Writing with a Wink and Infinite Reduplication

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 18 December 2015

Time:

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Room:

Room E319

UQ Location:

Forgan Smith Building (St Lucia)

URL:

http://hapi.uq.edu.au/seminars-and-events

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Presented by Peter Kline (PhD candidate, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA)

Writing with a Wink: Kierkegaard’s Apophatic Authorship
This paper will argue that Kierkegaard’s apophaticism shows itself primarily through the form and style of his writing. Kierkegaard’s authorship deploys multiple forms, styles, moods, and personas as a way of keeping open an “indirect” space of thought and communication. Indirection, I will claim, is an apophatic problematic, one in which writing refuses to say what cannot be said by keeping language and communication in unceasing motion.

Infinite Reduplication: Kierkegaard’s Negative Concept of God
This paper will argue that underwriting Kierkegaard’s entire authorship is a negatively theological (non)apprehension of God. Kierkegaard’s most direct conceptual vocabulary for naming God is “infinite reduplication.” Infinite reduplication, however, is an entirely negative or apophatic concept, one that erases itself as a concept. According to Kierkegaard, God cannot act with objective intention, only with subjective passion. It is contended that this apophatic (non)apprehension of God underwrites a theological economy of gift, generosity, freedom, and abandon.