marius timmann mjaalanddespair.^19 Thus, Derrida’s text not only analyzes but at the same time
expresses such a crisis in the Humanities. Like in Hegel’s and Husserl’s
phenomenologies, the definition of the Other has been reduced to a
definition of my Self, to a “structure of invisible interiority.” The
interference and absolute difference between Oneself and the Other
has collapsed and alterity is weakened to the extent that it is re-
constructed (or re-invented) by the Self, levelled down to a question
of “secrecy.”
In her book on the return of God in postmodern philosophy, Jayne
Svenungsson accuses Derrida of making the alterity too radical, with
reference to the tout autre est tout autre in On the Name and The Gift of
Death.^20 Hence, a problem, which the early Derrida has criticized in
Levinas in the essay “Violence and Metaphysics” (1963), recoils on the
later Derrida. I am not quite convinced that Derrida’s otherness is that
radical, however, at least not when compared to Levinas or Kierkegaard.
On the contrary, it is formalized and general; it becomes extensively
disseminated and thus very abstract. Hence, I suspect that the problem
Svenungsson and e.g. Richard Kearney have pointed out has to do
with the opposite: With a lack or even collapse of alterity in Derrida’s
own analysis.
Second Reading: A Prior I
But let us now attempt a second reading from a different angle. This
time I will focus on the second aspect of the passage, namely what it
signifies that “what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me
... ”? What does it mean that “God exists” or that “God is there”?
The Being or Non-being of God has become a topic in American
postmodern theology and philosophy. The theists have always argued
for God’s existence and God’s classical attributes, his Goodness,
etc. — and thus the postmodern a/theists argue against this very idea.
Among the non-theists there is in fact a remarkable new “con-sense”
19. Cf. Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Autopsia, 266–272.
20. See Jayne Svenungsson, Guds återkomst, Göteborg: Glänta, 2004, 200. She
refers to a similar argument by Richard Kearney but the emphasis is certainly her
own. I will soon return to this question of alterity.