Performing the Covenant: Akedah and the Origins of Masculinity — Page 4:
16 In Abraham’s story, Derrida points out, there is no mention of women:
It is difficult not to be struck by the absence of woman in [this] monstrous yet banal story [of Abraham]. It is a story of father and son, of masculine figures, of hierarchies among men [. . .]. Would the logic of sacrificial responsibility within the implacable universality of the law, of its law, be altered, inflected, attenuated, or displaced, if a woman were to intervene in some consequential manner? Does the system of this sacrificial responsibility and of the double “gift of death” imply at its very basis an exclusion of woman or sacrifice of woman? A woman’s sacrifice or a sacrifice of woman, according to one sense of the genitive or the other? (75–76)
Derrida does not answer himself, leaving this “question in suspense,” but it is this question that demands to be answered if we are to understand the ethics of the economy of the sacrificial exchange that defines the relationship between femininity and the sacred: How would “the logic of sacrificial responsibility within the implacable universality of the law” be “altered, inflected, attenuated, or displaced” if woman were asked to perform her sacrificial duty? What is the relationship between the woman’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of a woman?
Sarah’s Silence: The Narrative Logic of Exclusion
17 Abraham’s unquestioning response to God’s demand is both a declaration of love toward God and also a declaration of self-worth. The fact that Abraham does not offer himself in lieu of Isaac implies that his life is worth as much as Isaac’s, and hence it does not matter who dies; the judgment between the two belongs ultimately to God. Man has no power or right to judge his own life as less or more worthy than another man’s. Woman, on the contrary, does so, and by doing so, she undoes herself. Not only does she take upon herself the judgment that belongs to God, but her declaration is a declaration of her inferiority. The purpose of the binding of Isaac appears therefore twofold: it binds man to God, but it also takes away man’s right to judge his own worth vis-à-vis other men. Not being able to judge himself, man always remains as value in-itself in the face of God, the supreme value in-itself. In Abraham’s story, Sarah knows nothing about the sacrifice, and as Berman notices, “there does not seem to be a single known midrash that suggests Abraham consulted her or had advised her of his momentous journey” (65). Would the Western ethics of sacrificial responsibility and its gender relations be different if Sarah were asked directly by God to perform her sacrificial responsibility? Berman suggests that it is narrative necessity that excludes Sarah from the sacrificial exchange: “Perhaps Sarah’s innocence of Abraham’s intent, as well as Isaac’s innocence until the last moment, adds to the suspense and mystery and are therefore necessary ingredients of the story as a suspenseful, compelling story” (72). To maintain the narrative suspense, Isaac must be ignorant of his fate, and for Isaac to be ignorant, Sarah also must be in the dark: “If Sarah knew about Abraham’s momentous decision [. . .] how could her response to this truly terrible news, whether it took the form of support or protest, keep the goal of Abraham’s journey a secret from Isaac?” (72). For Berman, the narrative structure alone warrants Sarah’s exclusion.
18 However, I suggest that aside from the narrative structure, the story also has a performative quality; it establishes the ethical relationship between man and God, the covenant from which Sarah is excluded.[7]See also Alter, R. <em>The Art of Biblical Narrative</em>. New York: Basic Books, 1981. The narrative structure that establishes the relationship of power between Abraham and God also establishes the relationship of power between Abraham and Sarah. Thus, one can ask whether the exclusion of Sarah is necessary to retain the narrative suspense, or whether the narrative suspense is necessary to exclude Sarah. Would it be possible to maintain the same narrative suspense if Sarah were spoken to by God, and Abraham remained ignorant? The lack of knowledge precludes the access to the divine that bestows the laws, the blessings, and the guidance. As Trible put it, “Patriarchy has denied Sarah her story, the opportunity for freedom and blessing. It has excluded her and glorified Abraham” (189). God does not address those whom he does not wish to test, and he does not test those on whom he has placed no stakes, those whose responses are either predictable or irrelevant.
19 In the patriarchal structure of the sacred, it appears, woman cannot be asked by God to participate in the sacrificial contract because if she did as Abraham and sacrificed Isaac without a shadow of doubt, like Abraham she would declare her love of God, thus cementing her position as an ethical subject capable of facing and transcending the moral aporia of faith and responsibility. Instead, Sarah “does not share in her husband’s glory. She has no chance here or anywhere else in her story to prove herself a woman of conspicuous faith and obedience; god has made no demands of her, just as he has never given her any promises [. . .]. [T]he issue of her faith, her obedience, her righteousness has never once been raised. In these ancestral narratives she is an abused woman” (Dennis 60–61). She is asked nothing and promised nothing. Sarah’s participation in the economy of the gift would make her equal to man “within the implacable universality of the law.”
20 If, however, she were to doubt God’s voice and refuse to sacrifice Isaac, faced with her doubt, Abraham’s action would seem “unreasonable.” Choosing between the ethical and the teleological, she would choose the ethical, and without her leap of faith, or without her trust, God would cease to be. Indeed, Delaney aptly asks: “Why is the willingness to sacrifice the child, rather than the passionate protection of the child, at the foundation of faith? [. . .] How our society would have evolved if protection of the child had been the model of faith” (252–253). Can one believe in God and not obey him, or is obedience a necessary part of faith? There is no God without obedience, Derrida suggests. Would, then, the ethics structured around the protection of a child be necessarily atheist? For God to exist and for man to maintain his patriarchal superiority over woman in relationship with God, Sarah must necessarily be excluded from the sacrificial exchange. God’s and man’s sacrificial contract binds them together in the sacred letter of the law, privileging man as having both the access to the divine and the right—by virtue of his faith, which he professes through his willingness to sacrifice his son—to act on God’s behalf to bestow divine laws, including those that regulate gender relations. The exclusion of woman from the sacred economy creates a condition of sacred imperialism, whereas woman’s agency as an ethical subject vis à vis the divine is erased. Man allows God to rule him; in exchange, God gives man the right to rule her.