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American Fascists: Language… and Reality

American Fascists: Language… and Reality

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What a beautiful present on a Saturday morning! It is rare to see someone write on this set of issues with such precision and clarity. Gigantic kudos to Jeff Fecke, and a huge thank you to Mark Crispin Miller for sharing this with me!

The F Word
By Jeff Fecke | October 27, 2010
Please go comment on the original post!

There are epithets that decent people shy away from using. One obvious example is the use of racist, ethnic, or gender-based slurs. If you’re a decent human being, you don’t use them, because one uses them to hurt, to malign, to defame.

But it is not just slurs on one’s person that we avoid. We also avoid slurs on one’s political philosophy. Describing someone as a Nazi, for example, is rightly seen as beyond the pale. It says a person is a believer in an ideology that led to the slaughter of six million innocent people, and ignited a global war that killed millions more. Unless a person actually is a follower of Hitler’s philosophy, describing them as a Nazi is not only inaccurate, it’s pejorative. And the same is true of other discredited, vile, or simply discarded epithets, like communist1, or Maoist, or totalitarian; unless a person actually is a communist, Maoist, or totalitarian, describing them as such is simply rude, and is designed to create far more heat than light.

But sometimes, the shoe fits. There are still Nazis, after all. There are still segregationists. Still anti-Semites. Still communists. Some of these people wear their positions proudly, like the perky neo-Nazi with the swastika tattoo on her head who frequents my local convenience store.2 Most, however, hold their positions without admitting to the label that defines them — as the label itself describes a belief system that has been rejected by everyone.

This is why people who proudly use racial epithets will refuse the epithet “racist.” They are racists, of course, but they will not wear the mantle, because racism is bad, and everyone agrees on that. Of course, they may believe that people of different races shouldn’t mix, and that people of a given race are inferior to people of another race, and that people of a different race moving into a country will destroy it. But don’t call them racist — they’ll pitch a fit.

And this is, of course, the other reason decent people shy away from applying the most loaded political labels to their opponents — because they don’t want to have to have the fight. Because no matter how much your opponent says Stalin had some good ideas, calling her a Stalinist will only lead to a fight about how she isn’t one.

And yet — sometimes you simply have to call a racist a racist. If a person is advancing all the tenets of racism, then that person is in fact a racist. And standing by and pretending that person isn’t racist is playing into their hands, by allowing them the fiction that their racism is not racism, but something benign.
And that lets radicalism in through the back door, and lets decent people advance radical views without admitting to being radicals. And slowly, that makes radical views acceptable.

There is a political philosophy that you are probably familiar with. Among its core tenets are:

  • Nationalism – The people of its country are special, and the founders of the nation as uniquely wise — and people of all other nations are inherently dangerous. People who do not fully assimilate are viewed as threats to be dealt with.
  • Social Darwinism – Those who are poor are poor because of their own flaws and failings, and if they can’t work, they don’t deserve to eat.
  • Propaganda – It uses its own media outlets (when out of power) or state-controlled media (when in power) to support its own viewpoint while ridiculing others.
  • Anti-Intellectualism –It ridicules the pointy-headed intellectuals with their large words and their big plans, in favor of the simple, salt-of-the-earth man on the street, and the wisdom of the Average Joe.
  • Heroism – National heroes are not just heroes, but uniquely heroic, uniquely wise. No other country’s heroes were as brilliant and crafty, and no other nation’s enemies more deserving of punishment.
  • Social Authoritarianism – When people fall away from morality, the power of the state can and should be used to push them back in line.
  • Militarism – The military is the best and most respectable part of the nation, and war should be supported unblinkingly whenever an enemy threatens.
  • Corporatism – The power of the government can be used to intervene economically, but almost always on the side of corporations — as it believes that companies create wealth
  • Anti-Communism – Communism — usually defined as “other political philosophies” — represents an existential threat to our way of life, and must be defeated at any and all costs.

The adherents of this philosophy believe that they are saving their nation from the weak, the Communists, the intellectuals. They see their country as at a crossroads, and believe that if the wrong turn is taken, it will cease to be a great nation, and will become like all the rest of those lousy states. Because they believe that they are the saviors of their nation, they are willing to do almost anything to gain power — lie, pull dirty tricks, and resort to violence against political opponents. Indeed, in every country where this philosophy has taken hold, it has used extrajudicial action by its members to intimidate its opponents.

If you have been paying attention, you know that there is a political movement in this country that mirrors these views. Its members claim that America is a unique country, a shining city on a hill. That the Founding Fathers were wise beyond any reckoning, and that any deviation from the course they set us on is tantamount to blasphemy. That immigration (and, sotto voce, racial and gender equality) is destroying the uniqueness of the American experiment, and that we keep moving away from the good ol’ days of the 1950s to a place that would make the founders blanch in horror.

These people have their own news network that tells them what they want to hear, that lies to them brazenly, that calls their opponents socialists and secret Muslims. They mistrust intellectuals, rage against the well-educated, claim that deep thinking is un-American. They believe that the government should use its power to keep people from getting abortions, and to discourage homosexuality. They believe that the unemployed are lazy, and that they should either work, or starve.

They are worshipful of the idea of the military and of citizen militias. They do speak out against corporate greed, half-heartedly, but oppose any action that might impose limitations of corporations — and are indeed happy to support corporate welfare whenever they get the opportunity, so long as they can call it something else.

They say they are doing all of this because of the threat from socialism, which is a word that in America has become conflated with communism.
And they are most definitely using extrajudicial violence and intimidation to get their way.

In America, in 2010, these people call themselves the Tea Party. They say they are trying to get our nation back to its founding principles, deliberately using iconography from the American Revolution to stake a claim that they represent the last, best hope of Real America.

They may see themselves that way, but that is not the right way to describe them. The philosophy they endorse is a well-known one, one described by one word.
Fascism.

You may object to my calling the Tea Party a fascist movement. I understand. I don’t like doing so myself. But they are far closer to fascism than the modern Democratic Party is to socialism. And Democrats being socialist is an article of faith among the far right of the Republican Party.

I don’t like calling my opponents fascist. But the shoe fits — at least among the farthest of the far right, the group that has taken over the modern Republican Party. The path that the Palins and Angles and Millers and their ilk would have us take is the same that Mussolini charted for Italy. They’ve prettied it up, of course. They’ve sanded off the edges. And they’ve added the extra dimension of religion to it — the idea that we are fighting a war against Islam, which is in league with socialism, and that Christianity must be bolstered.

But that was predicted. Sinclair Lewis once wrote, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Well, my friends, fascism has come to America, flag and cross and all. And if we do not say so — if we dare not name it, for fear of riling our opponents — we let them mainstream their views. And that inaction would be far worse than any word can be.

–
1Note: communist, not socialist. Communism, specifically the brand that was attempted in the Soviet Union and its client states, has been tried, and it failed spectacularly; it rivals Naziism for the most evil political philosophy of the 20th century. A version of socialism, contrawise, has been made to work rather well in places like Sweden and Denmark, without the terror wrought by Stalin and his ilk. One can argue whether socialism is a good or bad political system, but it is not an inherently evil one.
2Do you think I could possibly be making that up?

For Ex-JWs – Sites to Explore

For Ex-JWs – Sites to Explore

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Sites for Recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses to Explore

Scroll to the bottom if you’re not in the mood for this!

Over the years, I’ve noted that the quality and helpfulness of former JW sites varies quite a bit. Some are very angry, while others are more compassionate. Some are able to create spaces to share insights with one another, some are more combative with peers. Some are focused on biblical interpretation, others on issues like abuse and shunning. More recently, I’ve noticed an upsurge of writers that – like myself – have focused on what it takes to follow your own path and walk an authentic spirituality that is not particularly driven by past experiences. I’ve also found a decrease in the purple prose, and more of a matter-of-fact approach that comes with time and experience.

I developed a list of online resources for ex-JWs some time ago, but here’s a more updated list.
These cover a range of thoughts and approaches. Check them out!

Some of that is pretty dark.

Now you need something else, don’t you?

My dear friend Lin shared an article with me on disfunctional beliefs that former Jehovah’s Witnesses might still carry with them.

It probably helps that she herself is not a JW or a former JW. She really has a handle on the central problem of how some aspects of the Watchtower psychology/ideology prevent their adherents ( and post-adherents) from leaving, loving, and thriving. I think some of us would go further and reject the very word “apostate” because its connectations are too deeply ingrained.

Not only is the article itself an excellent resource for former Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I’m very impressed with the quality of the whole site – Mindful Construct. I wish that all recovering JWs had access to such an insightful and caring cognitive counsellor, someone who could interact with them in just this way. And – I was honored that my tips for former JWs article was linked as a resource!

Here, try these too:

Oh – and watch the sublime Sister Wendy talk about art whenever you can. She functions for me in much the same way that Mr. Rogers did when I was a child.

Derrida

Derrida

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I love humor, even when it’s aimed at my heroes. Jacques Derrida was hopelessly misunderstood by much of the American audience, but there is a grain of truth in much of this:

Fair enough. But really… let’s think about intellectual courage…

Yeah, Derrida has a lot going on. He is sometimes very difficult to read. And it’s easy to make fun of Derrida and deconstruction, and to think what it means is that there is no basis for justice or ethics. Many so-called religious leaders make this mistake, and far too many academics do as well.

There is no more careful reader than Derrida was – and to start to understand what is at stake, you have to develop the skills to read and to think in ways that are a little different than what you might be accustomed to, but it’s worth it.

A careful reader can easily discern that not only does his work *not* discard or undermine ethics and justice, but it really demands better forms of both than what many of his detractors can offer or (in many cases) care to offer.

The following is probably as clear as Derrida gets on these issues in a short space. Read slowly and carefully, and then try to argue that Derrida was proposing that we have no obligation to pursue (and construct, and deconstruct, and reconstruct) our truths in the light of ethics and justice….

I do not believe that the whole ‘left’ in general is more occupied with cultural identity than with social justice. But if some who call themselves leftists had done so they would deserve Rorty’s critique. On this point and to a certain extent I would agree with him, for then two grave risks would have been neglected: first, though legitimate in certain situations and within certain limits, the demands of cultural identity (and this word comprises all ‘communitarisms’, of which there are many) can often feed into ‘ideologies’ of the right – nationalist, fundamentalist, even racist. Secondly, the left may relegate to the background and gravely neglect other struggles, social and civic solidarities and universal causes (transnational and not merely cosmopolitical, because the cosmopolitical supposes again the agency of the state and of the citizen, be it the citizen of the world – we will return to this). But why must one choose between the care for cultural identity and the worry about social justice? They are both questions of justice, two responses to anti-egalitarian oppression or violence. No doubt it is very hard to lead both of these debates in the same rhythm, but one can fight both fronts, cultural and social, at the same time, as it were, and one must do so. The task of the intellectual is to say this, to mediate the discourses and to elaborate strategies that resist any simplistic choice between the two. In both cases, the effective responsibility for engagement consists in doing everything to transform the status quo in the two areas, between them, from one to another, the cultural and the social, to establish a new law, even if they remain forever inadequate for what I call justice (which is not the law, even if it determines its history and progress).

There is no ‘politics’, no law, no ethics without the responsibility of a decision which, to be just, cannot content itself with applying existing norms or rules but must take the absolute risk, in every singular instant, or justifying itself again, alone, as if for the first time, even if it is inscribed in a tradition. For lack of space, I cannot explain here the discourse on decision that I try to elaborate elsewhere. A decision, though mine, active and free in its phenomenon, cannot be the simple deployment of my potentialities or aptitudes, of what is ‘possible for me’. In order to be a decision, it must interrupt that ‘possible’, tear off my history and thus be above all, in a certain strange way, the decision of the other in me: come from the other in view of the other in me. It must in a paradoxical way permit and comprise a certain passivity that in no way allays my responsibility. These are the paradoxes that are difficult to integrate in a classical philosophical discourse, but I do not believe that a decision, if it exists, would be possible otherwise.

In my eyes what you call ‘a kind of political metaphysics’ would be exactly the forgetting of aporia itself, which we often try to do. But the aporia cannot be forgotten. What would a ‘pragmatics’ be that consisted in avoiding contradictions, problems apparently without solution, etc.? Do you not think that this supposedly realistic or empirical ‘pragmatics’ would be a kind of metaphysical reverie, in the most unrealistic and imaginary sense one gives these words?

One has to do everything to see the laws of hospitality inscribed in positive law. If this is impossible, everyone must judge, in their soul and conscience, sometimes in a ‘private’ manner, what (when, where, how, to what extent) has to be done without the laws or against the laws. To be precise: when some of us have appealed to civil disobedience in France on behalf of those without identifying papers (and for a small number among us – for example in my seminar, but publicly – more than a year before the press began to discuss this and before the number of protesters grew to be spectacular), it was not an appeal to transgress the law in general, but to disobey those laws which to us seemed themselves to be in contradiction with the principles inscribed in our constitution, to international conventions and to human rights, thus in reference to a law we considered higher if not unconditional. It was in the name of this higher law that we called for ‘civil disobedience’, within certain limited conditions. But I will not reject the word ‘grace’ (of the unconditional gift and without return) that you offered to me, provided that one does not associate it with obscure religious connotations which, though they can sometimes be interesting, would call for quite different discussions.

Michael Jackson, Child Abuse, and JW Apologist Firpo Carr

Michael Jackson, Child Abuse, and JW Apologist Firpo Carr

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“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” – William James

Recently, I participated in an online discussion in the comments of an article written by a prominent friend/adviser to the late Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson & Jehovah’s Witnesses, by Firpo Carr

The Michael Jackson case and the issue of child abuse are both important to me, but I didn’t really know who Firpo Carr was when I made my first comment. I’d run into his name before, but I was a little under-prepared for his particular style of debate. I felt pretty battered by the end of it, much like what happens when I try to have a political discussion with someone who has already been stirred up by their favorite propaganda machine.

His back and forth with Jerry Bergman is illuminating and true to form.

A sampling of Carr’s other L.A. Sentinel articles for you to chew on:

One article on money and priorities took an argument that was very familiar to me from JW days, and made it much more compelling and interesting. He’s clearly a smart guy, but something….

I hadn’t really thought about this very much before, but there might be a serious educational problem with a dependence on some forms of long-distance learning, especially at the upper levels in the humanities. Potential scholars may simply lose too much by not participating on-site at their universities. There is a sort of human osmosis effect that can only be learned by being there. It’s important to have both peers that are interacting with you and trustworthy mentors that can call attention to your blind spots without attacking you as a person. It may be more difficult to absorb the values and norms of dialogue and debate if you’re not part of the ebb and flow of discussion.

On campus, you become part of a network of friendship that includes worthy adversaries, and you develop different skills as you learn how to respect people independently of whether or not you have disagreements. Constant exposure to a wide range of scholarship and discussion not only helps the scholar to develop an ethical sense of discernment, but also models the qualities that they admire (or reject!) in a teacher. At its best, university life at the graduate level is amazingly liberating, intellectually stimulating, and fulfilling.

It’s not just the “immorality” (sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll) of university life that JWs object to, it’s the training in strong interpretations and critical thinking, along with the ethics of scholarship, that would be dangerous for them to condone in their followers. Independent thinking is against their religion.

Firpo Carr has written a fair number of books. Good for him for being so prolific! However, some supplemental reading might be helpful. Start with a selection from my page of reading recommendations for former JWs. To that, add:

Why? Because this latter list contains non-JW-influenced resources for understanding some aspects of the mindset that can lead people to be manipulated – and possibly continue the chain.

To stick to the topic at hand, though, readers should be aware that child abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses is a systemic problem, one that is reinforced by setting unreachable standards of perfection, demonizing “worldly authorities,” defending questionable biblical interpretations with out-of-context snippets, defending the two-witness rule for any accusation of foul play, subordinating women, presenting an almost comical style of discourse and argument, hours of weekly meetings for repetition and reinforcement, the paucity of choices for a mate, the fear of disfellowshipping and abandonment by friends and family, the threat of demonic possession, the undermining of kindness, and the almost complete lack of pastoral care.

Firpo Carr can of course believe what he likes and project what he needs to – his path is none of my concern – but it’s a very odd position from which to deny or rationalize child abuse. Even more so now, I wish that I had followed my instincts while Michael was still alive. Michael Jackson describes some of the abuse he and his siblings suffered at the hands of his father in this video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc8HjdK7kJ8[/youtube]

Watch that, then read our discussion. Remember that Firpo Carr says he was Michael’s friend. I’m sorry, but I have serious doubts that Firpo Carr brought much of spiritual value to the friendship. Now he says that Michael Jackson took him aside and told him that he wished his children to be brought up as Jehovah’s Witnesses – and to have them study with Carr!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnAhcHMgR_8[/youtube]

I wonder if Michael said that to anyone else, or (shall I be this cynical?) if he said it to anyone at all.

In related news – some new documentation on the Watchtower child sexual abuse settlement. It’s not hearsay – it’s signed, sealed with gag orders, wrapped up in lies, and delivered:

“Documents show that the church knew for years that some prominent members were sexually abusing children and did little.”

The Watchtower PR department issued a statement. “For the sake of the victims in these cases, we are pleased that a settlement has been reached.” Sigh. It’s not for the sake of the victims, or their policies would be different.

This is the way they protect known predators. Imagine how they handle psychological and physical child abuse, and then start Googling for the testimonies…

Here’s a sweet sad Monty Python/Michael Jackson mashup. Maybe it will start to express the inexpressible value of caring and kindness.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Z04RssKWI[/youtube]

For a while, Michael was able to redefine and transform his experience. He created music that brought fun – and even joy – to people all over the world.

I will remember him that way.

On Evil

On Evil

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I was re-reading a dissertation exam question, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that there has been no real transformation in my views on evil in more than a decade.

Question: Compare the language of cause, analysis, description, and solution to evil in Augustine, Nietzsche, Schüssler-Fiorenza and one author of your choice (Buber). Identify juxtapositions, similarities, opposition, etc., amongst the authors, and situate your own view.

The text of Augustine’s Confessions constructs an aesthetic metaphysics from within a post-Manichaean narrative of his intellectual and spiritual autobiography. Augustine modified (from Plotinus) the aesthetic idea of “plenitude,” in which the best creation is the creation that allows every possible kind of existence. For Augustine this implies a vertically-scaled hierarchy that I think of in terms of a ladder. God is both outside and at the top of this ladder, and God’s perfection of being and goodness stands as the immutable authority of measurement. Goodness is equated with being (or existence), since both go hand in hand up and down this ladder of the cosmic hierarchy. The gap between the separated top of the ladder and the rest describes the initial difference between God and God’s creation. Since Augustine believes that God created everything out of nothing (ex nihilo), the parts of creation “neither altogether are, not altogether are not, for they are, since they are from Thee, but are not, because they are not what Thou are. For that truly is which remains unchangeably” (VII, 17). As created, humans do not participate in God’s being.

In order to argue against the idea of evil as a positive force or substance in opposition to the good, the order of goods and the order of being for Augustine are in terms of proper measure at each level of the hierarchy. Augustine employs the language of “privation” and “corruption” to describe both the proper tincture of being and non-being and the order of goods proper to the perspective of each level. “Privation” is a “taking away” (privatio), a lack, an absence, a loss – especially of something necessary to the functioning or flourishing of life. To Augustine, evil is “nothing but a privation of good, until at last a thing ceases altogether to be” (III, 12). This conflation of being and goodness allows him to describe a dynamic at each point of the ladder, in which the initial proper measurement is, again properly, sucked away. The violence of death, or even of privation as an act of depriving one in want or distress is not addressed in terms of any detraction from God’s perfection. Augustine’s interpretation of the Genesis narrative also authorizes him to place women in a state of greater “privation” than men (XIII, 47). However, privation is an optimistic term in the sense that it implies a sense of not-yet-realized potential and the possibility of replenishment. Since humans are twice-removed from God’s perfection, by creation and by the “fall,” our degree of goodness and existence has to do with staying on the proper rung and looking upwards. There is good on every level, but the measure of our loves should be in proportion and in priority to our God-given position. Sin is committed through an “immoderate inclination towards those goods of the lowest order” in which “the better and higher are forsaken” (II, 10). When we love in the wrong order, we are indirectly punished by God: “For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment” (I, 19).

“Corruption” carries more negativity, suggesting the broken pieces of something that was whole. Only things that are mutable can be corrupted, and insofar as things of creation are in a state of “privation” of God’s perfect immutability of goodness and being, creation is corrupted by its mixture with non-being (voidness) as lack of goodness. Evil is not a substance, because a substance can be only insofar as it is good. In so far as a thing is corruptible, it is good, or else there would be nothing to corrupt (VII, 18). This suggests that humans need some form of metaphysical rust-proofing. But there is another sense in which “corruption” pertains, and for that Augustine has to rely on the Adamic “fall.” In this sense, evil consists in the self-originating act of pride of turning away from the highest good. Against the original turning away (down) from God in the context of free will, Augustine posits a genetic-spiritual transmission (literally, for Augustine, via the semen), in which we inherit this tendency. As a kind of contagion or infection, sinful pride (a misdirection of the will) is parasitic in a more thoroughgoing way than oxidation and the like might indicate.

The terms privation and corruption both place the blame for certain kinds of suffering on human will. Each individual has an inherited tendency and a free choice to will the inappropriate thing, thereby placing him or her in the “bondage” of sin. The solution to evil for Augustine is to turn to God for grace and salvation, to love God more than your own private good. In privation, turn to God for replenishment. In corruption, let God clean you and loose you from your chains. It is by the grace of God that the will is liberated from its servitude to sin. The only alternative to that choice is this: to the extent that we bring excessive non-being upon ourselves, we are subject to punishment (both at the time and in the life thereafter). While Augustine relies on an optimistic language, he requires the idea of hell to balance the results of human free-will against the totalizing economy of creation.

Nietzsche is not a Christian and offers no god’s-eye view since for him there is no absolute objective structure of the world existing independently of human apprehension. While Augustine can rely on a sense of extra-human authority, Nietzsche maintains that we construct value and meanings from particular perspectives and through our own actions. His analysis aims to be historically and linguistically genealogical, asking how ideas about morality have arisen. He describes evil primarily in terms of strength and weakness, or master and slave moralities (with frequent, somewhat Darwinian allusions to differences of function in the animal world). Although theses terms appear oppositional, Nietzsche stresses that they are more often expressed in terms of gradation and interpenetration, both in communities and in the same human being (Beyond Good & Evil, sec. 260).

Genealogically speaking, “evil” has been framed in terms of power that is sought by both the weak and the strong, but only exercised by the strong. Moral designations are first of all applied to human beings. The difference between good and evil – or good and bad – depends on one’s position. A master morality depicts itself as “noble” and therefore good in that it experiences the construction of its own values. Against its “triumphant affirmation” of itself in action (power and will), it sees weakness (flattery, humbleness, liars, doglike people who allow themselves to be mistreated) as “contemptible” (“bad” rather than evil). The “noble” has power in self-relation, has no need of pity, and honors others over a long run with gratitude or revenge (BGE, sec. 260). Ressentiment (resentment) arises from the slave morality, where slaves depict themselves as morally good, but dominated by evil masters who rule by fear. Their morality depends on a hostile external world against which they react with blame and a sometimes hidden imaginary of revenge (see On the Genealogy of Morals, first essay).

The conventionally Christian idea of “evil” for Nietzsche represents a slave morality since it is based on the fear of the power of others—a façade whereby the weak make of their weakness a moral strength and spread mediocrity while waiting for their revenge when their kingdom comes. Nietzsche’s criticism is more generally aimed at the illusion of absolutes, which for him inevitably revert to their opposites; what is framed as “immoral” is what happens. Christianity’s “morality” in no way increases actual sensitivity to others, but rather impoverishes instincts and drives. His assertion of “the death of God,” is not only an announcement of the end of metaphysics or of the effective function of the absolute. As Baudrillard reads Nietzsche (and I agree with its tenor), Nietzsche’s announcement also acts as a provocation and a challenge to God (or human ideas about God) to exist against the Christian image of God (supposing that there was only one such image).

The solution is a dismissal of the conventions of absolute terms, and a “transvaluation of values,” where the superhuman (Übermensch, which also includes the action of the subhuman “blond beast” or bird of prey) exercises willful power in a complex state of delight and love of fate—an individual Dionysian affirmation of the sovereignty of the self in the world. In sum, Nietzsche claims that we need to liberate ourselves from all conceptions of “morality” in order to be free to experience the constructions of our own sense of what morality might be outside the regulatory framings of power relationships.

Buber’s Images of Good and Evil (published as the second part of Good and Evil) performs a phenomenology of structures of consciousness through readings of the Hebrew-biblical and Zoroastrian myths. Each account represents a different kind and stage of evil for human consciousness. He interprets both narratives, finally, in terms of differences in the language of decision, and although both kinds of evil are represented in each, he focuses on the Persian (Iranian) battle of the warring gods to describe the structure of evil as the decision to do wrong instead of right, to be false instead of true.

Here I shall focus on his readings of the Hebraic bible accounts, which suggest that the soul has an urge that is “evil,” which is passion, and an urge that is “good,” which is directionality. Buber recasts evil as the sundering of these urges. Evil, or sin, is the “way” which fills the earth with violence as a result of a passionate, but directionless products of the “imaginary”(GE, 91). To Buber, every imagined possibility entices the soul. The demonic danger that “lies in wait” when passion and direction are sundered is the “tension of omnipossibility” that exists as a result of the “vortex of indecision” of one’s soul.

Buber’s “demythologizing” interpretations of the biblical accounts are noteworthy in that he avoids the problems of Augustine’s fall-before-the-fall and condemnation of sexual desire. Passion and direction together are “very good.” His solution is not to extirpate the evil urge passion, but to reunite it with the good urge direction: to “yoke” the urges of evil and good back together in the service of God. This will “equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders it capable of great love and of great service” (GE, 92-97). He suggests a personal phenomenology in which you would meditate in a complete way upon an occurrence in which you seriously acknowledge, for yourself and not as a result of societal taboos, that you were bound up in the actuality of evil, either through decision or indecision. He suggests that when you really remember what it was like, you will see that in the “vortex” of possibilities were not “things,” but “possible ways of joining and overcoming them” (GE, 126). When the soul affirms the one direction in relation to which the soul is crystallized, it affirms its best in relation to God. Only the good of yoked passion and direction can be done from the position of this self-affirmation of decision. For each, this good is different, because we are all called differently by God.

Schüssler-Fiorenza does not describe evil, not even by a performance of its differences from conventional uses: the term itself disappears from the discourse. I see this absence functioning in different ways. It signals a refusal to re-invoke all conventional associations (especially as other, scapegoat, alien) on anything other than feminist terms. In this way, it also functions as an acceleration of the essential non-evil to which each of the other thinkers have subscribed.

In her biblical interpretations, Schüssler-Fiorenza theorizes (and practices) a feminist hermeneutics of evaluation in response to patriarchal structures of oppression, and a feminist hermeneutics of liberation that affirms the bodies and voices of women. There is an implicit language of description of evil in the former, and a language of solution in the latter. Androcentric language, phallogocentric representations of ultimate reality and authority, racism, colonial exploitation, sterotyping, and the like are all evaluated negatively in the context of a vision of freedom for women. The ultimate “litmus test” for invoking Scripture with authority “must be whether or not biblical texts and traditions seek to end relations of domination and exploitation” (BNS, xiii). Her writing is social, political, and pragmatic.

Her book Bread not stone: The challenge of feminist biblical interpretation describes a re-naming of God, church, scripture, and language. The structures of oppression and dehumanization that patriarchy has constructed in the metaphor of permanent “tablets of stone” is transformed to the image of bread that “nourishes, sustains, and energizes” women (there may be an implicit anti-Semitism in this transformation, but her point is the change in functional metaphor). Likewise, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation argues – through the words of the “resident alien,” expressed in the figure of the Syro-Phoenician woman who interrupts Jesus’ retreat to argue for her daughter – for the disruptive and “incendiary power” of the Word to transform discourses of “objectivist scientific or ecclesial doctrinal ethos into a critical rhetoric.” Her hermeneutic center is the notion of the ekklesia, taking from the ancient legislative assembly of citizens “called out” by the crier “the practice and vision of a discipleship of equals as the women-church”. The women-church collectively describes the men and women who struggle for liberation from patriarchal oppression and who are affected by biblical discourses.

Her critical theology of liberation attempts to take responsibility for discourses in the recognition that “all language about the divine is incommensurate with divine reality” (BSS, 6) and that interpretation is historical and framed by varying imperatives and conditions. She focuses on a metaphorical space between the “logic of patriarchy” and the “logic of democracy” where emancipatory practices of interpretation might be engendered in biblical interpretation, by exploring not only what the text excludes, but also how the text constructs what it does include by tracing the “rhetorical moves, spaces, silences and crevices” of these two logics. Schüssler-Fiorenza’s constructions of affirmative possibility against kyriocentric (master-centered) readings of Scripture are already a practice of the solution that she describes.

Against all of the above thinkers, one could claim—and this would be my own tendency—that there is evil, and that evil and goodness exist in a very interdependent and interpenetrating relationship. A modified Manichean position such as this would be perspectival without complete relativism, where each temporary resting-place of constructed identity defines its own evils (usually in the process either of creating or being assaulted by them – or witnessing either). With Schüssler-Fiorenza, I would agree that evil and goodness can only be framed in terms of problematic subject-positions and institutional or communal conditions. A metaphysics such as Augustine’s is not possible. Efforts to imagine what a God’s-eye position would look like (such as Borges’ “The Aleph” or “The Library of Babel”) are interesting simply through the vertigo they induce. The God perspective, whatever that might mean, is not human nor does it translate easily to the human niche in the cosmos.

I think that there can be a will toward evil (in everyone to a greater or lesser extent at different times) in a predatory human agency that takes active delight in the observation and infliction of the suffering and pain of others. There can also be evil where there is not a specific will to evil or malicious enjoyment taken in the suffering of others, but where there is profound misunderstanding of the effects of what they do – particularly with the person who in a position to give aid and succor or at least kindess and compassion and refuses to do so. More generally, there is an ongoing dynamic of permeations of violence in active, passive, and complicit forms (with greater and lesser degrees of defensive rationalization or acceptance of responsibility for them). Any attempt to place them in a stable hierarchy has to fail, since space, place, temporality, and form are in states of reversals and metamorphosis.

Although I confine myself to notions of humanly-constructed (human, all too human) evils and systems of evil when theorizing, I am also fascinated by representations of inhuman evils in the American popular imagination. In the late twentieth-century, Americans seem to require more and more images of evil. What might this signify?

Buber’s phenomenological readings, like all other readings, simply re-mythologize what they intend to demythologize, in more or less convincing ways, to different communities, classes, genders, and so on. My objection to Buber’s Images of Good and Evil is that he claims to have described universal stable structures of consciousness from specifically-located myths. He assumes their influence on himself and his communal structures, but he does not show how these influences operate, nor is he conscious of the narrativity of his narrative. Against Buber’s claim that the soul can only crystallize in one direction, I suggest that it is fairly difficult, if not impossible to find just one direction, although two or three are sometimes possible. In my own experience, an additional problem is that any such crystallization tends to provide some of the conditions for the next problem. In this, I partly agree with Nietzsche, and am also influenced by Baudrillard’s notion of the “fatal” strategies of the object.

Schüssler-Fiorenza’s sense of ethics in biblical scholarship runs the risk of a “slave morality” in Nietzsche’s sense. To counter this, new perspectives and strategies for speaking with power and authority are required that do not simply re-instantiate the same old problems. When liberation discourse becomes authoritative, something is lost – the core of liberation and freedom without which the discourse is meaningless. Power itself is a metamorphizing mixture of good and evil. For example, the powerful uncovering of patriarchal oppression through the incendiary word can generate effects that uncover certain truths, while in a Heideggarian sense also serve to cover over the power relations between women: to separate those who fight for liberation openly from those who not, to separate believers from unbelievers, to assert supremacy of one community over another while pretending not to do so, to control the use of language, to encourage conformity in the very valorization of the claim to embrace difference, and so on.

A search for causes for evil seems to me – ultimately – futile, since causes are everywhere and nowhere. Only evil effects can be named with confidence. In a way, Heideggarian “thrownness” and “dasein” are inflected in the American sayings “you had to be there” and “wherever you are, there you are.” This is not to say that one has to inhabit a particular subject-position in order to describe it, but it does suggest that a better description might result from listening to the people who are “there.” This suggests something like a hermeneutics of multiple attentiveness.

There are also multiple methods of analysis that can be constructed, and each construction tells a more or less convincing narrative for a different group of people. As part of the dissertation project, I intend to explore some of changes in literary representations of evil in twentieth-century America. My method of analysis will be a somewhat postmodern eclectic one in the sense that it will that picks up theories as a bricoleur, as they seem pragmatically useful in the process of religious readings of literary texts. I do not subscribe to one particular discipline in isolation, or even to one theory in exclusion to all others, but am by nature and inclination intellectually interdisciplinary (although yes, I am well aware that this may be destructive to my future flourishing. As Martin Luther did, I can only post the note on the great door and state, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”). I am suspicious of communal demands, but I welcome a deeper understanding of multiple social locations.

I have no idea what the solution to evil might look like, or if such a thing as a “solution” to evil is possible (I do most seriously doubt it).

Voices Through the Whirlwind

Voices Through the Whirlwind

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Just when I had loads and loads to blog about, I got knocked down by oak pollen. I just knew those trees were hostile. There is too far too much to tell, so here’s just a very quick summary.

  • Equinox Weekend – Inconsolably depressed, and for no good, acceptable (rational) reason.

    Spiraling outside my will. Surrounded by a wall. Falling down a well.

    But then… the thunder quieted a little and – between the soundcracks of the whirlwind – I began to hear multiple voices in my spirit.

    … wake up… wake up… wake up, love… look who’s here to see you…

    Friends. Light. Comfort….

    Take heart…. open your eyes… Arise!

    And then the gifts arrived, one after another…

  • 3/24 – Dinner at the fantastic Rathbun’s Restaurant with Joseph and Marie-Claude and David. Friend vibes overwhelming – like an angel rescue. Readers of this blog will already know how much I admire Joseph and his work. I hadn’t seen him since I was last in Paris, and if anything, we’re more simpático now than we were then. It was totally lovely to meet Marie-Claude at last, and so fun to sneak out for a smoke with David. Even our waiter was fun. Oh! The food! They had yummy Wellfleet clams, and the Lamb Scaloppini was to die for. Oh! The conversation. I was totally relaxed and free. I haven’t had so much fun in ages. Just what I needed – thank you, cosmos.
    Heidi, Joseph, David, Marie-Claude
    Heidi, Joseph, David, Marie-Claude

    John, Heidi and Joseph
    John, Heidi and Joseph
  • 3/26 – The big event – Joseph’s terra incOgnitO gallery opening at David’s beautiful Wm. Turner Gallery in Atlanta.

    Take a look at the art! I’m writing an essay on the artwork (stay tuned), but meanwhile listen to this interview. Since Joseph’s art was on the cover, they also had a copy of John’s book there. Very nice.

    J Trinity -Joseph, Jerry, John

    Friends turned up! Jerry was embroiled in conversations brilliant. Robert and Sloane (who appeared with a baby! how did they hide that little gem from us?!?!?) dropped in and on such as day as that there is much hugging. Geoff and Curzio got in some good conversations with Joseph and John, and I drank champagne and reveled in my happiness level. We went out for snackies afterwards and I got to meet David’s wife – a very cool woman who is – unfortunately – allergic to Facebook. Wah. I was able to speak at greater length with Marie-Claude, and hear all about their impressions of Atlanta. There were foot rubs! Perfect evening.

  • 3/27 – Jeff and Ann made a very brief swoop-in visit to Atlanta for an occasion, and we arranged to meet them with some of their friends at Manuel’s Tavern (prior to having dinner at Cafe di Sol). Manuel’s is the hangout of Atlanta liberals – yes, we exist! John and I showed up at the appointed hour, and it was hilarious because we wandered all around seeking but not finding. I had never actually met Jeff or Ann. I adore all of Jeff’s fiction (read him – he’s top notch – really, maybe the best living American writer) and we had all become friends via online interconnections, but I wasn’t completely confident about picking them out at a crowded bar/restaurant. John and I did several circuits around the place, garnering some curious looks, but didn’t see them anywhere. We saw a young woman standing outside, also looking around and waiting, but we didn’t think to ask her if she was looking for them, too. Finally, we walked down the street to see if they had decided just to go straight to Cafe di Sol – which turned out to be the old Cafe Diem where I spent far too much time as a graduate student. Nope.

    Finally, we went back to Manuel’s and ordered a drink at the bar. That was fortuitous, since we then became involved in conversation with two very charming men – one who lived in a part of France that we’ve wanted to visit (John cornered him for details), and another that I clicked with right away – he works at GA Tech and is originally from New York. We were soon trading stock phrases in northern accents and having a grand time. We all exchanged contact information…. Then, I had a sensation on the back of my skull, looked toward the door, and there they were, just walking in!

    And yes, the beautiful young woman – Desirina – a talented writer in her own right- had also been waiting. Along with were more creative cool friends Will and Sara – but I hardly even got to talk with them at all! Why? Why? Because the restaurant was too darned noisy, that’s why! The old Cafe Diem was always more subdued – it was easier to talk then.

    Sara, Desirina, Heidi, Ann, John, Jeff
    Sara, Desirina, Heidi, Ann, John, Jeff

    John and Jeff huddled – it sounded like it was probably a fun conversation, but I only got little bits of it. I’m sorry for that, because I would have liked to talk more with Jeff, but I can’t complain because I had a fabulous time talking with Ann. She brought us issues of the magazine she edits – Weird Tales. Yes, that’s right – THE Weird Tales. Why I don’t already have a subscription to that, I have no idea (that’s been rectified). The magazine is on the ballot for a Hugo this year. Even against the steep competition, I think they’re going to take it. Ann is an amazing woman – I love her, and she is henceforth considered to be my sister, with all associated benefits.

    Ann with Digital Kitty
    Ann with Digital Kitty

    Click! Click-click – CLICK! Thank you, benevolent deities, inc.

  • 3/28 – Ok, now I’m officially over-socialled and crashing fast, but there’s more! Dear friends Mark and Marty threw a rock-climbing birthday party for their son – this was in addition to the new puppy, lucky kid. John wasn’t feeling well, so I packed up Ben and off we went.

    This is the second year they’ve done this, and there’s a confluence between me, the rock-climbing place, and the presence of pounding rain. As I approach this building, it’s pelting rain. Once I enter the building, the rain dies down and stops. Silly, you say?

    Yes, but oh, it goes further! I accompanied Mark to go fetch the pizza and ice-cream cake. Again, as we approached the building – RAIN! Once inside… no rain. It made me feel a little like Tyrone Slothrop in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Sometimes even magical paranoia can be fun. We had a low-key and enjoyable afternoon. I got exactly three photos before my cellphone died. Great expression, Marty!

    Marty
    Marty

    Oh, Mark: Linen which?

  • Well, then it hit. The pollen. Pollen! Pollen! More Pollen! It knocked me out for most of last week, and I’m not quite recovered even yet. But how could I let a shining week like that go by without comment?

    Thank you to my beautiful lovely smart creative wonderful friends of the spirit. You make me remember.