Misusing deconstruction (pt. 2): some clarifications
My last post generated quite a bit of feedback, both publicly and privately. It seems that I struck a nerve here and most of the folks I am hearing from resonated with much of what I said. I do, however, want to add a few clarifications.
Despite my tone — which is a little harsh in places and rightfully so I think — I am not suggesting that what some are calling “positive belief” simple be abandoned or dismissed. I am, after all, dealing with the Christian tradition in which I have been inculcated. I am a theologian and I use the symbolic framework and the social imaginary of this tradition. Better, I interpret these things as best I can and try to read and reread them in creative ways, hopefully in ways that have been for whatever reason silenced or glossed over by the dominant power discourse. All of this involves positive belief, argumentation, and responsibility for my thought ideas. On this point Derrida agrees with me. Though he is situated in a different tradition, I believe his body of work stands as a testament to detractors who would suggest otherwise.
For me, the problem is not with “positive belief” per se, but rather how said belief is used and wielded. The language and tone I hear around “reconstruction” suggests to me that belief may be given a new label but it is still built around a metaphysics of presence and given substantial recourse to some sort of big Other, what Derrida calls a transcendental signified, that ultimately secures things. For me this is untenable and representative of the attitude that deconstruction is merely a stage rather than an ongoing discursive strategy. As I said before it should alway infect theology, leaving the tension between religious desire and the belief structures that necessarily facilitate that desire forever open and haunted by that which that can never fully contain. If anything it is an argument for the proliferation of “positive belief” and a multiplicity of understandings within a tradition on the condition that these things are provisional, susceptible to reinterpretation, and open to fall under the judgment and analysis of rigorous scrutiny.
I am as much a critic as I am a theologian — the two are always closely intertwined for me — so when it comes to belief I tend to err on the side of deconstruction, hoping to bear witness to an event that even the most beautiful and persuasive positive belief structure can never fully contain (this is also why I have a deep love for the mystics and the apophatic tradition). I am alway unsaying what I have previously said so I can hopefully, maybe, say it a little better. That doesn’t mean I’m not interesting in saying anything. It just means I want to precise and open to being shown my blindspots, which is maybe another possible definition of deconstruction. I aim to be about the business of reframing and reinterpreting while at the same time taking responsibility for the Christian tradition by inhabiting its language, turning around in it, and showing that there is always some excess that never quite fits into the puzzle perfectly.
A theology infected by deconstruction is always looking over its shoulder, always oscillating between the known and the unknown, leaving the tension, the wound of divine desire, open and festering in order to say something, however feeble or inadequate, about the event by which it is animated. So in a sense, there is no reconstruction that needs to be done. It is all already there, the tradition is before us and ahead of us. We already have the constructions. Good theology is about negotiating how they function in discourse and life, asking whether they foster a posture of unmitigated hospitality toward heterogeneity and alterity, toward the divine itself, or whether they squelch it through misguided quests for ultimate grounds, bedrock foundations, and sedimented structures.
And that’s why I am not interested in leaving deconstruction behind for mere surface reconstruction — because for me deconstruction is, as friend of mine put it, a sustained spiritual practice, fostering a deep sense of awe and wonder at the world and incessantly reminding me that the divine always lies ahead of even my best theological ideas.
Related articles
- Misusing deconstruction: on belief and the emergent church (blakehuggins.com)
- Derrida and theology [video] (blakehuggins.com)
Posts
Email
Pingback: Clippings No. 5 | The Edge of the Inside