Elliptical Interruptions: Or, Why Derrida Prefers Mondialisation to Globalization

Responding to a journalist's question on subject of globalization, Jacques Derrida expressed his interest in notion of [monde] and its history while emphasizing that world is neither earth nor universe nor cosmos. He then went on to ask provocatively: Why do English, Americans, and Germans speak of and not (as French do) mondialisation? (2005b, 118). Rather than merely reflecting a francophone bias, Derrida' s preference for mondialisation calls attention to a couple of important points. First, Derrida suggests that global adoption of Anglo-American word globalization not only reveals defacto status of English as universal medium of linguistic exchange, but also more troubling ascendancy of a global Anglo-American hegemony or homo-hegemonization in which an apparent homogeneity or unity conceals great imbalances of power (2002, 373). As he notes, the word is itself becoming global to point of imposing itself more and more, even in France, in rhetoric of