"One Wish" or the Possibility of the Impossible: Derrida, the Gift, and God in Timon of Athens

A phenomenological reflection on women's lived experience of giving in circumstances of material scarcity

“…Derrida gave a deconstructionist twist to Mauss's account of the gift by emphasizing its impossibility: A gift is never truly a gift because it is always bound up in obligation (Champetier, 2001). Derrida described how the only true gift would be one that is free of expectation and exchange, the inconceivable end‐term in what is an infinite system of deferrals—gifts that are not quite gifts because they occur in repeating, reciprocal systems of debt, exchange, obligation, return (Jackson, 2001). The idea of giving as infinite and free while simultaneously circumscribed appears as well in Derrida's, (2000, 2005) deconstruction of hospitality, where the hostile underside of welcoming the “stranger” into the home is captured in Derrida's (2000) portmanteau “hostipitality.” Such giving is both open and closed, inevitably constrained by the host's fear of losing mastery over the home.…”

Spiritual Shakespeares

“…11 Fredric Jameson stressed such potential some years ago, attempting to 'rewrite certain religious concepts -most notably Christian historicism and the "concept" of providence -as anticipatory foreshadowings of historical materialism' ( Jameson 1981a: 285 Sardar 1979: 230). 16 Gallagher 1991, Lupton 2000band Jackson 2001 This point has already been well made by Kiernan Ryan:…”

“…2 For more on 'presentism', see Grady 1991, Hawkes 2002and Fernie 2005. A few pioneers, including Jackson and a number of contributors to this volume, have begun a theoretical recovery of spirituality as an existential, ethical or epistemological experience pertinent, in several ways, to the present: see especially Berry 1999, Freinkel 2002, Gallagher 1991, Girard 1991, Jackson 2001, Lupton 1997, 2000a, Taylor 2001and Wilson 2004 As well as surveying the field, Jackson and Marotti attempt to further and consolidate this initiative ( Jackson and Marotti 2004). Out of a fastidious respect for the otherness of the past, they fight shy of presentism, but the connections they perceive between early modern religion and postmodern theory belie this -and Jackson is acutely sensitive to the extraordinary resonance between early modern belief and postmodern theory in other work ( Jackson 2001).…”

“…A few pioneers, including Jackson and a number of contributors to this volume, have begun a theoretical recovery of spirituality as an existential, ethical or epistemological experience pertinent, in several ways, to the present: see especially Berry 1999, Freinkel 2002, Gallagher 1991, Girard 1991, Jackson 2001, Lupton 1997, 2000a, Taylor 2001and Wilson 2004 As well as surveying the field, Jackson and Marotti attempt to further and consolidate this initiative ( Jackson and Marotti 2004). Out of a fastidious respect for the otherness of the past, they fight shy of presentism, but the connections they perceive between early modern religion and postmodern theory belie this -and Jackson is acutely sensitive to the extraordinary resonance between early modern belief and postmodern theory in other work ( Jackson 2001). Jackson and Marotti are right to be wary of glibly translating early modern religion into 'acceptable modern forms conformable to our own cultural assumptions' but they don't consider the positive possibility that a presentist criticism might deliberately seek out, and dialectically profit from, the alterity of the past and of literature (see Grady 2002 andFernie 2005).…”