Spatial juxtaposition and temporal imagery in postdictatorship culture

• Published in: Journal of Latin American cultural studies : travesía 2009-03, Vol.18 (1), p.33-54
• Main Author: Draper, Susana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Culture; Derrida, Jacques; Dictatorship; Genocide; Hegemony; Violence
• ISSN: 1356-9325; 1469-9575
• DOI: 10.1080/13569320902819752

In 'Unforeseeable Freedom', a conversation between Elizabeth Roudinescu & Jacques Derrida, the latter points out the many metaphysical presuppositions that are loaded into the idea of freedom, such as its implicit reference to an instant of certainty that depends on a subject who is conscious & in control of itself a presence to itself that Derrida famously critiqued at the very beginning of his career. Then, too, there is the background assumption that autonomy & rationality are integrated in the self-assurance of a sovereign subject who decides & calculates as if following a desire of control that would prevent the unforeseen from happening. However, after many such cautions, Derrida seems to insist on using 'freedom' as if within the hegemonic obsession for calculability, control & expansion guided by discourses on pre-emptive actions (a concept aligned with pre-emptive wars & linked to a long history of violence through 'pre-emptive dictatorships' & genocides) freedom also needed to become the site for a critical & ethical intervention. Thus, the talk of 'the arrival of the other' Derrida's privileged ethical event in this dialogue is connected to a sense of freedom that 'comes' as what 'exceeds...the calculations & strategies of my mastery' (2001: 91; 2004: 52). Adapted from the source document.