Like this:

Sarah Hammerschlag has an Notre Dame Philosophical Review piece up on Shakespeare’s book. I’ve read some of her work (have I met her?) and enjoyed it. I want to juxtapose three sets of sentences though:

Shakespeare gives in to the temptation to read Derrida’s engagement with the language of kabbalah as a sign that Derrida is himself something of a kabbalist. To my mind this is a moment of wishful interpretation.

The claim is not that différance is another name for God, but rather that Derrida’s characterization of différance might open the way for a re-conceptualization of God in non-originary terms, as the trace of otherness (75).This raises the question: how elastic is the term “theology”? Given that Derrida’s description of différance, even when put in generative terms, does away with so many of the features understood as definitive for the monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — features such as sovereignty and priority — I wonder if such an association would not necessarily stretch the tradition past its breaking point.

And then….

Shakespeare is ultimately not afraid to ask this question even as he insists that Derrida’s thinking opens up new possibilities for theology. At the same time he rightly rejects Martin Hägglund’s claim that the trace with its logic of spacing exposes all things to the corrosion of difference, thus ruling out any concept of God and making Derrida a “radical atheist.”^[

I’ve talked to Hägglund about this and I think he’s on the right side of these things. He does have a questionable discussion of desire (not just that immortality is impossible, but that we wouldn’t and shouldn’t desire it. Perhaps shouldn’t, but don’t really desire it? I’m not in the business of telling other people what they “really” desire…), but overall his reading of Derrida is along the lines of my own reading of Derrida. Hammerschlag seems to accept many of the premises of this reading, and then she writes that Shakespeare “right rejects” Hägglund’s approach (for reasons not apparent in the review). And yet, she is led to “wonder” how Shakespeare can hold this all together, which she really doesn’t “wonder” about: she basically says he can’t.

And thus, one needs to show not just that Derrida wrote on theology. He did. And one doesn’t need to just show that you can cut out one or more sentences of Derrida and make it theological. You can. But the logic of deconstruction is atheistic. There is no difference between the earlier and later Derrida on this point. Yes, he later engages in the history of messianism, but as a way to discuss atheistic Marxism. It’s not that I haven’t engaged these traditions: I’ve edited a book on Richard Kearney, who argues with Derrida on exactly these points, and a few years before that I put together a panel on Jack Caputo’s work (at which he was a respondent).

Ultimately, there’s a lot  written into this “Derrida opens possibilities” for theology phrase.

I don’t know what Marion and Hart mean by a non-ontotheological God. I know what they’ve written, but of course, these analyses are lead by a certain doctrine, and let’s not pretend otherwise. You want (desire this immortality even!) this God in Derrida, or in the theological tradition—and bow to your gods on Sunday. That’s what I don’t see: (1) let’s say that Derrida opens up these “possibilities,” then (2) you need to show what these are, rather that just airy God of the gaps of différance, and (3) that somehow this leads you to a particular Christian confession.

I’m not convinced of #1, since you need to ignore all the places where Derrida works to demonstrate the impossibility of what you call a “possibility.” And the step from #2 to #3 is, whatever fear and trembling, a leap that is certainly untethered from any of the previous analyses.

Besides, aren’t we better off looking to Badiou—and one could spend a lifetime on the links, as I’ve written elsewhere, between and among each of these words—as our “hidden theologian of the void“?

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