Radical Atheism and “The Arche-Materiality of Time”

Abstract

(Robert King interviewed Martin Hagglund. Dr. King focused his questions on impact of Radical Atheism and arche-materiality of time). R.K.: Did reception of Radical Atheism push your research in any surprising directions? M.H.: The most surprising thing, at least for me, is first of all how much response book has generated. The reception of Radical Atheism has gone far beyond anything I expected and I am deeply grateful for ways in which it has challenged me to refine my thinking and develop my arguments. Thanks to careful and demanding respondents, I have not only been given chance to press home stakes of my intervention; I have also been pushed to pursue issues that were either underdeveloped or inadequately addressed in my previous work. Beginning with The Challenge of Radical Atheism conference at Cornell and continuing with colloquium on Ethics, Hospitality and Radical Atheism at Oxford as well as Derrida and Religion conference at Harvard, I have had good fortune to engage in direct debate with central interlocutors of book. These debates have in turn informed written exchanges about book, which continue to inspire my current work. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Leaving aside specific polemics about Derrida scholarship, I would emphasize two strands of questioning that have been both most difficult and most productive to address. The first strand concerns status of structure of in my argument, while second concerns conception of desire that informs what I call radical atheism. R.K.: Could you say more about these two strands of questioning? And how do you see them intersecting with other developments in Continental Philosophy? M.H.: The first strand of questioning can be situated in relation to a trend that is increasingly visible in Continental Philosophy, namely, a turn away from focus on questions of language and discourse in favor of a renewed interest in questions of real, material, and biological. If Saussure and linguistics once were an obligatory reference point, Darwin and evolutionary theory have increasingly come to occupy a similar position. In wake of this development, Derrida's work is largely seen as mired in linguistic turn or as mortgaged to an ethical and religious piety that leaves it without resources to engage sciences and question of material being. As I argue in Radical Atheism, however, such an assessment of deconstruction is deeply misleading. Already in Of Grammatology Derrida articulates his key notion of the trace in terms of not only linguistics and phenomenology but also natural science. My crucial point here is that Derrida defines in terms of a general co-implication of time and space: it designates becoming-space of time and becoming-time of space, which Derrida abbreviates as spacing (espacement). Spacing is according to Derrida condition for both animate and inanimate, both ideal and material. The question, then, is how one can legitimize such a generalization of structure of trace. What is methodological justification for speaking of as a condition for not only language and experience but also processes that extend beyond human and even living? With his characteristic incisiveness, Henry Staten was first to put pressure on this question at The Challenge of Radical Atheism conference and I have spent much of past two years seeking to work out a precise answer. R.K.: So how have you responded to this question of methodological justification in your work? M.H.: The distinction that is needed, I have come to contend, is one between logical and ontological (and here I am also influenced by Rocio Zambrana's work on Hegel). The is not an ontological stipulation but rather a logical structure that makes explicit what is implicit in concept of succession. …