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Politics after the Death of the Father: Democracy in Freud and Derrida
- Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature
- Mosaic, an interdisciplinary critical journal
- Volume 44, Number 3, September 2011
- pp. 115-131
- 10.1353/mos.2011.a450732
- Article
- Additional Information
Freud hypothesizes that civilization originates with the murder of the primal father. Derrida argues that this murder finds its repetition in the execution of Louis XVI and, drawing on Freudian considerations of the problem of violence, derives an account of democracy as impelled by this death.