An Executive Summary of the Recent Žižek Interview

So on the one hand, all these so-called radicals who don’t do anything, or want all their real revolutions elsewhere suck, but on the other hand so do the people who protested the Iraq War cause they “knew” it wouldn’t make a difference just like people who say “if you’re here you’re from here”, but at the same time we have to fight little battles when we can, but those won’t matter unless we change everything and I didn’t understand the thesis of Empire. The beer-goggled night when all souls are beautiful.

Is the Pre-Backlash Forwardlash Over?

It took Deleuze about ten years before there was a proper backlash to his philosophy after a brief moment of being the avant-garde. Badiou got four. It appeared that Laruelle was destined to never get anything but pre-backlash fowardlash following the words of some popular bloggers. But, hope of hopes, perhaps this blurb on the back of an obscure translation of sort-of-middle-middle period book by Schelling means the fowardlash has ended and Laruelle can have six months? Maybe?

AUFS Approved AAR Sessions

I won’t be able to make the AAR this year, and to be completely honest even when I have attended I only attended the panels I spoke on. Something to do with the sheer size of the conference and the complete lack of atmosphere the hotels seem to foster makes it very difficult. Still, there are quite a few panels this year that are making me wish I was heading out there and many of them will be featuring friends of AUFS. I thought I’d start listing them now and other contributors can add to the list if they wish. We’ll post the list again closer to the date (Nov 7-10). I’ve moved the names of AUFS friends to the top of each session listed.

Update on the Theology of Money Book Event

Update: Andy points out that there are two working papers online that may also be of interest.

Following on the success of the Schneider Beyond Monotheism event, we are continuing on with Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money. We’ll be starting December 1st and will post every weekday as we did in the previous event. Theology of Money (link for Amazon UK) was first published in the UK by SCM Press back in 2007 and has just recently been published by Duke University Press in the New Slant series. (Thanks go to Duke University Press for providing us with review copies.)

The differences between the two editions are negligible (there are some updated economic figures in the US edition), but Goodchild did write a new preface for the US edition that is available online as a pdf. For those unfamiliar with the book I’ve pasted the publisher’s description below (though I think Pickstock’s recapitulation of the thesis actually gets it wrong).

Theology of Money is a philosophical inquiry into the nature and role of money in the contemporary world. Philip Goodchild reveals the significance of money as a dynamic social force by arguing that under its influence, moral evaluation is subordinated to economic valuation, which is essentially abstract and anarchic. His rigorous inquiry opens into a complex analysis of political economy, encompassing markets and capital, banks and the state, class divisions, accounting practices, and the ecological crisis awaiting capitalism.

Engaging with Christian theology and the thought of Carl Schmitt, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and many others, Goodchild develops a theology of money based on four contentions, which he elaborates in depth. First, money has no intrinsic value; it is a promise of value, a crystallization of future hopes. Second, money is the supreme value in contemporary society. Third, the value of assets measured by money is always future-oriented, dependent on expectations about how much might be obtained for those assets at a later date. Since this value, when realized, will again depend on future expectations, the future is forever deferred. Financial value is essentially a degree of hope, expectation, trust, or credit. Fourth, money is created as debt, which involves a social obligation to work or make profits to repay the loan. As a system of debts, money imposes an immense and irresistible system of social control on individuals, corporations, and governments, each of whom are threatened by economic failure if they refuse their obligations to the money system. This system of debt has progressively tightened its hold on all sectors and regions of global society. With Theology of Money, Goodchild aims to make conscious our collective faith and its dire implications.

“The power of the analysis, the energy of the text, the passions it excites in the reader, and its call upon us to think beyond the limits in which most philosophical, theological, economic, and cultural thought is enclosed make Theology of Money an indispensable book.”—William E. Connolly, author of Capitalism and Christianity, American Style

“Well written and very well researched, Theology of Money is a remarkable and very important book; there is nothing else like it currently in print. Philip Goodchild’s thesis is, in a way, startlingly simple: the universal sway of money exists instead of a universal sway of an ethics and a religion.”—Catherine Pickstock, co-editor of Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology

Philip Goodchild is Professor of Region and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety and the editor of Difference in the Philosophy of Religion and Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy.

Book Discussion Announcement: The Recognitions

At long last, I finally have the time and attention to devote the subject I brought up here too long ago — a book-discussion group.  We had a lively discussion, several suggestions were given, and I went back and forth between a book we could all feasibly read & finish together and a book that I simply wanted to read again (& everybody else who doesn’t keep it up can go to hell). After much consideration and conversation, we’ve settled on our original intention, William Gaddis’ The Recognitions. This is a book, I feel, cries out for discussion. It is too often relegated to unread thesis manuscripts and/or obscure references by critics who may or may not have read it but appreciate the relative status bestowed upon those who have.  I, however, think there is a lot there that deserves reflection and conversation. Whether you do, too, well, we shall see.

As a practical matter, reading The Recognitions is both laborious and time consuming.  But rarely, I should note, tedious.  Clocking in at just over 900 pages, for people with jobs and or a life at all, it will probably take between 1.5 to 3 months to finish. I’m under no illusion that everybody who starts it will finish it. There’s no shame in that, though, and you’re welcome to join in the discussion, too, provided you can adequately pretend you’re up to speed on the reading. There will be no tests. (For all the pretenders, as well as those of us who aren’t pretending but are still confused about what the hell is going on, The Gaddis Annotations is absolutely indispensable.)

Several commenters have already explicitly expressed an interest in The Recognitions. I trust they are still aboard. Those who were opposed to it (read: Hill) or preferred another book are obviously invited to reconsider. Should you do so, please let me know, simply so I have a vague idea of what kind of participation we can expect. The plan, such as one exists right now, is to read between 75-100 pages per week. Each week there will be one post or open thread devoted to the discussion. If you are especially blown away by a particular week’s reading, let me know and you can write something up. Otherwise, I hope most of the legwork will be done in the comment fields.  (Side note: if, as the weeks pile up and we have no comments, we will safely assume nobody is reading, and we’ll all silently agree that this was either a really bad idea in general or a very book choice, and nothing more will be said of it.)

As to a start date: you can begin when you want. But those who wish to participate, let’s shoot for having having the first 75-100 pages read by Nov. 13. That gives us all a couple of weeks to buy or borrow a copy, as well a chance to read through enough of it to know whether it is something we think we’ll stick with for a few months.

Below the fold I’ve attached one of my favorite sections from the first chapter.

Spinoza and Bodies Audio

The Spinoza Research Network has posted the audio from the recent Spinoza and Bodies conference. You can hear my paper amongst the other excellent ones that were given. The Q&A was one of those rare experiences where people actually asked good questions that challenged me and also allowed me to develop the piece further. Sadly this isn’t included with the audio. I will say I did not write the paper for hardcore Spinoza scholars, instead aiming to deliver a kind of generalist paper that showed how working with Spinoza can be of use for ecology in its scientific and social forms.

The cunning of reason

I’m starting to think that my liberation theology course is being haunted by the ghost of Hegel, because every time I think that I’ve explained the dialectic to them, the next book we read overturns what I’ve said.

(It makes me think that I need to read Jameson’s Valences of the Dialectic, and indeed if any of my readers are journal book review editors who could hook me up with a copy in exchange for a review, you know how to contact me.)

Call For Papers: Real Objects or Material Subjects?

Michael passes along the following. Please re-post and spread the word.

Real Objects or Material Subjects? A Conference on Continental Metaphysics

March 27th and 28th 2009, University of Dundee, Scotland

Keynote Speakers: Graham Harman (American University, Cairo) and Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico)

The aim of this conference is to stage a debate between two dominant strands of contemporary continental thought, as represented by the object-oriented realism of Graham Harman, and by the transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity recently proposed by Adrian Johnston.

Along with the debate between Harman and Johnston, we hope to attract papers from both advanced graduate students and early career researchers on related topics.

Suggested topics include:
realism v. materialism, the contemporary relevance of ‘critical realism’, materialist theories of subjectivity, object oriented ontologies, the place of the political in the realism/materialism debate, the persistence of dialectical materialism, recent continental appropriations of eliminative materialism, realism and materialism in contemporary Anglophone philosophy, continental naturalism, the role of the physical sciences in contemporary philosophical materialism, the persistence of religious themes in recent materialist philosophy, the continued importance (or lack thereof) of thinking the ontological in conjunction with the political.

Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted to m.burns@dundee.ac.uk by January 15th, 2010.

Do not hesitate to contact the organizers with any questions.

Absolutely valueless?

If anyone can discern any value or insight in Ross Douthat’s latest column, please let me know in comments — because I can’t.

The theological critique of Nazism

I posted this as a comment to Ben Myers’ latest post, but since it’s somewhat off to the side of the post’s topic, it seemed appropriate to turn it into a fresh post of its own:

I say this as a great admirer of Barth, but I’ve always found the “theological” critique of Nazism to be weirdly disconnected from reality. For instance, Barth’s self-congratulation that the church somehow did the right thing insofar as a small sect of it rejected natural theology in the midst of Nazism strikes me as downright chilling. The test here is that you could take it the opposite direction: for instance, the lack of a viable natural theology produced a disconnect between the gospel and the world, which led to the unlimited rise of technological instrumentality that was then ultimately turned against the human race itself most horrifically in Nazism, etc. Or you could say that the artificial either/or of Christ or nature led necessarily to the embrace of natural “paganism,” etc. Or basically you could make up any “theological” cause you like and congratulate yourself for bravely coming down on the right side of the debate, but that doesn’t make what you’re saying relevant. If anything, wouldn’t it have been more immediately relevant and more obviously connected to Nazism if the church had staked its identity on the opposition to anti-Semitism rather than the somewhat obscure point of natural theology?