'In contrast, according to Marx it's superstition and prejudice that are the basis of despotism. "Enlightenment" in his sense, a sense different from the sense invoked by those who find it impossible to imagine human relations as other than "despotic" (i.e. other than as various forms of sadistic domination), is the basis of "freedom" elaborated ethically as relations of "mutual recognition", an idea different from Derrida's idea of "respect".'
Yes, though in fairness to Asad and Derrida, the special conditions of French colonialism in the twentieth century meant that they tended to dominate other nations in the name of reason and republicanism, appealing to the enlightenment traditions that are justly associated with French history.
The error in much of the critical theory in France thereafter is that it took the ideological appeal to enlightenment values made by French colonialism as good coin, failing to distinguish between actual enlightenment and its falsification as pro-Empire propaganda. From there it was easy to yoke the liberation struggle in Algeria to the struggle against rationality in the universities.
Fanon - who at least had the virtue of fighting with the FLN - was the original source for these ideas. Other FLN commanders, though, saw their struggle for freedom as a realisation of enlightenment ideals, and the culmination of the revolution against autocracy in 1789, not a reaction against it.
I look at this in detail, here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/defeat-french-humanism.htm