The Time of Dialogue 2000–2002 517
The fi rst and most violent of rogue states are those that have
ignored and continue to violate the very international law they
claim to champion, the law in whose name they speak and in
whose name they go to war against so-called rogue states each
time their own interests so dictate. The name of these states?
The United States. [.. .]
Those states that are able or are in a state to denounce or
accuse some ‘rogue state’ of violating the law, of failing to live
up to the law, of being guilty of some perversion or deviation,
those United States that claim to uphold international law
and that take the initiative of war, of police or peacekeeping
operations because they have the force to do so, these states,
namely, the United States and its allied states in these actions,
are themselves, as sovereign, the fi rst rogue states.^68But in Derrida’s view, vigilance needed to be exercised on an
even more fundamental level, since ‘every sovereign state is in fact
virtually and a priori able, that is, in a state [en état], to abuse its
power and, like a rogue state, transgress international law. There
is something of a rogue state in every state. The use of state power
is originally excessive and abusive.’^69 In spite of this, he continued
to place his trust in democracy, ‘the only system, the only constitu-
tional paradigm, in which, in principle, one has or assumes the right
to criticize everything publicly, including the idea of democracy, its
concept, its history, and its name.^70
In autumn 2002, Derrida was back in New York, where he attended
the première of the feature fi lm Derrida by Kirby Dick and Amy
Ziering Kofman. Filming had taken several years, starting in 1997.
The approach was more American and aimed at a wider audience
than D’ailleurs Derrida by Safaa Fathy. Without any voiceover or
any real interview, the montage took biography as its central thread.
We follow Derrida in his life as a public fi gure, from the École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales to New York via California and
South Africa, but also as a private man, at home, in his kitchen,
even at the barber’s. He good-humouredly played along with all
this, despite his long-standing mistrust of images and the media,
as mentioned above. The music was by Ryuichi Sakamoto: he had
used certain of Derrida’s texts in an opera a few years before.
Derrida was conceived for the big screen, and was presented as
an offi cial selection at the Sundance Festival, and also at Locarno,
Venice, and Melbourne, and was unusually successful for this type
of fi lm. The strapline, though cheesy, was an eff ective draw: ‘What if
someone came along who changed not the way you think about every-
thing, but everything about the way you think.’ For the fi rst time, at
least in New York, Derrida was frequently recognized in the street.