Derrida's Marrano Passover

No one has ever tracked the figure of the Marrano through Derrida’s entire corpus—and particularly the figure of Derrida himself as Marrano—with the degree of erudition, sophistication, insightfulness, and fidelity that Agata Bielik-Robson has in this new work. It will be impossible to read Derrida on questions of religion, the secret, testimony, confession, exile, and identity, to name just a few, without taking this magnificent, magisterial book along as one’s guide. * Michael Naas, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, USA *
Marrano is a denigrating insult—pig!—of those who feigned to be Christians in order to avoid persecution as Jews. A despised and hidden figure of non-identity at the origins of the modern world, the marrano position as neither Jewish nor Christian nor atheist became, for Jacques Derrida, an intimately personal but also richly theoretical sign of a distinctly modern mode of subjectivity as singular, historical life beyond identity and homogenization. It is the great merit of this book to show how Derrida’s admiration for, even devotion to the marrano’s interminable infidelities informed his search for the excesses of life, both human and divine, that can never be contained by the politics or the metaphysics of identity. In Bielik-Robson’s deft hands, the marrano becomes a precursor antidote to the twin social pathologies of identitarianism and homogenization that plague our world, while Derrida is approached in an ingenious, original way, as a kind of vitalist driven by faith in the irrepressible possibilities of mortal, historical life. This is an engaging, erudite study of Derrida’s vast corpus and its abiding capacity to help us sur-vive, to live beyond, the dominant paradigms of globalized modernity. * Michael Fagenblat, Senior Lecturer, The Open University, Israel *
Brilliant, beautiful and radically independent. I have long awaited such a lucid and comprehensive treatment of Derrida's scattered confessions of marranism. This exquisite exposition of marrano experience is equally at home in Derrida and kindred stories that Derrida did not know. * Yvonne Sherwood, Visiting Research Professor of Religious Studies, University of Oslo, Norway *
Bielik-Robson's readings of Derrida early and late provide pathbreaking insights. She unfolds with unprecedented allusiveness Derrida's project of reinscribing the departed God within the sheltering crypt of the living human being, thus ensuring a certain sur-vie, not a messianic promise but a way of negotiating the infinite play of perjury and forgiveness, of knowing and unknowing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE, N. Lukacher, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA *