[
PT
11.1 (2010) 15-34]
Political Theology
(print) ISSN 1462-317X doi:10.1558/poth.v11i1.15
Political Theology
(online) ISSN 1473-1719
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR.
P
lasticity
and
the
F
uture
oF
P
hilosoPhy
and
t
heology
Clayton Crockett
128 Harrin HallDepartment of Philosophy and ReligionUniversity of Central ArkansasConway, AR 72035USA ClaytonC@uca.edu
Catherine Malabou
A
bstrAct
This article develops a theoretical and political critique of the contem-porary notion of the deconstruction of Christianity, primarily in the later work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The deconstruction of Christianity relies upon an understanding of temporality and messianicity derived from Heidegger and Benjamin, and we challenge this privileg-ing of messianism in contemporary philosophy and theology. Messianismis contrasted with plasticity, and plasticity is shown to have resources toovercome the impasses of contemporary thought in a counter-messianic way. To oppose messianism is not to oppose theological thinking, but toopen a creative and productive political space for a radical theological and
philosophical reection.
Keywords
: deconstruction of Christianity, Jacques Derrida, Catherine Mal-abou, messianism, plasticity.Religion is conscientiousness. The holiness of the acceptance and the truth-fulness of what man must confess to himself. Confess to yourself. To havereligion, the concept of God is not required (still less the postulate: ‘Thereis a God’).Immanuel Kant,
Opus Postumum
16
Political Theology
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.
We confess, we are hesitant to place this work before your ‘eyes,’ you who alreadyknow what we are going to say, who can see (what is) to come (voir venir). To thinkis a work of mourning, a desire for approval as well as an anticipation of disappoint-ment. To think is to love, a love that is always in transference… How can we establish the respective roles of the philosopher and the theologian, hereof all places? Or any place? Are they strangers, enemies, partners, or lovers? For the philosopher, her task is to create thought from within, an internal, intensive power that is primary. Philosophical thinking inaugurates the arrival of being. But what if thought has exhausted itself and being has withdrawn? Can postmetaphysi- cal thinking resign itself to piecing together gadgets with strands of thread and glue salvaged from the ruins of western metaphysics (Odradek)? Or would a genuine philosophical vision be possible in the wake of deconstruction?… For the theologian, his task is completely derivative of the divine presence, the necessary and impossible task of expressing God’s Word about God, without any intermediary.The theologian is extrinsic, external to the self-generating truth of divinity, reducedideally to the status of a pure vessel of transmission. But what if theology is cut off from all dogmatic or ecclesiastical bonds, from all positive revelation? Is theologicalthinking then at an end, without any purpose? Or could there be a radical theology freed from the possibility of revelation, a creative theological fashioning of conceptionsof divinity?…
The Deconstruction of Christianity
One way to read some of the last writings of Jacques Derrida, as well assome of the most recent works of Jean-Luc Nancy, is to understand theend of deconstruction as the deconstruction of Christianity. That is, afterdeconstructing western metaphysics and onto-theology, one sees that themost pervasive, profound and problematic spirit of what we call the Westis named Christianity, and the need for its deconstruction coincides with what has been called “the return of religion” in contemporary society andthought.An effect of what has been called postmodernism has been to under-mine the singularity of the Enlightenment, or the decisive break between European modernity and every other form of human culture. If theuniqueness of modernity is called into question, then there may exist asmany continuities as discontinuities between European modernity and what preceded it. Thinkers such as Marcel Gauchet have articulated atrajectory that began in ancient Greece and/or ancient Israel, and it is
this trajectory that is unique, rather than the specic Enlightenment
Crockett and Malabou
Future of Philosophy and Theology
17
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.
articulation of it.
1
The trajectory is usually understood in its vulgar formas progressive, in a more modern way as dialectical, or sometimes, inits postmodern version, following Walter Benjamin, as messianic. ForDerrida in
Specters of Marx
, the messianic refers to a poignant but revolu-tionary hope, “an urgency, imminence but, irreducible paradox, a waiting without horizon of expectation.”
2
The recent emphasis upon messianicity reects at least in part a strat
-egy to defend Eurocentrism and western culture by linking it temporally with its history, and cutting off any spatial diffusion or contamination of separate cultures, even though scholars and historians know better andhave demonstrated such transmissions in empirical and theoretical stud-ies.
3
The spirit of Christianity is identied with the spirit of the West,
and even if some of its forms are criticized as dangerous, superstitious,fundamentalist or malevolent, this spirit remains accessible to “us” in theform of time, or can be re-actualized at this time.In the context of the “deconstruction of Christianity,” Christianity as such is seen as a
pharmakon
, both poison and cure. As a cure, in itsoriginary form as expressed by St. Paul, Christianity provides the oppor-tunity for an opening, a universality or a
déclosion
, beyond the enclosurethat traps western metaphysics in its snare. According to Nancy, theheart of the western tradition is a Christian heart, and “the only currentatheism is one that contemplates the reality of its Christian roots.”
4
If Christianity is co-extensive with the West, and here Nancy agrees withthe reading of Marcel Gauchet, then Christianity as such, “is in andthrough itself in a state of overcoming,” that is, a state of overcoming Christianity.
5
The deconstruction of Christianity, then, would be tobring that self-overcoming of Christianity to an end. But would this bethe end of Christianity, and if so, would it also be the triumph of Chris-tianity? Nancy reads the essence of Christianity in terms of Heidegger’s
1. See Marcel Gauchet,
The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion
,trans. O. Burge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).2. Jacques Derrida,
Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International
, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 168.3. See Mohammed Arkoun,
Islam: To Reform or to Subvert?
(London: Saqi Books,2006), for careful methodological consideration of issues related to this idea that implicateboth Islamic and western scholarship. Arkoun suggests that a conception of “Mediterra-nean space” would help deconstruct the “fundamental polarity of a substantialised Islam onone hand, and on the other (depending on the side of the divide), an ‘enlightened’ or Sata-nized West” (13).4. Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Deconstruction of Christianity,” in
Religion and Media
, ed.Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 113. Alsoincluded in
La Déclosion: Déconstruction du christianisme
, I (Paris: Galilée, 2005).5. Ibid., 114.
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