From: "Stuart Elden" <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Derrida and Silence
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 00:40:40 -0400


To take just one line from your interesting mail

> Certainly, the idea of nation founded on law not violence, which is now
> about to justify the use of violence to preserve itself against the
violence
> of non-nations, seems to become a question not obvious assumption.

Absolutely. Derrida has written on this precise point. See 'Declarations d'
Independence', in Otobiographies: L'enseignement de Nietzsche et la
politique du nom propre, Paris: Editions Galilee, 1984. There is supposed to
be an English translation, but i've never seen it.

James W. Ceaser, Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern
Thought, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; Bonnie Honig, Political
Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993; and Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida, London: Routledge, 2000
all have discussions.

Derrida's piece in For Nelson Mandela is also worth reading, and... loads of
other related pieces - Specters of Marx, his stuff on Hamlet, Romeo and
Juliet...

I have a collection of notes on these pieces towards an article, but i never
got round to working it up into anything. Too many ideas and too little
time...

Stuart