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FORCE DE LOI: LE "FONDEMENT MYSTIQUEDE L'AUTORITE"*

Jacques Derrida

I.

C'est ici un devoir, je dois m'adresser i vous en anglais (A pro-noncer en frangais puis en anglais en soulignant adresse).

Le titre de ce colloque et le probleme qu'il me faut, comme vousle dites transitivement dans votre langue, "address," me font r~verdepuis des mois. Bien qu'on m'ait confi6 le redoutable honneur de la"keynote address," je ne suis pour rien dans l'invention de ce titre etdans la formulation implicite du probleme. "Deconstruction and thepossibility of justice": la conjonction "and" associe des mots, des con-cepts, peut-8tre des choses qui n'appartiennent pas i la m~me cat-gorie. Une telle conjonction, "and," ose defier 'ordre, la taxinomie, lalogique classificatoire, de quelque faqon qu'elle op6re: par analogie,distinction ou opposition. Un orateur de mauvaise humeur dirait: jene vois pas le rapport, aucune rh6torique ne peut se plier i un telexercice. Je veux bien essayer de parler de chacune de ces choses oude ces categoremes ("Deconstruction," "possibility," "justice") etmeme des syncategoremes ("and," "the," "of"), mais nullement danscet ordre, cette taxis, cette taxinomie ou ce syntagme.

Un tel orateur ne serait pas seulement de mauvaise humeur, ilserait de mauvaise foi. Et m~me injuste. Car on pourrait facilementproposer une interpr6tation juste, c'est-A-dire dans ce cas adequate etlucide, donc plut6t soupgonneuse, des intentions ou du vouloir-diredu titre. Ce titre sugg6re une question qui prend elle-m~me la formedu soupqon: est-ce que la d6construction assure, permet, autorise lapossibilit6 de la justice? Est-ce qu'elle rend possible la justice ou undiscours cons6quent sur les conditions de possibilit6 de la justice?

* Ce texte correspond, i 'exception de quelques notes ajout6es apr~s coup, i la version

distribu6e lors du Colloque sur "Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice" (octobre 1989,Cardozo Law School) et dont Jacques Derrida ne lut que la premiere partie i l'ouverture de larencontre. Jacques Derrida a dfi renoncer, faute de temps, A mener i terme l'61aboration encours, dont ceci n'est qu'une premiere version. D'autre part, la deuxi~me partie de laconf6rence, celle qui pr6cis6ment n'a pas 6 lue mais seulement discut6e lors du mimecolloque, a kt prononc6e le 26 avril 1990 A l'ouverture d'un Colloque organis6 A University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles, par Saul Friedlander sur Nazism and the 'Final Solution : Probing theLimits of Representation. Nous avons pens6 qu'il 6tait appropri6 de publier ici, en note, aud6but et A la fin de cette seconde partie, du moins dans la version anglaise, l'introduction et laconclusion ajout6es au texte initial A cette occasion.

FORCE OF LAW: THE "MYSTICALFOUNDATION OF AUTHORITY"*

Jacques Derrida **

Translated by Mary Quaintance

PART ONE

C'est ici un devoir, je dois m'adresser ' vous en anglais. This isan obligation,. I must address myself to you in English.

The title of this colloquium and the problem that it requires me,as you say transitively in your language; to address, have had me mus-ing for months. Although I've been entrusted with the formidablehonor- of the "keynote address," I had nothing to do with the inven-tion of this title or with the implicit formulation of the problem."Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice": the conjunction"and" brings together words, concepts, perhaps things that don't be-long to the same category. A conjunction such as "and" dares to defyorder, taxonomy, classificatory logic, no matter how it works: by anal-ogy, distinction or opposition. An. ill-tempered speaker might say: Idon't see the connection, no rhetoric could bend itself to such an exer-cise. I'd be glad to try to speak of each of these things or these categoremes ("deconstruction," "possibility," "justice") and even ofthese syncategoremes ("and," "the," "of"), but not at all in this or-der, this taxis, this taxonomy or this syntagni.

Such a speaker wouldn't merely be in a bad temper, he'd be inbad faith. And even unjust. For one could easily propose an interpre-tation that would do the title justice. Which is to say in this case anadequate and lucid and so rather suspicious interpretation of the ti-tle's intentions or voulcir-dire. This title suggests a question that itselftakes the form of a suspicion: does deconstruction insure, permit, au-thorize the possibility of justice? Does it make justice possible, or a

* Except for some footnotes added after the fact, this text corresponds to the versiondistributed at the colloquium on "Deconstruction and, the Possibility- of Justice" (October1989, Cardozo Law. School), of which Jacques Derrida read only, the' first' part to open- thesession. For lack of time, Derrida- was unable to conclude the elaboration of the work inprogress, of which this is only a preliminary version. In addition, the second part of thelecture, the part that precisely was not read but only' discussed at- the same colloquium, wasdelivered on. April 26th,. 1990 to open a colloquium organized. by Saul Friedlander at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles on Nazism and the 'Final Solution : Probing the-Limits ofRepresentation. We thought it appropriate to publish the introduction and conclusion addedto' the, initial text on this occasion, in footnotes at-the.beginning and end of this second-part.

** I- would like to thank Sam Weber for his help, in: the.final revision- of this text.

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Oui, repondraient certains, non, repondrait l'autre "party." Les "so-called" dconstructionnistes ont-ils quelque chose ' dire sur la justice,quelque chose ' faire avec la justice? Pourquoi en parlent-ils si peu aufond? Est-ce que cela les int6resse, finalement? N'est-ce pas, commecertains le souponnent, parce que la d&construction ne permet enelle-me^me aucune action juste, aucun discours juste sur la justice maisconstitue meme une menace contre le droit et ruine la condition depossibilit6 mime de la justice? Oui, r6pondraient certains, non, r6pon-drait rautre "party." Des ce premier 6change fictif s'annoncent d~jades glissements equivoques entre droit et justice. La souffrance de lad6construction, celle dont elle souffre ou celle dont souffrent ceuxqu'elle fait souffrir, c'est peut-etre l'absence de regle et de critere as-sur6 pour distinguer de fagon non equivoque entre le droit et lajustice.

Voili le choix, le "ou bien.. .ou bien," "oui ou non," que je soup-gonne dans ce titre. Dans cette mesure, ce titre est donc plut6t vio-lent, polemique, inquisiteur. On peut y redouter quelque instrumentde torture, c'est-a-dire une maniere d'interroger qui n'est pas la plusjuste. Inutile de preciser d~s maintenant qu'a des questions pos6essous cette forme ("ou bien ou bien," "oui ou non"), je ne pourraiapporter aucune riponse, en tout cas aucune reponse rassurante pouraucun des deux partis, aucune des deux attentes ainsi formalisees.

Je dois donc, c'est ici un devoir, m'adresser 'a vous en anglais.(prononcer cela une fois en frangais, plus une fois en anglais) Je ledois, cela veut dire plusieurs choses ' la fois.

1. Je dois parler anglais (comment traduire ce "dois," ce de-voir? I must? I should, I ought to, I have to?) parce qu'on m'en faitune sorte d'obligation ou une condition impos&e par une sorte de forcesymbolique ou de loi dans une situation que je ne contr6le pas. Unesorte de polemos concerne d6j l'appropriation de la langue: si dumoins je veux me faire entendre, il faut que je parle dans votre langue,je le dois.

2. Je dois parler votre langue car ce que je dirai ainsi sera plusjuste ou jug6 plus juste, et plus justement appr6cie, c'est-A-dire justeau sens, cette fois, de la justesse, de l'ad6quation entre ce qui est et cequi est dit ou pens6, entre ce qui est dit et ce qui est compris, voireentre ce qui est pens6 et dit ou entendu par la majorite de ceux quisont ici et qui manifestement font la loi. "Faire la loi" ("making thelaw") est une expression int6ressante dont nous aurons a reparler.

3. Je dois parler dans une langue qui n'est pas la mienne parceque ce sera plus juste, en un autre sens du mot juste, au sens de jus-tice, un sens qu'on dira sans trop y r6flechir pour l'instant, juridico-

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discourse of consequence on justice and the conditions of its possibil-ity? Yes, certain people would reply; no, replies the other party. Dothe so-called deconstructionists have anything to say about justice,anything to do with it? Why, basically, do they speak of it so little?Does it interest them, in the end? Isn't it because, as certain peoplesuspect, deconstruction doesn't in itself permit any just action, anyjust discourse on justice but instead constitutes a threat to droit, tolaw or right, and ruins the condition of the very possibility of justice?Yes, certain people would reply, no, replies the other party. In thisfirst fictive exchange one can already find equivocal slippages betweenlaw (droit) and justice. The "sufferance" of deconstruction, whatmakes it suffer and what makes those it torments suffer, is perhaps theabsence of rules and definitive criteria that would allow one to distin-guish unequivocally between droit and justice.

That is the choice, the "either/or," "yes or no" that I detect inthis title. To this extent, the title is rather violent, polemical, inquisi-torial. We may fear that it contains some instrument of torture-thatis, a manner of interrogation that is not the most just. Needless tosay, from this point on I can offer no response, at least no reassuringresponse, to any questions put in this way ("either/or," "yes or no"),to either party or to either party's expectations formalized in this way.

Je dois donc, c'est ici un devoir, m'adresser d vous en anglais. So Imust, this is an obligation, address myself to you in English. Je le dois... that means several things at once.1. Je dois speak English (how does one translate this "dois," thisdevoir? I must? I should, I ought to, I have to?) because it has beenimposed on me as a sort of obligation or condition by a sort of sym-bolic force or law in a situation I do not control. A sort of polemosalready concerns the appropriation of language: if, at least, I want tomake myself understood, it is necessary that I speak your language, Imust.2. I must speak your language because what I shall say will thus bemore juste, or deemed more juste, and be more justly appreciated,juste this time [in the sense of "just right,"] in the sense of an adequa-tion between what is and what is said or thought, between what is saidand what is understood, indeed between what is thought and said orheard and understood by the majority of those who are here and whomanifestly lay down the law. "Faire la loi" (laying down the law) isan interesting expression that we shall have more to say about later.3. I must speak in a language that is not my own because that willbe more just, in another sense of the wordjuste, in the sense of justice,a sense which, without worrying about it too much for now, we can

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6thico-politique: il est plus juste de parler la langue de la majorit6,surtout quand par hospitalit6 celle-ci donne la parole A l'6tranger.Nous nous referons ici a une loi dont il est difficile de dire si elle estune bienseance, la loi du plus fort ou la loi 'quitable de la d6mocratie.Et si elle relive de la justice ou du droit. Encore faut-il, pour que jeme pile a cette loi et que je l'accepte, un certain nombre de conditions:par exemple que je r6ponde a une invitation et manifeste mon d~sir deparler ici, ce a quoi personne ne m'a apparemment contraint; ensuiteil faut que je sois capable, jusqu'a un certain point, de comprendre lecontrat et les conditions de la loi, c'est-a-dire de m'approprier aumoins de fagon minimale votre langue qui ds lors cesse, dans cettemesure du moins, de m'etre 6trang~re. I1 faut que vous et moi nouscomprenions, a peu pros de la mime fagon, la traduction de montexte, d'abord 6crit en frangais et qui, toute excellente qu'elle est (et jetiens ici a en remercier Mary Quaintance) reste ne'essairement unetraduction, c'est-i-dire un compromis toujours possible mais toujoursimparfait entre deux idiomes.

Cette question de langue et d'idiome sera sans doute au coeur dece que je voudrais proposer a votre discussion ce soir.

I1 y a dans votre langue un certain nombre d'expressions idioma-tiques qui m'ont toujours paru assez precieuses pour n'avoir aucunequivalent strict en frangais. J'en citerai au moins deux, avant mimede commencer, qui ne sont pas sans rapport avec ce que je voudraistenter de dire ce soir.

A. La premiere est "to enforce the law" ou encore "enforceabil-ity of the law or of contract." Quand on traduit en frangais "to en-force the law," par exemple par "appliquer la loi," on perd cetteallusion directe, litt6rale i la force qui vient de l'int6rieur nous rap-peler que le droit est toujours une force autoris6e, une force qui sejustifie ou qui est justifi6e a s'appliquer, m~me si cette justificationpeut 8tre jugee d'autre part injuste ou injustifiable. L'applicabilit6, 1'"enforceability" n'est pas une possibilit6 ext6rieure ou secondaire quiviendrait s'ajouter ou non, supplementairement, au droit. Elle est laforce essentiellement implique dans le concept m~me de la justicecomme droit, de la justice en tant qu'elle devient droit, de la loi en tantque droit (car je veux tout de suite et encore insister pour reserver lapossibilit6 d'une justice, voire d'une loi qui non seulement exc~de oucontredit le droit mais qui peut-6tre n'a pas de rapport avec le droit,ou entretient avec lui un rapport si 6trange qu'elle peut aussi bienexiger le droit que l'exclure). Le mot "enforceability" nous rappellequ'il n'y a pas de droit qui n'implique en lui-mime, a priori, dans lastructure analytique de son concept, la possibilite d'Etre "enforced,"

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call juridico-ethico-political: it is more just to speak the language ofthe, majority, especially when, through hospitality, it grants a for-eigner-the right to speak. It's~hard to say if the law we're referring tohere is that:of decorum, the law of the strongest, or the equitable lawof democracy. And. whether it depends on justice- or, law (droit).Also, if I am to bend to thisl law and accept it, a certain number ofconditions are. necessary: for example, I must respond to an invitationand manifest my desire to speak here, something that no one has ap-parently constrained me to do; I must be- capable, up to a certainpoint, of understanding the contract and the conditions of the law,that is, of at least minimally adopting, appropriating, your language,which from that point ceases, at least to this extent, to be foreign tome. You and I must understand, in more or less the same way, thetranslation of my text, initially written in French; this translation,however excellent it may be (and I'll take this moment to thank MaryQuaintance) necessarily remains a translation, that is to say an alwayspossible but always imperfect compromise between two idioms.

This question of language and idiom will doubtless be at theheart of what I would like to propose for discussion tonight.

There are a certain number of idiomatic expressions in your lan-guage that have always been rather valuable to me is'they have nostrict equivalent in French. I'll cite at-least two of them, before I evenbegin, two that are not unrelated to what I'd like to try to say tonight.

A. The first is "to enforce the law," or "enforceability of thelaw or contract." When one translates "to enforce the law" intoFrench, by "appliquer la loi," for example, one loses this direct, literalallusion to the force that comes from within to remind us that law isalways an authorized force, a force that justifies itself or is justified inapplying itself, even if this justification may be judged from elsewhereto be unjust or unjustifiable. Applicability, "enforceability," is not anexterior or secondary possibility that may or may not be added as asupplement to law. It is the, force essentially implied in the very con-cept of justice as law (droit), of justice as it becomes droit, of the lawas "droit" (for I want to insist right away on reserving the possibilityof a justice, indeed of a law that not only exceeds or contradicts "law"(droit) but also, perhaps, has no relation to law, or maintains such astrange relation to it that it may just as well command the "droit"that excludes it). The word "enforceability" reminds us that there isno such thing as law (droit) that doesn't imply in itself, a priori, in theanalytic structure of its concept, the possibility of being "enforced,"applied by force. There are, to be sure, laws that are not enforced, butthere is no law without enforceability, and no applicability or enforce-

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appliqu6 par la force. I1 y a, certes, des lois non appliqu&es mais il n'ya pas de loi sans applicabilit6, et pas d'applicabilit6 oud' "enforceability" de la loi sans force, que cette force soit directe ounon, physique ou symbolique, ext~rieure ou int&ieure, brutale ou sub-tilement discursive et herm6neutique, coercitive ou regulative, etc.

Comment distinguer entre cette force de la loi, cette "force deloi," comme on dit aussi bien en frangais qu'en anglais, je crois, etd'autre part la violence qu'on juge toujours injuste? Quelle differencey a-t-il entre d'une part la force qui peut etre juste, en tous cas jug6e16gitime, non seulement l'instrument au service du droit maisl'exercice et 'accomplissement meme, l'essence du droit, et d'autrepart la violence qu'on juge toujours injuste? Qu'est-ce qu'une forcejuste ou une force non-violente? Pour ne pas quitter la question de'idiome, je me refere ici 'a un mot allemand qui nous occupera

beaucoup tout ' rheure et qui est celui de Gewalt. En frangais commeen anglais, on le traduit souvent par "violence." Le texte de Benja-min, dont je vous parlerai tout A l'heure et qui s'intitule "Zur Kritikder Gewalt" est traduit en frangais par "Critique de la violence" et enanglais par "Critique of Violence." Mais ces deux traductions, sans&re tout i fait injustes, donc tout a fait violentes, sont des interpr6ta-tions tr~s actives qui ne font pas justice au fait que Gewalt signifieaussi, pour les Allemands, pouvoir l'gitime, autorite, force publique.Gesetzgebende Gewalt, c'est le pouvoir legislatif, geistliche Gewalt,c'est le pouvoir spirituel de 'Eglise, Staatsgewalt, c'est 'autorit6 ou lepouvoir d'Etat. Gewalt, c'est donc i la fois la violence et le pouvoirl6gitime, l'autorit6 justifi6e. Comment distinguer entre la force de loid'un pouvoir 16gitime et la violence pr~tendument originaire qui a dfiinstaurer cette autorite et qui elle-meme ne pouvait s'autoriserd'aucune 16gitimit6 antirieure, si bien qu'elle n'est, dans ce momentinitial, ni 16gale ni ill6gale, d'autres diraient tres vite, ni juste ni in-juste? J'ai consacr6 il y a quelques jours ' Chicago une conf6rence-que je veux laisser d6lib6r6ment de c6t6 ici, bien que le theme en soit6troitement connexe-A un certain nombre de textes de Heidegger oales mots de Walten et de Gewalt jouent un r6le d6cisif alors qu'on nepeut les traduire simplement ni par force ni par violence, dans uncontexte oi d'ailleurs Heidegger s'attachera i montrer que selon lui,originairement, et par exemple pour Hraclite, Dik, la justice, ledroit, le proces, le jugement, la peine ou le chitiment, la vengeance,etc., est Eris (le conflit, Streit, la discorde ou lepolemos ou le Kampf),c'est-i-dire aussi bien adikia, l'injustice. Nous pourrions revenir l-dessus, si vous le souhaitez, au cours de la discussion, mais je prefe'rem'en abstenir pour l'instant.

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ability of the law without force, whether this force be direct or indi-rect, physical or symbolic, exterior or interior, brutal or subtlydiscursive and hermeneutic, coercive or regulative, and so forth.

How are we to distinguish between this force of the law, this"force of law," as one says in English as well as in French, I believe,and the violence that one always deems unjust? What difference isthere between, on the one hand, the force that can be just, or in anycase deemed legitimate, not only an instrument in the service of lawbut the practice and even the realization, the essence of droit, and onthe other hand the violence that one always deems unjust? What is ajust force or a non-violent force? To stay with the question of idiom,let me turn here to a German word that will soon be occupying muchof our attention: Gewalt. In English, as in French, it is often trans-lated as "violence." The Benjamin text that I will be speaking to youabout soon is entitled "Zur Kritik der Gewalt," translated in Frenchas "Critique de la violence" and in English as "Critique of Violence."But these two translations, while not altogether injustes (and so notaltogether violent), are very active interpretations that don't do justiceto the fact that Gewalt also signifies, for Germans, legitimate power,authority, public force. Gesetzgebende Gewalt is legislative power,geistliche Gewalt the spiritual power- of the' church, Staatsgewalt the-authority or power of the state. Gewalt, then, is both violence andlegitimate power, justified authority. How are we to distinguish be-tween the force of law of a legitimate power and the supposedly origi-nary violence that must have established this authority and that couldnot itself have been authorized by any anterior legitimacy, so that, inthis initial moment, it is neither legal nor illegal--or, others wouldquickly say, neither just nor unjust? I gave a lecture in Chicago a fewdays ago-which I'm deliberately leaving aside here, even though itstheme is closely connected--devoted to a certain number of texts byHeidegger in which the words Walten and Gewalt play a decisive role,as one cannot simply translate them by either force or violence, espe-cially not in a context where Heidegger will attempt to demonstratehis claim that originally, and for example for Heraclitus, Dikd-jus-tice, droit, trial, penalty or punishment, vengeance, and so forth-isEris (conflict, Streit, discord, polemos or Kampf ), that is, it is adikia,injustice, as well. We could come back to this, if you wish, during thediscussion, but I prefer to hold off on it for now.

Since this colloquium is devoted to deconstruction and the possi-bility of justice, my first thought is that in the many texts considereddeconstructive, and particularly in certain of those that I've publishedmyself, recourse to the word "force" is quite frequent, and in strategic

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Puisque ce colloque est consacr6 la d6construction et ' la pos-sibilit6 de la justice, je rappelle d'abord que dans de nombreux textesdits deconstructifs, et en particulier certains de ceux que j'ai publi6smoi-mame, le recours au mot de "force" est ' la fois tres fr6quent,j'oserai mime dire d~cisif en des lieux strategiques, mais toujours ac-compagn6 d'une reserve explicite, d'une mise en garde. J'ai tressouvent appelk ' la vigilance, je m'y suis rappelk moi-m~me, sur lesrisques que ce mot fait courir, soit le risque d'un concept obscur, sub-stantialiste, occulto-mystique, soit le risque d'une autorisation donn6ei la force violente, injuste, sans regle, arbitraire. Je ne vais pas citerces textes, ce serait complaisant et nous ferait perdre du temps, maisje vous demande de me faire confiance. Une premiere precautioncontre les risques substantialistes ou irrationalistes qua je viensd'6voquer tient justement au caractere diff6rentiel de la force. I1 s'agittoujours pour moi de la force diffrentielle, de la diffirence commedifference de force, de la force comme diffrance ou force de diffr-ance (la diff~rance est une force diff6r~e-diff6rante), du rapport entrela force et la forme, la force et la signification, de force "performa-tive," force illocutionnaire ou perlocutionnaire, de force persuasive etde rh~torique, d'affirmation de signature, mais aussi et surtout detoutes les situations paradoxales oti la plus grande force et la plusgrande faiblesse s'6changent &rangement. Et c'est toute l'histoire. IIreste qua j'ai toujours 6te mal i Paise avec le mot de force que j'aisouvent jug6 indispensable, et je vous remercie de me forcer ainsi 'tenter d'en dire aujourd'hui un peu plus. I1 en va de mime d'ailleurspour la justice. I1 y a sans doute bien des raisons pour lesquelles lamajorit6 des textes hitivement identifies comme "deconstruction-nistes," par exemple les miens, semblent, je dis bien semblent, ne pasplacer le theme de la justice, comme theme, justement, en leur centre,ni m~me celui de l'6thique ou de la politique. Naturellement ce n'estqu'une apparence, si on considire par exemple (je ne citerai que ceux-1U) de nombreux textes consacr~s i Levinas et aux rapports entre "vio-lence et m&aphysique," i la philosophie du droit, celle de Hegel avectoute sa post~rit6 dans Glas, dont c'est le motif principal, ou de textesconsacres i la pulsion de pouvoir et aux paradoxes du pouvoir dansSpdculer-sur Freud, i la loi, dans Devant la loi (sur Vor dem Gesetz,de Kafka) ou dans Diclaration d'Inddpendance, dans Admiration deNelson Mandela ou les lois de la reflexion, et dans bien d'autre textes.I1 va sans dire que des discours sur la double affirmation, le donau-delA de l'6change et de la distribution, l'indcidable,l'incommensurable ou l'incalculable, sur la singularit6, la difference etl'h&trogenit6 sont aussi, de part en part, des discours au moins obli-ques sur la justice.

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places I would even say decisive, but at the same time always or al-most always accompanied by an explicit reserve, a guardedness. Ihave often called for vigilance, I have asked myself to keep in mindthe risks spread by this word, whether it be the risk of an obscure,substantialist, occulto-mystic concept or-the risk of giving authoriza-tion to violent, unjust, arbitrary force. I won't cite these texts, thatwould be self-indulgent and would take too much time, but I ask youto trust me. A first precaution against the risks of substantialism orirrationalism that I just evoked involves the differential character offorce. For me, it is always a question of differential force, of differ-ence as difference of force, of force as diffdrance (diffirance is a forcediffdrde-diffdrante), of the relation between force and form, force andsignification, performative force, illocutionary or perlocutionaryforce, of persuasive and rhetorical force, of affirmation by signature,but also and especially of all the paradoxical situations in which thegreatest force and the greatest weakness strangely enough exchangeplaces. And that is the whole history. What remains is that I've al-ways been uncomfortable with the word force, which I've oftenjudged to be indispensable, and I thank you for thus forcing me to tryand say a little more about it today. And the same thing goes forjustice. There are no doubt many reasons why the-majority-of texts,hastily identified as "deconstructionist"-for example, mine-seem, Ido say seem, not to foreground the theme of justice (as theme, pre-cisely), or the theme of ethics or politics. Naturally this is only appar-ently so, if one considers, for example, (I will only mention these) themany texts devoted to Levinas and to the relations between "violenceand metaphysics," or to the philosophy of right, Hegel's, with all itsposterity in Glas, of which it is the principal motif, or the texts de-voted to the drive for power and to the paradoxes of power inSpdculer--sur Freud, to the law, in Devant la loi (on Kafka's Vor demGesetz) or in Ddclaration d'Inddpendance, in Admiration de NelsonMandela ou les lois de la reflexion, and in many other texts. It goeswithout saying that discourses on double affirmation, the gift beyondexchange and distribution, the undecidable, the incommensurable orthe incalculable, or on singularity, difference and heterogeneity arealso, through and through, at least obliquely discourses on justice.

Besides, it was normal, foreseeable, desirable that studies ofdeconstructive style should culminate in, the problematic of law(droit), of law and justice. (I have elsewhere tried to show that theessence. of law is not prohibitive but affirmative.) It is even the mostproper place for them, if such a thing exists. A deconstructive inter-rogation that starts, as was the case here, by destabilizing or compli-

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11 6tait d'ailleurs normal, pr6visible, souhaitable, que desrecherches de style deconstructif aboutissent dans une probl6matiquedu droit, de la loi et de la justice. C'est m~me leur lieu le plus propre,si quelque chose de tel existe. Un questionnement d6constructif quicommence, comme cela fut le cas, par d6stabiliser ou compliquerl'opposition de nomos et de physis, de thdsis et de physis-c'est-i-direl'opposition entre la loi, la convention, l'institution d'une part, et lanature d'autre part, avec toutes celles qu'elles conditionnent, par ex-emple, et ce n'est qu'un exemple, celle du droit positif et du droitnaturel (la diff6rance est le deplacement de cette logique opposition-nelle), un questionnement d6constructif qui commence, comme celafut le cas, par d6stabiliser, compliquer ou paradoxaliser des valeurscomme celles du propre et de la propri6t dans tous ses registres, dusujet, et donc du sujet responsable, du sujet du droit et du sujet de lamorale, de la personne juridique ou morale, de l'intentionnalit6, etc.,et de tout ce qui s'ensuit, un tel questionnement d6constructif est depart en part un questionnement sur le droit et sur la justice. Un ques-tionnement sur les fondements du droit, de la morale et de la poli-tique. Ce questionnement sur les fondements n'est ni fondationnalisteni anti-fondationnaliste. I1 ne se prive mime pas, A l'occasion, de met-tre en question ou d'exc6der la possibilit6 ou l'ultime n6cessitE duquestionnement mime, de la forme questionnante de la pense, inter-rogeant sans confiance ni prejuge l'histoire meme de la question et deson autorite philosophique. Car il y a une autorit--donc une force16gitime de la forme questionnante dont on peut se demande d'oi elletire une si grande force dans notre tradition.

Si par hypothese il avait un lieu propre, ce qui justement ne peutpas etre le cas, un tel "questionnement" ou m6ta-questionnementd6constructif serait plus at home dans des law schools, peut-tre aussi,comme cela arrive quelquefois, dans des d6partements de th6ologie oud'architecture, que dans des departements de philosophie et surtoutdans des d6partements de litterature oii on a cru souvent devoir lecontenir. C'est pourquoi sans bien les connaitre de 'int6ieur, ce dontje me sens coupable, sans pr6tendre A aucune familiarit6 avec eux, jejuge que les developpements des "critical legal studies" ou destravaux, comme ceux de Stanley Fish, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith,Drucilla Cornell, Sam Weber et d'autres, qui se situent A l'articulationentre la litt6rature, la philosophie, le droit et les probl6mes politico-institutionnels, sont aujourd'hui, du point de vue d'une certained6construction, parmi les plus f6conds et les plus n6cessaires. Ils r6-pondent, me semble-t-il, aux programmes les plus radicaux d'uned6construction qui voudrait, pour 6tre cons6quente avec elle-meme,

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cating. the opposition between nomos and physis, between thdsis andphysis-that is to say, the opposition between law, convention, theinstitution on the one hand, and nature on the other, with all the op-positions that they condition; for example, and this is only an exam-ple, that between positive law and natural law (the diffrance is thedisplacement of this oppositional logic), a deconstructive interroga-tion that starts, as this one did, by destabilizing, complicating, orbringing out the paradoxes of values like those of the proper and ofproperty in all their registers, of the subject, and so of the responsiblesubject, of the subject of law (droit) and the subject of morality, of thejuridical or moral person, of intentionality, etc., and of all that followsfrom these, such a deconstructive line of questioning is through andthrough a problematization of law and justice. A problematization ofthe foundations of law, morality and politics. This questioning offoundations is neither foundationalist nor anti-foundationalist. Nordoes it pass up opportunities to put into question or even to exceedthe possibility or the ultimate necessity of questioning, of the ques-tioning form of thought, interrogating without assurance or prejudicethe very history of the question and of its philosophical authority.For there is an authority-and so a legitimate force in the questioningform of which one might ask oneself whence it derives such greatforce in our tradition.

If, hypothetically, it had a proper place, which is precisely whatcannot be the case, such a deconstructive "questioning" or meta-ques-tioning would be more at home in law schools, perhaps also-thissometimes happens-in theology or architecture departments, than inphilosophy departments and much more than in the literature depart-ments where it has often been thought to belong. That is why, with-out knowing them well from the inside, for which I feel I am toblame, without pretending to any familiarity with them, I think thatthe developments in "critical legal studies" or in work by people likeStanley Fish, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Drucilla Cornell, SamWeber and others, which situates itself in relation to the articulationbetween literature and philosophy, law and politico-institutionalproblems, are today, from the point of view of a certain deconstruc-tion, among the most fertile and the most necessary. They respond, itseems to me, to the most radical programs of a deconstruction thatwould like, in order to be consistent with itself, not to remain enclosedin purely speculative, theoretical, academic discourses but rather(with all due respect to Stanley Fish) to aspire to something moreconsequential, to change (1) things and to intervene in an efficient andresponsible though always, of course, very mediated way, not only in

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ne pas rester enferm6e dans des discours purement speculatifs, theori-ques et acad6miques mais prtendre, n'en d6plaise i Stanley Fish,avoir des consequences, changer des choses et intervenir de faqon ef-ficiente et responsable toujours tres m6diatis6e, bien sir, non seule-ment dans la profession mais dans ce qu'on appelle la cit6, la polis etplus g6n6ralement le monde. Non pas les changer au sens sans douteun peu naif de l'intervention calculee, d6liber6e et strat6giquementcontr6l6e, mais au sens de l'intensification maximale d'une transfor-mation en cours, 'a un titre qui n'est ni celui du simple sympt6me nicelui d'une simple cause (d'autres cat6gories sont ici requises). Dansune soci6t6 industrielle et hyper-te.hnologis6e, l'espace acad6miqueest moins que jamais l'enclos monadique ou monastique qu'il n'ad'ailleurs jamais e6t. Et cela est vrai en particulier des "law schools."

Je m'empresse d'ajouter ceci, en trois points tres brefs:1. Cette configuration, cette conjonction ou cette conjoncture

est sans doute necessaire et inevitable entre une d6construction destyle plus directement philosophique ou plus directement motiv6e parla th6orie litt6raire, d'une part, la r6flexion juridico-litt6raire et les"Critical Legal Studies" d'autre part.

2. Cette conjonction articulee ne s'est sfirement pas d6velopp6ede faqon aussi intiressante dans ce pays par hasard; ceci est un autreprobleme-urgent et passionnant--que faute de temps je dois laisserde c6t6. I y a sans doute des raisons profondes, compliqu6es et dedimensions mondiales, je veux dire g6o-politiques et non seulementdomestiques, au fait que ce developpement soit d'abord et surtoutnord-am6ricain.

3. Surtout, s'il paralt urgent de pr&er attention i ce d6veloppe-ment conjoint ou concurrent et d'y participer, il est aussi vital de nepas assimiler entre eux des discours, des styles, des contextes discur-sifs largement h6terog~nes et in6gaux. Le mot de d6constructionpourrait, dans certains cas, induire ou encourage une telle confusion.I1 donne lieu lui-m~me i assez de malentendus pour qu'on n'en ajoutepas en assimilant par exemple entre eux tous les styles de CriticalLegal Studies ou en en faisant des exemples ou des prolongements deLA d6construction. Si peu familiers qu'ils me soient, je sais que cestravaux des Critical Legal Studies ont leur histoire, leur contexte etleur idiome propres, que par rapport i tel questionnementphilosophico-deconstructif, ils sont parfois, disons pour faire vite, in-gaux, timides, approximatifs ou sch6matiques pour ne pas dire en re-tard, alors que par leur specialisation et l'acuit6 de leur comptencetechnique ils sont au contraire tres en avance sur tel ou tel 6tat de lad6construction dans un champ plut6t litt6raire ou philosophique. Le

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the profession but in what one calls the citd, the polis and more gener-ally the world. Not, doubtless, to change things in the rather naivesense of calculated, deliberate and strategically controlled interven-tion, but in the sense of maximum intensification of a transformationin progress, in the name of neither a simple symptom nor a simplecause (other categories are required here). In an industrial and hyper-technologized society, academia is less than ever the monadic or mo-nastic ivory tower that in any case it never was. And this is particu-larly true of "law schools."

I hasten to add here, briefly, the following three points:1. This configuration, this conjunction or conjuncture is no

doubt necessary and inevitable between, on the one hand, a decon-struction of a style more directly philosophical or more directly moti-vated by literary theory and, on the other hand, juridico-literaryreflection and "critical legal studies."

2. It is certainly not by chance that this conjunction has devel-oped in such an interesting way in this country; this is another prob-lem-urgent and compelling-that I must leave aside for lack of time.There are no doubt profound and complicated reasons of globaldimensions, I mean geo-political and not merely domestic, for the factthat this development should be first and foremost North American.

3. Above all, if it has seemed urgent to give our attention to thisjoint or concurrent development and to participate in it, it is just asvital that we do not confound largely heterogeneous and unequal dis-courses, styles and discursive contexts. The word "deconstruction"could, in certain cases, induce or encourage such a confusion. Theword itself gives rise to so many misunderstandings that one wouldn'twant to add to them by reducing all the styles of Critical Legal Stud-ies to one or by making them examples or extensions of Deconstruc-tion with a capital "D." However unfamiliar they may be to me, Iknow that these efforts in Critical Legal Studies have their history,their context, and their proper idiom, and that in relation to such aphilosophico-deconstructive questioning they are often (we shall sayfor the sake of brevity) uneven, timid, approximating or schematic,not to mention belated, although their specialization and the acuity oftheir technical competence puts them, on the other hand, very muchin advance of whatever state deconstruction finds itself in a more liter-ary or philosophical field. Respect for contextual, academico-institu-tional, discursive specificities, mistrust for analogies and hastytranspositions, for confused homogenizations, seem to me to be thefirst imperatives the way things stand today. I am sure, or in any caseI hope, that this encounter will leave us with the memory of dispari-

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respect des spCificit~s contextuelles, academico-institutionnelles, dis-cursives, la m6fiance A l'agard des analogismes et des transpositionshitives, des homogqneisations confuses, me paraissent, dans la phaseactuelle, les premiers imp~ratifs. Je suis sir, en tout cas, j'espre quecette rencontre nous laissera la m~moire de diff6rences et de diff6rendsau moins autant que de croisements, de coincidences ou de consensus.Je le disais A l'instant: c'est seulement en apparence que dans sesmanifestations les plus connues sous ce nom, la d6construction n'a pas"adress6," comme on dit en anglais, le probleme de la justice. Cen'est qu'une apparence, mais il faut rendre compte des apparences,sauver les apparences, selon le mot d'Aristote, et c'est ce que jevoudrais m'employer i faire ici: montrer pourquoi et comment cequ'on appelle couramment La deconstruction, tout en semblant nepas "adresser" le problme de la justice n'a fait que cela sans pouvoirle faire directement, seulement de fagon oblique. Oblique comme ence moment meme, oi je m'appr~te A d6montrer que l'on ne peut pasparler directement de la justice, thematiser ou objectiver la justice,dire "ceci est juste" et encore moins "je suis juste" sans trahir im-mediatement la justice, sinon le droit.

B. Mais je n'ai pas encore commence. J'avais commence pardire que je dois m'adresser a vous dans votre langue et aussit8t an-nonc6 que j'avais toujours juge tres precieuses, voire irremplagables,au moins deux de vos expressions idiomatiques. L'une, c'6tait "to en-force the law" qui nous rappelle toujours que si la justice n'est pasnicessairement le droit ou la loi, elle ne peut devenir justice de droitou en droit qu'a detenir la force ou plut6t A en appeler a la force desson premier instant, des son premier mot. Au commencement de lajustice il y aura eu le logos, le langage ou la langue, cela n'est pasnecessairement contradictoire avec un autre incipit qui dirait: "Aucommencement il y aura eu la force."

Pascal le dit dans un fragment sur lequel je reviendrai peut-etreplus tard, une de ses "pensees" c~lkbres et toujours plus difficile qu'iln'y paralt. Elle commence ainsi: "Justice, force.-Il est juste que cequi est juste soit suivi, il est n~cessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soitsuivi." Le commencement de ce fragment est deja extraordinaire, aumoins dans la rigueur de sa rhetorique. II dit que ce qui est juste doitetre suivi (suivi de consequence, suivi d'effet, applique, enforced) etque ce qui est le plus fort doit tre aussi suivi (de consequence, d'effet,etc.). Autrement dit, l'axiome commun, c'est que le juste et le plusfort, le plus juste comme (as, as well as) le plus fort doivent etre suivis.Mais ce "devoir etre suivi" commun au juste et au plus fort, est"juste" dans un cas, "necessaire" dans l'autre: "II est juste que ce qui

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ties and disputes at least as much as it leaves us with agreements, withcoincidences or consensus.

I said a moment ago: it only appears that deconstruction, in itsmanifestations most recognized as such, hasn't "addressed," as onesays in English, the problem of justice. It only appears that way, butone must account for appearances, "keep up appearances" as Aris-totle said, and that is how I'd like to employ myself here: to show whyand how what is now called Deconstruction, while seeming not to"address" the problem of justice, has done nothing but address it, ifonly obliquely, unable to do so directly. Obliquely, as at this verymoment, in which I'm preparing to demonstrate that one cannotspeak directly about justice, thematize or objectivize justice, say "thisis just" and even less "I am just," without immediately betraying jus-tice, if not law (droit).

B. But I have not yet begun. I started by saying that I mustaddress myself to you in your language and announced right awaythat I've always found at least two of your idiomatic expressions in-valuable, indeed irreplaceable. One was "to enforce the law," whichalways reminds us that if justice is not necessarily law (droit) or thelaw, it cannot become justice legitimately or de jure except by with-holding force or rather by appealing to force from its first moment,from its first word. At the beginning of justice there was logos, speechor language, which is not necessarily in contradiction to another inci-pit, namely, "In the beginning there will have been force."

Pascal says it in a fragment I may return to later, one of hisfamous "pens6es," as usual more difficult than it seems. It starts likethis: "Justice, force.-I1 est juste que ce qui est juste soit suivi, il e-tn6cessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soit suivi." ("Justice, force.-It isjust that what is just be followed, it is necessary that what is strongestbe followed.") The beginning of this fragment is already extraordi-nary, at least in the rigor of its rhetoric. It says that what is just mustbe followed (followed by consequence, followed by effect, applied, en-forced) and that what is strongest must also be followed (by conse-quence, effect, and so on). In other words, the common axiom is thatthe just and the strongest, the most just as or as well as the strongest,must be followed. But this "must be followed," common to the justand the strongest, is "right" ('Juste") in one case, "necessary" in theother: "It is just that what is just be followed"-in other words, theconcept or idea of the just, in the sense of justice, implies analyticallyand a priori that the just be "suivi," followed up, enforced, and it isjust-also in the sense of "just right"-to think this way. "It is neces-sary that what is strongest be enforced."

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est juste soit suivi [autrement dit, le concept ou l'id6e du juste, au sensde justice, implique analytiquement et a priori que le juste soit"suivi," enforced, et il est juste-aussi au sens de justesse-de penserainsi]; il est necessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soit suivi (enforced)."

Et Pascal poursuit: "La justice sans la force est impuissante [au-trement dit, la justice n'est pas la justice, elle n'est pas rendue si ellen'a pas la force d'etre "enforced"; une justice impuissante n'est pasune justice, au sens de droit]; la force sans la justice est tyrannique.La justice sans force est contredite, parce qu'il y a toujours desmtchants; la force sans la justice est accuse. I1 faut donc mettre en-semble la justice et la force; et pour. cela faire que ce qui est juste soitfort, ou que ce qui est fort soit juste." Le "il faut" dans cette conclu-sion ("I1 faut donc mettre ensemble la justice et la force"), il est diffi-cile de decider si c'est un "I1 faut" prescrit par ce qui est juste dans lajustice ou par ce qui est ntcessaire dans la force. Mais c'est une htsi-tation sans objet puisque la justice exige, en tant que justice, le recoursa la force. La necessit6 de la force est donc implique dans le juste dela justice.

Cette pense, ce qui la suit et la conclut ("Et ainsi ne pouvantfaire que ce qui est juste ffit fort, on a fait que ce qui est fort ffit juste")mtfiteraient une longue analyse que je ne peux deployer ici. Leprincipe de mon analyse ou plut6t de mon interpr6tation active et toutsauf non-violente, de l'interpretation qu'au fond je proposerai in-directement au cours de cette conftrence, ira, notamment dans le casde cette pense de Pascal, a 'encontre de la tradition et de son con-texte le plus massivement 6vident. Ce contexte massif etl'interpretation conventionnelle qu'il semble commander vont juste-ment dans un sens conventionnaliste, vers une sorte de scepticismepessimiste, relativiste et empiriste qui, par exemple, avait pouss6Arnaud i supprimer ces pensees dans l'6dition de Port Royal en al-16guant que Pascal les avait 6crites sous l'impression d'une lecture deMontaigne selon lequel les lois ne sont pas justes en elles-m~mes, maisseulement parce que ce sont des lois. I1 est vrai que Montaigne avaitutilis6 une expression inttressante, que Pascal reprend i son compte etque li aussi je voudrais r6-interprtter et soustraire i sa lecture la plusconventionnelle. L'expression, c'est "fondement mystique del'autorite." Pascal cite sans le nommer Montaigne quand dans la pen-ste 293 il 6crit: "... l'un dit que l'essence de la justice est l'autorit6 dul6gislateur, l'autre la commodit6 du souverain, l'autre la coutumepresente; et c'est le plus sfir: rien, suivant la seule raison, n'est juste desoi; tout branle avec le temps. La coutume fait toute l'6quit6, par

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And Pascal continues: "La justice sans la force est impuissante"("Justice without force is impotent")-,in other words, justice isn'tjustice, it is not achieved if it doesn't have the force to be "enforced;"a powerless justice is not justice, in the sense of droit-"la force sansla justice est tyrannique. La justice sans force est contredite, parce qu'ily a toujours des michants; la force sans la justice est accusde. Ilfautdonc mettre ensemble la justice et la force; et pour cela faire que ce quiestjuste soit fort, ou que ce qui est fort soitjuste" ("force without jus-tice is tyrannical. Justice without force is contradictory, as there arealways the wicked; force without justice is accused of wrong. And soit is necessary to put justice and force together; and, for this, to makesure that what is just be strong, or what is strong be just." It is diffi-cult to decide whether the "it is necessary" in this conclusion ("Andso it is necessary to put justice and force together") is an "it is neces-sary" prescribed by what is just in justice or by what is necessary inforce. But that is a pointless hesitation since justice demands, as jus-tice, recourse to force. The necessity of force is implied, then, in the'juste" in "justice."

This pensee, what continues and concludes it ("And so, since itwas not possible to make the just strong, the strong have been madejust") deserves a longer analysis than I can offer here. The principleof my analysis (or rather of my active and anything but non-violentinterpretation), of the interpretation at the heart of what I will indi-rectly propose in the course of this lecture, will, notably in the case ofthis Pascal pensie, run counter to tradition and to its most obviouscontext. This context and the conventional interpretation that itseems to dictate runs, precisely, in a conventionalist direction towardthe sort of pessimistic, relativistic and empiricist skepticism thatdrove Arnaud to suppress these pensies in the Port Royal edition,alleging that Pascal wrote them under the -impression of a reading ofMontaigne, who thought that laws were not in themselves just butrather were just only because they were laws. It is true thatMontaigne used an interesting expression, which Pascal takes up forhis own purposes and which I'd also like to reinterpret and to con-sider apart from its most conventional reading. The expression is"fondement mystique de l'autoriti," "mystical foundation of author-ity." Pascal cites Montaigne without naming him when he writes inpensie 293: ". . . Pun dit que l'essence de la justice est l'autoritd duligislateur, l'autre .la commoditi du souverain, l'autre la coutumeprsente; et c'est le plus str: rien, suivant la seule raison, n'estjuste desoi; tout branle avec le .temps. La coutume fait toute l'6quit'i par cetteseule raison qu'elle est reque; c'est le fondement mystique de son

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cette seule raison qu'elle est reque; c'est le fondement mystique de sonautorit6. Qui la ramene ' son principe, l'an6antit."

Montaigne parlait en effet d'un "fondement mystique" del'autorit6 des lois: "Or les loix, dit-il, se maintiennent en credit, nonparce qu'elles sont justes, mais parce qu'elles sont loix: c'est le fonde-ment mystique de leur auctorit6, elles n'en ont point d'autre [...].Quiconque leur obeit parce qu'elles sont justes, ne leur ob6it pas juste-ment par off il doibt" (Essais III, XIII, De 1'exprience, ed. Pl6iade, p.1203).

Visiblement, Montaigne distingue ici les lois, c'est-a-dire le droit,de la justice. La justice du droit, la justice comme droit n'est pas lajustice. Les lois ne sont pas justes en tant que lois. On ne leur obeitpas parce qu'elle sont justes mais parce qu'elles ont de l'autorit6.

C'est peu 'a peu que j'6claircirai ce que j'entends sous cette ex-pression "fondement mystique de l'autorit." I1 est vrai queMontaigne avait aussi &crit ceci, qui doit atre encore interprete au-deli de sa surface simplement conventionnelle et conventionnaliste:"(notre droit mime a, dit-on des fictions 16gitimes sur lesquelles ilfonde la verit6 de sa justice)." J'avais plact ces mots en exergue d'untexte sur Vor dem Gesetz. Qu'est-ce qu'une fiction lgitime? Que veutdire fonder la v6rit6 de la justice? Voila' certaines des questions quinous attendent. I1 est vrai que Montaigne proposait une analogie en-tre ce suppl6ment de fiction 16gitime, c'est-i-dire n6cessaire ' fonder lavrit6 de la justice, et le supplement d'artifice appel6 par une d~fi-cience de la nature, comme si l'absence de droit naturel appelait lesupplement de droit historique ou positif, c'est-a'-dire fictionnel,comme-et c'est I'analogie proposee par Montaigne-"les femmes quiemploient des dents d'ivoire oti les leurs naturelles leur manquent, et,au lieu de leur vrai teint, en forgent un de quelque matiere 6trangere,etc ... ." (Livre II, ch. XII, p. 601 Pl'iade).

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autorit6 Qui la ramene d son principe, l'andantit." ("... one mansays that the essence of justice is the authority of the legislator, an-other that it is the convenience of the king, another that it is currentcustom; and the latter is closest to the truth: simple reason tells usthat nothing is just in itself; everything crumbles with time. Customis the sole basis for equity, for the simple reason that it is received; it isthe mystical foundation of its authority. Whoever traces it to itssource annihilates it.")

Montaigne was ultimately talking about a "mystical foundation"of the authority of laws: "Or les loix," he says, "se maintiennent encrddit, non parce qu'elles sont justes, mais parce qu'elles sont loix: c'estle fondement mystique de leur auctoriti elles n'en ont point d'autre.... Quiconque leur obdit parce qu'elles sont justes, ne leur obdit pasjustement par od il doibt" (Essais III, XIII, De l'expdrience, ed.Pdiade, p. 1203) ("And so laws keep up their good standing, not be-cause they are just, but because they are laws: that is the mysticalfoundation of their authority, they have no other .... Anyone whoobeys them because they are just is not obeying them the way heought to.")

Here Montaigne is clearly distinguishing laws, that is to saydroit, from justice. The justice of law, justice as law is not justice.Laws are not just as laws. One obeys them not because they are justbut because they have authority.

Little by little I shall explain what I understand by this expres-sion "mystical foundation of authority." It is true that Montaignealso wrote the following, which must, again, be interpreted by goingbeyond its simply conventional and conventionalist surface: "(notredroit mime a, dit-on des fictions ligitimes sur lesquelles il fonde lavdritd de sa justice)"; "(even our law, it is said, has legitimate fictionson which it founds the truth of its justice)." I used these words as anepigraph to a text on Vor dem Gesetz. What is a legitimate fiction?What does it mean to establish the truth of justice? These are amongthe questions that await us. It is true that Montaigne proposed ananalogy between this supplement of a legitimate fiction, that is, thefiction necessary to establish the truth of justice, and the supplementof artifice called for by a deficiency in nature, as if the absence ofnatural law called for the supplement of historical or positive, that isto say, fictional, law (droit), just as-to use Montaigne's analogy-"lesfemmes qui emploient des dents d'ivoire od les leurs naturelles leurmanquent, et, au lieu de leur vrai teint, en forgent un de quelque ma-tiere dtrangre. .. " (Livre II, ch. XII, p. 601 Pdiade); ("women whouse ivory teeth when they're missing their real ones, and who, instead

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La pense de Pascal qui "met ensemble," comme il dit, la justiceet la force et fait de la force une sorte de pr&licat essentiel de la jus-tice-mot sous lequel il entend plut6t le droit que la justice-va peut-8tre au-deli d'un relativisme conventionnaliste ou utilitariste, au-delad'un nihilisme, ancien ou moderne, qui ferait de la loi a "maskedpower," au-dela de la morale cynique de "Le loup et l'agneau" de LaFontaine selon laquelle "La raison du plus fort est toujours lameilleure."

La critique pascalienne, dans son principe, renvoie au p6ch6originel et i la corruption des lois naturelles par une raison elle-m~mecorrompue ("I1 y a sans doute des lois naturelles; mais cette belleraison a tout corrompu," section IV, pensee 294; et ailleurs: "Notrejustice s'aneantit devant la justice divine," p. 564. Je cite ces penseespour preparer i la lecture de Benjamin).

Mais si on isole le ressort fonctionnel de la critique pascalienne,si on le dissocie de son pessimisme chr6tien, ce qui n'est pas impossi-ble, alors on peut y trouver, comme d'ailleurs chez Montaigne, lespr6misses d'une philosophie critique moderne, voire une critique del'id6ologie juridique, une des6dimentation des superstructures dudroit qui cachent et refl6tent A la fois les int6rets 6conomiques et poli-tiques des forces dominantes de la soci&6. Cela serait a la fois possi-ble et toujours utile.

Mais au-dela de son principe et de son ressort, cette pens6e pas-calienne concerne peut-atre une structure plus intrinseque et qu'unecritique de l'id6ologie juridique ne devrait jamais n6gliger. Le surgis-sement m~me de la justice et du droit, le moment instituteur,fondateur et justificateur du droit implique une force performative,c'est-i-dire toujours une force interpretative: non pas cette fois au sensoi le droit serait au service de la force, l'instrument docile, servile etdonc exterieur du pouvoir dominant mais oa il entretiendrait avec ce 0

qu'on appelle la force, le pouvoir ou la violence une relation plus in-terne et plus complexe. La justice au sens du droit (right or law) neserait pas simplement mise au service d'une force ou d'un pouvoirsocial, par exemple 6conomique, politique, id6ologique qui existeraithors d'elle ou avant elle et auquel elle devrait se plier ou s'accorderselon l'utilit6. Son moment de fondation ou d'institution mame (quin'est d'ailleurs jamais un moment inscrit dans le tissu homog~ned'une histoire puisqu'il le d6chire d'une d6cision), l'op6ration qui con-siste i fonder, A inaugurer, A justifier le droit, A faire la loi, consisteraiten un coup de force, en une violence performative et donc interpr6ta-tive qui en elle-m~me n'est ni juste ni injuste et qu'aucune justice etaucun droit pr6alable et anterieurement fondateur, aucune fondation

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of showing their true complexion, forge one with some foreign mate-rial ...").

Perhaps the Pascal pensie that, as he says, "puts together" justiceand force and makes force an essential predicate of justice (by whichhe means "droit" more than justice) goes beyond a conventionalist orutilitarian relativism, beyond a nihilism, old or new, that would makethe law a "masked power," beyond the cynical moral of La Fontaine's"The Wolf and the Sheep," according to which "La raison du plusfort est toujours la meilleure" ("Might makes right").

The Pascalian critique, in its principle, refers us back to originalsin and to the corruption of natural laws by a reason that is itselfcorrupt. ("I1 y a sans doute des lois naturelles; mais cette belle raison atout corrompu, "Section IV, pense 294; "There are, no doubt, naturallaws; but this fine thing called reason has corrupted everything," andelsewhere: "Notre justice s'andantit devant la justice divine, "p. 564:"Our justice comes to nothing before divine justice." I cite these pen-sdes to prepare for our reading of Benjamin.)

But if we set aside the functional mechanism of the Pascaliancritique, if we dissociate it from Christian pessimism, which is notimpossible, then we,.can find in it,,.as in Montaigne, the basis for.amodem critical philosophy, indeed for a critique of juridical ideology,a desedimentation of the superstructures of law that both hide andreflect the economic and political interests of the dominant forces ofsociety. This would be both possible and always useful.

But beyond its principle and its mechanism, this Pascalianpensdeperhaps concerns a more intrinsic structure, one that a critique ofjuridical ideology should never overlook. The very emergence of jus-tice and law, the founding and justifying moment that institutes lawimplies a performative force, which is always an interpretative force:this time not in the sense of law in the service of force, its docileinstrument, servile and thus exterior to the dominant power butrather in the sense of law that would maintain a more internal, morecomplex relation with what one calls force, power or violence. Jus-tice-in the sense of droit (right or law) would not simply be put inthe service of a social force or power, for example an economic, polit-ical, ideological power that would exist outside or before it and whichit would have to accommodate or bend to when useful. Its very mo-ment of foundation or institution (which in any case is never a mo-ment inscribed in the homogeneous tissue of a history, since it isripped apart with one decision), the operation that consists of found-ing, inaugurating, justifying law (droit), making law, would consist ofa& coup deforce, of a performative and therefore interpretative violence

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pr6existante, par d6finition, ne pourrait ni garantir ni contredire ouinvalider. Aucun discours justificateur ne peut ni ne doit assurer ler6le de metalangage par rapport a la performativite du langage in-stituant ou i son interpr&ation dominante.

Le discours rencontre 1i sa limite: en lui-m~me, dans son pouvoirperformatif m~me. C'est ce que je propose d'appeller ici le mystique.I1 y a UA un silence mur6 dans la structure violente de 'acte fondateur.Mur6, emmur6 parce que ce silence n'est pas ext6rieur au langage.Voila en quel sens je serais tent6 d'interpreter, au dela du simple com-mentaire, ce que Montaigne et Pascal appellent le fondement mys-tique de l'autorite. Je tirerais l'usage du mot "mystique" dans un sensque je me risque A dire plut8t wittgensteinien. Ces textes deMontaigne et de Pascal, comme la tradition a laquelle ils appartien-nent, comme l'interpr~tation un peu active que j'en propose, pour-raient 8tre invit6s a la discussion par Stanley Fish dans "Force" (inDoing What Comes Naturally) de The Concept of Law de Hart---et dequelques autres, dont implicitement Rawls, lui-m~me critiqu6 parHart, comme A bien des d6bats illumines par certains textes de SamWeber sur le caract~re agonistique et non simplement intra-institu-tionnel ou mono-institutionnel de certains conflits dans Institutionand Interpretation.

L'origine de l'autorit6, la fondation ou le fondement, la positionde la loi ne pouvant par d6finition s'appuyer finalement que sur elles-m~mes, elles sont elles-m~mes une violence sans fondement. Ce quine veut pas dire qu'elles sont injustes en soi, au sens de "illegales."Elles ne sont ni legales ni ill6gales en leur moment fondateur. Ellesexcedent l'opposition du fond6 et du non-fonde, comme de toutfondationnalisme ou anti-fondationnalisme. M~me si le succes deperformatifs fondateurs d'un droit (par exemple et c'est plus qu'unexemple, d'un Etat comme garant d'un droit) supposent des condi-tions et des conventions pr6alables (par exemple dans l'espace na-tional ou international), la m~me limite "mystique" ressurgira Al'origine suppos6e des dites conditions, r~gles ou conventions, et deleur interpretation dominante.

La structure que je d6cris ainsi est une structure dans laquelle ledroit est essentiellement d6constructible, soit parce qu'il est fond6,construit sur des couches textuelles interpretables et transformables(et c'est 'histoire du droit, la possible et n6cessaire transformation,parfois 'am6lioration du droit), soit parce que son ultime fondementpar d6finition n'est pas fonde. Que le droit soit d6constructible n'estpas un malheur. On peut meme y trouver la chance politique de toutprogr6s historique. Mais le paradoxe que je voudrais soumettre A la

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that in itself is neither just nor unjust and that no justice and no previ-ous law with its founding anterior moment could guarantee or contra-dict or invalidate. No justificatory discourse could or should insurethe role of metalanguage in relation to the performativity of institu-tive language or to its dominant interpretation.

Here the discourse comes up against its limit: in itself, in itsperformative power itself. It is what I here propose to call the mysti-cal. Here a silence is walled up in the violent structure of the found-ing act. Walled up, walled in because silence is not exterior tolanguage. It is in this sense that I would be tempted to interpret,beyond simple commentary, what Montaigne and Pascal call the mys-tical foundation of authority. I would take the use of the word "mys-tical" in what I'd venture to call a rather Wittgensteinian direction.These texts by Montaigne and Pascal, along with the texts from thetradition to which they belong and the rather active interpretation ofthem that I propose, could be brought into Stanley Fish's discussionin "Force" (Doing What Comes Naturally) of Hart's Concept of Law,and several others, implicitly including Rawls, himself criticized byHart, as well as into many debates illuminated by certain texts of SamWeber on the agonistic and not simply intra-institutional or mono-institutional character of certain conflicts in Institution andInterpretation.

Since the origin of authority, the foundation or ground, the posi-tion of the law can't by definition rest on anything but themselves,they are themselves a violence without ground. Which is not to saythat they are in themselves unjust, in the sense of "illegal." They areneither legal nor illegal in their founding moment. They exceed theopposition between founded and unfounded, or between any founda-tionalism or anti-foundationalism. Even if the success of performa-tives that found law or right (for example, and this is more than anexample, of a state as guarantor of a right) presupposes earlier condi-tions and conventions (for example in the national or internationalarena), the same "mystical" limit will reappear at the supposed originof said conditions, rules or conventions, and at the origin of theirdominant interpretation.

The structure I am describing here is a structure in which law(droit) is essentially deconstructible, whether because it is founded,constructed on interpretable and transformable textual strata (andthat is the history of law (droit), its possible and necessary transfor-mation, sometimes its amelioration), or because its ultimate founda-tion is by definition unfounded. The fact that law is deconstructible isnot bad news. We may even see in this a stroke of luck for politics,

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discussion est le suivant: c'est cette structure d6econstructible du droitou si vous pr6f6rez, de ]a justice comme droit qui assure aussi la pos-sibilit6 de la d6construction. La justice en elle-m~me, si quelque chosede tel existe, hors ou au-deli du droit, n'est pas d6constructible. Pasplus que la d6construction elle-m me, si quelque chose de tel existe.La d6construction est la justice. C'est peut-8tre parce que le droit(que je tenterai r6guliirement de distinguer de la justice) est con-structible, en un sens qui d6borde l'opposition de la convention et dela nature, c'est peut-Etre en tant qu'il deborde cette opposition qu'ilest constructible donc d6constructible et, mieux, qu'il rend possible lad6construction, ou du moins l'exercice d'une d6construction quiproc~de au fond toujours A des questions de droit. 1. La d6con-structibilit6 du droit, de la 16galit6, de la 16gitimit ou de la 16gi-

timation (par exemple) rend la deconstruction possible. 2.L'ind6constructibilit6 de la justice rend aussi la deconstruction possi-ble, voire se confond avec elle. 3. Cons6quence: la d6construction alieu dans l'intervalle qui s6pare l'ind6constructibilit6 de la justice et lad6constructibilit6 du droit, de rautorit6 1e'gitimante ou 16gitim6e.

Autrement dit, l'hypoth~se et les propositions vers lesquelles jetitonne ici, appelleraient plut6t pour sous-titre: la justice comme pos-sibilit6 de la deconstruction, la structure du droit ou de la loi, de lafondation, ou de l'auto-autorisation du droit comme possibilite de'exercice de la d6construction. Je suis sir que cela n'est pas clair,

j'esp~re, sans en 6tre sir, que cela le deviendra un peu plus tout irheure.

J'ai donc dit que je n'avais pas encore commenc6. Je ne com-mencerai peut-Etre jamais et peut-etre ce colloque restera sans key-note, et pourtant j'ai d6jA commenc6. Je m'autorise-mais de queldroit?- multiplier les protocoles et les d&ours. J'avais commenc6par dire que j'6tais amoureux d'au moins deux de vos idiomes. L'unc'6tait "enforceability," l'autre c'est l'usage transitif du verbe "to ad-dress." En frangais on s'adresse A quelqu'un, on adresse une lettre ouune parole, usage aussi transitif, sans &re sir qu'elles arrivent A desti-nation, mais on n'adresse pas un probl~me. Ce soir, je me suis engag6par contrat i adresser en anglais un prohlme, c'est-i-dire A aller droitvers lui et droit vers vous, th6matiquement et sans detour, enm'adressant A vous dans votre langue. Entre le droit, la rectitude del'adresse, la direction et la droiture, on devrait trouver la communica-tion d'une ligne directe et se trouver dans la bonne direction. Pour-quoi la d6construction a-t-elle la r6putation, justifi6e ou non, de traiterdes choses obliquement, indirectement, en style indirect, avec "quota-tion marks" et en demandant toujours si les choses arrivent A l'adresse

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for all historical progress. But the paradox that I'd like to submit fordiscussion is the following: it is this deconstructible structure of law(droit), or if you prefer of justice as droit, that also insures the possi-bility of deconstruction. Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outsideor beyond law, is not deconstructible. No more than deconstructionitself, if such a thing exists. Deconstruction is justice: It is perhapsbecause law (droit) (which I will consistently try to distinguish fromjustice) is constructible, in a sense that goes beyond the oppositionbetween convention and nature, it is perhaps insofar as it goes beyondthis opposition that it is constructible and so deconstructible and,what's more, that it makes deconstruction possible, or at least thepractice of a deconstruction that, fundamentally, always leads toquestions of droit. 1. The deconstructibility of law (droit ), of legality,legitimacy or. legitimation (for example) makes deconstruction possi-ble. 2. The undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstructionpossible, indeed is inseparable from it. 3. The result: deconstructiontakes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructibility ofjustice from the deconstructibility ofdroit (authority, legitimacy, andso on).

In other words, the hypothesis and propositions toward whichI'm tentatively moving here call more for the subtitle: justice as thepossibility of deconstruction, the structure of law (droit) or of thelaw,. the foundation or the self-authorization of law (droit) as the pos-sibility of the exercise of deconstruction. I'm sure this isn't altogetherclear; I hope, though I'm not sure of it, that it will become a littleclearer in a moment.

I've said, then, that I have not yet begun. Perhaps I'll never be-gin and perhaps this colloquium will have to do without a "keynote,"except that I've already begun. I authorize myself-but by whatright?-to multiply protocols and detours. I began by saying that Iwas in love with at least two of your idioms. One was the word "en-forceability," the other was the transitive use of the verb "to address."In French, one addresses oneself to someone, one addresses a letter ora word, also a transitive use, without being sure that they will arriveat their destination, but one does not address. a problem. Tonight Ihave agreed by contract to address, in- English, a problem, that is togo straight toward it and straight toward you, thematically and with-out detour, in addressing myself to you in your language. Betweenlaw or right, the rectitude of address, direction and uprightness, weshould-be able to find a direct line of communication and to find our-selves on the right track. Why does deconstruction have the reputa-tion, justified or not, of treating things obliquely, indirectly, with

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indiquee? Cette reputation est-elle meritee? Et, merite ou non, com-ment l'expliquer?

Nous avons dja, dans le fait que je parle la langue de l'autre etromps avec la mienne, dans le fait que je me rende 'a l'autre, un singu-lier melange de force, de justesse et de justice.

Et je dois, c'est un devoir, "adresser" en anglais, comme vousdites dans votre langue, les probl6mes infinis, infinis dans leur nom-bre, infinis dans leur histoire, infinis dans leur structure, que recouvrele titre Deconstruction and the possibility of justice. Mais nous lesavons d~jA, ces problmes ne sont pas infinis parce qu'ils sont infini-ment nombreux ni parce qu'ils sont enracin6s dans l'infini dememoires et de cultures (religieuses, philosophiques, juridiques, etc.)que jamais nous ne maitriserons. Us sont infinis si on peut dire eneux-m~me, parce qu'ils exigent l'exp~rience meme de l'aporie qui n'estpas sans rapport avec ce que j'appelais tout A l'heure le mystique.Quand je dis qu'ils exigent m~me l'exp~rience de l'aporie, j'entendsdeux choses, d6ja assez compliqu6es. 1. Une experience est unetraversee, comme son nom l'indique, elle passe au travers et ,voyagevers une destination pour laquelle elle trouve le passage. L'experiencetrouve son passage, elle est possible. Or en ce sens, il ne peut y avoird'exp6rience pleine de l'aporie, c'est-i-dire de ce qui ne laisse pas lepassage. Une aporia, c'est un non-chemin. La justice serait de cepoint de vue l'exp6rience de ce dont nous ne pouvons fairel'exp6rience. Nous allons rencontrer tout i l'heure plus d'une aporiesans pouvoir les passer. Mais 2. je crois qu'il n'y a pas de justice sanscette exp6rience, tout impossible qu'elle est, de l'aporie. La justice estune exp6rience de l'impossible. Une volont6, un desir, une exigencede justice dont la structure ne serait pas une exp6rience de l'aporien'aurait aucune chance d'etre ce qu'elle est, a savoir juste appel de lajustice. Chaque fois que les choses passent ou se passent bien, chaquefois qu'on applique tranquillement une bonne regle a un cas particu-lier, A un exemple correctement subsume, selon un jugement determi-nant, on peut 8tre sfir que le droit y trouve peut 8tre son compte maiscertainement pas la justice. Le droit n'est pas la justice. Le droit estl'element du calcul, et il est juste qu'il y ait du droit, mais la justice estincalculable, elle exige qu'on calcule avec de l'incalculable; et les ex-periences aporetiques sont des experiences aussi improbables quen6cessaires de la justice, c'est-i-dire de moments oii la d6cision entrele juste et l'injuste n'est jamais assuree par une regle.

Je dois donc m'adresser A vous et "adresser" des probl&mes, jedois le faire bri6vement et dans une langue etrangre. Pour le fairebri~vement, je devrais le faire aussi directement que possible, allant

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'"quotation marks," and of always asking whether things arrive at theindicated address? Is this reputation deserved? And, deserved or not,how does one explain it?

And so we have already, in the fact that I speak another's lan-guage and break with my own, in the fact that I give myself up to theother, a singular mixture of force, justesse and justice.

And I am obliged, it is an obligation, to "address" in English, asyou say in your language, infinite problems, infinite in their number,infinite in their history, infinite in their structure, covered by the titleDeconstruction and the Possibility of Justice. But we already knowthat these problems are not infinite simply because they are infinitelynumerous, nor because they are rooted in the infinity of memories andcultures (religious, philosophical, juridical, and so forth) that we shallnever master. They are infinite, if we may say so, in themselves, be-cause they require the very experience of the aporia that is not unre-lated to what I just called the "mystical." When I say that theyrequire the very experience of aporia, I mean two already rather com-plicated things. 1. As its name indicates, an experience is a traversal,something that traverses and travels toward a destination for which itfinds the appropriate passage. The experience finds its way, its pas-sage, it is possible. And in this sense it is impossible to have a fullexperience of aporia, that is, of something that does not allow passage,An aporia is a non-road. From this point of view, justice would be theexperience that we are not able to experience. We shall soon encoun-ter more than one aporia that we shall not be able to pass. But, 2. Ithink that there is no justice without this experience, however impos-sible it may be, of aporia. Justice is an experience of the impossible.A will, a desire, a demand for justice whose structure wouldn't be anexperience of aporia would have no chance to be what it is, namely, acall for justice. Every time that something comes to pass or turns outwell, every time that we placidly apply a good rule to a particularcase, to a correctly subsumed example, according to a determinantjudgment, we can be sure that law (droit) may find itself accountedfor, but certainly not justice. Law (droit) is not justice. Law is theelement of calculation, and it is just that there be law, but justice isincalculable, it requires us to calculate with the incalculable; andaporetic experiences are the experiences, as improbable as they arenecessary, of justice, that is to say of moments in which the decisionbetween just and unjust is never insured by a rule.

And so I must address myself to you and "address" problems, Imust do it briefly and in a foreign language. To do it briefly, I oughtto do it as directly as possible, going straight ahead, without detour,

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tout droit, sans dtour, sans alibi historique, sans d6marche oblique,vers vous d'une part, les premiers destinataires suppos6s de ce dis-cours, mais en m~me temps, d'autre part, vers le lieu de d6cision es-sentiel pour lesdits probl~mes. L'adresse, comme la direction, commela rectitude, dit quelque chose du droit et ce qu'il ne faut pas manquerquand on veut la justice, quand on veut 8tre juste, c'est la rectitude de'adresse. I1 ne faut pas manquer d'adresse, dirais-je en frangais, maissurtout il ne faut pas manquer 'adresse, il ne faut pas se tromperd'adresse et l'adresse se trouve etre toujours singuli~re. Une adresseest toujours singuli~re, idiomatique, et la justice, comme droit, sembletoujours supposer la g6n6ralit6 d'une r~gle, d'une norme ou d'un im-p6ratif universel. Comment concilier 'acte de justice qui doittoujours concerner une singularit6, des individus, des groupes, des ex-istences irremplagables, l'autre ou moi comme l'autre, dans une situa-tion unique, avec la regle, la norme, la valeur ou l'imp6ratif de justicequi ont n6cessairement une forme generale, mime si cette g6n6ralit6prescrit une application chaque fois singuli~re? Si je me contented'appliquer une r~gle juste, sans esprit de justice et sans inventer enquelque sorte A chaque fois la r~gle et l'exemple, je serais peut-6tre il'abri du droit, agissant conform6ment au droit objectif, mais je neserais pas juste. J'agirais, dirait Kant, conformdment au devoir, maisnon par devoir ou par respect pour la loi. Est-il possible de dire: uneaction est non seulement l6gale, mais juste? Une personne est nonseulement dans son droit mais dans la justice? Un tel est juste, uned6cision est juste? Est-il possible de dire: je sais que je suis juste?Permettez-moi encore un detour.

S'adresser i l'autre dans la langue de rautre, c'est A la fois lacondition de toute justice possible, semble-t-il, mais cela parait nonseulement impossible en toute rigueur (puisque je ne peux parler lalangue de l'autre que dans la mesure o6 je me l'approprie et l'assimileselon ]a loi d'un tiers implicite) mais m~me exclu par la justice commedroit en tant qu'elle semble impliquer un 616ment d'universalit6, lerecours au tiers qui suspend l'unilat6ralit6 ou la singularit6 desidiomes.

Quand je m'adresse en anglais i quelqu'un, c'est toujours une6preuve pour moi. Pour mon destinataire, pour vous aussi, j'imagine.Plut6t que de vous expliquer pourquoi et de perdre du temps i lefaire, je commence in medias res, par quelques remarques qui lientpour moi la gravit6 angoissante de ce probl~me de langue a la questionde la justice, de la possibilit6 de la justice.

Premiire remarque: D'une part, pour des raisons fondamentales,il nous semble juste de "rendre la justice," comme on dit en frangais,

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without historical alibi, without obliqueness, toward you, supposedlythe primary addressees of this discourse,.but at the same time towardthe -place of essential decision for said problems. Address-as direc-tion, as rectitude-says .something about droit (law or right), andwhat we must not forget when we want justice, when we want to bejust, is the rectitude of address. Il ne faut pas manquer d'adresse, Imight say in French, but above all il ne faut pas manquer l'adresse,one mustn't miss the address, one mustn't mistake the address-and theaddress always turns out to be singular. An address is always singu-lar, idiomatic, and justice, as law (droit), seems always to suppose thegenerality of a-rule, a norm or a universal imperative. How are we toreconcile the act of justice that must always concern singularity, indi-viduals, irreplaceable groups and lives, the other or myself as other, ina unique situation, with rule, norm, value or the imperative of justicewhich necessarily have a general form, even if this generalityprescribes a singular application in each case? If I were content toapply a just rule, without a spirit of justice and without in some wayinventing the rule and the example for each case, I might be protectedby law (droit), my action corresponding to objective law, but I wouldnot be just. I would act, Kant would say, in conformity with duty, butnot through duty or out of respect for the law. Is it possible to say: anaction is not only legal, but also just? A person is not only within hisrights but also within justice? Such a man or woman is just, a deci-sion is just? Is it possible to say: I know that I am just? Allow meanother detour.

To address oneself to the other in the language of the other is, itseems, the condition of all possible justice, but apparently, in all rigor,it is not only impossible (since I cannot speak the language of theother except to the extent that I appropriate it and assimilate it ac-cording to the law of an implicit third) but even excluded by justice aslaw (droit), inasmuch as justice as right seems to imply an element ofuniversality, the appeal to a third party who suspends the unilateralityor singularity of the idioms.

When I address myself to someone in English, it is always anordeal for me. For my addressee, for you as well, I imagine. Ratherthan explain why and lose time in doing so, I begin in medias res, withseveral remarks that for me tie the agonizing gravity of this problemof language to the question of justice, of the possibility of justice.

First remark: On the one hand, for fundamental reasons, it seemsjust to us -to "rendre la justice," as one says in French, in a givenidiom, in a language in which all the subjects concerned are suppos-.edly competent, that is, capable of understanding and interpreting-

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dans un idiome donn6, dans une langue pour laquelle tous les sujetsconcernes sont supposes comp&ents, c'est-a-dire capables d'entendreet d'interpr&er, ceux qui &ablissent les lois, ceux qui jugent et ceuxqui sont jug6s, les temoins au sens large et au sens &roit, tous ceux quisont garants de l'exercice de la justice, ou plutot du droit. Il est in-juste de juger quelqu'un qui ne comprend pas la langue dans laquellela loi est inscrite ou le jugement prononce, etc. Nous pourrions multi-plier les exemples dramatiques de situations de violence o3 l'on jugedans un idiome que la personne ou le groupe de personnes jug6s necomprennent pas, parfois pas tr~s bien, parfois pas du tout. Et sileg~re ou subtile que soit ici la difference de comp&ence dans la mat-trise de I'idiome, la violence d'une injustice a commence quand tousles partenaires d'une communaut6 ne partagent pas, de part en part, lememe idiome. Comme, en toute rigueur, cette situation id6ale n'estjamais possible, on peut d6ja en tirer quelque cons6quence sur ce quele titre de notre conference appelle "la possibilit6 de la justice." Laviolence de cette injustice qui consiste a juger ceux qui n'entendentpas l'idiome dans lequel on pr6tend, comme on dit en frangais, que"justice est faite," ce n'est pas n'importe quelle violence, n'importequelle injustice. Cette injustice suppose que l'autre, la victime del'injustice de la langue, soit capable d'une langue en g6nral, soit unhomme comme animal parlant, au sens que nous, les hommes, don-nons A ce mot de langage. I1 fut d'ailleurs un temps qui n'est nilointain ni fini oui "nous les hommes" voulait dire "nous les europeensadultes males blancs carnivores et capables de sacrifices."

Dans l'espace o3i je situe ces propos ou reconstitue ce discours,on ne parlera pas d'injustice ou de violence a l'egard d'un animal,encore moins d'un v6g~tal ou d'une pierre. On peut faire souffrir unanimal, on ne dira jamais, au sens dit propre, qu'il est un sujet 16se, lavictime d'un crime, d'un meurtre, d'un viol ou d'un vol, d'unparjure,--et c'est vrai a fortiori, pense-t-on, pour ce qu'on appelle lev6g~tal ou le min6ral ou les espces interm6diaires comme l'6ponge. I1y a eu, il y a encore, dans l'esp6ce humaine beaucoup de "sujets" quine sont pas reconnus comme sujets et regoivent ce traitement del'animal (c'est toute l'histoire inachev6e A laquelle je faisais brieve-ment allusion il y a un instant). Ce qu'on appelle confus6mentl'animal, done le vivant en tant que tel et sans plus, n'est pas un sujetde la loi ou du droit. L'opposition du juste et de l'injuste n'a aucunsens i son sujet. Qu'il s'agisse des proc6s d'animaux (il y en a eu) oudes poursuites contre ceux qui infligent certaines souffrances auxanimaux (certaines legislations occidentales en pr6voient et parlentnon seulement des droits de l'homme mais du droit des animaux en

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those who establish the laws, those who judge and those who arejudged, witnesses in both the broad and narrow sense, all those whoare guarantors of the exercise of justice, or rather of droit. It is unjustto judge someone who does not understand the language in which thelaw is inscribed or the judgment pronounced, etc. We could give mul-tiple dramatic examples of violent situations in which a person orgroup of persons is judged in an idiom they do not understand verywell or at all. And however slight or subtle the difference of compe-tence in the mastery of the idiom is here, the violence of an injusticehas begun when all the members of a community do not share thesame idiom throughout. Since in all rigor this ideal situation is neverpossible, we can perhaps already draw some inferences about what thetitle of our conference calls "the possibility of justice." The violenceof this injustice that consists of judging those who don't understandthe idiom in which one claims, as one says in French, that 'justice estfaite," ("justice is done," "made") is not just any violence, any injus-tice. This injustice supposes that the other, the victim of the lan-guage's injustice, is capable of a language in general, is man as aspeaking animal, in the sense that we, men, give to this word lan-guage. Moreover, there was a time, not long ago and not yet over, inwhich "we; men" meant "we adult white male Europeans, carnivo-rous and capable of sacrifice."

In the space in which I'm situating these remarks or reconstitut-ing this discourse one would not speak of injustice or violence towardan animal, even less toward a vegetable or a stone. An animal can bemade to suffer, but we would never say, in a sense considered proper,that it is a wronged subject, the victim of a crime, of a murder, of arape or a theft, of a perjury-and this is true a fortiori, we think, forwhat we call vegetable or mineral or intermediate species like thesponge. There have been, there are still, many "subjects" amongmankind who are not recognized as subjects and who receive thisanimal treatment (this is the whole unfinished history I briefly alludedto a moment ago). What we confusedly call "animal," the livingthing as living and nothing else, is not a subject of the law or of law(droit). The opposition between just and unjust has no meaning inthis case. As for trials for animals (there have been some) or lawsuitsagainst those who inflict certain kinds of suffering on animals (legisla-tion in certain Western countries provides for this and speaks not onlyof the rights of man but also of the rights of animals in general), theseare considered to be either archaisms or still marginal and rare phe-nomena not constitutive of our culture. In our culture, carnivoroussacrifice is fundamental, dominant, regulated by the highest industrial

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g~n~ral), ce sont 1M, pense-t-on, soit des archaismes soit des ph6-nom~nes encore marginaux et rares, non constitutifs de notre culture.Dans notre culture, le sacrifice carnivore est fondamental, dominant,r6gl6 sur la plus haute technologie industrielle, comme l'est aussil'exp~rimentation biologique sur l'animal-si vitale i notremodemit6. Comme j'ai tent6 de le montrer ailleurs, I le sacrifice carni-vore est essentiel i la structure de la subjectivit6, c'est-a-dire aussi aufondement du sujet intentionnel et, sinon de la loi, du moins du droit,la difference entre la loi et le droit, la justice et le droit, la justice et laloi restant ici ouverte sur un abime. Je n'en approche pas pourl'instant, pas plus que je ne m'approcherai de l'affinite entre le sacri-fice carnivore, au fondement de notre culture et de notre droit, et tousles cannibalismes, symboliques ou non, qui structurentl'intersubjectivit6 dans l'allaitement, l'amour, le deuil et en verit6toutes les appropriations symboliques ou linguistiques.

Si on veut parler d'injustice, de violence ou de manque de respectenvers ce que nous appellons encore si confus~ment l'animal-la ques-tion est plus actuelle que jamais, et j'y inclus, donc, au titre de lad~construction, un ensemble de questions sur le carno-phallogocentr-isme-il faut reconsid6rer la totalit6 de l'axiomatique m&aphysico-anthropocentrique qui domine en Occident la pens6e du juste et del'injuste.

On entrevoit d6ji, d~s ce tout premier pas, une premiire conse-quence, i savoir qu'une approche deconstructrice des limites qui in-stituent le sujet humain (de pr6f6rence et paradigmatiquement le maleadulte, plut6t que la femme, l'enfant ou l'animal) en mesure du justeet de l'injuste, ne conduit pas n6cessairement a l'injustice, ni il'effacement d'une opposition entre le juste et l'injuste mais peut-&re,au nom d'une exigence plus insatiable de justice, A la r6interpr&ationde tout I'appareil de limites dans lesquelles une histoire et une cultureont pu confiner leur crit6riologie. Dans l'hypoth6se que je ne faisqu'effieurer superficiellement pour l'instant, ce qu'on appelle couram-ment la d6construction correspondrait non pas, selon la confusion quecertains ont int&t A r6pandre, A une abdication quasi nihiliste devantla question &hico-politico-jurique de la justice et devant l'oppositiondu juste et de l'injuste, mais A un double mouvement que jesch6matiserai ainsi:

1. Le sens d'une responsabilit6 sans limite, et donc n6cessaire-ment excessive, incalculable, devant ]a m6moire; et donc la tiche derappeler l'histoire, l'origine et le sens, donc les limites, des concepts de

I Cf. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, The University of Chicago Press, trans. Ben-nington and Bowlby, 1989. D'autres r6f6rences sont rassembl6es dans ce volume.

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technology, as is biological experimentation on animals-so vital toour modernity. As I have tried to show elsewhere,' carnivorous sacri-fice is essential to the structure of subjectivity, which is also to say tothe founding of the intentional subject and to the founding, if not ofthe law, at least of law (droit), the difference between the law and law(droit), justice and law (droit), justice and the law here remainingopen over an abyss. I will leave these problems aside for the moment,along with the affinity between carnivorous sacrifice, at the basis ofour culture and our law, and all the cannibalisms, symbolic or not,that structure intersubjectivity in nursing, love, mourning and, intruth, in all symbolic or linguistic appropriations.

If we wish to speak of injustice, of violence or of a lack of respecttoward what we still so confusedly call animals-the question is moretopical than ever, and so I include in it, in the name of deconstruction,a set of questions on carno-phallogocentrism-we must reconsider inits totality the metaphysico-anthropocentric axiomatic that domi-nates, in the West, the thought of just and unjust.

From this very first step we can already glimpse the first of itsconsequences, namely, that a deconstructionist approach to theboundaries that institute the human subject (preferably andparadigmatically the adult male, rather than the woman, child oranimal) as the measure of the just and the unjust, does not necessarilylead to injustice, nor to the effacement of an opposition between justand unjust but may, in the name of a demand more insatiable thanjustice, lead to a reinterpretation of the whole apparatus of boundarieswithin which a history and a culture have b.en able to confine theircriteriology. Under the hypothesis that I shall only touch lightlyupon for the moment, what is currently called deconstruction wouldnot correspond (though certain people have an interest in spreadingthis confusion) to a quasi-nihilistic abdication before the ethico-polit-ico-juridical question cf justice and before the opposition between justand unjust, but rather to a double movement that I will schematize asfollows:

1. The sense of a responsibility without limits, and so necessar-ily excessive, incalculable, before memory; and so the task of recallingthe history, the origin and subsequent direction, thus the limits, ofconcepts of justice, the law and law (droit), of values, norms, pre-scriptions that have been imposed and sedimented there, from then onremaining more or less readable or presupposed. As to the legacy wehave received under the name of justice, and in more than one Ian-

' Cf. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, The University of Chicago Press, trans. Ben-nington and Bowlby, 1989. Other references are collected in this volume.

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justice, de loi et de droit, des valeurs, normes, prescriptions qui s'ysont imposees et s6diment6es, restant dis lors plus ou moins lisibles oupresuppos6es. Quant A ce qui nous est 1'gue sous le nom de justice, eten plus d'une langue, la tiche d'une m6moire historique et interpr&a-tive est au coeur de la d6construction, non pas seulement commetfiche philologico-6tymologique, comme tiche d'historien, maiscomme responsabilit6 devant un h6ritage qui est en meme tempsl'hritage d'un imp6ratif ou d'un faisceau d'injonctions. La d6con-struction est d6ja engag6e par cette exigence de justice infinie qui peutprendre l'aspect de cette "mystique" dont je parlais tout A l'heure. I1faut &re juste avec la justice, et la premiere justice a lui rendre, c'estde l'entendre, lire, interpreter, d'essayer de comprendre d'oia ellevient, ce qu'elle veut de nous, sachant qu'elle le fait A travers des idi-omes singuliers (Diks Jus, justitia, justice, Gerechtigkeit, pour nouslimiter a des idiomes europeens qu'il serait peut-8tre aussi n6cessairede d6limiter vers ou a partir d'autres; nous reviendrons la-dessus) etsachant aussi que cette justice s'adresse toujours A des singularit6s, ala singularite de l'autre, malgre ou en raison m~me de sa pr&ention al'universalit6. Par consequent, ne jamais c6der sur ce point, tenir con-stamment en haleine un questionnement sur l'origine, les fondementset les limites de notre appareil conceptuel, th6orique ou normatifautour de la justice, c'est de la part de la d6construction tout sauf uneneutralisation de l'int6r&t pour la justice, une insensibilit6 a l'injustice.C'est au contraire une surench~re hyperbolique dans l'exigence de jus-tice, la sensibilit6 A une sorte de disproportion essentielle qui doit in-scrire l'exces et l'inadequation en elle et qui pousse A denoncer nonseulement des limites th6oriques mais des injustices concretes, aux ef-fets les plus sensibles, dans la bonne conscience qui s'arr&e dogmati-quement A telle ou telle d&ermination h6it6e de la justice.

2. Cette responsabilite devant la m6moire est une responsabilit6devant le concept m~me de responsabilit6 qui regle la justice et la jus-tesse de nos comportements, de nos decisions th6oriques, pratiques,ethico-politiques. Ce concept de responsabilit6 est ins6parable de toutun r6seau de concepts connexes (propri&6, intentionnalit6, volont6,conscience, conscience de soi, sujet, moi, personne, communaut6, d6-cision, etc.) et toute d6construction de ce reseau de concepts dans leur&at donn6 ou dominant peut ressembler A une irresponsabilisation aumoment meme otu, au contraire, c'est A un surcroit de responsabilit6que la deconstruction en appelle. Mais dans le moment ofi le cr6ditd'un axiome est suspendu par la d6construction, dans ce momentstructurellement necessaire, on peut toujours croire qu'il n'y a plus deplace pour la justice, ni pour la justice elle-m~me, ni pour l'int6r&

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guage, the task of a historical and interpretative memory is at theheart of deconstruction, not only as philologico-etymological task orthe historian's task but as responsibility in face of a heritage that is atthe same time the heritage of an imperative or of a sheaf of injunc-tions. Deconstruction is already engaged by this infinite demand ofjustice, for justice, which can take the aspect of this "mystique" Ispoke of earlier. One must be juste with justice, and the first way todo it justice is to hear, read, interpret it, to try to understand where itcomes from, what it wants of us, knowing that it does so throughsingular idioms (Diki Jus, justitia, justice, Gerechtigkeit, to limit our-selves to European idioms which it may also be necessary to delimit inrelation to others: we shall come back to this later) and also knowingthat this justice always addresses itself to singularity, to the singular-ity of the other, despite or even because it pretends to universality.Consequently, never to yield on this point, constantly to maintain aninterrogation of the origin, grounds and limits of our conceptual, the-oretical or normative apparatus surrounding justice is on deconstruc-tion's part anything but a neutralization of interest in justice, aninsensitivity toward injustice. On the contrary, it hyperbolicallyraises the stakes of exacting justice; it is sensitivity to a sort of essen-tial disproportion that must inscribe excess and inadequation in itselfand that strives to denounce not only theoretical limits but also con-crete injustices, with the most palpable effects, in the good consciencethat dogmatically stops before any inherited determination of justice.

2. This responsibility toward memory is a responsibility beforethe very concept of responsibility that regulates the justice and appro-priateness (justesse) of our behavior, of our theoretical, practical,ethico-political decisions. This concept of responsibility is inseparablefrom a whole network of connected concepts (property, intentionality,will, conscience, consciousness, self-consciousness, subject, self, per-son, community, decision, and so forth) and any deconstruction ofthis network of concepts in their given or dominant state may seemlike a move toward irresponsibility at the very moment that, on thecontrary, deconstruction calls for an increase in responsibility. But inthe moment that an axiom's credibility (crddit) is suspended bydeconstruction, in this structurally necessary moment, one can alwaysbelieve that there is no more room for justice, neither for justice itselfnor for theoretical interest directed toward the problems of justice.This moment of suspense, this period of ipochi, without which, infact, deconstruction is not possible, is always full of anxiety, but whopretends to be just by economizing on anxiety? And this anxiety-rid-den moment of Suspense-which is also the interval or space in which

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theorique qui se porte vers les problkmes de la justice. Ce moment desuspens, ce temps de l'ipochi, sans lequel en effet il n'y a pas ded6construction possible, est toujours angoissant, mais qui pr6tend 8trejuste en faisant l'6conomie de l'angoisse? Et ce moment de suspensangoissant--qui est aussi l'intervalle ou l'espacement oti des transfor-mations, voire des revolutions juridico-politiques ont lieu-ne peutatre motive, il ne peut trouver son mouvement et son 61an (un 61anqui, lui, ne peut 8tre suspendu) que dans l'exigence d'un surcroit oud'un suppl6ment de justice, donc dans l'exp6rience d'une inad6qua-tion ou d'une incalculable disproportion. Car enfin ofi la d6construc-tion trouverait-elle sa force, son mouvement ou sa motivation sinondans cet appel toujours insatisfait, au-dela des determinations donneesde ce qu'on appelle, dans des contextes determin6s, la justice, la pos-sibilit6 de la justice? Mais encore faut-il interpr6ter cette dispropor-tion. Si je disais que je ne connais rien de plus juste que ce quej'appelle aujourd'hui la deconstruction (rien de plus juste, je ne dis pasrien de plus 16gal ou de plus l6gitime), je sais que je ne manquerais pasde surprendre ou de choquer, non seulement les adversaires d6ter-min6s de ladite d6construction ou de ce qu'ils imaginent sous ce nom,mais m~me ceux qui passent ou se tiennent pour ses partisans ou sespraticiens. Donc je ne le dirai pas, du moins pas directement et sansla precaution de quelques detours.

Comme vous le savez, dans de nombreux pays, dans le pass6 etaujourd'hui encore, une des violences fondatrices de la loi ou del'imposition du droit etatique a consist6 a imposer une langue A desminorit6s nationales ou ethniques regroupees par 'Etat. Ce fut le casen France, au moins a deux reprises, d'abord quand le d6cret de Vil-lers-Cotteret a consolide l'unit6 de l'Etat monarchique en imposant lefranqais comme langue juridico-administrative et en interdisant que lelatin, langue du droit ou de l'Eglise, permit a tous les habitants duroyaume de se laisser representer dans une langue commune, par unavocat interprte, sans se laisser imposer cette langue particuli~requ'6tait encore le franqais. II est vrai que le latin 6tait d6ja une vio-lence et que de ce point de vue le passage du latin au franqais ne futque le passage d'une violence a une autre. Le deuxie'me grand mo-ment de l'imposition fut celui de la R6volution frangaise, quandl'unification linguistique prit parfois les tours p6dagogiques les plusr6pressifs, en tout cas les plus autoritaires. Je ne vais pas m'engagerdans l'histoire de ces exemples. On pourrait en prendre dans ce pays,aujourd'hui, ofi ce probleme linguistique est encore et sera longtempsaigu, pr6cis6ment en ce lieu oii les questions de la politique, del'6ducation et du droit sont inseparables.

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transformations, indeed juridico-political revolutions take place--can-not be motivated, cannot find its movement and its impulse (an im-pulse which itself cannot be suspended) except in the demand for anincrease in or supplement to justice, and so in the experience of aninadequation or an incalculable disproportion. For in the end, wherewill deconstruction find its force, its movement or its motivation if notin this always unsatisfied appeal, beyond the given determinations ofwhat we call, in determined contexts, justice, the possibility of justice?But it is still necessary to interpret this disproportion. If I were to saythat I know nothing more just than what I today call deconstruction(nothing more just, I'm not saying nothing more legal or more legiti-mate), I know that I wouldn't fail to surprise or shock not only thedetermined adversaries of said deconstruction or of what they imagineunder this name but also the very people who pass for or take them-selves to be its partisans or its practitioners. And so I will not say it,at least not directly and not without the precaution of several detours.

As you know, in many countries, in the past and in the present,one founding violence of the law or of the imposition of state law hasconsisted in imposing a language on national or ethnic minorities re-grouped by the state. This was the case in France on at least twooccasions, first when the Villers-Cotteret decree consolidated theunity of the monarchic state by imposing French as the juridico-ad-ministrative language and by forbidding that Latin, the language oflaw and of the Church, allow all the inhabitants of the kingdom to berepresented in a common language, by a lawyer-interpreter, withoutthe imposition of the particular language that French still was. It istrue that Latin was already a violent imposition and that from thispoint of view the passage from Latin to French was only the passagefrom one violence to another. The second major moment of imposi-tion was that of the French Revolution, when linguistic unificationsometimes took the most repressive pedagogical turns, or in any casethe most authoritarian ones. I'm not going to engage in the history ofthese examples. We could also find them in this country, today,where this linguistic problem is still acute and will be for a long time,precisely in this place where questions of politics, education and law(droit) are inseparable (and where a debate has been recently begunon "national standards" of education).

Now I am moving right along, without the least detour throughhistorical memory toward the formal, abstract statement of severalaporias, those in which, between law and justice, deconstruction findsits privileged site--or rather its privileged instability. Deconstructionis generally practiced in two ways or two styles, although it most

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Je vais maintenant tout droit, sans le moindre detour par lam6moire historique vers l'6nonce formel, abstrait, de quelques apo-ries, celles dans lesquelles, entre le droit et la justice, la d&constructiontrouve son site ou plut6t son instabilit6 privilegiee. En ge'neral lad6construction se pratique selon deux voies ou deux styles, que le plussouvent elle greffe l'un sur l'autre. L'un prend l'allure demonstrativeet apparemment non-historique de paradoxes logico-formels. L'autre,plus historique ou plus anamnsique, semble proc&ler par lectures detextes, interpretations minutieuses et g6n6alogies. Je vais me livrersuccessivement aux deux exercices.

J'nonce d'abord sechement, directement, j' "adresse" les aporiessuivantes. En fait il s'agit d'une seule aporie, d'un seul potentielaporetique qui se distribue i l'infini. Je ne prendrai que quelques ex-emples qui supposeront, expliciteront ou produiront peut-etre une dis-tinction difficile et instable entre la justice et le droit, entre la justice(infinie, incalculable, rebelle i la r6gle, 6trangere A la symetrie, h6-trogene et h&rotrope) et l'exercice de la justice comme droit, legi-timite ou l6galite, stabilisable et statutaire, calculable, syst~me deprescriptions r6gl&-s et codees. Je serais tent6, jusqu'a un certainpoint, de rapprocher le concept de justice-que je tends ' distinguerici du droit--de celui de Levinas, en raison de cette infinit6, juste-ment, et du rapport heteronomique a autrui, au visage d'autrui qui mecommande, dont je ne peux pas th6matiser l'infinite et dont je suisl'otage. Dans Totaliti et Infini ("Verit6 et justice," p. 62), Levinasecrit: "... la relation avec autrui--c'est-a-dire la justice"--qu'ildefinit ailleurs comme "droiture de l'accueil fait au visage" (p. 54).La droiture ne se rduit pas au droit, bien sir, encore que les deuxvaleurs ne soient pas sans rapport.

Levinas parle d'un droit infini: dans ce qu'il appelle'Thumanisme juif" dont la base n'est pas "le concept d' 'homme',"mais autrui; "l'6tendue du droit d'autrui" est "un droit pratiquementinfini" ("Un droit infini," in Du Sacrd au Saint. Cinq Nouvelles Lec-tures Talmudiques, pp. 17-18). L'6quite, ici, ce n'est pas l'galit6, laproportionalit6 calcul6e, la distribution 6quitable ou la justice distri-butive mais la dissym&rie absolue. Et la notion levinassienne de lajustice se rapprocherait plut8t de 1'6quivalent h6breu de ce que noustraduirions peut-&tre par saintet& Mais comme j'aurais d'autres ques-tions difficiles sur ce discours difficile de Levinas, je ne peux pas ici mecontenter de lui emprunter un trait conceptuel sans risquer des confu-sions ou des analogies. Je n'irai donc pas plus loin dans cette direc-tion. Tout serait encore simple si cette distinction entre justice etdroit 6tait une vraie distinction, une opposition dont le fonctionne-

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often grafts one on to the other. One takes on the demonstrative andapparently ahistorical allure of logico-formal paradoxes. The other,more historical or more anamnesic, seems to proceed through read-ings of texts, meticulous interpretations and genealogies. I will devotemy attention to these two practices in turn.

First I will drily, directly state, I will "address" the followingaporias. In fact there is only one aporia, only one potential aporeticthat infinitely distributes itself. I shall only propose a few examplesthat will suppose, make explicit or perhaps produce a difficult andunstable distinction between justice and droit, between justice (infi-nite, incalculable, rebellious to rule and foreign to symmetry, hetero-geneous and heterotropic) and the exercise of justice as law or right,legitimacy or legality, stabilizable and statutory, calculable, a systemof regulated and coded prescriptions. I would be tempted, up to acertain point, to compare the concept of justice-which I'm here try-ing to distinguish from law-to Levinas's, just because of this infinityand because of the heteronomic relation to others, to the faces of oth-erness that govern me, whose infinity I cannot thematize and whosehostage I remain. In Totaliti and Infini ("Verit6 et Justice," p. 62),Levinas writes: " . . . la relation avec autrui--c'est d dire la justice"(". . . the relation to others-that is to say, justice")-which he de-fines, moreover, as "droiture de l'accueilfait au visage" (p. 54) ("equi-table honoring of faces"). Equity (la droiture) is not reducible toright or law (le droit), of course, but the two values are not unrelated.

Levinas speaks of an infinite right: in what he calls "Jewish hu-manism," whose basis is not "the concept of man," but rather theother; "the extent of the right of the other" is "a practically infiniteright"; "l'dtendue du droit d'autrui [est] un droit pratiquement infini"("Un droit infini, " in Du Sacrd au Saint, Cinq Nouvelles LecturesTalmudiques, pp. 17-18). Here equity is not equality, calculated pro-portion, equitable distribution or distributive justice but rather abso-lute dissymmetry. And Levinas's notion of justice might sooner becompared to the Hebrew equivalent of what we would perhaps trans-late as "sanctity." But since Levinas's difficult discourse would giverise to other difficult questions, I cannot be content to borrow concep-tual moves without risking confusions or analogies. And so I will gono further in this direction. Everything would still be simple if thisdistinction between justice and droit were a true distinction, an oppo-sition whose functioning was logically regulated and permitted mas-tery. But it turns out that droit claims to exercise itself in the name ofjustice and that justice is required to establish itself in the name of a

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ment soit logiquement r6gl6 et maitrisable. Mais il se trouve que ledroit pr6tend s'exercer au nom de la justice et que la justice exige des'installer dans un droit qui doit 8tre "enforced." La d6constructionse trouve toujours entre les deux. Voici donc quelques exemplesd'apories.

1. Premiere aporie: l'dpokhe' de la rigle.Notre axiome commun, c'est que pour 8tre juste ou injuste et

pour exercer la justice, je dois 8tre libre et responsable de mon action,de mon comportement, de ma pens6e, de ma d6cision. On ne dira pasd'un tre sans libert6, ou du moins qui n'est pas libre dans tel ou telacte, que sa d6cision est juste ou injuste. Mais cette libert6 ou cetted6cision du juste doit, pour 8tre telle, suivre une loi ou une prescrip-tion, une r~gle. En ce sens, dans son autonomie m8me, dans sa libert6de suivre ou de se donner la loi, elle doit pouvoir 8tre de l'ordre ducalculable ou du programmable, par exemple comme acte d'equit.Mais si l'acte consiste simplement i appliquer une regle, i d6rouler unprogramme ou i effectuer un calcul, on le dira peut-8tre 16gal, con-forme au droit, et peut-8tre, par m6taphore, juste mais on aurait tortde dire que la decision a 6te juste.

Pour 8tre juste, la d6cision d'un juge, par exemple, doit nonseulement suivre une r~gle de droit ou une loi g6n6rale mais elle doit'assumer, l'approuver, en confirmer la valeur, par un acte

d'interpr6tation r6instaurateur, comme si ' la limite la loi n'existaitpas auparavant, comme si le juge l'inventait lui-m~me i chaque cas.Chaque exercice de la justice comme droit ne peut &re juste que sic'est un "fresh judgment" (j'emprunte cette expression anglaise il'article de Stanley Fish, "Force," in Doing What Comes Naturally).Ce "fresh judgment" peut bien, doit bien 8tre conforme 'a une loipr6existante, mais l'interpr6tation r6-instaurative, r6-inventive etlibrement d6cidante, responsable du juge requiert que sa "justice" neconsiste pas seulement dans la conformit6, dans l'activit6 conserva-trice et reproductrice du jugement. Bref pour qu'une decision soitjuste et responsable, il faut que dans son moment propre, s'il y en aun, elle soit i la fois r6gl6e et sans r6gle, conservatrice de la loi et assezdestructice ou suspensive de la loi pour devoir a chaque cas lareinventer, la re-justifier, la r6inventer au moins dans la reaffirmationet la confirmation nouvelle et libre de son principe. Chaque cas estautre, chaque d6cision est diff6rente et requiert une interpr6tation ab-solument unique, qu'aucune r~gle existante et cod6e ne peut ni ne doitabsolument garantir. Si du moins elle la garantit de fagon assuree,alors le juge est une machine i calculer-ce qui arrive-on ne dira pasqu'il est juste, libre et responsable. Mais on ne le dira pas non plus s'il

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law that must be "enforced." Deconstruction always finds itself be-tween these two poles. Here, then, are some examples of aporias.

1. First aporia: ipokh and rule.Our common axiom is that to be just or unjust and to exercise

justice, I must be free and responsible for my actions, my behavior,my thought, my decisions. We would not say of a being without free-dom, or at least of one without freedom in a given act, that its deci-sion is just or unjust. But this freedom or this decision of the just, if itis one, must follow a law or a prescription, a rule. In this sense, in itsvery autonomy, in its freedom to follow or to give itself laws, it musthave the power to be of the calculable or programmable order, forexample as an act of fairness. But if the act simply consists of apply-ing a rule, of enacting a program or effecting a calculation, we mightsay that it is legal, that it conforms to law, and perhaps, by metaphor,that it is just, but we would be wrong to say that the decision was just.

To be just, the decision of a judge, for example, must not onlyfollow a rule of law or a general law but must also assume it, approveit, confirm its value, by a reinstituting act of interpretation, as if ulti-mately nothing previously existed of the law, as if the judge himselfinvented the law in every case. No exercise of justice as law can bejust unless there is a "fresh judgment" (I borrow this English expres-sion from Stanley Fish's article, "Force," in Doing What Comes Natu-rally). This "fresh judgment" can very well-must very well-conform to a preexisting law, but the reinstituting, reinventive andfreely decisive interpretation, the responsible interpretation of thejudge requires that his "justice" not just consist in conformity, in theconservative and reproductive activity of judgment. In short, for adecision to be just and responsible, it must, in its proper moment ifthere is one, be both regulated and without regulation: it must con-serve the law and also destroy it or suspend it enough to have toreinvent it in each case, rejustify it, at least reinvent it in the reaffirma-tion and the new and free confirmation of its principle. Each case isother, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique in-terpretation, which no existing, coded rule can or ought to guaranteeabsolutely. At least, if the rule guarantees it in no uncertain terms, sothat the judge is a calculating machine-which happens-we will notsay that he is just, free and responsible. But we also won't say it if hedoesn't refer to any law, to any rule or if, because he doesn't take anyrule for granted beyond his own interpretation, he suspends his deci-sion, stops short before the undecidable or if he improvises and leavesaside all rules, all principles. It follows from this paradox that there isnever a moment that we can say in the present that a decision is just

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ne se r~fere 'a aucun droit, 'a aucune r~gle ou si, parce qu'il ne tientaucune regle pour donn e au-dela de son interpretation, il suspend sadecision, s'arrete ' l'ind6cidable ou encore improvise hors de touter~gle et de tout principe. De ce paradoxe, il suit qu'i aucun momenton ne peut dire prdsentement qu'une d6cision est juste (c'est-a-direlibre et responsable), ni de quelqu'un qu'il est un juste, ni encoremoins, 'ye suis juste." A la place de "juste," on peut dire l6gal oulgitime, en conformit6 avec un droit, des regles et des conventionsautorisant un calcul mais dont l'origine fondatrice ne fait que reculerle probl~me de la justice. Car au fondement ou l'institution de cedroit, le m~me probleme de la justice aura t6 pos6, violemmentr6solu, c'est-i-dire enterr6, dissimu6, refoul6. Le meilleur paradigmeest ici la fondation des Etats-Nations ou l'acte instituant d'une consti-tution qui instaure ce qu'on appelle en frang-ais l'&at de droit.

2. Deuxidme aporie: la hantise de l'inddcidableAucune justice ne s'exerce, comme droit, sans une decision qui

tranche. Cette d6cision ne consiste pas seulement dans sa forme fi-nale, par exemple une sanction p6nale, 6quitable ou non, dans l'ordrede la justice proportionnelle ou distributive. Elle commence, elledevrait commencer en droit ou en principe, dans l'initiative de pren-dre connaissance, de lire, de comprendre, d'interpreter la r~gle, etm~me de calculer. Car si le calcul est le calcul, la d&'ision de calculern'est pas de l'ordre du calculable, et ne doit pas l'8tre.

L'ind6cidable dont on associe souvent le theme i la d~construc-tion, ce n'est pas seulement l'oscillation entre deux significations oudeux regles contradictoires et tres d&ermin6es, mais 6galement imp6-ratives (par exemple ici le respect du droit universel et de l'6quit6 maisaussi de la singularit6 toujours h6t6rog~ne et unique de l'exemple nonsubsumable). L'ind6cidable n'est pas seulement l'oscillation ou la ten-sion entre deux d6cisions, c'est l'exp6rience de ce qui, &ranger, h6t6-rog~ne 'ordre du calculable et de la r~gle, doit cependant--c'est dedevoir qu'il faut parler--se livrer A la d6cision impossible en tenantcompte du droit et de la regle. Une d6cision qui ne ferait pasl'6preuve de l'ind6cidable ne serait pas une decision libre, elle ne seraitque l'application programmable ou le d6roulement d'un processus cal-culable. Elle serait peut-&tre 16gale, elle ne serait pas juste. Mais dansle moment de suspens de l'ind6cidable, elle n'est pas juste non plus,car seule une d6cision est juste. Et une fois l'6preuve de l'ind6cidablepass6e (si cela est possible), elle a de nouveau suivi une regle ou s'estdonn6 une r~gle, 'a invent& ou r6invent6e, reaffirm6e, elle n'est plusprdsentement juste, pleinement juste. A aucun moment une decisionne semble pouvoir &re dite pr6sentement et pleinement juste: ou bien

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(that is, free and responsible), or that someone is a just man--evenless, "I am just." Instead of "just," we could say legal or legitimate,in conformity with a state of law, with the rules and conventions thatauthorize calculation but whose founding origin only defers the prob-lem of justice. For in the founding of law or in its institution, thesame problem of justice will have been posed and violently resolved,that is to say buried, dissimulated, repressed. Here the best paradigmis the founding of the nation-states or the institutive act of a constitu-tion that establishes what one calls in French l'dtat de droit.

2. Second aporia: the ghost of the undecidable

Justice, as law, is never exercised without a decision that cuts,that divides. This decision does not simply consist in its final form,for example a penal sanction, equitable or not, in the order of propor-tional or distributive justice. It begins, it ought to begin, by right or inprinciple, with the initiative of learning, reading, understanding, in-terpreting the rule, and even in calculating. For if calculation is cal-culation, the decision to calculate is not of the order of the calculable,and must not be.

The undecidable, a theme often associated with deconstruction,is not merely the oscillation between two significations or two contra-dictory and very determinate rules, each equally imperative (for: ex-ample respect for equity and universal right but also for the alwaysheterogeneous and unique singularity of the unsubsumable example).The undecidable is not merely the oscillation or the tension betweentwo decisions, it is the experience of that which, though heterogene-ous, foreign to the order of the calculable and the rule, is stillobliged-it is of obligation that we must speak-to give itself up tothe impossible decision, while taking account of law and rules. A de-cision that didn't go through the ordeal of the undecidable would notbe a free decision, it would only be the programmable application orunfolding of a calculable process. It might be legal; it would not bejust. But in the moment of suspense of the undecidable, it is not justeither, for only a decision is just. And once the ordeal of the undecid-able is past (if that is possible), the decision has again followed a ruleor given itself a rule, invented it or reinvented, reaffirmed it, it is nolonger presently just, fully just. There is apparently no moment inwhich a decision can be called presently and fully just: either it hasnot yet been made according to a rule, and nothing allows us to call itjust, or it has already followed a rule-whether received, confirmed,conserved -or reinvented-which in its turn is not absolutely guaran-teed by anything; and, moreover, if it were guaranteed, the decisionwould be reduced to calculation and we couldn't call it just. That is

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elle n'est pas encore prise selon une regle, et rien ne permet de la direjuste, ou bien elle a d6ji suivi une regle-reque, confirm6e, conserv~eou r&invente--que rien ne garantit absolument i son tour; etd'ailleurs si elle tait garantie, la d6cision serait redevenue calcul et onne pourrait la dire juste. C'est pourquoi l'ipreuve de l'ind6cidabledont je viens de dire qu'elle doit tre travers6e par toute d6cisiondigne de ce nom, n'est jamais pass6e ou depasse, elle n'est pas unmoment surmonte ou releve (aufgehoben) dans la d6cision.L'ind6cidable reste pris, loge, comme un fant6me au moms, mais unfant6me essentiel, dans toute d6cision, dans tout evenement de d6ci-sion. Sa fantomaticite d6construit de l'int6rieur toute assurance depr6sence, toute certitude ou toute pr&endue crit6riologie nous as-surant de la justice d'une d6cision, en v6rit6 de l'6v6nement m~med'une d6cision. Qui pourra jamais assurer qu'une d6cision commetelle a eu lieu? Qu'elle n'a pas, selon tel ou tel d&our, suivi une cause,un calcul, une r~gle sans m~me ce suspens imperceptible qui marquetoute d6cision libre, au moment d'appliquer ou non une regle?

Toute l'axiomatique de la responsabilit6, de la conscience, del'intentionalite, de la proprie6t qui commande le discours juridiqueactuel et dominant, la cat6gorie de d6cision jusque dans ses recoursaux expertises m6dicales, est d'une fragilit6 et d'une grossieret6 the-orique que je n'ai pas besoin de souligner ici. Et les effets de cettelimitation sont assez concrets et assez massifs pour que je n'aie pasbesoin de donner d'exemples.

Cette deuxicme aporie ou cette deuxi~me forme de la m~meaporie fait d6ji apparaitre que la d6construction de toute prsumptiona la certitude d&erminante d'une justice pr6sente, op~re elle-m~me ipartir d'une "id&e de la justice" infinie, infinie parce qu'irr6ductible,irr6ductible parce que due i l'autre, due i l'autre, avant tout contrat,parce qu'elle est venue, la venue de I'autre comme singularit6 toujoursautre. Cette "id6e de la justice" me parait irr6ductible dans soncaract~re affirmatif, dans son exigence de don sans 6change, sans cir-culation, sans reconnaissance, sans cercle 6conomique, sans calcul etsans r~gle, sans raison ou sans rationalit6, au sens de la maltrise r6gu-latrice. On peut donc y reconnaitre, voire y accuser une folie. Etpeut-&re une autre sorte de mystique. Et la d6construction est follede cette justice-lI. Folle de ce d6sir de justice. Cette justice-la, quin'est pas le droit, est le mouvement mme de la d6construction 'l'oeuvre dans le droit et dans l'histoire du droit, dans l'histoire poli-tique et I'histoire tout court, avant m8me de se pr6senter comme lediscours qu'on intitule ainsi dans l'acad6mie ou la culture moderne, le"d6constructionnisme."

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why the ordeal of the undecidable that I just said must be gonethrough by any decision worthy of the name is never past or passed, itis not a surmounted or sublated (aufgehoben).moment in the decision.The undecidable remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost-but anessential ghost-in every decision, in every event of decision. Itsghostliness deconstructs from within any assurance of presence, anycertitude or any supposed criteriology that would assure us of the jus-tice of a decision, in truth of the very event of a decision. Who willever be able to assure us that a decision as such has taken place? Thatit has not, through such and such a .detour, followed a cause, a calcu-lation, a rule, without even that imperceptible suspense that marksany free decision, at the moment that a rule is, or is not, applied?

The whole axiomatic of responsibility, of conscience, of inten-tionality, of property that governs today's dominant juridical dis-course and the category of decision right down to its appeals tomedical expertise is so theoretically weak and crude that I need notemphasize it here. And the effects of these limitations are massiveand concrete enough that I don't have to give examples.

We can already see from this second aporia or this second formof the same aporia that the deconstruction of all presumption of adeterminant Certitude of a present justice itself operates on the basis ofan infinite "idea of justice," infinite because it is irreducible, irreduci-ble because owed to the other, owed to the other, before any contract,because it has come, the other's coming as the singularity that is al-ways other. This "idea of justice" seems to me to be irreducible in itsaffirmative character, in its demand of gift without exchange, withoutcirculation, without recognition or gratitude, without economic circi-larity, without calculation and without rules, without reason andwithout rationality. And so we can recognize in it, indeed accuse,identify a madness. And perhaps another sort of mystique. Anddeconstruction is mad about this kind of justice. Mad about this de-sire for justice. This kind of justice, which isn't law, is the very move-ment of deconstruction at work in law and the history of law, inpolitical history and history itself, before it even presents itself asthe discourse that the academy or modern culture labels"deconstructionism."

I would hesitate to assimilate too quickly this "idea of justice" toa regulative idea ,(in the Kantian sense), to a messianic promise or toother horizons of the same type. I am only speaking of a type, of thistype of horizon that would have numerous competing versions. Bycompeting I mean similar enough in appearance and always pretend-ing to absolute privilege and irreducible singularity. The singularity

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J'h6siterais a assimiler trop vite cette "id6e de la justice" a uneide r6gulatrice au sens kantien, a une promesse messianique ou ad'autres horizons de m'me type. Je parle seulement d'un type, de ceZype d'horizon dont les esp~ces seraient nombreuses et concurrentes.Concurrentes c'est-i-dire assez ressemblantes et pr6tendant toujoursau privilege absolu et A l'irreductible singularit6. La singularite dulieu historique-qui est peut-8tre le n6tre, qui est en tout cas celuiauquel je me r6f~re obscurement ici-nous permet d'entrevoir le typelui-m~me, comme l'origine, la condition, la possibilit6 ou ]a promessede toutes ses exemplifications (messianisme de type juif, chr6tien ouislamique, idee au sens kantien, eschato-tel6ol6gie de type n6o-hege-lien, marxiste ou post-marxiste, etc.). I1 nous permet aussi depercevoir et de concevoir la loi de la concurrence irr6ductible, maisdepuis un bord oui le vertige nous guette au moment ou nous nevoyons que des exemples et oii certains d'entre nous ne se sentent plusengag6s dans la concurrence: autre fagon de dire que nous risquonstoujours, d6sormais, (mais je parle ici au moins pour moi) de n'treplus, comme on dit en frangais "dans la course." Mais ne pas 8tre"dans la course" A l'int6rieur d'une all'e, ne permet pas de rester aud6part ou d'etre simplement spectateur, loin de 1A, au contraire. C'estpeut-tre, comme on dit aussi en frangais, cela m~me qui "fait courir,"plus fort et plus vite, par exemple la deconstruction.

3. Troisime aporie: l'urgence qui barre l'horizon du savoirUne des raisons pour lesquelles je garde ici une reserve A 1'6gard

de tous les horizons, par exemple de l'id6e regulatrice kantienne ou deI'avenement messianique, du moins dans leur interpretation conven-tionnelle, c'est que ce sont justement des horizons. Un horizon,comme son nom l'indique en grec, c'est ' la fois l'ouverture et la li-mite de l'ouverture qui d6finit soit un progr~s infini soit une attente.

Or la justice, si impr6sentable qu'elle soit, n'attend pas. C'est cequi ne doit pas attendre. Pour 8tre direct, simple et bref, disons ceci:une d6cision juste est toujours requise immediatement, "right away."Elle ne peut pas se donner l'information infinie et le savoir sans limitedes conditions, des regles ou des imperatifs hypoth6tiques qui pour-raient la justifier. Et m~me si elle en disposait, m~me si elle se donnaitle temps, tout le temps et tous les savoirs n6cessaires A ce sujet, lemoment de la ddcision, en tant que tel, reste toujours un moment finid'urgence et de pr6cipitation, d~s lors qu'il ne doit pas 8tre la cons6-quence ou l'effet de ce savoir th6orique ou historique, de cette r6-flexion ou de cette d6liberation, des lors qu'il marque toujours."interruption de la d6lib'ration juridico- ou ethico- ou politico-cogni-tive qui le precede, qui doit le prec6der. L'instant de la d6cision est

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of the historical place-perhaps our own, which in any case is the oneI'm obscurely referring to here-allows us a glimpse of the type itself,as the origin, condition, possibility or promise of all its exemplifica-tions (messianism of the Jewish, Christian or Islamic type, idea-in theKantian sense, eschato-teleology of the neo-Hegelian, Marxist orpost-Marxist type, etc.). It also allows us to perceive and conceive thelaw of irreducible competition (concurrence), but from a brink wherevertigo threatens to seize us the moment we see nothing but examplesand some of us no longer feel engaged in it; another way of saying thatfrom this point on we always run the risk (speaking for myself, atleast) of no longer being, as they say, "in the running" (dans lacourse) But not to be "in the running" on the inside track, does notmean that we can stay at the starting-line or simply be spectators-farfrom it. It may be the very thing that "keeps us moving,"(fait courir)with renewed strength and speed, for example, deconstruction.

3. Third aporia: the urgency that obstructs the horizon ofknowledge

One of the reasons I'm keeping such a distance from all thesehorizons-from the Kantian regulative idea or from the messianic ad-vent, for example, or at least from their conventional interpretation-is that they are, precisely, horizons. As its Greek name suggests, ahorizon is both the opening and the limit that defines an infinite pro-gress or a period of waiting.

But justice, however unpresentable it may be, doesn't wait.. It isthat which must not wait. To be direct, simple and brief, let us saythis: a just decision is always required immediately, "right away." Itcannot furnish itself with infinite information and the unlimitedknowledge of conditions, rules or hypothetical imperatives that couldjustify it. And even if it did have all that at its disposal, even if it didgive itself the time, all the time and all the necessary facts about thematter, the moment of decision, as such, always remains a finite mo-ment of urgency and precipitation, since it must not be the conse-quence or the effect of this theoretical or historical knowledge, of thisreflection or this deliberation, since it always marks the interruptionof the juridico- or ethico- or politico-cognitive deliberation that pre-cedes it, that must precede it. The instant-of decision is a madness,says Kierkegaard. This is particularly true of the instant of the justdecision that must rend time and defy dialectics. It is a madness.Even if time and prudence, the patience of knowledge and the masteryof conditions were hypothetically unlimited, the decision would bestructurally finite, however late it came, decision of urgency and pre-cipitation, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Not of

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une folie, dit Kierkegaard. C'est vrai en particulier de L'instant de lad6cision juste qui doit aussi d6ehirer le temps et d6fier les dialectiques.C'est une folie. Mme si le temps et la prudence, la patience du savoiret la maitrise des conditions 6taient par hypoth~se sans limite, la d6ci-sion serait structurellement finie, si tard qu'elle arrive, d6eisiond'urgence et de pr6cipitation, agissant dans la nuit du non-savoir et dela non-r~gle. Non pas de r'absence de r~gle et de savoir mais d'une r6-institution de ]a r~gle qui par definition n'est pr&ced6e d'aucun savoiret d'aucune garantie en tant que telle. Si on se flait i une distinctionmassive et tranchee du performatif et du constatif-problme danslequel je ne peux pas m'engager ici--on devrait mettre cette irr6duc-tibilit6 de l'urgence pr6cipitative, au fond cette irr6ductibilite del'irr6flexion et de l'inconscience, si intelligente soit-elle, au compte dela structure performative des speech acts et des actes tout courtscomme actes de justice ou de droit, qu'il soient performatifs in-stituants ou performatifs d6iv6s et supposant des conventions ante-rieures. Un constatif peut 8tre juste, au sens de la justesse, jamais ausens de la justice. Mais comme un performatif ne peut 8tre juste, ausens de la justice, qu'en se fondant sur des conventions et donc surd'autres performatifs ant6rieurs, enfouis ou non, il garde toujours enlui quelque violence irruptive, il ne r6pond plus aux exigences de larationalit6 th6orique. Tout 6nonce constatif reposant lui-meme surune structure performative au moins implicite ("je te dis que, je teparle, je m'adresse A toi pour te dire que ceci est vrai, qu'il en est ainsi,je te promets ou je te renouvelle la promesse de faire une phrase et designer ce que je dis quand je dis que, je te dis ou j'essaie de te dire lav6rit6," etc.), la dimension de justesse ou de v6rit des 6nonces th6o-rico-constatifs (dans tous les domaines, en particulier dans le domainede la th6orie du droit) pr6suppose donc toujours la dimension de jus-tice des 6nonc6s performatifs, c'est-A-dire leur essentielle pr6cipita-tion, qui ne va jamais sans une certaine dissym6trie et quelque qualit6de violence. C'est ainsi que je serais tent6 d'entendre la proposition deLevinas qui, dans un tout autre langage et selon une proc6dure discur-sive toute diff6rente, d6clare que "La v6rit6 suppose la justice" ("Var-it6 et justice," in Totaliti et infini, p. 62). En parodiantdangereusement l'idiome franqais, on finirait par dire: "La justice, y aqu'qa de vrai." Cela n'est pas sans cons6quence, inutile de le sou-ligner, quant au statut, si on peut encore dire, de la v6rit6.

Paradoxalement, c'est i cause de ce d6bordement du performatif,A cause de cette avance toujours excessive de linterpr6tation, A causede cette urgence et de cette pr6cipitation structurelles de la justice quecelle-ci n'a pas d'horizon d'attente (r6gulatrice ou messianique). Mais

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the absence of rules and knowledge but of a reinstitution of ruleswhich by definition is not preceded by any knowledge or by any guar-antee as such. If we were to trust in a massive and decisive distinctionbetween performative and constative-a problem I can't get involvedin here-we would have to attribute this irreducibility of precipitateurgency, at bottom this irreducibility of thoughtlessness and uncon-sciousness, however intelligent it may be, to the performative struc-ture of speech act and acts in general as acts of justice or law, whetherthey be performatives that institute something or derived performa-tives supposing anterior conventions. A constative can be juste(right), in the sense ofjustesse, never in the sense of justice. But as aperformative cannot be just, in the sense of justice, except by foundingitself on conventions and so on other anterior performatives, buried ornot, it always maintains within itself some irruptive violence, it nolonger responds to the demands of theoretical rationality. Since everyconstative utterance itself relies, at least implicitly, on a performativestructure ("I tell you that, I speak to you, I address myself to you totell you that this is true, that things are like this, I promise you orrenew my promise to you to make a sentence and to sign what I saywhen I say that, tell you, or try to tell you the truth," and so forth),the dimension of justesse or, truth of the theoretico-constative utter-ances (in all domains, particularly in the domain of the theory of law)always thus presupposes the dimension of justice of the performativeutterances, that is to say their essential precipitation, which never pro-ceeds without a certain dissymmetry and some quality of violence.That's how I would be tempted to understand the proposition ofLevinas, who, in a whole other language and following an entirelydifferent discursive procedure, declares that "La v6rit6 suppose la jus-tice" ("Truth supposes justice") ("Ve'ritd et justice" in Totalit6 et in-fini, 3. p. 62). Dangerously parodying the French idiom, we couldend up saying: "La justice, y a qu'qa de vrai." This is not withoutconsequence, needless to say, for the status, if we still can call it that,of truth.

Paradoxically, it is because of this overflowing of the performa-tive, because of this always excessive haste of interpretation gettingahead of itself, because of this structural urgency and precipitation ofjustice that the latter has no horizon of expectation (regulative ormessianic). But for this very reason, it may have an avenir, a "to-come," which I rigorously distinguish from the future that can alwaysreproduce the present. Justice remains, is yet, to come, d venir, it hasan, it is d-venir, the very dimension of events irreducibly to come. Itwill always have it, this d-venir, and always has. Perhaps it is for this

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par la-m~me, elle a peut-Atre justement un avenir (to-come) que je dis-tingue rigoureusement du futur qui peut toujours reproduire le pr6s-ent. La justice reste d venir, elle a, elle est i-venir, la dimension m~med'6venements irr6ductiblement i venir. Elle 'aura toujours, cet a-venir, et toujours eu. Peut-Atre est-ce pour cela que la justice, en tantqu'elle n'est pas seulement un concept juridique ou politique, ouvre Al'avenir la transformation, la refonte ou la refondation du droit et dela politique. "Peut-8tre," il faut toujours dire peut-tre pour la justice.I1 y a un avenir pour la justice et il n'y a de justice que dans la mesureo6 de l'6v6nement est possible qui, en tant qu'6v6nement, excede lecalcul, les r~gles, les programmes, les anticipations, etc. La justicecomme exp6rience de l'alt6rit6 absolue, est impr6sentable, mais c'estla chance de l'6v6nement et la condition de rhistoire. Une histoiresans doute m6connaissable, bien sfir, pour ceux qui croient savoir dequoi ils parlent sous ce mot, qu'il s'agisse d'histoire sociale, id6o-logique, politique, juridique, etc.

Cet exces de la justice sur le droit et sur le calcul, del'impr6sentable sur le d6terminable ne peut pas et ne doit pas servird'alibi pour s'absenter des luttes juridico-politiques, ' l'interieur d'uneinstitution ou d'un Etat, d'une institution ou d'un Etat aux autres.Abandonn6e i elle seule, l'idee incalculable et donatrice de la justiceest toujours au plus pros du mal, voire du pire car elle peut toujours8tre r6appropri6e par le calcul le plus pervers. C'est toujours possible.La justice incalculable commande donc de calculer. Et d'abord auplus proche de ce A quoi on associe la justice, i savoir le droit, lechamp juridique qu'on ne peut isoler dans des fronti6res sfires, maisaussi dans tous les champs dont on ne peut pas le separer, qui in-terviennent en lui et qui ne sont plus seulement des champs: l'thique,le politique, l'6conomique, le psycho-sociologique, le philosophique, lelitt6raire, etc. Non seulement il faut calculer, n6gocier le rapport en-tre le calculable et l'incalculable, et n6gocier sans r~gle qui ne soit Ar6-inventer 1A o6f nous sommes "jet6s," l off nous nous trouvons; maisil faut le faire aussi loin que possible, au-deli du lieu oi nous noustrouvons et au-deli des zones d6jA identifiables de la morale, de lapolitique ou du droit, au-delA de la distinction entre le national etl'international, le public et le priv, etc. La politisation, par exemple,est interminable m~me si elle ne peut et ne doit jamais &re totale.Pour que cela ne soit pas un truisme ou une trivialite, il faut en recon-naltre ]a cons6quence suivante: chaque avanc6e de la politisationoblige a reconsidrer, donc i r6interpr6ter les fondements memes dudroit tels qu'ils avaient 6t6 pr6alablement calcul6s ou delimit6s. Celafut vrai par exemple ' la D6claration des droits de l'homme, A

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reason that justice, insofar as it is not only a juridical or political con-cept, opens up for I'avenir the transformation, the recasting orrefounding of law and politics. "Perhaps," one must always say per-haps for justice. There is an avenir for justice and there is no justiceexcept to the. degree that some event is possible which, as event, ex-ceeds calculation, rules, programs, anticipations and so forth. Justiceas the experience of absolute alterity is unpresentable, but it is thechance of the event and the condition of history. No doubt an un-recognizable history, of course, for those who believe they know whatthey're talking about when they use this word, whether it's a matter ofsocial, ideological, political, juridical or some other history.

That justice exceeds law and calculation, that the unpresentableexceeds the determinable cannot and should not serve as an alibi forstaying out of juridico-political battles, within an institution or a stateor between one institution or state and others. Left to itself, the incal-culable and giving (donatrice) idea of justice is always very close tothe bad, even to the worst for it can always be reappropriated by themost perverse calculation. It's always possible. And so incalculablejustice requires us to calculate. And first, closest to what we associatewith justice, namely, law, the juridical field that one cannot isolatewithin sure frontiers; but also in all the fields from which, we cannot'separate it, which intervene in it and are no longer simply fields: eth-ics, politics, economics, psycho-sociology, philosophy, literature, etc.Not only must we calculate, negotiate the relation between the calcu-lable and the incalculable, and negotiate without the sort of rule thatwouldn't have to be reinvented there where we are cast, there wherewe find ourselves; but we must take it as far as possible, beyond theplace we find ourselves and beyond the already identifiable zones ofmorality.or politics or law, beyond the distinction between nationaland international, public and private, and so on. Politicization, forexample, is interminable even if it cannot and should not ever be total.To keep this from being a truism or a triviality, we must recognize init the following consequence: each advance in politicization obligesone to reconsider, and so to reinterpret the very foundations of lawsuch as they had previously been calculated or delimited. This wastrue for example in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, in the aboli-tion of slavery, in all the emancipatory battles that remain and willhave to remain in progress, everywhere in the world, for men and forwomen. Nothing seems to me less outdated than the classicalemancipatory ideal. We cannot attempt to disqualify it today,whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without treating ittoo lightly and forming the worst complicities. But beyond these

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l'abolition de 1'esclavage, dans toutes les luttes 6mancipatoires quirestent et devront rester en cours, partout dans le monde, pour leshommes et pour les femmes. Rien ne me semble moins pefime que leclassique id6al 6mancipatoire. On ne peut tenter de le disqualifieraujourd'hui, que ce soit de fagon grossiere ou sophistiqu6e, sans aumoins quelque lgeret6 et sans nouer les pires complicit6s. Mais au-deli de ces territoires identifi6s de la juridico-politisation a grande6chelle g6o-politique, d'autres zones doivent constamment s'ouvrirqui peuvent d'abord ressembler a des zones secondaires oumarginales. Cette marginalit6 signifie aussi qu'une violence, voire unterrorisme et d'autres formes de prise d'otage sont A l'oeuvre (les ex-emples les plus proches de nous seraient A chercher du c6t6 des loissur l'enseignement et la pratique des langues, la 16gitimation des ca-nons, l'utilisation militaire de la recherche scientifique, l'avortement,l'euthanasie, les probl~mes de greffe d'organes, de conception extra-ut6rine, la bio-engeenerie, l'exp6rimentation m6dicale, le traitementsocial du Sida, les macro- ou micro-politiques de la drogue, des home-less, etc., sans oublier, bien entendu, le traitement de ce qu'on appellela vie animale, l'animalit6. Sur ce dernier probleme, le texte de Benja-min que j'aborde maintenant montre bien que son auteur n'y fut passourd ou insensible, meme si ses propositions a ce sujet restent bienobscures sinon bien traditionnelles).

II.

Si je n'ai pas 6puis6 votre patience, abordons maintenant, dans un

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identified territories of juridico-politicization on the grand geo-polit-ical scale, other areas must constantly open up that at first can seemlike secondary or marginal areas. This marginality also signifies thata violence, indeed a terrorism and other forms of hostage-taking are atwork (the examples closest to us would be found in the area of lawson the teaching and practice of languages, the legitimization of ca-nons, the military use of scientific research, abortion, euthanasia,problems of organ transplant, extra-uterine conception, bio-engineer-ing, medical experimentation, the social treatment of AIDS, themacro- or micro-politics of drugs, the homeless, and so on, withoutforgetting, of course, the treatment of what we call animal life, ani-mality. On this last problem, the Benjamin text that I'm coming tonow shows that its author was not deaf or insensitive to it, even if hispropositions on this subject remain quite obscure, if not quitetraditional).

PART Two*

If I have not exhausted your patience, let us now approach, in

* As promised above, we here include the introduction to this part of the lecture as it was

delivered at the UCLA colloquium on' "Nazism and the 'Final'Slution" "'"Rightly or wrongly, I thought that it would perhaps not be entirely inappropriate to

interrogate a text by Walter Benjamin, singularly an essay written in 1921 and entitled ZurKritik der Gewalt (Critique of Violence), at the opening of such a meeting on Nazism, the FinalSolution, and the limits of representation, especially since my lecture is also presented (and Iam greatly honored by this double hospitality) under the auspices of a center for CriticalStudies and the Human Sciences. If I have therefore chosen to present a somewhat riskyreading of this text by Benjamin, it is for several reasons that seem to converge here.

.I. I believe this uneasy, enigmatic, terribly equivocal text is, as it were, haunted inadvance (but can one say "in advance" here?) by the theme of radical destruction,extermination, total annihilation, beginning with the annihilation of the law and of right, if notof justice, and, among those rights, human rights, at least such as these are interpreted within atradition of natural law of the Greek type or the "Auklarung" type. I purposely say that thistext is haunted by the themes of exterminating violence because first of all, as I will try todemonstrate, it is haunted by haunting itself, by a quasi-logic of the phantom which, because itis the more forceful one, should be substituted for an ontological logic of presence, absence orrepresentation. Now, I ask myself whether a community that assembles or gathers itselftogether in order to think what there is to be thought and gathered of this nameless thing thathas been called the "final solution" does not have to show, first of all, its readiness to welcomethe law of the phantom, the spectral experience and the memory of the phantom, of that whichis neither dead nor living, more than dead and more than living, only surviving, the law of themost commanding memory, even though it is the most effaced and the most effaceable, but forthat very reason the most demanding.

This text by Benjamin is not only signed by a thinker who is considered and consideredhimself to be, in a certain fashion, Jewish (and I most especially would like to talk about theenigma of this signature). Zur Kritik der Gewalt is also inscribed in a Judaic perspective thatopposes just, divine (Jewish) violence that would destroy the law to mrythical violence (of theGreek tradition) that would install and conserve the law.

2. The profound logic of this essay puts to work an interpretation of language-of the

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origin and the experience of language-according to which evil, that is to say lethal power,comes to language by way of, precisely, representation, in other words, by that dimension oflanguage as means of communication that is re-presentative, mediating, thus technical, utilita-rian, semiotic, informational-all of those powers that uproot language and cause it to decline,to fall far from or outside of its originary destination which was appellation, nomination, thegiving or the appeal of presence in the name. We will ask ourselves how this thinking aboutthe name is articulated with haunting and the logic of the specter. This essay by Benjamin,which treats thus of evil, of that evil that is coming and that comes to language throughrepresentation, is also an essay in which the concepts of responsibility and of culpability, ofsacrifice, decision, solution, punishment or expiation play a major role, one which is most oftenassociated with the value of what is demonic and "demonically ambiguous" (da'nonischzweideutig).

3. Zur Kritik der Gewalt is a critique of representation not only as perversion and fall oflanguage, but as a political system of formal and parliamentarydemocracy. From that pointof view, this revolutionary essay (revolutionary in a style that is at once marxist and messianic)belongs, in 1921, to the great anti-parliamentary and anti-"Aujkldrung" wave on which Na-zism so to speak surfaced and even surfed in the '20's and the beginning of the '30's.

4. This very polyhedric and polysemic question of representation is posed as well fromanother point of view in this strange essay. Having begun by distinguishing between two sortsof violence, founding violence and conserving violence, Benjamin must concede at one momentthat the one cannot be so radically heterogeneous to the other since the violence called found-ing violence is sometimes represented (reprdsentiert) by the conserving violence.

For all of these reasons and according to all of these interlaced threads to which I amgoing to return, one can ask oneself a certain number of questions. They will be on the horizonof my reading even if I do not have the time here or the means to make them explicit. Whatwould Benjamin have thought, or at least what thought of Benjamin is potentially formed orarticulated in this essay-and can it be anticipated-on, the "final solution," its project, itsmise en oeuvre, the experience of its victims, the judgments, trials, interpretations, narrative,explicating, literary, historical representations which have attempted to measure up to it?How would Benjamin have spoken, how would he have wished one to speak, to represent, or toforbid oneself from representing the "final solution"? How might he have attempted to iden-tify it, to assign places in it, origins to it, responsibilities for it (as a philosopher, a historian,judge or jurist, as moralist, man of faith, poet, filmmaker). The very singular multiplicity ofthe codes that converge in this text, to say nothing of other texts; the graft of the language ofmarxist revolution on that of messianic revolution, both of them announcing not only a newhistorical epoch, but also the beginning of a true history that has been rid of myth; all of thismakes it difficult to propose any hypotheses about a Benjaminian discourse on the "final solu-tion" or about a Benjaminian discourse on the possibility or impossibility of a discourse on the"final solution." A "final solution" of which it would be reckless to say, relying on the objec-tive dates of the Wannsee conference in 1942 and Benjamin's suicide on the Franco-Spanishborder in 1940, that Benjamin knew nothing about it. One will always find ways to supportthe hypothesis according to which Benjamin, already in 1921, was thinking about nothing elsethan the possibility of this final solution that would be all the more challenging to the order ofrepresenation from having perhaps arisen, in his view, from radical evil, from the fall as fall oflanguage into representation. And if one relies on a constant logic of his discourse, many signsallow one to think that for Benjamin, after this unrepresentable thing that will have been the"final solution," not only are discourse and literature and poetry not impossible but, moreoriginarily and more eschatologically than ever, they must offer themselves to the dictation ofthe return or the still promised advent of a language of names, a language or a poetics ofappellation, in opposition to a language of signs, of informative or communicative representa-tion: beyond myth and representation but not beyond the language of names. Something I triedto show elsewhere about Celan on the subject of dates and acts. At the end, after the end of a

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autre style, la lecture promise d'un texte bref et d6routant de Benja-min. Ii s'agit de Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1921), traduit par Critique ofViolence (in Reflections, p. 277). Je n'ose pas dire que ce texte estexemplaire. Nous sommes dans un domaine oii il n'y a, finalement,que des exemples singuliers. Rien n'est absolument exemplaire. Je netenterai pas de justifier absolument le choix de ce texte. Mais je diraispourquoi ce n'est pas le plus mauvais exemple de ce qui pourrait etreexemplaire dans un contexte relativement d6termin6 comme le n6tre.

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another style, the promised reading of a brief and disconcerting Ben-jamin text. I am speaking of Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1921), translatedas Critique of Violence (in Reflections, p. 277). I will not presume tocall this text exemplary. We are in a realm where, in the end, thereare only singular examples. Nothing is absolutely exemplary. I willnot attempt to justify absolutely the choice of this text. But I could

reading in the course of which the horizon of Nazism and the final solution will appear onlythrough signs or brief flashes of expectation and will be treated only in a virtual, oblique orelliptical fashion, I will propose a few hypotheses on the ways in which this text from 1921 cantoday be read, after the event of Nazism and the event of the final solution.

Before proposing a reading of this singular text, before articulating some questions thatconcern it more strictly, I must also say a few words, in this already too lengthy introduction,about the contexts in which I began to read the essay. That context was double and I willdefine it as schematically as possible, while limiting myself to the aspects that may interest ushere, this evening, because they will have left some traces on my reading.

1. First of all, within a three-year seminar on "philosophical nationalities and national-isms," there was a year-long sequence subtitled Kant, the Jew, the German in which, whilestudying the varied but insistent recurrence of the reference to Kant, indeed to a certain Juda-ism in Kant, on the part of all those who, from Wagner and Nietzsche to Adorno, sought torespond to the question "Was ist Deutsch?", I became very interested in what I then called theJudeo-German psyche, that is, the logic of certain phenomena of a disturbing sort of specu-larity (Psychd also meaning in French a sort of mirror) that was itself reflected in some of thegreat German Jewish thinkers and writers of this century: Cohen, Buber, ,Rosenzweig,Scholem, Adorno, Arendt-and, precisely, Benjamin. I believe that a serious reflection onNazism--and the "final solution"--cannot avoid a-courageous, interminable and polyhedralanalysis of the history and structure of this Judeo-German "psyche." Among other things thatI cannot go into here, we studied certain analogies, which were sometimes of the most equivo-cal and disquieting sort, between the discourse of certain "great German" thinkers and'certain"great German Jewish" thinkers, a certain German patriotism, often a German nationalism,and sometimes even a German militarism (during and after the First World War) being not theonly example, far from it, for instance in Cohen or Rosenzweig or, to some extent, in Husserl.It is in this context that certain limited but determinable affinities between Benjamin's text andsome texts by Carl Schmitt, even by Heidegger, began to intrigue me. Not only because of thehostility to parliamentary democracy, even to democracy as such, or to the Au/klarung, notonly because of a certain interpretation of the polemos, of war, violence and language, but alsobecause of a thematic of "destruction" that was very widespread at the time. AlthoughHeideggerian Destruktion cannot be confused with the concept of Destruction that was also atthe center of Benjaminian thought, one may well ask oneself what such an obsessive thematicmight signify and what it is preparing or anticipating between the two wars, all the more so inthat, in every case, this destruction also sought to be the condition of an authentic traditionand memory, and of the reference to an originary language.

2. Other context: On the occasion of a recent colloquium held at the Cardozo LawSchool of Yeshiva University of New York on the topic "Deconstruction and the Possibility ofJustice," I began, after a long consideration of "Deconstruction and Justice," to examine thistext by Benjamin from another point of view. I followed there precisely, and as cautiously aspossible, a dismaying trajectory, one that is at the same time aporetic and productive of strangeevents in its very aporia, a kind of self-destruction, if not a suicide of the text, that lets no otherlegacy appear than the violence of its signature-but as divine signature. How to read this textwith a "deconstructive" gesture that is neither, today any more than it has ever been, Heideg-gerian nor Benjaminian? In brief, that is the difficult and obscure question that this readingwould like to risk putting forth.

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1. L'analyse de Benjamin r6fl6chit la crise du mod/1e europeende la democratie bourgeoise, lib6rale et parlementaire, et donc du con-cept de droit qui en est inseparable. L'Allemagne de la d6faite estalors un lieu de concentration extreme pour cette crise dontl'originalit tient aussi i certains traits modernes comme le droit degrave, le concept de grave g6n6rale (avec ou sans ref6rence i Sorel).C'est aussi le lendemain d'une guerre et d'une avant-guerre qui a vu sed6velopper mais 6chouer en Europe le discours pacifiste, l'anti-militarisme, la critique de la violence, y compris de la violencejuridico-policiere, ce qui ne tardera pas i se rep&er dans les ann6esqui suivent. C'est aussi le moment oii les questions de la peine demort et du droit de punir en gen6ral connaissent une actualit6douloureuse. La mutation des structures de l'opinion publique enraison de l'apparition de nouvelles puissances m6diatiques, comme laradio, commence 'a mettre en question ce module lib&al de la discus-sion ou de la d61ib6ration parlementaire dans la production des lois,etc. Autant de conditions qui motivent les pensees de juristes alle-mands comme Carl Schmitt, pour ne citer que lui. J'ai donc aussi 6teint6ress6 par quelques indices historiques. Par exemple ce texte, i lafois "mystique," au sens surdetermin6 qui nous int6resse ici, et hyper-critique, ce texte qui, par certains traits, peut &re lu comme une greffede mystique n6o-messianique juive sur un n6o-marxisme post-sorelien(ou l'inverse) a valu 'a Benjamin, des sa parution, une lettre de f6licita-tions de Carl Schmitt, ce grand juriste conservateur catholique, en-core constitutionnaliste i l'6poque mais dont vous connaissezl'6trange conversion i l'hitlerisme en 1933 et la correspondance qu'ilentretiendra avec Benjamin. Mais aussi avec Heidegger. Quant auxanalogies entre Zur Kritik der Gewalt et certains tours de la pens6eheideggerienne, elles n'6chapperont i personne, notamment autourdes motifs du Walten et de Gewalt. Zur Kritik der Gewalt conclut surde la violence divine (gdttliche Gewalt) et Walter dit pour finir decette violence divine qu'on peut 'appeler die waltende (Die g6ttlicheGewalt. . . mag die waltende heissen): "Divine violence... may becalled sovereign violence." ". . . die waltende heissen" sont lesderniers mots du texte. C'est ce r6seau historique de contrats 6qui-voques qui m'int6resse dans sa n6cessit6 et dans ses dangers memes.Dans les d6mocraties occidentales de 1989, avec du travail et un cer-tain nombre de pr6cautions, des le~ons peuvent encore en &re tir6es.

2. Ce texte m'a paru exemplaire, jusqu'i un certain point, dansla mesure oi), compte tenu de la th6matique de notre colloque, il seprete i un exercice de lecture d~constructive, ce que je vais essayer demontrer.

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say why it is not the worst example of what might be exemplary in arelatively determined context such as ours.

1. Benjamin's analysis reflects the crisis in the European modelof bourgeois, liberal, parliamentary democracy, and so the crisis inthe concept-of droit that is inseparable from it. Germany in defeat isat this time a place in which this crisis is extremely sharp, a crisiswhose originality also comes from certain modem features like theright to strike, the concept of the general strike (with or without refer-ence to Sorel). It is also the aftermath of a war and a pre-war thatsaw the European development and failure of pacifist discourse, anti-militarism, the critique of violence, including juridico-police violence,which will soon be repeated in the years to follow. It is also the mo-ment in which questions of the death penalty and of the right to pun-ish in general are painfully current. Change in the structures ofpublic opinion, thanks to the appearance of new media powers such asradio, begin to put into question this liberal model of parliamentarydiscussion or deliberation in the production of laws and so forth.Such conditions motivated the thoughts of German jurists like CarlSchmitt, to mention only him. And so I. was also interested by severalhistorical indices. For example, this text, at once "mystical" (in theoverdetermined sense that interests us here) and hypercritical, thistext which, in certain respects, can be read as neo-messianical Jewishmysticism (mystique) grafted onto post-Sorelian neo-Marxism (or thereverse), upon its publication won Benjamin a letter of congratula-tions from Carl Schmitt, that great conservative Catholic jurist, still aconstitutionalist at the time; but you are already familiar with hisstrange conversion to Hitlerism in 1933 and his correspondence withBenjamin. But also with Heidegger. As for analogies between ZurKritik der Gewalt and certain turns of Heideggerian thought, they areimpossible to miss, especially those surrounding the motifs of Waltenand Gewalt. Zur Kritik der Gewalt concludes with divine violence(gottliche Gewalt) and in the end Walter says of divine violence thatwe might call it die waltende (Die gottliche Gewalt . . . mag diewaltende heiBen): "Divine violence... may be called sovereign vio-lence." ".... die waltende hei Ben" are the last words of the text. It isthis historical network of equivocal contracts that interests me in itsnecessity and in its very dangers. In the Western democracies of1989, with work and a certain number of precautions, lessons can stillbe drawn from it.

2. Keeping in mind the thematic of our colloquium, this textseemed exemplary to me, up to a point, to the degree that it lendsitself to an exercise in deconstructive reading, as I shall try to show.

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3. Mais cette deconstruction est en quelque sorte l'op6ration ouplut6t l'experience meme que ce texte, me semble-t-il, fait d'abord lui-meme, de lui-m~me, sur lui-m~me. Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? Est-ce possible? Que reste-t-il alors d'un tel 6v6nement? de son auto-het6ro-d6construction? de son juste et injuste inach~vement? Qu'est-ce que la ruine d'un tel ev6nement ou la blessure ouverte d'une tellesignature? En quoi consiste aussi sa force, pr6cisement au sens deGewalt, c'est-i-dire i la fois sa violence, son autorit6 et sa 16gitimite?Voila une de mes questions. C'est une question sur la possibilit6 de ladeconstruction. Si vous me permettez de me citer, il m'est arrived'crire que "the most rigorous deconstructions have never claimed tobe [ .... ] possible. And I would say that deconstruction loses nothingfrom admitting that it is impossible; and also that those who wouldrush to delight in that admission lose nothing from having to wait.For a deconstructive operation possibility would rather be the danger,the danger of becoming an available set of rule-governed procedures,methods, accessible approaches. The interest of deconstruction, ofsuch force and desire as it may have, is a certain experience of theimpossible" ("Psych6: Invention of the Other," in Reading de ManReading (University of Minnesota Press, p. 36, tr. C. Porter).

La d6monstration de Benjamin concerne donc la question dudroit (Recht). Elle veut meme inaugurer, on pourra le dire en touterigueur dans un instant, une "philosophie du droit." Et celle-ci sem-ble s'organiser autour d'une s6rie de distinctions qui toutes paraissentinteressantes, provocantes, n6cessaires jusqu'a' un certain point maisqui, me semble-t-il, restent radicalement problmatiques.

I1 y a d'abord la distinction entre deux violences du droit, deuxviolences quant au droit: la violence fondatrice, celle qui institue etpose le droit (die rechtsetzende Gewalt, "law making violence") et laviolence conservatrice, celle qui maintient, confirme, assure la perma-nence et l'applicabilite du droit (die rechtserhaltende Gewalt, "the lawpreserving violence"). Par commodit6, gardons la traduction deGewalt par violence mais j'ai dit quelles precautions elle appelait.Quant a la traduction de Recht par "law" plutt que par "right," dansla version publiee a laquelle je me r6f~re, c'est un autre probleme queje laisse ici de c6t6.

I1 y a ensuite la distinction entre la violence fondatrice du droitqui est dite "mythique" (sous-entendu: grecque, me semble-t-il) et laviolence destructrice du droit (rechtsvernichtend), qui est dite divine(sous-entendu: juive, me semble-t-il).

I1 y a enfin la distinction entre la justice (Gerechtigkeit) commeprincipe de toute position divine de but (das Prinzip aller gottlichen

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3. But this deconstruction is in some way the operation orrather the very experience that this text, it seems to me, first doesitself, by itself, on itself. What does this mean? Is it possible? Whatremains, then, of such an event? of its auto-hetero-deconstruction? ofits just and unjust incompletion? What is the ruin of such an event orthe open wound of such a signature? And also, in what does itsstrength consist, strength precisely in the sense of Gewalt, that is, itsviolence, authority and legitimacy? That is one of my questions. It isa question about the possibility of deconstruction. If you will allowme to cite myself, I happened to write that "the most rigorous decon-structions have never claimed to be ... . possible. And I would saythat deconstruction loses nothing from admitting that it is impossible;and also that those who would rush to delight in that admission losenothing from having to wait. For a deconstructive operation possibil-ity would rather be the danger, the danger of becoming an availableset of rule-governed procedures, methods, accessible approaches. Theinterest of deconstruction, of such force and desire as it may have, is acertain experience of the impossible." ("Psych6: Invention of theOther," in Reading de Man Reading (University of Minnesota Press,p. 36, tr. C. Porter).

Benjamin's demonstration concerns the question.of droit, recht,right or law. It even means to inaugurate, we shall be able to say itmore rigorously in a moment, a "philosophy of droit." And this phi-losophy seems to be organized around a series of distinctions that allseem interesting, provocative, necessary up to a certain point but thatall, it seems to me, remain radically problematic.

First, there is the distinction between two kinds of violence inlaw, in relation to law (droit): the founding violence, the one thatinstitutes and positions law (die rechtsetzende Gewalt, "law makingviolence") and the violence that conserves, the one that maintains,confirms, insures the permanence and enforceability of law (die recht-serhaltende Gewalt, "law preserving violence"). For the sake of con-venience, let us continue to translate Gewalt as violence, but I havealready mentioned the precautions this calls for. As for translatingRecht as "law" rather than "right," as in the published version I'musing here, that is another problem that I'll leave aside for now.

Next there is the distinction between the founding violence oflaw termed "mythic" (implicit meaning: Greek, it seems to me) andthe annihilating violence of destructive law (Rechtsvernichtend),which is termed "divine" (implicit meaning: Jewish, it seems to me).

Finally, there is the distinction between justice (Gerechtigkeit) asthe principle of all divine positioning of the end (das Prinzip aller got-

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Zwecksetzung, p. 198) ("principle of all divine end making" p. 295) etla puissance (Macht) comme principe de toute position mythique dedroit (aller mythischen Rechtsetzung) ("of all mythical lawmaking,"ibid.).

Dans le titre "Zur Kritik der Gewalt," "critique" ne signifie passimplement 'valuation n6gative, rejet ou condamnation l6gitimes de laviolence, mais jugement, 6valuation, examen qui se donne les moyensde juger de la violence. Le concept de critique, en tant qu'il impliquela d6cision sous la forme de jugement et la question au sujet du droitde juger, a ainsi un rapport essentiel, en lui-m~me, la sphere dudroit. Un peu au fond comme dans la tradition kantienne du conceptde critique. Le concept de violence (Gewalt) ne permet une critique6valuante que dans la sphere du droit et de la justice (Recht, Gerech-tigkeit) ou des rapports moraux (sittliche Verhaltnisse). I1 n'y a pasde violence naturelle ou physique. On peut par figure parler de vio-lence au sujet d'un tremblement de terre Iu meme d'une douleur phy-sique. Mais on sait qu'il ne s'agit pas la d une Gewalt pouvant donnerlieu a un jugement, devant quelque appareil de justice. Le concept deviolence appartient A l'ordre symbolique du droit, de la politique et dela morale. Et c'est seulement dans cette mesure qu'il peut donner lieui une critique. Jusqu'ici cette critique s'est toujours inscrite dansl'espace de la distinction entre moyen et fin. Or, objecte Benjamin, sedemander si la violence peut etre un moyen en vue de fins (justes ouinjustes), c'est s'interdire de juger de la violence elle-meme. La crit6-riologie concernerait alors seulement l'application de la violence, nonla violence elle-mame. On ne saurait dire si celle-ci, en tant quemoyen, est en elle-mame juste ou non, morale ou non. La questioncritique reste ouverte, celle d'une 6valuation et d'une justification de laviolence en elle-meme, ffit-elle simple moyen, et quelle que soit sa fin.Cette dimension critique aurait 6t6 forclose par la tradition jusnatural-iste. Pour les tenants du droit naturel, le recours a des moyens vio-lents ne pose aucun probl~me puisque les fins naturelles sont justes.Le recours i des moyens violents est aussi justifi6, aussi normal que le"droit" de 'homme i mouvoir son corps vers le but A atteindre. Laviolence (Gewalt) est de ce point de vue un "produit naturel" (Natur-produkt). Benjamin donne quelques exemples de cette naturalisationde la violence par le jusnaturalisme:

a) l'Etat fond sur le droit naturel dont parle Spinoza dans leTraitd Thdologico-politique et dont le citoyen, avant le contrat form6par la raison, exerce de jure une violence dont il dispose de facto,

b) le fondement id6ologique de la Terreur sous la R6volutionfranqaise,

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tlichen Zwecksetzung, p. 198,"principle of all divine end making," p.295) and power (Macht) as principle of mythical positioning of droit(aller mythischen Rechtsetzung, "of all mythical law making, ibid.).

In the title "Zur Kritik der Gewalt," "critique" doesn't simplymean negative evaluation, legitimate rejection or condemnation of vi-olence, but judgment, evaluation, examination that provides itselfwith the means to judge violence. The concept of "critique," insofaras it implies decision in the form of judgment and question with re-gard to the right to judge, thus has an essential relation, in itself, tothe sphere of law or right. Fundamentally, something like the Kant-ian tradition of the concept of critique. The concept of violence(Gewalt) permits an evaluative critique only in the sphere of law andjustice (Recht, Gerechtigkeit) or the sphere of moral relations (sit-tliche Verha'tnisse). There is no natural or physical violence. We canspeak figuratively of violence with regard to an earthquake of even toa physical ailment. But we know that these aren't cases of a Gewaltable to give rise to a judgment, before some instrument of justice. Theconcept of violence belongs to the symbolic order of law, politics andmorals. And it is only to this extent that it can give rise to a critique.Up to this point this critique was always inscribed in the space of thedistinction between means and end. But, objects Benjamin, to askourselves if violence can be a means with a view toward ends (just orunjust) is to prohibit ourselves from judging violence itself. Thecriteriology would then concern only the application of violence, notviolence itself. We would not be able to tell if the latter, as means, isin itself just or not, moral or not. The critical question remains open,the question of an evaluation and a justification of violence in itself,whether it be a simple means and whatever its end may be. This crit-cal dimension would have been foreclosed by the jusnaturalist tradi-tion. For defenders of natural droit, recourse to violent means posesno problems, since natural ends are just. Recourse to violent means isas justified, as normal as man's "right" to move his body to reach agiven goal. Violence (Gewalt) is from this point of view a "naturalproduct" (Naturprodukt). Benjamin gives several examples of thisnaturalization of violence by jusnaturalism:

a) the state founded on natural law, which Spinoza talks aboutin the Theological-Political Treatise in which the citizen, before a con-tract is formed by reason, exercises dejure a violence he disposes of defacto,

b) the ideological foundation of the Terror under the FrenchRevolution,

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c) les exploitations d'un certain darwinisme (et cela pourrait &reappliqu6 plus tard au nazisme), etc.

Mais si, i l'oppos6 du jusnaturalisme, la tradition du droit positifest plus attentive au devenir historique du droit, elle reste aussi en-deqa du questionnement critique appele par Benjamin. Sans doute nepeut-elle considerer que tous les meyens sont bons d~s lors qu'ils seconforment A une fin naturelle et anhistorique. Elle prescrit de jugerdes moyens, c'est-i-dire de leur conformit6 i un droit qui est en coursd'institution, a un nouveau droit (non naturel) qu'elle 6value en fonc-tion des moyens, donc par la critique des moyens. Mais les deux tra-ditions partagent la m~me pr6supposition dogmatique, a savoir qu'onpeut atteindre A des fins justes par des moyens justes. "Le droit na-turel s'efforce de "justifier" ("rechtfertigen") les moyens par la justicedes buts (durch die Gerechtigkeit der Zwecke); le droit positif s'efforcede "garantir" ("garantieren") la justice (Berechtigung) des fins par la16gitimit6 (Gerechtigkeit) des moyens." Les deux traditions tourne-raient dans le m~me cercle de pr6suppositions dogmatiques. Et il n'ya aucune solution A l'antinomie quand une contradiction surgit entredes fins justes et des moyens justifies. Le droit positif resterait aveugleA l'inconditionnalit6 des fins, le droit naturel A la conditionnalit6 desmoyens. N6anmoins, bien qu'il semble les renvoyer sym&riquementdos A dos, Benjamin garde de la tradition du droit positif le sens del'historicit6 du droit. I1 est vrai, inversement, que ce qu'il dira plusloin de la justice divine n'est pas toujours incompatible avec le fondth6ologique de tous les jusnaturalismes. En tout cas, la critiquebenjaminienne de la violence pr6tend exc6der les deux traditions et neplus relever de la sphere du droit et de 'interpretation interne del'institution juridique. Elle appartient A ce qu'il appelle en un sensassez singulier une "philosophie de l'histoire" et se limite express&ment aux donn~es europ6ennes.

Dans ce qu'il a de plus fondamental, le droit europ6en tend Ainterdire la violence individuelle et A la condamner en tant qu'ellemenace non pas telle ou telle loi mais l'ordre juridique lui-m~me (dieRechtsordnung, "the legal system"). D'ou l'int6r& du droit--car il ya un int6r& du droit A se poser et A se conserver lui-mEme, ou A repr6-senter l'int6r&t que justement il repr6sente. L'intr& du droit peutparaitre "surprenant," c'est le mot de Benjamin, mais il est en m~metemps dans sa nature d'int6rt, et en ce sens il n'y a rien lA de surpre-nant, que de pr&endre exclure les violences individuelles quimenacent son ordre et monopoliser ainsi la violence, au sens deGewalt, c'est-a-dire aussi d'autorit6. I1 y a un "interat du droit a lamonopolisation de la violence" (Interesse des Rechts an der Mono-

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c) the exploitations of a certain Darwinism (and this could laterbe applied to Nazism), etc.

But if, in opposition to jusnaturalism, the tradition of positivelaw is more attentive to the historical evolution of law, it also fallsshort of the critical questioning called for by Benjamin. Doubtless itcan only consider all means to be good once they conform to a naturaland ahistorical end. It prescribes that we judge means, that is to sayjudge their conformity to a droit that is in the process of being insti-tuted, to a new (not natural) droit that it evaluates in terms of means,and so by the critique of means. But the two traditions share thesame dogmatic presupposition, namely, that just ends can be attainedby just means. "Natural law attempts, by the justness of ends (durchdie Gerechtigkeit der Zwecke), to "justify" (rechtfertigen) the means,positive law to "guarantee" (garantieren) the justness of the endsthrough the justification (Gerechtigkeit) of the means." The two tra-ditions would turn in the same circle of dogmatic presuppositions.And there is no solution for the antinomy when a contradictionemerges between just ends and justified means. Positive law wouldremain blind to -the unconditionality of ends, natural right to the con-ditionality of means. Nevertheless, although he seems to dismiss bothcases symmetrically, from the tradition of positive law Benjam iii re-tains the sense of the historicity of law. Inversely, it is true that whathe says further on about divine justice is not always incompatible withthe theological basis of all jusnaturalisms. In any case, theBenjaminian critique of violence claims to exceed the two traditionsand no longer to arise simply from the sphere of law and the internalinterpretation of the juridical institution. It belongs to what he callsin a rather singular sense a "philosophy of history" and is expresslylimited to European particulars.

At its most fundamental level, European law tends to prohibitindividual violence and to condemn it not because it poses a threat tothis or that law but because it threatens the juridical order itself (dieRechtsordnung, "the legal system"). Whence the law's interest-forit does have an interest in laying itself down and conserving itself, orin representing the interest that, justement, it represents. Law's inter-est may seem "surprising," that is Benjamin's word, but at the sametime it is in its nature as interest, and in this sense there is nothingsurprising here at all, to pretend to exclude any individual violencethreatening its order and thus to monopolize violence, in the sense ofGewalt, which is also to say authority. Law has an "interest in a mo-nopoly of violence" (p. 281), (Interesse des Rechts an der Mono-polisierung der Gewalt). This -monopoly doesn't strive to protect any

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polisierung der Gewalt: "law's interest in a monopoly of violence," p.281). Ce monopole ne tend pas A prot6ger telles ou telles fins justes et16gales (Rechtszwecke, "legal ends") mais le droit lui-m~me. Cela res-semble i une trivialit6 tautologique. Mais la tautologie n'est-elle pasla structure ph~nom6nale d'une certaine violence du droit qui se poselui-m~me en decr&ant qu'est violent, cette fois au sens de hors-la-loi,tout ce qui ne le reconnait pas? Tautologie performative ou synthesea priori qui structure toute fondation de la loi a partir de laquelle onproduit performativement les conventions qui garantissent la validit6du performatif grace auquel on se donne les moyens de d6cider entrela violence l6gale et la violence ill6gale. Les expressions de tautologieou de synth~se a priori, et surtout celle de performatif ne sont pasbenjaminiennes, mais j'ose croire qu'elles ne trahissent pas sonpropos.

La fascination admirative exerce sur le peuple par la "figure du'grand' criminel" (die Gestalt des "grossen" Verbrechers, "the figure ofthe 'great' criminal," p. 281) s'explique ainsi: ce n'est pas quelqu'unqui a commis tel ou tel crime pour lequel on 6prouverait une secreteadmiration; c'est quelqu'un qui, en d6fiant la loi, met A nu la violencede l'ordre juridique lui-meme. On pourrait expliquer de la mimefagon la fascination qu'exerce en France un avocat comme JacquesVerges qui defend les causes les plus difficiles, les plus insoutenablesaux yeux de la majorit6, en pratiquant ce qu'il appelle la "strategie derupture," c'est-i-dire la contestation radicale de l'ordre donn6 de laloi, de l'autorit6 judiciaire et finalement de la 16gitime autorite del'Etat qui fait comparaitre ses clients devant la loi. Autorit6 judiciairedevant laquelle en somme l'accus6 comparait sans comparaitre et pr6-tend au droit de contester l'ordre du droit. Mais quel ordre du droit?L'ordre du droit en g6neral ou cet ordre du droit institu6 et "en-forced" par cet Etat? Ou l'ordre en tant qu'il se confond avec l'Etaten gen6ral?

L'exemple discriminant serait ici celui du droit de grave. Dans lalutte des classes, note Benjamin, le droit de grave est garanti auxtravailleurs qui sont donc, a c6t6 de l'Etat, le seul sujet de droit(Rechtssubjekt, "legal subject") A se voir garantir un droit ' la vio-lence (Recht auf Gewalt) et donc A partager le monopole de l'Etat Acet 6gard. Certains ont pu consid6rer que l'exercice de la grave, cettecessation d'activite, ce Nicht-Handeln, n'&ant pas une action, on nesaurait parler ici de violence. On justifie ainsi l'octroi de ce droit parle pouvoir d'Etat (Staatsgewalt) quand celui-ci ne peut faire autre-ment. La violence viendrait de l'employeur et la grave consisteraitseulement en une abstention, un 6loignement non-violent par lequel le

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given just and legal ends (Rechtszwecke) but law itself. This seemslike a tautoloical triviality. But isn't tautology the phenomenalstructure of a certain violence in the law that lays itself down, bydecreeing to be violent, this time in the sense of an outlaw, anyonewho does not recognize it? Performative tautology or a priori synthe-sis, which structures any foundation of the law upon which oneperformatively produces the conventions that guarantee the validityof the performative, thanks to which one gives oneself the means todecide between legal and illegal violence. The expressions "tautol-ogy" and "a priori synthesis," and especially the word "performative"are not Benjaminian, but I'll venture to suggest that they do not be-tray his purposes.

The admiring fascination exerted on the people by "the figure ofthe 'great' criminal," (p. 281)(die Gestalt des "grossen" Verbrechers),can be explained as follows: it is not someone who has committed thisor that crime for which one feels a secret admiration; it is someonewho, in defying the law, lays bare the violence of the legal system, thejuridical order itself. One could explain in the same way the fascina-tion exerted in France by a lawyer like Jacques Verges who defendsthe most difficult causes, the most indefensible in the eyes of the ma-jority, by practicing what he calls the "strategy of rupture," that is,the radical contestation of the given order of the law, of judicial au-thority and ultimately of the legitimate authority of the State thatsummons his clients to appear before the law. Judicial authoritybefore which, in short, the accused appears without appearing andclaims the right to contest the order of right or law. But what orderof law? The order of law in general or this order of law instituted andenforced by this state? Or order as inextricably mixed with the Statein general?

The telling example would here be that of the right to strike. Inclass struggle, notes Benjamin, the right to strike is guaranteed toworkers who are therefore, besides the state, the only legal subject(Rechtssubjekt) to find itself guaranteed a right to violence (Recht aufGewalt) and so to share the monopoly of the state in this respect.Certain people may have thought that since the practice of the strike,this cessation of activity, this Nicht-Handeln, is not an action, we can-not here be speaking about violence. That is how the concession ofthis right by the power of the State (Staatsgewalt) is justified whenthat power cannot do otherwise. Violence would come from the em-ployer and the strike would consist only in an abstention, a non-vio-lent withdrawal by which the worker, suspending his relations withthe management and its machines, would simply become alien to

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travailleur, suspendant ses relations avec la patronat et ses machines,leur deviendrait simplement tranger. Celui qui sera l'ami de Brechtd6finit cet eloignement (Abkehr) comme une "Entfremdung" ("es-trangement"). I1 6crit le mot entre guillemets. Mais visiblement Ben-jamin ne croit pas i cet argument de la non-violence de la grave. Lesgr6vistes posent des conditions a la reprise du travail, ils ne cessentleur grave que si un ordre des choses a chang& I1 y a donc violencecontre violence. En portant le droit de grave a sa limite, le concept ou

-le mot d'ordre de grave gn6rale en manifeste ainsi l'essence. L'Etatsupporte mal ce passage i la limite. I1 le juge abusif et pr&end qu'il ya 1M un malentendu, une m6sinterpr~tation de l'intention originelle etque le droit de grave n'a pas et6 entendu ainsi (das Streikrecht "so"nicht gemeint gewesen sei, "the right to strike was not "so intended,"p. 282). I1 peut faire alors condamner la grave g6nerale comme il-gale et, si elle persiste, nous avons la une situation revolutionnaire.Une telle situation est en fait la seule qui nous permette de penserl'homog6n6ite du droit et de la violence, la violence comme l'exercicedu droit et le droit comme exercice de la violence. La violence n'estpas ext6rieure i l'ordre du droit. Elle menace le droit i l'int6rieur dudroit. Elle ne consiste pas essentiellement i exercer sa puissance ouune force brutale pour obtenir tel ou tel resultat mais A menacer ou ad6truire un ordre de droit donn6, et pr6cis6ment, dans ce cas, l'ordrede droit &atique qui a dci accorder ce droit a la violence, par exemplele droit de grave. Comment interpreter cette contradiction? est-elleseulement de facto et exterieure au droit ou bien immanente au droitdu droit?

Ce que redoute l'Etat, le droit dans sa plus grande force, ce n'estpas tant le crime ou le brigandage, m~me a grand 6chelle, comme lamafia ou le grand trafic de la drogue, s'ils transgressent la loi en vued'atteindre a des b6n6fices particuliers, si importants soient-ils. L'Etata peur de la violence fondatrice, c'est-A-dire capable de justifier, del6gitimer (begrzinden, "to found," p. 283) ou de transformer des rela-tions de droit (Rechtsverhaltnisse, "legal conditions"), et donc de sepresenter comme ayant un droit au droit. Cette violence appartientainsi d'avance a l'ordre d'un droit qui reste A transformer ou A fonder,m~me si elle peut blesser notre sentiment de justice (Gerechtigkeits-gefzihl, "sense of justice"). Seule cette violence appelle et rend possi-ble une "critique de la violence" qui determine celle-ci comme autrechose que l'exercice naturel de la force. Pour qu'une critique, c'est-i-dire une evaluation interpr&ative et signifiante de la violence soit pos-sible, on doit d'abord reconnaitre du sens A une violence qui n'est pasun accident arrivant de l'ext6rieur au droit. Ce qui menace le droit

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them. The man who will become Brecht's friend defines this with-drawal (Abkehr) as an "Entfremdung" ("estrangement"). He putsthe word in quotation marks. But Benjamin clearly does not believein this argument about the non-violence of the strike. The strikingworkers set the conditions for the resumption of work, they will notend their strike unless a list, an order of things has changed. And sothere is violence against violence. In carrying the right to strike to itslimit, the concept or watchword of general strike thus manifests itsessence. The state can hardly stand this passage to the limit. It deemsit abusive and claims that there was a misunderstanding, a misinter-pretation of the original intention, and that (das Streikrecht "so" nichtgemeint gewesen sei, "the right to strike was not "so intended," p.282). It can then condemn the general strike as illegal and, if thestrike persists, we have a revolutionary situation. Such a situation isin fact the only one that allows us to conceive the homogeneity of lawor right and violence, violence as the exercise of droit and droit as theexercise of violence. Violence is not exterior to the order of droit. Itthreatens it from within. Violence does not consist essentially in ex-erting its power or a brutal force to obtain this or that result but inthreatening or destroying an order of given right and precisely, in thiscase, the order of state law that was to accord 1this right'to violence,for example the right to strike. How can we interpret this contradic-tion? is it only de facto and exterior to law or is it rather immanent inthe law of law(au droit du droit)?

What the State fears (the State being law in its greatest force) isnot so much crime or brigandage, even on the grand scale of the Ma-fia or heavy drug traffic, as long as they transgress the law with an eyetoward particular benefits, however important they may be. The Stateis afraid of fundamental, founding violence, that is, violence able tojustify, to legitimate, (begrinden, "to found," p. 283) or to transformthe relations of law (Rechtsverhdltnisse, "legal conditions"), and so topresent itself as having a right to law. This violence thus belongs inadvance to the order of a droit that remains to be transformed orfounded, even if it may wound our sense of justice (Gerechtigkeit-sgefui"hl). Only this violence calls for and makes possible a "critiqueof violence" that determines it to be something other than the naturalexercise of force. For a critique of violence-that is to say an inter-pretative and meaningful evaluation of it-to be possible, one mustfirst recognize meaning in a violence that is not an accident arrivingfrom outside law. That which threatens law already belongs to it, tothe right to law (droit), to the origin of law (droit). The general strikethus furnishes a valuable guiding thread, since it exercises the con-

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appartient d6ja au droit, au droit au droit, i l'origine du droit. Lagreve gen6rale fournit ainsi un fil conducteur pr6cieux puisqu'elleexerce le droit concede pour contester l'ordre du droit existant etcr6er une situation r6volutionnaire dans laquelle il s'agira de fonderun nouveau droit, sinon toujours, nous le verrons dans un instant, unnouvel Etat. Toutes les situations revolutionnaires, tous les discoursr6volutionnaires, de gauche ou de droite (et ' partir de 1921, en Al-lemagne, il y en eut beaucoup qui se ressemblaient de fagontroublante, Benjamin se trouvant souvent entre les deux) justifient lerecours i la violence en all6guant l'instauration en cours ou a venird'un nouveau droit. Comme ce droit i venir 16gitimera en retour,retrospectivement, la violence qui peut heurter le sentiment de justice,son futur anterieur la justifie d6jA. La fondation de tous les Etats ad-vient dans une situation qu'on peut ainsi appeler r6volutionnaire. Elleinaugure un nouveau droit, elle le fait toujours dans la violence.Toujours, c'est-i-dire meme si alors n'ont pas lieu ces g6nocides, ex-pulsions ou deportations spectaculaires dont s'accompagnent sisouvent la fondation des Etats, grands ou petits, anciens ou modernes,tout pres ou tres loin de nous.

Dans ces situations dites fondatrices de droit ou d'Etat, la ca-tegorie grammaticale de futur anterieur ressemble encore trop ' unemodification du present pour d6crire la violence en cours. Elle con-siste justement a feindre la presence ou la simple modalisation de lapr6sence. Ceux qui disent "notre temps," en pensant alors "notrepresent" a la lumiere d'une pr6sence future antieure ne savent pastres bien, par d6flnition, ce qu'ils disent. C'est dans ce non-savoir queconsiste justement l'6venementialite de l'6v6nement, ce qu'on appellenalvement sa presence.

Ces moments, a supposer qu'on puisse les isoler, sont des mo-ments terrifiants. A cause des souffrances, des crimes, des tortures quimanquent rarement de les accompagner, sans doute, mais aussi bienparce qu'ils sont en eux-memes, et dans leur violence m~me, ininter-pr6tables ou ind6chiffrables. C'est ce que je surnomme le "mystique."Telle que Benjamin la presente, cette violence est certes lisible, voireintelligible puisqu'elle n'est pas trangere au droit, pas plus quenolemos ou eris ne sont 6trangers a toutes les formes et significationsde dik. Mais elle est dans le droit ce qui suspend le droit. Elle inter-rompt le droit 6tabli pour en fonder un autre. Ce moment de suspens,cette 6pokhe, ce moment fondateur ou revolutionnaire du droit estdans le droit une instance de non-droit. Mais c'est aussi toutet'histoire du droit. Ce moment a toujours lieu et n'a jamais lieu dansune prisence. C'est le moment oii la fondation du droit reste sus-

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ceded right to contest the order of existing law and to create a revolu-tionary situation in which the task will be to found a new droit, if notalways, as we shall see in a moment, a new State. All revolutionarysituations, all revolutionary discourses, on the left or on the right (andfrom 1921, in Germany, there were many of these that resembledeach other in a troubling way, Benjamin often finding himself betweenthe two) justify the recourse to violence by alleging the founding, inprogress or to come, of a new law. As this law to come will in returnlegitimate, retrospectively, the violence that may offend the sense ofjustice, its future anterior already justifies it. The foundation of allstates occurs in a situation that we can thus call revolutionary. Itinaugurates a new law, it always does so in violence. Always, which isto say even when there haven't been those spectacular genocides, ex-pulsions or deportations that so often accompany the foundation ofstates, great or small, old or new, right near us or far away.

In these situations said to found law (droit) or state, the gram-matical category of the future anterior all too well resembles a modifi-cation of the present to describe the violence in progress. It consists,precisely, in feigning the presence or simple modalization of presence.Those who say "our time," while thinking "our present" in light of afuture anterior present do not know very well, by definition, whatthey are saying. It is precisely in this ignorance that the eventness ofthe event consists, what we naively call its presence.

These moments, supposing we can isolate them, are terrifyingmoments. Because of the sufferings, the crimes, the tortures thatrarely fail to accompany them, no doubt, but just as much becausethey are in themselves, and in their very violence, uninterpretable orindecipherable. That is what I am calling "mystique." As Benjaminpresents it, this violence is certainly legible, indeed intelligible since itis not alien to law, no more than polemos or eris is alien to all theforms and signification3 of dik. But it is in droit what suspends droit.It interrupts the established droit to found another. This moment ofsuspense, this ipokhi, this founding or revolutionary moment of lawis, in law, an instance of non-law. But it is also the whole history oflaw. This moment always takes place and never takes place in a pres-ence. It is the moment in which the foundation of law remains

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pendue dans le vide ou au-dessus de l'abime, suspendue a un acteperformatif pur qui n'aurait de compte a rendre a personne et devantpersonne. Le sujet suppos6 de ce performatif pur ne serait plus devantla loi, ou plut6t il serait devant une loi encore indtermin6e, devant laloi comme devant une loi encore inexistante, une loi encore a venir,encore devant et devant venir. Et l'8tre "devant la loi" dont parleKafka ressemble i cette situation A la fois ordinaire et terrible del'homme qui n'arrive pas i voir ou surtout A toucher, A rejoindre laloi: parce qu'elle est transcendante dans la mesure mime oi c'est luiqui doit la fonder, comme a venir, dans la violence. On "touche" icisans toucher a cet extraordinaire paradoxe: la transcendance inacces-sible de la loi devant laquelle et avant laquelle 1' "homme" se tient neparait infiniment transcendante et donc th6ologique que dans lamesure oj, au plus pros de lui, elle ne depend que de lui, de l'acteperformatif par lequel il l'institue: la loi est transcendante, violente etnon violente, parce qu'elle ne d6pend que de qui est devant elle-etdonc avant elle--de qui la produit, la fonde, l'autorise dans unperformatif absolu dont la pr6sence lui 6chappe toujours. La loi esttranscendante et th6ologique, donc toujours a venir, toujours promise,parce qu'elle est immanente, fnie et donc d6ja pass6e.

De cette loi l'avenir seul produira l'intelligibiliti oul'interpritabilite. Au-delA de la lettre du texte de Benjamin, que je nesuis plus depuis un instant dans le style du commentaire mais quej'interprete depuis son avenir, on dira que l'ordre de l'intelligibilit6d6pend A son tour de l'ordre instaur6 et qu'il sert A interpr6ter. Cettelisibilit6 sera donc aussi peu neutre que non-violente. Une r6volution"r6ussie," la fondation d'un Etat "r6ussie" (un peu au sens oi onparle d'un "felicitous" "performative speech act") produira apr~scoup ce qu'elle tait d'avance destin6e a produire, A savoir desmodules interpr6tatifs propres i lire en retour, A donner du sens, de lanecessit6 et surtout de la l'gitimit6 aLla violence qui a produit, entreautres, le module interpr6tatif en question, c'est-a'-dire le discours deson auto-16gitimation. Les exemples de ce cercle, cet autre cercleherm6neutique, ne manquent pas, pres ou loin de nous, ici m~me ouailleurs, qu'il s'agisse de ce qui se passe d'un quartier a l'autre, d'unerue i l'autre, d'une grande m6tropole ou d'un pays ou d'un camp al'autre autour d'une guerre mondiale au cours de laquelle des Etats etdes nations sont fond6s, d6truits ou r6am6nag6s. I1 y a des cas oilpendant des generations, on ne sait pas si le performatif de la fonda-tion violente d'un Etat est "felicitous" ou non. Nous pourrions citerplus d'un exemple. Cette illisibilit6 de la violence tient A la lisibilitememe d'une violence qui appartient a ce que d'autres appelleraient

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suspended in the void or over the abyss, suspended by -a pureperformative act that would not have to answer to or before anyone.The supposed subject of this pure performative would no longer bebefore the law, or rather he would be before a law not yet determined,before the law as before a law not yet existing, a law yet to come,encore devant et devant venir. And the being "before the law" thatKafka talks about resembles this situation, both ordinary and terrible,of the man who cannot manage to see or above all to touch, to catchup to the law: because it is transcendent in the very measure that it ishe who must found it, as yet to come, in violence. Here we "touch"without touching this extraordinary paradox: the inaccessible tran-scendence of the law before which and prior to which "man" standsfast only appears infinitely transcendent and thus theological to theextent that, so near him, it depends only on him, on the performativeact by which he institutes it: the law is transcendent, violent and non-violent, because it depends only on who is before it-and so prior toit-, on who produces it, founds it, authorizes it in an absoluteperformative whose presence always escapes him. The law istrancendent and theological, and so always to come, always promised,because it is immanent, finite and so already past.

Only the yet-to-come (avenir) will produce intelligibility or inter-pretability of this law. Beyond the letter of Benjamin's text, which Istopped following in the style of commentary a moment ago butwhich I am interpreting from the point of its avenir, one can say thatthe order of intelligibility depends in its turn on the established orderthat it serves to interpret. This readability will then be as little neutralas it is non-violent. A "successful" revolution, the "successful foun-dation of a State (in somewhat the same sense that one speaks of a" 'felicitous' performative speech act") will produce aprs coup whatit was destined in advance to produce, namely, proper interpretativemodels to read in return, to give sense, necessity and above all legiti-macy to the violence that has produced, among others, the interpreta-tive model in question, that is, the discourse of its self-legitimation.Examples of this circle, this other hermeneutic circle, are not lacking,near us or far from us, right here or elsewhere, whether it's a questionof what happens from one neighborhood to another, one street to an-other in a great metropolis or from one country or one camp to an-other around a world war in the course of which States and nationsare founded, destroyed or redesigned. There are cases in which it isnot known for generations if the performative of the violent foundingof a state is "felicitous" or not. Here we could cite more than oneexample. This unreadability of violence results from the very reada-

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l'ordre symbolique du droit, si vous voulez, et non a la physique pure.On pourrait &re tent6 de retourner comme un gant la "logique" (en-tre guillemets car cet "illisible" est aussi bien "illogique" dans l'ordredu logos, et c'est aussi pourquoi j'h~site A l'appeler "symbolique" et Ale pr6cipiter ainsi dans l'ordre du discours lacanien) de cette lisibleillisibilit6. Elle signifie en somme une violence juridico-symbolique,une violence performative A l'interieur meme de la lecture interpreta-tive. Et une mtonymie pourrait retourner l'exemple ou l'indice versla ge'neralit6 conceptuelle de l'essence.

On dirait alors qu'il y a une possibilit6 de grave g6n6rale, un droitla grave g6nrale dans toute lecture interprtative, le droit de con-

tester le droit &abli dans sa plus forte autorite, celle de l'Etat. On a ledroit de suspendre l'autorite 16gitimante et toutes ses normes de lec-ture, et cela dans les lectures les plus lisantes, les plus efficaces, lesplus pertinentes, qui 6videmment s'expliquent avec de l'illisible parfoispour fonder un autre ordre de lecture, un autre Etat, parfois non; carnous verrons que Benjamin distingue entre deux sortes de gravesgenerales, les unes destin6es A remplacer l'ordre d'un Etat par unautre (grave gen~rale politique) l'autre A supprimer l'Etat (grave g&n6rale proletarienne). En somme les deux tentations de lad6construction.

Car iI y a de la grave g6n6rale, et donc de la situation revolution-naire dans toute lecture instauratrice qui reste illisible au regard descanons &ablis et des normes de lecture, c'est-a'-dire de l'etat presentde la lecture ou de ce qui figure l'Etat, avec un grand E, dans l'6tat dela lecture possible. Devant une telle grave gn6rale, on peut alors,selon les cas, parler d'anarchisme, de scepticisme, de nihilisme, de de-politisation, ou de surpolitisation subversive. Aujourd'hui, la gr~veg6nrale n'a pas besoin de d6mobiliser ou de mobiliser spectaculaire-ment beaucoup de monde: il suffit de couper l'61ectricit6 dans quel-ques lieux privil6gies, par exemple les services, public et prive, despostes et t616communications, ou d'introduire quelques virus efficacesdans un reseau d'ordinateurs bien choisis ou, analogiquement,d'introduire l'quivalent du Sida dans les organes de transmission,dans le Gesprdch herm6neutique.

Ce que nous faisons ici, est-ce que cela peut ressembler a unegreve g6nerale ou A une r6volution, au regard de modules, de struc-tures mais aussi de modes de lisibilit6 de l'action politique? La d6con-struction, est-ce cela? Est-ce une grave g6n6rale ou une strat6gie derupture? Oui et non. Oui, dans la mesure o6i elle prend le droit decontester, et de fagon non seulement theorique, les protocoles consti-tutionnels, la charte meme qui r6git la lecture dans notre culture et

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bility of a violence that belongs to what others would call the sym-bolic order of law, if you like, and not to pure physics. We might betempted to reverse this "logic" like a glove ("logic" in quotationmarks, for this "unreadable" is also very much "illogical" in the orderof logos, and this is also why I hesitate to call it "symbolic" and pre-cipitately send it into the order of Lacanian discourse), the "logic" ofthis readable unreadability. In sum, it signifies a juridico-symbolicviolence, a performative violence at the very heart of interpretativereading. And the example or index could be carried by metonymyback toward the conceptual generality of the essence.

We might say then that there is a possibility of general strike, aright to general strike in any interpretative reading, the right to con-test established law in its strongest authority, the law of the State.One has the right to suspend legitimating authority and all its normsof reading, and to do this in the most incisive, most effective, mostpertinent readings, which of course will sometimes argue with the un-readable in order to found another order of reading, another State,sometimes not; for we shall see that Benjamin distinguishes betweentwo sorts of general strikes, some destined to replace the order of onestate with another (general political strike), the other to abolish thestate (general proletarian strike). In short, the two temptations ofdeconstruction.

For there is something of the general strike, and thus of the revo-lutionary situation in every reading that founds something new andthat remains unreadable in regard to established canons and norms ofreading, that is to say the present state of reading or of what figuresthe State, with a capital S, in the state of possible reading. Faced withsuch a general strike, we can in various cases speak of anarchism,skepticism, nihilism, depoliticization, or of subversive overpoliticiza-tion. Today, the general strike does not need to demobilize or mobil-ize a spectacular number of people: it is enough to cut the electricityin a few privileged places, for example the services, public and private,of postal service and telecommunications, or to introduce a few effi-cient viruses into a well-chosen computer network or, by analogy, tointroduce the equivalent of AIDS into the organs of transmission, into.the hermeneutic Gesprdch.

Can what we are doing here resemble a general strike or a revolu-tion, with regard ,to models, structures but also modes of readabilityof political action? Is that what deconstruction is? Is it a generalstrike or a strategy of rupture? Yes and no. Yes, to the extent that itassumes-the right to contest, and not only theoretically, constitutionalprotocols, the very charter that governs reading in -our culture and

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surtout dans l'Acad6mie. Non, du moins dans la mesure oii elle sed6veloppe encore dans l'Acad6mie (et n'oublions pas, si nous nevoulons pas sombrer dans le ridicule ou l'ind6cence, que nous sommesici confortablement installes sur Fifth Avenue-A quelques blocksc'est deJa l'enfer de l'injustice). Et puis, de meme qu'une strat6gie derupture n'est jamais pure, l'avocat ou l'accus6 devant la "n6gocier" enquelque sorte devant un tribunal ou au cours d'une gr6ve de la faimdans la prison, de m~me n'est jamais pure l'opposition entre la graveg6n6rale politique en vue de re-fonder un autre Etat et la grave g6n6r-ale prol6tarienne en vue de d6truire l'Etat.

Ces oppositions benjaminiennes me paraissent donc plus quejamais i d6construire, elles se d6construisent elles-m~mes, y compriscomme paradigmes pour la d6construction. Ce que je dis MA n'est rienmoins que conservateur et anti-r6volutionnaire. Car au-delA du pro-pos explicite de Benjamin, je proposerai l'interpr6tation suivant la-quelle la violence mime de la fondation ou de la position du droit(rechtsetzende Gewalt) doit envelopper la violence de la conservation(rechtserhaltende Gewalt) et ne peut pas rompre avec elle. I1 appar-tient A la structure de la violence fondatrice qu'elle appelle la rep6ti-tion de soi et fonde ce qui doit 8tre conserv6, conservable, promis al'h6ritage et A la tradition, au partage. Une fondation est unepromesse. Toute position (Setzung) permet et pro-met, elle pose enmettant et en promettant. Et meme si une promesse n'est pas tenueen fait, l'it6rabilit6 inscrit la promesse de garde dans l'instant le plusirruptif de la fondation. Elle inscrit ainsi la possibilit6 de la r6p6titionau coeur de l'originaire. Du coup, il n'y a pas plus de fondation pureou de position pure du droit, donc de pure violence fondatrice, qu'iln'y a de violence purement conservatrice. La position est d6jA it6ra-bilit6, appel A la r6p6tition auto-conservatrice. La conservation A sontour est encore re-fondatrice pour pouvoir conserver ce qu'elle pr6-tend fonder. I1 n'y a donc pas d'opposition rigoureuse entre la posi-tion et la conservation, seulement ce que j'appellerai (et que Benjaminne nomme pas) une contamination diff6rantielle entre les deux, avectous les paradoxes que cela peut induire. Je pense en particulier ici auparadoxe de la singularit6, de l'unicit6, de la multiplicit6 des singu-larit6s. Et la r6p6tition est la condition m~me de l'unicit6 de l'unique,sa paradoxale it6rabilit6. Pas de distinction rigoureuse entre unegrave g6n6rale et une grave partielle (encore une fois, dans une soci6t6industrielle, les crit6res techniques manqueraient aussi pour une telledistinction), ni, au sens de Sorel, entre une grave generale politique etune grave g6n6rale proletarienne. La d6construction est aussi la pen-s6e de--et la pens6e prise dans la n6cessit6 de--cette contamination

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especially in the academy. No, at least to the extent that it is in theacademy that it has been developed (and let's not forget, if we do notwish to sink into ridicule or indecency, that we are comfortably in-stalled here on Fifth Avenue--only a few blocks away from the in-ferno of injustice). And besides, just as.a strategy of rupture is neverpure, since the lawyer or the accused has to "negotiate" it in someway before a tribunal or in the course of a hunger strike in the prison,so there is never a pure opposition between the general political strikelooking to re-found another state and the general proletarian strikelooking to destroy the state.

And so these Benjaminian oppositions seem to me to call morethan ever for deconstruction, they deconstruct themselves, even asparadigms for deconstruction. What I am saying here is anything butconservative and anti-revolutionary. For beyond Benjamin's explicitpurpose, I shall propose the interpretation according to which thevery violence of the foundation or position of law (RechtsetzendeGewalt) must envelop the violence of conservation (RechtserhaltendeGewalt) and cannot break with it. It belongs to the structure of fun-damental violence that it calls for the repetition of itself and foundswhat ought to be conserved, conservable, promised to heritage andtradition, to be shared. A foundation is a promise. Every position(Setzung) permits and promises (permet et pro-met), it positions enmettant et en promettant. And even if a promise is not kept in fact,iterability inscribes the promise as guard in the most irruptive instantof foundation. Thus it inscribes the possibility of repetition at theheart of the originary. With this, there is no more a pure foundationor pure position of law, and so a pure founding violence, than there isa purely conservative violence. Position is already iterability, a callfor self-conserving repetition. Conservation in its turn refounds, sothat it can conserve what it claims to found. Thus there can be norigorous opposition between positioning and conservation, only whatI will call (and Benjamin does not name it) a diffirantielle contami-nation between the two, with all the paradoxes that this may lead to.No rigorous distinction between a general strike and a partial strike(again, in an industrial society, we would also lack the technical crite-ria for such a distinction), nor, in Sorel's sense, between a generalpolitical strike and a general proletarian strike. Deconstruction isalso the idea of-and the idea adopted by necessity of-this .diffeiran-tielle contamination. It is in thinking about this diffirantielle contam-ination, as the contamination at the very heart of law that I single outthis sentence of Benjamin's, which I hope to come back to later: thereis, he says "something rotten in law,"(p. 286) (etwas Morsches im

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differantielle. C'est en pensant A cette contamination ditffrantielle,comme contamination au coeur m6me du droit que j'isole cette phrasede Benjamin, sur laquelle j'esp~re revenir plus tard: il y a, dit-il "quel-que chose de pourri au coeur du droit" (etwas Morsches im Recht,"something rotten in law," p. 286). I1 y a quelque chose de vermouluou de pourri dans le droit, qui le condamne ou le ruine d'avance. Ledroit est condamn6, ruin6, en ruine, ruineux, si on peut risquer unesentence de mort au sujet du droit, surtout quand il y est question dela peine de mort. Et c'est dans un passage sur la peine de mort queBenjamin parle de ce qui est "rotten" dans le droit.

S'il y a de la grave et du droit de grave dans toute interpr6tation,il y a aussi de la guerre et du polemos. La guerre est un autre exemplede cette contradiction interne au droit. I1 y a un droit de la guerre(Schmitt se plaindra qu'il ne soit plus reconnu comme la possibilit6meme de la politique). Ce droit comporte les m6mes contradictionsque le droit de grave. Apparemment des sujets de droit d6clarent laguerre pour sanctionner des violences dont les buts paraissent naturels(l'autre veut s'emparer d'un territoire, de biens, de femmes; il veut mamort, je le tue). Mais cette violence guerrire qui ressemble A du"brigandage" hors la loi (raubende Gewalt, "predatory violence," p.283) se d6ploie toujours d l'intirieur de la sphere du droit. C'est uneanomalie d l'intirieur de la juridicit6 avec laquelle elle paraft rompre.La rupture du rapport est ici le rapport. La transgression est devantla loi. Dans les soci6t6s dites primitives, qui sont ici plus signifiantes,la conclusion de la paix montre bien que la guerre n'6tait pas un ph6-nomene naturel. Aucune paix ne se conclut sans le phenomenesymbolique d'un c6rmonial. Celui-ci rappelle qu'il y avait d6jfa duc6remonial dans la guerre. Elle ne se r6duisait donc pas au choc dedeux int6rts ou de deux forces purement physiques. Ici uneparenthese importante souligne que, certes, dans le couple guerre/paix, le c'r6monial de la paix rappelle que la guerre 6tait aussi unphenomene non-naturel; mais Benjamin semble vouloir soustraire uncertain sens du mot "paix" a cette corrilation, en particulier dans leconcept kantien de "paix perp6tuelle." I1 s'agit I d'une tout autresignification "non-m6taphorique et politique" (unmetaphorische undpolitische, "unmetaphorical and political") dont nous mesureronspeut-8tre tout a l'heure l'importance.

Apres la c6r6monie de la guerre, la c6remonie de la paix signifieque la victoire instaure un nouveau droit. Et la guerre, qui passe pourla violence originaire et archetypique (urspruingliche und urbildliche,"primordial and paradigmatic," p. 283) en vue de fins naturelles, esten fait une violence fondatrice de droit (rechtsetzende, "law making").

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Recht). There is something decayed or rotten in law, which con-demns it or ruins it in advance. Law is condemned, ruined, in ruins,ruinous, if we can risk a sentence of death on the subject of law, espe-cially when it's a question of the death penalty. And it is in a passageon the death penalty that Benjamin speaks of what is "rotten" in law.

If there is something of strike and the right to strike in everyinterpretation, there is also war andpolemos. War is another exampleof this contradiction internal to law (Recht or droit). There is a droitde la guerre (Schmitt will complain that is is no longer recognized asthe very possibility of politics). This droit involves the same contra-diction as the droit de grdve. Apparently subjects of this droit declarewar in order to sanction a violence whose object seems natural (theother wants to lay hold of territory, goods, women; he wants mydeath, I kill him). But this warlike violence that resembles "brigand-age" outside the law (raubende Gewalt, "predatory violence," p. 283)is always deployed within the sphere of law. It is an anomaly withinthe legal system with which it seems to break. Here the rupture of therelation is the relation. The transgression is before the law. In so-called primitive societies, which mean more here, the peace settlementshows very well that war was not a natural phenomenon. No peace issettled without the symbolic phenomenon of a ceremonial. It -recallsthe fact that there was already ceremony in war. War, then, did notsimply amount to a clash of two interests or of two purely physicalforces. Here an important parenthesis emphasizes that, to be sure, inthe pair war/peace, the peace ceremonial recalls the fact that the warwas also an unnatural phenomenon; but Benjamin apparently wantsto withhold a certain meaning of the word "peace" from this correla-tion, in particular in the Kantian concept of "perpetual peace." Hereit is a question of a whole other "unmetaphorical and political" (un-metaphorische und politische) signification, the importance of whichwe may weigh in a moment.

After the ceremony of war, the ceremony of peace signifies thatthe victory establishes a new law. And war, which passes for origi-nary and archetypal (urspringliche und urbildliche, "primordial andparadigmatic," p. 283) violence in pursuit of natural ends, is in fact aviolence that serves to found law or right (rechtsetzende, "law mak-ing"). From the moment that this positive, positional (setzende) andfounding character of another law is recognized, modern law (droit)refuses the individual subject all right to violence. The people's shud-der of admiration before the "great criminal" is addressed to the indi-vidual who takes upon himself, as in primitive times, the stigma of thelawmaker or the prophet. But the distinction between the two types

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A partir du moment oui l'on reconnalt ce caractere positif, positionnel(setzende) et fondateur d'un autre droit, le droit moderne refuse ausujet individuel tout droit a la violence. Le fr6missement der'admiration populaire devant le "grand criminel" s'adresse al'individu qui porte sur lui, comme aux temps primitifs, les stigmatesdu 16gislateur ou du prophite. Mais la distinction entre ies deux vio-lences (fondatrice et conservatrice) sera tr~s difficile i tracer, A fonderou A conserver. Nous allons assister de la part de Benjamin A unmouvement ambigu et laborieux pour sauver A tout prix une distinc-tion ou une corr6lation sans laquelle tout son projet pourraits'effondrer. Car si la violence est A 'origine du droit, 1'entendementexige qu'on mane A terme la critique de cette double violence, lafondatrice et la conservatrice ("critique of both lawmaking and law-preserving violence," p. 386).

Pour parler de la violence conservatrice du droit, Benjamins'attache a des problemes relativement modernes, aussi modernes quel'tait tout A l'heure celui de la grive g6n6rale. I1 s'agit maintenant duservice militaire obligatoire, de la police moderne, ou de l'abolition dela peine de mort. Si, pendant et apres la premiere guerre mondiale,s'6tait d6veloppe une critique passionn6e de la violence, elle visaitcette fois la forme conservatrice de la violence. Le militarisme, con-cept moderne qui suppose une exploitation du service militaire obli-gatoire, est l'usage force de la force, la contrainte (Zwang) a l'usagede la force ou de la violence (Gewalt) au service de 'Etat et de ses fins16gales. La violence militaire est ici l6gale et conservatrice de droit,donc plus difficile A critiquer que ne le croient dans leurs d6clamationsles pacifistes et les activistes, pour lesquels Benjamin ne cache pas sonpeu d'estime. L'incons6quence des pacifistes anti-militaristes tient ace qu'ils ne reconnaissent pas le caractere l6gal et inattaquable decette violence conservatrice du droit.

Nous avons ici affaire A un double bind ou A une contradictionqu'on peut sch6matiser ainsi. D'une part, il paraeit plus facile de criti-quer la violence fondatrice puisqu'elle ne peut se justifier par aucune16galit6 pr6-existante et paralt donc sauvage. Mais d'autre part, et ceretournement fait tout l'intrrt de cette r6flexion, il est plus difficile,plus illigitime de critiquer la m~me violence fondatrice puisqu'on nepeut la faire comparaitre devant l'institution d'aucun droit pr6exis-tant: elle ne reconnalit pas le droit existant au moment oti elle en fondeun autre. Entre les deux termes de cette contradiction, il y a la ques-tion de cet instant r6volutionnaire insaisissable qui n'appartient aaucun continuum historique et temporel mais dans lequel pourtant lafondation d'un nouveau droit joue, si on peut dire, sur quelque chose

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of violence (founding and conserving) will be very difficult to trace, tofound or to conserve. We are going to witness an ambiguous andlaborious movement on Benjamin's part to preserve at any cost a dis-tinction or a correlation without which his whole project could col-lapse. For if violence is at the origin of law, we must take the critiqueof this double violence, ("lawmaking and lawpreserving violence," p.386), to its logical conclusion.

To discuss the conservative violence of law, Benjamin sticks torelatively modem problems, as modem as the problem of the generalstrike was a moment ago. Now it is a question of compulsory militaryservice, the modem police or the abolition of the death penalty. If,during and after World War I, an impassioned critique of violencewas developed, it took aim this time at the law-conserving form ofviolence. Militarism, a modem concept that supposes the exploitationof compulsory military service, is the forced use of force, the compel-ling (Zwang) to use force or violence (Gewalt) in the service of thestate and its legal ends. Here military violence is legal and conservesthe law, and so is more difficult to criticize than the pacifists and ac-tivists believe; Benjamin does not hide his low esteem for these de-claimers. The ineffectiveness and inconsistency of anti-militarypacifists results from their failure to recognize the legal andunassaila-'ble character of this violence that conserves the law.

.Here we are dealing with a double bind or a contradiction thatcan be schematized as follows. On the one hand, it appears easier tocriticize the violence that founds since it cannot be justified by anypreexisting legality and so appears savage. But on the other hand,and this reversal is the whole point of this reflection, it is more diffi-cult, more illegitimate to criticize this same violence since one cannotsummon it to appear before the institution of any preexisting law: itdoes not recognize existing law in the moment that it founds another.Between the two limits of this contradiction, there is the question ofthis ungraspable revolutionary instant that belongs to no historical,temporal continuum but in which the foundation of a new law never-theless plays, if we may say so, on something from an anterior lawthat it extends, radicalizes, deforms, metaphorizes or metonymizes,this figure here taking the name of war or general strike. But this

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d'un droit anterieur qu'elle 6tend, radicalise, deforme, m6taphorise oum6tonymise, cette figure ayant ici les noms de guerre ou de gravegen6rale. Mais cette figure est aussi une contamination. Elle efface oubrouille la distinction pure et simple entre fondation et conservation.Elle inscrit l'it6rabilit6 dans l'originarit6, dans l'unicit6 et dans lasingularit6, et c'est ce que j'appellerai la d6construction i l'oeuvre, enpleine n6gociation: dans les "choses" m~me et dans le texte deBenjamin.

Tant qu'on ne se donne pas les moyens th6oriques ou philosophi-ques de penser cette co-implication de la violence et du droit, les criti-ques habituelles restent nalves et incons6quentes. Benjamin ne cachepas son d6dain pour les d6clamations de l'activisme pacifiste et pourles proclamations d' "anarchisme pu6ril" ("quite childish anarchism,"p. 284) qui voudraient soustraire l'individu i toute contrainte. La r6-f6rence i l'imp6ratif cat6gorique ("Agis de telle sorte que, dans ta per-sonne comme dans celle de tout autre, tu uses toujours de 'humanit6comme fin, jamais comme moyen," "act in such a way that at alltimes you use humanity both in your person and in the person of allothers as an end, and never merely as a means," p. 285), tout incon-testable qu'elle est, ne permet aucune critique de la violence. Le droit,dans sa violence m~me, pr6tend reconnaltre et dMfendre laditehumanite comme fin, dans la personne de chaque individu. Une cri-tique purement morale de la violence est donc aussi injustifi6equ'impuissante. On ne peut pas, pour la mime raison, critiquer laviolence au nom de ]a libert6, de ce que Benjamin nomme ici1' "informe 'libert' " (gestaltlose 'Freiheit,' "formless 'freedom' "),c'est-i-dire en somme purement formelle, comme forme vide, selonune veine hegeliano-marxiste qui est loin d'Etre absente tout au longde cette m6ditation. Ces attaques contre la violence manquent de per-tinence et d'efficacit6 parce qu'elles restent 6trang~res i l'essencejuridique de la violence, i 1' "ordre du droit." Une critique efficacedoit s'en prendre au corps du droit lui-m~me, dans sa tte et dans sesmembres, dans les lois et dans les usages particuliers que le droitprend sous la protection de sa puissance (Macht). Cet ordre est telqu'il existe un seul destin, un destin ou une histoire unique (nur eineinziges Schicksal, "only one fate," p. 285). C'est 1M un des conceptscl6s, mais aussi des plus obscurs du texte, qu'il s'agisse du destin lui-m~me ou de son absolue unicit6. Ce qui existe, ce qui a consistance(das Bestehende) et ce qui menace en m~me temps ce qui existe (dasDrohende) appartiennent inviolablement (unverbrichlich, "inviola-bly," p. 285) au meme ordre, et cet ordre est inviolable parce qu'il estunique. On ne peut le violer qu'en lui. La notion de menace est im-

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figure is also a contamination. It effaces or blurs the distinction, pureand simple, between foundation and conservation. It inscribes iter-ability in originarity, in unicity and singularity, and it is what I willcall deconstruction at work, in full negotiation: in the "things them-selves" and in Benjamin's text.

As long as they do not give themselves the theoretical or philo-sophical means to think this co-implication of violence and law, theusual critiques remain naive and ineffectual. Benjamin does not hidehis disdain for the declamations of pacifist activism and for the proc-lamations of "quite childish anarchism" that would like to exempt theindividual from all constraints. The reference to the categorical im-perative ("Act in such a way that at all times you use humanity bothin your person and in the person of all others as an end, and nevermerely as a means" (p. 285), however uncontestable it may be, allowsno critique of violence. Law (droit) in its very violence claims to rec-ognize and defend said humanity as end, in the person of each individ-ual. And so a purely moral critique of violence is as unjustified as it isimpotent. For the same reason, we cannot provide a critique of vio-lence in the name of liberty, of what Benjamin here calls gestaltlose'Freiheit', "formless 'freedom,'" that is, in short, purely formal, asempty form, following a Marxist-Hegelian vein that is far from absentthroughout this meditation. These attacks against violence lack perti-nence and effectiveness because they remain alien to the juridical es-sence of violence, to the Rechtsordnung, the order of law (droit). Aneffective critique must lay the blame on the body of droit itself, in itshead and in its members, in the laws and the particular usages thatlaw adopts under protection of its power (Macht). This order is suchthat there exists one unique fate or history, (nur ein einziges Schick-sal; "only one fate," p. 285). That is one of the key concepts of thetext, but also one of the most obscure, whether it's a question of fateitself or of its absolute uniqueness. That which exists, which has con-sistency (das Bestehende) and that which at the same time threatenswhat exists (das Drohende) belong inviolably (unverbrtichlich) to thesame order and this order is inviolable because it is unique. It canonly be violated in itself. The notion of threat is important here butalso difficult, for the threat doesn't come from outside. Law is boththreatening and threatened by itself. This threat is neither intimida-tion nor dissuasion, as pacifists, anarchists or activists believe. Thelaw turns out to be threatening in the way fate is threatening. Toreach the "deepest meaning" of the indeterminacy (Unbestimmtheit,"uncertainty," p. 285) of the legal threat (der Rechtsdrohung), it will

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portante ici mais aussi difficile car la menace ne vient pas du dehors.Le droit est a la fois menagant et menace par lui-meme. Cette menacen'est ni l'intimidation ni la dissuasion, comme le croient les pacifistes,les anarchistes ou les activistes. La loi se montre menagante a lamani~re du destin. Pour acc6der au 'sens le plus profond" del'ind6termination (Unbestimmtheit, "uncertainty," p. 285) de la me-nace du droit (der Rechtsdrohung, "of the legal threat") il faudram6diter plus tard l'essence du destin qui est a l'origine de cettemenace.

Au cours d'une m6ditation sur le destin, qui passe aussi par uneanalyse de la police, de la peine de mort, de l'institution parle-mentaire, Benjamin en viendra donc a distinguer entre justice divineet justice humaine, entre la violence divine qui d6truit le droit et laviolence mythique qui fonde le droit.

La violence conservatrice ("lawpreserving violence"), cette me-nace qui n'est pas de l'intimidation, est une menace du droit. Doubleg6nitif: elle vient du droit et menace le droit. Un pr6cieux indice vientici du domaine du droit de punir et de la peine de mort. Benjaminsemble penser que les discours contre le droit de punir et notammentcontre la peine de mort sont superficiels, et non par accident. Car ilsn'admettent pas un axiome essentiel A la definition du droit. Lequel?Eh bien, quand on s'attaque i la peine de mort, on ne conteste pas unepeine parmi d'autres mais le droit m~me dans son origine, dans sonordre m~me. Si 'origine du droit est une position violente, celle-ci semanifeste de la faqon la plus pure lM oti la violence est absolue, c'est-a'-dire touche au droit A la vie et a la mort. Benjamin n'a pas besoind'invoquer ici les grands discours philosophiques qui ont justifi6 avantlui, et de la m~me fagon, la peine de mort (Kant, Hegel, par exemplecontre les premiers abolitionnistes comme Beccaria).

Si l'ordre du droit se manifeste pleinement dans la possibilit6 dela peine de mort, abolir celle-ci, ce n'est pas toucher A un dispositifparmi d'autres, c'est d6savouer le principe m~me du droit. C'est IAconfirmer, dit Benjamin, qu'il y a quelque chose de "pourri" au coeurdu droit. Ce dont temoigne et doit t6moigner la peine de mort, c'estque le droit est une violence contraire i la nature. Mais ce quiaujourd'hui en t6moigne de fagon encore plus "spectrale" (gespen-stisch, "spectral," p. 286, spectrale et non seulement hallucinantecomme dit ]a traduction franqaise) en melangeant les deux violences(conservatrice et fondatrice), c'est l'institution moderne de la police.C'est cc m6lange (Vermischung, "mixture") qui est spectral, comme siune violence hantait l'autre (bien que Benjamin ne le dise pas ainsipour commenter le double usage du mot gespenstisch). Cette absence

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later be necessary to meditate upon the essence of fate at the origin ofthis threat.

In the course of a meditation on fate, which includes along theway an analysis of the police, the death penalty, the parliamentaryinstitution, Benjamin thus comes to distinguish between divine justiceand human justice, between the divine justice that destroys law andthe mythic violence that founds it.

The violence that conserves ("law-preserving violence"), thisthreat which is not intimidation, is a threat of droit. Double genitive:it both comes from and threatens droit. A valuable index arises herefrom the domain of the right to punish and the death penalty. Benja-min seems to think that the arguments against the droit de punir andnotably against the death penalty are superficial, and not by accident.For they do not admit an axiom essential to the definition of law.Which? Well, when one tackles the death penalty, one doesn't dis-pute one penalty among others but law itself in its origin, in its veryorder. If the origin of law is a violent positioning, the latter manifestsitself in the purest fashion when violence is absolute, that is to saywhen it touches on the right to life and to death. Here Benjamindoesn't need to invoke the great philosophical arguments that beforehim have justified, in the. same way, the death penalty (Kant, Hegel,for example, against early opponents like Beccaria).

If the legal system fully manifests itself in the possibility of thedeath penalty, to abolish the penalty is not to touch upon one disposi-tif among others, it is to disavow the very principle of law. And thatis to confirm, says Benjamin, that there is something "rotten" at theheart of law. The death penalty bears witness, it must bear witness, tothe fact that law is a violence contrary to nature. But what todaybears witness in an even more "spectral" (gespenstiche) way in mixingthe two forms of violence (conserving and founding), is the modeminstitution of the police. It is this mixture (Vermischung) that is spec-tral, as if one violence haunted the other (though Benjamin doesn'tput it this way in commenting on the double meaning of the wordgespenstich ). This absence of a frontier between the two types of vio-lence, this contamination between foundation and conservation is ig-noble, it is, he says, the ignominy (das Schmachvolle) of the police.

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de fronti~re entre les deux violences, cette contamination entre fonda-tion et conservation est ignoble, c'est, dit-il, l'ignominie (dasSchmachvolle, "the ignominy," p. 286) de la police. Car celle-ci ne secontente plus aujourd'hui d'appliquer la loi, et donc de la conserver,elle l'invente, elle publie des ordonnances, elle intervient chaque foisque la situation juridique n'est pas claire pour garantir la securit&C'est-i-dire aujourd'hui presque tout le temps. La police est ignobleparce que dans son autorit6 "la separation de la violence fondatrice etde la violence conservatrice est suspendue (aufgehoben)" (in ihr dieTrennung von rechtsetzender und rechtserhaltender Gewalt aufgehobenist,) "in this authority the separation of lawmaking and lawpreservingis suspended," p. 286). Dans cette Aufhebung qu'elle est elle-m~me,la police invente le droit, elle se fait "rechtsetzende," "lawmaking,"legislative, chaque fois que le droit est assez indetermine pour lui enlaisser la possibilit6. Le police se comporte comme un lgislateur dansles temps modernes, pour ne pas dire comme un l~gislateur des tempsmodernes. La oii il y a police, c'est-i-dire partout et ici m~me, on nepeut plus discerner entre les deux violences, la conservatrice et lafondatrice, et voila l' quivoque ignoble, ignominieuse, degofitante. LapossibilitE, c'est-i-dire aussi la necessite' in6luctable de la policemoderne ruine en somme, on pourrait dire d~construit, la distinctionentre les deux violences qui structure pourtant le discours que Benja-min appelle une nouvelle critique de la violence. Ce discours, ilvoudrait ou bien le fonder ou bien le conserver mais il ne peut en toutepuret6 ni le fonder ni le conserver. Tout au plus peut-il le signercomme un ev'nement spectral. Texte et signature sont des spectres.Et il le sait, si bien que l'venement du texte Zur Kritik der Gewaltconsiste en cette &trange ex-position: une demonstration ruine sousvos yeux les distinctions qu'elle propose. Elle exhibe et archive lemouvement m~me de son implosion, laissant en place ce qu'on appelleun texte, le fant6me d'un texte qui, lui-m~me en ruine, A la fois fonda-tion et conservation, n'arrive ni i l'une ni 'a l'autre et reste l, jusqu'aun certain point, pour un certain temps, lisible et illisible, comme laruine exemplaire qui nous avertit singulierement du destin de touttexte et de toute signature dans leur rapport au droit, c'est-A-diren~cessairement i une certaine police. Tel serait donc, soit dit en pas-sant, le statut sans statut d'un texte dit de d&onstruction et de ce qu'ilen reste. Le texte n'6chappe pas i la loi qu'il 6nonce. I1 se ruine et secontamine, il devient le spectre de lui-m~me. Mais de cette ruine de lasignature il y aura plus A dire.

Ce qui menace la rigueur de la distinction entre les deux vio-lences, c'est au fond le paradoxe de l'it~rabilit& Celle-ci fait que

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For today the police are no longer content to enforce the law, andthus to conserve it; they invent it, they publish ordinances, they inter-vene whenever the legal situation isn't clear to guarantee security.Which these days is to say nearly all the time. The police are ignoblebecause in their authority "the separation of the violence that foundsand the violence that conserves is suspended" (in ihr die Trennungvon rechtsetzender und rechtserhaltender Gewalt aufgehoben ist, "inthis authority the separation of lawmaking and lawpreserving is sus-pended," p. 286). In this Aujhebung that it itself is, the police inventlaw, they make themselves "rechtsetzend," "lawmaking," legislative,each time law is indeterminate enough to give them the chance. Thepolice behave like lawmakers in modern times, not to say lawmakersof modern times. Where there are police, which is to say everywhereand even here, we can no longer discern between two types of vio-lence, conserving and founding, and that is the ignoble, ignominious,disgusting ambiguity. The possibility, which is also to say the ineluc-table necessity of the modern police force ruins, in sum, one could saydeconstructs, the distinction between the two kinds of violence thatnevertheless structure the discourse that Benjamin calls a new critiqueof violence. He would like either to found it or conserve it but in allpurity, he can do neither. At most, it can sign it as a spectral event.Text and signature are specters. And he knows it, so well that theevent of the text Zur Kritik der Gewalt consists of this strange ex-position: before your eyes a demonstration ruins the distinctions itproposes. It exhibits and archiVizes the very movement of its implo-sion, leaving instead what we call a text, the ghost of a text that, itselfin ruins, at once foundation and conservation, accomplishes neitherand remains there, up to a certain point, for a certain amount of tim,:,readable and unreadable, like the exemplary ruin that singularlywarns us of the fate of all texts and all signatures in their relation tolaw, that is, necessarily, in their relation to a certain police force.Such would be (let it be said in passing) the status without statute, thestatute without status of a text considered deconstructive and whatremains of it. The text does not escape the law that it states. It isruined and contaminated, it becomes the specter of itself. But aboutthis ruin of signature,there will be more to say.

What threatens the rigor of the distinction between the two typesof violence is at bottom the paradox of iterability. Iterabifity requires

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l'origine doit originairement se r6p6ter et s'alt6rer pour valoir commeorigine, c'est-A-dire pour se conserver. I1 y a tout de suite de la policeet la police 16gif~re, elle ne se contente pas d'appliquer une loi quiavant elle serait sans force. Cette it6rabilit6 inscrit la conservationdans la structure essentielle de la fondation. Cette loi ou cetten6cessit6 g6n6rale n'est pas un ph6nom~ne moderne, elle vaut a priori,m~me si Benjamin a raison d'en donner des exemples irr6ductible-ment modemes dans leur sp6cificit6. L'it6rabilit6 emp~che en touterigueur qu'il y ait de purs et grands fondateurs, initiateurs, 16gis-lateurs (de "grands" potes, penseurs ou hommes d'Etat, au sens oaHeidegger le dira en 1935, en suivant un sch6ma analogue concernantle fatal sacrifice de ces fondateurs).

La ruine n'est pas A mes yeux une chose n6gative. D'abord, cen'est evidemment pas une chose. Puis j'aimerais 6crire, peut-8tre avecou selon Benjamin, peut-8tre contre Benjamin, un court trait6 del'amour des ruines. Que peut-on aimer d'autre, d'ailleurs? On nepeut aimer un monument, une architecture, une institution commetelle que dans 'exp6rience elle-m~me pr6caire de sa fragilit6: elle n'apas toujours 6t6 la, elle ne sera pas toujours la, elle est finie. Et pourcela meme je l'aime en mortel, a travers sa naissance et sa mort, Atravers le fant6me ou la silhouette de sa ruine, de la mienne--quedonc elle est ou pr6figure d6ja'. Comment aimer autrement que danscette finitude? D'oa viendrait autrement le droit d'aimer, voirel'amour du droit?

Revenons i la chose mme, c'est-A-dire au fant6me, car ce texteest une histoire de fant6mes. Nous ne pouvons pas plus 6viter lefant6me et la ruine que nous ne pouvons 6luder la question du statutrh&orique de cet 6v6nement textuel. A quelles figures a-t-il recourspour son exposition, son explosion interne ou son implosion? Toutesles figures exemplaires de la violence du droit sont des m6tonymiessinguli~res, a savoir des figures sans limites, des possibilit6s de trans-position d6chain6es et des figures sans figures. Prenons l'exemple dela police, cet indice d'une violence fantomatique parce qu'elle male lafondation A la conservation et devient d'autant plus violente de ce fait.Eh bien, la police qui capitalise ainsi ]a ,iolence n'est pas seulement lapolice. Elle ne consiste pas seulement en agents de police en uniformequelquefois casqu6s, arm6s et organis6s dans une structure civile demodule militaire A laquelle le droit de grave est refus6, etc. Par d6fini-tion, la police est pr6sente ou repr6sent6e partout oi il y a force de loi.Elle est pr6sente, parfois invisible mais toujours efficace, partout o ily a conservation de l'ordre social. La police n'est pas seulement lapolice (aujourd'hui plus ou moins que jamais), elle est lIA, figure sans

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the origin to repeat itself originarily, to alter itself so as to have thevalue of origin, that is, to conserve itself. Right away there are policeand the police legislate, not content to enforce a law that would havehad no force before the police. This iterability inscribes conservationin the essential structure of foundation. This law or this general ne-cessity is not a modern phenomenon, it has an a priori worth, even ifBenjamin is right to give examples that are irreducibly modern intheir specificity. Rigorously speaking, iterability precludes the possi-bility of pure and great founders, initiators, lawmakers ("great" poets,thinkers or men of State, in the sense Heidegger will mean in 1935,following an analogous schema concerning the fatal sacrifice of thesefounders).

I do not see ruin as a negative thing. First of all, it is clearly nota thing. And then I would love to write, maybe with or followingBenjamin, maybe against Benjamin, a short treatise on love of ruins.What else is there to love, anyway? One cannot love a monument, awork of architecture, an institution as such except in an experienceitself precarious in its fragility: it hasn't always been there, it will notalways be there, it is finite. And for this very reason I love it as mor-tal, through its birth and its death, through the ghost or the silhouetteof its ruin, of my own-which it already is or already prefigures. Howcan we love except in this finitude? Where else would the right tolove, indeed the love of right, come from? (D'od viendrait autrement ledroit d'aimer, voire l'amour du droit?)

Let us return to the thing itself, to the ghost, for this text is aghost story. We can no more avoid ghost and ruin than we can eludethe question of the rhetorical status of this textual event. To whatfigures does it turn for its exposition, for its internal explosion or itsimplosion? All the exemplary figures of the violence of law are singu-lar metonymies, namely, figures without limit, unfettered possibilitiesof transposition and figures without figures. Let us take the exampleof the police, this index of a phantom-like violence because it mixesfoundation with conservation and becomes all the more violent forthis. Well, the police that thus capitalize on violence aren't simply thepolice. They do not simply consist of policemen in uniform, occasion-ally helmeted, armed and organized in a civil structure on a militarymodel to whom the right to strike is refused, and so forth. By defini-tion, the police are present or represented everywhere that there isforce of law. They are present, sometimes invisible but always effec-tive, wherever there is preservation of the social order. The policearen't just the police (today more or less than ever), they are there, thefaceless figure (figure sans figure) of a Dasein coextensive with the

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figure d'un Dasein coextensif au Dasein de la polls. Benjamin lereconnalt i sa mani~re, mais dans un geste double et que je crois nond61ib6r6, en tout cas non th6matise. 11 ne renonce jamais i contenirdans un couple de concepts et ' reconduire i des distinctions celam~me qui les exc~de et les d6borde sans cesse. I1 admet ainsi que lemal de la police, c'est qu'elle est une figure sans figure, une violencesans forme (gestaltlos). Elle n'est saisissable, comme telle, nulle part(nirgendsfassbare). Dans les Etats dits civilis6s le spectre de son ap-parition fantomatique s'&end partout (allverbreitete gespenstische Er-scheinung im Leben der zivilisierten Staaten, "all pervasive ghostlypresence in the life of civilized states," p. 287). Et pourtant, cetteinsaisissable figure sans forme de la police, alors meme qu'elle sem&onymise, spectralise, et installe partout sa hantise, Benjaminvoudrait encore qu'elle reste une figure determinable et propre auxEtats civilis6s. I1 pr&end savoir de quoi il parle quand il parle au senspropre de la police et voudrait en d&erminer le ph6nom~ne. I1 estdifficile de savoir s'il parle de la police de l'Etat moderne ou de l'Etaten g6nOral quand il nomme l'Etat civilis6. Je pencherais plut6t vers lapremiere hypothese pour deux raisons:

1. Il selectionne les exemples modernes de la violence, parexemple celui de la grave g,6n6rale ou le probleme de la peine de mort.Plus haut, il ne parle pas seulement des Etats civilis6s mais d'une au-tre "institution de l'Etat moderne," la police. C'est la police moderne,dans des situations politico-techniques modernes qui est amen6e iproduire la loi qu'elle est cens6e seulement appliquer.

2. Tout en reconnaissant que le corps fantomal de la police, sienvahissant soit-il, reste toujours 6gal i lui-m~me, il admet que sonesprit (Geist), l'esprit de police, fait moins de ravage dans lamonarchie absolue que dans les dimocraties modernes oti sa violenced6g6n6re. Arr&ons-nous un instant sur ce point. Je ne suis pas sirque Benjamin ait d61ib6r6 le rapprochement que je tente entre les motsgespenstische, spectral, fantomal, et le mot de Geist, d'esprit au sensaussi de double fantomatique. Mais la logique profonde de cette ana-logie me parait peu contestable m~me si Benjamin ne la reconnaissaitpas. La police devient hallucinante et spectrale parce qu'elle hantetout; elle est partout m~me la o6 elle n'est pas, dans son Fort-Daseinauquel on peut toujours faire appel. Sa presence n'est pas prbsente,pas plus qu'aucune pr6sence n'est pr6sente, comme nous le rappelleHeidegger, mais la pr6sence de son double spectral ne connalt pas defrontiire. Et il est conforme A la logique de Zur Kritik der Gewalt demarquer que tout ce qui touche i la violence du droit-ici de la policeelle-meme--n'est pas naturel mais spirituel. I1 y a un esprit, i la fois

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Dasein of the polis. Benjamin recognizes it in his way, but in a doublegesture that I don't think is deliberate and in any case isn't thema-tized. He never gives up trying to contain in a pair of concepts and tobring back down to distinctions the very thing that incessantly ex-ceeds them and surpasses them. In this way he admits that the prob-lem with the police is that they are a faceless figure, a violence withouta form (gestaltlos). As such, they are ungraspable in every way(nirgends fassbare). In so-called civilized states the specter of itsghostly apparition is all-pervasive (alverbreitete gespenstische Er-scheinung im Leben der zivilisierten Staaten, "all pervasive ghostlypresence in the life of civilized states," p. 287). And still, this formlessungraspable figure of the police, even as it is metonymized, spectral-ized, and even as it installs its haunting presence everywhere, would ifBenjamin had his way remain a determinable figure proper to the civi-lized States. He claims to know what he is speaking of when hespeaks of the proper meaning of the police and tries to determine thatphenomenon. It is hard to know whether he's speaking of the policeof the modem State or of the State in general when he mentions thecivilized state. I'm inclined toward the first hypothesis for tworeasons:

1. He selects modem examples of violence, for example that ofthe general strike or the problem of the death penalty. Earlier on, hespeaks not only of civilized states but of another "institution of themodem state," the police. It is the modern police, in politico-techni-cal modern situations that have been led to produce the law that theyare only supposed to enforce.

2. While recognizing that the phantom body of the police, how-ever invasive it may be, always remains equal to itself, he admits thatits spirit (Geist), the spirit of the police, does less damage in absolutemonarchy than it does in modem democracies where its violencedegenerates. Let us stay with this point a moment. I am not sure thatBenjamin worked out the rapprochement I'm attempting here betweenthe words gespenstische, "spectral," and "Geist," spirit also in thesense of the ghostly double. But the profound logic of this analogyseems hardly contestable to me, even if Benjamin didn't recognize it.The police become hallucinatory and spectral because they haunteverything; they are everywhere, even there where they are not, intheir Fort-Dasein to which we can always appeal. Their presence isnot present, any more than any presence is present, as Heidegger re-minds us, but the presence of their spectral double knows no bounda-ries. And it is in keeping with the logic of Zur Kritik der Gewalt tonote that anything having to do with the violence of droit-here the

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au sens du spectre et au sens de la vie qui s'l6ve, justement i traversla mort, par la possibilit6 de la peine de mort, au-dessus de la vienaturelle et biologique. La police en t6moigne. J'invoquerai ici unpassage de 1'Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels qui parle du Geistcomme facult6 d'exercer la dictature. Je remercie mon ami Tim Bahtid'avoir attir6 mon attention sur ce passage (mais il faudrait lire tout lechapitre qui parle plus haut des apparitions de spectres (Geister-scheinungen, p. 273): "L'esprit (Geist)-telle est la these del'6poque-se manifeste dans le pouvoir (weist sich aus in Macht);1'esprit, c'est la facult6 d'exercer la dictature (Geist ist das Vermdgen,Diktatur auszuuben). Cette facult6 exige une discipline int6rieurerigoureuse tout autant qu'une action ext6rieure depourvue descrupules (skrupelloseste Aktion)," p. 276. Et plus bas il est encorequestion du mauvais genie (b6se Geist) des despotes.

Au lieu d'&re lui-m~me et d'&re contenu dans la democratie, cetesprit de la police, cette violence policiere comme esprit y deg6n~re. I1t6moigne dans la d6mocratie moderne de la d6g6n6rescence la plusgrande qui puisse se penser pour la violence (die denkbar grosste Ent-artung der Gewalt bezeugt, "bears witness to the greatest conceivabledegeneration of violence," p. 287). Pourquoi? Dans la monarchie ab-solue, les pouvoirs l'gislatifs et ex6cutifs sont unis. La violence y estdonc normale, conforme 1 son essence, i son ide, a son esprit. Dansla d6mocratie au contraire, la violence n'est plus accord6e i l'esprit dela police. En raison de la s6paration pr6sum6e des pouvoirs, elles'exerce de fagon illegitime, surtout quand au lieu d'appliquer la loi,elle la fait. Benjamin indique ici le principe d'une analyse de la r6alit6polici~re dans les d6mocraties industrielles et leurs complexesmilitaro-industriels A haute technologie informatis6e. Dans lamonarchie absolue, si terrible qu'elle soit, la violence policiere se mon-tre telle qu'elle est et telle qu'elle doit &re dans son esprit, alors que laviolence polici~re des d6mocraties nie son propre principe en 16gif6-rant de fagon subreptice, dans la clandestinite. Double consequenceou double implication: 1. la d6mocratie est une d6g6n6rescence dudroit et de la violence du droit; 2. I1 n'y a pas encore de democratiedigne de ce nom. La d6mocratie reste A venir: a engendrer ou Ar6g6n6rer. Le discours de Benjamin qui se d6veloppe alors en unecritique du parlementarisme de la d6mocratie lib6rale est donc rdvolu-tionnaire, voire marxisant, mais aux deux sens du mot "r6volution-naire," qui comprend aussi le sens r6actionnaire, A savoir celui d'unretour au pass6 d'une origine plus pure. Cette 6quivoque est asseztypique pour avoir nourri bien des discours r6volutionnaires de droiteet de gauche, en particulier entre les deux guerres. Une critique de la

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police themselves-is not natural but spiritual. There is a spirit, bothin the. sense of specter and in the sense of the life that exalts itself,through death, precisely, by means of the possibility of the death pen-alty, above natural and biological, life. The police bear witness to this.Here I shall invoke a passage. from, the Ursprung der deutschenTrauerspiel that speaks of Geist as the capacity to exercise dictator-ship. I thank my friend Tim Bahti for bringing this- passage. to myattention (but one ought to read the whole chapter, which earlier ondiscusses the apparition of specters (Geisterscheinungen, p. 273)):"Spirit (Geist)-so the epoch would have it-manifests itself in power(weist sich aus in Macht ); spirit is-the capacity to exercise dictatorship(Geist ist das Verm6en, Diktatur auszuiben). This capacity requiresa rigorous internal discipline just as much as it requires the most un-scrupulous external action (skrupelloseste Aktion)" (p. 276). And fur-ther on it is again a question of the evil genius (b'se Geist) of despots.

Instead of being itself and being contained within democracy,this spirit of the police, this police violence as spirit degenerates there.It bears witness in modern democracy to the greatest degeneracy im-aginable for violence (die denkbar gr'sste Entartung der Gewaltbezeugt, "bears witness to the greatest conceivable degeneration of vi-olence," p. 287). Why? In absolute monarchy, legislative and execu-tive powers are united. In it violence is therefore normal, in keepingwith its essence, its idea, its spirit. In democracy, on the other hand,violence is no longer accorded to the spirit of the police. Because ofthe supposed separation of powers, it is exercised illegitimately, espe-cially when instead of enforcing the law the police make the law.Here Benjamin indicates the principle of an analysis of police realityin industrial democracies and their military-industrial, complexes withhigh computer technology. In absolute. monarchy, police violence,terrible as it may be, proves to be what it is and what it ought to be inits spirit, while the police violence of democracies denies its properprinciple, making laws surreptitiously, clandestinely. The conse-quences or implications are twofold: 1. democracy is a degeneracy ofdroit and of the violence of droit; 2. there is not yet any democracyworthy of this name. Democracy remains to come: to engender or toregenerate. And.so Benjamin's argument, which then develops into acritique: of the parliamentarism of liberal democracy, is revolutionary,even marxisant, but in the two senses of the word. "revolutionary,"which also includes the sense "reactionary," that is, the. sense of areturn to, the past of a purer origin.. This equivocation. is typicalenough, to' have fed many revolutionary discourses on the right andthe left, particularly between the two wars. A critique of "degener-

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"deg6nerescence" (Entartung) comme critique d'un parlementarismeimpuissant a contrOler la violence polici~re qui se substitue A lui, c'estbien une critique de la violence sur le fond d'une "philosophie del'histoire": mise en perspective archo-teleologique, voire arch6o-es-chatologique qui dechiffre l'histoire du droit comme une decadence(Verfall) depuis l'origine. L'analogie avec des schemas schmittiensou heideggeriens n'a pas a tre soulign6e. Ce triangle serait i illustrerpar une correspondance, je veux dire par la correspondance episto-laire qui lia ces trois penseurs (Schmitt/Benjamin, Heidegger/Schmitt). Et il s'agit toujours d'esprit et de r6volution.

La question serait au fond:* quoi de la d6mocratie lib6rale etparlementaire aujourd'hui? En tant que moyen, toute violence fondeou conserve le droit. Elle renoncerait autrement A toute valeur. Pasde problematique du droit sans cette violence des moyens. Cons&quence: tout contrat juridique, tout Rechtsvertrag ("legal contract," p.288) se fonde sur la violence. I1 n'y a pas de contrat qui n'ait la vio-lence a la fois pour origine (Ursprung, "origin") et pour issue (Aus-gang, "outcome"). Une allusion furtive et elliptique de Benjaminparait ici d6cisive, comme c'est souvent le cas. En tant que fondatriceou positionnelle de droit (rechtsetzende, lawmaking) la violence n'apas besoin d'&re imm6diatement presente dans le contrat (nicht un-mittelbar in ihm gegenwdrtig zu sein: "it need not be directly presentin it as lawmaking violence," p. 288). Mais sans &re imm6diatementprb.sente, elle est remplac6e (vertreten, "represented") par le suppl&-ment d'un substitut. Et c'est dans cette diff6rance, dans le mouve-ment qui remplace la pr6sence (la pr6sence immediate de la violenceidentifiable comme telle dans ses traits et dans son esprit), c'est danscette repr6sentativit6 diff6rantielle que se produit l'oubli de la violenceoriginaire. Cette perte de conscience amn6sique ne se produit pas paraccident. Elle est le passage m~me de la presence A la repr6sentation.Un tel passage forme le trajet du d6clin, de la d6g6n6rescence institu-tionnelle, leur Verfall ("decay"). Benjamin parlait tout a 'heured'une d6g6n6rescence (Entartung) de la violence originaire, par exem-ple celle de la violence polici~re dans la monarchie absolue qui se cor-rompt dans les d6mocraties modernes. Voici qu'il d6plore le Verfallde la r6volution dans le spectacle parlementaire: "Que disparaisse laconscience de cette pr6sence latente de la violence dans une institu-tion, cette demi~re alors periclite (schwindet das Bewusstsein von derlatenten Anwesenheit der Gewalt in einem Rechsinstitut, so verfdllt es,"When the consciousness of the latent presence of violence in a legalinstitution disappears, the institution falls into decay," p. 288). Lepremier exemple choisi en est celui des parlements d'alors. S'ils don-

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acy" (Entartung) as critique of a parliamentarism powerless to con-trol the police violence -that substitutes itself for it, is very much acritique of violence on the basis of a "philosophy of history": a put-ting into archeo-teleological, indeed archeo-eschatological perspectivethat deciphers the history of droit as a decay (Verfall) since its origin.The analogy with Schmittian or Heideggerian schemas does not needto be spelled out. This triangle could be illustrated by a correspon-dence, I mean the epistolary correspondence that linked these threethinkers (Schmitt/Benjamin, Heidegger/Schmitt). And it is still aquestion of spirit and revolution.

The basic question would be: what about liberal and parliamen-tary democracy today? As means, all violence founds or preservesdroit. Otherwise it would lose all value. There is no problematic ofdroit without this violence of means. The result: every juridical con-tract, every Rechtsvertrag ("legal contract," p. 288) is founded on vio-lence. There is no contract that does not have violence as both anorigin (Ursprung) and an outcome (Ausgang). Here a furtive and el-liptical allusion by Benjamin is decisive, as is often the case. The vio-lence that founds or positions droit need not be immediately presentin the contract (nicht unmittelbar in ihm gegenwdrtig zu sein: "it neednot be directly present in it as lawmaking violence," p. 288). Butwithout being immediately present, it is replaced (vertreten, "repre-sented") by the supplement of a substitute. And it is in this diffdr-ance, in the movement that replaces presence (the immediate presenceof violence identifiable as such in its traits and its spirit), it is in thisdiffdrantielle representativity that originary violence is consigned tooblivion. This amnesic loss of consciousness does not happen by acci-dent. It is the very passage from presence to representation. Such apassage forms the trajectory of decline, of institutional "degeneracy",their Verfall ("decay"). Benjamin had just spoken of a degeneracy(Entartung) of originary violence, for example, that of police violencein absolute monarchy, which is corrupted in modern democracies.Here is Benjamin deploring the Verfall of revolution in parliamentaryspectacle: "When the consciousness of the latent presence of violencein a legal institution disappears, the institution falls into decay," (p.288) (schwindet das BewuBtsein von der latenten Anwesenheit derGewalt in einem Rechtsinstitut, so verfdlit es). The first example cho-sen is that of the parliaments of the time. If they offer a deplorablespectacle, it is because these representative institutions forget the rev-olutionary violence from which they are born. In Germany in partic-ular, they have forgotten the abortive revolution of 1919. They havelost the sense of the founding violence of droit that is represented in

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nent un spectacle d6plorable, c'est parce que ces institutions repr6-sentatives oublient la violence r6volutionnaire dont elles sont n6es. EnAllemagne en particulier, elles ont oublie la r6volution avort6e de1919. Elles ont perdu le sens de la violence fondatrice du droit qui estrepr6sent6e en eux ("Ihnen fehlt der Sinn fiir die rechtsetzende Gewalt,die in ihnen reprdsentiert ist," "They lack the sense that a lawmakingviolence is represented by themselves," p. 288). Les parlements viventdans roubli de la violence dont ils sont n6s. Cette d6n6gationamnesique n'est pas une faiblesse psychologique, c'est leur statut etleur structure. Ds lors, au lieu d'aboutir i des d6cisions commen-surables ou proportionnelles i cette violence et digne ("wzirdig,""worthy") d'elle, ils pratiquent la politique hypocrite du compromis.Le concept de compromis, la d6n6gation de la violence ouverte, lerecours A la violence dissimul6e appartiennent ' 'esprit de violence, 'la "mentalitE de la violence" (Mentalitdt der Gewalt, "mentality ofviolence") qui pousse A accepter la contrainte de 'adversaire, i la foispour 6viter le pire et en se disant avec le soupir du parlementaire quece n'est certes pas l'id6al, que, sans doute, cela aurait 6t6 mieux autre-ment mais qu'on ne pouvait justement pas faire autrement. Le parle-mentarisme est donc dans la violence et dans le renoncement A rid6al.I1 choue ' resoudre les conflits politiques par la parole, la discussion,la d6lib6ration non-violente, en somme par la mise en oeuvre de lad6mocratie lib6rale. Devant le "d6clin des parlements" (der Verfallder Parlamente), Benjamin trouve la critique des bolchevistes et dessyndicalistes A la fois pertinente (treffende) dans 'ensemble et radi-calement destructrice (vernichtende).

I1 nous faut maintenant introduire une distinction qui une fois deplus rapproche Benjamin d'un certain Carl Schmitt et en tout casdonne un sens plus pr6cis A ce que pouvait &re la configuration his-torique dans laquelle s'inscrivaient toutes ces pensees (prix excessif dela dMfaite A payer par 'Allemagne, R6publique de Weimar, crise etimpuissance du nouveau parlementarisme, 6chec du pacifisme,lendemain de la r6volution d'octobre, concurrence entre les medias etle parlementarisme, nouvelles donn6es du droit international, etc.).Nous venons de voir en somme que dans son origine et dans sa fin,dans sa fondation et dans sa conservation, le droit 6tait ins6parable dela violence, imm6diate ou m6diate, pr6sente ofi repr6sentee. Cela ex-clut-il toute non-violence dans l'61imination des conflits, comme onpourrait le conclure tranquillement? Nullement. Mais la pens6e de lanon-violence doit exc6der l'ordre du droit public. Benjamin croit auxrapports non-violents entre les personnes priv6es. Une union sans vio-lence (gewaltlose Einigung, "nonviolent agreement," p. 289) est possi-

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them ("Ihnen fehlt der Sinn ftir die rechtsetzende Gewalt, die in ihnenreprdsentiert ist," "They lack the sense that a lawmaking violence isrepresented by themselves," p. 288). The parliaments live in forget-fulness of the violence from which they are born. This amnesic dene-gation is not a psychological weakness, it is their statut and theirstructure. From this point on, instead of coming to decisions com-mensurable or proportional to this violence and worthy (wuirdig) of it,they practice the hypocritical politics of compromise. The concept ofcompromise, the denegation of open violence, the recourse to dissimu-lated violence belong to the spirit of violence, to the "mentality ofviolence" (Mentalitdt der Gewalt) that goes so far as to accept coer-cion of the adversary to avoid the worst, at the same time saying toitself with the sigh of the parliamentarian that this certainly isn'tideal, that, no doubt, this would have been better otherwise but that,precisely, one couldn't do otherwise. Parliamentarism, then, is in vio-lence and the renunciation of the ideal. It fails to resolve politicalconflicts by non-violent speech, discussion, deliberation, in short byputting liberal democracy to work. In face of the "decay of parlia-ments" (der Verfall der Parlamente), Benjamin finds the critique ofthe Bolshevists and the trade-unionists both pertinent (treffende)overall and radically destructive (vernichtende).

Now we must introduce a distinction that once again brings to-gether Benjamin and one Carl Schmitt and in any case gives a moreprecise sense of what the historical configuration could have been inwhich all these different modes of thinking were inscribed (the exorbi-tant price Germany had to pay for defeat, thc Weimar Republic, thecrisis and impotence of the new parliamentarism, the failure of paci-fism, the aftermath of the October revolution, conflict between themedia and parliamentarism, new particulars of international law, andso forth). We just saw, in sum, that in its origin and its end, in itsfoundation and its conservation, le droit was inseparable from vio-lence, immediate or mediate, present or represented. Does this ex-clude all non-violence in the elimination of conflicts, as we mightplacidly conclude? Not at all. Benjamin does not exclude the possi-bility of non-violence. But the thought of non-violence must exceedthe order of public droit. Union without violence (gewaltloseEinigung, "nonviolent agreement," p. 289) is possible everywhere that

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ble partout oa la culture du coeur (die Kultur des Herzens) donne auxhommes des moyens purs en vue de l'accord (Ubereinkunft). Celasignifie-t-il qu'il faille en rester a cette opposition du prive et du publicpour prot6ger un domaine de non-violence? Les choses sont loind'8tre si simples. D'autres partages conceptuels vont d6limiter, dansla sphere m~me du politique, le rapport de la violence A la non-vio-lence. Ce serait par exemple, dans la tradition de Sorel ou de Marx, ladistinction entre la greve g6nerale politique, violente puisqu'elle veutremplace rEtat par un autre Etat (par exemple celle qui venait des'annoncer comme un 6clair en Allemagne) et la grave g6n6raleprolitarienne, cette r6volution qui au lieu de fortifier i'Etat vise a sasuppression, comme A l'61imination des "sociologues, dit Sorel, desgens du monde amis des r6formes sociales, des intellectuels qui ontembrass6 la profession de penser pour le prol&ariat" ("sociologists,elegant amateurs of social reforms or intellectuals who have made ittheir profession to think for the proletariat," p. 292).

Une autre distinction parait encore plus radicale et plus prochede ce qui concerne la critique de la violence comme moyen. Elle op-pose l'ordre des moyens, justement, et l'ordre de la manifestation. I1s'agit bien encore une fois de la violence du langage, mais aussi del'av6nement de la non-violence par un certain langage. L'essence dulangage consiste-t-elle en signes, consid6res comme des moyens decommunication, ou en une manifestation qui ne relive plus ou pasencore de la communication par signes, c'est-a-dire de la structuremoyen/fin?

Benjamin entend prouver qu'une 61imination non violente desconflits est possible dans le monde priv6 quand y regnent la culture ducoeur, la courtoisie cordiale, la sympathie, l'amour de la paix, la confi-ance. Le dialogue (Unterredung, "conference"), comme techniqued'accord civil en serait 'exemple le plus profond. Or i quoi recon-nait-on que la violence est exclue de la sphere priv6e ou propre(eigentliche Sphdre)? La r6ponse de Benjamin peut surprendre. Lapossibilit6 de cette non-violence est attestee par le fait que le men-songe (die Lige, "lying," p. 289) n'y est pas puni, ni la tromperie(Betrug, "fraud"). Le droit romain et l'ancien droit germanique ne lespunissaient pas. Consid6rer un mensonge comme un d6lit, c'est unsigne de d6cadence (Verfallsprozess, "declining vitality"). Le droitmoderne perd confiance en lui-m~me, ii condamne la tromperie nonpas pour des raisons morales mais parce qu'il redoute les violencesqu'elle pourrait entrainer de la part des victimes. Celles-ci pourraienten retour menacer l'ordre du droit. C'est le meme mecanisme quedans l'octroi du droit de grave. I1 s'agit de limiter la pire violence par

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the culture of the heart (die Kultur des Herzens) gives men puremeans with accord (Ubereinkunft) in view. Does this mean we muststop at this opposition between private and public to protect a domainof non-violence? Things are far from that simple. Other conceptualdivisions will delimit, in the sphere of politics itself, the relation ofviolence to non-violence. This would be, for example, in the traditionof Sorel or Marx, the distinction between the general political strike,violent since it wants to replace the State with another State (for ex-ample the one that just flashed forth in Germany) and the generalproletarian strike, that revolution that instead of strengthening theState aims at its suppression, as it aims at the elimination of "sociolo-gists, says Sorel, men of the world so fond of social reforms, intellec-tuals who have embraced the profession of thinking for theproletariat" ("sociologists, elegant amateurs of social reforms or intel-lectuals who have made it their profession to think for the proleta-riat," p. 292).

Another distinction seems even more radical and closer to whatconcerns the critique of violence as a means. It opposes the order ofmeans and representation, precisely, to the order of manifestation.Once again it is very much a question of the violence of language, butalso of the advent of non-violence through a certain language. Doesthe essence of language consist in signs, considered as means of com-munication as re-presentation, or in a manifestation that no longerarises, or not yet, from communication through signs, that is, fromthe means/end structure?

Benjamin intends to prove that a non-violent elimination of con..flicts is possible in the private world when it is ruled by the culture ofthe heart, cordial courtesy, sympathy, love of peace, trust. Dialogue(Unterredung, "conference"), as technique of civil agreement wouldbe the most profound example. But by what token can violence beconsidered excluded from the private or proper sphere (eigentlicheSphdre)? Benjamin's response may be surprising to some. The possi-bility of this non-violence is attested to by the fact that the lie (dieLdge, "lying," p. 289) is not punished, nor is deception (Betrug,"fraud"). Roman law and Old German law did not punish them. Toconsider a lie an offence is a sign of decadence (Verfallsprozess, "de-clining vitality"). Modern law loses faith in itself, it condemns decep-tion not for moral reasons but because it fears the violence that itmight lead to on the victims' part. They may in return threaten theorder of droit. It is the same mechanism as the one at work in theconcession of the right to strike. It is a matter of limiting the worstviolence with another violence. What Benjamin seems to be dreaming

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une autre violence. Ce dont semble r~ver Benjamin, c'est un ordre dela non-violence qui soustrait a l'ordre du droit-donc au droit depunir le mensonge-non seulement les relations priv6es mais m~mecertaines relations publiques, comme dans la grave g6n6raleprol6tarienne dont parle Sorel-qui ne cherche pas a refonder un Etatet un nouveau droit; ou encore certaines relations diplomatiques o6,de fagon analogue aux relations priv6es, certains ambassadeurs r~glentles conflits pacifiquement et sans trait6s. L'arbitrage est non violentdans ce cas parce qu'il se situe "au-dela de tout ordre du droit et doncde la violence" ("beyond all legal systems, and therefore beyond vio-lence," p. 293). On verra tout l'heure en quoi cette non-violencen'est pas sans affinit6 avec la pure violence.

Benjamin propose ici une analogie sur laquelle il convient des'arrter un instant, en particulier parce qu'elle fait intervenir ce con-cept 6nigmatique de destin. Que se passerait-il si une violence like audestin (schicksalsmassige Gewalt, "violence imposed by fate," p. 293)et utilisant des moyens justes (berechtigte) se trouvait dans un conflitinsoluble avec des buts justes (gerechten)? Et cela de telle sorte qu'ilfaille envisager une autre esp6ce de violence qui a l'6gard de ces butsne serait ni un moyen justifi6 ni un moyen injustifie. Ni moyen justifieni moyen injustifi6, ind6cidablement, cela ne serait m~me plus unmoyen mais entrerait dans un tout autre rapport avec le couplemoyen/fin. On aurait alors affaire i une tout autre violence qui ne selaisserait plus d6terminer dans 'espace ouvert par l'oppositionmoyen/fin. Question d'autant plus grave qu'elle exc6de ou d6place laprobl6matique initiale que Benjamin avait jusqu'ici construite au sujetde la violence et du droit et qui tait tout enti~re command~e par leconcept de moyen. On s'apergoit ici qu'il y a des cas oa, pos6 entermes de moyens/fins, le probl~me de droit reste indecidable. Cetteultime indecidabilit6 qui est celle de tous les problemes de droit(Unentscheidbarkeit aller Rechtsprobleme, "ultimate insolubility of alllegal problems," p. 293), c'est la lumiere d'une exp6rience singuliireet decourageante. Oil aller quand on a reconnu cette ind6cidabilit6in6luctable?

Une telle question ouvre d'abord sur une autre dimension du lan-gage, sur un au-dela de la m6diation et donc du langage comme signeau sens de m6diation, comme moyen en vue d'une fin. Elle paraitd'abord sans issue et donc sans espoir. Mais dans l'impasse, cettedesesp6rance (Aussichtslosigkeit, "insolubility," "hopelessness") ap-pelle des d6cisions de pensee qui ne concernent rien de moins quel'origine du langage dans son rapport A la v6rit6, la violence destinale(schicksalhafte Gewalt, "fate-imposed violence") qui se place au-des-

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of is an order of non-violence that withholds from the order of droit-and so from the right to punish the lie-not only private relations buteven certain public relations as in the general proletarian strike thatSorel speaks about-which would not attempt to refound a State anda new droit; or again certain diplomatic relations in which, in a man-ner analogous to private relations, certain ambassadors settle conflictspeacefully and without treaties. Arbitration is non-violent in this casebecause it is situated beyond all order of droit and so beyond vio-lence" ("beyond all legal systems, and therefore beyond violence," p.293). We shall see in a moment how this non-violence is not withoutaffinity to pure violence.

Here Benjamin proposes an analogy that we should linger overfor a moment, particularly because it brings in this enigmatic conceptof fate. What would happen if a violence linked to fate (schicksals-mdssige Gewalt, "violence imposed by fate," p. 293) and using justmeans (berechtigte) found itself in an insoluble conflict with just (ge-rechten) ends? And in such a way that we had to envision anotherkind of violence that regarding these ends would be neither a justifiednor an unjustified means? Neither a justified nor an unjustifiedmeans, undecidably, it would no longer even be a means but wouldenter into a whole other relation with the pair means/end. Then wewould be dealing with a wholly other violence that would no longerallow itself to be determined in the space opened up by the oppositionmeans/end. The question is all the more grave in that it exceeds ordisplaces the initial problematic that Benjamin had up to this pointconstructed on the subject of violence and droit and that was entirelygoverned by the concept of means. Here it will be noticed that thereare cases in which, posed in terms of means/ends, the problem ofdroit remains undecidable. This ultimate undecidability which is thatof all problems of droit (Unentscheidbarkeit aller Rechtsprobleme,"ultimate insolubility of all legal problems," p. 293) is the insight of asingular and discouraging experience. Where is one to go after recog-nizing this ineluctable undecidability?

Such a question opens, first, upon another dimension of lan-guage, on an au-deld beyond mediation and so beyond language assign in the sense of mediation, as a means with an end in view. Itseems at first that there is no way out and so no hope. But at theimpasse, this despair (Aussichtslosigkeit, "insolubility, .... hopeless-ness") summons up decisions of thought that concern nothing lessthan the origin of language in its relation to the truth, destinal vio-lence (schicksalhafte Gewalt, "fate-imposed violence") that puts itselfabove reason, then, above this violence itself, God: another, a wholly

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sus de la raison, puis, au-dessus de cette violence m~me, Dieu: unautre, un tout autre "fondement mystique de l'autorit6." Ce n'est cer-tes pas celui de Montaigne ou de Pascal mais il ne faudrait pas trop sefier 'a cette distance. Voila sur quoi ouvre en quelque sortel'Aussichtslosigkeit du droit, voila' oui mane l'impasse du droit.

I1 y aurait une analogie entre "l'ind6cidabilit6 (Unent-scheidbarkeit) de tous les problemes de droit" et ce qui se passed'autre part dans les langues naissantes (in werdenden Sprachen) oiaune d6ecision (Entscheidung) claire, convaincante, d&erminante estimpossible entre le juste et le faux, le correct et l'incorrect (richtig/falsch, "right/wrong"). Ce n'est 1U qu'une analogie propos6e en pas-sant. Mais on pourrait la d6velopper ' partir d'autres textes de Benja-min sur le langage, notamment "La tiche du traducteur" (1923) etsurtout le fameux essai de 1916, cinq ans auparavant ("Sur le langageen g6neral et sur le langage humain"). Tous deux mettent en questionl'essence originairement communicative, c'est-i-dire semiologique, in-formative, representative, conventionnelle, donc mddiatrice du lan-gage. Celui-ci n'est pas moyen en vue d'une fin-une chose ou uncontenu signifi6- laquelle il devrait se rendre correctement adequat.Cette critique du signe 6tait alors aussi politique: la conception dulangage comme moyen et comme signe serait "bourgeoise." Le textede 1916 dffinit le peche originel comme cette chute dans un langagede communication mediate oil les mots devenus moyens incitent aubavardage (Geschwatz). La question du bien et du mal apres la cr6a-tion rel6ve de ce bavardage. L'arbre de la connaissance ne fut pas 1Upour fournir des connaissances sur le Bien et le Mal mais comme le"Wahrzeichen," le signe symptomal du jugement (Gericht) port6 surcelui qui questionne. "Cette extraordinaire ironie, conclut Benjamin,est le signe auquel on reconnait l'origine mythique du droit (dasKennzeichen des mythischen Ursprungs des Rechtes )" (Bd. II, 1, p.154).

Au-deli de cette simple analogie, Benjamin veut donc penser iciune finalit', une justice des fins qui ne soit plus li6e ' la possibilite dudroit, en tous cas i ce qu'on congoit toujours comme universalisable.L'universalisation du droit est sa possibilit6 m~me, elle est analytique-ment inscrite dans le concept de justice (Gerechtigkeit). Mais cequ'on ne comprend pas alors, c'est que cette universalit6 est en con-tradiction avec Dieu lui-m8me, i savoir avec celui qui d6ecide de lal6gitimite des moyens et de la justice des fins au-dessus de la raison etmi'me au-dessus de la violence destinale. Cette r6f6rence soudaine iDieu au-dessus de la raison et de l'universalit6, au-deli d'une sorted'Aufklrung du droit, n'est autre qu'une r6f6rence i la singularit6

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other "mystical foundation of authority." It is not, to be sure,Montaigne's or Pascal's, but we shouldn't trust too much in this dis-tance. That is what the Aussichtslosigkeit of droit in some way opensup on, that is where the impasse of droit leads.

There would be an analogy between "the undecidability (Unent-scheidbarkeit) of all the problems of droit" and what happens in nas-cent languages (in werdenden Sprachen) in which it is impossible tomake a clear, convincing, determinant decision (Entscheidung) be-tween true and false, correct and incorrect (richtig/falsch, "right/wrong"). This is only an analogy proposed in passing. But it could bedeveloped on the basis of other Benjamin texts on language, notably"The Task of the Translator" (1923) and especially the famous essayof 1916, five years before, "On Language in General and Human Lan-guage." Both put into question the notion that the essence of lan-guage is originally communicative, that is to say semiological,informative, representative, conventional, hence mediatory. It is not ameans with an end in view-a thing or signified content-to which itwould have to adequate itself correctly. This critique of the sign waspolitical then as well: the conception of language as means and as signwould be "bourgeois." The 1916 text defined original sin as that fallinto a language of mediate communication where words, having be-come means, incite babbling (Geschwdtz). The question of good andevil after the creation arises from this babbling. The tree of knowl-edge was not there to provide knowledge of good and evil but as the"Wahrzeichen," the sign betokening judgment (Gericht) borne by hewho questions. "This extraordinary irony," Benjamin concludes, "isthe sign by which the mythical origin of droit is recognized" (dasKennzeichen des mythischen Ursprungs des Rechtes, Bd 11,1, p. 154).

Beyond this simple analogy, Benjamin here wants to conceive ofa finality, a justice of ends that is no longer tied to the possibility ofdroit, in any case to what is always conceived of as universalizable.The universalization of droit is its very possibility, it is analyticallyinscribed in the concept of justice (Gerechtigkeit). But in this casewhat is not understood is that this universality is in contradictionwith God himself, that is, with the one who decides the legitimacy ofmeans and the justice of ends over and above reason and even abovedestinal violence. This sudden reference to God above reason anduniversality, beyond a sort of A ufkldrung of law, is nothing other thana reference to the irreducible singularity of each situation. And theaudacious thought, as necessary as it is perilous, of what I shall herecall a sort of justice without droit (this is not one of Benjamin's ex-

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irr6ductible de chaque situation. Et la pens6e audacieuse, aussi neces-saire que perilleuse de ce que j'appellerai ici une sorte de justice sansdroit (ce n'est pas une expression de Benjamin) vaut aussi bien pourl'unicit6 de l'individu que pour le peuple et pour la langue, bref pourl'histoire.

Pour faire entendre cette "fonction non m6diate de la violence"(Eine nicht mittelbare Funktion der Gewalt, "nonmediate function ofviolence," p. 294), Benjamin prend encore l'exemple du langage quo-tidien comme s'il s'agissait seulement d'une analogie. En fait nousavons lM, me semble-t-il, le v6ritable ressort, et le lieu m~me de lad6cision. Est-ce par hasard et sans rapport avec telle figure de Dieuqu'il parle alors de l'exp6rience de la col~re pour montrer que le lan-gage est manifestation, epiphanie, avant d'8tre mediation?L'explosion de violence, dans la colere, n'est pas un moyen en vued'une fin; elle n'a pas d'autre but que de montrer et de se montrer elle-m~me. Laissons i Benjamin la responsabilite de ce concept: la mani-festation en quelque sorte d6sint6ress6e, immediate et sans calcul de lacol~re. Ce qui lui importe, c'est une manifestation de la violence quine soit pas moyen en vue d'une fin. Telle serait la violence mythiquecomme manifestation des dieux.

Ici commence la derni~re s6quence, la plus 6nigmatique, la plusfascinante et la plus profonde de ce texte. Faute de temps mais nonseulement de temps, je renonce i lui faire justice. Je devrai me con-tenter d'y souligner d'une part la terrible ambiguit6 6thico-politiquedu texte, d'autre part 'exemplaire instabilit6 de son statut et de sasignature, enfin ce que vous me permettrez d'appeler ce coeur ou cecourage d'une pens6e qui sait qu'il n'y a de justesse et de justice et deresponsabilit6 qu'a s'exposer i tous les risques, au-delA de la certitudeet de la bonne conscience.

Dans le monde grec, la manifestation de la violence divine soussa forme mythique fonde un droit plut6t qu'elle n'applique un droitexistant en distribuant les r6compenses et les chitiments. Ce n'est pasune justice distributive ou r6tributive, et Benjamin 6voque les exem-ples de la 1egende de Niob6, d'Apollon et d'Artemis, de Prometh6e.Comme il s'agit de fonder un droit nouveau, la violence qui tombe surNiob6 vient donc du destin; et ce destin ne peut 8tre qu'incertain etambigu, (zweideutig, "ambiguous") puisqu'il n'est pr&c6d ni r6gl6 paraucun droit ant6rieur, sup6rieur ou transcendant. Cette violencefondatrice n'est pas "proprement destructrice" (eigentlich zerst"rend,"actually destructive"), puisque par exemple elle respecte la vie de lamare au moment oti elle apporte une mort sanglante aux enfants deNiob6. Mais cette allusion au sang vers6, nous le verrons, est ici dis-

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pressions) is just as valid for the uniqueness of the individual as forthe people and the language, in short, for history.

To explain this "nonmediate function of violence" (p. 294) (Einenicht mittelbare Funktion der Gewalt), Benjamin again takes the ex-ample of everyday language as if it were only an analogy. In fact, itseems to me, we have here the true mechanism, and the very place ofdecision. Is it by chance and unrelated to such a figure of God that hespeaks then of the experience of anger to show that language is mani-festation, epiphany, before it is mediation? The explosion of violence,in anger, is not a means that looks toward an end; it has no objectother than to show and show itself. Let us leave the responsibility forthis concept to Benjamin: the in some way disinterested, immediateand uncalculated manifestation of anger. What matters to him is amanifestation of violence that would not be a means looking towardan end. Such would be mythic violence as manifestation of the gods.

Here begins the last sequence, the most enigmatic, the most fasci-nating and the most profound in this text. For lack of time but notonly time, I cannot claim to do it justice. I will have to content myselfwith stressing on the one hand the terrible ethico-political ambiguityof the text, on the other hand the exemplary instability of its statusand its signature, what, finally, you will permit me to call this heart orcourage (ce coeur ou ce courage) of a thinking that knows there is nojustesse, no justice, no responsibility except in exposing oneself to allrisks, beyond certitude and good conscience.

In the Greek world, the manifestation of divine violence in itsmythic form founds a droit rather than enforcing an existing one bydistributing compensations and punishments. It is not a distributiveor retributive justice, and Benjamin evokes the legendary examples ofNiobe, Apollo and Artemis, Prometheus. As it is a matter of found-ing a new droit, the violence that falls upon Niobe comes from fate;and this fate can only be uncertain and ambiguous (zweideutig), sinceit is not preceded or regulated by any anterior, superior or trans-cendant droit. This founding violence is not "properly destructive"(eigentlich zerst"rend, "actually destructive"), since, for example, itrespects the mother's life in the moment it brings a bloody death toNiobe's children. But this allusion to blood spilled, as we shall see, is

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criminante pour identifier la fondation mythique et violente du droitdans le monde grec et pour la distinguer de la violence divine dans lejudaisme. Benjamin multiplie les exemples de cette ambigiiite(Zweideutigkeit, le mot revient quatre fois au moins), et meme derambigu'it6 "d6monique" de cette position mythique du droit2 qui esten son principe fondamental une puissance (Macht), une force, uneposition d'autoriti et donc, comme le sugg6re Sorel lui-meme, queBenjamin semble ici approuver, un privil6ge des rois, des grands oudes puissants: A l'origine tout droit est un privilege (in den Anfadngenalles Recht "Vor"recht der Konige oder der Grossen, kurz der Mach-tigten: "in the beginning all right was the prerogative of the kings orthe nobles-in short of the mighty," p. 296). A ce moment originaireet mythique, il n'y a pas encore de justice distributive, pas de chiti-ment ou de peine mais seulement expiation (Szthne, mal traduit par"retribution").

A cette violence du mythos grec, Benjamin oppose trait pour traitla violence de Dieu. A tous points de vue, dit-il, elle en est le con-traire. Au lieu de fonder le droit, elle le d~truit; au lieu de poser deslimites et des fronti~res, elle les an6antit; au lieu d'induire la faute et'expiation, elle fait expier; au lieu de menacer, elle frappe; et surtout,

c'est 'essentiel, au lieu de faire mourir par le sang, elle fait mourir etelle an6antit sans effusion de sang. Le sang fait toute la difference.L'interpr6tation de cette pensee du sang est aussi troublante, malgrecertaines dissonnances, chez Benjamin que chez Rosenzweig (surtoutsi nous pensons i la "solution finale"). Le sang est le symbole de lavie, dit-il. Or en faisant couler le sang, la violence mythologique dudroit s'exerce en sa propre faveur (um ihrer selbst willen ) contre la viepure et simple, la vie biologique (das blosse Leben). Au contraire, laviolence purement divine (juda'fque) s'exerce sur toute vie mais auprofit ou en faveur du vivant (ziber alles Leben urn des Lebendigenwillen, "Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its ownsake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the liv-ing," p. 297). Autrement dit, la violence mythologique du droit sesatisfait en elle-m~me en sacrifiant le vivant, alors que la violence di-vine sacrifie la vie pour sauver le vivant, en faveur du vivant. Dans lesdeux cas il y a sacrifice, mais dans le cas oii le sang est exig6, le vivantn'est pas respect. D'o la singuli~re conclusion de Benjamin ' qui jelaisse une fois de plus la responsabilit6 de cette interpr&ation, en par-ticulier de cette interpretation du judaisme: "La premiere (la violence

2 Cette dimension "mythique" du droit en g6n6ral s'6tendrait sans doute, selon Benjamin,A toute th6orie des "droits de l'homme," du moins dans la mesure o6 celle-ci ne proc6deraitpas de ce qui s'appelle dans ce texte la "violence divine" (gdttliche Gewalt).

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here a discriminating index for identifying the mythical and violentfoundation of droit in the Greek world and distinguishes it from thedivine violence of Judaism. Benjamin offers multiple examples of thisambiguity (Zweideutigkeit, the word returns at least four times), andeven of the "demonic" ambiguity of this mythical positioning of droit2

which is in its fundamental principle a power (Macht), a force, a posi-tion of authority and so, as Sorel himself suggests, with Benjamin'sapparent approval here, a privilege of kings, of the great or powerful:at the origin of all droit is a privilege (in den Anfa'ngen alles Recht"Vor"recht der Konige oder der Grossen, kurz der Mdchtigen: "in thebeginning all right was the prerogative of the kings or the nobles-inshort of the mighty," p. 296). At this originary and mythic moment,there is still no distributive justice, no chastisement or penalty, onlyexpiation (Suihne, badly translated as "retribution").

To this violence of the Greek mythos, Benjamin opposes featurefor feature the violence of God. From all points of view, he says, it isits opposite. Instead of founding droit, it destroys it; instead of settinglimits and boundaries, it annihilates them; instead of leading to errorand expiation, it causes to expiate; instead of threatening, it strikes;and above all, this is the essential point, instead of killing with blood,it kills and annihilates without bloodshed. Blood makes all the differ-ence. The interpretation of this thought of blood is as troubling, de-spite certain dissonances, in Benjamin as it is in Rosenzweig(especially if we think of the "final solution"). Blood is the symbol oflife, he says. In making blood flow, the mythological violence of droitis exercised in its own favor (um ihrer selbst willen) against life pureand simple, biological life (das blosse Leben). In contrast, purely di-vine (Judaic) violence is exercised on all life but to the profit or infavor of the living (tiber alles Leben um des Lebendigen willen:"Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake,divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living," p.297). In other words, the mythological violence of droit is satisfied initself by sacrificing the living, while divine violence sacrifices life tosave the living, in favor of the living. In both cases there is sacrifice,but in the case where blood is exacted, the living is not respected.Whence Benjamin's singular conclusion, and again I leave to him re-sponsibility for this interpretation, particularly for this interpretationof Judaism: "The first (the mythological violence of droit) demands(fordert) sacrifice, the second (divine violence) accepts it, assumes it

2 This "mythic" dimension of droit in general could no doubt be extended, according to

Benjamin, to any theory of the "rights of man," at least to the extent that the latter would notproceed from what in this text is called "divine violence" (gottliche Gewalt).

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mythologique du droit) exige (fordert) le sacrifice, la seconde (a vio-lence divine) l'accepte, l'assume (nimmt sie an)." En tout cas, cetteviolence divine qui ne serait pas seulement attest6e par la religion maisdans la vie presente ou dans les manifestations du sacre, an6antit peut-&re les biens, la vie, le droit, le fondement du droit, etc., mais elle nes'attaque jamais pour la d&ruire A l'Ame du vivant (die Seele desLebendigen). Par consequent on n'a pas le droit d'en conclure que laviolence divine laisse le champ libre a tous les crimes humains. Le "tune tueras point" reste un imperatif absolu d6s lors que le principe dela violence divine la plus destructrice commande le respect du vivant,au-delA du droit, au-deli du jugement. C'est lA pour Benjaminl'essence du judaisme qui interdit tout meurtre, sauf en cas de 16gitimed6fense, et qui sacralise la vie au point que certains penseurs tendentcette sacralisation au-delA de l'homme, jusqu'A l'animal et au v6g6tal.Mais il faut aiguiser a l'extreme ce que Benjamin entend ici par lasacralit6 de l'homme, de la vie ou plut6t du Dasein humain. I1 s'61iveavec vigueur contre toute sacralisation de la vie pour elle-mrime, de lavie naturelle, du simple fait de vivre. Commentant longuement laphrase de Kurt Hiller, selon laquelle "plus haut encore que le bonheuret que la justice d'une existence (Dasein), se situe l'existence m~me"(". . .higher even than the happiness and justice of existence standsexistence itself," p. 298), Benjamin juge fausse et ignoble la proposi-tion selon laquelle le simple Dasein serait plus 61ev6 que le Daseinjuste (als gerechtes Dasein), si par simple Dasein on entend le simplefait de vivre. Et tout en notant que ces termes de Dasein et de vierestent tr~s ambigus, il juge au contraire la m~me proposition, touteambigue qu'elle reste, pleine d'une puissante v6rit6 (gewaltigeWahrheit) si elle veut dire que le non-8tre de l'homme serait encoreplus terrible que le non-etre juste de l'homme, purement et simple-ment. Autrement dit, ce qui fait le prix de l'homme, de son Dasein etde sa vie, c'est de contenir la potentialit6, la possibilit de la justice,l'avenir de la justice, l'avenir de son 8tre-juste, de son avoir-a-&re-juste. Ce qui est sacr6 dans sa vie, ce n'esi pas sa vie mais la justice desa vie. M~me si les bates et les plantes 6taient sacr~es, elles ne le se-raient pas pour leur simple vie, dit Benjamin. Cette critique du vita-lisme ou du biologisme, si elle ressemble aussi i celle d'un certainHeidegger et si elle rappelle, comme je l'ai not6 ailleurs, un certainHegel, s'avance ici comme le r6veil d'une tradition judaique. Enraison de cette ambiguit6 des concepts de vie et de Dasein, Benjaminest i la fois attir6 et reticent devant le dogme qui affirme le caracteresacr6 de la vie, comme vie naturelle, pure et simple. L'origine de cedogme m6rite une enqute, note Benjamin qui est pr& A y voir la r6-

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(nimmt sie an )." In any case, this divine violence, which will be at-tested to not only by religion but also in present life or in manifesta-tions of the sacred, may annihilate goods, life, droit, the foundation ofdroit, and so on, but it never mounts an attack to destroy the soul ofthe living (die Seele des Lebendigen). Consequently we have no rightto conclude that divine violence leaves the field open for all humancrimes. "Thou shalt not kill" remains an absolute imperative oncethe principle of the most destructive divine violence commands therespect of the living being, beyond droit, beyond judgment. It is not a"criterion of judgment" but a "guideline for the actions of persons orcommunities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and in excep-tional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it.That for Benjamin is the essence of Judaism which forbids all murder,except in the singular cases of legitimate self-defense, and whichsacralizes life to the point that certain thinkers extend this sacraliza-tion beyond man, to include animal and vegetable. But here weshould sharpen the point of what Benjamin means by the sacrality ofman, life or rather human Dasein. He stands up vigorously against allsacralization of life for itself, natural life, the simple fact of life. Com-menting at length on the words of Kurt Hiller, according to which"higher even than the happiness and the justice of existence standsexistence itself" (p. 298), Benjamin judges the proposition that simpleDasein should be higher than just Dasein (als gerechtes Dasein) to befalse and ignoble, if simple Dasein is taken to mean the simple fact ofliving. And while noting that these terms "Dasein" and "life" remainvery ambiguous, he judges the same proposition, however ambiguousit may remain, in the opposite way, as full of a powerful truth (gewal-tige Wahrheit) if it means that man's non-being would be still moreterrible than man's not-yet-being just, than the not yet attained condi-tion of the just man, purely and simply. In other words, what makesfor the worth of man, of his Dasein and his life, is that he contains thepotential, the possibility of justice, the yet-to-come (avenir) of justice,the yet-to-come of his being-just, of his having-to-be just. What issacred in his life is not his life but the justice of his life. Even if beastsand plants were sacred, they would not be so simply for their life, saysBenjamin. This critique of vitalism or biologism, if it also resemblesone by a certain Heidegger and if it recalls, as I have noted elsewhere,a certain Hegel, here proceeds like the awakening of a Judaic tradi-tion. Because of this ambiguity in the concepts of life and Dasein,Benjamin is both drawn to and reticent before the dogma that affirmsthe sacred character of life, as natural life, pure and simple. The ori-gin of this dogma deserves inquiry, notes Benjamin, who is ready to

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ponse relativement moderne et nostalgique de l'Occident A la perte dusacr6.

Quel est l'ultime et le plus provocant paradoxe de cette critiquede la violence? Celui qui donne le plus A penser? C'est que cette cri-tique se presente comme la seule "philosophie" de l'histoire (le mot"philosophie" restant entre des guillemets inoubliables) qui rende pos-sible une attitude non seulement "critique" mais, au sens le plus cri-tique et diacritique du mot critique, du krinein, une attitude quipermette de choisir (krinein), donc de d6cider et de trancher dansl'histoire et au sujet de l'histoire. C'est la seule qui permette i l'6garddu temps pr6sent, dit Benjamin, une prise de position d6cisoire et d6-cisive (scheidende und entscheidende Einstellung, "discriminating anddecisive approach," p. 299-300). Toute l'ind6cidabilit6 (Unent-scheidbarkeit) est situe, bloqu6e, accumule du c6te du droit, de laviolence mythologique, c'est-a'-dire fondatrice et conservatrice dudroit. Toute la d6eidabilit6 au contraire se situe du c6t6 de la violencedivine qui detruit le droit, on pourrait meme se risquer a dire quid6construit le droit. Dire que toute la d6cidabilit6 se trouve du c6t6de la violence divine qui d6truit ou d6eonstruit le droit, c'est dire aumoins deux choses:

1. que l'histoire est du c6te de cette violence divine, et l'histoirepr6cis6ment par opposition au mythe; c'est bien pour cela qu'il s'agitd'une "philosophie" de l'histoire et que Benjamin en appelle en effet aune "nouvelle 're historique" (ein neues geschichtliches Zeitalter, "anew historical epoch," p. 300) qui devrait suivre la fin du regnemythique, l'interruption du cercle magique des formes mythiques dudroit, l'abolition de la Staatsgewalt, de la violence ou de l'autorite del'Etat. Cette nouvelle 're historique serait une nouvelle re politique ila condition qu'on ne lie pas le politique a 'tatique, comme le fera aucontraire un Schmitt par exemple.

2. Si toute la decidabilit6 se trouve concentre du c6t6 de laviolence divine dans la tradition judaique, cela viendrait confirmer etdonner sens au spectacle que donne l'histoire du droit qui se decons-truit elle-m~me et se paralyse dans l'ind6cidabilit6, puisque ce queBenjamin appelle la "dialectique des hauts et des bas" (ein dialek-tisches Auf und Ab, "dialectical rising and falling") dans la violencefondatrice ou conservatrice du droit constitue une oscillation oi laviolence conservatrice doit constamment se livrer a la repression descontre-violences hostiles (Unterdrtickung der feindlichenGegenwalten); or cette repression-et le droit, l'institution juridiqueest essentiellement r6pressive de ce point de vue-ne cesse d'affaiblirla violence fondatrice qu'elle repr6sente. Elle se d&ruit donc d'elle-

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see in it the relatively modern and nostalgic response of the West tothe loss of the sacred.

Which is the ultimate and most provocative paradox of this cri-tique of violence? The one that offers the most to think about? It isthat this critique presents itself as the only "philosophy" of history(the word "philosophy" remaining in unforgettable quotation marks)that makes possible an attitude that is not merely "critical" but, in themore critical and diacritical sense of the word "critique," krinein, anattitude that permits us to choose (krinein), and so to decide and tocut decisively in history and on the subject of history. It is the onlyone, Benjamin says, that permits us, in respect to present time, to takea decisive position (scheidende und entscheidende Einstellung, "dis-criminating and decisive approach," pp. 299-300). All undecidability(Unentscheidbarkeit) is situated, blocked in, accumulated on the sideof droit, of mythological violence, that is to say the violence thatfounds and conserves droit. But on the other hand all decidabilitystands on the side of the divine violence that destroys le droit, wecould even venture to say deconstructs it. To say that all decidabilityis found on the side of the divine violence that destroys or decon-structs le droit is to say at least two things:

1. That history is on the side of this divine violence, and historyprecisely in opposition to myth; it is indeed for this reason that it's amatter of a "philosophy" of history and that Benjamin appeals in factto a "new historical era" (ein neues geschichtliches Zeitalter, "a newhistorical epoch," p. 300) that should follow the end of the mythicreign, the interruption of the magic circle of the mythic forms of droit,the abolition of the Staatsgewalt, of the violence or authority of theState. This new historical era would be a new political era on thecondition that politics not be tied to state control, as Schmitt for ex-ample would have it.

2. If all decidability is concentrated on the side of divine vio-lence in the Judaic tradition, this would come to confirm and givemeaning to the spectacle offered by the history of droit which decon-structs itself and is paralyzed in undecidability, since what Benjamincalls the "dialectic of up and down" (ein dialektisches Auf und Ab,"dialectical rising and falling") in the founding or conserving violenceof droit constitutes an oscillation in which the violence that conservesmust constantly give itself up to the repression of hostile counter-vio-lences (Unterdrickung der feindlichen Gegengewalten); but this re-pression-and droit, the juridical institution, is essentially repressivefrom this point of view-never ceases to weaken the founding violencethat it represents. And so it destroys itself in the course of this cycle.

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m~me au cours de ce cycle. Car ici Benjamin reconnalit en quelquesorte cette loi d'it6rabilite qui fait que la violence fondatrice esttoujours repr6sent6e dans une violence conservatrice qui toujoursr6pete la tradition de son origine et qui ne garde en somme qu'unefondation d'abord destin6e a etre r6p&6e, conserv6e, r6institu6e. Ben-jamin dit que la violence fondatrice est "repr6sent6e" (reprdsentiert)dans la violence conservatrice.

Si maintenant on pensait avoir fait la clart6 et correctement inter-pr6t6 le sens, le vouloir-dire du texte de Benjamin, en opposant defagon d6cidable d'un c6t6 la d6cidabilit6 de la violence divine, r6volu-tionnaire, historique, anti-&atique, anti-juridique et de rautre c6tel'ind6cidabilit6 de la violence mythique du droit &atique, on d6cide-rait encore trop vite et on ne comprendrait pas la puissance de cetexte. Car dans ses derni~res lignes se joue un nouvel acte du drameou un coup de th6,tre dont je ne jurerais pas qu'il n'6tait paspr6m6dite des le lever de rideau. Que dit en effet Benjamin? I1 parled'abord au conditionnel de la violence r6volutionnaire (revolutiondreGewalt): "si," au-deli du droit, la violence voit son statut,assur6comme violence pure et imm6diate, alors cela prouvera que la vio-lence r6volutionnaire est possible. On saurait alors, mais c'est un con-ditionnel, ce qu'est cette violence r6volutionnaire dont le nom est celuide la plus pure manifestation de la violence parmi les hommes. Maispourquoi cet enonc6 est-il au conditionnel? Est-ce seulementprovisoire et contingent? Nullement. Car la ddcision (Entscheidung)

ce sujet, la d6cision d~terminante, celle qui permet de connaitre oude reconnaltre une telle violence pure et r6volutionnaire comme telle,c'est une dicision inaccessible d l'homme. Nous avons affaire ici i uneautre ind6cidabilit6, et je pr6f~re citer in extenso cette phrase de Ben-jamin: "Mais il n'est pour des hommes ni 6galement possible ni 6gale-ment urgent, de d6cider quand une violence pure fut effective en uncas d~termine. (Nicht gleich m6"glich noch auch gleich dringend istaber fir Menschen die Entscheidung, wann reine Gewalt in einembestimmten Falle wirklich war, "Less possible and also less urgent forhumankind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has beenrealized in particular cases," p. 300).

Cela tient au fait que la violence divine, qui est la plus juste, laplus historique, la plus r6volutionnaire, la plus d6cidable ou la plusd6cidante ne se pr&e a aucune determination humaine, 'a aucune con-naissance ou "certitude" d6cidable de notre part. On ne la connaitjamais en elle-m~me, "comme telle," mais seulement dans ses "effets"et ses effets sont "incomparables," ils ne se pr~tent a aucune g6n6ralit6conceptuelle. II n'y a de certitude (Gewissheit) ou de connaissance

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For here Benjamin to some extent recognizes this law of iterabilitythat insures that the founding violence is always represented in a con-servative violence that always repeats the tradition of its origin andthat ultimately keeps nothing but a foundation destined from the startto be repeated, conserved, reinstituted. Benjamin says that foundingviolence is "represented" (reprasentiert) in conservative violence.

To think at this point that we have cast light and correctly inter-preted the meaning, the vouloir-dire of Benjamin's text, by opposingin a decidable way the decidability of divine, revolutionary, historical,anti-state, anti-juridical violence on one side and on the other the un-decidability of the mythic violence of state droit, would still be to de-cide too quickly and not to understand the power of this text. For inits last lines a new act of the drama is played, or a coup de thddtre thatI couldn't swear was not premeditated from the moment the curtainwent up. What does Benjamin in fact say? First he speaks in theconditional about revolutionary violence (revolutiondre Gewalt): "if,"beyond droit, violence sees its status insured as pure and immediateviolence, then this will prove that revolutionary violence is possible.Then we would know, but this is a conditional clause, that it is thisrevolutionary violence whose name is the purest manifestation of vio-lence among men. But why is this statement in the conditional? Is itonly provisional and contingent? Not at all. For the decision (Ent-scheidung) on this subject, the determinant decision, the one that per-mits us to know or to recognize such a pure and revolutionaryviolence as such, is a decision not accessible to man. Here we mustdeal with a whole other undecidability, and I prefer to cite Benjamin'ssentence in extenso: "But it is neither equally possible nor equally ur-gent for man to decide when pure violence was effected in a deter-mined case." (Nicht gleich m6glich, noch auch gleich dringend ist aberfzir Menschen die Entscheidung, wann reine Gewalt in einembestimmten Falle wirklich war, "Less possible and also less urgent forhumankind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has beenrealized in particular cases," p. 300).

This results from the fact that divine violence, which is the mostjust, the most historic, the most revolutionary, the most decidable orthe most deciding does not lend itself to any human determination, toany knowledge or decidable "certainty" on our part. It is neverknown in itself, "as such," but only in its "effects" and its effects are"incomparable," they do not lend themselves to any conceptual gen-eralization. There is no certainty (Gewiliheit) or determinant knowl-edge except in the realm of mythic violence, that is, of droit, that is, ofthe historical undecidable. "For only mythical violence, not divine,

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d&erminante que dans le domaine de la violence mythique, c'est-h-dire du droit, c'est-i-dire de l'ind6cidable historique. "Seule la vio-lence mythique, et non la violence divine, dit Benjamin, se laisse con-naitre comme telle avec certitude, i moins que ce ne soit dans seseffets incomparables" ("For only mythical violence, not divine, will berecognizable as such with certainty, unless it be in incomparable ef-fects. . .," p. 300). Pour sch6matiser, il y a deux violences, deuxGewalten concurrentes: d'un c6t6, la d6cision (juste, historique, poli-tique, etc.), justice au-deli du droit et de l'Etat, mais sans connais-sance d6ecidable; de 'autre, connaissance d6cidable et certitude dansun domaine qui reste structurellement celui de l'ind6cidable, du droitmythique et de l'Etat. D'un c6t6 la d6cision sans certitude d6eidable,de l'autre la certitude de l'ind6cidable mais sans decision. De toutefagon, sous une forme ou sous une autre, l'indecidable est de chaquec6t6, et c'est la condition violente de la connaissance ou de 'action.Mais connaissance et action sont toujours dissoci6es.

Questions: ce qu'on appelle au singulier, s'il y en a une et s'il n'yen a qu'une, la d6construction, est-ce ceci ou cela? ou autre choseencore ou autre chose enfin? Si l'on se fie au sch6ma benjaminien, lediscours d6constructif sur l'indecidable est-il plut6t juif (ou jud6o-christiano-islamique) ou plut~t grec? Plutt religieux, plut6tmythique ou plut6t philosophique? Si je ne r6ponds pas A des ques-tions de cette forme, ce n'est pas seulement parce que je ne suis passfir que quelque chose comme la Dconstruction, au singulier, existeou soit possible. C'est aussi parce que je crois que les discours decons-tructifs tels qu'ils se pr6sentent dans leur irr6ductible pluralit6 par-ticipent de fagon impure, contaminante, negoci6e, baitarde et violentea toutes ces filiations--disons jud6o-grecques pour gagner du temps-de la d6cision et de l'ind6cidable. Et puis que le Juif et l'Hellkne, cen'est peut-8tre pas tout i fait ce que Benjamin veut nous faire croire.Et enfin pour ce qui dans la d6construction reste a venir, je crois quedans ses veines court aussi, peut-&tre sans filiation, un tout autre sangou plut~t tout autre chose que du sang.'

En disant donc adieu ou au-revoir a Benjamin, je lui laisse n-anmoins le dernier mot. Je le laisse signer, si du moins il le peut. I1

3 En mettant ce texte-ci de Benjamin A l'6preuve d'une certaine n6cessitE d6constructrice,telle du moins qu'elle se d&ermine ici maintenant pour moi, j'esquisse ainsi un travail plusample et plus coh6rent: sur les rapports entre cette d6construction, ce que Benjamin appelle la"destruction" (Zerstorung) et la "Destruktion" heideggerienne (sur laquelleje me suis expliqu6et reviendrai encore ailleurs, notamment dans "Philopolemology: Heidegger's Ear (GeschlechtIV)" A paraltre dans The Indiana University Press (Actes d'un Colloque consacr6 A Heideggeri Loyola University en Octobre 1989).

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will be recognizable as such with certainty, unless it be in incompara-ble effects . . . " (p. 300). To be schematic, there are two violences,two competing Gewalten: on one side, decision (just, historical, polit-ical, and so on); justice beyond droit and the state, but without decida-ble knowledge; on the other, decidable knowledge and certainty in arealm that structurally remains that of the undecidable, of the mythicdroit of the state. On one side the decision without decidable cer-tainty, on the other the certainty of the undecidable but without deci-sion. In any case, in one form or another, the undecidable is on eachside, and is the violent condition of knowledge or action. But knowl-edge and action are always dissociated.

Questions: what one calls in the singular, if there is one and onlyone, deconstruction, is it the former or the latter? something else en-tirely or something else again? If we trust the Benjaminian schema, isthe deconstructive discourse on the undecidable more Jewish (orJudaeo-Christian-Islamic) or Greek? More religious, more mythic ormore philosophical? If I do not answer questions that take this form,it is not only because I am not sure that such a thing as "Deconstruc-tion," in the singular, exists or is possible. It is also because I thinkthat deconstructive discourses as they present themselves in their irre-ducible plurality participate in an impure, contaminating, negotiated,bastard and violent way in all these filiations-let's call them Judaeo-Greek to save time--of decision and the undecidable. And then, theJew and the Greek, that may not be exactly what Benjamin had inmind for us. And finally for what remains to come in deconstruction,I think that something else runs through its veins, perhaps withoutfiliation, an entirely different blood or rather something entirely differ-ent from blood.

3 In putting this text of Benjamin to the test of a certain deconstructive necessity, at leastsuch as it is here determined for me now, I am anticipating a more ample and coherent work:on the relations between this deconstruction, what Benjamin calls "destruction" (Zerstdrung)and the Heideggerian "Destruktion" (which I have already touched upon and to which I willreturn elsewhere, notably in "Philopolemology: Heidegger's Ear" (Geschlecht IV)," forthcom-ing in Indiana University Press (Proceedings of a colloquium devoted to Heidegger at LoyolaUniversity in October 1989).

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faut toujours que l'autre signe et c'est toujours l'autre qui signe ledernier. Autrement dit le premier.

Dans ses dernieres lignes, Benjamin, juste avant de signer, se sertd'ailleurs du mot "bitard." C'est en somme la d6finition du mythe,donc de la violence fondatrice du droit. Le droit mythique, on pour-rait dire la fiction juridique, c'est une violence qui aura "abitardi"(bastardierte) les "formes &ernelles de la violence divine pure." Lemythe a abitardi la violence divine avec le droit (mit dem Recht).M6salliance, g6n6alogie impure: non pas m6lange des sangs maisbatardise qui au fond aura cr66 un droit qui fait couler le sang et payerpar le sang.

Et puis, aussit6t apres avoir pris la responsabilite de cette inter-pr6tation du Grec et du Juif, Benjamin signe. I1 parle de fagon evalu-ative, prescriptive et non constative, comme on fait chaque fois qu'onsigne. Deux phrases 6nergiques annoncent quels doivent etre les motsd'ordre, ce qu'ilfautfaire, ce qu'ilfaut rejeter, le mal ou la perversit6de ce qui est i rejeter (Verwerflich). "Mais il faut rejeter (Verwerflichaber) toute violence mythique, la violence fondatrice du droit, qu'onpeut appeler violence gouvernante (schaltende). I1 faut rejeter aussi(Verwerflich auch) la violence conservatrice du droit, la violencegouverne (die verwaltete Gewalt) qui est au service de la gouver-nante." (La traduction anglaise est, comme souvent, affadissante:"But all mythical, lawmaking violence, which we may call executive,is pernicious. Pernicious, too, is the law-preserving, administrativeviolence that serves it," p. 300).

Puis ce sont les derniers mots, la derni6re phrase. Comme le sho-phar au soir ou A la veille d'une priire qu'on n'entend plus ou pasencore. Non seulement elle signe, cette ultime adresse, et tout pros duprenom de Benjamin, Walter. Mais elle nomme la signature, l'insigneet le sceau, elle nomme le nom, et ce qui s'appelle "die waltende."Mais qui signe? C'est Dieu, le Tout Autre, comme toujours, c'est laviolence divine qui toujours aura pr&c6d mais aussi donnd tous lespr~noms: "Die g6ttliche Gewalt, welche Insignium und Siegel, niemalsMittel heiliger Vollstreckung ist, mag die waltende heissen": "La vio-lence divine, qui est insigne et sceau, non point jamais moyend'ex6cution sacr6e, peut &re appel6e souveraine (die waltende heis-sen). ("Divine violence, which is the sign and seal but never themeans of sacred execution, may be called sovereign violence (diewaltende heissen ).)"4

Jacques Derrida

'4 Ce "jeu" entre walten et Walter ne peut donner lieu AL aucune d6monstration et " aucune

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And so in saying adieu or au-revoir to Benjamin, I neverthelessleave him the last word. I let him sign, at least if he can. It is alwaysnecessary that the other sign and it is always the other that signs last.In other words, first.

In his last lines, Benjamin, just before signing, even uses the word"bastard." That in short is the definition of the myth, and so of thefounding violence of droit. Mythic droit, we could say juridical fic-tion, is a violence that will have "bastardized" (bastardierte) the"eternal forms of pure divine violence." Myth has bastardized divineviolence with droit (mit dem Recht). Misalliance, impure genealogy:not a mixture of bloods but bastardy which at its root will have cre-ated a droit that makes blood flow and exacts blood as payment.

And then, as soon as he has taken responsibility for this interpre-tation of the Greek and the Jew, Benjamin signs. He speaks in anevaluative, prescriptive, non-constative manner, as we do each timewe sign. Two energetic sentences proclaim what must be thewatchwords, what one must do, what one must reject, the evil or per-versity of what must be rejected (Verwerflich). "But one must reject(Verwerflich aber) all mythical violence, the violence that foundsdroit, which we may call governing (schaltende) violence. One mustalso reject (Verwerflich auch) the violence that conserves droit, thegoverned violence (die verwaltete Gewalt) in the service of the gov-erning." (The English translation is, as it often is, insipid: "But allmythical, lawmaking violence, which we may call executive, is perni-cious. Pernicious, too, is the law-preserving, administrative violencethat serves it," p. 300).

. Then there are the last words, the last sentence. Like the shopharat night or on the brink of a prayer one no longer hears or does notyet hear. Not only does it sign, this ultimate address, and very closeto the first name of Benjamin, Walter. It also names the signature, thesign and the seal, it names the name and what calls itself "diewaltende." But who signs? It is God, the Wholly Other, as always, itis the divine violence that always will have preceded but also will havegiven all the first names: "Die g6ttliche Gewalt, welche Insignium undSiegel, niemals Mittel heiliger Volistreckung ist, mag die waltendeheiBen": "Divine violence, which is the sign and seal but never the

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certitude. C'est d'ailleurs Mn le paradoxe de sa force "demonstrative": cette force tient i ladissociation entre le cognitif et le performatif dont je parlais i l'instant, (et aussi ailleurspr~cis6ment i propos de la signature). Mais ce "jeu" n'est en rien ludique et gratuit. Car onsalt d'autre part que Benjamin s'est beaucoup int6ress6, notamment dans Les affinits electivesde Goethe, aux coincidences al6atoires et signifiantes dont les nomnv propres sont proprement lelieu.

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means of sacred execution, may be called sovereign violence (diewaltende heissen )."4*

Jacques Derrida

4 This "play" between walten and Walter does not afford any demonstration or any cer-tainty. That, furthermore, is the paradox of its "demonstrative" force: this force results fromthe dissociation between the cognitive and the performative of which I spoke a moment ago(and also elsewhere), precisely in regard to the signature. But this "play" is in no way ludicand gratuitous. For we also know that Benjamin was very interested, notably in Goethe'sElective Affinities, in the aleatory and significant coincidences of which proper names are prop-erly the site.

* Post-scriptum: As indicated above, we include, in the following pages, the conclusionthat Derrida added to this lecture at the UCLA colloquium previously mentioned.

CARDOZO LAW REVIEW

Post-scriptum

This strange text is dated. Every signature is dated, even andperhaps all the more so if it slips in among several names of God andonly signs by pretending to let God himself sign. If this text is datedand signed (Walter, 1921), we have only a limited right to convoke itto bear witness either to Nazism in general (which had not yet devel-oped as such), or to the new forms assumed there by the racism andthe antisemitism that are inseparable from it, or even less to the finalsolution: not only because the project and the deployment of the finalsolution came later and even after the death of Benjamin, but becausewithin the history itself of Nazism the final solution is something thatsome might consider an ineluctable outcome and inscribed in the verypremises of Nazism, if such a thing has a proper identity that cansustain this sort of utterance, while others-whether or not they areNazis or Germans-might think that the project of a final solution isan event, indeed something entirely new within the history of Nazismand that as such it deserves an absolutely specific analysis. For all ofthese reasons, we would not have the right or we would have only alimited right to ask ourselves what Walter Benjamin would havethought, in the logic of this text (if it has one and only one) of bothNazism and the final solution.

And yet in a certain way I will do just that, and I will do it bygoing beyond my interest for this text itself, for its event and its struc-ture, for that which it allows us to read of a configuration of Jewishand German thinking right before the rise of Nazism, as one says, ofall the shared portions and all the partitions that organize such a con-figuration, of the vertiginous proximities, the radical reversals of prointo con on the basis of sometimes common premises. Presuming,that is, that all these problems are really separable, which I doubt. Intruth, I will not ask myself what Benjamin himself thought of Nazismand antisemitism, all the more so since we have other means of doingso, other texts by him. Nor will I ask what Walter Benjamin himselfwould have thought of the final solution and what judgments, whatinterpretations he would have proposed I will seek something else, ina modest and preliminary way. However enigmatic and overdeter-mined the logical matrix of this text might be, however mobile andconvertible, however reversible it is, it has its own coherence. Thiscoherence also marks a number of other texts by Benjamin, both ear-lier and later ones. It is by taking account of certain insistent ele-ments in this coherent continuity that I will try out several hypothesesin order to reconstitute not some possible utterances by Benjamin but

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the larger aspects of the problematic and interpretive space in whichhis discourse on the final solution might have been inscribed.

On the one hand, he would probably have taken the final solutionto be the extreme consequence of a logic of Nazism that, to take upagain the concepts from our text, would have corresponded to:

1. The radicalization of evil linked to the fall into the languageof communication, representation, information (and from this pointof view, Nazism has indeed been the most pervasive figure of mediaviolence and of political exploitation of the modern techniques ofcommunicative language, of industrial language and of the languageof industry, of scientific objectification to which is linked the logic ofthe conventional sign and of formalizing registration);

2. The totalitarian radicalization of a logic of the State (and ourtext is indeed a condemnation of the State, even of the revolution thatreplaces a State by another State, which is also valid for other totali-tarianisms-and already we see prefigured the question of theHistorikerstreit );

3. The radical but also fatal corruption of parliamentary andrepresentative democracy through a modern police that is inseparablefrom it, that becomes the true legislative power and whose phantomcommands the totality of the political space. From this point of view,the final solution is both a historico-political decision by the State anda decision by the police, the civil and the military police, without any-one ever being able to discern the one from the other and to assign thetrue responsibilities to any one decision whatsoever.

4. A radicalization and total extension of the mythical, ofmythical violence, both in its sacrificial founding moment and itsmost conservative moment. And this mythological dimension, that isat once Greek and aestheticizing (like fascism, Nazism is mythologi-cal, Grecoid, and if it corresponds to an aestheticization of the polit-ical, it is in an aesthetics of representation), this mythologicaldimension also responds to a certain violence of State law, of its policeand its technics, of right totally dissociated from justice, as the con-ceptual generality propitious to the mass structure in opposition tothe consideration of singularity and uniqueness. How can one other-wise to explain the institutional, even bureaucratic form, the simu-lacra of legalization, of juridicism, the respect for expertise and forhierarchies, in short, the whole judicial and state organization thatmarked the techno-industrial and scientific deployment of the "finalsolution"? Here a certain mythology of right was unleashed against ajustice which Benjamin believed ought to be kept radically distinctfrom right, from natural as well as historic right, from the violence of

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its foundation as well as from that of its conservation. And Nazismwas a conservative revolution of right.

But, on the other hand and for these very reasons, because Na-zism leads logically to the final solution as to its own limit and be-cause the mythological violence of right is its veritable system, onecan only think, that is, also remember the uniqueness of the final solu-tion from a place other than this space of the mythological violence ofright. To take the measure of this event and of what links it todestiny, one would have to leave the order of right, of myth, of repre-sentation (of juridico-political representation with its tribunals of his-torian-judges, but also of aesthetic representation). Because whatNazism, as the final achievement of the logic of mythological vio-lence, would have attempted to do is to exclude the other witness, todestroy the witness of the other order, of a divine violence whose jus-tice is irreducible to right, of a violence heterogeneous to the orderboth of right (be it that of human rights or of the order of representa-tion) and of myth. In other words, one cannot think the uniquenessof an event like the final solution, as extreme point of mythic andrepresentational violence, within its own system. One must try tothink it beginning with its other, that is to say, starting from what ittried to exclude and to destroy, to exterminate radically, from thatwhich haunted it at once from without and within. One must try tothink it starting from the possibility of singularity, the singularity ofthe signature and of the name, because what the order of representa-tion tried to exterminate was not only human lives by the millions,natural lives, but also a demand for justice; and also names: and firstof all the possibility of giving, inscribing, calling and recalling thename. Not only because there was a destruction or project of destruc-tion of the name and of the very memory of the name, of the name asmemory, but also because the system of mythical violence (objectivist,representational, communicational, etc.) went all the way to its limit,in a demonic fashion, on the two sides of the limit: at the same time, itkept the archive of its destruction, produced simulacra of justificatoryarguments, with a terrifying legal, bureaucratic, statist objectivity andparadoxically produced a system in which its logic, the logic of objec-tivity made possible the invalidation and therefore the effacement oftestimony and of responsibilities, the neutralization of the singularityof the final solution; in short, it produced the possibility of the histo-riographic perversion that has been able to give rise both to the logicof revisionism ( to be brief, let us say of the Faurisson type) as well asa positivist, comparatist, or relativist objectivism (like the one nowlinked to the Historikerstreit) according to which the existence of an

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analogous totalitarian model and of earlier exterminations (the Gu-lag) explains the final solution, even "normalizes" it as an act of war,a classic State response in time of war against the Jews of the world,who, speaking through the mouth of Weizman in September, 1939,would have, in sum, like a quasi-State, declared war on the ThirdReich.

From this point of view, Benjamin would perhaps have judgedvain and without pertinence-in any case without a pertinence com-mensurable to the event, any juridical trial of Nazism and of its re-sponsibilities, any judgmental apparatus, any historiography stillhomogeneous with the space in which Nazism developed up to andincluding the final solution, any interpretation drawing on philosophi-cal, moral, sociological, psychological or psychoanalytical concepts,and especially juridical concepts (in particular those of the philosophyof right, whether it be that of natural law, in the Aristotelian style orthe style of the Aufkldrung). Benjamin would perhaps have judgedvain and without pertinence, in any case without pertinence commen-surable to the event, any historical or aesthetic objectification of thefinal solution that, like all objectifications, would still belong to theorder of the representable and even of the determinable, of the deter-minant and decidable judgment. Recall what we were saying a mo-ment ago: in the order of the bad yiolence of right, that is themythological order, evil arose from a certain undecidability, from thefact that one could not distinguish between founding violence andconserving violence, because corruption was dialectical and dialecti-cally inevitable there, even as theoretical judgment and representationwere determinable or determinant there. On the contrary, as soon asone leaves this order, history begins-and the violence of divine jus-tice-but here we humans cannot measure judgments, which is to sayalso decidable interpretations. This also means that the interpretationof the final solution, as of everything that constitutes the set and thedelimitation of the two orders (the mythological and the divine) is notin the measure of man. No anthropology, no humanism, no discourseof man on man, even on human rights can can be proportionate toeither the rupture between the mythical and the divine, or to a limitexperience such as the final solution. Such a project attempts quitesimply to annihilate the other of mythic violence, the other of repre-sentation: destiny, divine justice and that which can bear witness to it,in other words man insofar as he is the only being who, not havingreceived his name from God, has received from God the power andthe mission to name, to give a name to his own kind and to give aname to things. To name is not to represent, it is not to communicate

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by signs, that is, by means of means in view of an end, etc. In otherwords, the line of this interpretation would belong to that terrible andcrushing condemnation of the Aukldrung that Benjamin had alreadyformulated in a text of 1918 published by Scholem in 1963 honoringAdorno on his 60th birthday.

This does not mean that one must simply renounce Enlighten-ment and the language of communication or of representation in favorof the language of expression. In his Moscow Diary in 1926-27, Benja-min specifies that the polarity between the two languages and all thatthey command cannot be maintained and deployed in a pure state,but that "compromise" is necessary. or inevitable between them. Yetthis remains a compromise between two incommensurable and radi-cally heterogeneous dimensions. It is perhaps one of the lessons thatwe could draw here: the fatal nature of the compromise between het-erogeneous orders, which is a compromise, moreover, in the name ofthe justice that would command one to obey at the same time the lawof representations (Aufklrung, reason, objectification, comparison,explication, the taking into account of multiplicity and therefore theserialization of the unique) and the law that transcends representationand withholds the unique, all uniqueness, from its reinscription in anorder of generality or of comparison.

What I find, in conclusion, the most redoubtable, indeed (per-haps, almost) intolerable in this text, even beyond the affinities itmaintains with the worst (the critique of Aufkdrung, the theory ofthe fall and of originary authenticity, the polarity between originarylanguage and fallen language, the critique of representation and ofparliamentary democracy, etc.), is a temptation that it would leaveopen, and leave open notably to the survivors or the victims of thefinal solution, to its past, present or potential victims. Which tempta-tion? The temptation to think the holocaust as an uninterpretablemanifestation of divine violence insofar as this divine violence wouldbe at the same time nihilating, expiatory and bloodless, says Benja-min, a divine violence that would destroy current law through abloodless process that strikes and causes to expiate. Here I will re-citeBenjamin: "The legend of Niobe may be confronted, as an example ofthis violence, with God's judgment on the company of Korah (Num-bers 16:1-35). It strikes privileged Levites, strikes them withoutwarning, without threat, and does not stop short of annihilation. Butin annihilating it also expiates, and a deep connection between thelack of bloodshed and the expiatory character of this violence is un-mistakable" (p. 297). When one thinks of the gas chambers and thecremation ovens, this allusion to an extermination that would be expi-

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atory because bloodless must cause one to shudder. One is terrified atthe idea of an interpretation that would make of the holocaust anexpiation and an indecipherable signature of the just and violent angerof God.

It is at that point that this text, despite all its polysemic mobilityand all its resources for reversal, seems to me finally to resemble tooclosely, to the point of specular fascination and vertigo, the very thingagainst which one must act and think, do and speak, that with whichone must break (perhaps, perhaps). This text, like many others byBenjamin, is still too Heideggerian, too messianico-marxist or archeo-eschatological for me. I do not know whether from this namelessthing called the final solution one can draw something which still de-serves the name of a lesson. But if there were a lesson to be drawn, aunique lesson among the always singular lessons of murder, from evena single murder, from all the collective exterminations of history (be-cause each individual murder and each collective murder is singular,thus infinite and incommensurable) the lesson that we can draw to-day-and if we can do so then we must-is that we must think, know,represent for ourselves, formalize, judge the possible complicity be-tween all these discourses and the worst (here the final solution). Inmy view, this defines a task and a responsibility the theme of which(yes, the theme) I have not been able to read in either Benjaminian"destruction" or Heideggerian "Destruktion." It is the thought of dif-ference between these destructions on the one hand and a deconstruc-tive affirmation on the other that has guided me tonight in thisreading. It is this thought that the memory of the final solution seemsto me to dictate.

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