ABSTRACT
At the opening of his talk for the colloquium on the isle of Capri that would eventually be published as “La Réligion,” Derrida noted that there were no Muslims among the speakers there gathered, no representatives of “other cults” (he meant, presumably, other than Judaic or Christian) and “not a single woman!” He deplored these absences, and said they ought to be taken into account, even if that reckoning occurred only indirectly, by proxy or substitution. Someone ought to speak for these invisible interlocutors, these “mute witnesses,” he argued, because their lack of representation was bound to have serious consequences in the long run.1
