

the “undeconstructible.” By way of reminder, the transcendental signified would be that

which would ultimately arrest the play of difference which results from the trace, thereby

establishing the “structurality of structure.” It is in this role that the transcendental

signified would be “undeconstructible;” it would not itself be subject to the play of

differential traces. Taking the example of the law/justice relation, to say that law is

deconstructed “in the name of” justice as transcendental signified would be to say one

had full assurance of the “directionality” of the deconstruction of law. Justice would

serve as the ultimate, assured end of such deconstruction; likewise, the democracy to

come would serve as the assured end toward which existing democratic structures would

be subjected to questioning.

Yet this is precisely what Derrida insists is not the case with the deconstruction of

law undertaken “in the name of” justice. On the contrary, he insists that the question of

justice must be approached “obliquely” because “one cannot speak directly about justice,

thematize or objectivize justice, say „this is just,‟ and even less „I am just,‟ without

238
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 257.
 305

immediately betraying justice, if not law.”239 This is so precisely because “justice”

names a phenomenological negativity which is no-thing. Far from providing assurance

concerning the enactment or “arrival” of justice in juridico-legal institutions, practices,

etc., justice is a phenomenological negativity which disrupts the present, thereby opening

the way for the reformation of laws, but with no assurance or knowledge of what those

reformed laws must be, or even that they might be, more “just.” Exactly parallel

considerations would hold for questions of democracy and the democracy to come.240

Similar considerations hold with regard to the Kantian ideal, which Derrida

addresses most directly in his discussion of the “democracy to come.”241 He identifies

three basic concerns he has with identifying the “undeconstructible” with a Kantian

regulative ideal. The first has to do less with Kant that with appropriations of his

thought, dealing with the fact that “in such cases the regulative Idea remains in the order

of the possible, an ideal possible that is infinitely deferred. It partakes of what would still

fall, at the end of an infinite history, into the realm of the possible….”242 In other words,

the attainment of the democracy to come or of justice in actually existing institutional

structure or practices would, in principle, be possible, given enough time; a “proper”

democracy would be an ideal to be asymptotically approached in empirical

instantiations.243 But such an understanding would reduce or democracy to come to

239
Ibid., 237.
240
As this indicates, Derrida recognizes, as does Laclau, that while the inadequation of the social to itself is
the condition of possibility for better or more “progressive” social formations, there is nothing which
determines the direction in which the social will be articulated, and so no guarantee that the novel social
forms which emerge will, in fact, be better than those which preceded. These issues will receive further
attention toward the end of the next chapter.
241
I briefly addressed this issue in the previous chapter (pp. 224-225).
242
Derrida, Rogues, 83-84.
243
By way of contrast to Derrida‟s view, we have already considered precisely such a view of a Kantian
regulative ideal in the thought of Habermas. See chapter four, pp. 187-189; for the contrast with Derrida,
see 224-225.
 306

possible “present” realities, thereby closing off the true, novel potential opened up by the

disruption of phenomenological negativity. Justice and the democracy to come would no

longer have to do with an absolute future, but with a merely calculable future-present.

As John Caputo states the issue, a regulative ideal “admits of gradual empirical

approximations and constitutes the very essence of essentialism or idealism….”244

Derrida‟s second reservation is similar: “The responsibility of what remains to be

decided or done (in actuality) cannot consist in following, applying, or carrying out a

norm or a rule….The decision then no longer decides anything but is made in advance

and it thus in advance annulled [as decision].”245 Once again, the issue has to do with the

assurance of enacting or embodying justice or democracy, which could be rendered

“present” precisely because they would simply be modifications of the present.

Derrida‟s third reason for resisting this Kantian reading is that, given the

systematicity of Kant‟s thought, one would “have to subscribe to the entire Kantian

architectonic and critique,” which Derrida says he “cannot seriously undertake or even

commit myself to doing….”246

Conclusion

I have sought to give a basic presentation of Derrida‟s phenomenological

ontology, or “hauntology.” In the process of undertaking this presentation, I have tried to

highlight the overall continuity of Derrida‟s early and later work. This emphasis is

244
John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), 129.
245
Derrida, Rogues, 84-85. It is worth noting here that the concept of “decision” to which Derrida appeals
is in all central respects identical to the notion of decision as it is developed in Laclau (indeed, it is Derrida
from whom Laclau develops his own notion of decision). The notion of decision cuts through almost all of
Derrida‟s chronologically later works. For good, condensed discussions of his understanding of decision,
see “Force of Law,” 252-255; On the Name, 15ff., 53ff.; Deconstruction Engaged, 63ff.; “Afterword.” I
will address Derrida‟s understanding of decision in the next chapter.
246
Derrida, Rogues, 85.
 307

important for undertaking the articulation of Derrida‟s hauntology in terms of religion in

the next chapter. One of my central contentions is that Derrida‟s work is not “religious”

in the sense that his later work turned to a consideration of religion which was not present

in his early work. On the contrary, my argument is that Derrida‟s hauntology may

meaningfully be described as “religious” as such, and not in the secondary or derivative

sense of his having explicitly turned to a consideration of religious topics or interests.

My explanation for why I insist that Derrida‟s hauntology may be meaningfully described

as “religious” is the topic of the final chapter.

In this chapter I have also attempted to draw attention to the essential continuity

of Derrida‟s hauntology and Laclau‟s political ontology. This continuity should be borne

in mind as we transition to the final chapter, though I will not address its full significance

until the Conclusion. By way of anticipation, my reason for emphasizing the continuity

of Derrida‟s and Laclau‟s thought is this: If Derrida‟s hauntology is essentially

continuous with Laclau‟s political ontology, and if Derrida‟s hauntology can

meaningfully be described as “religious,” then there is good reason to think that Laclau‟s

political ontology can meaningfully be described as “religious.” This is the aspect I

described as being “latent” in Laclau‟s theory in the conclusion to the previous chapter.
 308

CHAPTER SIX

HAUNTOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS AFFIRMATION

Deconstruction always presupposes affirmation….Deconstruction is, in itself, a

positive response to an alterity which necessarily calls, summons, or motivates it.
Deconstruction is therefore vocation—a response to a call.
--Jacques Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other”

Introduction

In the previous chapter I presented what I have called Derrida‟s hauntology. In

that discussion, I focused heavily on developing Derrida‟s operative notion of alterity, of

the tout autre, in terms of phenomenological negativity, and in demonstrating the

continuity of Derrida‟s earlier and later work with regard to this hauntological structure.

My aim in this chapter is to further advance my consideration of Derrida, picking up

again with the theme of alterity. Specifically, I want to demonstrate why Derrida‟s

phenomenological hauntology might reasonably be described as “religious,” and to turn

briefly to a consideration of the significance of this religious phenomenology for his

thought concerning the political, specifically the democracy to come (introduced in the

previous chapter). I will sharpen our presentation of the specifically religious nature of

Derrida‟s hauntology by demonstrating the difference between Derrida‟s

phenomenological notion of alterity and the distinctly ethical notion of alterity attributed

to Derrida by Critchley. The work of this chapter also prepare the ground for the

Conclusion, where I will bring together the various themes I have developed to this point,

arguing that Laclau‟s program of radical democracy represents a form of religious

affirmation.
 309

Critchley Vis-à-vis Derrida on Alterity

Stated in summary form, my contention is that Derrida‟s understanding of alterity

in terms of phenomenological negativity (as outlined in the previous chapter) differs

fundamentally from Critchley‟s understanding of alterity, which, following Levinas,

takes as its privileged form “the other person.” Precisely because the tout autre names a

structurally unforeseeable phenomenological disruption as such, Derrida‟s other has no

such privileged site and cannot be reduced to the other person (though, if tout autre est

tout autre, it includes the other person). Critchley larges misses this phenomenological

dimension of Derrida‟s thought.

Levinasian Ethics as the Basis of Democratic Politics

I begin with a brief consideration of Critchley‟s development of the relation

between Levinasian ethics and the political. Critchley‟s argument1 is that political action,

and specifically democracy, is motivated by the ethical demand of the other, understood

in a Levinasian sense. According to his account,2 Levinas‟s understanding of “ethics as

first philosophy” has to do with the way in which the ego or subject is called into

question by “the other.” The ego or “I” is that which “reduces the distance between the

Same and the other,” and the other is therefore that which calls the Same into question

insofar as its alterity “escapes the cognitive powers of the knowing subject.” Within this

1
In particular, see Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance
(London: Verso, 2007); Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity. Also of relevance are his essays “Is there a
Normative Deficit?” and “Deconstruction and Pragmatism.”
2
It is important to reiterate that our concern here is not with Levinas or with the correctness of either
Critchley‟s or Derrida‟s interpretation of Levinas. Rather, our concern is with Critchley‟s understanding of
Levinas, or the deployment of Levinas by Critchley, and the correctness or incorrectness of his reading of
Derrida relative to this deployment. For Critchley‟s accounts of Levinas‟s ethical theory, see Simon
Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University
Press, 1999); “Levinas,” in Understanding Derrida, ed. Jack Reynolds and Jonathan Roffe (London:
Continuum, 2004); Ethics—Politics— Subjectivity; Infinitely Demanding; and “Deconstruction and
Pragmatism.”
 310

framework, “ethics…describes the non-totalizable relation with the other, the placing in

question of the ego, or consciousness, by the alterity of the other.” Thus, “the meaning of

ethics is found in the relation that I have with the other and in the unique demand that is

placed upon me by him or her.”

The paradigmatic figure of “the other” in Critchley‟s thought is the other person, a

concept he owes to Levinas. Critchley writes that “ethics for Levinas is defined as the

calling into question of my freedom and spontaneity, that is to say, my subjectivity, by

the other person (autrui)”3 and notes that Levinas‟s notion of “ethics as first philosophy”

takes as its central task “the attempt to describe a relation with the other person that

cannot be reduced to comprehension” (emphasis added).4 Critchley therefore notes that

“autrui [other, other person] is arguably the key term in all of Levinas‟s work and, in line

with common French usage, it is Levinas‟s word for the human other, the other person”

(emphasis added).5 While he has recently described his Levinasianism as somewhat

“heterodox,”6 and while it is clear that he has sought to expand the notion of the other

from the broadly humanistic emphasis of Levinas,7 it nevertheless remains the case that

the paradigmatic “other” in Critchley‟s thought is the other person.8 The privileged site

of the encounter with the other person is “the face.” The experience of the face of the

other, and the demand of the other upon the ego, is, according to Critchley, “also critique;

3
Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” 32.
4
Simon Critchley, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and
Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8.
5
Ibid., 11.
6
Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, 62.
7
As when he refers to “the other—whether human, animal, vegetable, or mineral.” See Critchley, Ethics—
Politics—Subjectivity, 109.
8
This is clear when, to give one example, Critchley insists that “infinite responsibility only arises within
the context of a singular experience; that is, within the empirical event of a concrete speech act, the
performative dimension of the promise” (Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity, 108). It is difficult to
see how an empirical speech act could apply to an animal, mineral, or vegetable, as opposed to a human
person.
 311

it is critical of the liberty, spontaneity, and cognitive emprise of the ego that seeks to

reduce all otherness to itself.”9

For Critchley, the infinite demand placed upon the ego by the experience of the

other is the “meta-political moment” which is the basis of democratization.10 In his view,

then, only democratic societies are properly ethical (which is to say ethical in a

Levinasian sense) insofar as democratic societies are those which most closely attend to

the demand of the other. As Critchley puts it, “the ethical is part and parcel of

democratic societies alone….”11 As a result, he concludes that “I would be inclined to

say that democratic political forms are simply better than non-democratic ones: more

inclusive, more capacious, more just, or whatever.”12 In Critchley‟s view, then,

democracy is the proper form of the social.13

Critchley‟s Identification of Derrida and Levinas

One of Critchley‟s defining scholarly interests has been the elaboration of what he

calls a “homology”14 between Derrida and Levinas with regard to alterity, arguing that

they share essentially the same concept of alterity; he has been successful to the point that

such a reading of Derrida in light of Levinas has become virtually standard.15 In line

with this, he argues that the “Levinasian ethical relation to the other” is “the irreducibly

Levinasian moment in Derrida…,”16 thereby interpreting Derrida‟s notion of alterity in

9
All of these quotations are taken from Critchley, “Levinas,” 127-128.
10
Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, 119.
11
Critchley, “Is there a Normative Deficit?” 121.
12
Ibid.
13
As we saw in chapter four, and despite his signifiant differences from these other thinkers, this aspect of
Critchley‟s thought is consistent with that of Habermas, Hardt, and Negri. On the other hand, it differs
significantly from Laclau, a point which will be revisited later in this chapter.
14
See Critchley, “Levinas” and The Ethics of Deconstruction, 9ff.
15
On this point, see Hägglund, 76.
16
Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity,” 277.
 312

terms of the Levinasian conception of ethics as first philosophy. Critchley marshals the

support of this Levinasian reading of Derrida in opposition to the “normative deficit” he

detects in Laclau‟s political theory (introduced in the previous chapter): “What the theory

[Laclau‟s] of hegemony lacks, and can indeed learn from deconstruction, is the kind of

messianic ethical injunction to infinite responsibility described in Derrida‟s work from

the 1990s” (emphasis added).17

Critchley has good prima facie reason for reading Derrida the way he does.18 He

often quotes the famous 1986 remarks made by Derrida concerning Levinas to the effect

that “faced with a thinking like that of Levinas, I never have an objection. I am ready to

subscribe to everything that he says.”19 In addition, he notes Derrida‟s affirmation of

Levinas‟s definition of “justice” as “the relation to the other.”20 Thus, Derrida writes in

“Force of Law” that “deconstruction is justice,”21 and he states that

I would be tempted, up to a certain point, to bring the concept of justice…closer

to Levinas‟s. I would do so just because of this infinity and because of the
heteronomic relation to the other [autrui], to the face of the other that commands
me, whose infinity I cannot thematize and whose hostage I am.22

Likewise, Critchley takes Derrida‟s affirmation of “hospitality” as the welcome or

affirmation of the other person,23 a reading which seems to find some support when

Derrida defines hospitality (a theme to which I will return later in this chapter) as

17
Critchley, “Is there a Normative Deficit?” 117.
18
One of the significant weaknesses of Hägglund‟s presentation of these issues is that he shortchanges this
aspect of Derrida‟s thought.
19
Quoted in Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity,” 273; The Ethics of Deconstruction, 9ff.; “Levinas,”
129.
20
Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” 34.
21
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 243.
22
Ibid., 250. Derrida also seems clearly to affirm Levinas‟s notion of the ethical understanding of the face
to face relation in “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 443. Likewise, he indicates his proximity to the
Levinasian definition of justice as “the relation to the other” in “Deconstruction of Actuality,” 105.
23
Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity, 274.
 313

allowing “passage to the other, to the totally other [le passage à l‟autre, au tout

autre].”24

Given considerations such as these, Critchley‟s reading of Derrida is

understandable. Additionally, some of his basic statements about the significance of

alterity for Derrida‟s thought are correct, as is his recognition of Derrida‟s acknowledged

debt to Levinas (indeed I also highlighted Derrida‟s intellectual debt to Levinas in the last

chapter). So, for example (again, highlighted in the previous chapter), Critchley is

correct in identifying Derrida‟s thought as motivated by a concern for an alterity which

“cannot be reduced to the Same” and which “escapes the cognitive powers of the

knowing subject,”25 and he correctly recognizes that Derrida‟s thought “seeks a place of

exteriority, alterity, or marginality, that is irreducible to philosophy,”26 particularly if we

understand “philosophy” as “ontophenomenology” or the “metaphysics of presence.”

Nevertheless, despite his insistence that “the work of these two thinkers [Derrida and

Levinas] is not identical,”27 he takes their respective understandings of alterity to be

essentially the same, and it is on this point that he misses decisive points of Derrida‟s

thought, particularly with regard to alterity.

Derrida‟s Distance from Levinas‟s Other

While there is a real and undeniable proximity of Derrida‟s understanding of

alterity to that of Levinas, there is also a greater distance between them than Critchley

24
Derrida, “Sauf le nom,” 80. French: Jacques Derrida, Sauf le nom (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1993), 102.
25
Critchley, “Levinas,” 128.
26
Ibid., 129.
27
Ibid.
 314

allows.28 Derrida‟s statement that he would not contest anything in Levinas is best

understood as hyperbolic, as are his similar statements in other contexts.29 Derrida makes

it clear, in a number of contexts over a long period of time, that his appropriation of

Levinas‟s thought is not simply a repetition but is, in fact, highly qualified.30

In “Force of Law,” written from 1989-1990, on the same page in which Derrida

apparently endorses Levinas‟s notion of justice, cited by Critchley,31 Derrida says he

“cannot be content to borrow a conceptual trait” from Levinas because he “would have

other difficult questions about Levinas‟s difficult discourse” (emphasis added).32 In the

1993 interview “The Deconstruction of Actuality,” Derrida says that his work has “cut

across the legacies of several different traditions,” including “the tradition of Levinas,

when he simply defines the relation to the other as justice,” and that, with regard to these

traditions, his work has been an effort at “displacing them a little.”33 In the 1994 Politics

of Friendship he is critical of Levinas‟s “subsumption” of the alterity of the other under

the concept of friendship.34 In the 1996 “Faith and Knowledge,” he refers in his

28
We might say that if Hägglund fails to recognize the very real proximity of Derrida to Levinas, Critchley
fails to appreciate the distance that necessarily accompanies such proximity.
29
One example of this must be Derrida‟s statement in “Force of Law” that “nothing seems to me less
outdated than the classical emancipatory idea” (258). While Derrida insists, consistently, that “one cannot
attempt to disqualify it today…without forming the worst complicities,” it nevertheless remains the case
that the “classical emancipatory ideal” as propounded by Marx and in subsequent Marxist discourse is what
he also subjected to severe questioning in Specters of Marx. It is perhaps telling with regard to Critchley‟s
reading of Derrida that he misses this hyperbolic aspect of Derrida‟s statement about the “classical ideal” of
emancipation. See Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” 35.
30
We already saw a significant example of this in our discussion of “Violence and Metaphysics” in the
previous chapter. I don‟t give that particular essay further attention here because Critchley accepts the
questions Derrida put to Levinas‟s early work in that essay, and notes that Levinas incorporated them into
his later work”; see Critchley, “Levinas,” 131. But, despite this, Critchley never seems to seriously
consider the possibility that Derrida‟s notion of alterity might still differ fundamentally from Levinas‟s
own.
31
Cf. Critchley, “Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” 34.
32
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 250.
33
Derrida, “Deconstruction of Actuality,” 105.
34
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 305.
 315

discussion of the khora to “an utterly faceless other,”35 an obvious, albeit oblique,

criticism of Levinas‟s privileging of the face as the site of the other. In the portion of

Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas produced in 1996, he highlights a number of concerns with

the role of sexual difference in Levinas‟s thought.36 In his 1997 seminar, published under

the book title The Animal that Therefore I Am, he is critical of Levinas for limiting the

idea of the other to “the other person,” specifically with regard to the animal.37

My point in offering these examples (to which others could be added) is simply to

demonstrate that while Derrida owes an obvious intellectual debt to Levinas, there are

nevertheless significant differences between their respective conceptions of alterity.

Critchley seems to assume that because Derrida “is not simply against Levinas”38 (which

is correct) and that the critical questions he puts to Levinas do not constitute “moments of

an external critique,”39 Derrida essentially adopts Levinas‟s notion of alterity wholesale.

Yet we have already seen that while Derrida relates to neither phenomenology

specifically nor Western philosophy generally as an “external critic,” he obviously does

not endorse Husserl‟s phenomenology or the metaphysics of presence. Likewise, he

relates to Levinas in the same way, which is to say that he works a sort of passage

“through” Levinas which nevertheless marks his own work as significantly different from

that of Levinas.

To relate the demonstration of the previous chapter to our present discussion, we

can see that “the other” in Derrida cannot simply be equated with “the other person.” On

35
Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” 58-59.
36
Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1999), 36-45.
37
Jacques Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 105ff.
38
Critchley, “Levinas,” 131.
39
Ibid., 132.
 316

the contrary, “the other” names a phenomenological negativity which cannot be

predetermined as it is in Critchley (i.e. as the other person). I have also drawn attention

to the relation between alterity and the notion of the absolute future, a notion which is

largely absent from Critchley‟s reading of Derrida.40 While Derrida does indeed credit

Levinas‟s notion of “the trace of the other” as being significant in the development of his

own thinking,41 the discussion of the previous chapter should have made it clear that the

other, in Derrida, is not simply equivalent with “the other person.” It is as

phenomenological negativity, which is no-thing (as developed in the last chapter), that

“the other” in Derrida disrupts the Same, the ego, etc. What Derrida owes to Levinas,

then, is the introduction of a “paradoxical heterogeneity” into phenomenology;42 but this

heterogeneity is not exhausted in “the other person.”43

On Critchley‟s reading of Derrida, the terms I highlighted in the previous chapter

(e.g. différance, the event, the to-come, justice, democracy to come), as well as those to

which I will give more attention in this chapter (e.g. the messianic, hospitality), have to

do with the ethical relation with the other person.44 So, for example, Critchley refers to

40
One near exception to this occurs in Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity, where Critchley highlights diachrony
in Levinas‟s thought in a manner which does touch on some of the central considerations in Derrida‟s own
thought (which, we have seen, he does borrow from Levinas) (cf. 155). Yet the potential
phenomenological import of this diachrony, to which we have given extended attention in the previous
chapter, is undercut by Critchley insofar as he immediately limits this experience of diachrony to “the
everyday event of my responsibility for another” (155, emphasis added), making clear the privileged
reading of “the other” as “the other person.”
41
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 70. See page 239 of the previous chapter.
42
Derrida, Adieu, 51. More properly, we could say that both Derrida and Levinas are indebted at this point
to Husserl‟s reflections on the alter ego.
43
This is not to say that there is no relation between Derrida‟s tout autre and the other person. Reflecting
on the discussion of the previous chapter it is clear that the other person can be the site of
phenomenological disruption and, as such, is clearly included in the formulation tout autre est tout autre.
In the numerous instances in which Derrida does speak of the other in personal terms, at times even using
Levinas‟s preferred l‟autrui [the other person] to his own more common l‟autre [the other], we should
understand that the other person is tout autre as the site of phenomenological disruption.
44
For basically the same point, see Hägglund, 101-102.
 317

“the injunction of différance,”45 he defines the democracy to come as “an ethical demand

or injunction,”46 justice is said to involve an ethical injunction for the other person while

the messianic has to do with the injunction to await the coming of the other person,47 and

hospitality refers to the welcome offered to the other person.48 My argument, in contrast,

is that these notions are best understood as naming the disruption of constituted

normative complexes, rather than as a function of something anterior to themselves, such

as the “face of the other.”

While it is true that Critchley, working from his Levinasian perspective, certainly

understands “ethics” to involve a fundamental experience of phenomenological

disruption, this disruption is brought about only, or at least paradigmatically, as an effect

of the face-to-face encounter with the other person as theorized by Levinas. Rather than

being a function of alterity, as in Critchley, I argue that concepts such as the messianic

and hospitality refer, in Derrida‟s thought, to alterity as such, as outlined in the previous

chapter. In a related point, we can see that différance and the terms related to it do not

name an ethical injunction, as Critchley supposes, but, a structure of phenomenological

experience.49 The scope of Derrida‟s tout autre, particularly as it is highlighted in the

phrase tout autre est tout autre, exceeds the notion of “the other person.” We can see this

in his insistence that the formulation leads to what he describes as an “absolute

formalization” with regard to alterity: “Each thing, each being, you, me, the other, each

X, each name, and each name of God can become the example of other substitutable X‟s.

45
Critchley, Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity, 154.
46
Ibid., 280-281.
47
Ibid., 151ff.
48
Ibid., 275.
49
I will revisit the question of ethics in relation to Derrida‟s concept of alterity later in this chapter.
 318

A process of absolute formalization. Tout autre est tout autre.”50 The “formalization” in

question here has to do with the impossibility of anticipating which “other,” in the

ordinary sense of the term, will become the site of phenomenological disruption, when

such disruption will occur, etc.51 The tout autre is (potentially) any or every singularity,

and is therefore broader than “the other person.” The “absolute formalization” of which

Derrida speaks is such that there can be no a priori privileged site of phenomenological

negativity such as the other person.

Religion and the Bottomless Collapse

Of Phenomenological Negativity

It should now be clear that Critchley advances a much narrower concept of

alterity than does Derrida. We can now see that alterity in Derrida‟s thought should not

be defined as an ethical obligation to the other person brought about by the face-to-face

encounter.52 If alterity should not be understood in terms of ethics, how should it be

understood? I will spend the remainder of this chapter addressing this question and

considering its relation to the political, elaborating the sense in which Derrida‟s concept

of alterity may be said to relate to religion.

Playing on Derrida‟s own language, the phenomenological structure we have been

examining constitutes a kind of “bottomless collapse” about which it is both impossible

50
Derrida, On the Name, 76. The final sentence is translated into English as “any other is totally other,”
but we have chosen to leave it untranslated in view of the issues and complexities we have been
highlighting. We will also attend to Derrida‟s consideration of the name “God” in relation to alterity
shortly.
51
It is important to note that an emphasis on “formalism” is not equivalent to an emphasis on abstraction.
On the contrary, this structure of “absolute formalism” is uncovered through attention to the particularity of
every specific phenomenological disruption.
52
Though the ethical is not unrelated to the religious as I shall elaborate later in this chapter.
 319

and necessary to speak.53 The phenomenological structure I have outlined to this point

therefore has to do with the unspeakable about which we are nevertheless obliged to

speak and in the face of which we are obliged to act. It is for this reason that I argue that

alterity, understood in terms of the phenomenological disruption brought about by the

phenomenological negativity of the tout autre, may meaningfully be described as

“religious.”

Derrida on Religion: A Pervasive Theme

Any discussion of why I choose to describe Derrida‟s hauntology as “religious”

must begin with a consideration of the relation of Derrida‟s body of work as a whole to

religion. As with ethics and politics, it is common to encounter descriptions of Derrida‟s

later work having been marked by a “religious turn,” which is not unrelated to his

supposed adoption of a Levinasian ethical conception.54 Given my discussion to this

point, it will come as no surprise that I do not find this notion of a “religious turn”

compelling.55

While I have not yet dealt with the concepts in Derrida‟s later work which

purportedly demonstrate this “turn” (though I mentions the notion of messianicity in the

53
By way of anticipation, it is important to note the parallel between this formulation and Laclau‟s
discussion of universality as both impossible and necessary.
54
For one example of this perspective, see Bruce Ellis Benson, Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and
Marion on Modern Idolatry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002).
55
It is again worth noting both the proximity and the distance of my position with that elaborated by
Hägglund. While I agree with Hägglund in rejecting the notion of a “religious turn” in Derrida, my
position is that Derrida‟s thought has always been intimately engaged with questions of religion, and that
one of the crucial effects of his thought is to disrupt the boundary between religion and non-religion, as
well as, even more centrally, that between theism and atheism. This is one point at which Hägglund‟s
reading of Derrida is utterly un-deconstructive: His entire reading depends upon the maintenance of this
dividing line between theism and atheism, and he completely misses the fact that Derrida‟s driving
fascination, stated explicitly on numerous occasions, is to call the firmness of this boundary into question.
This misreading on Hägglund‟s part is what licenses the brutal interpretive violence he enacts on those who
seek to articulate the religious aspects of Derrida‟s thought, most notably John Caputo (see in particular
Chapter 4 of Radical Atheism).
 320

previous chapter), what I want to highlight here is the fact that Derrida‟s work, early and

late, has been irreducibly implicated with questions of religion. My point is that it is a

mistake to understand Derrida‟s concern with religion to be limited to texts such as “How

to Avoid Speaking,” “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy,” Sauf le

Nom, or “Faith and Knowledge,” to name a few. The mistake lies in the resulting

impression both that the relevance of his thought for questions of religion is limited to

texts such as these, and that such texts are only relevant to questions of religious studies

or theology. In contrast, my position is that questions of religion pervade Derrida‟s texts,

and that his thought on religion cannot be conveniently limited to a particular “canon

within the canon” of his works.56

56
I want to be clear on this point: As with the discussion of alterity in the previous chapter, I am arguing
that religion does not mark a Kehre in Derrida‟s later thought, sharply contrasting it with his earlier
thought. I am not denying, however, that Derrida does consider religion more explicitly, directly, and
thematically in a number of his later works (which is also true of ethics and politics). In this regard,
Derrida is implicated in, and indeed has been a primary player with regard to, the so-called “return of
religion” within Continental philosophy. The literature concerning the relation of Derrida‟s thought to
religion, both primary and secondary is legion, and certainly far from unified in its evaluation of Derrida‟s
relation to religion. For a discussion of the “return of religion” as it relates to Continental philosophy, see
Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
and John D. Caputo, “Introduction: Who Comes after the God of Metaphysics?” in The Religious, ed. John
D. Caputo (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). For a good treatment of this issue in the specific context of France,
see Peter Jonkers, “God in France. Heidegger‟s Legacy,” in God in France: Eight Contemporary French
Thinkers on God, ed. Peter Jonkers and Ruud Welten (Leuven: Peeters, 2005).
Some notable early treatments of Derrida‟s thought as it relates to religion took their point of
departure from what I described in the previous chapter as the destructive or critical moment in Derrida‟s
thought: See particularly Thomas J. J. Altizer, Charles Winquist, and Carl Raschke, Deconstruction and
Theology (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982) and Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern
A/Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984). No one has done as much to highlight the
religious aspects and resonances of Derrida‟s thought, particularly in its more constructive aspect, as
Caputo: See John D. Caputo, “A Commentary: Deconstruction in a Nutshell,” in Deconstruction in a
Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed. John D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1996), particularly ch. 6; The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997); On Religion (London: Routledge, 2001); The Weakness
of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). In addition, see
Caputo‟s co-authored introductions and other contributions to the three volumes based upon a the series of
conferences he organized at Villanova University: John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., God, the
Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999); John D. Caputo, Mark
Dooley, and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., Questioning God (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001);
John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., Augustine and Postmodernism: “Confessions” and
“Circumfession” (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005). Other notable treatments which
focus upon or make extensive use of Derrida include: Ward, Barth, Derrida, and the Language of
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Briefly, then, I want to highlight the significance of questions of religion for

Derrida‟s overall intellectual program, as outlined in the previous chapter. I begin with a

provocative statement in one of Derrida‟s early published texts: “The age of the sign is

essentially theological.”57 The “classical semiology” targeted by Derrida retrieves a

Christian theological paradigm, specifically the division between the sensible and the

intelligible, with the privileging of the latter.58 Derrida describes the “hidden sediments”

which cling to this theological heritage:

The semiological or, more specifically, linguistic “science” cannot therefore hold
to the difference between the signifier and the signified—the very idea of the
sign—without the difference between sensible and intelligible, certainly, but also
not without retaining, more profoundly and more implicitly, and by the same
token the reference to a signified able to “take place” in its intelligibility, before
its “fall,” before any expulsion into the exteriority of the sensible here below.59

Theology; Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2000); relevant chapters of Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology:
Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001); Richard Kearney,
The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001);
Hugh Rayment-Pickard, Impossible God: Derrida‟s Theology (Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing,
2003); the contributing essays to the Villanova texts, as well as those in Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart,
eds., Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments (London: Routledge, 2004); Rico Sneller, “God as War.
Derrida on Divine Violence,” in God in France: Eight Contemporary French Thinkers on God, ed. Peter
Jonkers and Ruud Welten (Leuven: Peeters, 2005); Dawne McCance, Derrida on Religion: Thinker of
Differance (London: Equinox, 2009); Steven Shakespeare, Derrida and Theology (London: T & T Clark,
2009).
For some of his most pertinent reflections on religion and religious themes, in addition to the texts
I have already cited, see Derrida‟s contributions and responses in the three Villanova texts; Jacques
Derrida, Circumfession, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993);
“The Villanova Roundtable: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida,” in Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A
Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed. John D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996); the
collection of essays in Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2001);
Jacques Derrida et. al., “Epoché and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Derrida and Religion:
Other Testaments, ed. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (London: Routledge, 2004).
57
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 14.
58
Ibid., 13.
59
Ibid. Derrida also cites Roman Jakobson‟s own description of Saussurian linguistics to make this point.
In this regard Jakobson writes that “the medieval definition of sign…has been resurrected and put forward
as still valid and productive. Thus the constitutive mark of any sign in general and of any linguistic sign in
particular is its twofold character: every linguistic unit is bipartite and involves both aspects—one sensible
and the other intelligible, or in other words, both the signans “signifier” (Saussure‟s signifiant) and the
signatum “signified” (signifié). These two constituents of a linguistic sign (and of sign in general)
necessarily suppose and require each other.” See Roman Jakobsen, “The Phonemic and Grammatical
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Derrida makes this same point in Speech and Phenomena when he notes that the

theological nature of the distinction between the signifier and the signified in Saussure

finds its analog in the theological motif of body and soul: “The opposition between body

and soul is not only at the center of this doctrine of signification, it is confirmed by

it….”60

It is the privilege of intelligibility which determinatively marks the sign as

theological: “As the face of pure intelligibility, it refers to an absolute logos to which it is

immediately united. This absolute logos was an infinite creative subjectivity in medieval

theology: the intelligible face of the sign remains turned toward the word and the face of

God.”61 The original logos which marked the transcendental telos and arche of the

intelligible was the divine. The “secularization” of this idea to the point where the logos

is no longer the divine does nothing to disrupt this essentially theological orientation: A

common structure is simply displaced to a different level (e.g. infinite to finite logos).62

As Derrida points out in a note, the theological orientation of this notion of signification

is unaffected even in the most avowedly atheistic discourses.63

This classical semiology “inherently leaves open the possibility of thinking a

concept signified in and of itself, a concept simply present for thought, independent of a

relationship to language, that is, of a relationship to a system of signifiers.”64 This

semiology is irreducibly theological, then, insofar as it implies the transcendental

signified of the governing logos, the center which would guarantee the “structurality of

Aspects of Language in their Interrelations,” in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of

Linguistics (Paris, 1949), 6. Cited in Derrida, Of Grammatology, 13.
60
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 35.
61
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 13.
62
Ibid., 15.
63
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 323n3.
64
Jacques Derrida, Positions, 19.
 323

structure,” the exemplar of which is what is called “God.” Again, this theological

residuum remains even if we do not speak in terms of God. Indeed, we can say that the

transcendental signified is defined, in theological terms, by a simplicity and an inherent

apathy which have marked the historically dominant Western theological presentations of

God. Like God, the transcendental signified is undivided with relation to itself, and

remains unaffected by any relation to the world.

Insofar as Derrida‟s entire project consists of calling this conceptuality into

question by attending to phenomenological disruption, it constitutes a deconstruction of

the dominant religious conceptions of Western thought. If the age of the sign is

essentially theological, then to call a classical semiology into question is to call this

theology in question. While much more could be said concerning these issues, my point

is simply that Derrida‟s work has been integrally related to questions of religion from the

very start. Significantly, this calling into question of the governing theo-logic of Western

thought is never repudiated in Derrida‟s later thought. While he undoubtedly addresses

religious concerns differently in his later works, it would constitute a fundamental

misreading to understand Derrida as having somehow come to affirm what he calls into

question in his early work.

Religion‟s Basic Insight

My fundamental contention is that the overall phenomenological structure Derrida

is at pains to elaborate may be meaningfully described as “religious,” and that this is

consistent with his early work. We can illustrate the reason for describing the structure of

the tout autre as religious by considering the thought of one of Derrida‟s erstwhile critics,

the Slovenian theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek. In a recent exchange with the
 324

theologian John Milbank,65 Žižek proposes a “materialist theology” and, in the process of

doing so, advances a concept of religion consistent with the phenomenological structure

we have been considering (though Žižek‟s own proposal is decidedly metaphysical).

Žižek advances a form of materialism according to which “the material” is not

understood as “fully ontologically constituted, „really existing out there‟…,” but, rather,

as ontologically incomplete.66 For Žižek, this understanding of materiality links religion

to materiality; in his view, “a truly logical materialism” accepts “the basic insight of

religion,” namely that “our commonsense reality is not the true one,” but with the

rejection of the notion that “there must be another, „higher,‟ suprasensible reality.”67

With some modification, this is an exceptionally fitting description for Derrida‟s

own thought. If we substitute “phenomenology” for what Žižek has to say about

“materialism,” my point is clear. Derrida‟s thought as I have presented it captures

precisely the emphasis that constituted phenomenological totalities are not the “true”

reality (i.e. full constitution is irremediably disrupted). He therefore shares Žižek‟s

rejection of the “commonsense” view of the world, according to which full constitution

could be attained or according to which the experience of phenomenological disruption

would be presented as a departure from an origin or a deviation from a path toward a

telos of full constitution.68 Yet, at the same time, he follows Žižek in his refusal to

postulate any “higher” reality in place of the phenomenologically constituted, because (in

Derrida‟s case) any such postulation would involve crossing over into the speculative

65
For more on Milbank, see chapter two, p. 65n5.
66
Slavoj Žižek, “Dialectical Clarity Versus the Misty Conceit of Paradox,” in The Monstrosity of Christ:
Paradox or Dialectic? Ed. Creston Davis (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009), 240.
67
Ibid.
68
A telling example of this aspect of Derrida‟s thought is given when he derides “all the imbeciles, until the
end of time, who never believe anything, of course, because they are so sure that they see what is seen,
everything that is seen, only what is seen.” See Derrida, Specters, 150.
 325

terrain of metaphysics (yet another point which demonstrated Derrida‟s proximity to

phenomenology).69 This is what I intend by referring to this phenomenological structure

as a “bottomless collapse;” there is no ultimate anchor point which arrests the

inadequation of phenomenological constitution.

Derrida‟s Messianic

These considerations bring me to one of the most significant concepts in Derrida‟s

later work: The messianic.70 I noted that Derrida‟s concept of the messianic is often

understood as an indication of a “religious turn” in his later work, and I also noted

Critchley‟s understanding of the messianic as stemming from a Levinasian ethical

orientation marking Derrida‟s work. One of my reasons for devoting attention to the

central role of religion in Derrida‟s work as a whole, as well as the overarching

phenomenal hauntology which orients Derrida‟s work as a whole, has been to contest this

understanding of the messianic.

A careful consideration of the messianic reveals that this notion is continuous

with the structure of alterity as we have considered it to this point. Derrida describes the
69
I discussed this aspect of Derrida‟s thought in the previous chapter. We encounter one of Žižek‟s basic
misreadings of Derrida on this point. Žižek finds in Derrida a failure to carry his project all the way
through, and detects in this a departure from the notion of différance in his early work. Žižek summarizes
Derrida‟s notion of the messianic as follows: “In a kind of inverted phenomenological epoche, Derrida
reduces Otherness to the „to-come‟ of a pure potentiality, thoroughly deontologizing it, bracketing its
positive content, so that all that remains is the specter of a promise; and what if the next step is to drop this
minimal specter of Otherness itself, so that all that remains is the rupture, the gap as such, which prevents
entities from attaining their self identity?” He continues on the net page: “I am tempted to suggest a return
to the earlier Derrida of différance: what if…Derrida‟s turn to „postsecular‟ messianism is not a necessary
outcome of his initial „deconstructionist‟ impetus? What is clear here is that, first, Žižek understands
Derrida‟s notion of alterity in broadly substantival terms, and that, second, he finds in this emphasis a
departure from Derrida‟s earlier work. In contrast, we have demonstrated that Derrida‟s notion of alterity
represents an example of precisely what Žižek seeks: An account of alterity as the failure of
phenomenological constitution. This reading obviously addresses Žižek‟s second point: The messianic
structure in Derrida is no different from his early work on notions such as difference, the trace, etc. For the
Žižek quotations, see Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 140, 141.
70
I referenced this concept more or less in passing in the previous chapter (pp. 293-294) promising to
return to it here.
 326

messianic is a “universal structure,”71 as “the general structure of our relation to what is

coming” (emphasis added),72 and describes it as the “nickname” for the “pure and purely

necessary form of the future as such.”73 The messianic is therefore another name for the

phenomenological structure of alterity as absolute futurity, by whatever name it may go

(e.g., the tout autre, the event, the arrivant).74 Far from representing a religious or ethical

“turn” in Derrida‟s later thought, then, we find that the messianic once again names the

phenomenological structure which is, as we have seen, Derrida‟s consistent focus. This

structure of experience is universal insofar as “as soon as you address the other, as soon

as you are open to the future, as soon as you have a temporal experience of waiting for

the future, of waiting for someone to come: that is the opening of experience.”75 We can

properly say that the messianic has to do with “the coming of the other,” as long as this

other is understood in the phenomenological terms I have advanced, and is not reduced

only to the other person. The messianic has to do with an “experience” as the

“experience of the impossible” detailed in the previous chapter.76 The disruption of

phenomenological negativity represents “the coming of the other” as radically

71
Derrida, Specters, 167.
72
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 67.
73
Derrida, Specters, 73.
74
Just as I noted in the previous chapter with regard to the structure of alterity as phenomenological
disruption (cf. 289n189), the messianic is a concept which relates to the absolute past as much as to the
absolute future. Indeed, in the thought of Walter Benjamin, from whom Derrida initially appropriates the
notion, the past is the central emphasis. For a discussion of Derrida‟s relation to Benjamin with regard to
the messianic, see: John D. Caputo, “A Commentary: Deconstruction in a Nutshell,” in Deconstruction in a
Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed. John D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1996), ch. 6; John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2006), 93ff; Jill Petersen Adams, “Mourning, the Messianic, and the Specter:
Derrida‟s Appropriation of Benjamin in „Specters of Marx‟,” in “Refiguring Continental Philosophy,” ed.
Peg Birmingham and James Risser, special issue, Philosophy Today 51 (2007).
75
Jacques Derrida, “The Villanova Roundtable: A Discussion with Jacques Derrida,” in Deconstruction in
a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed. John D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1997), 22.
76
Cf. pp. 294-296.
 327

unknowable and unanticipatable (once again, because the other is the no-thing which

cannot be known or anticipated).

The Messianic and Concrete Messianisms

The structurally unknowable and unanticipatable nature of the messianic in

Derrida‟s thought is what differentiates from concrete religious formations, specifically

the “Abrahamic messianisms.”77 The latter know who it is they are expecting as

Messiah, and Derrida senses significant political danger in this:

This messianic structure is not limited to what one calls messianisms, that is,
Jewish, Christian, or Islamic messianism, to these determinate figures and forms
of the Messiah. As soon as you reduce the messianic structure to messianism,
then you are reducing the universality and this has important political
consequences. Then you are accrediting one tradition among others and a notion
of an elected people, of a given literal language, a given fundamentalism. 78

A messiah who/which could be anticipated and known beforehand would not be, for

Derrida, a messiah. The messiah, like the tout autre (totally other) may be tout autre

(any/every other).

Nevertheless, and in a manner we should expect in Derrida by now, we should not

overemphasize the distance between messianicity and messianism in Derrida, or read

messianicity as a straightforward rejection of messianism.79 Derrida acknowledges a debt

to messianism, just he does to philosophy and phenomenology, noting that “even if it is

different from messianism, messianic refers to the word Messiah; it does not simply

77
Derrida, Specters, 167. See also Derrida‟s comments in “The Villanova Roundtable,” where he
distinguishes “messianicity” as a universal structure from the “messianisms” of specific messianic religious
traditions (22).
78
Derrida, “Villanova Roundtable,”23.
79
Derrida himself is very open about the ambivalence he feels concerning the relative priority of
messianicity and messianism in relation to each other. For this ambivalence, see Specters, 167-168; and
“Villanova Roundtable,” 23-25.
 328

belong to a certain culture, a Jewish or Christian culture.”80 While the pronoun reference

of the “it” in this statement is ambiguous (possibly referring to either “messianic” or to

“Messiah”), I understand it as a reference to “Messiah.” Derrida‟s claim is, then, that

there is something of the figure of the one who comes that resonates in the notion of the

“Messiah.” This no doubt relates to what Derrida calls the “verticality” of the coming of

the event/tout autre/arrivant. He makes clear how it is that this experience exceeds the

concrete messianisms (though he does not mention them in this context):81

In the arrival of the arrivant, it is the absolute other who falls on me. I insist on
the verticality of this coming, because surprise can only come from on high.
When Lévinas or Blanchot speaks of the „Très Haut,‟ the Most High, it is not
simply religious terminology. It means that the event as event, as absolute
surprise, must fall on me (emphasis added).82

Further, I would claim that, for Derrida, this resonance is heightened, rather than muted,

when one no longer has any assurance of what this “coming” entails.83

Messianic Promise and Threat

If the messianic names the structure of phenomenological negativity, this means

that it names this structure as “bottomless collapse.” This language should obviously not

be understood as simply negative: As I discussed in the previous chapter, the disruption

of sedimented normative complexes is the condition of possibility of new social forms,

practices, institutions, etc. This is what I have described as the phenomenologically

positive effect of phenomenological negativity (concerning which more remains to be

said below). But I also noted in the previous chapter that Derrida is not naïve,
80
Derrida, “Villanova Roundtable,” 24.
81
As I have noted previously, Derrida adopts the language of the messianic from Benjamin, not Lévinas or
Blanchot. It nevertheless seems to me that the resonances of the “Messiah” and the “Most High” are such
that it is not inappropriate to relate Derrida‟s concept of Lévinas and Blanchot.
82
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 451.
83
In addition, Derrida would hold that even the determinate messianisms are not of a kind, and that they do
not all reduce the Messiah to the known. See his comments on Blanchot in Politics of Friendship, 46n14.
 329

recognizing that nothing ensures the development of the social in a better or more

progressive direction.84

On the one hand, then, the messianic as the universal structure of experience

relating to “what comes” has to do with “a certain emancipatory…affirmation,” and “a

certain experience of the promise that one can try to liberate from any dogmatics and

even from any metaphysico-religious determination, from any messianism.”85 The

“promise” which is implicit in this orientation to the future is a promise “to produce new

events, new effective forms of action, practice, organization, and so forth.”86

On the other hand, however, the messianic also names phenomenological

negativity as risk; the messianic may be a promise, but it is “an irrecusable and

threatening promise” (emphasis added).87 To cite just two of innumerably more

representative statements, Derrida writes that “to be „out of joint‟ [a reference to the

experience of the present as disrupted]…can do harm and do evil, it is no doubt the very

possibility of evil” (emphasis added),88 and states that “we are open to what is coming,

which is not necessarily a good thing, the worst might be coming” (emphasis added).89

The messianic structure of phenomenological negativity is therefore a structure of

ambivalence:

There is the possibility that my relation to the Messiah is this: I would like him to
come, I hope that he will come, that the other will come, as other, for that would
be justice, peace, and revolution—because in the concept of messianicity there is
revolution—and, at the same time, I am scared. I do not want what I want and I
would like the coming of the Messiah to be infinitely postponed, and there is this

84
Cf. p. 305n239.
85
Derrida, Specters, 89.
86
Ibid.
87
Derrida, Adieu, 118.
88
Derrida, Specters, 29.
89
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 68.
 330

desire in me….So there is some ambiguity in the messianic structure (emphasis

added).90

This ambivalence reflects the reality that the disruption of the present by the absolute

future guarantees only that present structures and institutions are deconstructible, not that

they will be deconstructed and replaced with better institutions or structures.91

Naming the Event: The Tout Autre and Apophatic Discourse

The religious nature of the structure of phenomenological negativity is brought

more clearly into view when we consider the role of nomination, or naming, with regard

to this phenomenological structure and the way that nomination ineluctably takes on the

form of apophatic language. As I noted previously, the event/tout autre/arrivant exceeds

the category of knowledge or, more properly, belongs to a category of non-knowledge.92

As such, the tout autre is an “absolute secret,” not because it is not known or

comprehended, but because it is “heterogeneous to all manifestation” as such.93 As

Derrida puts it

Whenever the event resists being turned into information or into a theoretical
utterance, resists being known and made known, the secret is on the scene….The
secret belongs to the structure of the event. Not the secret in the sense of

90
Derrida, “Villanova Roundtable,” 24-25.
91
It is also worth reemphasizing that Laclau recognizes the ambivalent nature of the disruption of the
social, and is acutely aware that there is no guarantee of the development of, in particular, radically
democratic social structures or institutions. Hägglund is correct in noting that Critchley does not seem to
take account of this notion of “threat” in Derrida‟s thinking, insofar as the opening of the present by the
future is, in his words, “necessarily susceptible to violent visitations” (Radical Atheism, 104). In this
regard, though he receives no mention by Hägglund (perhaps because he defends a “religious” reading of
Derrida), Richard Kearney offers a better reading of Derrida than does Critchley, insofar as he is resistant
to Derrida‟s language of openness to the other precisely because there is no way to protect against the
threat that necessarily attends such openness. For Kearney, there must be a way to differentiate monster
from Messiah. See Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 69-79.
92
Cf. chapter five, pp. 292-293.
93
Derrida, On the Name, 59.
 331

something private, clandestine, or hidden, but the secret as that which doesn‟t
appear (emphasis added).94

The absolute secret, as secret resists all knowledge and comprehension because it is non-

phenomenal. To recall the discussion from early in the previous chapter, insofar as the

tout autre is nothing present or presentable, because it is phenomenological negativity, it

cannot be rendered as the purity of the eidos present to intentional intuition.

To say that the tout autre is the absolute secret is to reaffirm my prior point that

the tout autre is structurally unforeseeable. Yet, despite the nature of the tout autre, of

the event as absolute secret and, therefore, unanticipatable, Derrida also insists on the

necessity of anticipating the event. While “no horizon of expectation as yet seems ready,

in place, available” to receive the event (which is what marks it as event), Derrida also

insists that passivity is not enough, that “it is necessary to prepare for it….”95 Or, again,

Derrida notes that the aleatory, alterity, and calculative rationality are interminably

linked, with the result that “one has to calculate as far as possible, but the incalculable

happens [arrive]: it is the other, and singularity, and chance….”96 This calculation is

necessary insofar as the disruption of sedimented forms by phenomenological negativity

does not leave some sort of phenomenological void or fissure. Rather, we saw in the

previous chapter that it produces phenomenologically positive effects as the social field is

changed in response to it.97 Yet any such response implies the necessity of some level of

comprehension of the event: Despite the fact that the event is that which “resists

analysis,” it nevertheless remains the case, in Derrida‟s view, that “the task of a

94
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 457.
95
Derrida, “Psyche,” 39.
96
Derrida, “I Have a Taste for the Secret,” 61.
97
It is also worth recalling the point, made in chapter three, that the complete dissolution of the social is as
impossible as its ultimate and final fixity. See pp. 138-139.
 332

philosopher…is to take the analysis as far as possible to try to make the event intelligible

up to the moment when one comes to the arrivant” (emphasis added).98

To prepare for the event, to calculate and comprehend that which is incalculable

and incomprehensible is to “name” the event, to assign it a place and take account of it, to

“place” it, within a broader totality.99 In a sort of preface to the three-part work published

under the English title On the Name,100 Derrida poses the question of what happens when

“one gives a name,”101 noting that “something comes to be…” through nomination.102 To

name the event, to identify, categorize, and thematize it, to render it intelligible against

the horizon of expectation it disrupted, even if the horizon itself is also necessarily

changed (i.e., even if a sedimented social form must be reconfigured), is to render the

event into a phenomenal positivity. Stated from the other side, any rendering of a

phenomenal positivity necessarily requires calculation and comprehension in the form of

nomination.

Nomination therefore represents a kind of “making-present,” or the constitution of

a phenomenological positivity in response to the disruption of the tout autre (Derrida‟s

point that in nomination “something comes to be”). This means that the event, the tout

autre, or the arrivant, which is no-thing, must be rendered as something. As Derrida

says, “there cannot be an absolutely negative discourse: a logos necessarily speaks about

98
Derrida, “Deconstruction of Actuality,” 104.
99
For this linkage of nomination and the assignation of a “proper” place, see Jacques Derrida, “The
Principle of Hospitality,” in Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2005), 67.
100
Derrida, On the Name. The French edition included a four-page insert which was published with it,
which is reproduced by Thomas Dutoit in the English edition. See Thomas Dutoit “Translating the Name?”
in On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood et. al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
101
Dutoit, “Translating the Name?” xiv.
102
Ibid.
 333

something; it cannot avoid speaking of something; it is impossible for it to refer to

nothing.”103

But this “making-present” of the tout autre or the event is also, necessarily, the

destruction or absolute loss of the event. The need for logos to speak of an object cuts

right to the heart of the point I am making here: The tout autre, in being named and

assigned a place within a totality, becomes repeatable, thereby losing its status as

absolute singularity; singularity is reduced to particularity.104 What Derrida says about

the word applies just as well to the name: “A word is comprehensible only because it can

be repeated; whenever I speak, I‟m using repeatable words and uniqueness is swept into

this iterability. Similarly, the event cannot appear to be an event, when it appears, unless

it is already repeatable in its very uniqueness.”105 To render the tout autre as a

phenomenal positivity via nomination is to undercut its singularity, to undercut the

“event-ness” of the event. Just as a trace which could not be effaced would no longer be

a trace, so an event or an arrivant which could ever, finally, arrive would cease to be an

event or arrivant. To repeat a quote from Derrida cited in the previous chapter, “if the

structure of a field makes an invention possible…then the invention is not an

invention.”106

What we encounter in alterity, in Derrida‟s thought, is therefore the necessity of

doing the impossible, which is to say of naming the unnameable.107 This is, once again,

the reason for Derrida‟s oblique question as to whether or not such a thing as the event

103
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 103.
104
I noted in the last chapter that particularity is irreducibly “contaminated” by singularity. We see here, in
contrast, the contaminating of singularity with particularity.
105
Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 452.
106
Ibid., 450.
107
We should not miss the obvious parallel with Laclau‟s own thought, with regard to the necessity of
positing an impossible universality.
 334

even exists: In rendering the event a phenomenological existent by means of nomination,

the event paradoxically loses its status as event. And yet, as we have now seen, we must

speak of the event; hence Derrida‟s concern regarding “the impossible possibility of

saying the event.”

Demonstrating the Complexities of Event and Nomination:

Derrida on 9/11

A consideration of Derrida‟s own reflections on the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

commonly understood as a “major event,” illustrates the nuances and complexities of the

event and nomination. What launches Derrida‟s considerations is the statement by

Giovanna Borradori that “September 11 gave us the impression of being a major

event….”108 This leads Derrida through a complex set of considerations concerning

whether or not 9/11 is, in fact, a “major event,” and his considerations illustrate many of

the complexities I have been highlighting. Thus, on the one hand, he notes that 9/11 does

bear the marks of being an “event” insofar as it opens the present to a traumatic, because

radically unforeseeable, future which disrupts horizons of constitution and anticipation,109

because it cannot be easily accounted for or fitted into the ordinary functioning of world

affairs, most clearly evidences by the difficulty of “naming” this event, which is only

named with a calendar date,110 and by the fact that this phenomenological negativity

gains a phenomenologically positive force through the disruption of a sedimented stated

of world affairs, most notably unquestioned US global hegemony.111 In all of these

senses, 9/11 does indeed seem to qualify as an “event” precisely because it seems

108
Derrida, “Autoimmunity,” 85. There is a translator‟s note that “major event” appears in English in the
original.
109
Ibid., 96ff.
110
Ibid., 86-88.
111
Ibid., 93.
 335

impossible to calculate and assign a place. What may most mark 9/11 as an event is the

way in which an occurrence which is not at all uncommon in the world takes on such a

monumental force.112

On the other hand, however, Derrida also performs the philosopher‟s task of

“calculating as far as possible.” In light of this calculation, the event-character of 9/11 is

called into question. Stated more properly, the event of 9/11 is rendered as non-event

precisely to the extent that a close consideration of it assigns it a place within the larger

totality which it disrupted. Thus, Derrida points out that the terrorist attacks were not

unforeseeable at all, but had well-known precursors,113 the terrorists who committed the

acts in question are not external “others” but, in important ways, “internal” to the US,114

and the kinds of social displacements which move people into such actions are also well-

known and can be analyzed. To consider 9/11 as event is, in an important sense, to

reduce it to an object of knowledge, thereby rendering it a non-event.

Nomination and Apophaticism

What we find with regard to the event is a sort of injunction to speak precisely

where speech would seem to be barred, and the question then becomes how to speak well

112
As Derrida puts it, “To produce a „major event,‟ it is, sad to say, not enough…to cause the deaths of four
thousand people, and especially „civilians,‟ in just a few seconds by means of so-called advanced
technology. Many examples could be given from the world wars…but also from after these wars,
examples of quasi-instantaneous mass murders that were not recorded, interpreted, felt, and presented as
„major events‟” (“Autoimmunity,” 89). What we find with 9/11, then, is a particularity approaching the
status of singularity.
113
Derrida writes that “it was not impossible to foresee and attack on American soil by those called
„terrorists‟..., against a highly sensitive, spectacular, extremely symbolic building or institution. Leaving
aside Oklahoma City (where, it will be said, the attacker came from the United States, even though this was
the case of „September 11‟ as well), there had already been a bombing attack against the Twin Towers a
few years back…” (“Autoimmunity,” 91).
114
Derrida notes, for example, that “„September 11‟ is also, still, and in many respects, a distant effect of
the Cold War itself, before its „end,‟ from the time when the United States provided training and weapons,
and not only in Afghanistan, to the enemies of the Soviet Union, who have now become the enemies of the
US” (“Autoimmunity,” 92). In addition to this, see Derrida‟s comments on pp. 94ff.
 336

about that which eludes all speech. With this we enter the terrain of apophatic discourse,

about which Derrida has had much to say. On the one hand, Derrida has resisted a

certain tendency of apophatic discourse to “hyperessentialize” the name of “God” as a

form of absolute presence. He is suspicious of such discourse when it denies central

attributes to God (being, goodness, truth, etc.) only to the end of ultimately affirming God

as a kind of hyperbolic being or Being. In such cases, apophaticism

first of all obeys a logic of the sur, of the hyper, over and beyond, which heralds
all the hyperessentialisms of Christian apophasis and all the debates that develop
around them….This maintains a sufficiently homogeneous, homologous, or
analogous relationship between Being and (what is) beyond Being, in order that
what exceeds the border may be compared to Being; albeit through the figure of
hyperbole.115

In response to the accusation that différance names the God of apophaticism, Derrida

therefore insists that “différance is not, it is not a being and it is not God (if, that is, this

name is given to a being, even a supreme being)” (emphasis added).116 All of this

amounts to saying that Derrida is critical of apophaticism when it invokes the name

“God” in the form of the religion and theology of which, we have seen, he is highly

critical.

This critical distance from apophaticism, however, does not exhaust Derrida‟s

relation to apophaticism, nor does this “voice” of apophatic discourse exhaust the

resources of the name “God.” Immediately after registering his concerns about

apophaticism, then, Derrida goes on to say that “this infinite distance [from

115
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 102. For a similar point, see Derrida, “Sauf le nom,” 68-69.
116
For this accusation and Derrida‟s response, see Brice Parain‟s comments to Derrida following the initial
presentation of the essay “Différance,” in “The Original Discussion of „Différance‟,” 85.
 337

apophaticism] is also an infinitesimal distance. That is why negative theology fascinates

me.”117

This fascination comes from the injunction to speak where all speech would seem

to be foreclosed, having to do with a “certain typical attitude toward language,” which is

present “in every discourse that seems to return in a regular and insistent manner to this

rhetoric of negative determination, endlessly multiplying the defenses and the apophatic

warnings…” (emphasis added).118 Apophaticism therefore connects very naturally to the

question of the event, as when Derrida notes that “there is this event, which

remains…neither this nor that.”119 One can therefore only “properly” speak of the event,

of alterity as phenomenological negativity, insofar as it is no-thing, in terms of “negative

determination,” which is to say that one is pressed into adopting apophatic discourse.

Apophaticism therefore has to do with “the bottomless collapse” or “endless

desertification” of language,120 with the injunction to speak where speech seems

impossible, as with the tout autre. Derrida‟s comments concerning Levinas‟s speaking of

the other is relevant, when he writes that such language “describes or says what, within

the said, interrupts it….”121 This involves a negotiation which

Deals with a language, with a grammatical and lexical order, with a system of
normative constraints that tend to interdict what must be said [il faut dire]
here….The negotiation thematizes what does not allow itself to be thematized;
and in the very trajectory of that transaction, it forces language into a contract
with the stranger, with what it can only incorporate without assimilating. With a
nearly illegible stroke, the other stands up the contaminating negotiation and

117
Ibid.
118
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 74.
119
Derrida, On the Name, 56.
120
Ibid., 55-56.
121
Derrida, “At this Very Moment,” 153.
 338

furtively marks the effraction with a saying that, even as it is no longer said in
language, is nevertheless not reduced to silence.122

As Derrida states the issue in his most explicit extended treatment of apophaticism, the

questions is “how not to speak, and which speech to avoid, in order to speak well.”123

If the experience of phenomenological disruption forces one into nomination, if it

involves an injunction to speak where it seems impossible, then the question is how to

speak well in such a context, and it is this question to which Derrida believes

apophaticism responds uniquely. This is the second “voice” of apophaticism, and the one

to which Derrida attends. His fascination with apophaticism as a “form of language”

which is pressed upon us124 provides a key for understanding his relationship to

apophaticism. He is not concerned with apophaticism as a distinctly or narrowly

theological discourse, but as a form of language which is ineluctably forced upon us by

an experience like that engendered by the event, wherever “negativity ought to absolutely

rarefy discourse.”125 He therefore finds a “family resemblance of negative theology in

every discourse” employing a “rhetoric of negative determination” (emphasis added).126

Apophaticism is at play in every context requiring the nomination of “the beyond of the

name in the name.”127

As with the locutions tout autre est tout autre, we encounter a certain

formalization with regard to apophaticism in Derrida‟s thought. The apophatic names

any site in which logos, which must speak of an object, is forced to do so through a

122
Ibid., 153-154.
123
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,”85. The title of this essay in French is “Comment ne pas parler:
Dénégations,” and may be translated into multiple English equivalents, including “how to avoid speaking,”
as the essay is titled in English, and “how not to speak,” which is to say, how to speak properly, which is
the meaning to which Derrida draws our attention here.
124
Ibid., 73.
125
Ibid., 84.
126
Ibid., 74.
127
Derrida, On the Name, 59.
 339

negative determination. My point in highlighting the “formal” nature of apophaticism in

Derrida‟s thought is to reiterate the point that Derrida‟s fascination with apophaticism

cannot be reduced to, and is often explicitly at odds with, a specifically traditional

theological notion of the apophatic.128 This formalization is indicated when Derrida

states that he trusts no text which is not marked by apophaticism,129 a sentiment that

certainly applies equally well to my concern with the nomination of the event.

“God” as the Improper Name: Tout Autre est Dieu

The necessity of speaking and nomination as it relates to the tout autre or the

event is the necessity of the impossible, insofar as it requires “doing the impossible,

going where one cannot go…rendering oneself there where it is impossible to go.”130

The key to understanding the promise Derrida finds in the name “God” as it relates to

apophaticism lies in its function as the discourse necessary for “speaking well.” If

apophaticism is the form of discourse forced upon us by the “experience of the

impossible” in the tout autre, by the “bottomless collapse” which marks this experience,

then “God” is the name given to this collapse as language attempts to name that which

cannot be named;131 “God” is the name given to the impossible132 of which logos can

only speak through negation but about which, nevertheless, logos must speak.

128
By way of comparison, I understand Derrida, in this regard, to advance a very different evaluation of
apophatic theology than that of Kevin Hart or Jean-Luc Marion, who, in my estimation, both understand
apophatic discourse as a form of speech that is uniquely resistant to deconstruction, and therefore as a
means of preserving a distinctly theological discourse. See: Hart; Jean-Luc Marion, “How to Avoid
Speaking of „Negative Theology‟,” in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael
J. Scanlon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).
129
Derrida, On the Name, 69.
130
Ibid., 59.
131
Ibid., 55-56.
132
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 69.
 340

Again, I emphasize that Derrida resists any theological assurances which could be

provided by apophaticism and reference to the name “God.” If the apophatic “voice”

resisted by Derrida is the one in which the propriety of “God” is preserved through a

form of negation which effectively constitutes hyperessential predication,133 he affirms

apophaticism as a formal structure which advances a very different understanding: “What

if this proper, if the proper of this proper consists in expropriating itself, if the proper of

the proper is precisely, justly, to have nothing of its own [en proper]? What does „is‟

mean here?”134

If “the proper” (French le propre) names the “prope, proprius, self-proximity,

self-presence, property, own-ness,”135 the “reappropriation of difference,”136

“cleanliness” in the sense of “nonpollution,”137 presence uncontaminated by non-

presence, then what resonates as a possibility in apophatic discourse is a conception of

“God” as the “name” of that which cannot be named, which is to say the “im-propriety”

of the tout autre. The promise within apophaticism lays in the fact that the name “God,”

for Derrida, is “the name of the absolute metonymy….”138 That is, “God” names that

which cannot be named, not because it is a superessentiality which exceeds human

language or reason, but because it is no-thing, and speech, all logos, requires an object.139

This metonymy is what leads Derrida a further development of the “absolute

formalization” of the locution tout autre est tout autre in the equivalent formulations

Dieu est tout autre and tout autre est Dieu. As he formulates the issue,

133
This is the overall gist of “How to Avoid Speaking.”
134
Derrida, On the Name, 69.
135
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 107.
136
Ibid., 26.
137
Jacques Derrida, “La parole soufflée,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1978), 183.
138
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 293.
139
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 103.
 341

The trembling of the formula “tout autre est tout autre” can also be reproduced.
It can do so to the extent of replacing one of the “tout autres” by God: “Tout autre
est Dieu” or “Dieu est tout autre.” Such a substitution in no way alters the
“extent” of the original formulation, whatever grammatical function may be
assigned to the various words. In one case God is defined as infinitely other
[infiniment autre], as wholly other [tout autre]. In the other case it is declared
that every other one [tout autre], each of the others [des autres], is God inasmuch
as he or she is, like God, tout autre.140

These statements are equivalent because, as metonymy, “God” names any site of

phenomenological disruption, insofar as any such disruption becomes the “bottomless

collapse” of the phenomenal. This is the reason why the “absolute formalization” of

which Derrida speaks applies to “God”: Dieu est tout autre and tout autre est Dieu in a

truly undecidable interplay. What draws Derrida to apophaticism is this second voice,

this metonymical voice which becomes almost indistinguishable from an affirmation of

atheism.141 “God” is the name of the improper as such (which has no “as such”), which

is to say that “God” metonymically refers to that which is lost once it is named.

Religion, the Political, and the Affirmation of the “Bottomless Collapse”

I want to turn now to a consideration of Derrida‟s program as an affirmation of

the “bottomless collapse” initiated in the disruption of phenomenological negativity.

140
Derrida, Gift of Death, 87, translation modified/ Donner la mort, 120-121. It is also worth noting that
this equivalence and formalization marks another point of departure for Derrida vis-à-vis Levinas. As
Derrida notes, the notion of alterity disrupts the distinction Levinas wishes to maintain between the human
and the divine (84).
141
Derrida, “Sauf le nom,” 35. The complexities of this point represent another instance in which
Hägglund flattens Derrida‟s texts for the sake of his reading of “radical atheism.” The reading of Derrida
we are proposing here has obvious parallels with the overall emphasis of John Caputo‟s recent The
Weakness of God. With this in view, we might echo his statement concerning the relation of “God” as a
name and “theology” more traditionally considered: “About God as an entitative issue, I offer no final
opinion….I am more interested in answering to the provocation of the event of this name [God] than in
adjudicating whether there is an entity somewhere who answers to that name” (Weakness, 10). In contrast
to this, Derrida recognizes the impossibility of barring this move: “The onto-theological reappropriation [of
apophatic discourse] always remains possible—and doubtless inevitable insofar as one speaks, precisely, in
the element of logic and onto-theo-logical grammar. One can always say: Hyperessentiality is precisely
that, a supreme Being who remains incommensurate to the being of all that is, which is nothing, neither
present nor absent, and so on” (“How to Avoid Speaking,” 79).
 342

Derrida clearly does more than simply describe or outline the phenomenological structure

we have considered over the course the last two chapters; he affirms that disruption,

which necessarily amounts to a religious affirmation…. A consideration of this

affirmation will serve to bring us to a discussion of the relation between this religious

phenomenological structure and questions of the political

Hospitality and Affirmation

I begin with a consideration of Derrida‟s notion of hospitality which, as I noted

above, Critchley reads as an ethical injunction to welcome the other person. While

Critchley is correct insofar as Derrida does speak of “absolute hospitality” 142 in terms of

the welcome of the other, Hägglund correctly points out that this has to do not with the

welcome of the other person, but that hospitality

designates the exposure to the unpredictable, which can always be violent and to
which one cannot know in advance how one should relate. The „hospitality‟ to
otherness is unconditional not because it is ideal or ethical as such, but because
one is necessarily susceptible to violent visitation.143

I read Hägglund‟s reference to “violent visitation” as equivalent to the points I made

concerning the traumatic nature of the event in the previous chapter144 and the structure

of the messianic as both promise and threat, discussed above. His description of

hospitality makes it clear that hospitality, like the concept of the messianic, names a

particular structure of experience as such, rather than a specifically ethical concern or

orientation. Hospitality does indeed name the “welcome” of the other, but the other must

142
Though we will not have the opportunity to consider it in any significant detail, the structural relation
between “absolute” and “conditional” hospitality in Derrida‟s though it broadly analogous to the structure
between justice and law. For Derrida‟s most detailed treatments of hospitality, see Derrida Politics of
Friendship; Adieu; Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. Rachel
Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); and “Hostipitality,” trans. Gil Anidjar, in Acts of
Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2001).
143
Hägglund, 104.
144
Cf. pp. 285-286, 292.
 343

be understood as the phenomenologically disruptive phenomenal negativity of the tout

autre. This, in turn, alerts us to the fact that such openness is marked by all the risk that

attends the phenomenological structure of the messianic as such.145

The concept of hospitality is marked by a paradoxical structure similar to what we

have seen with the event. Just as one must seek to anticipate the anticipatable event, one

must prepare to welcome the unforeseeable. As Derrida puts it,

on the one hand, hospitality must wait, extend itself toward the other…it must be
ready to welcome, to host and to shelter, to give shelter and cover; it must prepare
itself and adorn itself for the coming of the hôte; it must even develop itself into a
culture of hospitality, multiply the signs of anticipation, construct and institute
what one calls structures of welcoming, a welcoming apparatus.”146

This, obviously, corresponds to what Derrida has had to say concerning the need to

prepare for or anticipate the event. However, the other side of this formulation also

applies:

On the other hand, the opposite is also nevertheless true, simultaneously and
irrepressibly true: to be hospitable is to let oneself be overtaken, to be ready not
to be ready, if such is possible, to let oneself be overtaken, to not even let oneself
be overtaken, to be surprised, in a fashion almost violent, violated and raped,
stolen…, precisely where one is not ready to receive—and not only not yet ready
but not ready, unprepared in a mode that is not even that of the “not yet.”147

Derrida‟s language of “if such is possible” and of an unpreparedness which is structural

(not of the order of the “not yet”) demonstrates that this is the structure of the trace.

Hospitality, then, names openness to the absolute future. It is the openness to

145
On this point of risk as it relates to hospitality, see also Derrida, Adieu, 111.
146
Derrida, “Hostipitality,” 360-361.
147
Ibid., 361. The reference to being “violated and raped” certainly reinforces Hägglund‟s point about the
violence of hospitality, noted on the previous page.
 344

unforeseeable invention, rather than to planned, anticipated, comprehended

“invitation.”148

To be “hospitable” to the absolute future, which is to say to the phenomenological

negativity of the tout autre, is to affirm the phenomenological disruption that the

“coming” of the tout autre brings about. It is important to note that affirmation, in this

sense, can be differentiated from a mere response to the phenomenological disruption of

the tout autre. As a way of making this distinction clear, we can say that while

affirmation of phenomenological disruption is avoidable, response to such disruption is

not.

For example, Derrida speaks of “allow[ing] the coming of the tout autre,” to

“get[ting] ready” for it and “let[ting] the other [l‟autre] come, come in.”149 As he sums

up this point, “to get ready for this coming of the other [l‟autre] is what can be called

deconstruction.”150 Thus, “the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can consist only

in opening, in unclosing, destabilizing foreclusionary structures so as to allow for the

passage toward the other [l‟autre]” (emphasis added).151 If affirmation consists of

destabilizing foreclusionary structures (a term I take as equivalent to that of normative

complexes), then it is surely possible to respond to the experience of phenomenological

disruption by seeking to stabilize the foreclusionary structures which are threatened by

the coming of the tout autre. Such responses find, in the tout autre of phenomenological

148
This is the general point Derrida is making when, in “The Deconstruction of Actuality,” he insists that in
the case of absolute hospitality “I must not ask the arrivant to begin by declining an identity, by telling me
who he/she is, under what conditions I am to offer him/her hospitality, whether he/she is going to integrate
him/herself or not, whether or not I will be able to „assimilate‟ him/her into the family, the nation, or the
state. If he/she/it is the absolute arrival, I must not propose a contract or impose any conditions” (95). See
also Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 98, for this distinction between invention and visitation as it relates
to hospitality.
149
Derrida, “Psyche,” 39/ “Psyché,” 53.
150
Ibid/Ibid.
151
Ibid., 45/ Ibid., 60.
 345

negativity, only threat with no promise. It is clear, in other words, that affirmation is not

the only possible response to the experience of phenomenological disruption.

There is, then, a distinction to be made between response to phenomenological

disruption and the affirmation of that disruption. Even if one rejects or resists the

“coming” of the tout autre, such a rejection still constitutes a response to this

phenomenological “experience of the impossible.”152 Regardless of whether one affirms

or resists the phenomenological negativity of the tout autre, one necessarily responds to

the disruption it brings about. Referring back to our previous discussion of Laclau on

decision, and forward to our upcoming discussion of Derrida on decision, we could say

that the experience of phenomenological disruption is the experience of the undecidable.

That is, the disruption of a phenomenologically constituted totality is disruptive in

precisely the sense that it has called into questions all assured and pre-programmed ways

of proceeding, and this is what is meant by describing the situation as “undecidable.” Yet

we must proceed; decision must be rendered. Affirmation, then, would be a possible

decision undertaken on the undecidable terrain opened by the experience of

phenomenological disruption itself; but so, on the other hand, would be the move to

reinforce “foreclusionary structures” and so resist the movement of phenomenological

disruption.

Derrida‟s work, and deconstruction more generally, therefore represents not only

a “response” to the “experience of the impossible,” but an affirmation of this experience

as such. This affirmative relation to phenomenological disruption can be inferred from

the very fact that Derrida privileges the term “justice” as applying to this experiential

152
Such efforts at “insulation” also represent yet another possible conception of “religion.” This is one of
the points of Derrida‟s very complicated essay “Faith and Knowledge,” in which he discusses the notion of
religion as concerned to leave some privileged structure, history, practice, etc. “unscathed” and pure.
 346

structure, that he privileges religious conceptions of the messianic, and so forth.

Nominating phenomenological disruption in this manner is indicative of his affirmation

of that disruption, highlighting the promise (but not, again, the guarantee) of social,

intellectual, political, etc. forms of change.

The theme of affirmation is explicit in Derrida. His most explicit statements of

the affirmative character of deconstruction come in the context the early reception of his

work in predominantly English-speaking contexts where “deconstruction” was

understood in a primarily negative sense. Thus, for example, Richard Kearney poses the

following question to Derrida in an interview in the early 1980s: “If deconstruction is a

way of challenging the logocentric pretensions of Western European philosophy, and by

implication of the sciences it has founded, can it ever surmount its role of iconoclastic

negation and become a form of affirmation?”153 Derrida provides an enlightening

response to this question, which is worth considering in some detail:

Deconstruction certainly entails a moment of affirmation. Indeed, I cannot

conceive of a radical critique which would not be ultimately motivated by some
sort of affirmation, acknowledged or not. Deconstruction always presupposes
affirmation….Deconstruction is, in itself, a positive response to an alterity which
necessarily calls, summons, or motivates it. Deconstruction is therefore
vocation—a response to a call (emphases added).154

We find here both an explicit acknowledgement that deconstruction is an affirmative

response to the experience of phenomenological disruption we have been discussing, and

a further linking of this affirmation with religion. The experience of phenomenological

disruption is taken, from a deconstructive perspective, as a kind of “call” or “summons,”

which is given a specifically religious intonation when Derrida refers to it as a kind of

“vocation.”

153
Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other,” 149.
154
Ibid.
 347

Likewise, in a work from the same period,155 Derrida poses the following

rhetorical question: “In what respect can a movement of deconstruction, far from being

limited to the negative or destructuring forms that are often naively attributed to it, be

inventive in itself, or be the signal of an inventiveness at work in a sociohistorical

field?”156 In responding to this question, clearly intended to distance deconstruction from

a certain negative or even nihilistic reading to which it is often subjected,157 Derrida

comes to themes we have already considered, specifically the notions of invention and

the preparation for the coming of the other. The point I specifically wish to highlight

here is the way that these notions relate to the theme of affirmation.

In this connection Derrida articulates deconstruction in terms of the “desire to

invent”: “To invent not this or that, some teckne or some fable, but a novel world,

another world—a world, not America, the New World, but a novel world, another

habitat, another person, another desire even, and so forth.”158 As Derrida continues on,

he writes that

this desire for invention, which goes so far as to dream of inventing a new desire,
remains, to be sure, contemporary with a certain experience of fatigue, of
weariness, of exhaustion, but also accompanies a desire for deconstruction, going
so far as to lift the apparent contradiction that might exist between deconstruction
and invention (emphasis added).159

If we recall that “invention” refers, in Derrida‟s thinking, not to something that “we” do,

but to the “coming” of the tout autre, which is to say of phenomenological disruption as

such, then we find deconstruction defined as the desire for this disruption.

155
As the editor notes, “Psyche” is the text of lectures given by Derrida at Cornell University in 1984 and
at Harvard University in 1986. See “Psyche,” 1.
156
Derrida, “Psyche,” 22.
157
On this point, see also the following statement from Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other”: “I totally
refuse the label of nihilism which has been ascribed to me and my American colleagues. Deconstruction is
not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness towards the other” (155).
158
Derrida, “Psyche,” 22.
159
Ibid., 23.
 348

Deconstruction, then, is marked by the structure of an originary “yes” to the

“coming” of the tout autre,160 and this “yes,” as an affirmation of phenomenological

disruption, takes on the intonation of a response to a religious “call.” Deconstruction is

marked by “the desire to affirm the future” in the sense outlined above.161 With this

notion of the call, what Derrida has to say concerning apophatic discourse is again of

relevance for us. As he notes, apophatic discourse necessarily begins with the question

“how to avoid speaking [how not to speak],” and that, at this very moment, “it is already,

so to speak, too late.”162 That is, in posing this very question, even if one were to

determine not to speak at all, this not-speaking would already have been undone by the

very occurrence of the question. Not-speaking is a response: “There is no longer any

question of not speaking. Even if one speaks and says nothing, even if an apophatic

discourse deprives itself of meaning or of an object, it takes place. That which

committed or rendered it possible has taken place.”163 Whether one speaks or does not

speak, one does so in response to a solicitation which precedes and calls forth that

response. As Derrida puts it,

the possible absence of a referent still beckons, it not toward the thing of which
one speaks…at least toward the other [l‟autre] (other than Being [autre que
l‟être]) who calls or to whom speech is addressed—even if it speaks only in order
to speak, or to say nothing. This is the call of the other [l‟autre], having always
already preceded the speech to which it has never been present a first time…
(emphases added).164

160
On this point, see Derrida, “A Certain Impossible Possibility,” 442-443.
161
Jacques Derrida, “Not Utopia, the Im-possible,” in Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2005), 127.
162
Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 97.
163
Ibid.
164
Ibid. French: Jacques Derrida, “Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations,” in Psyché: Inventions de l‟autre
(Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1987), 559-560.
 349

We encounter here a repetition of my previous point concerning the necessity of

responding to phenomenological disruption, this time written in a more explicitly

“religious” register. Refusing to speak in response to the call is still a response.

Affirmation, Religion, and Ethics

I have made significant efforts in this chapter to demonstrate both the very real

distance between Derrida and Critchley with regard to their respective notions of alterity

and, following from this, that alterity in Derrida cannot simply be equated with the idea

of the ethical relation to the other. Now that we have seen that Derrida‟s hauntological

program represents a form of religious affirmation, we are in a better position to

understand the relation of this religious affirmation to the ethical.

Derrida does, often, articulate his notion of alterity in terms of ethics, and in

language which seems to give some credence to Critchley‟s reading of him. For

example, he refers to “an „idea of justice‟ that is infinite, infinite because irreducible,

irreducible because owed to the other [à l‟autre] [emphasis added]—owed to the other [à

l‟autre], before any contract, because it has come, it is a coming, the coming of the other

[l‟autre] always as other singularity [singularité toujours autre].”165 I maintain that

statements such as this one on Derrida‟s part are consistent with the more

phenomenological reading I have been developing. I suggest that ethics is not, for

Derrida, “first philosophy,” as in Levinas and Critchley, but that the experience of the

relation to alterity as an ethical relation is itself an effect of the affirmation of

phenomenological disruption, which is necessarily anterior to it. The experience of the

165
Derrida, “Force of Law,” 254. French: Jacques Derrida, Force de loi: Le «Fondement mystique de
l‟autorité» (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1994), 55. It is worth again noting my distance from Hägglund on this
point. While I agree with him that, in distinction from Levinas, ethics is not “first philosophy” for Derrida,
Derrida nevertheless articulates his thought in terms of ethics more than Hägglund allows.
 350

tout autre is experienced as an ethical relation, as an obligation owed to the other, only

insofar as one already affirms or embraces the experience of phenomenological

disruption. Only as one responds affirmatively to what we have seen as the “call” of the

tout autre does one experience the disruption of phenomenological negativity as an

ethical demand or obligation. Understood in these terms, we can see that religion, in the

terms by which I have developed that notion here, is the condition of the ethical relation

to the tout autre. It is not the case, then, that the ethical has no place in Derrida‟s

thought;166 rather the ethical places a crucial and important role in Derrida‟s thought.

However, the ethical is not the starting or central orienting point of Derrida‟s thought as it

is in that of either Levinas or Critchley.

The Religious Structure of Phenomenological Negativity

and the Question of Meta-Politics

I have devoted the bulk of this chapter to a development of the relation of

Derrida‟s concept of alterity to religion. What I now what to consider is the relation of

alterity and religious affirmation to the political, a consideration which ultimately take us

into the Conclusion. By way of reminder, Critchley argues that only a conception of the

ethical relation to the other person provides an adequate meta-political normative basis

for advancing a democratic structure to the social. On his terms, any non-democratic

social formation is “unethical.” In contrast, we have already given some consideration to

Laclau‟s rejection of this meta-political position.167 My remaining task in this chapter is

to demonstrate that Derrida‟s hauntology (we can now refer to it as a “religious

hauntology”) does not provide the kind of meta-political foundation Critchley seeks (and

166
This is the impression that one can get in reading Hägglund, for example.
167
See chapter four, pp. 230ff.
 351

which he also assumes Derrida himself advances). In this regard, Derrida‟s position is

consistent with Laclau‟s own. I will give a specific consideration of the relation of

Derrida‟s religious hauntology to Laclau‟s theory of radical democracy in the

Conclusion.

Derrida and Laclau on Decision

Given the very different understandings of alterity in Derrida and Critchley, it is

not surprising that Derrida does not subscribe to Critchley‟s meta-political model. But

the distance between Derrida and Critchley can be demonstrated more precisely by

considering his broad agreement with Laclau‟s concept of decision, considered in some

detail in chapters three and four. I noted in the context of that discussion that Laclau‟s

theory of decision draws significantly from Derrida‟s own, and considering Derrida‟s

position in more detail will further highlight his distance from Critchley on this issue.

I begin with a brief reminder of Laclau‟s own conception of ethical decision. For

Laclau, the properly “ethical moment” is the experience of the constitutive lack

disrupting the social, which is to say “the distance between what is and what ought to

be….”168 Because there is no privileged site of hegemonic universality around which

concrete social formations may coalesce, Laclau describes the social as “undecidable.”

The “ethical” therefore names the instituting of the social, when the impossible fullness

of the social is identified with a social particularity. Laclau‟s central point in all of this is

that the ethical is defined by undecidability: Actually existing social formations or

institutions (normative complexes) cannot determine the direction of ethical decision in

advance, and the ethical moment, as such, does not determine the specific shape of

specific normative complexes. The ethical, we might say, exceeds calculation in both of
168
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 286.
 352

these directions. To repeat a point from chapter four, the experience of the ethical is an

experience of “the unconditioned as lack in an entirely conditioned universe,” with the

result that “there is no way of conceptually or logically moving from it to a particular

normative order.”169

I made it clear in chapter four that, to stay with Laclau‟s language, I accept his

account of the unbridgeable gap between the ethical and normative, and this is also

consistent with Derrida‟s understanding (which, again, is the basis of much of Laclau‟s

own formulation). For Derrida, ethical-political decision, to count as decision, must not

simply be the result of calculative reasoning. As he states the issue,

a decision can only come into being in a space that exceeds the calculable
program that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into a
programmable effect of determinate causes. There can be no moral or political
responsibility without this trial and this passage by way of the undecidable. Even
if a decision seems to take only a second and not to be preceded by any
deliberation, it is structured by this experience and experiment of the
undecidable.170

We find here a notion of decision elaborated broadly in terms of the phenomenology we

have been discussing.

To define the moment of decision as the “experience of the undecidable,” to insist

that decision as decision cannot be derived as an “effect” of “causes,” echoes all the

formulations we have examined concerning phenomenological disruption and “the

impossible.” To see this point, consider the following rhetorical question posed by

Derrida: “A decision that I can take, the decision in my power and that manifests the

taking of action or the deployment of what is already possible for me, the actualization of

my possibility, a decision that is dependent only on me—would that still be a decision?”

169
Ibid., 290.
170
Derrida, “Afterword,” 116.
 353

his obvious response to this question is negative; in contrast, he writes that “a responsible

decision must be that im-possible possibility of a „passive‟ decision, a decision by the

other [une décision de l‟autre] in me that does not exonerate me from any freedom or any

responsibility.”171 Derrida‟s point in saying that responsible decision cannot follow as

the mere effect of a determinate cause is that decision, as decision, cannot be reduced to a

constituted phenomenological totality, but that the specific site of decision is the

experience of the breakdown of such totalities, which is unforeseeable; decision therefore

exceeds calculation. The decision, as decision, is understood in terms of

phenomenological disruption.

This is what Derrida has in view when he speaks in terms of the “decision of the

other in me,” a phrase concerning which I want to avoid mystification. Echoing this

language in another context, Derrida states that

The decision, in order to be a decision, however mad it may sound, or crazy it

may sound, a decision, my decision should not be mine, it should be, as
impossible, the decision of the Other, my decision should be the Other‟s decision
in me, or through me, and I have to take responsibility for the decision which is
not mine.172

Fortunately for us, Derrida immediately clarifies what he means with this language:

When I say „it‟s not mine‟ I mean that which exceeds my own being, my own
possibility, my own potentiality. If you describe an individual as a set of
possibilities, a set of capacities, a set of predicates—I am this or that, I am the one
whom you can describe as being this or that, that is an assemblage of attributes or
predicates—and if the decision is simply the consequence or what follows from
this set of possibilities, then it‟s not a decision. A decision should be something
more than what is simply possible…what follows from the predicate of
possibilities, what defines my definition. If I decide, if my decision is my
definition, if by my definition of myself I make such or such a decision, it‟s not a
decision. So, the only possible decision is the impossible decision, the decision

171
Derrida, “As If It Were Possible,” 87. French: Jacques Derrida, “Comme si c‟était possible, «within
such limits»,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 3 (1998), 515.
172
Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, 103.
 354

which is stronger than me, higher than me and coming from the Other, from the
order of the Other, that is heteronomy.173

What we see in this extended definition is that, if we understand Derrida‟s reference to

alterity in the terms of phenomenological negativity I have proposed, his point is that

decision, properly understood, takes place against the background of the breakdown of

the assurances provided by phenomenological positivities. This is the point of his

language about subjectivity in this context. If social actors understand themselves only

according to their own positioning within a constituted totality (i.e., within a sedimented

normative complex) and act accordingly, they simply reproduce the “logic” of that

totality. This is what Laclau has in mind when he speaks of acting within “an entirely

conditioned universe.”174 Such pseudo-decisions would simply be the result of the

“essential objectivism” of which Laclau speaks, according to which social actors would

simply act according to the “subject positions” assigned within a determinate, constituted

normative complex.

In contrast, then, decision takes place on an undecidable terrain, in the sense that

courses of action cannot be determined on the basis of “being,” which is to say on the

basis of a phenomenologically constituted sedimentation. This is why Derrida insists that

undecidability is the condition of possibility of decision (and must therefore not be

confused with indecision). He captures this point through reference to the notion of the

“aporia,” playing on the Greek derivation of the term, which has a venerable

philosophical pedigree,175 meaning “difficulty,” “question,” “problem,” or, with regard to

173
Ibid.
174
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 290. See chapter four, p. 232.
175
Derrida deploys the term “aporia” in numerous contexts. For his most extended treatment of the theme
of “aporia,” see Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1993).
 355

place, “difficulty in passage.”176 With a derivation from the Greek privative alpha (a)

together with poros (“a way” or “a track”), aporos carries the meaning of “without

passage,” “trackless,” or “impassable.”

Thus, Derrida plays on the notions of impassibility and the pass, road, or track,

posing the following question: “What would a path be without aporia? Would there be a

way without what clears the way there where the way is not opened, whether it is blocked

or still buried in the nonway?”177 That is, “isn‟t the uncleared way [aporia] also the

condition of decision or event, which consists in opening the way, in (sur)passing, thus

going beyond? In (sur)passing the aporia?”178 Relating this notion of aporia to the

phenomenological structure which has been my focus, we see that the determined “path”

would be an action undertaken according to the logic of a sedimented normative

complex, a simple unfolding or extension of a present state of affairs, while the

experience of the non-way, of the aporia, is the experience of the phenomenological

disruption of the tout autre.179 Decision as decision would be annulled if it were

determined in advance by a normative determination.

It is here that we find Derrida in substantive agreement with Laclau over against

Critchley. Stating the issue in Derridean terms from this chapter, Critchley effectively

collapses the distinction between response and affirmation with regard to the experience

of phenomenological disruption (leaving to one side his privileging of the “other

person”). On Critchley‟s formulation, the only valid response to phenomenological

176
Derrida notes that aporia signifies “a certain impossibility as nonviability, as nontrack or barred path. It
concerns the impossible or the impracticable;” see Derrida, Aporias, 13.
177
Derrida, On the Name, 83.
178
Ibid., 84.
179
This emphasis on aporia and the non-way also echoes our discussion of the injunction to speak where
one cannot, an injunction which we can see is also aporetic.
 356

disruption would be the formation of democratic social forms; this is the import of his

claim that only such social forms are properly ethical. But, to repeat a point made by

Laclau in chapter four, “there is no possibility of deriving a normative injunction to keep

open the gap between the ethical and the normative, from the ontological existence of

that gap.”180 To claim that the experience of phenomenological disruption as such

necessarily leads one to the adoption of particular social forms is to determine decision

on the basis of a constituted totality, albeit a totality precisely as it is called into question.

Critchley‟s position, then, amounts to a determination of decision on the basis of an

actually existing sedimented social form. But this, from the perspective of both Laclau

and Derrida, is an annulment of the decision as such. For Derrida, as for Laclau, the

actual institution of a social form cannot be justified with reference to a sedimented social

form.

Democracy to Come and Religious Affirmation

We see, then, that on the central issue of decision, Derrida agrees with Laclau

over against Critchley, with the result that, in Derrida‟s thought, there is no basis for

insisting on the normativity of democratic social forms. From the perspective of

Derrida‟s thought, there is no basis for understanding democracy as the proper form of

the social as such; his thought on this point is therefore in line with Laclau, as opposed to

Critchley (as well as Habermas, Hardt, and Negri). So where does this leave us in our

considerations?

If I agree with Laclau against Critchley that there is no way to normatively

determine the shape of the social on the basis of the common ontology advanced by

180
Laclau, “Glimpsing,” 291.
 357

Laclau and Derrida, does this mean that I must join Critchley in despairing that the

articulation of the social in terms of democracy is merely arbitrary and decisionistic? I

don‟t think this follows. We are now in a position to see that, while there is no position

of meta-political assurance to guide the shaping of the social, the articulation of the social

in democratic terms is not simply arbitrary, but constitutes a response of religious

affirmation undertaken in the face of the phenomenological disruption of the tout autre.

This is immediately evident if we recall the discussion of the democracy to come

in the previous chapter. If the democracy to come represents one more notion of

phenomenological disruption in the political register, then it also relates to religion. By

way of reminder, the notion of the “democracy to come” names the phenomenological

disruption which renders any existing democratic structure inadequate to itself; the

democracy to come is always, structurally, to-come, and thus names the absolute future,

and so is related to concepts such as justice and messianic. But, as with the structure of

phenomenological negativity in general, Derrida does not simply describe or elaborate

this structure as it relates to socio-political formations, but affirms the disruption of

phenomenological negativity as such. Thus, on the political register, Derrida affirms

democracy because it is “the only system that welcomes, in itself, in its very

concept…the right to self-critique and perfectibility.”181

Derrida‟s advancement of democratic structures, institutions, and practices is

neither arbitrary nor determined on the basis of a meta-political normative ground. What

we find is that, insofar as the democracy to come has to do not only with the

phenomenological structure we have determined to be religious, but that it also involves

the affirmation of that structure, the advancement of democracy itself represents a

181
Derrida, Rogues, 86-87.
 358

specifically religious affirmation. Such advancement is, to refer to another Derridean

formulation we have been considering, the response to a religious call; it is a religious

vocation, in the sense I have outlined in this chapter.

More remains to be said about this notion of religious affirmation as it relates to

the political, and this is what will bring us to a consideration of the relation of Laclau‟s

“radical democracy” and religion in the Conclusion.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have tried to undertake two primary goals. First, I have tried to

demonstrate why Derrida‟s hauntology, outlined in the previous chapter, may reasonably

be described as “religious.” In demonstrating the first point, which occupies the bulk of

this chapter, I sought to demonstrate the difference between Derrida‟s and Critchley‟s

respective notions of alterity; specifically, I argued that Derrida‟s notion of alterity

cannot be equated with the ethical relation to the other person as Critchley argues. In

contrast to Critchley, I have argued that Derrida‟s thought represents an affirmation of the

phenomenological disruption brought about by the tout autre and that, as such, it can be

described as “religious.” Insofar as Derrida‟s notion of alterity has to do with the ethical

relation with the other (and I have argued that it does), this should be understood in terms

of the religious structuration of Derrida‟s thought which is anterior to it.

My second primary goal in this chapter has been to indicate the significance of

this for Derrida‟s political thought, as represented by his concept of democracy to come.

I have argued that, insofar as Derrida‟s advocacy of the democracy to come represents a

further example of his affirmation of the structure of phenomenological disruption of the

tout autre, it can also be described as religious. My remaining task is to more directly
 359

relate this aspect of Derrida‟s thought to Laclau‟s own program of radical democracy.

This will be the primary task of the Conclusion.

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CONCLUSION

I concluded the previous chapter by arguing that Derrida‟s affirmation of the

“democracy to come” should be understood in terms of religious affirmation, which is to

say that it should be understood as an affirmation of the experience of disruptive (and, as

such, potentially constructive) phenomenological negativity. What remains now is to

link this notion of religious affirmation to Laclau‟s theoretical notion of radical

democracy. Before undertaking this final task, however, it is worth pausing to review the

ground we have covered in the previous chapters, particularly given what the reader may

feel has been a meandering path.

Chapter Review

In the first chapter, I presented the context for the chapters which followed.

Specifically, this context has to do with the displacement of normative secularism as a

universal narrative suitable for grounding a political theory. In addition, I described how

the concepts of “religion” and “the secular” have been co-constituted in the modern

period, and noted that if one of these concepts is called into question, a questioning of the

other necessarily follows. While this is significant for a number of reasons, my primary

interest in this point was to note that any such questioning necessarily disrupts the

constitution of the socio-political in terms of a “religious” sphere and a “secular” sphere,

rendering it necessary to reconsider the relation of the religious and the political, insofar

as the proper locale of the latter, at least in the modern period, has been understood as the

secular sphere. However, and this is a point the importance of which I will highlight in

this Conclusion, the disruption of the religion/secular binary, and the concomitant

necessity of re-envisioning political theory, do not simply do away with the necessity of
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speaking in terms of “religion;” this was my point of disagreement with the genealogical

historicist accounts of “religion” in Fitzgerald and Cavanaugh. Finally, I noted that the

concern of the remaining chapters would involve efforts to advance alternative

understandings of universality which could serve as a basis for political theory “after the

return of religion.”

The second chapter considered an explicitly Christian theological proposal for a

new understanding of universality after the “return of religion.” Articulating the themes

of universality and particularity in the Christian theological concepts of transcendence

and immanence, Graham Ward, one of the founders of the theological movement known

as “Radical Orthodoxy,” views the contemporary socio-political moment as one of

radical immanence which has renounced appeals to transcendence. The political

reflection of this renunciation is democracy, which, I noted, is consistently presented by

Ward as simply equivalent with a particular form of liberal democracy. Democracy is the

political form taken within the frame of an immanentist emphasis on freedom defined in

terms of individualist autonomy. This is to say that democracy and an immanent social

cut off from all transcendence is the political reflection of a cultural secularism. We saw

that, for Ward, such an emphasis on immanence is ultimately nihilistic, and the supposed

autonomy and freedom of democracy necessarily harbor totalitarianism within

themselves. The libertarian freedom of such a socio-political formation leads to anxieties

which drive the search for an assurance transcending the limits of immanent socio-

political formations. The only form of transcendence available, however, is a false one,

in which a dictator or “egocrat” steps in to fill this role.

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Western secularism and its political form of democracy are therefore, for Ward,

exhausted and nihilistic forms. In contrast to the false assurances of immanentist

democracy, only an account of the social‟s proper participation in the metaphysical being

which exceeds and transcends it can provide the assurance of a thriving social order.

Specifically, we saw that Ward advances a model of the social involving an analogy of

Being, according to which the created order participates in the Being of God. But there is

an important qualification to this account: Left to its own devices, the world beyond the

Church has no true being, insofar as it fails to properly participate in the Being of the

divine; it is only the particular human community embodied in the Christian Church

(itself understood in very particular terms) which properly participates in the Being of

God and is tasked with, in a sense, initiating the broader world into that participation. I

argued that, ultimately, Ward‟s proposal leads to either a triumphalist vision of a

theocratic social space or to a social space populated by incommensurable theological

communities engaged in culture war.

These considerations led us to chapter three, the first of two chapters dedicated to

the thought of Ernesto Laclau. The aim of chapter three was to offer a basic exposition of

the contours of Laclau‟s political theory, particularly as it relates to the issues of

universality, particularity, and metaphysics. The chapter began with a consideration of

the way in which his political theory amounts to a political ontology of the social (and

therefore to something more than a “regional” account of the social). We saw in that

chapter that Laclau shares Ward‟s position that any social particularity necessarily makes

appeal to that which exceeds or transcends it (whereas Ward prefers the language of

immanence/transcendence, Laclau prefers the language of particularity/universality).

 363

Where Laclau differs significantly from Ward is in his formulation of the universality to

which social particularities make appeal. Whereas Ward envisions that universality in

terms of a metaphysical plenitude (i.e. the Being of God), Laclau envisions that

universality as a void or emptiness. Laclau formulates universality as both necessary and

impossible: Necessary because any particular social group making political claims

necessarily appeals to a notion of universality, impossible because that universality is not

a metaphysical or ontological positivity or plenitude of any kind.

The result is that particular social signifiers, in a process of hegemonic

articulation, are emptied of their particular content and take on the role of signifying the

impossible but necessary universal. There is no deep logic of the social governing or

determining the shape of these hegemonic formations; on the contrary, these formations

are what give shape the social as such. In addition, we saw that these formations are only

ever contingent and so are subject to disruption and efforts of counter-hegemonic

formations undertaken by other social groups. In contrast to Ward, there is no “proper”

form of the social defined by relation to a metaphysical norm; indeed, as I noted in that

context, Laclau fairly explicitly rejects the kind of theo-political proposal advanced by

Ward.

Chapter four added to the discussion of Laclau undertaken in chapter three,

specifically relating his political ontology to the question of democracy. Laclau‟s

“radical democracy” names a particular structuring of the social as such, rather than being

limited to narrower considerations of institutional structures, procedures, etc. (though

these latter are obviously not irrelevant). As such, radical democracy has to do with

maintaining the social as an open space, which is to say as a space in which the
 364

hegemonic articulations of the social remain contestable and undecidable; in this regard I

also pointed out that democracy, in Laclau‟s view, precludes totalitarianism, rather than

harboring it as Ward supposes. One of the centrally important elements of this

presentation was Laclau‟s insistence that the political ontology he describes bears no

necessary or normative relation to democracy. The ontology of the social is a political

ontology, I argued, in the sense that any determinative shape of the socio-political is the

effect of hegemonically structuring acts of force. Laclau insist that, on this

understanding, there is no necessary or normative reason why such articulation would

take a democratic form. I attempted to demonstrate the significance of this point by

comparing Laclau‟s understanding of democracy and its relation to the social to the

theoretical proposals of Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and Antonio Negri and Michael

Hardt. This comparison revealed that each of these alternative models, in different ways,

privileges the social over the political (while Laclau understands the social in terms of

political articulation), and that “democracy” names the proper form of the social within

them.

I concluded chapter four with a consideration of a critique of Laclau which stems

from the disjunction between democracy, the political, and the social in his thought. The

substance of this critique was provided by Simon Critchley, who raises the concern that

Laclau‟s political theory is marred by a “normative deficit” with regard to democracy. In

his view, Laclau can provide no adequate account why the socio-political should be

articulated in terms of democracy, rather than any other form (such as, for example,

totalitarianism). Critchley proposes that without a normative conception to guide it (we

saw that Critchley‟s own proposal is based upon a Levinasian ethical conception)
 365

Laclau‟s political theory can render any democratic shaping of the social wholly

arbitrary. I concluded the chapter by registering my agreement with Critchley‟s overall

concern while indicating my rejection of his proposed solution. This poses a significant

difficulty: Laclau advances a compelling alternative account of universality, but possibly

at the cost of any non-arbitrary reason for advancing a democratic articulation of the

social. In response to this difficulty, I argued that Laclau‟s theory lacked an account of

the motivating force of a democratic articulation of the social, but that this motivation

had to do with a phenomenological structure meaningfully described as “religious,”

rather than to ethics as Critchley proposed.

The final two chapters focused on Jacques Derrida, whose thought forms the basis

for an articulation of what I have called “radical democracy as religious affirmation.”

Chapter five, the first of these two chapters, was devoted to presenting a basic overview

of Derrida‟s ontology of phenomenological negativity or, in more specifically Derridean

terms, his “hauntology.” In that presentation, I periodically attempted to highlight the

consonance between Derrida‟s hauntology and Laclau‟s own political ontology (more

properly, to highlight the dependence of Laclau‟s political ontology on Derrida‟s

hauntology). One of the primary emphases of that chapter, in addition to the broadly

phenomenological orientation of Derrida‟s overall philosophical program, was the nature

of alterity in his work. I attempted to demonstrate that Derrida‟s paradigmatic concept of

the “totally other” (tout autre) has to do not with an ontological or metaphysical

positivity, but rather with the breakdown or disruption of phenomenologically constituted

formations (socio-political or otherwise). I also emphasized, however, that what I called

the “phenomenological negativity” of the tout autre takes on phenomenologically

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positive force, with the result that phenomenological disruption becomes the condition of

possibility for the constitution of novel phenomenological formations (again, socio-

political or otherwise). I also demonstrated how Derrida‟s own articulation of

democracy, in the form of “the democracy to come,” fits into his overall

phenomenological schema, and I noted the continuity of Derrida‟s concept of democracy

with that advanced by Laclau.

In chapter six I picked up with Derrida‟s notion of alterity and sought to

demonstrate that the phenomenological structure outlined in the previous chapter can

meaningfully be described as “religious.” The first part of this demonstration consisted

in an effort to illustrate the difference between Derrida‟s concept of alterity, and the

concept of alterity advanced by Simon Critchley in his reading of Derrida and Levinas.

My aim was to demonstrate that Derrida‟s notion of alterity as phenomenological

negativity differs from Critchley‟s understanding of alterity (following Levinas) in terms

of the ethical relation to the other person. This demonstration served two primary

purposes. The first was to demonstrate what I take to be the religious, as opposed to

primarily ethical, aspect of the phenomenological structure outlined in Derrida‟s work;

the second was to demonstrate that Derrida‟s advocacy of the “democracy to come”

represents an affirmation of the religious phenomenology outlined to that point.

This latter point brought us back to a consideration of Critchley‟s concerns

regarding Laclau‟s theory, and also served to orient us toward our further consideration

of Laclau‟s thought to be presented in the remainder of this Conclusion. I argued that

Derrida‟s thought is consistent with Laclau‟s insofar as there is no basis for insisting on

either the necessity or the normativity of democratic social forms. I also concluded the
 367

discussion, however, by stating that the understanding of phenomenological negativity in

terms of religion provides the basis for arguing that the articulation of the socio-political

in terms of Laclau‟s radical democracy need not be understood as arbitrary, but can be

understood as, in itself, a form of religious affirmation.

Radical Democracy as Religious Affirmation

This latter point brings us to our present discussion. While I demonstrated the

religiously affirmative character of Derrida‟s advocacy of the democracy to come in the

previous chapter, the task remains to make clear precisely how this discussion of religion

related to Laclau‟s own theory of radical democracy, and how an articulation of Laclau‟s

radical democracy in terms of religious affirmation addresses the remaining significant

deficiency in his thought. Undertaking this task will also provide us with the opportunity

to return to some of the significant themes outlined in chapter one.

I have already noted in passing that Laclau‟s political theory, like Derrida‟s own

thought, is deeply implicated in questions of religion from the very start. That is, as I

alluded in chapter three and expressly noted in chapter four, the context in which Laclau

(with Mouffe) first articulates his vision of radical democracy is the “democratic

revolution” which decisively shifted the socio-political imaginary of Western societies

around two centuries ago. By way of reminder, Laclau and Mouffe describe the

democratic revolution in the following terms:

With this [the idea of the democratic revolution] we shall designate the end of a
society of a hierarchic and inegalitarian type, ruled by a theological-political logic
in which the social order had its foundation in divine will. The social body was
conceived of as a whole in which individuals appeared fixed in differential
positions. For as long as such a holistic mode of institution of the social
predominated, politics could not be more than the repetition of hierarchical
 368

relations which reproduced the same type of subordinated subject (emphasis

added).1

Laclau‟s political theoretical project, then, is based on the rejection of a certain form of

religio-political social articulation.

This raises an obvious question: Referring back to our discussion of the first

chapter, does Laclau‟s political theory simply participate in the narrative of normative

secularism? If we refer back to Ward‟s theo-political perspective, the answer would be a

resounding “yes.” Laclau and Mouffe celebrate the “subversive power” of the

democratic revolution, which stems from a shift to the power of “the people” and the

spread of “equality” and “liberty” to ever more diverse regions of the socio-political. In

other words, what Laclau and Mouffe seem to celebrate as the condition of radical

democracy is precisely what Ward understands as the nihilistic social order of secularism.

Additionally, I have also noted that the openness of the social which Ward reads as threat

is precisely what is affirmed in Laclau (and Derrida). If, in addition to these points, we

also note that the democratic revolution broadly corresponds to the emergence of the

modern dualism of religious and secular (as outlined in chapter one), this implication is

only strengthened.

Despite these points, however, I think that the issue remains undecided. While

Laclau clearly rejects a particular theo-logic (which I note bears more than a passing

resemblance to the theopolitical model advanced by Ward), there is significant reason to

doubt that his position maps easily onto a paradigm of normative secularism. First,

Laclau never advances a “secular” social formation in opposition to a “religious” social

1
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony, 155.
 369

formation.2 Second, given his insistence on the contingent shape of the socio-political, he

cannot advance a particular shape of the social as “rational,” as opposed to a “non-

rational” social formation; one of his most central theoretical positions is that the shape of

the social is not governed according to a logic of rationality. Third, and closely related to

this second point, nothing in Laclau‟s political ontology precludes the possibility of a

socio-political formation articulated around religious identities or conceptions.3

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Laclau does not articulate his political theory in terms

of religion, and in rejecting Critchley‟s arguments concerning ethical normativity, he

nowhere advances an alternative conception like the one I briefly introduced at the end of

chapter four and developed in relation to Derrida‟s thought.

My suggestion is that, while Laclau‟s political theory is neither reducible nor

entirely compatible with the narrative of normative secularism, it remains inadequate

unless it is articulated in the phenomenological terms outlined in the previous chapter.

The outlines of this articulation can be demonstrated in a straightforward manner: I have

already demonstrated that Derrida‟s “democracy to come” names precisely such an

affirmation. I have also indicated the essential continuity of Derrida‟s notion of

“democracy to come” with Laclau‟s notion of democracy as the maintenance of the

openness of the social (chapter five), a linkage which is made clear in Mouffe‟s

appropriation of Derrida‟s concept (see chapter four). Bringing these two points together,

it is clear that Laclau‟s articulation of radical democracy already involves an implicit

affirmation of phenomenological disruption. I am not, in other words, substantially

2
Indeed, on Laclau‟s model, the socio-political forms articulated around secularism are themselves the
effects of hegemonic articulation.
3
This is the whole point of Sayyid‟s excellent text, which draws heavily upon Laclau‟s political theory. In
particular, see Chapter 2, “Thinking Islamism, (re-)thinking Islam.”
 370

modifying or adding to Laclau‟s theory at this point; rather, I am simply making explicit

what I think is already implicitly at work in his political theory. Reading Laclau‟s

advocacy of radical democracy as motivated by religious affirmation addresses the

remaining weakness of his proposal. This reading unites Laclau‟s innovative concept of

universality with an account of the democratic articulation of the social which avoids the

dangers of arbitrary decisionism highlighted by Critchley.

Why “Religion” (Again)

A question which persists at this point is my insistence on referring to this

phenomenological structure as “religious.” In this regard, I want to relate the articulation

of Laclau‟s concept of radical democracy in terms of the necessity of the non-identical

repetition of “religion” outlined in the first chapter, which is to say in terms of “religion

without religion” (on the reading I have given to this phrase). Thinking back to our

discussions of Derrida, in what sense, precisely, does the phenomenological structure

outlined in the previous two chapters, and described as “religious” in the previous

chapter, constitute a non-identical repetition of “religion?”

My maintenance of the word “religion” (or the adjective “religious)4 in relation to

the politico-phenomenological structure I have been describing is integrally related to

points developed in chapters one, five, and six. Recalling the argument from chapter one,

the disruption of the narrative of secularism‟s normative status (for example, via the

account of the historical development of the modern concepts of “religion” and “secular”)

does not, in and of itself do away with the very real sedimented socio-political forms

4
I take the nominative and adjectival forms as basically equivalent. I find the distinction drawn between
the two by, for example, Smith, to be unconvincing. See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of
Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), particular p. 20 and the Conclusion.
 371

which have been articulated by that narrative and its construction of the concept of

“religion.” The reality of these forms means that religion is not merely illusory, but

continues to “haunt” (to use a Derridean term from chapter five) the present. With this in

view, I argued that one encounters an injunction to speak in terms of religion, precisely to

call the articulation of the social in terms of “religion” and “secular” into question.

Quoting Pecora, “it would be impossible, even with the help of…Derrida‟s

deconstruction, to imagine a mental [we can also say social] world entirely liberated from

dominant conceptions….”5

Having now given sustained consideration to Derrida, we can strengthen Pecora‟s

point: It is not that one cannot imagine the social entirely liberated from dominant

conceptions despite Derrida‟s efforts at deconstruction, but that we see the impossibility

of this because of Derrida‟s deconstructive efforts. As we have seen with regard to the

metaphysics of presence and phenomenology, to repeat our two examples, Derrida has

consistently shown that, in order to change a terrain, it is necessary to occupy that terrain

in a particular way. This brings us to the “double gesture” of deconstruction, which

entails first, the reversal of an opposition and, by means of that reversal, a displacement

of the very system authorizing that opposition.6 Derrida insists on the impossibility of

attempting to “immediately pass to a neutralization” (which, as we saw in chapter one, is

the mistake of Cavanaugh and Fitzgerald), and thereby highlights the active nature of

what Abeysekara refers to as “un-inheritance.” The point of this discussion in the first

chapter was to highlight the necessity of deploying religion against secularism‟s

normative definition of “religion” precisely in order to disrupt the binary of “religion”

5
Pecora, 5.
6
Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, in Limited Inc,
ed. Gerald Graf (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 21.
 372

and “secular” as such. It was in this sense that I deployed Derrida‟s productive phrase

“religion without religion” arguing that the second “religion” in the phrase constituted a

non-identical repetition of the first, thereby calling its dominant status into question.

Stating this in terms of Derrida‟s “double gesture,” an appropriation of the term religion

reverses the field of priority constituted by normative secularism, overflowing the bounds

of what we might think of as authorized religion, thereby placing the field of “religion-

vs-the secular” into question as a whole. Such is the process of “un-inheriting” the

legacy of “religion” as defined within the narrative scope of normative secularism.

Such was the position I outlined in chapter one. How, then, does this relate

specifically to the phenomenological structure we have examined over the course of the

previous two chapters? If “religion without religion” is understood as a non-identical

repetition, as a repetition with a difference, then the connection begins to emerge. In the

previous chapter, for example, I addressed a formal injunction to speak in apophatic

language. That is, we saw that an apophatic form of language is forced upon us as we

experience the phenomenological disruption inaugurated by the tout autre. What we

experience in the injunction to apophaticism is the haunting of the present by a past form

of religious discourse, the inability to simply neutralize or do away with that form. In

this regard, I distinguished between the two “voices” of apophaticism: The theological,

hyperessential voice of which Derrida is famously critical, and the more general “voice”

which can be heard, as I put it there, whenever logos is forced to speak through negative

determination.

Here, in the “two voices” of apophaticism, we encounter a non-identical

repetition, and this on two registers. The first involves apophatic discourse itself: We
 373

encounter a repetition of a particular and determinate religious form which, precisely as

repetition, disrupts and exceeds the particularity of that form (i.e., the particularity of its

provenance in Neoplatonic Christian thought). Likewise, and this is of crucial

importance, we encounter a repetition of religion which disrupts the normative bounds of

secularism‟s “religion.” That is, it is precisely in the articulation of a political theory of

radical democracy (Laclau) or democracy to-come (Derrida) that we find ourselves

making recourse to a religious form of language.

It is important to see the operation of Derrida‟s double gesture at work here. This

is not simply a reversal, the affirmation of “religion” over against “the secular.” Rather,

it is the displacement of the religion/secular bifurcation of the social, which is to say the

displacement of normative secularism. If apophaticism (and appeal to the messianic, the

name “God,” etc.) force themselves upon us in a way which exceeds their “original”

theological intent, they are also not merely “secularized,” for the simple reason that they

are formally indistinguishable from the religious forms they repeat. This formality

renders any firm distinction between the religious and the secular undecidable, equally

suspended, it seems, between “both/and” and “neither/nor.” This point is clearer if we

think back to the presentation of Graham Ward‟s theopolitical project from the second

chapter. In Ward we encounter, despite his protestations to the contrary, a simple

reversal, rather than a displacement. Despite his insistence on the analogical, and

therefore non-dualistic nature of his metaphysical proposal, the entire edifice of Ward‟s

proposal depends on there being a nihilist, secular other to the community that

participates fully in the divine. Stated differently, were Ward to call into question the

distinction between religion and secular as such, he would necessarily have to call into
 374

question the firm boundaries he places around “theological communities,” and hence his

project as a whole.
 375

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 399

VITA

AUTHOR: Daniel D. Miller

PLACE OF BIRTH: Grand Junction, Colorado

DATE OF BIRTH: November 9, 1975

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE INSTITUTIONS ATTENDED:

Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Oklahoma
Golden Gate Theological Seminary, Vancouver, Washington
University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

DEGREES AWARDED
Bachelor of Arts in Religion, 1998, Oklahoma Baptist University
Master of Divinity, 2001, Golden Gate Theological Seminary
Master of Studies, 2005, University of Oxford
Master of Philosophy, 2007, Syracuse University

HONORS AND AWARDS

Teaching Fellowship, Syracuse University 2009
Theta Alpha Kappa National Honor Society 2006
Syracuse University Fellowship 2005
Theology Graduate Studentship, University of Oxford 2004
Asheville Scholarship, Regent‟s Park College, Oxford 2004
Outstanding Senior in Religion, Oklahoma Baptist University 1998
Senior Achievement Award, Greek, Oklahoma Baptist University 1998
Senior Achievement Award, Hebrew, Oklahoma Baptist University 1998

PUBLICATIONS
“A Theo-Politics of the (Im)proper: Jacques Derrida vis-à-vis Graham Ward.”
Political Theology, forthcoming 2010.

“Review of Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox
or Dialectic? Edited by Creston Davis.” Sophia, 2009, DOI: 10.1007/s11841-
009-0145-0.

“Review of Ananda Abeysekara‟s The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning

Postsecular Futures.” Religion and Culture (forthcoming).
 400

PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS
“Synchronicity and Materiality: Evaluating the Phenomenological Turn in John
Milbank‟s Theology.” 2010 International Society for Religion, Literature, and
Culture Biennial Meeting. Oxford, England, UK.

“Theology-vs-Secular Reason? The Dualism of Radical Orthodoxy and Promise

of Paul Tillich‟s Correlational Method.” 2010 American Academy of Religion
Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA.

“Religious Political Identity and the Conceptual Limits of Genealogical Critique:

A Consideration of two Recent Examples.” 2010 AAR Eastern International
Region Annual Meeting. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

“Transcendental Historicism and a Politics of Peace: A Consideration of William

Cavanaugh‟s The Myth of Religious Violence.” 2010 Society for Continental
Philosophy and Theology Annual Meeting, Messiah College, Grantham, PA.

“Postcoloniality, Secular Critique, and Democratic Futures.” Chair of panel

presented at the 2009 North American Association for the Study of Religion
Annual Meeting, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

“Mapping Postsecular Religion: Graham Ward and Jacques Derrida.” 2009

University of Memphis Philosophy Graduate Student Conference: The Sacred
and the Secular: Philosophy and Religion in the 21st Century, Memphis, TN.

“Apocalyptic Monstrosity and the „War on Terror‟.” 2008 Le Moyne College

Religion and Literature Forum: The Grotesque and the Sublime in Contemporary
Culture, Syracuse, NY.

“Baptists and the Uncommon Good: Outlining a Political Baptist Ecclesiology.”

2007 Young Scholars in the Baptist Academy Conference: Baptists and the
Common Good. Regent‟s Park College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

“Extension of the „Democratic Revolution‟ as Participation in the Becoming of

God.” 2007 American Academy of Religion Southeastern Commission for the
Study of Religion Annual Meeting, Nashville, TN.

“Chaos and Re-creation: An Examination of George W. Bush‟s Religious

Rhetoric and the „War on Terror.‟” 2007 Hawaii International Conference on
Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, HA.

“Messianism by Any Other Name: The Messianic and Différance as Dual

Formulation of the Absolute Future in Derrida.” 2007 Hawaii International
Conference on Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, HA.
 401

“Fidelity to Difference: Reading Badiou as Derrida‟s Supplement.” Panel on

“The Ethics of Difference,” 2006 AAR Eastern International Region Annual
Meeting, Québec City, Québec, Canada.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Teaching Fellow, Syracuse University 2009-2010
Part-Time Instructor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University 2008-2009
Teaching Assistant, Department of Religion, Syracuse University 2007-2008
Research Assistant, Department of Religion, Syracuse University 2008
Teaching Associate, Department of Religion, Syracuse University 2005-2009
402