For Derrida, the ‘‘as if’’, as a regulative principle directly appropriated and modified from its Kantian context, becomes the central lynchpin for understanding, not only Derrida's philosophical system as a whole, but also his numerous seemingly enigmatic references to his ‘‘jewishness’’. Through an analysis of the function of the ‘‘as if’’ within the history of thought, from Greek tragedy to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, I hope to show how Derrida can only appropriate his Judaic roots as an act of (...) mourning that seeks to render the lost object as present, ‘‘as if’’ it were incorporated by the subject for whom this act nevertheless remains an impossibility. As Derrida discerns within the poetry of Paul Celan, bringing a sense of presence/presentness to our experiences, and as a confirmation of the subject which the human being struggles to assert, is the poetic task par excellence. It is seemingly also, if Derrida is to be understood on this point, the only option left to a humanity wherein poetry comes to express what religious formulations can no longer justify. (shrink)

:This paper examines the transmediation of sacrifice in the Isuma “Fast Runner” trilogy, focusing in particular upon The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. In this film the impact of the introduction of Christianity upon traditional Inuit culture in the 1920s sets the stage for literal and metaphorical sacrifice, tied inexorably to the parallel threat of conversion and the transvaluation of traditional shamanistic beliefs. In the process, the film maintains a critical stance with respect to both the ethnographic perspective of the outsider, (...) which it incorporates, and to its own preferred Inuit perspective. My reading of the transmediation of sacrifice in The Journals rests upon the relation between sacrificial substitution and the notion of communion, in both doctrinaire and more secular senses. I argue that the film presents the Inuit characters negotiating a necessary détente with Christian culture, both at the cost of traditional beliefs and in the form of the co-optation and transmediation of ritual within the film's story, a process mirrored in the appropriation of the digital video medium in the fictional re-creation of these events. (shrink)

Recent debates about the legacy (and, sometimes, surpassing) of Derridean philosophy have often oriented themselves around questions of a new austerity in relation to the implicit philosophical functioning of God. Indeed, an increasing philosophical vigilance about the death or nonexistence of God has begun to be presented as a hallmark of recent criticisms of earlier receptions of Derrida and, by way of messianic structures of time, of Derridean politics as well. We argue that the inflating value of atheism in recent (...) texts operates most effectively within a broader forgetfulness of the many modes in which a serial dying of gods constitutes a more fundamental quality of the religio-political archive than the stability or life of these gods. We find, moreover, there to be something comical about a reconfiguration of the ontotheological archive around a tableau of serially dying Gods, this God who cannot stabilize or maintain for long any system of divine life support. Most importantly, we find that our sense of comedy is itself indicative of important shifts within the stylistics of Derridean discussions of auto-immunity and supplement which have yet to be worked through with any real seriousness. In this respect, our reflections pair Bergson's reflections on the universe as a ‘machine for the manufacture of gods’ with Bergson's explorations of comedy as a fundamentally mechanical affair. The serially dying gods of our religious and philosophical traditions are best understood in the same modes as Bergson's comedy, often marked by an automatism of everyday mechanisms of life which outlive their useful functioning. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's vision of 'messianicity' in his book Specters of Marx and the essay 'Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone' has been widely appreciated by scholars. Yet little fundamentally critical engagement appears to have been made with some important historical-sociological questions raised by Derrida's ideas in these texts. Drawing on earlier reference-points in 20th-century critical theory and sociology, the present article argues for some objections to Derrida's presentation of the significance of religious (...) messianism in modern Western social and political thought. The central claim defended is that Derrida invidiously marginalizes some important non-messianistic idioms, sources and traditions of thinking about religious history and its bearing on contemporary social and political self-understanding. (shrink)

Belgian law on child euthanasia uses the concept of discernment to bestow the right to die to minors. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of oppositional logic grasps the ambiguity of this use of discernment and generally challenges the alleged force of a textual sign meaningfully to differentiate itself from its different and meaningless else. This alleged ability to discern the presence of discernment impinges the truth-value of the distinction between worthy/unworthy lives. The resulting undecidability morally suggests the respect for otherness and promotes (...) the moral value of the suspension of arbitrary judgment and, in so doing, de facto converges towards the praxis of the doctrine of the sanctity of life that embraces the ‘life is always quality’ argument. (shrink)