Derrida Taking A Stand For Algeria.pdf

Taking a Stand for Algeria

Jacques Derrida

C oncerning the crisis which Algeria experi-

Jacques Derrida was awarded the

ences today, only the Algerians can find

political solutions. Yet these cannot be

born in the isolation of the country.

Everybody recognizes the complexity of

the situation; diverging analyses and perspec-

tives can legitimately be expressed about its

origins and developments. Nevertheless, an

agreement can be reached on a few points of

principle.

First of all, to reaffirm that any solution

must be a civil one. The recourse to armed

violence to defend or conquer power, terror-

ism, repression, torture and executions, mur-

ders and kidnappings, destruction, threats

against the life or security of persons, these

can only ruin the possibility that is still with-

in Algeria’s reach in order to build its own

democracy and the conditions of its econom-

ic development.

It is the condemnation by all of the prac-

tices of terrorism and repression which will

Adorno prize in 2001. Fichus

came out in 2002.

Author

116

thus begin to open a space for the confrontation of each and everyone’s

analyses, in the respect of differences.

Proposals will be made to increase the number of acts of solidarity in

France and elsewhere. Some initiatives are required without delay to make

public opinion sensitive to the Algerian tragedy, to underscore the responsi-

bility of governments and international financial institutions, to further the

support of all for the Algerian democratic demands.

I am asked to be brief, I will be.When I ask, as I will do, in the name of

whom and in the name of what we speak here, I would simply like to let

some questions be heard, without contesting or provoking anybody.

In the name of whom and of what are we gathered here? And whom do

we address?

These questions are not abstract, I insist on this—and I insist that they

engage first of all only me.

For several reasons. Due to decency or modesty first , of course, and

because of a concern about what an Appeal like ours may contain in both

strengths and weaknesses. However generous or just it may be, an Appeal—

particularly when it resonates from here, from the walls of this Parisian audi-

torium, that is, for some of us, not for all precisely, but for many of us, when

it is thus cast from far—I always fear that such an Appeal, however legitimate

and well-meaning it may be, may still contain, in its very eloquence, too

much authority; and I fear that as such it also defines a place of arbitration

(and there is indeed one in our Appeal, I will say something about it later).

In its apparent neutrality in arbitration, such an Appeal runs the risk of con-

taining a lesson, an implicit lesson, whether it be a lesson learnt, or worse, a

lesson given. So it is better to say it, it is better not to hide it from ourselves.

Above all, decency is required when one risks matching a few words to such

a real tragedy about which the Appeal from the ICSAI and the League of

Human Rights rightly underlines two characteristics :

1. The entanglement (the very history of the premises, of the “origins” and

of the “developments” which have led to what looks like a terrifying dead-

lock and to the entwined sharing of responsibilities in this matter, in Algeria

as well as outside); which implies that the time of the transformation and the

coming of this democracy, the response to the “Algerian democratic

demand” mentioned several times in the Appeal, this time for democracy will

be long, discontinuous, difficult to gather into the act of a single decision,

into a dramatic reversal which would respond to the Appeal. It would be

irresponsible to believe or to make believe the opposite. This long time for

democracy, we will not even be able to gather it in Algeria.Things will have

to take place elsewhere too .None of the autonomy of Algerians is removed by

such a serious reminder. Even if we could doubt this and even if we kept

117 College Literature 30.1 (Winter 2003)

Jacques Derrida

dreaming of such a reversal in the course of events, the very time of this

meeting would be enough to remind us of it. Indeed, we are here after the

so-called “reconciliation talks,” that is, after a failure or a simulacrum, a dis-

aster at any rate so sadly foreseeable, if not calculated, which sketches, as if

negatively, the dream of the impossible which we can neither abandon nor

believe in.

2. Our Appeal also underscores the fact that faced with such an entan-

gled situation, the diversity of perspectives and analyses is “legitimate.” And

how true that is! But at this point, the Appeal carefully stops and goes back

to what it defines as a possible “agreement” on a “few points of principle.”

Yet, nobody, even among the first to sign the Appeal (I am one of them), is

fooled by the fact that the “diversity of analyses and perspectives,” if it is taken

to be legitimate, can lead some to diverge on the “few points of principle”

at stake (for instance, about what is to be understood by the three major

words or motifs of the Appeal: that of violence [all forms of violence are con-

demned: but what is violence, that armed violence which is the most gener-

al concept in the Appeal? Does it cover any police operation even if it claims

to protect the security of citizens, and to ensure—or claims to ensure—the

legal and normal processes of a democratic society, etc.?], then that of civil

peace [What of the civil in general? What is the civil? What does civil mean

today? etc.], and above all that of the idea of democracy [Which democracy is

referred to?].

In the end, these words engage only myself, for if I have supported and

even participated in the preparation of the appeal for civil peace in Algeria,

if I approve of all its formulations (which seem to me both prudent and

demanding), I cannot be sure ahead of time that, as far as applications and

consequences are concerned, my interpretation is in all respects the same as

that of the others who have signed it.

Thus, I will try to tell you briefly how I understand some crucial pas-

sages of the Appeal. I will do so in a dry and analytical manner, to save time

but also in order to refrain from a temptation I have which some might deem

sentimental: the temptation to turn a demonstration into a sensitive or

pathetic testimony, and to explain how all I will say is inspired above all and

after all by a painful love for Algeria, an Algeria where I was born, which I

left, literally, for the first time only at nineteen, before the war of independ-

ence, an Algeria to which I have often come back and which in the end I

know to have never really ceased inhabiting or bearing in my innermost, a

love for Algeria to which, if not the love of citizenry, and thus the patriotic

tie to a Nation-state, is nonetheless what makes it impossible to dissociate

here the heart, the thinking, and the political position-taking—and thus dic-

tates all that I will say. It is precisely from this position that I ask in the name

Author

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of what and of whom, if one is not an Algerian citizen, one joins and sup-

ports this Appeal.

Keeping this question in mind, I would thus like to demonstrate tele-

graphically, in four points, why our Appeal cannot limit itself to a praisewor-

thy neutrality in front of what, indeed, must be above all the responsibility of

the Algerians themselves. Hence,“not to limit oneself to political neutrality,”

which does not mean that one has to choose a side—we refuse this, I

believe—between two sides of a front supposed to define, for a large part of

the public opinion, the fundamental fact of the current conflict. On the con-

trary, it seems to me that political responsibility today consists not accepting

this fact as natural and unchangeable. It consists of demonstrating, by saying

it and by turning it into acts, that it is not so and that the democratic way has

its place and its strengths and its life and its people elsewhere.

By saying this is not to be politically neutral. On the contrary it means

to take a stand 4 counts:

To take a stand:

1. For a new international solidarity;

2. For an electoral agreement;

3. For a dissociation of the theological and the political;

4. For what I would more or less properly call a new Third Estate.

We take a stand for a new international solidarity

The Appeal says that the solutions belong to the Algerians alone, a cor-

rect claim in principle, but it adds several times that these solutions cannot

be born in the “isolation of the country.” This reminds us of what must be

made explicit in order to demonstrate the consequence: political solutions do

not depend in the last instance on the citizens of this or that Nation-state.

Today, with respect to what was and what remains up to a point a just imper-

ative, that is, non-intervention and the respect of self-determination (the

future of Algerian men and women of course belongs in the end to the

Algerian people), of understanding it runs the risk of being, from now on, at

best the rhetorical concession of a bad conscience, at worst, an alibi. Which

does not mean that a right of intervention or of intrusion, granted to other

states or to the citizens of other states as such , should be reinstated. That

would indeed be inadmissible. But one should reaffirm the international

aspect of solidarity that anchors us as citizens of determinate Nation-states.

Which does complicate things, but also sets the true place of our responsi-

bility: neither simply that of Algerian citizens, nor that of French citizens; and

this is why my question, and my question as one who has signed the Appeal,

comes from neither an Algerian nor a French person as such, which does not

free me on the other hand of my responsibilities, civil or more than civil as a

119 College Literature 30.1 (Winter 2003)

Jacques Derrida

French citizen born in Algeria, and obliges me to do what must be done

according to this logic in my country, toward the public opinion and the

French government (as we try to do here; all that remains to be done in this

regard has been and will still have to be set). For example (for lack of time it

will be my only example) the logic of the Appeal leads us to take sides—it is

indeed necessary—with respect to Algeria’s foreign debt and what is linked

to it. This matter is also, as is well known (unemployment, despair, dramati-

cally increasing poverty), an essential component of the civil war and all of

today’s sufferings. But we cannot seriously take a position on the economic

recovery of Algeria without analyzing the national and international respon-

sibilities in this situation.And, above all, without pointing to means of politi-

co-economic interventions which go beyond Algeria, going even beyond

France. It is a matter of European and worldwide stakes, and those who call,

as we do, for such international endeavors and call to what the Appeal care-

fully names “international financial institutions,” those who call for these

responsibilities and these solidarities, those do not speak anymore solely as

Algerians or French, nor even as Europeans, even if they also and thereby speak

as all of these.

We take a stand for an electoral agreement

One cannot invoke, however abstractly, democracy, or what the Appeal

calls the “Algerian democratic demand” without taking a stand in the

Algerian political sphere. A consistent democracy demands at least, in its

minimal definition: 1). A schedule, that is, an electoral engagement; 2). A dis-

cussion, that is, a public discourse armed only with reasoned arguments, for

example in agreement with the press; 3). A respect of the electoral decision,

and thus of the possibility of transition within a democratic process which

remains uninterrupted.

This means that we, who have signed the Appeal, have already taken a

stand twice on this matter, and it was necessary. On the one hand , against a state

apparatus which urgently creates the necessary conditions, in particular those

of appeasement and of discussion, in order to reinitiate as quickly as possible (and

this rhythm poses today the most effective problem, the one to discuss dem-

ocratically) and interrupted electoral process. Vo ting is not indeed the whole

of democracy, but without it and without this form and this accounting of

voices, there is no democracy. On the other hand ,by the very reference to a

democratic demand, we also take a stand against whoever would not respect

the electoral decision, but would tend, directly or indirectly, before, during or

after such elections, to question the very principle presiding over such

plebiscite, that is, democratic life, a legal state, the respect for free speech, the

rights of the minority, of political transition, of the plurality of languages,

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