Archives for postmodernism

In persona Christi: the rise of the phallogocentric Eucharist

In the middle of the third century a conflict emerged in the church over the use of water instead of wine as an element in the Eucharistic feast.  Attacking the practice in a letter to a fellow bishop, Cyprian of Carthage argued: "For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of Himself, certainly that priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a
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Iterations of the Eucharistic text

In our previous post we explored Derrida's concepts of iterability and (un)translatability.  In this post we apply the first of these concepts in an examination of iterations of the Eucharistic text.
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“There is Nothing Outside of the Text”

il n'ya a pas de hors texte…[1] Summarizing Derrida's deconstructive project would be a colossal task.  Because of its very nature, there is no short, clear exposition of deconstruction.  However, for our purposes we will focus on only a couple of its concepts, gleaning insights from a few key texts.  The first of these, perhaps the most famous axiom of postmodern thought:  there is nothing outside of the text. 
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