Derrida
and the
diaspora
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~CHAEL
GREENSTEIN
AT
Yale and Johns Hopkins they· '
swallow him wholeheartedly. Elsewhere, he is derided" as ~stri­
dently for his obscurantism. But whatever one's position, ,it is
difficult to ignore the impact of Jacques Derrida on contemporary
literary criticism. An Algerian Jew by birth, Derrida has risen to
hold the Chair of Philosophy at France's prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure, and his impressive publications assurehirit a
place alongside such figures as Bergson, Levi-Strauss, and Albert '
Memmi-a cluster attesting to'the vitality of Jewish contributions
to the intellectual environs of the Sorbonne and College de France.
Paris has not ~imply inspired the imaginations of HemingWay,
Fitzgerald, and other American expatriates; it has also served as a
. ,
major center for Jewish creativity.
The extent of Levi-Strauss' lewishness seems limited to a
single structural comment about his childhood sojourn.·
his
rabbinical grandfather's home: the future anthropologist passed
through a cold corridor between house and synagogue, impassable frontier between the sacred and profane. 1 Derrida, '. on the
other hand, pronounces more elaborately on his secular JudCilism..
The relationship of Derrida's post-structuralist theories to rabbinic
tradition has been the subject of a .recent book, Susan Han':' .
delman's The Slayers of Moses, which places Derrida; Freud,iand
Harold Bloom within a "heretic hermeneutics"-a simultaneous "
rejection and continuation of traditional Jewish thought. 2 His triple
at'
an
33
sv\·mC~l11(les·
the valorization of writing 'over speech where the
takes precedence over the Oral Law; the displa~e­
center by the circumference, which has challengmg
for the relationship between Zion and the Diaspora;
;aJ~c;tYilt,~¥' p~~ennial deferment of the Messiah.
Glas, a book that, copies the columnar format of the
:iV!·ti!1:~i!ii(::i::Mg!~ira1.m.llld;:Oerrida includes a reference to his own childhood:
In~geria~ in the middle of a mosque that the colonists ha~ chan~ed into a
,synagogpe,tht? Torah once ou~from derriere les rideaux, IS carned about
iIithe'armsofa man or child .... Children who have watched the pomp of
thls celebration, especially those who were able to give a hand, perhaps
,dfea.mofitlong after, of arranging there all the bits of their life. .,
What am I doing here? Let us say that I work at the ongm of,
literature by miming it. Between the two. 3
Indeed what is Derrida doing in this passage as he combines
aritobi~graphical tidbits and philosophical speculation, Jewish ex.
.
perience and ,aesthetic theory?
Utilike structuralists who posit a static, black-and-white, bl:nary opposition, Derrida places himself "between the tw~,"
, among lIlultiple shades of gray, for only in this state of "mbetweenness" can he move beyond, to some form of transcendence. He dwells in and on marginality, celebrating borderlines
(Qtte of his books is entitled Margins of Philosophy~. Notice t~e
shifting margins in the passage from Glas: the Algenan colony IS
peripheral to the Parisian metropolis from whic? the man recalls
IHs,cchildhood; a mosque has been transformed mto a synagogue,
!::"'T!evjersiimrthe marginal position of Jews; and the uncurtained ~orah
;:t'1nO'iTes away from the middle. In retrospect, how does the ph~loso­
,::+':~!ie/"p'heltaITallg~ all the bits of his life there? This seems to be a hidden
aJ.]ll1s1lonto Freud's account of his grandson freely playing, fort ...
:> 'forth and back in a dec entering manner, derriere and da
"'~~t~ingpart ofDerrida's multilingual word play. Working bet.ween
;'.6~~sand mim~, invention and repetition, literature and ~hlloso­
p~r, here~anges categories in the process of deconstruc.tlOn.
'!~Derrida frequently works on the border between philoso~hy
;~tiIiterature, using Joycean free association in his highly elUSive,
.. ~ style with its etymological word .play. In La Carte Postale,
":,:·;'c:!lJllL'.U"''-' rindst of a treatise on Socrates, Freud, and the phenomenol-
.
ogy of letter writing, Derrida includes an' enttyon
September 7, 1977. This entry does not follow .from the~bIeyi,on!
one that breaks off in mid-sentence, just as this one
any transition or preparation in mid-sentence: "'her . W:lJLUll.l':'.I.:'~CU.r.:
,Esther."4 Whenever one wishes to attack him philolSO}:»bi~~all:y:!!:()n}:,i:
rational grounds, he retreats into literature, where a more iIruagiJ[la~
tive approach has to be taken. The idiosyncratic letter'
his imagined lover how much he loves Esther or at least her '. '" '....... ':.' . . .
the story of Purim interests him because he' imagines Ahasu~~ I
sending out letters, royal decrees to destroy the Jews:. He quotes at ,.:
length from a French translation by Chouraqui, and .itgtadll~)'·
becomes clear that the feast of Purim serves as' an example of
chance'writing, fortune-telling, drawing lots, letters whichsuspeot'f
the death sentence.
.
Not only does Purim exemplify the reversal aIid displacement
of an edict through writing-an enterprise fundamental to decoilstructionism-but Derrida also seizes upon some mimbers'cited in .
the tale as if he were about to engage in a personal form of
gematria. The date set for the Jews' destruction is the thirteenth
day of the twelfth month, and the letters are sent to '127 cities
throughout the kingdom. Derrida asks his imaginary lover whether
these numbers recall anything, and he promises to write her a,
detailed letter describing his experience of Purim at EI-Biar when
he was ten years old. Of course, he never writes this letter, for he.
always defers completion of meaning, and ends with"Je t'attends
encore "-awaiting meaning and completion, the tease and tense of .
deferment.
In another letter of the same date he returns to the same
subject, this time focusing on Esther's name. Addressing Judith at
the beginning he wonders what would happen if he were to ca1l her'
Esther and then goes on to Hadassah, myrtle, whose smellfuvokes
other associations from sexual perfume to the cologne praced ona
corpse, namely that of his father. He ends these cupous lett~rs,
with more psychoanalytic associations from Phoenix,,, a brand of
kosher anisette in Algeria, to circumcision and' the number 1, ",his'
telephone number in EI-Biar 73047, echoing the importance of his
"Jewish" letters of September 7, 1977. Free association, forays
into etymology, multilingual puns, and a nomadic turn of, mfud
contribute to the philosopher's elusiveness in La C(J,rte Postale.
I
QERRmA. ~U",D:II!.'.UI.J
···.··t!}:~,f~::~;:r}~t;'~i:
Demda elaborates his Jewish thematics in essays on
(';,'J~(J,JnrClin4.Ja:bes, where writer and Jew become synonymous:
Freedom 'allies and exchanges itself with that which restrains it, with
,eye¥bing it receives from a buried origin, with the gravity which situates
.......... '..... . . . '. and its site. A site whose cult is not necessarily pagan. Provided
i:tb~tthisSiteis not site, an enclosure, a place of exclusion, a province or
.•. . . •. agbetto. When a Jew or a poet proclaims the Site, he is not declaring war.
For. this site, this land, calling to us from beyond memory, is always
... elseWhere. The site is not the empirical and national Here of a territory.
~. ~ .. Freedom is granted to the nonpagan Land only if it is separated from
freedom by the Desert of the Promise. That is, by the Poem. 5
a
Derrida begins by reversing and displacing freedom and its opposite before proceeding to a deconstruction of "center." In his
JeWish deconstruction he valorizes the Diaspora over Israel, exile
and wandering over nationality. You cannot pin down the philosopher who turns poet, shading and shaking pi/pul into agadahhence Derrida's recourse to borders, margins, and traces. He is a
reveler, revealer, reliever, and re-Iever in paradox, taiku, and
aporia.
We are so accustomed in our structuring of thought to give
precedence to center over circumference, but what happens when
we reverse this geometrical hierarchy? For the Jewish situation
there are two consequences. On the one hand, instead of regarding
the Jew as a marginal, peripheral outsider, we may now focus on
that figure as central in the development of Western culture. On the
:{·other hand, this process of reversal and displacement puts into
question the relationship of Zion and Diaspora, with the latter
. . .,. . .,.:,."" ....,. '..:p~ed()minant. Although we may adduce in support of Derrida the
p,ttra~Qrthodox rejection of the State of Israel, as well as those who
'insist that Zionism is no longer viable since any Diaspora Zionist
.s6.b1.lld already have settled in Israel, these arguments are beside
~~J?oint. What this deconstructive strategy does accomplish,
. :.h.9wever, is to shake up our complacency, thereby sharpening our
a.Wareness .. of.a. too-comfortable exile of Israel in America and
·:France.
An'ironic talmudist, Derrida signs his name at the end of his
two ess~ys.on Jabes-Reb Rida and Reb Derissa, rabbinic signa"tures attesting to self-parody, derisive qualities, and the animal
ridens in Jacques Derrida, whose heretichumoolr~'i~~I:~f~~~[~~'{f"
heretic hermeneutics. But in a more serious v
Hegel's notion of Abraham's unhappy consciousness;~ an~t'{q[)11¥ ;,
tinues to explore the Wandering Jew in an essay, on E~m.u~)J~~'J:
Levinas, which concludes with questions about H~~bEaic!arld'JHel~
lenic origins: "Are we Jews? Are we Greeks? We ;,
difference between the Jew and the Greek, which is pet:balP$:.;tfie
unity of what is called history." Derrida quotes Levinas: ·~~litllC}Vff':.:·:'/
the Torah more than God is protection against the ma(JIl(~ss· . Q~. 3,.:\':
direct contact with the Sacred." If tradition is adventure';'n'lthc~t.,i"
than orthodoxy, then the supersession of Written La\Vovertb.e'~
Oral veils another>-assualt on Orthodox Judaism."·La polyseniie '
est la possibilite d'une 'nouvelle Tora' pouvant sortir qe l'autre}~6
Deconstruction borders on iconoclas'm in its' interest in "the' bro~'·
ken Law."
.
,
In Spurs Derrida examines Nietzsche's style and his equation
of woman, Jew, and artist:
.
.
That Jews and women should be thus associated does not seem at all
insignificant, and the fact Nietzsche often considers them in parallel roles
might in fact be related to the motif of castration and simulacrum for
.
which circumcision is the name of the mark. 7
Ever enamored of associationism, the twentieth-century philoso- .
pher outdoes his predecessor, but in relating woman or Jew to such
qualities as distance, hidden truth, and skepticism, he may be
nearer the mark. Woman, Jew, and artist participate in dijferance,
a key Derridean pun meaning not only an infinite play of differ:'"
ences, but also deferment. Within a Jewish context, deferment
points backward to a search for origins and forwardto the coming
of the Messiah.
'
Recapitulating some earlier concerns and breaking
ground, Derrida's most recent foray into Jewish thought occurs, in
"Shibboleth," an essay ostensibly devoted to the works of::PatiI
Celano The reader recognizes an almost characteristic Derridean .
tone, style, and rhetoric suited to the subject, an arrestitig progres.,.,'
sion or prose equivalent of rhyming couplets. The title, the occasion (a conference on Paul Celan), and the first sentence a,ntlIOtll[lCe
Jewish matter: "One time only: a circumcision takes'
once." Never one to handle one topic only, Derrida the mUlitil)lie:r,;.'
DERRIDA AND;l'BE
. .'p1illosoph~t, conjoins circumcision and uniqueness-two
;"YiJ!~>PiC~sit()beelaboiated, along with several others, in the course of
··./i",'h'iC!" ""4:14:1!ilir or meditation on Celan's poetry. What do shibboleth,
.poetry,circrimcision, and "once" have in common? While
.··2'i'..... ,'\J~J.ClUs;poems demonstrate the "one-time-only." of original crea:;jtjlOn~dill)'enida's repetition 'and interpretation of his words unsettle
'.tbie.lllotl[On of any absolute origin or center of creativity. He asks us
tO :f1dhere. to linguistic borders where only those who know how to
pTOllounce '''shibboleth'' may cross before going on to heteroge. ij~6ustranslations of "once" in several languages. To prevent us
.from. drawing any conelu'sions, the final sentence of the opening
. parilgraph negates what has preceded it: "Nor do these latter share
,any affinity of, let us say, a conceptual order."
. . Having denied this order in his first paragraph, he introduces
archaeology 'and eschatology in his second short paragraph (the
first anctlast time), and repeats his intention to circle around the
app't~arance of circumcision. If writing is akin to circumcision, then
the Derridean process is cyclical, circling about his subject yet
cldding to it as he goes along so that the reader may not expect mere
linearity of thought,. dialectical progression, or circular repetitions,
but instead. must (un)settle for a multiplicity of modes. Thus, he
soon introduces the concept of "date," which he proceeds to relate
to "one time," Circumcision, shibboleth, and Celan's poetry in a
contradictory process of accretion and subtraction, the same
marking of ring and anniversary in removal and addition to identity
mcircumcision. And all of these associations are a grafting on to
Celan's text, which Derrida quotes as he goes along. "What is
;'>going, coming, going and coming and turning-heart?" The question
be!ongsnot only to Celan's enigmatic, elliptical language but to
':~~rrida's philological method of coming-and-going and turning
::~~&es."Discontinuity is the law" not only of the philosopher's
:P!9se :and Celan's poetry, but also, as Irving Howe reminds us, of
'Jewish tradition in the modern world.
.. :Quoting extensively from Celan, Derrida speculates on mem8ry,deportation, inscription, individuation, effacing, encounter,
,,~~ncentration, s,igning,witness, specter, ash, crypt, password,
mllitiplicity, and migration of languages, before turning to more
,.ex~Jicit Jewish matters. "Conversation in' the Mountains" is a
. Illeditation on the Jew, son of a Jew, whose name is "unproi
nounceable," and who has nothing of his own!r "nolt111111t:1:
borrowed, so that the Jew has no property or
~~l~~Wi~~Ii;:i
not Jewish." "Anyone or no one may be J
explain this contradictory affirmation and annuJlti1~mt,\of~jilE
existence and identity? "The Jew is also the other m1,sel£·~~~("~~
other; I am Jewish in saying:' the Jew is the other; WtllO::inru~;~,.1J.I(.)i;,~:~
essence, who has nothing of his own or whose own eSl;eJ]lce\is,:n.o-~,;;:
to have one."9 Echoes of Buber's I-Thou and Sartre's· e~s,teJ]ttmJ~
ism reverberate in this doctrine that would seem to Ide~ntitY1the.Je~~•
as pure existence without essence. The paradox beloD!!s·"to .~~.lC;L1J;,':, .
as much as to Derrida: the alleged universality of Je:wish "Y\a.tJ]les~;j.s,,<,
integrated with the incommunicable secret ofthe.judaic I.'"
s.ingularity of its uhpronounceable name. In a par¢nthesis ·Ton. ....... ~
hne of thought, he consigns Israel to existence rather than eSSiell.lce.
"(~~d I will. ad~ as well, in parentheses, that. in its terrifyUig'
political ambIguIty, Shibboleth could today name the State of .
Israel, the state of the State of Israel.)"
Essentially without essence, Derrida marks his existence as
writer and Jew, poet and philosopher, creative essayist, homo
ludens as homo judens playing with many languages, Joycean'
levels of discourse, clusters of multiplicity, and a thesaurus or"
thought. Reb Derrida's midrash flows in midstream, in theShifibo- '.;:
leth that is river. But it also partakes of the Catch-22 of Sambatyon-a stream of consciousness that bubbles and beckons without .
permitting crossing. Beyond that boundary'lies another lost tribe'.
a?d the diatribes, tribulations, and tributaries 'of Diaspora, espe- .
cmIly those of Yale's secular yeshivah. He quotes from Joyce's
Ulysses: "Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet." Extremes of
tradition and post-modernism coalesce in the abyss of dijferance"
What, we may well ask, does all of this theoretical spec~tion
hav~ to do with modern Jewish literature? If we turn to.a paradigmatIc work such as Herzog, we may explore some o( the ~n1"""".-". . "·"i·,·'",."., .... ·
quences of Derridean thought. Bellow's anti-hero,' like Derrida's
anti-philosopher, is decentered, out of his mind, writing letters to
everyone under the sun. Eccentric, ironic Herzog confesses that
his "thoughts are shooting out all over the place,'~
Vineyard to New York to Chicago to Montreal and further
Russia, tracing diasporic routes and origins-habits of mind com:7.
mon to Derrida. While the marginal professor habitually comp~~tes'
nUJ:JU. .. 'LlU;;
•. ",[,:';",'1"'1".,..,,,,:.:,,:
DERRIDA ANIV-JrHJ~\
sentelldes for them, he rarely finishes his own letters
iJ[latgiJnal discourse~ Dragging his shoelaces as well as his past,
;;.rJje:"t:lG(~Snl~t
kriowwhetherheis coming or going: "If ... Yes ... No
the other hand"..,.-the laughing philosopher who wants to
at least botbways in his championing of differance and
'. D()Ivsernol1s. perversity. After examining Heidegger and Hegel,
··".:,.;:;X::f'J::i:elrZ()12,I)rofffers a "Jewi~h interpretation" of modern life as "in,. ',,'
,divided, vacillating." Herzog's adviCe would seem to
coincide with a deconstructive platform: "Any philosopher who
W,~lltsto keep his contact with mankind should pervert his own
sys~min advance."
But where finally does Derrida's and Bellow's mutual penchant for metaphor lead? Have we merely gone around in chaotic
circles 'or do these twentieth-century minds continue the tradition
of ben Bag Bag who also turned the texts of Holy Writ? Derrida
right concur with Herzog's conclusion that he has no messages for
anyone, but at least he invites us to examine, reverse, and displace
Paradoxes!with the hope of yielding new insights. If modernism
arid post-modernism are fraught with dilemmas, paradoxes, and
ambigUities, then the program of post-structuralism, in its nonnihilistic forms, could have pragmatic results, but when it merely
gets caught up in the excesses of its own rhetoric, it tends to be
self-defeating.
Part pure, part wicked, half elegant, half slovenly, is Herzog a
clever man or a cosmic idiot? With all his fragmentation and
disintegration, Derrida would let him have it both ways. The
. Frenchman's archaeology of the frivolous alternates with the
'runerican's astronomy of the near-at-hand-observation through
".~hefront end of a telescope at a tiny clear image. For a dreaming
"'~~rzogin his hammock, the stars approach like spiritual bodies; to
'\.sQDlbat destiny he hitches his agony to a star, the novae bursting
, .• ;~d:theworlds coming into being; and if Mr. Bellow's planet in its
"ig~axy goes from void to void, aching with its unrelated signifi"£~ce"thenHerzogwith a Jewish shrug whispers, "Nu, maile". : ;~~ultimate Yiddish deconstruction, domestication of myth (to use
,RobertAlter's phrase), taiku, or aporia.
. . BellQw's protagonist personifies differance: brokendown mon. . . arch or princely immigrant whose deep heart is his kingdom.
~eri?g~s transcendence downward, his blend of high and low
'i',-·;'i'';i'~i,:;:.:''''.',''lJ'll
brow, matches Derrida's frivolous archaeology, le"reU~W!Iij€~riii
chies, and sexual dissemination. Reb Rida's ~1:;"'.J.,aal.J. J)a.st~l:dinble
ments Bellow's Montreal childhood with its
French. Enigmas of the Diaspora and cannibal gaIaXies sttllbbqtIuy}
resist resolution: dissemination, dijJerance, deCeltlte~riIllg~,=.,.-_.,_....... ,.,
construction alliterate where Zion intersects with M.cli:niSttet:~t:(jr
Napoleon Street's intertexts. In place of the grandiose SYIlth€~sis:;:
Wissenschaft, Bildung, Wahrheit, Au/hebunginvolved ill the'
lectic between Israel and the Diasporas, we may have to settle
five-cent synthesis in Moses Elkanah Herzog's worlCl1y '". '. ,' . . . . ,«
"quack" arising from a Derridean canard. Like Freumarusm;'
Marxism, and Levi-Strauss' structural anthropology, Derridean'
deconstruction participates in the ordeal of civility or Jewish postmodern struggle with modernity: the secularizing. Jewish iIitellec- "
tual from Algiers to Paris as the avant-garde of his 'doubly decolo- .
nized people.
.
1. See John Murray Cuddihy, The Ordeal 0/ Civility (New York: Basic,
1974), p. 158.
2. Susan Handelman, The Slayers 0/ Moses (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982)."
See also Shira Wolosky, "Derrida, Jabes, Levinas: Sign-Theory as Ethical
Discourse," Proo/texts 2, 3 (September 1982),282-302.
3. Jacques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1974), 2681r269b, quoted
.
In Handelman, p. 165.
For a commentary on Glas and other Derridean texts, see Geoffrey Hartman,
Saving the Text: LiteraturelDerridalPhilosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ .
Press, 1981). "The prohibition against images obliged a channeling into . the
written word of imaginal energies. Derrida in this is Hebrew rather than Hellene:
aniconic yet intensely graphic" (p. 17). "As in the Hebrew liturgy that qU9t~s God
against God to plead a covenant in danger, so here words are 'quoted· against
words to save the contract between word and thing .... Glas is of the, House of
Galilee" (p. 19).
.
.
4. Jacques Derrida, La Carte Postale (paris: Flammarion, 1980), pp.
5. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, (Chicago:
U ni v. of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 66.
6. Jacques Derrida, La Dissemination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 383 .
7. Jacques Derrida, Spurs Nietzsche's Styles, trans. Barbara·Harl()w,(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 69. For Derrida's discussion of Walter
Benjamin, exile, messianism, and borders, see La Verite en Peinture (Paris:' .
.
.
.
Flammarion, 1978), p. 204.
8. Jacques Derrida, "Shibboleth," in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey
.
Hartman and Sanford Budick (Yale Univ. Press, 1986), p.·338.
9. Ibid.