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by
Brian J. Walsh
They
had a whole semester of semiotics under their belt, swimming
in the deep end of postmodern theory. Foucault, Lacan, Lyotard,
Derrida--they had read and discussed them all. By some fluke
of history they even had a guest lecture from the post-structuralist
queen of intertextuality, Julia Kristeva. Later in the year,
Linda Hutcheon (one of the finest and most eloquent of the
postmodern literary critics) was due to address the class.
And their professor figured that it might be a good idea to
have me come in and talk to the class about religion and postmodernity.
Me. Preceded by Kristeva, followed by Hutcheon. Called upon
to address this group of seasoned, Gen X, semiotically attuned
postmodernists.
So
I started with a rather innocent question that produced precisely
the results that I expected.
What
happens when postmodern thought and culture interface with
religion?
"Religion
gets deconstructed."
What
do you mean?
"Well,
a Foucauldian analysis uncovers the implicit power grab involved
in any and all religious truth claims, demonstrating that
religion is just a front for a regime of truth that will marginalize
all dissent as it imposes its orthodoxy on everyone."
(This
answer might be impenetrable to the average reader, but it's
completely lucid to a postmodernist.) Anyone else?
"Wouldn't
Lyotard's 'incredulity toward all metanarrative' also be the
death knell of at least the three western monotheistic religions?"
Why
is that?
"Well,
they all tell pretty tall tales, don't they? The stories that
they tell all make universal claims for themselves, and in
a postmodern context it is pretty hard to believe any such
claims."
"Yeah,"
added another student, "these religions, and probably all
religions, fall into the trap of totality thinking. And a
postmodernist would insist (and I would agree) that that kind
of thinking simply legitimates violence. It would seem that
the history of religious wars proves the point."
"And
if we were to bring Derrida into the discussion," added yet
another, "then it becomes pretty clear that religion is the
carrier of a metaphysics of presence par excellence. Religion
banks on nothing less than the presence of 'God,' or the divine,
or whatever. And then when you think about the importance
of the 'Word' in religion--you know, the whole 'revelation'
thing--Derrida's deconstruction of logocentrism is pretty
devastating."
So
the clear consensus in the class was that when religion is
confronted with postmodernity, religion gets a pretty serious
beating. And if you were to read an awful lot of postmodernists--especially
ones who teach on the eastern seaboard of the United States
of America--it would seem that this kind of deconstructive
dismissal of religion is pretty common.
Now
there are two problems with this. The first is that this critique
of religion seems to be quintessentially modern. After all,
it was the Enlightenment that told us that religion would
inevitably recede into the recesses of our cultural memory
as the secular spirit progressively triumphed in history.
But I thought that deconstruction was a post-Enlightenment,
post-modern, and therefore a post-secular movement. How can
it then be so easily employed to further the secularist agenda?
Second,
if postmodernity is so clearly deconstructive of religion,
then why do so many postmodern cultural expressions seem preoccupied
with religious motifs, spirituality and even "God"? There
is the famous Douglas Coupland quote from Life After God:
My
secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer
make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no
longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind,
as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love,
as I seem beyond being able to love.
And
maybe we weren't too surprised when U2's Pop album was simply
loaded with songs of spiritual longing like "Playboy Mansion,"
"If God Will Send an Angel," and "Wake Up Dead Man." But hasn't
anybody noticed, had the students in this semiotics class
not noticed, that the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and
the Infinite Sadness was also spiritually preoccupied? In
"bullet with butterfly wings" Billy Corgan sings that while
he cannot believe that he can be saved, nevertheless, his
deepest desire is to have a relationship with God like Jesus
did:
tell
me i'm the only one tell me there's no other one jesus was
an only son tell me i'm the chosen one Jesus was an only
son for you
Does
anybody notice that this is a prayer? Or consider "fuck you
(an ode to no one)," with its lyrics "you can't bring me back
/ cause i give it all back to you." Isn't this song a desperate
and passionate cry into the void, a call to an unknown God?
Who else can this ode be directed to?
The
professor had also assigned this class David Lodge's novel
Small World, no doubt because of its delightful dismantling
of the pretense of much contemporary literary criticism. But
had anyone noticed that the author likens professional conferences
to medieval Christian pilgrimages? And might this not suggest
that an important interpretive clue to this novel is to read
the protagonist's quest for the woman who has captured his
heart and imagination as nothing less than a spiritual pilgrimage?
My
point was simple. If postmodernity is the end of religion,
then it is rather curious that religious themes and motifs
stubbornly reappear in cultural products that are self-consciously
postmodern.
The
problem is that "the end of religion" and "the death of God"
are modernist, Enlightenment dogmas. They are the ultimate
conclusion of the modernist blind faith in human autonomy.
In the hubris of a modernist worldview, the voice of God and
the experience of spirituality gets drowned out by the self-assured,
arrogant voice of "rational men." The self-centered Cartesian
ego finds it necessary to eradicate anything that might be
a threat to or a limit on its imperialist self-expression.
Hence, God must die. That is the modernist pretense! Anything
that was truly postmodern, however, would want to dismantle
this imperialist, other-denying ideology of modernity. Therefore,
I suggest that we consider the movement called "deconstruction"
not to be the logical result of the secularizing tendency
of the Enlightenment, but a post-secular movement that moves
beyond the Enlightenment debunking of religion. Deconstruction
is post-secular not only because its practitioners recognize
(at long last!) that the Enlightenment vision is itself a
religion, but because they cannot keep from hoping for a Messiah.
All
of which brings us to Derrida, one of postmodernism's most
influential thinkers. Born into a non-observant Jewish home
in Christianized Algiers; named "Jackie" after the movie star,
Jackie Cooper; raised on Rue Saint Augustin. Jackie Derrida.
Jacques Derrida. A Jew who did not circumcise his own sons.
But a Jew nonetheless. And a Jew in a struggle with the Messiah.
But
we are getting ahead of ourselves. To understand deconstruction,
we need to know what deconstruction is not. Derrida is no
nihilist. Deconstruction is not a theoretical cover for a
simplistic nihilism out to destroy and tear down just for
the hell of it! Derrida says that what gives deconstruction
its movement is "constantly to suspect, to criticize the given
determinations of culture, of institutions, of legal systems,
not in order to destroy them or simply to cancel them, but
to be just with justice, to respect this relation to the other
as justice." Justice has always been the ethical drive behind
deconstruction. It is what deconstruction affirms.
Derrida's
foremost North American interpreter (his beloved disciple),
John Caputo, notes that "every deconstructive analysis is
undertaken in the name of something, something affirmatively
un-deconstructible." And Derrida is candid about what that
un-deconstructible something is: "Justice in itself, if such
a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible.
Deconstruction is justice." If everything were deconstructible,
there would be no point to deconstruction. Why deconstruct?
To make space for justice, which can be defined for deconstructionists
as hospitality to the other.
But
there is an important distinction to be made here. Justice
is not law. Law, for Derrida, is an instantiation, construction,
or determination of justice. This means that any and all law
is always deconstructible in the name of justice. What then
is justice? This is very difficult to say, and I certainly
do not speak as a Derrida expert on this. But as far as I
can make out, justice, for Derrida, is an undeconstructible
call that is the basis for the deconstruction of law. Justice
simply ceases to be justice as soon as we think we have "got
it" and instantiated it in positive law.
We
then might well ask whether it is possible to have a determinate
justice. And the Derridean answer is, no. This is the "im-possibility"
(the hyphen is a favorite device of deconstructionists to
bring out the multiple resonances of words--in this case,
emphasizing possibility even while denying it). The im-possible
call to justice is undeconstructible because it exceeds, or
is the basis of, any deconstruction of actual, achievable
futures and positive laws. But it is precisely this im-possibility
that gives deconstruction its passion.
Now
what has all of this to do with the matter of postmodernity
and religion? Well, as soon as we hear the language of impossibility
from a child of Abraham (no matter how far that child has
wandered), we do well to overhear biblical overtones. Is anything
impossible for God? asks the angel when news of a son for
post-menopausal Sarah is greeted with laughter. And when a
Jew, raised on Rue Saint Augustin and rooted in the prophets
of Israel, speaks of justice and passion then we know that
matters religious--indeed, matters of undeconstructible faith--are
lurking nearby.
Derrida
does not disappoint. He tells us that while religion, like
law, is deconstructible, faith, like justice, is "something
that is presupposed by the most radical deconstructive gesture.
You cannot address the other, speak to the other, without
an act of faith, without testimony." In other words, to speak
to another is to ask the other to "believe in me" or "trust
me." Such faith, says Derrida, is "absolutely universal."
And this universal structure of faith is an undeconstructible
that Derrida calls the messianic structure or messianicity.
We do well to hear Derrida out on this:
As
soon as you address the other, as soon as you are open to
the future, as soon as you have a temporal experience of
waiting for the future, of waiting for someone to come;
that is the opening of experience. Someone is to come, is
now to come. Justice and peace will have to do with this
coming of the other, with the promise. Each time I open
my mouth, I am promising something. When I speak to you,
I am telling you that I promise to tell you something, to
tell you the truth. Even if I lie, the condition of my lie
is that I promise to tell you the truth. So the promise
is not just one speech act among others; every speech act
is fundamentally a promise. This universal structure of
the promise, of the expectation for the future, for the
coming, and the fact that this expectation of the coming
has to do with justice--that is what I call the messianic
structure.
This
messianic structure, or messianicity, has everything to do
with faith. Indeed, Derrida confesses that "there is no society
without faith, without trust in the other." But messianicity
is no more to be confused with messianisms than is justice
to be confused with law. Like law, messianisms are an identification
in time and history of the messianic structure. Messianisms
say that the Messiah has appeared at this time, in this tradition,
in this person, with this name.
Such
messianisms, like all claims of law to have embodied justice,
must for Derrida remain deconstructible, because the messianic
is an im-possible, indeterminate structure of experience.
For him, the non-presence of the Messiah is the very stuff
of promise. Again, Caputo interprets Derrida: "The coming
of the Messiah, the messianic coming, is not to be confounded
with his actual presence in recorded history, with occurring
in ordinary time, with actually showing up in space and time,
which would ruin everything....The Messiah is a very special
promise, namely, a promise that would be broken were it to
be kept, whose possibility is sustained by its impossibility."
But
Derrida has a problem which many readers will quickly grasp.
Are the religions of the Book just specific manifestations
of the general structure of messianicity, or are the events
of revelation in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions
"absolute events, irreducible events which have unveiled this
messianicity"? Naturally, Derrida wants to claim that they
are only manifestations at best. Any particular, historical
appearing of the Messiah would have to be deconstructed. The
problem, however, is that any experience of messianicity,
of promise, of hope, of faith, indeed, of that which is undeconstructible,
is always determinate. But what deconstruction requires is
a non-determinate messianicity, a weak messianism that will
not claim too much for itself. Caputo says, "It does not give
content to its faith and hope, but it retains the form of
faith and hope." This is an impossible, contentless, and indeterminate
messianicity--because any determinate Messiah, Derrida suspects,
spells war.
So
Derrida is on the horns of a dilemma--torn between messianicity
and messianism. And then he perceives another possibility.
A more profound and, I think, a more spiritually honest possibility.
Again, we need to cite him at some length. And if you honored
Douglas Coupland's request that you be in a quiet place when
he told you about his need for God, then I suggest that you
take a similar stance in reading what follows. Derrida suggests
that perhaps the Messiah is not simply the one that he is
constantly waiting for:
But
the Messiah might also be the one I expect even while I
do not want him to come. There is the possibility that my
relation to the Messiah is this: I would like him to come,
I hope that he will come, that the other will come, as other,
for that would be justice, peace, and revolution--because
in the concept of messianicity there is revolution--and,
at the same time, I am scared. I do not want what I want
and I would like the coming of the Messiah to be infinitely
postponed, and there is this desire in me.
Here
is where Derrida is, I think, most honest. Why is Derrida
(and perhaps an entire generation) so resistant to a determinate
Messiah? Just because such determinations often make for war?
Just because of a penchant for universality over singularity?
Just because of an incredulity toward all metanarrative, a
suspicion of all totality thinking and a denial of any determinate
presence? No! Derrida wants a formal, contentless messianicity
because it is, in fact, more comfortable and less scary than
an embodied Messiah who comes--as other--with peace (not war)
and real instantiated justice (the poor hear the good news,
the hungry are fed, the rich are toppled from their thrones,
the trees and the hills sing for joy). Such a Messiah requires
a decision, a decisiveness, a determination that suspends--indeed
deconstructs--postmodern undecideability.
There
is no messianicity apart from a Messiah. There is no formal
structure of promise apart from an embodied revelation, an
incarnation, of messianic promise and fulfillment. Human life
and deconstructive justice require such determinations, and
such determinations require the risk of faith.
We
are waiting for someone to come, for the opening of experience,
says Derrida. Indeed, the constant word, the sentiment that
pervades deconstruction, says Caputo, is "come, viens." This
fearful invitation, this call, this impassioned cry to the
Messiah to come is at the spiritual heart of postmodernity.
Even though such a coming scares Derrida, the Messiah must
come, because the terror cannot go on. There must be a justice
rooted in hospitality--a real, embodied justice, a healing
river of justice.
Biblical
faith has a response for such an honest longing, even when
that longing is made tentative by fear. For Scripture responds
to the human heart crying out for justice to come, for healing
to come, indeed for the Messiah to come, with its own invitation
(Rev. 22:17, 20):
The
Spirit and the Bride say, "Come."
And
let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And
let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let
anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
The
one who testifies to these things says,
"Surely
I am coming soon."
Amen,
come soon, Lord Jesus.
Brian
J. Walsh is the Christian Reformed Chaplain to the University
of Toronto.
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