The Derridean Ethic and the Spirit of Activism
“…the “political” has come to be viewed exclusively as a sign of the philosophical and ethical exhaustion of religion. Our conception of the “political” or “ethical” is in many ways hopelessly circumscribed by the secular, rational calculations which underscore the movement of modern European thought - from Europe “out” into the (post)colonial world; (…) predicated upon a [Kantian autonomous] subject who is constitutively transcendental, self-sufficient, unified, and as such invulnerable to both desire (…) and prayer (…).
[a certain stream in Derrida] nags relentlessly at the contradictions inherent in Kant’s extradition of religion from the realm of ethics and justice. It does so to posit a certain type of metaphysical experience (Derrida calls this “fiduciary” faith) as a profound and utopian address to the other.”
- Leela Gandhi, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship, Duke University Press, 2006, p.116-117