Thursday, October 14, 2004
(8:04 PM) | Anonymous:
I rightly pass for a Christian: Jacques Derrida Week.
When Derrida addressed the American Academy of Religion he told them that he "I rightly pass for an atheist." According to John Caputo when asked why he didn't just say that he was an atheist Derrida responded by saying, "Because I don't know. Maybe I'm not an atheist."When I first read Derrida it was in a Philosophy of Religion class my freshman year of college. The professor, Craig Keen, had us read Derrida's essay "Différance", followed by a discussion of the implications for theology. Since that class Derrida’s specter haunted all subsequent readings of religion; whether it be ‘real’ theology or Kierkegaard. I feel no shame in the fact that my background began in theology, or that, for the first two years of college, everything I read philosophically was done in the harsh light of my religious beliefs. I affirm that past (Oui! Oui!) and, in fact, I think I rightly pass for a Christian ("Why not just say you are a Christian?" "Because I don't know. Maybe I'm not a Christian.").
Derrida's "religious turn" has been an aporia for me, one that served to challenge any and all theology I would read. It even served to challange any actual religious practices, like partaking of Eucharist. It wasn't the merely "liberal" ideas that Derrida has kept over (as an Enlightenment thinker sans the Enlightenment), those I could deal with, it was the honesty that his thought demanded. This honesty came to me in two-fold manner, though they act deconstructively on each other. "Do you really believe in God? With all that 'God' refers to, signifies, and excludes? Can you really deny that have been given a promise?" I don't want to believe in God - to everything to which that word refers. And yet I do feel a call, a certain promise.
I'm not sold on the whole after-life thing, and I don't really care anymore. Derrida, as a good Jew, didn't either. I can’t even begin to think what Derrida’s death as death means. I do know that his work continues to make God-like demands akin to the one made of Abraham. Like Marx, another errant believer, his work must turn to dust and ashes if we are to faithfully rise from them.
