The Trace of God

by Baring, Edward; Gordon, Peter E. ;

  It is in Christianity, retaining Hegel and Kierkegaard in the complementary movement of their resolution, that the place is defined, that the space is identified, that the site of thinking is determined as Europe. Europe is the place, the site where the very “plasticity” of Christian resolution is deployed. In this sense, the Christian resolution we have just explicated forms the place of Europe. And the defining element of this movement where Christianity stretches across Europe as that which forms the space of Europe is precisely comprehended from the already-Christian reading of the sacrifice of Isaac and of the figure of Abraham. That is, from the reading that makes Abraham and the experience of the sacrifice of Isaac a means toward the end as resolution in the “reconciliation” and “event” of Christ. In a certain manner, the resolution both Hegel and Kierkegaard furnish to the sacrifice of Isaac is, for the first, the “reconciliation,” for the second the “event,” symbolized by the figure of Christ. And it is this figure that will now harbor the name and the place “Europe.” For Europe is—returning here to the etymological source of the name—not so much the place of a philosophical universality nor the space of a geographical singularity, but the advent of a certain gaze. This gaze is turned upon resolution. It is the gaze that sees “reconciliation” and “event” co-informing and resolving one another. And the place of this co-informing and resolve is named Europe. This depiction of Europe, however, ought not to mean that it constitutes a permanent idea of fusion. Rather, it ought to mean the movement of a resolved tension between “reconciliation” and “event.” As if both Hegel and Kierkegaard were here forming the concept of Europe from the resolute plasticity of identity and difference, of self and other, of “reconciliation” and “event.”

  But in this gaze, where does Abraham stand? And furthermore, toward what or where is the gaze of Abraham turned? For Hegel and Kierkegaard this question is not a question. It is as if Abraham were at once blind to Europe and blinded by Europe. Why? Since Abraham is already informing the modality of a Christian resolution. The place of Abraham constitutes thus a blind spot in the resolute gaze that characterizes Europe. This is not to say, however, that Abraham does not have his place in Europe, but rather that his place is precisely that which stands outside, foreign, estranged to the resolution Europe is gazing upon, the resolution that, beyond Abraham, thinks “reconciliation” and “eventuality” as co-informing each other. Which means that Abraham is, in Europe, the foreigner settled in his being foreign. But what does this phrase imply? Far from Hegel and Kierkegaard but in and within their very characterization, this phrase perhaps keeps and conceals a resource yet unthought by both Hegel and Kierkegaard. Which means that perhaps Abraham is the bearer of yet unthought and hidden hypotheses outside and within Europe.

  Abrahamic hypothesis: to suspend the gaze of the resolution between “reconciliation” and “event” while proliferating its philosophical foundation. This hypothesis, torn between suspension and proliferation, leads us to imagine an-other place in the place of Europe. But we must proceed here with care and be careful not to hear in this phrase a place replacing the place of Europe. Proceed with care by attempting to think an-other place continuously displacing Europe in and within the deployment of its place. As if Abraham were the bearer or the witness of an-other gaze capable of thinking a place that at once and simultaneously suspends, brackets, defers the place of Europe in and within the constitution and institution of Europe itself. A place other than Europe in Europe. An-other gaze retracted from Europe in Europe’s own gaze. An-other place, an-other gaze, we could imagine here Abraham continuously wandering between the other than Europe and the place of Europe.

  As if Abraham was both foreign and settled in and outside Europe. And this also means that Europe is but one possible instantiation of Abraham. Not exactly an effect but more profoundly a determination of what the proper name Abraham could perhaps mean. But not its exhaustion. Here must be thought, continuously, shall we say, infinitely, an-other Abraham. An undetermined Abraham leaving the space and the place of determination entirely open and de-multiplied in yet unthought meanings, significations, futures, and histories. An-other Abraham … Jacques Derrida, recalling Kafka’s intriguing dream, once thought of an-other Abraham.14 What name could it have? Is it the name Israel? Or the name Europe? And if it does bear any of these names, could there also be, in these names, other yet unnamed potentialities than the one determined under them?

  Unprotected Religion

  Radical Theology, Radical Atheism, and the Return of Anti-Religion

  JOHN D. CAPUTO

  Postmodern theology has come of age.1 It now has its own countermovement, philosophers marching under the flag of materialism, realism, and anti-religion and complaining that the theologians are back at their old trick of appropriating critiques of religion in order to make religion stronger. So this is an occasion to clear the air and see just how hard and fast the borders are between religion and anti-religion, realism and anti-realism, materialism and anti-materialism, especially given that deconstruction is an exercise in anxiety about rigorous borders. Martin Hägglund’s Radical Atheism is a closely argued contribution to the recent debate that fits hand in glove with this countermovement, although Hägglund does not mention it.2 His book is a welcome refutation of any attempt to reduce Derrida to an anti-realist or anti-materialist, especially in the light of Meillassoux’s caricature of “correlationism,” which treats continental philosophers from Kant on as creationists.3 Given the historical violence religion has provoked and the reactionary meanness of the religious right in American politics today, I am no less nervous about “religion.” That makes it all the more important to sort out what I am saying and what I am not, since my own work on Derrida and religion, as Michael Naas points out clearly, is no less informed by protecting Derrida’s laïceté.4

  Unprotected Religion

  Deploying Derrida’s analyses of “auto-immunity,” Hägglund isolates the logic of time in Derrida, which is, at it were, the skeletal basis of everything that goes on in deconstruction. Time, he argues, is a process of coming to be and passing away such that its “radical finitude” (RA, 1) is intrinsic to its constitution and not merely a passing defect from which we can or should seek protection (immunity). The very condition under which time is given ensures that what is given will be taken away. Whatever is present is never “absolutely present” (RA, 1); it is always “divided by time,” by the “spacing” of time. Its very coming to presence is constituted by its passing away or loss of presence, its passing presence requiring the “trace” to be retained. “Pure” presence—absolute immunity (non-contamination) from passing away—is meaningless and contradictory, since nothing pure could ever be present in the first place. Pure presence is pure death. Presence immunized from spacing and passing away implies the absence of coming to be altogether. Accordingly, desiring a good in a pure or immune condition is a desire divided against itself, desiring a condition under which it would be impossible for that good to be the good that it is. If we remove the condition that consigns a good to perish, we also remove the condition that enables it to be a good. The very condition under which a good is possible—the spacing of time—is also the condition that makes it impossible for that good to be pure. Hence the desire for a pure good would not be idealistic but nihilistic. Purity of presence is not an ideal forever out of reach where reality dictates we must be willing to settle for less. Purity of presence is impossible, nothing at all, and nothing to be desired. Not only are we denied such goods, we cannot and should not desire them. The desire for life is the desire for more life, more time, more mortal time, which Derrida calls “living on” (sur-vivre). Survival trades in a time that may, that will, erase the survivor. Survival is not the desire for infinite or immortal life, since immortal life is death. The time of life is “auto-immune,” intrinsically exposed and vulnerable, its immunity from perishing disarmed, its desire for immunity broken down.

  From this line of argument, to whi
ch I think no careful reader of Derrida would take exception, Hägglund takes up Derrida’s analyses of phenomenology, ethics, religion, and politics, reaching the conclusion that not only is deconstruction atheistic, it represents a “radical atheism.” Garden variety or standard-form atheism admits that we all desire the immortality promised by religion, but it concedes that such a hope is denied to us. This is what Christopher Watkin calls “ascetic” atheism; we deny ourselves the consolations of religion on the grounds of reason and realism, without denying that it would be rather nice to have what religion promises (living forever in a kingdom of pure goodness).5 Radical atheism, on the other hand, denies that we should or even could have such a desire. We can only desire mortal goods and believe in mortal beings; were there such an entity as God, God must also be mortal. Contrary to the “theological turn,” deconstruction is “radically”—constitutively and unequivocally—at odds with religion. To this conclusion, any careful reader of Derrida should take exception, as I most certainly do, especially since I am singled out in Radical Atheism as the prime culprit responsible for drawing Derrida down the dark corridors where religion does its shady work in this vale of tears.

  The exception I take is this. Time and the trace imply no less what Derrida calls “iterability,” the constitutive repeatability and recontextualizability—time and time again—of the trace. That means that “religion” is more than one. Religion, “if there is such a thing,” just one thing, undivided against itself, “la” religion, in the singular, the same all the time—that is exactly what deconstruction deconstructs. What we call in “Christian Latin French”6 la religion is a massive globalatinization that splinters in the face of the real multiplicity of actually existing beliefs and practices colonized by this risky word. Is that not the first and most obvious result of taking up religion in terms of time and the trace (which accords perfectly with virtually every important study of religion today)? The point of a deconstruction is to de-sediment our most sedimented concepts, to redeploy and reinvent them and so release their inherent play, not to consign them to oblivion with a reductionistic argument. If that is so, as I think any careful reader of Derrida would agree, then the upshot of every analysis from the “dangerous supplement” to auto-immunity is not the radical extermination of religion, as of a dreaded disease or pure evil, but the invention of a contaminated religion, like Damian among the lepers, one that hails (Salut!) the coming of a religion to come (viens) rather than take sides in the binary war between theism and atheism. Derrida sketches in the dark a certain religion, a religion without religion, which turns precisely on this impure, radically finite, and constitutively contaminated condition predicted by the logic of auto-immunity. For Hägglund, “the logic of auto-immunity is radically atheist” (RA, 9); for Derrida, it presages a contaminated religion that unhinges a religion of purity, that displaces the puritas essendi of the good old God of classical metaphysics and negative theology, that disrupts “a positive infinity that is absolutely in itself” (RA, 3) and the corresponding desire for immortal life. But the dualism of Augustinian religion is unfortunately the only “religion” to make an appearance in Radical Atheism, a “religion” at whose desedimentation and deconstruction Derrida and I, along with a good many contemporary theologians, have for a long time now been in attendance.

  As Clayton Crockett argues in an incisive essay, Hägglund misinterprets my interest in religion, which is not to defend a traditional religion (or confessional theology) in deconstructive terms, but precisely to advance a religion without religion (and hence a radical theology) and has confused me with Jean-Luc Marion.7 Cast in terms of Derrida’s “Faith and Knowledge” essay, a religion without religion turns on a primordial faith (foi) in an open-ended but risky promise, not on a confessional belief (croyance) in a determinate and assured creedal object, and so draws upon the first of the two sources of religion discussed by Derrida while contaminating the second. Such a faith is deserted and despairing, naked and unsheltered—not unscathed, not safe and sound, not immune from the depths of doubt, error, evil, violence, or death. Unlike Paul, who felt immunized by the blood of the crucified Christ, it does not boast “O death, where is your victory?” On the contrary, the faith to which Derrida and I subscribe is an impossible faith, arising from the abyss of unfaith, uncertainty, and insecurity, from a prayer that is left without a prayer, sustained by what this same Paul calls a hope against hope in an unforeseeable future. That is why, in “Circumfession,” instead of denouncing Augustinian dualism, Derrida engages in an iteration of the prayers and tears of Augustine’s Confessions, subtly inflecting its very title and so boldly engaging in unprotected religion, if I may adapt an expression from those who warn us against sexually transmitted diseases.8 Such unarmed and vulnerable faith affirms a promise that is not merely fraught with risk but is constituted internally by risk. The risk is intrinsic and structural, not provisional and accidental, not a fault that could in principle be removed at a later point, not a matter of seeing now in part, in a glass darkly, but later on in full (Paul again!). This faith is not a compromise with an ideal faith free from doubt that we just cannot achieve given the weakness of the flesh. This faith is made possible by the very condition that makes it impossible, as Derrida says about all the famous operations of deconstruction. The contamination described by the logic of auto-immunity does not obliterate religion but reinvents it, writing the prescription for an unprotected religion.

  Deconstruction has always been the critique of such unscathed immunized purity.9 It has never changed. “Auto-immunity” was just the last trope Derrida came up with before he died. That is what interests me about deconstruction. That is the point I have defended ever since I first described the project of “radical hermeneutics” some thirty years ago in terms of facing up squarely to the “difficulty” of factical life, that is, of dealing with the fact that we never make contact with anything safe and secure, pure and unmediated, immune and unscathed.10 My work with religion is to bring this confession or circumfession to bear upon religion and to show how deconstruction reopens and reinvents religion in a new way—to the considerable displeasure both of secularizing deconstructors and of confessional theology. Radical theology does not deny finitude and contamination, it begins with them.

  But Crockett is too generous to say that, while Hägglund misinterprets me, he does not misinterpret Derrida. While it is true that iterability allows Derrida to be read in the selective way undertaken by Hägglund, this iteration is not nearly as interesting or fruitful as Derrida. It is a torso, a truncated form of deconstruction, not Derrida’s doing but Hägglund’s, who proceeds at times as if Derrida has nothing to teach him about deconstruction. Hägglund claims (a) that deconstruction reaches an unambiguous result, a decisive refutation of religion (in the singular), and (b) that deconstruction proceeds on a level of neutral, value-free descriptive analysis of the logic of time. These claims, entirely of Hägglund’s own devising, are both philologically and philosophically mistaken. They are creatures of everything about modernity that deconstruction sets out to deconstruct, and they are separated by an abyss from both the style and the substance of what Derrida calls deconstruction. Deconstruction is a way of rereading and reinventing religion—or anything else—not of eradicating religion by means of a radical atheism. The atheism attributed to Derrida by Hägglund would be described by Derrida as “absolutely ridiculous.”11 Radical Atheism may be a way to philosophize with a hammer (RA, ix). Deconstruction is not.

  In what follows I first contest what I find contestable in Radical Atheism and then I set out my own interpretation of what deconstruction can do for religion.

  Radical Atheism

  Let me be clear that I welcome Hägglund’s timely presentation of a certain realist-materialist Derrida (“materialist theology” is the order of the day!). He shows that différance is not an immaterial spirit but requires a material substance, that the “play of traces” is spacing-timing, and that is all to the good. His mi
stake is to suppress Derrida’s axiomatics of the beyond, of the super, epekeina, hyper, über, au-delà,12 for fear of contamination by Augustinian immaterialism. Derrida himself says that deconstruction has “always come forward in the name of the real, of the irreducible reality of the real—not the real as an attribute of the thing [res], objective, present, sense-able or intelligible, but the real as coming or event of the other.… In this sense, nothing is more ‘realist’ than deconstruction.”13 I describe deconstruction not as anti-realism but as “hyper-realism,”14 let us say an ultra-materialism, an open-ended materialism, just as Žižek thinks that matter is all, but the all is a non-all, and, as Malabou describes, a “reasonable materialism” that does not turn life into a cybernetic or neurological program.15 Derrida, Žižek, Malabou, and I are all “materialists” in the sense that we do not think there are two worlds, one in space and time, the other transcending space and time. So I speak of a “poetics,” not a logic; Malabou emphasizes a transformational “plastics”; and Žižek introduces “parallax shifts.” But Hägglund mistakenly thinks that defending a certain realism and materialism comes at the cost of Derrida’s religion. This conclusion is reached by systematically abridging and/or altering several crucial notions in deconstruction, which I sketch here and develop at greater length elsewhere (see note 1).