Who killed Jesus, and who cares?

I’m currently reading Elaine Pagels’ The Origin of Satan, which despite its title seems so far to be mostly concerned with the ways in which the gospel writers shifted responsibility onto the Jews for the death of Jesus. Historically, of course, most scholars now agree that the Romans were primarily responsible for executing Jesus, though they likely had some assistance and support from certain Jewish leaders.

This work of historical clarification is an insistent theme among many liberal Christians, and while I obviously agree with the historical point that’s being made, I find something unsettling in the way it’s approached. What if events had gone down pretty much as the gospels presented them, with Jewish leaders pushing a reluctant and cowardly Pilate to execute Jesus? Would anti-Semitism then be justified?

Adventures in Church Attendance: Response to a Concerned Voicemail

Dear ________,

First, I want to thank you for your call a week or so ago. I have not been ignoring it, though the delay & your stated concern in the voicemail would perhaps suggest otherwise. Things have just been more busy than normal, attentions tugged this way & then that. While I confess I could’ve made and/or found the time to respond, either by calling or by writing, life is filled with decisions, most of them, we hope, not as malevolent or even as plainly calculated as they might appear, and I opted for decisions that did not include a quick response to you.

Second, you will no doubt notice that I’m responding via email rather than your chosen mode of communication, the telephone. Please, do not read anything into that either. I’m simply far more comfortable in print than I am in person, with even my closest friends. Would that I could carry on my own internal dialogues & diatribes wholly in print, I might make a better go at consciousness in general.

Hayek occupies London

Twitter is abuzz with Jodi Dean’s post on a depressing Financial Times column (which I can’t find on the FT site for some reason) from the Occupy London economics working group, which embraces Hayek:

Fans of Friedrich von Hayek may be surprised to learn that the Austrian economist is the talk of Occupy London. Hayek’s observation that distributed intelligence in a voluntary co-operative is a hallmark of real economy rings true beneath the bells of St Paul’s. Occupy is often criticised for not having a single message but that misses the point: we are committed to incorporating different preferences before coming up with policies. In this sense, it could be said we work more like a market than the corporate boardroom or lobbyist-loaded politics – our ideas are radical but also just and democratically decided.

The policy proposals that follow focus on reducing tax-avoidance, using monetary policy to boost the housing market, and changing the way executives are compensated — hardly revolutionary stuff, but probably beneficial. (I’m not sure, though, how the idea for the Bank of England to use “quantitative easing… to fund housebuilding” would work either logistically or in terms of getting the desired outcome.)

I understand that these kinds of demands are uninspiring for any number of reasons, above all because they embrace the logic of capitalism and implicitly legitimate the system by reference to a “better way” to execute it. At the same time, I don’t think there is widespread understanding of more radical alternatives, in large part because it’s not at all clear, objectively, what the desired answer would be. (In this respect, I’m reluctant to embrace the notion that the problem is the open-ended, anarchist nature of the Occupy movement — though I’m skeptical of that approach to some degree, I don’t think that having greater discipline and structure would be beneficial in the absence of an actual workable program. If an anarchistic/democratic form doesn’t automatically lead to good results, surely we can agree that a centralized “organized” form doesn’t either.)

Indeed, what’s most depressing isn’t that this group would cite Hayek, but that Hayek is objectively to the left of mainstream neoliberal economic ideology at this point — and of course Keynes counts as a radical leftist in this context. To put it another way: what’s most depressing is that drawing on Hayek genuinely counts as a step in the right direction compared to the idiocy that’s driving most policy makers.

Peer reviewing: A suggestion

Since completing my PhD, I have served as peer reviewer for several articles. One thing that stands out to me is the fact that doing so is not very time-consuming — basically, you need to read through the article a couple times, then write up a page or two of remarks in response. It’s a process that can easily be completed in an afternoon.

Another thing that stands out to me is the mismatch between how relatively painless the task is and how ridiculously backed up most journals’ review processes tend to be. Part of that surely results from the procrastination that forms the bedrock of the academic life, but I also assume that there are many academics who are doing little to no peer reviewing at all.

And that’s when it hit me: I’m writing this post to procrastinate on reviewing an article!

In all seriousness, though, there’s no reason academics who are actively involved in research shouldn’t be peer reviewing regularly. I’d even suggest that doing as much as one article per month would not be particularly burdensome.

FYI

Just so everyone knows, according to the excerpts from The Divine Inexistence published in Harman’s book on Meillassoux, the logical consequences of an embrace of the radical contingency of all being and the inexistence of God are as follows:

• The belief in creation ex nihilo
• Anthropocentrism: the contingent becoming of the universe reaches its pinnacle and unsurpassable goal in humanity
• Faith in the resurrection of the dead
• Hope in a coming mediator figure who, though possessing the divine power necessary to inaugurate the resurrection, empties himself
• An ethics based on living in joyful hope of the resurrection

It’s a good thing we have Meillassoux to tell us about these radically new and unheard-of ideas! I wonder if the other sections tell us about such innovations as a ceremonial cleansing to enter the messianic community or a symbolic meal commemorating the mediator figure.

News on Zizek’s Hegel book

Peter Thompson of Ernst Blog has posted the TOC for Zizek’s forthcoming Less Than Nothing, as well as a review.

Rejection letters for dummies

While we see a lot of advice for people on the job market, it is much more rare to see tips for people on the other side of the process. This is a shame, as poor execution on the side of the hiring institution can cause significant unnecessary emotional distress. While there is a lot that could be changed, I’d like to start by providing tips for one of the most common documents produced by academic departments: rejection letters. It’s a delicate moment, to be sure, but I think many common practices, even well-intended ones, make the situation worse. As such, here is my advice:

A Ridiculous Comment from Harman

From Graham Harman’s blog:

Just picked up his Anti-Badiou. If I were to write a book called Anti-Laruelle, I would be treated by Laruelle’s tweep army like someone who drowns puppies and crushes kittens.

Considering that writing such a book would require Harman actually read and try to understand Laruelle, I think he’s safe from any attack by the United-without-Unity Tweep Army. Sad that this constitutes his response to a number of questions raised about his abominable review.

Opaque finance as social good

Steve Waldman of the blog interfluidity recently argued that opacity in the financial system is a feature, not a bug — only by convincing everyone that they won’t be the one holding the bag if things go south can the financial system ensure that the critical mass of investment necessary for economic grwoth will take place. Now he’s written a follow-up post responding to various criticisms and expanding on his points. It’s a disturbing and thought-provoking argument.

Communist Counterfactuals: A Sincere Question

This morning on Twitter, I randomly went on a pro-Soviet Union tear. My goal in doing so wasn’t to indicate my deep-seated wish that I had been born under Stalin or my belief that the Soviet system was an unmitigated triumph — mostly just to push back on the moralizing and frankly boring ways that the Soviet Union is depicted in mainstream discourse.

Naturally, I’ve gotten some push-back. What this has all led me to wonder is not how the Soviet Union performed compared to some ideal, but compared to the available alternatives.