This session engages the massive contemporary resurgence of the discourse of grievance from both the political Left and Right and its redefinition and reorientation of the questions of justice and the political in relation to temporality--a temporality not constrained by the present moment. In fact, it is not too much to say that, at the current moment (in the United States, at least), the dominant mode of the political, regardless of ideology, is the politics of grievance and a call for forms of justice that fall outside the formal and procedural norms and modes to which such calls are typically delimited. This is the rationale for organizing the session, which brings together three of the most important figures in the world currently working on questions of justice, ethics, and the rethinking of the domain of the political in relation to both of these.

Farred’s paper in particular will explore the fact that grievance is entirely temporal and, as such, an address to temporality--the historic articulation of the time that was. It is a time that appends to itself various names, and these might range from injury to defeat, from disenfranchisement to loss. Out of the resilience of the time that was emerges the impetus for redress. As such, grievance is temporality in struggle with itself. As much as it seeks redress, to return the time that was to itself, grievance is determined to simultaneously extend itself against the time that is (now) in order to reinstate--with as few accommodations to the now as possible -- the time that was into perpetuity. Grievance marks a fidelity to the intensity of time that is also committed to making time both immanent and immaterial.

As Martinon will note in his paper, since one is in the unfortunate position of seeking reparation for a wrong that was done before one’s birth, and since the reparation of this immemorial wrong dooms one to always be the man of right, is it at all conceivable or even reasonable to yearn for a time in which one would be finally removed from the fatality of this originary grievance? If yes, can one then imagine a justice not stemming from grievance and reparation, but from gratefulness? Such a vision would radically alter the face of the world--imagine, a “word of thanks” establishing justice! On all accounts, this is inconceivable. But would this not be admirable? Perhaps such an impossible justice is already announced with the Yin (or Stygian) Iron, this mythological metal that has the ability of absorbing energy from either grievance or gratefulness. Right at its heart, right at the ironlike threshold between life and death, there would be the possibility of altering the fatality of all grievances and thus turning the tide of justice. If this is possible, then the negative charge of this iron can be reversed. Instead of absorbing grievances, it can also take on a grateful charge without economy, thereby laying the foundation of a new justice. Will I be able to remedy the irremediable punishment that chains me to the endless cycle of grievance and reparation and kick start justice as an-economic gratefulness? Can the transmutation of the metal and therefore of the entire history of justice be successful? This paper explores this personal journey from the enunciation of an immemorial grievance as the establishment of justice all the way to the possibility of imagining a world whereby “what is just” can finally stem from a “word of thanks” that seeks no return.

Marrati’s paper will focus on this aspect of the question as well, exploring how grievances not of one’s own can be acknowledged without attempts at appropriation, how a past that has never been experienced can nevertheless deeply affect one’s present and one’s hopes for the future.

The three speakers will engage these questions largely within a purview defined by investigations of questions of justice and the political in relation to temporality in fields of current scholarship such as contemporary philosophy (including but not limited to Derrida, Cavell, Deleuze, Nancy), Mudimbe and contemporary Rwandan thought on genocide and race, and Africana Studies. The organizer and presider will ensure that 15 minutes, at a minimum, will be available for free and open discussion by monitoring the length of each speaker’s paper, and by supervising the fielding of questions from the floor.