belated derrida tribute...

remembering derrida...

I never had the chance to study Derrida in university... I remember my tutor saying rather smugly when I told him I would like to read Derrida... He said, "We only do serious philosophy here at King's".

Still, like a ghost, Derrida haunts me with his scepticism towards our logocentrism(our privileging of logic/reason over the affective/emotive side of humanity), his vigilance towards any possible violence committed by our notions of ends/metanarratives). He was concerned with the inbreaking of the absolute surprise, that which comes above and beyond our programmatic inventions and scientific/reasoned progress, the future as the progression of linear time... He warns us to always be ready for the coming of The Other, that which defies our categories that seeks to homogenize real difference in the other, the stranger... His was a certain kind of messianism without claiming the moral high ground of speaking on behalf of the divine...

Perhaps, the biblical injunction to welcome strangers (where we might inadvertently had entertained angels), the Jewish expectation of the coming of Elijah, who stands at our doorstep... ultimately our Master's promise to return at a time we least expect it, hence his encouragement to us to 'Watch and pray'... Could all these be a challenge that we be open to meeting our Messiah in meeting the hungry, the poor, the dispossessed, the refugees... to give justice where it is within our power to provide... I have been made more sensitive to the Other, through Jacques' work...

God still speaks through others who are different from us... We only need to learn the patience to listen... even from Jacques Derrida...

(a nice obituary of Jacques at The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1324160,00.html)