Entering my post-Derridean/pre-______ Phase
November 24, 2004
I’m not sure if you’d call it a pride issue, or what, but I really wanted to do Derrida for this paper. I wanted to be able to say that I used Derrida for my paper and I thought there was a connection between Dionysius and Derrida. There is actually a connection and Derrida did a lot of work with, and addressed, the idea of negative theology, specifically in a panel discussion with Jean-Luc Marion. I sat in the library for a couple hours one night and attempted to read through Derrida’s “How to Avoid Speaking: Negations” - and was completely lost, but wanted to prove to myself that I could learn Derrida and deconstruction and his view on negative theology in just a few short weeks and feel comfortable enough with Derrida to write a paper on him. It didn’t help that when I was hanging out with Dr. Hankey and asked him a question about whether I should try reading Derrida’s essay “Difference” as well, he responded with, “Have you even tried to read Derrida yet? Because he’s hard…I mean, hard. I mean, really, really hard.” [this was coming from one of the preeminent Thomas Aquinas scholars in the world]
So, I’m now in a post-Derridean phase and it feels pretty good. The part that doesn’t feel so good is the fact that I’m in a pre-______ phase, which means: I don’t know what I’m trying this 20pg paper on. Apophatic/negative theology of Dionysius & -______. So I feel a little lame about dropping Derrida, but at the same time, it feels so good.
I’m sitting on a train right now heading up to Providence, Rhode Island (I didn’t know it was the smallest state) to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt & uncle. It should be a nice few days, a good sabbatical break. I am learning Hebrew (whoever knew adjectives, prepositions, pronouns & demonstratives could be so hard!) on the train ride and working on some other papers.
A few other little updates:
- My uncle just called me to check on my status and posed as an IRS agent. Damn him. I fell for it for like…a split nanosecond.
- I know there have been some inquiries, some people wondering about my current “status” because I haven’t been as “transparent” lately on the blog. No worries. I am not single.
- Our junior flag football team, the Sneaky Patahs, snuck into the playoffs with our defeat against Wicked Hardcore (a middler team). So, we’ll be in the playoffs next Saturday and hopefully we can pull out at least one win there. I ran the Pomo play a couple times, and got some yardage, got the extra points on a touchdown, and had a dramatic juggling act almost-catch on the last play of the game, but ended up dropping it in the endzone. Luckily, we were already ahead…or I know I’d be having nightmares about that missed catch for years to come (yah Rhoda, feel free to comment)
Posted in General
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
November 24th, 2004 at 5:28 pm
No idea what the full requirements of your paper are. If you’re just looking for someone more contemporary whose spirituality/theology was based on Dionysius, one option might be Madame Guyon. She was a French Catholic whose books were published mainly by evangelical protestant publishing houses. She has a very apophatic spirituality best described as “Let go and Let God.” Very much Dionysian.
November 24th, 2004 at 6:16 pm
No, no, don’t feel lame. There is no point. I think you probably did the right thing, for the sake of your mental health :)
Madame Guyon is a quietist, right? As long as we’re doing quietists, how about Miguel de Molinos?
If you’re looking for someone contemporary talking negative theology, I’m not that much help.
November 29th, 2004 at 5:05 pm
Ok, so you don’t know me. I got to your blog via a link on my friend Travis McMaken’s blog.
I’m really interested in overlap between continental philosophers and negative theology. Could you email me that link on derrida and dionysus.
I don’t know if your paper has already come due or not, or exactly what the requirements are, but if you are still interested in the question, I might suggest you look into the second chapter of Merold Westphal’s book “God, Guilt, Death” and read about what he calls ‘ontological ambivalence’. Westphal is much easier to read than derrida is.
yours,
shane wilkins
November 22nd, 2005 at 8:55 pm
You might be interested in this book -
Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God by Thomas A. Carlson. It’s about Derrida, Marison and Heidegger’s connection to negative theology.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:33 am
i come to this late… but i was websearching while thinking about P-Dennis and Derrida (doing a report on the subject tomorrow)
the [conference proceedings] book “Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought” ed. R Baine Harris has a couple interesting articles on Derrida and neoplatonism/negative theology/ dennis. neat stuff.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
if anyone’s still here, it might be worth noting that stephen gersh has a book out last year, _neoplatonism after derrida_, which i am looking forward to reading when the library has it (um, it’s brill, so it costs a zillion dollars).
i still haven’t gotten over either derrida or negative theology, or the intersection, even though i know it’s a bit tired, at the moment. my only refereed pub is a derridean reading of derrida (although in some ways the reverse), which i still think is pretty good but is dated, at this point, in terms of scholarship and philosophy in the meantime.
i found this post because at the moment i’m trying to figure out points of conflict and compatibility between neoplatonism and process thought, and particularly negative theology and process thought. at least i was near the front-end of the last trend, if i’m at the tail end of this one. :-/
the neoplatonism and contemporary thought volume also has a couple of essays on neoplatonism and process/whitehead.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
sorry — derridean reading of dionysius. d’oh. i’d edit if i could!