Norman Alexis Colindres Pinoth

Occidente. Historia y Cultura, ed. José Manuel Cerda, 2013

La poética de Enrique Banchs

Modern Theology, 2024

The primary objective of this study is to offer an original interpretation in two fields of research: the first, of contemporary Jewish philosophy, and the second, to the continental and specifically deconstructionist method. I wish to achieve this by analysing a new deconstructionist text of the French, Jewish, post-structuralist, feminist contemporary thinker-Hélène Cixous, which has thus far received little scholarly attention at all, and even less in its contributions to deconstructionism and Jewish philosophical thought. Focusing on this text, I concentrate on its Jewish and philosophical aspects-Gare d'Osnabrück à Jérusalem-The Osnabrück Station in/to Jerusalem. This study will centre on Cixous' treatment of theodicy-the theological problem of evil and sufferingcontextualising her position in the thought of the postwar French cultural milieu of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. I will examine the position Cixous develops on theodicy-which is to resist it, and move towards a position of anti-theodicy. I show how she develops this position, which is through a deconstructionist and hermeneutical reading of the biblical figure of Job. I then trace further theological issues arising from her anti-theodicy, of the roles of exile and return in this text-especially in Cixous' positioning of Osnabrück as 'Jerusalem'. The study is set alongside the 'Hauntology' theory of Jacques Derrida. I claim that Cixous' work can be enhanced through a hauntological reading, but that she ultimately redefines this position to advance her own thinking. This study offers questions beyond this particular text: first, relating to the role of deconstructionism in portraying theological issues, especially theodicy, and second, of the contributions, complex as they may be, to contemporary Jewish philosophical discourse.