Phd in PHILOSOPHY

The driving question of the research is to assess the extent to which the political and theological thought of Jacques Derrida is influenced by Walter Benjamin. The research aims to interpret for the first time the relationship between Benjamin and Derrida from a theological-political perspective. To begin the research, an investigation of Derrida’s interest in Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers and Zur Kritik der Gewalt will be conducted in light of the critique of facticity displayed in both texts. The research will evaluate if Derrida acquires the theoretical attitude of emptying the divine otherness of any positive determination from the negative theology of Benjamin. As the project develops, the focus will move to the limits of political and aesthetic representation exhibited in Force de loi and Des tours the Babel. The ban on earthly representation of the invisible transcendence will be examined as an attack against the presumption to establish the political order on the sovereignty of God. The research will eventually supply the analysis of Benjamin and Derrida’s reversal of the radical dualism between politics and theology into an extreme monism. The unity of opposites is in fact detectable at the core of the separation between world and God in Des tours de Babel and Force de loi: according to Benjamin and Derrida, immanence and transcendence are intertwined precisely because they belong to two different ontological levels that do not contradict each other.

keywords
Benjamin, Derrida, messianism, political theology, deconstruction