AUT: Derrida, Negri, and International Law

[Alvaro Reyes <areyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello again Angela,

	Wow! Doesn't this email stuff really speed/mess things up? I mean
we have had one email exchange, we have never talked, or met, and already
there is confusion as to whether we are arguing! Seriously though, I
understand that you are not arguing with me, you are simply trying to
clarify and strengthen your position, and this will I hope help me
sharpen mine.  I was very interested in all the comments that you made.
But I will start addressing them last things first.

Angela said: I would also agree with Negri and Hardt that social
democratic and liberal
reformism is no longer tenable; but I'm not sure that this is the issue at
stake here.  nowhere does Derrida make any claim about the law or justice
other than to argue that justice cannot be measured, and that injustice
cannot be calculated.   this is a critique of international law (of justice
as compensation, for instance), and I can't see how this would be mutually
exclusive of Hardt and Negri's arguments.  it may not go as far as I would
like, or even in the direction that I would insist upon, but it remains an
insight about the sense in which international law has increasingly become
the terrain of promises of redemption and justice: notable examples would
be east timor, the ex-yu, Rwanda, and even the appeal to an international
tribunal on the issue of land rights in australia.  Derrida's arguments are
precisely a critique of the central premises of this sense of justice.

Alvaro says: Yes, international law is going to seem like the natural
place in which to look for justice these days. First, because it's
inter-nation system should apparently have a better shot at re-regulating
the market than any domestic legal system ever could (assuming that it
functioned ideally, that is). Second, the "human rights" framework has an
idealism that has been gutted out of the domestic courts of many
countries, and last it is known (at least on the surface) throughout the
world.  But, I do not believe that it (both "law" and the international
system) holds much promise for real change, not just because of its
cynical manipulation by more powerful nations, but because the processes
that afflict us are not inter-national they are global or
trans-national.  Thus, mine and I think Negri's disagreement with Derrida
is not whether international law will play an increasing role in current
conflict but on the positive or negative possibilities of the role it
will play.

  On to other things.  First, you are right that I did not emphasize
Derrida's sincere commitment to social change in the international law
arena.  So let me clarify, I do not want to come off sounding like I
believe that Derrida is a "closet conservative" or anything of the sort.
I simply want to highlight what I believe are real and important
differences between the projects of Negri/Deleuze/Guattari/Hardt and that
of Derrida.  The difference is between: 1) criticizing the law of a
government, even if it is a global government, and wanting to change
it-even if radically (clearly what Derrida seems to want to do), 2) and
encouraging the production of norms outside of the state system even an
inter-state system (as Negri/Deleuze/Guattari/Hardt would like to do-that
is the whole point of their work on Spinoza). This project is what
Deleuze calls an "anti-juridicism" in his introduction to Negri's French
edition of "The Savage Anomaly." To sum up, we have a radical and
anti-formal juridicism in Derrida and an anti-juridicism in Negri and
company.  It is definitely not as easy as good guys and bad guys (as
unfortunately many still believe), but I do think that it is possible and
important to show how what seems to be unimportant theoretical
differences lead to quite varying political projects.  Take for example
the following quotes from Derrida and Negri on the use of international
intervention by the United Nations, notice their stance on these
institutions, their views on the nature of the rise of "humanitarian
intervention," and lastly theie stance toward the State and law:

 Derrida after recognizing and condemning the eurocentricity and cynical
use of the international legal system goes on to say, "These facts do not
suffice to disqualify international institutions.  Justice demands, on
the contrary, that one pay tribute to certain of those who are working
within them in the direction of the perfectibility and emancipation of
institutions that must never be renounced.  However insufficient,
confused, or equivocal such signs may still be, we should salute what is
heralded today in the reflection on the right of interference or
intervention in the name of what is obscurely and sometimes
hypocritically called the humanitarian, thereby limiting the sovereignty
of the State in certain conditions.  Let us salute such signs even as one
remains vigilantly on guard against the manipulation or appropriations to
which these novelties can be subjected." A couple of paragraphs later he
goes on to say, "Despite appearances what we are saying (he is referring
to the redefinition of sovereignty implicit in intervention) is not
simply anti-statist: in given and limited conditions, the super-State,
which might be an international institution, may always be able to limit
the appropriations and the violence of certain private socio-economic
forces.  But without necessarily subscribing to the whole Marxist
discourse on the state (which, moreover, is complex, evolving,
heterogenous) and its appropriation by a dominant class, on the
distinction between State power and State apparatus, on "the end of
politics," or on the withering away of the State, and on the other hand
without suspecting the juridical idea in itself" (Specters of Marx, pg.
84-86)

Before moving on to Negri's quote I want to put out a perplexing question
and a comment about this quote; 1) How does Derrida know what "justice
demands" if justice, he says, is "inaccessible to man?" 2) I hope this
makes clear that what Derrida is doing is more than critiquing the
international law system as it is, he is defending the possibility of it
producing justice.

Now, contrast Derrida's quote to Negri's analyses of the rise of
intervention, "The USA is not subject to international law; rather it
forms imperial law. The ordering of the Empire has been constructed over
time.  The seeds were sown by President Wilson.  Roosevelt built its
democratic machine (in terms of both politics and the economy).  Then,
with the crisis of the Soviet Union, the Empire began to be constructed
with increasing speed.  When president Carter first began talking about
humanitarian intervention everyone laughed at him.  But within just a few
years initiatives by "non-governmental organizations" were springing up
all over the place, and humanitarian intervention thus became a vangaurd
focus of imperial attention in the project of defining a new world
politics.  Everthing changed at this point: ceremonial required that
declaration of war should be preceded by tears of grief. Amazing how much
order was developed through human commiseration! And then (last but not
least) how much cheap labor has been made available on the market in the
honest conviction of snatching it out of the clutches of
totalitarianism!  Even the global strategies against "real socialism"
that were employed during the Reagan period could not avoid taking a
humanitarian angle: thus "star wars" was duly flavoured with emotion over
the "gulags" and a horrible confusion between Auschwitz and Timisoara
began to circulate-history, philosopy and propaganda playing under the
one same cover.  So here we come to the turning point: within the nation
state operating in a context of capitalist reform (whether Rooseveltian
or Soviet) the basis of the constitution is labor; whereas the content of
the postmodern imperial is values.  In other words human rights; and in
other words the rights which the freeing-up the market defines.  So what
do we mean when we talk of absolute government, representative of values
and not of the power (potenza) of the citizenry? Global government in the
same sense that the market is global.  Government of peace, because where
you have Empire you no longer have war; all you have is rebellions
against Order, which a special repressive force, a policing force, will
eliminate.  This is not a war that is being pursued against Serbia, but a
restoration of values"  Negri goes on to say, "In order to push the
Empire into catastrophe, it has to be taken seriously.  And therefore we
have to refuse its every ritual" (Negri, "The 'Democrats' as Gendarmes of
World Order Translated and made available by Ed Emery through his web
site occasional papers)

In short, Derrida views the rise of interventionism with a very cautious
optimism, but he salutes it nonetheless, believing that if we are
vigilant, on occasion the "international institutions" can be a space
"outside" of capital that we can use to fight for justice.  Negri on the
other hand, views the entire "humanitarian" project, not just some
deviations within it, as now being fully subsumed within the logic of
capital, not capable of doing anything but reproducing it.  It is part
and parcel of the rise of a new global Empire, a global biopolitical
situation (as Hardt says). Not small and unimportant differences I
think.  And this I think are the positions that follow from their varying
theoretical trusts and mistrusts of the juridical.  That is,
Negri/Hardt/Deleuze/Guattari don't buy the fact that their can exist any
site of mediation against capital, whether it be domestic or
international, there is no possibility of a law that approaches justice.
To them that is beside the point.  What they interested in seeing is the
extraction of the juridical from the hands of the state, the setting of
norms through non-mediated consensus, what they call the "rule of the
multitude." Only then can we set an agenda through norms that differs
with that of the market.


Angela said: (I am paraphrasing) It is quite wrong to characterize
Derrida as an anti-foundationalist.

Very quickly I would like to say that you are absolutely right to say
that I am wrong.  I am sorry, I was importing phrases from legal theory
that have now become synonymous, but which in philosophy are far from the
same.  What I meant to say it that Derrida is an anti-formalist.  I
understand that the very notion of differance is a deferral on the
questions of foundations.

Last, thinking through my answer to the question of ontology will take
more time than I have right now, but I can say right away that it does
not seem contradictory to me to propose a "post-deconstructive" ontology
as Negri does but it is a very long argument about Spinoza's conception
of being.  I will try to give an answer to this complex question in the
near future.

Alvaro

P.S. I hope people don't mind my lengthy quoting, I just think it is
important to be clear as to what we are referring especially in an era
where everything can be reduced to a passing reference.



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