Just Deconstruction? Derrida and Global Ethics

Abstract

Critical theory/practice has long held an ambiguous relationship with justice and questions of practical morality.¹ Marx characteristically eschewed morality as an instance of the liberal superstructure allowing for piecemeal administrative justice within society, while forgoing the question of changing that society. The equality in scientific socialism was an ideal to be realized, once the capitalist structures of power and domination were overthrown and a communist system erected. Similarly, Critical Theorists and writers from a postmodern perspective regard justice as an ideal to be located in the on-going overhaul of a diverse set of social structures. Their now relative establishment in International Relations (IR) has added to the discipline’s previous concern with material state power, a focus on power dynamics operating through class, culture, gender, language discourse, and the media.