ABSTRACT
Metamorphosis seems to be a slow process and seems to imply a step forward, whereas mutation might be understood more as a leap, an instant change in which the newer form of a culture has nothing to do whatsoever with the older form. This chapter seeks to exploit this hesitation on Nancy’s part and relates it to Derrida’s critique of Nancy in his magnificent On Touching. Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity squares with his phenomenological ontology of “being-with” in the very precise sense that Christianity has, from time immemorial, according to Nancy at least, always been exposed both to metaphysical structures and that which remained outside of it. Jean-Luc Marion begins his exposition of ontotheology with the claim that concepts too can function as idols, as “the making available of the divine” in that it produces a “concept that makes a claim to equivalence with God”.
