SubStance

Benjamin, Ross.
Chang, Heesok.
Jacques Derrida, The Last European
SubStance - Issue 110 (Volume 35, Number 2), 2006, pp. 140-171

University of Wisconsin Press

Ross Benjamin and Heesok Chang - Jacques Derrida, The Last European - SubStance 35:2 SubStance 35.2 (2006) 140-171 Jacques Derrida, The Last European Ross Benjamin New York City Heesok Chang Vassar College "Ce qu'on nomme algébriquement 'l'Europe' a des responsabilités à prendre, pour l'avenir de l'humanité, pour celui du droit international – ça c'est ma foi, ma croyance. Et là, je n'hésiterai pas à dire 'nous les Européens.'" — Derrida, "Je suis en guerre contre moi-même" In Paris of May 2004, at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Le Monde diplomatique, in one of the last acts of his extraordinary public career, Jacques Derrida issued an impassioned call to resist globalization (mondialisation) and US unilateralism in the name of Europe. A year earlier, on May 31, he and Jürgen Habermas had published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung invoking the "Wiedergeburt Europas" (the "rebirth of Europe"). Authored by Habermas and co-signed by Derrida, the publication signaled a startling gesture of unity between two philosophers who had, to say the least, failed to find common ground for the past several decades. The Habermas-Derrida text calls upon the nations of Europe to formulate a common foreign policy and to forge a new European identity as a counterpoise to US global power. It cites February 15, 2003 – the day mass demonstrations against the Iraq war were staged in London, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris,...