björn thorsteinssonon us and demand to settle the accounts — when will we turn into
them?
One of the guiding lights, if not regulatory ideals, of this excursion
will be what is referred to as “justice.” What is justice? Much, possibly
everything, hinges on the way in which we answer that question. Has
justice arrived, has it been achieved on this earth? Have we arrived at
the summit, have we reached the end — have we come as far as we can
go? These are relatively simple questions, and as such they are tainted
with an unmistakable tone of interrogation, demanding a categorical
answer: yes or no. Such an alternative, in all its ruthlessness, may not
be to the liking of those who strive to deconstruct apparently absolute
oppositions — but we would do well to bear in mind that the system of
justice to which we belong never abstains from employing such
oppositions in practice, regardless of what “we,” whoever we are, may
think of them. So, again, what is justice? What is its relation to this
moment, to the “here and now”? Is it here in the fullness of its plenitude,
or is it not — yes or no? Or, in other words, what, if anything, does the
future harbor for us — is there any time, any real time, remaining? Is
there a future for emancipation, does it still have a chance, or have its
resources already been exhausted?
What will be offered here, in the pages that follow, is an attempt to
come to terms with these issues in the company of four thinkers:
Walter Benjamin, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agam-
ben. First, we will make an excursion into the way in which Benjamin
and Žižek envisage the relation of (historical) materialism (understood
as a theoretical-practical attitude towards human emancipation) and
theology (chiefly in the guise of a messianic promise). Then we will
move on to an account of Derrida’s attempts to come to terms with
the legacy of materialism, and finally we will take a brief look at
Agamben’s recent contribution to the issues at stake, focusing above
all on his criticism of Derrida. What attempts to articulate itself here,
in the ongoing debate in which the above-named thinkers have played
a significant part as well as in this paper, is the question of the part to
be played by the subject in the time that remains.