Derrida's Secret (Perjury, Testimony, Oath)

A new philosophical reflection on the secret and its importance to our contemporary political experience

The Snowden Affair, Wikileaks, the ‘lone wolf’ terrorist, Clinton’s private email account – the secret is arguably the central element of our contemporary political experience. Now, Charles Barbour looks at the basic ontological question ‘what is a secret?’

Organised as a reflection on Jacques Derrida’s later writings on secrecy, four chapters each look at a separate problematic: society and the oath, literature and testimony, philosophy and deception, and time and death.

Barbour shows that secrecy is not a negation of our relations with others, but a necessary condition of those relations. We can only reveal ourselves to one another (and, indeed, to anything other) insofar as we conceal as well.

• Provides a new philosophical reflection on the question of the secret, and its importance to contemporary political experience
• Develops a unique reading of the later work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, and of his largely overlooked discussions of the secret in his later writings and seminars
• Initiates a new method of approaching Derrida’s work – one that rejects obscurity and reveals the lucidity of his thought
• Compares Derrida’s work with that of the German sociologist Georg Simmel, and thus argues for the significance of Derrida’s work for sociology
• Connects Derrida’s work to a series of philosophical debates in the Analytic tradition, such as the problems of consciousness, self-deception, and other minds
• Compares Derrida’s work on the secret with a series of other important political thinkers, including Deleuze, Schmitt, Arendt, Bataille and Agamben.

Keywords: Secrecy, Law, Oath, Testimony, Jacques Derrida, Georg Simmel

Subject: philosophy