Monday, April 18, 2005
(9:16 AM) | Brad:
On the Conference
So much for the periodic updates while I was up in Syracuse for the Paul & Philosophers conference. On Friday a friend discovered a wi-fi connection somewhere in the building, but it was far too random to be of much help; and I just couldn't be bothered with sitting in an internet cafe.A couple of notes:
1) Syracuse is an boringly average town.
Not sure what I was expecting; but whatever it was, Syracuse, the city, did not meet those unspoken expectations. Just a quiet -- too quiet -- college cum industrial town, whose reputation for being covered in snow most of the time makes the factor of depression increase ten-fold. My thoughts might be colored by the fact that I was turned away from an empty bar on campus because I refused to pay a $2 cover charge. The bar was, I reasoned, empty, at one in the morning, and I figured that they did not deserve my $2 if they did not have the good sense to allow me, already slightly intoxicated, to go inside and drink a little more before collapsing into my bed.
2) Zizek is a serious thinker ...
His lisp, his stammering, and his general inability to answer a question notwithstanding, Zizek is a thinker worth taking seriously. Really. His lecture on Friday was better than I expected, and I really quite like Zizek in general. He didn't go over the hour alloted to him, and if one paid close enough attention he simply kept repeating his materialist thesis re: Paul and Christianity. Nothing new here, nothing new expected. Where Zizek truly shined, though, was Saturday's Q&A. Here, his wit, his friendship with A. Badiou, and the general frustration he causes for a lot of people was most clear. Because all of the more historically inclined speakers lumped together Zizek & Badiou, the two apparently had agreed beforehand that Z. would be the representative for the cause. I think his responses surprised a lot of people, because his answers to the Q&A on Thursday night were a little chaotic due to (a) the questions being fucking horrible, and (b) everyone just wanting to go to the wine reception. On Saturday, his responses were punchy and aggressive. If nothing else, Zizek does not play rhetorical defense. His response to the repeated refrain re: his anti-historicism, was that he would respect such criticism more if historicians actually regarded their historicist perspectives historically. But seeing as they rarely do, he's not inclined to defend himself on the charge too rigorously. An empty gesture, perhaps, but a fine rhetorical move for a short Q&A. He also had a very funny remark about the poor American readings of Derrida and Foucault, after they were first introduced to the English ears and eyes. Seeing the 'political potential' of those poor readings, Zizek asserted in passing, Derrida and Foucault began embodying those poor readings.
3) Badiou looks and sounds like Bela Legosi.
This is a good thing. Badiou is, for my money, a bad ass philosophical presence behind a podium. I was impressed. He was hunched over the podium, steadied by his hands gripping its sides, which made him seem like ten feet tall . . . and then, the voice. He has a cadence and a style that is absolutely mesmerizing. In his final years, he really should just start reading philosophical texts for books-on-tape.
4) Boyarin really dislikes evangelical Christians.Boyarin's lecture was interesting enough: about Paul's place in Sophist philosophy, and the revision of his (Boyarin's) claim in A Radical Jew that Paul was a Platonist. More interesting for me, however, because I am remarkably shallow as an individual and an academic, was his humiliation of an evangelical Christian during the Q&A. We'd already learned there was a conservative contingent from Chattanooga in attendance, so it wasn't too surprising when another announced himself at the microphone following Boyarin's lecture. I cannot remember the specifics of the questions, but in it he basically challenged Boyarin's right to the text. The Pauline letters, he reasoned, were written to churches, often responding to those who had 'gone astray', and directed to those whom Jesus is speaking when he said 'To those who have ears, let them hear'. In other words, I, everybody else in the room, but especially Boyarin, understood the guy to be saying that Boyarin's non-Christian reading is not legitimate. Now, he may have legitimately wanted to point out that he thought Boyarin was not being historically vigorous enough in his analysis; but ultimately it sounded like a faith-based hermeneutic. Upon being asked: 'Do you think this might be true?', Boyarin paused for what seemed like ten seconds, stared at his young interrogator, and dismissively exclaimed: 'Sure ... why not.' Crestfallen already at the ensuing, derisive laughter throughout the room, the heroic evangelical was humiliated even more when Boyarin continued: 'Perhaps you'd like to come up here and pray over me, if you'd think that would help my reading.' Sadly, our hero did not agree, and he returned to his seat, never to be heard from again.
5) Not many inter-participant fireworks.
Sorry, Old/Doug, not much to report re: Zizek vs. Sanders, or whomever. Without a doubt, though, Boyarin was the most feisty. He, for instance, reacted really strongly when someone asked a question about his advocacy of 'sophistry', claiming instead that he thought that he'd used the term 'sophism'. When the questioner replied that he did not mean anything pejorative by the term, Boyarin responded: 'Yeah, well, nobody means anything pejorative when they call me a Trotskyite either, but it is pejorative nevertheless.' Fair enough. I also thought he was going to rip R. Kearney a new asshole when the latter suggested a too-easy affinity between the peace process in Northern Ireland and the promise of one in Israel represented by the handshake of Rabin and Arafat.
And finally ...
6) I've seen the future of academic inappropriateness, and it ain't pretty.
After I got back last night I told this story to so many people I ended up dreaming about it. Frightening stuff. On Thursday, during Zizek's lecture, I sat near the back of the room, due to the number of Zizek fanboys/girls who had snuck in -- one of whom, btw, was wearing a 'Slavoj Zizek Fan Club' t-shirt, replete with a picture of, if I'm not mistaken, Zizek sitting in a forest naked with an army behind him. No clue. (The only person who may know is the old academic who was clearly looking at her chest while hitting on her during the evening's wine reception, and who was summarily dismissed by her with a horrifed expression that read to all who were watching at the time: 'HELP!) Sitting in front of me was a long-haired man, who I later learned knew Zizek personally, and his apparent girlfriend/wife. Throughout the lecture, I was entertained by their foreplay. There was earlobe licking, bra-gropping, and to culminate ... ass-rubbing. At one point, and I promise I'm neither lying nor exaggerating, he turned his back to her, his legs in the aisle, his eyes directed out to those across from him, and took his ass-rubbing like a man. It was something to behold. The next day, they were also sitting in front of me during Badiou's lecture. Surely, I thought, nothing could top the previous evening's performance. It must have been obvious that I thought myself too smart, because they sought new ways to make me realize I knew nothing about true love. At some point, he was picking the glue from either the absent birth-control or nicotine patch on her left shoulder, rolling it between his fingers, and flicking it to the floor. And then, this is my favorite, she reached under his shirt, and popped a zit on his back. Such is love.
Such was the conference.
