The postmodern political condition

deconstruction and enlightenment

Agnes Heller

Ferenc Fehér

pp. 96-121

in: Michael Thomas, The reception of Derrida, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

Regardless of Derrida's politico-institutional thinking deconstruction has often been approached as a form of postmodern neoconservatism or anarchism (Habermas, 1987). Over the course of the previous chapters we have seen how this postmodern reading was indebted to the literary translation of deconstruction which drained Derrida's work of its politico-institutional context and emphasized indeterminacy over a specific understanding of undecidability. Such interpretations have been based on a metaphysical conception of the political that fails to come to terms with the political implications of Derrida's notion of originary repetition and the aporia of time.