DERRIDA AND THE APORIA OF THE POLITICAL, OR

THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL DIMENSION OF

DECONSTRUCTION

by

NOAH HORWITZ
Loyola University Chicago

ABSTRACT
Jacques Derrida’s insistence on submitting politics to the test of undecidability elicits
the common accusation that an aporetic form of thought can only end in dubious
conclusions concerning the pressing matter of politics and that no normative claims
can emerge from a thought of radical undecidability. In this paper, I articulate the
structural undecidability (aporia) that constitutes politics according to Derrida, the man-
ner in which this structural undecidability elicits judgments, and the importance for
critique of not ignoring it. In particular, this structural undecidability is articulated
within the event of foundation of any state or set of social relations by way of a declar-
ative act. In addition, the aporetic structure of the political renders visible the essen-
tial relationship between (revealed) religion and politics. Ultimately, due to a necessary
reference to an ultimate authority at any event of foundation, the political is always
already theologico-political in character.

1. The Political from the Perspective of Deconstruction

In The Other Heading: Reections on Today’s Europe, Jacques Derrida writes
that “ethics, politics, and responsibility, if there are any, will only ever
have begun with the experience and experiment of the aporia.”1 Here,
Derrida highlights how the very possibility of politics must be tested
by the trial of the aporia, of structural undecidability. Such a trial
must be endured not only in order for a political theory to be estab-
lished but also for any political action to take place. Of course Derrida’s
insistence on submitting politics to the test of undecidability elicits the
common accusation that an aporetic form of thought can only end in
indeterminate and dubious conclusions concerning the pressing mat-
ter of politics and that no substantive and normative claims can emerge
from a thought of radical undecidability. Before one merely rehearses
such charges in order simply to dismiss deconstruction from the scene
and to carry on with business as usual, one should test Derrida’s

Research in Phenomenology, 32
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands 2002
 derrida and the aporia of the political 157

attempt to Ž x the very possibility of politics; for if Derrida is correct

that politics and ethics can only take place by way of undecidability—
that politics and ethics are themselves informed by structural unde-
cidability—then attempts to dismiss deconstruction from the scene will
have simply turned out to be disavowals of politics as such.
The stakes, then, of Derrida’s intervention into politics and ethics
are high; for submitting politics and ethics to the trial of aporia implies
that undecidability is not merely one way of characterizing politics,
but the very predicament that politics always Ž nds itself in from the
beginning. To disavow this predicament is to deny (or perhaps better,
de-negate, since if undecidability forms the very structure of politics, it
will be found in every truly political instance) what makes politics pos-
sible (if it is) and what consequences follow from the aporetic nature
of politics. But how does such an aporetic thought of politics take
place? For Derrida, politics, or perhaps better, the political, involves
the institution of social relations, the event of foundation that produces
society as such.2 The aporia of the political, then, would involve the
structural undecidability of any event instituting or founding a state
or law (for example).
The act of foundation or institution cannot avoid, even if it can
deny, the aporetic nature of its occurrence. A Derridean intervention
into politics, in this manner, consists in returning various social rela-
tions and structures to the event of their foundation in order to demon-
strate the aporetic nature of their institution and the consequences and
possibilities that emerge given the aporetic structure of these events.
The political dimension opens by way of the event of foundation and
the very structuration of the event. While various examples of instances
of foundation could be given (and each could be examined in its own
singularity), all events, even in their singularity, betray a general aporetic
structure. While the deconstitution of social structures demonstrates
their political nature, the reactivation of the founding moment of these
structures renders visible their open possibilities. With the reactivation
and examination of the aporetic event of institution, the relative con-
tingency of social relations and institutions becomes apparent, and the
lines of politicization that must follow can be traced out.
Since deconstruction renders apparent the general structure of the
political qua the aporetic event of institution, it will appear to be, on
the one hand, neutral with regards to any particular form of politics
and manner of politicization (due to its rendering of the quasi-tran-
scendental ‘ground’ of any politics) and, on the other hand, excessively
158 noah horwitz

political by showing how all events of institution lead to politicization

and involve contingency and openness. After articulating the aporia of
the political, deconstruction will be able to answer the usual charge
lodged against it of not oVering any normative criteria for judging par-
ticular political situations. Instead, deconstruction will prove to lead
politics back to its very ground, or nonground, to the very moment
that the ‘truth’ of politics can be seen and judged.

2. The Meaning of ‘Aporia’

Now, before proceeding to an articulation of the aporia of the polit-
ical by examining the general structure of the event of institution, the
very term “aporia” must be speciŽ ed and further delimited. The term
“aporia” literally means “nonpassage” or “without passage” and involves
an experience of not knowing what path to follow or coming to the
point where no path can be found.3 As Derrida points out, the expe-
rience of the aporia is not at all foreign to the philosophical tradition
(A, 12). In fact, following Heidegger, Derrida notes how, especially in
Kant and Hegel, the experience of the aporia is rendered dialectically
or dialecticized (A, 14). However, Derrida chooses the term aporia
instead of “antinomy” (which Kant, of course, uses) since an antin-
omy involves “contradictions or antagonisms among equally impera-
tive laws” that can be solved or overcome, whereas an aporia involves
an irreducible and constitutive experience of impossibility or nonpas-
sage (A, 16). The contradiction of equally valid and necessary propo-
sitions found in an antinomy is solved by showing how it is “appar-
ent or illusory,” by dialecticizing the contradiction in a Hegelian or
Marxist manner, or by rendering it as a “transcendental illusion in a
dialectic of the Kantian type” (A, 16).
In contrast to these experiences of the aporia, the deconstructive
articulation of the aporia shows it to be irreducible and constitutive
to the degree that it cannot be overcome. While a Hegelian or Marxist
thought, for example, would exploit the constitutive and necessary
nature of the aporia in order to engender a dialectical progression, for
Derrida the irreducible and interminable nature of the aporia will
always disrupt this progress by showing how thought and action remain
caught in the movement of the “double bind” (A, 15). Instead of being
sublated or overcome, the aporia for deconstruction becomes the very
ordeal of all experience. The aporia must be endured as interminable
in order for experience to take place. As opposed to a contradiction
 derrida and the aporia of the political 159

of equally valid and necessary statements, the deconstructive aporia is

perhaps best formulated by showing how the conditions for the pos-
sibility of something also prove to be the conditions for its impossi-
bility (A, 15). The deconstructive aporia is thereby iterability itself, an
ineradicable “double bind” or an “experience of the impossible” (A,
15). Or, one could render aporia as undecidability, as the undecid-
ability involved in a determinate vacillation between determinate and
structural possibilities and as the undecidability found when the con-
ditions for the possibility of something also prove to be the conditions
for impossibility.

3. The Aporetic Event of Foundation: The Declarative Act

Now, this structural undecidability is at work at the very event of the
foundation of a state, as Derrida shows in his analysis of the founda-
tion of the United States’ ‘Declaration of Independence’. The “declar-
ative act which founds an institution” does not initially merely describe
a state of aVairs, but rather “it performs, it accomplishes, it does what
it says it does: that at least would be its intentional structure.”4 The
event of founding a state involves a performative act that brings into
being what it describes, since prior to this act the state does not yet
exist. The act that institutes requires a speciŽ c empirical moment of
inception and inscription even though the institution founded exceeds
this moment and opens out onto the future (DI, 8). In this way, while
the instituting act founds the state or institution, it does not control
its destiny or meaning completely. The representatives of the ‘United
States in General Congress Assembled’ speak in the name of the peo-
ple of the United States in order to declare this people free and inde-
pendent (DI, 9). But since it is the representatives of the people who
perform this act, it is, in eVect, the people itself declaring itself free
and independent (DI, 9). Here, seemingly, an entity calls itself into
existence.
But are not the people of the United States already free and already
a ‘people’ prior to the act of declaration? Derrida highlights the diYculty
of deciding whether or not the declarative act found at the event of
institution merely describes a state of aVairs (there is already a people
of the United States which has representatives), a constative speech
act, or actually produces what it names (the declarative act brings into
being this people), a performative speech act: “One cannot decide—
and that’s the interesting thing, the force and the coup of force of
160 noah horwitz

such a declarative act—whether independence is stated or produced

by this utterance” (DI, 9). The “force” of the declarative act lies in
the structural undecidability found in its gesture since it is intelligible
only insofar as it is viewed as both constative and performative, neither
constative nor performative, and either constitutive or performative:
“Is it that the good people have already freed themselves in fact and
are only stating the fact of this emancipation in [par] the Declaration?
Or is it rather that they free themselves at the instant of and by [ par]
the signature of this Declaration?” (DI, 9). For Derrida, it is precisely
this undecidability that makes such an act forceful since it must bring
into being what must already exist.
This undecidability does not ruin the act, but rather gives it the
force to found and establish a state by way of a coup of force:
This obscurity, this undecidability between, let’s say, a performative struc-
ture and a constative structure, is required in order to produce the sought-
after eVect. It is essential to the very positing or position of a right as
such, whether one is speaking here of hypocrisy, of equivocation, of unde-
cidability, or of Ž ction. (DI, 9–10)

This act then has the modality of being both impossible (for how can
something call itself into being?) and necessary (for without such an
act the state or institution would not be founded). The oscillation
between viewing this act as a description of what already exists and
the bringing into being of an entity cannot be overcome and forms
the general structure of all such declarative acts.
Such an act produces the paradox of an entity calling itself into
being, of the signature preceding the one who signs (here, by way of
their representatives, the people of the U.S.):
But this people does not exist. They do not exist as an entity, it does not
exist, before this declaration, not as such. If it gives birth to itself, as free
and independent subject, as possible signer, this can hold only in the act
of the signature. The signature invents the signer. This signer can only
authorize him- or herself to sign once he or she has come to the end
[parvenu au vout], if one can say this, of his or her signature, in a sort of
fabulous retroactivity. (DI, 10)
The declarative act then has the deferred eVect, the “fabulous retroac-
tivity,” of bringing into being what only will have been. In other words,
the event of foundation, in a paradoxical fashion by way of Nachträglichkeit,
brings into being a Ž ction.5 The people have the status of a Ž ction,
and so are “fabulous,” precisely due to the paradox of the event of
 derrida and the aporia of the political 161

foundation. The structural undecidability found here means that an

element of Ž ction intervenes in order for the event to take place in a
paradoxical fashion. But this element of Ž ction and paradox found in
this event are not rare, but rather can be found “every time,” and in
the most common way, to inform all events of institution and all per-
formances whereby an entity seems to call itself into being (DI, 10).
The foundation of a state, then, is subject to diVérance since the peo-
ple invented here as a legal Ž ction (which does not take away from
the actuality of the people invented) can be brought into being only
in diVering from themselves by way of representatives and deferring
themselves to the moment they will have actually arisen into being as
a real entity (DI, 10). The state comes into existence by an act of force
whereby power is legitimated through a paradoxical and structurally
undecidable act. The state guarantees itself by itself in the event of
foundation by way of the violence of bringing itself into being. This
unfounded event of foundation shows its violence due to the para-
doxical way in which it must presuppose itself in order to performa-
tively enact itself. Since what legitimates the state here is this aporetic
event of institution, the legitimation betrays itself as being unfounded
or as being its own foundation.
However, due to the “fabulous retroactivity” included in the aporetic
event, the event of foundation includes the disavowal of the ground-
less beginning by making it appear as though what is brought into
being already existed as a fully present entity prior to the act. But the
“tense for this coup of right,” for this coup of force, is the “future
perfect,” according to Derrida (DI, 10). The people of the United
States will have been, since prior to the act it was not as such. But the
strange temporality of this aporetic event is dissimulated by way of the
structure of the event itself, due to the paradox of bringing something
into being which must presumably exist prior to this act. The tem-
porality of this event then cannot be that of the present and the peo-
ple cannot be self-identical; otherwise the event as such would not be
possible (DI, 10). The state guarantees and founds its own existence
through a coup of force that allows for a state, l’etat de droit, both to
have the right to exist and to exist as a state of right.
Thus, the declarative act that founds a state shows, for Derrida,
how certain performative speech acts paradoxically always involve a
description of the state of aVairs they bring into being. The state can
consequently legitimate itself by founding itself, but also exposes the
illegitimacy of the founding event, given the coup of force that enables
162 noah horwitz

it to come into being. And because the declarative act must describe
what it founds by referring to something outside of itself and seem-
ingly prior to itself, the event of foundation must always have recourse
to something heterogeneous to what it founds. The state has its foun-
dation in something other than itself, in the people, so that the
foundation of the state is outside of itself. But, as we have seen, this
people itself cannot be except by way of the declarative act that initi-
ates the state. The declarative act must vacillate between the perfor-
mative and the constative, and between auto-reference (having its
legitimacy only within the declarative act) and hetero-reference (see-
ing its foundation arise outside of itself in something heterogeneous to
itself ); consequently, it always carries with itself an instability that forms
the very event of foundation and structures the event aporetically.
The invention of the state thus founds a state of right, founds the
norms and rules of the state, only through giving these norms the legit-
imacy of a legal Ž ction or self-legitimating Ž ction and an instability
that undercuts their absoluteness. But Derrida’s demonstration that
such an event upsets the division between the performative and the
constative does not mean that such a distinction no longer holds; it
means, rather, that the structuration of the event of foundation shows
how a crossover between the two categories contaminates this distinc-
tion. The distinction between the performative and the constative must
be upheld (since the two are not simply identical and since some speech
acts are one or the other), but this distinction, once set up, helps to
reveal the inmixing of the two in the very structure of the aporetic event.
The coup of force is dissimulated by the very structure of the declar-
ative act that implicitly describes what it founds. Derrida’s decon-
structive eVort reactivates this event and enables the coup of force
that structures it to become visible again. The legitimate order gains
its legitimacy by retroactively rendering invisible that its legitimation
rests on the aporia of its foundation, but this violence at the founda-
tion occurs precisely due to the fabulous circle of a declarative act that
establishes an institution and simultaneously and retroactively dissim-
ulates this very act as political, as an act of force, as having contained
a dimension of constitutive violence. Since the dissimulation is part
and parcel of the very structure of this act, a deconstructive reactiva-
tion of such events is interminably called for so that the political event
that founds social structures and relations can be rendered visible.
Since the deconstructive act reactivates the event of foundation of
a state or institution and points to the question of origins, it points
 derrida and the aporia of the political 163

out the unstable point of every order and institution. The question of
the event of foundation for any order is always traumatic, since any
order Ž nds its legitimacy by dissimulating the coup of force found at
its institution. 6 When one is reminded of the political dimension of insti-
tutions, one sees the non-absoluteness of their foundation and legiti-
macy. By way of Derrida’s analysis of the ‘Declaration of Independence’,
the aporia of the political as the aporia of the event of foundation of
a state or institution shows its irreducible and structural place.7

4. Politicization
Now, the event of foundation is related to attempts to Ž x the context
of politics, of what counts as politics, and what can be articulated as
a politics. While this event of foundation opens and may precede any
particular context, it also relates to attempts to Ž x a context. How-
ever, given that the aporetic event is structurally undecidable, no con-
text can be fully and absolutely determined and Ž xed. In Limited Inc.,
Derrida elaborates on the notion of the nonabsolute closure or satu-
ration of contexts and how it relates to politics, and this elaboration
begins to draw out further the consequences of the aporia of the polit-
ical. For Derrida, there is always “something political” in any attempt
to Ž x a context: “Such experience is always political because it implies,
insofar as it involves determination, a certain type of non-‘natural’ rela-
tionship to others.” 8 The event of foundation allows for the determi-
nation of a context by bringing into existence, in some institution or
order, a social structure or set of relations. These relations do not exist
prior to this event and thereby can be seen as nonnatural.
By Ž xing a context, a certain kind of politics is always tacitly intro-
duced. To determine the context of utterances “cannot be apolitical,”
since the contextual determination presupposes a political dimension
that always insinuates itself (LI, 136). Given that a context cannot be
absolutely Ž xed or saturated, any particular determination of it implies
a relatively contingent decision and a relatively contingent act. The
nongivenness of how these contexts should be determined means that
any act is nonnecessary and involves what Derrida would here call a
political nature. Such acts thus imply relations of force by Ž xing what
cannot be absolutely closed (LI, 152).
The irreducible nonclosure of context that can be found in the
event of foundation due to its paradoxical structure always allows for
an opening onto the politics of Ž xing contexts and deciding upon and
164 noah horwitz

stabilizing meanings. The very incompletion of the event of found-

ation gives rise to an unconditional opening that sets to work the
deconstructive moment whereby what is dissimulated is reopened
and politics becomes necessary due to the incompletion of what is
instituted:

Now, the very least that can be said of unconditionality (a word that I
use not by accident to recall the character of the categorical imperative
in its Kantian form) is that it is independent of every determinate con-
text, even of the determination of a context in general. It announces
itself as such only in the opening of context. Not that it is simply present
(existent) elsewhere, outside of all context; rather, it intervenes in the
determination of a context from its very inception, and from an injunc-
tion, a law, a responsibility that transcends this or that determination of
a given context. Following this, what remains is to articulate this uncon-
ditionality with the determinate (Kant would say, hypothetical) conditions
of this or that context; and this is the moment of strategies, of rhetorics,
of ethics, and of politics. The structure thus described supposes both that
there are only contexts, that nothing exists outside context, as I have often
said, but also that the limit of the frame or the border of the context
always entails a clause of nonclosure. (LI, 152)

The unconditionality Derrida sees in the nonclosure of context is not

outside of context, but beyond any particular context, since it allows
for the opening and constitution of context as such. In this way, one
can see that what Derrida here calls unconditionality is the aporia of
the political. This unconditional openness is itself the event that opens
context and allows one to stabilize meanings. It transcends in its gen-
erality and sublimity any particular context by intervening in any con-
text and opening all contexts.
However, unconditionality and the event of foundation, in their irre-
ducible and constitutive incompletion and sublimity, do not proscribe
any particular politics or actions, but rather allow for and make pos-
sible many types of politics. In this way, unconditionality and the apo-
ria of the political give rise to particular politics and politicization. While
there are only contexts, the absolute nonclosure of contexts entails an
unconditional opening that gives politics a chance and politicization its
motivating force. Politics and politicization must take place precisely
due to structural undecidability and the unconditional nonclosure of
context, since no particular type of politics and political action can be
deduced a priori from the quasi-transcendental structure and aporetic
events that give rise to them.
 derrida and the aporia of the political 165

For Derrida, “this unconditionality also deŽ nes the injunction that
prescribes deconstructing” (LI, 153). One can and must deconstruct
precisely because of the structural undecidability of the event of insti-
tution and the unconditional nonclosure of contexts. This uncondi-
tionality is thus a kind of transcendent and sublime law that informs,
intervenes, and opens any particular politics. Deconstruction takes its
force and motivation from this unconditionality in the same way as it
does from structural undecidability and aporia. The event of founda-
tion or the Ž xing of contexts is contingent and incomplete because
there is no way of deducing a priori how or what they should deter-
mine; however, there is a general structure of the event, as aporetic
and as transcendent unconditionality, that intervenes at each instance.
The relatively contingent institution of institutions is possible because
this event is not fully achieved, but only will have been. This contin-
gency and incompletion leads to politicization insofar as the aporia of
the political and the unconditionality of nonclosure intervene at each
instance. While, at this point, one does not examine particular deter-
minations, one shows how particular determinations and events are
possible and how they are always informed by a general structure.

5. An Excess of Violence: The Question of Judgment

Although the thought of the aporia has shown both that the political
is the structurally undecidable event of institution and that politics is
the Ž xing of an opening, perhaps it is precisely such a quasi-tran-
scendental discourse and elaboration of general structures that disal-
low Derrida’s work from oVering a way to judge in politics and under-
cuts the relevance of deconstruction for politics. For Derrida, every event
of foundation of a state or institution entails a coup of force, since this
coup marks this event and forms part of its very structure. In addi-
tion, once any institution has been invented, the unstable moment of
its foundation usually recedes into the past and is forgotten unless pre-
vailing conditions constantly recall the originary violence constitutive
of its foundation.
In his essay on Nelson Mandela, Derrida elaborates the aporia of
the political with regards to the founding of the South African state
(a state that at the time enforced apartheid) in order to contest the
legitimacy of this state. Like the founding of the United States, the
founding of South Africa both presupposed and produced the unity of
the people at the event of its institution: “Mandela reminds us, in fact,
166 noah horwitz

of the truth: the establishment of this constitutional law had not only,
both in fact and in practice, taken the form of a singular coup of force,
but this one act at once produced and presupposed the unity of a nation.”9
According to Derrida, Mandela, in contesting the legitimacy of South
Africa as actually representing the entire people of the state, renders
visible the coup of force found at the institution of the state.
The founding of South Africa, of course, attempted to produce and
describe an (already) uniŽ ed nation and people; but here, according
to Derrida, the South African state was never able to establish itself
because its coup of force was “a bad coup” (LF, 18). The coup of
force found in the instituting of South Africa could never fully dis-
simulate itself and be rendered invisible due to the obvious Ž ction that
the people brought into being by the state only represented “a lim-
ited sum of private interests, those of the white minority” (LF, 18). For
Derrida, because only the white minority signed for and onto this
declarative act, the exclusion of the black majority delegitimates this
declarative act. But, according to Derrida, the signature invents the
signer, so that, in some sense, the people of South Africa were brought
into being by this declarative act. However, due to the obvious exclu-
sion, Derrida wishes to argue that the coup of force remains constantly
visible and undercuts what has been brought into being.
But given that such a coup of force is found in all events of foun-
dation, by what right does Derrida call into question the South African
state in particular? If the unity of the nation or people invented by a
declarative act is always something of a legal Ž ction that never com-
pletely overlaps and corresponds to the actual population of a state,
how is it that the coup of force in this instance can be contested
whereas elsewhere it remains forgotten? Derrida attempts to explain
further why this particular coup of force can be called “bad” due to
the obvious discrepancy between what has been declared and what
remains in fact:

In the case of South Africa, certain ‘conventions’ were not respected, the
violence was too great, visibly too great, at a moment when this visibility
extended to a new international scene, and so on. The white commu-
nity was too much in the minority, the disproportion of wealth too  agrant.
From then on this violence remains at once excessive and powerless,
insuYcient in its results, lost in its own contradiction (LF, 18).

The declarative act, like any act that includes a performative dimen-
sion, depends on certain conventions and that these conventions be
 derrida and the aporia of the political 167

respected (LF, 18). For the performative to be ‘happy’ and to achieve

its eVect, the conditions and conventions that order these performa-
tives must be in place and respected in the context of the event of its
enunciation. With South Africa, the necessary conventions and condi-
tions required for a declarative act to come oV were not in place
because a minority signed for the majority. Even though in the case
of the founding of the U.S. a minority (the representatives of the peo-
ple) signed for the entirety, with South Africa the minority that signed
was too little to be a legitimate signer. The degree of the South African
minority constantly makes visible the coup of force that brought South
Africa into being. The contradiction between declaring the unity of
the people and the fact that only a minority are allowed to rule and
declare this unity renders this performative ‘unhappy’.
But by what right does one judge that in a particular case a minor-
ity is too much a minority, especially if a coup of force is necessarily
at work in any event of foundation? Since any declarative act includes
a coup of force and cannot be signed by everyone, how are the con-
ventions and conditions that form the contexts of these events to be
respected so that it takes place? If there is always an element of ille-
gitimacy at work in declarative acts given the structural undecidabil-
ity that informs them, then it would appear diYcult to justify a judg-
ment about a particular instance as illegitimate due to a diVerence of
degree. This diVerence of degree itself is a matter of judgment, and
Derrida renders such a judgment. One wants to say that the apartheid
state of South Africa was illegitimate, but keeping in mind the coup
of force at work in any event of foundation, locating this diVerence
of degree becomes diYcult. The contradiction between a minority that
is too much a minority and a declarative act that founds the unity of
a people is obvious, but one could also show that it is constitutive of
such legal Ž ctions to be in contradiction to a state of aVairs. And, of
course, the coup of force is precisely that something is brought into
being while at the same time describing the state of aVairs that it
brings into being (as if this state of aVairs already was the case). The
point here is that because this declarative act did not attempt to be
representative and respect the conventions and conditions necessary
for making this coup of force recede into the past, the coup of force
is not rendered invisible.
But even if the correct conditions are respected and a new South
Africa is founded (as it eventually was), the aporia of the political and
the originary violence that marks the foundation of a state will persist,
168 noah horwitz

since it is structurally necessary. A coup of force will mark even the

inception of a new South Africa. Mandela, in founding a new state,
will also be caught in a coup of force, and in particular, the coup of
force that brought about the Ž rst South Africa:

Mandela knows that: no matter how democratic it is, and even if it seems
to conform to the principle of the equality of all before the law, the
absolute inauguration of a state cannot presuppose the previously legit-
imized existence of a national entity. The same is true for a Ž rst consti-
tution. The total unity of a nation is not identiŽ ed for the Ž rst time
except by a contract—formal or not, written or not—which institutes
some fundamental law. Now this contract is never actually signed, except
by supposed representatives of the nation which is supposed to be ‘entire.’
This fundamental law cannot, either in law or in fact, simply precede
that which at once institutes it and nevertheless supposes it; projecting
and re ecting it! It can in no way precede this extraordinary performa-
tive by which a signature authorizes itself to sign, in a word, legalizes
itself on its own without the guarantee of preexisting law. This violence
and this autographic Ž ction are found at work just as surely in what we
call individual autobiography as in the ‘historical’ origin of states. In the
case of South Africa, the Ž ction lies in this—and it is a Ž ction against
a Ž ction: the unity of the ‘entire nation’ could not correspond to the
delimitation eVected by the white minority. (LF, 20–21)

In founding a new South Africa one does not want to recognize the
violence that instituted the former one, but at the same time this new
event of foundation will itself be structured by a coup of force:
It should now constitute a whole (the white minority plus all the inhab-
itants of South Africa) whose conŽ guration was only to be established,
in any case to be identiŽ ed, by beginning with a minority violence. That
it can from then on oppose this violence alters nothing about this terri-
fying contradiction. The ‘entire nation,’ a unity of ‘all the national groups,’
will grant itself existence and legal force only by the very same act to
which the Charter of Freedom appeals. This Charter speaks in the pre-
sent, a present supposed to be founded on the description of historical fact,
which, in turn, should be recognized in the future. It also speaks in the
future, a future which has a prescriptive value. (LF, 21)
Here the diVerence would be that the unity of the nation would be
closer and more approximate to this legal Ž ction because its signing
would not exclude the majority of the population. But this legal Ž ction
would itself arise through a coup of force and never fully correspond
to the actual state of aVairs.
 derrida and the aporia of the political 169

The critique of South Africa thus involves not dismissing the legal
Ž ction of the entire nation, but upholding this Ž ction and demon-
strating the contradiction between it and the actual state of aVairs.
That any new event of foundation will itself be informed by a coup
of force does not undermine this critique, since it is precisely the
attempt to better approximate and take seriously this legal Ž ction that
makes it more likely that the new event of foundation will become
invisible and recede into the past. To take this legal Ž ction seriously
oVers up a critique of the current state of aVairs. In addition, the con-
stitutive discrepancy of the legal Ž ction to the current state of aVairs,
and the constitutive coup of force at the event of foundation remain
the ever-possible resource for calling into question any state that does
not adhere to the principles and legal Ž ctions that form and legitimize
it. The fact that a new declarative act will itself contain a coup of
force may initially appear to be a disabling contradiction, but actually
it is only due to the aporia of the event of foundation that such a cri-
tique is possible.
When one founds a state that claims to be ‘a state of and for all’,
this self-legitimating legal edict takes on a “prescriptive value” such that
it must be upheld. When it is not upheld and taken seriously, the state
itself is called into question. The declarative act thus comes with an
unconditional call for the legal Ž ction to exist in fact even if this exis-
tence is impossible. This necessary but impossible unconditional demand
is opened precisely by the aporia of the political, that is, by the struc-
turally undecidable declarative act. It oVers the resource for critique
and questioning. The coup of force at the event of foundation can
always be recalled and rendered visible. And if the prescriptive value
of its founding act is not respected, then this coup of force will remain
visible and never fully dissimulated.
But the decision to hear and answer to this unconditional opening
and to recall the coup of force at the event of foundation remains a
matter of judgment.10 It is a judgment of degree. It is the judgment,
for instance, that a minority is too much a minority. While there is no
a priori rule for deciding where something is excessive or where a
minority is too much of a minority, this lack of a rule means that it
is a political decision to recall the coup of force. Even if one points
out the constitutive nature of a coup of force and the irreducible dis-
junct between a legal Ž ction and a state of aVairs, these irreducible
aspects of the foundation of a state give legal Ž ctions a prescriptive
value that can be heard and the critic a resource for denouncing a
170 noah horwitz

state of aVairs. Even though this judgment is one of degree and of a

particular situation, such judgments form politics, since no politics is
ever fully grounded. The general structure of the aporia of the polit-
ical does not disallow one from judging particular instances, but rather
demands that one judge and oVers a resource for formulating such
judgments.
One is required to judge the excessiveness of violence, but it is only
the prescriptive value of a legal Ž ction and the unconditionality of the
very aporia of the political that allows for this excess even to become
visible. Derrida’s articulation of the aporia of the political and his
demonstration of this aporia as a general structure that informs all
events of foundation does not lead simply to the ‘night in which all
cows are black’, but rather to the necessity of judging as well as to a
politics of judging in a given condition. 11 The prescriptive value of
legal Ž ctions and the unconditional opening of the aporia give one a
kind of criteria and resource for judging, but ultimately to judge the
excessiveness of force requires a political decision that cannot fully
adhere to any rule. In other words, the aporia of the political always
already includes lines of politicization, since the excess of a certain regime
is only visible due to the structural undecidability of the event of foun-
dation. To obscure this politicization is to obscure politics itself. In
eVect, deconstruction reveals the possibility of politics and politiciza-
tion by revealing the aporetic structure of the political.
The law of the aporia transcends any particular example. In this
way, there is no privileged political example or politics; there is no
type for the aporia and the unconditionality of openness it shows. For
Kant, as is well known, the transcendent and sublime moral law has
a particular type (as opposed to schema): the categorical imperative. This
imperative gives content to the formal and unrepresentable moral law.
But given the indeterminacy and unconditionality of the moral law
(does it not ultimately merely say ‘Do your duty!’?), any type forms one
way of symbolizing and interpreting it. A particular example or sym-
bol of the moral law instantiates it, but cannot fully symbolize or rep-
resent it. Derrida’s refusal to oVer a particular type for the law of the
aporia keeps open the radical possibilities it institutes.
 derrida and the aporia of the political 171

6. The Event of Revelation as the Event of Foundation:

The Political and the Religious
Given that Derrida also articulates the general structure of the event,
this structure transcends any particular event. Here, an undecidability
arises between a particular event opening up a Ž eld of possibilities and
what allows for a Ž eld of possibilities as such. This undecidability is
best formulated (not accidentally) in terms of the undecidability between
an event of revelation and a general structure of revealability and phe-
nomenality: “Must one choose between the priority of revelation (OVenbarung)
and that of revealability (OVenbarkeit), the priority of manifestation and
that of manifestability, of theology and theiology, of the science of god
and the science of the divine, of the divinity of God?”12 Here, in Politics
of Friendship, Derrida draws on Heidegger in order to articulate the
undecidability between an event of revelation that grounds what can
become manifest and a general structure of manifestation that com-
prehends manifestation as such without any recourse to a particular
event.
The general structure of revealability seems to account for a par-
ticular event of revelation; but at the same time, a particular event of
revelation can open up and order a whole Ž eld of possibilities and
phenomenality:
‘In fact’, ‘in truth’, it would be only the event of revelation that would
open—like a breaking-in, making it possible after the event—the Ž eld of
the possible in which it appeared to spring forth, and for that matter
actually did so. The event of revelation would reveal not only this or
that—God, for example, but revealability itself. By the same token, this
would forbid us saying ‘God, for example’. (PF, 18)
The event opens up a Ž eld of possibilities and also allows one to
see the general structure of the event that is irreducible to and tran-
scends the particular event. Given this play between the particular
event and the general structure, it appears that the event precedes the
general structure in priority; however, given that this general structure
cannot be reduced to the event, the general structure also seems to
have priority:
Among the immense consequence of this strong logical necessity, we must
reckon with those concerning nothing less than revelation, truth and the
event: a thought (ontological or meta-ontological) of conditions of possi-
bility and structures of revealability, or of the opening on to truth, may
well appear legitimately and methodologically anterior to gaining access
172 noah horwitz

to all singular events of revelation—and the stakes of this irreducible

anteriority of good sense or common sense are limitless. (PF, 18)

Still, one must examine these events because they do open various
Ž elds of possibilities and forms of possible manifestation. The general
structure makes the event possible and thinkable, but conversely, a
particular event, in its status as an example, allows one to articulate
the general structure.
The undecidability here is constitutive of the structure of the event
and the general possibilities it gives rise to. No choice between the
two, event and general structure, can be made since one always implies
the other. One can call this particular undecidability theological inso-
far as it is paradigmatically governed by the example of revealed reli-
gion. In addition, it shows how any event, political or otherwise, relates
to truth and revelation. To relate the event to this undecidability makes
the thinking of the political as event of foundation always already a
theologico-political discourse.

7. God and Politics

But also and more forcefully, this theologico-political dimension opens
up precisely within the aporia itself, within the political as event of
institution, insofar as it entails a recourse to God or to an ultimate
instance. The structural undecidability between the performative and
constative that marks a declarative act makes recourse to such an
instance. Due to the coup of force and the constitutive instability of
such an act, the recourse to such an ultimate instance forms part of
the very structure of the act, whether implicitly or explicitly. In order
to guarantee and underwrite the abyssal act of a self-legitimating
Ž ction, this recourse to an ultimate instance is neither accidental nor
contingent. 13
In the ‘Declaration of Independence’, for instance, the declarative
act does not solely authorize itself by reference to the good people.
Instead, at the very moment this fabulous invention occurs, a refer-
ence is made to God in order to stabilize the act. The ‘Declaration’
of course reads:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one peo-
ple to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and
equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
 derrida and the aporia of the political 173

them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they

should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold
these truths to be self-evident. . . .

As Derrida notes, here the signers of the declaration make recourse

both to the “laws of Nature” and to God as a foundation in order to
stabilize this self-legitimating event of institution:

for this Declaration to have a meaning and an eVect, there must be a

last instance, God is the name, the best one, for this last instance and
this ultimate signature. Not only the best one in a determined context
(such and such a nation, such and such a religion, etc.), but the name
of the best name in general. Now, this (best) name also ought to be a
proper name. God is the best proper name, the proper name the best
[Dieu est le nom propre le meilleur]. One could not replace ‘God’ by the ‘best
proper name [le meilleur nom propre]’. (DI, 12)

This reference to God, the ultimate instance and foundation hetero-

geneous to what is being founded, forms an eVort to prop up and
safeguard the coup of force taking place.
In a way, it is precisely this reference to an ultimate instance that
betrays the very instability and abyssal structure of the act. While the
declaration makes reference to ‘the people’ as authorizing agency, it
must also reference an ultimate source such as God. The Declaration
brings this aspect out again when it reads:

We therefore the Representatives of the United States of America, in

General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the Name and by the
authority of the good People of these Colonies solemnly publish and declare,
that these united Colonies are and of right ought to be Free and indepen-
dent states.

Derrida commenting on this passage shows how it is in fact God, the

ultimate instance, that allows for the performative and constative dimen-
sions of the act to be conjoined:

‘Are and ought to be’; and the ‘and’ articulates and conjoins here the
two discursive modalities, the to be and the ought to be, the constation
and the prescription, the fact and the right. And is God: at once creator
of nature and judge, supreme judge of what is (the state of the world)
and of what relates to what ought to be (the rectitude of our intentions).
The instance of judgment, at the level of the supreme judge, is the last
instance for saying the fact and the law. (DI, 11–12)
174 noah horwitz

Even though it is by means of the declarative act that independence

is established, the reference to God as ultimate instance and author-
ity allows for what is described as already being (independence) and
what should be (independence), a fact and a right, to be brought
together. God thus names not only an ultimate instance but also the
very aporia of the act. God’s double status renders visible the irre-
ducible nature of the aporia as it is reproduced at each level.14 God,
or whatever names this ultimate instance, is the last possible source
and support to guarantee and authorize what is being signed into exis-
tence. By showing the necessity of this ultimate instance, Derrida shows
how the coup of force found in the event of institution, at the aporia
of political, comes with a reference to some ultimate authority. This
reference can be seen as mere lip service or as a way of concealing
the coup of force at work in the act, but this reference cannot ulti-
mately be avoided. It forms an irreducible dimension of this act as a
way of conjoining the two distinct modalities involved.
Of course, it is such a reference that further shows the dissimulat-
ing structure of the event, since it makes it seem as though it is God
and not the founders who guarantee the act. But can one sign for
God, and does God sign and authorize such acts? In a sense, God
does sign here because the recourse to this ultimate instance is nec-
essary. One can only ultimately authorize such a declarative act by
signing in such a way that one pretends God signs on to it. In this
way, one cannot simply authorize oneself to sign, but must always
make reference to something transcendent and ultimate in order to
underwrite one’s decision and performance.
This transcendent reference opens up and informs the very aporia
of political, making it always a theologico-political event. Following
from the work of Derrida then, one could say that religion itself (at
least ‘revealed religion’) is always political, always informing the polit-
ical as such. In addition, such a reading shows that the political and
politics are related in a nonarbitrary way to the theological. In this
way, what is founded always has in itself a religious dimension.
Since a mere coup of force would betray what is founded as ille-
gitimate (a pure power politics always betrays its illegitimacy and
creates a crisis of legitimation due to its lack of authority), the refer-
ence to an ultimate authority is required for even the semblance of
legitimacy to arise. But this reference can itself never fully legitimate
or authorize the event of institution. The instability of the event of
institution leads not only to politicization, but also to a constitutive
 derrida and the aporia of the political 175

crisis of legitimation at the very heart of the political. This crisis is

itself irreducible and constitutive.

NOTES
1. Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reections on Today’s Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne
Brault and Michael B. Nass (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), 41.
2. I am drawing liberally on the work of Ernesto Laclau in order to articulate the rel-
evance of Derridean deconstruction to politics. In particular, I am drawing upon
his essay “Deconstruction, Pragmatism, Hegemony,” in Deconstruction and Pragmatism,
ed. Chantal MouVe (New York: Routledge, 1996), 47–68.
3. Jacques Derrida, Aporias: Dying —awaiting (one another at) the ‘limits of truth’, trans.
Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993), 12; henceforth cited as A, followed
by page.
4. Jacques Derrida, “Declarations of Independence,” trans. Tom Keenan and Tom
Pepper, New Political Science 15 (Summer 1986): 7–15, 8; henceforth cited as DI, fol-
lowed by page.
5. For further analysis of such legal Ž ctions, see Jeremy Bentham’s Theory of Fictions
(London: K. Paul, Trench, Tribner, 1932). Jacques Lacan has appropriated Bentham’s
theory within the context of his own theory in, for example, his The Seminar of Jacques
Lacan Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959–1960, trans. Dennis Porter, ed. Jacques-
Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1992).
6. Did we not just experience such a trauma in the American presidential election of
2000? One could say that elections in a representative democracy reproduce the
founding moment of the state. Based on the principle of popular sovereignty, such
elections express and describe the people’s will by bringing it into being at the same
time. A certain administration is performatively enacted and brought into being
while at the same time being a description of a certain state of aVairs, the people’s
will. When such a process goes awry, the aporetic nature of the event is rendered
visible. This visibility means the abyssal nature of the act comes to the fore. At this
moment, the very essence (usually disavowed) of democracy becomes apparent.
Following Claude Lefort, one can say that democracy is constituted by such a void
of power and by the paradoxes involved in ‘the people’ constituting itself. When an
election goes awry, the empty place of power becomes apparent. For Lefort’s analy-
sis of the structure of democracy, see his Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David
Macey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1988).
7. Of course, one could also show how a homologous aporetic structure is involved in
law through an analysis of its foundation and origins. For example, Derrida artic-
ulates the aporia of law in his analysis of Kafka, Freud, and Kant in the essay
“Before the Law” (cf. Jacques Derrida, “Before the Law,” in Acts of Literature, ed.
Derek Attridge [New York: Routledge, 1992], 181–220). In addition, Derrida oVers
an analysis of the aporia of law that relates and overlaps with many of the issues
developed in the body of my paper in his “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundations
of Authority’,” in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel
Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1992), 3–67. In Derrida
and the Political, Richard Beardsworth takes up the aporia of law in order to situate
Derrida as a political thinker. While Beardsworth concentrates primarily on the tem-
poral dimension of the aporia and on Derrida’s relation to Kant, Hegel, and
Heidegger, Beardsworth also elaborates the aporia of law in order to demonstrate
the constitutive violence of institution. Cf. Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political
(New York: Routledge, 1996).
176 noah horwitz

8. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 136.
To be referred to henceforth in parenthesis as LI. For a further analysis of Derrida’s
political thought insofar as it concerns the nonclosure of context and the politi-
cization that follows, see Simon Critchley’s The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and
Levinas (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992).
9. Jacques Derrida, “The Laws of Re ection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration,” in
For Nelson Mandela, ed. Jacques Derrida and Mustapha Tlili (New York: Seaver,
1987), 17, referred cited as LF, followed by page.
10. Here a matter of judgment in the sense of frñnhsiw rather than yevrÛa.
11. Here I am arguing that Derrida’s intervention into politics by way of the notion
of aporia does allow for discriminating particular instances by way of judgment,
which is to say, by way of a politics of judging. The charge that Derridean decon-
struction disallows such discrimination is a charge usually thought to dismiss the
relevance of deconstruction to politics. Thomas McCarthy has oVered a critique
of deconstruction on precisely these terms (and, although he does raise other ques-
tions about deconstruction, this particular critique remains the most forceful and
relevant). See his “The Politics of the IneVable: Derrida’s Deconstructionism,” The
Philosophical Forum 21 (fall-winter 1989–90): 146–68. Implicitly and explicitly, my
account of Derrida takes issue with McCarthy’s most forceful critique of Derrida
found on pages 154–56. For a defense of the relevance of deconstruction to pol-
itics in relation to other charges leveled against it (for example, that deconstruc-
tion leads to a form of textual idealism unsuitable for the reality of politics), see
Bill Reading’s “The Deconstruction of Politics” in Reading de Man Reading, ed.
Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1989), 223–43.
12. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (New York: Verso, 1997),
18–19; henceforth cited PF, followed by page.
13. This recourse is violence, is the very ‘essence’ of violence. And of course I am
here examining the theological eVect that is at work in the political and not argu-
ing that the work of deconstruction is itself theological. Deconstruction is not itself
a founding discourse. However, deconstruction does demonstrate the constitutive
nature of the theological eVect. The theological is not merely a transcendental illu-
sion, but rather part and parcel of the aporetic structure of the event. It is thereby
a ‘lure’ (and not simply one to be overcome). Derrida refers to the lure of the
theological as the “theological trap” and further articulates its structure in his
Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981),
258. For further analysis of the constitutive “trap” of the theological, see Rodolphe
Gasche’s “God, for Example,” in his Inventions of DiVerence: On Jacques Derrida
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). Derrida himself has oVered his own
criticisms of characterizing deconstruction as ‘negative theology’ in, for example,
his “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” trans. Ken Frieden, in Derrida and Negative
Theology, ed. Howard Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1992).
14. Implicitly, here Derrida would both be accounting for the constitutive ‘lure’ of a
‘determination in the last instance’ and undermining the very possibility of any such
instance. Derrida would thereby undercut Louis Althusser’s appeal to such an instance,
but Derrida would also show how such an appeal to a ‘determination in the last
instance’ forms the theologico-political moment of Althusser’s Marxist discourse. In
other words, Derrida renders visible how a discourse performs a theological gesture
that obscures the aporetic.