Derrida's Marrano Passover

Exile, Survival, Betrayal, and the Metaphysics of Non-Identity

Agata Bielik-Robson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781501392658
• eBook ISBN: 9781501392627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: French Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this first ever monograph on Jacques Derrida's 'Toledo confession' – where he portrayed himself as 'sort of a Marrano of the French Catholic culture' – Agata Bielik-Robson shows Derrida's marranismo to be a literary experiment of auto-fiction. She looks at all possible aspects of Derrida's Marrano identification in order to demonstrate that it ultimately constitutes a trope of non-identitarian evasion that permeates all his works: just as Marranos cannot be characterized as either Jewish or Christian, so is Derrida's 'universal Marranism' an invitation to think philosophically, politically and – last but not least – metaphysically without rigid categories of identity and belonging. By concentrating on Derrida's deliberate choice of marranismo, Bielik-Robson shows that it penetrates deep into the very core of his late thinking, constantly drawing on the literary works of Kafka, Celan, Joyce, Cixous and Valéry, and throws a new light on his early works, most of all: Of Grammatology, Dissemination and 'Différance'. She also offers a completely new interpretation of many of Derrida's works only seemingly non-related to the Marrano issue, like Glas, G iven Time: Counterfeit Money, Death Penalty Seminar, and Specters of Marx. In these new readings, this book demonstrates that the Marrano Derrida is not a marginal auto-biographical figure overshadowed by Derrida the Philosopher: it is one and the same thinker who discovered marranismo as a literary trope of openness, offering up a new genre of philosophical story-telling which centers around Derrida's Marrano 'auto-fable'.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Marrano uncanny: The last and the first of Jews
• Chapter 1: Betray, betray again, betray better: Marrano theology of survival
• Chapter 2: Secret followers of the hiding god: Marrano a-theism
• Chapter 3: The nameless still life: Marrano metaphysics of non-presence
• Chapter 4: Two serious Marranos: Derrida and Cixous (with constant reference to Poldy Bloom)
• Chapter 5: Ana-community: Marrano ‘living together’
• Bibliography
• Index of names and terms