Haunted Democracies and the Politics of Possibility: A Deconstructive Analysis of Truth Commissions
Open Access
- Author:
- Johnson, Leigh M.
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 21, 2007
- Committee Members:
- Dr Shannon Sullivan, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Philip Christman, Committee Member
Vincent M Colapietro, Committee Member
Dr Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Committee Member
Dr John Caputo, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Rogues
metaphysics of presence
democracy to come
hospitality
Emmanuel Levinas
Soren Kierkegaard
Chile
Uganda
Argentina
deconstruction
specters
postcolonial
truth commissions
apartheid
South Africa
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Jacques Derrida
democracy
reconciliation
forgiveness
transitional justice
autoimmunity
Desmond Tutu
aporia
Politics of Friendship
The Gift of Death - Abstract:
- This study is a deconstructive analysis of the contemporary political innovation known as the “truth commission.” As such, it has a two-fold aim: first, to demonstrate the relevance and force of deconstruction for political analysis through an explication of key concepts and insights in the work of Jacques Derrida and, second, to reinforce this interpretive claim by applying deconstructive analysis to the study of contemporary truth commissions. With regard to the first aim, I argue that political concerns are evident in Derrida’s entire corpus, from his earliest work in Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Margins of Philosophy, through his later (more explicitly ethical and political) work in Specters of Marx, The Politics of Friendship, Monolingualism of the Other and Rogues. Using three dominant deconstructive tropes—autoimmunity, the aporia, and specters/ghosts (or the critique of the metaphysics of presence)—I show the implicit consonance between the philosophical methodology of deconstruction and the theory and practice of democracy. This consonance is further elaborated in my analysis of two key concepts employed by truth commissions (most especially, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission)—truth and forgiveness/reconciliation. I argue that not only is deconstruction helpful for understanding the work of truth commissions, but that the work of truth commissions is helpful in concretizing and making real the implications of deconstruction. Using the examples of recent political transitions (in Argentina, Chile and South Africa, among others), I characterize these transitional polities as “haunted democracies” attempting to reckon with the memory of gross violations of human rights. Their attempts to do so in the form of a truth commission, I contend, offers historical evidence of what I call the “politics of possibility,” that is, the attempt to rethink and refigure democracy as something that is pursued, rather than achieved. In the end, I address the important relationship between memory and the future (or what Derrida calls the a venir) for emergent or extant democracies—a relationship, I argue, which is essential to understanding both the full implications of deconstruction and the possibility for successfully executing the truth commission form.