the cut that binds

let there be circumcision with a difference,
circumcision of the word, of writing,
the poetic cut that opens like a wound,
like a door to the other,
a word opened up to another
to suggest a trace of something left behind
or something yet to come.

"Poetry is riveted to a date, to the singularity
and alterity of an event, the poem speaks to everyone,
to the other for the idiom belongs
to a system of reiteration and there can be
no pure idiom...whereas although philosophy wants
to 'render itself universal' and to efface the date
and the traumatism of its singularity - and the date
of which it writes for the other who does not share
this singularity..." (Caputo, 1997)

When Caputo writes that poetry is not history,
he means that it is not a record of historical events
but rather it performs a singular event
by effacing the date of its occurrence
in favor of referring itself to a date with the other,
by opening up its secrets to a stranger.
Something which literature has always tried to do,
and which Derrida attempts to play with
in his writings. In Circumfessions.

Something that always begins
without a guiding star
or a fixed destination.

Circumfessions tells the story of his broken alliance.
A cut with his covenant.
The unity of his life found in the divide
between himself and Judaism,
which ultimately results in a conversion of sorts.
In his faith and passion (his prayers and tears)
for his private religion without Religion.
Through this self-deconstruction, he

"forces us to think about what religion can be,
what the passion of deconstruction can be".

A passion for the impossible.

The academic circumcision
which JD effects in philosophy
is a writing style
that eludes the accepted style of 'scholarship'.
It is something which disregards the borders between disciplines.

Poststructuralist thinkers like Derrida
mark the way
for a new style of scholarship
while also inspiring
the use of language
as an art object.

Language.
The arbitrary use of symbols
arranged or structured
in particular ways
to house meaning.

Language as art.
Language as object.