The bitter Religous Studies Prof Type

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

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

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

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

"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

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

All the King's Men

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

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

"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?

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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...).
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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.
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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

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

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).