AUFS: Past and Future

While we normally do not have “meta” posts here, I felt it was worth pointing out that AUFS has had a banner year. Particularly in the last six months, traffic took a qualitative leap, and this year we got more hits than the previous two years combined. I credit this to the fact that the site has become much more useful and diverse: we provided two sets of reading notes for untranslated books, held two events working through recent books in theology, and began a reading group for The Recognitions, and posted several syllabi, in addition to hosting several of the circulating essays about the Iranian protests (one of which wound up getting an Andrew Sullivan link and one of which, by Zizek, wound up being by far our most-read post ever). My goal when I started the blog was to start small, do what we wanted, and let it find its own audience, and it seems as though at least in this case, traffic has followed quality.

I think it’s worth thinking aloud about the direction of the blog for the next year. First and foremost, what recent books in theology would make a good topic for another book event? The Gaddis event is going to be continuing into the new year — what novels might work well for future reading groups? What other theology or theory bloggers should we attempt to bring onboard? (Feel free to nominate yourself.) I note that even though Thomas Bridges has done a relatively small number of posts since he found refuge here, they’ve been among the ones with the highest impact recently, in terms of comments and links. What new kinds of features could take us to the next level? We experimented with doing link posts for a while, but that fell by the wayside — is it worth picking back up? Or should we just hold everything steady? AUFS remains a benevolent dictatorship rather than a democracy, but I trust some good suggestions may result from this.

Does Milbank walk among us?

Our dear colleague Roland Boer, proprietor of the most cleverly named blog around and one of the most prolific men alive, has pointed out a curious thing: it seems that a commenter going by the name of Alasdair Maclagan is going around defending Milbank on the internet in a way that evinces an intimate knowledge of even the most obscure of Milbank’s texts (see a sample). What’s more, the e-mail address he uses in WordPress appears to be the same as Milbank’s own.

Surely this situation is difficult to account for. Yet if I had to venture an analysis, I’d say that there seem to be two possibile explanations. First, Milbank is engaging in sock-puppetry posting under a pseudonym. Many people regard pseudonymous posting in one’s own defense as sock-puppetry and as pathetic behavior, an attempt to create the appearance of broader support for one’s own position than actually exists. If one were in the business of providing positive spin, however, perhaps Milbank reasons that if he used his real name, people would be intimidated and not debate as vigorously. Second, this could be an elaborate scheme to discredit Milbank by making it appear that he is engaged in sock-puppetry.

Which possibility is it? As with the eternal question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Whoever he is, though, it seems clear that Alasdair Maclagan is going to have an ever-increasing amount of work on his hands as more and more people get ahold of Milbank’s essay in The Monstrosity of Christ. Perhaps the burden will be too great and he’ll disappear into the mist.

Winter Quarter Syllabi: Feminist Theologies and Medieval Christian Thought

I have uploaded my syllabi for this quarter to Scribd: Medieval Christian Thought and Feminist Theologies. These are mainly for informational rather than advice-seeking purposes, as I’m locked into the readings, etc. Readers of my infamous Inside Higher Ed article and related conversations will note that I’m employing the advance study question strategy, and I also plan on giving them a good overview of the text before they read. In other words, I’m fully intending to use the methods I suggest in the article; maybe I can write a follow-up after the quarter ends to see how it went.

The Feminist Theologies syllabus will likely not be too controversial, though I know everyone has their own preferred emphases, but the Medieval one might seem strange, given that a huge chunk of it is Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius.

Women in the Bible: A document

For my course on Feminist Theologies, the first reading is a selection of representative passages from the Bible, with a bias toward the New Testament since I am focusing on Christian feminists. I have posted the document on Scribd and invite any interested parties to make use of it, and also to point out to me significant passages that I’ve missed — but please have in mind a passage I can delete to offset it, as I think I’m pushing the boundaries of how much I want to assign for this.

Alberto Toscano on Marx and Religion

Alberto Toscano has an article up that attempts to make the case for a continued relevance of the Marxian critique of religion in our “post-secular” era. It’s really excellent, as one would expect, and it brings out a point that I believe is especially important in light of the resurgence of the classic Enlightenment critique of religion in the guise of Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., namely that Marx is in many ways carrying out a “critique of the critique of religion.”

Ted Jennings’ Statement for the AAR “Death of God” Panel

[Since time ran out before Ted Jennings' statement could be presented at the AAR panel "Whither the Death of God," I am posting it here.]

Every year my friend Kunitoshi Sakai and I attend Good Friday services. Those who know us and that we almost never attend church ask about this odd custom. To which Kunitoshi always replies with a mischievous gleam in his eye: we go to make sure that God is still dead.

The big blue Jesus: A thought on Avatar

There’s been some discussion recently on the racist logic of the incredibly impressive film Avatar. I completely agree with the critique in Aaron’s post, but I’d like to add something else that jumps out at me as a student of theology: contrary to one of Ross Douthat’s recent absolutely valueless columns, this thing reeks of Christianity, with Jake Sully cast as (an at first reluctant) Jesus.

As one of the “sky people,” Jake takes on a Na’Vi body and becomes literally “one person in two natures” (two sets of DNA). He has his own temptation in the desert, with the devilish sadistic colonel offering him his legs back if only he will turn against his official mission and follow the colonel. When he is unplugged without going to sleep first, he is accused of having a demon. I’m sure there are many more parallels, but those are the ones that jump out at me.

This is a specifically supercessionist version of Christianity, however. The only way to be saved is to renounce one’s human roots, with only a small remnant of humans allowed to participate — the rest are cast off into the darkness, never to return. Recast the human/Na’Vi distinction as Jew/Gentile, and this sounds pretty familiar.

Since it’s the day after Christmas and I just got back from the movie, my ability to take this much further is limited right now — perhaps we can discuss in comments, and maybe the opportunity for a more developed follow-up post will present itself. For now, though, I’d like to suggest that the fact that this film follows both a racist logic (in its romantic mode) and a (supercessionist) Christian logic is no coincidence and that this is something that race-focused critiques of the film need to take into account as well.

A Leftist Christmas Bleg

Friend of the blog Jared Woodard asks for our readers to come up with “the best text of the 00s that is a) leftist b) philosophically informed and c) financially literate. If there are any.”

Book Discussion: The Recognitions

I mentioned a jaw-dropping section from The Recognitions in my last post, and promised to upload it when I had a chance. As luck would have it, I’m basically the only person in my office today and the scanner is completely unencumbered by petty corporate matters. So . . . here you are (read to the section break on p. 293). Enjoy.

I cannot recommend this enough, even if you’ve not read (or have no intention of ever reading) a word of the novel. I would even venture so far as to say it could’ve been a part of our recent Theology of Money book event.

Multilateralism

I’ve been writing a review of Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth today, and a thought occurs to me: the fact that the Copenhagen climate talks produced little more than a token gesture seems to count as evidence that, as Hardt and Negri argue, multilateralism is just as dead as unilateralism. It’s difficult to imagine any kind of binding agreement being reached under any circumstances, but certainly a meeting among heads of state, various CEOs, and representatives of NGOs and religious groups seems more likely to produce meaningful results.

(Similarly, I wonder if one could take the depressing progress of health care reform as evidence that social democracy is just as empty as neoliberalism….)