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For
A Justice To Come
An
Interview with Jacques Derrida
Lieven
De Cauter
The
BRussells Tribunal is a commission of inquiry into the “New
Imperial Order”, and more particularly into the “Project
for A New American Century” (PNAC), the neo-conservative
think tank that has inspired the Bush government’s war
logic. The co-signatories of the PNAC “mission statement”
include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The
programme of this Think tank is to promote planetary hegemony on
the basis of a supertechnological army, to prevent the emergence
of a rival super-power and to take pre-emptive action against
all those who threaten American interests. The BRussells Tribunal
will be held in Brussels from April 14 through 17. One
of the greatest living philosophers, Jacques Derrida, who suffers
from cancer and is unable to attend the tribunal, has invited the
project’s initiator, Lieven De Cauter, to his house for an
interview.
Lieven
De Cauter: While thanking you for your generosity—why
have you decided to grant us this interview on our initiative, the
“BRussells Tribunal”?
Jacques
Derrida: First of all I wanted to salute your initiative in
its principle: to resuscitate the tradition of a Russell Tribunal
is symbolically an important and necessary thing to do today. I
believe that, in its principle, it is a good thing for the world,
even if only in that it feeds the geopolitical reflection of all
citizens of the world. I am even more convinced of this necessity
in light of the fact that, for a number of years now, we have
witnessed an increased interest in the working, in the
constitution of international institutions, institutions of
international law which, beyond the sovereignty of States, judge
heads of State, generals. Not yet States as such, precisely, but
persons responsible for, or suspected of being responsible for,
war crimes, crimes against humanity—one could mention the
case of Pinochet, despite its ambiguity, or of Milosevic. At any
rate, heads of State have to appear as such before an
International Criminal Court, for instance, which has a recognised
status in international law, despite all the difficulties you
know: the American, French, Israeli reservations. Nonetheless this
tribunal exists, and even if it is still faltering, weak and
problematic in the execution of its sanctions, it exists as a
recognised phenomenon of international law.
Your
project, if I understand it correctly, is not of the same type,
even if it is inspired by the same spirit. It does not have a
juridical or judicial status recognised by any State, and it
consequently remains a private initiative. Citizens of different
countries have agreed among each other to conduct, as honestly as
possible, an inquiry into a policy, into a political project and
its execution. The point is not to reach a verdict resulting in
sanctions but to raise or to sharpen the vigilance of the citizens
of the world, in the first place that of the responsible parties
you propose to judge. That can have a symbolic weight in which I
believe, an exemplary symbolic weight.
That
is why, even though I do not feel involved in the actual
experience you intend to set up, I think it is very important to
underscore that the case you are about to examine—which is
evidently a massive and extremely serious case—is only one
case among many. In the logic of your project, other policies,
other political or military staff, other countries, other
statesmen can also be brought to be judged in the same manner, or
to be associated with this case. Personally, I have a critical
attitude towards the Bush administration and its project, its
attack on Iraq, and the conditions in which this has come about in
a unilateral fashion, in spite of official protestations from
European countries including France, in violation of the rules of
the United Nations and the Security Council... But notwithstanding
this criticism — which I have expressed in public, by the
way — I would not wish for the United States in general to
have to appear before such a tribunal. I would want to distinguish
a number of forces within the United States that have opposed the
policy on Iraq as firmly as in Europe. This policy does not
involve the American people in general, nor even the American
State, but a phase in American politics which, for that matter, is
about to be questioned again in the run-up to the presidential
elections. Perhaps there will be a change, at least partially, in
the United States itself, so I would encourage you to be prudent
as regards the target of the accusation.
LDC:
That is why we have directed our attention not to the government
in general but more particularly to the Project for the New
American Century, the think tank which has issued all these
extreme ideas of unilateralism, hegemony, militarisation of the
world, ...
JD:
Where there is an explicit political project which declares its
hegemonic intent and proposes to put everything into place to
accomplish this, there one can, in effect, level accusations,
protest in the name of international law and existing
institutions, in their spirit and in their letter. I am thinking
as much of the United Nations as of the Security Council, which
are respectable institutions, but whose structure, charter,
procedures need to be reformed, especially the Security Council.
The crisis that has been unfolding confirms this: these
international institutions really need to be reformed. And here I
would naturally plead for a radical transformation — I don’t
know whether this will come about in the short run — which
would call into question even the Charter, that is to say the
respect for the sovereignties of the nation-states and the
non-divisibility of sovereignties. There is a contradiction
between the respect for human rights in general, also part of the
Charter, and the respect for the sovereignty of the nation-state.
The States are in effect represented as States in the United
Nations and a fortiori in the Security Council, which gathers
together the victors of the last war. All this calls for a
profound transformation. I would insist that it should be a
transformation and not a destruction, for I believe in the spirit
of the United Nations.
LDC:
So you still remain within the vision of Kant…
JD:
At least in the spirit of Kant, for I also have some questions
concerning the Kantian concept of cosmopolitanism.1
It is in this perspective that I believe initiatives such as yours
(or analogous initiatives) are symbolically very important to
raise consciousness about these necessary transformations. This
will have — at least that is what I hope — the
symbolic value of a call to reflection we are in need of, and
which the States are not taking care of, which not even
institutions like the International Criminal Court are taking care
of.
LDC:
If I may allow myself one specification: we are part of a whole
network called “World Tribunal on Iraq”. There will be
sessions in Hiroshima, Tokyo, Mexico, New York, London, and
Istambul. In London, and there the link between the International
Criminal Court and the moral tribunal is very strong, those in
charge of the Tribunal on Iraq have, together with specialists,
assembled a dossier to investigate whether Blair (who has
recognised the International Criminal Court) has broken
international law. By all evidence, there is a considerable
consensus among specialists to say that this war is a
transgression, it is an “aggressive war” in the
technical sense of the term as used in the charter of the UN,
since there was no imminent threat to the territory of the
countries involved. The upshot of this inquiry is that they have
submitted a dossier to the International Criminal Court in The
Hague. Similarly in Copenhagen, since Denmark is part of the
coalition. So it’s possibile that our moral initiative may
be transformed, in some of its components, into a juridical
procedure strictly speaking.
JD:
That would be desirable, evidently! But the probability that this
would come about seems low, for there would be too many States who
would oppose your initiative becoming institutional and generally
judicial, and not just the United States. Yet if this doesn’t
come about, that does not mean your project is destined to
ineffectiveness. On the contrary. I believe in its considerable
symbolic effectiveness in the public domain. The fact that it is
said, published, even if it isn’t followed by a judgement in
the strictly judicial sense, let alone actual sanctions, can have
considerable symbolical impact on the political consciousnes of
the citizens, a relayed, deferred effect, but one that raises high
expectations. I would hope that you would treat those you accuse
justly, that yours would be an undertaking of true integrity,
devoid of preliminary positioning, without preconditions, that
everything would be done in serenity and justice, that the
responsible parties would be accurately identified, that you would
not go over the top and that you would not exclude other
procedures of the same type in the future. I would not want this
procedure to serve as an excuse for not conducting other
procedures that are just as necessary concerning other countries,
other policies, whether they be European or not. I would even wish
that the exemplary character of your initiative would lead to a
lasting, if not a permanent instance.
I
believe that it would be perceived as being more just if you
didn’t commit yourself to this target as if it were the only
possible target, notably because, as you are aware, in this
aggression against Iraq, American responsibility was naturally
decisive but it didn’t come about without complex
complicities from many other quarters. We are dealing with a knot
of nearly inextricable co-responsibilities. I would hope that this
would be clearly taken into account and that it wouldn’t be
the accusation of one man only. Even if he is an ideologue,
someone who has given the hegemony project a particularly readable
form, he has not done it on his own, he cannot have imposed it on
non-consenting people. So the contours of the accused, of the
suspect or the suspects, are very hard to determine.
LDC:
Yes, that is one of the reasons why we have abandoned the strictly
juridical format. One of the disadvantages of the juridical format
is that you can only target persons. Whereas we want to take aim
at a system, a systemic logic. We name the accused (Cheney,
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld) to show people we’re not talking about
phantoms, but we take aim at the PNAC as a set of performative
discourses, that is to say plans to achieve something, intentions
to be translated into action. Our difficulty is also one of
communication: communicating to people that PNAC exists and that
it is important to spread this knowledge, is already a job in
itself.
JD:
Of course. And for that reason, it is important that matters are
partly personalised and partly developed at the level of the
system, of the principles, the concept, where this system, these
principles, these concepts violate international laws which must
be both respected and perhaps also changed. This is where you will
not be able to avoid talking about sovereignty, about the crisis
of sovereignty, about the necessary division or delimitation of
sovereignty. Personally, when I have to take a position on this
vast issue of sovereignty, of what I call its necessary
deconstruction, I am very cautious. I believe it is necessary, by
way of a philosophical, historical analysis, to deconstruct the
political theology of sovereignty. It’s an enormous
philosophical task, requiring the re-reading of everything, from
Kant to Bodin, from Hobbes to Schmitt. But at the same time you
shouldn’t think that you must fight for the dissolution pure
and simple of all sovereignty: that is neither realistic nor
desirable. There are effects of sovereignty which in my view are
still politically useful in the fight against certain forces or
international concentrations of forces that sneer at sovereignty.
In
the present case, we have precisely the convergence of the
arrogant and hegemonic assertion of a sovereign Nation-State with
a gathering of global economic forces, involving all kinds of
transactions and complications in which China, Russia and many
countries of the Middle East are equally mixed up. This is where
matters become very hard to disentangle. I believe that sometimes
the reclamation of sovereignty should not necessarily be denounced
or criticised, it depends on the situation.
LDC:
As you have clearly demonstrated in Voyous [Rogues], in
deconstructing the term, there is no democracy without “cracy”:
a certain power, and even force, is required.
JD:
Absolutely. You can also talk of the sovereignty of the citizen,
who votes in a sovereign fashion, so you need to be very cautious.
In my view, the interesting thing about your project is in taking
up or pursuing this reflection starting from an actual case which
takes a specific form: military, strategic, economic, etc. It is
very important to develop such reflection on a case, but this
reflection requires considerable time and must accompany the
entire geopolitical process in decades to come. It is not just as
a Frenchman, European or citizen of the world but also as a
philosopher concerned to see these questions developed that I find
your attempt interesting and necessary. It will provide an
opportunity for others, many others I hope, to adopt a position
with regard to your efforts, to reflect, possibly to oppose you,
or to join you, but this can only be beneficial for the political
reflection we are in need of.
LDC:
I was amazed by the definition you give in The Concept of
September 11: a philosopher, you say, is someone who deals
with this transition towards political and international
institutions to come. That is a very political definition of the
philosopher.
JD:
What I wanted to convey is that it won’t necessarily be the
professional philosophers who will deal with this. The lawyer or
the politician who takes charge of these questions will be the
philosopher of tomorrow. Sometimes, politicians or lawyers are
more able to philosophically think these questions through than
professional academic philosophers, even though there are a few
within the University dealing with this. At any rate, philosophy
today, or the duty of philosophy, is to think this in action, by
doing something.
LDC:
I would like to return to this notion of sovereignty. Is not the
New Imperial Order which names “Rogue States” a State
of exception? You speak in Voyous about the concept of the
auto-immunity of democracy: democracy, at certain critical
moments, believes it must suspend itself to defend democracy. This
is what is happening in the United States now, both in its
domestic policy and in its foreign policy. The ideology of the
PNAC, and therefore of the Bush administration, is exactly that.
JD:
The exception is the translation, the criterion of sovereignty, as
was noted by Carl Schmitt (whom I have also criticised, one must
be very cautious when one talks about Carl Schmitt, I have written
some chapters on Carl Schmitt in The Politics of Friendship
where I take him seriously and where I criticise him and I would
not want my reflection on Schmitt to be seen as an endorsement of
either his theses or his history). Sovereign is he who decides on
the exception. Exception and sovereignty go hand in hand here. In
the same way that democracy, at times, threatens or suspends
itself, so sovereignty consists in giving oneself the right to
suspend the law. That is the definition of the sovereign: he makes
the law, he is above the law, he can suspend the law. That is what
the United States has done, on the one hand when they trespassed
against their own commitments with regard to the UN and the
Security Council, and on the other hand, within the country
itself, by threatening American democracy to a certain extent,
that is to say by introducing exceptional police and judicial
procedures. I am not only thinking of the Guantanamo prisoners but
also of the Patriot Act: from its introduction, the FBI has
carried out inquisitorial procedures of intimidation which have
been denounced by the Americans themselves, notably by lawyers, as
being in breach of the Constitution and of democracy.
Having
said that, to be fair, we must recall that the United States is
after all a democracy. Bush, who was elected with the narrowest of
margins, risks losing the next elections: he is only sovereign for
four years. It is a very legalistic country rich in displays of
political liberty which would not be tolerated in a good many
other countries. I am not only thinking of countries known to be
non-democratic but also of our own Western European democracies.
In the United States, when I saw those massive marches against the
imminent war in Iraq, in front of the White House, right by Bush’s
offices, I said to myself that if in France protesters assembled
in their thousands and marched in front of the Elysée in a
similar situation, that would not be tolerated. To be fair, we
must take into account this contradiction within American
democracy — on the one hand, auto-immunity: democracy
destroys itself in protecting itself; but on the other hand, we
must take into account the fact that this hegemonic tendency is
also a crisis of hegemony. The United States, to my mind,
convulses upon its hegemony at a time when it is in crisis,
precarious. There is no contradiction between the hegemonic drive
and crisis. The United States realises all too well that within
the next few years, both China and Russia will have begun to weigh
in. The oil stories which have naturally determined the Iraq
episode are linked to long-term forecasts notably concerning
China: China’s oil supply, control over oil in the Middle
East… all of this indicates that hegemony is as much under
threat as it is manifest and arrogant.
It
is an extremely complex situation, which is why I am bound to say
it should not be a matter of blanket accusations or denunciations
levelled against the United States, but that we should take stock
of all that is critical in American political life. There are
forces in the United States that fight the Bush administration,
alliances should be formed with these forces, their existence
recognised. At times they express their criticism in ways much
more radical than in Europe. But there is evidently — and I
suppose you will discuss this in your commission of inquiry —the
enormous problem of the media, of control of the media, of the
media power which has accompanied this entire history in a
decisive manner, from September 11 to the invasion of Iraq, an
invasion which, by the way, in my opinion was already scheduled
well before September 11.
LDC:
Yes, as a matter of fact that is one of the things that need to be
proven. The PNAC, in 2000, writes: “the United States has
for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional
security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the
immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force
presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam
Hussein.” They write this in September 2000: it was already
decided, all the rest was just an alibi.
JD:
I have had this debate in public with Baudrillard, who said that
the aggression against Iraq — which was then being prepared—
was a direct consequence of September 11. I opposed that thesis, I
said that I thought it would take place anyway, that the premises
had been in place for a long time already, and that the two
sequences can be dissociated, to a certain extent. The day when
this history will be written, when the documents are made public,
it will become clear that September 11 was preceded by highly
complicated underhand negotiations, often in Europe, on the
subject of petrol pipe-line passage, at a time when the petrol
clan was in power. There were intrigues and threats, and it is not
impossible to think that one day it will be discovered that it was
really the Bush clan that was targetted rather than the country,
the America of Clinton. But we shouldn’t stop at petrol:
there are numerous other strategic geopolitical stakes, among them
the tensions with China, Europe, Russia. Alliances with the
United States, variable as ever, since it has attacked those who
they have supported for a very long time. Iraq
was an ally of the United States as of France: all of this is part
of diplomatic inconstancy, hypocritical from end to end, and not
only on the part of the United States. There are many more stakes
than petrol alone, especially since petrol is a matter of only a
few more decades: there won’t be any oil left in 50 years!
We must take the petrol question into acount, but we shouldn’t
devote all our attention and analysis to it. There are military
questions, passing through territorial questions of occupation and
control. But military power is not only a territorial power, we
know that now, it also passes through non-territorialised
controls, techno-communicational channels etc. All of this has to
be taken into account.
LDC:
And Israel?
JD:
Many have said that the American-Israeli alliance or the support
the United States give to Israel is not unrelated to this
intervention in Iraq. I believe this is true to some extent. But
here too matters are very complicated, because even if the current
Israeli government—and here I would take the same
precautions as for the United States: there are Israelis in Israel
who fight Sharon — has indeed congratulated itself
officially and in public on the aggression against Iraq, the
freedom this may have apparently given Israel in its offensive
initiatives of colonisation and repression is very ambiguous. Here
too we could speak of auto-immunity: it’s very
contradictory, because at the same time this has aggravated
Palestinian terrorism, intensified or reawakened symptoms of
anti-semitism across Europe…
It’s
very complicated, for if it is true that the Americans support
Israel — just like the majority of European countries, with
different political modulations - , the best American allies of
Sharon’s policy, that is to say the most offensive policy of
all Israeli governments, are not only the American Jewish
community but also the Christian fundamentalists. These are often
the most pro-Israeli of all Americans, at times even more so than
certain American Jews. I’m not sure it will turn out to have
been in Israel’s best interest that this form of aggression
against Iraq has come about. The future will tell. Even Sharon
meets with opposition in his own government nowadays, in his own
majority, because he claims to withdraw from the Gaza colonies.
The difficulty of a project such as yours, however just and
magnificent it may be in its principle, is that it must cautiously
take this complexity into account, that it must try not to be
unfair to any of the parties. That is one of the reasons why I
insist in confirming my solidarity in principle. Unable to
participate effectively in the inquiry and in the development of
the judgement because of my illness, I prefer to restrict myself
for now to this agreement in principle, but I will not hesitate to
applaud you afterwards, if I find you have conducted matters well!
LDC:
Your statements are limpid and will serve as drink for many who
are thirsty (for justice, for instance). Thank you very much. By
way of post-script: let us speak of messianism for a minute or so.
That is to say of “the weak force”, which refers to
Benjamin and which you evoke in the “Prière
d’insérer”, the preface to Voyous. Allow
me to quote from it: “This vulnerable force, this force
without power exposes to what or who is coming, and coming to
affect it (…) What affirms itself here would be a
messianic act of faith—irreligious and without messianism.
(…) This site is neither soil nor foundation. It is
nonetheless there that the call for a thought of the event to
come will take root: of democracy to come, of reason to come.
All hopes will put their trust in this call, certainly, but the
call will remain, in itself, without hope. Not desperate but alien
to teleology, to the expectancy and the benefit [salut] of
salvation. Not alien to the salavation [salut] of the
other, nor alien to the farewell or to justice, but still
rebellious towards the economy of redemption.”… I
thought this very beautiful. Almost a prayer to insert —
into the everyday, into our project. What is it, this messianism
without religion?
JD:
The weak force indeed refers to the interpretation of Benjamin,
but it is not exactly mine. It is what I call “messianicity
without messianism”: I would say that today, one of the
incarnations, one of the implementations of this messianicity, of
this messianism without religion, may be found in the
alter-globalisation movements. Movements that are still
heterogeneous, still somewhat unformed, full of contradictions,
but that gather together the weak of the earth, all those who feel
themselves crushed by the economic hegemonies, by the liberal
market, by sovereignism, etc. I believe it is these weak who will
prove to be strongest in the end and who represent the future.
Even though I am not a militant involved in these movements, I
place my bet on the weak force of those alter-globalisation
movements, who will have to explain themselves, to unravel their
contradictions, but who march against all the hegemonic
organisations of the world. Not just the United States, also the
International Monetary Fund, the G8, all those organised
hegemonies of the rich countries, the strong and powerful
countries, of which Europe is part. It is these
alter-globalisation movements that offer one of the best figures
of what I would call messianicity without messianism, that is to
say a messianicity that does not belong to any determined
religion. The conflict with Iraq involved numerous religious
elements, from all sides—from the Christian side as well as
from the Muslim side. What I call messianicity without messianism
is a call, a promise of an independent future for what is to come,
and which comes like every messiah in the shape of peace and
justice, a promise independent of religion, that is to say
universal. A promise independent of the three religions when they
oppose each other, since in fact it is a war between three
Abrahamic religions. A promise beyond the Abrahamic religions,
universal, without relation to revelations or to the history of
religions. My intent here is not anti-religious, it is not a
matter of waging war on the religious messianisms properly
speaking, that is to say Judaic, Christian, Islamic. But it is a
matter of marking a place where these messianisms are exceeded by
messianicity, that is to say by that waiting without waiting,
without horizon for the event to come, the democracy to come with
all its contradictions. And I believe we must seek today, very
cautiously, to give force and form to this messianicity, without
giving in to the old concepts of politics (sovereignism,
territorialised nation-state), without giving in to the Churches
or to the religious powers, theologico-political or theocratic of
all orders, whether they be the theocracies of the Islamic Middle
East, or whether they be, disguised, the theocracies of the West.
(In spite of everything, Europe, France especially, but also the
United States are secular in principle in their Constiutions. I
recently heard a journalist say to an American: “how do you
explain that Bush always says ‘God bless America’,
that the President swears on the Bible, etc.” and the
American replied: “don’t lecture us on secularity for
we put the separation of Church and State into our Constitution
long before you did”, that the State was not under the
control of any religion whatsoever, which does not stop Christian
domination from exerting itself, but there too it is imperative to
be very cautious). Messianicity without messianism, that is:
independence in respect of religion in general. A faith without
religion in some sort.
Transcribed
by Maïwenn Furic
(Ris
Orangis, Thursday February 19 2004)
Translated
by Ortwin de Graef
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