Abstract

Taking its point of departure from a thread of references to Palestine in Derrida's writings, from Glas to his last texts, this essay seeks to demonstrate that these writings can be a resource for us as we navigate our way through the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It traces Derrida's complicated relation to his own Jewishness and argues that it is this complexity that enables him to guide us through the thicket of the present war in Gaza. My title, ‘No Occupation’, aims to evoke not only the slogan of the anti-war movement against Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank – and Derrida's relation to this movement – but also Israel's 2023 campaign to declare that there is ‘no occupation’. The instrumentalisation of the phrase ‘no occupation’ in different directions permits me to exploit this conflicting resonance, moving one use against another.