Sufism and Deconstruction: A Comparative Study of Derrida and Ibn 'Arabi (Routledge Studies in Religion)

175 Pages·2004·0.92 MB·English

by  Ian Almond

Sufism and Deconstruction
What possible relationship can there be between a contemporary French
postmodern thinker and a twelfth-century Sufi? How closely can Sufi
oppositions to rationality in medieval Islamic thought resemble the con-
temporary, deconstructive resistance to reason and the Enlightenment
project? How far is the medieval debate in Islamic tradition, concerning
the extent to which we can talk truthfully and meaningfully about God,
analogous to the postmodern debate of more recent times, concerning
the extent to which we can talk truthfully and meaningfully about the
world and the text?
This book provides a fascinating exploration of these questions by
discussing a variety of common features in the vocabularies of two
thinkers, Jacques Derrida and Ibn 2Arabi, situated almost eight centuries
apart. These features include the opposition to systematizing representa-
tions of God/reality/the text; a re-emphasis on the radical unthinkability
of God and the text; a common conception of rational thought as restric-
tive, commodifying and ultimately illusory – and a subsequent appraisal
of confusion as leading to a higher state of knowledge; a positive belief in
the infinite interpretability of the text; a suspicion of representation – and
an awareness of its semantic futility, along with a common, ‘welcoming’
affirmation of openness and errancy towards God and the text.
This book will be essential reading for advanced students and
academics of Religious Studies, Arabic and Islamic Studies and those
interested in the work of Jacques Derrida and Ibn 2Arabi.
Ian Almond teaches English Literature at Bosphorus University,
Istanbul, Turkey. He has published a wide variety of articles in a range
of journals such as ELH, Modern Fiction Studies, The Harvard
Theological Review, German Life and Letters, and New Literary History.
This is his first book.
Routledge studies in religion
1 Judaism and Collective Life
Self and community in the religious kibbutz
Aryei Fishman
2 Foucault,Christianity and Interfaith Dialogue
Henrique Pinto
3 Religious Conversion and Identity
The semiotic analysis of texts
Massimo Leone
4 Language,Desire,and Theology
A genealogy of the will to speak
Noëlle Vahanian
5 Metaphysics and Transcedence
Arthur Gibson
6 Sufism and Deconstruction
A comparative study of Derrida and Ibn 2Arabi
Ian Almond
7 Christianity,Tolerance and Pluralism
Michael Jinkins
8 Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy
Arthur Bradley
Sufism and Deconstruction
A comparative study of Derrida
2
and Ibn Arabi
Ian Almond
First published 2004
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 2004 Ian Almond
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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ISBN 0-203-69450-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-67049-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–32043–7 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of transliterations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 The shackles of reason:Sufi/deconstructive
opposition to rational thought 7
The emancipatory project in Derrida and
Ibn 2Arabi: freeing al-haqqand l1écriturefrom the
shackles of reason 10
The emancipatory project in Derrida: freeing the
letter from the shackles of the spirit 25
2 The honesty of the perplexed:Derrida and
Ibn 2Arabi on ‘confusion’ 39
Derrida and Ibn 2Arabi: lovers of clarity or
confusion? 40
Deconstruction: untying knots, thwarting systems 46
Derrida on Babel: the tyranny of clarity 47
Ibn 2Arabi on the flood: sainthood as perplexity 55
Conclusion: actual situations 60
3 Sages of the book:the meaning of infinity in Sufi
and deconstructive hermeneutics 63
Livre and kitab: when is an empty text an
infinite one? 67
vi Contents
A sea without a shore: the Koran as example par
excellenceof infinite textuality 70
Affirmative hermeneutics: celebrations of multiple
meaning 74
Rabbis and poets 76
Inconsistencies 81
4 Mystery-tasting and abyssality:the secret in
Ibn 2Arabi and Derrida 89
Derrida on the secret of the non-secret 90
Ibn 2Arabi on the secret of idolatry 96
On the consequences of the secret 101
Conclusion: Derrida and Ibn 2Arabi on illusion 110
Conclusion – the post-structuralist dissolution of
the subject:three Neoplatonic moments in the
Derridean canon 117
Blanchot on écrireand the ‘breakthrough’ 119
Benjamin’s Übersetzenas a return to the One 121
‘What is an Author?’: Foucault and the
post-structuralist dissolution of the subject 126
Allah and écriture: the centre is not the centre,
‘God’is not theReal 128
Notes 135
Bibliography 155
Index 161
List of transliterations
Arabic characters
s d
·
b
t
·
t
z
·
th
t
j
gh
h
·
f
kh
q
d
k
dh
l
r
m
z
s n
sh h
s w
·
Acknowledgements
A debt of gratitude should be acknowledged to the English translators of
Ibn 2Arabi, in particular Ralph Austin and William G. Chittick, who have
made the work of the Great Shaykh known so much more quickly in the
Western world. Although I have frequently referred to the Arabic in my
treatment of many passages from Ibn 2Arabi, I am certainly indebted to
both Austin and Chittick’s translations of these texts.
Thanks also goes to State University of New York Press for permission
to reprint extracts from William G. Chittick’s The Sufi Path of Knowledge:
Ibn al-2Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination(1989) and to Paulist Press of
New Jersey for permission to reprint extracts from Ralph Austin’s The
Bezels of Wisdom(1980), www.paulistpress.com.
I would also like to thank the research trust (Bogaziçi Üniversitesi
Vakif) at Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey for their financial assis-
tance and generosity. A number of their grants and awards have made the
economic burden of my research much easier. Parts of chapters 2 and 3
have already been published in the Journal of the American Academy of
Religion(Oxford University Press), vols. 70: 3 (2002) and 72: 1 (2004).
Chapter 1 has appeared in Philosophy East and West 53: 1 (2003) –
reprinted here courtesy of Hawai’i University Press.
Introduction
At the time, one of them had claimed that “the existentialist of all time”
had been Ibn 2Arabi who’d not only been imitated seven centuries later
but also been robbed blind by the Western world...
Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book1
Perhaps every history of ideas is nothing more than a careful documentation
of clandestine theft. From Heraclitus and Augustine to Aquinas, prece-
dents for existentialism are found almost daily, even though Pamuk’s
long and extraordinary novel, it should be said, finds little sympathy with
this practice. Parodying the familiar territorial instinct which, in many
critics, seeks to re-appropriate vast sections of modern culture and whole
centuries of thought on behalf of a single cultural source (invariably the
critic’s own), Pamuk uses Ibn 2Arabi as an example of how certain
Islamic/nationalist agendas in the ‘East’(for desperate want of a better
term) have tried to lay claims to the foundations of the West. The
Shaykh’s alleged influence on Dante’s Divina Commedia – although
Pamuk never mentions the scholar who first suggested this, Asin
Palacios, by name – is cited as one example amongst many of such
wishful hermeneutics.
‘Robbed blind’ or not, one thing is certain: Ibn 2Arabi is ‘hot’.
In the 150 years since the first of Ibn 2Arabi’s works were printed in
Europe,2 the body of critical interest in a thinker previously unknown
tothe West has grown exponentially. With a thriving Society, a plethora
of critical studies and a quarterly Journal, Ibn 2Arabi (or the Shaykh
al-akbar, the greatest master, as he is known in the Muslim world)
has become associated with (to name but a few) quantum mechanics,
Taoism, St Thomas Aquinas, Swedenborg, New Age mysticism, Kant
and Chaos theory. With two central chapters dedicated to him in