“The Postsecular Turn in Feminism” – A brief summary and outline of questions

This afternoon the reading group Critical Conversation will be discussing a text by Rosi Braidotti titled, “In Spite of the Times: The Postsecular Turn in Feminism.”  In preparation I thought it might be helpful to outline the position taken in the paper and draw up a few questions.

The subtitle of the paper is really an apt description of the work of the paper.  Braidotti begins by outlining the origins of feminism as nestled within the larger Enlightenment project which critiqued and largely rejected religious dogma and clerical authority.  This was based in a larger ‘negative’ position which functioned in a primarily oppositional mode and at times seemed “to have only paradoxes to offer” (3).  This position has led to some difficulties as the critique has, at times, been shifted wholesale onto the Muslim community resulting in blatant racism.

With the ‘return of religion’ many monotheisms have been developing a conservative politics based on ‘strong foundations’ that function at a number of disjunctions (separating women from mothers / gays from humanity / sexuality from health / science from faith).

Braidotti then proceeds to ask how ‘secular’ feminism really is in its various manifestations.  Here she cites a number feminist representatives within monotheistic religions as well as more marginal ‘spiritual’ forms.  This leads to the assertion that,

All non-secularists stress the deep spiritual renewal that is carried by
and is implicit in the feminist cause, insisting that it can be of benefit to
the whole of mankind and not only to the females of the species (Russell,
1974). This humanist spiritual aspiration is ecumenical in nature and
universalist in scope. (7)

The question then becomes a matter of how to maintain a universal scope while avoiding the temptation to seize this vision and establish it for all on their terms.

In an interesting turn of phrase Braidotti then speaks of the spiritual ‘residue’ that remains at work in secularism through its expression as a negation of particular religious forms.  The postsecular problematizes this position in light of increasingly complex expressions of ethnicity and diversity that are not allowing themselves to be defined under one ‘rational’ vision.  The second feature which secularism has not accounted for is a more psychoanalytic perspective which includes vital drives and totemic structuring of psychic order and social cohesion.

The main psychoanalytic insight therefore concerns the importance of
the emotional layering of the process of subject-formation. This refers to the
affective, unconscious and visceral elements of our allegedly rational and
discursive belief system. (11)

As I near as I understand this appears to be a definition of ‘spirituality’ by Braidotti.  And it is in these elements that she finds more “residues of religious worship practice.”

From here Braidotti outlines “Vital Feminist Theories” which reflect a process rather than foundationalist or idealist ontology.  In this account “immanence expresses the residual spiritual values of great intimacy and a sense of belonging to the world as a process of perpetual becoming.”  And further, “What is postsecular about this is the faith in potential transformation of the negative and hence in the future” (13).  The position is no longer based in a negative or reactionary critique of what is destructive but attempts to explore how the creation of conditions for liberation can be achieved which allows it to address expressions (religious or otherwise) in their particularity without rejecting them under a prior ideology (anti-clericalism for instance).

What this means practically is that the conditions for political and
ethical agency are not dependent on the current state of the terrain. They
are not oppositional and thus not tied to the present by negation; instead
they are affirmative and geared to creating possible futures.
. . .
As Rich put it in her recent essays,
the political activist has to think ‘in spite of the times’ and hence ‘out of my
time’, thus creating the analytics – the conditions of possibility – of the
future. (16)

I set this paper within similar moves being made which attempt to take greater account for the mutual positioning that occurs between religion and secularism.  In this case feminism is taken seriously as a ‘third’ in its attempt to form subjectivities that will find ways of affirming “what is not contained in the present conditions.”  What are some questions, theological or otherwise, that arise from reading this piece?

What do theological anthropologies say about the ‘subject’ and subject formation?  It would seem to me that dominant practices of subject formation in the church would fall under the critique of most global monotheistic religion leveled by Braidotti.

Do we accept her characterization of religion?  Is what she is placing religion/spirituality under (as a ‘residue’ of) too nebulous to have real social and subjective traction?

How do we navigate the Western world with secularized accounts of prior religious commitments (humanism)?  And further do we need to simply learn to ‘take our place’ amidst a larger collaborative project?  Do we need to ‘become less’ so that salvation/liberation would become more?

What is the theological concept of ‘new’?  Is it actually a return to the old?

A plea for descriptive and inquisitive intervention

In my last post I was pushing towards more care in how we articulate possible notions of faithfulness tied up in practices intimately linked with having a social awareness and engagement.  So how then does one articulate and engage the world when it is of course possible to undermine any given expression?  I think part of the shift is to not ‘over-code’ a given situation.  Simply living in the ‘hood and buying 2nd-hand and organic does not itself imply goodness.  How do we describe and articulate the network of relations that are at play in our actions?  Let the theology, if there is any, emerge from the material of our life and not impose the theology on it.  So the task, in my mind, becomes more descriptive and attentive.  This is not to say neutral or objective.  But open-ended or reflexive descriptive and inquiry will allow for ongoing modification and development.  What does this mean in specific situations.  One approach is a sort of journalistic posture.

I was walking home yesterday when I saw something that stood out.  A car was stopped at an angle in the middle of an intersection.  There were no other cars around so it did not look like a crash.  Then a saw someone helping another person to their feet.  My initial response was that someone had fallen and the driver stopped to help the person up.  The person being helped up looked a little frail and perhaps had a slight disability or something (though this of course could have been the result of the incident).  The driver then hopped back into her car and drove away.  I was not prepared for how to respond to this situation.  I asked someone afterwards if the car actually hit the woman on the street.  The person said yes.  I was initially not prepared to believe this or allow for it as a possibility.

Now in what follows I want to be clear that I am not advocating for a response and posture of authority never mind superiority that leads us to believe we know what is best in a given situation.  Rather, I am advocating for a sense of responsibility and insight.  So what would a descriptive and inquisitive intervention look like?  Well, it would begin with description and follow with inquiries.

I see this woman has fallen.  How did that happen?

Perhaps this seems stupid to make explicit.  But the reality is that I am a relatively confident person who has intervened in other awkward situations in the past.  But in this instance I did not.  What was the result of my not being able to simply make an observation and ask a question?  The result was, likely, yet another of the near infinite forms of how power is abused.  The driver (I am told) hit the woman.  A car driven by a white person with visibly more wealth hit an older woman of a visible minority in a neighbourhood with a high immigrant population (I of course need to speculate because I did not directly observe or inquire).  The driver then came out and helped the woman up.  You can walk so whatever happened was not toobad.  The driver got back into the car and drove away with no visible information shared (contact information and license plate number).

The wealthy know how to defend their property at all costs.  Just think of the intense scrutiny of a vehicle after the smallest fender-bender.  They then filter this through channels of insurance to make sure maximum compensation and protection is possible.  The woman in this instance was bodily struck.  She likely had little concept of our legal system and if she did the shock may not have allowed her to process this in the moment.  So the one in power aided the more vulnerable to her feet in weakened state.  This tends to be intervention of power and privilege.  We help people to their feet but in state that is weaker than they were before.  We strike them, not intentionally of course but they just sort of get in the way, then when this happens we feel bad, help them up, and carry on in our original goal.

My hope is that a descriptive intervention would have shown the woman who was struck that she was a neighbour deserving to be loved and also that if necessary the one in power can be held accountable by community who values one another.

Keep it to yourself

A number of blogs that I follow push back (most recently here) pretty hard against a type of personal activism that ends up creating a structure a moral evaluation with no sense that effective change is produced or even possible.  What do I mean by this?  I mean simply that personal activism can be a therapeutic response to the guilty conscious of privilege.  There is nothing new in that statement and many of the blogs that I follow outline and develop this a more thorough manner.  However, I though it might be helpful to outline a few simple guidelines for how to discern this reality.

1. If you believe your action has direct connection to effective change, then outline the network of relationships that demonstrates this, so as to help enable others to participate.  So the personal practices of reducing and recycling are good but I personally do not know of the statistics that relate the basic difference between the personal recycling of material goods and the inherent production of corporate waste in producing our goods and services.  Therefore, in our current structure I do not actually know if increased recycling will actually make a dent in the realities of environmental damage.  So reduce, reuse, and recycle but unless you can articulate a well-informed understanding of how that effects change in the environment in relationship to all the other variables then just do as a base-line practice and nothing more.  The same is true for alternative or ‘guerrilla’ gardening.  These practices can be fun and meaningful but can they address global issues of starvation?  Should they function as anything more than a ‘good habit’?
2. Be honest that ‘fair-trade’ products represent a sort of premium or ‘luxury’ brand.  They are not bad.  They are simply out of reach for many people to consistently have access to.  The result of creating a morally elevated status for such products is that those who are the most vulnerable in our society will actually have guilt heaped on them (in addition to the prevalent social stigma of being poor).
3. ‘Symbolic’ gestures are only powerful if they register or gain traction in the face of those in power.  In my Mennonite culture there is an emphasis on ‘simple’ or humble lifestyles.  This basically means that people are not supposed to be ‘flashy’ with their money.  So a family can have a cabin, an RV, snowmobiles, a boat, etc. but if another family occasionally goes out to a fancy restaurant or purchases a piece of ‘abstract’ art they are deemed frivolous or ‘materialistic’.  Simple living is fine, not having flashy things is fine, but there should be no moral scale here.  The only time a particular way of living has symbolic power is if it is actually taken note of by those in power and disrupts the flow of power.  Otherwise, go ahead and do it but drop the implicit or explicit pretense of righteousness.

The result of not following some of these guidelines is, I believe, the very real possibility of insulating ourselves from the possibility of actual change because we are already the change we want to see in the world.  So, again, to repeat there are all manner of good and relatively equivalent (I did not say neutral) ways of living (because in many instances we do not actually know the good or harm we do).  This is not a critique of particular practices as such, rather I am concerned about the moral structure that gets developed around these practices that serve to sanctify and pacify our privileged guilt while condemning those in our midst outside the privileged ability to attain this sort of personal social-piety.  Sure we will condescend to acquit the poor from such guilt but it will be done not from solidarity but from ‘on high’.  And to be clear it is not only those without material means who struggle to attain this sort of personal social-piety but the reality is that it is a lot of work to be consistent in this area.  Many people with mental illness or with children with disabilities or with other significant stress in their life will find it hard attain this piety and will only have more guilt/shame added to their lives as they already have difficulty achieving the other salvation narrative of the ‘American dream’.

So is this another expression that functions to insulate my own position?  I am sure there are elements of self-protection here.  But I do want to offer this as a sort of confession.  For most of my adult life I have lived in the ‘less-desirable’ areas of Canada.  I have, for the most part, quite enjoyed this experience.  I have, however, also held it up as a sort of implicit model of ‘faithfulness’.  And for the most part the practice has been selfish as it has kept me in touch with certain social realities that we tend to ignore.  But functionally there has been no more method in this approach than the baseline hope of being a ‘good neighbour’.  Being a good neighbour will look differently in my neighbourhood than it will in other neighbourhoods but it is also no more righteous (and I am not convinced I have lived up to this in my context in any event).  While I need to take down my lifestyle as a model of personal piety this is different than articulating the manner in which neighbourhoods are formed and maintained (which I have articulated here and here).  This articulation can be a framework in which possibilities for effective or symbolic action can be developed.  This becomes a participatory and collaborative expression rather than a personal posture of living in the ‘hood is more righteous than living in the ‘burbs.  My point in all this is simple.  There are many good things to do in the world but for the most part keep it to yourself.  If it is an effective or truly symbolic act then it will speak for itself.

So what am I missing in my thinking or on my list?

First Fanon

I was slightly desperate not having a book at hand as I about to head to catch a rather long (city) bus ride.  Finally I grabbed a copy of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks that I picked up used a while back and headed out.  I don’t think I am sucker for just anything new but Fanon’s style was impacting to say the least.  And I think it was impacting because it struck a chord that I am tuned in to but rarely hear played with all notes together.  The notes comprising this chord looks a little a like this existential/psychological/social.

Fanon is not a philosopher as such, nor is a social theorist or poet.  He blends these influences into a sort of form that, for me, speak of acongruence, that is, of accounting for the gifts and passions in my life that should not be neglected.  Here are a few excerpts from the intro,

The explosion will not happen today.  It is too soon . . . or too late.
I do not come with timeless truths.
My consciousness is not illuminated with ultimate radiances.
Nevertheless, in complete composure, I think it would be good if certain things were said.
These things I am going to say, not shout.  For it is a long time since shouting has gone out of my life.
. . .
This book should have been written three years ago . . . But these truths were a fire in me then.  Now I can tell them without being burned.  These truths do not have to be hurled in men’s faces.  They are no intended to ignite fervor.  I do not trust fervor.
Every time it has burst out somewhere, it has brought fire, famine, misery . . . and contempt for man.
Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.
. . .
It is good form to introduce a work in psychology with a statement of its methodological point of view.  I shall be derelict.  I leave methods to the botanists and the mathematicians.  There is a point at which methods devour themselves.

I have only a read a couple of chapters and there is little that is ‘new’ and some things I might question or challenge but to read someone for whom these ideas were formed out of the direct crucible of experience remains an important part of our formation.

Difficult to discard

The following quote by Craig Keen was recently posted on Facebook,

The mystery before which I am to give up all my intellectual possessions is the mystery of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

My initial (and internal) response to the quote was to call bullshit.  The quote is written by an academic whose bread is buttered by an institution of intellectual possessions, posted on Facebook by an academic and will be read by those looking to secure such possessions.  I admit that I became a little reactionary in my response and Craig did respond to some of my comments.  The parallel he offered was that he was speaking to ‘thinkers’ in the manner that Jesus might have spoken of the wealth of the Rich Young Ruler.  This parallel further begged the question for me.  What might it look like to actually give away your intellectual possessions?

It seems to me that this sort of translation renders Jesus’ call overly subjective.  There is no quantitative measure to evaluate the response.  And of course the subjective is important, at least in my estimation.  It is, however, not what should be figured into this particular appropriation of Jesus’ words.  The reason Jesus’ words had impact was because of the evaluative position it put the Rich Young Ruler into.  There is a time to speak of the method of living after such a decisive choice, but not before.  So again, this leads me to ask whether there is any traction in claiming a parallel from Jesus’ words to the idea of giving up ‘intellectual’ possessions.

Sitting with this question for a time I began to reflect on my own trajectory in the past couple of years.  In those years I was confronted by the question of whether my view of the world reflected a type of ‘pious theology’ that actually insulated me from the sort of engagement with the world that my theology apparently called me to.  In other words, was the way I expressed or articulated my theology actually more significant then how my theology (intellectual possessions?) engaged the world?  I came to the conclusion that in many ways this was true.  I was more interested in preserving a theological form than engaging the world theologically.  And so, at times explicitly and at time implicitly, I set about ‘giving up’ many of my theological possessions.

What has been the result of this dispossession?  It has resulted in many theological statements (including the one above) coming across as more and more foreign or unintelligible.  These statements required the now discarded theological lenses to have meaning for me.

I of course do not claim to now have a privileged perspective on the situation and I do continue to hold on to intellectual possessions.  What is pressing remains the second half of the quote.  Is my dispossession occurring before the mystery of the crucifixion?  How would I know?

What has guided the last couple of years is the idea that the body of Christ is that which is gathered and formed in the spaces between the powers of death and those that suffer that power.  I would call my approach a mixture of liberation/anabaptist/natural/existential theologies.  So in many ways I would say that yes my approach has indeed been before the mystery of the crucifixion (though I may not always call it a mystery . . . sometimes it is far too blunt and pointed).  So why do I continue to find this great rub with other active theological voices in the blogosphere (though more often on Facebook now) that articulate an ‘apocalyptic’ posture towards the crucifixion?

Reflecting on how some earlier exchanges occurred there appears to be a fundamental difference in theological resources (again, possessions?).  I have discarded the primacy of orthodox doctrines (note I said discarded their primacy).  In place I hope to have a much more reflexive or affected approach to theology.  The claim of ‘natural theology’ has been leveled against this approach, and I suppose it is true as far as the label can go.  However, it is the only method I currently have that has any integrity or congruence.   And in this respect I do have a sense of and could articulate what it looks like for me to have discarded intellectual/theological possessions (and some days it is more than a little unnerving).  But it draws me back to my initial question.  How do one, particularly within a broadly ‘barthian’ posture, discard their intellectual possessions?  How do they know when they are encountering the ‘mystery of the crucifixion’ if not for at least a taint of natural theology.

To be clear I am not saying such discarding does not happen.  I am just not clear on what that could look like within the particular theological method I tend to encounter online.  I have noticed that Halden has shifted away from a particular ecclesiology.  I take it his theology was challenged at some point but what provides the criteria for a position to be ‘discarded’?  How is one persuaded or, again, how does one recognize encountering the mystery of the crucifixion?

Initial thoughts on the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8

The Ethiopian eunuch is biding his time.  Well, his time . . . I guess I am not sure.  Our time remains marked by a language that demands his masculinity, his balls, in any event.  It is not his time, as time now possesses <strike>him</strike> the eunuch.  Perhaps it is better to say the eunuch waits.  But waiting is a terrible term.  It gives the illusion of passivity and detachment.  What does the eunuch do?  The eunuch reads,

Like a sheep he was led to slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.

The eunuch reads the words of his own silence.  There is silence but there are alsosilenced words.  These words remain internal or are ignored as foreign or corrupt.  So the eunuch pronounces his silence.

How does one become a eunuch and what does it mean?  I have read just a little.  The eunuch in many traditions is close to power, either human or divine.  The eunuch can be a priest.  The eunuch can be a royal official.  The eunuch is close to power but does not draw close to this power.  Rather the eunuch is positioned close to power.  The eunuch is allowed next to power because power has been stripped from the eunuch.  The eunuch is a place holder.

As the eunuch recites the eunuch’s silenced words for his life is taken away from the earth he remembers his encounter with a teacher of the law on his visit to Jerusalem.  The scribe tells him of the corruption in the Greek text that he is reading.  The prophecy is of one who is cut off from the land of living.  This, this must be a castrated one.  What else could such an expression mean?  The eunuch feels something welling up within him but as yet there is no release, no outlet for his urge and desire.

The eunuch’s tradition positions him next to power by stripping him of life.  What sort of power could this be?  It is the power of death.  But what of this foreign religion?  This religion that in its founding traditions denies a eunuch from even gathering in worship.  He again recalls the scribe who looked on him with pity reciting the blunt prohibition from Deuteronomy,

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

The God of Israel does not gather passive servants (eunuchs) to minister in the Temple.  The God Israel does not even allow them to gather in worship. But what of this castrated one who was silenced and humiliated as I was?  Does the prophet speak of himself or someone else?

The difference of Jesus: A sermon on Acts 3:12-19

Those of us in the church business often hear about recovering ‘the Acts church’ or even more specifically the ‘Acts 2 church’.  ‘Acts 2’ of course refers to the second chapter and the inspiring scene at Pentecost as well as the believers gathered daily in worship, sharing their lives and material resources together.  In these short verses we find an image of unity and wholeness; a certain sense that things are as they should be.

Rarely, however, do we find much reflection on the very next chapter.  I don’t recall hearing about the ‘Acts 3 church’.

Who comes first among all?

A few gems from Is it Righteous to Be.

The exceptional position of the I as the only one having to respond for the other thus finds itself understood starting from the generality of a code of laws, relevant for all of us.  For indeed, in the social multiplicity we are not paired off with the neighbour for whom I am responsible, but are linked also with the third and fourth parties, etc. Each person is, to the I, an other!  The exclusive relation for the I to the neighbour is modified.  How, in effect, can one be answerable for all?  Who comes first among all?  This is the essential ambiguity of the relation between the ethical order of the responsibility for the other and the juridical order, to which the ethical nevertheless appeals.  This is because in approaching in charity the first one to come along, the I runs the risk of being uncharitable toward the third party, who is also my neighbour.  Judgment, comparison, are necessary.  One must consent to comparing incomparable beings.

And in a later interview Levinas responds to the question of his definition of philosophy.

I would say that philosophy permits man to interrogate himself about what he says and about what one says to oneself in thinking.  No longer to let oneself be swayed or intoxicated by the rhythm of words and the generality they designate, but to open oneself to the uniqueness of the unique in the real, that is to say, to the uniqueness of the other.  That is to say, in the final analysis, to love.  To speak truly, not as one sings; to awaken; to sober up; to undo one’s refrain.  Already the philosopher Alain taught us to be on guard against everything that in our purportedly lucid civilization comes to us from the ‘merchants of sleep.’  Philosophy as insomnia, as a new awakening at the heart of self-evidence which already marks the awakening, but which is still or always a dream.

There are two ways

There are two ways of reading a biblical verse. One consists in appealing to the tradition, in giving it the value of the premise in one’s conclusions, without distrusting and without even taking account of the presuppositions of that tradition. . . . The second reading consists not in contesting straightaway, philosophically, but rather translating and accepting the suggestions of a thinking which, once translated, can be justified by what manifests itself.
. . .
Of course, I try to enter first into the language of the nonphilosophical tradition which is attached to the religious understanding of Jewish writings; I adopt it, but this adoption is the not the philosophical moment of my effort. There I am simply a believer. A believer can search out, behind the adopted intelligibility, an intelligibility which is objectively communicable. A philosophical truth cannot be based on the authority of a verse. The verse must be phenomenologically justified. But the verse can allow for the search for a reason. . . . I illustrate with the verse, yes, but I do not prove by means of the verse.

Emmanuel Levinas, Is it Righteous to Be, 61-62.

I put this quote up on Facebook as a stand alone.  It initially spoke to me of, or validated for me, how the biblical text can be used beyond confessional ‘logics’.  Immediately after reading this, however, Levinas went on to describe how confessional and philosophical readings acted like separate disciplines for him.  He even mentioned having separate publishers for these works.  Levinas continues this distinction maintaining that we need both Greek and biblical thought; one of reason and the other of sociality.  This troubles me because I simply do not know how to exercise these distinctions in practice.  I can understand how the distinct disciplines of politics and geology separately ‘read’ the land.  But if I understand Levinas correctly I cannot, as of yet at least, make his distinction in practice.

The context I am thinking of in particular is preaching.  When I approach the Bible as an ordained minister I do not know what it means to read it ‘simply as a believer’ as Levinas puts it.  The Bible continues to come to me as strange and I will literally take anything (philosophy, art, literature, psychology, observations, etc.) that will give me some point of orientation or manner of conversing with the text.  In the same way I cannot bracket some of my devotional postures of prayer when I try and gain congruence and coherence in my thinking.  Something other than reason wanders through my thoughts that I could not and would not want to exorcise from my ideas.  There is the matter of trust (I find that is a better term than ‘faith’ in most cases) that continues to inform and shape my reasoning.

In any event I look forward to working through my first full text of Levinas.  And I suspect in as much as he himself embodies both processes he may not adhere to strict divisions all the way through.  But what I am left wondering about is to what extent the sheer discipline of distinction would actually benefit both my faith and thought (or are those categories already too reductive)?

Confessing the resurrection

[Easter Sunday sermon preached at First Mennonite Church, Winnipeg.]

I confess that I have not struggled this much writing a sermon as I have in a while.  I confess that for most of the week I felt like I was staring blankly and confused into the face of this reality we call resurrection.  I confess that I followed numerous lines of thought trying to develop something insightful or meaningful.  I confess that I failed.  I confess that I would have preferred preaching on the Gospel of Mark which ends with the women terrified at the news that Jesus is not in the tomb and keeping silent out of fear.  That strikes me as the most reasonable response to facing the reality of the resurrection.  It is unintelligible, and perhaps fearfully so.  We have no real framework for this reality other than through examples that seem to pale in comparison to the force of this event.  But Paul nevertheless reminds the church in Corinth that the message of Jesus death, burial, and resurrection forms the message, the good news, by which we are saved.