What is to be done...

...when there seems nothing more?

"Demeurer."


In our reading-forum, someone asked along this line: "If in 'Eating Well' Derrida is not advocating universal vegetarianism, and in speaking of Auschwitz, one must not admit for a 'provisional' morality and therefore merely to speak 'in the name of,' what good does a critique of metaphysics do? What good does it do for Darfur?"

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The question appeared to be directed at those who laboured to explain the critique of metaphysics and which despite what Heidegger sets out to do, is still an ontotheology. As the straw-(wo)man one amongst many, the indictment was unnecessary on so many levels: for no one, if he or she has read, could or should declare that a thorough critique of metaphysisc would resolve the ongoing conflicts and the present global community's inactivity towards them. No one. To make such a declaration, would be a horrible thing to say. Insofar as 'saying' is a priviledged limitation, insofar as 'saying' still does not amount to a 'doing.' All of us present in that forum and in that room cannot 'say' what we 'do' if we were to ignore and conflate the two.

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Hence the age-old question of theory vs. practice, this time teased to its incommensurable measurement but at the same time also teased with a price it cannot afford. To question their incommensurability -- is that still a theoretical or practical task?

None of us are guiltless in this context. And the academic sphere that we live in should never seek to acquit us of such a guilt - however "ivory" our pleasures are often designated. Indeed, to anyone who dare claim that a gathering to speak of terrorism, to write of terror, evil, justice, etc., let him or her not fanthom that these concepts are urgent because he or she is equipped with the vocabulary and honourary degree to solve them. These concepts are urgent in spite of, and not because of our (in)capacity. But this is not to hide behind the veil of weakness or "practical ignoranace." It is because the drive to make such concepts calculable constitutes their being problems.

And to claim an 'ownership' over problems has always been to partake in genealogical fictions.

What costs humanity very dearly is doubtless to believe that one can have done in history with a general essence of Man, on the pretext that it represents only a Hauptgespenst, an arch-ghost, but also, what comes down to the same thing -- at bottom -- to still believe, no doubt, in this capital ghost. To believe in it as do the credulous or the dogmatic. Between the two beliefs, as always, the way remains narrow.

[...]Can one, in order to question it, address oneself to a ghost? To whom? To him? To it, as Marcellus says once again so prudently? "Thou art a Scholler; speak to it Horatio .... Question it." (Derrida, Specters of Marx 175).