Anarchy or Aporia? The Aporetic Ground of Coexistence in Derrida's Deconstruction Project

Abstract

The critique of the dominance of the metaphysical ground, at first approximation, can be realized within the framework of two obvious strategies — the strategy of inversion and the strategy of subversion. Both of these strategies, however, do not fully achieve their purpose, implicitly preserving and affirming the hierarchical structure of binary oppositions. Inversion involves inverting the positions of ground and non-ground (the identical and the other), assuming as ground something that has been oppressed. Subversion involves the breakdown of the oppositional structure itself and the unfolding of ontological an-archy supposedly on the other side of metaphysical limitations. However, the conceptualization of ontological an-archy, groundlessness, or absolute emancipation remains inscribed in the same horizon of imagination, which is initially set and limited by the dominant discourse of grounding. Derrida's deconstructivist project suggests an alternative way of both criticizing the domination of the ground and acquiring a new form of grounding. The new form of ground must avoid both metaphysical implications and the defects of the strategies of inversion and subversion. We call this form of ground - aporetic ground. The aporetic ground doesn’t provide a privileged form of presence or coexistence, but holds the permanent displacement and undecidability of the instances of ground and non-ground in relation to each other. Therefore, it doesn’t presuppose a dualization into grounding and grounded, which is ontotheological in nature. On the contrary, the aporetic ground appears as an immanent condition of the (non-)possibility of heterogeneous coexistence, inscribed in the latter. However, the main hypothesis is that the aporetic ground doesn’t lead only to a «short-circuit» or mutual neutralization of the ground and non-ground, the identical and the other. The aporetic ground proves to be effective in the moment of its very undecidability: undecidability becomes a necessary condition for justice and the democracy to come. Derrida's democracy to come, as a prototype of heterogeneous coexistence, is an internally aporetic auto-immune concept, within which there is an endless oscillation between in-co-possible demands — the affirmation of democracy itself as totality and the affirmation of absolute openness to the other. This is why democracy exists only in the horizon of an indefinite/indefinable future.