Gmail - [pomoxian] The Question of Religion - jacobthanni@gmail.com

Gmail - [pomoxian] The Question of Religion - jacobthanni@gmail.com
Excerpts rom Derrida's "Deconstruction in a Nutsell" Villinova Table Talks 1994
To address the question of religion - again, in an oversimplifying way - I
would say this. First, I have no stable position on the texts you mentioned,
the prophets and the Bible. For me, this is an open field, and I can receive
the most necessary provocations from these texts as, at the same time, from
Plato and others... For me, there is no such thing as "religion." Within
what one calls religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam or other religions -
there are again tensions, heterogeneity, disruptive volcanos, sometimes
texts, especially those of the prophets, which cannot be reduced to an
institution, to a corpus, to a system. I want to keep the right to read
these texts in a way which has to be constantly reinvented. It is something
which can be totally new at every moment.

Then I would distinguish between religion and faith. If by religion you
mean a set of beliefs, dogmas or institutions - the church, e.g. - then I
would say that religion as such can be deconstructed, and not only can be
but should be deconstructed, sometimes in the name of faith. For me, as for
you, Kierkegaard is here a great example of some paradoxical way of
contesting religious discourse in the name of a faith that cannot be simply
mastered or domesticated or taught or logically understood, a faith that is
paradoxical. Now, what I call faith in this case is like something tsaid about justice and the gift, something that is presupposed by the most
radical deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other, speak to the
other, without an act of faith, without testimony. What are you doing when
you attest to something? You address the other and ask, "believe me." Even
if you are lying, even in a perjury, you are addressing the other and asking
the other to trust you. This "trust me, I am speaking to you," is of the
order of faith, a faith that cannot be reduced to a theoretical statement,
to a determinative judgment; it is the opening of the address to the other.
So this faith is not religious, strictly speaking; at least it cannot be
totally determined by a given religion. That is why this faith is absolutely
universal.