Derrida's Marrano Passover

In this first ever monograph on Jacques Derridas Toledo confession where he portrayed himself as sort of a Marrano of the French Catholic culture Agata Bielik-Robson shows Derridas marranismo to be a literary experiment of auto-fiction. She looks at all possible aspects of Derridas 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 Derridas universal Marranism an invitation to think philosophically, politically and last but not least metaphysically without rigid categories of identity and belonging. By concentrating on Derridas deliberate choice of marranismo, 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 Valry, and throws a new light on his early works, most of all: Of Grammatology, Dissemination and 'Diffrance'. She also offers a completely new interpretation of many of Derridas works only seemingly non-related to the Marrano issue, like Glas, Given Time: Counterfeit Money, Death Penalty Seminar, and Specters of Marx. 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 marranismo as a literary trope of openness, offering up a new genre of philosophical story-telling which centers around Derridas Marrano auto-fable.