Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Finishing, Starting" in Derrida and the Time of the Political
The unrealizable is not just the permanent 'to-come' that will never assume the form of a person or event. The unrealizable is also the condition of possibility (what Derrida would call the 'impossible condition of possibility') for events and for persons, and in this sense what is 'to come' is already there, even always, as the condition of possibility for what exists.
There are a lotta words here, and they go by really quickly. Slow down with us, and we'll get you through this quote.
"The unrealizable" is what Derrida calls "to come." It's what deconstruction demands is not yet here and may never be (true friendship, democracy) but what we must work to achieve continually. So Butler is saying that what's "to come" doesn't just live in the future. It also in the past.
Say what?
Well, our hopes and dreams for the future determine what we do in the present, right? Like, if we want to become a doctor, we know that we have to work hard in college in order to get into med school. Our aspirations determine what plans we make and what we build in our present lives.
Without some vision of what we want our future to look like, we don't really have much of a present ("what exists"). Because the present is possible only as the product of past plans we made and followed through on. Even "persons" come into being as a result of others' aspirations for them. Quit your giggling, kiddos. Think of the way parents' hopes for their children so often their lives.
Now, we bring Butler into our deconstruction mix not only to show the movement's relevance to recent political theory, but to provide some clarification for the rest. Derrida's reflections on democracy can get murky, so it helps to have a translation like Butler's around to help us see what's at the bottom of Lake Deconstruction.