Open AccessEnduring the Autoimmune Aporia of Democratic Sovereignty
Author(s) -
Janar Mihkelsaar
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
krisis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1875-7103
pISSN - 0168-275X
DOI - 10.21827/krisis.41.1.37171
Subject(s) - sovereignty , democracy , popular sovereignty , politics , identity (music) , political science , order (exchange) , political economy , law , law and economics , sociology , philosophy , aesthetics , economics , finance
The aim of this article is to read Rogues, in order to show that Derrida is neither a philosopher of democracy nor a critic of sovereignty , but rather a thinker of democratic sovereignty. Taking my cue from his Aporias, I argue that democratic sovereignty is aporetically in excess over itself, for it is based on articulating the path through the im-possible passage from the unconditional injunction of the ‘promise’ to the exigency of sovereignty. That is why it can neither be absorbed into the conditions of any existing democracy nor abstracted into any pure identity of sovereignty. Political trends today fail in enduring the aprioricity of aporia, as neoliberals valorize the posited conditions of existing democracy and populists the objective pregivenness of the ‘people’.