" Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible. No more than deconstruction itself, if such a thing exist. Deconstruction is justice " (DPJ, 14-15).
Is Derrida really and seriously talking about justice? It is not surprising to see such kind of surprise that one, who does not understand Derrida and even holds bias with him, has when he or she first looks at his messages on justice. Honestly, so am I in my first sight at the lecture, or the first part of the lecture, that he reads at the colloquium on " Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice". Such kind of reaction originates from the widely extended interpretation in which Derrida is sketched as "the devil himself, a street-corner anarchist, a relativist, or subjectivist, or nihilist, out to destroy our traditions and institutions, our beliefs and values, to mock philosophy and truth itself, to undo everything the Enlightenment has done—and to replace all this with wild nonsense and irresponsible play" (DN, 36). With such kind of impression to Derrida, people do not believe that he would seriously talk about the topic of justice. In their mind, deconstruction just simply means destruction. However, here Derrida is talking about justice indeed and dears to claim that deconstruction is justice itself.
In a nutshell, although deconstruction generally goes against all kinds of things like nutshell, Caputo summarizes, "the very meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that things—texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and practices of whatever size and sort you need—do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more than any mission would impose, that they exceed the boundaries they currently occupy"(DN,31). In the force of law, the first thing Derrida did is to break a nutshell, the common conception of justice as law (droit). One piece is law, another piece is justice, they are closely attached together, however, the core in the nutshell is force or violence. As Pascal argues, "justice without force is impotent. Force without justice is tyrannical. Justice without force is contradictory, as there are always the wicked; force without justice is accused of wrong. And so it is necessary to put justice and force together; and, for this, to make sure that what is just be strong, or what is strong be just"(DPJ,10-11). Following Pascal, the conclusion is that since it is impossible to make the just strong, the strong have been made just, that is, the strong which is made just is law. Then, Derrida turns to reinterpret Montaigne's discourse that "so laws keep up their good standing, not because they are just, but because they are law: that is the mystical foundation of their authority, they have no other..... Anyone who obeys them because they are just is not obeying then the way he ought to"(DPJ, 12). One obey them not because they are just but because they have authority. Here, Montaigne clearly distinguishes laws from justice. From their opinion, we can find that justice is something originally outside of laws, something that is attached to laws. The reason why laws are followed by people is that fact they are law, that is, they are the authority. However, the foundation of authority is mystical.
The simple distinction between laws and justice is not enough for Derrida, then he continues to interpret the mystical foundation of authority which implies something violent existing there. To unveil the mystery, he turns to the the very emergence of justice and law. He asserts that "the founding and justifying moment that institutes law implies a performative force.....its very moment of foundation or institution ......would consist of a coup de force, of a performative and therefore interpretative violence that in itself is neither just or unjust and that no justice and no previous law with its founding anterior moment could guarantee or contradict or invalidate"(DPJ, 13). "Since the origin of authority, the foundation or ground, the position of the law can't by definition rest on anything but themselves, they are themselves a violence without ground. Which is not to say that they are in themselves unjust, in the sense of 'illegal.' They neither legal nor illegal in their founding moment"(DPJ,14).
By describing the violent structure of the founding act, Derrida concludes that law is essentially deconstructible. For people who were misunderstanding Derrida, this is the very thing what Derrida wants to do and usually did, that is, to destroy the beliefs that we are holding, such as justice and law. When they hear that some thing is claimed to be deconstructible, what appears in their mind is that the thing would be destroyed by Drrida, just like here the authority is claimed to be without foundation except itself with violence.
However, Derrida have more things to say about justice, that they usually ignore or fail to understand. They usually just see the negative aspects in deconstruction but fail to see the positive aspect. In fact, there are two main points in their ignorance about Derrida's deconstruction: Firstly, they fail to see that deconstruction is calling for some new things to add onto the old ones when it is applied to some things. It is not to simply destroy old things, but rather tear the old things open in order to make it possible to be renewed. The other one is that they fail to see what deconstruction affirmed. Actually, when it is in application upon something that is constructible in its sense, deconstruction is also affirming some thing at the same time, that is, the things that are undeconstrutible. The two points are closely connected in the process of deconstruction. In the following paragraphs, we will explain what a big misunderstanding they make, and find that deconstruction actually is on our side.
When he claims that law is essentially deconstructible, Derrida continues to point out "the fact that law is deconstructible is not bad news. We may even see in this a stroke of luck for politics, for all historical progress"(DPJ, 14). From the deconstructive point of view, one thing will not have future whenever it is to stabilize, to paralyze, or to close itself. Therefore, deconstruction goes against such kind of tendency and tries to crack all nutshells that do not open itself to the future. This may be the very mission that deconstructionists put on their shoulder. Therefore, we could see the deconstructibility of law as a good news although deconstruction could not guarantee what it will be specifically. Deconstruction is a positive element in historical progress because it is deconstruction that keeps the history open to the future. Furthermore, deconstructability of law itself is valuable for deconstruction because the deconstructible structure of law make deconstruction possible. Derrida argues that law itself is constructible, so it is deconstructible, furthermore, it makes deconstruction possible. Maybe historical progress under such kind of relation between law and deconstruction is what it should be.
Even if we admit that deconstruction gives law a future, but what about the value of justice? Out of our sense, Derrida gives us a very different account and a very high position. " Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible. No more than deconstruction itself, if such a thing exist. Deconstruction is justice " (DPJ, 14-15). As you see, he also shows us a very surprising interpretation of deconstruction. Justice is the very thing that Deconstruction affirms. Justice is not deconstructible, however, it is just the undeconstructiblity of justice that makes deconstruction possible. Because without the undeconstructible deconstruction cannot be motivated, cannot find its movement and its impulse. In this sense, we can say that justice is what the deconstruction of law wants to bring about.
The deconstructibility of law makes deconstruction possible and the undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstruction possible, thus, the result is that "deconstruction takes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of droit (authority, legitimacy, and so on)"(DPJ, 15). Deconstructioin stands in the gap between justice and law, one side gives deconstruction impulse and the other side is the object that it will crack, and both of them guarantee laws a future. "The future is not present, but there is an opening onto it; and because there is a future, a context is always open. What we call opening of the context is another name for what is still to come"(ATS,20). It is the progress through which deconstruction bents to pull new things into old things or to push old things open to the future. "Accordingly, everything in deconstruction......is organized around what Derrida calls l'invention de l'autre, the in-coming of the other, the promise of an event to come, the event of the promise of something coming"(DN, 42).
But justice is not a goal in the future that you can see or predesign. Once it could be foreseen then it would not be in the future, rather in the present. So deconstruction by justice refers to something unforeseeable but sill to come in the future. "Deconstructive analysis deprives the present of its prestige and exposes it to something tout autre, "wholly other," beyond what is foreseeable from the present, beyond the horizon of the ''same'(DN, 42). Therefore, the future is always open and further the context should be open. "it [deconstruction] is possible as an experience of the impossible, there where, even if it does not exist (or does not yet exist, or even never does not exist), there is justice"(DPJ,15). But this require the very experience of aporia. Justice means beyond the extreme boundaries, while the experience of the future is impossible for it does not allow passage. From this point of view, justice would be the experience that we are not able to experience. But Derrida thinks that there is no justice without the experience of aporia, no matter how impossible it may be. "Justice is an experience of the impossible. A will, a desire, a demand for justice whose structure wouldn't be an experience of aporia would have no chanced to be what it is, namely, a call for justice"(DPJ,16).
Aporia is the way to experience the impossibility. Maybe we can say that the "experience of impossibility" is just what deconstruction all about. "Deconstruction is the relentless pursuit of the impossible, which means, of things whose possibility is sustained by their impossibility, of things which, instead of being wiped out by their impossibility, are actually nourished and fed by it"(DN, 32). The impossible is undeconstructable because it beyond what we can see, namely, the possible. The possible, in Derrida's eyes, is a future, which is foreseeable and plannable, therefore, he call it the "present future". The experience means running against and beyond the limits of horizon, the present and the "present future". "To desire the impossible is to strain against the constraints of the foreseeable and possible, to open the horizon of possibility to what it cannot foresee or foretell"(DN, 134).
When we wait for the future that has been planned or predetermined, then we have annulled it. To open the future, it is necessary to free the value of the future from the horizon of present. Because the future, foreseen and pre decided possible is still limited in the present which need to be cracked from the point of view of deconstruction. That which defies any form of predetermination is singularity. "Justice always addresses itself to singularity, to the singularity of the other, despite or even because it pretends to universality"(DPJ, 20). There can be no future that is beyond the present and the "present future" unless there is radical otherness, and respect for this radical otherness. It is the way how justice participates in the future. Justice must be something that overflows law, which is always an ensemble of determinable norms and also be distinguished from what is general. "The singularity is what is always and already overlooked, out of sight, omitted, excluded, structurally, no matter what law, no matter what universal schema, is in place"(DN, 135).
Justice is never found in present order, justice is never present to itself. We can not see it but we can experience it by experiencing the impossibility when we meet aporia and where we are blocked. Why Derrida dear to say that "I know nothing more just than what I today call deconstruction"(DPJ, 21)? Because deconstruction is deeply and already engaged by the infinite demand of justice, for justice. Deconstruction is the experience of aporia, therefore it is the way of experiencing the impossible and the justice. Justice implies an opening to the future, and call for what is to come, to the coming of the other. "Justice calls, justice is to come, but justice does not exist"(DN, 154). However, although we know it does not exist, but we also know it is to come, therefore, by corresponding to its calling, we welcome a all new future.
DPJ, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Ed. D.G. Carlson , D. Cornell, and M.Rosenfeld, Routledge, 1992.
DN, Deconstruction in A Nutshell: a conversation with Jacques Derrida, Ed. J.D. Caputo, Fordham University Press, 1997.
ATS, A Taste for the Secret, J. Derrida, and M. Ferraris, tan. G. Donis, Ed. G.Donis, and D. Webb
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