Hyper-Sovereignty and Community

Abstract

The article retraces three important steps along the path of Derrida’s Heidegger interpretation in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II. Readings of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Introduction to Metaphysics, and “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics” complement and further develop Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger, which revolves around the term “Walten” and its role in the world-formation that makes community possible. The analysis of what Derrida calls the hyper-sovereignty of Walten reveals an ethico-political ambiguity in Heidegger’s texts. On the one hand, this hyper-sovereignty registers as a super-sovereign violence that founds theological-political world-constructs through the exclusion of those deemed other. On the other hand, like différance it serves as the condition of impossibility of a common world. Following Derrida’s provocation, I develop this second sense to argue that the dissolution of the common world entails an ethical imperative to carry the other with whom one has nothing in common.

Keywords:

• Derrida
• Heidegger
• sovereignty
• ethics

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Derrida’s La bête et le souverain II (The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II) is cited in parentheses as BSII with French and then English page numbers. The volumes of the complete edition of Heidegger’s works, the Gesamtausgabe, are abbreviated in parenthetical citations as GA followed by the volume number with German and then English page numbers.

2 For discussion of Heidegger’s human/animal division as a Schmittian sovereign decision, see Krell 101; see also BSII: 382–83/279; Schmitt 26.

3 On walten and Gewalt, see Fried and Polt, who offer “prevail,” “reign,” “govern,” and “dominate” as possible renderings of the verb walten, while opting for “hold sway.” They translate the noun Walten as “sway” (Fried and Polt xix). In their translation of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, McNeill and Walker translate walten as “prevail” and Walten as “prevailing.” For Derrida on the difficulty of translating Walten and related words, see BSII 62–63/31–32; for discussion see Mendoza-de Jesús 99, 104–05; Knowles 270–71; Naas 151; and Vallega-Neu 369–87, 371.

4 Interpreters tend to agree that the senses of domination, power, force, and violence are present in Heidegger’s use of Walten in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and intensify in the Introduction to Metaphysics. Disagreement arises concerning the presence and intensity of these connotations of Walten in “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics,” with some following Derrida in hearing a note of violence (Mendoza-de Jesús 108–09), some hearing the note, but faintly (Naas 154; Krell 52, 70), and some contending that the note has ceased to sound (Vallega-Neu 371–72, 378; Ziarek 156–57, 162).

5 Vallega-Neu criticizes Derrida’s language of production and casts suspicion on the reading strategy that allows him to impute violence into the meaning of Walten in Heidegger’s 1957 text (372–75, 377–78). See also Ziarek (156–57, 162), who similarly concludes that starting in 1936 Heidegger increasingly dissociates Walten from Macht (power) and Gewalt (power, force, violence).

6 For further discussion of the λόγος ἀποφαντικός, see Krell 112, 120–44 and McNeill 39; see also GA29/30: 485/334–35, 490/337, 492–98/339–43.

7 As Derrida clarifies in “Différance,”

What is written as différance, then, will be the playing movement that “produces” – by means of something that is not simply an activity – these differences, these effects of difference. This does not mean that the différance that produces differences is somehow before them, in a simple and unmodified – in-different – present. Différance is the non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences. Thus, the name “origin” no longer suits it. (11)

8 On the ethico-political stakes of translating Walten, see Mendoza-de Jesús 104–05 and Knowles 271.

9 See also Mendoza-de Jesús 107–08.

10 Derrida briefly treats the choral ode at the end of the tenth session (BSII: 391–96/285–89). The prominence of power and violence in the uses of Walten and related words in the choral ode and in Introduction to Metaphysics more generally is acknowledged to varying degrees by those scholars most critical of Derrida for importing power and violence into the meaning of Walten in later texts. See Krell 52–53, 110–11; Vallega-Neu 371; and Ziarek 157. Vallega-Neu and Ziarek see the connotations of power and violence receding from Heidegger’s use of Walten shortly after 1935’s interpretation of Sophocles’ choral ode.

11 This reading presents one way to develop Derrida’s remark that in reading Heidegger’s interpretation of Sophocles’ choral ode he “would have liked to analyze more closely” the violence “of […] the action that creates states” (BSII: 395/289).

12 The quoted translation with Überkommnis rendered as “overwhelming” is Stambaugh’s. In addition to the German text, Derrida cites Préau’s translation in Questions I. Préau renders Überkommnis as “Survenue,” which Bennington translates as “Supervening” (BSII: 352/254).

13 Derrida emphasizes the difficulty of translating Austrag and the insufficiency of Préau’s “conciliation [conciliation]” (BSII: 160/105, 301/215). He offers “settlement [règlement],” and “reconciliation [rèconciliation]” as alternative possibilities (BSII: 355/256). Krell also offers “settlement,” as well as “carrying to term” (70), the latter of which picks up on Derrida’s remark that “ein ausgetragenes Kind is a child brought to term, borne to birth, to term” (BSII: 354/255–56). As indicated in the cited passage, Stambaugh translates Austrag with “perdurance.” The literal “carrying out” is Vallega-Neu’s preferred translation (377).

14 Heidegger’s reference to Zeus suggests a rejoinder to Vallega-Neu’s and Ziarek’s interpretations, both of which attempt to strictly distinguish the period between 1929 and 1935, when Walten has connotations of sovereign power and violence, from the period beginning in 1936, when Walten becomes increasingly divested of sovereign power and violence. See Vallega-Neu 378 and Ziarek 156, 160–63.

15 On the twofold sense of the hyper-sovereignty of Walten and its proximity to différance, see Krell 70–72, Naas 156–57, and Vallega-Neu 371–72, 378–79.