Elliptical Interruptions: Or, Why Derrida Prefers Mondialisation to Globalization

Responding to a journalist's question on the subject of globalization, Jacques Derrida expressed his interest in the notion of "world" [monde] and its history while emphasizing that the world is "neither the earth nor the universe nor the cosmos. " He then went on to ask provocatively: "Why do the English, the Americans, and the Germans speak of globalization and not (as the French do) mondialisation?" (2005b, 118). Rather than merely reflecting a francophone bias, Derrida' s preference for mondialisation calls attention to a couple of important points. First, Derrida suggests that the global adoption of the Anglo-American word "globalization" not only reveals the defacto status of English as the universal medium of linguistic exchange, but also the more troubling ascendancy of a global Anglo-American hegemony or "homo-hegemonization" in which an apparent homogeneity or unity conceals great imbalances of power (2002, 373). As he notes, "the word globalization is itself becoming global to the point of imposing itself more and more, even in France, in the rhetoric of