The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary

The Force of Derrida’s Indecision

61 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter) The Force of Derrida’s Indecision Following Caputo, it would be (in)accurate to say that Derrida is an atheist.31 Of course, such a statement—it is (in)accurate to say that Derrida is an atheist—is probably misleading; or rather, it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. Whether or not Derrida believes in God is hardly addressed; because of the parenthetical prefix, this statement fails to embrace fully a particular position. It is not decisive in the sense that it is not without doubt. Yet, at the same time (and this is in fact the point), this statement leaves open, or opens up, the possibility that Derrida —and, by implication, deconstruction—is not, as seems only logical , atheistic. If it does anything, this statement gambles with its fingers crossed on the uncertainty that necessarily surrounds the question (if it has even been at any time a serious question) of deconstruction’s atheistic position. This statement speaks to the indecisiveness that should, that must (if we are to believe, if we are to have faith in, Derrida) haunt any decision concerning the function of God in deconstructive discourse—indeed, that must haunt any “just” decision. I begin with these issues—of (a)theism, of indecision and “just” decisions, of gambles, of haunting—simply as a point of departure for a discussion of the position of “late” deconstruction. These issues are of paramount importance in Derrida’s more recent work on ethical responsibility, the possibility of justice and the necessity of the messianic in the work of deconstruction. They are also, then, as I’ve suggested previously, a point of departure for a discussion of deconstruction’s commitment, or sense of responsibility, to Marx—or rather, a certain specter of Marx, or Marxism. Throughout his later work, as we saw in the previous chapter, the “emancipatory and messianic affirmation” (Specters 89) that Derrida locates in Marxism, the promise of something “to come,” the transcendent, is identified as the animating feature of deconstruction. However, and at the same time, Derrida repeatedly cautions us. While the possibility that the promise will be fulfilled, that the future will become present, encourages the movement of deconstruction (as it does the utopian impulse of Marxism and, I would add, postmodernism), such a promise must be understood as impossible, as only ever the promise of what can never arrive—what can never be effaced as the other, as the still “to come,” as, simply, the promise. By employing the metaphor of the specter, the later Derrida explicitly points to the fact that deconstruction, like Marxism, must always be haunted by the specter of the promise (of the messianic, of the transcendent , of God), haunted in the sense that what haunts it (a ghost) is never wholly spirit (i.e., ideal), nor is it ever wholly realized, or made 62 The Passing of Postmodernism present in the flesh. Faith in the messianic, or the promise, gives us the reason (or perhaps, the right) to decide, to deconstruct, or even to revolt, but the impossibility of the messiah, or messianism, allows us to decide. The impossibility of the future present,32 of the messiah, of God, is the very condition of uncertainty and, thus, of decisions. A decision is, and must always be, a gamble on an impossible future, an impossible messiah. Were the messiah finally “to have arrived,” no decision would be necessary—indeed, no decision (and, for that matter , no deconstruction) would be possible. This ironic positioning, this faith without belief, is the “quasi-transcendental ” ground of, what we might call, late-Derridean ethics—what Caputo understands as “the first movements of the first covenant in a religion without religion” (Prayers and Tears xxi). However, as I pointed out above, I want to consider the possibility that Derrida’s arguments concerning the need to respect the spectrality of the specter, the possibility and the impossibility of the Kantian transcendental, of the future “to come,” is necessarily contingent upon the very thing it is intent on endlessly circumventing: teleology, positivism, absolute faith, and the effacement of the specter’s spectrality. The late Derridean (or perhaps “renewalist”) imperative to respect the specter—“the specter must be respected” (Politics 288, my emphasis)—is, itself, an imposition on the specter; it is tantamount to what Derrida condemns as a “conjuration” of the specter’s spectrality. The inherent positivism of Derrida’s call for respect speaks to the impossibility of such...