The Question of Sacrifice

8. Derrida: The Double Bind of Sacrifice

8 Derrida The Double Bind of Sacrifice Everything on sacrifice in the work of Derrida hinges on that aporetic moment of the double bind of sacrifice: the moment when the sacrifice of (economical) sacrifice turns into the sacrifice of (aneconomical) sacrifice, and vice versa. Here is the sacrifice of sacrifice. Hegel and the “All (holos) Is Burned (caustos)” Following his reading of the work of Bataille in “From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve” (1967), Derrida’s next sustained consideration of sacrifice—Glas (1974)—again occurs within the context of the work of Hegel. The following remarks on Glas are limited to a reading of the Hegel column (i.e., the left-hand column of each page), specifically to a reading of Derrida’s reading of the first shape of natural religion in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Hegel characterizes the first shape of natural religion—essential light or luminous-essence (Lichtwesen)—as a shape of shapelessness. “The first figure of natural religion figures the absence of figure, a purely visible, thus invisible sun that allows seeing without showing itself or that shows itself without showing anything, consuming all in its phenomenon: die Gestalt der Gestaltlosigkeit” (Gf 265/Ge 238). This absence of shape or representation anticipates the characterization of absolute knowing, which is characterized as free of all Vorstellung (Gf 264/Ge 237). As a light that burns everything (including itself), this all-burning is an essenceless play of light that never determines itself as for-(it)self. Hegel writes, “The movements of its own externalization, its creations in the unresisting element of its otherness, are torrents of light; in their simplicity, they are at the Derrida 135 same time the genesis of its being-for-self and the return from the existence [of its moments], streams of fire destructive of [all] structured form” (PG 371/PS 419; see Gf 265/Ge 238). If the all-burning burns everything (including itself), leaving no trace of itself (Gf 265/Ge 238), how, Derrida asks, “can it guard the trace of itself and breach/broach a history where it preserves itself in losing itself?” (Gf 267/Ge 240). Or, said otherwise, how is all-burning constricted so as to determine itself as for-(it)self and take on a stable subsistence? Hegel argues that the all-burning must pass into its contrary. However, this reeling, unconstrained Life must [muβ] determine itself as being-for-self and endow its vanishing “shapes” with an enduring subsistence. The immediate being in which it stands in antithesis to its consciousness is itself the negative power which dissolves its distinctions. It is thus in truth the Self; and Spirit therefore passes on to know itself in the form of self. Pure Light disperses its unitary nature into an infinity of forms, and offers up itself as a sacrifice [gibt sich dem Fürsichsein zum Opfer] to being-for-self, so that from its substance the individual may take an enduring existence for itself. (PG 371–372/PS 420; see Gf 268/Ge 241) It is important to note that when Hegel argues that the all-burning must “determine itself as being-for-self and endow its vanishing ‘shapes’ with an enduring subsistence,” it is because this demand is an inherent necessity of (as opposed to being externally imposed upon) the all-burning itself. It is an inherent necessity of the all-burning itself that it both burns everything, including itself (and, therefore, be what is otherwise than speculative thought), and extinguishes itself as all-burning (and, therefore, become a moment of speculative thought). This all-burning essenceless play of light that never determines itself as for- (it)self, and as such puts the history of Spirit out of order, can be what it is (namely, an “all-burning essenceless play of light that never determines itself as for-(it)self, and as such puts the history of Spirit out of order”) only if it turns into its contrary. Derrida (remaining faithful to the Hegelian text) notes, “In order to be what it is, purity of play, of difference, of consuming destruction, the allburning must pass into its contrary: guard itself, guard its own movement of loss, appear as what it is in its very disappearance” (Gf 267–268/Ge 240, emphasis added). Here one sees the implacable force of the hard-working negative (Gf 267/Ge 240), the constriction of...