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LEVINAS'S DOSTOEVSKY: A Response to "Dostoevsky's Derrida"

LEVINAS'S DOSTOEVSKY: A Response to "Dostoevsky's Derrida" Page 318 LEVINAS’S DOSTOEVSKY A Response to “Dostoevsky’s Derrida” Val Vinokurov “I’m leading you alternately between belief and disbelief,” the devil confesses to Ivan Karamazov, who is tormented because he is unable to sort out his responsibility in the murder of his father Fyodor Pavlovich. In “Dostoevsky’s Derrida,” published in the fall 2002 issue of Common Knowledge (vol. 8, no. 3), Nina Pelikan Straus notes a tonal kinship between Jacques Derrida and this shabby devil that Ivan hallucinates in The Brothers Karamazov. Straus suggests that Derrida’s recent turn toward a “new self-submission . . . evoking both Augustinian penance and Jewish justice” comes from his newfound revulsion for this demonic aspect of disseminative undecidability. Deconstructive fatigue is demonic, she suggests, because it precludes both compassion and a recognition that truth may be based on faith. However, Straus characterizes Derrida’s essay “Circumfession” not simply as an attempt to overcome the forever questioning “narcissistic ‘I’ or ego,” but as a demand that his readers understand him, the particular J. D., and the importance of his personal conversion. And this marks him as more of a celebrity, an “I,” than a convert. . . . The image of himself as a http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

LEVINAS'S DOSTOEVSKY: A Response to "Dostoevsky's Derrida"

Vinokurov, Val
Common Knowledge , Volume 9 (2) – Apr 1, 2003
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-9-2-318
Publisher site
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Abstract

Page 318 LEVINAS’S DOSTOEVSKY A Response to “Dostoevsky’s Derrida” Val Vinokurov “I’m leading you alternately between belief and disbelief,” the devil confesses to Ivan Karamazov, who is tormented because he is unable to sort out his responsibility in the murder of his father Fyodor Pavlovich. In “Dostoevsky’s Derrida,” published in the fall 2002 issue of Common Knowledge (vol. 8, no. 3), Nina Pelikan Straus notes a tonal kinship between Jacques Derrida and this shabby devil that Ivan hallucinates in The Brothers Karamazov. Straus suggests that Derrida’s recent turn toward a “new self-submission . . . evoking both Augustinian penance and Jewish justice” comes from his newfound revulsion for this demonic aspect of disseminative undecidability. Deconstructive fatigue is demonic, she suggests, because it precludes both compassion and a recognition that truth may be based on faith. However, Straus characterizes Derrida’s essay “Circumfession” not simply as an attempt to overcome the forever questioning “narcissistic ‘I’ or ego,” but as a demand that his readers understand him, the particular J. D., and the importance of his personal conversion. And this marks him as more of a celebrity, an “I,” than a convert. . . . The image of himself as a

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2003

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