Liberalism and the Algerian War: The Case of Jacques Derrida

Baring, Edward

doi:10.1086/648525

Cited by 22 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Second, those who enter the system to change it for the better run the risk of complicity. One example is how the French Algerian liberals during the Algerian war (1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962) were portrayed as complicit with colonial rule [35]. Another is the argument that feminists and women working in NGOs, for example, draw on, support, and in some way strengthen western and middle-class patriarchal values [33].…”

Section: Changing the System From Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

The AI ethicist’s dilemma: fighting Big Tech by supporting Big Tech

2021

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Assume that a researcher uncovers a major problem with how social media are currently used. What sort of challenges arise when they must subsequently decide whether or not to use social media to create awareness about this problem? This situation routinely occurs as ethicists navigate choices regarding how to effect change and potentially remedy the problems they uncover. In this article, challenges related to new technologies and what is often referred to as ‘Big Tech’ are emphasized. We present what we refer to as the AI ethicist’s dilemma, which emerges when an AI ethicist has to consider how their own success in communicating an identified problem is associated with a high risk of decreasing the chances of successfully remedying the problem. We examine how the ethicist can resolve the dilemma and arrive at ethically sound paths of action through combining three ethical theories: virtue ethics, deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics. The article concludes that attempting to change the world of Big Tech only using the technologies and tools they provide will at times prove to be counter-productive, and that political and other more disruptive avenues of action should also be seriously considered by ethicists who want to effect long-term change. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages, and a combination might be desirable to achieve these advantages and mitigate some of the disadvantages discussed.

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Section: Changing the System From Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

The AI ethicist’s dilemma: fighting Big Tech by supporting Big Tech

2021

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“…Indeed, Derrida’s ethics of cosmopolitan humanism shares some of the conceits of liberalism. As Baring (2010) notes, “publicly Derrida remained silent on the question of Algeria for most of his life” (257). In private, he took issue with scholars such as Pierre Nora whose writings exposed the complicity of French Algerian liberals in the occupation of Algeria.…”

Section: At the Threshold Of Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In private, he took issue with scholars such as Pierre Nora whose writings exposed the complicity of French Algerian liberals in the occupation of Algeria. Derrida, Baring (2010) suggests, was “torn between a colonial regime towards which he felt grave misgivings and a French republican tradition to which he expressed a strong allegiance” (241). He thus asserted that “the anticolonial revolution can only liberate itself from factual Europe or the empirical West, in the name of transcendental Europe, that is Reason” (Derrida in Baring, 2010: 257).…”

Section: At the Threshold Of Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

The city in the age of Trumpism: From sanctuary to abolition

Roy

2019

Environ Plan D

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The city as sanctuary is an ancient concept. As a modern practice in North America and Europe, it has entailed refuge for subjects rendered illegal and placeless by the state, be it asylum-seekers or undocumented immigrants. Sanctuary thus reveals the terms of protection through which liberal democracies recognize and include racial others. In the age of Trumpism, sanctuary jurisdictions have become a key terrain of struggle in the United States, connoting resistance to white nationalism and the defiance of federal immigration policy. However, the concept of sanctuary requires scrutiny. In this paper, I demonstrate that the current meaning of sanctuary in the United States has limited scope, relying on, rather than limiting, police power. Seeking to disrupt such forms of liberal inclusion, I turn to a more expansive ethico-political inquiry concerned with hospitality. Such inquiry demands engagement with colonial and imperial histories. At stake is a rethinking of liberal and cosmopolitan traditions of Western humanism, those that seek to provide sanctuary from the place of Europe or the free city. Once conceptualized as the threshold of empire, these territories are no longer sanctuary for the illegal and placeless but instead expressions of state violence and thus grounds for abolition.

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“…Refusing to sign the Manifesto of 121 in support of Algerian independence (unlike Sartre and Bourdieu), Derrida also viewed Messali Hadj as a "prophet of fanatical Islamism." 42 This vocabulary is certainly reminiscent of a colonial worldview that occasionally reveals itself in Derrida"s writing. Take, for example, his description of "the primary-school classrooms where there were still little Algerians, Arabs, and Kablyes."…”

Section: Jacques Derrida: Filiality and Nostalgériementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Baring ascribes this to a "shift in the political landscape," namely, "the restructuring of the Political left after the decline of Communism." 49 Yet we might take this observation one step further and insist that while postcoloniality has displaced a previous political commitment, it continues to elide the historical specificity that was also lacking the discourse of third worldism. Following, to romanticize Derrida"s postcolonial marginality as an identity that necessarily led to a radical critique of modernity is to overlook the historical parameters of his engagement with Algeria.…”

Section: Jacques Derrida: Filiality and Nostalgériementioning

confidence: 99%

Algeria as Postcolony? Rethinking the Colonial Legacy of Post-Structuralism

Davis

2011

JFFP

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While there is little doubt that Algeria was of enormous importance to the theoretical output that is often recognized as French, here I would like to ask: what is at stake in re-inscribing these French intellectuals as postcolonial? In what ways did the particularities of Algerian history impact French philosophy? Indeed, if the term postcolonial is meant to describe those who were influenced by events in Algeria, then an entire generation of French thinkers might be considered postcolonial to varying degrees. Surely Derrida’s oeuvre was influenced by his experiences in Algeria, but does this make him postcolonial in the same way as Jean-Paul Sartre or Pierre Bourideu, who have also become important figures in postcolonial theory?

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Liberalism and the Algerian War: The Case of Jacques Derrida

Cited by 22 publications

References 3 publications

The AI ethicist’s dilemma: fighting Big Tech by supporting Big Tech

The AI ethicist’s dilemma: fighting Big Tech by supporting Big Tech

The city in the age of Trumpism: From sanctuary to abolition

Algeria as Postcolony? Rethinking the Colonial Legacy of Post-Structuralism

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