“My own words take me by surprise and teach me what I think.”

I have found this to be true, yet we have choices in what we write. I originally thought about writing about trauma, but then I thought I would be doing self-psychoanalysis and that would be dwelling in a state of dysfunction, deconstructing pain and our reaction to it. I’m sure that has its time and place, and I’ve certainly done it before – considered pain. I don’t think the remembrance of painful things should be stifled, and I consider it very therapeutic to verbally, which includes literally, remember what happened at least once, remember that is, and maybe let someone else read it so that you’re not alone with it any more. But I’m wanting to move away from conflict right now at least, so I picked up Writing and Difference and came across the above quote by Merleau-Ponty (p.11). Jacques goes on to say,

It is because writing is inaugural, in the fresh sense of the word, that it is dangerous and anguishing. It does not know where it is going, no knowledge can keep it from the essential precipitation toward the meaning that it constitutes and that is, primarily, its future. [I am a let it happen type writer so I relate to this, but some people have a set plan like Rowling did so I don't know how this would be applied to them, unless writing can be equated with planning, and I do believe she was surprised when Harry fell from the sky.] However, it is capricious only through cowardice. There is thus no insurance against the risk of writing. Writing is an initial and graceless recourse for the writer, even if he is not an atheist, but, rather, a writer. Did Saint John Chrysostom speak of the writer? “It were indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written Word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come let us at any rate embrace the second best course.” But, all faith or theological assurance aside, is not the experience of secondarity tied to the strange redoubling by means of which constituted-written-meaning presents itself as prerequisitely and simultaneously read: and does not meaning present itself as such at the point at which the other is found, the other who maintains both the vigil and the back-and-forth motion, the work, that comes between writing and reading, making this work irreducible? Meaning is neither before or after the act. Is not that which is called God, that which imprints every human course and recourse with its secondarity, the passageway of deferred reciprocity between reading and writing? or the absolute witness to the dialogue in which what one sets out to write has already been read, and what one sets out to say is already a response, the third party as the transparency of meaning? Simultaneously part of creation and the Father of Logos. The circularity and traditionality of Logos. The strange labor of conversion and adventure in which grace can only be that which is missing.

No wonder the Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Protestants (which I was one in various denominations and non-denominations but an official member of none) don’t respect the Emergent Church. The former’s Sola Scriptura, anti-tradition beliefs equate the written word with grace as a primary source. However, the Emergent Church (Jacques is mentioned in that Wikipedia link) questions the fact that different people can come up with different meanings in the same Scripture passages.

Self-proclaimed emergent author Marcus Borg, for example, notes that individuals who have read the same Bible “literally” may have radically different accounts of the message of Christianity, which are often mutually exclusive. For example, one Christian may look to the Bible literally and see a strong case for the immorality of slavery or segregation, while another may look to the Bible literally and find strong literal support for the belief that slavery and segregation should be morally allowed to exist^{[citation needed]}. Borg notes that many aspects of people’s lives, including their political beliefs and their surrounding culture can provide a “lens” that can distort the Bible and influence which parts of the Bible they take literally, and which parts they may ignore. Critics claim that the postmodern lens through which emergents view Christianity has influenced their radical relativism. Emergent Christians tend to acknowledge that there are diverse valid perspectives within “Christianity” that are valuable for consideration in order for humanity to progress toward truth as they define it and a better resulting relationship with God as they define him. They believe this non-dogmatism coupled with their liberal social agenda will facilitate harmony with the rest of ‘His creation’ (other people and the rest of the universe).

Words are evidence of a lack of grace in humans. If we had grace we would have no need to speak or hear, words indicate lack, either the speakers or the necessity of word to the hearers. But aren’t words a means to meaning and grace? Father Braga said in the passage I quoted a few posts back that in prison he had no books, no paper, and no one to talk to and that’s when he found grace. But then he writes a book about it and we read it and learn how to find grace, not everyone does in prison. He also said that suffering brings maturity, and I would say ultimate consolation like Lazarus found in the Bosom of Abraham while the rich, comfortable (on earth) guy ultimately didn’t. Writing and remembering suffering is important, which is how we have the lives of the Saints and why I watch Cold Case Files sometimes. We need to know how people suffered, and this comforts them, it brings them grace. Words and Suffering are evidence that we don’t have grace, but this is a fact, so merely being quiet does not change it. By letting ourselves suffer and write, as opposed to numbing ourselves with medications, means of comfort, and living in denial, we confess that we are graceless and then maybe we will obtain some. But words as evidence of lack of grace explains why much of the O.T. and the Gospels were written so much later than the events occurred, and indeed why Paul had to write his letters to dam the grace leak in the newly established churches. The grace, or the memory of it, which infused the experiences when they occurred was wearing off. This is why we have the Councils, heretics were perverting the truth and traditional words had to be written down. We have faulty memories, so meaning needs to be rehearsed or it wears off. And it’s why Sola Scriptura is a crippling doctrine. It lacks the inherited, rehearsed, mature, effective, unifying, non-relativistic interpretation of the Bible. The Emergent Church recognizes the problem with over-assuming meaning in the Bible alone, and they even intuit effective means, as some employ traditional things like candles, icons and Liturgy. This is why I think they, like Father Guilquist and his colleagues did, not that they were formally emergent, may eventually find the Orthodox Church.

This is not to say that primary means, prayer, is incapable of bringing grace, in fact don’t all words point to the need for prayer? We can know all mysteries and all knowledge through proper prayer, and unless one has a pure heart, we need to be taught by word and example how to pray properly.

So when I’m silent, is it because I am pure, or because I’m hiding that I’m not, or because I’m shielding you from how impure I am. But does that work? Being silent about impurity doesn’t erase it or cause it to not damage the Body of Christ. Hidden sin has us captive, and in a solidarity with humanity sort of way, holds all of us captive so that we can’t fully experience grace. My expressed words reveal my graceless heart, even to myself. But I’ll not despair.

p.s. I’m not promoting tell-all, let it all hang out, self-expression. May we seek authentic grace, graciousness, and gracefulness, with all our hearts “or we shan’t live happy lives” (Emma Thompson/Margaret Schlegel/E.M.Forster in Howard’s End).

Chapter 3, no Nazi or totalitarian sympathizing there. More about not pitting people against each other through a false sense of allegiance to someone else, which ultimately western philosophy does. I guess Lilla just doesn’t like inconclusiveness. I am sometimes plagued by being able to see both sides of things and not discounting either side. At the same time I think I’m loyal to the truth, and have faith that the Orthodox Church has it, so I’m glad I can bring my inconclusiveness to the Church and let her deal with it. I accept God’s answers that He provides there. The Orthodox Church has a singular non-judgmental conservatism, if you get the paradox.

I really like Derrida’s points here, and continue to think Lilla prefers premature dogmatism.

In Chapter 4 on justice and law,

The problem with law, in his view, is that it is founded and promulgated on the basis of authority, and therefore, he asserts (with typical exaggeration), depends on violence. Law is affected by economic and political forces, is changed by calculation and compromise, and therefore differs from place to place. Law is written into texts and must be interpreted, which complicates things further.

Of course, none of this is news. Our whole tradition of thinking about law, beginning in Greek philosophy and passing through Roman law, canon law, and modern constitutionalism, is based on the recognition that laws are a conventional device. The only controversial issue is whether there is a higher law, or right, by which the conventional laws of nations can be judged, and, if so, whether it is grounded in nature, reason, or revelation. This distinction between law and right is the foundation of continental jurisprudence, which discriminates carefully between loi/droit, Gesetz/Recht, legge/diritto, and so forth. Derrida conflates loi and droit for the simple reason that he recognizes neither nature nor reason as standards for anything. In his view, both are caught up in the structures of language, and therefore may be deconstructed.

Now, however, he also wishes to claim that there is a concept called justice, and that it stands “outside and beyond the law.” But since this justice cannot be understood through nature or reason, that only leaves one possible means of access to its meaning: revelation. Derrida studiously avoids this term but it is what he is talking about. In Force de loi he speaks of an “idea of justice” as “an experience of the impossible,” something that exists beyond all experience and therefore cannot be articulated. And what cannot be articulated cannot be deconstructed; it can only be experienced in a mystical way. This is how he puts it:

If there is deconstruction of all determining presumption of a present justice, it operates from an infinite “idea of justice,” infinitely irreducible. It is irreducible because due to the other–due to the other before any contract, because this idea has arrived, the arrival of the other as a singularity always other. Invincible to all skepticism . . . this “idea of justice” appears indestructible…. One can recognize, and even accuse it of madness. And perhaps another sort of mysticism. Deconstruction is mad about this justice, mad with the desire for justice.

Or again in Specters of Marx:

What remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undeconstructible as the possibility itself of deconstruction, is, perhaps, a certain experience of the emancipatory promise; it is perhaps even the formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion, even a messianic without messianism, an idea of justice–which we distinguish from law or right and even from human rights–and an idea of democracy –which we distinguish from its current concept and from its determined predicates today.

There is no justice present anywhere in the world. There is, however, as Derrida puts it, an “infinite idea of justice,” though it cannot and does not penetrate our world. Yet this necessary absence of justice does not relieve us of the obligation to await its arrival, for the Messiah may come at any moment, through any city gate. We must therefore learn to wait, to defer gratifying our desire for justice. And what better training in deferral than deconstruction? If deconstruction questions the claim of any law or institution to embody absolute justice, it does so in the very name of justice–a justice it refuses to name or define, an “infinite justice that can take on a ‘mystical’ aspect.” Which leads us, without surprise, to the conclusion that “deconstruction is justice.”

Socrates equated justice with philosophy, on the grounds that only philosophy could see things as they truly are, and therefore judge truly. Jacques Derrida, mustering all the chutzpah at his disposal, equates justice with deconstruction, on the grounds that only the undoing of rational discourse about justice will prepare the advent of justice as Messiah.

Maybe Derrida’s showing his Jewishness here, still waiting for the Messiah. Well perhaps he couldn’t find Him in the western Church and the laws of its land. Still, with the judge and jury system, instead of a computer generated outcome based on formula, there is room for Messianic inspiration. I like the phrase, “The Eastern Orthodox Church knows where the Spirit is, but does not know where He is not.”

Chapter 5,

Unless, of course, he places the “idea of justice” in the eternal, messianic beyond where it cannot be reached by argument, and assumes that his ideologically sympathetic readers won’t ask too many questions.

I’m seeing correlations with the Last Judgment and its element of surprise. However, as Father Stephen highlights, Christ has come and we can find direction here. Plus we have intuition.

As to the rest of the chapter, Derrida’s right, people are seeking the Messiah in their politics,whether Marxist or Democratic, and that’s good, seeking the Messiah that is, but these ideologies have dissapointed. They fall short. Derrida very much criticized aspects of Marx, and by no means supports totalitarian regimes, and I got this from Lilla’s paper! Lilla’s defaming agenda towards Derrida and his belittling of his impressed readers is very oppositionally Platonic, but has less basis in fact (the ones thathe presents and supposedly support his conclusions) than he purports. Our Ochlophobist is right, he is a twit. Oops, that’s too anti. My lack of transcendence is showing.

Well this is just downright insulting, now Lilla thinks that Americans should hate themselves too. From Chapter 6,

No wonder a tour through the post-modernist section of any American bookshop is such a disconcerting experience. The most illiberal, anti-enlightenment notions are put forward with a smile and the assurance that, followed out to their logical conclusion, they could only lead us into the democratic promised land, where all God’s children will join hands in singing the national anthem. It is an uplifting vision and Americans believe in uplift. That so many of them seem to have found it in the dark and forbidding works of Jacques Derrida attests to the strength of Americans’ self-confidence and their awesome capacity to think well of anyone and any idea. Not for nothing do the French still call us les grands enfants.

I’ve been caught up in anti-post-modernist anti-dogmatism, but now I see that there’s room for some of it. The west has been too dogmatic and falsely confident about many things. We’re really not that far removed from cruelty to Others deemed less-than. Becoming Orthodox after 40 years of Protestant dogmatism has made me more open to the idea. Shouldn’t persecutors question their ideas? It’s only ok to be stubborn if you’re right, but then there’s mercy…

Chapter 2

François Dosse describes Jacques Derrida’s doctrine of deconstruction as an “ultrastructuralism.” This is accurate enough but does not tell the whole story. In France at least, the novelty of deconstruction in the Sixties was to have addressed the themes of structuralism–difference, the Other–with the philosophical concepts and categories of Martin Heidegger. Derrida’s early writing revived a querelle over the nature of humanism which had set Heidegger against Sartre back in the late Forties and had many political implications. Derrida sided with Heidegger, whom he only criticized for not having gone far enough. And it is to that decision in favor of Heidegger that all the political problems of deconstruction may be traced.

…An intellectually consistent deconstruction would therefore seem to entail silence on political matters. Or, if silence proved unbearable, it would at least require a serious reconsideration of the anti-humanist dogmas of the structuralist and Heideggerian traditions. To his credit, Michel Foucault began such a reconsideration in the decade before his death. Jacques Derrida never has.

So if he’d sided with Marxist, humanist, European self-hatred promoting Sartre he’d have been more “correct”? What I like about deconstruction is that it promotes humility by saying that individual assumptions are usually not as stable and worthy of being built on as is supposed (the Orthodox Church’s dogmatic and inspired cataphatic conciliar teachings not included) These assumptions are worthy of being questioned, deconstructed, and opened up to let in more light. To assume that anyone has all the light available on any matter at all is prideful and false. But we can’t go around in total silence, paralyzed of any action at all. We walk in the light we have as we ask for more. There’s always more. No one has arrived, though Saints come the closest, and even they would deny it.

Plus the guilty by association of nazi tendancies is quite a stretch. Derrida didn’t think Heidegger or De Man, and I don’t even think he himself, had arrived.

Anyone who has heard him lecture in French knows that he is more performance artist than logician. His flamboyant style–using free association, rhymes and near-rhymes, puns, and maddening digressions–is not just a vain pose (though it is surely that). It reflects what he calls a self-conscious “acommunicative strategy” for combating logocentrism.

I’ve read a few of his poetic free associations and I like them. They are energizing, beautiful, intriguing, interesting, and in some ways innocently pure to me. I’ve read another person’s similar attempts that I now think were attempts at copying him. I found them energizingly intriguing, but they had an accusatory, derogatory component to them that was hurtful. I don’t want to justify my affinity for Derrida’s further right now till I know more.

Though I don’t agree with Lilla’s over-confident conclusions, I recognize that he is well-researched, which I’m not, so I’ll keep reading.