Diacritics

Taking its point of departure from Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida’s exchanges around the concept of fraternity, the essay explores Nancy’s claim that Derrida was “mistaken” regarding this decisive political concept, one inherited from the revolutionary tradition. The essay follows the reinscription of Nancy’s writings on fraternity within a number of Derrida’s texts, addressing those moments in both their writings when fraternity comes to haunt any suggestion that it has finally exhausted itself as a concept, run aground in the wake of its revolutionary inheritance. The focus of the argument concerns Derrida and Nancy’s respective writings on post-Independence Algeria.