Post-Gay

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

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

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

Nowadays (nou adaise)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secularization

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

Economies of Death - Butch Cassidy, Derrida and Updike

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

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

And here is the clincher:

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the love of Stevphen!

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

Funny stuff.