Reading Hagar: Genesis 16
The first three of our four questions seem most relevant this week, although I will make a couple of suggestions as to how the fourth is also relevant. I see the first three as interconnected through three intertwining themes that strike me particularly as I read this chapter. To get the themes out on the table, I will state them simply and then list a series of (often leading… sorry about that) questions in order to generate some discussion on these themes (I hope, then, that my questions are not too leading, or misleading). After these three themes, I’ve written out a couple of paragraphs on some other interesting things I see in the text, for whatever they’re worth. The two intertexts open the possibility of thinking about the relevance of a uniquely LDS reading of the text.
Three philosophical themes
Verse 7 marks the very first appearance of an angel (by that name) in Genesis (there are, of course, the cherubim of the Garden story). Why would an angel show up for the first time here, of all places? And why is it that the first angel comes specifically to Hagar? How does this play into the theme of mediation that has been a question in the last two chapters (14-15)? Is it significant that Hagar considers the angel to be the Lord Himself (see verse 13)? The angel comes specifically to perform a rather common function in the scriptures, that is to announce the birth of a promised child; why does an angel perform that task? Does this bear on Joseph Smith’s reading of Hebrews 11-12, where he sees angelic visitation to be a function of the fathers turning to their sons and the sons to their fathers in the work of the covenant?
In verse 10, the already repeated promise of innumerable children is given to Ishmael, but the promise is given without the metaphorical elaborations that have appeared in chapters 13 and 15 when the promises were given to Abram. What is to be made of this non-metaphorical promise, especially since the promise is just as disruptive, so to speak, as the metaphorical promises given to Abram? If the promise goes on to use metaphor about Ishmael specifically (“a wild ass of a man”) but not about the promised multitudes of children, what can be read into that? Why is the non-metaphorical promise put in the mouth of the angel?
The chapter is punctuated by references to seeing and hearing (hearing: verses 2, 11, 15—“Ishmael” means “God hears”; seeing: verses 2, 4, 5, 13—“El-roi” means “I saw God”). How do these two themes interplay? How does seeing differ from hearing here? How does the theme of seeing play into the earlier hints of idolatry on Abram’s part? Is it significant that only Hagar is reported in the chapter as seeing? What is the significance in verse 2 of Sarai’s assuming that Abraham has seen something? How is this theme of seeing connected with the introduction of the angelic? How does hearing differ from seeing here? Is it significant that Abram is the only one reported to have “hearkened” besides the Lord Himself in this chapter? Why doesn’t the author ever use the verb to describe Hagar’s relation with the angel? Why is the Lord described as hearing but not seeing? What is the significance of seeing and hearing both being wrapped up in the names given in the chapter? Is one justified to read the body into the theme of seeing, and the “spirit” into the theme of hearing? Is there a connection between the fact that the angel is only described as seen (not heard) and the fact that the angel gives the non-metaphorical promise (metaphor can only be spoken, not shown)?
Allusions, anticipations,… types?
There are some curious parallels between this story and the Eden narrative. “And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (verse 2); “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and has eaten of the tree…” (Gen 3:17). “And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife” (verse 3); “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). Curiously, in the Sarai/Hagar narrative, this is followed by a sort of opening of the eyes: “and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes” (verse 4; compare NRSV: “and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress”). More curiously still, this echo of the “Fall” story in Gen 16 traces the development from Sarai’s inability to have children (like Eve’s inability, according to one reading—not my reading, I should probably add—of 2 Nephi 2:23) to her ability to do so (albeit through a surrogate).
More obvious, perhaps, are the anticipations in the Gen 16 narrative of the Exodus story, though things are essentially backwards. The Egyptian is the slave, and Sarai “dealt hardly” (the same Hebrew word that will appear in Exod 1:11) with her. The Egyptian, instead of the Hebrew, flees into the wilderness, apparently on the way to Egypt. If all of this constitutes a sort of reversed anticipation of the Exodus to come, it is fascinating how the story wraps up: Hagar is commanded to return to her mistress. In short, the reversal is reversed in the end, and by the Lord Himself. I’m not sure what is to be made of this reversed reversal.
Finally, the scene at the well seems to be typical. Perhaps the scene that most comes to mind is John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus. In both the present text and John 4, the Lord engages the outcast kin. In the end, I’m not sure what can be taken from the tie between these two texts, but the connection is intriguing to me.
Intertexts
Two other books of scripture deal with this chapter in interesting ways that probably deserve mention, at least because they draw from the present text some aspects of the story that might otherwise be ignored. The first is Galatians 4:21-31, Paul’s allegorical reading of Hagar and Sarah. Verse 23: “But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.” The distinction Paul draws is tied, of course, to the great gulf between “salvation by works” and “salvation by grace.” This suggests to me that what is at work in Gen 16 is a sort of “fulfillment of the promise by works.” In Gen 16, it is not quite clear whether this sort of an approach is condoned or condemned: on the one hand, the promise of countless seed is confirmed on Ishmael (verse 10); on the other hand, as the NRSV translates it, “He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin” (verses 11-12). My own predilection is to condemn this attempt at fulfilling the commandment one’s own way, this “fulfillment by works” business (to condemn it, perhaps, as totalitarian).
But the other intertext suggests otherwise, a text I approach only with fear and trembling, a text that for Joseph Smith himself might have been the very gift of death: D&C 132. Verse 34 there: “God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises.” Two points to raise. First, what are we to make of this reading? It is quite different, ultimately, from the most obvious reading of Gen 16. Is there some way to reconcile the two texts? Would that even be desirable? Second, did Joseph read his own experiences with Emma into this story (Emma giving certain women to Joseph as wives, and then rejecting them and demanding Joseph break off those marriages)? If so, then verses 64-65 are important as well: if “a wife… receive not this law… she then becomes the transgressor; and he [the husband] is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham according to the law when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.” I’m not personally quite sure what to make of these verses, but it seems quite clear that “a uniquely Latter-day Saint” reading of Abraham has to engage them. Perhaps all of this raises at least this major question: Why was Abraham so central to Joseph’s temple/marriage revelations in Nauvoo?
Setting these two intertexts side by side, it certainly appears that there are two very different ways to read this story: it might be read on the one hand as pointing to the wrong of an attempt to fulfill the promise (to be saved?) by works, or it might be read on the other hand as an example of Abraham’s strict obedience to the word (command) of grace.
An afterthought for fun
Any thoughts on how the master-slave dialectic might be read into Hagar’s work of mothering a child for Sarai?
Three philosophical themes
Verse 7 marks the very first appearance of an angel (by that name) in Genesis (there are, of course, the cherubim of the Garden story). Why would an angel show up for the first time here, of all places? And why is it that the first angel comes specifically to Hagar? How does this play into the theme of mediation that has been a question in the last two chapters (14-15)? Is it significant that Hagar considers the angel to be the Lord Himself (see verse 13)? The angel comes specifically to perform a rather common function in the scriptures, that is to announce the birth of a promised child; why does an angel perform that task? Does this bear on Joseph Smith’s reading of Hebrews 11-12, where he sees angelic visitation to be a function of the fathers turning to their sons and the sons to their fathers in the work of the covenant?
In verse 10, the already repeated promise of innumerable children is given to Ishmael, but the promise is given without the metaphorical elaborations that have appeared in chapters 13 and 15 when the promises were given to Abram. What is to be made of this non-metaphorical promise, especially since the promise is just as disruptive, so to speak, as the metaphorical promises given to Abram? If the promise goes on to use metaphor about Ishmael specifically (“a wild ass of a man”) but not about the promised multitudes of children, what can be read into that? Why is the non-metaphorical promise put in the mouth of the angel?
The chapter is punctuated by references to seeing and hearing (hearing: verses 2, 11, 15—“Ishmael” means “God hears”; seeing: verses 2, 4, 5, 13—“El-roi” means “I saw God”). How do these two themes interplay? How does seeing differ from hearing here? How does the theme of seeing play into the earlier hints of idolatry on Abram’s part? Is it significant that only Hagar is reported in the chapter as seeing? What is the significance in verse 2 of Sarai’s assuming that Abraham has seen something? How is this theme of seeing connected with the introduction of the angelic? How does hearing differ from seeing here? Is it significant that Abram is the only one reported to have “hearkened” besides the Lord Himself in this chapter? Why doesn’t the author ever use the verb to describe Hagar’s relation with the angel? Why is the Lord described as hearing but not seeing? What is the significance of seeing and hearing both being wrapped up in the names given in the chapter? Is one justified to read the body into the theme of seeing, and the “spirit” into the theme of hearing? Is there a connection between the fact that the angel is only described as seen (not heard) and the fact that the angel gives the non-metaphorical promise (metaphor can only be spoken, not shown)?
Allusions, anticipations,… types?
There are some curious parallels between this story and the Eden narrative. “And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (verse 2); “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and has eaten of the tree…” (Gen 3:17). “And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife” (verse 3); “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). Curiously, in the Sarai/Hagar narrative, this is followed by a sort of opening of the eyes: “and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes” (verse 4; compare NRSV: “and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress”). More curiously still, this echo of the “Fall” story in Gen 16 traces the development from Sarai’s inability to have children (like Eve’s inability, according to one reading—not my reading, I should probably add—of 2 Nephi 2:23) to her ability to do so (albeit through a surrogate).
More obvious, perhaps, are the anticipations in the Gen 16 narrative of the Exodus story, though things are essentially backwards. The Egyptian is the slave, and Sarai “dealt hardly” (the same Hebrew word that will appear in Exod 1:11) with her. The Egyptian, instead of the Hebrew, flees into the wilderness, apparently on the way to Egypt. If all of this constitutes a sort of reversed anticipation of the Exodus to come, it is fascinating how the story wraps up: Hagar is commanded to return to her mistress. In short, the reversal is reversed in the end, and by the Lord Himself. I’m not sure what is to be made of this reversed reversal.
Finally, the scene at the well seems to be typical. Perhaps the scene that most comes to mind is John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus. In both the present text and John 4, the Lord engages the outcast kin. In the end, I’m not sure what can be taken from the tie between these two texts, but the connection is intriguing to me.
Intertexts
Two other books of scripture deal with this chapter in interesting ways that probably deserve mention, at least because they draw from the present text some aspects of the story that might otherwise be ignored. The first is Galatians 4:21-31, Paul’s allegorical reading of Hagar and Sarah. Verse 23: “But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.” The distinction Paul draws is tied, of course, to the great gulf between “salvation by works” and “salvation by grace.” This suggests to me that what is at work in Gen 16 is a sort of “fulfillment of the promise by works.” In Gen 16, it is not quite clear whether this sort of an approach is condoned or condemned: on the one hand, the promise of countless seed is confirmed on Ishmael (verse 10); on the other hand, as the NRSV translates it, “He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin” (verses 11-12). My own predilection is to condemn this attempt at fulfilling the commandment one’s own way, this “fulfillment by works” business (to condemn it, perhaps, as totalitarian).
But the other intertext suggests otherwise, a text I approach only with fear and trembling, a text that for Joseph Smith himself might have been the very gift of death: D&C 132. Verse 34 there: “God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises.” Two points to raise. First, what are we to make of this reading? It is quite different, ultimately, from the most obvious reading of Gen 16. Is there some way to reconcile the two texts? Would that even be desirable? Second, did Joseph read his own experiences with Emma into this story (Emma giving certain women to Joseph as wives, and then rejecting them and demanding Joseph break off those marriages)? If so, then verses 64-65 are important as well: if “a wife… receive not this law… she then becomes the transgressor; and he [the husband] is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham according to the law when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.” I’m not personally quite sure what to make of these verses, but it seems quite clear that “a uniquely Latter-day Saint” reading of Abraham has to engage them. Perhaps all of this raises at least this major question: Why was Abraham so central to Joseph’s temple/marriage revelations in Nauvoo?
Setting these two intertexts side by side, it certainly appears that there are two very different ways to read this story: it might be read on the one hand as pointing to the wrong of an attempt to fulfill the promise (to be saved?) by works, or it might be read on the other hand as an example of Abraham’s strict obedience to the word (command) of grace.
An afterthought for fun
Any thoughts on how the master-slave dialectic might be read into Hagar’s work of mothering a child for Sarai?
posted by Anonymous at 9:28 AM
5 Comments:
Joe,
Thanks for the excellent introduction and the very challenging questions.
(For instance, I don’t have the faintest idea about what to say about Gen 16 in relation to D&C 132, but I’d be very interested if someone were to take it up. And Hegel’s master/slave dialectic as an approach to what happens between Sarai and Hagar – would someone please write that paper?)
I found the parallels you point out between Gen 16 and Gen 3 to be especially helpful. I’d like to reflect a little on that parallel (perhaps, at least, in the ambience of the master/slave dialectic) particularly in connection with the chapter 16's emphasis on sight and seeing.
The connection between the chapters that most immediately strikes me is shame. In Gen 3.7, the very first product of having eaten the fruit of knowledge, the very first product of their “eyes being opened,” is a sense of shame that prompts them to hide themselves, to attempt to withdraw from the gaze of the Other. Until this moment in the Garden, they were perfectly capable of seeing - but until this moment they had never seen themselves being seen. Their initiation into “knowledge” appears to consist primarily in this doubling of consciousness. We could say: knowledge is a result of the fact that we become capable of “metaphorically” or symbolically substituting our own perspective with the Other’s so that we see them seeing us.
In 16.2, Sarai’s explanation of why she wants Abram to take Hagar to wife appears to be profoundly rooted in her own sense of shame about not having born the promised child (and it’s probably important not to underestimate the biting intensity of this shame in her culture and epoch). In particular, her shame expresses itself (classically) in blaming someone else: “the Lord has kept me from bearing children . . .” It’s not her fault, it’s the Lord’s. (Of course, it really isn’t her fault - the basic problem is that she mistakenly feels that it is).
Sarai then theorizes: “perhaps I shall be built up in her [Hagar] . . .” (16.2). Clearly Sarai believes that God’s promise needs to be fulfilled, but her shame/fear limit her to conceiving of its fulfillment strictly in terms of what’s possible. Does this withdrawal in shame and fear from the impossible mark a misstep in one’s relation to God? In a way, God purposefully structures the whole process so that the promise can have only an impossible fulfillment. Is a faithful relation to God one that simply does not withdraw in fear and shame from the blatant impossibility of what we have been promised? (Though, perhaps, good can certainly come from seeking its fulfillment in projects that remain possible? E.g., the good that comes from Ishmael?)
Robert Alter’s rendering of Hagar’s experience of conceiving a child in 16.4 also follows along with the above mentioned parallels to Gen. 3:
“She [Hagar] conceived and she saw that she conceived and her mistress seemed slight in her eyes.”
Here, again, what is at stake is the metaphorical/symbolic interplay of perspectival substitution in which Hagar BOTH conceives AND sees that she conceives. She experiences it first-hand and sees it through Sarai’s eyes second-hand. And, in seeing it through Sarai’s eyes second-hand, she sees the burning shame that tinges everything that Sarai sees. As a result, Sarai “is diminished in Hagar’s eyes” because she has already become “slight” in her own. Nonetheless, Hagar’s gaze extends only to the point of seeing her own advantage in Sarai’s eyes. It doesn’t extend beyond the orbit of her own advantage to the experience of empathy. In other words, Hagar’s gaze, having stopped short, is idolatrous: Sarai is a frozen mirror of Hagar’s own vanity at having produced an heir. Saria is not an-Other person in her own right (an icon).
One more wildly speculative comment on 16.14 as a way of quasi-tying this up. Here, Hagar has just received the Lord’s message promising her a multitude of seed and directing her to return to Sarai. In response (as Joe points out) she significantly calls God “El-roi” or "the God who sees me” and then offers this penetrating and (perhaps) thoroughly surprised explanation for this name:
“Did I not go on seeing here after He saw me?”
Could we read this admission of surprise that it’s possible to be seen by God without withering under his gaze as a mark of the fundamental religious mistake inaugurated in the Garden itself: the mistake of thinking God’s gaze is a rebuke rather than a promise of fidelity and solidarity? What is shame but the inability of conceiving the other’s gaze as other than burningly judgmental? Could we, then, read this as the key to understanding the relation that God wants to have with us: “Stopping running from me because you recognize your own imperfection! Stop trying to hide your imperfection or somehow make yourself perfect! Believe that I can look at you and that you can be with me just as you are without my gaze destroying you!”
My best,
Adam
Joe,
This is, for me, a very productive reading of the Sarai/Hagar relation in terms of the master/slave dialectic.
There surely is a way in which the dialectic is fundamentally inflected in a different direction in this chapter by the way that the work of the slave is to bear the child of the master. A crucial wrinkle in the exchange. If a moment of mutual recognition is possible here perhaps it is because (as you suggest) of this wrinkle?
Also, one of the most striking things about Hegel's dialectic is the way that what appears to be the slave's defeat (the acceptance of the inferior position) actually turns out to be the key to human success and advancement: the master is left to dumbly enjoy the fruit of the slave's work while the slave, in performing work, is able to recognize herself in the work she performs. What looked like a disaster (slavery) turns out (in a stunning reversal!) to be what gives the slave a crucial advantage over the master. (It's difficult not the love the dialectic!)
Perhaps this is what we see happening here in Chapter 16: only the slave women is rewarded with a conversation with an angel/the Lord. The master is left to stew in her own juices.
Advancement in the dialectic is dependent on adopting the position of the servant and abandoning the pretension to mastery (the very pretension leads to the experience of shame in the first place: I'm ashamed because I'm not really the independent master [god] I pretend to be; thus shame shares the same root as pride: the pretension to mastery).
My best,
Adam
A couple of quick comments:
Joe, I like the characterization of Hagar's insertion as a second wife as an additional metaphor/substitution that disrupts a patriarchal linearity. (Though, as I write this, I wonder to what extent polygamy can be read as an interruption of patriarchy - or maybe it really isn't that difficult to read it that way? And, in this case, it is Sarai who insists on the addition of a wife, not Abraham. This insistence might itself mark such an interruption?)
Jim writes: "The promised community begins in the desert and wilderness, in separation and difference rather than in the imitation and replaceability of the collective." Are you suggesting that a covenant community will be formed in a way that exceeds/eludes the logic of metaphor/substituion? This may be an important point: genuine community is formed not in relation to the symbolic but in a post-symbolic relation to the symbolic's aporetic "Real"?
We might glance ahead and see such an idea succinctly formulated by Derrida's "tout autre est tout autre" - every other is wholly other. A formula which nicely combines the necessity of the symbolic with its play of substitutions and metaphors ("every other is every other") with the necessity of every other being a wholly singular and irreplaceable or unsubstitutable Other. Not that substitution and metaphor can be disposed of, but that their very foundering in relation to the Real must be included in the community's foundation.
Is this the difference between contract and covenant? A contract works only at the level of symbolic substitution while a covenant is grounded in the post-symbolic recognition of the singularity of an incomparable and inassimilable aporetic "Real"?
Just throwing things out on Sunday morning.
My best,
Adam
Nice discussion so far, everybody. Joe, your comments on the intertexts are very stimulating, although I don't have anything to add. I can't talk knowledgably about the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, but I'm enjoying listening in. I do have a thought or two on slavery and covenant, however, included below.
Part of the work of this episode, like the Babel episode with which we began, is a narrative etymology of a toponym, Beer-Lahai-Roi. I don't think the author explicitly implies any parallel between the episodes, but it's interesting nevertheless to contrast the nature of the revelation in each: in Babel, a jealous Lord punishes an ascendant group by disrupting the coherence of its ethnic "name" and seed; at Beer-Lahai-Roi, a benificent (mostly) messenger of the Lord vouchsafes to an outcast slavegirla revelation and a remarkable promise of, precisely, name and seed.
As Jim has pointed out, however, the Lord's relationship with Hagar is not covenantal in the same way that Abram's is, despite their cognate promises. (And not only cognate, in fact, but precisely coextemsive: in multiplying Hagar's seed, the Lord IS multiplying HAgar's seed.) Presumably the Lord CANNOT covenant with Hagar, because she, being the slave property of Sarai, is not free to pledge fealty to another master (the Lord); and indeed, the Lord's messenger does not offer to release Hagar from subjection to Sarai in order to free her up to covenant with the Lord, but instead seems to reinforce her subjection. Abram, in contrast, is free, and by virtue of his freedom can refuse fealty to the world and pledge it to God. Can the Lord covenant with a slave? For that matter, can he covenant with a woman, who owes fealty to her husband? (Maybe this is obvious to everybody else already, but thinking about covenant in this way---as a freeman's pledge of fealty to a Lord---makes some sense of LDS temple worship, particularly of the ways mens' and womens' covenants differ.)
It has been suggested that Hagar's surrogacy enacts a logic of interruption and substitution(which we've been associating with metaphor) similar to that structuring the Lord's interruption of Abram's patriarchal line. I don't think this is quite right, though: Hagar does indeed work as a sexual substitute for Sarai (a kind of metaphor, in this sense), but she does so not to INTERRUPT the patrilineal series but precisely to GUARANTEE it. She might be seen perhaps to interrupt the matriline, but I'm not sure about this, either: Sarai hopes that Hagar will conceive a son FOR Sarai, that Sarai herself will be the mother. Alter suggests an alternative rendering of 16: 2 as "I will be sonned through her."
I'm out of gas for tonight. I'll think about these things some more.
Joe and Jim,
I'm always willing to take a stab at telling us what Jim really thinks :)
There is the "self," naively at home in the immediacy of the world. When this naivete is interrupted by the self's initiation into the symbolic order (an initiation that ultimately interrupts the self's own sense of self), then the self comes to belong (as Kierkegaard would say) to the ethical order.
In a way, the ethico-symbolic order is characterized above all by metaphor, i.e. the possibility of symbolic substitution. We become capable of recognizing everyone as equal before the law of the symbolic order.
I'm suggesting that we read Jim's notion of "contract" as belonging to this level of intersubjectivity. The ethico-symbolic order is the level of substitution, exchange, economy, etc.
However, the interruption of the "identity" of naivete with symbolic substitution also simultaneously produces a third order: the order of the "Real." Real, here, in the Lacanian sense of what exceeds the bounds of the symbolic order, as what shows up as a symbolic aporia, as what resists symbolization. The Real is that crack in the symbolic order that makes the symbolic possible.
For example, the Real has to do with the crisis that symbolic substitution introduces into self-identity by making self-reflection possible. Reflecting on myself, I'm never able to coincide with myself because there is always a minimal difference between myself, myself seeing my myself, and myself seeing myself seeing myself, etc. Reflecting on myself, I can never catch up with myself. It's this gap that makes symbolic or metaphorical substitution possible but which also simultaneously makes it impossible to totalize the field of possible substitutions (a la Derrida's condition of im/possibility).
I meant to suggest that we might read Jim's point about a covenant community being rooted in difference rather than substitution as belonging to the order of the "real" rather than to the symbolic. Not in the sense that the community of the "real," the community of difference, recovers its original, naive unity by leaving behind substitution, etc. - but in the sense that the covenant community shifts its relation to the symbolic in such a way that the "crack" in the symbolic order that makes it possible itself becomes the center of attention.
God shows himself in the ethical interruption of naive immediacy but he also then shows himself in the aporetic cracks of that ethical order. Showing himself in the aporetic cracks in the ethical order would be something like Kierkegaard's level of religios singularity that exceeds the universality of ethics. (Though it exceeds the universality of ethics because ethics proves itself to be incapable of universality. Or, better, ethics is capable of universality only if it recognizes its own failure to be entirely universal [i.e., if it become "religious" in K's sense].)
This, I think (and I'm sure we'll have to talk about this when we get to Derrida's book), is what Derrida attempts to summarize with the pithy formula "tout autre is tout autre." The formula is simultaneously a tautology of naive identity, an assertion of ethical responsibility in which every other is substitutable with every other, and an affirmation of the fact that such a substitution is never absolutely possible (every other is wholly other: no other is like any other Other).
So covenant is, in a way, simply the product of a subjective re-orientation of our relation to the contract: an orientation that also takes into account the irreducible difference (the "real") that makes the contract possible in the first place.
Or maybe we could say: a covenant is a contract split and spilt by love.
Reading this over, I realize that I may have only made the point more obscure rather than more clear. At any rate, that's what I've got for the moment.
My best,
Adam
PS Rosalynde, I'm inclined to agree with the points you make about Hagar's slavery. Any suggestions about what we do with it?
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