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ABSTRACT
From his Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy (1953–4) to the address given on the fiftieth anniversary of Le monde diplomatique just before he died in 2004, Derrida made constant reference to the subject of Europe. A recent volume of essays, Europe after Derrida: Crisis and Potentiality, seeks to explore this work and the current paper gauges the extent to which it correctly accounts for it. It is suggested that many of the chapters are seriously flawed in failing to note how Derrida’s interest in Europe follows that of a long line of philosophers from the phenomenological school, going back to Husserl and including Heidegger and Patočka. Consequently, many of the contributors resort to ideas of identity current in sociology and cultural studies and appear not to understand that central to Derrida’s thought is a challenge to such notions. Unlike Gasché’s Europe, or The Infinite Task, the only single-volume treatment of Derrida’s work on Europe and a text mentioned by only two contributors, they overlook the way in which he proposes that Europe could be precisely a project of pioneering the rethinking of identity.
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Notes
1. Weber’s contribution is a notable one coming from a scholar who is better known for his work on Adorno than Derrida. He was, however, a personal friend of Derrida and is mentioned in The Post Card as driving Derrida from Strasbourg to Freiburg in May 1979 (Derrida, 1987, p. 189). See further the anecdote in (Derrida, Citation2014), pp 11–2.
2. He has been the author of both academic papers and numerous public outreach publications.(Glendinning, Citation2011, Citation2012, Citation2013, Citation2014, Citation2015, Citation2016).
3. We might further note – not too digressively given our topic is Europe – that Irish can be found to particularly remark this by being unable to say today in a single word but requiring the phrase ‘lá atá inniu ann’ (its sister Celtic language Welsh, in contrast, derives its noun, heddiw, from Latin as does German). Similar to Latin, the Slavic languages, whether Czech dnes or Bulgarian днес, contain no preposition.
4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 5, 1010a.
5. Weber also notes here Benjamin’s ‘Einmal ist Keinmal’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p.15).
6. Mattias Fritsch’s paper on ‘Europe’s Constitution for the Unborn’ is a stark example of a tendency in his work on Derrida to engage only superficially with the pertinent primary texts while largely working out an independent line of argument. This is unfortunate, as when he does read more closely, most notably in his Research in Phenomenology paper on Mouffe, he has been able to make an important interventions. Here, one feels he is going through the motions and having elaborated some of the paradoxes of constitution making, in conclusion, states simply: ‘perhaps future Europeans will not be European, in any case not in a way recognised by present Europeans’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 92). Not only does Fritsch fail to engage Derrida’s texts in a sustained manner in his chapter but he fails to refer to Clark’s important paper concerning deconstruction and future generations (Clark, Citation2008).
7. Direk repeatedly talks of ‘ideals’. This is not a word Derrida uses. In Rogues and elsewhere he does discuss the ‘Idea in the Kantian sense’ which we shall see is quite different from common talk of ‘ideals'. Derrida insists that ‘deconstruction is neither a theory nor a philosophy. It is neither a school nor a method. It is not even a discourse, nor an act, nor a practice. It is what happens, what is happening today in what they call society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on and so forth. Deconstruction is the case’. (Derrida., Citation1994, p. 85). Or, as he said in a late interview: ‘this movement of “deconstruction” did not wait for us to begin speaking about “deconstruction”; it has been underway for a long time, and it will continue for a long time’ (Derrida, Citation2004a, p. 131).
8. Rather contrary to Direk’s accusation, Derrida himself observes just before he makes this remark: ‘I am not known as a Eurocentric intellectual. Over the last 40 years, people have tended to accuse me of the opposite’ (Derrida, Citation2006, p. 710).
9. Direk says that ‘those who retreat into their identity lack an open relation to the other that could give rise to new universals’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 142). But we might add even more pointedly that they are mistaken about their identity because no identity is whole and rather than speaking only of universals we should, as Weber does in his chapter, press on to attempt an exposure of singularity.
10. In contrast to Direk, Morrison brings out slightly better the quite contradictory positions often held in discussion of Europe. Yet in his paper, we still have the same tendency to monolithic statements. On the basis of van Rompuy’s claim that Europe is Christian, we are told that ‘Europe is secular in relation to its Muslim migrants, and Christian in the face of Muslim Turkey’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 149). As with Direk, there is no remarking that say, Kaczynski is a voice in the wilderness when he calls for the EU to officially recognise the Christian nature of Europe. If Morrison is more familiar with the variety of European political discourse than Direk, he is hardly even handed in his choice of the few texts he briefly discusses. Melanie Phillips and Ye’or can hardly be considered typical of the tone and content of the mainstreams of European debate. And when he turns to academic debate he is rather quick to dismiss and misread the way in which figures as varied as Max Weber, Charles Taylor and scholars of Islam have all linked the emergence of the idea of secularism to Christianity itself. His conclusion that identities are ‘never given, received or attained’ is quite correct but others verge on the mistaken. Autoimmunity is not quite the suggestion that each identity contains a force that promotes it self-destruction but rather is a claim that identity is never one in the first place and thus contains contradictory forces. Similarly, to say that Derrida sets for Europe the task of maintaining an openness to the other is in danger of missing the point that he finds European identity to already be conflicted and thus always already in deconstruction. In any case, these points are not really integrated with the rest of the essay. While I agree with his suggestion that ‘deconstruction is at work within all constructions of a unified, ipseic Europe. As such, the integrity of any unified conception of Europe is always under threat from the autoimmune processes that work to undermine the dualistic structures on which it rests’, it is a shame this is stated by way of conclusion rather than brought out in the paper itself‘ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 159).
11. For example, ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ are only mentioned in a brief concluding paragraph and no references are given to the huge literature that has arisen around this phrase.
12. Direk also fails to note the way in which many in the Catholic Church would find religious Muslims to be their allies as defenders of‘traditional’ values against secular culture. In philosophy as a discipline, this can be seen in the activities of the Council for Research on Values and Philosophy.
13. There are some frankly bizarre argumentative twists. The rejection of the Yiddish language in favour of Hebrew – extraordinarily said to be ‘neo-Hellenic’! – is seen to be part of the rejection of Asia. This ignores both the obvious historical prestige of Hebrew and, ironically given what has just been said about Asian Jews, the presence of many Jews in Israel for whom Yiddish was not their language (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 125).
14. As Dana Hollander argues: ‘Even where Husserl’s statements about Europe drift off dangerously toward ethnocentrism, Derrida shows them to be not merely instances of chauvinism, but as extensions of Husserl’s own exemplaristic thought’ (Hollander, Citation2013), 54.
15. A good survey which outlines some of the problems inherent in such an encounter is (Kelly, Citation2013).
16. Even the almost omniscient Gasché misses some, such as the intriguing suggestion that writing ‘in several languages, in more than two languages [is] the whole program for a critical experience of Europe and of its institutions’ (Derrida, Citation2002), 36.
17. Glendinning and Isin. For the latter see the next endnote.
18. Elsewhere in Europe after Derrida Engin F. Isin’s ‘We, the Non-Europeans: Derrida with Said’ says it will show ‘how Derrida’s problem of Europe can be brought into sharper relief with Edward Said’s problem of orientalism’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 108). However, no real engagement between the two occurs, the author early on rather disappointingly telling us: ‘nor am I really concerned with making Derrida and Said speak to each other’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 109). Isin is the only author in Europe after Derrida to refer to Gasché and perhaps proves Glendinning’s point by making very little of him. The central difficulty of the essay is that Derrida is conflated to Said and the problem at hand is said to be ‘the inability to approach the non-European with the openness it demands’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 116). Derrida's own conception of identity – which lays a severe challenge to Said – is overlooked. It is unfortunate that the author did not refer to Robert Young’s Derrida inspired criticism of the way Said conceives of alterity, ‘Disorienting Orientalism’ (Young, Citation1990). This suggested that Said becomes trapped in speaking of orientalism as an other to the west that can be clearly demarcated from it. He thus loses any possibility to speak of it as a positive site from which change can come and thus ironically mirrors the very orientalist discourse he is criticising.
19. Glendinning tells us: ‘there is no evidence in his book that Gasché has attended closely to everything that goes on in “postcolonial criticism” today’ (Czajka & Isyar, Citation2014, p. 34). I think perhaps he is being rather demanding in expecting that a single scholar, no matter how diligent, can master both the phenomenological literature necessary to have written such a book as Europe, or the Infinite Task as well as tackling the vast and daunting field of postcolonial criticism. Indeed, one could throw back the criticism against he and ask why he devotes such critical attention – three essay publications – to the minor faults of Gasché? If one wishes to correct the secondary literature on Derrida, there is no shortage of obvious targets. Robert Young has written some astute work in post-colonial theory, we might think of his assessments of Said and Bhabha in White Mythologies: Writing History and the West mentioned above, but his ‘Derrida and the Postcolonial’ survey is deeply flawed in characterisation of Derrida (Young, Citation2000). Why does Glendinning single out Gasché and not Young? Or why not, given Glendinning also specialises in philosophy of animals, not Matthew Calarco who has written two books which caricature and misread Derrida on animals before summarily dismissing him? Warning the unwary of the misreadings of Calarco, rarely commented on in print, is something much needed and long overdue (Calarco, Citation2008, Citation2015).
20. One could suggest that his own ‘Europe, for example’ is not without its own form of difficulty. Certainly, it is rather cryptic and allusive in places, and indeed one feels that his contribution to Europe after Derrida is written in part to clarify and engage better. We might note that no other contributor to Europe after Derrida cites ‘Europe, for example’.
21. One can’t help feeling that Glendinning is criticising Gasché when his objection is to Derrida himself: in particular, the suggestion that ‘what we can rigorously call “philosophy” exists nowhere other than in Greece’ (quoted by Gasché)’. This important question is not discussed by Glendinning. (Derrida, Citation2004b, p. 18 cited in Gasché, Citation2008, p. 292). We might contrast Glendinning’s reading of Gasché with a review essay Samuel Weber wrote on Europe, or the Infinite Task. There he commends Gasché for bringing out ‘the distinguishing trait of Europe, at least in the four thinkers upon whom he focuses his attention: its originary heterogeneity’ (Weber, Citation2009, p. 73) His main quibble is that Gasché never broaches the question of the relationship of Europe and the United States of America (Weber, Citation2009, p. 81).
22. In the review essay, he is even more positive: ‘Gasché’s book is an in-depth and at-length unpacking of the references that are essential to Derrida’s engagements with Europe’ (Glendinning, Citation2013, p. 92).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mihail Evans
Mihail Evans is a graduate of the universities of Wales, Oxford and Nottingham. He was awarded his PhD by the University of the West of England. He is the author of a monograph, The Singular Politics of Derrida and Baudrillard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He is International Research Fellow at the New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Studies in Bucharest.