ROGUE DEMOCRACY AND THE HIDDEN GODregarded, and that continued to present itself, as the world’s leading democracy, the
United States. To attempt to readdress the question of democracy in this particular situa-
tion had thus to proceed through a rereading of certain of the discourses and traditions
out of which the notion of democracy emerged and to which it remained indebted.
With respect to one of the terms that Derrida chose to serve as the title of his talk,
and then of the book of which it composed the major part—rogue, and in particular,
rogue state—he recalls that its use in political discourse was by no means limited to the
current American administration. Rather, he reminds his readers, the use of the phrase
reaches a high point ‘‘between 1997 and 2000... first of all in the speeches of Clinton
himself and those of his top advisors (particularly Madeleine Albright)’’ (95–96 / 138).
Previously, he notes, ‘‘Ronald Reagan had preferred the termoutlaw, and George Bush
tended to speak ofrenegaderegimes.’’ As to the wordrogueitself, its use goes back to the
sixteenth century, when it designated ‘‘a dishonest, unprincipled person... a rascal.’’
‘‘From there,’’ Derrida notes, its ‘‘meaning is extended, in Shakespeare as well as in Dar-
win, to all nonhuman living beings, that is, to plants and animals whose behavior appears
deviant or perverse. Any wild animal can be called rogue but especially those, such as
rogue elephants,that behave like ravaging outlaws, violating the customs and conventions,
the customary practices, oftheir owncommunity’’ (93 / 135). The wordroguethus ac-
quires the significance of ‘‘a mark of infamy,’’ involving a ‘‘banishing or exclusion that
then leads to a bringing before the law.’’ Here Derrida underscores one important distinc-
tion of the English word with respect to its French and German counterparts,voyousand
Schurken: whereas the latter two words always signify human beings, the English word
comes to be applied to plants and animals, endowing the term with a particularly danger-
ous connotation manifest in the following remark from an article published in theChroni-
cle of Higher Education:‘‘In the animal kingdom, a rogue is defined as a creature that is
born different. It is incapable of mingling with the herd, it keeps to itself, and it can attack
at any time, without warning’’ (94 / 135).
The fact that in English the wordrogueis not limited to any one class of beings seems
to endow it with a particular, and dangerous, capacity: impossible to place or classify, it
is also difficult to predict and defend against: ‘‘It can attack at any time, without warning.’’
Although Derrida does not mention it here, just such considerations inform the 2002
National Security Strategy (NSS) document of the Bush government, which reacted to
the attacks of September 11, 2001, by declaring long-established procedures of interna-
tional law to be obsolete and by endorsing ‘‘preemptive’’ military action as an integral
and legitimate part of official American policy:
For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack
before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present
an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often condi-PAGE 385385.................16224$ CH20 10-13-06 12:35:54 PS