Saturday, November 13, 2004
(10:13 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
A longing in my heart
I am already looking forward to my massive six-week winter break -- seven weeks for one of my classes, which gets out early. Before then, I have to write a paper on Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (a replacement for my previously proposed paper on Adorno), write a brief review of a book on theology and film, do a group presentation on Israel and Palestine, write a paper about non-violence, and write a "take-home final" of indeterminate length on Romans 14-15. I also have to read a few more books about Romans, which are all very good and interesting. That may sound like a lot of work, but it isn't -- especially since I am basically all done with my PhD applications and don't need to think about that again until the rejection letters start coming in.During my winter break, I need to become a Wesley/Badiou scholar, or close enough to one to convince the Wesleyan Theological Society not to laugh me off the podium. (This is all part of my plan to pioneer a new theological subdiscipline called Wesley Juxtaposition Studies.) Last winter break, I managed to read Phenomenology of Spirit, so I figure Wesley will be less difficult than that. With Badiou, I figure I can just fake it by indulging in all kinds of bluster about how much better his ethics are than the outdated, pseudo-religious ethics of Levinas. Then I throw in how he wrote a book on Paul, without mentioning the whole "Mao" connection, and everyone thinks Badiou is a Christian -- before long, Wesleyan theologians will replace Wittgenstein and Ricouer with Badiou as the "go-to guy" of pretensious philosophical epigrams:
On balance, it will be a lot better than hearing once again about how the Trinity is a whole lot like a language game -- but it's a language game of explosive, outgoing love.Chapter II
Toward a Trinitarian Ethic of Economic Scarcity
The inscription of the subject comes about only in terms of the event, through what I will call a "truth process" .... -- Alain Badiou
Badiou is here hitting upon a major trend in Christian theology, namely, process thought. It will be the burden of this chapter to bring Wesleyan holiness theology into dialogue with Whitehead in order to develop a distinctly trinitarian ethic, one that can provide resources for dealing with economic exploitation and poverty....
In addition, I need to start either my translation of "Litterature au secret" or my previous thesis proposal on Derrida, Milbank, and Zizek. Part of that decision would likely entail determining whether the proposed section had already been translated. (According to Ted Jennings, Peggy Kamuf doesn't think it has been, and she would probably be the one to know.)
So now it's not completely clear why I am looking forward to my "break," because it sounds like it will be just as much work as I'm doing now, if not more. Well, here's my reasoning: I won't have to go up to Chicago two days a week and sit through classes. Assuming I work my same schedule, or more likely, slightly more, I will still have Tuesdays off, and probably Thursday mornings as well. My gasoline expenditures will be negligible. If I don't want to read essays about how the struggle for gay liberation ties into ecological degradation, or about the relevance of the Korean concept of han to theological ethics, I won't have to. (By the way, I think the Korean concept of han is actually very useful, but everything I've read about it is introductory or is making the case that the concept can be very useful, without actually putting it to use.)
Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about now, as I stare down the barrell of a full day of hard-core Pauline study.
