• DOI:10.1086/695377
• Corpus ID: 224798450

Apartheid / Apartheid / [   ]

@article{Makdisi2018ApartheidA,
  title={Apartheid / Apartheid / [   ]},
  author={Saree Makdisi},
  journal={Critical Inquiry},
  year={2018},
  volume={44},
  pages={304 - 330}
}

• Saree Makdisi
• Published 1 January 2018
• Art
• Critical Inquiry

“APARTHEID: by itself the word occupies the terrain like a concentration camp,” wrote Jacques Derrida in an issue of this journal thirtythree years ago. “This last-born of many racisms is also the only one surviving in the world, at least the only one still parading itself in a political constitution. It remains the only one on the scene to dare to say its name and to present itself for what it is: a legal defiance taken by homo politicus, a juridical racism and a state racism.” In reply to a critique by Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon, Derrida restated one of his central claims: “Apartheid designates today in the eyes of the whole world, beyond all possible equivocation or pseudonymy, the last state racism on the entire planet.” Derrida was both absolutely correct and hopelessly wrong. He was wrong because there was, and is, another state racism that has long out-