The Persistence of the Trace: Interrogating the Gods of Speculative Realism

This essay seeks to bring the speculative realism of Quentin Meillassoux into dialogue with Derrida on matters of religion. It argues that the answer Meillassoux provides to the suffering of the world - to wait for a future God to come - is abstract and empty. Turning to Derrida, it shows that the recent turn to speculative thinking in philosophy has been unduly dismissive of deconstruction, misreading its claims about the ubiquity of the trace. Rescuing the trace from false accusations of linguistic idealism, the essay argues that deconstruction offers a way to think the singularity, absolute otherness and translatability of objects together. Key to this is rethinking God as simultaneously dispersed into otherness and yet guarding an absolute secret which resists assimilation.