Encounter to Come: two modes of deconstruction in “Faith and Knowledge” (original) (raw)

2022, The 7th Derrida Today Conference

In “Faith and Knowledge” (1994), Jacques Derrida addresses the fundamental duplicity of religion. According to Derrida, religion has not one but two sources: “the sacrosanct, the safe and sound on the one side, and faith, trustworthiness or credit on the other” (Acts of Religion, 61). Derrida thus offers two different critiques: one attacks the purity of the unscathed by demonstrating the autoimmune relation between religion and science; the other rethinks the elementary act of faith by appealing to two “historical” names, the messianicity and khōra. In light of Michael Naas’ discussion of the two essential dimensions of language implicit in Derrida’s two sources of religion, I would like to read Derrida’s two critiques in terms of two modes of deconstruction, one operating on a constructive level and the other on a performative level. By reading “Faith and Knowledge” in the context of Derrida’s writings from the late 1980s to the 1990s, this essay intends to demonstrate a quasi-progressive relationship between these two modes of deconstruction: pointing out the necessary autoimmunity in the dogmas, the deconstruction on the constative level opens up the passage between the transcendent and its deviation (i.e., between religion and science, founding law and preserving law, apophatism and atheism), which allows the deconstruction on the performative level to “name” the unthinkable opening to the given/performative time and space. This quasi-progression ensures that the two “historical” names (the messianicity and khōra) unsettle the division between the two sources of religion from within Western history. However, we shall also be wary of the inertia that arises from this quasi-progression. An overemphasis on the critique of the Judeo-Christiano-Islamic tradition from within may lead to the neglect of a certain kind of discussion of receptivity, attachment, and historicity that might have been possible in the context of metaphysical or religious diversity. Before we discuss a new religious tolerance and a democracy to come that detaches from all determinate religions, perhaps we should begin by discussing a pluralistic and heterogenous approach to the question of religion, an approach enabled by deconstruction, but still not fully discussed.