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4 La religion soufflée The Genesis of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ As I argued in the Introduction, one must always try to understand how the form, style, and even the format of Derrida’s texts reflect the theses within them. ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ would be a truly exemplary text in this regard. The three theses developed in the previous chapter concerning the nature of religion and the unprecedented forms it is taking today will thus have played, as we have already seen, a determining role in the form and writing of Derrida’s essay. The many textual and graphic doublings and divisions noted earlier can all be read as reflecting the fundamental complicity between religion and science, as well as the duplicity at the heart of religion itself. Apart from the title ‘‘Faith and Knowledge,’’ which is in effect a translation or double or mere repetition of a 1802–3 essay by Hegel, not to mention a work of Franz Rosenzweig with exactly the same title, and apart from the fact that the subtitle, which speaks of two sources of religion, is little more than a condensation of two canonical sources on the question of religion, almost every other source divides in two—at least two—from the very beginning: hence Derrida marks the essay with two places, one European and one American, the Italian island of Capri where an early version of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ was first delivered and Laguna Beach in California where the essay was completed and signed; and these two seaside places correspond to two times, 28 February 1994, in Capri, and 26 April 1995, in Laguna Beach. As for the form of the essay itself, it has fifty-two sections that are themselves divided into two sets of twentysix , the first set entitled ‘‘Italics’’ and printed in italics and the second, 107 entitled ‘‘Post-scriptum,’’ printed in roman font and divided into two unequal sections, with two distinct though seemingly related headings, ‘‘Crypts . . . et grenades,’’ the latter evoking, as we will see later, either a fruit that plays a major role in religion, and particularly in Judaism, a translation of grenades that inscribes it on the side of life, or a little, handheld war machine, a translation that inscribes it on the side of a certain knowledge and a certain science, though also on the side of death. That is just a small sampling of the many repetitions, doublings, and moments of duplicity in this at once improvised and highly constructed and organized text. But just as important as all these formal or structural duplicities, which underscore the fundamental duplicity within religion itself and the irreducible complicity between religion and science, is the way in which this duplicity influences Derrida’s method or approach to the question of religion ‘‘itself.’’ Note, for example, how Derrida begins both the essay itself (§1) and the first section of the second set of twentysix sections (§27): in both places Derrida asks about the possibility of talking ‘‘of religion,’’ ‘‘Singularly of religion, today’’ (§1), the possibility of speaking ‘‘here and now, this very day,’’ of religion, of the ‘‘essence’’ of religion and ‘‘with a sort of religio-sity’’ that tries ‘‘not to introduce anything alien, leaving it thus intact, safe, unscathed’’ (§27). Derrida’s emphasis in both places on the day, on what is happening to religion today, already suggests that the ‘‘essence’’ of religion, the seemingly ahistorical essence of religion, must be broached by means of the way religion manifests itself today, which is to say, by means of the question of the relationship between religion and science. Indeed, Derrida will assert in the passage from §35 where he recounts the origin of the conference at Capri: Of course, it would have been madness itself to have proposed to treat religion itself, in general or in its essence; rather the troubled question, the common concern is: ‘‘What is going on today with it, with what is designated thus? What is going on there? What is happening and so badly? What is happening under this old name? What in the world is suddenly emerging or re-emerging under this appellation ?’’ (§35) Even if, as he will go on to say, ‘‘this form of question cannot be separated from the more fundamental one (on the essence, the concept and the history of religion itself, and of what is called ‘religion’),’’ his approach, he says, would have to be ‘‘more direct, global, massive and immediate, spontaneous , without...

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