Bettina Bergo, Joseph Cohen, and Raphael Zagury-Orly, eds. Judeities. Questions for Jacques Derrida Reviewed by (original) (raw)

Another, Other Abraham: Derrida's Figuring of Levinas's Judaism

Shofar, 2009

Through a comparison of Derrida' s late essay "Abraham, l' autre" with Gift of Death and Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas this essay illustrates how Derrida in "Abraham, l' autre" extends his efforts to derive a political thinking from Levinas' s ethics. At the heart of this political thinking is the mode of "being-Jewish" which Derrida describes as "the experience of deconstruction itself, its chance, its menace, its destiny, its earthquake." Derrida develops a self-deconstructing model of identity by way of the mode of "being Jewish," and in so doing simultaneously critiques Levinas for his use of Judaism as an exemplary model of ethical thinking and capitalizes off the tensions arising out of this model, such that the figure of the Jew becomes ironically exemplary for Derrida of a political identity that would call into question the possibility that one could ever claim it as one' s own.

The Teshuvah of Jacques Derrrida: Judaism H'ors Texte

ABSTRACT: ‘Sparks’of Judeity appear everywhere within Derrida’s discourse.They illuminate previous gnomic terminology and propel future focus. His early deconstruction of Husserl’s pseudo-intuitive epoché in 1964, for example, accrues added significance when seen as a pseudo-interiority in The Gift of Death in contrast to the silent avowal of Kierkegaard’s Abraham in the moment of the Akedah. Levinas's “ethics beyond ethics” allows Derrida to launch a second sailing after deconstruction. In the autobiographical “Circumfession,” Derrida assumes an inner life hors-texte and, sans exemplarity, a personal election as a Jew. In “Abraham, the Other,” he claims a “hyper-ethical, hyper-political, hyper-philosophical responsibility…that burns at the most irridescent core of what calls itself ‘jew.’” Derrida’s teshuvah finds its full fruition in later political writings such as “Force of Law,” enacting a new equation: deconstruction is justice” (243). "!

Autobiography-Heterobiography, Philosophy and Religion in Jacques Derrida

In this essay, my ambition is to show how the movements of never stable meanings that link biography and religion, the personal version of his life that Derrida gives us and his philosophical-theological reflection, especially on Judaic and Christian religious traditions, are interwoven in an inextricable whole to such an extent that they describe a kind of ineffable literary and philosophical notion of religion. Notwithstanding Derrida’s personal way of writing and thinking, I want to suggest that this notion of religion emerges through such recurrent topics as origin, promise, forgiveness, dissociation, the unconditional, the un-deconstructable and the possibility of the impossible.

Religion as Response: Derrida's Responsibility to the Question of the Question

2016

fullest treatment of religion comes . In it he states, Of the origins and borders of the question as of the response. In this thesis I explore to and fro of question and response as a means for thinking through what is taking place in the event of religion. nd the way it engages with four thinkers who influence his exploration of religion as response: Heidegger, Kant, Levinas and Kierkegaard. The thesis reveals that, rather than approaching religion as a site to be excavated and examined as if we might get to its interests lie in the event of religion that would exceed thematisation. As such, he attempts a way to speak of religion without ever saying what religion is, for when it comes to religion everything tends to drop out of sight as soon as knowledge is framed in terms of mastery. For Derrida, knowledge is not opposed to faith, but rather something that is infused with faith as it participates in the fiduciary opening that performativity affords. This faith-filled reasoning ope...

Autobiography-Heterobiography, Philosophy and Religion in Derrida

Symposium, 2010

In this paper, I would like to show how the movements of never stable meanings that link biography and religion are figured and interwoven throughout a kind of ineffable literary and philosophical notion of religion. Religion is a notion that can be understood through a cluster of topics such as origin, promise, dissociation, the unconditional, forgiveness, the undeconstructable and the possibility of the impossible-terms and expressions that Derrida suggests describe God. The Last Derrida Despite Derrida's hesitation to speak of an evolution in his thought, it is widely believed, so much so as to become commonplace, that during the last decades of his life, Derrida, in dealing with the topic of identity, sharpened important distinctions between singularity and universality, the conditional and the unconditional, the otherness of the other and the absolute Other. The day after Derrida's death, October 14, 2004, the New York Times' Mark C. Taylor wrote: During last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings. Yet, we live in an age in which people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side, shape major conflicts. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly dis