PS: To Jim

john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:25:01 -0500

Jim,

I forgot one more little bit of reading.

Regarding your theory about the secularization of Paul's work in Derrida...
The language you cite concerning all becoming one and the dream of unity
through the restoration of the voice of the other is of course completely
and utterly counter to Derrida's large collection of work as the
philosopher of *differance* and hetereogeneity par excellence.  In fact, if
you wish to argue that JD's work is the secularization of any religious
tradition, it would more likely be the Hebraic tradition of the Midrash
(again, see *Glas* on the synagogue and writing here.  For more on the
differences between moments of deconstruction and Pauline projects see also
Derrida's reading of Augustine, his mother's death, and the problems of
writing in "Circumfession").  Also, I think Derrida's work positions itself
repeatedly in resistance to the very sort of rhetoric of solution (either
poltical or linguistic) that your first paragraph uses in its attempt to
define a complex collection of texts.  The fact that these texts seek often
to disseminate even their own trajectory suggests that the unifying and
linear metaphors of Paul might not be the most likely ones to have founded
them.

Unless you had someone else's work or another text specifically in mind.

Just a thought,

--John