Asking who the enemy is already constitutes an act of war

Evidence

As Derrida puts it in a different, but relevant context commenting on Schmitt, the question of the enemy “is no longer a theoretical question, a question of knowledge or of recognition, but first of all, like recognition in Hegel, a calling into question, an act of war. The question is posed, it is posed to someone; someone puts it to himself like an attack, a complaint, the premeditation of a crime, a calling into question of the one who questions or interrogates. It is posed to oneself in terms of a break into the other, or its breaching. One cannot question oneself on the enemy without recognizing him -that is, without recognizing that he is already lodged in the question” (Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 162-63/F187-88) 23. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 999

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that the enemy is ‘already lodged in the question’ — that interrogation itself enacts recognition-as-hostility — is dense enough to sit with; it reframes epistemology as combat.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 999
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”