The Series
1: Derrida and Textual Interpretation
2: Lyotard, Metanarratives, and The Christian Story
3: Foucault, Power and Knowledge, “The Golden Compass,” and Church Inc.

Since I am feeling all academic while being on the cusp of a 3-year seminary season, I thought I would begin blogging through one of my my brand-spanking new seminary books called “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?”. I’m starting a mini-series of posts (probably 4-5) that will give some consideration to Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, and the implications of postmodernity for the 21st century church.

Jacque Derrida is the first of the 3 postmodern thinkers the author, James K. A. Smith addresses. To many Christians, Jacque Derrida is a part of the unholy Trinity of postmodern thinkers, including Jean-Francois Lyotard and Michael Foucault. Many, many evangelicals (which are not necessarily known for intellectual rigor [see Knoll’s “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind“]) fear all things pomo and run for the hills at the drop of the word, a fear rooted in profound misreadings and misinterpretations. James K. A. Smith’s book seeks to help the Church engage these important prophets on their own terms, realizing that philosophy influences culture and is not entirely void of any constructive instruction.

The second chapter engages with Jacque Derrida, the father of French deconstruction and addresses one of Derrida’s primary thoughts: “there is nothing outside the text.” Earlier this summer, I began reading through his book, “Writing and Difference,” a collection of essays in which Derrida engages many themes of language, the act of writing and codifying thought, the relationship of words and meaning, and the important topic of textual interpretation. It is the later that Smith addresses and relates to Christian spirituality.

Technorati Tags: deconstruction, derrida, emerging church, postmodernism, postmodernity, textual interpretation

In short, the author’s conclusions on the meaning of Derrida’s thoughts on texts and interpretation is that interpretation is an inescapable part of being human and experiencing the world. It isn’t that texts and writings stand between us and the world, rather the world itself is a text that is contantly interpreted; “there is no reality that is not always already interpreted through the mediating lens of language.” This stands over and against the modern thinker Jean Jacque Rousseau’s notion that we simply read a text without thought or interpretation and approach the world “as it is” and language is a necessary evil that stands in the way of experiencing the world the way it is without mediation.

This Rousseauian naivete is addressed by Derrida when he proclaims “there is nothing outside the text.” As Smith says, there is no kingdom of pure reading that exists beyond the realm of textual interpretation. Meaning: we do not simply step out of our skins and abandon language and interpretation to step into a world without language or a “state of nature” (as Rousseau suggests) where interpretation is not necessary. No, the event (or daily events) of interpretation is a part of being human and experiencing the world. As Smith says, “texts that require interpretation are not things that are inserted between me and the world; rather the world is a kind of text requiring interpretation.”

The author gives an example of a cup. When I see a cup in front of me and use it to get coffee and satisfy my morning craving, I am not simply experiencing drinking a cup of coffee as a brute fact. Rather, I am actively interpreting the thing in front of me as an object that will hold hot liquid, whether consciously or not. So in this simple example, the cup is a text to interpret as I experientially live my morning.

And the same is true for the rest of reality: it is interpretation all the way down, whether of the substance of reality itself or codified words.

In his essay entitled “Force and Significance,” Derrida eludes to this notion of text and interpretation, especially as texts themselves interpret the “text” of the world. He writes:

To write is not only to conceive the Leibnizian book as an impossible as an impossibility. Impossible possibility, the limit explicitly names by Mallarme. To Verlaine: “I will go even further and say: the Book, for I am convinced that there is only One, and that it has [unwittingly] been attempted by every writer, even by Geniuses.” “…revealing that, in general, all books contain the amalgamation of a certain number of age-old truths; that actually there is only one book on earth, that it is the law of the earth, the earth’s true Bible.” The difference between individual works is simply the difference between individual interpretation of one try and established text, which are proposed in a mighty gathering of those ages we call civilized or literary.

For Derrida, individually written texts were merely an interpretation of the one Text; there is only one Text, and this same Text is distributed throughout all books. Now this frightens people, because it is assumes this leads to an “anything goes” worldview, devolving into relativism. Rather, this understanding does a few things: 1) it owns up to the very real part of the human condition to figure out this thing called life, and in fact there is a “thing” to figure out; 2) everyone brings interpretations to the “thing” in an attempt to understand the Text of reality; 3) because we are finite, the event of textual interpretation is finite, fraught with agendas, and subjective. In my reading of Derrida, so far, there does not seem to be doubt about the Text itself, but rather the individual and communal event of textual interpretation.

So what does this mean for Christian spirituality? I propose this understanding of texts and interpretation should lead us to become living texts; we must live-out the interpretation of reality incarnationally by following the One Text as revealed through the Word, Jesus Christ. This idea of incarnational living has been with me for quite some time, and delving into postmodern thought and the prophets of our postmodern culture is convincing me that this is where the Church must steer Herself: If She is to recapture Her witness in the 21st century postmodern world, the Church must cast aside simply writing texts of interpretation and embody textual interpretation through becoming the Text, which is what Jesus called us to do, anyway.

As I was reading chapter I wrote these two thoughts in the margin:

That’s why we have Jesus and his person…to interpret the Text for us with a lived way.
The Creator must be the final interpretation of the Creation.

Jesus came not only to be the final sacrifice for the sin and brokenness of the world and break forth a new reality into the old through ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven, He came as the Word to show us a better way of living and being human. In a previous post, I wrote about the word used by the Book of John for Jesus: Word.

The Greek word used here is LOGOS, which is NOT a word that means “word” in a grammatical sense; that is LEXIS. Word, here, in both the Jewish and Christian spirituality sense is defined as a Creative Reality; LOGOS is both the originator and definer of all that has, is, and will exist throughout eternity. I guess you could say LOGOS is a Being of Meaning.

So in John, it is revealed that this Creative Reality has existed from the beginning of beginnings, from the point where time has flowed from eternity past. This Creative Reality has eternally existed with God, the Creator and is in fact God. But then this Creative Reality invades the earth and is enfleshed as Jesus, the God-with-us-God. LOGOS, the Creative Reality of the universe, is revealed as a Person; LOGOS is not an idea or a doctrine or a piece of parchment, rather LOGOS is a relational flesh-and-blood Being.

This Being is the Definer, Author, and Interpreter of the Text of Meaning; the Creator is the final interpretation of the Creation. And this Textual Interpreter has called us to continue the act of Texting by being the Word to the rest of the world, by interpreting how we are to be human through a lived way.

Part of the Derridian fascination is his exposure of fact that we all interpret and that there are multiple interpretations that exist and arise out of multiple communities. So in the face of a plurality of texts interpreting the Text (e.g. Buddhism, Islam, New Age, etc…), let the Church be the Text-made-flesh, let her live out the Text of Jesus, not with pen and paper, but through the (re)breaking of body and (re)shedding of blood by denying ourselves, taking up the boards of execution, and following Jesus into the way of sacrificial love.