Jacques Derrida and the Theologico-political Complex

This dissertation investigates the relationship between the theological and the political in the contemporary predicament by exploring the undervalued political thought of Jacques Derrida. It examines the complex interaction between religion and politics, especially as it relates to political authority and community by also paying attention to the conceptions of language and time at work in the political understandings of and normative responses to cultural and religious diversity. Through a close reading of Derrida’s work on language, time, religion and politics, I argue that his political thought offers significant resources to re-think the theologico-political relationship in more complex and critical ways, especially beyond the radical separation between religion and politics so common in the classical modern paradigm. The project’s central aim is two-fold: first, to offer a theoretical response to the empirical significance of religions in the public sphere by seeking to further the understanding of how the political and the theological interacts in politics; and second, to contribute to current debates on religion and politics in political theory as well as to Derrida scholarship by offering a politico-philosophical analysis of how his view of the theologico-political relates, in its various ramifications, to political foundations.Ph.D