Jacques Derrida and the Advent of the Reconciliation Paradigm through the Globalization of Avowal

This article analyzes the extent to which, during the 1990s, Derrida devotes his attention to the emergence of a new phenomenon he calls the “globalization of avowal”, by which he means an unprecedented extension of theological-therapeutic discourse into the legal-political one. To achieve its goal, the paper examines how and why, according to Derrida, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC) shows in an exemplary way how religious practices, such as repentance, confession, and forgiveness asked for, can be extended in the public sphere for the purpose of promoting social healing. The globalization of avowal embodied by the SA-TRC is thus framed by this article as emerging in significant contemporaneity with concomitant epochal phenomena such as the “age of apology” and the “era of the witness”, all of which result to be ultimately linked to the cosmopolization of Holocaust memories in the last decade of the 20th century. By juxtaposing Jankélévitch’s assertion that “forgiveness died in the death camps” and Hegel’s notion of reconciliation as healing of the wounds of the spirit, the article then traces the parable Derrida draws between the “night of forgiveness” which takes place with the Holocaust and the “dawn of reconciliation” represented by the SA-TRC. In its last section, the paper finally thematizes how Derrida posits a certain return-as-repentance to the past and his plea for a relation to the Other as justice as requirements for reconciliation, here framed as the unfolding of the conditions of possibility which needs to be taken into account toward an (outmost problematic) individual, intra- and intergroup “living together”.