Jacques Derrida
The Last of the Rogue States: The ‘‘Democracy
to Come,’’ Opening in Two Turns
I have already played a great deal with this ver-
bal thing voyou, this idiom of recent or modern
French invention (dating back only to the nine-
teenth century, to the beginning, therefore, of an
urban society entering the age of industrial capi-
talism), an idiom of popular origin and barely
French, but also, in spite of or actually because of
all this, an untranslatable, or barely translatable,
incrimination, a sort of French interjection or
exclamation, ‘‘voyou!’’ which, I neglected to say,
can be turned by means of an intonation into
something tender, affectionate, maternal (my
maternal grandmother used to call me this when
Iwasachild,pretendingtobeangrywith
me, ‘‘voyou, va! ’’ [‘‘you little rascal!’’]).
1
Ihave
played a great deal with this word, which, while
remaining untranslatable, nonetheless becomes
in the expression ‘‘Etat voyou’’ a more-than-recent
translation, almost still brand new, barely used,
approximate, franglaise, of the Anglo-American
‘‘rogue state’’—that so-very-singular indictment
I discovered for the first time in my own lan-
guage a little more than a year ago, and doubly
associated with the state, when it was announced
after a cabinet meeting that the president and
The South Atlantic Quarterly :/, Spring/Summer .
English translation copyright ©  by the Board of Trust-
ees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

324 Jacques Derrida
the prime minister at the time, in spite of their ‘‘cohabitation,’’ that is, in
spite of belonging to different political parties, had agreed upon the devel-
opment of a nuclear weapon aimed at combatting or deterring what the
statement read on the steps of the Elysée Presidential Palace called Etats
voyous. I have thus spoken a great deal of this word voyou (for the word
itself is a voyou of language), of what has recently become and, such is my
hypothesis, will remain for only a short time still, a useful slogan or rallying
cry for the coalition of what are called Western democracies. In this word
voyou I have thus let appear by turns the noun and the attribute or adjective,
a nominal adjective sometimes attached to a ‘‘who’’ and sometimes accorded
to a ‘‘what,’’ for example, Etat voyou. For in the French idiom, someone can
do something that’s voyou without actually being avoyou.And,inbegin-
ning, I said successively, youmay recall, using the word voyou four different
times, sometimes as a noun, sometimes as an adjective qualifying some-
one or something of someone: ‘‘It would no doubt be, dare I say, somewhat
‘voyou’ on my part were I not to begin by declaring, yet one more time,
my gratitude’’ (voyou here qualifies something, an attitude). I then added: ‘‘I
would thus be, you might think, not only ‘voyou’ but ‘a voyou,’ a real rogue,
were I not to declare at the outset my endless and bottomless gratitude.’’
(This time, after the attribute of a subject, of a who, the substantive le voyou,
un voyou, ‘‘a rogue,’’ designated the subject, a ‘‘who.’’)
The attribute voyou can thus sometimes be applied to a subject that is not
substantially, that is, through and through, or naturally, avoyou, a rogue.
The quality voyou is always precisely an attribution, the predicate or categoria
and, thus, the accusation leveled not against something natural but against
an institution. It is an interpretation, an assignation, and, in truth, always a
denunciation, a complaint, or an accusation, a charge, an evaluation, and a
verdict. As such it announces, prepares, andbegins to justify some sanction.
The Etat voyou must be punished, contained, rendered harmless, reduced
to a harmless state, if need be by force of law (droit) and the right (droit)
of force.
I am drawing attention to this idiomatic distinction between the adjec-
tive and the noun in order already to help us think about the fact that in this
French expression of very recent date, ‘‘Etat voyou,’’ which, even if untrans-
latable, as I said, will have been but an approximate translation of theAnglo-
American rogue state,wedonotknowexactlyhowvoyou should be heard or
understood.We do not know whether it should be, as a substantive, linked
by a hyphen to the substantive state, thereby indicating that some state is
substantially a voyou and thus would deserve to disappear as a nonconstitu-