Wikipedia, I mean, "A Work in Progress"

Breathing Finitude

2007-09-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

The absence of finality
of total certainty
of confirmation of one's findings
being baptized without the dove
the dove being invisible
a flutter on the skin
a homelessness in the world
gold horns riding on holy
holy wholely holy
unconfirmed
undeniable
undecidable?

Eden and Evolution, or Moses, Darwin and Augustine

2007-09-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

When I first accepted the theory of evolution, albeit loosely, I understood right away that it created a hemeneutical crisis for me (and Christianity). I think I was in third year, conversing with my roommate Mark, an Atlantic Baptist who held to evolution. Mark didn't see the crisis that I did, and I suspected this was because Mark was more cultured then I was. What I saw was that original sin was predicated on a temporal event that caused a condition. We have the condition as evidence of a temporal event in the past, which is accounted for in scripture. If then I tried to splice the evolutionary story together with the Eden lapse, the later morphed from a historico-mythical foundation into a psychological-existential etiology. This converted the Eden narrative form the historiography and linear temporality of the Hebrews to the functional psychology of the Greeks. Theologians had always been reading the Eden narrative as the Greeks might, but they had recourse to the Hebraic foundation (at least until the 19th century). What occurred to me was that if the Greek hermeneutic won out the post-lapsarian curse which results in the condition of sin was unfounded (in history at least). Where and when did the rebellion occur? Were some animals, the earlier version of humanity, immune from the curse? This seemed unlikely, as they were likely more limited then we are. How then is the Eden narrative to be understood? Do we have to opt for the progressivist reading of history and say that the Eden narrative is a mistaken document of lesser worth? In short, accepting evolution pushed me into a afoundational reading of sin. This bothered me for a while, as I could not reconcile the problem of original sin with the condition of sin. The itch, however, had been forgotten until I began to do more reading on Augustine for the first chapter of my dissertation.

While I do not have a solution, here is how I cope with the problem. Since we are trapped in afoundational narratives wherever we look, this includes evolution, evolution has no more essential believability then Eden. I now hold belief in the ability to reconcile variations of the two narratives. Furthermore, I find the ethic that Eden gives me, and the livability in this narrative framework, of much more value then what evolution provides. Eden explains much more about my soul, mind and body, then evolution has been able to. Evolution, for instance, would explain guilt as a function of sociability - in that if I didn't have a strong sense of guilt when I harmed the social I wouldn't have recourse to the goods of the social. Augustine has a much richer analysis of guilt in that his version can include the political realism of the evolutionary narrative while also accounting for the metaphysical aspect of guilt that is, for me (and countless others), the most penetrating element, the idea that I have sinned against God, and also wronged my community. This for me is the only suitable explanation for the otherworldly power that sometimes sits on my chest and humbles me to the point of confession. But what a blessing it is. Thus, I still give primacy to the Eden narrative, even while I think about the purely physical temporality of creation through the lens of evolution (albeit evolution with a primary cause and continued sustenance in the not-God of God - to use David Hart's formula).

By the way, this is my 100th posting.

Wife-aroo, wait up!

2007-08-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yes folks, she's a determined woman, descendant of a farm girl.

And boy can she hustle

Kitty thinks...

2007-08-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

...your favourite band sucks...

Bonedigger bonedigger

2007-08-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bone-digger, bone-digger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly, beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don’t find this stuff
Amusing anymore

Pigs in (cramped) space

2007-08-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

It's always good to see that the boys in NB are keeping up their end of the bargain, while I toil and sweat to rhetorically express that NB spirit:

Thieves carried off 22 pigs in compact car, say police
Last Updated: Thursday, August 23, 2007 | 3:27 PM AT
CBC News

RCMP have arrested a pair suspected of stealing 22 pigs from a barn near Sussex, N.B., in a getaway that police say was likely a very tight squeeze.

Thieves took the pigs earlier this month after smashing the locks on a barn in Knightville, rented by Moffett's Farms.

The two from Petitcodiac, aged 19 and 20, are suspected to have used one small car to haul the 22 pigs, weighing 23-27 kilograms each, from the farm to the house in Havelock where police tracked them.

RCMP picked up the trail after one of the men forgot his ID at the scene of a break-in.

Const. Jim Gass said the stench from the pigs was immediately apparent to investigators, who found a small car, filled with pig droppings, as well as sacks used to transport the pigs.

"This little car they transported them in once had like 22 pigs," Gass said. "Man, it wasn't a lot of room in the car. She would have been a noisy affair, I would imagine, and quite a wild ride. Something you see in the movies, I would guess."

Police couldn't recover all of the pigs, worth about $75 each. The suspects allegedly ate one the night of the theft, Gass said. Most of the others, police said, were sold to unknowing customers.

RCMP won't release names of the suspects because the men have yet to be charged.

Both suspects are to appear in court Sept. 24 on unrelated charges.

Korean Comfort Women

2007-07-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for some time, but a recent newspaper article needed comment. During the second world war, Japan was a devastating colonial force. In fact, their colonial period began in 1910 and continued until the US forced Japan into submission with unprecedented military action - two infamous nuclear warheads that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Korea was one of the colonies most devastated by the Japanese. You can also find out more about the Japanese devastation of Asia by reading on the rape of Nanjing. One despicable thing Japan did as a colonial power was to enslave young Korean women (teens) beat them into submission, and use them as sex slaves for the Japanese forces. Korea estimates that Japan enslaved 200, 000 Korean women between 1930 and 1945. Unlike atrocities committed by forces in Europe (thinking primarily of the Holocaust here), Japan has never apologized for the treatment of these women. Moreover, they deny that they ever participated in this systematic rape and torture of a significant portion of Korean women at that time. They still teach a version of Japanese history that whitewashes their activities in Asia, portraying their colonization of Korea as humane.

The article just published by the Korean Times comments on the US support of the comfort women, urging Japan for a public apology and financial remuneration. Korea, China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore are no longer singing an Asia-only lament. I believe that Canada, if it hasn't already, should put significant pressure on the Japanese to apologize for their treatment of Korean Comfort Women.

Ex-Sex Slaves Welcome US Resolution

Comfort women who were forced to serve for the Japanese army as a sexual slave during World War II are consoled by protesters during a press conference welcoming the passage of a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Japan to formally apologize to the victims and accept historical responsibility in front of Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Tuesday. / AP-Yonhap

By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter

Former Korean sex slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II hailed Tuesday the passage of a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives, urging Japan to officially apologize to the victims and acknowledge its historical responsibility.

``The United States’ approval of the resolution gives us hope for the restoration of honor, the realization of justice for victims of comfort women in the Asia Pacific region, and women’s human rights activists who have spent tens of years for supporting victims of comfort women,’’ said the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.

``The Japanese government should officially apologize to the elderly victims as soon as possible and make legal compensations as well as teach the younger generations correct history and promise a peaceful future,’’ it said.

Kil Won-ok and Lee Soon-duk, two of the victims of comfort women, expressed their delight.

``My delight is beyond words. The Japanese government should now sincerely apologize to the victims in order not to become the mockery of the world,’’ said Kil.

Lee, 91, demanded activists to continue their efforts for rights of the victims.

``I have no single spot in my body which is well as I was beaten so hard when I was hauled away at the age of 17. Please help us live decent lives for the rest of our lives,’’ she said.

Lawmakers, including Lee Mi-kyung of the Uri Party, also hailed the U.S. House Resolution as a wise decision and called on the Japanese government to immediately give legal compensation to victims and to educate future generations about comfort women without distorting history.

The non-binding House resolution is symbolic, but it demands Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for the coercion of young women into sexual slavery in military brothels in the 1930s and 40s.

While estimates are varying, hundreds of thousands of women, mostly from Korea and other Asian countries, are believed to have been sexually enslaved by Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

U.S. Democratic Rep. Mike Honda, the resolution's chief sponsor, said Lee Yong-soo, who testified before Congress in February on her rape and torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers, watched Monday's proceedings. ``All she could do was weep and say thank you,’’ Honda said. ``It vindicated her past.’’

In 1993, Japan issued a carefully worded official apology, but it was never approved by its parliament. Japan has rejected compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.

michelle@koreatimes.co.kr

Gord Downey's Controversial Poem

2007-07-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is a poem by Gord Downey of The Tragically Hip. He recited this as he accepted the hips induction into the Canadian Rock of Fame (or whatever it is called). I guess it stirred up some controversy. At anyrate, Gord is a good lyricist, and this is not a bad poem persay, it has it 's moments. I liked his foray into theology half way through.

WE ARE THE NEXT US
(The time occupied by the action is an afternoon and one night.)

I don't know who comes up with this
but, I wish they'd stop saying;
'it's not the band I hate, it's their fans'

You can't hate "fans".
You must narrow your hate
You can't hate huge, hate sprawling, hate the wild,
unfocussed hate hates itself,
pick your victims. specialize
find the good n' unaffiliated, the heir-not apparent, the everyday outcast,
the weirdo with the heart of gold, infiltrate the hoser elite.
Find the ribs-showingest rock n roll stray dog
That ever pushed melodious air
howling against vivisection in the uncompartmentalizeable
night.
and, then hate

or go to a show - look down your row.
the lights are on - find people you know.
There's AnthemSinger standing with his arm
around DarklyNurturedDream.
and Ol'Quintessential listening to HigherThanACBCGuest say;
"I haven't read them, but I understand them."
And there's BrainOfAToaster (he knows when things are done)
next to that girl, CradlingHerKeyCard, whispering,
"this might be my last show, come."
Check it out! There's HoldStill and Gently - together again for the very first time.
and MyDoctrineHasFailedMeButMyMusicHasn't
next to ColderValues, next to FeaturelessButFree.
Hey, even TheEmperorHasNoHook is here and IDon'tWannaTalkAboutItHowYouBrokeMyHeart, she's here too.

Go to a show. Look down your row
While the lights are on
find people you know:
MindOfFame's yelling
to GoesWithoutSaying and
OverTheRadar points out
WinWinWinWin to
GulpIndeed

Go to a show.
Music Lovers under a full moon in trust
It's not the band you like it's their sea of hate you don't trust
you're in the right place

Author a killing.
employ carelessness, greed
wait til the hate's flowing
then hate like the wind
take hate's hate and do it better
make hate retire - go soft
catch bats til you feel better
try and catch them aloft

don't hate fans it makes ya sound like a fuckin fascist, or worse -
undiscerning.
No one likes indiscriminate.
you won't get laid with those politics

that said. Lets go backstage! See what's hateable there.
C'mon!

C'mon

C'mon
The band is preparing - lost in thought,
relearning, "How To Get Lost" and
"Where To Appear, Where to Never Appear"
hoping to return to the birthplace of the word
where winning sentences hang from trees
where no one is too cool to move
or too slow to get out of their own way.

The crew is moving on water
Tributarily spring-run-off fed rapids they're paddling
deliberately, quietly, fur-traders not missionaries
they run God's Instrument through the Devil's Amp for chrissakes
they bring the Peace If Peace
is any good at all
it's because of them,
and if it isn't, well, it was working before.

a shadowy figure stands alone with a notebook
writes then underlines;
'Glowing Disses'
- I fucked Paul McCartney
- Put teen ennui back in 'tsunami fatigue'
- Penned Relentlessly Apt…
- Forgot DarklyNurturedDream

look,
deep in conversation,
It's Picasso (Canadian) and Matisse (Canadian)
- 'Giving is where the pleasure is in this business.'
- 'That's when can you see what this business can do'
- 'When everyone in this business is together- whoa - I'd like to be you'
they organize relief in a heartbeat
they can stand in a canoe
lets move UN to the Halifax move Superior to the moon.

Hey there's Andrea, the dancer
and a poet named Ken.
Their nametags say, 'Muse'
they are Somebody's Someone Somewhere then
waving to the Canadian Arc
they're gonna do something
together one day
A thing about a country that
found itself in its
art found its way

It's getting time - it's getting close (go to your seats)
a part in the night where's the love of my life?
kiss me, 'thank you for this'
kiss me 'I won't be myself without you'
kiss me, It's time, to reach you the way you reach me
it's time.

Out in the emptying lobby, a lonely Waterkeeper is late setting up his booth.
A kid, who is interested, says, 'here, let me help you.'

Here's an explosion
an explosion inside
the just before music sound (the sound of just before music)
kindnesses, sweetnesses shoot up
and shower back down
The listeners have spoken, and it's,

WeAreTheNextUs.

We all have our moments
get the success we deserve
We must look at each other
(it's failure that takes nerve)
make eye contact, shake hands
silently vow;
Like the greats before us
let us cry into the curtains
and then go on stage

Now

The band's plugging in (they intend to stay)
The singer strides to the microphone
Yells (rock voice) 'Thank you!' as if to say
'For giving us our start!'
and 'This one's for Neil!'
and 'Have a great Augusta, Craig!'
And then we start

It's revealed

now you can hate

Literal and Figurative reading

2007-06-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

To take it figuratively we must take it literally. This is a maxim that I want to try to think around in this post. For a while now, I have found tiresome the polemic against fundamentalists that condemns readers for interpreting the bible literally and then lectures on the virtues of reading the bible figuratively (for an example of this read the first chapter of Chris Hedge's American Fascists). The dichotomy of literal and figurative seems wrong headed for some reason.
Genesis
When I read the creation stories of Genesis I do not think that the world was actually created according to the 7 day scheme. I tend more toward the evolutionist frame work with a divine driver. However, there is a part of me that will not allow myself to junk the first three chapters of Genesis because I no longer think that they represent "reality", because, on some level I do think that they represent reality much better then say Darwin's On the Origin of Species. I don't think of the original composers of the text, and the later editors, as people who thought to themselves "I'm going to write a figurative story about creation for my children". I think that such authors said, I'm going to tell "our" perspective on the world. This is to say that I don't think of the first authors to be hung up with the enlightenment problems of empiricism. These authors were much more poetic, much more Heideggerian, if you will, meaning that they thought of themselves as living in a "house of language", a world contained by their theological convictions. This world was distinct because it was sustained by a God who was both singular and plural. Both in the world and beyond. Both evident and mysterious. To understand this God you must enter into figuration, while reading figurative statements as if they were literal. This is me is the essence behind the ontological argument proposed by Anselm of Cantebury: Imagine the greatest "thing"; now imagine that "thing" as real; isn't that better? (Anselm"And certainly that than which a greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is at least in the understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in reality too, which is greater."). With contemporary readers, I do not think that Anselm was trying to prove the a priori existence of God, but to help Christian, people of a particular faith, to understand what it is that they have hope in. To me the spirit of Anselm thus expressed, is extremely important to reading the tales of Genesis (one of my all time favourite pieces of literature - one I grow to value more and more on formal and aesthetic and anthropological grounds). To read Genesis according to a limp concept of figurative language, on that is not attached to a realist theology, is to undermine faith in God. This is what thinkers like Chris Hedges do while they imagine themselves to be correcting the blindness of hardly literate readers.

The Body of Christ:
In several places in the new testament Christians are referred to as the body of Christ. If we think of this with a limp concept of figuration we say that the man Jesus wanted to express how close the followers of his ethical ideology were to him to such extent that he used hyperbole, claiming that followers were actually him. This should be read as a concept of ideological tradition, whereby Jesus' thoughts are carried on by those who think and act likewise. To read Christ likewise, is to read him as though he were merely finite. We must actually enrich this finite reading, which is wrong only in that it limit's Jesus to the category of man, without ever approaching the infinity of Christ. Christians cannot think of themselves as only being part of an ideological body/tradition of teaching, they must flesh out this ideology by then understanding the mystical nature of this comment. Spiritually, Christians are the body of Christ. This means that our finite capacity as human beings is united with Christ's infinite capacity as the resurrected, un-end-able, God that he is. To be the body of Christ is to participate in God himself, the most real of the real. To think thus, we must entertain the figurative element in the statement, but read it literally. The finite nature of the language does not totally capture the mysterious reality, yet, it is one of the most useful doors through which we imagine this reality. It is not the only door, because Christ himself (as narrated in the Gospels) used other expressions to describe this mysterious event - the imagine of the vine and the branches. My brother in law speculates that this analogy has a natural referent - the vine - that was especially developed for the purpose of expressing Christ's message to believers. I do not permit myself such speculation, as it overshoots the mark from my perspective, but it is an interesting comment that may be aimed at getting folks to meditate on God's eternal foresight for the world. At any rate, Christians cannot afford not to think of themselves as literally embodying Christ on some level.

The End

To Taste

2007-06-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am not a careful poet. In fact I find caring to much about punctuation during the writing freezes me up and I lose the vision. Today I was inspired by listening to Ryan Adams talk about the 15 albums he's written in the last 7 years. He defended his output and called everyone else lazy and afraid of their imagination. He claimed that we live in an era of art criticism that has forgotten how to create art. He claims that the critic kills art. There was something about what he said that resonated with the (almost forgotten) poet in me. I think I wrestle with two selves, the poet and the critic. The critic would not have me write, the poet lives only to write. Michael Winter wrote once about an artist who found the critic in him outgrew the poet. Yes. I know what you speak of young warrior. It is a tough thing to listen to the soul. To hear the rhythm of the cosmos in the solitude of your gray matter. So today, I turned the critic down low, and rolled a few of my favourite things around in my head - a song by Ryan Adams called Dancing Till the Stars go Blue, a Yoga pose called Dancing Shiva, the Eucharist, and Gregory of Nyssa's ontology.

Without Further Ado, Ladies and Gentlemen - To Taste

Amid cheerleaders and doomsayers
I stand, sand on my toes,
Warmed by the fire, waiting for the dance.
The great balance
Cupped hand before me,
Leg stretched out behind
Back arched
The muscles of my spirit invigorate
Suddenly my body begins to transform
Eternally transform, perpetually turning
Into the solar wind of time,
Perpetually reaching forward to the mosaic
Experience of the back side
The tail wind of

Nyssa would call this the pursuit of perfection
But what else do we have?
I’ve no taste for evil,
It just comes in cravings.

In weakness these holes spiral back through my
Substance and spew out my core
On the yellow road, I take steps
On the dolorosa, and move one foot
After another towards what?
I can not say,
Towards whom?
I shall never fully know,
But I will always have the promise of taste.

Take and eat,
These words haunt my Baptist
She cowers in the corner remembering all that is
And not knowing where to go, who to flee to…
Is it a question of groups, of feasting or pretending to feast?
Remembering a future time of great enjoyment.
There is an inescapable aspect to remembering
But,
We must eat to live, and I must eat more then symbols.

I’m hungry
hoc est corpus meum
Is me
Whoa, like Isaiah of old I feel trapped in lips unclean
Hopes with ends unforeseen
Not knowing where to step
Who to go to with time
Plans
Charity
Not knowing what charity I might have to give
What order lies in me to expel
Express
But a word lingers on my tongue

My mouth salivates for this word

The poetry of my life has been in neglect,
I have not found my epic, or perhaps I have been too involved in my epic, in my preparation for flight
That I have not found my myth.

Where do I go when I’m lonely?

Who do I call when I’m lost;
How can I lie right beside you peacefully, and
Watch the stars flow on and on,
Across a sky, some say has soured,
Some say will bust?
These are my questions,
My mystery at heart
That I worry myself about,
That I fear critics will take up,
This is my wordlessness that leaves me silent
As I tear through the fabric of time

Waiting for the dance.

Women In Art

2007-06-06T12:26:00.001-07:00

This is a "morphage" of women in western uppercrusty art. I found it quiet good.

Who writes a novel?

2007-06-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

I was mowing the lawn today thinking about my upcoming dissertation proposal presentation, and the thought occurred to me: who writes a novel? I'm working on Atlantic Canadian literature and the theme of religion though and in it, and what is coming to the fore is that Catholics are writing novels like they are going out of style. When you look back into the history of Can lit and At-can lit, you find that this is somewhat of a new thing. So I've been wondering why now? What makes one want to write a novel? What political and economic forces must be in place to make writing a novel something you might do? What follows is a conversation over gmail between me and my colleague, Holly (who works on Jews is film), about what gave rise to the novel:

1:22 PM me: who writes a novel?
1:23 PM Holly: a-a-an authour?
well, in biblical lit, we have the debate - "a person creates a document, not a community"
me: this is the big question that hit me while mowing the lawn....
Holly: but then again I don't know if that is true
1:24 PM a text is created FOR a community
me: that seems to be a debate with german romantic ancestry...and a novel isn't really any old document
Holly: no published authour creates just for him or herself
1:25 PM me: no author creates ex nihlo
Holly: yes - that is my take with film
I like Berger's theory of internalization, externalization
1:26 PM me: you know that is Berger's retelling of Marx's dialectic of production - worker makes product and becomes alienated from it though the process of production
1:27 PM Holly: yes
me: but back to the novel. it seems to me that the novel has a particular place in history
Holly: but the idea that a person consumes the product - that is important
1:28 PM novels both document and create history
me: it's kind of like the car... you don't have it until the 20th century...with the novel you don't really have it in full force until the 19th century
Holly: yes - but you had things that led up to it
1:29 PM the stage led to the novel, as well as the essay, the sermon, the poem and the song
me: yes, certainly biblical literature, as well as greek and roman epics lead up to it
1:30 PM The stage...the play
uh huh... is a novel a private 5 act play?
Holly: it is the frustration
poem are too short, sermons too dusty, and plays not internal enough
1:31 PM and, yes, too corporate
me: the european epic to clunky
Holly: the novel is a drawing room intrigue laid bare
a false memoir
me: yes the novel comes to rise after europe is tired of trying to organize communities to act their ideas
Holly: yes
1:32 PM I think I see what you mean
me: the novel also needs the printing press, where the play doesn't
Holly: it is the individual, not the chorus
yes
but with the enlightenment, the emphasis placed on internal reason...
you can't just show after that
you have to let the reader into the mind
1:33 PM since that is what "really matters"
me: wow, this is the question, or the impulse that lead to the unconscious
1:34 PM since the novel is the presentation of one's own imagination, housed in the mind, plus one's own theory of external organization - say Jane Austen's communities and the play of marriage
1:35 PM Holly: yes
1:36 PM me: it can't be wholly about the social, or the community, it has to also be about the depth and complexity of ones internal realm. it has to be exibihitionist
Holly: it is the digesting of what is around you - not the Truth, but the digested matter
people cannot get away from their showing roots
they still must show
but the mode of shoing is different
me: this is why scatological tropes are so common
1:37 PM Holly: through the novel, you can create a play, but you get more than action to do it with
that is why film bridges the gap - it is a play, but with tighter angles so you can show the internal, as well
1:38 PM me: well shakespeare certainly had more then action. Hamlets whole to be or not to be is internal reasoning at its finest
Holly: yes, but it is still rare and short
with a novel, there is more room to develope
and you don't have to rely on artificail things like silloquies
1:39 PM Shakespeare is to the novel as musicals are to personal films
me: so beyond the psychological and the formal, what has to be happening in your state to create a novel?
1:40 PM Holly: a need to express
me: I'm thinking that the novel is tied to the rise of nationalism in europe
Holly: a need to reflect what you see
a need to find others who feel the same
perhaps a need to pursuade
me: perhaps reflect is the wrong word, maybe dominate would do better?
1:41 PM yes, a need to persuade one to your way of thinking... this must come after everyone's unified, catholic way of thinking has been ruptured
1:42 PM Holly: well, that is the function of the nation state
me: The novel is a protestant apolegetic invention
Holly: to unifiy individuals
me: it is made to create communities
audiences (here the parallel with film is strong, yet different)
1:44 PM so we started by saying that a novel was created by an individual who was not interested in organizing and persuading other individuals to take the time to act out their particular imaginative thing. Now we see that the novel does still have a communal impulse - it longs to draw people together under it in affirmation of the author's individual mastery of the known world and the interior drama of self.
1:45 PM It is the drive to political leadership internalized, privatized...
1:46 PM when margaret atwood travels around canada to audiences that gawk at her she is actual demonstrating her leadership of a certain community within a nation. She has created a party
1:48 PM Have you read mrs. Dalloway or seen the film the hours?
1:49 PM Holly: read
me: you know how she bustles around all day trying to create a party, which happens at the end...I think this is an analogy for the novel and its function in society
1:51 PM VW was trying to create an audience of readers, a party in both the upper class and political sense.
do you think this is the same with film?
1:52 PM Holly: maybe

Re-reading Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World.

2007-06-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Re-reading Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World.
While I think that Asad has done a sufficient job of poking holes in Casanova's argument about secularization, I find myself going back to Casanova's book. I'm back here because I think that C's argument covers a lot of ground and I find myself continually playing with the dichotomy of public and private. On this topic, Casanova quotes Seyla Benhabib:
"SB has shown that the liberal model of "public dialogue" and its "neutrality" rule impose certain "conversational restraint," which tend to function as a "gag rule," excluding from public deliberation the entire range of matters declared to be "private" - from the private economy to the private domestic sphere to private norm formation." (65)

I think SB is right on here. I've been trying to track down her essay, rather then read it second hand. I wonder where an electronic version might be hiding out?

Uncle Kurt

2007-06-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

Amanda and I returned from our trip to find out that her uncle Kurt, who stayed back from the wedding because he had just started a new job, passed away last Sunday. Yes, it was the Sunday of the wedding, for which his wife, Cathy, organized the flowers. She didn't find out that Kurt had died until Tuesday night when she came home to a policeman and her pastor waiting for her. Kurt was 55 and had recently begun jogging again. He had been jogging when he took a massive heart attack and passed away, alone, out by an old scout camp. The family was with us in Colorado, that is accept for his daughter Amber, who was teaching ESL in Nepal, and his other daughter Victoria, who, I believe, was in summer classes. None of the four children were there to say goodbye to their father, nor should they have expected that he would not be there when they returned. His death has been a giant shock to all of the family. Kurt will be missed.

It is the missing that I find most moving now, and I am not around his home, where his touch, presence, and intentions effected everything. It is this his lack that changes their world. I am off to the airport to pick up Amber and visit with the family.

In a presentation at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Gadamer once said that the thing-in-itself is only fully known when it is gone from the environment in which it was known. Loss gives a thing a sense of completeness. Kurt was not a thing. He was a human being, but I think that I do perceive the form of Kurt more vibrantly now then at any point in his life.

One thing I will remember about Kurt was when he took me under his wing during a footwashing ceremony at his local SDA church. It was quite touching, and i was glad to enter into such a humble ritual with the man. I am proud to say my feet were washed by Kurt.

I'm back, loaded down with pictures and credit card debt

2007-05-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from Colorado. I took over 700 pictures there and had a great time doing it. We did a lot - hiked (in Rocky Mountain National Park during a snowstorm, up a arid canyon outside Gateway, all over Denver), went white water rafting (royal gorge on the Arkansa river), wedded (Rachel and JEB), went to a Hold Steady concert (at the Ogden theater in Denver), ate Fondue with Mark (high school bud) and Kristin, sipped world famous Martinis with Rach and Pete (friends from Acadia), swam across a fast running river, frolicked in poison ivy (me - no reaction), teased mom-in-law (me - quite a reaction), and watched Rach get the biggest speeding ticket known to man ($393 for doing 45 mph in a 25 mph school zone while descending the rockies in the Mustang Pete rented). Go here to look at some pics.

I'm relaxed. Perhaps, way too relaxed. I've got my proposal presentation next Friday before the faculties of religious studies at WLU and UW. Peter and I are going to plan this thing out tomorrow. I've got to kick the brain back into gear. But I must say, it's funn running down low on the mental rpms for a week or two.

Colorado

2007-05-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been maxing and relaxing in Colorado for about five days now. I'm not reading all that much, (though I did finish the future of religion by Rorty and Vattimo just before I left). I wrote my last comp exam on May 11 and I've been letting the brain heal since then. I hooked up with an old buddy from highschool in Colorado Springs. We had a great time. Attended New Life Church at his request. It was quite moving for me, though my wife was skeptical about the performance element in the worship. It was very interesting to see what they were doing post-Ted Haggart. I wonder if NLC doesn't know more about the future of religion then Rorty and Vattimo (still thinking about this one). We did some white water rafting later that day. We're now in Denver, and I've got a new SLR - the Nikon D80 - so I'll have lots of pics to post when I return. I haven't really taken a lot of joy from photography since I returned from Korea and found out film was so expensive to use in Canada. But the Nikon D80 fixes all that. I think this will prove to be a nice pass time - get me out of the books, but still flexing my creative and analytical muscles. Plus I love what the practice of photography makes me notice about the world around me. The phenomenology of a photographer is quite interesting. I'm sure I'll post more on this in the future. We head to Grand Junction tomorrow for a family wedding. Snappy dappy do. Until next time!

Theological Aesthetics Part Four - The Beauty of the Infinite

2007-05-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

David Bentley Hart published The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth in 2003. Hart, an American Greek Orthodox himself [I suspect he is a convert], draws on the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, who was a contemporary of Augustine, the younger brother of Basil the Great, and a good friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. It seems that Gregory of Nyssa was (one of) the first theologian(s) to argue that God was infinite. Before this thinkers like Origen had argued, as consistent with Platonism, that God was limited. I suspect this has something to do with the "form" of the Good in the Platonic system. At any rate, Nyssa pushed towards negative theology, claiming that God was unknowable. The idea that is at the centre of Hart's text, which I suspect comes form Nyssa, is that God is an abyss in which beauty subsists. All the beautiful particulars of creation are not subsumed into unity with God, but given to the beauty of their very particularity in the infinite distance of God himself. For the first third of the book, Hart critiques the "postmodernists" - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, Lyotard, Nancy, as well as their intellectual fathers, Heidegger and Nietzsche. Following in Milbank's footsteps, he argues that these thinkers theorize an ontology of violence, a Hobbsian war of all against all, which is based on the Cartesian separation of soul and body, God and creation - that leaves us with skepticism about reality - an inner violence of self consciousness. This is to say that the postmodernists, following Nietzsche, claim that the will to power precedes any peace. For Christians this in unacceptable as the peace of God, b(r)ought through the lamb of God, was spoken before time as the Word of God, and is the primary principle of creation. Any violence that ensues, ensues through deviance from the beautiful order of God in the Garden. We see the violence of lying and disobedience in Adam and Eve, which leads to the brother against brother violence, when Cain kills Abel. The chaos of the Cannanite myth of the Leviathan is placed after the order, peace, goodness and beauty of God's creation (Hart 257-8; this is the best Christian answer to Zizek's chaotic "night of the world" which is his primary principal of the imagination - The Ticklish Subject 29-32 and throughout).
The chaos of culture obscures the objectivity of beauty that was so central to Hellenistic and the Church Fathers. But Hart claims that beauty must not be relegated to a subjective effect, but exalted as an on objective presence (I'm lost for a word here, as Hart critique metaphysics heavily). However, he would be the first to claim that empirical methodologies will not be able to capture of isolate beauty as it is a transcendental, embodying divine distance, which always has a beyond, even while it is present. Like the transcendentals, Hart's thesis pervades his work and yet is not fully understable until you have read the whole.
Not being able to get into the myriad arguments that he puts forth, I will list off notable comments about the beautiful that he makes in the introduction, and which are elaborated throughout.
I should mention that Hart is in Balthasar's camp - arguing for beauty through the analogy of beauty. He critiques Barth quite heavily on this topic.

1. Beauty is objective: "in the beautiful God's glory is revealed as something communicable and intrinsically delightful, as including the creature in its ends, and as completely worthy of love...beauty calls not only for awe and penitence, but also for rejoicing" (17-8).

2. Beauty is the true form of distance: Hart has his eye on Derrida here, who claims that "meaning" [for lack of a better word] cannot traverse distance, and falls to differance. "This presence of distance within the beautiful, as primordially the effect of beauty, provides the essential logic of theological aesthetics: one that does not interpret all distance as an original absence, or as the difference of differentiation's heterogeneous and violent forces, but that sees in distance, and in all the series and intervals that dwell in it, the possibility of peaceful analogies and representations that neither falsify nor constrain the object of regard"(18). "The first thought ... is the thought of the distance that opens up all differences, the interval between their terms, the event of their emergence; and in asserting that distance is originally the gift of the beautiful - rather then the featureless sublimity of will, or force, or differance, or the ontological Nothing - theology interprets the nature and possibility of every interval within being" (19). Hart latter evokes Augustine's analogy of music to describe how created differences can be brought together beautifully and peacefully, under God's orchestration - perhaps the most important point of the book.

3. Beauty evokes desire. Contra Luther and Kierkegaard, who separate ethics and aesthetics, Hart sides with Dante and sees eros and agape united in desire of the particular.

4. Beauty crosses boundaries. Goodness, truth and beauty are convertable..."that God is good may be seen and tasted; and this means that a theology of beauty should not scruple to express itself at times as an ontology, an epistemology, or an ethics...theology should ponder how beauty can compel morally by its excess" (21).

5. Beauty's authority, within theology, guards against any tendency towards gnosticism. Beauty is the incarnate logos, Christ. He came as God and man, spirit and body, united. Creation is good.

6. Beauty resists reduction to the "symbolic". "beauty lies in the immediacy of a certain splendor, radiance, mystery, or allure; it plays upon the continuous insisture of a plastic, or lyric, or organic, or metaphoric surface" (24). He, here, is denying the bad symbolic of fixity (Lacan's law of the father)"the symbolic occurs as that which stabilizes the individual aesthetic moment as a fixed property, a meaning, a kind of exchangeable capital or currency that stands in lieu of substantial wealth" (25). This invites the Cartesian gnosticism, where real and symbolic are parsed from each other, causing the real or the meaning to be an abstracted extra, a supplementarity. For Hart, beauty is on the surface, not in the depths (gnostic truth). "But the beautiful is prior to all schemes of isolable meanings: it is excess but never formlessness, a spilling over, jubilant, proclaming glory without "explaining" it. For just this reason it fixes reflection upon the irreducibly particular, the momentary, fragile, and fortuitous. In the beautiful, when it is liberated from the "symbolic," a purely serial infinity is implied - such as Hegel dreaded - and the circular infinity of synthesis and transcendental reconciliation - such as Hegel heralded - is resisted"(25).

Hart concludes by arguing that beauty is in the particulars: "In the end, that within Christianity which draws persons to itself is a concrete and particular beauty, because a concrete and particular beauty is its deepest truth" (28). Here Hart is trying to side step the onto-theological critique of Heidegger and Derrida.

As you can see, Hart has given Christian thinkers much to mull over. I am not done with Hart. And I'm sure the exercise isn't in vain.

Pope condemns three more glands - The Onion

2007-05-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

Serious business - theological anatomy. We have orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthoanatomy?

Pope Condemns Three More Glands

Theological Aesthetics Part Three - Barth and VB

2007-05-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen: wake the kids, call this neighbours, this is an extravaganza you won't want to miss - Theological Aesthetics Part Three.

I have an image in my mind of Karl Barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar sitting in a dusty European room with a phonograph. Light pours through the window, refracting off the ancient particles floating through the air. Barth is sitting back in a leather chair with stained wooden arms, and Von Balthasar is leaning forward on a piano bench. There are books surrounding them. Towers on the end tables, tomes in the corners, piled high like miniature babels, or conversely, paper altars. What has these two great theologians enraptured? Mozart. His music enchants the still air of their dim room. Both listen for hours, allowing the music to take hold of their bodies, not to dance, but to cause shivers and great sensuous pleasures. But we must not forget the soul. The soul climbs on braided strands of the music, floating on the drafts of sonorous emanations, lifting the mind higher, perhaps contemplating even the lower stratum of the third heaven. Perhaps…
This image is not one I have read of in a book, but one that I have stored in my mind from a course on Charles Taylor by Peter Erb. I have added to it, but it expresses something eminently European, something North American Christians have lost sight of. If this certain “je ne sais qua” was simply European there would be no need for its recovery, but the truth of the matter is that this European element is an important aspect of Christian tradition – the enjoyment of God’s beauty.
Today I want to look at Barth’s thoughts on beauty. There is a difficulty here for Barth. As a protestant who leans on the pillars of Catholicism, Barth saw a danger in raising mater up so high that it might refract God’s glory. Barth thinks Balthasar and his church does this. Balthasar picks up Erich Prytzwara’s notion of the analogy of being, which expresses the idea that the ontic substance of humanity, being, shares a similarity with God’s being, that is separated by a humanly unbridgeable distance between God’s being and Humanity’s. Barth stresses that such an analogy is only to be made through eyes that have been graced by faith. The term often used for Barth’s position is called the analogy of faith. While Barth’s expression of the analogy of faith is to be seen as the door to the contemplation of any further theological analogies, Balthasar sees the analogy of being and the analogy of faith as overlapping analogies. This is to say that the beauty of God can be seen in nature without faith (Rom: 1:20), but that faith perfects this analogy. Where Paul writes: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom 1:20), Balthasarian scholar Stephen Fields claims, “If loving self-sacrifice exerts a universal aesthetic appeal, then worldly beauty is an analogy of proper proportionality. In other words, beauty inheres in the Grand Canyon, a Mozart sonata and the Parthenon, even as it does in Mother Theresa and her work. As a result, anyone, even without the analogy of faith, can begin to understand how Christ’s crucifixion can be perceived as beautiful, although only the conviction of faith can ground a firm certitude of this beauty” (“The Beauty of the Ugly” 181).
Barth has problems with this view because it is tied in, traditionally, with a merit mediating interpretation of the sacraments, and leads, in his eyes to the idolatry of nature. I have not read Barth on Rom 1:20, so I cannot speak to what he says about natural theology. But let it be known that the relationship between, in the first case, natural theology and its parallel, “intramundane aesthetics” (Fields’ term for philosophical aesthetics), and revelation, in the second case, is what is at stake here. Is revelation so strange that we are fools before the world? Or is there a kernel of “natural” reason within Christian revelation, which makes us only seem the fool? I’m drawn to the parables and Christ’s concept of hiddenness on this front, but I’ll not advance that idea here.
But what does Barth think about beauty? I’ll let the horse speak (from the horse’s mouth…):
“in answering this as all other questions in the doctrine of God, we must be careful not to start from any preconceived ideas, especially in this case a preconceived idea of the beautiful…. God is not beautiful in the sense that He shares in an idea of beauty superior to Him, so that to know it is to know Him as God. On the contrary, it is as He is God that He is also beautiful, so that He is the basis and standard of everything that is beautiful and of all ideas of the beautiful….” (Gesa Theissen’s Theological Aesthetics: a Reader 318). That said, Barth does not think that beauty is “a leading concept” of God (316). He thinks that both Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine have mis-stepped here (Balthasar does not share Barth’s opinion). But if we are going to talk about beauty we must see it as an aspect of God’s glory, which includes what we call beauty. “The objective meaning of God’s glory is His active grace and mercy and patience, His love” (317). His glory gives pleasure, awakens desire, but above all “creat[es] enjoyment” (317). Here Barth recovers Augustine, who claimed that there are two categories all “things” can fall into usi (use) and frui (enjoyment). God is the only “thing” that can be enjoyed, where as all other things are to be used for the enjoyment of God; yes, this includes other people, a concept which is repugnant to modern ears. But let us put it this way, if God is the summon bonum, the supreme good, it is likely that his desire for one’s use of other people will not contradict his goodness, and will instead lead to mutual enjoyment in God (for more on this see Paul Griffith’s Lying 52-3). So when Barth claims that God’s glory is to be enjoyed, he is tying theological conceptions of beauty to the source of enjoyment. What is then the sensation of beauty? Joy. “…[T]he glory of God is not only great and sublime [read Kant here] or holy [Otto] and gracious [Luther]…[God’s glory] awakens joy, and is itself joyful. It is not merely a glory which is solemn and good and true, and which, in its perfection and sublimity, might be gloomy or at least joyless…The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologians at all” (319). As we can see, Barth is serious about joy, and rightly so. What is it about God that makes him this source of enjoyment and beauty? Barth claims that God is the perfect unity of form and content, “in this form the perfect content, God Himself, shines out” (319). I find this argument to be a bit circular, but I suppose it is the best we can do for now. God is what makes God beautiful. I would point to aspects of wholeness, as Barth does, symmetry, unity, proportionality, spoken-ness and absolute reception in love. But much of this is tied to the imminent trinity and not the economic trinity, which I think is the most tangible aspect of God’s beauty, his discipline. Odd that I’m saying this, but his discipline gives form to his beauty in us, which we are to respond to in obedience. Ultimately we fail, but we fail into grace, which is a beautiful thought.

I’m going to try and tackle David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, tomorrow – Part 4. I find his conception of beauty very compelling, and theoretically potent. You might notice that you’ve been getting Balthasar throughout. I wonder if I’ll dedicate a day to him, or if he just floats through this whole investigation like a spirit…time will tell.

The Cat Came Back (the very next day)

2007-04-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

Kill the fatted calf, the prodigal has come home. Last night at around this time (7:00)I heard a little peep at the door. I'd been bothered all day, worried that she had gotten into some rat poison or something. But at 7:00 I heard he cry and ran for the door. Sure enough, she pranced in crying quite a bit, and running crazily for her food bowl. I couldn't extract a story from her, but I was glad to have her. About 15 mins later, Amanda came home. I ran out side in my bare feet (I had just come home from a run) with Kitster. Gene our old spinster next door, was on her deck. She asked me if I missed our cat? She said that some how Kitster got stuck in her garage overnight.
I had actually thought of this possibility, but I figured that she would be let out in the morning. It was 7:00 pm when she came home. Gene uses a car port, but some how Kitster has snuck into her closed portion. When Gene came home, she heard the cry, and loosed the lost.

And I'm very grateful.

Kitster is missing

2007-04-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Kitster is missing. We went out last night to a meeting, came back around 10 and expected the cat to meet us at the door. But there was no cat. I walked around the block until about 12:30 looking for her, but she was no where to be found. This morning I got up and called to her - she's never spend a night outdoors by herself since we've had her - no Kitster. I then drove around town looking for traces of her on the road. No traces. As I mentioned yesterday, she has been hunting more lately. Perhaps she is on the prowl. Amanda and I biked around the paths in St. Jacobs looking for her but she was nowhere to be seen. I just came home from lunch, no Kitster.

So, I sit here, working on my paper, waiting for Catot. I do hope she shows soon.

Vatican Unveils New Pope Signal

2007-04-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

This was too good to resist

Well to the 5th power

2007-04-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Well Well Well Well Well.

I'm all written out today because I was working on a paper this morning. As I am going to be doing the same activity tomorrow, I thought, hey, why not screw around a little bit this afternoon... read a little of the onion, read some of the comp exam books, watch the rest of Russian Ark - a film tour through the Hermitage - that I thought was particularly important last night at about, well, bedtime.

You know the second option - to read some of the comp books, is quite interesting. Now that I'm supposed to be writing my paper, the comp books are again enticing. When I was supposed to be reading the comp books, the paper was all I wanted to do. There is the law desire problematic again eh! I have to do this, so I desire that. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Here is one of my favourite quotes from the novel I am working with - Strange Heaven:
They let her and the priest, a none-too-thinner version of Father Boyle, go into the kitchen and talk because the kitchen was usually locked when it wasn't meal time. Everyone knew this, so no one would disturb them by walking in.
When the priest saw that she had nothing to say, he began telling a story about working in the Philippines. He said there was this beautiful little girl there and everybody in the village loved her, but she had leukemia and was going to die. Everybody knew it and did everything they could to keep it from her. And the priest said that every day the little girl used to walk out to a cliff and stand looking out on the ocean for a while, and then she'd come back to the village. The priest said this struck him as very sad, so one day he followed her out to the cliff and he said to her " Well, you know, dear, everything is going to be all right, now." And the priest said she just looked at him and smiled. "She knew better," the priest said, finishing. "She knew better."
The priest sat with his fingers entwined and actually twiddled his thumbs for a few moment, smiling. "Ah dear, dear, dear, dear, dear," he said, looking around. (15).

It's that last line that does it for me. So human, so real. I find it tugs on my heart strings.

In other news, my wife and I have been suspecting that our little piglet, Kitster, has been eating something outside - been going after a little diet supplement, shall we say. So today, I walked outdoors, down the driveway to get the mail, and what to my wondrous eyes should appear, but a small, mangled mole. A little blind rodent, the only kind she can catch. Bloody and slain all over my driveway, - my dooryard - as they would say in the most upriver parts of Miramichi. So my suspicions were confirmed. I had to call my wife at noon and tell her this. I think she's writing up the report as we speak. We'll have Kitster a subpoena by tomorrow at the latest. When the authorities do come to get her, and they will, I sure hope they grow their nails long, sneak up on her about a half an hour before she plans to get up, claw on the bedspread for 15 minutes. Then top it all of with wining noises like someone's passing a kidney stone in the next room, only right in her ear. Perhaps they could purr a bit too. None of this calm purring, but some lawn mower style, no holds barred type stuff.

And before I go, I found a funny little parody of religion (Wicca and Christianity to be exact) in the onion today:

Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration

Enjoy

Barth's view of True Human Nature

2007-04-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm still going to write the third section of theological aesthetics on Barth's view of beauty, but I've come across some of his though in an article included in the Wayne Meeks and John Fitzgerald reader, The Writings of St. Paul. The article is called "The New Man" (1952).

"Much in true human nature is unrelated to "religion," but nothing in true human nature is unrelated to the Christian faith. That means that we can understand true human nature only in the light of the Christian gospel that we believe. For Christ stands above and is first, and Adam stands below and is second. So it is Christ that reveals the true nature of man. Man's nature in Adam is not, as is usually assumed, his true and original nature; it is only truly human at all in so far as it reflects and corresponds to essential human nature as it is found in Christ. True human nature, therefore, can only be understood by Christians who look to Christ to discover the essential nature of man. [Romans]Vv. 5:12-21 are revolutionary in their insistence that what is true of Christians must also be true of all men. That is a principle that has an incalculable significance for all our action and thought. To reject this passage as empty speculation is tantamount to denying that the human nature of Christ is the final revelation of the true nature of man." (391-2)

Theological Aesthetics Part Two

2007-04-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

In my last post I outlined some scriptural support for theological beauty and I highlighted the necessity of adopting a specifically Christian conception of beauty that can reconcile “the father of lights” and the transfiguration with the ugliness of the cross and the humility of Christ. In Part Two I want to consider Allen Tate’s incarnational poetics.

Who was Allen Tate?
Allen Tate (1899-1979) was a poet and literary critic from Kentucky. He went to Vanderbilt University, where he met Robert Penn Warren. He was a member of the Fugitive Poets with John Crow Ransom, and is most often labelled a Southern Agrarian, along with Caroline Gordon, his sometime wife, and the previous two, Warren and Ransom. Wendell Berry is considered a contemporary descendant of this literary movement.

What were Allen Tate’s views on Aesthetics?
I’ll make Balthazar proud and first assert that Tate’s Catholicism is the most important facet of his aesthetic theory. Of the Southern Fugitives in general, Francesca Murphy writes: “The history of the ‘earth’ of the South became the archetypal image through which the Fugitives perceived the transcendentals. This earth acts on its inhabitants as a concrete given: a fence, and a boundary for the imagination, as well as a means of transcendence. To imagine it is to be drawn into a dense, singular fact” (Christ the Form of Beauty 70). For Tate, the particulars of a location are as important to the theological view as the universal. In fact, the particulars are the door through which the universal may be encountered. Siding with T.S. Eliot, as a voice of conservative modernism, Tate et al were ticked off at the Scopes Monkey trial, and though they didn’t hold to literal 7 day creation, they thought there was more at stake. I see them envisioning this trial as an influx of northern liberalism on a political level, which took the right to free thought, as a right to conquest. The trial represented “colonial” aggression from the north that was about to wipe away what they saw as the sin of tradition. To Tate, tradition represented something else: the memory of a history of encounters with a place, with particulars. Tradition in this sense is a house of the memory of interaction with God. To scrap tradition and move on with the modernity of the northern eastern seaboard was not an option. Somewhere during the debates about civil rights and racism in the 60s, we have lost the secondary argument, that liberalism has a way of undermining local particularities while it extends the rule of individual rights and “equality”.
Tate would call this impulse “The Angelic Imagination”, in an essay of that title, bearing the secondary clause: “Poe as God”. The distinctive mark of this imagination is that it: “Surges toward essences without touching upon the mater in which they are enclosed... Poe’s disembodied mind is said to parallel that of the Cartesian dualism. Poe’s imagination is an absolute: it flies directly up into beauty, without crossing the material world” (Murphy 95)
In Tate’s words:
“The reach of our imaginative enlargement is no longer than the ladder of analogy, at the top of which we may see all…that we have brought up with us from the bottom where lies the sensible world. If we take nothing with us to the top but our emptied, angelic intellects, we shall see nothing when we get there. Poe as God sits silent in darkness. Here the movement of tragedy is reversed: there is no action” (Murphy 96).
In Poe, Tate sees Descartes. In Tate we should see Jacques Maritain. In Maritain we should see Aquinas and Dante (not to mention Beatrice). Back to Poe: Tate’s problem: like Descartes, the angelic imagination “ends in solipsism” (96). Where Descartes’ skepticism lead him to doubt the very existence of the world, Poe’s angelic imagination does away with the world so as to live in thought. Descartes’ had a crisis; whereas Poe’s nationals see an economic opportunity. To quote David Bowie ( but it's Kurt Cobain I hear): “You’re face to face, with the man who sold the world”. The second stanza highlights the predicament that Tate feared:
I laughed and shook his hand,
I made my way back home,
I searched for form and land,
Years and years I roamed,
I gazed a gazely stare,
We walked a million hills -- I must have died alone,
A long long time ago.
The death of the world, the real, leads to the death of the self. What is the fix? Murphy leads us to Dante and Beatrice: “The radiance which shines through this feminine figure (Beatrice) gives its beholder a sense of reality, but only when the witness binds themselves to this one, single form” (97).
The theory of being-in-the-world that pre-figures much of this conception is decidedly anti-cartesian, anti-Kantian, pro-Thomistic. For Maritain, we engage the world through the intellect. We see a flower. Our mind forms a phantasm or an image of that flower. Our illuminative intellect then activates the phantasm and the intellect-in-act encounters the phantasm of the flower-in-act, revealing a glimpse of the essence, or form of the flower (for more on this see Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, p. 70-74, or Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, q. 84). Catherine Pickstock calls this process “hylomorphism” : “the form of the thing is already synthesized before it ‘informs’ the mind (even though the active intellect must bring out its full coherence)... the thing fulfills itself in and through its comprehensibility. Such a view regards the knowing of a thing as commensurate with the known thing’s own constitutive repetition. For when the species is formed in our mind, the thing perceived happens again (since being is an event), or repeats itself, though in a different mode” (After Writing 131). What all of these thinkers are defending is the convertability of knowledge to being and to beauty. One will notice that using the post-modern variants of Kantian representation, beauty becomes disengaged with reality, the real, God. Beauty is purely cultural, and not the penetration of God in culture, the incarnation. Tate and others were attempting to preserve the Thomistic tradition of essence, participation and analogy, which, as we all know, is assailed from all sides.

In Part three of Theological Aesthetics I will consider Karl Barth's contention that Beauty is not a front running concept of God.

Theological Aesthetics Part One

2007-04-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I will need to answer for my upcoming comprehensive exam is on theological aesthetics. Hans Urs von Balthazar has drawn a harsh line across this field of study by claiming that theology must be the adjective and aesthetics the noun, and not the other way around. To inquire into aesthetic theology is to free a conception of beauty from the tradition of theology, only to apply it to theology itself, thereby twisting theology towards a non-theological conception of beauty. In opposition to this, theological aesthetics weds Christian claims with a conception of beauty. We essentially refuse the difference between God and beauty, while asserting the truth of Christian dogma. The transcendental of beauty finds it's home in the trinity and not the other way around.

How is the father revealed to the world? Through the son as logos and as Jesus the Christ. Here we run smack dab into Isaiah's account of the messiah: "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him" (Isa 53:2b). Christ was not beautiful of body, but beautiful in action, in obedience, in spirit. Beauty, if it is linked to the trinity, must have an aspect in it that can hold both the apex and nadir of the kenotic passage in Phil. 2:6-11. We have Christ the humble, who was willing to become horrendous on the Cross, but who was raised up in his true light...a light that is too radiant for fallen eyes. We see a foretaste of this in the transfiguration of Christ, and we see the analogical fulfillment of this beautiful, awesome Christ in Rev. 1:12-16. This is Christ as he was uttered before time: the cosmological Christ who shines like the sun, speaks with words that sound like running waters, holds seven stars in his hand, has hair like wool, eyes like blazing fire, wearing a golden sash. John of Patmos then goes on to rhetorically unfold this figure, but if we move too fast to the hermeneutics of apocalyptic secrets, we miss the most important point of all. This analogical image of Christ is one that ascends and descends. The beauty of Christ is explained through the sensuous particulars of creation, all of which are brought together in a constellation that mediates Christ's beauty. We ascend to the glory of the son through an appreciation of the materials of the world.

Here is the central tension of theological aesthetics. It must orient us toward the beauty of the trinity, while also demonstrating how it is that the trinitarian beauty is transcendentally present in the world. If we cut off the world, we lose the flesh to a variation of gnosticism, and as we know from the crucifixion and resurrection, Christ valued humanity so much that he sought to redeem his "very good" creation (Gen. 1:31).

In part two I'm going to look at Allen Tate's conception of the universal in the particular, as articulated by Francesca Murphy in Christ the Form of Beauty.

Hugh Hood's Unsupported Assertions (1991)

2007-04-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hood is a Canadian Catholic novelist and essayist. He is from TO, but I taught at U of Montreal. He sound's like he was quite the character. Here are some quotes from his 1991 publication Unsupported Assertions. A modest title for a text that bears the subtitle "Genius is only a series of unsupported assertions".

"This Sunday a grander ceremony was in progress, the dedication and opening of the first McDonald's in the Emilia Romagna, perhaps in the whole of Italy. Right here on the northeast corner of roadways sacred to independence and to the heroic monk and apostle of revolution...Naturally the restaurant is packed ...there is a boy here with five burgers an two Big Macs, but what are these among so many? To the Christian the table of the Eucharist is the first and the greatest of fast-food service" (Hugh Hood, "Cher in Bologna: McLuhan Revisited", 41-2). [Holly, if you're reading, you'd like this essay - remind me to get you a copy]

"Is there a corner of Canada free from authoritarian submissiviness?...Somebody described the American intelligentsia as a herd of independent minds. The Canadian publicist belongs to a gaggle of Canada geese. What causes this perpetually undignified posture? A few guesses might be made about its historical sources. Too-long-continued colonial status. Second rank status among North American nations. (Foreign journalists always refer to the USA as 'America' and now Canadians are starting to do the same.) The unwholesome predominance of authoritarian Christianity - Scots Presbyterianism and French Catholicism - in our morals and manners. I speak as a believing and practicing Catholic. The root of the matter requires careful attention, but the fact of the behavior, the outward and visible cringing, remains undeniable." (Hugh Hood, "Authority in Canada" 7-8, 1991)

Is Hugh Hood right? I'm not sure. In this essay he continually points to Canadian submissiveness, which doesn't really ring true to me. Still, I love a good essay that waltzes around the rhetorical ring with skill, dancing toward its subject like the shit eating opponent it is, swinging wildly at times, yet causing the reader to stand up and roar. Yeah, I'm a sucker.

"Do we have the will and the commitment to real, genuine, rooted personal freedom to get rid of the from the-top-down domination of our corporate bodies, big governments, grants boards, take-it-or-leave-it marketing men? In many ways Canada is the freest country in the world, but perhaps our freedom is made of fairy gold. Nobody will come and take me away in the night for writing this essay; there are other and subtler penalties I may be subject to: dismissal as a crank and an attention-seeking egoist, refusal to publish what I write about these matters. We have to keep telling ourselves that our magazines and newspapers and broadcasting networks and educational institutions and our government departments are out of our control. I'm supposed to take my orders from the top down like everybody else, and in my mind I always hear the stern admonition of the policeman. We don't want any trouble here!" (ibid 9).

Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 MR vs. Lamborghini Murcielago

2007-04-09T19:16:00.001-07:00

So I was reading about compact street racing cars this weekend. I've got a bad father in law. Anyway, he was telling me about this Mitsubishi Evo 8 that is the hottest "cheep" car on the road. Here it is cornering better, and straighting faster then an all-wheel drive Lamborgini. All this in a "4 door saloon". Watch topgear talking head drive the poop out of this thing (it's a bit of a frankenstein of a car really). Enjoy.

Invisible Religion

2007-04-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a great quote from a great essay on invisible religion by Marcia Ian:

# It would be truer to say that on the contrary America has marched from its founding vision of itself as a liberal society guided by the light of right reason, away from Puritan "abstractions concerning virtue," toward an ever more diffuse and yet ever more concretely embodied religion at once personal and global. [3] By concretely embodied, I mean "materialized" in ways intrinsic to consumer capitalism, with its tendency to worship the material as if it were spirit made manifest, and the spirit as if it were matter made immortal. What Colleen McDannell has called our "material Christianity" solidified during the 19th century. Material Christianity is "affectionate religion," Protestantism softened and sentimentalized, with its iconoclasm, its antipathy toward, and laws prohibiting, images, relaxed. During the nineteenth century, for example, the Holy Bible was re-invented and made available as a kitschy mass-market commodity, illustrated, commodified, and mass-produced. The family Bible linked faith to fantasy and commodity to spirit as "the saving text" evolved into the "saving object," a standard feature of most Protestant households, a sign at once of domestic sanctity, divine paternity, and mainstream American identity (McDannell 68, 73, 74).

# Such objects blur the boundary between sacred and secular, but in so doing they reproduce and re-iterate logos in commodity form; they perform for the zillionth time the original "blurring" putatively achieved by the Incarnation. A supposedly one-time event "infusing . . . the divine into one man," the incarnation theoretically made it possible for the divine and the human realms to become, if not exactly one, at least not discontinuous (McDannell 18-19). In Christ, the secular and the sacred melt into that uncanny proximity which Lacan calls the "extimate," namely the appearance of "the real in the symbolic" (Miller 75). Christ is "the real in the symbolic"; he embodies the extimate as the object of worship and the point of identification for the subject; he is the nonexistent point where one side of the möbius strip becomes continuous with the other; he is the immanent transcendence of material nature become the signifier of culture--American culture. I can think of no better apologist for this point than Henry James, Sr., known to most of us mainly as the father of William James the philosopher/psychologist, Henry James the novelist, and Alice James the diarist, but known during his own time as a prolific if idiosyncratic public intellectual, a Swedenborgian Christian mystic, and Fourierist proponent of radical spiritual democracy.

Rome

2007-04-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

Rome has been sacked. After two seasons HBO has pulled the plug. It was only intended to be a mini-series - 4 shows. But because of the quality of scripts and the viewers, the show was extended. I have quite enjoyed the show, though I have reservations about some of the extremes of HBO representations - sex and violence. The two characters that drove the story were Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson). They were soldiers in Caesar's army, but the writers managed to put them in the most amazing places, making them perhaps the biggest movers and shakers in Roman history. Of course, Caesar, Augustus, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Cicero, Brutus, Casius, Cato all got their due. But the writers brought an interesting element into the story when they began to follow the feud between Rome's leading women Servillia, Brutus' mom, and Atia of the Julii, Augustus' mom. Yes HBO put roman women on the map. These two fought a stronger, more spiritual battle then any of the men. Servillia was having an affair with Caesar and long awaited his return from Gaul. Upon that return Servillia and Caesar continued their affair, but Atia wanted a piece of the action. Through a series of events she managed to seduce Caesar. Servillia then cursed Atia, in one of the most eerie scenes I've ever seen on TV. At one point Atia had Servillia tortured. At another point we see Servillia on her knees outside of Atia's house, wearing death robes and ashes, crying "Atia of the Julii I call for justice" for what seems like 48 hours. Quite the scene.

Anyway, I must say, I've enjoyed the show. It has been interesting to watch while reading Cicero, Augustine, Virgil and generally trying to get a grip of the ancient Roman world. I can't say that I trust HBO to represent Rome as it was, but I do think they captured the pagan "ontology of violence" and honour culture well. I also think that they did a pretty good job bringing Roman cults to life. They showed Rome for what it was, a place dominated by worship, where logic walked a lower road then religio, and politics was always rapped up in both. Augustus is portrayed as the preemimant realpolitician of the last 2000 years. Caesar, played by Ciaran Hinds, seems a noble man, rather then a tyrant, with a generous heart. Cicero seems a bit on the queer side, and Brutus is simply, well, Hamlet.

There is a reason why Rome was made now. Rome has been adopted as a analogical setting by the left (as opposed to the right of the sword and sandal flicks) to work out state problems of the same manner that West Wing would tackle. Let's say that Rome is West Wing after Michael Ignatieff's publication of Empire Lite.

The bitter Religous Studies Prof Type

2007-03-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of ideal types, however I do think that there is something like an ideal type that emerges within similar traditions. We can begin to outline this type by using analogy to build a list of similar tendencies of these characters. The type I'm interested in is the angst ridden post-Christian religious studies prof. This is how you can tell them. They are invariably using methods that are thematic rather then tradition based. Most of their methods are univocal, especially when they speak about Christians. That is they read all Christians of a certain type the same: evangelicals, fundamentalists, liberals. So here is a typical comment: All evangelicals are a bunch of material consuming, 'attached' world destroyers, who harbour hate towards minorities be they ethnic/racial, sexual or religious (and religious-ethinic); while they proclaim belief in spirit they are so attached to world that they make all of their doctrine look ridiculous. [notice the total misreading or erasure of the incarnation, trinitarian dynamic]

I ran into a prof spouting this type of univocal, stereotypical type crap this week. The interesting thing about this "type" is that they usually rant about Christians when the topic is actually focused on something else. Last year I was critiquing a presentation on walmart's staff rituals, saying that walmart attempts to create community in the store - smile, laugh, buy - while it erodes community outside the store. In this way walmart manufactures a symptom - lack of community, and then treats it. My prof immediately looked at me and said "Well isn't that what evangelists do with sin?" And he looked at me in such a way that his connection seemed obvious. The thing is, the debate was about walmart, not evangelists - however much they may share sales tactics, the two traditions are very different, though they do have a base southern culture in common. His comment was a Freudian slip that betrayed a stewing hate for evangelicals. Likewise the prof this week exposed his own hate for Christians by claiming that most capitalism is propelled by Christians, while responding to a lecture on non-attachment in a 8th century buddhist monk's writing. The fact is that most capitalism is propelled by seculars who may be able to trace Christian roots in their families. This is a given: Bush does encourage consumerism and southern Christians are certainly disciplined to mix faith and consumer fix together - witness: Jerry Jenkins and Tim Lehaye; Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven bs; packaged fast food Christianity. The thing is that scholars need to be able to get a grip on their object of critique - and they certainly don't do this through stereotype. [I say this while I'm critiquing a type. The thing is I could list out genealogies of individuals here, traditions, and prove analogical similarities.] This broad based bashing of Christians just mystifies the whole thing. The truth is that many Christians are fed up with consumerism. Many Christians, like my next door neighbour have adopted lifestyles that evade overconsumption. My neighbour has two families living in his house. Friends who got together after Uni and said: hey lets live together, save some overhead, and some energy, have a good time, prove community can work. Lets also help the downtrodden, the shit on, and the shitting, to get back into community in a healthy way, where they might avoid turning other people into shitters (by which I mean pedophiles). These people are Mennonite, close faith relatives to Baptists. You know, some Christians don't run over people with tanks or drive SUV's until the next ice age. In fact those that perpetuate this later model usually have developed alternative ideologies and traditions that are incompatible with Christianity and they live in a certain place in the world. We might say their very Christianity is nominal. However, we might add that this certain country actually only has a about a 25-30% Church attending population.

Which means this: Secularity is the problem, not necessarily bad Christians, but a government ruled by the desire for profit and progress(rather then Christ), a desire that many Christians are caught up in.

So here is my comment to the type of RS prof that I've run into: Quit projecting the wrath you feel toward whoever it was in your lifetime that turned you off of Christianity on to me. Quit writing about stereotypes. Quit promoting some naive type of liberalism that leads to the thinnest subject position around: consumer.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2007-03-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

So I've been super busy lately and neglecting this blog. I'm on a search committee at Renison college, which is great experience, but it eats a lot of time. Earlier this week I gave my first solo lecture to a class of 150. It was on Love and Film and I gave a materialist reading of film. I told the class that they needed to do the "descent" in order to understand the intertextuality of film. I screened Dogville (the night before), used clips from Happy Feet, and worked with a critique of Fox and the Hound as supporting racial segregation. I was arguing that these films work as secular myth.

Last night I went to a lecture by Saba Mahmood on the Islamic emancipation genre in North America - Reading Lolita in Tehran, Irshad Manji's diatribes against Islam. Great talk. Mahmood demonstrated how most of the authors she referenced were in bed with Neo-conservativism, usually through economic links.

Today I attended a lecture by Terry Eagleton on "The Death of Criticism". I couldn't hear very well, and I was dead tired from two days of interviewing and the late night coming back from the Mahmood lecture. Eagleton is still arguing for a dynamic notion of nature - pushing against the thesis that we are culture all the way down.

I've been meaning to mention that I went to a The Shins concert about three weeks ago now in TO. Very good stuff. Though I was remarking that I think they would be as good in a classical concert hall as they are in a rock venue.

I also put the finishing touches on an essay that I'm going to shop around to Journals for the next little bit. "There is no Outsider".

Terry Eagleton Vs. Doc Dawkins

2007-03-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

Wow did Marxist Critic Eagleton ever tear Dawkins a new one! His review of Dawkins God Delusion, begins:
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

Eagleton isn't that bad a theologian either:

Dawkins, who is as obsessed with the mechanics of Creation as his Creationist opponents, understands nothing of these traditional doctrines. Nor does he understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us. Dawkins’s God, by contrast, is Satanic. Satan (‘accuser’ in Hebrew) is the misrecognition of God as Big Daddy and punitive judge, and Dawkins’s God is precisely such a repulsive superego. This false consciousness is overthrown in the person of Jesus, who reveals the Father as friend and lover rather than judge. Dawkins’s Supreme Being is the God of those who seek to avert divine wrath by sacrificing animals, being choosy in their diet and being impeccably well behaved. They cannot accept the scandal that God loves them just as they are, in all their moral shabbiness. This is one reason St Paul remarks that the law is cursed. Dawkins sees Christianity in terms of a narrowly legalistic notion of atonement – of a brutally vindictive God sacrificing his own child in recompense for being offended – and describes the belief as vicious and obnoxious. It’s a safe bet that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t agree more. It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus.

Find the debate here. The Wiki article on TE also has a link to the above article and a response by someone. Sorry I'm too lazy to find out who. Also, Wikipedia - I still love you man. Those idiots who actually want to you be THE source of truth, are just bone heads anyway. I know that you are in the connection business, not the prophet/profit business. Hugs and kisses.

facebook

2007-03-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

So I've been playing with facebook these days. A friend participated in some email harrasment until I caved. But I'm glad I did cave. Facebook is everything email isn't . You don't loose connection everytime your internet provider squashes up your piddely little email - I'm looking at you Rogers Yahoo.

Anyway, I've connected with two long lost buds from high school on there. We used to have some good times - too good perhaps. I used to get dragged behind Mark's Ford Ranger in highschool. Not as bad as it sounds. For shits and giggles we would drive to this icy road near the school, two of us would get out and hang onto the tailgate, and the other would drive down the road. I've been up over 60km/h using this method. Faster then I've ever traveled on a mountain bike, thanks to the slick soles of doc Martens. One time Mark wanted to try, so another friend took the wheel. We ended up doing a 720, with Mark hanging on the back of the tail gate. At one point in the spin he was pinned between the truck and the snowbank. We almost rolled the truck. I climbed out of shotgun, slamming the door into the snowbank until I could get out. The truck was off kilter. We ran to Mark who was rolling around in pain, holding his ribs. I thought we had killed him. But low and behold, he only had the wind knocked out of him. That person was never allowed to drive the Ranger again. The end.

Stereotypical Names with Ben

2007-03-22T05:17:00.001-07:00

"man all this racism is making me thirsty" what a great line...when it's not true. What is this genre now anyway? The whole Borat, Sarah Silverman, Dave Capelle thing? Don't forget the office. One thing to be said for multiculturalism - it gets funny.

I Have to Deal with Stereotypes

2007-03-22T05:09:00.001-07:00

This is a funny little film on asian stereotypes, with great delivery. I love the asian mom bit.

All the King's Men

2007-03-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Just saw All the King's Men (2006). I haven't yet read the novel, but rest assured, I will. The film was panned by critics though I think it did a bit of box office. I loved it. We have the Christopher Marlowe Faustus tale, mixed in with the American democratic metanarrative, combined with individuals with disordered goods, Neitzsche, Dante, Beatrice and Sean Penn. What more can you ask for? Oh, and I forgot the Freud (killing the father), the Rene Girard (violence), the Kennedy assassination, and the great camera work. Wow, did the critics suck hole on that one!

A rant on leftist naivity - Paul Gilroy

2007-03-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Am reading Paul Gilroy's Postcolonial Melancholia at the moment. I am tempted to say that Gilroy has a brilliant ability to make the debates about multiculturalism break open and reveal their underbelly. However, I find him to be a bit naive when he starts to critique the "civilizationism" of the US. This is because Gilroy celebrates the communitarianism of "ethnic groups" vis-a-vis the individualism of "skin heads" in the example he gives*, while critiquing the products of communitarianism in US - nationalism, global arrogance, etc. I can't figure out how we can celebrate friends without having enemies? This is the Schmitt problem. I think Gilroy sees it. I think his answer is to have nonnational group formations, the first taste of which were feminist and proletariat internationalisms. I find it difficult not to see Christianity and Islam as just older versions of such internationalisms. Which leads me to believe that he is working within a paradigm of civilizationalism without recognizing, or theorizing the way to stunt the growth of such civilazations before they try to take over the world. But don't we need the world to be taken over? I think the only way to keep multinationals at bay is to find some way to take over the world. I don't want some evil leader to do this, but we certainly need to extend the rule of law so far that one cannot evade it by hiring sweatshop workers to make whatevers for horrible pay only to ship this back to a place where their relative economy permits exploitation legally!. Legally. Legal illegality! That is what we have now. Clearly I am juxtaposing small L national law with some type of metaphysical Law, but mustn't we appeal to this? Otherwise we will have exploitation in the name of fashion ad infinitum (indeed we already have it). Communitarianism is the answer but writ large it involves nationalism, defense, civilization. We must face it that when we project ourselves collectively, which we cannot avoid (no one lives in a nameless town), it has the potential to get either ugly or beautiful, but it is the nature of the ethos of the communitas that will fix this. Not a denial of the very species of community. We will never avoid collective identity. If we do we are entirely atomistic, having minimal commonality with our neighbour. I don't want that place. I think I lived in it in Ottawa, the hell-hole of the entire world, where the Canadian apartheid of rich and poor is the Queensway: north of it lies little Italy and China town, as well as dirt poor white land (at least until you get to down town - the desert of capitalism); south of it lies the Glebe where houses sell for multiple millions. People drive beemers and VWs and Suvs. People recycle. Still - Still - this is the inequality of our capital (pun intended) and our liberal vision. Apartheid divides along race, liberalism divides on money and race. Is that any better?

* Gilroy's example:
One man interviewed by the Daily Mirror challenged the civilizationist folklore about the sources of the conflict [between skin-heads and Englishmen of Asian descent] with an important and neglected explanation of how the hatred directed by whites against Asians had come about: "'I'll give you an example of why they [the whites] dislike us so much,' he said, fingering a top-of-the-range Nokia mobile phone. 'It's jealousy. See, we start working young - I started helping my dad at 11 - and whenever we buy anything we pay cash. At 17 we have saved enough for our first car. It might cost two thousand pounds. A coupe of years later we sell it and buy one for five thousand, and by twenty one we've got a brand new BMW.'" (Postcolonial Melancholy 25).

I applaud the communitarianism, but I stick to my objections above.

Here are some lectures on the Canadian Economy by James Laxer.

More Foucault

2007-03-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

"Everyone knows that, in a novel narrated in the first person, neither the first-person pronoun nor the present indicative refers exactly either to the writer of to the moment in which he writes, but rather to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies, often changing in the course of the work. It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author function is carried out and operates in the scission itself, in the division and this distance" (Foucault, Rabinow 112)

"the manner in which literary criticism once defined the author - or, rather, constructed the figure of the author beginning with existing texts and discourses - is directly derived form the manner in which Christian tradition authenticated (or rejected) the text at it disposal..." (110 Foucault then explains St. Jerome's method for determining authorship and creating subjectivity)

What is an author?

2007-03-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

Foucault. What to do with Foucault? You can't live with him; you can't live without him. I first read "What is an Author" about 5 years back, and I didn't find it memorable. I think I was getting Foucault through the teeth those days. Foucault was Law, and so I wanted to diminish his hold on me, claiming he knew nothing. Although I did think he knew something.

Rereading "What is an Author" I find that my mind is ignited with insight. I don't agree with the zero-sum positions that F often urges - such as the dissolution of the subject or the complete negation of nature through the elevation of discourse, discipline, and discursively created subjectivity - however, I do think that discourse legitimates modes of being and thinking and to that end I value F very highly. What I will not do is idolize him.

Here is a passage that struck me while I was rereading this afternoon:

"Discourses are objects of appropriation. The form of ownership from which they spring is of a rather particular type, one that has been codified for many years. We should note that, historically, this type of ownership has always been subsequent to what one might call penal appropriation. Texts, books, and discourses really began to have authors (other than mythical, “sacralized” and “sacralizing” figures) to the extent that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the extent that discourses could be transgressive. In our culture (and doubtless in many others), discourse was not originally a product, a thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an act – an act placed in the bipolar field of the sacred and the profane, the licit and the illict, the religious and the blasphemous. Historically, it was a gesture fraught with risks before becoming goods caught up in a circuit of ownership." (Rabinow 108)

This reminded me: I was reading Greenblatt's bio of Shakespeare, Will and the World this summer, and I was struck by the violence of the theological battles in Renaissance/Reformation England. Greenblatt claimed that Shakespeare was secular because it was the only way he could survive (I'm not sure I agree). He came from a house of Catholic sympathizers while Elizabeth I was busy killing Jesuits (who were trying to overthrow her rule). Greenblatt describes the arrest of Edmund Campion SJ in his chapter, "The Great Fear". Pope Gregory xiii proclaimed that the assassination of Elizabeth I would not be a mortal sin (99)and Campion, amongst others took him seriously. By 1585 it was treason to be a Catholic priest in Britain (100). Greenblatt remarks "Saints, Shakespeare understood all his life, were dangerous people" (110). While he was free Campion claimed that he could defeat any Protestant that wanted to debate him on theological matters. After he was arrested, two Protestant theologians were brought before him and challenged him to a debate. They were Alexander Nowell, the dean of St. Paul's, and William Day, the dean of Windsor. Greenblatt narrates:

"The theologians, seated at a table piled with books and notes, were celebrated debaters. At another table two other distinguished but hardly neutral figures, William Chalk, the preacher of Gray's Inn, and William Whitaker, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, were poised to act as notaries. The prisoner would get his debate, but the government would set the stage and the rules.
Campion objected that he had had not time to prepare, had not notes and no books, and that he had been subjected to "hellish torture". ...Campion accepted - as he had no choice but to accept - the grossly unfair terms of the debate. He then proceeded, by what appears to be near-universal consensus, to annihilate his opponents." (115)

In the weeks that followed the Crown staged three more debates with fresh scholars, at which point, (with a little help from torture) the Crown declared victory. They then hanged Campion, then quartered him and boiled the pieces of him in a vat (all public of course):

"One of the bystanders, a Protestant named Henry Walpole, was close to the place where the hangman was throwing the pieces of Campion's body into a vat of boiling water. A drop of the water mixed with blood splashed out upon his clothes, and Walpole felt at once, he said, that he had to convert to Catholicism. He left for the Continent, became a Jesuit, and was sent back to England, where he too was arrested and executed as a traitor. Such are the works of saints and martyrs." (115-6).

In this context, Foucault's claims make sense (well maybe not in this context but in a context that remembered this context well - perhaps during the Enlightenment). I'm also reminded of John Berger's claim that painter began to sign their work during the renaissance (Ways of Seeing). It would be interesting to compare the persecution of authors with painters. Is written truth much more troublesome than visual? Perhaps the iconoclast controversies previously dealt with this topic.

Celebrity look alike thing.

2007-03-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

I think I did pretty well. I've got some real charmers on my list - Forrest Gump, Garfunkel, the brat from TV - Malcolm... I'm surprised I wasn't matched up with Will Smith.

It gets even better when I try the second time - Dick Cheney and ....wait for it....
LARRY DAVID!!!! Does it get any better then that?

Reading Cicero

2007-03-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

So I picked up a collection of Cicero's works a while back. It was a used philosophy text. I got it for two fifty. I was on the way home and I was about to stop off at the local book store to pick up a copy of On Friendship for about twenty bucks, when I thought, why not wait, see if I have it at home. Lord knows you have other things to read if not.

Low and behold, On Friendship, On Duties and other key texts by Cicero were mine for 2.50.

So I find Cicero to be a bit folksie. His wisdom seems down home, common sense, though I imagine that it is actually a little uncommon. Here was the quote the hit me with a bit of laughter:

"Friendship...the finest equipment that life can offer". About 25 pages in.

I'm also reading book ten of Augustine's Confessions, Hugh McClennan's The Watch that Ends the Night, and a book of short stories I am reviewing called The Shadow Side of Grace. I'm starting to hate short story writers. I find them to be a bit pretentious. Now the best SS writers are great, but the bad ones like to throw characters at you so fast your head is spinning, then they like to play games with erasing details you would like to know (they are fascinated with the fragment - seems a bit derivative of the news clip to me), and pulling plot twists out of their asses. I'm starting to believe the short story is for people too impatient and daft to write novels. Trust me, if you are tempted to write a short story, put the pen down now! If you can put it down, it was probably for the best, if you can't then more power to you, just give me no more then four new characters per page. And don't stroke your genius; if you're tempted it probably means you don't have much.

Infernal Affairs and The Departed

2007-03-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

I saw both of these films some time ago. I watched Infernal Affairs because I wanted to go see The Departed. I fear that I may spoil both films for those who haven't seen them. I'll tread lightly. It struck me this morning while cleaning the bathroom that The Departed might be Scorsese's apology for the just war, and I do believe his grammar is Catholic. This is all based on the ending, which is the biggest change from Infernal Affairs. The ending in IA is much different. And its difference seems to be resigned to something, not to apathy, but to perhaps something more Buddhist - all life is suffering perhaps. But The Departed seems to avoid this ending. Scorsese seems to claim that all life is suffering but this doesn't mean you must resign yourself too it.

Does he, however, perpetuate suffering or limit it, if only slightly?
This is the eternal question. Is pacifism the refusal of justice or the only just act? Does pacifism ever act violently on behalf of peace?

When we frame The Departed thus, we find Nicholson falling into the role of Satan, DiCaprio as Christ - especially in his suffering - and Wahlburg as Angel of Wrath, the Wrath of God. Interesting to see that DiCaprio has an absent father, who's legacy follows him everywhere he goes in Boston. Ah the Christian metanarrative, narrative, mythos...whatever.

FYI: A brief, simplistic, yet good account of Just War Theology. One will notice very quickly that America's war of terror (thank you Borat) does not fill the requirements. Might I add that these requirements are from the era of what we call "The Dark Ages". I think we are safe to assume that we are in the "Even Darker Ages" as long as we don't live up to (or supersede) the best of the ethical norms such an age produced.

Mean Boy (2006) Part Duex : Coady on New Brunswick

2007-03-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

So I finished Mean Boy around midnight past, and then I woke myself up in a coughing fit at around two. I needed a throat lozenge, which don't go away quickly, so I picked up a book of short stories I am reviewing for Books in Canada (by the way, my last review is going to be on the March cover "Newfoundland in Letters" - 2500 words). The book is called The Watermelon Social, by Elaine McCluskey. It is published by one of the snaziest small presses in all of Canada, Gaspereau Press in NS, so it is a great aesthetic experience just to be around this book. Opening the cover though, I must say, the experience dims. And in this dim light, Coady's brilliance hovers over me like a sublime thing (Wordsworth's Mountain in the Prelude). Damn, Coady was in control of her writing in Mean Boy. The text was more sparse then that of Strange Heaven, which was decorated like a rococo palace with Catholicism. Mean Boy is crisp. She is able to twist and turn around the social world she has created, she also does backflips with the whole writing about writing thing. The book is ironic to the core, yet Coady's irony avoids the dark nihilism that hovers around so much of postmodernity (especially in pop-rock from NY). What bothers me about Mean Boy is that it is not as rich a text as Strange Heaven, but I would say this is because of two things: Coady no longer lives in the Maritimes, so she writes with a stale pallet (though she is still sharper than I); she has attempted to push herself beyond what she knew in terms of setting - we're no longer in Cape Breton Toto.

This last point is significant. Who, besides the great David Adams Richards, choses New Brunswick as a setting for fiction? Coady has done just that. And NB is no walk in the Lake District, let me assure you, especially the Tantramar Marsh area, where her book is set (Sackville). Tantramar has barely risen from the ocean. It is a mud flat with some golden sprouts of wild hay and more radio towers then you can safely count while driving by on the THC (I mean TCH, though the last is true as well). The British would treat NB with no more nobility then they would Lancaster. All they used it for was a shipyard - a place to find masts for tall ships. This is why the forest of NB looks like freshly grown stubble (well perhaps the Irvings have something to do with this). NB is a woodlot (a woodlot that I have a fondness for, mind you).

Here's Coady on Moira, Jim's wife:

Larry: "You told her to fuck off?"
Slaughter puts his sandwich down on the table between us.
"You ever meet his wife? Oh, yeah, you met here out at their place that time with the dumplings. She's a complete bitch, right?"
"Well," I balk. I want to explain to Slaughter that Moria is not actually a complete bitch. Slaughter is from suburban Ontario and so he wouldn't understand. Moira is a New Brunswick woman, I want to explain - but that doesn't work because I've met women like Moira in PEI as well. Moira is a rural person, is the best way I can think to describe it. She doesn't put on airs. Moira would never have been exposed to airs in her life, is the thing - and if she ever was, she would dismiss them immediately.
As airs.
"She's just - she's harsh," is what I end up saying. "She's blunt."
"She's a douchebag," Slaughter contends... (271)

Moira in action, hosting a party:

It's hard not to watch the way Ruth watches Moira. She sits on the couch beside Dekker, draped in a shawl the colour of dried blood over a burgundy velvet dress. She looks like mulled wine. She is the best-dressed person in the room.
"Can I help you with anything?" she said to Moira upon our arrival.
Moira, in a pair of floppy-assed jeans, seemed physically unable to look upon Ruth. Her eyes kept darting toward and then bouncing away from her.
"I don't plan on doing a goddamn thing," she huffed. "Beers in the fridge, food and wine's on the table. If anyone needs anything else they can talk to that one there." And jabbed her cigarette at Jim, crouched by his record player. "I been cutting fuckin' vegetables all afternoon." She held up her hands to show us where she had nicked herself in the process.
"Well, its very nice to meet you," said Ruth after a glance at Dekker.
The comment met with Moira's back.
"Don't tease the dog." she was yelling, hustling her assless way across the room.
"She's so thin," murmured Ruth. (343-4)

Moira on the way students treat Jim:

"The bunch of you," Moira complains, "just treat him like King Shit. I don't know what in hell is wrong with you. Your husband, too," Moira turns abruptly on Ruth, who doesn't even flinch, who actually smiles a little [Ruth is Scandinavian - If that explains anything]
"For Christ's sake, that one could be - he could take a crap on your kitchen floor," Moira sputters, turning toward me again. "He could be hitting himself on the head with a hammer saying, how do you like that, now, boys? Whaddya thing about that little trick? And what would you bastards say?"
At this point Moira actually pauses as if I'm going to answer her.
"I don't know," I tell her.
She folds her arms. They remind me of two tree roots woven together above the earth. [how poetic - Coady likes to interject the poetic aspect with Larry - makes him real]
"You don't know," says Moira, turning to Ruth. "He doesn't know."
"Perhaps they would say," offers Ruth in her strange accent, "yes, King Shit. Very Good, King Shit."
For the first time since I met her, Moira laughs. She laughs worse than Ruth. She coughs as she laughs, a smoker's cough, harsh, wet, and red-sounding. Gravel scrapes her windpipe. It makes me want to shrivel up and die.
"Very good, King Shit," caws Moira, smacking Ruth across a velvet thigh. Aren't they just getting along like a house on fire...(356-7)

Well Moira is a minor character, but shit is she sharp. I do believe it is the little local details that Coady taps which make her work universal.

Mean Boy (2006)

2007-03-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

So the gigs up, you caught me, I've been reading fiction again. Boy do I feel like I've had my hand in the cookie jar. I'm about 50 pages from the end of Lynn Coady's very funny Mean Boy (2006). This is the third novel from Coady, and I do believe it is my least favourite of them. In fact, her first offering, Strange Heaven (1998), was the best, followed by Saints of Big Harbour (2002). Both novels were set in Cape Breton, and she played with hickness and Catholicism throughout. Lawrence, "Larry", the protagonist of Mean Boy, is a presbyterian from PEI who comes to a fictional Mount Alison University called Westcock, on the NB side of the NB-NS border. When I say that Mean Boy is my least favourite of the last three, I still would give this book (on a very crude IMDB scale which should never be applied to any narrative) about an 8.2. Larry wants to be a poet. He has wanted to be a poet since he was twelve. He goes to Westcock because celebrated poet Jim Arsnault is there. Jim looks like the average hippy poet (the book is set in 1975). He has a bit of the Gary Snyder aesthetic about him. Chops his own wood, is married to a woman that Charles Slaughter calls "a Bitch", and Larry describes as just "an New Brunswick Woman" (His rational: Slaughter's from a suburb of Toronto, he wouldn't know). Anyway, Coady starts dropping hints that Jim is a bit eccentric about 100 pages in. We find out that Jim has not made tenure, and that Larry is going to come to his aid with a student petition. About 200 pages are spent on the petition, much of which are very funny. We also spend a lot of time in class having poems reviewed. Jim and Larry start getting drunk together. Larry feels like he is making progress, while Jim feels like he has someone to lean on. Soon we find out that Jim is a little unstable. Larry gets a phone call from Jim's wife - she tells him to come drink with Jim and discuss Oedipus Rex. When Larry arrives, it feels like he has rolled up to the curb of Heathcliff's home in Wuthering Heights. Pure hell. Jim has an axe in hand. He looks dirty and disheveled. In his other hand he holds the bloody body of a crow. He has just chopped off its head. He then ties it to a tree, while his dog, Panda runs crazily below, covered in blood. Jim's rationale? Crow was teasing Panda. So he shot it, cut off its head and tied it to a tree as a warning to other crows. He then claims he really admires crows, but that this one just had a bad streak. Larry finds out that Jim has a Jack Nicholson-from-the-Shining streak.

More stuff happens. Larry gets high on mushrooms. So does Slaughter and a guy named Todd, who trips out at the front of the bar. Wont turn around, keeps looking in the mirror - feels a bit apprehensive: Todd: "I just feel a bit apprehensive". This is a very funny part of the book.

Scariest part of the book? that Coady has real insight into the student-supervisor worship phenom. As I mentioned, I'm not finished the book, but I would recommend it, especially to Grad students. Lots of fun. I'll post one of Larry's poems later - quite funny. Out.

PS: A poem by Lawrence Campbell

the ass of the head
and what is in it,
or is not -
The question
of which should take
its rightful place up top-
Is the axis
the ass-kiss
the pinhead
on which this angel

squats

December 7, 1975 (189)

...
A highlight:

Sometimes, even when I'm not writing, just the feel of being alone in my apartment in front of the typewriter is enough. I take off my shirt, I can see myself, I can see what I look like sitting here wearing nothing but jeans and glasses, me and my pale teenage limbs. I look like a poet. I know that I do. I believe in it, those days.
I, I'll type. And that will be enough.
Then there are the other days, when nothing is enough. The poem grins. It grins because it knows it is a terrible poem. It grins in embarrassment. It grins in pity. It grins in superiority. I may be a terrible poem, it grins, but at least I have one comfort. At least I'm not a terrible poet. At least I'm not the guy who sat in front of a typewriter for two hours coming up with the likes of me. (4)

Critiques of Pickstock's reading of Duns Scotus

2007-03-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

Mary Beth Ingham has sought to correct Pickstock's reading of Duns Scotus in After Writing and other essays. Pickstock has blamed modernity on Scotus. What an absurd sentence. But he certainly plays the Judas to her Christ (Aquinas). What an absurd sentence. At any rate Modern Theology thought this debate about Scotus was so important that it merited an entire issue in 2005. I've selected quotes from Ingham's article "Why Pickstock is bad and Scotus is Good", I mean "Re-situating Scotist Thought". At any rate, I can see why equivocation becomes an appealing alternative to univocity and analogy. Everybody is as they are, forget about it. I think that is the logic of capitalism isn't it. Have a coffee my friend, forget about politics! But remember your cup was made with oil products. Ok, here are some highlights from Ingham's article. I especially found the part on formal-modal distinctions helpful, as I have never really understood was was going on there (though like other philosophical problems, I knew this problem innately, I just didn't know what symbolic code matched up to what I already thought. You know somewhere deep inside, I've got most of it figured out...).
...
Ingham maintains:

In their respective disciplines (logic and theology) the concept being functions differently. In the domain of logic it functions univocally (since the alternative offered by Henry of Ghent was equivocation disguised as analogy). In
the domain of theology, and particularly in regard to the names of God, the term functions analogically. (611)

Christocentric Theology of Scotus:

The first key element in Scotus’s view of reality and of the relationship of philosophy to theology is the centrality of the Incarnation. Because his vision
is so predominantly Christocentric and so affirming of the sui generis nature of Christian revelation, Scotus both critiques the natural capacity of human reason to grasp everything about God and moves his consideration of creation (both in its contingency and in the logical categories used to discuss it) to a secondary status. Thus, he would not hold (with Aquinas and Aristotle) that this world is the only one possible, nor (with Aristotle) that its unique existence points to a single, necessary prime mover. Nor would he hold (with Aquinas and Aristotle) that the life of natural virtue and the philosopher’s goal of happiness (felicitas) are sufficient reasons to demonstrate immortality. This is not because he holds that reason cannot demonstrate the soul’s immortality. Rather, he holds that natural reason cannot
(alone) demonstrate the sort of immortality promised by Christianity (cf. 1 Cor. 2: “eye has not seen nor has ear heard . . .”). (613)

Univocity

The final element of Pickstock’s critique of Scotus is the affirmation of the univocity of the concept being and its lethal consequences for any defense of
transcendence and a spiritual ascent. This point deserves a more careful treatment. Scotus sets forth his argument for the univocity of being in Ordinatio I, distinction 3, question 1.12 The text deals specifically with the possibility of knowledge about God and, by implication, of the existence of theology as a science. Here, the Franciscan develops his position on the univocity of being in tandem with a discussion of scientific knowledge of God. Together, both constitute the sine qua non condition for any possible theology: human cognition must have some natural basis from which to reflect on the divine. This natural ground is, in Scotist thought, the univocity of the concept of being. If, in his argument, Scotus can show that the human mind has foundational access to reality, and if that reality provides adequate basis for natural knowledge of God, then theology can be understood as a science,
whose content does not exhaust the truth about God.

Scotus reasons from the discussion of language about God to the deeper consideration of the sort of foundation that would explain how such language is possible (namely, that being rather than quidditas is the first object of the intellect). In this, he follows his usual methodological procedure, moving from experience to what grounds the possibility of that experience. In addition, Scotus bases his argument upon the Aristotelian cognitive model, where sense knowledge, mental species and agent intellect form the constitutive parts. Finally, the Subtle Doctor rejects Henry of Ghent’s proposed illumination theory, along with its argument from analogy. For Scotus, Henry’s position on analogy without an underlying univocity of concepts is
simply equivocation. The Franciscan argues that when we conceive of God as wise, we consider a property (wisdom) that perfects nature. In order that we might do this and in light of the cognitive structure Aristotle provides, we must first have in mind some essence in which the property exists. When we consider properties or attributes such as wisdom, we do not understand them as pure abstraction, but as belonging to an essence. This more basic, quidditative concept is a type of conceptual whatness that grounds the act of cognition. Were such a concept not univocal, theology could not be a science, nor would language about God be meaningful.(616)

Formal Modal Distinction

The formal modal distinction is key to understanding the way in which Scotus presents the relationship of cognition to the natural world and then to language about God. The formal modal distinction is related to but not identical with the formal distinction. This modal distinction applies not to different attributes or aspects of a being (as does the formal distinction), but to the distinction between a subject, such as intelligence in humans, and its mode, such as finite. The significance of the formal modal distinction becomes clear when we understand its role as foundation for those concepts that are predicable univocally of God and creatures. Consider, for example, the concept wisdom as predicable of God and creatures. Scotus asks, “How
can the concept common to God and creatures be considered real unless it can be abstracted from some reality of the same kind?”13 In response, he explains the difference between the modal distinction and the strict formal distinction. A perfection and its intrinsic mode, such as infinite wisdom, are not so identical that we cannot conceive of the perfection (wisdom) without the mode (infinity). We can, indeed, conceive of wisdom independently of whether it is finite (human wisdom) or infinite (divine wisdom). The perfection and mode are not really distinct, however, because they cannot be separated in reality; nor are they formally distinct, because they are not two formalities each capable of terminating a distinct and proper concept. Nonetheless, they are still not identical, because the objective reality signified by the perfection with its modal intensity (infinite wisdom) is not precisely the same as that signified by the perfection alone (wisdom). The formal modal distinction, then, actually safeguards the reality of those concepts, such as being, that are predicable of God and creatures. Without the mode, these sorts of concepts are common and imperfect. They function semantically in a confused manner, designating in a general way. With the mode, the concept is called proper, and has a more focused, specifying role. The referent (that is, the being designated as infinite) emerges more clearly within the field, like a figure against a background. The formal modal distinction, in a manner similar to the formal distinction, is linked to the activity of abstractive cognition. The modal distinction’s specificity can be clearly seen when we reflect upon the experience of the beatific vision. The blessed in heaven, states Scotus, perceive the infinite perfection of divine infinite
wisdom intuitively, not as two formal objects, but as one.14 By contrast, no intuition in heaven erases the formal distinction between the divine persons and the divine essence, or between the divine intellect and the divine will. In short, the formal distinction is such that it remains even in the beatific vision, while the formal modal distinction does not.15 (616-7)

Footnote 7
Aquinas’s insistence on the light of glory (lumen gloriae) needed for the beatific vision is challenged by Scotus as a diminishment of the natural powers of the human person. When he presents and defends the key role of intuitive cognition, Scotus notes that it follows from the natural constitution of the human person as created by God. It was known to Jesus and thus belongs to human nature. With his Franciscan insight of viewing the person as imago Christi (a perspective shared by Bonaventure), Scotus does not hesitate to attribute to the human person any perfection that does not contradict Scripture or right reasoning.
...
Now let's all hold hands and kiss. Right, we've done away with kissing. Pick up your gun instead...

Dogville by Lars von Trier

2007-03-05T06:38:00.000-08:00

I watched Lars von Trier's film Dogville the other night and was impressed. How was I impressed? The only film I'd seen of his previous to this was Dancer in the Dark, with Bjork. It was really slow developing and it had a romantic view of a factory worker, but there are scenes from it that still come to mind now and then: when Bjork would be overcome with music, pulling together the sounds of the factory to create her own symphony. P.T. Anderson used this motif in Punch-Drunk Love, where it was also very effective. But everyone who had seen DitD knew Anderson was just ripping it off.
So how was I impressed by Dogville?
1) the film is set in a small American town in the Rockies, but the town is only sparsely constructed. Most of the town remains as chalk lines on the floor of a film studio.

2) the genre of the film is a mix of Winnie the Pooh like Narration (I think I can call this a genre) - tons of voice over, which implies that it is an adaptation of a novel, though no novel exists. The voice must be the writer/god. Indeed this confusion is encouraged because the film is anti-realist and mostly told in a "mythical" type mood. Everything is universal. Particulars are erased from the script so that the message can extend as far as possible. This relates to the minimalist stage.
3) the one exception to Dogville's universality is that the film makes a big deal about being a commentary on America. The end credits are all pictures of the down and out from the depression, complemented by more pictures of the down and out from later on - in colour. This is all set to David Bowie's tune "Young Americans".
4) Nicole Kidman plays a character named "Grace" who comes to a small town - dogville - which doesn't want to keep her because there is someone on the look out for her - seems like a gangster. The town comes to love her (Palm Sunday), then comes to hate her (very last supper - even Judas shows up). Then something very interesting happens and we have a scene between "Grace" and her Father (I don't know where the spirit was during this). Then Grace does something that seems a bit odd given her name. She refuses the Atonement. (Kidman gives a great performance, as does Paul Bettany, James Caan and Ben Gazzara)
5) The refusal of the Atonement (I will not tell you the details), seems to be the part that von Trier wants to pin on America. This is the only part of the film that seems bogus. The rest of the film is exceptional, but the use of the Christian mythos for an explicit critique of America (which I am not broadly against, just particularly in this case) seems to limit the effect of the film's penetration of the social problems that humans 'naturally' come by. Not just American humans.
6) Grace thus seems not to be the transcendent grace of Christ, but a specifically American reincarnation. This makes the film explicitly political and twerps the myth (which can still be political).

Go rent this three hour film. You'll enjoy it, but you may have the same problems as I did. I found this review to be quite good.
Drop me a line if you had similar problems with Dogville.

One last moment of praise for von Trier. This film does things with metafiction, the ability for a story to expose the fictional mechanisms of the narrative which pervade it, that I haven't seen rivaled by any other film. The device is so obvious and at the same time it is a stroke of genius. I'm speaking of the minimalist stage carved out with chalk lines and various props. Dogville draws a direct line from Marxist theatre, through the postmodern, and into what ever Dogville is. It doesn't seem postmodern , because it insists on truth. This story isn't about relativity folks.

Inverting the Symbolic-Real dynamic: the icon

2007-03-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

I've had a break through thinking about the symbolic-real dynamic in Zizek. Zizek, following Lacan, claims that though we symbolically construct our world there is an interruption of our ability to dwell in the symbolic. Where the symbolic cannot contain all of experience the real leaks from under it. Zizek actually uses the image of a snail in a shell to describe the real (the snail's body) and the symbolic (the shell). He also claims that, like the snail, the real is grotesque. I like to think that the real can be beautiful. One other thing: the early Lacan conceived of the real as extra linguistic, but the late Lacan (and Zizek), claims that the real is actually a function of language. The Symbolic is also a function of language. It is the known of language, where as the real comes through in the unknown, the un-assimilated (think of the Gov't trying to code a new-immigrant who has not papers - birth certificate - yet is full of human constructs; that is how the real exceeds the symbolic).

So, here is my insight. What happens if we invert Zizek's model? The Real explodes through the Symbolic, but it doesn't exhaust it. Thus we have a symbolic that is remaindered, rather then a real. I think that the Orthodox conception of the Icon works along these lines. As Ivan Illich claims, Icons are not for collecting, they are for praying with. Icons are the Symbolic which represents the Real presence of the Saint. But the faithful 'sees' the Saint, which is communicated through the Symbolic. Yet the Real does not exhaust the Symbolic. In fact, the Real isn't even contained by the Symbolic. Switching gears here, consider the Eucharist, which always has an excess of accidents. The substance is totally changed, but the accidents remain (this maybe problematic, as I'm moving from "culture" to "nature" as it were). The bread is the construct, but the presence of Christ is the real.

A final note. Often "the Law" is the example of a symbolic coding that both Lacan and Zizek reference. It is by having a gap between symbolic and real that the subject comes into existence. Christ claimed that he came not to abolish the law (and the prophets), but to fulfill it (them). Christ is then the reconciliation of the symbolic and the real. However, the injunction that Paul gives to obey the law of rulers because they have been set in place by God highlights that he was not working within a metaphysics whereby law of any type was solely nominal. Law, even fallen law, was Real - upheld by God himself, until he should so chose to alter it, or remove the leader. I'm always troubled by this idea because it seems hyper-conservative. Clearly there are laws that are only nominal, like the speed limit. What do we do when the "nature" or "truth" (or real) of our car is to excel beyond the level of mediocrity set by the Gov't? Do I follow the spirit of the law (the car's rpms and gas mileage) or the letter? Does it matter? Well it would seem that Paul was pretty serious about slaves not leaving masters and we certainly do not respect those laws now. Should we say that they were "real"? It would seem to me that not every law is part of the incarnation of Christ, the logos. Lies are held up by signs, yet we do not think that lies are "real". They have real effect, but not reality. Though strangely, this is von Balthasar's logic for claiming that the Greek myths are real: "myths exist only as the react upon immanent being" (Murphy, Christ the Form of Beauty, 154).

Liberal Democracy Made Strange

2007-02-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

If you are like me you were brought up eating, sleeping and breathing liberal democracy. I didn't know this at the time. Lib dem is the ideology that we practice on a daily basis. But I want to make it strange for a moment, so that we might see what it is.

Open Google Earth. You are far away from the planet. You zoom in, coming closer to a land formation, the middle east, Turkey to Saudi Arabia. On this land are multiple people groups, some of whom follow Islam, some Christianity, some Judaism, others secular. If you hold that your allegiance is to a version of the good shared by a collectivity you see yourself as part of a people group. As a group you occupy land. This land may also be shared by people of other groups. Lib dem tells us that the only way to live in peace with these people of other groups is to privatize our particularities, and live a public life that is difference blind. Thus we sell what we make to people regardless of their group allegiances. The groups we are a part of tell us that the only way we can live at peace with other members is to privatize those things that are publicly contentious. In the broader shared space, I should privatize my religion so that I can live at peace with others of other groups. [Religions invert this: I should privatize my political opinion, so that I may share more with my friends.]

Lib dem is a group that holds a good. The good is that those other groups are a problem because they conflict with the making of a broader group - humanity. In this respect lib dem must make us over as equals (the privatization impulse) so as to extend the group affiliation as far as it can go. The problem here is that lib dem must extend globally, because the members of the species - humanity - extends globally. What falls victim to this broad extension of governance? Particularity. Do people like to have their particularities taken away? No. Consider NY in the 1800s as Scorsese portrays it: the town was a dutch settlement taken over by Brits. Irish, Italian, German and Jewish settlers decided to move in, not to mention African slaves. Did any of these people want to give up their ethnicities, their cultures, their religions? Not entirely. They may have given up one thing or another, but not their entire particularity. NY must be an identity that reflects the particularities of each subgroup. And the groups must not be put into play by the city ID, but rather, held coextensively.

But lib dem likes to limit difference, so it says, especially after the race riots of the 1960s, you can hold on to your ethnicity, but don't make a big deal about your religion. Religion is a particularity that we can do without, because, afterall, it is a "belief", an ideology, which is subscribed. Ethnicity is not, it is natural. Of course this notion of ethnicity has died away, and now ethnicity is little more than an ideology along with religion. All we have left is "difference" - not ethnic difference, not religious difference, not linguistic difference - just homogeneous difference.

The problem with lib dem is that empty difference may be good for keeping peace, but it isn't good for the soul. It isn't good for the mind. It isn't good for liesure. Empty difference is what you encounter when you can't tell the difference between a pepsi and a coke. It is fast food. Lib dem's chief product is fast food. Walmart is the symbol of lib dem governance, because it is a broad shelter under which all people can come and buy anything they want. It collects everything and assimilates it to nothing. Everything is relativized as a commodity, an ideology (ethnicity, religion, sexuality).

So I'm a bit fed up with lib dem, and it is not because I don't like negative freedom, or public agency, or peace, or broadly extended law, or "multiculturalism". It is that I don't like being made in the image of fast food.

Ultimately, lib dem must erase region, localities of all kinds, nations, land demarcations. This is because the ultimate vision of lib dem is to have a borderless globe over which all can travel as nomads. Lib dem is about being unfettered. The problem is that I like to be a bit fettered. I like my linguistic distinctions, my religious views and practices, my local water with its specific minerals. I like things that are rooted, and I like having roots.

Can lib dem be delimited such that it ceases to promote "difference" and begins to allow roots?

The mulitiple Individual

2007-02-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

"It is necessary to theorize the individual, not as a monad, an ‘unencumbered’ self that exists prior to and independently of society, but rather as a site constituted by an ensemble of ‘subject positions’, inscribed in a multiplicity of social relations, the member of many communities and participant in a plurality of collective forms of identification." (Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 97)

So, I have realized that how the subject is conceived determines the political form it will support. The subject is the metonymic polis. This means that if the subject is multiple, it will support a pluralist framework; however, if the subject is singular, it will support a state that is unified on the questions of the Good, and the Will.

From a Christian perspective, our trouble with liberal-democracy (that it creates homogeneous subjects and supports empire), and the trouble with dictatorship (while it has the power to police the market, the sovereign itself is unpolicable), stems from our inability (the impossibility) to "think" trinitarian forms of government and subjectivity that can articulate singularity and plurality without mystery. Because the acceptance of mystery is conversion. Thus to have a state that is both multiple and plural is to have a Christian state, otherwise, you are stuck with mediocrity, or genocide.

This is to say that I don't think that Radical Orthodoxy can sincerely support pluralism (religious), as their teleology of politics results in trinitarian ends under which "genuine subjectivity" is only available through conversion.

Ding an Sich as Eucharist, infinitizing mater

2007-02-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

I just finally put two and two together and realized that in Catholicism, the thing in itself is the Eucharist*, which is itself, infinitely deep, such that going into the eucharist takes us into the Logos spoken before time. Like Alice, travelling through a worm hole (or whatever she does), that is always already with us, the Eucharist comes in us from "outside" so that we are more fully part of Logos, Shalom, Love.

It is true though that a Christian goes into the body, while the body comes into her. There are some interesting border issues, or a-border issues, that have to do with spirit as infinitizing our mater.

Somehow though, this idea of the eternal pre-lapsarian body, which I in no way think ever existed other then as Christ, is in tension with this idea of a seed falling into the ground so that it might birth a plant. I know that by retaining the word body, we resist splitting the Christic body into spirit and body (we retain a unity), but sometimes, the idea of spirit as divorced from body (somewhat Cartesian, somewhat Gnostic), is canonical in Christianity. I was just reading about an interval between esse and essentia in Aquinas (around 250 in Pickstock's After Writing). Paul continually talks about putting to death flesh and living in spirit (but he also talks about putting on the body of Christ, or exhaling his self, that he might inhale Christ 1 Col...) God, the father 'exists' not as a body but as a spirit, as nothingness, yet what do we do with the body of Christ, which is itself spiritual. Do we just conflate spirit and body? It's like Hellenism and Hebraism have had a front on collision, and bodies and spirits are flying every which way. I don't know what to think.

* it is a misnomer to say that the Eucharist is a "thing" because it is a relation to the Trinity through the Son. Thus, the Eucharist as ideal ding an sich, redefines ding as Sein (being). Being as itself.
What bothers me about the discourse of being is that we have psychologized it so that being is only there for us if we attend to it. But being is not like that; it is aready there, whether we think it or not. We may have a heightened experience of being, but being is not just a state of consciousness. Ontology is regardless of psychological flux, not that we could do without psyche, but that psyche cannot erase being's persistence without dieing.
If, when we are in "the cloud of unknowing," "the dark night of the soul", the via negativa, we are close to the Father, it would seem that a psychological reading of this experience would side for non-being (perhaps this is true if the Father is nothingness). But God is the pure act of love, and action does not happen outside of a context. Understandably, God is the context for His act.
When we fold "context" and "act" together like that we open language to God. I guess this is how God is impossible.

Milbank on Islam, the West and Secularity from Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror

2007-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

Milbank, John
Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror
The South Atlantic Quarterly - Volume 101, Number 2, Spring 2002, pp. 305-323

Revived Islamic civilization is in some ways a challenge to the Western secular state, but it is also much more like a rival twin than we care to imagine. Recent scholarship is showing just how Islamic the West itself has been. When the University of Oxford was founded in the late twelfth century, some scholars there took over an essentially Islamic project for the experimental control of nature that was at first to do with optics and alchemy. The Cartesian turn to the subject, the idea of knowledge as detached representation of spatialized objects, the exposition of being as univocal, all have their long-term origin in ironically the Oriental thought of Avicenna (ibn Sina).To say, as many do, that Islam was only accidentally, and for a time, the bearer of a Mediterranean civilization to which it was essentially alien is quite untrue. Even though philosophy was less easily assimilated within Islam than
in Christendom, Avicenna and other philosophers were still concerned with ‘‘prophetology,’’ or the nature of inspiration, and this profoundly inflected their rendering of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic understandings of the soul. In this crucible, protomodern ideas concerning subjectivity were forged and then handed over to the West.

In the year 1277, the Christian West reached its crisis: certain drastic edicts issued by the archbishops of Paris and Canterbury meant that it decided more or less to outlaw the common Hellenistic legacy of Aristotle fused with Neoplatonism, and blended with allegorical readings of the Hebrew Bible, which it shared with Islam, Judaism, and Byzantium. A common culture of mystical philosophy and theology, focused around analogy and ontological participation—which has also tended to favor social participation— was rendered impossible. TheWest went in one direction and Islam in another, since Islam, too, inclined in this period to outlaw this perspective. Islam became a doctrinally orthodox, scriptural, and legalistic civilization to the exclusion of dialectics and mystical theology (apart from newly enhanced Sufistic tendencies).

The conventional view is that from that point forward, the West became secular and Islam became theocratic. But that seems to me to be a half-truth. In fact, by bandoning the shared mystical outlook, Western Christian theology started to look more and more itself like Islamic orthodoxy; it started to read the Bible more like the Qur’an, allowing only the literal meaning and construing that meaning more narrowly than it had. The new stress in the fourteenth century, that only God’s will makes things true and right, echoed earlier Islamic Kalam theology and some of the ideas of Al-Ghazali.

The West’s attitude toward evil, with ironically the Cathars safely defeated, started to become more Manichean, again taking over the unfortunate Iranian contamination of Islam by the primordial Zoroastrian tradition. But, above all, in the political domain, the Islamic alliance of the absolute will of the Caliph linked to the will of Allah, and with the right to fight holy wars, was taken over by Christian thought. As earlier in Islam, so now also in the West, a merely de facto grounding of state sovereignty in absolute right to do what it likes is linked to its mediation of the will of God. Thus the early Western nation-state started to fight holy wars within Christendom itself. Modern Islam and Christianity are not after all so dissimilar in certain ways. What I am wanting to suggest here is that theocratic notions of sovereignty are not simply something archaic within Islam that stands over against our Western modernity. In many ways theocratic notions are specifically modern in their positivity and formality (as Carl Schmitt indicated). Bush in a crisis has appealed to the supposed divine destiny of America, and it is modern Judaism that has lapsed into a statist, Zionist form.

There is now a terrible symbiosis arising between Zionism and the American Protestant and un-Christian literalistic reading of the Old Testament in the Puritan tradition, which equates Anglo-Saxondom with Israel. Both ascribe to an idolatrously non typological and non eschatological reading of God’s ‘‘free election of Israel,’’ as if really and truly God’s ‘‘oneness’’ meant that he arbitrarily prefers one lot of people to another (as opposed to working providentially for a time through one people’s advanced insight— as Maimonides rightly understood Jewish election); and as if he really and truly appoints to them, not just for a period, but for all time, one piece of land to the exclusion of others. (Regina Schwartz’s The Curse of Cain, which tries to distinguish true from idolatrous monotheism in the Hebrew Bible, is highly relevant here.) There is also an unfortunate tendency within contemporary theology to play down the Christian ‘‘going beyond the law,’’ which incoherently and anachronistically seeks a kind of alignment with post-Biblical Rabbinic law, as if this somehow had obviouslymore status for Christianity than Islamic law (even if we may well often find the former to be nearer to Christian charity).

Meanwhile, the Islamic Wahhabi, to whom bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda belong, are themselves in some ways very modern. They are opposed to all iconic images, all auratic manifestations of religion; they are urban, middleclass, fanatically puritanical. They are prepared to compromise the Islamic tradition insofar as it stands firmly against usury. And they are thoroughly in love with technology. Bin Laden in the desert with his gun is surely an American antihero: perhaps a sectarian first cousin to Joseph Smith. For it is not an accident that the Mormons—that archetypical American sect, according to Harold Bloom—express such explicit kinship with Islam.

But of course the West and Islam have construed the legacy of theocratic sovereignty in very different ways. The West has invented a secular sphere that is neutral and unmystical: the sphere of a pure balance of power whose control is still nevertheless, in the last analysis, divinely sanctioned. Strict Islam knows only an expression of sovereignty through sacred laws. One may not much care for either variant. But on what basis can one decide that an Islamic sacral state, especially if it took a more sophisticated form than that envisaged by the Taliban, is not permissible? In reality our apparent concern for women and others persecuted by these unpleasant people is fantastically hypocritical: as recently as 1998 the Californian oil giant UNOCAL, with the backing of the United States, was trying to enlist Taliban support in building an oil pipeline through Afghanistan from the former Soviet territories to the north. Meanwhile, the manifestations of asharia law in Saudi
Arabia have not appeared troublesome to Western economic interests. The only possible basis for refusing the legitimacy of an Islamic state would be if Islamic men, and especially Islamic women, themselves decided that they no longer wanted such a thing. This decision would amount though to a new construal of Islam, and a redefinition of Islamic community apart from the sanction of coercive law. Islam would then have to proceed in a more Sufistic direction. It is certainly not in principle up to the West
to decide, but I do not think that the West as it is presently constituted can tolerate this forbearance and all its implications.

Yet properly speaking, this is a debate that Islam should be able to conduct with itself without external impediment. Such a debate could even help us in the West to realize that genuine religious pluralism and tolerance means far more than merely respecting the private beliefs of the individual. Communities also are collective realities that we should respect, within certain bounds of discrimination.

A perpetual war against terrorism can be seen as an effort to resolve the crisis of state sovereignty in the face of globalization. Since in a real sense both the Western and the different Islamic state forms face the same crisis, one can go further and say that both terrorism and counterterrorism, which will quickly become commingled and indistinguishable, are attempts to resolve this crisis. To see globalization on one side and anti-globalization on the other (as Baudrillard perhaps tends to do) is too simple.
(312 - 315)

U.S. and indeed European domestic democracy is a kind of harmless theatrical indulgence for the globally privileged. And this circumstance reveals to us that the trouble is not ‘‘totalitarianism’’ pure and simple, but the emptiness of the secular as such, and its consequent disguised sacralization of violence. There is a desperate need for the United States to reach behind its current Machiavellian,Hobbesian, and Lockean norms for its deeper and more truly radical legacy of Christian (and at times Jewish) associative agrarian and civic Republicanism, which has truly to do with just distribution and the inculcation of social virtue .Among much of the American populace, the spirit of this legacy is still extraordinarily and creatively alive, as anyone who has lived in the United States can testify. Yet it is today rarely able to achieve any conscious political articulation.
(321)

Both empty secular power and arbitrary theocratic power, in their secret complicity, show us no way forward. Neither enlightenment nor ‘‘fundamentalism’’ can assist us in our new plight. Instead we need to consider again the Biblical and Platonico-
Aristotelian metaphysical legacy common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. We should ponder ways in which this legacy may provide us with a certain area of common vision and practice, while at the same time respecting social and cultural spaces for exercised difference.

Such a common vision would eschew all idolizations of formal power, whether in the case of individual ‘‘rights’’ or of absolute state sovereignty. Instead it would trust that human wisdom can intimate, imperfectly but truly, something of an eternal order of justice: the divine rapports of Malebranche and Cudworth. A shared overarching global polity would embody this intimation in continuously revisable structures dedicated to promoting the common good insofar as this can be agreed upon. It would also embody this imperfection through the maximum possible dispersal and deflection of human power.

Perhaps then the noble and at times heroic perpetuation of the local and embedded also could be a proffered gift to the whole globe, which would reciprocate with a measured influence and support, instead of an obliterating equivalence. Perhaps then we would cease to sacrifice the substantively particular to the generally vacuous, ensuring that there was no need for the particular to incite in response the suicidal sacrifice of everything, forever.
(322-3)

Quote of the Evening - John Donne

2007-02-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

This is the xxiii stanza of John Donne's "A Litany". I'm interested in the doubled action of prayer in the last line.

Hear us, O hear us, Lord; to Thee
A sinner is more music, when he prays,
Than spheres' or angels' praises be,
In panegyric alleluias ;
Hear us, for till Thou hear us, Lord,
We know not what to say ;
Thine ear to our sighs, tears, thoughts, gives voice and word;
O Thou, who Satan heard'st in Job's sick day,
Hear Thyself now, for Thou in us dost pray.

Quote of the Morning

2007-02-21T08:20:00.000-08:00

"In the Roman Rite, as we have just seen, the worshipping "I" is both designated and realized by self-dispossessing acts of doxological impersonation which displace any sense of enclosed autonomy in the subject in favour of that which is impersonated. However, this does not result in a radically discontinuous subject, but rather intensifies his continuity to reside in God. This liturgical impersonation is not a matter of arbitrary mimicry across a lateral plain of untimely interchangeable identities, but an altogether more radical and redemptive mimesis which transgresses the hierarchical boundaries between the worldly and the other worldly. Unlike the random mimetic arts with Socrates expels form the city the transcendence of that which is imitated in the Roman Rite ensures that mimesis does not remain a purely extrinsic act. By impersonating angelic voices or the Trinitarian persons, the worshipping impersonator cannot but participate in that which he emulates, and so, to travel in another's name becomes the nomination of the traveller himself. In consequence, he does not ashamedly conceal his inadequate and stammering voice by assuming divine voices, in the cover manner of ventriloquist substitution, but boldly asserts that he acts "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti." He borrows this name not in order to deny its own speaking, or to silence its declaration, but in order to disseminate it still further. For, the borrower of the name is also that name's ambassador." (Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, p 208-9)

Stranger than Fiction

2007-02-20T21:00:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching Stranger than Fiction, which I really enjoyed. Talk about realism! Anyway, I noticed one of my comp books on the shelf of Dustin Hoffman's office - After Virtue, with a "used" sticker on it. I'm not sure if you can see it in this picture, but I do have to say, the TV in corner office is a nice touch.

Quotes of the Morning

2007-02-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

"The more devastation and instability an unbridled marked creates, the more illiberal a state you need to contain it." (Terry Eagleton, After Theory, 220)

"Capitalism has always pitched diverse forms of life promiscuously together - a fact which should give pause to those unwary postmodernists for whom diversity, astonishingly, is somehow a virtue in itself. Those for whom 'dynamic' is always a positive term might also care to reconsider their opinion, in the light of the most dynamically destructive system of production which humanity has ever seen. But we are now witnessing a brutally quickened version of this melt-down, with the tearing up of traditional communities, the breaking down of national barriers, the generating of great tidal waves of migration. Culture in the form of fundamentalism has reared its head in reaction to these shattering upheavals. Everywhere you look, people are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to be themselves. This is partially because other people have abandoned the notion of being themselves as an undue restriction on their activities" (Eagleton 49 - 50)

"[There is a] fundamental paradox located at the center of the rule of law in a democratic society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carl Schmitt, Franz Kafka, Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, Bonnie Honig, Jacques Derrida, Alan Keenan, Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, while disagreeing on numerous issues, concur in asserting that a democratic state seeking to honor the rule of law is also one in which a sovereign power operating both inside and outside the law is brought into play. Since the paradox expresses the lawlessness upon which the rule of law depends it is often hidden from public view. ...[G]aps and fissures open up periodically between positional sovereignty as the highest authority to interpret the law and sovereignty as the effective power to decide what it will be. ...[F]or a government of self-rule to come into being out of a nondemocratic condition, the public ethos needed for democratic governance would have to be preceded by the kind of laws that nourish it; but those good laws, in turn, would need to be preceded by that very ethos if they were to emerge. The laws and the ethos must precede each other." (William E. Connolly, Pluralism, 134-5)

"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception" (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, 5)

"The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state developed in the last centuries" (Schmitt, 36)

I found myself laughing

2007-02-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

I found myself laughing
And the self did say
Something, though I would,
I could not repeat.

In this laugh was a
Secret
Holding me to they, the one they, the total they,
The they of play and fixity

It was in them,
I found him,
And in him I found them

His name is Augustine
And in him I find Augustus,
But it is the prior gust
I seek, both Caesar
And slave, exalted
And crucified
Finalized and continued

There is a sense
That the laugh picks up
Where it left off

I picked up the first book
And I laughed
Such as Sarai had done
Doubting the tribes in
Her husband’s wrinkled
Test.

What sort of test?
Testicular, male, globes of potential
Nested in amongst marrow-less
Femurs
Empty bones, dry bones
Ezekiel laughed, he must have
Burning dung, lying on one side as
He did
Laughing at the past, laughing at the future
Modernity: who would lie, lay even
Who would lay such an old feller like he
Laying about
Wrinkled
With the smell of shite not so far off.

Laugh I tell you, laugh.
I picked up Augustine in his 44th year,
And I chortled at his childishness,
Playing with figuration as we was,
At the feet of God:
Do heaven and earth, then contain the whole of you, since you fill them?
Or,
When once you have filled them, is some part of you left over because they are too small to hold you?

If this is so, when you have filled heaven and earth, does that part of you which remains

Flow over into some other place?

God, do you laugh, filled up with you as you are?
Is there room for a belly shaking good howl?

If you were to laugh, would you laugh with
Sarai, laugh against Sarai? Would you laugh with
Abram, as he came against his humanity,
Would you laugh with him?

Would you laugh through him?
And laughing impregnate Mary,
By yourself, for yourself,
Against humanity, with humanity,
Laughing through the couplet,
Down through the cervix,
Out near the labia, and into the outro.

You Father were in the outro and the intro,
Above the Cross, on the Cross, below the Cross,
There was a moment, where I thought you cried,
Laughing, facing death,
Breathing in, committing spirit, unto
Yourself.

Where did you go for those three days?

I’m not laughing. You rent the veil;
Did you need to return it?
You wore the robe, did you need to mend it?

Dark comedy here? Feels a little sacrilege
To laugh at such a disappearance.

There is a pit, a wonderful pit,
In which the Father hides,
Is that where you went?
Into the tent? Beyond the curtain,
Home from the pig farm,
Donning the ring and the robe
Eating the slain lamb?

Is this a joke?
(three days passed without a laugh)

I guess not.

Up from the belly he a laughed,
Which a mighty snicker he did come,
He arose, a Victor, to be broken and eaten,
To be eaten and broken, till the end of days

He a laughed, he a laughed,
Hallelujah, he a laughed.

Quote of the Afternoon

2007-02-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

So I just finished my first article for Books in Canada, titled Newfoundland in Letters, and I have been asked to take up another on short fiction in Atlantic Canada. I'm glad to do this. It keeps me abreast of the new writing in the region, while helping me to fill out my CV and become a better writer.

But now that the article is off, I can focus on my comp reading again. Here is the quote that hit me this afternoon, Pickstock, After Writing again:

In contrast to the "urge" of Derridian differance, liturgical language is neither autonomously in command of itself, nor an instrument controlled invisibly by a lurking and manipulative power. Rather, its language is in several ways "impossible". For liturgy is at once a gift from God and a sacrifice to God, a reciprocal exchange which shatters all ordinary positions of agency and reception, especially as these have been conceived in the west since Scotus. Moreover, liturgical expression is made "impossible" by the breach which occurred at the Fall. This breach is the site of an apparent aporia, for it renders the human subject incapable of doxology, and yet, as I have suggested above in my analysis of the Phaedrus, the human subject is constituted (or fully central to itself) only in the dispossessing act of praise. However, the aproria is resolved in the person of Christ, whose resurrection ensures that our difficult liturgy is not hopeless, and enables us to rejoin the angelic liturgy taking place in an ambiguous and shifting space beyond our own. (176-7)

I heard "impossible" used as it is above, in a presentation by Alison Milbank, who was a reader of After Writing before it was published. She was speaking about Huysmans' decadent and satanic images of Christ which, she implied, were "impossible", yet which led him into the Church. I was trying to get at what impossible meant in that context and if she was playing on Pickstock's usage of it, then I think I know what she is about. Pickstock's very theory of the subject is constructed on an impossibility, that of opening to God, which is already transcended by God for us. Not too shaby: she takes Paul and makes him relevant to contemporary theoretical gobily-gook. I like it.

ECMAs and "the arse lickers of Satan"

2007-02-19T02:52:00.000-08:00

I was too touched by this not to post it (Perhaps McKay is the one that is a little "touched"):

The Trailer Park Boys — Bubbles, Ricky and Julian — busted out of jail and into the Halifax Metro Centre to host the awards, two of them still wearing their orange jumpsuits.

It is the second year the foul-mouthed TV and film stars, played by Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith, have played host.

The boys kept their language clean and performed a heart-warming rendition of Kitties are So Nice, with Bubbles on guitar.

However, Newfoundland and Labrador comedian Mary Walsh referred to the federal Conservatives as 'the arse-lickers of Satan' before introducing a performer.

The cameras then focused on Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, who had committed a faux pas earlier in the evening, when he mistakenly referred to Halifax as Toronto.

He drew a chorus of boos and was ribbed about it throughout the night.

Pickstock critiques my post on represention and the thing in itself

2007-02-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

So now that I have a pretty good handle on the Kantian conception of representation and synthetic imagination, Catherine Pickstock goes and messes everything up for me by telling me that this is attached to a nominalist conception of ideas, which thinks being univocally, rather then analogically, and which devoids the space between subject and object of divine participation (mathesis):

“In so far as the “real” is now determined by the intellect, and the first object of the intellect is now Being, it seems that Scotus anticipates the modern invention of the object and its distinction from the subject. …In consequence, the object is now defined on the basis of the concept, as representation. This departs from Aquinas’ Aristotelian theory of knowledge, whereby the form of a thing disengages itself from its matter and becomes a thought or “species” in our mind…[Scotus] opens up the possibility of an empiricism which thinks of material reality in terms of isolated atoms of information streaming in from the outside world, which the mind must then synthesize, since they act upon the mind in the mode of merely efficient causality. This involves a departure form the traditional hylomorphic view that the form of a thing is already synthesized before it “informs” the mind (even though the active intellect must bring out its full coherence), and that the thing fulfills itself in and through its comprehensibility. Such a view regards the knowing of a thing as commensurate with the known thing’s own constitutive repetition. For when the species is formed in our mind, the thing perceived happens again (since being is an event), or repeats itself, though in a different mode. Knowledge, for Aquinas, is therefore akin to an ontological event. In contrast to this, post-Scotist representation is equivalent to a de-ontological process, for the perceived object is reduced to an empirical exigency which simply happens to facilitate or occasion an act of cognition”. (After Writing, 130-1)

So instead of composing the cat from a bunch of sense data, Aquinas would encourage me to see the cat as a form already composed before it “informs” my mind. Now that it is in my mind, the active intellect must bring it to full coherence. When the “species” is formed in my mind (the ‘cat’ of Chloe, I’m suspecting), it is an event, not unlike being itself. This is how Aquinas demonstrates that knowledge is divine participation. In a way, God forms the cat as a whole, and sends it into my mind, at which point I must use my intellect to fully reveal the cat to myself (I suspect this is the inward light of Christ that fully reveals the cat as Chloe). And this revelation is an event, like a party. Have a beer. No, I insist.

So where Kant’s process emphasizes the assembly of the whole only by observance of the parts, Aquinas tells us that God creates the whole, which we must reveal to ourselves. I suspect this has more to do with waiting for the Polaroid picture to reveal itself, then it would connecting the dots of the image. Aquinas is a proponent of Gestalt psychology…and Kant believes in constructivism. I hadn’t realized that these 20th century debates fell along realist-nominalist divides.

Okay, here is something to think about: How does this relate to pointillism (and the TV colour matrix) and the previous preference for whole forms, say in a painting by Delacroix, or David? How does this relate to Alex Colville’s method? Is pointillism Kantian painting?

Now think about the camera. The camera doesn’t expose an image to parts. It captures the whole image. Even when the composition is of a part, say half of a face, the whole is presupposed, and it asks us to fill in the rest of the image, such that we are active viewers. Why would the mind assemble parts, if the film doesn’t? Is reality (what ever that is), really as partial as Kant suggests? Or is there a deeper order running through it all?

And a final thought: I can see that structuralism was a type of heuristic that sought out the logos, but which did so on univocal terms. I think we can revive the search for coherence, the logos, on analogical terms, without ever thinking that we have the logos cornered with any type of positivism.

Charles Taylor on CBC Radio One

2007-02-15T12:01:00.000-08:00

Charles Taylor on the Current, CBC Radio One. He's talking about that crazy town in Quebec that has said stupid things about Islam.

the real, the thing in itself (ding an sich)

2007-02-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

I just don't know what to think about "the real". It seems that no one thinks that we have any access to the "thing in itself". Reality for those of us born after the "social construction of reality" idea rose to ascendancy is only a construction. Some say it is a linguistic construction. Others say it is the construction of our senses. I don't know what to think, but my intuition tells me that I interact with things that are real and have real experiences with them.

Lets say I look across the room at my cat, sleeping on the blanket on top of the couch. I might linguistically relate this to you, but I do not linguistically relate this to myself. Some people do, but I don't look at the cat and have the words scroll through my head like some sort of wall street electric banner. I don't look at the couch and say couch. I just perceive the whole of the couch. This is where I'm tempted to deny the real. If I look at the cat, and I see say 45 percent of her body, my mind fills in the rest. I don't see a partial cat, I see the whole cat. But this is not a linguistic construction on my part. It is the privileging of the whole over the part, the ideal over the particulars of my visual perception. My imagination assembles the partial view I have, by looking to my tradition of seeing cats (my memory) and assimilating the sense data into a cat schema. Better yet, my imagination working with my memory knows the particulars of Chloe, my cat, and can recognize her at an instance. None of this is linguistically mediated. It isn't like my mind is constantly decoding a textual word into images that I am conscious of. No, I am in touch with the light that is reflected off my cat, which allows me to assimilate the colours, forms, patterns, volume and texture of my cat, such that I perceive the existence of the whole cat, even though part of the cat is hidden to me at all moments.

What isn't real in this equation? I'll tell you: the cat I construct in my mind isn't real, it is an image of the cat. But the light is real. The colours are real - they are not figurative approximations - there is no analogy at work here. The forms are real. How am I not experiencing the "thing in itself"? Certainly I do not experience the thing as Chloe experiences Chloe-catness, but I experience the visual expression of her catness.

Jean Luc Nancy likes to play with the idea that my representation of the cat is nothing but an interior extension of myself, somewhat like an interior phallus, which I "touch". Representation, to Nancy, is masturbatory. Sex is masturbatory. All life is masturbatory. This seems to be solipsism to me, the idea that I am the only mind, all else is simulacra.

Just rereading this post: I do find myself thinking about the "typo". Why if I compose a text, am I likely to read the whole word and not see the scrambled word, or dropped word. For instance, i will often write a sentence with they in it and drop the y. This may have something to do with the key board, but, nonetheless, I rarely catch my "y-less theys" on a proof-read. I'll catch them a day later. I just reread my last post and found a few typos. One that sticks out to me is redure which I read as rendure. I've just found out its spelled render. Anyway. The point is that I have a subjective bias because I can only encounter the world subjectively. Perhaps this is what the denial of "the real" is all about, but still, I don't like how this leads our popular culture to see all constructs as fictions, as arbitrary. That is just careless social theory, despite the fact that you hear such hogwash coming from intelligent people. It might have been arbitrarily assigned, but that don't mean it's arbitrary people. Tradition might be built on top of it. Which would make it real now, since it is a fixture in someone's reality. Oh, I may be pushing it here; it's off to dream land for me.

Frank Gehry and his Critics: Sketches of Frank Gehry

2007-02-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

Magnanimity is a quality that is lost on critics. I've just finished watching Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry (the architect that does the wavy titanium pieces - the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao Spain, the Music hall in LA and I think he's redoing the AGO in Toronto) , and I've been surfing around with the reviews. Figures like Eva Hagberg, weren't fans of this film, and I suspect they aren't fans of Gehry either (though I think Hagberg is ambivalent). Hagberg's probably right about Pollack's film, it is a bit too much of a celebration - not enough of an evaluation... what can you expect from a friend? But Hagberg, let's face it, you don't need to be an expert to tell if a piece of architecture is aesthetically interesting (technically interesting yes...). Now the average Schmoe won't be all that specific, though she may surprise you (you wanted me to use the male pronoun there didn't you). Gehry's Bilbao and his LA piece radically alter the aesthetics of their place for the better for the moment. Does architecture need to be eternal? Well the best pieces will have longevity, but it must also speak to the phenomenology of the contemporary city dweller, and on that level, Gehry's work all but forces a viewer to dwell poetically. It stands out in the midst of tall city shit, like an iceberg. Not necessarily there for eternity, but something to gawk at, in awe, for the time being. And the awe that a Gehry invites us to partake in is not the awe of totalitarianism...it is the awe of the passionate inwardness - the romantic expressivism of that aging hippy generation (you know the type - they drive Mercedes and hang on to the revolutionary urges of their youth).
Hal Foster, very much the aesthete, doesn't think that Gehry's work is worth all the hoopla. Foster gives the impression that he is rooting for the architect who ruptures the metanarratives, renders open the closures, the messianic type who celebrates provisionality and makes the ordinary (chain link) extraordinary. To Foster the early Gehry is an artist, the later Gehry...a sellout. But let's examine the nature of this sellout. I can agree that some of his stuff is pretty shitty, but I can also ascent to the praise that is extended to his work at Bilbao. Bilbao and the LA piece do rupture the skyline. They explode the city forms. They look like futurist sculptures that are lived in. Now Foster is right to say that Gehry shouldn't be heralded as the greatest living artist because of this, but this shouldn't take away from the sublimity of his work. I, for one, can appreciate his pieces without the need to deify him. After all, there are lots of 'conformity buildings' to compare his work to, and I can tell the difference without any training.

To Foster's credit, he claims that he needs to hold to a critical line, as a critic, so that the public will know that dissenting voices are permitted, available. I think this is a valuable role for an artist to play, but lets identify the object we are playing with - consensus - and not the object of art. Magnanimity is worth exploring. Greatness, something both Foster and Gehry know a bit about, is a privilege that is not a privilege for the sake of debasing others. Greatness need not exist on a Darwinian plain of violence and competition. Greatness can stand on its own, in its own presence, among other great presences, without fear of limited space.

By the way, Hagberg is on point about Julian Schnabel; Pollack completely mis-reads him:

"and Julian Schnabel, who (in a brilliantly critical farce that Pollack seems to have missed) shows up in a terrycloth robe with a brandy snifter in one hand and a cigarette in the other, dropping loaded one-liners like "It makes me want to put my stuff in there." They get it: Frank's just fucking with us".

What Hagberg isn't clear about who her "us" is that Frank fucks with...I think Frank is fucking with them, for our benefit...

Download the Gehry film at Greylodge (lord knows neither he nor Pollack needs the money)

Note: Zizek! and Sketches of Frank Gehry have both shocked me with the quirkiness of their subjects. It is interesting to see such heterogeneous personalities, with their odd gestures, tones of voice, neuroses. You swear it was a Woody Allen conspiracy.

Quote of the evening

2007-02-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

'Religion is the Real as the impossible Thing beyond phenomena, the Thing that “shines through” phenomena in sublime experiences; atheism is the Real as grimace of reality, as the gap, the inconsistency, of reality. This is why the standard religious reproach to atheists (“But you cannot really understand what it is to believe!”) has to be turned around: our “natural” state is to believe; the truly difficult thing to grasp is the atheist position. Here one should move against the Derridean/Levinasian assertion of the kernel of religion as the belief in the impossible Real of a spectral Otherness that can leave its traces in our reality—the belief that this reality of ours is not the Ultimate Reality. Atheism is not the position of believing only in the positive (ontologically fully constituted, sutured, closed)reality; the most succinct rien n’aura eu lieu que le lieu definition of atheism is precisely “religion without religion”—the assertion of the void of the Real deprived of any positive content, prior to any content, the assertion that any content is a semblance which fills in the void. “Religion without religion” is the place of religion deprived of its content, like Mallarme’s—this is atheism’s true formula—“nothing takes place but the place itself.” Although this may sound similar to the Derridean/Levinasian “Messianic Otherness,” it is its exact opposite: it is not “the inner messianic Truth of religion minus religion’s external institutional apparatuses” but, rather, the form of religion deprived of its content, in contrast to the Derridean/Levinasian reference to a spectral Otherness, which does not offer the form, but the empty content of religion. Not only do both religion and atheism insist on the Void, on the fact that our reality is not ultimate and closed—the experience of this Void is the original materalist experience, and religion,
unable to endure it, fills it in with religious content.'
diacritics / spring 2001 100-101 Zizek The Rhetoric of Power

Even if you don't agree with this guy, you have to marvel at his rhetoric like you would the unfathomable card tricks of a illusionist. Zizek the illusionsist...
There is a point in The Sublime Object of Ideology where he freaked me out with revelation: you do not know it but you do it. You practice Capitalism everyday. How do you rupture it? Stop practicing Capitalism...

Zizek on Job p102 The Rhetoric of Power

Against this temptation, one should precisely locate the true greatness of Job: contrary to the usual notion of Job, he is not a patient sufferer, enduring his ordeal with firm faith in God. On the contrary, he complains all the time, rejecting his fate (like Oedipus at Colonus, who is also usually misperceived as a patient victim resigned to his fate). When the three theologian friends visit him, their line of argumentation is the standard ideological sophistry (if you suffer, by definition you must have done something wrong, since God is just). However, their argumentation is not limited to the claim that Job must somehow be guilty: what is at stake at a more radical level is the meaning(lessness) of Job’s suffering. Like Oedipus at Colonus, Job insists on the utter meaninglessness of his suffering. As the title of Job 27 says: “Job Maintains His Integrity.” As such, the Book of Job provides what is perhaps the first exemplary case of the critique of ideology in human history, laying bare the basic discursive strategies of legitimizing suffering: Job’s properly ethical dignity resides in his persistent rejection of the notion that his suffering can have any meaning, either as punishment for his past sins or as a trial of his
faith, against the three theologians who bombard him with possible meanings. Surprisingly, God takes his side at the end, claiming that every word Job has spoken was true, while every word of the three theologians was false.

Job as ideology buster. And here I though ideology was a post-Cartesian/Kantian construct.

Quote of the afternoon

2007-02-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

Is Socrates talking about the modern love song here?

Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in the arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention; but when you leave the commonplaces, then there may be some originality. (Phaedrus Jowett translation)

But when you leave the commonplaces, then there may be some orginality. This little quote will stay with me. Makes a lot of sense.

Quote of the morning

2007-02-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

Book XI, 4, The Confession of St. Augustine

Earth and the heavens are before our eyes. The very fact that they are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; whereas if anything exists that was not created, there is nothing in it that was not there before; and the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. Earth and the heavens also proclaim that they did not create themselves. 'We exist', they tell us, 'because we were made. And this is proof that we did not make ourselves. For to make ourselves, we should have had to exist before our existence began.' And the fact that they plainly do exist is the voice which proclaims this truth.

It was you, then, O Lord, who made them, you who are beautiful for they too are beautiful; you who are good, for they too are good; you who ARE, for they too are, But they are not beautiful and good as you are beautiful and good, nor do they have their being as you, their Creator, have your being. In comparison with you they have neither beauty nor goodness nor being at all. This we know, and thanks be to you for this knowledge. But our knowledge, compared with yours, is ignorance.

...

Me: Compare this to the bad translation online. It's amazing how creativity must meet creativity to keep translated works alive. This passage is spectacular for the way it describes the relations between our qualities and those of God. Augustine effortlessly explains the analogy of being, that God and humans exist in analogical relation: our beauty is an analogy of God's beauty. Many protestants give analogical thinking up because it exalts human nature higher than Luther et al would permit. After all, we are made only a little lower then the angels. I was quite moved by reading Marilyn Robinson's little essay on Psalm 8 a few years back. You can find it in her collection The Death of Adam. As a protestant thinker - congregational I believe, she has a wonderful understanding of the analogia entis (analogy of being). Her Pulitzer prize winning novel, Gilead glimmers with analogical insights, not the least of which is the central character's quest to bless his God-son. Very moving, and this comes from a man with a stone heart (ah, but there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in).

I'm minutes away from finishing Theology and Social Theory - another one bites the dust!

Quote of the afternoon

2007-02-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

"Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain." (Augustine Civitas Dei, XIV 6)

I had no idea that this was Augustine's logic. I find myself encountering elements of classical Christianity in the Christianity of today, and I am amazed because never suspected these ideas/phrases were so old. For all I knew, "hate the sin and love the sinner" could have been Billy Graham or John Wesley, but lo and behold, it's granddaddy Augustine. Perhaps we are more orthodox then we think??

Quote of the morning

2007-02-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

"Whereas the civitas terrena inherits its power form the conqueror of a fraternal rival [Romulus kills Remus to control Rome] , the 'city of God on pilgrimage through this world' founds itself not in a succession of power, but upon the memory of the murdered brother, Abel slain by Cain" (394 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory)

Flicks: Zizek!; Double Indemnity; the Tommy Douglas Story; Dreamgirls

2007-02-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

"The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx's 'Capital': 'They do not know it; but they are doing it'" Zizek! (12:27)

Last night I watched the documentary Zizek! (2005); today, to escape the bitter cold (-25 Celsius), I stayed inside and watched Double Indemnity (1944), a film that Zizek is looking for in his documentary (and one that I have been meaning to watch for some time). Now I'm watching Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story (2006, CBC mini-series). Last night before Zizek, I saw Dreamgirls (2006). I was very disappointed in Dreamgirls, which is nominated for almost everything this award season (though I was glad to see that it wasn't nominated for best picture). Dreamgirls is poorly written. It is a musical that is badly translated into film. I'm tired of this musical to film business anyway. Also, the Motown story would be much better as just that, the Motown story, and not the almost Motown story. I will say this: Jennifer Hudson can sing like a banshee, and she's not a bad actor. Also, Eddie Murphy does a good job of playing a James Brown-like soul man who is forced to sing like Lionel Richie by the Berry Gordy Jr analogue (Jamie Foxx).

The common thread in all these films (and the good thing about Dream Girls): the corruptions of capitalism. Zizek is a lacanian-socialist, Tommy Douglas was a Baptist Socialist (the best kind - much better then the National Socialist), Double Indemnity's lesson is on the corruption of money, and has a corrupt insurance sales man who kills an oilman (sounds socialist to me...though the best detective ends up being the claims guy, Keats, at the insurance company). Bill Condon tackles the market's effect on the forms of black music (though he seems to bask in the production of Motown parody). At one point the Gordy Jr. character (Foxx) tells the Diana Ross character (Beyonce) that he made her lead singer over the Florence Ballard character because Ross's voice was so thin that he could put anything he wanted into it, whereas Ballard's voice was too rooted in black tradition to for him to control.

The Tommy Douglas story is excellent. There is a great representation of the 1931 Bienfait Miner Strike, where the RCMP killed three peaceful, protesting and singing Miners, calling them Communist (mostly because of racist attitudes towards Ukrainians who populated the town). Here is a little exchange between Douglas and the man he beat as Premier, Jimmy Gardiner:

Jimmy Gardiner: Bit of a difference between your table and my mine isn't there? People notice these things you know.

Douglas: If people notice that I don't need a private room to eat my dinner that is, ah, fine by me.

Jimmy: That's not what they notice. They notice that you may be premier but this is still my table in my restaurant in my town in my Provence, you've only got it on loan.

Douglas: We all get it on loan Jimmy that is the concept of democracy.

Gardiner: No sir the concept of democracy is that business goes on as usual regardless of who gets elected. You could call yourself a socialist reverend, but this is a capitalist country and the people won't stand for it.

Douglas: Well the capitalists lost this time. Enjoy your table. (5:1 4:00)

Now I'm not sure about Douglas's position on democracy, but I certainly like how he practiced justice. One of my biggest fears as of late is that democracy is the opiate of the masses, the idea that you can have effect, that you can control the market. I think the real problem in 21st global politics is that democracy has little hold on the market and political forms won't until we have some sort of global political power that can restrict and discipline the market. Our environment hangs in the balance, as do our particular identities, our localities, our religions, our accents, our languages (other then English).

A word on the Zizek! documentary: I was amazed at how quirky he is. I've been reading his works for three years now and I had no idea what he was like in person. I'm also very impressed by the film, especially the ending. But this is what I'm most impressed by: the film was made by Astra Taylor, who was born in 1979 in Saskatchewan, who studied at the New School for Social Research, has published a book, and is working on her third film or so. She's also taught two courses. It makes me feel like I'm letting the world pass me by.

On Givenness

2007-02-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

Marcel Mauss started a debate about gifting and gift exchange in 1924, by producing an ethnographic work, The Gift, which denied the existence of a free gift. Since then the debate about gifting, which was grounded in material exchange, has drifted into discourses on ontology, phenomenology and theology. This Fall (2006), I heard Margaret Visser give a work shop based on the word "thanks", and its relationship to gifting. She was examining the difference between "Thanks" (and its etymology in the German Dank, and Dink) to its analogue in the Romance languages "Gracias" (grace, gratuity). German forces you to think about what it costs someone, where as Latin acknowledges the prior givenness of the gift. Thanks leads us to accounting, where as Grace leads us to the Feast. I think Visser has more tact then I, prone as I am to drawing harsh lines and caricatures.

Derrida got his hands on this topic and argued for an inaccessible purity in gifting. According to Derrida, the free gift must meet this requirements:
1. There is no reciprocity
2. The recipient must not recognize the gift as a gift or himself as the recipient of a gift
3. The donor must not recognize the gift, either
4. The thing itself cannot appear as a "gift" (I lifted this from the Wiki article on Mauss's The Gift, though it is Derrida's position as recounted in Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite.)

For Derrida, the purity of the gift is exalted to unreachable ends. It makes me think of his analysis of Law in Kafka's famous "Before the Law". With Kafka the Law is unattainable and so far beyond human understanding that one can only stand before the law and grow old (and less as less of a specimen of lawful life). It reminds me of Roman 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". I can assent to this; however, I think that it is quite clear that Christ thinks right action is knowable (and doable), even though perfection is unattainable by anyone other than the Christ. Still, we must long to be perfect (I used to read Christ's "Be ye perfect like your Father in heaven" as ultimate irony, but I have changed my tune: I think we cannot but attempt such perfection, otherwise we do nothing). Gifting is part of perfection because it is part of God's being. The Father, who is complete in and of himself, cannot help but extend himself in creation through the Word, and the world cannot help but respond fully to such extension as there is nothing (evil) to restrict the perfect perception (a non-response is, in the end, nothing). This is to say that there is no re-presentation in God; the Spirit is one of complete fidelity between subject and object, speaker and spoken, spoken and heard, given and returned. This seems to be a bit of a closed (feedback) loop, if we don't open it to the limited beings, humanity. Because every aspect of humanity is completely given (life, soul-mind, knowledge, love, tradition, language, politics, ontology - except evil), all humanity can do is participate in a gift economy that is beyond human ability to reciprocate. As I write "beyond", I do not mean to say that humans can't aspire to God's ability to freely give from an infinite source, only to say they humans cannot do this without tapping the God-source in the first place. Humans cannot freely give without participating in God.

How is this enacted in the Catholic Church? The Eucharistic ceremony, whereby God gives his body (the Word, language...don't forget it, infused in materiality as it is) to his body, to join them to him in giving, that they might then give to the broader community as he gave to them, and extend the circulation of gift (truth, goodness, beauty).

I was inspired to write on this when I was reading Milbank's small essay "The Gift and the Given". Here are some highlights from his essay (his gift?):

"Supposing that I am myself, really, ontologically a gift? Then one does not immediately need to invoke the other in order to grant oneself this status. If mind or spirit is more than an illusory epiphenomenon, then it does not derive from matter, and must be in consequence a mysterious and fundamental gift from the unknown (Bruaire, 1983). If I am myself a gift, then what lurks in me from before myself is more than the human, horizontal other. It is rather the trace of a vertical donor. And it seems appropriate that this donor, ‘God’, who gives gifts to nothing, and so gives gifts to themselves in order to establish gifts, should create first of all a creature able reflexively to exist by giving this gift to herself in turn. Is this not what it means to think (Bruaire, 1983)? Then gratitude for the gift of self spills later over into generosity towards the neighbour in imitation of that generosity that has first constituted us in being at all." (445)

Milbank's key insight, from my perspective, is that Mauss and other reduce gifting to contracting, which is totally immanent, with no aspect of transcendence, and no relationship to Gift as givenness - tradition/culture/language - the prior gifts none of us can escape, to which we can add little as individuals.

Here is a long quote from Milbank that is worth suffering through (Milbank has incarnated the via dolorosa into his prose, just as Derrida has incarnated play into his):

But to speak of spoken sign as gift – what does this mean? If a gift is a signifying convention then is it at bottom a fiction? Is the impossibility of the pure gift according to Derrida (because we award ourselves economically even in telling ourselves that we have been generous) coterminous with the endless deferral of meaning by the sign, such that to speak is to endlessly project the arrival of meaning, while to act ethically is endlessly to strive towards a generosity that cannot be enacted? This implies, however, as Derrida was aware, that postponement of meaning nonetheless remains ‘truer’ than a foreclosed presence of truth, while equally the impossible gift remains ‘the good’ in a way that economic and contractual self-assurance cannot be. So 11: What is the co-implication between gift and fiction?

Is meaning just postponed? Or can it be in some measure anticipated? And if not, then is the gift basically a sign, a promise of special attention that can never be realized? But perhaps, to the contrary, a sign has always a material vehicle, like the person speaking, the medium in which it is inscribed, the actions, place and time that accompany it. This vehicle itself supplements the import of the sign, and not just the next sign to which it gives rise. This ensures that some meaning is already realized. Is this meaning a suppression of indeterminacy, or does it of itself open up a specific but open horizon of meaning? If it does not, then the significance of the material for meaning seems to be suppressed, by arbitrary fiat. But a sign proffered by a material someone deploying a material vehicle is not just a sign, it is also a gift. Inversely, a material thing handed over must be also a sign in order to be a gift. So gift is the exact point of intersection between the real and the signifying. It thereby exceeds the contrast between history and fiction, just as, at the instance where we receive joyfully a gift, our lives have become saturated with meaning, like novels, as if we were truly living out a dream. Thus, the instance of the gift is the instance of the closing of the gulf between the fictional and the desired on the one hand and the real and the tedious on the other.

And yet this instance only reminds us that such closure is more fundamental than the rift since, originally, no material thing appears to us before it has been interpreted as in some way significant; nor, on the other hand, can any signified meaning ever entirely float free of material actuality. Where this cultural presupposition is seen as itself a response to a prior gift (sign/reality) then one has ‘religion’. Where the latter is absent, then the unavoidable presupposition of original gift – the givenness of gift, both historically and ontologically, for human existence – is placed, with a constant effort, in ironic brackets. Then the gift is seen as only a fantasy in order to escape the givennness of an endless drift, rising up without generosity from a fundamental void. All then unravels: there can be really no gift, unilateral or reciprocal, but only the assertive gestures of power and their self-interested mutual contracting.

So, finally, 12: Is the gift the echo of divine creation and of divine grace? And otherwise, is it an illusion? (445-6)

There we have it: Power or Peace?

The Legitimacy of Modernity: Blumenberg, Lowith, Schmitt, Milbank and the Pomos

2007-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

How did the Modern world emerge? Is it, as some claim, a disobedient child of modernity, or does it have a legitimate identity of its own, independent of Christendom? This is what Robert Wallace, translator of Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of Modernity has to say:

“Blumenberg makes it clear here that while the modern age is not the result of a transformation (whether through ‘secularization’ or any other process) of something that was originally Christian, this does not mean that it sprang into existence spontaneously, as though into a historical void. The continuity underlying the change of epoch is, he says, a continuity of problems rather than of solutions, of questions rather then of answers. Instead of remaining forever fixated on ‘doctrines’ or ‘ideas’ as the stuff of our tradition, we need to learn to relate these to the human activity of inquiring, of questioning, which gives them their relevance and concrete meaning. When we do so, Blumenberg suggests, we may find other kinds of continuity besides those of rightful inheritance or illegitimate misappropriation, and other kinds of novelty besides that of unprovoked ‘creation from nothing’” (Robert Wallace xviii).

Blumenberg wants to see modernity as springing from a Christian context, but what springs has to have a different composition then what fell. His critique of Lowith is on grounds of continuity. In emphasizing the illegitimacy of progress (bad providence), Lowith highlights how progress fails where providence didn’t. Blumenberg wants to claim the opposite. That progress is not deprived providence, but that providence was such an insufficient prototype of progress that we cannot highlight their identity; we must emphasize their difference, the rupture of Christendom. How did this rupture occur? 1. Science moved beyond Scientia; Bacon et al overcame Aristotle. 2. The literary arts overcame classicism (Wallace xvii-xviii). Both of these innovations occurred in the 17th century.
Do I agree with Blumenberg? Partially. I think that Blumenberg is right to complicate the genealogy of progress. If we stress continuity too much then we oversimplify the context and the issues that lead to progress. However, I think that Blumenberg is trying to smuggle Lowith’s thesis back into this text, by demonstrating how continuity is a mistake, but by linking providence and progress through a more complicated narrative.

However, I think that we need to turn to Carl Schmitt and consider how the idea of the nation state has emerged from Christendom. Blumenberg might have more on his hands then he thinks?:

“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development – in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God become the omnipotent lawgiver – but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state developed in the last centuries” (Political Theology 36).

What becomes clear in Schmitt’s analysis is that he is using analogical reasoning, which recognizes that when we highlight a similarity, that similarity is couched in a great number of differences (I want to say infinite here but I fear I may be misusing the term). I sense that Blumenberg has adopted a flat view of being, univocity, which interprets all things with being, as being of the same genera. Analogy would claim that there is always a difference between different orders of being. That we must preserve this distance between Being (of God) and being (of man). This complicates Lowith’s thesis on continuity – progress is analogously related to providence. The state is analogously related to the Church.

It struck me that Milbank’s interpretation of the liberal subject and the secular realm is relevant to this discussion. Milbank claims that the secular realm is not only related to the Church, but that it is a theological construction which emerges from Medieval thinking (religious and secular realms and priests). He also claims that the creation of secular space in protestant settings was firstly a theological creation. Milbank claims that Locke and Hobbes argued for private property by considering Adam's mythological position in the Garden of Eden. Milbank extends his argument to the providence in Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market place, and to socialism in de Bonald's (and Saint-Simon's) positive (and Catholic) state.

There is another level, or context, for this general argument – the relationship between Christendom and Modernity - that I we need to consider: Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy have launched a full fledged deconstruction of Christianity (and Foucault had an implicit argument about the relationship between Christian confession and modern subjectivity). Why do we need to deconstruct Christianity if Modernity is legitimate on its own? I think Derrida, Nancy and Foucault have sided with Lowith in claiming that Modernity is still intimately related to Christendom, so intimately that it must still kill the Christendom Father in order to evade its shadow.

Peter Erb on Augustine

2007-01-31T11:39:00.000-08:00

So I've been sitting in on Peter Erb's last class at WLU. He's teaching Augustine's Confessions, but he's still creating the theoretical background for a postmodern interpretation of Augustine (with Erb this means treating Augustian as a rhetoritian, not as a philosopher). The class with change radically when we finally crack the text. Over the last two classes he extended an argument about western culture, claiming that our political and legal forms, along with the core or our normative values, our civil society, are all secularized forms of Christendom. He was using Schmitt's Political Theology and Karl Lowith's Meaning in History to support this view. He was calling the west "a disobedient Christian step-child". Then he moved on to sketch the rize of postmodernity in the academy, which is important for his interpretation of Augustine, as he claims pomo has given the victory to rhetoric/sophists over the philosophers (sounds like Milbank here). Today he continued to set up postmodernism through a narrative about authorial intention and the search for the author. He claimed that modernist forms, especially in Biblical studies, were obsessed with authorship. Then came Karl Barth, the New Critics, Eliot, all of who stressed textual tradition and made way for structuralist insights. According to Erb, the key players in structuralism were not Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, but rather Chomsky on Language and Frye on cultural code. He said Chomsky and Frye hit North America by storm in 1957, and the interest in the French followed after. Then Erb moved to poststructuralism (just to get Judith Butler's back up I suppose) and he began to explain Derrida's negation of Heidegger, which we all understood to be Derrida's continuation of Heideggerian questions with more radical results. Needless to say, most of the lecture on Derrida was about Heidegger. We were looking at Heidegger's concept of a "house of language", he comment that dasein lives on earth, but in the world. Erb claimed the difference between the earth and the world is that the earth sustains us physically, while the world is our cultural imaginary. It is in the world that Angels live, but only if we dwell poetically. He commented on Heidegger's critique of instrumental reason and technology, and his late pronouncement about dwelling poetically as a type of figurative play. I think he was going to extend this to Derrida next class. Anyway, I thought I would post his lectures on z share, and compile a list of links on my blog sidebar (Martini anyone?).
Jan 24 07
Erb sets up Pomo 1
Erb sets up Pomo 2
Jan 31 07
Erb on the Rise of Structuralism
Erb on Heidegger and Derrida

Another Last Supper

2007-01-30T08:26:00.000-08:00

This freaks me out a bit - mostly the plasticine Christ. Though it reminds me of the mural at Sacre-Coeur in Montmarte, Paris.

Religion, Ethnicity and the God of the Helium Baloon

2007-01-30T06:34:00.000-08:00

A friend got me thinking about the relationship between ethnicity and religion last night. She's working on Judaism in Comedy and Film, I'm working on Christianity in Literature. So we began talking about Larry David's relationship to his Jewishness in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and how that differed from Seinfeld's Jewishness [of which David was a co-creator(the TV show, not Seinfeld's biology)]. In CYE David is very Jewish, on Seinfeld Jewishness is minimalized. On some level this boils down to a difference between NBC and HBO, but on another level it relates to a change in the Western Imaginary regarding how we deal with religious identity (the personal is political, or at least public). Then we threw John Stewart in the mix. To me Stewart is the "whitest" Jew in the media. His religion isn't all that public. His Jewishness is narrowly ethnic. It is something he might check off on a census - I'm speaking of his public persona. Who knows what the off screen Stewart is like?.

From Stewart it is never a big jump to Stephen Colbert, but it did move the boarders of our conversation from Judaism to Christianity. To me Colbert is a new innovation for "white" America, in that he relates to his identity markers in a way that used to be particular to religious minorities (perhaps this has to do with being Catholic in the south?). Colbert has a heterosexual camp aesthetic. He is hyper self-conscious, riddled with irony, and yet has none of the hesitation that usually comes with reflection. He is all performance, all surface (is there a little of Groucho here?). The big difference between Larry David and Colbert, however, is that Colbert is post-religious (he denies this), while David is playfully religious. Where Colbert wants to secularize, David wants to tease.

What makes Colbert post-religious is the intentional emptiness of his religious utterances. He celebrates differance in his use of religious rhetoric. While David can still recoup the Seder supper, finding meaning in inviting the local pedophile to the table (S5E7), Colbert repeatedly exposes dominant evangelical rhetoric of inwardness and evidential apologetics to ridicule (perhaps this is a Catholic mode after all?).

Anyway, I started thinking about ethnicity and the protestant tradition in Atlantic Canadian literature, which is an ironic way of saying it because protestants have no literary tradition in AtCan. Catholics on the other hand do. It is mostly Catholics who write, aside from the odd secular or areligious "traditionalist" here or there. I think the difference here has to do with identity and ethnicity. In Canada the only protestants who make a big deal about their identity in literature are either Mennonite (usually Russian) or Aficadian (African Acadian - I'm thinking of you GE Clarke). But the rest of the protestants go on as though ethnicity doesn't matter a lick. Catholics, on the other hand, have a deep relationship to identity markers. When a Catholic writes, her religious identity is throughly incarnated in locality, nature, religious symbolism, linguistic nuance, history (this is even the case when the Catholic has lost her faith - see Lynn Coady's Strange Heaven). But none of this is of issue for protestants in Canada. Why? This is my initial answer, and I appeal to a theology to do so (sociologically the answer is that majority voices in power have nothing to write about because they write policy). I think Protestants put too much emphasis on Galatians 3:28, "In Christ there is neither Jew no Greek, Slave nor Master, Male nor Female, because you are all one in Christ Jesus". Now it is not the anti-racist unity bit that I critique here, but the idea that Christian identity totally transcends ethnicity, gender and class. It's not even transcendence that I'm critiquing but rather a specific interpretation of transcendence. Nominalism, the idea that linguistic creations have no ontological status, encourages us to over- emphasize the transcendence of God and create an unbridgeable distance between ultimate things and human knowledge. In Protestant services we see the effects of this in communion, where the elements are understood as empty symbols. Catholics have a tradition that stresses realism, the idea that some linguistic creations have ontological status - particularly truth, goodness, and beauty. If a Catholic approaches the Eucharist after it has been consecrated it is thought that Christ's body is "really" there in the substance of the elements (let's not overextend this thought). This is to say that when a Catholic takes the Eucharist they are participating in God's being.

Now apply this to the world. Where a Catholic sees a beautiful locality, there a Catholic sees the blessing of God. For a Protestant, God is so beyond his creation that that beauty may be an unreliable indicator of God. Instead the Protestant attempts to discern the Spirit's inward movement regarding the land. If a Catholic, say Dante, sees a beautiful woman, say Beatrice, then that Catholic recognizes God's radiance in that woman. A Protestant tells the woman to cover up lest she urge him to sin (this is why secularized protestants fetishize nudity). Clearly I'm creating caricatures, but there is some truth to these descriptions. Largely, Protestants have severed the tension and play between imminence and transcendence such that God floats away from the earth like a lost helium balloon (it is as though God never came to the earth in the first place). For Catholics, God is the Helium that makes the earth float. Apply this to ethnicity - Irish Catholic, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, Quebecois, Acadian, Catholic Newfoundlander - clearly Catholicism incarnates God's blessing in ethnicity. But what happens with Prods? Our new identity in God is so far "above" ethnicity that ethnicity becomes the "bad" matter that a gnostic attempts to overcome through spirit. I think that Protestants go so far in effacing ethnicity that they have few theological resources through which to communicate the idea that that God blesses all ethnic particularities. On the other end of the spectrum, in secularized protestantism, we see the emergence of the idolatry of ethnicity - Nazism and the Fatherland, The American South and Jim Crow, Mid-19th century British imperialism (the Fatherland becomes the substitute for the lost God). All of these idolatries begin to emerge as Protestantism secularizes, as the Father floats farther away from the earth.

The question is, how far are we going to let him float off before we begin to revalue ethnicity? Can we do this in Protestantism, or are the ecclesiological forms too corrupted by nominalism to redeem? Is conversion in order?

FYI: Here is interesting talk Mark Noll gave on the effect of space on Religious Diversity in North America.

Skiing the Mill-Run.

2007-01-29T12:30:00.000-08:00

I got up early this morning and ran to the bakery to get my wife some bread for her sandwich. On the way there I realized that it was a perfect day for a cross-country ski. I came home, wished my wife well, and settled into a book I'm reviewing. My plan was to wait for the temperature to rise, take a ski before lunch.
At 10:30 I suited up, dewaxed then rewaxed my skis, and set out down the path that runs beside the Conestoga river. Halfway down the path I veer off to the right, down into a farmers field. I skied this field twice before, but today my tracks are blown over. I know that if I can find my old tracks, there will be a base of crystallized snow that will keep me from sinking below the crust. The wind is bitter, but the day is clear. I head through the field and I'm surprised by the wind: it travels across the ice like it would open water. The loose snow animates the wind coming my way. Suddenly the squall hits me and the woosh of wind dominates my senses. I'm almost stopped in my tracks. I round the corner and come to the dirt road. I can see the river to my right. I take off my skis and cross the road. There is a damn up along the river. The water below it is open, but I'm interested in the pool at the top. I ski up the incline. The river is frozen, but I'm not sure how stable it is. I side step down to the ice and hammer around with my poles. Solid. I ski across the short inlet thinking about what I might do if the ice cracks. Climbing back on to land, it strikes me that I'm trespassing, but as long as no one confronts me I'm free. I can pass, all my senses tell me this. Only the discontinued fence behind me warns me of the rule of law, private property. I head up along the river, but the wind is fierce. I tighten my hood until my neck is sore from the restriction. I head into the wind. Eventually I've had enough. I turn around and can feel the wind talking the back of my jacket like a sail, pushing me back along my tracks. It is no time before I'm back to the damn. I side step up the bank. Hay is stuck to the wax of my left ski. I slide them back and forth, then head down the hill waiting for a fall. The ride is quick, and it carries me to the road. I'm back in the field, cruising with the wind, sun is beating down on my face. I open my jacket to the nape of my neck for ventilation. Crossing on my tracks to the meeting point with the mill-run trail, I notice some foot prints going off to my left. Turning on to this trail, my stomach lifts to my mouth, my eyes hit the sky, my feet come out from under me, and I feel the moment of weightlessness before I hit the ground. I lay there for a second, surprised at the swiftness of my fall. I'm not hurt. I push myself up with my right pole and it curves so far I fear it will snap. I head down the trail. Light snow is heaped up on the trees. It follows the field. I think it will meet up with the Conestoga. I duck under a tree, I roll down a series of woopdeedoos. My skis are fast. The sun is warm, the wind is gone. I take off my toque, unzip my jacket. I realize that interspersed with the human tracks are a dog's paw prints, and to my surprise, a cloven hoof. A big deer print. Must be a buck. This close to town? The sun is warm in the way that winter can be so much like a warm summer day. This is beyond what I expected. I abandon the path. I can see the river and I must stand beside it. Some of the water is open. Two ducks are riding the rapids. I'm tempted on to the ice, but I know better. I stand, patient. I turn around and head back to the trail, needing my poles to make up the elevation. Back on the path, I've lost my deer. I'm ducking under trees, avoiding rogue thickets that catch up my tips and my poles. I kick through them. The sun disappears. I feel lost. I head across a frozen pool. The trail extends to my right. I recognize a rest spot from my summer runs. I see a ramp of earth that meets the path. I release my skis. Climb over the log, grab my skis and head up to the path. I'm less then a kilometer from home. The worn hard pack is fast, but my form is off. I've waxed for new snow, it is old. Somehow I hit a groove and burst to the rail bridge. The poodle spies me, a beast that moves too smooth, with sounds swish swish. Should I say something to the owner, should I assume a gender of the animal, or refer to its genus. She speaks before me. Lots of laughter, loud, covering up for her violation of social norms. What did she violate. I can't say, but her laughter betrays her, we both know. I sprint to the end of the trail. Take off my skis and walk the 100 metres home thinking about the minestrone soup I'll warm for dinner.

Indie music and secular theology - Isaac Brock

2007-01-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

So I've just confirmed something that I had suspected for some time. The common denominator behind (some of) these indie bands that are doing a sort of secular theology is Isaac Brock, the lead singer of Modest Mouse and a former A&R for subpop (he signed Wolf Parade and invited the Shins to tour with him). As I've mentioned before, I'm intrigued by the theology of "Saint Simon" by the Shins, "Ocean Breathes Salty" and "Bukowski" from Modest Mouse's last lp, as well as "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" and "I'll believe in anything" by Wolf Parade. Frankly there is a litany of artists playing with or participating in God these days: Champion (Oh Lord, there ain't no heaven); K-os (everyday is Saturday night but I can't wait for Sunday morning); The Hold Steady (I feel Jesus in the tenements of young and awkward lovers / I feel Judas in the pistols and the pagers that come with all the powder); Death Cab for Cutie (If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied / illuminate the nos on their vacancy signs ... then I'll follow you into the dark). What I notice in Champion is that he evokes "the Lord" while he negates the Lord's product (?) - heaven, and uses the vocal idioms of spirituals (post-spirituals - this might apply to Moby as well). With Death Cab what we have is just the desire to mine a catholic background for poetic phrases, but the fixation on darkness and the persistence of substance, of life, this does seem to be a secular eschatology. There is a wish to step beyond symbolism into some unity of identity. This must have to do with the ubiquity of the media, and the desire to escape it.

You hear something similar in the Shins "Saint Simon" (which now comes with Windows XP - hows that for indie?). The singer wants to let his guard down, allow himself no mock defense and step into the night. But his night is not a night of lack or negation, but rather the appearance of lady mercy (Our Lady of Mercy in a cloud of sonic beauty), with eyes so blue, which evokes this pietist response (nothing holds a roman candle to the sudden warmth you feel inside of you). The title of the song is also puzzling - Saint Simon - which leads you to think about the Catholic Canon, but which actually signifies the father of socialism, French positivist Saint-Simon. Thus the escape from answers seems not to be an escape from religion, but rather from politics, or political theory. This escape leads to mercy, and an encounter with beauty - the city of God?

But if the Shins are contemplating the city of God, Modest Mouse is protesting the truthiness of contemporary Augustinians. Throughout The Good Times are Killing Me Brock lists the faults of God (seemingly to God - like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof):

If God controls the land and disease
Keeps a watchful eye on me
If he's really so damn mighty
My problem is that I can't see
Well who'd wanna be?
Who'd wanna be such a control freak?
Well who'd wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak? (Bukowski)

But in between his disillusioned questioning, Brock provides some lines that approach the sacramental (Ocean Breathes Salty):

Your body may be gone, I’m gonna carry you in.
In my head, in my heart, in my soul.
And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both live again.
Well I don’t know. I don’t know.
I don’t know. Don’t think so.
...
Well that is this and this is this.
Will you tell me what you saw
and I’ll tell you what you missed,
when the ocean met the sky
You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye.
[You missed] When the earth folded in on itself.
[You missed] And said “Good luck,
for your sake I hope heaven and hell
[You missed] are really there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
[You missed] You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?
[You missed] You wasted life, when wouldn’t you waste death?
The ocean breathes salty, wont you carry it in?
In your head, in your mouth, in your soul.

Clearly Brock is a conflicted lyricist. He does seem to describe a doubter's thoughts about a "natural" Eucharist. I can see a protagonist standing on the shores of Puget Sound, looking out too eternity, confronting the loss within. Which leads me to more of Brock's complaints and accusations about God:

You were laying on the carpet
Like you're satin in a coffin
You said, "Do you believe what you're sayin'?"
Yeah right now, but not that often
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
God I sure hope you are dead

Well you disappeared so often
Like you dissolved into coffee
Are you here right now or are there
Probably fossils under your meat?
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?
God I sure hope you are dead

Now the blow's been softened, since the air we breathe's our coffin
Well now the blow's been softened, since the ocean is our coffin
Often times you know our laughter is our coffin ever after
And you know the blow's been softened, since the world is our coffin
And now the blow's been softened, since we are our own damn coffins
Well everybody's talkin' 'bout their short lists
Everybody's talkin' 'bout DEATH!

Well, perhaps that's enough of Brock for the day. He gets a bit blasphemous for me (though he his usually talking about God by talking about someone else, like Bukowski). Wolf Parade seems to continue Brock's conflicted description of God, but where Brock seems to hold onto something, carry a burden of lost-fundamentalism perhaps, WP just seems lost in Montreal's relativity:

I got a hand
So I got a fist
So I got a plan
It's the best that I can do
Now we'll say it's in God's hands
But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he? (Hungry Ghosts)

Ok, so maybe that does sound like post-fundamentalist angst, but I still think it's concocted. Brock's is dripping with real, untold history, WP, not so much. Here's a glance at "I'll believe in anything", which has a nice critique of urban relationships embedded in it:

Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Your blood, your bones
Your voice, and your ghost

We've both been very brave
Walk around with both legs
Wait for the scary day
We both pull the tricks out of our sleeves

But I'll believe in anything
And you'll believe in anything
Said I'll believe in anything
And you'll believe in anything

If I could take the fire out from the wire
I'd share a life and you'd share a life
If I could take the fire out from the wire
I'd share a life and you'd share a life
If I could take the fire out from the wire
I'd take you where nobody knows you
And nobody gives a damn
Said nobody knows you
And nobody gives a damn

So WP seems to have some trickle down angst inspired by Brock. There will be more on indie music and secular theology in the future. Some of my past posts cover this as well.

Treat yourself to some of 2006's best!

Best Contemporary Theology Meme

2007-01-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

So I'm participating in a theologyblogs meme, in which you list the "best" contemporary works in theology over the last 25 years and the results are tallied through google. My Caveat: I'm listing the works that have taught me the most over the last little while, not necessarily "the best" - I'm not sure I could be the judge of that.

1. David Bentley Hart. The Beauty of the Infinite (2003).
2. Graham Ward. Christ and Culture (especially the last chapter on Desire and Suffering)(2005).
3. A Tie: Francesca Murphy. Christ the Form of Beauty: A Study in Theology and Literature, and Catherine Pickstock's critique of univocity of being in Theology and the Political (2005).

On my Sinus Infection!

2007-01-19T10:12:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking about sickness lately, mostly because I have pus-filled snot running from my sinuses to my lunges, sticking there, and creating a rasp, which I cough into the toilet in the mornings (sometimes with a bit of blood). Yes that is grotesque, but not unwarranted. I've found those coughing fits to be some of the most vivid "moments of being" (spots of time, epiphanies...)of my life. At least this is what my memory of being an allergic, asthmatic teenager who dabbled in smoking (all sorts of things - even tried a banana once with my friend Kyron) tells me.

The thing about viruses that is so wonderful (I mean this literally, not in the shitty post-victorian sense) is that they are genealogical substances that appear transcendental (in that they don't appear), and announce themselves through bodies that aren't theirs. Their goal is to live in you long enough to replicate themselves as many times as possible and continue their existence, the end result of which steals being from others. Put succinctly, viruses are demons. I was thinking about this at 3:30 this morning as I was sucking on a cough drop that was stuck to my biteplate, which I was tonguing unconsciously to keep my mind off the spasming muscle that lies below my ribs on the right side and flexes its pain every time I breathe. This also brought on another insight: viruses not only infect the body, but they perpetuate that infection by creating an environment (a body with no sleep) that will not threaten them (no-sleep plus no-appetite equals no immune system). As you can see I'm very interested in my sickness, which actually makes it not that bad to live with.

Earlier in the year when Ignatieff was dominating the Canadian psyche I started reading his biography of Isaiah Berlin, which is very well written. He mentioned that Berlin enjoyed being a bit sick; it gave him the excuse to curl up in his bed with his limp left arm and read as much as he wanted. I can understand Berlin's mindset here, but I'm not a big fan of letting all my muscles atrophy while I live out a cerebral existence in bed. Bed sores tend to be the income of such laxity and I'm not at all excited about participating in such an economy. The bed does seem to be an interesting figure in 20th century academic life though. If one is confined to the bed then academic life becomes heroic, otherwise academics are constantly wondering if their "reading" is actually an elaborate strategy for avoiding something else.

Erb was talking about this in Augustine on Wednesday (though I think Augustine preferred the high alter over the bed...he was one of those rare men of letters who was also a man of action). Erb called this the "love-knowledge" problem. He said that love unites while knowledge divides. For instance, I know much about my sister and in that sense I feel a great deal of similarity with her, but I also know so much about her that I sense our irreconcilable differences. The more I know about our differences, the greater my alienation. On the other hand, love accepts, opens up, moves us toward the other in a way that knowledge doesn't. This is why Augustine prizes the love of wisdom over the acquisition of knowledge. He did not mean to devalue knowledge, but to subject it to love. I appreciate this critique. It speaks to the sensibility that I experience as a young academic.

Democracy and Tradition

2007-01-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've been looking forward to sitting down with Jeffery Stout's Democracy and Tradition for some time. Last year I read a few chapters, part two, where he encourages reasoned religious arguments in the public square and the proceeds to make his mentors look foolish - Stanley Hauerwas and Alistair MacIntyre. From what I remember about Stout's approach to H and M, I was quite affected. I felt like I'd been witness to a slaughter, and I had no idea how to judge if the slaughter was at all accurate or needed or just.

Stout claims that Traditionalists (under which he groups Milbank, H and M, and Burke) and Secularists (Rorty and Rawls among others) have entered into culture wars (he claims they created them)with such polarized Manichean rhetoric that no common ground could be hoped for. To Ts, Democracy is the great source of atomizing evil which erodes communities, and consequently, the virtues. It allows for the rise of capitalism and the laxity of the middle class. For Ss, Democracy is our only salvation, this is, of course, if we can keep dogma and religious reasoning out of the public square. Stout rightly corrects Ss by asserting that Rorty's position on truth is unsustainable for a democracy, that if a state is to be virtuous it must have a concept of truth (14). But Stout also thinks that Augustinians (a subgroup of Ts) are wrong to assume that a general public should adopt a common orientation toward the good. Nonetheless he claims that Democracy does this, and he applauds this, claiming that we mustn't abandon a sense of our collectivity (as imagined as it may be).

His other claim is that Ts overemphasize the pessimistic situation America is in. In my experience it has not been the Ts who are the harbingers of American sins, but rather the Marxists, and the democrats - I'm thinking of the radical end here - Michael Moore and Chomsky (is he a democrat? Perhaps libertarian is better here).

But who does Stout respond to these Ts and Ss with?: Whitman (yes Walt), Emerson and Dewey. Talk about erectile dysfunction! I mean I tend to agree with Stout's negative apologetic, but his positive argument and his resources are severely lacking. It seems like he is attempting to create an American Democratic company of Saints that will rival that of Christendom. I guess Augustine is a bit much to live up to. Both Emerson and Whitman are twits and Dewey, well I just don't know him well enough to aptly assault him. I think that Stout might have fared better with Raymond Williams, the founder of Rode Island, or perhaps Jimmy Carter, maybe even a little Martin Luther King Jr. The problem is that Stout is searching for sufficiently secular origins for what is properly considered a Baptist tradition - Democracy (though he says he isn't searching for such origins - 11, 13).

Yes Stout. Democracy - a Baptist Tradition (I'll give Wesley a little credit too.) I know I'm being a bit antagonistic here, but I think there is a case to be made that the Free Church tradition created the America we know and l...ike (sometimes). Consider the role of the great awakenings in creating a broad sense of communal identity - creating the public square even. Tents were to American what Coffee houses and pubs were to 18th century Brits, and Salons were to 19th century Frenchmen. I have no idea what the Germans where doing - climbing mountains maybe, reading Goethe, creating the suspenders? The Spanish were busy with Carnivals and the Italians were likely very busy reorganizing their many city states. But the Baptists - they were sensing the inward movement of the spirit and claiming freedom of conscience before such ideas were sanctified by the Constitution (thanks to the Whitefields and Wesleys out there).

Sheshatshit

2007-01-15T06:06:00.000-08:00

Sheshatshit is the uniquely redundant name of a town in Newfoundland. As one might guess, it is a transliteration of the Innu "Tshishe-shatshu". "Sheshatshit" is an interesting nugget of Canadian orientalism. Certainly the name is racist to the core, as the town is populated by Innu people. Now I'm not a big fan of throwing the word racist around, but I think we must recognize the way humour works to create a derogatory term. No one wants their home associated with shit. But what 19th century English speaking explorer/pirate isn't going to find that name a little hard to resist?

Anyway, I stumbled on Sheshatshit when I was flipping through A Charm Against the Pain, an anthology of NFLD writers that I'm reviewing for Books in Canada. I'll be also looking at Hard-Headed and Big-Hearted, a series of essays by the late Stuart Pierson, edited by the great Stan Dragland. This little review article is going to be a feature in Books in Canada, and I'm excited about it. Though I'm afraid this might be a a time hog that keeps me away from my Specific Comprehensive Exam reading (57 books left to read by May 11).

Back East

2007-01-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

So here is a little update. My comp exam ran last friday - it was tough, but somehow I made it. At a quarter to four in the afternoon, with 5.5 hours of writing behind me, I was swimming in the crappily crafted sentences before me. As luck would have it the pizza deal I purchased the night before came with three cans of pop. A sprite each for A and I, with a coke left over. It was just this coke that I cracked, with a cool coke can sound, and I knew that I would be homefree as soon as that caffeine hit my veins. I shot off like a rigged out 96 honda civic with nitrous oxide pumping the tiny pistons down the last lines of the page. And famous last words they were: I'm afraid I went out mumbling something like "Religious Studies needs to understand it's complicity with secularism".

The next night I flew out east to see my folks and fam, losing one of my bags in the process. I'm still searching for it, but in the mean time I'm sporting some new duds courtesy of West Jet. Let's just hope the bag does come in, as they only have $250 insurance available for it, and that won't cover my undies. Fish net ain't cheep folks.

So I'm alone with my folks. It's fun being with them, but it's mighty sad not having my baberini with me. I'll see here soon. She flies in to Mtown on Tuesday night.
Showed my folks the highlights from Altman's last film tonight - The Prairie Home Companion. I highly recommend it. Garrison Keillor penned the thing; he also starred in it. Maryl Streep sings her heart out and it nearly brings me to tears. God love her. God love you; Thanks be to God for getting me through my first comp! I'm heading to bed.

A theory of literature

2007-01-04T15:59:00.000-08:00

Literature, I am learning, is the narrative response to individual narrativity. By this I mean that Literature takes up the stories we experience or tell our selves, or have overheard, and through analogies twists these stories into shapes that we wouldn't expect.

I put this differently in notes earlier today:
Great Narratives (novels, film, autobiography, some poetry, philosophy, theology, theory) take up our daily narration through close approximations of our stories (analogies)and puts them in a "whirlwind", returning our narratives in new forms. When we engage these Great Narratives we construct a new narrative figuration of common stories about life, psychology, the social realm, politics, ethnicity, culture, theology, religion...

Stressed

2007-01-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

The day of judgment is upon us. The "us" I refer to is my phd cohort at WLU/Waterloo in Religious Diversity in North America. Tomorrow we write our general comprehensive exam. I'm a bit of a wreck. I've been reading too late at night which gives me these academic dreams. I wake up at five or so and realize that I've been thinking about say the plethora of names in Prebish & Baumann's Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia anthology.

I'm beginning to forget that which I have already put to memory. I've already studied these books sufficiently, say Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World, and now my mind is rearranging his argument. I have a tendency to forget the shortcomings of a book. I like to idealize the texts I've read. I think it has something to do with managing cognitive dissonance. If I like part of an argument, I begin to intentionally "forget" those elements that I don't find harmonious. It's like purgatory.

The other thing I've been thinking about is conferences in May. There are three that I want to attend. The first one is The Atlantic Canadian Studies Conference in Halifax on May 3-5. The topic is "knowledge in action" which seems like a title dreamed up by someone who is ignorant of Foucault and Said. I've submitted an abstract on the Catholic imaginary in Ann-Marie MacDonald and David Adams Richards. These are two of the authors I am working on in my thesis, and so my work will be productive. Second conference I want to apply to is the regional AAR in at U Waterloo held on the same weekend. The paper I want to deliver is on secular theology in "indie" music with a glance at the cultural habitus, and subjectivity of ipod users (and the subgroup of "indie" music listeners). The songs I have in mind are 1) "Saint Simon" by the shins, which uses a Zizekian model of subjectivity to talk about an encounter with the sublime; 2) "We are no where and it's now" by Bright Eyes, which addresses the problem of place in a imaginary that has disavowed God; 3)"Ocean Breathes Salty" by Modest Mouse, which uses an image of an earthy Eucharist (Ocean Breaths Salty want to carry you in in my head in my heart in my soul) yet ends on a faithless note. I'm captivated by the God talk in this secular space, and I'm also interested in the social-cultural impact that the ipod has had. I think the ipod makes hyper-subjective communities that are a mix of private and public - perhaps priblic, or pubvate, in that one purchases music, is part of some imagined community of listeners, and has no contact with them what so ever, except at a concert. Also, this public commodity reshapes the internal realm and becomes a type of language that expresses one's interiority: note song lists on myspace (yes I've fallen for this trick). Anyway, if I can't present this at the AAR, which is likely, I'll try to submit it to the CSSR in Saskatchewan, May 27-30, though my wife wants me to be at her cousin's wedding in Colorado that weekend. My poor beautiful idea of secular theology may go to waste. It's sad isn't it...

One Punk Under God

2007-01-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

So it seems that Jay Bakker, son of the swindlers, wants to be representative of a "revolutionary voice" in Christianity.

Revolution, used here, seems so culturally contextual (how could it not). I mean, Bakker has a church in Atlanta, the Southern Baptist Mecca, and he thinks that accommodating the church to liberal norms is revolutionary. Well it might be for Atlanta, but I'm not too sure it will play in TO. To me it seems like NYC hegemony interpolating the young southern baptist with a new version of uncle sam: "Only you can prevent conservatism" (Ok so there is a bit of smoky the bear in there too).

Here's a section from the wiki sketch on Jay:

"Because his philosophy of inclusiveness extends to gays and gay marriage, Bakker falls outside of the beliefs of many in the conservative Christian community. When Larry King asked him if he was "part of the liberal sect of Christianity?", he said that he was. [4] He also decries the influence of politics in religion, saying that it prevents civil discussion of topics such as homosexuality and abortion. [5]"

Now I don't want to demonize Jay. In deed, I think that conservative churches do need to be more "open" to homosexuals, and I have never been a proponent of banning abortion. However, I also think that the 21st century's ideology of "inclusiveness" might not be the same type that Christ preached (for instance how do 21st century proponents of "free love" feel about Christ's dialogue with the woman at the well). I think any doctrine of catholicity (unity..."inclusiveness") needs be supported by a notion of authority. If the church can't stand for anything on moral grounds then what is the use of it standing? Also, Christ encouraged his followers to be as shrewed as snakes and as innocent as doves...which means that Christians need to have a nice healthy dose of skepticism with their innocence (Christians need a good deal of work here as well).

So here is my healthy dose of skepticism: mightn't Jay be a political tool for transforming conservative protestantism? The US is full of theological tools for transforming Islam, just read Saba Mahmood's latest article in Public Culture. Indeed these tools were sharpened in the protestant cultural arena. If Jay is such a tool (which is quite likely...there are lots of edgy preachers around to make documentaries about, but Jay's pedigree draws much more attention...He's a Paris Hilton of the South), then what is the "good" around which his audience is being oriented. This is assuming that "Jesus" is often co-opted for the goods of one political ideology or another, which leads me to one of my favourite quotes of 2006:

"I always think of Jesus with big eagle wings, as the lead singer of Lynard Skynard...and he's got this angel band...and I'm in the front row, just hammered ..."

And when I laugh at this let's just say I'm using my shrewdness. But conflating the Christ with the American Eagle is a bit of a mistake...though Lynard Skynard might make it past the pearly gates ...I wanna fly-eye-ayeye free bird, woaw,..

Question for Larry King: Just which "sect" is the liberal sect of Christianity?

The One Book Meme

2007-01-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a game I like:

1. One book that changed your life:
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
The Riverside Shakespeare - lots of time for soliloquies

4. One book that made you laugh:
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

5. One book that made you cry:
Douglas Coupland, Life After God

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Paul of Tarsus, Epistle to the Postmoderns

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Russel McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion

8. One book you’re currently reading:
John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Randy Boyagoda, Governor of the Northern Province

10. Now tag five people: In the hope of getting this meme started, I’ll tag anyone who happens to read this! [This was part of the post I ripped the template from. I hate to put pressure on people, but I can't mess with a good ending]

Ayles ice shelf , An Inconvient Truth and the need for a robust inner-city bus system in Southern Ontario

2007-01-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

I heard that Ayles ice shelf separated from Ellesmere island over the Christmas break. That is only when it symbolically separated for the general public. It actually snapped free on August 19, 2005, proving we do have a bit of a time lag in our media reportage.

The Ayles ice shelf was the size of 11 000 football fields, or 60 km squared. I'm getting concerned about the environment. A month ago Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was shown during an environmental rally at Wilfrid Laurier University. It freaked me out for two reasons:

1) The climate change thing is real - it's above zero in January in Waterloo Canada right now (and it certainly ain't El Nino!). New Brunswick, where I would have been snowboarding in at least 3 feet of snow 10 years ago, has about an inch of snow. Ski hills from Ontario to NS can't open.

2) I've known about the green house effect since I was in grade 5 (1990) and I was somehow able to forget about the environment (at a political level) for the last 5 years. How was this done? 9/11. The old 9/11 smoke screen, erected so that a few key players can shovel shitloads of money into their portfolios while those poor enough not to be able to afford international space travel are left to sink in the global titanic.

Here's what pisses me off: Stop and go traffic 45 minutes outside of Toronto. I was looking around during the drive back from North Bay last week. I realized that the car is the shape of the nuclear family. We have the infrastructure to support a robust intercity bus system that would reduce traffic from the Waterloo, Guelph, London, Cambridge, etc... to Toronto by at least half, if it was subsidized by the government, and made as affordable as driving your own car. The Koreans have done it; albeit they are much more communitarian then we are. But I could do with being a bit more connected to people. The social element of modernity (or hyper or post - whatever) sucks. The bus would bring a little Durkheim back in our lives, a little society. And here is the selling line: you gain an extra two hours of productivity because the bus could be wifi compatible. Bring your laptop on the bus, do your business shit, read the paper. Screw the pooch on YouTube, at least you're not popping the clutch between first and second, stalling the car in stop and go (and inadvertently undermining the polar ice cap)

The infrastructure is there, it just needs to be utilized. The truth is the inconvenient truth isn't even all that inconvenient.

Geertz Smeertz

2007-01-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

Cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz died not long ago. The next day one of my profs sent a note to the religion and culture email list that was dripping with sadness. Something like: Clifford Geertz died last night (with a link to an article)...I thought you would want to know".

Now, I'm not one for undermining human dignity, but my mind went to Steven Lewis and kids with AIDs in Africa (kids with AIDs period - cut the colonial melodrama Andrew), and I thought -- yeah religious studies (the old guard anyway) has succumbed to a type of a political neo-romanticism. A friend of mine says they're all hippies who can't help reverting...I wonder. Anyway, they are retiring and their idols are, well, cashing in on the big pension in the sky...

When I was studying English, I was enamored with Michael Winter's One Last Good Look, a pseudo-fictional glance at Newfoundland, which was highly influenced by thick description. My wife was studying social theory, and I had a new jewel in my mouth - Geertz. High on a pedestal. I thought thick description was divine revelation, and Geertz was some sort of Gabreel.

A good prof of mine, ole (level headed) R. Mas burst that bubble. Sent us home to read Talal Asad on Geertz. Asad claims that Geertz reduces all life to text, leaving anthropology in a bit of a quagmire - having no person left to act (I've re-read Asad - his complaint about Geertz is more nuanced then I have portrayed it. It has more to do with Geertz' naivety about knowledge-power relations in pre-modern Christianity and contemporary Islam. Geertz' is influenced by protestant views on belief, separation of church and state and power in general). I tend to agree. After Asad, Geertz is dead.

Anyway, H. and I were going over Geertz' definition of religion for the upcoming comprehensive exam. If you don't know it already, here you are:

[A religion is](1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic (Geertz 1985: 4).

I was struck by what an absurd definition this was for an anthropologist to write. The system acts while the people have no agency. Their moods and motivations are implanted in them (similar to Foucault here) from an anthropomorphic system which formulates order clothed in an aura of factuality (clearly the natives are deluded)* and convinces the poor sods of some foolish mobile in the sky.

And the icing on the cake: this was considered science...

I call it poetry, and bad poetry at that.

[I realize that I may sound like a champion of science...I'm not. Nor do I disparage poets -- except perhaps Keats and Christopher Dewdney -- I'm just struck by the childish language games that are played in the social sciences about religion. But you know what? I still like Geertz' concept of deep play in the Balinese cockfighting article; however, I'm done with his definition of religion.]

* Asad critiques Geertz thus: "The paradox results from an ambiguous phenomenology in which reality is as once the distance of an agent's social perspective from the truth, measurable only by the privileged observer, and also the substantive knowledge of a socially constructed world available to both agent and observer, but to the latter only through the former" (52). This, Zizek would claim, is possibility of subjectivity - that representation and object are unequal.

Religion as Imagination

2007-01-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

"Musn't the ability and the will to adopt a religious standpoint be present prior to the ritual performance" (Asad 1993:50)

Since I started in religious studies I have abhorred the idea that religion needed to be defined. Coming from literary studies, deeply influenced by post-colonial critiques of power-knowledge, I found that definitions are instruments of control that attempt to limit phenomenon by explaining them. I think that this attempts to reduce mystery to something consumable. That is to say that I think religion, while a very basic concept of our world, in the end, remains mysterious. But I have come to see the advantages of having a provisional definition of religion, one that remains "always-already" partial, yet orienting. So with out further ado...

My always-already partial definition of religion:
Religion is a product of the imagination. A religion is a social-imaginary, an object created by multiple imaginations coming together for the hope of a common purpose. Religion also includes an element of bodily action; however, this element is secondary to the imaginative possibility of action. Imagination is primary because one must have a glimpse of possible action before purposeful action can take place. When Abraham leaves his known locality of Ur to search for the city of God, he must have a image of this city in his mind before his pilgrimage can be undertaken. This image need not be accurate, but it must exceed his immanent knowledge. It must push him beyond.

This is to say that the possibility of action must exist before action takes place. Religious action always takes place in the space created by the free play of the imagination. This is the case when someone innovates, and also when someone conforms to pre-imagined constructs of religion (as is the case with tradition).
Habits are fostered which reform life-worlds, subjectivities and bodies, yet the ability to form habits is contingent on one's potential to imagine ways of conforming to habit. Conformity, in the creation of habitus, is imaginative activity.

One might say that this concept of religion is a theory of subjectivity that can be applied to any human capacity: politics, culture, economics, travel. To this I say yes. I claim that imagination is religious because it is mysterious (as the history of psychoanalysis in the 20th century will testify to, along with surrealism, and post-modern attempts to negate the imagination - Zizek), yet not so mysterious that it is unknowable in entirety. The totality of the imagination may not be understood, but certain process can be approached in part. As with the subject, so with the social: the social element of religion can have a symbolic shape, yet the this symbolic shape will never represent the sum of religious possibility, because of the mysterious excess of its parts (constitutive subjectivities). Without such subjectivities, religion would not exist. Thus a theory of subjectivity is the basic starting point of a definition of religion.

The symbolic "structure" of religion, embodied in buildings, texts, and selves is real, yet created (note: This is not to align the "real" with the "true"). It is fashionable to claim that products of the imagination are abstractions, as say Benedict Anderson claims regarding the nation; I assert that imagined products are real: I drive one everyday; I am using one to write this blog. Both the car and the computer are imagined products, as are movies, literature and theatrical performances. Cathedrals and the texts which inspired them are equally real. Temples and sutras are as real as the monks and nuns that use them.

Still the question remains: what makes Mahayana Buddhism different then a cultural product, say the film "Spring, Summer Fall, Winter, Spring" (a Korean film about a Mahayana monk and a young boy)? I would say that this question (which tries to get at the distinction between religion and culture), is conceptually problematic. The film is religious, yet the form is modern. We like to think that modern cultural products are areligious, however this idea is false. Is there a difference between religion and culture? Yes, but it exists in the interplay of transcendence and immanence. We imagine culture to be constrained by the immanent (the given), while religion keeps the immanent and transcendent in tension. We call things religious for many reason:
A) because they privilege this tension of the immanent and transcendent
B) because they are traditional
C) because they are routine
(feel free to add to this list)

Faith is the actuality of synthesizing a transcendent vision with the immanent. Bad faith is unsuccessful because one's vision is shoddy. Good faith is successful because the object of vision has fidelity with the real.

Because the imagination is mysterious we never limit agency to the human. There is a possibility that something other then human interacts with imagination, just as the same possibility exists that the world is founded on something we cannot conceptualize in total. Whether we can speak about this other intelligently is still out there...

Post-Gay

2006-12-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

I got yelled at this year for saying that "we" (whatever that means - me and Kitty maybe) were post-feminist. But we are. I TA for classes of 150 that have 15 males in them. This is common in the Arts (my we), perhaps feminism hasn't yet penetrated engineering though. You know, I wouldn't mind a bit more vaginal centred architecture. Penis centered buildings are hard. Vagina centred buildings are soft, and perhaps a bit bloody. There is some gender-essentialism for you (yes you)

Anyway, Persky (some journalist) says that we are now post-gay in Canada and I find my self whole heartedly shaking my head in affirmation. This assertion is brought on by the latest defeat of the anti-gay marriage vote in parliament in early Dec. Persky claims that counties can be pre-gay (Korea), where gay is still under the radar, gay, (US) where gay is aesthetically and rhetorically militant, or post-gay, (Can, Netherlands) where the gay parade has passed and 20% of us have wet stains on our pants, but no one really cares. Though Persky claims that we still care, just not in the pre-orgasmic way that a gay culture cares. We're already lighting our smokes.

How do I feel about this? I feel a bit used. A bit wham bam and thank you maam. Ridden hard and put away wet. All this rhetoric, what is a poor evangelical boy to do. I mean I've been trained to meditate on texts for years - holding them up high in the sky. Now the texts are gone. Rhetoric has passed like last spring's fashions. And here we are - post-gay.

Nowadays (nou adaise)

2006-12-29T08:14:00.000-08:00

Nowadays is a word that I think should be retired. I used to tell my students in Korea that no native english speaker would ever use the word "nowadays". I suspected that they were getting it from some stupid old oxford publication on english grammar. But, and this will continue my persecution of C.Taylor, I've found him using it (p. 9 of the article mentioned below).

I should pondure on this a bit more. Nowadays...no one ever says nowaday. Why is it always plural (why are days countable and milks not?). Why always now. My dad is fond of a similar phrase: "in this day and age". Admittedly, nowadays is a bit more efficient then Dad's archaism. But will this save it from the chopping block?

The Oxford English Dictionary never ceases to amaze me. Chaucer is the first to write this phrase (surely that has some redeeming value - Chaucer was a bit of a dude):

2. now-a-days: At the present day, during the present time.
c1386 CHAUCER Can. Yeom. T. 425 Ffor any wit {th}at men han now a dayes [Camb. MS. on dayes]. a1420 HOCCLEVE De Reg. Princ. 1415 Adayes now, my sone, as men may see, O chirche to o man may nat suffise. c1449 PECOCK Repr. II. xiii. 227 Peple now adaies ben not to be blamed. 1590 SHAKES. Mids. N. III. i. 148 Reason and loue keepe little company together, now-adayes. 1651 WITTIE Primrose's Pop. Err. I. ii. 4 But now adayes great is the neglect herein. 1711 GREENWOOD Eng. Gram. 227 One ought not promiscuously to write every Noun with a great Letter, as is the Fashion of some now adaies. 1856 E. B. DENISON Church Bldg. iv. 150 What would nowadays be talked of as a very fine spire.

and then the OED contradicts itself (though perhaps it has something to do with the previous def being on the adverb, and this next one including the noun):

A. adv. At the present time, in contrast with the past.
?1387 R. WIMBLEDON Serm. (Corpus Cambr.) 83 O Lord God, what abusioun is {th}er among officeres of here bo{th}e lawes nowadayes. a1393 GOWER Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) V. 4884 As men mai finde nou adaies. c1395 CHAUCER Clerk's Tale E 1164 It were ful hard to fynde now a dayes In al a toun Grisildis thre or two. c1400 (a1376) LANGLAND Piers Plowman (Trin. Cambr.) A. XI. 37 Leccherie & losengerie..{th}ise arn games nowadayes. ?c1450 tr. Bk. Knight of La Tour Landry 53 Men of these maners there be now a dayes to mani. 1474 CAXTON tr. Game & Play of Chess 30 The lawes nowadayes ben not executed but vpon the poure peple. a1533 LD. BERNERS tr. Huon lxxxi. 252 Now a dayes can not be founde trew frendes as were wont to be. 1583 P. STUBBES Anat. Abuses II. sig. D3, I cannot but lament the small preferment now adaies that learning getteth in the world. 1611 Bible (A.V.): 1 Sam. xxv. 10 There bee many seruants now a daies that breake away. 1658 W. JOHNSON tr. F. Würtz Surgeons Guid II. Introd. 43 Yet have I not related all the abuses which are practised and committed now adayes. 1712 J. ADDISON Spectator No. 481 ¶4 Lacqueys were never so saucy and pragmatical, as they are now-a-days. 1747 R. CAMPBELL London Tradesman iii. 39 Their Patients received more Ease from their rude Conjectures, than may now a-days be received from the elaborate Systems of a College. 1766 J. FORDYCE Serm. Young Women (1767) I. vi. 226 We speak of good housewifery now a days. 1833 H. MARTINEAU Berkeley the Banker I. i. 21 Guineas are scarce now-a-days. 1893 Law Times 95 248/1 The Crown has certain privileges which appear somewhat anomalous nowadays. 1918 V. WOOLF Diary (1979) I. 163 We had a great bout of people yesterday, as we tend to do nowadays. 1939 L. M. MONTGOMERY Anne of Ingleside xiii. 86 We never seem to have old-fashioned winters nowadays. 1988 M. HOCKING Irrelevant Woman (1989) vi. 77 Kids are spoiled nowadays. They are brought up to think the world revolves around them.

B. n. Present times.
?c1425 tr. G. de Chauliac Grande Chirurgie (Paris) 568 Wirchers of now a dayes [?a1425 N.Y. Acad. Med. {th}at ar nowe; L. moderni] maken hem noght but after {th}e dyuysioun of 8 membres folowed in {th}is tretys. 1645 MILTON Tetrachordon 26 Not partly right and partly wrong,..as Divines of now adaies dare censure them. 1647 tr. Maloezzi Pourtract 94 The Phisitians of now a dayes. 1852 N. HAWTHORNE Wonder-bk. (1879) 121 In the orchards of nowadays. 1904 M. M. DODGE Miss Flip at Exposition in Poems & Verses 117 Because we girls of nowadays... We learn so much we really feel as if we ought n't to. 1991 K. K. DYSON tr. R. Tagore I won't let you Go 199 There are likenesses between the dreams of yore and the dreams of nowadays.

C. adj. (attrib.). Of or belonging to the present day. rare.
1609 J. RAWLINSON Fishermen 32 Such indeed..is our now-adaies religion. 1897 Westm. Gaz. 2 Mar. 2/1 These nowadays parsons are just a set of fussing insurance agents. 1967 P. J. KAVANAGH Satire I in Coll. Poems 59 Why did I leave my rich place at the court, or the nowadays version of it.

Then again, Chaucer did die, why can't his word? Though, if we still spelled it like Gower did in the 15th century - nou adaise - I think I would excuse it. Nou adaise, we don't spell "nowadays" as we did thenadays, but we should return to the beforethenadays. I'm in adaise. Leave me by myselfe blogge!!!

Bottoms up!! (and why not enjoy a bit of fornication while at it)

2006-12-29T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here is an intriguing New Years thought provided by Charles Taylor: "in the united states in the 1820s liqueur consumption was 4 times per capita what it is today" (2006: 288). We've got some catching up to do America (Steve Colbert would love this insight).

Oh blog, I stopped reading too soon! Haste, the death of me. Taylor continues (I think he was there): "Along with drink (also aiding and abetting it) were other favored activities: cruel sports, gambling, sexual promiscuity (otherwise know as fornication - one of my favourite words in existence)". Yes, that last comment was also Taylor's. In case anyone should desire to read this article it is titled "Religious Mobilizations" and was published in Public Culture 18:2, with a few other essays on secularization (and fornication).

Slaughter of the Innocents (is this part of the 12 days?)

2006-12-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

So my newly birthed blog took a Christmas break. Let's say I had to flee to Egypt. The slaughter of the innocents was imminent. In fact, it has been rescheduled. It will be held in a small, hideous room, filled with molded chairs and old rusty computers. It will be held on January 5th, and it is going by the name of (lightening flash) General Comprehensive Exam (dun dun dun dun - done like dinner).

I'm going to practice on you blog, so be prepared. You'll be getting a healthy, or (eyebrows tilted) should we say unhealthy dose of diaspora later this afternoon. This message will self destruct in 4000 years. Until then blog!!!

Secularization

2006-12-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

So, I've been reading all fall for my first comprehensive exam. I have somewhere near 40 texts on this exam and it is held on Jan 5th. I'll be glad to get it finished.

Secularization is one of the key issues that many texts address. In it's barbaric form. Secularization theory says that society develops in three stages from the religious, to the metaphysical, and on to the scientific society. This is August Comte's theory, who attempted to factor out all faith based claims from his worldview, establishing a positivist system of knowledge. He was not successful. After Comte, Weber came waddling along and devised a little theory known as the protestant work ethic. He blamed Calvinists and their gosh darn anxiety for producing capitalism. His rational follows: Calvinists (read Puritans) weren't sure if they were elected to heaven or hell. They needed to prove this in a way that medieval Christians hadn't (after all they were moderns - which means empiricism people!). So they utilized journals. They wanted to chart the good works that God was doing in their lives and thus prove that they were of the elect. What is the American way to prove grace? You guessed it: Money! How do you get money? By working hard. Did Calvinists put two and two together? No. This is why Calvinism is called a vanishing mediator by Marxist thinker Fredric Jameson. Calvinism (this-worldly aestheticism) is the mediator between medieval Catholicism (other worldly aestheticism) and capitalism (this-worldly indulgence). After Calvinism brings about capitalism it is supposed that it is polite enough to blow away with the wind. This is secularism from an economic stand point. What does Weber leave us with? The iron cage of modernity, trapped in rationality.

Now many people have refuted this for good reason. One: Capitalism emerges in Catholic Italian city states before Calvin was a glimmer in his father's eye. Two: Weber reads history with a sort of providence devoid of a prime mover (God). Causality isn't as clear cut as Weber would have us believe. Still, Weber's theories were smoking hot and the fire burned through out the 20th century (that's right BJoel, he started it). Christiano's diagram shows you several popular theories of secularization by sociological superstars.

As it happens, Sociologists are fond of crib notes. Steve Bruce, master of subtlety and author of God is Dead, has produced his own image/theory, which, if you look below, you will notice is a amalgam of most of the theories above.

Since these images need no explanation (he hum) I will say that Jose Casanova has refuted them (well at least Bruce). Bruce makes these claims about secularization:
1. It leads to structural differentiation of spheres (economic, political, religious);
2. This differentiation undermines the socio-cultural authority of religious leaders;
3. Which leads to the decline of practices, beliefs, and any other conduct associated with belief (this is the dry up and blow away part).

Casanova says no. He's not dry (drinks wine one would suppose)nor blowing away (...not dead yet). He says that yes structural differentiation has occurred, but belief hasn't diminished. Why? Well, he says, the idea that belief would diminish is linked with a Kantian myth of the enlightenment, that claims the public will become religion-less because religion will be privatized. Casanova claims that privatization isn't a necessity, and that the privatization that has already occurred has been sustained because the elite has pressured, hacked and chased the religious villagers into interior realms.

Casanova isn't for the return of the villagers without a change, however. In a democracy, Casanova claims, freedom of conscience must be privileged. This is what necessitates the differentiation of religion from political and economic realms. He then says that "good" modern religions, like the Baptists, will allow for freedom of conscience (or the inner testimony of the spirit), while "bad" traditional religions like the Catholics will hold on to Church authority, in an attempt to reshape the political through their influence. These bad traditions will not prosper in modernity, Casanova claims, because they don't obey the rules. They will attract negative attention. Thus, Catholicism should not order it's parishioners to vote one way or the other, and instead work for cultural change in the civil sphere. Religion should become public, so it can free up the private.

I think he might be polishing over some burrs here. How, for instance, is a church supposed to tiptoe around freedom of conscience and preach/teach on the orientation toward the good? Can an idea of sin exist in such a framework, as sin creates situations where certain choices are discouraged. Furthermore, does any institution, club, or group, allow for such liberty if it has an orientation toward the good (which I assure you it does)? I think Casanova, who is a theologian, needs to re-evaluate his theology of sin and church authority.

Economies of Death - Butch Cassidy, Derrida and Updike

2006-12-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

Coffee is the bane of my existence. I love the taste. But it eats my belly lining, and it dances through my nerves at 4:30 in the AM. Which makes me get up and watch the ends of movies that my wife has fallen asleep in half way through and we've never got back to. This morning it was Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Two things to rave about: 1) the cinematography in the first five minutes of the film was exceptionally tight - all shadow work in B&W with nice textured shots of a western town; 2) Death! I've never been so excited about death as I was watching BC&TSK. Death follows them around through the desert after a botched train robbery. I loved it, because I've been thinking about being-toward-death. Heidegger used to claim that authenticity emerged from being oriented towards the ultimate end. He was an atheist, so death takes on that sort of finality for him. I also just finished Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he meditates on how death must be met by each of us. He also looks at the death of the other through the Abraham and Isaac story, via Kierkegaard. He tries to problematize the teleological suspension of the ethical (putting God before man when ethics says no : ie.: Abraham and Isaac and murder). Derrida reasons to the point of redefining God (which should be completely problematic from a deconstructive position):

God is the name of the possibility I have of keeping a secret that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior. Once such a structure of conscience exists, of being with-oneself, of speaking, that is, of producing invisible sense, once I have within me, thanks to the invisible word as such, a witness that others cannot see, and who is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, once I can have a secret relationship with myself and not tell everything, once there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then what I call God exists, (there is) what i call God in me, (it happens that) I call myself God - a phrase that is difficult to distinguish from "God calls me," for it is on that condition that I can call myself or that I am called in secret (108-9)

And here is the clincher:

"God is in me, he is the absolute "me" or "self," he is the structure of invisible interiority that is called, in Kierkegaard's sense, subjectivity" (109).

I think that Derrida could have used a bit more tact here, perhaps more homework or research was needed (but that would not suit his polemical end). David Bentley Heart distinquishes between that which is God of God and the space of not-God in God. Which is completely paradoxical, but essential for an understanding of creation within a conception of God as the positive. God is the abyss of being, in which all being has it's being, which is so transcendent that even in being there is space for other being. Thus preserving the distinction between subjectivity and, well, God, and swerving around what Ignatieff calls the idolatry of human rights (the idol of the human).

Now let me link this back to BC&TSDK. Death follows them around, yet they have no trouble killing others for their cause. In fact each of their lives is worth about 12 Bolivian lives if I counted correctly, which is quite an economy of death if you ask me. But death hounds BC&SDK, it just keeps knocking at their door. It gives their life meaning. But, unlike Derrida, they have no subjectivity. Their ends are objectively represented. Death is external, on horse back. The law is death, and neither BC or SDK has any authentic relationship to this end. They just seek to evade it. They don't try to understand it, only anticipate how death will move. I was reminded of Bergman's The Four Horseman of The Apocalypse, with the figure of death playing chess, chasing down main characters. But Bergman is much more playful, much more ironic. With Goldman(?) we have a film that is sincere in its brotherly love, nasty in its romantic love, playful with money, and damn serious about death. Could this be the difference between Europe and America? What a huge leap. Interesting to see that America has no God, while Europe has a comedic God. An old God who has seen too many deaths. If America had a God, it would be young and afraid of death. Neither vision gets to the heart of Christianity, which has a God who sees through death, in suffering.

Perhaps America's God is a God of money. Updike had something to say about this last night in In The Beauty of the Lilies: (Speaking about a Minster- Clarence - who has lost his faith and stepped down from the pulpit)

"Dollars had once gathered like autumn leaves on the wooden collection plates: dollars were the flourishing sigh of God's specifically American favor, made manifest in the uncountable millions of Carnegie and Mellon and Henry Ford and Catholina Lambert. But amid this fabled plenty the whiff of damnation had cleared of dollars and cents the parched ground around Clarence Wilmot" (he now sells encyclopedias, door to door). (90)

Updike has a flare for film in this text, perhaps he's talking about BC&TSDK. One Christian thing about the film: The deaths of others (BC&TSDK) provided great wealth for Redford and Newman! Which reminds me, the death they saw on horse back is immanent in my computer chair. I must retreat! Pow Pow.

For the love of Stevphen!

2006-12-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Stephen Colbert (Repubelickan) VS. Steve Carell (Democrap)

Funny stuff.

Craig Finn shook my hand

2006-12-14T09:02:00.000-08:00

Craig Finn, the lead singer of The Hold Steady, is an unlikely rock star. He wears coke bottle glasses, with big plastic frames, denim shirts - like an Ivy league professor out for a beer. He makes obscure references to John Berryman, Minneapolis, and Kerouac. He talks about Catholicism all the live-long day - and when he is not talking about heading to the 5:30 folk mass, he's talking about being born again (and he is excentuating this with a series of quirky hand gestures a la Gord Downey). Of course, he is doing this through a persona - Holly - Hallelujah (or some omniscient narrator). She's a "hood rat". She tattoos "Jesus lived and died for all your sins" and "Damn right I'll rise again" on her body with some home made kit.

When Finn is not talking about Christianity he's talking about getting high. He thanked the crowd in advance for who ever smoked him up after the show last night. Yet his drug antics - which he claims are all in line with Catholic moderation (I'm tempted to believe him) - seem a bit like some sort of Eucharistic celebration. His most Catholic record was Separation Sunday. I'm expecting Vatican III from him on the next one? Papa Finn? Perhaps. More like the laity taking on the social realm, for the sake of the social realm. I think of him as a bit like Rebelais.

He came down from the Showplace theatre stage (cold, cold Buffalo), visibly exhausted, and shook hands with his little hood rat friends. I was one of them, and proud of it. His band mates are a tad eccentric. There is a bit stylistic difference - we have Finn, his lead guitarist and his drummer, all who seem to appreciate normalcy in fashion. Then we have the piano man, drinking a bottle of wine, dressed in a three piece suit, with a french earwax stiled mustache, and a beret. He likes to do this crazy genuflecting thing with his hands at times, which looks a bit funny beside Finn who is doing this flapping clapping thing - the band can't dance - but they can make me dance. Then we have the bassist, who really goes to town, God-love him. He was dressed like Popeye last night - sailor's cap, red and white striped shirt. He would stand at the edge of the stage and flip out dollar bills to the audience. He repeated that at the end of the show with Camel cigarettes. But listen to the base line to Massive Nights before you judge him.

Great show for Finn and the gang.

The Hold Steady - Massive Nights
Live show in Tallahassee

Hold Steady for The Hold Steady!

2006-12-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm going to The Hold Steady concert in Buffalo tonight! It should rock. I just confirmed it last night. If you haven't heard the hold steady yet listen to First Night, this is one of their slower, piano based tunes. It has that kinda slow build at the end - reminds me of positive tension by Bloc Party.

Beatrice, Oh Beatrice...

2006-12-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Here is a thought, a theme even, that has stayed with me for some time. I find it profound, though it is the type of profundity that isn't all that unique. It is the pre-romantic profound (downloadable link for The Shin's Saint Simon, start playing now!).

I am intrigued by the tradition in Christian poetry and literature of representing divine grace, beauty, truth, goodness, in the figure of a female. We have Beatrice, who Dante fell in love with at a glimpse, and who soon died in youth. Beatrice thus becomes a transcendent love object who Dante desires. She is the woman who prompts his rescue when he is lost to the sin of sloth, and later she is the woman who guides him in Paradise. The beautiful idea in Beatrice is that, though she is one woman, Dante's love for her orients him to the love of God, which is reflected in a real state in her. Thus, the particular, the earthy, has an analogical element of God (the Universal) in it.

We see this tradition extended in Petrarch, who has given the sonnet form his name. He loved another woman, Laura. It is said, that though Petrarch was a Catholic author, his version of the desired one demonstrates a deep shift in European thinking. How? Laura doesn't die, and thus, the love of Laura is the love of the immanent. Dante united the immanent and transcendent in Beatrice, whereas Petrarch put the focus on the good that is here and has no "telos", no final end (some would call this a superficial good, or a flat good). The new science is born, empiricism, naturalism, materialism, and its earliest kernel is found in literature.

In English literature we find this tradition in William Lamgland's Piers Plowman. In the prologue the protagonist is overcome by a beautiful woman: "A lady, lovely of looks · in linen clothed, / Came down from a castle · and called me fairly..". Let's just say he listens well, and soon discloses his object of affection as the Church.

Then had I wonder in my wit · what woman it were
That such wise words · of Holy Writ showed,
And asked her in the high name · ere she thence went,
Who indeed she was · that taught me so fairly?

`Holy Church I am,' quoth she · 'thou oughtest me to know.
I received thee first · and taught thee the faith,
And thou broughtest me sponsors · my bidding to fulfil
And to love me loyally · while thy life lasteth.'

Then I fell on my knees · and cried of her grace,
And prayed her piteously · to pray for my sins,
And to teach me kindly · on Christ to believe,
That I might work his will · that made of me man.
`Show me no treasure · but tell me this only --
How may I save my soul · thou that holy art held?'

Few non-Catholics would depict the church this way now, though the image is there in the New Testament. We rather look to the empirical church, and loose focus on the bride of Christ. This does seem to be an androcentric image of desire (one that is still reflected in our films). But the vision of the divine/beatific woman, be she lady wisdom or Venus, is usually a form of universal beauty, attractive to all. The beauty is almost supra-sexual, so high that one stands in awe, rather then erection.

Certainly Shakespeare plays with the two pronged image of a woman. We have the Juliet on high, in the balcony scene. And then we have the sacrificed Juliet, who has no resurrection. Interestingly, the desire for Juliet falters at death - Dante would have nothing to do with this idea (The death of the two would only signify their eternal bliss in heaven - that is if they died of natural causes. Certainly their suicides complicate the issue. Dante would have them in hell.). This reflects how distant the afterlife was to some in the British Renaissance. If we could add a third prong it would be Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew. She is the image of whit and wisdom in England.

Goethe is also playing with desire for a woman he can't have in The Sorrows of the Young Werther. Lotte is her name, and she is betrothed to another man.

You can find this theme throughout European literature. Lately, I have been interested in its 20th century transformations. I think that one of the most iconic images of Beatrice in the 20th C is Ann Darrow of King Kong. Here Dante is turned into an ape, the image of a proto Adam/proto Christ from the natural world. In Peter Jackson's version we see King Kong's desire very plainly. Clearly he is working in the analogical realm here, comparing man to ape. Man and ape are oriented to the higher good (at the sunset scene) the transcendental beauty, which is incarnate in Ann Darrow (a somewhat messianic figure).

We also have an image of Beatrice in Graham Greene's The Quiet American, as the Vietnamese woman Phuong, who Fowler and Pyle both desire. There is much to mine in this text (cultural travel, how transcendence is evoked, death - of Pyle and not Phuong, secular longing), but now is not the time. Though I will note that perhaps Sarah of The End of the Affair is Greene's true version of Beatrice, and Phuong is his Laura (one suspects Greene had many Lauras).

Two more quick examples before I eat. I'm starving. The band, The Shins, in their song "Saint Simon", speak of a secular search for truth. The protagonist is tired of all the Fairy Tales of his youth, decides to allow himself no further "mock defence(s)" and steps into the night..I think of Zizek/Hegel's "Night of the World" the step beyond the symbolic into the real - which for Zizek is very distrubing, chaotic and violent (ontology of violence). Anyhow, the protagonist doesn't find chaos. We as listeners are swept away into a melodic, parts sung tune, which sounds rather cathedral like. And who do we meet in the night? Lady Mercy:

Mercy's eyes are blue
When she places them in front of you
Nothing holds a roman candle to
The solemn warmth you feel inside

There's no measuring of it
As nothing else is love

I absolutely love it. If you read this and don't know the song please listen to it here.

Last, but certainly not least is Kar Wai Wong's film 2049. There is much to go into here. It will suffice to say that Wong's Dante makes his Laura suffer, on behalf of his Beatrice, who has left him longing. He leaves his Laura, so that he can become her Beatrice, which is also the creative force of all writing. When we get to the end we realize that Beatrice is a fiction in the first place, a trick our minds play on us because of nostalgia, yet a trick we cannot do without. The principle which moves the world, the artist, is a fiction of some prior, unmatchable love.

Needless to say, I do not share Wong's view. However, I do find the film very good. I would say that it is Wong's best work on desire. And now I must eat!

I want to look at Nabokov's Lolita in this light in the future...

Harper's Merry making

2006-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Wow. What merriment I will now enjoy because Harper wished it to me and the rest of Canada.

My Favourite Christmas Song

2006-12-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

Feist is the best female vocalist I know of. Her voice makes me think of beauty. When she uses her beautiful voice to sing a beautiful song magical things happen. This is why "Lo, how a rose e're blooming" is my favourite song this Christmas, as it was last Christmas. Have a listen.