Nationalism, promise and fetishisation. An Introduction to Jaques Derrida´s Geslecht III

Abstract

The article introduces a limited reading of Geschlecht III (2018), by Jacques Derrida. He suggests that the seminar devoted to "El Speech in the Poem" (1953), particularly to Heidegger's philosophical nationalism, can be traced by attending to the drift of return and the motive of promise. The analysis of the movement of the promise, linked to the paraphrase and translation of the semantics of return (Heimkehr) around the homeland (Heimat), the country (Land) and the West (Abendland), has been highlighted by insisting on the margins of philosophy that, according to Derrida, inscribe Heidegger's meditation on the nation. In this context, preliminary sketches about the national and the sexual anticipated in previous stages are integrated. The outline of the comment allows us to indicate, in the last part, approaches to the "fetishistic motion" understood as a strange link between the thought of the Geschlecht and the empirical nationalism, and between the scarce negativity of the determination of sexuality (simplicity of a duplicity) and the becoming of truth (a-letheia).