Uśmiech Widma bez Ciała: kabalistyczna baśń z Derridą w tle
The Smile of the Spectre with No Body: A Kabbalistic Tale with Derrida in the Background

Summary/Abstract: This essay presents a Kabbalistic interpretation of Derrida’s writings. The focus is on Isaac Luria’s Tzimtzum, a process in which God surrenders his sovereignty to the created world. In the act of Tzimtzum the Creator withdraws from being, which is then ruled by its own laws. And yet – in contrast to radical deism – God does not disappear completely. His trace remains in the form of his parting smile – a smiling a-dieu. So it is only on the surface that Derrida’s spectre, which ‘haunts the living,’ is a ghost that must be feared. Derrida has no interest in maintaining a threatening divine sovereignty, even as a trace. The Derridean spirit that haunts the world has nothing of the primordial tremens et fascinans of the pagan sacrum about it. It is an entirely different spirit, one that haunts with laughter: the yes-laugh [oui-rire] from Derrida’s hauntological article ‘Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce’.

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