taylor, discrediting god

7/29/2019 Taylor, Discrediting God

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Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXII/2

ESSAY

Discrediting GodMark C. Taylor

"I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed,"there's so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it kind ofuncertain." Herman Melville, The Confidence-ManFaith is a confidence game whose stakes are undeniably economic.There is an economy of faith that mirrors and is mirrored by faith ineconomics. The speculum in which this play of mirrors is staged is thespace of speculation. But what does it mean to speculate? W hat are thestak es of speculation? Is it still possible to credit specul ation or to haveconfidence in any economy? When the economy is theologicaland whateconomy is not overtly or covertly theological?does the credit systemcredit or discredit the curren cy of belief? At this late date , might it bepossible that the only remaining way to credit faith is by discreditingwhat once was named "God"?On September 14, 1993, students returning to the Williams Collegecampus were greeted by a full-page advertisement for a credit card, whichread, in part:The psychology behind the Citibank Classic Visa card, and theemo tional security of the Photocard. The Citibank C lassic Visainstills in students feelings of safety, security, and general wellnessnot unlike those experienced in the womb. Therefore, it is themother of all credit cards . . . . Some experts attribute these feel-ings to the Citibank Photocard, the only credit card with yourphoto on it. A voice inside says, "This is me, really m e." . . . It's animm ediate form of ID, a boost to your self-image. Of co urse , if

Mark C. Taylor is Preston S. Parish Professor of Humanities at Williams College, Willianvstown, MA 01267.

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60 4 journal of the American Academ y of Religionyour card is ever lost or stolen and a stranger is prevented fromusing it, you'll feel exceptionally good (showing no signs of creditCard Theft N er v o s a) .. .. Special student savings are particularlytherapeutic . . . Not to mention the low variable interest rate of15.4% . . . . Suffice it to say, you'll have a credit card you candepend on while building a credit history . . . . If we say that asense of Identity is the first component of the citibank Classic Visacard, a sense of Security is the second, and a sense of AutonomousWill from your newfound financial independence die diird, don'tbe crazy . . . Call.

Like any good stud ent paper, die ad sum marizes its major points in w hatis labeled "The Mona rch Notes Version: The C itibank classic card givesstudents peace of mind, protection against Freudor radier frauda lowrate and no fee. Apply today.""Don't be crazy . . . Call." But how can we not be crazy, how can wenot go mad wh en "there's so many marks of all sorts to go by"? Wh omdoes one call? To who m can we tur n for advice? Perhaps to an invest-ment cou nselor. But whom can we credit, in whom can we confide w henevery counselor appears to be a confidence-man?Before we can call an investment counselor, we must, of course, knowwh at it me ans to invest. To invest is, among odier things, to speculate bycommitting money or capital "in order to gain profit or interest, as bypurchasing property, securities, or bonds." While investment is neverwithout some risk, the responsible speculator always banks on a reason-able retur n. The prospect of return is what lends speculation its interest.Within a speculative economy, there is neither interest nor profit in disin-terested specula tion. The psychology of investment presup poses an inter-est in returns that secure credit.If, as the ad suggests, there is a psychology "behind" economics, thereis also an econom y "be hind" psychology. Since every investment is m adewith the expectation of redemption, no cadiexis (Besetzung) is widioutinterest. The curren cy of psychological investment is the libidinal cu rre ntwhose flow is regulated by the constantly shifting difference between

credit and debit. Though seeming to tend toward equilibrium, the psychiceconomy can only operate if books do not balance. When the positiveand the negative or pluses and minuses cancel each odier, we reach thenull point where eros becomes thanatos a nd being becomes non-being. Ifwe credit die psychic economy, it seems we must admit that Freud is afraud. Tho se who invest in his theories eventually discover dia t theircoun selor is a confidence-man. Freud is a fraud inasm uch as he showsbut how can this be shown?that everydiing and everyoneevenSigmund himselfmasquerades as somediing or someone other dianwhat he, she, or it really is. In odier words, Freud discredits identityallidentity , every identity. Wid iin the economy of psychoanalysis, diere are


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Taylor: Discrediting God 605no securities tha t are not insecurities because every ID card is an id card.If our charges are always excessive discharges, the cards we play inevita-bly discredit the securities (on which) we bank. W hen expenditurebecomes excessive, the system of credit breaks down and the economyfalters. In the wake of this collapse or crash, it becomes possibleperhapsfor the first timeto think the unthinkable by figuring the sacredune con om ical^ . While admittedly attempting to capitalize on the loss offaith, we cannot, of course, have any confidence in the profitability of thisnon-speculative venture.

In 1857, Melville, living in a country farmhouse a few miles south ofWilliams College, completed what was to be the last prose work he pub-lished during his lifetime: Th e Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. At thetime Melville was in ill health and was facing serious economic problems.After considerable difficulty locating a publisher, his opaque work provedto be both a critical and a financial failure. With little pros pect of any-thing remotely resembling a reasonably profitable retu rn on the effort heinvested in writing, Melville was eventually forced to sell Arrowhead andmove to New York City where he worked as a customs inspector u ntil hisdeath in 1891. Though virtually ignored for nearly a century, Th e Confi-dence-Man is one of Melville's most challenging texts and remains one ofthe greatest works in the history of American literature.Melville's preoccupations in Th e Confidence-Man: His Masquerade areboth theological and economic. With subtlety and deception, thisdouble-dealing text probes, inter alia, the economy of faith and castsdoubt o n faith in the economy. In the century and a half since this workwas written, Melville's queries have become even more pressing than theywere in his own day. Aswe rush toward the electronic frontier of the nextmillennium few writers are as contemporary as Melville.The time is April 1st; the place, a latter-day ship of fools named Fidele,sailing down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans; the charac-ters: a motley crew, which, the narrator avers, resembles nothing somuch as "Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims." As the story opens, a youngman who is deaf and dumb boards the ship.His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a whitefur o ne, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither tr un k, valise, car-pet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him . He was unaccomp a-nied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whisp ers,wond erings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremistsense of the word, a stranger. (1)

Though the identity of this seemingly innocent youth remains obscure,his description obviously evokes the image of the lamb whose sacrifice isessential to the economy of salvation. This imp ressi on is reinforcedwhen, in the pages that follow immediately, the youth repeatedly writes


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606 Journal of the American Academy of Religionverses from 1 Corin thians 13 on a slate that he displays to the assembledpassengers.Between the innoce nt's initial appearance and his citation of scripture,Melville inserts an episode that provides the dramatic tension for theentire narrative. Making his way through the crowd on the lower deck,the you th "chan ced to come to a placard nigh the capta in's office, offeringa reward for the capture of a mysterious imposter, supposed to havearrived recently from the East" (1). What follows is a catalogue of thedisguises the alleged impostor is supposed to have assumed and a warn-ing to passengers to beware of this trickster. Though apparently intendedto counter doubts raised by the possible presence of an imposter, theactions of the christlike figure leave the unavoidable impression that hehimself might be the confidence-man. This suspicion deepens as the nextchapter of the drama unfolds.In the midst of the clamor and confusion created by voyagers strug-gling to read the cautionary placard and charitable citations, the ship'sbarber prep ared to open his shop for the day. Pushing people aside and"jumping on a stool, he hung over his door, on the customary nail, agaudy sort of illuminated pasteboard sign, skillfully executed by himself,gilt with the likeness of a razor elbowed in readiness to shave, and also,for the public benefit, with two words not infrequently seen ashore grac-ing other shops besides barbers':"

"NO TRUST."With the suspension of the barber's sign, it becomes clear that The Confi-dence-Man is not only a book whose plot hinges on the duplicity of signsbut is, more importantly, a text about signs. The work is at one and thesame time a narrative and a metanarrative whose textual strategies ques-tion themselves in their very deployment. In the first three chapt ers, weenco unter th ree different signs that are explicitly identified as such: theplacard, the slate, and the gilded pasteboard sign. The sign that M elvillename s a sign is no ordinary sign, for it calls into question the very mean-ing and significance of signs. Were we to follow the co unsel of the sign byrefusing to trus t, we could not have confidence in any sign. If, however,signs are not to be trusted, then we cannot even have confidence in thesign that reads "NO TRUST." The challenge of the sign creates a doublebind. The barb er's sign bends back on itself to create a distrust of dis-trust. The sign, in other w ords, discredits itself by encouraging an atti-tude th at is precisely the opposite of what it seems to promote. Wh en wedistrust distrust, it once again becomes possible to credit signs. Wh etherMelville is urging confidence or no confidence, belief or disbelief, trust ormistru st rema ins utterly undecidable. This gilded sign and the parado xesit engenders will return later in the narrative to discredit accounts thatonce seemed settled.


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Taylor: Discrediting God 60 7It is not insignificant that the sign upon which Melville's questionsturn is "gilt." A gilded sign is almost as good as gold: its surface is goldbu t its substance is a matter of little value. This play of surface and sub-stance inverts the customary relation of signifier and signified to create asimulation whose value is uncertain. Throughout hu ma n history, gold isnot so much a sign as the transcendental signified that is supposed to

ground the meaning and value of other signs. Gold, in othe r words, is thesign that is constructed to erase its status as a sign. Wh en un dersto od inthis way, the reasons for the intersection of economic and theologicalinterests become obv ious. God functions in a semiotic system in the sameway that gold functions in the economic system. The go(l)d standard isthe base upon which everything rests. When this foundation crum bles orbecomes inaccessible, signs are left to float freely on a sea that has noshores.From 1825 to 1875, debate about the gold standard raged throughoutthe United States. With the increasing economic deman ds created by theapproach of the Civil War, pressures to forsake the gold sta ndar d becameoverwhelm ing. Nevertheless, many people were reluctant to lift an cho rand set sail in the uncha rted waters of floating signifiers. Conce rn aboutthe threat of the devaluation of currency, which the shift to paper not

backed by gold seemed to pose, raged across the political spectrum . Incontrast to debates about the gold standard in our own day, people on theleft as well as the right defended the necessity of gold backing for papercurrency. With ominous visions of uncontrolled printing presses chu rn-ing out bank notes, Marx warns:The only difference, therefore, between coin and bullion, is one ofshape, and gold can at any time pass from one form to another.But no sooner does coin leave the mint than it immediately findsitself on the high-road to the melting pot. During their cu rrency,coins wear away, some more, others less. Name an d su bstanc e,nominal weight and real weight, begin their process of separation.(I, 126)

Though not expressed in semiotic terms, Marx's concern about the dis-junction of name and substance or nominal and real weight expresses. anxiety about the separation of the signifier from the signified. Severaldecades later, Nietzsche uses the image of the worn coin to explore semi-otic and aesthetic implications of the economy of signs.

Wh at, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, and anthropo-morphismsin short, a sum of human relations, which have beenenhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetori-cally, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obliga-tory to a people; truths and illusion about which one has forgottenthat this is what they are; metaphors that are worn out and with-


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60 8 Journal of the American Academy of Religionout sensuous power; coins that have lost their pictures and nowmatter only as metal, no longer as coins. (46-47)

The issues raised in N ietzsche's acute observation are, we shall see, ines-capably bound up with theological questions.Nietzsche was no t the first pe rson to realize the aesthetic implicationsof problems about representation involved in economic and politicaldevelopments. Many of his most telling insights were initially articulatedby several of America's leading nineteenth-century w riters. For those w itheyes to see, arguments about the gold standard cast doubt upon the valueof writ ing and the sta tu s of fiction. If we cannot have confidence in signs,then why write? Why read? No one was more sensitive to these q uestion sthan Edgar Allan Poe. Fourteen years before the appearance of The Confi-dence-Man, Poe published "The Gold-Bug," which anticipates many ofMelville's concerns as well as his literary strategy for addressing them.Having recently moved from New Orleans to Sullivan's Island, nearCharleston, South Carolina, an amateur entomologist, William Legrand,and his faithful negro servant, Jupiter, happen to find a gold bug.Describing the precious bug, Legrand comments:

"It is of brilliant gold colorabout the size of a large hickory-nutwith two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, andanother, somewhat longer, at the other. The antennae are""De aint no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you," hereinterrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him,inside and all, sep him wingneber feel half so hebby a bug in mylife." (Poe:653)

Truthsuch as it isis spoken by the fool. "De aint no tin in him." Allgold, no tin. The gold bug, Poe suggests, is no tin, notin, nothin, n othing .As the story develops, the focus shifts from bugs and gold to languageand signs. More precisely, Poe makes it clear that all along his interesthas been language. Having been bitten by the gold bug, Legrand becom esobsessed with finding buried treasure. His gold bug tur ns ou t to be lessvaluable in itself than as a sign that po ints to even greater rich es. Aftertracing the outline of the bug on a fragmentary parchment, Legrandnotices an obscure image emerging on the underside of his drawing.Teasing out the hidden figure with heat and moisture, he discerns a seriesof signs that initially are unintelligible. Despite the seeming arbitra rinessof the signifiers, Legrand believeshe has confidence in their profoundsignificance and in his ability to uncover it. Displaying skills as sophisti-cated as any contemporary cryptographer, he eventually decodes thescript and, following its instructions, unearths the treasure for which helonged. Legrand explains his interpretive procedure:

"In the present caseindeed in all cases of secret writingthe firstquestion regards the language of the cipher; for the principles of


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Taylor: Discrediting God 60 9solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are con-cerned, d epend u pon , and are varied by, the genius of the particu-lar idiom. In general, there is no alternative bu t ex perime nt(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him whoattempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, as withthe ciphe r now before us , all difficulty is removed by the signa ture.The pun on the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other languagethan the English. But for diis consideration I shou ld have begunmy attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in w hicha secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptographto be English. (Poe:587-588)

Poe's irony is unmistakable. If Legrand's assum ption proves to be correctand the cryptograph is English, his decipherment of the message estab-lishes nodiing or, in Jupiter's terms, no tin. Like die barber's sign, Kidd'scode erase s itself in its very inscription. If Kidd means kid, then only aperson who does not get die joke or is totally bugs would have confidencein signs.Legrand's faidi in his ability to decipher signs presupposes a critical

qualification. "Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind," he adm its,"have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubtedwhether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind whichhum an ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve" (587 ). In thisfictional version of die hermeneutic circle, Poe insists that what humanbeings create, hum an beings can understan d. But what if some signs arenot created by human beings or by any form of intelligence approximat-ing the human mind? Wh at if some signs or all signs are not created byany intelligence? W hat if signs are traces of notin?Legrand's faith in signs and their comprehensibility seems to be con-firmed by his discovery of long-lost treasures. Following the trail mark edby Kidd's signs, he eventually discovers their referent, which, of course, ifgold.There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antiqu e d ate andof great varietyFrench, Spanish, and German money, widi a fewEnglish guineas, and some counters, of which we had never seenspecim ens before. There were several large and heavy coins , soworn that we could make nodiing of their inscriptions. (Poe:579-580)

Gold, pure gold; coins, some worn beyond recognition, others French,Span ish, German, and a few English guineas. If Kidd is kidding, how arewe to read these signs? Wh at, after all, is a guinea?The questions raised by Poe's text take us back to the deck of dieFidele. The young man ped dling his scriptural wares disapp ears as sud-


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61 0 Journal of the American Academy oj Religiondenly as he h ad appeared. His place is taken by "a grotesque negro crip-ple, in tow-cloth attire and an old coal-sifter of a tam bourin e in his hand ,who, owing to something wrong about his legs, was, in effect, cut down tothe stature of a Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest black face rubbing against die upper part of people'sthighs as he made shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was,and ra ising a smile even from the gravest" (Melville:7). As white tu rn s toblack, the fleece seems to become a sign that is more diabolical than holy.Suspicions having been raised by the signs posted by die captain andbarber, many of the passengers fear being fleeced by the confidence-manwho is supposed to be roaming die ship.

"What is your name, old boy?" said a purple-faced drover, put-ting his large purple hand on the cripple's bushy wool, as if it werethe curled forehead of a black steer.Der Black Guinea they calls me, sar." (7)Few of the passengers have confidence in the Guinea. Wh en he attemptsto defend himself by offering what he insists is indisputable proof of hisidentity , a fellow cripp le explodes: "He can walk fast enoug h when h etries, a good d eal faster than I; but h e can lie yet faster. He's some w hiteoperator, betwisted and painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are allhumbugs" (10). A credulous Methodist clergyman rushes to the defenceof the poor Guinea by urging a more charitable resp onse to his entreatiesbut the master of suspicion is unconvinced and responds:

"Charity is one thing, and trudi another, . . . he's a rascal, 1say.""But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction as onecan upon the poor fellow?" said the soldier-like Methodist. . . "helooks honest, don't he?""Looks are one thing, facts are another," sna pped out the otherperversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction canyou put upon a rascal, but that a rascal he is?" (11)In an effort to resolve the conflict of interpretations created by the alter-native constructions projected on the Black Guinea, an Episcopal clergy-man, "with a clear face and blue eyes; innocence, tenderness, and goodsense triumvirate in his air," intervenes to ask whether anyone on boardcan testify to the identity of the beggar. Der Black Guinea replies by list-ing many of the personae he later assumes. Seeing through the charadestaged by the confidence-man, die man bearing die "true" prosdiesiscounsels die Episcopal priest not to waste his time on a "wild goosechase." The advice seems to be reliable because a search producesnothing.The image of the elusive goose, however, returns in the final chapterwhere die issue is again the interplay between faith and economics. A


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Taylor: Discrediting God 611cosmopolitan named Frank Goodman is deeply immersed in a theologi-cal conversation with an old man when they are interrupted by a juvenilemarchand clad in a yellow coat, which "flamed about him painted likeflames in the robes of a victim in auto-da-fe."1 Playing on the elderlyma n's fear and distrust, the youth sells him a traveller's lock and a moneybelt to secure his possessions. As a bonus, he throws in a "CounterfeitDetector." Though insisting that he does not lack confidence in the eco-nomic system in which he has invested more than his hope, the old mannone theles s exam ines several of his bills "just to pas s the time." Good-man, who takes considerable pride in his faith in other people, asks:

"Well, what say you, Mr. Foreman; guilty, or not guilty? Notguilty, ain't it?""I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed,"there's so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it a kind ofuncerta in. Here, now, is this bill," touching one, "it looks to be athree dollar bill on die Vicksburgh Trust and Insurance BankingCom pany. Well, the Detector says""But why, in this case, care wh at it says? Trust an d Ins uran ce!What more would you have?""No; but the Detector says, among fifty other things, diat, if agood bill, it must have, thickened here and there into the substanceof the paper, litde wavy spots of red . . . . ""Well, and is-""Stay. But dien it adds, die sign is not always to be relied on ;for some good bills get so worn, the red marks get rubbed out.And diat's die case widi my bill heresee how old it isor else it'sa counterfeit, or else-I don't see right-or else, dear, dear me-Idon't know what else to diink.""What a peck of trouble diat Detector makes for you now;believe me, the bill is good; don't be so distrustful . . . .""Stay, now here 's anodier sign . It says that, if the bill is goo d, itmust have in one corner, mixed in widi the vignette, die figure of a

'More of a "punster" than the characters he so describes, Melville plays with virtually allthe names in his tale in a way that turns them from proper to imprope r. Frank Goo dmansuggests both the cosmopolitan's forthrightness and his belief in the fundamen tal goodn essof human nature. But, as John Irwin no tes, Melville also indicted that "Go odman " was "thePuritan title of address" as well as "a cant term for a thief . . . and a Scottish title for theDevil" (336). The barber's nam e, William Cream, calls attention to th e veneer applied tostrip away the masks or to create the disguises people wear. Cream objects to Go odma n'sconfidence in his fellow h uman beings: "What, sir, to say nothing mo re, can one be foreverdealing in m acassar oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false mou staches, wigs, and toupees, and stillbelieve that men are wholly what they look to be? What think you, sir, are a thoughtfulbarber's reflections, when, behind a careful curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off ahead, and then dismisses it to the world, radiant in curling auburn?" (199).


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612 Journal of the American Academy of Religiongoose, very small, indeed, all but microscopic; and, for added pre-caution, like the figure of Napoleon outlined by die tree, but notobservable, even if magnified, unless the attention is directed to it.Now, pore over it as I will, I can't see this goose.""Can't see the goose? Why, I can; and a famous goose it is.There" (reaching over and pointing to a spot in the vignette).

"1 do n't see itdear meI don't see the goose. It is a real goose?"A perfect goose; beautiful goose.""Dear, dear, I don't see it." (Melville:214)A real goose? A perfect goose; beautiful goose. Since faith is a matt er ofvision, seeing is believing. But does Frank really see the goose? Does hebelieve because h e sees or does he see because he believes? If, as theCounterfeit Detector claims, "sign is not always to be relied on," then isthe search for faith based on vision, and vision based on faith a wildgoose chase?

His confidence having been shaken, Goodman had sought counseland reassura nce from the old man, who, disbelief to the contrary notwith-standing, is dubbed a "Master of Faith." In an effort to disprove the cyni-cism engendered by untrustworthy signs, Goodman enters into anagreement in which the barber, whose name we now learn is WilliamCream, promises to take down his "NO TRUST" sign and serve his cus-tomers in good faith. Goodm an, in turn, pledges to provide compensa-tion for any losses that result from this willing suspension of disbelief. Tojustify his insistence on the establishment of an escrow account as secur-ity against the possibility of lost income, Cream cites lines from "Wisdomof Jesu s, th e Son of Sirach:"

" . . . I recalled what the son of Sirach says in the True Book: 'Anenemy speaketh sweetly with his lips'; and so I did what the son ofSirach advises in such cases: 'I believed not his many words.'"(202)Unwilling to believe that "such cynical sort of things are in the TrueBook," Frank seeks the wisdo m of the elder who is absorbed in th e book.The troubling w ords, the cosm opolitan discovers, are not precisely in theBible, but are inside the book as a certain outside that is not truly incor-porated. The words the barber cites are part of a textual supplem ent th atfalls between the Old and New Testaments and, as such, remain marginalto the text proper. "Ecclesiasticus or the W isdom of Jesus Son of Sirach"is part of the Apocrypha."Apocrypha" (Latin apocryphys, hidden, from Greek apokrruptein, tohide away) was the Greek word used to designate writings that were soimportant diat they had to be kept hidden from the general public andwere disclos ed on ly to initiates or die inner circle of believers. W henused in a biblical context, "apocrypha" designates the boo ks of die Septu-


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Taylor: Discrediting God 613agint included in the Vulgate but considered uncanonical by Protestants.The more general sense of the word reflects the biblical usage. "Apocry-pha l" also means "of questionable auth orship ; false, counterfeit." Theconstitution and status of the Apocrypha remain subject to dispute.While customarily including fourteen books, there is no universal agree-men t about which books properly belong to the Apocrypha. The book sdesignated "apocryphal" are not included in the Jewish Canon of theHebrew Scripture. In 1534, Luther gathered these books and publishe dthem in a separate section at the end of the Old Testament. TheReformed traditio n accorded even less statu s to the Apocryp ha. After1599, the Geneva Bible went so far as to omit these books and the West-minster Confession of Faith (1646-48) identified them as "secular litera-ture." In response to the Protestant rejection of the Apocrypha, C atholicsaffirmed their canonical status. The Council of Trent (1546) declaredanathema anyone who did not accept the entire Vulgate as canonical.

Canon ical or heretical? T rue or false? Gen uine or counterfeit? Fran kGoodman is reassured by the discovery of rediscovery that the lines thebarber quoted are apocryphal.I cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me aboutthe apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped m e.Fact is, when all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing.The uncanonical part should be bound distinct. And, now that Ithink of it, how well did those learned d octors who rejected for usthis whole book of Sirach. I never read anything so calculated todestroy man's confidence in man . . . . And to call it wisdomtheWisdom of the Son or Sirach! Wisdom, indeed! What an uglything wisdom must be! Give me the folly diat dimples the cheek,say I, rather th an the wisdom tha t curdles the blood. But no, no; itain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir. For how can tha t betrustworthy that teaches distrust? (Melville:209)

There is, however, a tremor of uncertainty in Frank's brave words of confi-dence: "Fact is, when all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing."As the marginal between that both separates and joins the Old and NewTestaments, the Apocrypha contains or attempts to contain dou bt. Butfor thoughtful readers, the apocrypha l is uncontainable; the margin inevi-tably overflows its bounds and contaminates the whole book as if fromwithin. The history of the Apocrypha shows the undeniab le arbitrarine ssof the text: sometimes included, sometimes excluded, sometimesincluded as excluded. Once doubts about the authority of the book havebeen raised, only those whose faith is blind can fail to wonder whetherevery canon is apocryphal.

Though always shrouding his thoughts in duplicity, Melville appearsto leave little doubt abo ut his own doubt. On the penultim ate page of thebook, he returns to the exchange between Frank Goodman and the


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614 Journal of the American Academy of ReligionMaster of Faith. Having jus t claimed to have had a vision of the goosethat lays the golden egg by securing his confidence in the VicksburghTrust and Insurance Banking Co., Frank addresses the old man, who, inyet another reversal of roles, is now the one who needs reassurance.

At length, seeing diat he had given up his u ndert aking as hopeless,and w as at leisure again, the cosmopolitan addressed some gravelyinteresting remarks to him about the book before him, and, pres-ently, becoming m ore and more grave, said, as he turne d the largevolume slowly over on the table, and widi much difficulty tracedthe faded remains of the gilt inscription giving the name of thesociety who had presented it to the boat, "Ah, sir, though every onemust be pleased at the thought of the presence in public places ofsuch a book, yet there is something that abates the satisfaction.Look at this volume; on the outside, battered as any old valise inthe baggage-room; and inside, white and virgin as the hearts oflilies in bud." (215)

This is the second time that a "gilt inscription" app ears in die book. Thefirst, as we have seen, is the barber's gilded sign "NO TRUST." Byreturning to the image of gold at the conclusion of his work, Melvilleextends the que stions raised by the sign to the book as a whole. TheBible, like William Cream's sign, is not pure gold but is only gilded; itsgold is perhaps fool's gold, which, though it might contain no tin, is nev-ertheless no tin but a thin veneer that is utterly superficial. In his descrip-tion of the Bible, Melville plays on the contrasts between surface anddepth as well as inside and outside: "Look at this volume; on the outside,battered as any old valise in the baggage-room; and inside, white an d vir-gin . . . " How is such a book to be read? On the one hand, Melvillesuggests that superficial corruption obscures a deeper purity. On theother hand, the worn cover and virgin pages indicate that the book isnever opened and that only surfaces matter.

But the Bible is not the only book contaminated by William Cream'sdup licitou s sign. Qu estions abo ut the sign invade every bookeven thebook supposedly authored by Melville. Is Th e Confidence-Man a rein-scri ptio n of the gilded sign that is notin ? Can we ba nk on Melville'swords? Does he attem pt to credit faith or discredit confidence by counsel-ing us to distrust trust? The book is prefaced with a brief inscr iption:"Dedicated to victims of Auto de Fe." Auto-da-fe, was "the publicannouncement of the sentences imposed on persons tried by the Inquisi-tion" as well as "the public execution of these sentences by the secularauthoritie s, especially the bur ning of heretics at the stake." Melville'sbook, then, appears to be dedicated to heretics who have died for theirlack of confidence. But auto-da-fe can also be read in anothe r way. ThePortuguese phrase means act {auto, Latin actus) of (da) faith (fe). Whenread more "literally," which, in this case, means more literarily, Melville


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Taylor: Discrediting God 615seem s to dedicate his work to "victims of the act of faith." Is faith, th en,the ultimate confidence game?How is the exergue to be read? "Exergue," it is im por tan t to note ,means not only that which is outside of (ex) the work (ergon), but also"the space on the reverse of a coin or medal, below the central design."The u nderside of currency, we have discovered, is faith, and the currenc yof faith is an economy in which there is a profitable return on everyinvestment. That is what redem ption is all about. But wha t role does Th eConfidence-Man play in the economy of faith? Is Melville's missive sent tobelievers or heretics? Does he counsel confidence or doubt? Is Melville'sboo k a gilded sign that reads "NO TRUST"? Is it a narrativ e th at is amet anarrat ive calling all signseven the sign "NO TRUST" into questio n?If the book is "inwardly" faulted in a way that discredits it, then can wehave confidence in M elville's work? Is his book the in car nat ion of wordsin which we can have faith? Is Melville a confidence-man, pe rha ps theconfidence-man? Or is he the pale shadow of a confidence-m an w honever appears as such?

The psychoanalytic theory of money must s tart by establishing theproposition that money is, in Shakespeare's words, the "visiblegod," in Luther's words, "the God of this world." (Brown:240-41)In the years following the Civil War, the United States governmentrestored the convertibility of paper currency to gold. By 1880, the goldstandar d had evolved into an international mon etary system that was sup-ported by all major co untries. With the outbreak of World War I, how-ever, wartime exigencies once again led to the suspension of the goldstandard by many countries. While the United States maintained thegold convertibility of the dollar throughout the war, with the collapse ofthe banking system during the Depression, it became necessary to revokethe gold standa rd. The financial chaos tha t resulted from th is actionplunged international trade and finance into confusion and decline thatwere reversed only after the Second World War.One of the major reasons for the postwar economic recovery was the

developm ent of an intern ationa l mone tary system. Several years beforethe end of the war, England and the United States began negotiations thateventually led to the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. In an effort torestore a semblance of order to international markets, fixed exchangerates were instituted by linking all major currencies to the US dollar andreestablishing the convertibility of the dollar into gold at a fixed price.This arrangement functioned reasonably well until 1 97 1, when, inresponse to international pressures, President Nixon ended the converti-bility of the dollar into gold. The efforts of the international communityto preserve fixed rates of exchange in the absence of any vestige of thegold stan dard proved to be futile. In 197 3, fixed exchan ge rates gave way


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61 6 Journal o f the American Academ y of Religionto floating rates of exchange. With this development, it became undenia-ble that m oney is not th e sign of a stable "transcendental signified" bu t isreally "no tin" but a sign of a sign. No longer boun d to a secure referent,currency is a floating signifier whose value is relative to other floatingsignifiers. In this groundless econom y, currency is the free flow of unan-chored signs.

If, as the analysis of Melville's The Confidence-Man suggests, there isan isomorphism between the semiotics of money and the economics oftheology, then it should not be surprising that theological developmentsduring this period mirror and/or are mirrored by currents circulatingthroug hou t the world of finance. Wh ile money was losing (its) grou nd,theology was becoming unmoo red. Con curren t with the shift from aneconomy anchored in gold to an economy of floating signifiers, was theemergence of the so-called "death of God theology." The declaration ofthe death of God was not, of course, new news. Though the phrase wasfirst used by Luther, who also insisted, without realizing the stakes of hisclaim, that money is "the God of this world," it was left for Hegel andNietzsche to formulate and elaborate the theological significance of thedeath of God. The de ath of God theology of the 1 960s takes its inspira-tion from the writings of Hegel and Nietzsche. There is, however, animportant difference between nineteenth and twentieth century versionsof the de ath of God theology. In the course of the 20th century , the de athof God is historically enacted and embo died in society and culture. Thetelos of this process is postmodernism or the culture of the simulacrum,which I designate "simcult."

Contrary to widespread misunderstanding, postmodernism, as it isgenerally understood, does no t represent a decisive break with modernismbut realizes its fundamental tenets. As mechanical means of reproductiongive way to electronic means of reproduction, ideality becomes reality inwhich everything is mediated as well as mediaized. Simcult is a culture ofimag es wh ere all reality is, in effect, virtua l reality. In different t erm s,everything is always already encoded in an imaginary register that func-tions as an every-shifting cultural apriori constituted and reconstituted byan electronic network whose reach always exceeds our grasp. Since thesign doe s not re-present the real but is always a signifier of an other signi-fier, there is nothing outside the field of signs. In die absence of a founda-tional signified, it's signs all the way down. This is Baudrillard's po intwhen he insists on the "precession of simulacra." Simulation, Baudrillardargues, "is no longer tha t of a territory, a referential being or a sub stanc e.It is the genera tion by m odels of a real withou t origin or reality: a hyper-real. The territory no longer precedes the ma p, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territoryPRECESSION OF THESIMULACRAit is the map that engenders the territory and if we were torevive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowlyrotting across the map" (Baudrillard:2).


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Taylor: Discrediting God 617The postmodern culture of media and images might seem to be dis-tant from and unrelated to religious and theological traditions of the past.In a certain sense, this distance is undeniable. But to insist that simcultmerely negates its theological past is to interpret negation as single rathertha n double. Baudrillard is one of the few cultural critics who realizes thetheological implications of the culture of the simulacrum when he argues:But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons,when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the suprem eauthority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or isit volatilized into simulacra, which alone deploy their pomp andpower of fascinationthe visible machinery of icons being substi-tuted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? This is preciselywhat was feared by the Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel isstill with us today. Their rage to destroy images rose preciselybecause they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra, this facilitythey have of effacing God from the consciousness of men, and theoverwhelming, destructive trut h that they suggest: tha t ultima telythere has never been any God, that only the simulacrum exists,indeed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum.(8)

The question that lingers between the lines of Baudrillard's text iswhether the effacement of the divine is the negation of God or is God'sself-realization. In simcult perhap s God lives by dying. Death, in otherwords, does not necessarily discredit God.It is not easy to escape the system of credit that founds and fundstheological reflection. Theology, it seems, is inesca pably sp eculative,even when it is not identified as such. Speculation, I have noted, is n otmerely a matter of thought but also involves a certain economy and psy-chology. According to the fundamental p rinciple s of speculative calcula-tions, there can be no expenditure or investment without the expec tationof a profitable r eturn . Every systembe it philosophical, social, political,psychological, or religiousis an economic structure that sustains net-works of exchange. Though th e currency varies, the laws governing sys-

tems remain structurally constant. The breakdown of a system can occurin at least three ways: 1. op erational princip les can becom e dysfunc-tional; 2. one of the memb ers or parts of the system can die or bedestroyed; 3. perfect equilibrium or homeostasis can be attained. It isimpo rtant to note some of the implications of the third po ssibility. Whilethe establishment and m aintenance of equilibrium might appe ar to be theaim of economic systems, the achievement of this purpose would result inthe annihilatio n of the structure. The functioning of the system presup -poses a differential distribution of currency. When differences get too farout of balance, a reversal occurs, which, in turn, becomes excessive andmust be counter-balanced, and so on ad infinitum. As these remarks sug-


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61 8 Journal of the American Academy of Religiongest, the structure of structure or the metastructure of every structure isbinary or dialectical opposition. Within the bounds of seemingly all-encompassing structure, opposites are reciprocally related in such a waythat each m irrors and is mirrored by the other. This mirror play lendsevery system its speculative case.

The basic principles of speculation become somewhat clearer whentheir operation is observed in particular systems and structures. In thiscontext, 1 will focus on the economy of theology and religion. While notall theology is systematic, Christian theology te nds to be speculative. Theprinci ples of speculation guide both divine and hu ma n activity. Evenwhen it appears to be senseless, believers have confidence that God'sactivity is carefully calculated. Though God 's ways are not always ma n'sways, God never acts without purpose. From a Christian perspective, themost im portan t act of God is, of course, the incarnation. The incar nationrepresents Go d's investment in the hum an race. One does not need theelaborate appa ratus that Anselm deploys in Cur Deus Homo to discern theeconomic princip les at work in incarnational theology. If God is the crea-tor, we always live on credit; our lives are loans and our futures are mort-gaged. Wh en we spend w ithout limit or fail to meet our paym ents, as weinevitably seem to do, we discredit not only God but also ourselves andthus incur a debt, which in a theological economy, is guilt. Schuld isSchuld.

Having exhausted our credit by spending excessively, we no longerhave the funds necessary to repay our debt. But the creditor to who m weowe everything is no ordinary creditor. Always the prude nt s peculator ,God realizes tha t he has invested too muc h in the h um an race to allow themarket to crash. So he intervenes personally to redeem his coupons:Godto his creditbecomes ma n in order to absolve us of our deb t. Ou rinterest in God's investment is obvious. Unable to balance our books , weneed a furthe r loan to pay off our de bt. If, however, this loan is not toexacerbate our dilemma, it must be a loan that we are not required torepay. In an apparent break with basic economic principles, God spend swithout any possibility of receiving repayment of the principle or derivingprofitable inte rest from his investment. For the hum an race to beredeemed, God's act of incarnation has to be without interestcompletelydis-interested. If God were to act for himself rather than for us, he wouldbecome human in the worst sense and would thereby discredit himself.

To his cred it, God acts disinterestedly. It is precisely this dis-interestthat is supposed to distinguish divine agape from human eros. But isdivine disinterest really so disinterested? To his credit, God acts disinter-estedly. If disintere sted action is to God 's credit, then is it not actuallyinterested? God 's loan of himself is short-term, for he necessarily retu rnsto himself from w hat appears to be his own othern ess. According to theeconomy of trinitarian theology, the relation of the Father to the Son isboth specular and speculative. The Father sees himself reflected in the


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Taylor: Discrediting God 619Son, and the Son sees himself reflected in the Father. Since neither issimply himself but is also at the same time the other, i.e., the Father is theSon and the Son is the Father, the specular/speculative relation forms aperfect circle. Father passes into Son in order to re tur n to himself, andSon passes into Father in order to return to himself. This synchronic rela-tion is staged diachronically in the incarnation. The Father descends inthe Son to affirm his status as Father, and the Son rises in the Father toclaim his identify as Son. The currency of this system is spirit, wh ich,because it is the lifeblood of the system, is deemed divine.

Since the Father only becomes himself through die Son, the Son repre-sents the Father's most impo rtant investment. Though temporarily pain-ful, there is no ultimate risk involved in this investment. Both theprinc iple and the interest are absolutely secure. God, therefore, know s inadvance that his expenditure will result in a profitable retu rn. Inasmu chas disinterested investment is what makes G od, God, God needs the incar-natio n as much as the hum an race does. If, however, Go d profits fromdisinterested speculation, then his investment is not actually disinter-ested. Instead of a prud ent speculator, God is dup licitou s confidence-man w ho on ly plays when the deck is stacked in his favor. The ultimateconfidence game is the incarnation in which God appears to be otherthan what he truly is.Does this confidence game discredit God? In one sense, yes, but inanother sense, no. If disinterested investment makes God God, thenGod's interest in disinterest would seem to discredit God. How can onehave confidence in a duplicitous investment counselor who never is whathe seems to be? And yet, who would have confidence in an investmentcounselor who did n ot follow sound economic principles by insisting tha tno investment should be without interest? Why would one believe anadvisor who encouraged foolishly spending? Faith, it seems, is a confi-dence gam e we are all too willing to play. There are, of course , profits tobe made in confidence gam es. For those who believe, life remains m ean-ingful even when it seems senseless. While die tenets of faith might notbe verifiable, they noneth eless are nonfalsifiable. The unce rta int y createdby nonfalsifiability can create an opening for faith as well as an oc casionfor doubt. Wh en the stakes are so high, many argue, a person w ould be afool no t to wager everything. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Per-haps. But what "is" the nodiing we seem to lose in suc h confidencegames? Does this nodiing discredit God more radically dia n God discred-its himself? Might this nothing be precisely wh at confidence g ames aredesigned to lose? Is there a discrediting of God that cannot bediscredited?Death disc redits Godunless, of course, it is tempo rary. There was amoment, a brief moment that was a dark interval when God seemed tohave died. Between crucifixion and resu rrection even the most devo utfollowers of Jesus lost confidence. They bank ed on a coun selor w ho, it


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62 0 Journal of the A merican Academy of Religionseemed, turned out to be nothing more than a confidence ma n. Havinginvested everything, they received nothing in return. Nothing. For thosewho have faith, nothing is unbearable. Nothing, therefore, mu st be lost.If the confidence man is to be believed nothing is lost because loss isnever really loss but is always implicit gain. This assessment of our situa-tion requires that we take a long-term rather than short-term view.Instead of selling too quickly when losses mount, the seasoned investorincreases his wager precisely when things seem to have hit rock bottom.For those with confidence, Black Friday does not cause despair, for itprepares the way for a brighter day that promises a payoff beyond ourwildest expectations.

Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the Christian God diesrepeatedly throughout history. While circumstances vary, the patternrema ins the same. As crucifixion gives way to resurrection an d nega tionis negated, short-term losses become long-term ga ins. Since recovery isnot merely restoration but something more, the investment of beliefretu rns with co mp oun d interest. In this way, the wager of faith alwaysseems to pay handsome dividends, which are most profitable preciselywhen they are least obvious. Nowhere is the profit of faith less apparentthan when God seems to die.The twentieth century, as I have suggested, is framed by the death ofGod. Proclaimed by Nietzsche at the beginning of the century an d refor-mulated by leading theo logians at mid-century, the death of God is histor-ically enacted dur ing the latter half of the twentieth century. Simcultrealizes Nietzsche's vision of a world in which every ostensible transcen-dental signified is apprehend ed as a signifier tha t is caught in a lab yrinthof signifiers. Translating theology into semiology, God dies an d is reb ornas a sign that points to nothing beyond itself. Points to nothing beyond

itself.In ways more radical than mo dernists ever dreamed, postm odernismnegates what C hristian believers affirm. Negation, however, is not neces-sarily denial. If the negation enacted in simcult is und erstoo d specula-tively, it remains within an economy that is essentially Christian.Speculative dialectics create the possibility of recuperative readings inwhich loss becom es gain. From this point of view, die greatest loss pro-vides the occasion for the greatest gain. When negation is doubled, itgenerates a coincidentia oppositorum in which apparent opposites areessentially identical. For die speculator who invests in this basic eco-nomic principle, loss is never final and death-even the death of God-loses its devastating power.Within the economy of speculative theology, deadi does not discreditGod but is the climax of divine self-realization. Through a kenoic pro-cess, God's transcendence becomes an imm anence in which the divine istotally present here and now. The deadi of the transcendent signifiedeffectively divinizes the web of simulacra tha t constitute simc ult. W he n


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Taylor: Discrediting God 62 1there is nothing beyond the sign, image is all. Height, dep th, and inferior-ity collapse in an infinite play of surfaces that knows no d epth . In themidst of this superficiality, nothing remains profound. Nothing remainsprofound.

The speculative economy in which everything is always alreadyredeemed reflects the dream of sacrifice without sacrifice. Even whenblood is spilt, there is no expend iture without ret urn. Simcu lt involves arealized eschatology in which God dies and is reborn in the Magic King-dom whe re we enjoy Tomorrow land today. In this Fantasyland , everyonelives on credit. At least until the ma rket crashes.

If the discrediting of death is ultimately to God's credit, then it seemsimpossible no t to play the confidence game. When explicit negation isimplicit affirmation, every gesture of resistance turns out to support pre-cisely wha t it is designed to opp ose. To break the spell of the confiden ce-man, it is necessary to expose his confidence game as a charad e by think-ing an unthinkable gift that is not a present.A gift that is not a present pre sents nothing. Presents nothing. Since itprese nts noth ing, giving is a giving not. The gift is the not th at is a dona-tion that is a withdrawal. Withdrawal, in turn , is a taking that is a giving.In the fort/da of this give-and-take, the present appears as pre-sent bywh at is never present. This pre-sending, which is a prescind ing, is an off-err ing tha t involves neither sacrifice nor the sacrifice of sacrifice. Sincethe gift of the present costs nothing and demands nothing in return, itimp oses no debt and im plies no guilt. Indeed, a gift tha t is never (a)presen t cann ot even be received. W hen it is a question of a gift th at b earsno interest, to receive is, paradoxically, to receive not. If the gift isreceived, a reciprocal relation is established that cancels the gift byreturnin g it to the sender as having been received. Contrary to expecta-tion, the gratitude that acknowledges the gift is the ingratitude that rejectsit by accepting it. For a gift to be a gift, it must b e prodig al, extrav agant,excessive; it must, in other words, be an expenditure without retu rn. Thevery possibility of return introduces an element of calculation t hat annu lsthe gift. From an econom ic point of view, I have stresse d, the disinter-

ested giving of the gift is madness. But this madness is wh at speculato rsfear, for it exceeds anything they can ever imagine. The incalculable follyof the gift harbors a paradox that borders on the absurd. Th e gift can be agift only if it is not accepted as such.But can a gift be declined? Is it possible not to accept a gift? Non-acceptance seems to be as impossible as acceptance. While the accept-ance of the gift is its non-acceptance, the non-acceptance of the gift is itsacceptanc e. W hen giving and receiving are unavo idable, the gift disap-pears. More precisely, the disappearance of the gift makes giving andreceiving possible. In this way, the disappearan ce of the gift, wh ich isneither present nor a present, is the condition of the possibility of all


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62 2 Journal of the American Academy of Religioneconom ies. Always falling "outside" the circuit of exchange, the gift issomething like the tuche that sets every economic system in motion.

If all theology is economical and all economies are theological, thenthe gift discred its God. For the gift to elude the structure of reappro pria-tion, recovery, and redemption that speculation inevitably entails, it mustinterrupt the system of exchange in which credit and debit are recipro-cally related. Since discredit cannot create credit, the gift mu st be anexpe nditure w ithou t retu rn. If, however, the reception of the gift as gift,i.e., as that which requires nothing in return, negates the donation it isintended to acknowledge, then how can the system of credit ever bediscredited?The only alternative to the confidence game that is designed toreclaim (the) all would seem to be a certain forgetting. Not jus t any for-getting but a forgetting that is virtually prim al. Prim al oblivion dou blesforgetting without negating negation. Wh en one forgets yet remembe rsthat he or she has forgotten, speculation returns to re-member what oncewas lost but now is found. To break the tie that bind s, it is necessary n otonly to forget bu t to forget that one h as forgotten. If forgetting is radical,re-membering is impossible. When re-membering is impossible, dis-membering has always already occurred and redemption can never takeplace. In this case, the lack of redem ption do es not render one guilty.Inasmuch as the gift evades every economy, it demands nothing in retu rn.Nothing. To return nothing is to forget the gift without which we canneither give nor receive, be nor be not.Simcult is a culture of forgettingradical forgetting that forgets thefore-getting th at m akes it what it is and is not. The forgetting of forgettingmak es it possib le to lose loss and yet gain nothing. Forgetting does no ttransform absence into presence, which can be enjoyed here and now . Tothe contrary, the foregetting of forgetting inscribes in the midst of beingsomething like a primordial loss that is no longer experienced as a lackthat m ust be filled. The lack of primal oblivion perpe tuates a becom ingthat rests upon nothing beyond itself. When nothing lies beyond, every-thing is transfo rmed . Height, dept h, and interiority, we have discovered,

give way to a play of surfaces that is no longer superficial but now isimpossibly complex. In the culture of the simulacrum, metaphoric sub-stitution yields to metonymic displacement, which remains endless. Inthe absence of ends, everything is as purposeless as the gift that is ohnewarum.

While making wagers unavoidable, simcult discredits every confi-dence game. The dilemma is no longer how to recover confidence bu t tolearn how to live without confidence."I don't know, I don't know," returned the old man, perplexed,"there's so many marks of all sorts to go by, it makes it kind ofuncertain."


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Taylor: Discrediting God 62 3So many ma rks . . . it makes it kind of uncerta in. .Unavoidably uncerta in.Such uncertain ty makes erring inescapable. The place or nonplace oferring is the desertthe desert that opens with the gift whose giving is adesertion. On the sands of this desert, where every location is a disloca-tion, life becomes infinitely nomadic. Never lingering long enough to set-tle down, the nomad invests everything but receives nothing in return.Nothing. Always nothing. To err endlessly, to err purposelessly, to errohne warum in the desert of signs that are forever losing ground, is todiscredit God by realizing nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

REFERENCESBaudrillard, Jean1983

Brown, Norman O.1959Irwin, John1983

Marx, K arl1972Melville, Herman1971

Nietzsche,Friedrich1980Poe, Edgar Allen1984

Simulations. New York: Semiotexte.

Life Against Death. New York: Random House.

American Hieroglypics: The Symbol of the EgyptianHieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. Balti-more: Johns Hopkins University Press.Capital. Trans, by Samuel More and Edward Avel-ing. New York: International Publishers.Th e Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. by Her-shel Parker. New York: W .W. No rton ."On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense." In Th ePortable Nietzsche. Ed. by Walter Kaufmann. NewYork: Penguin Books."The Gold Bug." In Poetry and Tales. New York:The Library of America.

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