Jerusalén. La ciudad y la palabra en la obra de Jacques Derrida

In this article we may try to track down the use and the presence of Jerusalem in Jacques Derrida works. Between the real city and the word that designates it, the jerusalemite topic rises in Derrida’s writing as a bazillionth symptom of a self-confessed obsession. The Jewishness of the father of Deconstruction is one of the most decisive signs in his relationship with texts and words and, in the case of the thrice holy city it serves to explain one of the speech acts that perhaps he more committed with. Promise, as well as forgiveness and confession, is a paradoxical speech act where its conditions of possibility turn into impossible. Far from any calling related to truth or falseness, the city and the word, the town and the concept, will serve us to follow some of the most decisive trail in the biography and the work of one of the most outstanding thinkers of our philosophical tradition.