Deconstructing Undecidability: Derrida, Justice, and Religious Discourse

Advancing current readings of the deconstructive work of Jacques Derrida, Deconstructing Undecidability critically explores the problematic nature of decision, including the inherent exclusivity that accompanies any decision. In discourses where a pursuit of justice or liberation from systemic oppression is a primary concern, Michael Oliver argues for an appreciation of the inescapability of making limited, difficult decisions for particular forms of justice. Oliver highlights a similarly precarious predicament in the context of philosophical and religious negotiations of divine decision, pointing to the impossibility of safely navigating this issue. While wholeheartedly affirming the problem of exclusivity that inevitably accompanies decision, this book offers a renewed sense of undecidability that highlights a mistaken, illusory position of indecision as a reflection of power and privilege. Ultimately, this book aims to gain a greater appreciation for the complexity of the problem of decision, in order to be more rigorous and transparent in our continued engagement with it.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: How to Avoid Decision: Denials Part One: Deconstructing Undecidability Chapter One: Religion sans Exclusivity, “Perhaps” Chapter Two: Rereading Undecidability: An Appreciation for the Aporetic Double-Bind Part Two: Justifying Decisions Chapter Three: The Injustice of Exclusivity Chapter Four: The Injustice of Indecision Part Three: Deconstructing Divine Undecidability Chapter Five: Un/Avoidable Divine Decision Chapter Six: Un/Avoidable Human Decisions about Divine Decision Conclusion: The Decision-Maker that Therefore I am

About the Author :
Michael Oliver is a departmental lecturer in the faculty of theology and religion at the University of Oxford.

Review :
The tension in choosing one line of justice at the expense of another cannot be resolved. Indecision remains an illusion; we must decide. However, not without considering the larger context and its measure of power and privilege. This well-written and engaging study encourages the reader to face the challenge of deciding amidst competing calls for immediate and just attention. This book offers a welcome contribution to the literature on Derrida and religion. Where some interpreters associate deconstruction with an indeterminate openness, Michael Oliver shows that Derrida sees the act of decision as problematic but unavoidable. Drawing on Derrida, Oliver argues that theological debates over liberation and divine election must reckon with the need for discernment. With sensitivity and insight, Oliver offers an account of the struggle for justice that attends to its persistent ambiguity. At last, a book that offers a new way of working with Derrida's philosophy as it fronts on religion! It's edgy. It's controversial. It's contemporary. Here is a new theological voice that pushes both deconstruction and indecidability into original theological territories. New debates on familiar themes are opened with sparkling and generative insights. The book is needed and it's welcome. Anyone beset by the devils of indecision will find needed wisdom in Michael Oliver’s courageous investigation of the pitfalls of any presumptive inclusivism. He cuts—with disarming panache—to the ethical quick: where not to decide may prove as conceptually and ethically irresponsible as the feared exclusion. Michael Oliver examines the power of the theme of exclusion in determining the critical analyses and constructive remedies of certain progressive theologies—most specifically, postmodern and liberationist—alongside the theme’s slippery, challenging complexity. He exposes a deconstructive-like double bind: the tendency to isolate and demonize exclusion as the source of all bad religion, theology, and ethics and the simultaneous inability to provide a theo-ethical remedy that does not itself participate in some form of exclusion. In doing so, Oliver brings to light a difficult truth that has not always been sufficiently addressed in our best progressive theologies, thereby offering progressive theologies an invitation to be more self-aware, transparent, and self-critical, toward the hoped for outcome of becoming even more viable and more compelling.