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Mafte’akh 1e /2010
Declaration
Yoav Kenny
The political significance of declarations tends to be implicit or parasitical, as it is usually
the declared object that is considered important, and not the declaration itself. A closer
look at the unique discursive task that it fulfils, however, suggests that the declaration is
more than a rhetorical device and may also play an important explanatory role with respect
to sovereign authority, its constitution, and its ratification. The purpose of what follows is
to reveal the theoretical importance of the declaration as a political concept. The first part
of this study will combine J. L. Austin’s definition of the declaration as part of his speech
act theory with Carl Schmitt’s political theology; its latter part will focus on declarations
of independence, offering a synthesis of two of Jacque Derrida’s theoretical moves in a
way that will tie together the various sovereign, linguistic, and discursive threads of the
argument and propose a formal and political definition of the declaration.
***
Austin’s theory of speech acts is an obvious point of departure for a general linguistic
characterization of the declaration. Grounded in the distinction between constative speech
acts and performative speech acts, Austin’s theory has at its core the claim that, while the
former report and describe facts and are therefore judged by the classic philosophical and
linguistic criterion of truth, the latter do not discuss facts but rather create them and
are therefore judged by their success.1 The criterion for success is summed up in Austin’s
assertion that a performative speech act is successful only when “there is something which
is at the moment of uttering being done by the person uttering”.2
Accordingly, and given that Austin repeatedly mentions the declaration as a paradigmatic
performative utterance, we may propose the following as a preliminary and broad definition
of the declaration: a performative utterance whose producer creates something at the
moment of uttering. This definition is broad because it does not yet differentiate the
declaration from all other performative utterances (such as the promise, the order, etc.)
and it is preliminary because its political elements have not yet been spelled out. But
even in this basic and schematic form, the three components essential for both Austin’s
discussion and the present one are already apparent: the temporal characterization of the
declaration, or what Austin refers to as “the moment of uttering”; its productivity; and
the identity of the person who utters it. Any political conceptualization of the declaration
must be preceded by an assessment of each of these components.
Yoav Kenny – PhD Candidate, the School of Philosophy and the Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University.
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Declaration
The most conspicuous aspect of Austin’s declaration is its temporal peculiarity. Unlike
a constative utterance such as “he is walking”, whose truth depends on whether or not
someone actually walked at the moment of utterance (or in the preceding moments),
the success of a performative utterance such as “I hereby declare this a closed military
zone” cannot be dependent upon the prior existence of such a zone, as it is precisely this
utterance that creates the closed military zone. Temporally speaking, this means that,
according to Austin’s criterion for success, two things occur at the very same moment
of declaration: the declaratory utterance, and the creation of the declared object. This
simultaneity prevents Austin from treating the declaratory moment as a regular unit in the
chronological flow of diachronic time, leading him to refer to it instead as a moment of
“non-continuous” present, which underlines the original and autonomous productivity of
actual action.3 The implications of this temporal peculiarity will be fully developed only in
the last part of this essay, but even in this crude and unprocessed wording one can already
recognize its uniqueness and potential significance.
Stemming from this temporal peculiarity, the second component of Austin’s analysis is
the productivity of the declaration, or more accurately, the fact that for a declaration,
uttering something and creating that something are one and the same thing. For Austin,
not only declaring but also promising, swearing, bequeathing, betting, etc. are forms of
performative speech acts and so it seems that simultaneous utterance and creation is not
a unique trait of the declaration. But it is precisely this simultaneity that distinguishes
the declaration and makes it so important both linguistically and politically. Performative
utterances such as bets and promises create in the present a commitment for something
that will take place in the future, but as we have just seen, in order for an utterance
to be truly performative, producing it and producing its object must take place at the
exact same time. With respect to the declaration, this could have two implications: either
the commitment for a future creation can be seen as constituting something in itself,
effectively construing all promises and bets as declarations that create the special object
called “commitment”; or else the performativity of the bet or the promise is subjugated
to the performativity of a future declaration – that is, the success or failure of the former
can only be derived retroactively from the success or failure of the latter. Either way, the
privileged status of the declaration as the only performative speech act whose uttering and
creating are consolidated in one simultaneous instant is fully exposed here.
Part of the reason this privileged temporal status is not duly credited as a basis for the
performativity of the declaration lies in etymology. Like the German Erklärung, the
French and English declaration indicates some sort of exposure, a bringing into light of
that which already exists. Of course, exposing things by shedding light on them serves the
important political task of making those things public, but since it emphasizes that which
already exists, this function accounts only for the uttering capacity of the declaration
and says nothing about its more important capacity, namely, to create something new.4
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25
This capacity partially exists in the denouncement – indeed the Latin phrase for “declaring
war” is bellum denuntiare – but with the exception of a few archaic legal functions the
denouncement does not operate in the political discourse in the way Austin intends for
the performative speech act. What helps the declaration to fulfill this intention is the third
component of Austin’s analysis, namely an inquiry into the identity of the person who
performs the declaration. This inquiry is necessary because, unlike a statement, which
can be the result of an external demand, or even of a forceful extraction, the declaration
must be a voluntary and deliberate act on the part of its performer. In other words, while
intentionality is not a necessary condition of statements, a declaration can be carried out
only if the person declaring it intends to do so. No one can declare on someone else’s
behalf or refer to someone else’s utterance as a declaration without their approval. It is this
freely initiated intention of the speaker vis-à-vis his declaration – and consequently also
vis-à-vis the declared objects – that propels the discussion into the political sphere.
In a sense, the discussion needs no such propelling as it was always, if implicitly, political
for Austin himself. When Austin speaks of the success of the performative speech act as
dependent upon its being “tethered to its origin”5 in a way that enables its addressees to
identify this origin, he is actually assuming that such addressees exist. Such an assumption
amounts to claiming that the performative speech act of the declaration is a political act –
that is, an act performed in public and as part of the social organization and regularization
of the power relations between the declarer and his or her addressees. When the addressed
crowd is small and physically proximate to the origin of the utterance, as, for instance, in
a Jewish wedding where the groom sanctifies the bride with his speech, it is possible to
identify this origin even when the speech act is oral (the rabbi and the witnesses confirm
that the groom sanctified the bride and this confirmation is later translated into the legal
and political authority of the state when the marriage is listed and registered). But when
the addressed crowd is too big for such an identification – which is, of course, the case in
almost any western political body since the Greek polis ceased to exist – an oral utterance
is not good enough and a written one is needed so that it may be used to identify the
origin of the utterance in different times and places. Austin fully understands this when
he refers to the signature as that which enables the written performative speech act to stay
tethered to its origin even when that origin is not present. The temporal issues this raises
will be discussed later on, but it is already clear that with respect to declarations, both oral
and written, the main political question concerns not the identity of the person declaring
but his authority to do so; at the moment of declaration, does the declarer hold the
authority to declare that which is being declared?
Austin mentions authority but does not provide a sufficient analysis of it. He discusses
the importance of the acceptance of the declaration as a condition for its success, and
this acceptance necessarily depends upon the declarer’s authority, which Austin also
mentions.6 But he does not discuss the way in which an authority capable of generating
this sort of acceptance is acquired or granted. If the success of the declaration is nothing
but its acceptance as valid by its addressees, and if such acceptance is a direct result of the
26
Declaration
declarer’s authority, then it is clear that the success of a declaration cannot be determined
without an account of the source of this authority. This conclusion illustrates the fact that
any discussion about declarations is actually a political discussion about authority and,
more importantly, it paves the way for an analysis of declarations that are unique to the
political sphere and demonstrates the need for a political definition of the declaration.
***
The conceptual structures that Austin erected can be occupied by many different
political declarations, which in turn give rise to many different political entities: strikes,
bankruptcies, days of mourning or celebration, interest rates, closed military zones – all
of these are created the instant they are uttered, or more accurately, the moment they are
declared in writing and signed by a political agent. What defines such agents is the fact
that, in order for their declaration to be successful (i.e. in order for the political object they
declare to actually come to be), they must be authorized to declare it, and that, long and
complex as it may be, at the end of the chain of political and legal instances that enables
such an authorization must lie a sovereign source. The reason for this is that only such a
source can meet the conditions of autonomy, initiative, and intentionality necessary for
the success of the declaration as a productive perforamtive speech act. Thus, the focus
on the declarer’s authority (or lack thereof ) connects the declaration to sovereignty and
enables us to view it as a performative utterance through which something is created
by the sovereign (or by someone authorized by the sovereign).
But this definition is still not accurate. It ignores the fact that the relevant criterion for
the success of a declaration is its outcome, and therefore that the proper order of events is
not an authorization, leading to a declaration, which results in political objects, but rather
vice versa. Instead of saying that only the current ruling sovereign can create political
entities and objects, we ought to say that whoever successfully creates such entities and
objects is sovereign. For example, if I were to sign and send out a declaration of war to the
citizens of Israel and to its generals, and if they were to act upon it, then in some respects
– indeed, in those respects that really matter – I would in fact be the sovereign. It is only
once a political entity has been created that we can retrospectively refer to the utterance
that created it as a declaration and to its creator as a representative of sovereign authority.
Therefore, a more accurate definition of the declaration would regard it as an indication of
sovereignty, or more specifically, as a performative utterance that succeeds in creating
a political object or entity and that was uttered by a person who, for that reason,
possesses sovereign authority.
This reversal also explains the above mentioned claim that, theoretically speaking, the
reception of a declaration is secondary to the source of the declarer’s authority. This claim
does not present the modes in which a declaration is received and perceived as irrelevant
to its success but rather emphasizes the fact that these modes are already expressed in the
general description offered above, which identifies the sovereign subject as the person
Mafte’akh 1e /2010
27
whose declaration was a successful performative speech act. In order for the declarer to be
perceived as the sovereign of the state, the political object created by the declaration must
already be accepted and acknowledged as such by numerous agents: the state’s population,
the parliamentary coalition and opposition, sovereigns of other states, international
organizations, economic organizations, the media, etc. Surely, there are circumstances
in which a lack of acknowledgment from one or more of these agents may cause the
declaration to fail, but this does not mean that in order to determine the success of a given
declaration one must have a full account of the ways in which these many factors refer to
it. Indeed, since the number and character of these factors is always changing, such a full
account is not attainable. What is required, then, is a formal, theoretical definition on
the basis of which one would be able to identify and clarify each of the specific practical
characteristics of the reaction to the declaration, treating these as its success criteria. We
may say, then, that the politics involved in the investigation of the declaration – i.e.,
those parts of the investigation covered by political science, media studies, sociology,
and psychology – can become useful only after a critical philosophical investigation of
the political provides a general formal structure of the relation between the successful
declaration and political sovereignty.7
Thus, the political sense of the declaration, as it has so far been presented, has two main
attributes: the ability to indicate the existence of sovereignty; and a general formal structure
that conditions any specific content that may fill it. The ways in which this political sense of
the declaration develops and functions, and the theoretical implications of the declaration
as it has been defined so far, may be better understood by applying Austin’s concepts to
Carl Schmitt’s famous theory of sovereignty, which assigns a similarly central role to the
indicative function in the formal and theoretical structuring of authority. When Schmitt
claims that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”,8 he enables two different
interpretations of the relation between decision and sovereignty: either the decision is
nothing more than an instrument that identifies the current sovereign as such – he who
decides on the exception does so because he is sovereign; or it is an instrument that creates
the sovereign subject – the sovereign is sovereign because he decided on the exception.
Coming back to the declaration, we could say that the first interpretation only relates to the
uttering capacity of the declaration, whereas the second also refers to its capacity to create
political objects. After Austin has exposed for us the sovereign character of declarations,
we can no longer treat the Schmittian decision on the exception as a statement that
merely exposes a pre-existing sovereign; we must treat it as a declaration that creates the
sovereign as such. Though this reading is admittedly anachronistic, Schmitt himself lays
the foundations for it when he says that the uniqueness of the sovereign decision makes
it more than just a passive, literal description, and that “The legal force of a decision is
different from the result of substantiation”.9 In other words – Austin’s words – the claim
that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception” is just one instance of a broader
definition, according to which “sovereign is he who successfully declares a political object”
(and so the aforementioned groom is also sovereign, precisely because the success of his
28
Declaration
declaration testifies that he had been authorized to perform it by the sovereign of the
state). Schmitt’s “exception” (or “state of exception”) is obviously a very unique political
object and my narrow treatment of it here ignores many of the meanings to which Schmitt
is alluding; but in the present context this is a bearable sin. What is important for our
purposes is only the realization that there is no logical or theoretical reason to reject the
interpretation that the sovereign is constituted as such because of his successful decision
– or declaration – on the exception. Ultimately, both at Austin’s linguistic theoretical
level and at Schmitt’s juridical theoretical level, it is success in creating a political being
(e.g., a “married couple”) through its declaration that constitutes the declarer as possessing
sovereign power, and not the other way around.10
My choice of Schmitt here is, of course, a calculated one, stemming from the fact that the
two central claims of his political theology directly correspond to the two characteristics
I have so far identified with the declaration. According to the first and more general
of Schmitt’s assertions, “All significant concepts of the modem theory of the state are
secularized theological concepts.”11 Accordingly, the sovereign ability to create political
beings through the performative declaratory speech act should be understood as the
earthly, secularized equivalent of the divine ability to create through speech (as in the “ten
speeches”, beginning with “let there be light”, with which, according to Jewish tradition,
the whole world was created12). Schmitt’s second assertion stresses the formal and logical
priority of the unmediated intervention and autonomous decision of the sovereign over
any legal order. Just as the divine decision precedes the laws of nature and creates them,
so, too, the sovereign decision precedes the legal order because it creates the very objects
and entities that constitute and later occupy any such order.
While these two assertions aid us in delineating the argument and in clarifying the
connection between Schmitt’s political theology and Austin’s speech act theory, they fall
short of providing a full account of the type of sovereignty born of such a coupling.
This is chiefly because the politico-theological explanation for the sovereign decision has
a third and implicit component, which is based on what Giorgio Agamben famously
identified in Schmitt as “the paradox of sovereignty”.13 Within the current discussion,
the general shape of this paradox comes down to the fact that the sovereign is at one and
the same time the only one capable of creating political beings and himself a political
being. Since the sovereign is both the highest instance of authorization for any declaration
and a political entity that must itself be the object of a declaration, the declaration that
creates the sovereign must be a paradoxical declaration in which the sovereign is both the
declaring subject and the declared object. This declaration, of course, is the declaration of
independence, that is, a declaration through which the sovereign constitutes himself by
means of the political equivalent of the way in which God is His own cause and reason.
This connection between the declaratory act and the sovereign paradox of self-constitution
and legitimization is explored by Jacques Derrida, whose discussion of the linguistic and
political uniqueness of the American declaration of independence is based directly on a
critique of Austin’s speech act theory.14
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***
The first part of Derrida’s critical reading of Austin appears in his famous “Signature
Event Context”, where he presents Austin, the favored son of Oxford analytic philosophy,
as related to continental thinkers such as Nietzsche and Husserl.15 Despite his esteem
and appreciation for Austin’s work, Derrida criticizes him for failing to grasp his own
achievement and for his fear of moving away from “serious” philosophy, which eventually
caused him to commit himself to some of the very assertions he had tried to undermine.
The second and more specific part of Derrida’s critical reading came five years later in
a short lecture delivered in 1976 at a conference that marked the bicentennial of the
American Declaration of Independence. The essay, titled “Declarations of Independence”,
applied the general conclusions of Derrida’s criticism of Austin to the particular political
speech act of the declaration of independence.
According to Derrida, the declaration of independence is an event of performative writing
that constitutes the state and the sovereign as the highest authority of this state. With clear
parallels to the paradox of sovereignty that sees the declaration as a sovereign act as well as a
precondition for sovereignty itself, Derrida claims that the sovereign subject who signs the
declaration of independence does not exist as such prior to this signature. So long as the
American people did not sign a declaration of independence they did not exist as a people;
the declaration of independence, therefore, actually invented this people in an act of what
Derrida calls “fabulous retroactivity”, revealing it to be an instance whose ontological and
political status is unclear. To neutralize this uncertainty, the sovereign presents his signing
of the declaration of independence as an act whose authorization is external and based on
an even higher instance, who “holds itself back behind the scenes”.16 Since the sovereign is
the highest instance of his state, the only higher instance he could turn to is the ultimate
sovereign and master: God. The political sovereign needs the divine sovereign to authorize
him to sign his own declaration of independence, and it is therefore no surprise to find
that, in both the American and Israeli examples, the appeal to God takes place not in the
descriptive or procedural parts of the declaration but rather in the final paragraph, just
before the signature.
The following phrase opens the final paragraph of the American declaration:
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America [...] appealing
to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the
Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish
and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and
Independent States.17
The Israeli declaration concludes with the words, “Placing our trust in the Almighty, we
affix our signatures as testimony to this declaration....”18 In both cases, God is mentioned
but He is not the source of authorization of the declarers’ signatures. In the American case,
God simply vouches for the rectitude of the declarers’ intentions, whereas their authority
30
Declaration
comes from “the good People of these Colonies” and the right of “these United Colonies”.
In the Israeli case, the declarers merely “place trust” in the Almighty; they do not derive
from Him any force or authority, as they do from a “natural and historical right” in the
famous opening paragraph of the declaration. Indeed, God’s inclusion in the declaration
of independence serves no productive political purpose and amounts to little more than
a pompous rhetoric attempt to gain “external” authorization. Although the success of
the self-constitution of the sovereign subject necessitates acceptance and recognition by
numerous and various factors, such acceptance and recognition come only after the very
first instant of the political existence of the sovereign as such; in this unique and singular
instant there is no real instance that “holds itself back behind the scenes”.
This peculiar singularity of the political ontology of the self-constituting sovereignty has
two important implications for the declaration of independence: first, it highlights the fact
that the declaration of independence is not a constative expression of the autonomy and
freedom of the sovereign but a performative declaration that produces this autonomy and
freedom. Derrida summarizes this point in a way that both Schmitt and Austin could easily
accept, claiming that the declaration of independence is not based on any legal or political
infrastructure but rather is the sovereign decision that constitutes this infrastructure.
Accordingly, one could say that the connection between the “fabulous retroactivity” of the
declaration and the sovereign decision marks this particular Austinian-Derridian junction
in our debate as a site of political theology, at least according to Schmitt’s understanding
of this term.
Second, and as was already implied in his use of the term “fabulous retroactivity”, the
peculiarity that Derrida ascribes to sovereignty reveals once more the predominance of the
temporal in dealing with the declaration. This would be the point (or, more accurately,
the moment) to recall the non-continuous present that features in Austin’s definition
of the declaration – and Derrida indeed recalls it, going so far as to define the time of
the declaration as a “transcendental form of presentness [maintenance]”19 that enables
the declarer/signatory to attend both the present of the declaration and the future of its
products. But this temporal definition is too vague and general to serve as the basis for a
comprehensive political definition of the declaration. Not only does the exposure of the
paradoxical temporality of self-constituted sovereignty tell us nothing about the nature of
this sovereignty but it is also hard to understand how the sovereign subject is then able
to free itself from the “transcendental form” of the present in which it is constituted and
actually interfere and intervene in the concrete political reality. To put it differently, it is
hard to see how the formal and abstract discussion of the political can eventually become
a basis for understanding the ways in which an actual sovereign does politics. In order
to offer answers to these two questions, I wish to press Derrida for further clarification of
the temporal paradox with which he has confronted us. Such clarification can be found in
an earlier discussion of his, in which he characterizes the self-constitution of a sovereign
subject through a temporal phenomenological analysis; I am referring to the analysis of
the Cartesian Cogito presented as part of Derrida’s critique of Michel Foucault’s History
of Madness.
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***
The debate between Foucault and Derrida regarding the Cartesian Cogito is one of the
most famous chapters in poststructuralist history and needs no introduction here.20 What
nonetheless deserves special attention for our purposes is the way in which Derrida defines
the Cogito using temporal terminology. Although the popular image of the Cogito is that
of an Archimedian point, a sort of epistemological point of origin from which can begin
the construction of an existence that is certain, Derrida claims that it is not a spatial point
but a “temporal originality”. The Cogito, as Derrida repeatedly emphasizes in his criticism
of Foucault, is an instant, and this is why it precedes any distinction between an internal
“reason” and an external “unreason” and, indeed, is indifferent to any spatial relations
whatsoever.21
By understanding the Cogito as a primal and pre-distinctional instant of self-constitution,
Derrida renders his critical conclusions regarding Foucault relevant to declarations in
general and to the declaration of independence in particular. The instant of signing the
declaration of independence establishes sovereign existence in just the same way that
the Cogito establishes cognitive existence. Thus, and according to what has already been
shown above, the political paraphrase of “I think, therefore I am” may well be “I declare
successfully, therefore I am sovereign”. Accordingly, a further clarification of the definition
of declaration may be offered by way of an analogy: the declaration is the first and
constitutive instant of the sovereign subject in the same way that the Cogito is the
first and constitutive instant of the Cartesian subject.
But such a definition covers only one aspect of the temporal conclusion that Derrida drew
from the Cogito. The second aspect deals with the fact that the Cogito-based subject exists
only while it thinks, and therefore its political equivalent is not just “I declare successfully,
therefore I am” but also, “I am sovereign only while I am declaring and only while the
declaration is successful”. This additional temporal meaning of the declaration challenges
the earlier definition by exposing another facet of the same analogy: just as the Cogito is
only valid in the brief, singular, and discrete instant of intuition, so, too, the declarer of
the sovereign declaration has authority only in the brief, singular, instant of its uttering.
The thinking subject indeed constitutes himself in an instant, but it is a discrete instant,
making it impossible for the subject to move forward to the next instant and secure his
continuous existence in time. Each instant of self-constitution is also an instant of crisis
(or emergency) in which the subject might lose the certainty of his existence unless there
is some way to carry him to the next instant. The evolution of the Cogito into a complete
and valid subject calls for what Derrida refers to as a “temporalization of the Cogito”,
meaning that a continuum must be established that will connect the instant of the Cogito
to the instants that follow it and are based on it.22 For Descartes, of course, these “identity
crises” are ultimately solved by God, who is “no deceiver” and so guarantees that the
certainty of the subject regarding his own continual existence is well founded.23 But what
of the secularized, godless sovereignty of political theology? What of the sovereign of the
declaration of independence?
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Declaration
When Schmitt equates the earthly sovereign to God he does so through a direct reference
to Descartes’ conception of God, even quoting Atger’s claim that the prince, or, more
generally, the sovereign, “is the Cartesian god transposed to the political world”.24 But
since in the declaration of independence the sovereign not only occupies this divine
position but is also created as sovereign by this declaration, he is, in an important sense,
very different from the Cartesian subject. Whereas the latter relies on God to make the
discrete instant of his self-constitution a basis for his continual existence, the secularized
sovereign remains confined within the transcendental present of the discrete instant of his
constitution; to maintain his identity as sovereign he must reconstitute himself in each
and every instant of his existence. This reconstitution is another matter that becomes
clearer when described using the concepts of Derrida’s critique of Foucault’s interpretation
of the Cogito. Derrida agrees that the original independent instant of the Cogito remains
meaningless and purposeless if it does not open up a discursive space, for it is only within
such a space that a continuum of subjective identity can be constructed and maintained.
But – and this is the most weighty but that Derrida raises against Foucault – since the
transcendental instant that preceded the construction of the subject through rational
discourse is an essential condition of this very same discourse, it follows that, in order to
persist, this discourse must renew itself in every instant by releasing what was hitherto
confined as “irrational” and confining a new “irrational” against which can emerge a new
discourse. Therefore, and against Foucault, Derrida believes that the Cartesian argument
does not highlight the brief instant of the Cogito but rather the necessity of the instant
that follows it. The first constitutive instant of thought, in which the rational and the
irrational still co-exist within the same instance and in which the Cogito marks the
limits of the rational subject but is not yet located on either of its sides – this instant is
indeed necessary for the establishment of any discourse and continuum; but without such
discourse and continuum it remains intuitive, discrete, and devoid of any real public and
political manifestation. Thus, Derrida denies neither the importance of this instant of
self-constitution nor the importance of the following instant as the beginning of discourse
and logos, but he does wish to remind us that each of these two instants has no meaning
or importance when it appears on its own.25
The political equivalent of this reminder serves to explain how the declaration of
independence enables the transcendental and the actual, the momentary and the
continuous, the formal and the concrete, the political and politics, to become consolidated
in one performative and productive utterance of self-constitution. On the one hand,
without the response and recognition of all the aforementioned relevant political entities,
the declaration of independence cannot succeed in constituting a veritable political entity.
On the other hand, the same declaration of independence is a necessary condition of the
political discourse and ontology that create the only space in which such response and
recognition have sense. The declaration of independence takes place in the instant the
sovereign subject delineates his own boundaries against the background of the political
discourse that preceded him, thereby creating a new political discourse based on his
sovereignty. Since this discursive renewal may happen at any instant, the instant of self-
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constitution of the declaration of independence should not be understood as an originary
instant and a pre-historical source but rather as an instant that is implicitly present in
each and every instant of sovereign activity. The immediate conclusion, which was also
implied in the plural form of Derrida’s lecture (“Declarations of Independence”), is that
there is no single declaration of independence from which sovereign authority is derived.
Any declaration that succeeds in creating a political entity or object is also necessarily a
declaration of independence. Hence, any productive action in the political field in fact
involves an implicit declaration of independent sovereign existence.
This conclusion calls for a new understanding of the way in which the sovereign exists in
time. Though it seems continuous, sovereign existence is discrete and interrupted, jumping
from one instant to the next, from one sovereign event to another, from declaration to
declaration and from self-constitution to re-self-constitution. The fact that it is usually the
same sovereign authority that is reauthorized in each successful declaration is contingent
rather than necessary (indeed, this should be fairly obvious since otherwise no revolts,
revolutions, or other regime changes could ever take place). Eventually, the self-constitution
of the sovereign subject – the same self-constitution that is both a condition and a result
of the declaration – creates the sovereign’s authority, but as the validation of this selfauthorization is dependent on the new discourse it establishes, sovereign existence is an
unstable one, moving from one discrete instant to the next and requiring a reconstitution
of the sovereign at each instant of his existence. With the declaration the sovereign does
not renew his authority and independence – he creates them anew. Being sovereign is
thus not a status but an ongoing and ceaseless process, while the declaration is the main
politico-linguistic instrument of this process.
***
Now that the analogy to Derrida’s argument has concluded our temporal characterization
of the declaration, and helped us to explain why a formal treatment of the political does
not cancel the importance of concrete discourse and politics regarding the declaration, it
is finally possible to attempt a comprehensive political definition of the declaration. The
theoretical move that I have tried to carry out here is no more – but also no less – than a
triple displacement of the meaning of the declaration as defined by the three elements of
Austin’s account: the productivity of the declaration was transferred from the linguistic
field to the sphere of the political; the theoretical emphasis found in Austin’s discussion
was diverted from the declarer’s identity to his authority, and, as a consequence, the politics
of the chain of authorizing instances was replaced with a political theology of sovereign
self-constitution; and finally, the time of the declaration, or more precisely, its instant, was
transformed from a regular unit of continuous, diachronic time to a discrete, synchronic
unit of non-continuous or transcendental present, which forces a ceaseless and everrenewing self-constitution. Based on the new meanings I have given these three elements,
an inclusive formal definition of the declaration now seems possible: the declaration is a
discrete instant of free, independent, linguistic doing, which, by virtue of successfully
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Declaration
creating a political object and/or entity, constitutes – explicitly or implicitly, for the
first time or anew – the sovereign subject and the discursive space that enables us to
refer to him as such.
This is, of course, a formal and abstract definition, one that requires thickening and
supplementation by various fields and discourses when applied to particular political
situations. But it should by now be clear that this is not a disadvantage. On the contrary,
its formal essence is what enables the declaration to be a politico-linguistic instrument that
is applicable to possible future forms of government, regimes, and sovereignties, some of
which may differ profoundly from the ones we know today. This sort of openness to what
is yet to come appears to me to be a necessary condition for any definition that aims at
a theoretical conceptualization of political phenomena; and, as Derrida has shown, such
openness is more crucial still when it comes to the political instant that constitutes the
sovereign subject and creates the discursive space that enables all politics – that is, the
instant of declaration.
Endnotes
1. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, second ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1975). It is important to note that this distinction is not the final step of Austin’s argument. He later goes
on to conclude that constative and performative speech acts are not in complete opposition, since constative
utterances, such as descriptions and claims, may also lead to real actions and tangible change in the world.
Accordingly, the final division he suggests is actually a triad: every speech act simultaneously includes a
locutionary act of transmitting content, an illocutionary act of displaying “a certain (conventional) force”,
and a perlocutionary act leading to a non-linguistic outcome (p. 109). Nevertheless, this triple division does
not cancel the distinction between constative and performative speech acts but rather simply locates both
types of acts under the illocutionary title. Therefore, and in order to avoid unnecessary complication and
digression, the starting point of the current discussion is based on the constative/performative distinction
rather than the locutionary/illocutionary/perlocutionary triad.
2. Ibid., p. 60.
3. Ibid., p. 47.
4. This problem does not exist in Hebrew where the executive declaration or denunciation is called Hakhraza
[‫ ]הכרזה‬and the revealing utterance is called Hatzhara [‫]הצהרה‬. The latter, whose Arabic origin is T’haher [‫]ظهر‬,
literally means “back”, or more accurately, “being on the back of someone or something”, and it is interesting
to note that this indication of elevation is in fact connected to the indication of light that exists in German,
French, and English: because the sun’s light is brightest and strongest when it reaches the highest point in the
sky, words deriving from Hatzhara have various connections to light (e.g. Tzohora’im [‫ ]צהריים‬is noon, Tzohar
[‫ ]צוהר‬is a high window that lets in the light, and Yitzhar [‫ ]יצהר‬is the oil used to produce light).
5. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 61.
6. Ibid., pp. 28-32.
7. My use of the distinction between “the political” (le politique) and “politics” (la politique) is indebted
to the work of Claude Lefort. See especially: Claude Lefort, Le Travail de l’œuvre, Machiavel (Paris:
Mafte’akh 1e /2010
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Gallimard, 1972); Claude Lefort, Essais sur le politique : XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Seuil, 1986). For a
more detailed account of the uses of this distinction in current French thought, see: Olivier Marchart, PostFoundational Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), Ch. 2.
8. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated by George
Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 5.
9. Ibid., p. 32.
10. It is precisely because it refers to the declaration of a state of exception as just one example of linguisticjuridical creation of a political being that this formal conclusion can cope with criticisms such as the one made
by Žižek, who claims that the notion of sovereign exception developed by Schmitt (and later by Agamben)
cannot be fully understood within the limited conceptual framework of the state of emergency, and that it
must be integrated in a more general analysis of the link between ideology, materialism, and totalitarianism.
See: Slavoj Žižek, “Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post-Politics”, in The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, edited
by Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1999), pp. 18–37; Slavoj Žižek, The Universal Exception: Selected
Writings, vol. 2 (London: Continuum, 2006), Ch. 11.
For a discussion that suggests a possible connection between Schmitt and Žižek (as well as Derrida, who will
be mentioned below), see: Erik Vogt, “Schmittian Traces in Žižek’s Political Theology (and Some Derridian
Specters)”, Diacritics, 36.1, pp. 14–29.
11. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 36.
12. See: Masekhet Avot, 5, 1.
13. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), ch. 1.1.
14. In a different (but not completely unrelated) discussion of the self-legitimization paradox involved in
declarations of independence, Lyotard analyses the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
See: Jean Francois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in dispute, translated by Georges van den Abbeele
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 145-150.
15. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context”, in Limited Inc., translated by Samuel Weber & Jeffrey
Mehlman (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1998), pp. 1-23.
16. Jacques Derrida, “Declarations of Independence”, translated by Tom Keenan and Tom Pepper, New
Political Science 15, pp. 10-14.
17. The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, at http://www.archives.gov/national-archivesexperience/charters/declaration_transcript.html
[last viewed on 07 March 2010]
18. Quoted at http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/heb/megilat.htm [in Hebrew. Last viewed on 07 March
2010].
19. Derrida, “Signature Event Context”, p. 20.
20. For a detailed account of this debate, see: Roy Boyne, Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
21. Jacques Derrida, “Cogito and the History of Madness”, in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan
Bass (University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 47-51; 55; 309 n. 24.
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Declaration
22. Derrida, “Cogito and the History of Madness”, p. 58.
23. René Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, in Philosophical Essays and Correspondence,
edited by Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, In.: Hackett, 2000), p. 141.
24. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 47.
25. Derrida, “Cogito and the History of Madness”, pp. 58-61.