An und für sich

Death of God theology obviously no longer has the same cultural or intellectual pull it used to. For most people, it has lost its capacity to shock or inspire. It is, in short, a relic of a past most theologians would soon forget. Never having been an especially good theologian, though, I disagree. Perhaps it is due to my affection for “failed” intellectual and creative projects, not to mention my fidelity to people who believe in these projects despite all the odds, but I confess an undying fascination with the phenomenon that was the Death of God controversy. Indeed, in many respects I think I might be considered one of its bastard grandsons. And I take no shame from that.

Recently, the primary media evangelist of the controversy, Thomas J. J. Altizer, sent me a copy of an old National Education Television (the precursor to PBS) segment that detailed the scandal’s impact on Emory University and the religious community in Atlanta. It’s really worth watching, if only to see the reactions of those calling for Altizer’s head. It is refreshing to see depicted a time in which theology truly mattered, but also disturbing to see that its “mattering” (as something discussed in the media, if nothing else) has little effect on its lay reception.

Now on the home stretch of exam prep, I am going back through Empire and find myself wanting to reread it “for real” sometime soon, now that I’ve finally read many more of the works they’re referencing. I have long thought that the supposed “disproof” of their theses by the events after 9/11 was a little too easy, and reviewing the opening sections on the new configuration of sovereignty, I’m much more inclined to argue that they were describing a transition that is real and that the Bush administration is continuing. Indeed, their analyses of the politics of fear, of the new ambiguous status of war, of the use of the blanket term “terrorism,” etc., etc., all seem to directly anticipate the post-9/11 climate, to be more plausible now than they were then.

At the same time, it feels like their moment has passed — they were extremely, even weirdly, popular for a brief time, then were suddenly dropped. Advocating a Hardto-Negrian position today would seem parallel to arguing that the Arcade Fire is the best band of the decade: maybe they actually are, but who’s even talking about them anymore?

Obviously their exaggerated popularity was a “bubble” caused by extrinsic forces — most of all, the need for a “next big thing” in theory circles and in the cultural journalism that feeds off of academic trends both real and imagined. One could also say that their decline in popularity was caused by the extrinsic event of 9/11, which seemed to disprove (the simplified version of) their thesis of the decline of the nation-state. If I were to point to an intrinsic reason for the decline, however, it may well be that Multitude seemed, at least on the surface, to be conceding too much to critics who thought that the post-9/11 world had proven them wrong. To present a grand unified theory of the contemporary moment and then apparently retract it in response to the headlines (even if this is only a surface-level appearance) is a really self-undermining move.

Telos used to be firmly left-wing, right? What happened from then to now when they post blog commentaries celebrating the “revolution” of Berlusconi’s re-election? Berlusconi’s victory was only possible because of a neo-fascist groups and the new mayor of Rome, that supposedly would have done something about the Pope not being allowed to deliver a speech, is very obviously a neo-fascist still. Just the other day in the Guardian I saw pictures of his supporters throwing the fascist salute. (Update: So, infinite thought actually links to an article in the New York Times that has the picture.) Yeah, great…

Digressionary question: why is it that the Pope, whichever Pope, always have such strange and compromising relationships with fascistic governments?

Last weekend, I spent a lot of time going back over Kierkegaard texts, in preparation for an exam (miraculously already graded and passed, so I must be an expert on this topic). I was struck with a vertiginous sense that all of this, the play of names, the variety of genres, etc. — all of it fits together into a unified whole. All of it can be taken into account and systemaized. In fact, “systematized” might not be the right word: it already is a system, one revealed progressively from a variety of perspectives, but integral and coherent.

I obviously can’t demonstrate this in the context of a blog post, but if I ever do demonstrate it, it will be in a book entitled Kierkegaard’s System — a book of under 200 pages, most likely.

Following up somewhat on Dave’s recent complaints about extant patristic translations: Why on earth is there not a standard, facing-text edition of the major patristic texts in English? As I’ve mentioned before, the Sources Chrétiennes series is a wonderful resource, combining a contemporary French translation with the most authoritative modern edition of the text in question. I’m fortunate enough to be comfortable reading French and, more importantly, to have easy access to one of the greatest research libraries on earth, so I’m set as far as that goes.

For translations into English, everyone mostly has to settle for the ANF/NPNF editions, the more contemporary Fathers of the Church series (which is essentially a supplement to the ANF/NPNF), or editions of one particular figure (such as Augustine). The latter are great insofar as they usually provide a lot more explanatory notes, etc., but as far as the ANF/NPNF and Fathers of the Church series go, I just cannot see the mandate for their existence. They seem to hit the negative sweet spot of not allowing direct access to the original text, while also not giving enough help to be useful as a purely pedagogical resource. If you’re not going to provide thorough notes, then at least provide the original text, right? And who exactly is the audience for a reference-style series that is nonetheless only in English? It’s not useful to scholars, and it’s too intimidating for casual use by students. It helps exactly no one. Even back in the day, it seems like putting the English translation side-by-side with the text from Migne would not have been cost prohibitive. So in short, the most widely available resources in English for patristics are basically so sucky that I don’t think they should even exist. Thanks for you time.

I have some reservations about the recent Larval Subjects post about “difficult” books, but I think that, in part, it points toward a real phenomenon — one that I call “academic Stockholm Syndrome.” We’ve all seen it before: an academic invests great energy and undergoes profound suffering in the attempt to grasp a particularly difficult thinker and, upon succeeding, spends the rest of his or her career thoroughly identified with that thinker.

The most prominent victim is undoubtedly Zizek, who was taken hostage by both Lacan and Hegel, but even Sinthome himself appears to have a very difficult case, with his combination of Deleuze and Lacan.

Recently, for reasons that have thus far eluded me, my interest has turned to Zen Buddhism. In the past month or so I’ve dug out my old copies of Religion and Emptiness, The Logic of the Place of Nothingness, and a couple collections of Nagarjuna and Dogen. In the process, I discovered it took me back with welcome. I’m still not sure where I stand, not fully with or against it, and certainly not (yet) a practitioner, but I do find it continuing to defy expectations. Indeed, one of the things that I’ve long appreciated about Buddhism is its capacity to run against the grain of its Western embrace.

In America’s Zen industry, the practice of meditation is often another means of “finding yourself.” It is regarded as a means to see through the false and realize the true. But in my, admittedly novice, understanding, neither of these notions seem sufficient. What I gather from Nagarjuna, in particular, is a sense that there is no discovery as such, no “truth on the other side.” In meditation, one doesn’t find truth, but rather the means finally to see the false as false. And that’s it. In many respects, despite his protests, how far removed is this from Zizek’s presentation of the Real as “that invisible obstacle, that distorting screen, which always ‘falsifies’ our access to external reality, that ‘bone in the throat’ which gives a pathological twist to every symbolization, that is to say, on account of which every symbolization misses its object.” If the Real is a kind of falsification, in the guise normally of hope or desire for something beyond the false, Zen is consumed with the apprehension & internalization of this falsification. Is it not the religious embodiment of “Enjoying Your Symptom”? Could one even say that philosophy on the way to the Real is a form of Zen?

It strikes me that a good way to structure a seminar is to choose one important book and, along with it, read essentially everything the author cites. This method would obviously work mainly with modern texts, but it could work equally in theology and continental philosophy (the disciplines between which I am “interdisciplined”). In discussion with our very own JD, I once proposed a multi-semester seminar based on Pannenberg’s Anthropology in Theological Perspective, after which everyone involved would be tied for the most educated person alive. Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory would also allow for a similar expansiveness and would allow the students to gauge his polemic. In continental philosophy, Agamben would be an especially valuable target for such treatment, not only because he is reading such fascinating texts most of the time (what would be better than a course based on The Open?), but also because you would get a sense of how rushed his readings of many figures, including those most important to him*, can be.

The Agamben and Milbank examples would also serve a kind of meta-pedagogical purpose beyond simply providing a broad reading list and a detailed example of how to go about assessing a major work — it would attract the kind of student who follows the “cool” contemporary stuff and tends toward a kind of presentism (i.e., the kind of student I was and in many ways still am), but for the purpose of disillusioning them a bit and broadening their horizon.

[*Random free dissertation topic: Agamben and Heidegger on Aristotle.]

I have had a running joke that my blog presence allows me to gain a readership of up to a dozen for each of my articles, making them each “the most-read academic article of the past 100 years.”

But what is really the most-read academic article of the past 100 years? My initial thought, drawing on my own limited knowledge, is Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.”

Why is it considered important to think non-dialectically? What is meant by “dialectical” in such formulations? Are we to understand any specific content other than a kind of faux-Hegelian teleology of reason? I find it difficult to see what is supposed to be undesirable about other aspects of dialectical thought as I understand it — that is, what makes dialectical thought something so urgently to be avoided.

To come at it from another angle: Is “dialectical” thought a kind of persistent temptation, one that is difficult to resist? If so, why? — but wait! Wouldn’t a mode of thought that was able to account for the emergence of the dialectical error be, precisely to the extent that it was able to do so, dialectical? I withdraw the question, then: let us go on being non-dialectical.