Between the Canon and the Messiah

Download or read book Between the Canon and the Messiah written by Colby Dickinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dickinson traces the development of two concepts, the messianic and the canonical, as they circulate, interweave and contest each other in the work of three prominent continental philosophers: Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben, though a strong supporting cast of Jan Assmann, Gershom Scholem, Jacob Taubes and Paul Ricoeur, among others, also play their respective roles throughout this study. He isolates how their various interactions with their chosen terms reflects a good deal of what is said within the various discourses that constitute what we have conveniently labelled, often in mistakenly monolithic terms, as 'Theology'. By narrowing the scope of this study to the dynamics generated historically by these contrasting terms, he also seeks to determine what exactly lies at the heart of theology's seemingly most treasured object: the presentation beyond any representation, the supposed true nucleus of all revelation and what lies behind any search for a 'theology of immanence' today.