-
Desire of God: An Exchange
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Desire of God: An Exchange J A C Q U E S D E R R I D A , J O H N D . C A P U T O , A N D R I C H A R D K E A R N E Y KEARNEY: Derrida’s own response to the postmodern dilemma of undecidability would seem to be twofold—believe and read! In spite of our inability to know for sure ‘‘who speaks’’ behind the many voices and visages that float before us—now present, now absent; now here, now elsewhere—Derrida tells us that we must continue to trust and have faith. ‘‘Je ne sais pas, il faut croire,’’ as the refrain of Memoirs of the Blind goes. But if our belief is blind, and each moment of faithful decision terrifying, Derrida suggests that we can always be helped by the vigilant practice of meticulous, rabbinical reading. We must never abandon our responsibility to read between the lines: In order to overcome hallucination, we have to listen to and closely read the other. Reading, in the broad sense which I attribute to this word, is an ethical and political responsibility. In attempting to overcome hallucinations, we must decipher and interpret the other by reading. We cannot be sure that we are not hallucinating by saying simply ‘‘I see.’’ ‘‘I see’’ is, after all, just what the hallucinating person says. No, in order to check that you are not hallucinating, you have to read in a certain way. In what way? we might ask. How can we tell the difference between true and false prophets? Between gods and ghosts? Between messiahs and madmen? ‘‘I have no rule for that,’’ Derrida humbly 301 concedes. ‘‘Who can decide what counts as the end of hallucination? It is difficult. I, too, have difficulties with my own work.’’ But in spite of these avowed difficulties, Derrida has done more than most other living philosophers—theist or atheist—to make us sensitive to issues of messianicity and messianism and to the three calls of God: donne, pardonne, abandonne. The problem is that these calls are, for deconstruction, always made in the dark, where the need to discern seems so impossible. So my final question is: How do we read in the dark? CAPUTO: The distinction between the messianic and the messianisms is a tension that we inhabit, and it would never be a question of choosing one or the other. With that in mind, let me briefly make three points: (1) The notion of justice as à-venir refers structurally to the vulnerable ; to the victim, not the producer of the victim. It would never be the case that the ‘‘other’’ one to come would be Charles Manson, or some plunderer or rapist. The very notion of the to-come refers to the one who is not being heard, who is silenced, victimized by the existing structures. It will always be the case that someone is being injured by the present order, so that the worst injustice would be to say that present order represents perfect justice. (2) We are always situated within concrete historical traditions and structures. The point of a distinction like that between justice and law, or the messianic and the concrete messianisms, is to prevent the existing traditions, which are all we have, from closing in upon themselves, from becoming monoliths. There is no such a thing as the one tradition. Tradition is always rife with conflicts, silenced voices, and the prestige of the ‘‘tradition’’ is implicated in the dead bodies it produced in order to establish itself. Still, all we have is traditions, languages, cultures, social and institutional structures, our legacies, and we must both mourn everything that has been erased in those traditions and pray for the justice that these traditions promise. Deconstruction seeks to inhabit the tension between mourning and the promise, between recognizing that this is the only world I have and appreciating its finitude, keeping it open to what it cannot foresee. I can inhabit any tradition justly only if I appreciate that it is blind and that it tends structurally to close itself off from its other. (3) I am worried about your desire for criteria. I think we have situated decisions in contexts and traditions, about which we need to know as much as possible. But there comes a moment when all our 302 Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo, and Richard Kearney [44.206.248...