Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volume 10, Issue 2, Spring 2006

An Entrusted Responsibility: Reading and Remembering Jacques Derrida

“For the Creation Waits with Eager Longing for the Revelation”
From the Deconstruction of Metaphysics to the Deconstruction of Christianity in Derrida

Blindness has been a pervasive theme throughout Derrida’s career. But Derrida uses the word “blindness” only once in the title of one his works. This text is, of course, Memoirs of the Blind, Mémoires d’aveugle, an essay he wrote for the catalogue for an exhibition he organized at the Louvre in 1990. I argue that Memoirs of the Blind is more than just a phase in Derrida’s deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. Instead, it opens a larger, more ambitious project that we can call “the deconstruction of Christianity.” The article ends with a consideration of a new form of vitalism.