Freewheeling Democracy as an Impossible Figure in Jacques Derrida

摘要

September 11th, 2001. It is difficult to doubt that on that day something happened that was destined, in all likelihood, to determine a change of epoch, a shift of paradigm: ‘And so, the twenty–first century finally begins’ (Auster 2003: 88). Yet, actually, it is not easy to explain why: it is as if, still today, we could not find the right words to give sense to that horror, in real time, before our eyes. All right, for the first time, since 1812, the United States were under attack on their territory; for the first time the barbarians managed to strike at the heart of the Empire (Chomsky 2001). But certainly this is not sufficient to explain the ‘terror’. And least of all, the numbers of deaths occurred on that day: all things considered, those numbers are few if compared to the children that every day starve, also - in some sense - before our eyes. The question is different: on that morning, together with the Twin Towers, something else fell – once forever. What?