Unknow Thyself: Apophaticism, Deconstruction, and Theology after Ontotheology

This essay investigates the relationship between post-structuralist thought and apophaticism, arguing via Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart that theology at its most negative eludes logocentric determinations by disabling the two lynchpins of ontotheology. These are the self-determined "self" and the conceptually domesticated "God"; by unhinging the self as epistemologically constituted, the apophatic voyage destroys the mutually-reinforcing cogito and causa sui . It is ultimately suggested that the complete abandonment of "self" and "God", prefigured by negative theology and now provoked by post-structuralist critique, might enable their transformed restoration as relational, conditioning the possibility of an anti-ontotheological theology.