Infrapolitical Derrida: The Ontic Determination of Politics beyond Empiricism

Revisiting the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas through Derrida’s essay “Violence and Metaphysics,” Moreiras identifies a strain of Derridean thought that subverts the logic of heliopolitics, or a politics of light, that stands at the center of Derrida’s critique of Levinas’s treatment of the Platonic sun. Such a shadow politics, marrano politics, or infrapolitics “would be the region of theoretical practice that solicits the constitutive opacity of the ethicopolitical relation—hence admits, for every practical decision, of no preceding political or ethical light to mark the path.”