Erasing Differences between Derrida and Agamben

Bibliographic Data

ID11896679
AuthorsLuke Donahue (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume35
Issue1
Pages25-45
Publication date2013-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOxford Literary Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-1498 • E-ISSN: 1757-1634
PublisherEdinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3366/olr.2013.0055
OpenAlexW2060073301
LanguageEN
Citations received2

This article asks if we can learn anything new about the perhaps tired ‘debate’ between deconstruction and historicism by placing Derrida's The Beast and the Sovereign beside Agamben's Homo Sacer. While Derrida underscores many of Agamben's shortcomings and metaphysical assumptions, he submits Homo Sacer to critique rather than deconstructing (or reading) it. If we fully engage Homo Sacer, I argue, then we can track a peculiar history in which the trace ‘itself’—the trace which has no itself and thereby opens historicity in the first place—faces absolute disappearance. More precisely, while it would seem that differences can never absolutely disappear since they are the (disappearing) remains of their own disappearance, there are perhaps some erasures that destroy ahead, that destroy even and especially their ability, in the future, to return as ghosts or repeat in a different form. I conclude by suggesting that these ‘absolute erasures’—similar but not reducible to what Derrida calls ‘ash’ or ‘cinder’—introduce a historicity of difference that has remained unread

Absolute (philosophy · Art · Deconstruction (building · Epistemology · Historicism · Historicity (philosophy · Literature · Metaphysics · Nihilism · Politics · Reading (process · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Political Theology and Sovereignty

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