{"id":7059,"date":"2026-05-31T21:36:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T19:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=7059"},"modified":"2026-05-31T21:36:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T19:36:57","slug":"the-beast-the-sovereign-second-session-december-19-2001-by-jacques-derrida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/05\/31\/the-beast-the-sovereign-second-session-december-19-2001-by-jacques-derrida\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beast & the Sovereign<\/em>: \u201cSecond Session December 19, 2001\u201d by Jacques Derrida"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first, I didn\u2019t quite follow why and how Derrida segues from interrogating the fable and characteristics shared by the sovereign and the beast to post-9\/11 media and political communication before circling back to Hobbes. But then I understood that he is laying out an argument about how political communication and the fable have certain characteristics in common with respect to the strategy of \u201cmaking known,\u201d faire savoir<\/em>, toward what he calls a \u201cbecoming-fabulous of political action and discourse, be it described as military or civil, warlike or terroristic.\u201d Thus, the seminar\u2014the philosophical discourse\u2014must \u201cmake known without fable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, there\u2019s more to the argument about post-9\/11 political communication. It leads him back to Hobbes and the role of fear as the primary motivator for entering the contract (to gain protection) and keeping it (to avoid punishment), neatly encapsulated in the formula protego ergo obligo<\/em> (the cogito ergo sum<\/em> of the state, as Carl Schmitt has it). However, as Derrida argues, the structure established by the contract disguises its own perishability with the vocabulary of the divine, as if its structure were equally imperishable. And here, Q.E.D., the sovereign becomes exempt from the contract: Hobbes\u2019s ultimately theological model of the political puts the sovereign outside the law, just like the beast or wolf is outside the law.<\/p>\n

From there, Derrida rips into Hobbes\u2019s \u201cmediation argument\u201d against God as a law above the law, landing on Hobbes\u2019s double exclusion of god and the beast, where language enters the game. Both the beast and God (the sovereign\u2019s sovereign) \u201cdo not respond,\u201d as Hobbes argues, which can be read both in terms of response-as-speech and responsibility, which makes, for Hobbes, any covenant impossible with either.<\/p>\n

The session concludes with final thoughts, quotations, and reading tasks in the context of contracts, particularly the \u201cdouble-bind of domestication.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Derrida, Jacques. \u201cSecond Session December 19, 2001.\u201d In: The Beast & the Sovereign<\/em> Vol.1, transl. Geoffrey Bennington. The Seminars of Jacques Derrida. Chicago UP: 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udcda The language of the fable, of fear, and of the divine.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-archive","h-entry","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7059"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7179,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059\/revisions\/7179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}