A review by ralowe
On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness by Jacques Derrida

5.0

from participating in a type of survivor-centered organizing at the boundaries of accountability, where accountability fails, this is a very engaging deconstructionist perspective on forgiveness in the 'abrahamic' tradition as it assumes hegemony in international law. there are two essays here-- one about forgiveness which is related to another concerned with the liberal idea of cosmopolitanism, exemplified by the notion of a 'city of refuge.' derrida's thought exists of a kind of exception which is kind of essential to the idea itself, and emphasizes this necessary maddening equivocation. this is particularly striking with his insistence on a hyperbolic definition for a forgiveness without either sovereignty or conditions. he argues that forgiveness must always be irreducible to either reconciliation or reparative government intervention. asylum for the stateless disenfranchised similarly places a tension on the definition of national borders; the extension of hospitality as a lively exception to regimes.