Astonishingly, we are saved not by a special apparatus known as religion, but by the quality of our everyday relations with one another.
The fascinating is only a step away from the freakish.
Not all of Derrida’s writing is to everyone’s taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: ‘What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this “I” who speaks of speaking?
After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is ‘The Book of British Birds,’ and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.