“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?

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.

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)?

Experimenting with Rosenzweig and spiritual discipline

I admit that I am experimenting.  And so I am also admitting that I do not know what I am doing.  But I am hopeful.  I am increasingly trying to integrate my general interests in philosophy and theory in my profession as a pastor.  Sometimes this works easily in cases of preaching.  Other times it works surprisingly as in the case of hospital visitation.  And sometimes it must just be experimented with.  This is what I will be doing this Sunday.

Over Lent we are having an adult education series on spiritual discipline (big surprise!).  I am leading the opening session which will hopefully give some ‘frame’ for what follows.  I was originally going to frame sessions in the context of ‘prayer’.  This of course could have been helpful but I did not know where I would go with this and also many of the other sessions deal directly and indirectly with prayer.  I have recently finished Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding the Sick and the Healthy.  I decided that I would experiment with this work as a context for understanding the motivation and direction for spiritual disciplines.  I will in fact introduce this framework as a spiritual discipline in that I am confessing it for testing and examination.

Understanding the Sick and the Healthy is an attempted diagnosis of the illness of philosophy in its tendency to essentialize reality.  Essentialism for Rosenzweig is the isolating of aspects of reality for examination in a way that ends up distorting the manner in which reality is distinguishable but integrated (Rosenzwieg uses the image of ‘flow’ as the metaphor for engaging reality).  What is the world?  Who am I?  Who is God?  These are ultimately paralyzing questions in isolation that lead to a sickness and insulation from reality.  Rosenzweig calls then for a return to ‘common sense’ which is re-establishing an appropriate view of World, Humanity, and God.  These are pictured as distinct mountaintops in which it is impossible to have all three in view at all times though one must have a ‘base’ at the centre of the three if healing is to occur.  So what is a common sense view of the three mountaintops?

What is our world-view?  Rosenzweig warns against the notion that we can dip water out of the river to analyze as it as the world and believe that in so doing we understand it.  My reading of Rosenzweig on this is that we should not look for deeper meaning when it comes to the world.  Understanding the world means beginning precisely on the surface.  The world is not us and the world is not God.  The meaning of the world is in its relation to Humanity and God.  Therefore we enter each day “frankly confronting each thing as we encounter it; we look for nothing beyond, do not try to walk suspiciously around the object; nor do we peer into its depths, but accept it rather as it is, as it hastens towards us.  And then we leave it behind and wait for whatever is to come tomorrow.” (74)  Therefore we do not look for God in the World because the world is something and therefore not God.  This frees us to embrace a fully scientific model of engagement (as though this should still be a major question) and warns against viewing God’s ‘blessing’ in particular world events.  Because if God blesses in this way then wouldn’t God also curse in this way.  Let the world be the world in all its ferocious and unyielding consistency.

What is our life-view?  There is tendency towards trying to ‘pin-down’ our identity.  But again to isolate and abstract in this manner is to have things truly come unhinged and find ourselves in a crisis of identity.  You cannot set out to ‘find yourself’ except maybe in spite of that process.  Nevertheless we tend to situate ourselves in some form of ‘worm theology’ or act as though we are ‘like gods’.  Both instances are unhealthy thou both instances present themselves with a sort of ‘security’.  I sense again the Rosenzweig is interested in a simpler descriptive account that has no interest in a stable definition but understands the basic variability of humanity in its temporal orientation.  Here is a fabulous quote,

Let us seek not seek for anything beyond ourselves. Let us be ourselves and nothing more. Such a moment of existence may be nothing but delusion; we shall, however, choose to remain within the moment, deceived by it and deceiving it, rather than live in deception above or below the moment.  Let our personal experience, even though it change from instant to instant, be reality.  Let man become the bearer of these shifting images.  It is preferable that he change masks a hundred times a day (at least they do belong to him) rather than wear continually the mask of the divine ruler of the world (gained by thievery) or that of the world’s bondservant (forced upon him).  The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance. (79)

The strength of humanity might not be in securing identity but in accepting the variability.  Let humanity be human in all its fabulous variability.

What is our view of God?  How can we speak of God?  But didn’t we also have trouble speaking of the World and of Humanity when we sought essences?  Why would we expect anything else when seek God in this way?  But the stakes do seem higher.  When we claim or secure our identity of God then what we may be doing is articulating our own highest value and therefore become more threatened and aggressive when opposed.  But God is not us and God is not world.

Throughout his work Rosenzweig gives attention to the way in which language, words, and names form the bridges between these three peaks; that allow for the flow of the river.  The same is true of God.  The world is named by humans.  Humans engage past and future through their names.  God does not need a name but a gives a two-fold name.

One the one hand He embraces sinners (Humanity); on the other, He proclaims law for the world. The root of all of man’s various heresies is to confound the two parts of His name with one another; God’s love encroaches upon His justice, His justice upon his love.  It is indeed God’s task both to maintain the two-fold character of His name as well as reconcile them.  So long as there is reason for such a division, so long as God is not God-in-Himself whom philosophers drivel about; if He remains God of man and the world, then it is He, who by means of His two-fold name transforms – and we use the word in its technical sense – human energies into the energies of the world. (92)

Have faith in God.

What does this have to say about spiritual discipline?  Spiritual disciplines are the acts by which reality is properly distinguished and properly joined.  We do not secure and reside ‘in the world’ creating life as cogs and law.  We do not secure and reside ‘in humanity’ allowing ourselves to think too highly or too lowly of ourselves and each other.  We do not secure and reside ‘in God’ retreating from the responsibilities of life and creating an idol that will not heal and redeem.  It could be argued that for Rosenzweig spiritual disciplines are those things orient life thus,

There is in addition to the world and himself, He who turns His face towards both.  He it is who summons man by name and bids him take his place in the congregation who calls upon Him.  He it is who orders things so that they may form a kingdom bearing His name.  Thus man may act unconcerned with the outcome; he may act according to the requirements of the world as it is today.  That day, the day when action is required, lets him understand what he must perform. . . . Truth waits for him; it stands before his eyes, it is ‘in thy heart and in thy mouth,’ within grasping distance; ‘that thou mayst do it.’  In the same way as he has achieved certainty concerning the reality of the world and has found courage to live, he must also have faith in God who brought him into existence. . . . The proper time then is the present – today. To avail himself of today, man must, for better or worse, put his trust in God. . . . The proper time has come [when need calls], and thus God assists you. (93)

If I have given any justice to this short work then it should be somewhat apparent that Rosensweig has indeed given us a ‘common sense’ account of things in which the world is allowed to be the world, humanity is called to be human, and God turns toward and takes responsibility for both.

I am not entirely sure what to think of this project let alone how the presentation on Sunday will go.  What I appreciate about this project in terms of spiritual discipline is its liberating and clarifying possibility.  There are many critiques out there that deal with our need to ‘let go’ of our need for control but rarely have as helpful a supplement for how to take responsibility.  Perhaps after the session I can articulate some of those possibilities.

The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance.

I hope to do a more extended post on my reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s Understand the Sick and the Healthy but I could not resist putting up this quote.  What can I say I really am an existentialist at heart (wait, is that self-contradictory?!).

Let us seek not seek for anything beyond ourselves. Let us be ourselves and nothing more. Such a moment of existence may be nothing but delusion; we shall, however, choose to remain within the moment, deceived by it and deceiving it, rather than live in deception above or below the moment.  Let our personal experience, even though it change from instant to instant, be reality.  Let man become the bearer of these shifting images.  It is preferable that he change masks a hundred times a day (at least they do belong to him) rather than wear continually the mask of the divine ruler of the world (gained by thievery) or that of the world’s bondservant (forced upon him).  The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance.

A phenonmenal turn around

Circumspective concern decides as to the closeness and farness of what is proximally ready-to-hand environmentally. – Being and Time, 142.

This quote reflects Heidegger’s discussion of the manner in which we attempt to bring the world ‘close’, which is to say have it concernfully, subjectively, before us.  The examples given is that while glasses and pavement can be the most spatially present they are often the most concernfully distant entities to us.

Much is of often made of the silliness which postmodern philosophy seems to concern itself with respect to our inability to be present to realities and truth around us.  A while back I posted a quote on Facebook from Heidegger in which he said, “In principle the chair does not touch the wall.”  Now in what follows I am not claiming some sort of direct correspondence or example of this quote, though I think it relates to the initial quote of the post.

I can still vividly remember driving in a new section of Winnipeg that I was not familiar with.  I generally have a good sense of direction and ‘bearings’ so I was sort of going on my gut at that point thinking that I was at least heading generally in the right direction.  At one point an overhead sign was approaching and it basically communicated to me that I was heading in exactly the opposite direction as I thought I was.  Now at some point earlier in the drive I had made this shift but not noticed.  Now with the communication of this sign the reality of being turned around was ‘brought close’ to me immediately and physiologically I felt as though I had been spun around, I felt nauseous.  This always struck me as strange though I could not quite frame the experience.  Now what happened was the neither the truth of what already happened nor was it the direct response to some change in my bodies spatial direction.  What happened was a particular subjective appropriation that I can’t imagine would happen to everyone nor what it likely happen again to me in the same way.  It is this experience that helps me understand his earlier statement which says,

Yet this ‘subjectivity’ perhaps uncovers the ‘Reality’ of the world at its most Real. (141)

This thinking often does not effect (affect?) many aspects of everyday life but it follows as a spectre or hangs as a reminder which, I think, in certain situations should call us both to boldness and humility when faced with those claiming to have ‘direct access’ to the world or ‘Reality’ as such and how such decisions are enacted.

Approaching one of the Big Four

I am not sure it is the case with you but for at least a decade or so four books have hung over my head standing out as foundational for particular interests that I have.  These four books are Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Marx’s Capital, and Heidegger’s Being and Time.  Of course other works jockey for position but these sort of linger, not that I think reading them will necessarily be transformational (or even good) but only that they are required if I want to feel as though I can develop a proper orientation around the questions these works address.

Given my current reading schedule I have now begun one of the four, Being and Time.  It has been tremendously helpful to have read Husserl prior to starting this work (Heidegger was Husserl’s student).  Heidegger also believe that philosophy and so also science has not ‘gone back far enough’.  This is of course a disputable (overthrown?) quest today but I still find it helpful to try and think along the process of thinking being.  As I am still early in the work I thought I would offer a reasonably accessible quote on Heidegger’s concept of phenomenology,

[Unlike other sciences] ‘phenomenology’ neither designates the object of its researches, nor characterizes the subject-matter thus comprised.  The word merely informs us of the ‘how’ with which what is to be treated in this science gets exhibited and handled.  To have a science ‘of’ phenomena means to grasp its objects in such a way that everything about them which is up for discussion must be treated by exhibiting it directly and demonstrating it directly.  The expression ‘descriptive phenomenology’, which is at bottom tautological, has the same meaning.  Here ‘description’ does not signify such a procedure as we find, let us say, in botanical morphology; the term has rather the sense of prohibition – the avoidance of characterizing anything without demonstration.

. . .

What is it that phenomenology is to ‘let us see’?  What is that must be called ‘phenomenon’ in a distinctive sense?  What is that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly?  Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most does not show itself at all:  it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most does show itself; but at the same time it something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground.

Being and Time [trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson], 59.

A note on fact and meaning

My interest in working through Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences has waxed and waned.  This is probably due to the sharp transition I feel in moving from Kierkegaard’s style to the more straightforward work of ‘real’ philosophy.  What has kept my attention though is Husserl’s genuine impression of having discovered something and of its significance and secondly of the fact that in historical context the work he did has had tremendous historical significance.  So what is he doing?  I understand a primary motivation of his work to be a method of thinking subjectivity scientifically.  How can I be included in scientific investigation?  For this reason the natural sciences and mathematics always play a secondary (but certainly not disparaged) role.  These secondary sciences work from the assumptions of a pre-given world that accord with our experience of that world.  These sciences always rest on something prior.  So Husserl is trying to carry out to completion Descartes’s emphasis on the primacy of the ego.  But the ego is not a ‘premise’ from which the rest of knowledge is deduced.

The point is not to secure objectivity but to understand it.  One must finally achieve the insight that no objective science, no matter how exact, explains or ever can explain anything in a serious sense. To deduce is not to explain.  To predict, or to recognize the objective forms of composition of physical or chemical bodies and predict accordingly – all this explains nothing but is in need of explanation.  The only true way to explain is to make transcendentally understandable. (Crisis, 189)

This is not particularly shocking to anyone with exposure to philosophical hermeneutics but it is a helpful reminder for what continues presently to be a common and serious misconception, namely, that scientific findings are self-evidently meaningful.  These findings are framed as such because they give the air of authority and therefore power to various expressions.  While I am not sure I will follow Husserl in his own project I think this point remains sound.

High school wisdom

I have never studied philosophy institutionally.  This is, almost, a fact.  When I was in high school a few students were selected (how I don’t know) to participate in the University of Winnipeg’s Mini-U program which was a week’s worth of classes on a topic of the student’s choosing.  I chose philosophy (why I don’t know).  I remember the basic outlines of certain sessions.  We looked at theories of essence in which a knife was evaluated by its knifiness.  I remember making a comment and the professor saying I was a closet Nietzschian (I remember neither the comment nor do I know why it would have been associated with Nietzsche).  I remember being told that a dog does not think.  I remember some high school bantering about how truth can be known.

What I remember most, though, was coming across Zeno’s paradox.  I will go from memory so I don’t need to worry about accuracy.  Zeno’s paradox explores the nature of two simultaneous and seemingly conflicting processes.  As I remember it the paradox was described (either in the original context or taught as an example) as a race in which the runner has a clear start and finish.  However, during that run a mathematical process also occurs or can at least describe the runner.  Mathematically the space can be divided into halves.  Halving a finite space, however, is an infinite process.  A half can always be mathematically halved.  How can an infinite mathematic process be completed within a finite progression?  I am probably stating this horrendously.  However, Zeno’s paradox came back to mind as I am reading Husserl in which he attempts to outline the faulty thinking of science in assuming that objective and abstract processes can be the basis for all knowledge, when in reality “the objective is precisely never experienceable as itself.” So Husserl attempts to move back into understanding what a science of the subjective could be.

And more than this Zeno’s paradox came to mind with this image from a newly added blog to my feed, Fuck Theory.