About Gifts: Derrida, Scripture, Earth

Abstract

In recent times, the question of the gift has become a hot topic across a range of disciplines. Jacques Derrida was a key instigator: he disclosed the gift’s paradoxical or aporetic nature: it is both gratuitous and circular, excessive and reciprocal. An exemplary and decisive textual site of this duality is the Bible, where gift/ing is expressed according to extreme figures like grace and bribery – and much in between. But an examination of the gift should also move beyond the world of the text to the world itself. And so, we ask: ‘What if creation is a gift? How should we respond to the Earth?’