By the Blood: Derrida, Hauerwas, and the Potential for Posthuman Theology

Abstract

ABSTRACTJacques Derrida’s far-reaching attempts to challenge the anthropocentrism of Western political thought have made him an indispensable thinker to contemporary posthumanism. Yet, as the consequences of this anthropocentrism grow more destructive and irreversible, there is a growing sense that Derrida’s patient and methodical deconstruction is ill-suited to a theoretical movement in need of a more practical prescription. In this paper, I challenge this dismissal by engaging Derrida’s deconstructive framework with the theology of Stanley Hauerwas, whose reimagined church provides insight into what a community founded on deconstructive posthumanism might look like. I suggest that Hauerwas’ conceptualization of the church as a postsacrificial politic centered on the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ is a useful extension of Derrida’s messianic framework, insofar as Hauerwas assumes the arrival of an uncapturable other without allowing this arrival to become justification for a new sacrificial order.