AUTOIMMUNITY:
REAL AND SYMBOLIC
SUICIDES
A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida
B o R R A o o R I : September 11 (Le 11 septembre) gave us the impression
of being a major event, 1 one of the most important historical
events we will witness in our lifetime, especially for those of us who
never lived through a world war. Do you agree?
o E R R I o A : Le 11 septembre, as you say, or, since we have agreed
to speak two languages, "September 11."2 We will have to return later to
this question oflanguage. As well as to this act of naming: a date and
nothing more. When you say "September 11" you are already citing, are
you not? You are inviting me to speak here by recalling, as ifin quotation
marks, a date or a dating that has taken over our public space and
our private lives for five weeks now. Somethingfait date, I would say in
Translated from the French by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Revised byJacques Derrida in
French.
86 Autoimmunity: Realand Symbolic Suicides
a French idiom, something marks a date, a date in history; that is always
what's most striking, the very impact ofwhat is at leastfeU, in an
apparently immediate way, to be an event that truly marks, that truly
makes its mark, a singular and, as they say here, "unprecedented"3
event. I say "apparently immediate" because this "feeling" is actually
less spontaneous than it appears: it is to a large extent conditioned, constituted,
if not actually constructed, circulated at any rate through the
media by means of a prodigious techno-socio-political machine. "To
mark a date in history" presupposes, in any case, that "something"
comes or happens for the first and last time, "something" that we do not
yet really know how to identify, determine, recognize, or analyze but that
should remain from here on in unforgettable: an ineffaceable event in
the shared archive ofa universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal
calendar, for these are-and I want to insist on this at the outset-only
suppositions and presuppositions. Unrefined and dogmatic, or else
carefully considered, organized, calculated, strategic-or all ofthese at
once. For the index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal
deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else.
Namely, the fact thatwe perhaps have no concept and no meaning available
to us to name in any other way this "thing" that hasjust happened,
this supposed "event." An act of"international terrorism," for example,
and we will return to this, is anything but a rigorous concept that would
help us grasp the singularity of what we will be trying to discuss.
"Something" took place, we have the feeling ofnot having seen it coming,
and certain consequences undeniably follow upon the "thing." But
this very thing, the place and meaning ofthis "event," remains ineffable,
like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the
horizon or with no horizon at al~ out ofrange for a language that admits
its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a
date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind ofritual incantation, a conjuring
poem, ajournalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing
what it's talking about. We do not in fact know what we are saying or
naming in this way: September u, le 11 septembre, September u. The
brevity of the appellation (September u, gfu) stems not only from an
economic or rhetorical necessity. The telegram of this metonymy-a
name, a number-points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we
do not recognize or even cognize, that we do not yet know how to qualify,
that we do not know what we are talking about.
ADialoguewithJacques Derrida
This is the first, indisputable effect of what occurred (whether it
was calculated, well calculated, or not), precisely on September u, not
far from here: we repeat this, we must repeat it, and it is all the more
necessary to repeat it insofar as we do not really know what is being
named in this way, as if to exorcise two times at one go: on the one
hand, to conjure away, as ifby magic, the "thing" itself, the fear or the
terror it inspires (for repetition always protects by neutralizing, deadening,distancing
a traumatism, and this is true for the repetition ofthe
televised images we will speak of later), and, on the other hand, to
deny, as close as possible to this act oflanguage and this enunciation,
our powerlessness to name in an appropriate fashion, to characterize,
to think the thing in question, to get beyond the mere deictic of the
date: something terrible took place on September u, and in the end we
don't know what. For however outraged we might be at the violence,
however much we might genuinely deplore-as I do, along with everyone
else-the number ofdead, no one will really be convinced that this
is, in the end, what it's all about. I will come back to this later; for the
moment we are simply preparing ourselves to say something about it.
I've been in New York for three weeks now. Not only is it impossible
not to speak on this subject, but you feel or are made to feel that it is
actuallyforbidden, that you do not have the right, to begin speaking of
anything, especially in public, without ceding to this obligation, without
making an always somewhat blind reference to this date (and this
was already the case in China, where I was on September u, and then
in Frankfurt on September 22).4 I gave in regularly to this injunction, I
admit; and in a certain sense I am doing so again by taking part in this
friendly interview with you, though trying always, beyond the commotion
and the most sincere compassion, to appeal to questions and to a
"thought" (among other things, a real political thought) of what, it
seems, hasjust taken place on September n,just a few steps from here,
inManhattan or, not too far away, in Washington, D.C.
I believe always in the necessity ofbeing attentive first ofall to this
phenomenon oflanguage, naming, and dating, to this repetition compulsion
(at once rhetorical, magical, and poetic). To what this compulsion
signifies, translates, or betrays. Not in order to isolate ourselves in
language, as people in too much ofa rush would like us to believe, but
on the contrary, in order to try to understand what is going on precisely
beyond language and what is pushing us to repeat endlessly and with-
88 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
out knowing what we are talking about, precisely there where language
and the concept come up against their limits: "September u, September
u, le 11 septembre, gfn."
We must try to know more, to take our time and hold onto our freedom
so as to begin to think this first effect of the so-called event: From
where does this menacing injunction itselfcome to us? How is it being
forced upon us? Who or what gives us this threatening order (others
would already say this terrorizing ifnot terrorist imperative): name, repeat,
rename "September n," "le 11 septembre," even when you do not
yetknow what you are saying and are not yet thinking what you refer to
in this way. I agree with you: without any doubt, this "thing," "September
u," "gave us the impression ofbeing a major event." But what is an
impression in this case? And an event? And especially a"major event"?
Taking your word-or words-for it, I will underscore more than one
precaution. I will do so in a seemingly "empiricist" style, though aiming
beyond empiricism. It cannot be denied, as an empiricist of the eighteenth
century would quite literally say, that there was an "impression"
there, and the impression of what you call in English-and this is not
fortuitous-a "major event." I insist here on the English because it is the
language we speak here in New York, even though it is neither your language
nor mine; but I also insist because the injunction comes first ofall
from a place where English predominates. I am not saying this only because
the United States was targeted, hit, or violated on its own soil for
the first time in almost two centuries-since 1812 to be exact5-but because
the world order that felt itself targeted through this violence is
dominated largely by the Anglo-American idiom, an idiom that is indissociablylinked
to the political discourse that dominates the world stage,
to international law, diplomatic institutions, the media, and the greatest
technoscientific, capitalist, and military power. And it is very much a
question ofthe still enigmatic but also criticalessence ofthis hegemony.
By critica~ I mean at once decisive, potentially decisionary, decisionmaking,
and in crisis: today more vulnerable and threatened than ever.
Whether this "impression" isjustified or not, it is in itselfan event,
let us never forget it, especially when it is, though in quite different
ways, a properly global effect. The "impression" cannot be dissociated
from all the affects, interpretations, and rhetoric that have at once reflected,
communicated, and "globalized" it, from everything that also
and first ofall formed, produced, and made it possible. The "impres-
ADialog;uewith]acques Derrida 8g
sion" thus resembles "the very thing" that produced it. Even ifthe socalled
"thing" cannot be reduced to it. Even if, therefore, the eventitself
cannot be reduced to it. The event is made up ofthe "thing" itself(that
which happens or comes) and the impression (itselfat once "spontaneous"
and "controlled") that is given, left, or made by the so-called
''thing." We could say that the impression is "informed," in both senses
ofthe word: a predominant system gave it form, and this form then gets
run through an organized information machine (language, communication,
rhetoric, image, media, and so on). This informational apparatus
is from the very outset political, technical, economic. Butwe can and, I
believe, must (and this duty is at once philosophical and political) distinguish
between the supposedly brute fact, the "impression," and the
interpretation. It is ofcourse just about impossible, I realize, to distinguish
the "brute" fact from the system that produces the ''information"
about it. But it is necessary to push the analysis as far as possible. To
produce a "major event," it is, sad to say, not enough, and this has been
true for some time now, to cause the deaths ofsome four thousand people,
and especially "civilians," in just a few seconds by means of socalled
advanced technology. Many examples could be given from the
world wars (for you specified that this event appears even more important
to those who "have never lived through a world war") but also
from after these wars, examples ofquasi-instantaneous mass murders
that were not recorded, interpreted, felt, and presented as "major
events."They did not give the "impression," at least not to everyone, of
being unforgettable catastrophes.
We must thus ask why this is the case and distinguish between two
''impressions." On the one hand, compassion for the victims and indignation
over the killings; our sadness and condemnation should be
without limits, unconditional, unimpeachable; they are responding to
an undeniable "event," beyond all simulacra and all possible virtualization;
they respond with what might be called the heart and they go
straight to the heart of the event. On the other hand, the interpreted,
interpretative, informed impression, the conditional evaluation that
makes us believe that this is a "major event."Belief, the phenomenon of
credit and of accreditation, constitutes an essential dimension of the
evaluation, of the dating, indeed, of the compulsive inflation ofwhich
we've been speaking. By distinguishing impression from belief, I continue
to make as ifl were privileging this language ofEnglish empiri-
go Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
cism, which we would be wrong to resist here. All the philosophical
questions remain open, unless they are opening up again in a perhaps
new and original way: What is an impression? What is a belief? But especially:
what is an event worthy of this name? And a "major" event,
that is, one that is actually more of an "event," more actually an
"event," than ever? An event that would bear witness, in an exemplary
or hyperbolic fashion, to the very essence of an event or even to an
event beyond essence? For could an event that still conforms to an
essence, to a Iaw or to a truth, indeed to a concept ofthe event, ever be
a major event? A major event should be so unforeseeable and irruptive
that it disturbs even the horizon ofthe concept or essence on the basis
ofwhich we believe we recognize an event as such. That is why all the
"philosophical" questions remain open, perhaps even beyond philosophy
itself, as soon as it is a matter ofthinking the event.
B o R R A n o R I : You mean "event" in the Heideggerian sense?
D E R R I D A : No doubt, but, curiously, to the extent that the
thought ofEreig;nis in Heidegger would be turned not only toward the
apfrropriation of the proper (eigen) but toward a certain exfrropriation
that Heidegger himself names (Enteignis). The undergoing of the
event, that which in the undergoing or in the ordeal at once opens itself
up to and resists experience, is, it seems to me, a certain unappropriability
of what comes or happens. The event is what comes and, in
coming, comes to surprise me, to surprise and to suspend comprehension:
the event is first ofall that which I do not first ofall comprehend.
Better, the event is first ofall that I do not comprehend. It consists in
that, that I do not comprehend: that which I do not comprehend and
first of all that I do not comprehend, the fact that I do not comprehend:
my incomprehension. That is the limit, at once internal and external,
on which I would like to insist here: although the experience of
an event, the mode according to which it affects us, calls for a movement
ofappropriation (comprehension, recognition, identification, description,
determination, interpretation on the basis ofa horizon ofanticipation,
knowledge, naming, and so on), although this movement of
appropriation is irreducible and ineluctable, there is no event worthy
ofits name except insofar as this appropriationfalters at some border
or frontier. A frontier, however, with neither front nor confrontation,
one that incomprehension does not run into head on since it does not
take the form ofa solid front: it escapes, remains evasive, open, uncle-
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida 91
cided, indeterminable. Whence the unappropriability, the unforeseeability,
absolute surprise, incomprehension, the risk ofmisunderstanding,
unanticipatable novelty, pure singularity, the absence of horizon.
Were we to accept this minimal definition of the event, minimal but
double and paradoxical, could we affirm that "September n" constituted
an event without precedent? An unforeseeable event? A singular
event through and through?
Nothing is less certain. It was not impossible to foresee an attack
on American soil by those called "terrorists" (we will have to return to
this word, which is so equivocal and so politically charged), against a
highly sensitive, spectacular, extremely symbolic building or institution.
Leaving aside Oklahoma City (where, it will be said, the attacker
came from the United States, even though this was the case of"September
n" as well), there had already been a bombing attack against
the Twin Towers a few years back, and the fallout from this attack remains
very much a current affair since the presumed authors ofthis act
of"terrorism" are still being held and tried.6 And there have been so
many other attacks ofthe same kind, outside American national territory
but against American "interests." And then there are the notable
failures of the CIA and FBI, these two antennae of the American organism
that were supposed to see these attacks coming, to avert just
such a surprise. (Let me say in passing, since I've just spoken of the
"American national territory" and of American "interests," that "September
u" reveals, or actually recalls, that for countless reasons we
would have real difficulty defining rigorous limits for these "things,"
"national territory" and "American interests." Where do they end
today? Who is authorized to answer this question? Only American citizens?
Only their allies? It is perhaps here that we might get to the very
bottom of the problem-and to one ofthe reasons why we would have
difficulty knowing if there is here, stricto sensu, where and when, an
"event.")
Let us accept nonetheless such a hypothesis and proceed slowly
and patiently in speaking of this as an "event." After all, every time
something happens, even in the most banal, everyday experience, there
is something ofan event and ofsingular unforeseeability about it: each
instant marks an event, everything that is "other" as well, and each
birth, and each death, even the most gentle and most "natural." But
should we then say, to cite you, that September u was a "m<Uor event"?
92 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
Even though the word "major" suggests height and size, the evaluation
here cannot be merely quantitative, a question ofthe size ofthe towers,
the territory attacked, or the number ofvictims. You know, ofcourse,
that one does not count the dead in the same way from one corner of
the globe to the other. It is ourduty to recall this, without it attenuating
in the least our sadness for the victims of the Twin Towers, our horror
or our outrage in the face ofthis crime. It is our duty to recall that the
shock waves produced by such murders are never purely natural and
spontaneous. They depend on a complex machinery involving history,
politics, the media, and so on. Whether we are talking about a psychological,
political, police, or military response or reaction, we must acknowledge
the obvious-at once qualitative and quantitative: for Europe,
for the United States, for their media and their public opinion,
quantitatively comparable killings, or even those greater in number,
whether immediate or indirect, never produce such an intense upheaval
when they occur outside European or American space (Cambodia,
Rwanda, Palestine, Iraq, and so on). What appears new and
"major" is not the weapon used, either: planes to destroy buildings full
ofcivilians. There is no need, alas, to go back to the bombings during
World War II, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to find countless examples
ofthis. The least we can say about such aggressions is that, whether by
quantitative or other measures, they were not inferior in scope to "September
n." And the United States was not always, let it be said by way
ofa litotes, on the side of the victims.
We must thus look for other explanations-meaningful and qualitative
explanations. First of all, whether one is or is not an ally of the
United States, whether one approves or not ofwhat has remained more
or less constant and continuous in U.S. policy from one administration
to the next, no one, I think, will contest an obvious fact that determines
the horizon ofthe "world" since what is called the end ofthe Cold War
(and we will have to reinterpret this thing, the so-called end ofthe Cold
War, from several different perspectives, and I will do so later, but for
the moment allow me to recall only that "September n" is also, still,
and in many respects, a distant effect ofthe Cold War itsdf, before its
"end," from the time when the United States provided training and
weapons, and not only in Afghanistan, to the enemies of the Soviet
Union, who have now become the enemies of the U.S.). The obvious
fact is that since the "end of the Cold War" what can be called the
ADialogue withJacques Derrida 93
world order, in its relative and precarious stability, depends largely on
the solidity and reliability, on the credit, ofAmerican power. On every
level: economic, technical, military, in the media, even on the level of
discursive logic, ofthe axiomatic that supportsjuridical and diplomatic
rhetoric worldwide, and thus international law, even when the United
States violates this law without ceasing to champion its cause. Hence,
to destabilize this superpower, which plays at least the "role" of the
guardian ofthe prevailing world order, is to risk destabilizing the entire
world, including the declared enemies of the United States. What is
therefore threatened? Not only a great number of forces, powers, or
"things" that depend, even for the most determined adversaries ofthe
United States, on the order that is more or less assured by this superpower;
it is also, more radically still (and I would underscore this
point), the system ofinterpretation, the axiomatic, logic, rhetoric, concepts,
and evaluations that are supposed to allow one to comprehend
and to explain precisely something like "September u." I am speaking
here of the discourse that comes to be, in a pervasive and overwhelming,
hegemonic fashion, accredited in the world's public space. What is
legitimated by the prevailing system (a combination ofpublic opinion,
the media, the rhetoric ofpoliticians and the presumed authority ofall
those who, through various mechanisms, speak or are allowed to speak
in the public space) are thus the norms inscribed in every apparently
meaningful phrase that can be constructed with the lexicon ofviolence,
aggression, crime, war, and terrorism, with the supposed differences
between war and terrorism, national and international terrorism, state
and nonstate terrorism, with the respect for sovereignty, national territory,
and so on. Is, then, what was touched, wounded, or traumatized
by this double crash only some particular thing or other, a "what" or a
"who," buildings, strategic urban structures, symbols ofpolitical, military,
or capitalist power, or a considerable number of people ofmany
different origins living on the body ofa national territory that had remained
untouched for so long? No, it was not only all that but perhaps
especially, through all that, the conceptual, semantic, and one could
even say hermeneutic apparatus that might have allowed one to see
coming, to comprehend, interpret, describe, speak of, and name "September
u"-and in so doing to neutralize the traumatism and come to
terms with it through a "work of mourning." What I am suggesting
here might appear abstract and overly reliant on what seems like a sim-
94 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
ple conceptual or discursive activity, a question ofknowledge; it is as if
I were in fact content to say that what is terrible about "September n,"
what remains "infinite" in this wound, is that we do not know what it is
and so do not know how to describe, identify, or even name it. And that
is, in fact, what I'm saying. But in order to show that this horizon of
nonknowledge, this nonhorizon of knowledge (the powerlessness to
comprehend, recognize, cognize, identify, name, describe, foresee), is
anything but abstract and idealist, I will need to say more. And, precisely,
in a more concrete way.
I shall do this in three moments, twice by reference to what has
been called the "Cold War," the "end ofthe Cold War," or "the balance
ofterror." These three moments or series ofarguments all appeal to the
same logic. The same logic that elsewhere I proposed we extend without
limit in the form ofan implacable law: the one that regulates every
autoimmunitary process.7 As we know, an autoimmunitary process is
that strange behavior where a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion,
"itself" works to destroy its ownprotection, to immunize itselfagainst
its "own" immunity.
1. First moment, first autoimmunity. Reflex and reflection.
The Cold War in the head.
Well beyond the United States, the whole world feels obscurely affected
by a transgression that is not only presented as a transgression
without precedent in history (the first violation of U.S. national territory
in almost two centuries, or at least that's the phantasm that has
prevailed for so long) but as a transgression of a new type. But what
type? Before answering this question, let me recall once more the obvious:
this transgression violates the territory ofa country that, even in
the eyes of its enemies and especially since the so-called "end of the
Cold War," plays a virtually sovereign role among sovereign states. And
thus the role ofguarantor or guardian ofthe entire world order, the one
that, in principle and in the last resort, is supposed to assure credit in
general, credit in the sense offinancial transactions but also the credit
granted to languages, laws, political or diplomatic transactions. The
United States holds this credit, for which everyone-including those
who are trying to ruin it-feel the need, and it shows it not only
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida 95
through its wealth and its technoscientific and military power but also,
at the same time, through its role as arbitrator in all conflicts, through
its dominant presence on the Security Council and in so many other
international institutions. Even when-and with impunity-it respects
neither the spirit nor the letter of these institutions and their resolutions.
The United States still retains the power ofaccrediting before
the world a certain self-presentation: it represents the ultimate presumed
unity offorce and law, of the greatest force and the discourse of
law.
But here is the first symptom ofsuicidal autoimmunity: not only is
the ground, that is, the literal figure of the founding or foundation of
this "force oflaw," seen to be exposed to aggression, but the aggression
ofwhich it is the object (the object exposed, precisely, to violence, but
also, "in a loop,"S to its own cameras in its own interests) comes, as
from the inside, from forces that are apparently without any force of
their own but that are able to find the means, through ruse and the implementation
of high-tech knowledge, to get hold of an American
weapon in an American city on the ground ofan American airport. Immigrated,
trained, prepared for their act in the United States by the
United States, these hijackers incorporate, so to speak, two suicides in
one: their own (and one will remain forever defenseless in the face ofa
suicidal, autoimmunitary aggression-and that is what terrorizes most)
but also the suicide ofthose who welcomed, armed, and trained them.
For let us not forget that the United States had in effect paved the way
for and consolidated the forces of the "adversary" by training people
like "bin Laden," who would here be the most striking example, and by
6rst ofall creating the politico-military circumstances that would favor
their emergence and their shifts in allegiance (for example, the alliance
with Saudi Arabia and other Arab Muslim countries in its war against
the Soviet Union or Russia in Mghanistan-though one could endlessly
multiply examples ofthese suicidal paradoxes).
Doub~ suicidal, this force will have been adjusted with an extraordinary
economy (the maximum amount of security, of preparation, of
technical proficiency, ofdestructive capability, with a minimum ofborrowed
means!). It will have targeted and hit the heart or, rather, the
symbolic head of the prevailing world order. Right at the level of the
head (cap, caput, capital, Capitol), this double suicide will have
touched two places at once symbolically and operationally essential to
g6 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
the American corpus: the economic place or capital ''head" of world
capital (the World Trade Center, the very archetype of the genre, for
there are now-and under this very name-WTCs in many places of
the world, for example, in China) and the strategic, military, and administrative
place ofthe American capital, the head ofAmerican political
representation, the Pentagon, not far from the Capitol, the seat of
Congress.
In speaking here ofthe Capitol, I'm already moving on to a second
aspect of the same "event," ofwhat might make it a "major event." At
issue again is an autoimmunitary terror, and again, of the "Cold War,"
of what one calls a bit too quickly its "end" and of what, when seen
from the Capitol, might be worse than the Cold War.
2. Second moment, second autoimmunity.
Reflex and reflection. Worse than the Cold War.
What is a traumatic event? First ofall, any event worthy of this name,
even ifit is a "happy" event, has within it something that is traumatizing.
An event always inflicts a wound in the everyday course ofhistory,
in the ordinary repetition and anticipation of all experience. A traumatic
event is not only marked as an event by the memory, even ifunconscious,
ofwhat took place. In saying this, I seem to be going against
the obvious, namely, that the event is linked to presence or to the past,
to the taking place ofwhat has happened, once and for all, in an undeniable
fashion, so that the repetition compulsion that might follow
would but reproduce what has already happened or been produced.
Yet I believe we must complicate this schema (even if it is not completely
false}; we must question its "chrono-logy," that is, the thought
and order of temporalization it seems to imply. We must rethink the
temporalization ofa traumatism ifwe want to comprehend in what way
"September n" looks like a "major event." For the wound remains open
by our terror before thefuture and not only the past. (You yourself, in
fact, defined the event in relation to the future in your question; you
were already anticipating by speaking of "one of the most important
historical events we will witness in our lifetime.") The ordeal of the
event has as its tragic correlate not what is presently happening or what
has happened in the past but the precursory signs ofwhat threatens to
ADialogue withJacques Derrida 97
happen. It is the future that determines the unappropriability of the
event, not the present or the past. Or at least, ifit is the present or the
past, it is only insofar as it bears on its body the terrible sign ofwhat
might or perhaps will take place, which will be worse than anything
that has ever taken place.
Let me clarify. We are talking about a trauma, and thus an event,
whose temporality proceeds neither from the now that is present nor
from the present that is past but from an im-presentable to come (a
venir). A weapon wounds and leaves forever open an unconscious
scar; but this weapon is terrifying because it comes from the to-come,
from the future, a future so radically to come that it resists even the
grammar of the future anterior. Imagine that the Americans and,
through them,the entire world, had been told: what hasjust happened,
the spectacular destruction of two towers, the theatrical but invisible
deaths of thousands of people injust a few second, is an awful thing, a
terrible crime, a pain without measure, but it's all over, it won't happen
again, there will never again be anything as awful as or more awful than
that. I assume that mourning would have been possible in a relatively
short period of time. Whether to our chagrin or our delight, things
would have quite quickly returned to their normal course in ordinary
history. One would have spoken of the work of mourning and turned
the page, as is so often done, and done so much more easily when it
comes to things that happen elsewhere, far from Europe and the Americas.
But this is not at all what happened. There is traumatism with no
possible work ofmourning when the evil comes from the possibility to
come of the worst, from the repetition to come-though worse. Traumatism
is produced by the future, by the to come, by the threat ofthe
worst to come, rather than by an aggression that is "over and done
with."9 What happened, even though this has not been said with the
requisite clarity-and for good reason-is that, for the future and for always,
the threat that was indicated through these signs might be worse
than any other, worse even, and we shall explain this, than the threat
that organized the so-called "Cold War." The threat ofa chemical attack,
no doubt, or bacteriological attack (recall that in the weeks immediately
following September 11 it was thought that this was actually taking
place), but especially the threat ofa nuclear attack. Though rather
little has been said about this, those responsible in the administration
and in Congress quickly took the necessary measures to ensure that a
g8 Autoimmuni~y: Real and Symbolic Suicides
constitutional state might survive a nuclear attack against Washington,
the head of state, and the Congress (the Pentagon, White House, and
the Capitol building). Certain representatives of Congress made this
known during a televised public debate I happened to see here: from
now on the heads of state (president, vice-president, members of the
cabinet and ofcongress) will no longer all come together in the same
place at the same time, as used to be the case, for example, with the
State of the Union address. This suggests that the "major event" of
"September n"will not have consisted in a past aggression, one that is
still present and effective. X will have been traumatized (X? Who or
what is X? Nothing less than the "world," well beyond the United
States, or in any case, the possibility ofthe "world"), but traumatized
not in the present or from the memory of what will have been a past
present. No, traumatized from the unpresentable future, from the open
threat of an aggression capable one day of striking-for you never
know-the head ofthe sovereign nation-state par excellence.
Why is this threat signaled by the "end of the Cold War"? Why is
it worse than the "Cold War" itself? Like the formation ofArab Muslim
terrorist networks equipped and trained during the Cold War, this
threat represents the residual consequence of both the Cold War and
the passage beyond the Cold War. On the one hand, because of the
now uncontrollable proliferation of nuclear capability, it is difficult to
measure the degrees and forms ofthis force,just as it is difficult to delimit
the responsibility for this proliferation, a point we cannot pursue
here. On the other hand, and here we touch upon what is worse than
the Cold War, there can now no longer be a balance ofterror, for there
is no longer a duel or standoff between two powerful states (U.S.A.,
USSR) involved in a game theory in which both states are capable of
neutralizing the other's nuclear power through a reciprocal and organized
evaluation ofthe respective risks. From now on, the nuclear threat,
the "total" threat, no longer comes from a state but from anonymous
forces that are absolutely unforeseeable and incalculable. And since
this absolute threat will have been secreted by the end ofthe Cold War
and the "victory" of the U.S. camp, since it threatens what is supposed
to sustain world order, the very possibility ofaworld and ofany worldwide
effort [mondialisation] (international law, a world market, a universallanguage,
and so on), what is thus put at risk by this terrifying
autoimmunitary logic is nothing less than the existence ofthe world, of
ADialogue withJacques Derrida 99
the worldwide itself. There is no longer any limit to this threat that at
oncelooks for its antecedents or its resources in the long history ofthe
Cold War and yet appears infinitely more dangerous, frightening, terrifying
than the Cold War. And there are, in fact, countless signs that this
threat is accelerating and confirming the end ofthis Cold War, hastening
the at least apparent reconciliation oftwo equally frightened enemies.
When Bush and his associates blame "the axis ofevil," we ought
both to smile at and denounce the religious connotations, the childish
stratagems, the obscurantist mystifications ofthis inflated rhetoric. And
yet there is, in fact, and from every quarter, an absolute "evil" whose
threat, whose shadow, is spreading. Absolute evil, absolute threat, because
what is at stake is nothing less than the mondialisation or the
worldwide movement of the world, life on earth and elsewhere, without
remainder.
But, and here's another paradox, even ifthis is in fact the origin of
the "terror" that "terrorisms" are playing off, even ifthis terror is the
very worst, even ifit touches the geopolitical unconscious ofevery living
being and leaves there indelible traces, even if this is what we are
trying to get at when we speak, as youjust did, and as is done so often,
of"September n" as a "m~jor event" because it is the first (consciousunconscious)
sign of this absolute terror, well, at the same time, because
ofthe anonymous invisibility of the enemy, because of the undetermined
origin of the terror, because we cannot put a face on such
terror (individual or state), because we do not know what an event of
the unconscious orfor the unconscious is (though we must nonetheless
take it into account), the worst can simultaneously appear insubstantial,
fleeting, light,and so seem to be denied, repressed, indeed forgotten,
relegated to being just one event among others, one of the
"major events," ifyou will, in a long chain ofpast and future events. Yet
all these efforts to attenuate or neutralize the effect of the traumatism
(to deny, repress, or forget it, to get over it) are but so many desperate
attempts. And so many autoimmunitary movements. Which produce,
invent, and feed the verymonstrosity they claim to overcome.
What will never let itselfbe forgotten is thus the perverse effect of
the autoimmunitary itself. For we now know that repression in both its
psychoanalytical sense and its political sense-whether it be through
the police, the military, or the economy-ends up producing, reproducing,
and regenerating the very thing it seeks to disarm.
100 Autoimmuni~y: Realand Symbolic Suicides
3· Third moment, third autoimmunity.
Reflex and reflection. The vicious circle ofrepression.
It cannot be said that humanity is defenseless against the threat ofthis
evil. But we must recognize that defenses and all the forms of what is
called, with two equally problematic words, the "war on terrorism"IO
work to regenerate, in the short or long term, the causes ofthe evil they
claim to eradicate. Whether we are talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, or
even Palestine, the "bombs" will never be "smart" enough to prevent
the victims (military andjor civilian, another distinction that has become
less and less reliable) from responding, either in person or by
proxy, with what it will then be easy for them to present as legitimate
reprisals or as counterterrorism. And so on ad infinitum ...
For the sake ofclarity and because the analysis required it, I have
distinguished three autoimmunitary terrors. But in reality these three
resources ofterror cannot be distinguished; they feed into and overdetermine
one another. They are, at bottom, the same, in perceptual "reality"
and especially in the unconscious-which is not the least real of
realities.
B o R R A o o R I : Whether or not September n is an event of
major importance, what role do you see for philosophy? Can philosophy
help us to understand what has happened?
o E R R I o A : Such an "event" surely calls for a philosophical response.
Better, a response that calls into question, at their most fundamental
level, the most deep-seated conceptual presuppositions in
philosophical discourse. The concepts with which this "event" has
most often been described, named, categorized, ate the products ofa
"dogmatic slumber" from which only a new philosophical reflection
can awaken us, a reflection on philosophy, most notably on political
philosophy and its heritage. The prevailing discourse, that of the
media and of the official rhetoric, relies too readily on received concepts
like "war" or "terrorism" (national or international).
A critical reading ofSchmitt, for example, would thus prove very
useful. On the one hand, so as to follow Schmitt as far as possible in
distinguishing classical war (a direct and declared confrontation between
two enemy states, according to the long tradition ofEuropean
law) from "civil war" and "partisan war" (in its modern forms, even
though it appears, Schmitt acknowledges, as early as the beginning of
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida 101
the nineteenth century). But, on the other hand, we would also have to
recognize, against Schmitt, that the violence that has now been unleashed
is not the result of"war" (the expression "war on terrorism"
thus being one ofthe most confused, and we must analyze this confusion
and the interests such an abuse of rhetoric actually serve). Bush
speaks of "war," but he is in fact incapable of identifying the enemy
against whom he declares that he has declared war. It is said over and
over that neither the civilian population ofAfghanistan nor its armies
are the enemies of the United States. Assuming that "bin Laden" is
here the sovereign decision-maker, everyone knows that he is not
Mghan, that he has been disavowed by his own country (by every
"country" and state, in fact, almost without exception), that his training
owes much to the United States and that, of course, he is not alone.
The states that help him indirectly do not do so as states. No state as
such supports him publicly. As for states that "harbor" terrorist networks,
it is difficult to identify them as such. The United States and
Europe, London and Berlin, are also sanctuaries, places oftraining or
formation and information for all the "terrorists" ofthe world. No geography,
no "territorial"determination, is thus pertinent any longer for
locating the seat of these new technologies of transmission or aggression.
To say it all too quickly and in passing, to amplify and clarifyjust
a bitwhat I said earlierabout an absolute threat whose origin is anonymous
and not related to any state, such "terrorist" attacks already no
longer need planes, bombs, or kamikazes: it is enough to infiltrate a
strategically important computer system and introduce a virus or some
other disruptive element to paralyze the economic, military, and political
resources of an entire country or continent. And this can be attempted
from just about anywhere on earth, at very little expense and
with minimal means. The relationship between earth, terra, territory,
and terror has changed, and it is necessary to know that this is because
ofknowledge, that is, because oftechnoscience. It is technoscience that
blurs the distinction between war and terrorism. In this regard, when
compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that
are in reserve, for the future, in the computerized networks of the
world, "September n" is still part of the archaic theater of violence
aimed at striking the imagination. One will be able to do even worse tomorrow,
invisibly, in silence, more quickly and without any bloodshed,
by attacking the computer and informational networks on which the
102 Autoimmunity: Realand Symbolic Suicides
entire life (social, economic, military, and so on) ofa "great nation," of
the greatest power on earth, depends. One day it might be said: "September
n"-those were the ("good") old days of the last war. Things
were still ofthe order ofthe gigantic: visible and enormous! What size,
what height! There has been worse since. Nanotechnologies ofall sorts
are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of
creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes
and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it already
knows it, and that's what's scary.
If this violence is not a "war" between states, it is not a "civil war"
either, or a "partisan war," in Schmitt's sense, insofar as it does not involve,
like most such wars, a national insurrection or liberation movement
aimed at taking power on the ground ofa nation-state (even ifone
ofthe aims,whethersecondary or primary, ofthe "bin Laden" network
is to destabilize Saudi Arabia, an ambiguous ally ofthe United States,
and put a new state power in place). Even if one were to insist on
speaking here of"terrorism," this appellation now covers a new concept
and new distinctions.
B o R R A D o R 1 : Do you think that these distinctions can be
safely drawn?
o E R R 1 o A It's more difficult than ever. If one is not to trust
blindly in the prevailing language, which remains most often subservient
to the rhetoric of the media and to the banter of the political
powers, we must be very careful using the term "terrorism" and especially
"international terrorism." In the first place, what is terror? What
distinguishes it from fear, anxiety, and panic? When I suggested earlier
that the event ofSeptember 11 was "major" only to the extent that the
traumatism it inflicted upon consciousness and upon the unconscious
had to do not with what happened but with the undetermined threat of
a future more dangerous than the Cold War, was I speaking of terror,
fear, panic, or anxiety? How does a terror that is organized, provoked,
and instrumentalized cliffer from thatfoar that an entire tradition, from
Hobbes to Schmitt and even to Benjamin, holds to be the very condition
ofthe authority oflaw and ofthe sovereign exercise ofpower, the
very condition ofthe political and ofthe state? In Leviathan Hobbes
speaks not only of''fear" but of"terror."II Benjamin speaks ofhow the
state tends to appropriate for itself, and precisely through threat, a monopoly
on violence ("Critique ofViolence").I2 It will no doubt be said
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida 103
that not every experience of terror is necessarily the effect of some terrorism.
To be sure, but the political history ofthe word "terrorism" is
derived in large part from a reference to the Reign ofTerror during the
French Revolution, a terror that was carried out in the name of the
state and that in fact presupposed a legal monopoly on violence. And
what do we find in current definitions or explicitly legal definitions of
terrorism? In each case, a reference to a crime against human life in violation
ofnational or international laws entails at once the distinction
between civilian and military (the victims ofterrorism are assumed to
be civilians) and a political end (to influence or change the politics ofa
country by terrorizing its civilian population). These definitions do not
therefore exclude "state terrorism." Every terrorist in the world claims
to be responding in self-defense to a prior terrorism on the part of the
state, one that simply went by other names and covered itself with all
sorts ofmore or less credible justifications. You know about the accusations
leveled against, for example, and especially, the United States,
suspected ofpracticing or encouraging state terrorism.I3 In addition,
even during declared wars between states, in accordance with the long
tradition ofEuropean law, there were frequently terrorist excesses. Well
before the massive bombing campaigns ofthe last two world wars, the
intimidation of civilian populations was commonly resorted to. For
centuries.
A word must also be said about the expression "international terrorism,"
which has become a staple ofofficial political discourse the
world over. It is also being used in numerous officialcondemnations on
the part ofthe United Nations. After September n, an overwhelming
majority of states represented in the UN (it may have actually been
unanimous, I would have to check) condemned, as has happened more
than once in the past few decades, what it calls "international terrorism."
During a televised session of the UN, Secretary-General Kofi
Annan had to recall in passing some oftheir previous debates. Forjust
as they were preparing to condemn "international terrorism," certain
states expressed reservations about the clarity of the concept and the
criteria used to identifY it. As with so many other crucialjuridical notions,
what remains obscure, dogmatic, or precritical does not prevent
the powers that be, the so-called legitimate powers, from making use of
these notions when it seems opportune. On the contrary, the more confused
the concept the more it lends itselfto an opportunistic appropri-
104 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
ation. It was, thus, after a few very hasty decisions, without any philosophical
debate on the subject of"international terrorism" and its condemnation,
that the UN authorized the United States to use any means
deemed necessary and appropriate by the American administration to
protect itselfagainst this so-called "international terrorism."
Without going back too far in time, without even recalling, as is
often done these days, and rightly so, that terrorists might be praised as
freedom fighters in one context (for example, in the struggle against the
Soviet occupation ofAfghanistan) and denounced as terrorists in another
(and, these days, it's often the very same fighters, using the very
same weapons), let's not forget the trouble we would have deciding between
"national" and "international" terrorism in the cases ofAlgeria,
Northern Ireland, Corsica, Israel, or Palestine. No one can deny that
there was state terrorism during the French repression in Algeria from
1954 to Ig62. The terrorism carried out by the Algerian rebellion was
long considered a domestic phenomenon insofar as Algeria was supposed
to be an integral part ofFrench national territory, and the French
terrorism ofthe time (carried out by the state) was presented as a police
operation for internal security. It was only in the Iggos, decades later,
that the French Parliament retrospectively conferred the status of
''war" (and thus the status ofan international confrontation) upon this
conflict so as to be able to pay the pensions of the "veterans" who
claimed them. What did this law reveal? That it was necessary, and that
we were able, to change all the names previously used to qualify what
had earlier been so modestly called, in Algeria, precisely the "events"
(the inability, once again, of popular public opinion to name the
"thing" adequately). Armed repression, an internal police operation,
and state terrorism thus all ofa sudden became a "war." On the other
side, the terrorists were considered and from now on are considered in
much of the world as freedom fighters and heroes of national independence.
As for the terrorism of the armed groups that helped force
the foundation and recognition ofthe state of Israel, was that national
or international? And what about the different groups of Palestinian
terrorists today? And the Irish? And the Afghans who fought against
the Soviet Union? And the Chechnyans? At what point does one terrorism
stop being denounced as such to be hailed as the only recourse
left in a legitimate fight? And what about the inverse? Where does one
draw the line between the national and the international, the police and
ADialogue withJacques Derrida 105
the army, a "peacekeeping" intervention and war, terrorism and war,
civilian and military, in a territory and within the structures that assure
the defensive or offensive capacity ofa "society"? I say simply "society"
here because there are cases where a more or less organic and organized
political entity is neither a state nor a completely nonstate entity
but virtually a state: just look at what is today called Palestine or the
Palestinian Authority.
Semantic instability, irreducible trouble spots on the borders between
concepts, indecision in the very concept of the border: all this
must not only be analyzed as a speculative disorder, a conceptual chaos
or zone ofpassing turbulence in public or political language. We must
also recognize here strategies and relations of force. The dominant
power is the one that manages to impose and, thus, to legitimate, indeed
to legalize (for it is always a question oflaw) on a national or
world stage, the terminology and thus the interpretation that best suits
it in a given situation. It was thus in the course ofa long and complicated
history that the United States succeeded in gaining an intergovernmental
consensus in South America to officially call "terrorism" any
organized political resistance to the powers in place-those put in
place, in truth-so that an armed coalition could then be called upon to
combat the so-called "terrorism." So that the U.S. could, without compunction,
delegate responsibility to South American governments and
so avoid the very legitimate accusation ofviolent interventionism.
But rather than continue in this direction by multiplying examples,
I will settle for underscoring once more the novelty that makes so
urgent both a refoundation, ifwe can still say this, ofthejuridico-political
and a conceptual mutation, at once semantic, lexical, and rhetorical.
Let's look again at many ofthe phenomena that some are trying to
identify and interpret as (national or international) "terrorist" acts, acts
ofwar,or peacekeeping interventions. They no longer aim at conquering
or liberating a territory and at founding a nation-state. No one any
longer aspires to this, not the United States or the (wealthy) so-called
"northern" states, which no longer exercise their hegemony through
the colonial or imperial model of occupying a territory, and not the
countries formerly subject to this colonialism or imperialism.The "terrorist/freedom
fighter" opposition also belongs to the categories ofthe
past. Even when there is "state terrorism" it is no longer a question of
occupying a territory but ofsecuringsome technoeconomic power or
106 Autoimmunity: Realand Symbolic Suicides
political control that has but a minimal need for territory. Ifoil reserves
remain among the rare territories left, among the last nonvirtualizable
terrestrial places, one can simply secure the rights to lay down a
pipeline. Though it is also true that, for the moment, the whole technoindustrial
structure of hegemonic countries depends on these resources,
so that, however complex and overdetermined it may be, the
possibility ofeverything we havejust spoken about remains anchored,
so to speak, in these nonreplaceable places, these nondeterritorializable
territories. These territories continue to belong, by law, in the still solid
tradition ofinternational law, to sovereign nation-states.
B o R R A o o R I : What you are suggesting calls for profound
changes at the level ofinternational institutions and international law.
o E R R I o A : Such a mutation willhave to take place. But it is impossible
to predict at what pace. In all the transformations we have
been discussing, what remains incalculable is first of all the pace or
rhythm, the time ofacceleration and the acceleration of time. And this
is for essential reasons that have to do with the very speed of technoscientific
advances or shifts in speed. just like the shifts in size or scale
that nanotechnologies have introduced into our evaluations and our
measures. Such radical changes in international law are necessary, but
they might take place in one generation or in twenty. Who can say?
Though I am incapable of knowing who today deserves the name
philosopher (I would not simply accept certain professional or organizational
criteria), I would be tempted to call philosophers those who,
in the future, reflect in a responsible fashion on these questions and
demand accountability from those in charge ofpublic discourse, those
responsible for the language and institutions of international law. A
"philosopher" (actually I would prefer to say "philosopher-deconstructor")
would be someone who analyzes and then draws the practical
and effective consequences ofthe relationship between our philosophical
heritage and the structure of the still dominant juridicopolitical
system that is so clearly undergoing mutation. A "philosopher"
would be one who seeks a new criteriology to distinguish between
"comprehending" and "justifying." For one can describe, comprehend,
and explain a certain chain ofevents or series ofassociations
that lead to "war"or to "terrorism" withoutjustifying them in the least,
while in fact condemning them and attempting to invent other associations.
One can condemn unconditionally certain acts of terrorism
A Dialog;ue withJacques Derrida 107
(whether ofthe state or not) without having to ignore the situation that
might have brought them about or even legitimated them. To provide
examples it would be necessary to conduct long analyses, in principle
interminably long. One can thus condemn unconditionaUy, as I do
here, the attack ofSeptember 11 without having to ignore the real oralleged
conditions that made it possible. Anyone in the world who either
organized or tried tojustify this attack saw it as a response to the state
terrorism ofthe United States and its allies. This was the case, for example-and
I cite this only as an example-in the Middle East, even
though Yasir Arafat also condemned "September n" and refused bin
Laden the right to speak in the name ofthe Palestinian people.
u o R R A D o R 1 : If the distinction between war and terrorism is
problematic and we accept the notion ofstate terrorism, then the question
still remains: who is the most terrorist?
D E R R 1 D A : The most terrorist? This question is at once necessary
and destined to remain without any answer. Necessary because it
takes into account an essential fact: all terrorism presents itselfas aresponse
in a situation that continues to escalate. It amounts to saying, "I
am resorting to terrorism as a last resort, because the other is more terrorist
than I am; I am defending myself, counterattacking; the real terrorist,
the worst, is the one who will have deprived me of every other
means ofresponding before presenting himself, the first aggressor, as a
victim." It is in this way that the United States, Israel, wealthy nations,
and colonial or imperialist powers are accused ofpracticing state terrorism
and thus ofbeing "more terrorist" than the terrorists ofwhom
they say they are the victims. The pattern is well known, so I won't belabor
it. But it is difficult to write it offpurely and simply, even ifit is
sometimes applied in a simplistic and abusive fashion. Yet the question
you are asking, that ofa "more or less" in terrorism, should also not be
settled through a purely and objectively quantitative logic. For this
question can give rise to no such formal evaluation. "Terrorist" acts try
to produce psychic effects (conscious or unconscious) and symbolic or
symptomatic reactions that might take numerous detours, an incalculable
number of them, in truth. The quality or intensity of the emotions
provoked (whether conscious or unconscious) is not always proportionate
to the number ofvictims or the amount ofdamage. In situations
and cultures where the media do not spectacularize the event, the
killing ofthousands ofpeople in a very short period of time might pro-
108 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
voke fewer psychic and political effects than the assassination ofa single
individual in another country, culture, or nation-state with highly
developed media resources. And does terrorism have to work only
through death? Can't one terrorize without killing? And does killing
necessarily mean putting to death? Isn't it also "letting die"? Can't
"letting die," "not wanting to know that one is letting others die"hundreds
of millions of human beings, from hunger, AIDS, lack of
medical treatment, and so on-also be part of a "more or less" conscious
and deliberate terrorist strategy? We are perhaps wrong to assume
so quickly that all terrorism is voluntary, conscious, organized,
deliberate, intentionally calculated: there are historical and political
"situations" where terror operates, so to speak, as ifby itself, as the simple
result ofsome apparatus, because ofthe relations offorce in place,
without anyone, any conscious subject, any person, any "I," being really
conscious ofit or feeling itself responsible for it. All situations of
social or national structural oppressionproduce a terror that is not natural
(insofar as it is organized, institutional), and all these situations depend
on this terror without those who benefit from them ever organizing
terrorist acts or ever being treated as terrorists. The narrow, too
narrow meaning commonly given today to the word "terrorism" gets
circulated in various ways in the discourse that dominates the public
space, and first ofall through the technoeconomic power ofthe media.
What would "September 11"have been without television? This question
has already been asked and explored, so I will not insist on it here.
But we must recall that maximum media coverage was in the common
interest ofthe perpetrators of"September n," the terrorists, and those
who, in the name ofthe victims, wanted to declare"war on terrorism."
Between these two parties, such media coverage was, like the good
sense ofwhich Descartes speaks, the most widely shared thing in the
world. More than the destruction ofthe Twin Towers or the attack on
the Pentagon, more than the killing of thousands of people, the real
"terror" consisted ofand, in fact, began by exposing and exploiting,
having exposed and exploited, the image ofthis terror by the target itself.
This target (the United States, let's say, and anyone who supports
or is allied with them in the world, and this knows almost no limits
today) had it in its own interest (the same interest it shares with its
sworn enemies) to expose its vulnerability, to give the greatest possible
coverage to the aggression against which it wishes to protect itself: This
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida lOg
is again the same autoimmunitary perversion. Or perhaps it would be
better to say "pervertibility," so as to name a possibility, a risk, or a
threat whose virtuality does not take the form ofan evil intention, an
evil spirit, or a will to do harm. But this virtuality alone is enough to
frighten, even terrify. It is the ineradicable root of terror and thus ofa
terrorism that announces itselfeven before organizing itselfinto terrorism.
Implacably. Endlessly.
Let me add here a reminder: there is nothing purely "modern" in
this relation between media and terror, in a terrorism that operates by
propagating within the public space images or rumors aimed at terrifying
the so-called civilian population. It is true, of course, that with
radio and television what is called organized "propaganda" (something
that is in fact relatively modern) has, in the last century, and already
during World War I, played an essential role in "declared" war. It will
have gone hand in hand with bombing campaigns (whether conventional
or atomic) that could not differentiate between "civilian" and
"military" any more than the "resistance" movements and the repressions
ofthose movements could. It was thus already impossible during
the two "world wars" to distinguish rigorously between war and terrorism.
Look, for example, at the heroes ofthe French Resistance who
pursued the "war" even after the armistice and often in the name ofDe
Gaulle's "free France." These members of the Resistance were regularly
treated as "terrorists" by the Nazis and the Vichy collaborators.
The accusation ceased with the liberation ofFrance, since it had been
an instrument ofNazi propaganda, but who could deny that it was entirely
untrue?
B o R R A o o R I : Where were you on September n?
o E R R I o A : I was in Shanghai, at the end ofa long trip to China.
It was nighttime there, and the owner ofthe cafe I was in with a couple
offriends came to tell us that an airplane had "crashed" into the Twin
Towers. I hurried back to my hotel, and from the very first televised images,
those ofCNN, I note, it was easy to foresee that this was going to
become, in the eyes ofthe world, what you called a "major event." Even
if what was to follow remained, to a certain extent, invisible and unforeseeable.
But to feel the gravity ofthe event and its "worldwide" implications
it was enough simply to mobilize a few already tested political
hypotheses. As far as I could tell, China tried during the first few
days to circumscribe the importance ofthe event, as ifit were a more or
llO Autoimmuni~y: Realand Symbolic Suicides
less local incident. But this organized interpretation, informed by the
current state of U.S.-China relations (diplomatic tensions and incidents
ofvarious sorts), ended up having to yield to other exigencies:
CNN and other international media outlets have penetrated Chinese
space, and China too, after all, has its own "Muslim" problem. It thus
became necessary tojoin in some way the "antiterrorist" "coalition." It
would be necessary to analyze, in the same vein, the motivations and
interests behind all the different geopolitical or strategico-diplomatic
shifts that have "invested," so to speak, "September u." (For example,
the warming in relations between Bush and Putin, who has been given
a freer hand in Chechnya, and the very useful but very hasty identification
of Palestinian terrorism with international terrorism, which now
calls for a universal response. In both cases, certain parties have an interest
in presenting their adversaries not only as terrorists-which they
in fact are to a certain extent-but only as terrorists, indeed as "international
terrorists" who share the same logic or are part of the same
network and who must thus be opposed, it is claimed, not through
counterterrorism but through a "war," meaning, of course, a "nice
clean" war. The "facts" clearly show that these distinctions are lacking
in rigor, impossible to maintain, and easily manipulated for certain
ends.
B o R R A o o R I : A radical deconstruction ofthe distinction between
war and terrorism, as well as between different types ofterrorism
(such as national and international), makes it very difficult to conceive
ofpolitics in a strategic sense. Who are the actors on the world stage?
How many ofthem are there? Isn't there here the risk oftotal anarchy?
D E R R I D A : The word "anarchy" risks making us abandon too
quickly the analysis and interpretation ofwhat indeed looks like pure
chaos. We must do all that we can to account for this appearance. We
must do everything possible to make this new "disorder" a<i intelligible
as possible. The analysis we sketched out earlier tried to move in that
direction: an end ofthe "Cold War" that leavesjust one camp, a coalition,
actually, ofstates claiming sovereignty, faced with anonymous and
nonstate organizations, armed and virtually nuclear powers. And these
powers can also, without arms and without explosions, without any attacks
in person, avail themselves of incredibly destructive computer
technologies, technologies capable of operations that in fact have no
name (neither war nor terrorism) and that are no longer carried out in
ADialogue withJacques Derrida 111
the name of a nation-state, and whose "cause," in all senses of this
word, is difficult to define (there's the theological cause, the ethnic
cause, the socioeconomic cause, and so on). On no side is the logic of
sovereignty ever put into question (political sovereignty or that ofthe
nation-state-itselfofontotheological origin, though more or less secularized
in one place and purely theological and nonsecularized in another):
not on the side ofthe nation-states and the great powers that sit
on the Security Council, and not on the other side, or other sides, since
there is precisely an indeterminate number ofthem. Everyone will no
doubt point to existinginternational law (the foundations ofwhich remain,
I believe, perfectible, revisable, in need of recasting, both conceptually
and institutionally). But this international law is nowhere respected.
And as soon as one party does not respect it the others no
longer consider it respectable and begin to betray it in their turn. The
United States and Israel are not the only ones who have become accustomed
to taking all the liberties they deem necessary with UN resolu-
tions.
To answer your question more specifically, I would say that the
United States is perhaps not the sole target, perhaps not even the central
or ultimate target, of the operation with which the name "bin
Laden" is associated, at least by metonymy. The point may be to provoke
a military and diplomatic situation that destabilizes certain Arab
countries torn between a powerful public opinion (which is anti-American
if not anti-Western, for countless reasons stemming from a complex,
centuries old history, but then also, in the aftermath ofan era of
colonialism or imperialism, from poverty, oppression, and ideologicoreligious
indoctrination) and the necessity ofbasing their nondemocratic
authority on diplomatic, economic, and military ties with the
United States. First on the list here would be Saudi Arabia, which remains
the privileged enemy ofeverything that might be represented by
a "bin Laden" (a name I use always as a synecdoche) or a Saddam
Hussein. Yet Saudi Arabia (an important family and an important oilproducing
power), while maintaining its ties with its American "protector,"
"client," and "boss," fuels all the hotbeds of Arab Islamic fanaticism
if not "terrorism" in the world. This is one ofthe paradoxical
situations, once again autoimmunitary, ofwhat you called "total anarchy":
the movements and shifts in the strategic oil alliances between
the United States (self-styled champion of the democratic ideal, of
112 Autoimmunity: Realand Symbolic Suicides
human rights, and so on) and regimes about which the least that can be
said is that they do not correspond to this model. Such regimes (I used
the example ofSaudi Arabia, though it would be necessary to speak of
the equally serious case ofPakistan) are also the enemies or targets of
those who organize so-called "international terrorism" against the U.S.
and, at least virtually, their allies. That makes for more than one triangle.
And with all the angling going on between these triangles, it is difficult
to disentangle the real from the alleged motivation, oil from religion,
politics from economics or military strategy. The "bin Laden"
type ofdiatribe against the American devil thus combines such themes
as the perversion of faith and nonbelief, the violation of the sacred
places oflslam, the military presence near Mecca, the support oflsrael,
and the oppression of Arab Muslim populations. But if this rhetoric
clearly resonates with the populations and even the media ofthe Arab
and Muslim world, the governments ofArab Muslim states (the majority
ofwhich care about as much for human rights and democracy as
bin Laden does) are almost all hostile in principle, as ''governments,"
to the "bin Laden" network and its discourse. One thus has to conclude
that "bin Laden" is also working to destabilize them ...
B o R R A D o R 1 : Which would be the standard objective ofterrorists,
to overturn but not take over, to destabilize the current situa-
tion.
D E R R 1 D A : The most common strategy consists always in
destabilizing not only the principal, declared enemy but also, at the
same time, in a kind of quasi-domestic confrontation, those much
closer. Sometimes even one's own allies. This is another necessary consequence
of the same autoimmunitary process. In all wars, all civil
wars, all partisan wars or wars for liberation, the inevitable escalation
leads one to go after one's rival partners no less than one's so-called
principal adversary. During the Algerian War, between 1954 and 1962,
what sometimes looked like "fratricidal" acts ofviolence between different
insurrectional forces proved sometimesjust as extreme as those
between these groups and the French colonial forces.
This is yet one more reason not to consider everything that has to
do with Islam or with the Arab Muslim "world" as a "world," or at least
as one homogeneous whole. And wanting to take all these divisions,
differences, and differends into account does not necessarily constitute
an act ofwar; nor does trying to do everything possible to ensure that
A Dialog;ue withJacques Derrida 11.':1
in this Arab Muslim "world," which is not a world and not a world that
is one, certain currents do not take over, namely, those that lead to fanaticism,
to an obscurantism armed to the teeth with modern technoscience,
to the violation of every juridico-political principle, to the
cruel disregard for human rights and democracy, to a nonrespect for
life. We must help what is called Islam and what is called "Arab" to free
themselves from such violent dogmatism. We must help those who are
fighting heroically in this direction on the inside, whether we are talking
about politics in the narrow sense ofthe term or else about an interpretation
ofthe Koran. When I say that we must do this for what is called
Islam and what is called "Arab," I obviously mean that we must not do
any less when it comes to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia!
B o R R A n o R I : Earlier you emphasized the essential role ofinternational
organizations and the need to cultivate a respect for international
law. Do you think that the kind of terrorism linked to the alQaeda
organization and to bin Laden harbors international political
ambitions?
n E R R I n A : What appears to me unacceptable in the "strategy"
(in terms ofweapons, practices, ideology, rhetoric, discourse, and so
on) ofthe "bin Laden effect" is not only the cruelty, the disregard for
human life, the disrespect for law, for women, the use ofwhat is worst
in technocapitalist modernity for the purposes ofreligious fanaticism.
No, it is, above all, the fact that such actions and such discourse open
onto nofuture and, in my view, have nofuture. Ifwe are to put any faith
in the perfectibility of public space and ofthe worldjuridico-political
scene, ofthe "world" itself, then there is, it seems to me, nothing good
to be hoped for from that quarter. What is being proposed, at least implicitly,
is that all capitalist and modern techno scientific forces be put
in the service ofan interpretation, itselfdogmatic, ofthe Islamic revelation
ofthe One. Nothing ofwhat has been so laboriously secularized in
the forms ofthe "political," of"democracy," of"internationallaw," and
even in the nontheological form ofsovereignty (assuming, again, that
the value of sovereignty can be completely secularized or detheologized,
a hypothesis about which I have my doubts), none ofthis seems
to have any place whatsoever in the discourse "bin Laden." That is
why, in this unleashing ofviolence without name, ifl had to take one of
the two sides and choose in a binary situation, well, I would. Despite
myvery strong reservations about the American, indeed European, po-
Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
litical posture, about the "international antiterrorist" coalition, despite
all the de facto betrayals, all the failures to live up to democracy, international
law, and the very international institutions that the states of
this "coalition" themselves founded and supported up to a certain
point, I would take the side of the camp that, in principle, by right of
law, leaves a perspective open to perfectibility in the name ofthe "political,"
democracy, international law, international institutions, and so
on. Even ifthis ''in the name of" is still merely an assertion and a purely
verbal commitment. Even in its most cynical mode, such an assertion
still lets resonate within it an invincible promise. I don't hear any such
promise coming from "bin Laden," at least not one for this world.
B o R R A o o R I : It seems that you place your hopes in the authority
ofinternational law.
o E R R I o A : Yes. In the first place, as imperfect as they may be,
these international institutions should be respected in their deliberations
and their resolutions by the sovereign states who are members of
them and who have thus subscribed to their charters. I mentioned just
a moment ago the serious failings of certain "Western" states with regard
to these commitments. Such failings would stem from at least two
series ofcauses.
First, they would have to do with the very structure ofthe axioms
and principles ofthese systems oflaw and thus ofthe charters and conventions
that institutionalize them. Reflection (of what I would call a
"deconstructive" type) should thus, it seems to me, without diminishing
or destroying these axioms and principles, question and refound
them, endlessly refine and universalize them, without becoming discouraged
by the aporias such work must necessarily encounter.
But second, such failings, in the case of states as powerful as the
United States and Israel (which is supported by the U.S.), are not subject
to any dissuasive sanctions. The United Nations has neither the
force nor the means for such sanctions. It is thus necessary to do everything
possible (a formidable and imposing task for the very long term)
to ensure that these current failings in the present state ofthese institutions
are effectively sanctioned and, in truth, discouraged in advance by
a new organization. This would mean that an institution such as the
UN (once modified in its structure and charter-and I'm thinking here
particularly of the Security Council) would have to have at its disposal
an effective intervening force and thus no longer have to depend in
ADialog;ue withJacques Derrida 115
order to carry out its decisions on rich and powerful, actually or virtually
hegemonic, nation-states, which bend the law in accordance with
their force and according to their interests. Sometimes quite cynically.
I'm not unaware of the apparently utopic character ofthe horizon
I'm sketching out here, that ofan international institution oflaw and an
international court of justice with their own autonomous force.
Though I do not hold law to be the last word in ethics, politics, or anything
else, though this unity offorce and law (which is required by the
very concept of law, as Kant explains so well) is not only utopic but
aporetic (since it implies that beyond the sovereignty of the nationstate,
indeed beyond democratic sovereignty-whose ontotheological
foundations must be deconstructed-we would nonetheless be reconstituting
a new figure, though not necessarily state-related, ofuniversal
sovereignty, of absolute law with an effective autonomous force at its
disposal), I continue to believe that it is faith in the possibility of this
impossible and, in truth, undecidable thing from the point ofview of
knowledge, science, and conscience that must govern all our deci-
sions.I4
B o R R A D o R I : It might be said that this terrorist attack was, in
one sense, an attack against the principle ofsovereignty that the United
States has over its own land, yet also an attack on the sovereign role the
United States plays vis-a-vis the Western world, at once politically, economically,
and culturally. Have these two attacks destabilized the concept
ofsovereignty as it has been developed by Western modernity?
o E R R I o A : Those called "terrorists" are not, in this context,
"others,"absolute others whom we, as "Westerners," can no longer understand.
We must not forget that they were often recruited, trained,
and even armed, and for a long time, in various Western ways by a
Western world that itself, in the course ofits ancient as well as very recent
history, invented the word, the techniques, and the "politics" of
"terrorism." Next, one has to divide, or at least differentiate, all the
"wholes" or "groups" to which we might be tempted to attribute responsibility
for this terrorism. It's not "the Arabs" in general, nor
Islam, nor the Arab Islamic Middle East. Each of these groups is heterogeneous,
filled with tensions, conflicts, and essential contradictions,
with, in truth, what we have been calling self-destructive, quasi-suicidal,
autoimmunitary processes. The same goes for the "West." What is,
to my eyes, veryimportant for the future, and I will return to this later,
u6 Autoimmunity: Realand Symbolic Suicides
is also a difference, indeed up to a certain point and within certain limits,
an opposition, between the United States (or let's say, more honestly,
so as not to be too unfair to American society, what dominates
and even governs in the United States) and a certain Europe. And precisely
in relationship to the problems we are discussing. For the "coalition"
that hasjust formed around the United States remains fragile and
heterogeneous. It is not only Western, and the "front" without front of
this "war"withoutwar does not pit the West against the East or against
the Far East (indeed China ended upjoining, in its own way, the coalition),
or the Middle East, where every country condemned, more or
less sincerely, the terrorism and agreed to fight it. Some are doing so
with rhetoric alone, others by providing military and logistical support.
As for the European nations and NATO, their commitment to the socalled
"coalition" remains very complex; it varies from one country to
the next and public opinion is far from being won over to the American
initiatives. The shifts in these alliances, the warming in relations between
Putin's Russia and Bush's United States, the at least partial solidarity
ofChina in the same struggle, are changing the geopolitical landscape
and strengthening, though also complicating, the American
position, which needs all these agreements in order to act.
What would give me the most hope in the wake ofall these upheavals
is a potential difference between a new figure ofEurope and the
United States. I saythiswithoutany Eurocentrism. Which is why I am
speaking ofa new figure ofEurope. Without forsaking its own memory,
by drawing upon it, in fact, as an indispensable resource, Europe could
make an essential contribution to the future ofthe international law we
have been discussing.I5 I hope that there will be, "in Europe,"
"philosophers" able to measure up to the task (I use quotation marks
here because these "philosophers" ofEuropean tradition will not necessarily
be professional philosophers but jurists, politicians, citizens,
even European noncitizens; and I use them because they might be
"European," "in Europe," without living in the territory of a nationstate
in Europe, finding themselves in fact very far away, distance and
territory no longer having the significance they once did). But I persist
in using this name "Europe," even if in quotation marks, because, in
the long and patient deconstruction required for the transformation tocome,
the experience Europe inaugurated at the time ofthe Enlightenment
(Lumieres, Aujkliirung, /Uuminismo) in the relationship between
ADialor;uewith]acques Derrida 117
the political and the theological or, rather, the religious, though still uneven,
unfulfilled, relative, and complex, will have left in European political
space absolutely original marks with regard to religious doctrine
(notice I'm not saying with regard to religion or faith but with regard to
the authority ofreligious doctrine over the political).I6 Such marks can
be found neither in the Arab world nor in the Muslim world, nor in the
Far East, nor even, and here's the most sensitive point, in American
democracy, in what infact governs not the principles but the predominant
reality ofAmerican political culture. This final point is complex
and tricky. For such a philosophical "deconstruction" would have to
operate not against something we would call the "United States" but
against what today constitutes a certain American hegemony, one that
actually dominates or marginalizes something in the U.S.'s own history,
something that is also related to that strange "Europe" of the more or
less incomplete Enlightenment I was talking about.
B o R R A o o R I : What role do you see religion playing in this
context?
o E R R I o A : We have been speaking ofa strange "war" without
war. It often takes the form, at least on the surface, ofa confrontation
between two groups with a strong religious identification. On the one
side, the only great European-style "democratic" power in the world
that still has at once the death penalty in itsjudicial system and, despite
the separation in principle between church and state, a fundamental
biblical (and primarily Christian) reference in its official political discourse
and the discourse ofits political leaders: "God Bless America,"
the reference to "evildoers" or to the "axis ofevil," and the first rallying
cry (which was later retracted) of"infinitejustice," would be but a few
signs among so many others. And facing them, on the other side, an
"enemy" that identifies itself as Islamic, Islamic extremist or fundamentalist,
even if this does not necessarily represent authentic Islam
and all Muslims are far from identifying with it. No more, in fact, than
all Christians in the world identify with the United States's fundamentally
Christian professions offaith.
I'm oversimplifying, but such oversimplification provides, I believe,
at least the general outline of the overall situation. There would
thus be a confrontation between two political theologies, both,
strangely enough, issuing out ofthe same stock or common soil ofwhat
I would call an "Abrahamic" revelation. It is highly significant that the
uS Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
epicenter, at least metonymically, of all these "wars" is the confrontation
between the state oflsrael (another "democracy" that has not cut
the umbilical cord with religious, indeed with ethnoreligious, authority
and that is strongly supported, though in a complicated way, by the
United States) and a virtual Palestinian state (one that, in preparing its
constitution, has not yet given up on declaring Islam the official state
religion and that is strongly supported, though in a complicated and
often perverse way, by Arab Muslim states).
I would like to hope that there will be, in "Europe" or in a certain
modern tradition of Europe, at the cost ofa deconstruction that is still
finding its way, the possibility of another discourse and another politics,
a way out ofthis double theologico-political program. "September
u"-whatever is ultimately put under this title-will thus have been at
once a sign and a price to pay, a very high price, to be sure, without any
possible redemption or salvation for the victims, but an important stage
in the process.
B o R R A n o R I : So you see an important role for Europe?
n E R R I n A : I hope for it, but I do not see it. I have not seen anything
in the facts that would give rise to any certainty or knowledge.
Only a few signs to interpret. If there are responsibilities to be taken
and decisions to be made, responsibilities and decisions worthy of
these names, they belong to the time ofa risk and ofan act offaith. Beyond
knowledge. For if I decide because I know, within the limits of
what I know and know I mustdo, then I am simply deploying a foreseeable
program and there is no decision, no responsibility, no event. As
for what I havejust risked on the subject of"Europe," let's say that I'm
raising a few questions, in the midst ofa certain night and on the basis
of a certain number of signs. I decipher, I wager, I hope. If I put so
many cautionary quotation marks around these proper names, beginning
with "Europe," it is because I am not sure about anything. Especially
not about Europe or the European communitysuch as it exists or
announces itself de facto. It is a matter of thinking the "perhaps" of
which I spoke at such length in Politics ofFriendship on the subject of
the democracy to come.
B o R R A n o R I : Sticking for a moment with Europe in its current
state, how do you see Europe's political role and the possibilities
for it to exercise a real influence?
n E R R I n A : Right now, the French and German governments
ADialog;u£ withJacques Derrida 119
are trying, timidly, to slow down or temper the hastiness or overzealousness
ofthe United States, at least with respect to certain forms this
"war on terrorism" might take. But little heed is taken here to voices
coming from Europe. The major television networks speak only ofthe
unconditional and enthusiastic support ofEngland and Tony Blair beside
the United States. France should do more and do better, it seems
to me, to make an original voice heard. But it's a small country, even if
it has nuclearweapons and a vote on the Security Council. As long as
Europe does not have a unified military force sufficientfor autonomous
interventions, interventions that would be motivated, calculated, discussed,
and deliberated in Europe, the fundamental premises of the
current situation will not change, and we will not get any closer to the
transformation I alluded to earlier (a new international law, a new international
force in the service of new international institutions, a new
concept and a new concrete figure of sovereignty, as well as other
names, no doubt, for all these things to come).
I do not wish to grant too great a privilege to thejuridical sphere,
to international law and its institutions, even ifl believe more than ever
in their importance. Among the international institutions that matter
most today, there's not only the UN but the International Monetary
Fund and the G8, to name just two. Recall what happened recently in
Genoa,17 for example. Some have said, not without exaggeration but
also not without some plausibility, that between the forces that are
being mobilized today against globalization and those ofinternational
terrorism (in two words, "September n") there is a common cause, a
de facto alliance or collusion, if not an intentional conspiracy. Enormous
effort will be required to introduce here all the necessary distinctions
(both conceptual and practical), which will have to take into account
the contradictions, that is, the autoimmunitary overdeterminations
on which I've been insisting. Despite their apparently biological,
genetic, or zoological provenance, these contradictions all concern,
as you can see, what is beyond living being pure and simple. Ifonly because
they bear death in life.
B o R R A D o R 1 : The question ofinternational sovereignty appears
to me extremely complicated. When the role ofinternational organizations
and ofinternational law is pushed to its extreme, don't we
end back up with a state model: a meta-state, a meta-law?
n E R R 1 D A : This is an enormous problem, to be sure. The
120 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
major references to discuss here would be, for me, Kant and Hannah
Arendt. Both of these thinkers called for an international law and yet
excluded, indeed rejected, the hypothesis ofa superstate or world government.
It is not a question of going through, as is the case today,
more or less temporary crises of sovereignty to end up at a world state.
This absolutely new and unprecedented form of de-state-ification
would allow us to think, beyond what Kant and Arendt formulated in a
determined way, the new figure to come ofan ultimate recourse, ofa
sovereignty (or rather, and more simply, since this term "sovereignty" is
still too equivocal, still too theologico-political: a force or power, a cracy},
ofa -cracy allied to, or even one with, not only law butjustice.
That is what I wished to bring out in the phrase "democracy to come
(la dimocratie avenir)." "Democracy to come" does not mean a future
democracy that will one day be "present." Democracy will never exist
in the present; it is not presentable, and it is not a regulative idea in the
Kantian sense. But there is the impossible, whose promise democracy
inscribes-a promise that risks and must always risk being perverted
into a threat. There is the impossible, and the impossible remains impossible
because of the aporia of the demos: the demos is at once the
incalculable singularity of anyone, before any "subject," the possible
undoing ofthe social bond by a secret to be respected, beyond all citizenship,
beyond every "state," indeed every "people," indeed even beyond
the current state of the definition of a living being as living
"human" being, and the universality of rational calculation, of the
equality of citizens before the law, the social bond of being together,
with or without contract, and so on. And this impossible that there is
remains ineffaceable. It is as irreducible as our exposure to what comes
or happens. It is the exposure (the desire, the openness, but also the
fear) that opens, that opens itself, that opens us to time, to what comes
upon us, to what arrives or happens, to the event. To history, if you
will, a history to be thought completely otherwise than from a teleological
horizon, indeed from any horizon at all. When I say "the impossible
that there is" I am pointing to this other regime ofthe "possible-impossible"
that I try to think by questioning in all sorts of ways (for
example, around questions of the gift, forgiveness, hospitality, and so
on}, by trying to "deconstruct," if you will, the heritage of such concepts
as "possibility," "power," "impossibility," and so on. But I cannot
develop this any further here.IS
A Dialog;ue withJacques Derrida 121
Ofall the names grouped a bit too quickly under the category "political
regimes" (and I do not believe that "democracy" ultimately designates
a "political regime"), the inherited concept ofdemocracy is the
only one thatwelcomes the possibility ofbeing contested, ofcontesting
itself, ofcriticizing and indefinitely improving itself. Ifit were still the
name ofa regime, it would be the name ofthe only "regime" that presupposes
its own perfectibility, and thus its own historicity-and that is
responsive in as responsible a fashion as possible, I would say, to the
aporia or the undecidability on the basis of which-a basis without
basis-this regime gets decided. I'm quite aware that such formulations
remain obscure, but ifdemocracy is also a thing ofthe reason to come,
this reason can present itselftoday, it seems to me, only in this penumbra.
Yet I can already hear in it so many intractable injunctions.
B o R R A o o R I : What is your position concerning the concept
ofglobalization and what is the relationship between globalization and
cosmopolitanism?
o E R R I o A : As for globalization, or what I prefer to refer to in
French, for reasons I give elsewhere, as mondialisation, the violence of
"September 11" seems once again to attest to a series of contradictions,l9
Contradictions that are, in fact, destined to remain; for they are
aporias that have to do, once again, it seems to me, with that autoimmunitary
inevitability whose effects we are constantly registering. First,
globalization does not take place in the places and at the moment it is
said to take place. Second, everywhere it takes place without taking
place, it is for better and for worse. Let me try to clarify these two
points.
1. It does not take place. In an age ofso-called globalization, an age
where it is in the interest ofsome to speak about globalization and celebrate
its benefits, the disparities between human societies, the social
and economic inequalities, have probably never been greater and more
spectacular (for the spectacle is in fact more easily "globalizable") in
the history ofhumanity. Though the discourse in favor ofglobalization
insists on the transparency made possible by teletechnologies, the
opening of borders and of markets, the leveling ofplaying fields and
the equality ofopportunity, there have never been in the history ofhumanity,
in absolute numbers, so many inequalities, so many cases of
malnutrition, ecological disaster, or rampant epidemic (think, for example,
ofAIDS in Mrica and of the millions ofpeople we allow to die
122 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
and, thus, kill!). As for technological inequalities, think ofthe fact that
less than 5 percent ofhumanity has access to the Internet, though in
1999 half of all American households did, and that the majority of
servers are in English. At the very moment when the "end ofwork" is
being touted, unprecedented numbers ofpeople are being oppressed
by work conditions or, inversely, are unable to find the work they desire.20
Only certain countries, and in these countries only certain
classes, benefit fully from globalization. Wealthy, northern countries
hold the capital and control the instruments of economic decisions
(G8, IMF, World Bank, and so on). Ifthe organized perpetrators ofthe
"September u" attack are themselves among those who benefit from
this so-called globalization (capitalist power, telecommunication, advanced
technology, the openness ofborders, and so on), they nonetheless
claimed (unfairly, no doubt, though to great effect) to be acting in
the name ofthose doomed by globalization, all those who feel excluded
or rejected, disenfranchised, left by the wayside, who have only the
means of the poor in this age of globalization (which is, today, television,
an instrument that is never neutral) to witness the spectacle ofthe
offensive prosperity ofothers.
Aspecialplace would have to be reserved here for Islamic cultures
and populations in this context In the course ofthe last few centuries,
whose history would have to be carefully reexamined (the absence of
an Enlightenment age, colonialization,imperialism, and so on), several
factors have contributed to the geopolitical situation whose effects we
are feeling today, beginning with the paradox ofa marginalization and
an impoverishment whose rhythm is proportional to demographic
growth. These populations are not only deprived ofaccess to what we
call democracy (because of the history I just briefly recalled) but are
even dispossessed of the so-called natural riches of the land, oil in
Saudi Arabia, for example, or in Iraq, or even in Algeria, gold in South
Mrica, and so many other natural resources elsewhere. They are dispossessed
at once by the owners, that is, the sellers, and by the exploiters
and clients, in truth, by the nature ofthe game whereby the two
parties engage in these more or less peaceful alliances or transactions.
These "natural" riches are in fact the only nonvirtualizable and nondeteritorializable
goods left today; they are the cause ofmany ofthe phenomena
we have been discussing. With all these victims ofsupposed
globalization, dialogue (at once verbal and peaceful) is not taking place.
A DialoguewithJacques Derrida 12.'3
Recourse to the worst violence is thus often presented as the only "response"
to a "deafear." There are countless examples ofthis in recent
history, well before "September n." This is the logic put forward by all
terrorisms involved in a struggle for freedom. Mandela explains quite
well how his party, after years of nonviolent struggle and faced with a
complete refusal ofdialogue, resigned itself to having to take up arms.
The distinction between civilian, military, and police is thus no longer
pertinent.
From this point of view, globalization is not taking place. It is a
simulacrum, a rhetorical artifice or weapon that dissimulates a growing
imbalance, a new opacity, a garrulous and hypermediatized noncommunication,
a tremendous accumulation ofwealth, means ofproduction,
teletechnologies, and sophisticated military weapons, and the appropriation
of all these powers by a small number of states or
international corporations. And control over these is becoming at once
easier and more difficult. The power to appropriate has such a structure
(most often deterritorializable, virtualizable, capitalizable) that, at
the very moment when it seems controllable by a small number (of
states, for example), it escapes right into the hands of international
nonstate structures and so tends toward dissemination in the very
movement ofits concentration. Terrorism of the "September u" sort
(wealthy, hypersophisticated, telecommunicative, anonymous, and
without an assignable state) stems in part from this apparent contradic-
tion.
2. And yet wherever it is believed gjobalization is takingplace, it is
for better andfor worse. For better: discourses, knowledge, and models
are transmitted better and faster. Democratization thus has more ofa
chance. Recent movements toward democratization in Eastern Europe
owe a great deal, almost everything perhaps, to television, to the communication
ofmodels, norms, images, informational products, and so
on. Nongovernmental institutions are more numerous and better
known or recognized. Look at the efforts to institute the International
Criminal Tribunal.
You spoke of "cosmopolitanism"-a formidable question, to be
sure. Progress ofcosmopolitanism, yes. We can celebrate it, as we do
any access to citizenship, in this case, to world citizenship. But citizenship
is also a limit, that of the nation-state; and we have already expressed
our reservations with regard to the world state. I believe we
124 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
should thus, beyond the old Greco-Christian cosmopolitical ideal (the
Stoics, Saint Paul, Kant), see the coming ofa universal alliance or solidarity
that extends beyond the internationality of nation-states and
thus beyond citizenship. This was one of the mcgor themes ofSpecters
ofMarx and other texts. We are always led back to the same aporia:
how to decide between, on the one hand, the positive and salutary role
played by the "state" form (the sovereignty of the nation-state) and,
thus, by democratic citizenship in providing protection against certain
kinds ofinternational violence (the market, the concentration ofworld
capital, as well as "terrorist" violence and the proliferation ofweapons)
and, on the other hand, the negative or limiting effects ofa state whose
sovereignty remains a theological legacy, a state that closes its borders
to noncitizens, monopolizes violence,21 controls its borders, excludes
or represses noncitizens, and so forth? Once again the state is both selfprotecting
and self-destroying, at once remedy and poison. The pharmakon
is another name, an old name, for this autoimmunitary logic.22
One can see it at work in the inevitable perversion oftechnoscientific
advances (mastery over living beings, aviation, new informational
teletechnologies, e-mail, the Internet, mobile phones, and so on) into
weapons of mass destruction, into "terrorisms" of all kinds. Perversions
that are all the more quick to occur when the progress in question
is first ofall a progress in speed and rhythm. Between the two supposed
war leaders, the two metonymies, "bin Laden" and "Bush," the
war ofimages and of discourses proceeds at an ever quickening pace
over the airwaves, dissimulating and deflecting more and more quickly
the truth that it reveals, accelerating the movement that substitutes dissimulation
for revelation-and vice versa. For worse and for better,
therefore; for the worst and the best, the worst that, it seems, is also the
best. That is what remains terrible, terrifying, terrorizing; that is, on
earth, in terra, in and beyond territories, the ultimate resource of all
terrorisms.
B o R R A n o R I : What is the relationship between globalization-or
what you call mondialisation-and tolerance?
D E R R I D A : Ifthe term and theme oftolerance have come back
oflate, it is perhaps to accompany what is called in a rather simplistic
and confused fashion the "return ofthe religious."The stakes ofthe violence
we have been discussing are often, in fact, territorial, ethnic, and
so on. Whether religion is being used as an alibi or not, it is commonly
A Dialogue withJacques Derrida 125
invoked, explicitly and literally on the side of "bin Laden" and in an
implicit, disguised, but profound and fundamental fashion on the side
of"Bush." Intolerance, then: how old is that concept? Can one still ask
the question, "What is tolerance?" as Voltaire did in the first sentence
of his article on the subject in the Philosophical Dictionary?23 How
would this article be written today?Whowouldwriteit, with and without
Voltaire?
Ifwe must be faithful to the memory of the Enlightenment, ifwe
must not forget certain exemplary models in the struggle against intolerance,
models that are part ofour legacy, must we not today, and precisely
out offidelity, question anew without, however, contesting the
very concept oftolerance? Considering everything that has marked this
concept historically, would it be sufficient to inspire, enlighten, and
guide our resistance to the violence being unleashed throughout the
world today, in conditions that are in part unprecedented (but what
part?-that is the ineluctable question), against all those who do not
unconditionally respect certain orthodoxies? These dogmatic persecutions
all wear the face ofintolerance, to be sure, but is that enough to
define them? Is tolerance, that "appurtenance ofhumanity" (Voltaire),
the essence ofwhat we must oppose to them?
It is once again a question ofthe Enlightenment, that is, ofaccess
to Reason in a certain public space, though this time in conditions that
technoscience and economic or telemedia globalization have thoroughly
transformed: in time and as space, in rhythms and proportions.
Ifintellectuals, writers, scholars, professors, artists, andjournalists do
not, before all else, stand up together against such violence, their abdication
will be at once irresponsible and suicidal.
Since not all figures ofintolerance are new (anathema, excommunication,
censorship, marginalization, distortion, control, programming,
expulsion, exile, imprisonment, hostage taking, death threats, execution,
and assassination, to name just a few), since they have never
been separable from the very movement of culture, of tradition, of
processes oflegitimation, and ofcommunities in general, and particularly
ecclesiastical or state institutions, isn't one ofour first responsibilities
(intellectual, ethical, political, and even beyond those responsibilities
attached to the citizen-subject of a particular nation-state or
democracy) at once to analyze the laws of such recurrences and the
emergence ofwhat is new or unprecedented? Only by rigorously tak-
126 Autoimmuni~y: Real and Symbolic Suicides
ing into account this novelty will we be able to adjust our ripostes and
our acts ofresistance. Ifwe must, in order to carry this out, do a kind of
historical genealogy ofthe concept of tolerance, ifwe must celebrate,
study, and teach the admirable examples ofall the struggles against intolerance,
in Europe and elsewhere, from Voltaire to Zola to Sartre and
so many others, ifwe must also take inspiration and draw lessons from
them, a no less urgent task consists in trying to analyze that which
today no longer depends on the same conditions or on the same axiomatic.
An earthquake has completely transformed the landscape in
which the ideal oftolerance took its first form a few centuries ago. We
would have to analyze every mutation in the structure ofpublic space,
in the interpretation ofdemocracy, theocracy, and their respective relations
with international law (in its current state, in that which compels
or calls it to transform itselfand, thus, in that which remains largely to
come within it), in the concepts ofthe nation-state and its sovereignty,
in the notion of citizenship, in the transformation of public space by
the media, which at once serve and threaten democracy, and so on.
Our acts of resistance must be, I believe, at once intellectual and
political. We mustjoin forces to exert pressure and organize ripostes,
and we must do so on an international scale and according to new
modalities, though always by analyzing and discussing the very foundations
ofour responsibility, its discourses, its heritage, and its axioms.
The concept oftolerance would here constitute a prime example.
The article "Tolerance" in the Philosophical Dictionary is a tour
de force, a kind of fax for the eighteenth century. It contains such a
wealth ofhistorical examples and analyses, so many axioms and principles
to reflect upon, today, word by word. Yet this message calls for so
many questions in return. We would have to be extremely vigilant, it
seems to me, in interpreting this heritage. I would be tempted to say
"yes and no" to each sentence, "yes but no," "yes, although, however,"
and so forth, swearing in a form that is other than that ofthe Christian
apostles, the disciples, or the Quakers: "The apostles and disciples,"
writes Voltaire, "swore by yea and nay; the Quakers will not swear in
any other form." The word "tolerance" is first of all marked by a religious
war between Christians, or between Christians and non-Christians.
Tolerance is a Christian virtue, or for that matter a Catholic
virtue. The Christian must tolerate the non-Christian, but, even more
so, the Catholic must let the Protestant be. Since we today feel that re-
ADialogue withJacqU£s Derrida 127
ligious claims are at the heart ofthe violence (you will notice that I keep
saying, in a deliberately general fashion, "violence," so as to avoid the
equivocal and confused words "war" and "terrorism"), we resort to
this good old word "tolerance": that Muslims agree to live with Jews
and Christians, that Jews agree to live with Muslims, that believers
agree to tolerate "infidels" or "nonbelievers" (for this is the word "bin
Laden" used to denounce his enemies, and first ofall the Americans).
Peace would thus be tolerant cohabitation. In the United States, everything
is done so as not to identify the enemy as the religious foreigner,
the Muslim (and this is clearly better than the alternative, no matter the
motivations). It is said over and over: "We are not fighting Islam; the
three monotheistic religions have always taught tolerance." We know, of
course, that this is largely inaccurate, but little matter, it's certainly better
than the contrary. These official declarations of tolerance also obey
a strategy: there are many, indeed more and more, Muslims in America
and in Europe; it is thus necessary to reassure them, to gain assurance
of their support, to dissociate them from "terrorism," to divide the
enemy camp. Fair enough, that's part of fighting the good fight.
Though I clearly prefer shows of tolerance to shows ofintolerance, I
nonetheless still have certain reservations about the word "tolerance"
and the discourse it organizes. It is a discourse with religious roots; it is
most often used on the side of those with power, always as a kind of
condescending concession ...
B o R R A D o R I : You seem to understand tolerance as a form of
charity ...
D E R R I D A : Indeed, tolerance is first of all a form of charity. A
Christian charity, therefore, even ifJews and Muslims might seem to
appropriate this language as well. Tolerance is always on the side ofthe
"reason ofthe strongest," where "might is right"; it is a supplementary
mark of sovereignty, the good face of sovereignty, which says to the
other from its elevated position, I am letting you be, you are not insufferable,
I am leaving you a place in my home, but do not forget that this
is my home ...
B o R R A D o R I : Would you agree with the claim that tolerance
is a condition ofhospitality?
D E R R I D A : No. Tolerance is actually the opposite ofhospitality.
Or at least its limit. IfI think I am being hospitable because I am tolerant,
it is because I wish to limit my welcome, to retain power and main-
128 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
tain control over the limits ofmy "home," my sovereignty, my "I can"
(my territory, my house, my language, my culture, my religion, and so
on). In addition to the religious meaning oftolerance whose origin we
havejust recalled, we should also mention its biological,genetic, or organicist
connotations. In France, the phrase "threshold of tolerance"
was used to describe the limit beyond which it is no longer decent to
ask a national community to welcome any more foreigners, immigrant
workers, and the like. Fram;:ois Mitterrand once used this unfortunate
expression as a self-justifying word ofcaution: beyond a certain number
offoreigners or immigrants who do not share our nationality, our
language, our culture, and our customs, a quasi-organic and unpreventable-in
short, a natural-phenomenon of rejection can be expected.
I had at the time, in an article published in the newspaper
Liberation, condemned this organicist rhetoric and the "naturalist"
politics it attempted tojustify. It is true that Mitterrand later retracted
this language, which he himself deemed unfortunate. But the word
"tolerance" there ran up against its limit: we accept the foreigner, the
other, the foreign body up to a certain point, and so not without restrictions.
Tolerance is a conditional, circumspect, careful hospitality.
B o R R A n o R I : Tolerance thus amounts to granting someone
permission to continue living on?
n E R R I n A : Indeed, and so a limited tolerance is clearly preferable
to an absolute intolerance. But tolerance remains a scrutinized
hospitality, always under surveillance, parsimonious and protective of
its sovereignty. In the best ofcases, it's what I would call a conditional
hospitality, the one that is most commonly practiced by individuals,
families, cities, or states. We offer hospitality only on the condition that
the other follow our rules, our way oflife, even our language, our culture,
our political system, and so on. That is hospitality as it is commonly
understood and practiced, a hospitality that gives rise, with certain
conditions, to regulated practices, laws, and conventions on a
national and international-indeed, as Kant says in a famous text, a
"cosmopolitical"-scale.24 But pure or unconditional hospitality does
not consist in such an invitation ("I invite you, I welcome you into my
home, on the condition that you adapt to the laws and norms ofmy territory,
according to my language, tradition, memory, and so on"). Pure
and unconditional hospitality, hospitality itself, opens or is in advance
open to someone who is neither expected nor invited, to whomever ar-
ADialog;uewithJacques Derrida 129
rives as an absolutely foreign visitor, as a new arrival, nonidentifiable
and unforeseeable, in short, wholly other. I would call this a hospitality
of visitation rather than invitation. The visit might actually be very
dangerous, and we must not ignore this fact, but would a hospitality
without risk, a hospitality backed by certain assurances, a hospitality
protected by an immune system against the wholly other, be true hospitality?
Though it's ultimately true that suspending or suppressing
the immunity that protects me from the other might be nothing short of
life-threatening.
An unconditional hospitality is, to be sure, practically impossible
to live; one cannot in any case, and by definition, organize it. Whatever
happens, happens, whoever comes, comes (ce qui arrive arrive), and
that, in the end, is the only event worthy ofthis name. And I well recognize
that this concept ofpure hospitality can have no legal or political
status. No state can write it into its laws. But without at least the
thought ofthis pure and unconditional hospitality, ofhospitality itself,
we would have no concept ofhospitality in general and would not even
be able to determine any rules for conditional hospitality (with its rituals,
its legal status, its norms, its national or international conventions).
Without this thought of pure hospitality (a thought that is also, in its
own way, an experience), we would not even have the idea ofthe other,
ofthe alterity ofthe other, that is, ofsomeone who enters into our lives
without having been invited. We would not even have the idea oflove
or of"living together (vivre ensemble)" with the other in a way that is
not a part of some totality or "ensemble." Unconditional hospitality,
which is neitherjuridical nor political, is nonetheless the condition of
the political and the juridical. For these very reasons, I am not even
sure whether it is ethical, insofar as it does not even depend on a decision.
But what would an "ethics" be without hospitality?25
Paradox, aporia: these two hospitalities are at once heterogeneous
and indissociable. Heterogeneous because we can move from one to
the other only by means ofan absolute leap, a leap beyond knowledge
and power, beyond norms and rules. Unconditional hospitality is transcendent
with regard to the political, the juridical, perhaps even to the
ethical. But-and here is the indissociability-I cannot open the door,
I cannot expose myselfto the coming ofthe other and offer him or her
anything whatsoever without making this hospitality effective, without,
in some concrete way, giving something determinate. This determina-
1,'30 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
tion will thus have to re-inscribe the unconditional into certain conditions.
Otherwise, it gives nothing. What remains unconditional or absolute
(unbedingt, if you will) risks being nothing at all if conditions
(Bedingungen) do not make ofit some thing (Ding). Political,juridical,
and ethical responsibilities have their place, ifthey take place, only in
this transaction-which is each time unique, like an event-between
these two hospitalities, the unconditional and the conditional.
B o R R A o o R I : The fact that these two poles are at once heterogeneous
and indissociable is, philosophically,verydifficult to think.
How can political discourse assimilate it? Might the modern ideal of
cosmopolitanism be the solution?
o E R R I o A : The idea ofcosmopolitanism emerges out ofa very
old tradition that goes back, as we have already noted, to Saint Paul in
his letter to the Ephesians, to the Stoics, and to Kant In his short treatise
Perpetual Peace, Kant explains why we should probably give up
the idea ofa "world republic" (Weltrepublik) but not the idea ofa cosmopoliticallaw,
"the idea ofa law ofworld citizenship," which is "no
high-flown or exaggerated notion."26 It would be, on the contrary, the
condition for continually approaching perpetual peace. But ifwe must
in fact cultivate the spirit of this tradition (as I believe most international
institutions have done since World War 1), we must also try to
adjust the limits of this tradition to our own time by questioning the
ways in which they have been defined and determined by the ontotheological,
philosophical, and religious discourses in which this cosmopolitical
ideal was formulated. This is no small task, and we do not
have time even to begin the discussion here.27 What I call "democracy
to come" would go beyond the limits ofcosmopolitanism, that is, ofa
world citizenship. It would be more in line with what lets singular beings
(anyone) "live together," there where they are not yet defined by
citizenship, that is, by their condition as lawful "subjects" in a state or
legitimate members of a nation-state or even of a confederation or
world state. It would involve, in short, an alliance that goes beyond the
"political" as it has been commonly defined (a designation usually reserved
for the state or citizen body in a nation linked to a territory, even
if, as Schmitt reminds us, the state is not the only form ofthe political).
This does not, however, lead to a depoliticization-quite the contrary.
Yet it does require another thought and another putting into practice of
the concept ofthe"political"and the concept "world"-which is not
A Dialog;ue withJacques Derrida 131
the same as "cosmos." That said, and because all ofthis will remain for
some time out of reach, I believe that everything must be done to extend
the privilege of citizenship in the world: too many men and
women are deprived of citizenship in so many ways. Even when they
are not outright refused the title ofcitizen, the "human rights and citizens'
rights" to which they might lay claim are severely limited.
B o R R A o o R I : It seems to me that this deconstruction ofthe
concept ofcosmopolitanism implies a deconstruction ofthe idea ofthe
state.
o E R R I o A : Cosmopolitanism as it is classically conceived presupposes
some form ofstate sovereignty, something like a world state,
whose concept can be theologico-political or secular (that is, secular in
its filiation, though secretly theologico-political). For a deconstruction
to be as effective as possible, it should not, in my view, oppose the state
head on and in a unilateral fashion. In many contexts, the state might
be the best protection against certain forces and dangers. And it can secure
the citizenship ofwhich we have been speaking. The responsibilities
to be taken with regard to the state thus cliffer according to the
context, and there is no relativism in recognizing this. But, ultimately,
these necessary transactions must not obstruct a deconstruction ofthe
state form, which should, one day, no longer be the last word ofthe political.
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. It will not take the form ofa
suppression ofthe sovereign state at one particular moment in time but
will pass through a long series ofstill unforeseeable convulsions and
transformations, through as yet unheard-offorms ofshared and limited
sovereignty. The idea and even the practice ofshared sovereignty, that
is, ofa limitation ofsovereignty, has been accepted for a long time now.
And yet such a divisible or shared sovereignty already contradicts the
pure concept of sovereignty. As Bodin, Hobbes, and others have
pointed out, sovereignty has to be and must remain indivisible. The
deconstruction ofsovereignty has thus already begun, and it will have
no end, for we neither can nor should renounce purely and simply the
values ofautonomy or freedom, or those of power or force, which are
inseparable from the very idea oflaw. How are we to reconcile unconditional
auto-nomy (the foundation of any pure ethics, of the sovereignty
ofthe subject, of the ideal ofemancipation and offreedom, and
132 Autoimmunity: RealandSymbolicSuicides
so on) and the hetero-nomy that~ as I recalled a moment ago~ imposes itselfupon
all unconditional hospitality worthy ofthis name~ upon every
welcoming ofthe other as other? The decision~ ifthere is one~ is always
a decision of the other~ as I have tried to show elsewhere.28 Responsibility
for a decision~ if there is any and if one must answer for it~
amounts each time~ in an irreducibly singular way~ without any normative
program and without any assured knowledge~ to a transaction between
the imperative for autonomy and the imperative for heteronomy~
the two being equally imperious.
B o R R A D o R 1 : We have spoken about tolerance~ hospitality~
and cosmopolitanism. How do you see the problem of human rights?
What is the relationship between the notion ofright and that ofhospitality?
A right presupposes someone who avails him- or herself of that
right in relationship to another~ that is~ more precisely~ in a social context~
in an organized community. If the concept of state~ which is the
concept of a juridically organized community~ is no longer the last
word of the political~ how are you going to maintain the idea ofhuman
rights?
D E R R 1 D A : Actually~ it is today more and more often in the
name of human rights and their universality that the sov~reign authority
ofthe state is called into question~ that international courts ofjustice
are established~ that heads of state or military leaders are judged after
having been removed from the judicial institutions of their own state.
The concept ofa crime against humanity or ofa war crime no longer
falls under the authority of nationaljudicial institutions and sovereign
states. At least in principle. You know about the enormous problems
we are now facing in this regard.
We must (il faut) more than ever stand on the side of human
rights. We need (ilfaut) human rights. We are in need of them and they
are in need~ for there is always a lack~ a shortfall~ a falling short, an insufficiency;
human rights are never sufficient. Which alone suffices to
remind us that they are not natural. They have a history-one that is recent~
complex~ and unfinished. From the French Revolution and the
first Declarations right up through the declaration following World
War II~ human rights have been continually enriched~ refined~ clarified~
and defined (women~s rights~ children's rights~ the right to work~ rights
to education~ human rights beyond "human rights and citizens' rights~"
and so on). To take this historicity and this perfectibility into account
A DialoguewithJacques Denida
in an affirmative way we must never prohibit the most radical questioning
possible ofall the concepts at work here: the humanity of man (the
"proper ofman" or of the human, which raises the whole question of
nonhuman living beings, as well as the question ofthe history ofrecent
juridical concepts or performatives such as a "crime against humanity"),
and then the very concept of rights or oflaw (droit), and even the
concept ofhistory.
Forjustice does not end with law.29 Nor even with duties (devoirs),
which, in a still wholly paradoxical way, "must," "should" go beyond
obligation and debt. I tried to show elsewhere that any pure ethics
must begin beyond law, duty, and debt. Beyond law, that's easy to understand.
Beyond duty, that's almost unthinkable. Recall what Kant
says: amoral action must be accomplished not only "according to duty
(pjlichtmiissig)" but "from duty (eigentlich aus Pjlicht)," "out of pure
duty (aus reiner Pjlicht)."30 Once we have followed Kant this far, as we
no doubt ought to do, a leap is still required. If I act out of pure duty,
because I must do so, because I owe it, because there is a debt I must
repay, then two limits come to taint any pure ethicity or pure morality.
On the one hand, I subordinate my action to a knowledge (I am supposed
to know what this pure duty is in the name ofwhich I must act).
Yet an action that simply obeys knowledge is but a calculable consequence,
the deployment ofa norm or program. It does not engage any
decision or any responsibility worthy of these names. On the other
hand, by acting out of pure duty, I acquit myself of a debt and thus
complete the economic circle of an exchange; I do not exceed in any
way the totalization or reappropriation that something like a gift, hospitality,
or the event itselfshould exceed. We must thus be dutiful beyond
duty, we must go beyond law,J1 tolerance, conditional hospitality,
economy, and so on. But to go beyond does not mean to discredit that
which we exceed. Whence the difficulty of a responsible transaction
between two orders or, rather, between order and its beyond. Whence
all these aporias, and the inevitability ofan autoimmunitary risk.
B o R R A D o R 1 : This sounds like a regulative idea, though I
know you do not like this expression ...
D E R R 1 D A : That's true. But my reservations are not straightforward
objections. They are precisely reservations. For lack ofanything
better, ifwe can say this about a regulative idea, the regulative idea remains
perhaps an ultimate reservation. Though such a last recourse
1.'34 Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
risks becoming an alibi, it retains a certain dignity; I cannot swear that
I will not one day give in to it.
I have, in short, three sorts ofreservations. Some concern first ofall
the very loose way this notion ofa regulative idea is currently used, outside
its strictly Kantian context. In this case, the regulative idea remains
in the order ofthe possible, an ideal possible, to be sure, one that is infinitely
deferred, but one that participates in what at the end ofan infinite
history would still fall into the realm ofthe possible, the realm of
what is virtual or potential, of what is within the power of someone,
some "I can," to reach, in theory, in a form that is not wholly freed from
all teleological ends.
To all this I would oppose, in the first place, everything I placed
earlier under the title ofthe im-possible, ofwhat must remain (in a nonnegative
fashion) foreign to the order ofmy possibilities, to the order of
the "I can," to the theoretical, descriptive, constative, and performative
orders (inasmuch as this latter still implies a power guaranteed for
some "I" by conventions that neutralize the pure eventfulness of the
event). That is what I meant earlier by heteronomy, by a law come from
the other, by a responsibility and decision ofthe other-ofthe other in
me, an other greater and older than I am. This im-possible is not privative.
It is not the inaccessible, and it is not what I can indefinitely
defer: it is announced to me, sweeps down upon me, precedes me, and
seizes me here now, in a nonvirtualizable way, in actuality and not potentiality.
It comes upon me from on high, in the form ofan injunction
that does not simply wait on the horizon, that never leaves me in peace
and will not let me put it offuntil later. Such an urgency cannot be idealized,
no more than the other as other can. This im-possible is thus
not a regulative idea or ideal. It is what is most undeniably real. Like
the other. Like the irreducible and nonappropriable difference of the
other.
Then, in the second place, the responsibility ofwhat remains to be
decided or done (in actuality) cannot consist in following, applying, or
realizing a norm or rule. When there is a determinable rule, I know
what must be done, and as soon as such knowledge dictates the law, action
follows knowledge as a calculable consequence: one knows what
path to take, one no longer hesitates; the decision then no longer decides
anything but simply gets deployed with the automatism attributed
to machines. There is no longer any place for justice or responsi-
ADialor;ue withJacques Derrida 135
bility (whetherjuridical, political, or ethical).
Finally, in the third place, ifwe come back this time to the strict
meaning Kant gave to the regulative use ofideas (as opposed to their
constitutive use), we would, in order to say anything on this subject
and, especially, in order to appropriate such terms, have to subscribe to
the entire Kantian architectonic and critique. I cannot do this or even
decide to do this with any seriousness here. We would have to begin by
asking about what Kant calls "those differences in the interest ofreason,"32
the imaginary (thefocus imaginarius, that point toward which
all the lines directing the rules of understanding-which is not reason-tend
and converge, the point they thus indefinitely approximate),
the necessary iUusion, which need not necessarily deceive us, the figure
ofan approach or approximation (zu niihern) that tends indefinitely toward
rules ofuniversality, and especially the indispensable use ofthe as
if(als ob).33 We cannot treat this here, but you can imagine how circumspect
I would be to appropriate in any rigorous way this idea ofa
regulative idea. Let us not forget, since we have been talking so much
about the world and about worldwide movements, that the very idea of
world remains a regulative idea for Kant,34 the second one, between
two others that are themselves, so to speak, two forms ofsovereignty:
the "myself" (/ch selbst), as soul or as thinking nature, and God.
These are a few ofthe reasons why, without ever giving up on reason
and a certain "interest of reason," I hesitate to use the expression
"regulative idea" when speaking ofthe to come or ofthe democracy to
come.
B o R R A o o R 1 : You thus follow Kierkegaard in this regard.
o E R R 1 o A : No doubt, as always. But a Kierkegaard who would
not necessarily be Christian, and you can imagine how difficult that is
to think. I tried to explain myselfon this subject elsewhere)5 I always
make as ifi subscribed to the as if's of Kant (which I am never quite
able to do), or as ifKierkegaard helped me to think beyond his own
Christianity, as ifin the end he did not want to know that he was not
Christian or refused to admit that he did not know what being Christian
means. (In the end, I cannot quite bring myself to believe this, indeed
I cannot quite bring myself to believe in general, that is, what is
normally called "to believe.")
But what makes the rule ofsuch an interview impossible, impracticable,
is a law of the genre that orders us always to make as if as if
Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides
everything we are speaking about in a quasi-spontaneous fashion had
not already been treated elsewhere, by others or by ourselves, in already
published writings and with more developed arguments. As you
can see, I believe I must, at each moment, make as ifl were at once honoring
and breaking our contract.
PHILOSOPHY
IN A TIME OF TERROR
DIALOGUES WITH
JURGEN HABERMAS AND
JACQUES DERRIDA
Giovanna Borradori
THE !JNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
G I o v A NNA Bo R R A D o R I is associate professor ofphilosophy at Vassar College. She is
the author of 'J1.e American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, .Nozick,
Danto, Rorty, CaveU, Macintyre, Kuhn, published by the University ofChicago Press, and the
editor ofRecodingMetaphysics: The .New Italian Philosophy.
The University ofChicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University ofChicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2003 by The University ofChicago
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
12 n IO 09 o8 07 o6 05 04 03 I 2 3 4 5
ISBN:
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Habermas,Jiirgen.
Philosophy in a time ofterror: dialogues withjiirgen Habermas andjacques Derrida /
(interviewed by] Giovanna Borradori.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-226-06664-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. September11 Terrorist Attacks, 200I. 2. Terrorism-Philosophy. 3· Political
science-Philosophy. 4· Habermas,Jiirgen-lnterviews. 5· Derrida,Jacques-lnterviews.
I. Derrida,Jacques. II. Borradori, Giovanna. Ill. Tide.
Hv6432.7 .H32 2003
303.6'25-dc21 2002043559
@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofthe American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.