The "Theological And Non-theological" Orientation In Jacques Derrida’s Autobiographical Writing

The French thinker Jacques Derrida,who began to address issues of theology and religion around the 1990 s,has a roundabout style of writing that makes it difficult for researchers to grasp his theological views effectively and comprehensively.This style is often derided by the academic community as a postmodern style of writing.What needs to be noticed,is that Derrida is not pointing to a traditionally-thinking theology,but to a “non-theological theology”.Moreover,Derrida’s Jewish origins and his rejection of this identity reflect an ambiguity in his identification with the belief,which creates some difficulties to interpret his thoughts.The key to this challenge is not to find out how Derrida defined his belief or his view of theology,but rather to examine how Derrida unfolded his deconstructive strategies and thinking,so as to inspire us to reflect to what extent autobiographical writing opened up a “theological” dimension for Derrida.First of all,this dissertation starts from Derrida’s “secret” and considers the autobiographical as the locus of his secret.Drawing on his two autobiographical texts published around the 1990 s,Mémoires d’aveugle and Circonfession,the study will analyze and reflect on the themes of vision and conversion,circumcision and belief.The main part of this dissertation will focus on the deconstruction of the term“autobiography”,which includes “auto”,“bio”,and “grapy”,and by discussing these three terms,this study will examine respectively the very beginning of Derrida’s cogito,his phenomenological analysis of perception(touch and vision),and the opening of autobiographical writing as a possibility.Lying in the middle,bio grants the indistinguishable and ineffable beyond the self with the possibility of writing.It is indeed a kind of differential writing about the self.In conclusion,we will summarize Derrida’s autobiographical writing as a moment of demystification and re-mystification of the “self” and consider the revelation of Derrida’s literature and philosophy.