Remembering to Forgive.

The reaction to the events of September 11 highlights the urgency of an ethics of engagement in world politics. Whilst the US government imposes its ‘solutions’ on the world, intellectuals seem to mainly stare in disbelief. An apparently unbridgeable gap has opened between those who see a need to make the world ‘secure’ and those who either oppose war in principle or object to what they regard as imperialist imposition, or both. This paper takes its cue from the work of Jacques Derrida to explore the need, for intellectuals, to elaborate on what responding to the Other may mean at this time. In this context, it draws particular attention to the nexus of responsibility and forgiveness and to the significance of remembering an identity that does not derive simply from the desire secure oneself in the face of the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]