Derrida and Nephi walk into a bar...

So it's final paper time, and you know what that means: Derrida (also: using my blog to procrastinate). If you'll indulge me I have a thought on perjury, oaths, and grace that seems very cool.

In this essay I'm reading Derrida makes the argument that perjury is an inherently flawed contract. When we make an oath we, in reality, promise two things: one that we'll stick to the oath and two that we'll keep our promise to keep the oath. "I sincerely promised to tell the truth, or I promised this or that, promised to be faithful to my promise, promised to be faithful to my given word, swore to be faithful, period. and then later, for some reason or other, or for no other reason than the return of my wickedness, my malice, or even my loss of love, or even a transformation of myself, or even the sudden arrival of another person, another obligation, or even forgetfulness or distraction, I had to betray. But this betrayal comes about only in a second moment: when I promised-swore, I was sincere, in good faith, I was not perjuring myself. Not yet" (207).

Another argument he makes is that the people we are in discrete moments of our lives are not the people we are. That is, me now is not the same as me in a week. (Katherine warned against projecting our current selves unto our future selves. We can't imagine the way our future selves will make decisions, more on this in a minute.) Derrida again: "It's as if I was not the same, as if 'I' was not identical at several moments of history, of the story to be recounted or recalled, or even at several instants of the day or night...or even with different persons, with all the other to whom I am tied finally by different commitments, all equally imperious..." (198). I think this argument has some problematic assumptions and implications (the conclusion of this essay, for instance, argues that marriage could never succeed because how can you promise all of your future selves to love all the future selves of another person), but there are a couple of cool ideas that I want to tease out, particularly as they relate to my understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

First I think this moment-by-moment characterization of informs the idea of grace. Amanda reminded me a thing about grace yesterday: God gives and will keep giving. We don't know how he does it, but that is the inscrutable foundation of grace. Every time we ask for repentance He will respond. (The Puritanical leanings of my Mormon conscience are getting their hackles up here: wanting to insert sincerely or to an extent here, but the truth of eternal grace is that: it's eternal.) If we look at ourselves as 1681920000 versions of us strung together by means of sharing a body and some common background, it makes sense (am I trying to make intellectual sense of one of the most marvelous miracles of the universe? kill-joy) that Heavenly Father would extend the same privileges of mercy to each of them. Each time we ask we receive because each time we ask we're a different person.

But, but, we know that that can't be completely true. The I I am right now is built on the I I was a moment ago which was made of its previous I. I, therefore, am accountable for the mistakes that the past I's have made--or am I? Derrida equates this accountability with "a second moment of fall" (208). I'm not sure if he's referring to the fall, but I'm going to continue assuming he is to posit this question: if, through the atonement, we are not held accountable for Adam's transgression, is the power of the fall also to free us from the results of our past selves' actions? To allow us a clean slate from them as well? The fall frees us too from the consequences of other peoples' sins...and if that's true it's not too far a leap to equate a living in harmony with ourselves--applying the atonement in such a way that allows us to forgive our past self, forget
her sin, and move forward, with living in Zion: being of one heart and one mind. Interesting.
This also makes an idea the I've been trying to implement that much more pressing: that we must live in the moment. This is the only I that I have power over, and my doing my best to make this I the best it can be is the least I can do for the billions of other (temporal--which is cool) I's that are to come.

This also highlights the importance of forgiveness. I think that the most detrimental result of holding a grudge is that we don't allow the other person to reinvent herself, which is the whole point. It's terribly difficult, this forgiving and forgetting thing, but is what God does best, right? Letting us be the new I ever moment? There's more here...

And my next argument : Derrida mentions that we are tied to other people (or ourselves, I wasn't sure but it might be moot) through commitments. We make covenants and commit all of our future selves to act according to their precepts. Just as covenants draw us nearer to the Lord (at all times and in all things) and to each other (bear each others burdens) sot they draw us up into a more cohesive self. One of the glaring errors in Derrida's argument, or one of the holes, at least, that he leaves us to fill in is this: these innumerable (for us I think) I's are tied together. How can we argue that I am a different girl completely than I was a moment ago or last year? I am formed from and by my decisions to this point--or am I? Is this the goal? To be born again in Christ so completely and so presently that I actually am a different creature in each moment? Is that what eternity is--a renewing so complete and speedy as to resemble, as a motion picture, constancy? And is the power/importance of agency that it can only be used in the present? It can only drive us forward, we must rely on repentance to take care of the past and faith the future. (There's more here...)

So. That's what I've been chewing on. Thoughts anyone? Holes?