Editing Jacques Derrida (section)

==Politics==
Derrida engaged with a variety of political issues, movements, and debates throughout his career. In 1968, he participated in the [[May 68]] protests in France [and met frequently with [[Maurice Blanchot]]]?.<ref>Bennington (1991), p. 332.</ref> However, he expressed concerns about the "cult of spontaneity" and anti-unionist euphoria that he observed.<ref name="Derrida91MagLitEwald">Derrida (1991), "A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking", pp. 347–9.</ref> He also registered his objections to the [[Vietnam War]] in a lecture he gave in the United States. Derrida signed a [[French petition against age of consent laws|petition against age of consent laws]] in 1977,<ref>{{cite news |last=Henley |first=Jon |date=2001-02-23 |title=Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68 |website=[[The Guardian]] |location=Paris |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley |url-status=live |access-date=2019-10-20 |archive-date=2019-11-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191105034721/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley}}{{blockquote|'French law recognises in 12- and 13-year-olds a capacity for discernment that it can judge and punish,' said a second petition signed by Sartre and De Beauvoir, along with fellow intellectuals Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida; a leading child psychologist, Françoise Dolto; and writers Philippe Sollers, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Louis Aragon. 'But it rejects such a capacity when the child's emotional and sexual life is concerned. It should acknowledge the right of children and adolescents to have relations with whomever they choose.'}}</ref> and in 1981 he founded the French Jan Hus association to support dissident Czech intellectuals.<ref name="Powell06p151">Powell (2006), p. 151.</ref>

In 1981, Derrida was arrested by the [[Government structure of Communist Czechoslovakia|Czechoslovakian government]] for leading a conference without authorization and charged with [[Illegal drug trade|drug trafficking]], although he claimed the drugs were planted on him. He was released with the help of the [[François Mitterrand|Mitterrand]] government and [[Michel Foucault]].<ref>Jacques Derrida, "'To Do Justice to Freud': The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis," ''Resistances of Psychoanalysis'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 70–71.</ref> Derrida was an advocate for [[nuclear disarmament]],<ref>Derrida, Jacques. "No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)". Diacritics, 1984.</ref> protested against [[apartheid]] in [[South Africa]], and met with [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] intellectuals during a visit to [[Jerusalem]] in 1988. He also opposed [[capital punishment]] and was involved in the campaign to free [[Mumia Abu-Jamal]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}

Although Derrida was not associated with any political party until 1995, he supported the Socialist candidacy of [[Lionel Jospin]], despite misgivings about such organizations.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 234.</ref> In the [[2002 French presidential election]], he refused to vote in the [[Two-round system|run-off election]] between [[History of far-right movements in France|far-right]] candidate [[Jean-Marie Le Pen]] and [[Centre-right politics|center-right]] [[Jacques Chirac]], citing a lack of acceptable choices.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT437].</ref> Derrida opposed the [[2003 invasion of Iraq]] and was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself within and beyond philosophy. He focused on understanding the political implications of notions such as responsibility, reason of state, decision, sovereignty, and democracy. By 2000, he was theorizing "democracy to come" and thinking about the limitations of existing democracies.{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}