Berghahn Books

Sartre, Derrida and Commitment: The Case of Algeria

Author(s): Bruce Baugh
Source: Sartre Studies International, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2003), pp. 40-54
Published by: Berghahn Books
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and Commitment

Sartre, Derrida

The Case of Algeria

Bruce

Baugh

Let me start with an apparent aside. In the midst of his dialectical

demolition of Foucault's Histoire de la folie, in "Cogito et histoire de
la folie,"1 Derrida argues that although Foucault wants to do an

archeology of madness's silence, an archeo-logy is a logically ordered

work (465), and that even though Foucault wants to protest against
reason's sequestration of madness, "reason in the classical age" can
only be brought before the tribunal of Reason in general (466),
which could then rule on the unreasonableness
of classical reason.
Then,

in

a footnote

that

was

dropped

from

the

version

in

Writing

and Difference (1967),2 he adds: "A bit like how the anti-colonialist
revolution can only liberate itself from a de facto Europe or West in
the name of transcendental Europe, that is, of Reason, and by letting
itself first be won over by its values, its language, its technology, its
armaments;
cryI

am

an

irreducible

thinking

or

contamination

of Fanon'scould

exorcise,

incoherence
no

matter

that
how

no
pure

and intransigent it is" (466).

It is this footnote, and the problem it raises, that I want to discuss
today. For how anxious a footnote this is, written as it was in 1963,
on the heels of Algerian independence in 1962, with the wounds of
that conflict still fresh, and by someone who was no mere spectator.
Like Camus, and unlike Sartre and many others, Derrida was himself
a French Algerian, a pied noir, with friends and family living in

Algeria. Who can forget Camus' protest against the FLN's bombing
of French civilians in Algiers: "I love justice but I also love my
mother."3 And yet like Sartre, and unlike Camus, Derrida's note
reveals that his sympathies lie with "the anti-colonialist revolution."
The problem for the revolutionaries, in Derrida's view, is that they
can protest against European injustices only in the name of a Euro
pean ideal of justice, and fight European colonial power only by
using European weapons, tactics, forms of political organization, and
Sartre Studies

International,

Volume

9, Issue 2, 2003

- 40 -

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Sartre, Derrtda

and Commitment

theories (including Marxism and psychoanalysis). In short, they can

liberate themselves from European
rule only by Europeanizing
themselves. The winner loses.
If that was the difficulty for the revolutionaries, in Derrida's view,
how much more intractable were Derrida's difficulties! From what
position could he, as a European (or at least Europeanized) intellec

tual speak concerning Algerian problems, or Algerian attempts to

solve them? It's as if Derrida knew better than the Algerians them
selves the "truth" of their actions, and had assumed the vantage
point of Absolute Spirit, placing the Algerian insurrectionaries in the

condemned
to
predicament of Hegel's
"unhappy consciousness,"
of
between
the
and
wavering
"independence"
opposites
"depen
dence," affirmation and negation, Europe and Africa, without ever
realizing some unitary and reconciliatory
synthesis. In order to
negate Europe, the revolutionaries must affirm Europe; to affirm
transcendental Europe, they must negate empirical Europe. Perhaps.

And perhaps Derrida's understanding of the anti-colonialist's prob

lem is based on a vantage point that is not entirely external to that of
the revolutionists, for although Derrida is a French-Mgerhn, by lan
guage and culture, he is also a North African Jew, outside the
Catholic community of French colons. Neither simply "a stranger on

the African shore," as Connor Cruise O'Brien uncharitably said of

Camus,4 nor an Arab or a Berber, or Moslem, Derrida finds himself
in a very Derridean position: both inside and outside of Africa, nei
ther inside nor outside of it, caught in an aporia that places him, too,
in the position of Hegel's unhappy consciousness,
which affirms
what it negates and negates what it affirms. In this, he is like his
compatriot, Albert Memmi, also Jewish, who also found himself to
be neither coloniser nor colonised and yet both one and the other,
and non-Moslem
indigenous group,
being from a non-European
vis
A
vis
the Muslim majority, and living this
"relatively privileged"
"double solidarity and double rejection" as his own felt contradic

tion, his own dchirement of the mind.5 But how can Derrida affirm
his solidarity with an African and Moslem independence movement
from this awkward position? More generally, how can any European
speak on or to African concerns without
within
them
framing
European theory, without invoking European
moral and political values? And if Africa speaks, can a European hear?
or Western intellectual

Let
heard
we

us

return

by Sartre:

alone

were

to
"He
the

Frantz
speaks
speakers;

Fanon's

"pure

of you,
the

sons

never
no

and
to you
longer

intransigent"
...
even

For

cry,
the

consider

valid intermediaries: we are the objects of their speeches."6

as

fathers,
us

as

In Fanon's

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Bruce Baugb

The Wretched of the Earth (1961), says Sartre, Africa speaks to Africa,
about "us," that is, about Europe. In which case, we can only follow
Sartre's injunction: "Listen" (WE 9). In 1961, "we Europeans" are
no longer in the position of the speaker, or even of the person spo

ken to, but only in the position of something spoken about, exactly
as Africans had been in relation to European speech a half-century
earlier. In his earlier essay on black poetry, "Black Orpheus" (1948),
the relation in terms of sight, rather than speech,
use
of
his
famous
analysis of the gaze (le regard): "Here are
making
black men standing, looking at us, and I hope that youlike me
will feel the shock of being seen. For three thousand years, the white
Sartre had couched

man has enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen; he was a
pure gaze ... Today, these black men are looking at us, and our gaze
our

re-enters

own

eyes."7

The

effect,

says

Sartre,

is that

we

see

our

selves through the Other's eyes, objectively, with characteristics we

had never suspected: "suddenly, France seems exotic in our own
eyes."8

At

the

same

time,

the

African

becomes

the

Other

as

subject.

the gaze that sees us, without being seen, the consciousness
that
knows us, without being known. In short, we have no experience of
the

African,

but

only

an

of being

experience

an

object

for

of

Africans,

the effect of being seen and spoken about by an Other, from a per
spective

that

is inaccessible

to

us.

And

for that

reason,

Sartre's

essays

on Africa in general, and on Algeria in particular, are addressed to

Westerners or Europeans: it is of them Sartre speaks, and only indi
rectly of Africans. Sartre's concern is not what Africans should do to
liberate themselves from their European masters; it is what Euro
peans should do in the face of Africa's efforts to liberate itself. Con
sequently, he does not offer judgments concerning either African

goals or means, but engages in an effort of comprehension, of under

standing and listening. Since the African is the gaze, and we are the
object, we cannot judge or perceive the African using our categories

and perspectives, but must rather try to infer the categories and per
spectives by which the African judges us.
In both "Black Orpheus" and his "Preface" to The Wretched of the
Earth, Sartre does not ignore the problem Derrida identifies: that
African

revolutionaries

must

have

recourse

to

European

speech

and

thought. In "Black Orpheus," Sartre thought the solution to this

dilemma lay in poetry, which would turn the language
of the
colonisers inside-out: "Since the oppressor is present even in the lan
guage they speak, they will speak this language in order to destroy
it."9 Thus, the black poet's use of language is revolutionary nega
tion, the "dark work of negativity, which patiently gnaws away at
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Sartre, Derrida

and Commitment

concepts,"10 not, as in Surrealism, simply to liberate the imagination,

desire or l'esprit, but to liberate "a certain concrete and determinate
form of humanity ... the oppressed Negro."11 Yet between "Black
Orpheus" (1948) and 1961, Sartre came to realize that the political
efficacity of Fanon's prose was far greater than any poetic destruction

of language. If language is a tool to be used, then the object is not

to deform it or to destroy it, but to get the tool into the right hands,
so that it can be used effectively. What's important is who is speaking,

and to whom. What is said is secondary.

Secondary, but no incidental. For as soon

as Africans speak to
whether
about themselves ("Orphe noir," Sit. Ill233)
or
Africans,
about us ( WE 10), their mode of thought and speech changes. In his
"Preface"

to

Fanon's

Sartre

book,

traces

the

evolution

of a process

to subjectivity (WE 8-10). At first, the

leading from objecthood
colonised are only spoken of, and spoken to only in the form of
commands, but they do not speak; the colonisers are owners of the

Word. Then follows the assimilated "native," whose speech merely

echoes European speech: "From Paris, from London, from Amster
and
Brotherhood!'
dam, we would utter the words 'Parthenon!
somewhere

in Africa or Asia lips would open '... thenon! ... ther

At this stage, when Europeans listen to the colonised speak,
they hear only themselves, and narcissistically love and approve the
colonised for reflecting back to them their own idealized self-image.
hood!"

In

the

next

phase,

the

colonised

try to

turn

this

to

their

own

advan

tage, appealing to European ideals and values, such as democracy

and freedom, to shame the colonial powers for not living up those
ideals, for example, for being humanist in theory, but racist in prac
tice. In effect, this strategy consists in trying to force Europe to lis
ten to itself more seriously, and to "practice what it preaches." But
the values that frame the debate on both sides (colonised/coloniser)
are

still

European,

and

Eurocentric

frame

of

reference

remains

Indeed, the project of "liberation" for "natives" at

unquestioned.
this stage is simply that of becoming European. However, since the
built-in racism of the colonial system prevents the "native" from ever

being accepted as a European, this strategy leads to a dead end: the

colonised are unable to assimilate, and yet cannot reject European
values either, and are indeed in the position of Hegel's "unhappy
consciousness,"
(WE 8),
"caught up in their own contradictions"
that
as
Derrida finds them, and more or less as Derrida
is,
exactly,
finds himself, in 1963.
Except that for Sartre, there is a further phase, decolonization,
when through the voice of revolutionaries such as Fanon, "Africa
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Bruce Baujh

finds itself and speaks to itself," and Europe becomes the object ( WE
9) while the "objects" of European anthropology become the sub
jects of history who make history of Europe (WE 27).12 "Fanon
explains you to his brothers and shows them the mechanism by
which we are estranged from ourselves; take advantage of this, and
get to know yourselves seen in the light of truth, objectively ... It is
enough that they show us what we have made of them for us to real
ize what we have made of ourselves" (WE 13). In essence, the colo
nized possess the truth of the colonizers, and by listening to what
they say about us, we stand a chance of breaking free of our Euro
centric narcissism: our insistence on talking only about and to our

selves, seeing only ourselves, and understanding no way of being

other than our own (WE 25-26). The decolonization in the colonies
will then lead to a decolonisation
of the colonizers (WE 24), but
if
the colonized grasp us from a point of view that is truly other
only

than our own, and not an echo or reflection (however inflected or

deflected) of ours.
If I were to fully understand the Other, then I would perforce be
subsuming the other under my own point of view, through my own
and

concepts

and

categories,

would

thereby

reduce

the

to

Other

version of myself. The point of view of the Other, if it is genuinely

Other, must be wholly Other, and hence wholly unknown to us. We
can

never

through

it directly,

experience
how

the

Other

but

addresses

can
us,

to

come

treats

us

understand

and

behaves

it only
towards

us. This is why Sartre, following Michel Leiris, refers to "phantom

Africa ... absent, disintegrating Europe by its black and yet invisible
rays, out of reach" ("Orphe noir," p. 241). Yet, even if I cannot fully
grasp the Other, I can, says Sartre, grasp my being-for-others, or who
I am for the Other, and Sartre's essays on various oppressed groups
(Jews, women, Africans) attempt to do just that: draw a portrait of
the anti-Semite, of the colonizer, of the "beautiful soul" of the West
ern liberal who wants to be "neither victim nor executioner"
(in
Camus' phrase). It is our essence that is revealed to us by the Other,
as

an

unrealizable

that

we

nevertheless

must

assume;

the

hopes

than

essence

of

the Other is entirely beyond our grasp, and escapes all our cate
gories.13 As for the essences of and about the Other that we have con
structed,

they

reflect

more

our

own

fears

and

any

truth

about the Other; as Fanon points out, anti-Black racism is based on

the European's projection onto Blacks of their own "irrational long
ing for sexual license, or orgiastic scenes, of unpunished rapes, of
unrepressed incest."14 Sartre is insistent that "the native," "the Jew,"
"
the Negro" and so on are all products of oppression, rather than any
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Sartre, Derrida

and Commitment

fundamental reality of the persons so designated. "It is the settler

who has brought the native into existence," writes Fanon ( WE 36),
mostly through the dehumanizing violence that ranges from beatings
to the suppression of the language, culture and traditions of the colo
nized (WE 15). In that case, those who affirm their pride in being a

native, a Black, a Jew and so forth "continue to view themselves with

the concepts and according to the pattern furnished by their persecu
tors."15 This is a submission to violence, rather than resistance or
rebellion that would

be necessary to remake their humanity, a resis

tance and rebellion that looks to an open and revolutionary future,
and not a mythical past (WE 12, 21). "We only become what we are
by the deep-seated refusal of what others have made of us" ( WE 17).

The position of the committed intellectual vis vis Third World

anti-colonialism can then only be that of the sympathetic listener,

who takes the colonizeds

criticisms of the colonizers seriously, and

uses them as a way of trying to overcome the colonial mindset. The
primary goal, then, is self-criticism, using the vantage point of the
Other in order to get outside one's narcissistic self-reflection. The

danger, of course, is of becoming more narcissistic than ever, by

engulfing the Other within the ambit of one's own concerns and
problems, and constructing a fantasy of the Other that is tailor-made
to

help

rid

or

oneself

being. This would

admiration,"

as

Derrida

nocentric scorn":

what

wants

one

be the ethnocentric
puts

it, which

to

reveal

from

"purge"

one's

own

temptation of "hyperbolical
is merely

the

inverse

of "eth

"each time that ethnocentrism is precipitately and

reversed, some effort silently hides behind all the

ostententatiously
spectacular effects to consolidate
domestic

to

an inside and draw from it some

benefit."16 To the extent Sartre looks to the Third World

Europe's

true

face

to

Europeans,

and

looks

to

decoloniza

of
tion in the colonies as an impetus to an "internal" decolonization
consciousness of the colonizers, he is indeed attempting to derive

"some domestic benefit" from Third World liberation struggles. He

is also in danger of constructing not just a "phantom Africa," but a
phantasmatic and hallucinatory one: Africa as an anti-Europe, the
negation of Europe's psychic repression and denial of the body, and
thus entirely constructed out of what Sartre hates about Europe and
himself (much as the racist projects what he hates about Europe and
himself onto Africans).17 As Stuart Zane Charm puts it, Sartre has a
tendency to mythologize Black experience in "a mixture of senti
mental romanticism and anti-colonial protest,"18 and thus failed to
heed his own warning "about the temptation to see in the Other
one's

own

unexpressed

desire."19
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Bruce Baiigh

Let us leave Sartre twisting in the wind for the moment, and
return to Derrida, and specifically Derrida's 1995 "return" to Alge
ria via Sartre's "home turf," Les Temps modernes, in his "Parti pris
pour l'Algrie."20 Over thirty years of independence have not led to
the fulfillment of those anti-colonialist revolutionary aspirations that
had aroused so much hope among Western intellectuals. Sartre well
knew that a later generation could easily turn the sacrifices of an ear
lier generation into something that in no way corresponded to the
earlier generation's intentions; one can only imagine his dismay, if he
could learn that his apartment was bombed, twice, so that Algerian
and minorities could be denied the political rights enjoyed
their
by
counterparts in France. We can only imagine what Sartre
would say. As for Derrida, we know. His short piece on Algeria
protests against the current political situation there in the name of
women

"transcendental Europe's"
values of democracy, free elections, free
speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the separation of
Church and State, and so on. And Derrida condemns the Algerian
situation both as a European
intellectual, speaking in the name
of European ideas and values, and as a "native son": for Derrida
declares that although he had long since left Algeria, he had often
returned to it, and had always carried it with him. He has returned,
then, to a place he never left, which he had continued to inhabit,

and which certainly had inhabited his heart and thought through "a
painful love of Algeria" (236). His aporia of belonging/not-belong
ing to Algeria continues to haunt him.
His "intervention"
in the Algerian situation, however, seems

entirely and unproblematically European, through and through, in

tenor and in content; the values it invokes are those of "The Rights
of Man and the Citizen."21
The voice of the Algerian Moslem,

whether Arab or Berber, whether of the FLN government or the

Islamist rebels, is entirely absent from this text although Derrida
attempts to invoke, or rather, conjure the "voices" of Algerians who

are "in neither camp," a point I'll return to later. The very person
nages just mentioned exist, at most, only as persons addressed by
Derrida's "appeal" for Algerian civil and political rights, where these
rights are conceived of la franaise, "in the French manner." For
the ostensible object of Derrida's small text is the wider political com
munity (especially in France), which is called upon to exert whatever
force it can on the Algerian government to get it to relax its repres

sive measures. Unlike Sartre, then, Derrida is not speaking primarily

to the French about what the French are doing, or if he is, it is in a
way that is more likely to soothe their conscience than to trouble it.
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Sartre, Derridtt and Commitment

When Sartre wrote, concerning the betrayal of revolutionary hopes,

that "nothing protects a nation from itself, not its past, its loyalties
or even its own laws, if fifteen years is enough to change victims into
executioners,"

he is speaking of France, in 1957, and speaking to the

French

France,

about

in

order

to

force

them

to

what

recognize

France had become, to shame them into becoming something wor

thier of their own recent past, and to destroy their "good con
science."22 Derrida, speaking through a French periodical to an
Algerian problem, seems unclear as to his intended audience.
In any case, there seems to be little evidence in this text of Derri
da's much-vaunted "hospitality" and welcoming of the non-Euro
pean Other in his or her alterity,23and a lot of telling the Other what
to do, couched in the language of the troubled conscience of a West
ern liberal who recognizes, at least, the very questionable position
from which he speaks (237).
Is this "the double bind" of being

as Simon Critchley calls it, the "duty to

"responsibly European,"
both
and
difference
respect
singularity, while at the same time main
the
of
law," or of certain fundamental human
universality
taining
rights?24 Perhaps, although this "double bind" itself involves being

caught between two European values: respect for differences (plural

ism) and the assertion of basic rights (universalism). In short, it is a
problem for Western liberals, and could very well be a matter of pro
found indifference for Algerians on both sides of the internal con
flict,

none

of

whom

make

either

liberal

or

pluralism

the

liberal

universalism of "rights" central to their program.

But let me back up a minute, for this is much too hasty. For Der
rida in fact begins his article, a contribution to a Forum around an
"Appeal for a civil peace in Algeria," with the question, "in the name
of what and of whom, if one is not an Algerian citizen, does one
associate
that

with or subscribe

it is not

as

someone

to this appeal?"
or

French

as

an

Derrida

(236).
or

Algerian

even

as

replies
some

born in Algeria as such that he is a signatory to the

but as part of "an international solidarity" along the
(237),
Appeal
lines of the International Writers Parliament, "which seeks its guar
one French

antees neither in the actual state of international law and the institu

tions that currently represent it, nor in the concepts of nation, State,
citizenship and sovereignty that dominate this international dis
(239). As in Spectres of Marx, Derrida invokes "a new inter
national,"25 one that does not yet exist, except through certain
course"
hopes

and

aspirations

that

would

summon

it

to

"come"

(viens,

viens). It is along these lines that Derrida argues that any serious
position on Algeria must take into account and attempt to address its
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Bruce Bauh

situation and chronic unemployment, which are

"essential components of the civil war," and are inextricably linked
with Algeria's external debt, an issue that only international mone
tary and financial agencies can address (237-38).
serious economic

This goad to the conscience of the international community aside,

however, the remainder of the article sets forth demands for genuine
democracy along thoroughly Western, liberal lines. There must be a
set calendar for elections; public discussions "armed only with rea

soned

a free

arguments;"

for

respect

press;

the

electoral

results;

and

"The vote is certainly not

periodic changes of government (238).
the whole of democracy, but without it ... there is no democracy"
(238). Nevertheless, those who would profit from elections, but who

not respect "democratic life," namely, government by law,

respect for free speech, minority rights, and a plurality of languages,
morals and religions, are not genuinely democratic (239). All cul
tural, linguistic and religious groups must be free not only to belong

would

to their religion or culture, but to practice these, openly and pub

licly, without fear of reprisal, in an atmosphere of tolerance and

There must be an end to murder, torture

mutual respect (239-40).

and

capital

punishment

as political

means

(240).

There

must,

finally,

be an end to the exclusion of women from political life (241), not

just electorally, but in the campaign of violence waged by both sides:
"This civil war is essentially a war of men," and hence, tacitly, against
women (241).

Who could disagree with the demands Derrida sets forth? That is,

who

us

among

Western

intellectuals?

These

are

modern,

even

post

liberal-democratic

and pluralistic principles that we all

modern,
believe in. In fact, many of us wish that these principles be respected
in the West (for example, that the United States would abolish capital

punishment, at least for children). That would answer the question

"in the name of what" the "Appeal for a civil peace" was launched.
But in the name of whom? The "new international" Derrida invokes

has a certain status or reality; it reflects the hopes and values of a

good many intellectuals around the world, and not only "in the
West." Nevertheless, it has very little reality beyond these hopes and
values, and the appeals launched in their name; in comparison to the
have very little
IMF, PEN and other human rights organizations
effect. In short, the Wirklichkeit, the "effective reality" of this "inter
national" is negligible. This organization is not simply "spectral," as

Derrida would have it, but as "hallucinatory" as Sartre's "Africa": if

seems to be our uncanny double, it is because it is,
being nothing more than the projection of our desires onto an

this "specter"

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Sartre, Derrida

and Commitment

Other, an Other that is this time completely nebulous. When Der

rida adds that the "Appeal" is not just in the name of those Algerian
men and women who are struggling for democracy, but in fact comes

from them (241), then it is very hard to overcome the suspicion that
this is a genuine auditory hallucination, at best, and a bit of imperial
ist ventriloquism, at worst.
The style, strategy and the very title of the forum for Derrida's
intervention, "Appeal for a Civil Peace," inevitably calls to mind
Camus' "Appeal for a Civil Truce" (1956).26 Camus' proposal for an

end to violence directed at all civilians, French or Arab, invoked his

love for Algeria, the sufferings of which he had lived through as "a
personal tragedy," and launched his "purely humanitarian" and non
partisan appeal in the name of Algeria's future, and of "a community
of hope" whose desire for mutually respectful dialogue he wished to
"echo," a dialogue that would preserve differences rather than annul
them ("As for me, here as in every domain, I believe in differences

and not in uniformity"). Refusing to speak "in the name of our Arab
friends," Camus nevertheless declares his solidarity with those Arabs
stand ... in the no man's land
who, like himself, "courageously

where we are threatened on both sides," and who are "torn within
And however vapid, misguided and ineffective the
themselves."
"Appeal" was, it was given publicly, on Algerian soil (in Algiers), at a
forum sponsored

members

of the

by a committee of Europeans

Algerian

Front

de Libration

and Arabs (including

Nationale),

and

under

the very real threat of violence from ultra-rightist French colonists.

But despite the courage of Camus' gesture, the "community of
hope" in whose name he spoke was, in comparison with the warring
sides, rather amorphous and very ineffective, and although his appeal
spoke to both Arabs and Europeans, inside and outside of Algeria, it

to by either side.27 Of course, this was largely

events had progressed to a point where a "civil truce" was
already no longer possible, although Camus was unaware of this, but
which invoked both univeralist
it was also because his "Appeal,"
was not listened
because

rights and respect for differences, was sufficiently ambiguous and

unclear that it disappointed Arabs and Europeans alike. Derrida's
"Appeal," despite the vast differences between Derrida and Camus
on colonialism, is prey to a similar ambiguity, although Derrida char
acteristically tries to turn that ambiguity or "undecidability"

own

to his

advantage.

Derrida describes his article, and the entire Temps modernes special
issue on Algeria, as an instance of Les Temps modernes' stance of
"non-infidelity," that is, of neither fidelity nor infidelity, but "the
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Bruce Baujjh

renewed

oath

not

to

to

betray,"

never

renounce

or

deny,

however

often one changes course: there is a certain "fidelity" to self that

allows lor, and even requires, contradicting oneself, disagreeing with
oneself, and it is this self-disagreement of Les Temps modernes with

which Derrida most agrees.28 This "non-infidelity" might also accu

rately enough describe the double bind of the European intellectual
vis vis Algeria, caught between fidelity to "difference" and to uni
versalist notions

of rights and justice. And it is from within this

bind" of "undecidability" that the intellectual must come to
a decision, because he or she is already caught in the bind, already
and hence already "committed," prior to any decision.
"engaged,"
In his tribute to Les Temps modernes on its fiftieth anniversary, Der
"double

rida recognizes that Sartrean engagement is not (which "we had a

tendency to forget") a decisive or decisionary heroism of the will,
but a gamble made in circumstances
in which one finds oneself

engaged, that is, passively thrown before any decision, making any
"
decision or action a gamble on a basis (fond) that is undecidable and
in a space heterogeneous to all knowledge (savoir)."29 It is just such
a "gamble"
That

that Derrida's Algeria article takes.

might

appear

to

absolve

Derrida

of

the

charge,

levelled

by

Critchley and others, that "Derrida's work results in a certain impasse

of the political," and cannot move, responsibly, from the undecidabil
ity of texts and readings to the necessity of political decisions,30 For

after all, Derrida has made his decision in this text, he has "rolled the
dice." Yet as Critchley points out, he can give no account, in terms
of his own philosophical positions, of why he made just the "gamble"
he did.31 In his "Parti pris," his partisanship seems to be for univer

salism ("democracy"),
at the expense of pluralism ("difference"), but
it also seems that he could just as easily have gone the other way.
Moreover, in opting for human rights, Derrida is opting for a thor
oughly Eurocentric perspective, even if his vision of a democracy "to
come"

for Algeria is also meant to point out that democracy remain

something futural and "to come" for Europe as well. For however
much the Other passes over into the Self or the Same, "democracy,"
whether Europe's or Algeria's, is a European idea.32
Sartre

seems,

on

the

face

of

it,

both

more

open

and

more

cau

tious. He recognizes that Algeria's revolutionary future, in 1961, is

to be made, and hence open and undecidable. There is no knowing
how it will turn out, or if the values or principles of the new regime
will be democratic. And while Sartre is committed to a form of
"universalism," he insists that "All those who adopt a universalist
here and now [1965]
are reassuring to the established

perspective

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Sartre, Derrida

order ... True intellectuals

that

suggest

the

human

and Commitment

... are by contrast disquieting:

universal

is yet to come."33

"The

for they

true

intellec

tual, in his struggle against himself, will come to see society as the
arena of a struggle between particular groups ... for the status of
universality," but this universal is a task, a goal: it does not exist.34
Not that the universal is an ideal which simply has not been achieved
or realized, but that we will not even know what it is until it has
been achieved. For that reason, we struggle in the dark, gradually
discerning and attempting to cast off various forms of oppression
and alienation, but with no blueprint for the future, and no "advice"
about how the world "should be," ultimately. If there is a "pro
gram" here, it is merely that we stop doing horrible things to others,
stop torturing and oppressing, and "make peace":
have

the

to

power

do

so

in

having

over

power

that is, "we" who

those

we

oppress.35

the oppressed are those who wish to achieve the status of

humanity, it is their struggle that moves "the history of mankind"
toward the concrete universal (WE 31), and away from "the notion
of the human race ... an abstract assumption of universality which
Since

served as a cover for the most realistic practices" ( WE 26), including

that regarded certain people as inferior or less than

the enslavement

human (WE 15, 17).

Herein lies the dilemma, for Sartre and for Derrida.

If the com
a posi

mitted intellectual is to be "on the side of the oppressed"

tion

which

makes

arguably

more

sense

from

Sartrean

premises

than

Derridean onesthen which side is that? The Islamist rebel or the

secularist military government? Algerian women, or the Algerian
men

who

want

to be

masters

in their

own

house,

and

not

be

dictated

to by their former colonial masters? It is not enough to shout

"democracy!" in the hopes that somewhere African lips will part and
emit an echo: "... mocracy!" Neither can we unqualifiedly categorize
any single group as "the oppressed," and assign to them Marx's mis

sion for the proletariat, namely, ushering in universal freedom and

equality, on the grounds that when the lowest of the low achieve
equality, then all men (and women) will be equal. Nor can we offer
and advice to other cultures, or their governments, when
their policies fall afoul of our ethical norms, especially when we our
selves so often fail to live up to our own principles. The position of
the "committed intellectual" seems to be impossible.
I conclude with another passing remark. Derrida said, in 1968,
that "every philosophical colloquium necessarily has a political signif
icance ... Such is the case here."36 Such indeed is the case here.

lessons

"After September

11" (much as I hate to use this all-purpose clich),

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Bruce Baugb

there are more than a few intellectuals who, out of shock and grief,
are opting for Camus' position: yes, we love justice, but we also love
our families. Far more, it seems, have no qualms in asserting a Euro
centric conception of values in order to justify a "war on terrorism,"
arguing that the Taliban's brutal treatment of women and religious
minorities somehow justified bombing what used to be Afghanistan.
Even assuming the sincerity of such a position (which I don't), its

fundamental presupposition is that the universal human rights being

invoked to justify the war are human rights such as we conceive them.

At this writing, I see very little evidence of an effort to see ourselves

through the eyes of the Other, or to listen. Whether through a
bomb-sight or a camera lens, we are the ones in the position of see
ing, rather than being seen. And although September 11 should
have alerted us to the fact that the seeing subject is neither invisible
nor invulnerable, it has become, in the dominant public discourse, a
narcissistic wound that drives us (us "Westerners," us "North Ameri

cans") further back into ourselves. Even for those who try, in one
way or another, to take "the side of the oppressed," we are again
faced with the problem of in effect choosing which oppressed group
to

side

with.

The

women

oppressed

by

the

Taliban,

and

other

Islamist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? Undoubtedly,

but which
ones? Westernized and educated women, many of whom fled the
country,

who

and women's
lematic

one,

share

our

of

conceptions

human

rights,

democracy,

rights? That would be the easy choice, but it's a prob

for we

thereby

exclude

all

those

women

and

men

in the

Islamic world who either have a different conception of humanity

and human rights, or who are trying to invent such conceptions for
themselves, instead of merely accepting our version as being the only

valid choice.

Sartre's and Derrida's

tual commitment"

difficulties concerning "intellec

struggles have always

vis vis anti-colonialist

been ours as well; it's just that "after September

obvious than ever.

11,"

this is more

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Sartre, Derrida

and Commitment

Notes
1. Jacques Derrida,
morale 68 (1963):
cle.
2.
3.

"Cogito
460-94.

et histoire
Parenthetical

de la folie," Revue de mtaphysique et de

references are to this version of the arti

trans. Alan Bass,

Derrida, L'Ecriture et la difference (Paris: Seuil, 1967);
Writing and Difference (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1978).
Camus'
actual words, according
to Emmanuel
were: "If a terrorist
Robls,
throws a grenade in the Belcourt market where my mother shops, and if he kills
her, I would be responsible if, to defend justice, I defended terrorism. I love jus
Jacques

tice but I also love my mother." Cited in Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A
Biography (New York: George Braziller, 1980), 577; see Lottman, Albert Camus,
trans. Marianne Vron (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 586.
4.

Connor

5.

See

Cruise

Jean-Paul

Colonialism

Camus (London:
O'Brien,
Fontana, 1970), pp. 9-14.
The Colonizer
and the Colonized,"
in
Sartre, "Albert Memmi's
and Neocolonialism,
trans. Azzedine
Steve Brewer and
Haddour,

Terry McWilliams
6.

Jean-Paul

Sartre,

and New York: Roudedge,

2001), 48-49.
The Wretched of the Earth, trans.
to Frantz Fanon,
(New York: Grove Press, 1968),
p. 10 (my emphasis);

(London
"Preface"

Constance

Farrington
hereafter WE.
7.

noir," Situations III (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 229-30.

Eng
in Sartre, What is Literature? and Other
by John MacCombie,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988),
Essays (Cambridge,
p. 291. Translation
modified.
Sartre, "Orphe
lish translation

"Black

p. 292.
noir," Sit. Ill, p. 247;
noir, Sit. Ill, p. 251.
noir," Sit. Ill, 257-58.

Orpheus,"

Sartre, "Orphe
"Orphe

"Orphe
See Howard

Davies,

Sartre

and

trans., p. 303.

'Les Temps modernes'

(Cambridge:

Cambridge

p. 177.
and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken
Jew, like any authentic
man, escapes
p. 137: "the authentic

University Press, 1987),

See Sartre, Anti-Semite
Books,

1965),

description."
Frantz Fanon,

Black Skins, White Masks, trans. Constance

Grove Press, 1967), p. 165.
Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, trans. Bernard
New American Library, 1963), pp. 54-55.

Farrington
Frechtman

(New

York:

(New

York:

trans. Gayatri Chakravorty

Jacques Derrida,
Of Grammatology,
Spivak (Balti
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 80.
See Pascal Bruckner, The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt (New
York: Free Press, 1986), p. 185, who calls Sartre "an uncritical and naive Euro
This judgment is shared by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in A Critique
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999),
pp.
of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge,
to his remark in Existen
who reduces Sartre's position on colonialism
171-73,

centrist."

1948),
[trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Haskell House,
an idiot, a child, a
is always some way of understanding
Yet Spivak unwit
primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information."
in particular, of seeing white
tingly repeats Sartre's gesture, in "Black Orpheus"
tialism and Humanism

pp. 46-47)

that "There

civilization

as a result of the taming

and

repressing

of libidinous

affect: "this

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Bruce Baugh

rejection

of affect served and serves as the energetic

and successful

defense of the

civilizing mission" (p. 5).

Stuart Zane Charm,
of Otherness in the
Vulgarity and Authenticity. Dimensions
Sartre (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
World of Jean-Paul
Press, 1991), p.
205.
Charm,
Derrida,
233-41.

p. 209.
"Parti pris pour

Les Temps modernes

l'Algrie,"

580

(Jan-Feb

1995):

In fact, the forum was co-sponsored

by the Human
Rights League
(Ligue des
a venerable French defender of "human rights," especially
droits de l'homme),
political

rights.
Sartre, "Une Victoire,"
1958), p. 100.

afterword

to Henri Alleg, La question (Paris:

J.J. Pauvert,

See

Derrida, L'Autre
Brault and Michael

trans. Pascale-Anne
cap (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1991);
The Other Heading:
Naas,
Reflections on Today's Europe
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992).
(Bloomington,
Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 198
99.
See Derrida, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the
trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago:
New International,
University Press,
Chicago
1994).
Albert Camus,

Resistance, Rebellion and Death, trans. Justin O'Brien

Vintage, 1974), 131-42.
See Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography, 566-76.

(New

York:

'"Il courait mort': salut, salut. Notes pour un courrier aux Temps mod
ernes," Les Temps modernes 587 (March-April-May
1996): 7-54; see p. 9, 14, 32.
Derrida, "'Il courait mort' ..." p. 12.
199.
Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction, pp. 189-90,
Derrida,

Critchely, p. 200.
See Critchley, p. 212, who emphasizes
that democracy
is inachev and -venir,
but does not note that this "future" is a European
legacy.
trans. John Matthews, in Between Existentialism
Sartre, "A Plea for Intellectuals,"
and Marxism (New York: Pantheon, 1974),
Sartre, "A Plea for Intellectuals,"
p. 250.
Sartre, "Une victoire," p. 122.
Derrida,

"The

Ends

University of Chicago

of Man,"

of Philosophy, trans. Alan

p. 111.

Margins

Press, 1982),

p. 253.

Bass

(Chicago,

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