Marańska instrukcja Derridy: jak żyć i przeżyć bez kanonu
Derrida’s Marrano Instruction: How to Live and Survive without a Canon

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s statements on modern Marranismo and on his own identity in the context of his entire body of work. For philosopher, marranismo is not only “tormented Judaism” of the Jewish inhabitants of Toledo who were forced to take the Christian identity. It is also a chance – a paradoxical occasion – to search for a philosophical language, which would oppose the canonical hegemony of the Western thought as a whole and therefore escape the measuring patterns of tradition which is characterised by “the stern shine of that which is canonical.” Derrida chooses his Maranism as an expression of the affirmation of life: the condition of the survivor who preferred to go on living rather than submit to an honorable martyrdom. At the same time, he turns against the traditional systems of symbolic life, which demand sacrifices in the name of preserving the purity of their canons and leave no room for ordinary survie.

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