Derrida's Marrano Passover

In this first ever monograph on Jacques Derrida's 'Toledo confession' - where he portrayed himself as 'sort of a Marrano of the French Catholic culture' - Agata Bielik-Robson shows Derrida's <i>marranismo</i> to be a literary experiment of auto-fiction. She looks at all possible aspects of Derrida's Marrano identification in order to demonstrate that it ultimately constitutes a trope of non-identitarian evasion that permeates all his works: just as Marranos cannot be characterized as either Jewish or Christian so is Derrida's 'universal Marranism' an invitation to think philosophically politically and - last but not least - metaphysically without rigid categories of identity and belonging.<br/><br/>By concentrating on Derrida's deliberate choice of <i>marranismo</i> Bielik-Robson shows that it penetrates deep into the very core of his late thinking constantly drawing on the literary works of Kafka Celan Joyce Cixous and Valéry and throws a new light on his early works most of all: <i>Of Grammatology</i> <i>Dissemination</i> and 'Différance'. She also offers a completely new interpretation of many of Derrida's works only seemingly non-related to the Marrano issue like <i>Glas</i> <i>G</i><i>iven Time: Counterfeit Money</i> <i>Death Penalty Seminar</i> and <i>Specters of Marx</i>. In these new readings this book demonstrates that the Marrano Derrida is not a marginal auto-biographical figure overshadowed by Derrida the Philosopher: it is one and the same thinker who discovered <i>marranismo</i> as a literary trope of openness offering up a new genre of philosophical story-telling which centers around Derrida's Marrano 'auto-fable'.<br/>