Christian parables have retained their force well beyond the sphere
of religion; indeed, they share with much of modern literature
their status as a form of address: “Who hath ears to hear, let
him hear.” There is no message without there first being—or,
more subtly, without there also being in the message itself—an
address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening. This is not an
exhortation of the kind “Pay attention!” Rather, it is a
warning: if you do not understand, the message will go away. The
scene in the Gospel of John in which the newly risen Christ enjoins
the Magdalene, “Noli me tangere,” a key moment in the general
parable made up of his life, is a particularly good example of this
sudden appearance in which a vanishing plays itself out.
Resurrected, he speaks, makes an appeal, and leaves. “Do not
touch me.” Beyond the Christ story, this everyday phrase says
something important about touching in general. It points to the
place where touching must not touch in order to carry out its touch
(its art, its tact, its grace). The title essay of this volume is
both a contribution to Nancy’s project of a “deconstruction of
Christianity” and an exemplum of his remarkable writings on art,
in analyses of “Noli me tangere” paintings by such painters as
Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Correggio. It is
also in tacit dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s monumental tribute
to Nancy’s work in Le toucher—Jean-Luc Nancy. For the
English-language edition, Nancy has added an unpublished essay on
the Magdalene and the English translation of “In Heaven and on
the Earth,” a remarkable lecture he gave in a series designed to
address children between six and twelve years of age. Closely
aligned with his entire project of “the deconstruction of
Christianity,’” this lecture may give the most accesible
account of his ideas about God.
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