It was just about two decades ago that Jacques Derrida in Rogues (2005) spoke about the essential “autoimmunity” of democracy. On the eve of an election that is certain to change so much about the future of democracy in America, it will perhaps be instructive to return to Derrida’s arguments and analyses in Rogues in order to ask why Derrida continued, not simply despite this dangerous and ineluctable autoimmunity but because of it, to profess an unconditional “faith” in what he called at the time “the democracy to come.”
Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He works in the areas of Ancient Greek Philosophy and Contemporary French Philosophy. His most recent books include Threshold Phenomena: Jacques Derrida and the Question of Hospitality (Fordham University Press, 2024) and Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America (Bloomsbury Press, 2022). He is the co-translator of several works by Jacques Derrida, including Rogues (Stanford University Press, 2005) and is a member of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project. He also co-edits the Oxford Literary Review.
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