The Future of Emancipation:
Inheriting the Messianic Promise
in Derrida and Others
björn thorsteinssonIn our times, the reluctance to engage in any type of radical re-evalu-
ation of socio-political values seems almost all-pervasive. Of course,
such a broad claim immediately calls for numerous qualifications and
caveats — implied and invited by the modest but important word
almost. First of all, the reluctance in question is, not unsurprisingly,
limited to the well-off and those reveling in luxury. In other words — at
the risk of sounding naïve, vulgar, and simplistic — it only applies to
us. Second, the discourse calling for new sets of values is evidently not
completely absent. Some might even argue that it has already attract-
ed too much attention; the “alarmists,” we are told, are gradually be-
coming the reigning prophets of a “new orthodoxy.” Third, even if the
reluctance is strong, even if the forces of suppression constantly ac-
quire new reinforcements and ever stronger technological means, one
will never completely avoid encountering, in one of its guises, what I
might term, following Alain Badiou, the unnameable of the current
situation:^1 the elements that escape the reigning hegemony, those (of-
ficially) overlooked by bio-power, those that, quite simply, are not
counted. The dispossessed, the slum-dwellers, the “illegal immi-
grants,” the women and children sold as slaves. When will they stake
their claim on us — when will they come to haunt us? When will those
who do not count make themselves counted? When will we be made
accountable to them? Or, even worse, when will they turn the tables
- See, for example, Alain Badiou, “Philosophy and truth”, Infinite thought: Truth
and the return to philosophy, trans. Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens, London and
New York: Continuum, 2005, 49.