ABSTRACT
This chapter compares and contrasts notions of the divine and of its place in human activity presented in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Abdelwahab Meddeb. Meddeb's Talismano, like Nancy's L'Intrus, heavily foregrounds the roles of language and the body in opening onto a space of excess, and in interpreting that space. In contrast to traditional monotheistic notions of inscription, which propose sacred scripture as a textual site for encountering the divine, Meddeb and Nancy place the emphasis on writing as a means of encountering excess. The chapter suggests that, to a great extent, the overlap between the ideas of Meddeb and Nancy demonstrate novel ways of extending European philosophical approaches to Islam. Nancy rethinks the substance of the divine and its relationship to the world by subverting the concept of Incarnation. Nancy proposes the dissolution of the idea of the monotheistic God that is logically inherent in Christianity.
