Historicity and history: messianism versus immanent criticism

Abstract

This article is intended to show, first of all, that Derridean messianism could only arise from the articulation of the following aspects present throughout his work: 1) the transcendental-semiological approach and the conception of history as passivity; 2) the decision and the event as exclusionary from knowledge; 3) the co-extensivity of language and violence; 4) the historical logo/phonocentric closures. All these elements have the consequence of cancelling any immanent determination that could open the history. In second instance, it intends to explain some consequences of deconstruction to think politics and democracy, as well as to argue that a practice-focused approach can avoid both the metaphysics of presence and messianism, while preserving the idea of immanent criticism, one of the central aspects of the classical notion of emancipation.