Hagglund’s Radical Atheism of Derrida : Some Reflections
By Joe M.S
06 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org
In the religious turn of the intellectual scene for the last few decades, where Derrida is generally understood as embracing religion, talking about atheism among leftists is not fashionable any more. Such a dialogue is exactly what is attempted by Martin Hagglund in his book Radical Atheism: Derrida and The Time of Life (2008), by interpreting atheism in a new way. This is opportune since the kind of atheist defence made against reinvigorated religiosity, by the likes of Christopher Hitchens, is apparently supportive of the geopolitics of western powers, and not appealing to the left democratic and secular forces. Hagglund is reinterpreting the radical atheistic side of Derrida in a new perspective, where he argues that the desire for immortality itself “dissimulates a desire for survival that precedes it and contradicts it from with in”. This is against the popular understanding of Derrida’s religious turn, as understood by scholars like John Caputo. Such a view complicates the understanding of atheism itself, which may be of much help to the left democratic politics.
This new reading provides a unique understanding, when one looks at the ideology of people like Gandhi, which seems to be based on some kind of ‘absolute peace’, differing from the radical social critique of Periyar, which could be, it seems, as one waged from finite premises negating absolute peace and celebrating radical ‘violence’, as inherent to mortality, and therefore liberative. Such a new perspective would be different from the subjective understanding of the progressive movement themselves of their own history and might provide a new vision to alternative left praxis.
Radical Atheism
Hagglund provides a very lucid interpretation of Derrida’s ‘jargons’, helpful to comprehend Derida’s dense philosophy. Such an attempt is seemingly important for all leftists, since one should cautiously engage with all alternative thoughts, internalising and even appropriating constructive ones. Using Derrida’s ideas like ‘Trace’ and ‘spacing’, the book sheds new light on the indifference of metaphysical concepts, which is contrasted to real life in its difference (spacing). Therefore, the fullness of being (a la God) is unthinkable and finitude of body is the unconditional condition for anything. Accordingly, the undecidable coming of time is the non-destructible condition of justice. In other words, peace coexists with violence and the idea of ‘arche-writing’ proves that everything is already passing away, so that it can be inscribed for the future. Hagglund says that there is a primacy of retention testifying an inherent delay in subjectivity. Thus, Hagglund’s radical atheistic reading of Derrida stresses that nothing temporarily extended can ever be present in itself and is divided between past and future. Such conclusions have immense impact for understanding history as such and in engaging with future politics.
Furthermore, idealism, Hagglund argues, is pure immortality, death, timelessness or God. He pits it against the subject always divided by the movement of temporalisation, which faces contingencies. In short, existence itself is like a flux, as every self relation is mediated across temporal distance (anticipating even a nuanced dialectics, it seems). So, stereotyping social phenomena is meaningless. Thus, one can aver that, a progressive politics which internalises this understanding can enrich itself, as going wrong in their attempts is not always bad, as no one can exempt oneself from this only option.
Hagglund’s reading of Derrida’s ‘arche-writing’ is thus both spatial and temporal, preserving memory for the future and creating conditions for life. He contrasts it with Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical metaphysics of non-violence. Hagglund argues that Derrida’s radical atheism is never a call for mere peaceful respect for the divine other, but demands interaction with him as a complex alterity and emphasises constitutive violence as inherent to life as such. Such a Derrida even seems to be supporting radical revolutionaries. There is no idealism extolled as God or heaven in Derrida and even violence is comported with justice. The implications of such a reading helps one to see in a new light even failed attempts by radical progressives in the past.
Implications for a left democratic politics
There fore, one can rightly assume that, the utopian non-temporal peace ideal, from the perspective of which the problematic present is deemed as a fall, found in many political movements, ( say , may be, even in Gandhism), is non real. And ‘violence’ and ‘impurity’, being the natural order of temporal finitude, the politics upheld by Periyar, Ambedkar and Che Guevara, may be more closer to reality. Thus, the marginalising of other concerns, say for instance even in some genuine working class politics in the past, needs a sympathetic understanding, since without “divisional marks there would be nothing at all”. And what is excluded opens a new opportunity to alter the present.
For Derrida politics is endless and any attempt to define violence itself is violent, which is questionable for other concerns. Since nobody can decide exactly upon what is lesser violence, Hagglund observes that, violence is a constitutive condition for good and bad, which creates the basic condition for political struggle for transformation. When applied to the life and politics of a revolutionary figure like Lenin, with all his achievements and drawbacks, it seems, one can look at him differently.
Thus total peace for Hagglund is a totalitarian state, since there is no denials and contradictions, entertaining only peaceful and divine faces, rejecting violent others, there by politics as such. Moreover, an ethics of unconditional hospitality is not something one should aspire for but a conditional one. That is, say, a subaltern’s use of force for self defence is at times defensible, and nonviolence is not always a virtue, as it shirks responsibility for decisions in an indifferent way. Thus, sometimes, a nonviolent movement immune to the violent coming of the other, denies justice.
Hagglund views that Derrida glosses on God as “the idea that death cannot put an end to the world-to the true and ultimate world-even if it puts an end to the mortal world of singular living being” and adds that every possible world is absolutely destructible. Thus Radical atheism states that “every thing that can be desired is mortal in it’s existence’ and finite which necessitates love, because mortality makes things desirable and so God is undesirable. In other words, only a vile friend can be the real friend. Thus, it would be interesting to think that the innumerable conflicts, disagreement and divisions in the history of the left, is not because of some empirical faltering, but natural for any human endeavour. Thus Derrida’s Radical atheism portrays God as a friend who could not even cheat as against John Caputo’s understanding.
Hagglund differentiates this new atheism from the old, which desired for a friendship of perfection, even when denying God. On the contrary, the new Radical Atheism’s call for alterity anticipates even a jealous and mortal friend, since friendship arises only in mortality and imperfection.
Derrida’s atheistic concept of radical evil may help to elucidate the limitation in left movements own self criticism were, they sometimes lament a fall from a ‘Godly’ absolute state. Since every live context is susceptible to error, opting for the lesser evil is the only correct process available. Hagglund’s reads that Derrida’s ethics become ethical only with the inevitable possibility of evil. Such a perspective provides a complicated new understanding for progressive left politics and atheism.
The alleged religiosity of Derrida
Hagglund asserts that Derrida’s notions like ‘faith’, ‘messianic’ and ‘God’ are radically atheistic, unlike negative theology and that they celebrate mortal and finite life. They also deny immortal absolute fullness of God, which is nothing but sheer indifference. Derrida’s messianic hope is for temporal survival. Thus Hagglund states that, since always altered through spacing of time, there is an impossibility of being in itself. There fore, one can assume that no leftist movement in the world remain what they stand for, despite their subjective understanding to the contrary, and it is positive to be so and natural. Thus, one can even risk guessing that, Lenin’s dream was ‘inseperable’ from the threat of ‘losing’ it. In a heaven with no temporality (read a so called peaceful non revolutionary political movement), there is no flux, like a God, where a “gift cannot be given, since a gift cannot be given without a temporal interval that opens the possibility of violent loss and corruption”.
Therefore, justice is coming of time for Derrida and absolute justice is impossible. Hagglund further clarifies that “the threat of evil does not testify to a lack of good, it is internal to what ever good we desire”. Thus, the apprehension of how to believe in a progressive or radical movement, amidst canards spread by corporate media, one can say, there is no other option, since “faith is constitutive of every relation to the other”. One can read to such an effect Hagglund quotes from Derrida’s Rogues: “this exposition to the incalculable event is the irreducible spacing of every faith, credit or belief without which there would be no social bond, no address to the other, no uprightness or honesty, no promise to be honoured, and so no honour, no faith to be sum or pledge to be given”. For Hagglund, Derrida’s faith is linked to autoimmunity and radical evil and “the desire for salvation is rather a desire for survival that is essentially autoimmune, since the death that is defended is internal to what is defended’.
Thus, Derrida’s Radical Atheism re-examines salvation as it never aims immortality, but affirms finitude. On the other hand, old atheism is a mere denial of religious salvation. Here one can, may be, again risk guessing that Periyar’s atheism not only denied salvation, but sought possibilities in social action. Radical Atheism exhorts to refuse consolation in God and to mourn and affirm life. If atheism is affirming life in it’s finitude and it’s contingencies, that would have been the one attempted by Periyar. In other words, the limitations of this world of finitude create a Periyar or Che Guevara. Thus the survival of subaltern, remains, not in their espousal of some absolutes and exploitation by the upper-class, makes them responsible for political struggles.
Conclusion
In short, Martin Hagglund’s reinvents the Radical Atheism of Derrida , as against the popular conception of Derrida as espousing religion , which is quite seminal a contribution. as far as progressive politics is concerned. In the light of this, it seems, one can also explore the possibility of understanding the history and contribution of radical visionaries like Periyar and left democratic movement in general, as an affirmation of mortality and finitude.
Joe, basically a social science teacher from Kerala. Worked in various places of India, now residing in Ireland.
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