Real resistence

One often hears leftists criticizing the “Occupy Wall St.” protests. For instance, Doug Henwood recently declared, “Occupiers: I love you, I’m glad you’re there, the people I talked to were inspiring—but you really have to move beyond this. Neoliberalism couldn’t ask for a less threatening kind of dissent.”

The protesters aren’t threatening neoliberalism! Okay. Let’s say that, as a first approximation, you can tell whether a given regime finds an activity threatening by whether it attempts to use force to suppress it.

On the one hand, we have Doug Henwood’s writings and radio program. I have nothing but respect for both of them and am glad they exist. Yet as far as I know, the police have never raided his office or studio, and his newsletter has never been suppressed. Nor indeed have I heard of anyone invading the classrooms of Jodi Dean to stop her from spreading her brave message of taking a stand in favor of taking a stand.

On the other hand, we have the Wall St. protests, which have resulted in police violence that will presumably continue and even escalate.

Now I’m certainly no expert in political activism! I normally sit on the sidelines, thinking my deep theoretical thoughts. Yet if I were forced to choose, I’d have to say that the Wall St. protesters are doing a better job of threatening the current regime than their critics in this case, judging by the fact that the regime is bothering to fight back against the protestors.

Jesus, the Resurrection, and Zombies

Last week in class, we were discussing 1 Corinthians. When we got to the discussion of the resurrection in chapter 15, the students seemed to be converging on an understanding of the resurrection as a primarily spiritual reality — in fact, they seemed to think Paul was envisioning us “becoming” a soul in the resurrection, as opposed to having an immortal soul that was freed from the body — and I attempted to steer them in a different direction by pointing out that Paul talks about a spiritual body. “In fact,” I said, “in the resurrection accounts in the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as having a body. He can eat in some accounts, and in one he still bears the scars of the crucifixion.”

One student without any religious background was utterly outraged by the idea. “He comes back to life and has a body!? That’s insane! So we’re all going to come back and be zombies?!”

Jennings book event prep: Open thread over Part Three

In this section, Jennings pursues a twofold argument. First, he claims that the key terms from Pauline vice lists that are normally translated as references to homoerotic activities are mistranslated and actually have nothing to do with homoeroticism as such. Second, he argues that the homophobic reading of Romans 1:26-27 is completely misleading and serves to obfuscate the scathing political polemic Paul is engaged in throughout the first chapter of Romans. The overall take-away is that Paul does not embrace the Platonic-Hellenistic paradigm of homophobia and that the attempt to interpret him through that framework actively impedes our understanding.

What did you think, dear readers?

Thoughts on the Parable of Leaven

Here is some theological exegesis I am thinking through, resulting from a subconscious insight. Lately I have been reading some books concerning the Jewish roots of Christianity, and other material on the role of (biblical) Israel in Christian theology, and these ideas have been pervading my thoughts, directing what I look for in how I see things: reading theology, writing, and—apparently—other subconscious activities, such as watching my wife bake zucchini bread. I was watching her, and as yeast got mentioned in our conversation, it dawned upon me: the parable of the leaven in the synoptic Gospels has something to say about Israel within it.

Another parable he spoke to them: ‘the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until it was all leavened.’ (Matt. 13:33)

Drew TTC: Divinanimality (Creaturely Theology)

So we won’t actually be streaming the remaining events of this conference (which runs until Sunday). But for those who may still want to see the events we did livestream, you can check out the archives on our internet TV “channel.” And I offer advance apologies for the segments that were victims of my neolithic technological sensibilities and are without audio.

But you can hear: Erika Murphy on the eucharist and becoming consumable, Eric Meyer on the animality of the logos, Terra Rowe on a chimeric christology, Beatrice Marovich (that’s me) on Rilke & his god’s autoimmune animal body, An Yountae on freedom and animal mestizaje, Jake Erikson on apophatic animals, Brianne Donaldson on Jain karma & animal liberation…

And feel free to post general comments or questions that we might bring up in the final wrap-up session. We’ll be posting a podcast of the panel discussions after the week is over.

Free live streaming by Ustream

On the suspicion of unions

Last night, I talked to a young lawyer who claimed to be a Democrat, yet felt that unions should basically not exist. I’ve always found this stance puzzling. Whenever I’ve asked young liberals why they’re unfavorable to unions, they come up with reasons, but they always seem inadequate or nonsensical — so that I suspect that, at bottom, they just feel that there’s something icky about the concept.

I can see why an eager young meritocrat like this lawyer would feel like that, because a world in which unions are necessary goes against his hopes for what the workplace should be.

Hosting Video for the Drew Theological School Divinanimality Conference

I’m very happy to announce that, starting tomorrow, we’ll be hosting video for the Drew Theological School’s Eleventh Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium entitled “Divinanimality: Creaturely Theology”. The stream will be available to watch at the top of the page for the duration of the conference.

Weapons Grade Snark: Against Barth On Religions

I am frankly offended by this stunning display of bad faith, initiated by Barth’s tortured dialectic and Green’s defence of so transparent a piece of sophistry […] The parochialism and abject ignorance of the advocates of the Barthian position is not only embarrassing, it is offensive to the dignity of the spiritual and religious lives of literally billions of fellow human beings.

Ivan Strenski, “On “Religion” and Its Despisers,” in What is religion?: origins, definitions, and explanations, ed. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Brian C. Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 1998). responding to Green Garrett, “Challenging the Religious Studies Canon: Karl Barth’s Theology of Religion,” The Journal of Religion 75, no. 4 (1995).

Imagine writing a piece that was so offensive that it actually was offensive to billions of people.

No one expects the Academic Job Market

My Twitter feed is replete with complaints about preparing academic job applications, and it occurred to me that I could provide a valuable public service by opening up a forum to discuss the common yet vague requirements for such job applications. Possible topics for discussion include the following:

• What should go in my cover letter?
• What counts as “evidence of teaching effectiveness”?
• How do I go about writing an effective teaching statement or research agenda?
• How can I tell whether a job listing is a sincerely open search or an empty formality that will end in an inside hire?
• Why in the world does every postdoc application process require slightly different materials such that I need to rewrite everything every single time?
• How can I best balance my desire to save money with my need to cling to some shred of hope when weighing whether to just go ahead and sign up for three years of Interfolio up front?
• Why does God hate young academics so much?

The Wire and Porgy and Bess

As a new faculty member at Shimer, I get to audit one course this semester, which in my case is “Humanities 1: Art and Music” (basically Intro to Fine Arts). One of the main focal points for the music half of the class is Porgy and Bess, and watching it this weekend, I thought of a potential connection between the Gershwins’ opera and The Wire.

The very first scene of the first episode of The Wire has McNulty investigating a murder that resulted from a dice game gone bad. The first scene of Porgy and Bess features a craps game that ends with a murder. While Wikipedia informs me that the incident from The Wire is based on a real story David Simon came across in his reporting, it seems to me this can’t be a coincidence — by starting with a scene parallel to Porgy and Bess, Simon was most likely indicating his awareness of the challenges of creating a work of art focused on the black experience, as a white man.

(I am posting this in part because I know many of our readers are interested in The Wire, but mostly because preliminary internet research suggests I may have the chance to be the first person to publicly draw this connection.)