Magliola, Robert. Derrida on the Mend. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1984.

Abstract

The problematic of the text Derrida on the Mend is suggested by the pun built into the title. Derrida is indeed astride the "mend" whereby logocentrists (theorists who affirm "organic unity") think to repair the "rents" in organicism. Derrida is indeed devouring the mend, but his quandary is that he must use logic (a logocentric operation) to do so. For Derrida to be "on the mend" in the other sense animating the pun, a means must be found to heal the quandary while preserving deconstruction. This text argues for such a means: the author finds in Nagarjuna, a Buddhist naturalist of the first centurt A.D., three deconstructive techniques also used by Derrida. Nagarjuna, however, is able to reinstate logic and organicism while continuing the deconstructive process. He does so through his specialized version of the Buddhist "two truths," a solution which our author adopts, adapts, and universalizes. Derrida on the Mend has four parts and an appendix. The first provides a lengthy "reading" of Derrida, a service still much needed by today's philosophers and literary theorists. The second part locates a recension/redaction of Heideggerian thought at a site the author calls centric mysticism. Throughout this section, there are "original" applications to literature. The third part presents the "full-scale" analysis of Nargjunist technique, and then goes on to develop a "differential" Buddhism contrasting very much with "voidism," mystical "unity of opposites" (such as D. T. Suzuki's version of Zen), and other "centric" Buddhisms. Replete with treatments of Buddhist poetry, it summons Buddhologists to a critical "rereading" of the Buddhist tradition. The fourt part, perhaps the most "groundbreaking" of all, applies "differentialism" to monotheism and Christian theology and develops a nonentitative trinitarianism which revises contemporary theological thought significantly. In the lengthy appendix, comprised of two sections, some of what the author has worked out in the body of the text is applied to Western literary theory and to "practical" criticism.