Thursday, October 13, 2005
(10:51 AM) | Old - Doug Johnson:
Death Drive, Martyrdom, and Suicide pt. 2
To clarify a bit: I am sorry to have not been able to take part in last Thursday's discussion of part 1 (Death Drive vs. Martyrdom) nor in the lengthy discussion of Brad's subsequent post (on Brad's post 4 things 1. I've just started Moby Dick and look forward to discussing it with you Brad sometime in the near-distant future 2. I found the post to be a nice, succinct statement of a certain strain of post-Heideggerian theology, quite helpful in that regard 3. Discard the Name has a paper in which he offers a Deleuzian ontology for the work of John Howard Yoder. It's damn good and very much in opposition to both Millbank type theology and post-Heideggerian theology. Discard, of course, refuses orthodoxy. I know at least Anthony has had a look at the paper. Perhaps Discard is willing to share it with others? 4. It's the Luther in all of this that is problematic for me. It's a focus on subjectivity to such an extent that the political concerns both of today and of Jesus' are marginalized. Jesus' story does reveal something about the father, but against the Johannine emphases of both orthodoxy and Heideggerian/ Bultmannian philosophical theology, that revelation is secondary to Jesus' life as a climax in Israel's resistance to Rome. ... I'll stop here and get to the intended clarification. ...Adam did a great job in defending the basics of what I was after. He was on target in insisting that martyrdom must register as such and also right that I have a specifically Christian understanding of martyrdom (Anthony I am sympathetic to your pluralism issues, even if I can't address them in such a post. Part of the problem is that a whole new grammar is needed to have such a conversation. The way religious pluralism is addressed in religious studies departments, such as the one Jodie is in here in Toronto, is just so vapid, inane, stultifying. With respect to Judaism and Islam that grammar is beginning to be developed in certain circles that I respect, but I don't even know where a conversation with non-western religions can start without the pitfalls spotlighted by Zizek with respect to eastern religions as the opiate of today's capitalist burgeouise). Adam was on target in insisting that martyrdom must register as such (on my understanding) and also right that I have a specifically Christian understanding of martyrdom (or witness as Geoff pointed out). With respect to each fo these points, I had in mind "The Martyrdom of Polycarp." At a critical point, the circus governor demands that Polycarp affirm and repeat "Caesar is Lord." Horsley has pointed out (Taubes also) that much of the language Paul uses of Jesus, now highly spiritualized, is in fact political. So Romans 10's confession "Jesus is Lord" is set against the equally political "Caesar is Lord."
It isn't mere belief for which Christians were killed, it was the way their political allegiance posed a stark challenge to the sovereignty of the emperor. Martyrdom is critical for Paul both in Philippians (as argued Gabe suggested) and in Romans 5-8 (which along with Romans 9-11 forms the very centre of the Pauline gospel) - it's just that I agree with Badiou that Resurrection is even more important, and in fact governs the logic of martyrdom (another problem for Lutheran-Heideggerian theology). In terms of stark challenges to sovereignty, suicide does accomplish such with respect to the biopolitical, here I depart from Adam, but it is not really an option available to Christians. The challenge for those of us who do claim Christianity is, as outlined by Nate, one of discovering a new way "of subversive counter-witness to the world's ideological polity". The points Adam outlined as to why martrydom is impossible in today's world all have there genesis in the shift from sovereignty to the biopolitical, from the power of the king to people power, from feudalism to statist racism, or as the elementary school formula has it from rex lex (king/law) to lex rex (law/king). For those of you who are aware of my thinking with respect to Judaism and the law, the last 'from ... to' may give a clue as to what I am after. Christianity is floundering to find a way to resist biopower because it has no legal tradition of it's own (especially now that canon law has been delinked from it's vivifying force, Roman power).
Alright, I am a bit embarrased by the overly parenthetical nature of this post, but have to let it go anyway. I think I should do better at staying involved in the conversation through this weekend.
