Scatter 2: Politics in Deconstruction

329 Pages·2021·11.886 MB·English

by  Geoffrey Bennington

Scatter 2

Scatter 2
Politics in Deconstruction
Geoffrey Bennington
fordham university press
New York 2021
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bennington, Geoffrey, author.
Title: Scatter 2 : politics in deconstruction / Geoffrey Bennington.
Other titles: Scatter two
Description: First edition. | New York : Fordham University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020041477 | ISBN 9780823289929 (hardback) | ISBN
9780823289936 (paperback) | ISBN 9780823289936 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science—Philosophy—History. |
Democracy—Philosophy. | Sovereignty—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC JA83 .B446 2021 | DDC 320.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041477
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
23 22 21 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
for Elissa, again and always

contents
Preface ix
Abbreviations of Works by Jacques Derrida xiii
Introduction: Politics in Deconstruction 1
Part I politics, metaphysics, sovereignty
1. Bios Theōrētikos, Bios Politikos 15
2. Polykoiranie I (Derrida, Homer, Aristotle, Xenophanes) 48
3. Polykoiranie II (Philo Judaeus, Early Christian Apologists,
Pseudo- Dionysius) 70
4. Polykoiranie III (John of Salisbury, Aquinas, Dante,
Marsilius of Padua) 100
5. Polykoiranie IV (Bodin, La Boétie) 125
Part II (proto)democracy
6. To Poikilon (Plato, Alfarabi, Aristotle) 147
7. Democracy (Arendt, Aristotle) 182
8. Protodemocracy and the Fall of Sovereignty
(Hobbes, Aristotle) 203
9. Nature, Sovereignty, Government (Spinoza, Rousseau) 250
10. Stasiology (Rothaug, Peterson, Schmitt,
Gregory of Nazianzus) 280
Postscript 301
Index 305
vii

preface
The Scatter proj ect, of which this is the second volume,1 was originally con-
ceived as calling for a more scattered (Kant would perhaps say “rhap-
sodic”) form of pre sen ta tion than that of the standard academic monograph.
This conception was not supposed to be merely provocative or whimsical,
but was called for by the matter at hand, in which I try to demonstrate a
per sis tent and indeed ineradicable plurality and variegation that resists con-
ceptual reduction and that I associate with politics. The working model
for that scattered form of pre sen ta tion was, as had already been the case
long ago with my “Derridabase,”2 an electronic format that would exploit
the possibilities of hypertext, and of other subsequent developments—
notably the Internet— that had not been available when I wrote that
earlier text. I imagined, for example, that direct links to sources could be
provided for e very footnote and reference, and that primary texts could
easily be made available in their entirety, both in their original language
and in any number of translations, with the thought that readers might well
often choose simply to continue reading those texts for themselves rather
than my commentary on them. The inner connections of the work were
to be such that, although certain paths of reading would be indicated and
perhaps encouraged by a hierarchical ordering of levels of argument and
reading (as in the one— unsatisfactory— attempt at a print emulation of a
small part of the proj ect),3 other possibilities and links would remain open,
and a system of cross- referencing would enable loops and other more com-
plex patterns to emerge that would disrupt any obvious linear order and
induce a certain disorientation in the reader. I i magined, too, that t here
1. Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2016).
2. In Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1991); trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993).
3. See my “Scatter,” Oxford Literary Review 30, no. 1 (2008): 1–43.
ix