A Situation that Cannot be Found: Theorising the 'Inter' of the Interreligious

This article draws on the work of Jacques Derrida to investigate the 'inter' of the interreligious. I argue the typical imagination of the 'inter' as a space between religions has severe limitations. I suggest the situation is aporetic: On the one hand, the interreligious cannot be assigned a stable location or place, but remains a khōraic non-site that frustrates attempts to control or subdue it, as much both-and as neither-nor. On the other hand, however, religious identity depends on this non-site, as identity is always already oriented toward its 'other.' The confrontation with difference thus confronts religious identity with the aporia that what makes it possible simultaneously makes it unstable. What is most intimately mine, my religion, is not mine. Instead of a choice between interreligious commonality and difference, this deconstructive experience of religious difference may, paradoxically, engender a desire for reconciliation or wholeness, which remains the matter of a tenuous promise, making itself apparent as a call to solidarity.