Determined Violence: Derrida's structural religion

Journal of Religion

Volumn 78, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 197-211

  Smith, James K A ^a  

^a VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749839492     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/490177     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Jacques Derrida, "Foi et savoir: Les deux sources de Ia 'religion' aux limites de la simple raison," in La religion, éd. Thierry Marchaisse (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996), p. 22. (All translations from "Foi et savoir" are my own.)
2. See Jacques Derrida, "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils," trans. Catherine Porter and Edward Morris, Diacritics 13 (1983): 19.
3. For a helpful discussion of Derrida's relation to the Enlightenment, see John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1997), pp. 49-60.
4. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 28.
5. "Deconstruction and Tradition: The Villanova Roundtable with Jacques Derrida," in Caputo, ed., p. 23.
6. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 49.
7. Having also published his Circumfessiones m Jacques Derrida, ed. Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), can we now also expect his later Retractationes, where he will return to all that he has promised?
8. That is, a pure, transcendent, universal structure would seem to be everything deconstruction has set out to dismantle. Thus, if Derrida's movements have brought him to a site where he must posit just such a structure, it would seem helpful to recall that in one of his earliest texts, Derrida warned of the perils of deconstruction, "constantly risking falling back within what is being deconstructed" (see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. Spivak [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976], p. 14).
9. Before the questioning of philosophy, there is a fundamental trust in the promise (Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989], pp. 129-34);
10. and before the "seeing" of "knowledge" (voir/savoir), there is the faith of blindness (Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993]).
11. I have analyzed these themes much more extensively in my article "The Art of Christian Atheism: Faith and Philosophy in Early Heidegger," Faith and Philosophy 14, no. 1 (1997), pp. 71-81, esp. pp. 78-79.
12. Derrida, Circumfessions, p. 154.
13. Jacques Derrida, "Sauf le nom," trans. John P. Leavey, in On the Name (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 49-51.
14. Derrida links all of these motifs as ways of asking the "question of the gift" (Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992], p. x). Each of these logics is explored in different texts: on the gift
15. see Jacques Derrida, "Psyche: Inventions of the Other," trans.
16. Catharine Porter, in Reading de Man Reading, ed. Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 25-65;
17. and on the logic of Viens! see Jacques Derrida, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in Derrida and Negative Theology, ed. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 25-71.
18. Cp., Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pp. 40, 80.
19. on formalization, see "Sauf le nom," p. 76;
20. and on repetition, see Gift of Death, pp. 23, 49.
21. "Sauf le nom," p. 67;
22. and "Foi et savoir," p. 16.
23. "Sauf le nom," p. 67.
24. "Foi et savoir," pp. 16-17.
25. Specters of Marx, p. 167.
26. "Deconstruction and Tradition" (n. 7 above), p. 23.
27. See, e.g., his analyses of fallenness and their accompanying disclaimers, in Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 283
28. and Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 220, 224.
29. For a helpful discussion of Levinas's project of "translation" and the relationship between the Judaic and philosophy in his thought, see Jill Robbins, Prodigal Son/Elder Brother: Interpretation and Alterity in Augustine, Petrarch, Kafka, Levinas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 100-132.
30. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 140.
31. On democracy, see "Foi et savoir," p. 29;
32. Caputo, p. 142.
33. Jacques Derrida, "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in Coward and Foshay, eds., pp. 88-94.
34. For further discussion, see my "How to Avoid Not Speaking: Attestations," in Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy on the Threshold of Spirituality, ed. James H. Olthuis, Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham University Press 1997), pp. 217-34.
35. "How to Avoid Speaking," p. 94.
36. For a sketch of this alternative critique of fundamentalism, see James K. A. Smith and Shane R. Cudney, "Postmodern Freedom and the Growth of Fundamentalism: Was the Grand Inquisitor Right?" Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 25 (1996): pp. 35-49.