like Seyla Benhabib
conceive of the relationship between
constitutionalism and democracy as a self-correcting learning process in which an
inherent rationality is extracted through a process of immanent critique. At the level
of philosophy and reading, this implies a hermeneutic circle of clarification. This
difference over the role of philosophy is another way of expressing the difference
between Habermasian rational reconstruction and Derridean deconstruction. So,
despite the rapprochement between Derrida and Habermas prior to Derrida’s death,
important differences between their philosophical approaches nonetheless remain.
Constitutional democracy, then, does not work in spite of, but because of
undecidability. Habermas’s texts should be read as ultimately failed attempts to
reconcile constitutionalism and democracy, and this failure is not accidental but
structural. This is not a question of simply being true to or betraying Habermas’s
texts. A deconstructive reading cannot simply make the text transparent or neutralise
whatever contradictions there may be in the text. For instance, one cannot neutralise
the undecidability by referring to it as ‘mistakes’ on the part of the author. Instead, a
deconstructive reading is an intervention into the text. The deconstructive reading will
be caught in a double bind when, following the conceptual scheme governing the text,
it comes upon something which is undecidable according to that scheme. At this
point, the reading must both be ‘true’ to the text and displace and, as such, ‘betray’
the text (although not in the sense of betraying it in order to be true to it at another and
higher level of rationality). These are competing injunctions, each excluding the other,
and cannot be reconciled under a single rule for the reading of the text. As a
consequence, every deconstructive reading is not only an intervention but also
singular.
The constitutivity of undecidability does not mean that nihilism or
conservative resignation are our only options. Just as the deconstructive strategy of
reading is not guided by a telos of the unity of the text, so a deconstructive politics is
not guided by a telos of reconciliation of constitutionalism and democracy. However,
appeals to the fiction of democratic constitution making among free and equal
individuals may serve as the starting point for critique.
While aporetic, the appeal to
a fiction is also unavoidable, even if not necessarily in this or that particular form. It is
important to be clear about the way in which I am using the term ‘fiction’, though. I
borrow it from Habermas’s texts, as one must always borrow the resources of
27
Benhabib, ‘Democracy and Difference’, 16.
28
Ingram, ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’, p. 245.
29
Derrida, ‘The Laws of Reflection’; and Horwitz, ‘Derrida and the Aporia of the Political’, 166-70.
17
Convention