Derrida’s Democracy to Come and Climate Disobedience

This article argues that Derrida’s “democracy to come,” constituted in différance and riven by quasi-transcendental and normative aporias, understands democracy as both bound to institutions and their legal forms as well as remaining in principle non-institutionalizable, and so beyond law, committed to nonlegal justice and hospitality. This fundamental aporia between instituting (or constituting) and instituted (or constituted) power, the article then argues, entails a general justification for climate disobedience, by which the article means un/civil disobedience to democratically legitimated law but in the name of climate justice for current non-members. While this general strategy of justification is available to most accounts of what has come to be called “radical democracy,” Derrida’s democracy to come insists on the temporality of the rift between constituted and constituting power. This temporality, the article argues, can be elaborated in view of different generations, thus offering more specific justifications to younger generations engaging in climate disobedience.