In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 Emptying Apophasis of Deception: Considering a Duplicitous Kierkegaardian Declaration T. W I L S O N D I C K I N S O N Beginning a series of supposedly edifying remarks with the declaration that one is always wrong is likely to raise suspicion. Yet this is the central thrust of the text that will be the primary concern of this essay, the sermon of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, the Jutland Pastor. The central meditation of this subversive supplement to the multivoiced Either/Or is that ‘‘The upbuilding lies in the thought that in relation to God we are always in the wrong.’’1 For an audience of discerning listeners, this might serve as a good indication to stop listening or abruptly exit. Such an admonition may lead the listener to one of two conclusions: that the speaker’s insights will inevitably lead to failure or, perhaps, that it is a smokescreen for a great deception. That is, perhaps, by declaring an unending condition of ‘‘being in the wrong’’ the Preacher has undertaken a mystification par excellence, gaining what he has claimed to deny by finding an unmovable point in which his own discourse stands in the right above all others. In a time of televangelists—who are often little more than self-interested salesmen, shrouding their greed with the comforting cloaks of humility, forgiveness, and salvation—the contemporary reader quite likely understands the duplicitous possibilities that accompany the pretenses of piety. The assertion of such an extreme position I thank Christopher Boesel, John D. Caputo, Catherine Keller, and Edward Mooney for their comments on this essay. I wish only that I could have more adequately responded to the call of their criticisms and insights. 252 兩 e m pt y i ng a p op h a si s o f d e c ep t i on might lead one to wonder if this apparition of self-doubt is not a dissembling declaration that disguises one who truly holds the opposite. One may be right to be suspicious of such a performance, yet in this essay I hope to disrupt the structure of performer and spectator that underlies this suspicion and one’s relationship to texts more generally. That is, I do not want to view the performance of this text merely in terms of a dissembling operation, behind which one can find what is real; rather I want to consider the manner in which the pastor, his declarations, its hearers, and readers are all caught up and co-implicated in dynamic practices . Therefore, the Preacher’s performance does not seem to merely demand the demystifying activity that can sniff out the man behind the curtain and expose his fraudulent show of smoke and lights as so many buttons and levers. Instead of adding yet another layer of self-assured discourse that criticizes, but in its reduction repeats, the very dilemma that it claimed to overcome, it is my hope to hesitate before assuming that the truth of such a sentiment can be revealed by merely removing a mask. This hope is not directed toward a simple suspension of suspicion, but rather it opens in the swerve of self-reflexivity in which criticism doubles back to question the ground on which the observer with a cocked brow stands, or even more accurately, the way that he or she moves. Though much of this essay will be an activity of demystifying analysis2 that turns its questioning gaze to such extreme claims, the discourse that follows cannot itself assume a place above the fray of ambiguity and deception. The rhetorical and conceptual excess of the Preacher’s central meditation and the dilemmas that surround it seem to be paralleled by or analogous to that which is called ‘‘apophatic theology.’’ The Preacher’s utterance engages in its own form of unsaying, as its concluding word, ‘‘wrong,’’ undermines the very capacity that would be necessary to make such a universal declaration. Apophatic theology, if such a thing exists, is also often subject to the same suspicions of mystification and deception, as its excess is often read as only a momentary deferral of the metaphysical grounds that it appears to deny. This critical reading frames the issue in epistemological terms as apophatic theology’s delimitation of one’s rational capacity is taken to be its primary gesture. So long as apophasis is viewed in this way, the invocation of the unsayable logically necessitates a bait and switch in which the human...

Share