In one of his most shocking remarks, Jacques Derrida claimed that there is "no deconstruction without democracy, [and] no democracy without deconstruction." Alex Thomson's goal in Deconstruction and Democracy is to show us why this claim is not so shocking after all. And he succeeds, but only at the price of losing the meaning we usually attach to the terms "politics" or "deconstruction" and replacing it with the abstract and purely academic material of the word "deconstruction."

The greatest achievement of Thomson's book lies in its structure. As any refined architect, Thomson seems able to combine without contradiction two principles of construction: on the one hand, a sort of logical development of the themes related to the main topic, i.e. the relation between deconstruction and democracy; on the other hand, a comparative analysis of Derrida's work in relation to the other contributions brought forward by the great stars that populate the recent history of philosophy. However, an effect of his unconditional admiration and fidelity to Derrida's thought is that Thomson risks appearing to be on a sort of triumphal march displaying two distinct and continuous series of crushing victories: one of Derrida over his main philosophical rivals, in which the father of deconstruction outsmarts everybody as being at the same time more radical than the radicals and more lucid than the moderates; and one of Thomson himself over his closest allies, in which the author proves to be more Derridean than anybody else ever was.

In a "quasi-transcendental" manner, the first chapter deals with the conditions of possibility of democracy. Derived from the model of friendship, these conditions prove to be contradictory, marking as such democracy with an irreducible tension: aimance, the possibility of universal and unlimited friendship, and brotherhood, which involves the problem of number, of distinguishing friends from enemies. Hence, just like friendship, democracy will revolve around a question of number, and will be constantly under the pressure of these two opposed principles – the unlimiting one and the naturalizing one.

The synthesis of this dual structure is the concept of "democracy to come," which proves to be one of the leitmotifs of the book and which has a double function: on the level of meaning, it implies that democracy is permanently deferred; on the level of intellectual practice, it provides Derrida and Thomson with "a principle against which any state which claims to be democratic can be judged" (p. 26). Armed with this conceptual tool, Thomson proceeds then to distinguish the Derridean theory of democracy from the liberal theory and the radical democracy developments. With regards to the liberal theory, Derrida's approach might be called "immanent critique," provided we agree that this Adornian method is brought here to new and unknown peaks of convenience. Thomson pretends that Derridean deconstruction, contrary to liberalism, implies "an indefinite and prolonged criticism of the failure of democratic institutions to live up to an ideal, without giving up on democracy in favor of something else" (p. 38). Apart from Fukuyama, I wonder how many self-proclaimed liberals would disagree with this principle.

The second chapter follows the same movement of the first: responsibility is now split between an infinite demand of unlimited responsibility and the pressure to act and decide now, in this very moment. Alex Thomson shows here a great capacity of overcoming his intellectual doubts toward the Derridean project thanks to his unconstrained belief in its intrinsic value and unspoken intentions: "we might also be concerned that understanding responsibility as excessive or transgressive, as unfulfillable, might render any lesser concept of duty, or doing good, uninteresting or naïve: why bother to do something for the other, if by doing it I am still doing harm to the other? I think this is indeed one of the questions raised by Derrida's account, but I suspect that this is, at least in part, his intention" (p. 67). One might ask then why this innovative strategy of filling the gaps of argumentation with pure belief is put to work so late in the book.

Finally, the last chapter of the book applies the same principle of peras kai apeiron to the political as such. The simple opposition between depoliticization and repoliticization, common to both Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin, is disturbed, according to Thomson and Derrida, by the spectrality of politics. Thanks to this concept, Thomson and Derrida are thus able to defeat with only one hand both the enemies of the political center, Marxists and Schmittians, by simply opposing a unique moment of repoliticization to the status quo of depoliticization, ending up in a metaphysical foreclosure of the political opening. On the contrary, according to deconstruction, the political is always disseminated and can never be present as such in a revolutionary moment. This also means that the revolutionary moment is, at the same time, impossible and omnipresent. Eventually, this Derridean revolution without the revolution ("the revolutionary politics of everyday" (p. 172)) could be regarded as a mere relabeling of good old reformism: "the revolutionary act [is that] of interpretation…of negotiation and calculation" (p. 172).

There are at least two major problems with this Derridean account of politics and with Thomson's reenactment of it. On the theoretical level, verdicts like "undecidability is the condition of possibility of a decision" (p. 163) or "the law is made only in a moment of illegality" (p. 165) could be regarded, at the same time, as pathbreaking and extremely original intuitions, or as quite obvious sentences, whose meaning is inscribed analytically in the very definition of the terms they use. On the practical level, Derrida's strategy of deconstructing the basic distinctions of political and philosophical theory is just too convenient: since there is no difference between theory and practice, since every repoliticization ends up in a depoliticization and vice versa, Derrida can easily reproach any radical project of being too theoretical and metaphysical, while at the same time pretending that what seems to be a merely theoretical activity like deconstruction is, for the very same reason, a political practice and a radical repoliticization.

 This is why, from a non-Derridean point of view, the deconstructionist account of politics is probably the most chic and radical outfit that a conservatory politics ever put on.

This possible objection is, of course, discernible also from such a strongly Derridean perspective as that of Thomson's. However, his way of rejecting it is rather peculiar: a "potential accusation would be that this [Derrida's deconstruction] is not radical at all, since it is not radical according to traditional political paths and codes. Certainly, if the degree of radicality of a theory were to be measured in terms of the incomprehension and misunderstanding that have accrued to it then we would quite easily be able to prove that Derrida's revolutionary politics is more radical than traditional concepts of revolution" (p. 173).

Although Thomson's book is presumably dealing with the link between deconstruction and democracy and with the possible consequences that Derrida's work might have on politics, any Derridean student knows that it would be a huge mistake to actually expect a plain formulation of these political consequences. Thomson knows it too: "we know that any attempt to translate deconstruction into politics must be depoliticizing….So perhaps leaping to conclusions is the last thing we need here" (p. 202). Now, with the risk of leaping to conclusions, we just want to add that, from a strict Derridean point of view, not only formulating the conclusions, but even writing a book on deconstruction can be regarded as pure blasphemy. Whether he realizes it or not, Thomson wrote the blasphemous book that "is the last thing we need here."

© 2008 Alex Cistelecan

Alex Cistelecan (Luiss University of Rome, Department of Political Science, Rome, Italy).