Modal Aporias: Derrida on the reale Möglichkeit of Friends and Enemies in Schmitt

Abstract

Derrida’s engagement with Carl Schmitt, in Politics of Friendship, pursues multiple, intertwined deconstructive strategies. This chapter retraces the lines of approach made through the modal category “real possibility”, a modality that appears to lie in the space of spectrality, between the usual categories of possibility and actuality. Elaborating Derrida’s attempted “spectral inversion” of Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction, the chapter critiques a key moment in which Derrida equivocates between the exceptional and the improbable. Instead of the spectral, the chapter suggests that post-thermodynamic models of energy offer a better model for Schmitt’s use of the real possibility, based on his interest in Georges Sorel.