(4:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Lenin's Birthday!

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin [Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин]
(April 22, 1870-January 24, 1924)

“Freedom of criticism” is undoubtedly the most fashionable slogan at the present time, and the one most frequently employed in the controversies between socialists and democrats in all countries. At first sight, nothing would appear to be more strange than the solemn appeals to freedom of criticism made by one of the parties to the dispute. Have voices been raised in the advanced parties against the constitutional law of the majority of European countries which guarantees freedom to science and scientific investigation? “Something must be wrong here,” will be the comment of the onlooker who has heard this fashionable slogan repeated at every turn but has not yet penetrated the essence of the disagreement among the disputants; "evidently this slogan is one of the conventional phrases which, like nicknames, become legitimised by use, and become almost generic terms.”

[...] the demand for a decisive turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was accompanied by a no less decisive turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises, in view of the fact that the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on this criticism, it is not surprising that the “new critical” trend in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like Minerva from the head of Jove. The content of this new trend did not have to grow and take shape, it was transferred bodily from bourgeois to socialist literature.

[...]

He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people, not by the glittering uniforms they don or by the highsounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means’ freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.

“Freedom” is a grand word, but under the banner of freedom for industry the most predatory wars were waged, under the banner of freedom of labour, the working people were robbed. The modern use of the term “freedom of criticism” contains the same inherent falsehood. Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old. The cry heard today, “Long live freedom of criticism”, is too strongly reminiscent of the fable of the empty barrel.

In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

[...]

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty"--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

The first public reaction to the idea of reactualizing Lenin is, of course, an outburst of sarcastic laughter: Marx is OK, even on Wall Street, there are people who love him today - Marx the poet of commodities, who provided perfect descriptions of the capitalist dynamics, Marx of the Cultural Studies, who portrayed the alienation and reification of our daily lives -, but Lenin, no, you can't be serious! The working class movement, revolutionary Party, and similar zombie-concepts? Doesn't Lenin stand precisely for the FAILURE to put Marxism into practice, for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire XXth century world politics, for the Real Socialist experiment which culminated in an economically inefficient dictatorship? So, in the contemporary academic politics, the idea to deal with Lenin is accompanied by two qualifications: yes, why not, we live in a liberal democracy, there is freedom of thought... however, one should treat Lenin in an "objective critical and scientific way," not in an attitude of nostalgic idolatry, and, furthermore, from the perspective firmly rooted in the democratic political order, within the horizon of human rights - therein resides the lesson painfully learned through the experience of the XXth century totalitarianisms.

What are we to say to this? Again, the problem resides in the implicit qualifications which can be easily discerned by the "concrete analysis of the concrete situation," as Lenin himself would have put it. "Fidelity to the democratic consensus" means the acceptance of the present liberal-parlamentary consensus, which precludes any serious questioning of how this liberal-democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a society whose socio-political order would be different. In short, it means: say and write whatever you want - on condition that what you do does not effectively question or disturb the predominant political consensus.

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(1:34 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Badiou Lecture Notes

I decided it was easier to just link a Word document rather than go through and add HTML formatting to my notes, especially since they're too long for a blog post anyway. Enjoy!

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(7:21 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Friday Afternoon Confessional

I confess that I drove all the way to Kankakee last night, primarily for the sake of a "free" haircut. I confess that I have no idea why the Arby's in Bradley was absolutely packed out at 8:30 on a Thursday night, nor why the ATMs for every branch of my bank were being serviced at that time as well. I confess that 90% of the times that I call my family anymore, I'm driving somewhere.

The Badiou lecture last night was predictable, but not entirely predictable. It was one of the better Q&A sessions that I've attended. Badiou made clearer the ways in which Paul, for him, does not fit into his own philosophical project, and he was actually criticized for being insufficiently rigorous and historical in his treatment of Plato and Socrates, rather than Paul. (According to my professor who attended the lecture, a famous NT scholar named Betz was sitting very near us, but he did not ask his question publicly, preferring to approach Badiou afterward.) I have a lot to do this morning, but I took thorough notes and hope to write up a pretty good summary of the proceedings later today or this weekend.

[UPDATE: My business for the day is done. I have registered for a temp agency. I am ashamed of how proud I am that I did so well on their stupid tests. I am reviewing, 100 times, everything I did and said -- for instance, when the cute young lady was interviewing me, did I do anything that could remotely be construed as looking at unbusinesslike areas of her body? Did I make too much eye contact? Did it hurt me that I didn't get all the way down to the bottom of the very precisely formatted Word document they wanted me to make? And why couldn't I use some of my time left over from the Excel test to make changes to the Word thing? I think, though, that I'm mainly depressed because the last time I registered with a temp agency, I got an assignment the very day I walked in, then proceeded to work at that job, with an infinitely flexible schedule, for the next two years. The odds of repeating that were pretty slim, I suppose. I hope I get work from these guys before some other temp agency wants me to register, because it'd be a lot nicer not to repeat all those tests -- the initial self-esteem boost is great for an obedient test-taker such as myself, but the ensuing patheticness crash is brutal.]

[SECOND UPDATE: undercurrent has a nice skewering of the "European Graduate School." Once I'm ABD at CTS, I'm going to check my student loan balance, and if it's not high enough, I'm definitely going for the second doctorate from EGS. Then people can look at my CV and laugh and laugh -- what a sap! (By then, of course, it will be too late to go to law school.)]

[THIRD UPDATE: I confess that reading this article by Thomas Frank made me feel hopeless -- or maybe it's just the pouring rain and low temperatures, fast on the heels of beautiful spring-like weather.]

Confess away, my children.

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Thursday, April 21, 2005

(9:50 AM) | Old - Doug Johnson:

Ratzinger: a call for posts and a brief overview

We need to have a Ratzinger Week, pronto (pending, of course, the approval of the weblog administrator(s)). I know we are to the end of the semester crunch or nearly so for most. So let's negotiate. If you are interested/willing to write per info below or otherwise, let's hear about it. Also say when the earliest time is that you could reasonably get around to doing something (sooner the better: I want a Ratzinger week, not a Benedict XVI week!).

I checked out a stack of English language Ratzinger books from the library last night in hopes of being able to do a single post overview of issues of interest to me. Not possible in a short period of time. There's just too much there. Ratzinger IS a theological heavyweight. As such, some of the things he is rightly criticized (or praised) for at the macro level owe a great deal to more nuanced decisions made in theological trenches over the course of four or five decades. For all his faults, he was seriously involved in Vatican II. Nate, however, has already mentioned a shift in his thinking on Vatican II after 1968. I think there are also some real continuties with his pre-1968 thinking that should be fleshed out a bit.

A brief overview of issues of weblog interest, with some suggestions for topics and posters:

Liberation Theo: We need at least two or three posts here since leftist/communist political discussion are the bread and butter of the weblog. Nate seems quite familiar with the history of the dispute between Ratzinger and Latin American lib. theologians (I'm only familiar a bit with Gutierrez), and I think Adam or Anthony should be interested in doing something here as well. Also, I spent a good deal of time last night with the book on Bonaventure's philosophy of history. This is where the rubber hits the road folks. In good Catholic fashion, Ratzinger wants to have his Franciscan cake and eat with gluttonous Thomas too. Nein!!! Right where the book begins to get good, Ratzinger cuts it off with a wimper (Saints Augustine and Bonaventure, it is conceded, have a major difference on whether or not the kingdom comes in history or no ... but both of their major works on the matter end w/ the word "peace" - isn't that special). Marxists generally, and liberation theology particularly generally take their stand squarely with the messianic historiography of Bonaventure and the Franciscans (the common genealogical ancestor mediated for Marx through Hegel being Joachim of Fiore). Discard may want to post here, given a related paper on time, history, etc. that he just finished.

Ecumenism, etc: one or two posts. I will post on Judaism. I read Ratzinger's short, but brimmingly brilliant book on Israel and the church at the very outset of my investigations three or four years ago. I reread it last night. Ratzinger actually! uses the phrase "the universalizing of the Torah by Jesus" ... I'll stop here, except to say that here Ratzinger is actually quite radical. He consciously, though very subtly, overturns both Aquinas and Barth in a couple of short, stunning moves (still something very important to skewer him for - though not something that will get the Simon Wiesenthal Center up in arms). If someone else wants to post on Islam or other religions, that would be great, but isn't strictly necessary in the same way a post or two on lib. theo is if this thing is going to get off the ground. The book on Israel and the covenant I am referring to has a bit on other religions that I can't evaluate as well as I can the stuff on Judaism, plus he doesn't take them as seriously.

BTW: from my perusal last night I would suspect that the best way in English to get a handle on Ratzinger theologically/philosophically/poltically would be to pick up the collection of essays called *Church, Ecumenism, Politics*. Published in English in 1988, this book appears to me to be the best way to become quickly familiar with the major strands of R's thought (it includes at least one essay directly on the liberation theo question). For a general intro, perhaps less heady, *The Ratzinger Report* which is a series of interview responses may also do the trick.

Gender and Sexuality: Adam linked us to this earlier via NPR which, according to Kotsko, "claimed that it illustrates that Ratzinger is as feminist as it is possible to be while still not allowing women into the priesthood." My wife and I read it over and discussed it a bit. It is certainly better than the fundamentalism that many of us grew up with, but there is certainly some things to be said against it. Besides the brief reference to Jesus having balls, I'm not sure from this document how R. justifies not having women priests in light of his general engagements with Scripture and Tradition (which I've noticed to be generally strong, though with a definite tendency to ellide material, either in support of conservative or liberal positions, which conflict with what he is after - more in my post on Judaism). Perhaps someone can trace this down further (I do know that Jesus' jimmy is the ultimate reason - I just have to imagine that there is more extensive discussion somewhere). I also haven't found, in my brief look, whether Ratzinger has written anything substantial on his own on the sexuality questions. This was one of JPII's specialties before becoming pope, so maybe he just left that intellectual work to him. Someone want to do Ratzinger on sex?

Culture of Life Issues: War, abortion, death penalty. I didn't know the answer at all and had to ask around here at Duke to find out that Ratzinger has a reputation for being quite strict on Just War issues to the point that he rules out all modern warfare (so the rumor goes). It would be especially nice if someone knows more about this. He has said publicly already, I guess, that he took Benedict XVI because B15 was so anti-WWI. (Why is the American press so tunnel visioned on sexual questions that it can't exploit such things!) Now if he would become as nasty of a hound dog on this as he is apparently willing to be about abortion, a host of other errors might be marginalized a bit. Let's say for instance that B16 decided to really give the US hell by sanctioning the most disappointing man in America, George Weigel. Weigel was handpicked to write the JPII's biography, and then had the audacity to sign the statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century, an absolute middle finger to Catholic Just War principles (see especially this report). If the Catholic curia want to deny communion to those who defy it on life issues, start with Weigel, then perhaps we can take such actions with respect to abortion seriously. Anyone want to go down this road further? Or go in another direction with life and death issues?

Other Possible Topics: Vatican II generally; Church-State issues; Opus Dei, Fascism, Nazism (lots of smoke and fury here, any substance?); Pedophile scandal (a way to do sex and collegiality issues together?), Race Issues (any leads here?), philosophical theology generally (would be nice to have someone size up the center of R. thinking - my initial suspicisions: Barth as mediated by Von Balthasar is highly influential, especially evident in the way he handles Scripture and tradition; the polemics against Joachim in a way that "rescues" Francis and Bonaventure may be the key to almost everything - if the church "can't have" Francis/Bonaventure and Aquinas ... big trouble for R).

Feel free to propose other topics. If we can get some quick feedback, maybe we can pick a week and start signing people up (again, approval pending!).

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(9:48 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

On loving the Matrix

Alphonse von Werden has written a brilliant piece:

It is not at all surprising that in The Corporation’s fantasy and phantasy, the liberation of humanity is certainly not to be undertaken through the re-expropriation of cities like Chicago, with symphony orchestras and hotels on the lake. The plan for liberation which The COrporation offers its consumers involves, instead, humanity’s renouncement of all dreams of that kind, our repudiation of our own works and product, our acknowledgement that this - every product of human craft, the whole of the commons - is all indeed so profoundly the property of the Corporation that in fact it cannot exist without the Corporation. The Corporation is emitting it like heat from its pores. It's exclusive magic sustains the illusion of the solidity of all humanity is deluded into imagining it built. Without The Corporation to generate our prosperous world, to write novels and to make films, to build homes and fry eggs, we are 'free' to be sure, but cold, bored, imperilled, a most precarious existence.

The Corporation’s recommended dream for humanity is the dream of renouncement. One can choose however, what to renounce - your world or your freedom, your money or your life. The heroic option entails slinking off into the despoiled rubblescape to scrounge and forage and fight for survival. That is the rebels option. Humanity departs from Eden naked, because Eden always belonged to that God or demiurge - evil or good does not matter, what matter is ‘creative,’ ’productive’ and uniquely, exclusively so - and never to humanity, who was created to be a slave in ignorance there or alternatively to brave the bogus ‘freedom‘ of the wilderness, expropriated and alienated, while the Eden and its magic productivity is enclosed for the invisible elite masquerading as In- and Super- Human.

Or, if you choose to retain your comforts, to reappropriate them - if you choose socialism - you must renounce 'reality' 'authenticity' and 'freedom.' Your city will be reduced to a bleak, desolate labyrinth. (Or worse.)

The upshot of all these Matrix arrangements is a product whose effect is to create in humanity a radical alienation from, a disgust for and suspicion of, nature, ourselves and all our creations. The goal is to inculcate in humanity a state akin to various gnostic mysticisms and Buddhisms, which tends toward encouraging the desire in humanity to see itself and all its accomplishments utterly destroyed.

Like Fight Club, then, somewhat.

It's a little longish, but worth it in my opinion.

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Wednesday, April 20, 2005

(3:00 PM) | F. Winston Codpiece III:

The Codpiece Irregularity;
or, The Meta-Contest

[UPDATE: Toward the end of this post, I propose a Meta-Contest -- namely, a contest to see who can come up with the best idea for an Internet contest. Apparently, this is not The H is O, where people are willing and able to wade through a sea of incoherent nonsense without any guarantee of there being a "point." So scroll down and leave comments! Codpiece Comments!]

[Blogger's "so-called 'post-recovery system or feature'" did not "work" -- and so, like Moses, I am painstakingly rewriting what the ungrateful throng of blogites disobeyed and spurned already, had already disobeyed and shattered themselves before its institution; this primordial or originary disobedience leaves much for us to consider, and so we shall perhaps return to it later.]

Despite being slandered and disenfranchised -- even, in the final reckoning, by Adam Kotsko himself, who will do anything to please a woman, whether on the Internet or elsewhere -- I dare to post. And here: precisely here, at The Weblog, The Weblog, The Weblog Above Every Other Weblog. I write here, here precisely, for this very reason: namely, that I can. I can write here. I am able to write here because I have been enabled to do so. I can write here in the style and language I choose; and so:

1. Je peux écrire ici
2. Puedo escribir aquí
3. Posso scrivere qui
4. Eu posso escrever aqui
5. Ich kann hier schreiben
6. Ik kan hier schrijven
7. Я могу написать здесь
8. &c.

Do not be led astray! In the last days, many will come to you, saying: "Only Run Amuck can reach an international audience by posting in multiple languages." But I say unto thee: We here at the Weblog -- or more properly, I here at The Weblog -- have full access to the resources of cosmopolitanism. We, too, can cultivate relationship with our brothers and sisters around the globe by harnessing the fearsome power of Unicode: and so we sing --

Three Coding Systems for the Western European-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Asian-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for the Mortal Slavs doomed to die,
One for the Dark Codpiece on his dark throne
In the Land of The Weblog where the Shadows lie.
One Coding System to rule them all, One Coding System to find them,
One Coding System to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of The Weblog where the Shadows lie.

Irregular, you say? I am nothing if not -- and it is precisely this if not that we must question, investigate, and interrogate -- irregular, full to the brim with contradiction and solemnity. And in view of this, in celebration and commemoration of my very exclusion and rejection -- remembering, together, in a kenotic movement into the world or worlds -- that I announce my unprecedented act, which will be to inaugurate, right now, here, today, for us, quickly and without delay or DeLay --

-- a contest. But this will not have been merely one contest among others. Far from being even an exemplary contest among the many examples of contests that have come before it and that will come, in endless succession throughout the millenia, after it, this contest would be the very contesticity or contestation of the contest, for here it is precisely the contest as contest -- if there is any contest at all -- that is at stake [en jeu].

As announced or prefigured in my title, this would be the Meta-Contest; namely, a contest to see who can come up with the best idea for an Internet contest. And the reward is reward itself -- performatively (or constatively?) the winner shall be awarded his victory as award and re-ward, an iteration of previous awards or a-wards even in this contestation of the contest. Voting is open. No one will be excluded, a priori or a postiori, whether by the contest coordinator (that is, "me") or by any participant or non-participant, real or imagined. This means that you can vote regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, handicap(ability), nationality, religion, creed, membership or lack of membership in the rock group Creed, and any other characteristic or trait that has ever been or ever shall be adduced as a disqualification for participation in the processes of voting. There shall be no exclusion even of those who, for whatever reason, wish not to sign up for or disclose "their own" e-mail address and so fill in their Internet patron's address in a comment box. Without exception, everyone except the troll variously known as

• troll du jour
• low-rent empiricist positivist
• norad of the one testicle
• anti-Kamala
  
  or
  
  
• Glenn Reynolds

may vote from whatever IP address they choose. Your status as fictional, fictive, or fictitious provides no obstacle -- everyone, from Huckleberry Finn to the LORD God of Hosts who took us by the hand to lead us out of Egypt, can and may (in a distinction that we shall perhaps come back to later) participate in the Meta-Contest, using the HaloScan comment box below.

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(11:48 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

For more information on the Pope

The Virtual Stoa is your one-stop source for all Ratzingeria.

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(8:19 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Hypothetical

Let's say that the only reason that I would go to the trouble of learning Italian would be to do a translation of Passolini's Saint Paul screenplay. If I were to secure the rights to do the translation and only then set to work learning Italian, would that be an example of

1. unspeakable arrogance
   
   or
   
   
2. prudence?

For the sake of this scenario, let's assume that neither the Italian publisher nor any of the American publishers I would try would ask the obvious question, "So, you know Italian, right?"

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

(9:52 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Badiou is coming to the U of C

Thursday.

After giving up my chance to see Badiou, I am receiving it back -- on the strength of the absurd.

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(8:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Ratzinger on Liberation Theology

The new pope has spoken on liberation theology, the most consistently slandered theological movement in the history of Christianity:

An analysis of the phenomenon of liberation theology reveals that it constitutes a fundamental threat to the faith of the Church. At the same time it must be borne in mind that no error could persist unless it contained a grain of truth. Indeed, an error is all the more dangerous, the greater that grain of truth is, for then the temptation it exerts is all the greater.

Furthermore, the error concerned would not have been able to wrench that piece of the truth to its own use if that truth had been adequately lived and witnessed to in its proper place (in the faith of the Church). So, in denouncing error and pointing to dangers in liberation theology, we must always be ready to ask what truth is latent in the error and how it can be given its rightful place, how it can be released from error's monopoly.

He specifies that he is limiting his purview to those liberation theologies that have "embraced the marxist fundamental option." Lest we somehow come up with a way of understanding what the fuck that means, then-Cardinal Ratzinger took care that the only proper name of any theologian that is mentioned in this document is Bultmann (1884-1976) -- who is safely dead and unable to answer any charges. The reader is left wondering: has Gutierrez embraced the marxist fundamental option? Has Boff? Certainly Miranda has, but no one reads Miranda, so that's fine.

Now I remember, again, what I was hoping for when I hoped for a Latin American pope.

UPDATE: The Hitler Youth thing came up in comments. Ogged sends this link that explains that "HJ membership was made compulsory for youths over 17 in 1939, and for all over the age of 10 in 1941." This news story agrees with all the others I've read on this topic:

He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.

There's a lot to criticize Ratzinger for, but unless someone produces definitive proof that Hitler Youth membership was not required and that Ratzinger is lying about his level of participation or enthusiasm, then we might as well just stick to criticizing the homophobia, sexism, etc.

TANGENTIALLY RELATED UPDATE: Is it really necessary for Atrios to have a post up entitled "F--- the Jews", which is made up only of a link? (I know that I am usually not shy about using naughty language, but this seems like it should be an obvious exception.)

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(8:13 PM) | bitchphd:

Congratulations

To Mr. Kotsko, who, rumor has it, has now Mastered the Arts.

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(8:12 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Mastery

I successfully defended my thesis today. They asked very difficult questions, which I attempted to answer to the best of my ability, and afterward we went to the pub. I'm going to be seeing a lot more of these people for the next few years, and I'm glad.

I still need to finish up the one course I'm enrolled in, on the New Testament Epistles, then I'm done with the MA and ready to move on up to the PhD. At the pub, I floated the idea of starting up a new online journal under the banner of CTS, and they were all excited at the prospect. Once everyone is done with the blog book stuff, I fully expect you to be submitting manuscript after manuscript to The Provisionally Titled Scholarly Journal.

If anyone is curious about the blog book, we have received nearly everyone's proposed topics, and Jared and I will be going through sometime within the next couple weeks to hammer out exactly what topics everyone will be writing on and how we will divide that into sections. If this lives halfway up to my expectations, it will be a very cool and exciting project, and I'm glad Jared thought of it.

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(12:27 PM) | Anonymous:

The mutual goal of Christians and Communists.

I have to wonder if such a thing is ever to be possible now. I have a bad feeling about this German, his theology, and his vision for the Catholic church. My faith isn't what it used to be, call it backsliding or what have you, but this certainly doesn't help. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, but we all know that's just a way to say the Lord doesn't do much work at all.

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Monday, April 18, 2005

(10:44 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Congratulations to Cap'n Pete

Gorss reports that the good Cap'n is now the father of a newborn son.

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(6:00 PM) | Brad:

On the Conference, Part Two

Okay, fuck what I said about not posting again about the conference. Since JD actually wants to hear about the its content, rather than my adventures thereabout, thus betraying the fact that he does not know me or my general hatred for conferences, I thought a few more words might be in order. Rarely do I pay attention well enough to ask a coherent question at these things; when I do pay attention, I typically stammer and spit my way through a question that leaves the speaker with their own 'who farted?' expression. Oddly enough, though, I did pay attention this time around. This says nothing, though, about my maturity as an academic, or my heightened sense of intellectual responsibility. Rather, it was the presence of Jabba the Hut and Scankodemic, of whom I write in my first post. Without them, I would be at a total loss.

I will not rehearse the contents of everyone's papers. I say this mostly because if I feel qualified to say anything at all, it is about the philosophers' papers; and I can say quite definitively that neither of them (I'm exempting R. Kearney here, because I don't think anyone here cares about his hermeneutical philosophy) did anything especially different than what you might expect them to do. If you know their projects, you pretty much know their papers. It's like visiting Mount Rushmore ... or the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

As for the others, here's quick run-down of the ones I recall off the top of my head:

1) Daniel Boyarin was one of the most explicit when it came to 'conversing' with the philosophical perspective. He had many good things to say about Badiou's purpose, if not his method of getting there. He was, needless to say, troubled by Badiou's general unwillingness to get his hands dirty with history, or at least to acknowledge its place in his philosophy. At the end of the day, however, I don't think this was Boyarin's biggest problem with Lugosi, I mean Badiou. No, I think it was Badiou's Platonism that Boyarin could not abide the most expedient way to get at their shared political goals. Cutting through a lot of the textual legwork that he did, which was all surprisingly interesting, Boyarin seemed most divided from Badiou in terms of PHILOSOPHICAL disposition. His shift into thinking Paul as Sophist, and ensuing emphasis on Badiou's neglect of history, then, seemed a little convenient; but it was at least a gesture in the direction of conversational engagement.

2) E.P. Sanders had not read Badiou or Zizek, and I can well imagine that they had not read him. Sanders clearly did not expect too many biblical studies people, because he took a couple of minutes in his talk to actually explain the nature of the Septuagint -- going so far as to point out the significance of 'LXX'. The point of his talk was to discuss how a collection of passages in Romans show Paul to be a salvific universalist; that one should not be bothered by the apostle's exclusivist, damning writings in other books, because Paul is not a systematician nor a theologian, so he can change his mind if he damn well pleases. Sanders' contributious to any conversation with Badiou's and Zizek's universalism were peripheral, which is not to say details along the way cannot be brought to bear on the conversation. Such was a task, however, in which nobody seemed too interested this weekend.

3) Karen Armstrong .... don't know. I skipped her session, opting for an afternoon strolling through campus and downtown. A friend tells me however, though he perhaps should not be believed because he was not there either, that her session was over a mere sixty minutes into it, and nobody looked especially thrilled.

4) Dale Martin, as one might have well expected if one knows anything at all about Martin, cast his lot in with Zizek and Badiou -- with the caveat that Badiou, in particular, really should not de-emphasize the significance of (Jewish) identity for Paul the way he does, or disregard the fact that Paul was not about starting a new religion. The point about identity is something that Boyarin ventured into, as well, but did not seem to sustain -- at least not to my recollection. In contrast to Boyarin, Martin did not seem bothered by Zizek's and Badiou's philosophical dispositions, and went the furthest to in trying to reconcile and/or affirm their philosophical projects with the texts they use. And yet, to be sure, his paper was also (so says my biblical studies companions) a bit shallow -- though I think this is mostly due to the fact he had anticipated speaking to a lot of philosophical students. Though, then again, I sat though a pretty shallow presentation of his in Glasgow, too. So, maybe not.

5) Paula Fredriksen spent a loooooong time talking about Origen and Augustine, and very nearly put everybody to sleep in the process. But, in the final minutes of her lecture, finally made her way around to a point: namely, that what philosophers / theologians do is to systematize texts that are not systematic; where historians find layers and layers of context. I really could not fathom a more banal observation. And yet she followed it up by saying that what philosophers / theologians do with texts is okay, so long as they announce their intentions ahead of time. And then we all snorted ourselves from our slumber, shrugged, and walked out into the sun, unaware of just what in the hell we'd done with ninety minutes of our lives.

6) I honestly do not recall much of Kearney's paper. At this point I was still fighting a wicked hangover from the evening before, wherein an evil waitress at a German restaurant gave us poor alternative directions back to the hotel, assuring us that her way was shorter. I do recall, however, he had some nice things to say about Agamben's book, followed by his typical reserations about -- i.e., for those who have never read Kearney, that it either doesn't allow for or explain the hermeneutical decision making he regards as key. He is I think, right, about decision-making; but he is so often wrong about his indictments of people he regards as lacking in the ability to make such a decision. If only he could read other philosophers as well as he can movies. If only I could've been at a movie during the final two papers!

Everyone who participated in the various Paul / immanence / blah blah debates on The Weblog will be happy to know that the conference ended pretty much where we did: at a general impasse. I will say, though, that Zizek said something that made a lot of sense, albeit to me -- it is something I think I once said on the Weblog, too, and I desire nothing but affirmation from public intellectuals who (apparently) pose for pictures naked in the trees of Slovenia. He made a very general statement, as you would certainly expect, about the dialectial dynamics of history and philosophy (in terms of this Pauline debate) -- i.e., about how the 'conversation' is predicated on the constitutive failures of both, and that basically there would be a big problem if there was (a) no historical corrective of the philosophical abstraction and (b) no philosophical abstraction of the historical corrective. In fact, this is even something that Paula Fredriksen seemed to accept, whom Boyarin applauded with surprising zeal. And yet, of course, I realize this is also inadequate to a lot of people, because it would often seem to work more in favor of philosophical abstraction than historical corrective. This is perhaps a valid criticism ... and is definitely one that Boyarin made repeatedly.

The question no one really explored was where the this 'conversation' was supposed to be headed. But ... a la Derrida, I don't guess it would be much of a conversation if it was preprogrammed.

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(5:59 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

I am a participant

Ben Wolfson is running a contest. Bitch PhD is co-sponsoring the contest just mentioned. I am participating in it.

For many millennia, man has tried to create ways to measure time. His continued failure to achieve this goal has led many to believe that it is impossible to achieve. In this essay, I will demonstrate (1) the history of previous attempts, (2) the reason for their failure, and (3) the means by which this long-standing ambition of man was finally satisfied.


1. The earliest attempt to measure time was a sundial. This approach had many drawbacks. First, to see any movement of the shadow, you have to walk away and come back. Second, it did not work in all weather conditions. Third, the time was measured only indirectly -- you could infer from the movement of the shadow that a certain portion of a "day" had passed, but direct measurement of time was still not achieved. The same went for subsequent developments -- the clock, the watch, and other similar devices that have come down to us through the generations.
   
   
2. All of these methods failed to measure time because they failed to gather time. They were equivalent to attempting to measure milk using the unit called the "glug," inferring from some secondary occurence that a particular amount of milk had been used -- when in reality, the best way to measure milk is to collect it into a receptical of known volume. Heretofore, no receptical for time has been developed.
   
   
3. It is only with the development of the Internet that such a receptical has become available to man. Instead of being measured in such transitory units as "seconds" and all that other nonsense, time is now measured in permanently available quanities such as blog posts, blog comments, e-mails, and IM conversations. Instead of experiencing time as a passing thing, like a "glug" of milk, man can now feel the full weight of time, and everyone who cares to see it can look at the time congealed in various locations of the Internet.
   
   In conclusion, man has finally achieved a millenia-old goal: measuring time. He previously had to rely on indirect methods of measurement, but now he can collect and ponder time using the technological advance called The internet. Who knows what man has up his sleeve next!

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(3:20 PM) | Anonymous:

Essay this!

It is an old adage that numbers do not lie, that within numbers lies the truth. How can we best access this truth, however? This question and others have riddled mankind since the discovery of counting. When this discovery took place is unknown, since the application of counting to recording dates and time didn't occur until some time after the discovery of counting itself (though how long after, of course, we do not know).

Nevertheless, several proposals have been proposed by mathematicians attempting to sup the sweet artichoke heart of truth, without being pricked by the thistles of lying falseness. Perhaps certain numbers have a higher share of truth than others, and by combining them through addition or multiplication, and then subtracting out the numbers with a lesser proportion of truth, we may, as it were, "sweat" out the sweet sweet truth from within its hard candy coating of lies. This method was favored by ancient geometers in determining the value of π, but it is unclear how to go from π--which is, after all, just another number, perfect though it may be--to the truth of π. The truth of pie.

Other methods attempted through the ages include sorting through the numbers and retaining only those with exceptionally high truth content, and then forcing these through increasingly fine meshes which retain truth and let lies through, known as the Sieve of Eratosthenes, and the calculus, in which the summation of the many infinitesimal kernels of truth that underlie all truly successful lies is thought to result in a truth of appreciable size. It is said that "calculus", which means "little stone" in Greek, is so named because Leibniz experienced an epiphany one day when passing a kidney stone: the little deposits of calx, though small in and of themselves, were capable of becoming amassed into a form capable of causing appreciable pain, just as calculus asserts small deposits of truth are joined together to form one big truth.

These have been the chief methods attempted through the ages. However, not one of them has been wholly satisfactory. Perhaps what we need to do, is to investigate the adage itself, for while it asserts that numbers do not lie, it is silent on the question of its own truth-telling. If a statement does not assert of itself either that it is or is not false, it is impossible to know what to make of it! In particular worth investigation is the conjunction of claims that "numbers do not lie", and that "within numbers lies truth". First of all, if within numbers lies truth, perhaps what we need to do is merely believe the opposite of what a number says! But it is hard to see how to reconcile that with the first claim. Maybe it just means that numbers have lying hearts, but they'll be true to their lover anyway.

In conclusion, the question of truth in numbers is a vexed question. Perhaps it will never be answered.

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