Ethics of Ambiguity
Ethics of Ambiguity
Ethics of Ambiguity
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^M Human Studies 24: 5-28, 2001. 5
w\ ? 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
HONGLIM RYU
Department of Political Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Abstract. This paper examines the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern
deconstruction and ethics by elaborating upon the ethico-political dimensions of de
constructionism. It embarks on a critical assessment of postmodern discourse on ethics in view
of its political implications by analyzing Jacques Derrida's and Richard Rorty's arguments
with an assumption that their positions represent a certain "logic" in the postmodern discourse
on ethics. Postmodern ethics is based on incredulity with regard to traditional metanarratives,
and it defines ethics in terms of sensitivity or responsibility to "otherness" and difference. Its
proponents believe that the negation of modern "metanarratives" opens a way to the Other
which has been marginalized and suppressed both in thought and in social practice. Derrida
and Rorty represent this position with their emphasis on the ethical nature of deconstruction
and the need to elaborate new languages for ethics. Despite postmodern appeal to ethics of
this sort, however, postmodern thinking shows its limits in dealing with most ethical-politi?
cal matters in the contemporary world. The postmodern approach to ethics, being restricted
within the perspective of the individual, does not provide any determinate framework for de?
ciding how to adjudicate conflicting ethical claims or how to link the unconditional affirma?
tion of emancipatory ideals, enlightened social criticism, and democratic accountability in
determinate political terms. In the main, this paper contends that philosophical deconstruction
and "responsibility to otherness" undermine each other in the public sphere.
Introduction
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6 HONGLIM RYU
Postmodernism, however, is a source of both hope and despair. And its am?
bivalent character can be exposed by elaborating the main themes and underly?
ing assumptions of its ethico-political discourse. This paper attempts to examine
the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern deconstruction and
ethics, and to assess critically of postmodern discourse on ethics in view of
its political implications. In elaborating upon the ethico-political dimension
of deconstructionism, the paper focuses on Jacques Derrida's and Richard
Rorty's arguments, assuming that their positions represent a certain "logic"
in the postmodern discourse on ethics.
"The postmodern turn" has been discussed in relation to a variety of theo?
retical and social phenomena in architecture, art, literature, philosophy, the
social sciences, and social movements.1 Consequentially, it is difficult to de?
lineate its multifaceted aspects and articulate its coherent themes. What is
referred to as "the postmodern problematic" (White, 1991) might provide a
background against which postmodern ethico-political concerns can be un?
derstood. Four interrelated phenomena constitute this problematic: first, the
increasingly suspicious response to foundationalist metanarratives of modern
scientific, technological, and political projects; second, the growing aware?
ness of new problems and dangers in rationalization; third, the explosion of
new informational technologies; and finally, the emergence of new social
movements. These phenomena constitute an uncertain mixture of challenges,
dilemmas, and opportunities that form a distinctive context for contemporary
ethico-political reflection. Ambiguity and uncertainty characterize the present
condition. The ambiguity of the term postmodernity and the postmodern em?
phasis on ambivalence, multiplicity, and paradox illuminate the fact that con?
temporary social reality itself can be characterized in those terms and cannot
be easily comprehended through familiar cognitive and social structures.
Nevertheless, we can identify certain basic "postmodern problematics"
underlying its ethical-political discourse. First, postmodern ethics is based on
incredulity regarding traditional metanarratives (humanism, moral progress,
historical teleology, philosophies of history, "metaphysics of presence," on?
tology, etc.). Postmodernism exemplifies a tendency towards the negation of
any positive formulation of ethical principles in the contemporary discourse
on ethics. Deconstructing traditional metanarratives, postmodernists invoke
both the Nietzschean and Heideggerian critique of the morality of humanism
and joyous affirmation of "freeplay." Second, postmodernism defines ethics
in terms of sensitivity or responsibility to "otherness" and difference. Its pro?
ponents believe that the negation of modern "metanarratives" opens a way to
the Other, which is ordinarily marginalized and suppressed both in thought
and in social practice. The assumption underlying this belief is that idea and
reality are inseparable: suppression in the realm of thought is inevitably linked
to violence in social reality. This is why postmodern thinkers, deconstructing
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 7
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8 HONGLIM RYU
Most postmodernists2 think that ethics is doomed. They question the possi?
bility of ethics because they conceive of it as a branch of philosophy which
inevitably involves logical categories, metaphysical assumptions, and onto
logical foundations - all concepts which postmodernists seek to deconstruct.
Recently, however, some commentators3 have tried to illuminate the ethical
dimension of deconstruction. They start with Derrida's assumption that an
ethical moment is essential to deconstructive reading and that ethics is the goal
or horizon of his work. The difference between Derrida's conception of eth?
ics and the traditional conception of ethics can be explicated through a read?
ing of Derrida's appropriation of Levinasian ethics. Given the difference, we
can find both negation and affirmation of the possibility of ethics in Derrida's
deconstruction. This double gesture is characteristic of his conception of eth?
ics.
When we focus on the subversive effect of deconstruction and the Ni
etzschean "joyous affirmation of the play of the world" (Derrida, 1978, p. 292),
it is understandable that Derrida's deconstructionism should be conceived as
a type of Nietzschean philosophical irrationalism which rejects the whole
legacy of post-Kantian Enlightened thought and all genre distinctions, espe?
cially those between philosophy and literature, reason and rhetoric, and lan?
guage in its constative and performative aspects. On the other hand, Derrida's
reading of Levinas in "Violence and Metaphysics" (1978, pp. 79?153) reveals
the influence of Levinas's conception of ethics on Derrida. This Levinasian
influence accounts for Derrida's characterization of deconstruction in ethical
?therefore, more or less positive?terms. Levinas opens the way for an ethi?
cal reading of deconstruction. The textual dialogue between Derrida and
Levinas makes clear that they try to define ethics or the ethical in terms of
respect or responsibility for alterity.
Levinas's work seeks to describe a primordial ethical experience. This
endeavor is distinct from the construction of a system or procedure for for?
mulating and testing the moral acceptability of certain maxims or judgments
relating to social action and duty. In this sense, Derrida (1978, p. Ill) refers
to Levinasian ethics as "an ethics of ethics." Levinas (1969, p. 43) himself
defines ethics as "the putting into question of my spontaneity by the presence
of the Other." What Levinas calls the Other (l'Autre), alterity (alt?rit?), or
exteriority (ext?riorit?), which cannot be reduced to the Same, plays an im?
portant role in Derrida's understanding of the ethical. For both Levinas and
Derrida, exteriority or the exterior (other) being is the condition of possibil?
ity of ethics and identity itself. But, according to them, the Western philosophi?
cal tradition from Parmenides to Heidegger has been "ontological" in nature,
and the ontological tradition consists of suppressing or reducing all forms of
otherness by transmuting their alterity into the Same.
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 9
The resistance of the Other to the Same, in this regard, is conceived as ethi?
cal. Levinas's distinction between "the Saying" and "the Said" (1981) makes
this point clear. The Saying is my exposure to the Other, a performative do?
ing, or an ethical performance which cannot be reduced to a constative de?
scription. The Saying is the non-thematizable ethical residue of language that
escapes comprehension, interrupts philosophy, and enacts the ethical move?
ment from the Same to the Other. By contrast, the Said is a statement, as?
sertion, or proposition, the truth or falsity of which can be philosophically
ascertained. Levinas's point is that traditional philosophy, caught in the realm
of the Said, cannot capture the structure of the ethical or ethical experience.
The ethical is the event of being in relation to an Other. But Levinas is also aware
of the fact that the ethical Saying can be violated. It can only be thematized in
the language of the ontological Said. Given this, the interruption of the onto?
logical Said by the ethical Saying means the deconstruction of the ontologi?
cal language of philosophy. In this way, Levinas articulates the primacy of the
ethical, that is, the primacy of the interhuman relationship as "an irreducible
structure upon which all the other structures rest" (1969, p. 79).
Derrida, in his deconstructive reading of Levinas, however, reveals that
Levinasian ethics still maintains the traces of totalizing ontologies and em?
piricism he seeks to overcome. Derrida's reading of Levinas exemplifies his
double meaning of ethics. Derrida (1982, p. 65) writes that a deconstructive
reading as an ethical gesture must operate with "Two texts, two hands, two
visions, two ways of listening (?coutes). Together at once and separately."
Derrida, on the one hand, accepts the Levinasian commitment to the primacy
of the ethical over the ontological. On the other, however, he is sympathetic
to Nietzschean and Heideggerian reservations about the use of the term "eth?
ics." Derrida's twofold approach to the ethical dimension of deconstruction
can also be found in the concept of the closure of metaphysics (Critchley, 1992,
pp. 59-106). Derrida (1978, p. 110) defines the problem of metaphysical clo?
sure as "the problem of the relations between belonging and the breakthrough."
Closure is the double refusal both of remaining within the limits of tradition
and of the possibility of transgressing those limits. Closure is the hinge that
facilitates the double movement between logocentrism, or a metaphysics of
presence, and its other.
What Derrida tries to show in this double treatment of ethics is the ambigu?
ous nature of the ethical or ethics. He is quite aware that Levinas's understand?
ing of ethics is articulated around an ambiguous, or double, movement between
the ontological Said and the ethical Saying. Both thinkers explicitly attempt
to displace ethics and rethink it by locating its condition of possibility in the
relation to the Other. They, however, retreat into ambiguity in their efforts to
render legible "the relation to the Other." Derrida conceives deconstruction
a double reading or interrogation of mainly philosophical texts?to be ethical
in nature. He assumes that double reading would reveal the ethical Saying at
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10 HONGLIM RYU
work within the Said of the text. Also, he believes that the articulation of a
standpoint or a place of alterity and marginality in a given text brings to the fore
the question of ethics raised within deconstruction. For Derrida, "freeplay," or
undecidability, presupposes the unconditional affirmation which motivates
deconstruction. The unconditioned ethical conditions of possibility for the
interruption of logocentric textuality are to be conceived as "the opening of
another ethics" (see Derrida, 1988, p. 122).4
Derrida regards the illumination of the gap between logical concepts and
intention as part of an "ethical-political duty." Logocentric conceptuality cre?
ates an illusion of Enlightenment and transparency based on a belief in hu?
man reason. This illusion in turn entails suppression of the Other, which is
unarticulated and unthematizable by logocentric reason. For Derrida, ideas
and reality are inseparable. He assumes that suppression of the inarticulated
and the marginalized in logocentric understanding has an inescapable effect
on social reality, in the form of violence. The Other exists in both conceptuality
and reality. Conceptual marginalization of the Other, and violence in the so?
cial world, are coterminous. This is why Derrida conceives of his deconstruc?
tion of logocentric conceptuality as ethical-political.
With respect to the goal of deconstruction as a textual practice, in particu?
lar, Derrida (1976, pp. 161-162) writes that he wishes "to reach the point of
a certain exteriority in relation to the totality of the age of logocentrism." The
task is to open a reading that produces rather than protects,5 and to dismantle
the metaphysical and rhetorical structures which are at work in the texts (both
philosophical and socio-historical), not in order to reject or discard them, but
to reinscribe them in another way. The goal of deconstruction, in other words,
is to locate a point of otherness within logocentric conceptuality and then to
deconstruct this conceptuality from that position of alterity. In the same vein,
Derrida comments that "deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but
an openness towards the other" (Kearney, 1984, p. 124). Derrida argues that
the logocentric philosophical tradition has thought, appropriated, and mastered
its other through a reduction of plurality to unity and of alterity to sameness.6
Derridian deconstruction attempts to locate "a non-site, or a non-philosophi?
cal site, from which to question philosophy" (Kearney, 1984, p. 108). De
construction attempts to attain a point of exteriority, alterity, or marginality
that is irreducible to logocentric, philosophical conceptuality.
In response to some American critics who accuse him of setting up a kind
of "all or nothing" choice between pure realization, and complete freeplay,
Derrida contends that there is no completeness for freeplay. Derrida (1988, p.
116) writes:
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 11
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12 HONGLIM RYU
ethical, etc.). With this assumption, Derrida claims that his analyses of un?
decidability concern just these pragmatic determinations and definitions, not
some vague "indeterminacy." Derrida uses undecidability rather than "inde?
terminacy" because he believes that deconstruction must be concerned with
the relational differences of textual force.
We cannot deny that in recent years questions of a political nature have been
one of the crucial axes in Derrida's writing. His writings on racism, apartheid,
nuclear criticism, law, the politics of friendship, the university, and de Man's
and Heidegger's political engagement, contain explicit political intent and
implications. The accusation that Derrida avoids discussions of ethical-political
responsibility and that deconstruction leads to either an amoral anarchism or
a de-politicized quietism does not seem to be valid. More relevant, therefore,
is the question of whether his understanding of the political moments of de?
cisions, actions, conflicts, and judgments contributes to a deeper understand?
ing of the political in the contemporary world. More specifically, relevant
criticism has to focus on whether or how deconstruction, involving such no?
tions as undecidability, diff?rance, and freeplay, allows Derrida to address and
account for political questions.
According to Derrida, deconstruction takes place in the form of a double
reading of texts. While this double reading is mainly concerned with philo?
sophical texts, the word text does not suspend reference "to history, to the
world, to reality, to being and especially not to the other" (Derrida, 1988, p.
37). For Derrida (1988, p. 136), text qua context means "the entire 'real-his
tory-of-the-world.'" What he calls "text" implies all structures or all possible
referents which are called "real," "economic," "historical," "socio-institu
tional." Derrida therefore assumes, "there is nothing outside the text" (Derrida,
1988, p. 148). In this respect, Derrida argues that deconstruction as what takes
place in reading texts involves an ethical affirmation and intervention in real
social practices.
The paradox, however, that haunts Derridian deconstructive discourse is
that the only language available to deconstruction is that of philosophy, or
logocentrism. This ambiguous situation of both belonging and not belonging
to what is to be deconstructed describes the problem of closure, that is, the
problem of a double reading which risks "ceaselessly falling back inside" what
it deconstructs (Derrida, 1976, p. 14).
Derrida claims that he is not endorsing a philosophical irrationalism or
unlimited relativism of interpretive discourse. He rejects the suggestion that
since the deconstructionist is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or unity
of meaning, he cannot demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preci?
sion, and rigor. A close reading of his writings, Derrida contends, would re?
veal that the value of truth is never contested or destroyed, but only reinscribed
in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. Derrida's endorsement of
the value of "enlightened" reason for informed rational critique can be found
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 13
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14 HONGLIM RYU
tive. Derrida (1984, p. 30) even contends that there is a homonym between
Kantian criticism and "nuclear criticism." Despite his ceaseless questioning
and problematization of the principle of reason, his double gesture or de
construction as a strategy for thinking within and against the "logic" of nuclear
deterrence cannot be easily identified with a strain of postmodern irrational?
ism.8 In a certain way, deconstruction can be employed as a means of sub?
verting any claims to legitimacy in order to show how dominant political
institutions or practices are based upon a set of undecidable or unjustifiable
assumptions.9 And Derrida's emphasis on diff?rance can direct our attention
toward the repressed, excluded history of the victim. The claim underlying
his project of deconstruction is that while the history of a logocentric meta?
physics of presence is given from the perspective of the victor, a respect for
the Other, as his conception of the ethical implies, can open a way to speak of
the history of the victimized and the marginalized.
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 15
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16 HONGLIM RYU
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 17
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18 HONGLIM RYU
Moral commitment, Rorty argues, does not require taking seriously all mat?
ters that are, for moral reasons, taken seriously. On the contrary, it may re?
quire trying to josh people out of the habit of taking those topics so seriously.
Rorty thinks that there are serious reasons for doing so. More generally, he
recommends that we should not regard the aesthetic as the enemy of the moral.
He argues that in the recent history of liberal societies, the willingness to view
matters aesthetically-to be content to indulge in what Schiller called "play"
and to discard what Nietzsche called "the spirit of seriousness"-has been an
important vehicle of moral progress.
Rorty sees Derrida's work as confined to the private realm, to the ironist's
personal quest for perfection and autonomy, which has no public or political
significance. The core of Rorty's argument lies in the distinction between the
private and the public. In his "Moral Identity and Private Autonomy: The Case
of Foucault," Rorty writes about the tension between Foucault's mixed and
complicated motives, which is "characteristic of the Romantic intellectual who
is also a citizen of a democratic society" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 193). For such an
intellectual, Rorty holds, moral identity ? the sense of his relations to most
other human beings - does not exhaust his self-description. What is more im?
portant is his private search for autonomy, his rapport ? soi, his refusal to be
exhaustively describable in words which apply to anyone other than himself.
Rorty, juxtaposing moral identity and private autonomy, gives his qualified
endorsement of the Nietzschean and Heideggerian goal of self-overcoming
and self-invention as "a good model for an individual human being, but a very
bad model for a society" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 196).
Rorty, however, differentiates himself from anarchist tendency in any pro?
jection of the desire for private autonomy onto politics. He describes Foucault
as a liberal whose politics is the standard liberal's attempt to alleviate unnec?
essary suffering. Rorty also views Foucault as a liberal in that Foucault does
not urge human beings in general to be self-inventive or autonomous, and in
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 19
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20 HONGLIM RYU
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 21
sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other unfa?
miliar people.15
In response to "irresponsible" attacks on liberal institutions and culture by
both radicals and neo-conservatives, Rorty emphasizes the need to make lib?
eralism "look attractive." His insistent negation of "grounding" leads to "the
claim that liberal culture needs an improved self-description rather than a set
of foundations" (Rorty, 1989, p. 52). Rorty admits that it was natural for lib?
eral political thought in the eighteenth century to try to find True and Rational
foundations in association with Enlightenment scientism, the most promis?
ing cultural development of the time. Rorty argues, however, that the "logical,"
"methodical," and "objective" tactic has become less useful and convincing.
In the contemporary situation, the basic assumptions and promises of the sci?
ences are to a great extent discredited by intellectuals in various fields. Hence
the need to redescribe liberalism in its institutional and cultural forms "as the
hope that culture as a whole can be 'poeticized' rather than as the Enlighten?
ment hope that it can be 'rationalized' or 'scienticized' . . . [And] an ideally
liberal polity would be one whose cultural hero is Bloom's 'strong poet' rather
than the warrior, the priest, the sage, or the truth-seeking, 'logical,' 'objec?
tive' scientist" (Rorty, 1989, p. 53).
Rorty argues that we cannot transcend history and institutions. The funda?
mental premise of his argument is that "a belief can still regulate action, can
still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this
belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance"
(Rorty, 1989, p. 189). His insistence on contingency and consequent opposi?
tion to ideas like "essence," "nature," and "foundation" lead to the claim that
what counts as being a decent human being is relative to historical circum?
stance, a matter of transient consensus about what attitudes are normal and
what practices are just or unjust. However, Rorty's pragmatic rejection of the
principle of reason or Rationality, invoking a consensus-view of truth, entails
significant problems with respect to the possibility of informed rational cri?
tique. His pragmatist position tends to ignore the extent to which reason, in
its cultural and institutional forms, has shaped almost every aspect of modern
experience and set the main terms for discourse on public and private issues.
Also Rorty fails to recognize that this modern experience can be understood
and explained only from a critical standpoint with which it becomes possible
to uphold the values of "enlightened" reason embedded in the exercise of social
criticism.
Conclusion
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22 HONGLIM RYU
that there exists no theoretical justification for ethical commands, and that our
ethical decisions should be made without recourse to a positive articulation
of criteria. For instance, Lyotard's "pagan" ethics suggests that "we are in the
position of Aristotle's prudent individual, who makes judgments about the just
and the unjust without the least criterion" (Lyotard and Th?baud, 1985, p. 14).
Also, his defense of the radical incommensurability of "language-games"
implies that no a priori, categorical criteria exist to determine how to make
moral judgments.
This is the motif of "negative autonomy" in postmodernist thought (nega?
tive in the sense that it abandons the concept of a coherent agent) which un?
derlies its defense of difference, heterogeneity, marginality, and non-identity
against the coercive power of totalization and closure. In the same vein, for
postmodernists, ethics means remaining suspicious of the Utopian images
generated by self-generating society with its self-conscious commitment to
humanism. These hesitant, passive aspects of postmodern thinking, however,
undercut any notion of a deliberate and collective self-determination.
While it is rather difficult to discern any positive alternatives in the post?
modern discourse on ethics, postmodern thinkers seemingly advocate a radi?
cally individualist anarchy in which social interactions are based on "aesthetic"
considerations (Featherstone, 1992). Foucault, for example, has explicitly
adopted the Nietzschean advocacy of aesthetic self-creation as an ideal, in?
sisting that "we have to create ourselves as a work of art" (Foucault, 1984, p.
351). Given this idea, it is not surprising that postmodern ethics privileges art
and literature over any positive theoretical accounts of the ethical and the po?
litical, or at least blurs such a distinction in the spirit of a so-called "paraes
thetic" distrust of the very attempt to differentiate them (see Carroll, 1987).
But what is problematical is that in postmodern thinking, "the aesthetic" tends
to become identified with the ecstatic (Bataille), the unavowable (Blanchot),
the unpresentable, and the sublime (Lyotard). In this way, even the term "the
aesthetic" becomes reified.
A possibility remains for reading or reformulating postmodern decon?
struction as a Utopian ethics (see Cornell, 1992). If the intent of postmodern
deconstruction is to expose the limits or the excesses of any system (that is,
to demonstrate that there is always an Other to the system which cannot be
articulated positively), then an ethical aspiration exists behind that exposure
or demonstration. For postmodernists, however, the recognition of this limit
always remains in the realm of the undecidable, which is identified with that
of the ethical. Here, we can see another case of reification: the ethical becomes
the indeterminate. The very possibility of ethics is negated by assuming that
no positive socio-historical determinations are possible. Apolitical commit?
ment to the principle of tolerance and liberal political ideals seems hardly
compatible with a philosophical project of deconstruction. Emancipatory ide?
als themselves require us to specify the historical conditions for their realiza
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 23
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24 HONGLIM RYU
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 25
Notes
1. For useful discussions of the postmodern turn and its multifaceted nature, see R. Boyne
and A. Rattansi (1990); D. Harvey (1989); E.A. Kaplan (1988); A. Ross (1988).
2. For example, H. Bloom, et al. (1979); R. Gasch? (1986); I. Harvey (1986).
3. For example, R. Bernasconi (1987); D. Cornell (1992); S. Critchley (1992); R. Kearney
(1993).
4. Derrida (1988, p. 152) discusses the link between the opening of context and ethical
"unconditional" affirmation: "This leads me to elaborate rapidly what I suggested above
concerning the question of context, of its nonclosure, if you prefer, of its irreducible
opening. I thus return to the question of apartheid. It is exemplary for the questions of
responsibility and for the ethical-political stakes that underlie this discussion. In the dif?
ferent texts I have written on (against) apartheid, I have on several occasions spoken of
'unconditional' affirmation or of 'unconditional' 'appeal'. This has also happened to me
in other 'contexts' and each time that I speak of the link between deconstruction and the
'yes'. Now the very least that can be said of unconditionality (a word that I use not be
accident to recall the character of the categorical imperative in its Kantian form) is that
it is independent of every determinate context, even of the determination of a context in
general... it intervenes in the determination of a context from its very inception, from
an injunction, a law, a responsibility that transcends this or that determination of a given
context. Following this, what remains is to articulate this unconditionality with the de?
terminate (Kant would say, hypothetical) conditions of this or that context; and this is
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26 HONGLIM RYU
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ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 27
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28 HONGLIM RYU
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