...in deconstruction aporias (impassable obstacles) are made to broken, not to drive us off the road. They are broken not by a bit of academic cleverness and theoretical adroitness but by a dream, a desire, and a deed. "Go wherever you cannot go!" To the aporia of the impossible, where the way of knowledge has been blocked, there corresponds the imperative of doing the truth, facere veritatem...
deconstruction is structured like a religion. Like a prayer and tear for the coming of the wholly other (tout autre), for something impossible, like a messianic prayer in a messianic religion (viens) like a vast and sweeping amen, viens, oui, oui. Like a faith in the coming of something we cannot quite make out, a blind faith where knowledge fails and faith is what we have to go on... Religion without Religion!
Religion was not a possibility for the horizon of classical modernity. Today religion becomes the possibility of impossibility. With the two great unveilers [David] Tracy rejects all systems of totality with the claim that fragments are our spiritual tradition, fragments seen theologically as saturated and auratic bearers of infinity and hope for redemption [John Caputo]
Many have said that the core 'principle' of 'Emerging Church' is the deconstruction and reconstruction of Church... The way I understand 'deconstruction' (a la Derrida) is that it is the liberating dimension of the deconstruction itself, not necessarily a mechanistic reconstruction... that defeats the object, replacing one set of axioms and aporias with another imposed framework... Deconstruction in the understanding of Derrida has at its heart 'differance'... "rather than privileging commonality and simplicity and seeking unifying principles (or grand teleological narratives, or overarching concepts, etc.) deconstruction emphasizes difference, complexity, and non-self-identity." [Wikipedia] Tracy says that Kierkegaard showed that...
Christendom as a triumphant totality system could not and cannot survive any true experiment with authentic Christian living.
...and says himself...
Religion never could be contained by modernity; it could only be conquered or it could be colonised... The most explosive power in many forms of postmodern thought is the return of The Ultimate repressed by the Enlightenment - the return of religion as a phenomenon demanding new attention, new description, and, of course, new critique.
Religion cannot emulate modernity, nor can it be fully expressed (if at all say some) without seeing the beyond... tout autre... or as Emmanuel Levinas said religion is about the possibility of impossibility! I guess where I am going with this, is that Mission/Church in a post-Christendom/Modern paradigm has to engage with the impossible, to...
Let go of the hope for any totality system whatsoever. Focus instead on the explosive, auratic fragments of our heritages. Do this not, in conservative fashion, to shore up against our present ruin... learn to live joyfully, not despairingly, with and in the great fragments we do indeed possess. [Tracy]
... so if deconstruction is about blowing away the aporias of modernity... but not about re-constructing new totalities, then perhaps we should be concerned less with establishing anything and simply value the freedom we have... now I am aware that this causes communication difficulties, but so what? If "Emerging Church" becomes anything more cohesive than an aggregate, if it stops dreaming of the impossible or begins to build walls... I'm not sure I want to be there... it is the fragments, the irrationality, the vulnerability, the impossibility that grabs me... I want to be one of Caputo's 'Apostles of the Impossible'... I want want to nurture 'desire de l'impossible, desir de Dieu' and welcome 'l'invention de l'autre' [Derrida]... go on call me a relativist if you like, I'm only dreaming!
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