[HOME] [BOOKS] [ORDERING] [JOURNALS] [ABSTRACTS] [LINKS] [SPECIAL OFFERS]

Necati Polat, "The Same and the Similar: Nihilism and Mimetic Hostility", Law and Critique Vol.V/2 (1994), 219-239: A recent rhetoric of so-called nihilism in legal theory seems merely to reproduce one of the fundamental contradictions of the traditional rhetoric: a distinct hostility, towards representation, mimesis, a pattern indicated on the basis of Western philosophy in the writings of Jacques Derrida, the philosopher who, paradoxically, has consistently been invoked by the very "nihilists" to refute the claims of the traditionalists on the workings of law. The essay aims to trace the specific pattern that seems to mark the arguments about nihilism. First it presents some of the references in the debate to the Nietzschean formulation of the concept. This is followed by a discussion of the critique of nihilism by Heidegger. The essay then points out the logic which forms the core of the pattern - a logic of betrayal. This logic is responsible for the understanding of the nihilistic conception as one of presence and evasion. The presuppositions of presence in the nihilistic conception revive the traditional notion of identity, of the same. And evasion signifies a revival of the traditional concept of autonomy: as a presumed exception to the primordiality of the mimetic, the similar, evasion becomes a condition of discursive validity. Two intertwined paradoxes are therefore formed. As presencing, nihilism signifies re-presencing while de-presencing. As evasion, nihilism signifies mimetic uneasiness, even hostility, in the face of a discourse that is at the same time committed to the idea of the primordiality of the mimetic. This logic typically marks Peter Goodrich's work.

[HOME] [BOOKS] [ORDERING] [JOURNALS] [ABSTRACTS] [LINKS] [SPECIAL OFFERS]