NOTES TO PAGES 386–91relationship that which in no case can be ‘‘posed.’’ Inscription, as I would define it in this respect,
is not a simple position: it is rather that by means of which every position isof itself confounded’’
(95–96). Derrida’s discussion of democracy will continue this line of questioning by relating it to
the ‘‘rule of the same’’—ipseity or ipsocracy—as the principle informing all theories of ‘‘sover-
eignty,’’ including that of the sovereignty of the people.
- National Security Strategy of the United States (2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.-
pdf; my emphasis. - A related process, although described from a very different political perspective, is at the
heart of the much-discussed study of the CIA by Chandler Johnson,Blowback: The Costs and Conse-
quences of American Empire(New York: Henry Holt, 2000). - In response to growing signs of a possible U.S. or Israeli preemptive attack on Iran, Zbig-
niew Brzezinski observes that ‘‘In the absence of an immanent threat (and the Iranians are at least
several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If
undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional
and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the
United Nations Security Council... it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international out-
law(s)’’ (Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘‘Been There, Done That,’’Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2006). - On the relation of ‘‘terror’’ to violence and force, see the excellent essay by Marc Redfield,
‘‘War on Terror,’’ inProvocations to Reading: J. Hillis Miller and the Democracy to Come, ed. Barbara
Cohen and Dragan Kujundzˇic ́(New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 128–58. It is of particu-
lar significance that the epitome of ‘‘terrorist’’ acts—so far, at least—seems associated with ‘‘sui-
cide’’: as though it werelife itself—lifeasself—that were at issue, in its relation to death, above and
beyond its individual or collective embodiments. - Carl Schmitt,Politische Theologie(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1985), 11.
- Schmitt,Roman Catholicism and Political Form, 52.
- Derrida’s most elaborate discussion and critique of Schmitt is to be found in hisPolitics of
Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 2005), 83–170. - It would be revealing to contrast Derrida’s deconstruction of sovereignty in terms of what
he calls ‘‘ipsocracy’’ or ‘‘ipseity’’ to an earlier critique of the notion of ‘‘self ’’ to be found in the first
chapter of Adorno and Horkheimer’sDialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2002). One would find many of the same motifs: namely, critique of a
notion of sovereignty derived from monotheistic theology and historically institutionalized in the
principle of ‘‘self-preservation.’’ But such convergences would presumably also serve to highlight
the very significant divergences between the two critiques of ‘‘self.’’ Whereas for Derrida the key
relationship that entails the deconstruction of sovereignty and self involves above alltimeand
languageas media of alterity, for Adorno and Horkheimer that role is assigned to ‘‘nature,’’ as in
the following passage: ‘‘The self which, after the methodical extirpation of all natural traces as
mythological, was no longer supposed to be either a body or blood or a soul or even a natural ego
but was sublimated into a transcendental or logical subject, formed the reference point of reason,
the legislating authority of action’’ (22). ‘‘Nature’’ here is by implication a form of self-presence,
since its ‘‘traces’’ are ‘‘extirpated’’ by the self in the process of demystification. - Michael Naas, ‘‘ ‘One Nation... Indivisible’: Jacques Derrida on the Autoimmunity of
Democracy and the Sovereignty of God,’’Research in Phenomenology, 2006, p. 1. - I hope to explore this problem further in relation to the notions of ‘‘defense’’ and ‘‘danger’’
with reference both to Derrida and to Freud. - This unusual term, which sounds like an all too literal combination of the GermanHeimat
withVaterland, undoubtedly was chosen precisely to avoid the criticism of inconsistency: what is
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