A free tip for heresy hunters

Many conservative Christians are eager to point out heresies, but they are at a severe disadvantage compared to previous generations. Simply put, modern heresies don’t have the same imposing names as the old ones. Indeed, often they don’t have names at all — other than “women getting all uppity and using feminine terms for God.” The gap between that and “Nestorianism” or “monothelitism” is palpable.

Fortunately, I’m here to help. I’ve coined one term and independently discovered another to help provide my conservative brethren with the high-grade vocabulary arsenal they need:

• Gynotheism: using feminine imagery to refer to God (not an original coinage, but not in wide usage)
• Hermaphrotheism: using both masculine and feminine imagery to refer to God (according to Google, an original coinage as of this writing)

Perhaps more terms along these lines could be coined. For instance, there’s hydrotheism, the use of the metaphor of a spring for the Trinity.

History of Non-Philosophy: From Philosophy I to Philosophy IV

As the notes for Les philosophies de la différence are written up I thought it might be helpful for readers interested in Laruelle to have a history of the development of non-philosophy to place the work in context. Below is the text of a section from an essay I’ve written for a journal on ecology and philosophy. I’ve left out the footnotes, but will link to the article once it is published.

The name “non-philosophy” comes from the work of François Laruelle whose project was described by Deleuze and Guattari as “one of the most interesting undertakings of contemporary philosophy.” This assessment is finally starting to be shared by those outside of the Francophone world and works are beginning to be translated. So it is important to spend some time introducing those aspects of non-philosophy being deployed and making them intelligible by setting them within the context of Laruelle’s project as a whole.

Laruelle’s work is striking in the breadth of interests present as well as in the audacity and abstract complexity that characterizes his project. One of the easier ways to begin understanding Laruelle’s non-philosophy is through the history Laruelle himself presents in his Principes de la non-philosophie rather than attempting in a short space to detangle all the abstractions in his work. In his history he details the impetus of his work, which he calls Philosophy I, through its developments in Philosophy II and III. I will end the short history by providing my own reading of the shape of the current phase, Philosophy IV, which Laruelle began after publishing Principes de la non-philosophie. In this way we begin to see how non-philosophy is practiced, rather than what it means and in that way can begin to practice it ourselves without concern for the authority of the master. For Laruelle presents non-philosophy as something that should be practiced autonomously, rather than written about as if non-philosophy offered us the new true path. Indeed, he has constructed his non-philosophy in such a way that is rather difficult to write about it without thereby practicing it.

Further thoughts on violence

Theology blogging meta-star Halden links to a post by Paul Griffiths (perhaps best known in local blog circles for his abyssmal First Things article on philosophical engagement with theology) that lays out what seems to me to be a very typical conservative Christian response to Christian pacifism: of course violence is bad, but sometimes it’s necessary, and we should be suitably sorry when necessity drives us to it.

While I agree with the conservative position insofar as I think Christian pacifism is untenable as a blanket rule, I also find the conservative position palpably inadequate insofar as it leaves out a crucial element, which Bruce’s recent post brought back to the front of my reflections: our enjoyment of violence. That enjoyment means that violence can never be the simple “means to an end” that the standard conservative response envisions it as.

Notes on François Laruelle’s Les Philosophies de la différence: Introduction critique – “Instructions for Use”

Adam has championed the posting of reading notes for the benefit of our own scholarship and the interest of AUFS readers. His notes on Agamben’s two most recent works, still not available in English but both being translated, have been very helpful to me and I’m sure to many others. Following the example he set and that our friend Andy followed with his notes on Foucault’s last lecture series I have decided to post notes on my reading of some of Laruelle’s key texts. I see two major reasons for doing this. First, it will be a helpful exercise for me as I finish up the translation of Future Christ and begin writing on Laruelle and non-philosophy in the first two chapters of my dissertation. Secondly, I hope that having more information on Laruelle that sticks close to his text will help deepen some of the engagement with non-philosophy in the philosophical blogosphere (and, of course, I hope it spread beyond there).

Early reflections on teaching: one week in

Already the first week in, I am noticing a clear difference between my two classes: Classical Christian Thought and Liberation Theology. I am spending an equal amount of time preparing for both, I am very familiar with the literature for both (though perhaps moreso for Classical Christian Thought), and both classes have featured lively discussion — yet I feel less confident about Liberation Theology, more anxious.

Paradoxically, I think it might be because of my instinct that Liberation Theology should be easier to teach: it’s very contemporary, it deals with “social justice” issues that many of the students already identify with very strongly, and it’s fairly easy reading stylistically speaking. More than that, even if my practice is far from what it should be, my immediate feeling upon reading a text of Liberation Theology is, “YES! This is what the gospel is and should be about!”

I was energized this summer as I was doing my preparatory reading, excited about the prospect of teaching this bracing texts. What I’m finding, though, is that for the students, there are many obstacles — the whole “religion” thing, first of all, but also what they seem to perceive as a one-sided insistence on poverty.

I feel really confident when I can just do a lecture to provide background and context, or when I can follow along in a text and do “live” interpretation — but figuring out a way into this whole mindset is a completely different challenge that I can’t face through simple preparation and competence. In a very important sense, the class is intrinsically “about” much more than mastering a predetermined content or even learning how to read a new type of texts. On both those fronts, the task is almost too easy. Yet even deciding how to say what else I’m up to or should be up to is very difficult.

Luckily I at least have the assistance of the liberation theologians themselves in discerning that and in achieving it as well. Sobrino’s No Salvation Outside the Poor is on the docket for this week, and it’s much more forceful than Boff and Boff’s intro text — uncompromisingly simple in a way that simultaneously allows greater complexity to emerge, and of course completely unconcerned with talking out of both sides of his mouth to satisfy church authorities, which should help. And then Gutierrez’s On Job will address the core question of theodicy (a major question for several of the students, both in class and in their reading responses) that liberation theology arguably only intensifies compared to other theologies.

Perhaps learning how to teach liberation theology is, for me at least, the equivalent of learning how to teach tout court — and therefore not something I should expect to have under my belt after a year or a quarter, much less a week.

Political Theology Conference Announcement

Reader Christian Sorace alerts me to a call for papers [pdf] that might be of interest.

Frequently Asked Question

Yes, a translation of Agamben’s Il Regno e la Gloria is planned. As of now, two translators are under contract with Stanford University Press and are working on it, but it won’t be coming out for quite a while — you probably have ample time to learn to read Italian by then. Failing that, it has been translated into French and (I believe) German.

Hot and cold violence

[With his permission, I am posting Bruce Rosenstock's comment on Inglourious Basterds as a fresh post, in the hopes of giving it the attention it deserves.]

It seems to me that when talking about the representation of violence one needs to ask: with what subject position is the viewer being asked to identify with? In Inglorious Bastards, the viewers are being asked to place themselves in the position of the Jewish/Apache squad and they are being asked to cheer (even while being made queesy) the scalpings, the beating, and the machine-gunnings. There is no pity whatever for most of the victims (maybe one exception: the new father). Is there a moral problem with this? Tarantino shows us a Nazi film that shows a sniper, and in the film the audience takes the subject position of the shooter and cheers at the deaths of his victims. Is Tarantino saying his film and the Nazi film are one and the same in their intentions? I think it is significant that Tarantino uses a sniper as the hero of the Nazi film. The sniper is someone who inflicts violence from a distance and precisely does not confront his enemy. Nazi violence is portrayed as hiding its face as it coldly snuffs out victims from afar (in the first instance of it, the victims are not even visible to the perpetrators.) The Jewish/Apache violence is face-to-face and hot. Is this a better way to commit violence? If such face-to-face, hot violence is somehow only possible against an enemy who shoots from a distance and commits cold-blooded murder, if it is revenge against this kind of cold violence, then perhaps it is better. One can argue that Shylock’s violence is of this sort, a protest against the hypocritical violence of the Christians that hides its face behind the mask of justice. When hot violence takes vengeance against cold violence, it arouses our sympathy. But any representation of this vengeance becomes questionable when there is collateral damage, when it becomes blind to whether it is attacking a perpetrator or just someone who looks like a perpetrator. Hot, face-to-face violence must never be blind; it must have the courage to look its enemy in the eye. I think Tarantino is very careful in IB to show us this kind of courageous hot, face-to-face, violence for us to cheer. Are we better off for seeing this movie? I for one think so, precisely because we come to feel what kind of violence is evil and what kind of violence resists evil.

Advice

If you want to avoid becoming angry, try not to read Boff and Boff’s Introducing Liberation Theology and Ratzinger’s “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’” in rapid succession.

The nihilism of Kim Fabricus

Kim Fabricus recently wrote a post for Faith and Theology. Up front, I must say that he gets at something crucial in this post: namely, the tendency for evangelicals to punctuate their prayers with the word “just.” I have long been annoyed at this tic and am simultaneously saddened and satisfied to see that it has transmitted itself to Australia as well.