Monday, January 02, 2006
(11:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Phlebas the Phoenician, a Fortnight Dead
At about 8:00pm yesterday, I realized that I was in the midst of my first true day off in months -- no wage slavery, no academic pursuits, not even any blogging. I spent the day at Brett and Tara Smith's house, hanging out with them and their son Miles, with Richard, Kari, and Gizmo McElroy (of The Experience), and with Rob Kring. The last time I saw Miles, he was just a couple months old -- now he can walk and even talk to some extent. He is arguably the funniest and cutest kid I've ever seen. Gizmo turns out to be one of those dogs who talks big on the blog, but in person he's a total coward.It was strange not even to feel any anxiety about "not doing anything." Today, hopefully I will read a big chunk of Zizek and start in on my New Year's resolution. It's the perfect weather for staying home and reading, dark and rainy, occasional thunder. I don't have to go back to class until February 7. This seems to me to be the most reasonable possible approach to semester scheduling -- the holidays ultimately aren't any kind of break at all, and this has the benefit of allowing for finishing up incompletes from the fall semester without starting in too quickly on the next semester, so as to start the inevitable vicious cycle of incompletes. All the Hyde Park seminaries are on this schedule. People think that Christians are a bunch of irrational fundamentalists, but in this one instance, I think we're showing everyone else to be a bunch of irrational workaholics.
Christianity as practiced in the academy -- so often it can be much more appealling, even apparently workable or real or dangerous (in a good way). Perhaps we need a modern-day Clement of Alexandria to just come out and say it: the better Christians are the ones who care about learning. Don't we all think it, we recovering fundamentalists? Doesn't Christianity seem to work much better in a seminar setting? All the "implications," all the self-satisfaction at contrasting this radical appealling position with what people think out there in the pews -- it's better. No preacher can really satisfy us; no liturgy is performed quite right; we are above, or to the side of, clerical authority in any case. We're the better Christians, the Gnostic Christians, the ones who take it seriously to the appropriate degree -- and why shouldn't it be in the academy? Surely we all know that the university grew out of monasticism and that it retains certain monastic elements even today. Research is what we do instead of contemplation, now that the idea of contemplation or meditation has become so incomprehensible that we feel we can only learn them from a foreign culture. Our reasonable act of worship.
I joke, and more than joke -- but nothing has ever grabbed me in the way that Christianity did, and I don't ever want to let anything determine me to that degree ever again. Not revolutionary socialism, nothing. No history seems as "real" as salvation history. No institution provokes the same gut-level reactions as the church. For instance, I would advocate the American constitutional form of government insofar as, in our current situation, adhering to its norms would restrain the deeply evil people who have bullied their way into the executive branch. But at the end of the day? I could really give a fuck. And global hegemony? If the choice is between the US and China... but is it really? Is there any other "choice," really? And why do I get to make this choice? Are there diplomats and notaries public waiting outside my door for me to choose whether America or China will be the global hegemon, so that they can piously implement whichever I choose? No, the choice is not "between" the US and some indeterminate outside power (China! The Most Holy Caliphate of Osama bin Laden! The Commies, back from the dead!), but within the United States itself. If the United States is to atone for the sins of the world, why not go for the "moral example" theory of the atonement this time? Disarm, withdraw, mind your own fucking business.
Do I hate America because I said that? Was it wrong of me not to couch it in terms of some "true essence" of America that we have betrayed? Because let's be frank -- America has been about all of this shit from the very beginning. There's a lot of really great stuff about America, but then there's this tradition of conquest and spurious wars and just fucking everyone over for money. The latter is what needs to go, and it would take a miracle. Our president is already, ostensibly, obnoxiously, a Christian, so to that extent, we can't simply have recourse to the example of Rome. Perhaps a President could disarm, withdraw the armed forces within US borders, and convert to Islam.
I don't know. I could give a fuck, at the end of the day, because -- who knows -- maybe there's a corner of my mind that thinks Jesus really will come back, who thinks that he will judge the living and the dead, and that really displaces the urgency. Injustice is still urgent, insistent -- but somehow it seems like the urgency of injustice is always transubstantiated into the urgency of building up a human institution, of getting that institution right: the Democratic Party, for instance. Perhaps if the Democrats weren't so worthless, this whole post would turn out differently. Perhaps if it seemed as though there were a viable space of hope for America -- my country, where I intend to spend the entire rest of my life -- then some different strategy (a strategy at all) would be called for. But as for me, I just say, "Bring the whole thing down." I'm still a selfish human being -- perhaps I'm Hezekiah, told that the kingdom will come down, but still hoping for "peace in my day." I'd be satisfied to watch the apocalypse from beyond the grave. But this cannot go on forever -- indeed, the true horror would be if it could, if we could really have war without end, an immortal body of the world on which to inflict our tortures -- and it really seems like it's too late to change.
I might be wrong, though, about the whole thing. Perhaps things would be different if I really thought it was "the end of the day" or "the last instance" -- as of now, though, I'm going to continue to be a dutiful liberal, listening to NPR, donating to the ACLU, voting for Democrats, staving off the worst. Oh Lord, grant us peace in our day.
