Peter Erb on Augustine

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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...