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. I think that it’s naive to think that they’re benevolently sharing their wisdom about how to set up concrete social relations. Rather than viewing Catholic social teaching as an actual practical agenda, we should view it as immediately practical — to the papacy itself. It’s part of the interminable process of forming and maintaining alliances, about which Schmitt already told us all we need to know in Roman Catholicism and Political Form. Catholic social teaching needs to be a “third way” because it needs to appeal to various groups whose interests are in conflict. It needs to hold onto its alliances with the ruling powers in order to maintain the church’s privileges, and it needs to maintain its popular base of support as well. It needs the crazy right-wingers for foot soldiers in the stupid social issues (which are where the papacy’s heart really is), but it needs to convince the well-meaning liberal Catholics that there are really good elements in the church worth holding onto as well. The list goes on.

I don’t think that the Church intends to incite a fascist revolution by any means — though it has certainly felt perfectly comfortable with them wherever they’ve arisen. Its goal, rather, is its own self-preservation. I assume that if a political party arose with the goal of instituting Catholic social teaching as a positive political program, the pope (whoever he happened to be) would privately chuckle at how naive they were — and would publicly send out cautiously-worded documents that would reassure the members of that party that he approved while simultaneously appearing to distance himself from them so as not to alienate the members of the other parties.

I think it’s undeniable that this is a brilliant strategy. But treating the “social teaching” produced by this strategy as some kind of coherent positive vision that will solve all our problems seems crazy to me — although the very fact that people do so is yet more evidence of the brilliance of the strategy, since it is able to provide a rallying-point for intellectuals who can maintain their loyalty to the church and get a sense of unearned superiority as a kind of pure unmediated gift.

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.

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

I decided that everyone who thought Dussel was too far afield were right. Ethics and Community would’ve been great, but I felt it was too long. I still have yet to track down a copy of the Sobrino (hopefully coming tomorrow morning in the mail), so that might change — but I thought it was important to have a very contemporary text in the class to counter the widespread supposition that Liberation Theology is dead. I put Sobrino before Gutierrez because it seemed better for them to have a more solid grounding in the basic presuppositions of LT before getting to this book, which gives me my only text specifically of biblical interpretation (plus the topic of Job seems like a good conversation starter). I took out Park and put the Pieris and Minjung because I thought that would give them a broader view of what’s going on in Asia, plus I really like Minjung theology.

Class format: some lecture for background, but as much in-depth discussion as possible. The class will likely be small enough that this won’t be a big problem. (I’ve been told that the students will only balk at a heavy reading list if I don’t really build it into the class sessions themselves, making it seem like busy-work — making it strongly discussion-based seems like a good strategy, then.)

Thoughts on assignments: first of all, I’m definitely going to have some form of structured reading notes for each class meeting, both to hold them accountable for the reading and give them a handy reference for class discussion. Then I was thinking of having two or three short papers. The first would come after we’d read all the Latin American liberation theology, asking them to assess whether Ratzinger’s critique seemed fair. The second would come after getting through the feminist stuff, asking what Ruether and Terrell owe to Latin American and black theology, respectively, and where they push their forebears in new directions (they’d choose one or the other). The third would do the same with the Asian theologians vis-a-vis the Latin Americans, again choosing either Pieris or the Minjung. (If I did two instead, I’d just make them choose one out of the four options for the two-paper version.)

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.

I’m currently heading up to the University of Dundee where the philosophy department is hosting the 2nd Annual Film-Philosophy Conference (as a side note the philosophy department there, despite its relative small size, is one of the more exciting places to study contemporary European philosophy – go there [but live in Edinburgh]!). It is probably a little late for interested persons to come to it, unless you live in the UK, but check out the website for more information.

Graham Harman is “liveblogging” the writing of his current book project. A really nice resource for those who have ever wondered how exactly one goes about writing something larger than they have ever written before (though, of course, you should adapt the advice to your own tendencies). For my own part, I must say I really appreciate Harman’s “advice posts” and watching him stick up for graduate students to professors-that-must-not-be-named (because I don’t want them to come around here, we have enough hateful lurkers). Though I don’t agree with a good deal of the discussion of “grey vampires” and other categories for certain less than helpful interlocutors, I do think Harman is completely correct in his support of younger thinkers. Far too often we see people who assume they have connection to the current generation of graduate students or who want to whore themselves out to those in power instead of helping those in their own generation and the one below. These people’s thoughts will not be remembered past their own graduate school buddies and the excitement Harman causes amongst younger scholars is testament to his commitment to talk to them (rather than down to them). An example to be followed.

Infinite Thought links to a recent issue of Parallax on the thought of Jacques Ranciere. I’ve only read the article by Dr. Nina Power and the one by Ranciere that is, weirdly, in the third person. They are both really good though and anyone interested in the contemporary philosophical discussion of equality should be interested.

On the theological scene, I was sad to see rather few posts critical of the Pope’s recent encyclical. My own criticism was directed from a largely secular, anti-Papist (though not anti-Catholic) position and I was hoping to see more responses from faithful Catholics and other fellow travelers. Perhaps they are all still percolating on the document. The ones out there have been linked to over at Faith and Theology, but I was disappointed to see quite a few people claiming the document was “beyond Left and Right”.

There is an interesting discussion going on over at Rain & the Rhinoceros on the differing forms of contemporary apocalyptic philosophical theologies. There I make public my view that a very important debate is forming between these two different forms (one might cast it as a debate between Kerr and Barber), but it doesn’t appear that many of the participants accept my typology of that debate.

Finally, a note about the liveblogging of the recent Christian Social Teaching and the Politics of Money. I’ve taken it down, for now, because it was offensive to some. I don’t tend to bow to that kind of pressure usually, but there were some aspects that were taken as personally offensive to individuals, rather than offensive towards them intellectually (the first seems undesirable and the second is something we all should have to face as intellectuals). While I think sometimes the two become confused, and necessarily when we’re talking about the way we ought to live, I am not out here to hurt people’s feelings even if I think, to be an ethical human being, I must oppose their positions. I am going to be adding an introduction to this blog that sets out our basic philosophy and the ground rules for discussion as it has become clear that there are a lot of lurkers who feel that they cannot comment on some of these harshly worded posts. There is a lot wrong with blogs, but one thing that strikes me as good and right is their fundamentally egalitarian and democratic character. If I, or anyone else who posts here at AUFS, writes something you disagree with you are free to comment and present a differing view. By signing our full, real names to what we write here we are taking responsibility for what we write and are accountable to debate and discussion regarding what is written. Attacks deemed in our opinion to be truly personal are not welcome on the blog and we will continue to delete them in the future as we have done in the past. This is the most honest way I can live as an academic and think it is far more honorable than the kind of pleasantries strategically presented. So, please, if you wish to register your disagreement do so in the comments or at your own blogs via a link to the discussion here.

Blogging mega-star Halden has posted a long quotation from an article by James Alison that Halden designates as excellent. (It’s a marvel to me that theology bloggers so seldom read something that falls short of complete excellence.) Here is a relevant portion:

And this for me is the central point in any discussion about monotheism and idolatry: what is the criterion by which we can learn the difference between idolatry and worship? The answer which the Catholic faith gives me is this: the reason why it is possible to be non-idolatrous is because God has given us God’s own criterion for what it looks like to be non-idolatrous. And that criterion, given that God has no parts or divisions, and in every movement towards us is One, is also God. The criterion took the form of a lived-out fully human life story, that of Jesus, whose meaning was the reverse of all the human criteria that are usually brought into play in such stories. God gave, as God’s own criterion for God’s own power, not the power of Emperors, legislators or Priests, but the ability to occupy the space of losing, curse, shame and death without being run by them, in such a way that that space and the whole anthropological structure of human existence that depends on it, is able to be relativised. Idolatry is seen to be an involvement in the human cultural reality of death from which God longs for us to be free.

In the comments to the post, I react with the annoyance that people have come to expect from me:

Why the “reverse”? Why not say that it was different from everyday standards, yet recognizably good nonetheless? Why this fetishizing of reversal for its own sake? It leads you to miss things — like the joyfulness of Christ’s life. He didn’t submit to the cross because that would really fuck with our preconceptions. Right? God isn’t just willfully trying to screw with us because he would be mad if our expectations were too accurate, right? Seriously. It’s perverse, the way so many Christians fetishize Christ’s suffering as though it’s the key to everything.

I’d like to expand on these remarks here, at some length. I am perfectly happy to say that Christ is against “the power of Emperors, legislators or Priests.” If I didn’t think he was, then I wouldn’t identify at all with Christianity. What I object to is the supposed logical consequence, namely that Christ’s true power is “the ability to occupy the space of losing, curse, shame and death without being run by them.” Why is it that God appears to be so bound by the expectations precisely of the Powers? Why does rejecting their claims amount to “losing, curse, shame, and death” and only that?

Look at things from the perspective of the oppressed. To them, is “the power of Emperors, legistlators, or Priests” a self-evidently desirable and good thing? Sure, it’s better to be powerless than not if you’re in the current system, but once you see an alternative to that entire structure in Christ, those power positions don’t seem very appealling. No one is going to follow Christ if he’s saying, “Just suffer for its own sake, because I’m God and I’m here to mess with your shit!” No — they follow Christ because of the joyfulness of his life, because of the unexpected abundance he brings along with him.

His life is recognizably good and appealling, and if you’re oppressed by the structure rather than benefiting from it, you can see that clearly. If you’re benefiting from it, he looks like a total nihilist who will destroy everything — and so with much regret and hemming and hawing, you must unfortunately put him to death. But again, I think it’s perverse to claim that this was the goal. Christ’s willingness to face death — though please note, he doesn’t do so stoically or nobly, he’s crying out in honest agony — is absolutely crucial to what he’s doing, because it shows that he absolutely refuses the blackmail of the earthly Powers and because it subsequently empowers his followers to refuse that same blackmail.

The alternative he’s offering isn’t to accept suffering instead of power — it’s to reject that dyad altogether and live with one another in a way that is not determined by that dyad. What he’s offering is something that is perhaps unexpected and yet still recognizable, something we didn’t realize we were hoping for. What he’s not offering is a simple reversal of the given for its own sake that we’re supposed to embrace because it shows how awesomely transcendent God is. I’m not a huge fan of transcendence, but this position doesn’t even give us real transcendence: God’s actions are still being determined by the Powers, only negatively.

In fact, I wonder if transcendence can ever really get us past this point to a genuine independence, where God’s actions are first of all independent and good and then you notice, “Ah yes, the world is in thrall to these Powers — I guess we’d better figure out a way to deal with that, too.” I believe that the patristic authors often do the latter rather than the former, particularly Irenaeus, and it makes sense in that context that he believes the Incarnation would’ve happened regardless of whether we’d sinned — and I would add that Irenaeus does not seem to me to embrace a doctrine of transcendence, or certainly not of the kind we are accustomed to.

The doctrine of transcendence that is bandied about most often just gives us a kind of fun-house mirror on the world: suffering is good, turns out! But no, it’s not good. It’s unavoiable and can sometimes form part of a larger strategy of resistence, but in itself, it’s bad. To claim otherwise is stupid and morally bankrupt, whether you’re a theologian writing an article or a transcendent God with a petty fixation on fucking with people’s shit.

Friend of the blog Alex Andrews has a piece on the neoliberal economics as a religion at The Guardian.

My friend Mike Schaefer recently alerted me of the economic theory of Henry George, which is focused on getting rid of the problem of rent-seeking. As Mike writes,

While he’s mostly forgotten in the US, he’s fairly well-known in East Asia, particularly in Taiwan, where the government’s policies still reflect his principles–he’s really big on the evils of rent-seeking, and a lot of the Taiwanese govt’s policies still reflect a strong desire to prevent the emergence of any kind of rentier class. Property taxes are high, stock sales are restricted and heavily taxed, the government still controls natural monopolies and natural resources–basically if you want to get rich in Taiwan, you have to make something, and you have to do it in a competitive market. It’s like capitalism done right.

I knew all of this about Taiwan, but i didn’t realise that Sun Yat-sen, who came up with a lot of these policies in the early 20th century, was heavily influenced by George, and based a lot of his ideas on stuff he read in George’s work.

Drawing on this, what would be the drawbacks of a system where the government, presumably as representative of the people, owned all the country’s natural resources (including land) and controlled all businesses with inherently rent-seeking business models (i.e., the so-called “FIRE” segment: finance, insurance, and real estate)? The problem with ownership, of course, would be that then one could conceive of the state selling off said resources — perhaps something along the lines of being held in trust would work better.

In a sense, this could be construed as a generalization of the model from the Torah, where land cannot be sold in perpetuity and reverts to its owners after a given period, except that it applies to all the resources of the people and uses a notion of collective ownership rather than returning to a kind of status quo ante among different family lines. The really crucial addition, though, is the collective ownership of the money supply (through government-run finance). Banking and finance are essentially cartels for the distribution of money, which in the age of fiat currency is literally willed into existence by the designated government official, and there’s no reason for that commons to be enclosed by private actors who thereby become capable of amassing wealth and the accompanying power without doing anything actually useful.

This system would also have the benefit of providing the government with a simple revenue stream — the government becomes the rentier, who extracts the money but then immediately gives it back to the people in the form of public services. The problems of the economic inefficieny of taxation and of the political power of the rentier class are thus eliminated in a single stroke.

I am flattered by the interest my dissertation has generated among my blog readers. I am seeking publication, and if that effort is successful, then it will be available to the general public. In the meantime, I am extremely unlikely to send you a copy of my dissertation if I have not done so already.

I know that in an ideal world, information would flow freely without everyone being so possessive. I openly confess that the academic system of using one’s research to gain recognition and career advancement is in certain cases detrimental to the general human quest for knowledge. Within the academic system as it actually exists, however, sending out the most important thing I’ve ever written–a document whose publication (or whose role as a seed of future published documents) will prove to be absolutely essential to my career advancement–to whatever stranger comes along is an imprudent move, to say the least. Plagiarism, whether intentional or not, really does happen, and recourse is hard to come by.