Theology through Film syllabus

Adam’s recent post below got me thinking about the course I taught last semester and the help I received here at AUFS. In the spirit of gratitude and friendship I’ve decided to share the syllabus I created for the Theology through Film module. I was pretty happy with how the course went this past semester, though I’ve already decided to change one of the Christology lectures and need to consider how to deal with the British system of (not) reading texts. Anyhow, any suggestions are welcome and I hope it helps those who may try to create one of these courses in the future.

A warning to all theologians

If you’re dismissive of Richard Dawkins, you must be in the tank for some religion — not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course! Except for the whole thing where your discipline produces no advance in knowledge whatsoever. But still: nothing but respect, man.

On syllabi and the posting thereof

Regular readers should be familiar with my general attitude of skepticism about sharing drafts of unpublished work online — working out some ideas on the blog is one thing, but putting unpublished work out there seems imprudent.

The same concerns don’t seem to me to apply to syllabi. Particularly for general introductory courses, it seems like it would be very helpful, since no one can have an in-depth knowledge of every subfield within their discipline. Even though I was frustrated by the number of people suggesting American and European white dudes for my course on Liberation Theology, I found many of the other suggestions very helpful and at least seriously considered them. Yet I cannot recall a single time that I’ve seen anyone post a draft syllabi online for comment.

This seems exactly backwards — for something where your career advancement is at stake and being plagiarized would be a huge setback, yes, absolutely post it online for all to see; for something that just provides the barebones outline of something that no one can conceivably “steal” (your in-class performance), make sure to keep it to yourself.

I’m willing to admit that my attitude toward sharing work online may be overly paranoid. Obviously many bloggers have found the practice to be very helpful, both for the development of their arguments and in terms of making a name for themselves. So it’s very possible that I’m missing something on the syllabus front. If you have any thoughts, dear readers, please enlighten me.

Yet another papal post

This afternoon, I watched Romero in anticipation of using it in my Liberation Theology course. Talking to Brad afterward, I commented that it made me more sympathetic with the Church’s conservative stance — Romero made use of his moral authority as archbishop to probably the greatest degree possible, but he also used it up: at a certain point, his rabble-rousing reached such a level that it was worth it to the government to assassinate even the archbishop. Many observers are frustrated at how little the Church puts its moral authority on the line in concrete situations, but Romero’s example illustrates that doing so doesn’t necessarily get you very far against a determined opponent — and it’s worth remembering that in the modern era many of the situations where the Church has been best-positioned to speak out were “national security states” and therefore not open to persuasion.

In this perspective, I think it’s possible to phrase my argument about Catholic social teaching and the larger papal strategy of which it forms a part in a more sympathetic way. The Church obviously has a variety of moral commitments and ideals that it would like to see actualized in the real world. Let’s grant that the vast majority of higher-ups in the church are 100% sincere in holding those ideals. Nevertheless, the Church’s number one priority is to preserve the availability of the means of grace and to make them as accessible as possible (in terms of extrinsic obstacles — obviously the Church has its own internal standards for how to gain access). And the Church’s belief is that the Catholic Church as an institution must continue in existence for the means of grace to remain available. All of the other goals would be great, but the absolute, non-negotiable priority is keeping the sacramental system running (and hopefully running as smoothly as possible).

So let’s return to Latin American example. As much as we in the United States worry about a “priest shortage,” in the Third World, things are much, much worse. A regime that is corrupt and violent enough to ignore the constant pleas of a Romero is going to be corrupt and violent enough to assassinate him as well. So assume that all the bishops do that — before long, you have no more bishops in the country. And let’s say that the Church as such is labelled subversive (which would be the only logical conclusion if every bishop were a rabble-rouser) — soon all the priests are killed as well. An entire nation is still oppressed, and they’ve lost access to the sacraments. If you’re a high-up Church leader in that country, how does that math play out? I’d say you have to prioritize keeping the sacramental system running, right? And if you’re the pope, you have to recognize the danger that speaking out too concretely about conditions in that specific country stand a real chance of getting the church as such labelled as subversive by a government that is willing and able to extinguish the hierarchy within that country if need be.

The idea of the Church being completely uprooted from a given country might seem exaggerated, but I think we in the First World tend to be a little naive about the kinds of regimes that much of the rest of the world faces. And even if the risk of total extermination is small, think of the consequences if one of those regimes started persecuting the Church as such — people would be afraid to show their face at mass, meaning that even if the sacraments were theoretically available, they would be lying idle. What earthly goal could possibly be worth so thoroughly undercutting the Church’s salvific mission?

Another point that has tended to be missed in these discussions: I’m not exactly criticizing the Church here. It is what it is, and on its own terms, the papal strategy has been amazingly successful. The Church maintains a worldwide influence in the absence of any army or any real coersive force whatsoever. Though a pope like Benedict can sometimes be a PR disaster, the strategy is too robust for any one man to screw up completely. Even if the face of geopolitics changes completely, I think we can be confident that the Catholic Church’s hierarchy will survive and even thrive, keeping the bureaucracy of grace running as smoothly as possible.

Busy, Busy, Busy: A Link Post (Now updated with even more links!)

Update: infinite thought points us to another post on Trier’s latest by Ads without Products. I had forgotten how beautiful of a writer Ads is and, because there weren’t many spoilers, I did read this one.

Also, Burns at Daily Humiliation directs us to the complete set of papers that were recently delivered at the Immanence and Materialism conference.

Finally, Craig has posted on some recent animal books.

I’m currently racing to get an article finished on top of finishing an index and so, because I hate to see traffic fall, here is a link post to keep you busy.

Re:Press has just published The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics edited by Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano. As most of you probably know, Re:Press publishes using an open-access model and so you can download the pdf of the whole book by following that link. If you have the money do buy a copy. (h/t infinite thought)

Speaking of infinite thought, she has written a post on Lars von Trier’s newest film Antichrist. I haven’t read her post yet because she has a lot of spoilers, but I expect it will be an incredibly good piece of writing.

Michael Burns has posted some notes on Peter Hallward’s recent article in Radical Philosophy. I’m one of those who has some doubts about Hallward’s attempt to revive voluntarism, but Burns seems to think there are things worth considering here.

Also Collapse III has been sold out in its print form and so Urbanomic has released the issue as a free pdf (warning: direct link to the pdf).

Another Heidegger Blog has conducted three interviews with popular blogging philosophers. Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, and Adrian Ivakhiv get the treatment.

Finally, loyal opposition commenter Myles Werntz is looking to create some kind of discussion group around the work of William Stringfellow with Stringfellow biographer Anthony Dancer. If you’re interested send him an email.

Further thoughts on papal strategy

In addition to clearing the deck for a new comment thread that’s actually on topic, I’d like to expand a bit on certain aspects of my previous post, which gave a cynical explanation for the emergence of Catholic social teaching (CST). To summarize, I claim that the promulgation of social teachings was motivated by the papacy’s general desire to keep up alliances with multiple constituencies. The interests of those constituencies are in conflict, and the attempt to provide “something for everyone” — which is, after all, what being “catholic” or “universal” is all about, right? — is what gives CST its idiosyncratic character, its unsusceptibility to being placed along our accustomed ideological spectrum.

A rule of thumb; or, Catholic social teaching isn’t what you think it is

If you have someone claiming they’ve found a third way beyond left and right other than liberalism, what they’re advocating is probably yet another warmed-over version of fascism. I’d say that’s especially the case if the idea of the “sanctity of life” figures prominently into this supposedly innovative vision.

I would also add that a position’s supposed insusceptibility to placement on our current conceptual map is not ipso facto an argument in its favor — the frequent claim that this is a point in favor of Catholic social teaching, for instance, seems to be a variation on the common Christian reliance upon the supposedly intrinsic appeal of the counterintuitive. (“You think that it’s good to be healthy and happy, but actually being poor and dying is what’s really good. Isn’t that cool? Doesn’t that just fucking blow your mind? That crazy God!”)

In reality, Catholic social teaching seems to me to fall outside of our normal political spectrum because on the one hand, it requires individuals to start behaving in a moral and honorable way, but on the other hand, it appears to have no mechanism for getting them to do so. (“We don’t need a “statist” solution, we just need people to start being more generous! Don’t you see?”) In other words, it falls outside the political spectrum because it’s a fantasy — and not even a very appealling one. I’m not willing to trade the vague promise of a gift economy to supplement that market for the right to contraception, for example. I’m not willing to radically rethink the role of civil society if we’re told in advance that the result will require shaming and scapegoating of homosexuals. I could go on.

A question that doesn’t get asked enough in these discussions is why popes are coming up with social teachings.

Conference Announcement: Spinoza and Bodies

Just a short note to alert readers of a conference coming up in September organized by the Spinoza Research Network and hosted at the University of Dundee. It is called “Spinoza and Bodies: An interdisciplinary conference on Spinoza and the sciences and social sciences” and I’ll be giving a paper entitled “The Ethical Relation of Bodies: Thinking with Spinoza towards an Affective Ecology”.

Graduate students should consider applying for a travel bursary. The deadline to apply for it has been extended to the 22nd of July:

Travel Bursaries:

Bursaries are available for postgraduate students (Masters or PhD) or academics who are unemployed, part-time, or on fixed-term contracts. The bursary reimburses travel expenses (up to £150) and accommodation expenses (up to £60). To apply for a bursary, fill in the relevant section on the registration form and submit your form by July 22.

Another try at the liberation theology list

This list is in the order I will assign them:

Boff & Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology
Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor
Gutierrez, On Job
Cone, God of the Oppressed
West, Prophesy Deliverance!
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk
Terrell, Power in the Blood?
Pieris, An Asian Theology of Liberation
Selections from the anthology Minjung Theology: People as Subjects of History

For the record

Realizing that the long-standing oral tradition by which we have maintained our comment policy so far was no longer sufficient to safeguard our sanity, we have decided to write down the abiding principles that have always guided our behavior in comment threads here.