The Inheritance of a Promise - Democracy to Come by Jacques Derrida

Abstract

Not at all unaware of Derrida’s passion (for exappropriation) for the inherited language -with the aim of thus evoking that for the philosopher its reinvention consists in the very paradigm of invention itself-, I start this article drawing attention to the insistent reappearing of the French colloquialism “C’est pas demain la veille” [“A lot of water has to go under the bridge”] in the philosopher’s work. My aim is to show the way attention to the injunction of this absolute“veille” (“eve, wake”) of time, which resounds in such aphorism, lies at the origin of Derrida’s reinvention of the name or the inherited concept of “democracy” as “democracy to come.” In the same way as it lies at the origin of the reinvention of democracy (as political “regime”) in the name of “democracy to come.”