Abstract

This paper seeks to theorize a relationship of proximity between two acts: the act of taking absolute responsibility as theorized by Jacques Derrida in his The Gift of Death, and the act of revolutionary freedom as theorized by Slavoj Žižek in his The Ticklish Subject. In treating these two acts, first as converging on a point of similarity, and subsequently as diverging from a point of difference, it is the author’s hope to approach the paradoxical and elusive point on which so many other conjunctions rest: the conjunction between theory and practice, between individual and society, and between self and other. If successful, this procedure will allow the author to examine the act of theorizing itself and to suggest that theorists necessarily take on an ethical responsibility with regard to the way in which they theorize the acts of others. Key examples will include Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, the act of suicide bombing, and the construction of the thing being built between Israel and the West Bank which announces itself as a response to the act of suicide bombing