For two years now a small group has been gathering monthly for what has been called Critical Conversation (CC). In practice, CC is a reading group. Different individuals suggest articles, they are posted online, people read them (or not), and we gather to discuss them. After two years of this practice it seems like an appropriate time for some reflection.

The initial motivation for this group came from conversations I had with Aiden Enns (editor of Geez magazine). We connected over shared interests and over a lack of context in which to engage those interests. What were those interests? As we talked more and as we thought about some sort of reading group we came up with this statement now posted in the ‘About’ section of our website,

You are invited to join us for Critical Conversation. We hope to read and discuss materials that help us identify, understand and constructively engage the systems and expressions among us and within us that promote destructive forms of privilege for some groups to the detriment of others.

We see a lack of opportunity for this sort of dialogue within our culture and particularly within our churches. We see this form of engagement as part of assembling the message and work of good news from the materials of the present age.

Our readings fall broadly under the category of “critical theory and theology.” This includes influences from political/liberation theology, feminism, queer and race theory, marxist/socialist/anarchist thought, and philosophy of religion.

So what sort of opportunity has CC become? First, it is apparent this is not something many people want to do or have the time to do. We meet during the day over lunch and so this immediately excludes some people (as it would exclude others if we met in the evening) and we pick texts that are often, at best, difficult to understand after one reading. This group is limited in its accessibility and challenging in what it asks of people. This group has not had the problem of having too many voices around the table. That being said, we continue to have a stable and committed core of individuals as well as those who come and go. It is clear that such an opportunity is important to some people.

While we publicized this group to anyone interested, the group continues to reflect the circles we most commonly reside in. Most of the people who attend have some connection to the Mennonite world; a few are pastors, a few work for Mennonite organizations, or have studied at Mennonite schools, and for the others the connection has been more informal or indirect. The Mennonite church or ethos broadly informs our reading and discussion. However, what has proved unique in this context is that there is no explicit ‘over-sight’ in the conversation or thinking as it relates to things Mennonite. There is no shared commitment to the inherent value of Mennonite theology or institutions (or the church in general for that matter). Conversely, there is no shared commitment against these things. What I have come to value in this space and opportunity is being freed from the basic antagonism or false option of defending or discrediting the faith. There is very little policing in what people are allowed to say or propose other than the willingness to have it further examined and perhaps challenged. The commitment is to see what comes from the conversation itself. The event drives and directs where we go.

So again, what is this opportunity, what is this space in which we gather and what do we perform there? We do not gather as the church and it has never been advertised as a program of a local church or of the Mennonite conference. However, we meet inside a building owned by a Mennonite church and many of us are professionally employed or trained through the Mennonite church. This gathering is also not a class, we are not a school, though we rely heavily on the university structure and the type of work and insights it produces. We have also had two graduate students present their own original research for consideration. There are no tuition fees and no credit or diploma will be given.

To borrow a term developed by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney this space is one opportunity to study.[1] They deploy this term not in a strict intellectual sense (though that of course is present). Rather, they view study as a sort of speculative practice. In an interview, Harney says,

A speculative practice is study in movement for me, . . . to speak in the midst of something, to interrupt the other kinds of study that might be going on, or might have just paused, that we pass through, that we may even been invited to join, this is study across bodies, across space, across things, this is study as a speculative practice.

Earlier Moten refers to this practice as a sort of irreducible convergence. Critical Conversation appears to be a group refusing to simply support the church but it has also refused to refuse the church. This double refusal has resulted in a particular gathering, an irreducible convergence that accepts the reality of the church’s institutional force and presence but cannot accept the church with the institutional tendency towards over-determining policy which Harney describes as a way of ‘thinking for others.’ So we gather for the opportunity of intervening in the church’s discourse, intervening in the academy’s discourse, and (as we can) intervening in the various social and economic discourses that affect us. Our practice as a group demonstrates that it is not possible to simply reject these things but that we also cannot be carried away by them.

To be clear I do not think Critical Conversation is a unique or original space. I agree with Moten and Harney who see this type of study happening in the arts, music, theatre, in the workplace, on the steps, at the bar, or out for a walk. However, I also cannot say that it is a common practice. For many people school and church (as well as family, work, and society) function as a finishing process, an accomplishment, and a security. To remain committed to study in contrast is to remain committed to “not finishing oneself, not passing, not completing.” It is an ongoing practice which will not live in the illusion of a world without institutions but will also not accept their presence as finally sovereign.

I have been relying on the work of Harvey and Moten to help me think through what happens as we gather for Critical Conversation. To borrow another phrase, I want to consider whether the opportunity taken at there is to work within and against the church. It is apparent that by and large the people gathered for this time do so somehow fall within the gaze of the church even if particular individuals do not move directly within its parameters. We remain invested in the impact and presence of the church and, as with Christians and non-Christians alike, it can still be difficult in the West to truly consider oneself outside the conditions established by the church. Within the Mennonite church we form a particular expression, a particular and contingent communion of those understanding that our study, our speculative practice, is performed precisely against the church to the extent that it immunizes itself to the presence and voice of those differing or dissenting with the finishing process inherent to institutions.

This opportunity is important because popular imagination still holds that there is only the choice of faith or atheism, religion or secularism. This opportunity is important for the church because the church cannot but remain in the binds of institutional realities. These realities are not all bad but they have to be called into question, challenged, studied or they will move easily into the posture of a sovereign voice that will silence ‘weaker’ voices. This expression of study, this speculative practice within and against the church, invites all those once rejected, avoided or silenced by the church and it calls to those who still cannot help but resonate with the witness of the Gospel, the unavoidable nature of worship, and the commitment to healing.

 

[1] The following references are all taken from Stephano Harvey and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (New York: Minor Compositions, 2013).

In John’s Gospel Thomas missed the worship service where Jesus revealed himself to the disciples. So while the disciples did not believe Mary’s earlier encounter, so too Thomas did not believe the disciples. Like many biblical characters the figure of Thomas has received many interpretations. He has been characterized as a dull and unwilling to believe. Others, particularly in the modern period began to look to him as an image of sound realism with a commitment to be swayed only by the facts. As is so often the case our reading of the Bible becomes a way to project and promote our own values. Most simply what we find in the text is that Thomas was really no different than the disciples who do not believe Mary.

The challenge then is to understand the significance of Thomas not only seeing but feeling, entering into, the wounds of Jesus. What does this mean? I find it hard to speak about this encounter. Some theologians have referred to the intimacy of this scene, pointing to the symbolic eroticism in which the wound and side of Jesus are cast as feminine. When Jesus’s side was pierced on the cross and blood and water flowed from it some theologians read this as the place where the church is birthed. And so some have read Thomas as experiencing an intimate union with Christ in this scene. However, we also cannot forget that these are wounds. These spaces are the result of the violent transgression of Jesus’s body and here is Thomas re-enacting that violence. With his nails and a spear Thomas is getting his proof.

Reflecting on these possible images I feel unable to offer some clear reading of this scene. The best I can do is point to it as a powerful account of how fine the line is between intimate vulnerability and the abuse of power, the demand of vulnerability. And furthermore point to this image as happening within the church and how the church is called to steward that vulnerability and guard against its abuse. The church in this scene is trying to keep its doors closed to protect itself for fear of the world around it but Jesus reminds them that the possibility of intimacy as well as the sources and gestures of evil are pervasive.

It is a thinly veiled dirty secret that I still follow The Ultimate Fighting Championship (The ‘original’ MMA). In the days before the internet (well at least in my world) the corner store in Altona, isolated on the southern plains of Manitoba, somehow acquired VHS copies of the first UFC bouts. In 1993 alongside copies of White Men Can’t Jump and A Few Good Men there was the striking image of a man with large fists standing above a globe. On the back were images of men . . . in cage . . . fighting. As a straight ahead hetero teenage boy that was enough. I quickly found out that these events answered the primordial fascination of who was the best fighter. Prior to this, in my mind, this usually played out in terms of animal differences (who would win between a bear and a tiger).

The early events were in an experiment in the bizarre. There were very few rules. No biting. No eye gouging. There was of course the boundaries of the cage and the limit of one-on-one combat. There was a boxer with one boxing glove on so he could hold on to his opponent with the other. There was a sumo wrestler who had his tooth kicked out that went flying into the audience.  One of the early tournaments vividly demonstrated the need to employ a no groin striking rule. And in the early years it could not have been scripted better with the 180 lb jujitsu fighter winning most of the tournaments.

What I find interesting about these events is how they have adapted. All these fighting techniques had internal disciplines that had their own logic and history. When these disciples brought into contact with each other, when their authority over particular boundaries and limits was removed, they had to adjust in direct relation to their opponent. While there was a visceral and at times chaotic clash when these disciples first met each other something very interesting happened within the first few years. The events became boring.

There were no rounds and no time limits and so the best fighters were the most strategic and the most patient. The final event often saw the two fighters locked in a grappling position for half an hour. It was like a chess match . . .  but with less action. What happened? The rules changed. It is true that some of the rules changed to protect the fighters but the most significant rules were the ones that created more action. One rule was to create shorter rounds with an overall time limit. This meant that fighters would have to be stood up occasionally (which usually meant more ‘action’). This also introduced a point scoring system if a fighter was not knocked out or submitted within the time limit. The points were based in part on, literally, ‘aggression’ and ‘control’. The most interesting rule was the one where the referee had the fighters stand-up if they were not working. In fact you could often hear the referee say, Come you guys, I need to you to work, or I’ll stand you up. The law was introduced to produce more violence, more action. There was an inscribed notion of what it was to ‘work’ for your employer; expectation for compensation.

There remains the lie which says that without rules chaos will reign. Around the same time that UFC began I was in high school and in my social studies class we were asked to write a brief reflection on what would happen if there were no laws. Apparently I was the only one who said that after a period of chaos and re-adjustment there would be a time when people would negotiate what would be mutually beneficial. This is in fact what happened in the UFC. But for it to profitable there needed to be the creation of more work.

I will readily admit that this imagery has its limitations. I am not an anarchist. However, there remains the illusion that we need the law to stem chaos and violence when, at least in many instances, it is the law that creates or instigates it. This was also the case with sports. I remember people talking about the need for referees in minor sports. Well, sure, when you have an applied structure of victory and defeat stirred by anxious and aggressive parents. But when, in junior high, we played basketball on the weekend by ourselves we somehow had no (or little) problem monitoring our play. The worst case scenario was that we just stopped playing. But we wanted to play. So we returned and figured it out.

Again, I am not trying to abstract this beyond its limits, however, I think even in the case of the church (which in my tradition tries to be voluntarist) we can learn from this gathering and re-gathering. A gathering not proscribed by external claims to ‘holy order’ but developed through ongoing engagement with each other, with our tradition, and beyond our tradition.

I just finished writing a review of John Howard Yoder’s Theology of Mission. The book is a transcription of the course he taught Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries for over two decades. The text itself comes from recordings in the mid-70s. As can be expected, Yoder offers insightful readings of scripture and applies his anti-constantianism to the history and theology of mission. I thought I would post an excerpt of the review in case anyone is interested in further conversation.

Working towards a sort of climax Yoder draws closer to the basic questions of Christianity in relation to other religions. Until this point Yoder outlined an image of the church in mission that needed to repent of and reject past complicity with colonial projects. However, it remains an open question as to whether Yoder actually addresses the underlying logic that led to the destructive elements of the church’s mission. Yoder makes two claims in these final chapters that will need to be acknowledged and engaged by future theologians in this field. First, Yoder addresses the designation of ‘religion’ as an interpretive category and asserts that “what Christians must talk about is Jesus Christ not Christianity as religion or culture” (397). This position comes into tension with the second claim Yoder makes regarding other religions and ‘post-Christian’ movements. Yoder does not advocate active proselytizing of Hindus and Buddhists but articulates how they are changed when they come into contact with Jesus. Then with respect to post-Christian movements (anything from Islam to Marxism) Yoder positions them as “derived from a Christianity that lost its way” (385). This language sounds too much like an expression that is able to retain a pure ‘kernel’ of truth that remains unassailable in the face of experiences. In Yoder’s theology of mission Jesus functions as that which cannot be wrong.

This book is an important contribution to what is at present a controversial topic. Yoder calls on the church to live out of its particular history and formation. This means confessing the wrongs that came from it and returning again (and again) to the biblical witness which points the church towards a communal and migratory understanding of mission. These are welcome correctives to many supercessionist theologies of mission. The question that remains untouched is whether Yoder actually steers the church away from a theology that will always encroach, always insulate itself from receiving good news outside of (and perhaps otherwise than) its particularity; a theology of mission that can’t help but determine the question of salvation for others. The Mennonite church is currently not of one mind on this issue but the question continues to inform and challenge any present or future theology of mission.

I. Introduction
II.  Univocity in the Medieval Period
III. The Trajectory of Univocity to Immanence
IV. The Conceptual Paradigm of Immanence in Deleuze

V. The Excessive If Love in Hadewijch’s Complete Works

The typical way of conceptually situating Hadewijch is to place her somewhere within the expressions related to neoplatonism.[1] This is understandable given both her intellectual setting as well as a number of her Letters and Visions. Continue reading “The Excessive If Love in Hadewijch’s Complete Works” →

Easter Sunday Sermon: John 20:1-18

Here in the West we are enthralled by the pursuit of sight. How far and how close can we see? We have developed the technologies of X-Ray vision, telescopic vision, and microscopic vision. More recently are advances in our ability to see other people’s thoughts as we try and read the signals emitted by our brains. In these pursuits we have wanted to see the beginning and we have wanted to see the end. Somewhere along the way we have come to the idea that in seeing further and in seeing closer we will see the Truth, we will see the meaning of life. While this is perhaps seen most clearly in the sciences as it has been the case with religion and politics as we tell ancient and modern stories of our beginnings and future as a religion, as a country, or as a culture.

Our reading this Easter Sunday resists this sort of straining of our sight. Continue reading “Leave or Linger” →

I. Introduction
II.  Univocity in the Medieval Period
III. The Trajectory of Univocity to Immanence

IV. The Conceptual Paradigm of Immanence in Deleuze

Basically put, a paradigm of immanence is one in which the cause of being and the ef­fects of being belong to the same plane. There is no transcendent point of reference, for each being is co-constitutive of every other being. [O]ne consequence of immanence . . . is that it becomes impossible to name being as such, even as the multitude of names given to beings (and to being in itself) point to the inescapability of signification. What I propose, then, is that immanence puts in play a reciprocal relay be­tween namelessness and excessive signification. . . . An immanent relation is one in which neither term can be made utterly prior to the other; immanently related terms are mutually constitutive.[1]

It is often understood that critiquing transcendence has meant critiquing God; that God and transcendence are interchangeable. The critique of transcendence has tracked so closely with the Christian religion that the work of immanence has often been equated with secularism and the rejection of God. Challenging this notion Daniel Colucciello Barber, working first with Spinoza and then unpacking Deleuze, maintains that the critique put forward by immanence is not that of naming God but of accepting transcendence as the stabilizing or authorizing of this naming.[2]

Immanence accepts the relationship of cause and effect but refuses to place this distinction within the register of transcendence, that is, immanence is a two-way street.[3] This immediately places immanence in a questionable position with respect to dominant models of medieval theology. Speaking of relations as ‘two-way’, immanence requires an account of mutual affection. There is no priority of place here, “the cause is not prior to its effects, for its essence is affected by what it effects; the cause is constituted by its effects.”[4] A cause does not remain unaffected by the effects it creates. It is easy to see how this formulation challenges Christian orthodoxy and the belief in an impassible God distinct from (even if connected to) creation. With immanence there is one substance, one plane of relations. This relates to Spinoza’s reference to “God, or Nature.” Rather than deciding on how these terms relate with the subsequent collapsing of one term below the other what is important in that statement is the manner in which it opens up (or keeps open) the differential relay between namelessness and naming. As mentioned earlier, it is tempting to reduce one term as subordinate to the other (God really means Nature; or vice versa). However, this would transgress the formulation and deny both the relation and the non-identity of the terms; it would introduce transcendence.

The nameless reality of immanence emerges then as excess naming and “the only way of thinking this excess is to perform it.”[5] This account of mutually affected and excessive production distinguishes immanent process most clearly from the notion of divine revelation based on a closed canon and also troubles the notion of analogy as a form of mediation because at some point a transcendent authority stops or closes the relay of relations; a prior unity is posited as necessary and therefore remains unaffected. The excess comes not because of the plenitude of the One but of the infinite relay which resists collapsing God, or Nature.

For the purposes of this paper it is helpful to note that immanence also differs from the logic of most negative theology. While negative theology orients discourse around the namelessness of God “it is equally the case that negative theology addresses this difficulty by signifying that the object of signification is unsignifiable. Immanence, however, cannot permit this strategy, for such a strategy (i.e. negative theology) makes the unsignifiable into something that transcends signification.”[6] Naming is not improper because it falls short of some transcendent unnameable reality but because it emerges from the excess of namelessness and according to Barber “the key is to enable this relay.”[7]

Identifying relations of transcendence and immanence are not always as clear as they might seem. For the purpose of furnishing greater conceptual clarity I will briefly summarize what Barber calls ‘rival paradigms’ of immanence that collapse the relay between ‘God, or Nature’.[8]

• Philosophical Delimitation (PD) – In this model God is clearly collapsed into ‘Nature’ where Reason (Kant) or Being (Heidegger) set the parameters for thought.

• Theological Particularism (TP) – In this model the particularity of naming God in theological discourse is what orients thought to Nature. Here theology (the naming of God) is auto-referential, positioning itself, as in the case of Karl Barth. Nature then, is positioned by God.

• Theological Ontology (TO) – This model continues to privilege theological discourse but holds that it can be expanded beyond its particularity in its ability to offer a universal horizon (sort of an inverse of PD). Barber considers this the dominant model within early and medieval Christian theology where the particularity of Christianity represents the universality of truth. This model is represented by the method of theological analogy in Thomas Aquinas which allows theology (God) and ontology (Nature) to be convertible.

• Philosophical Excess (PE) – This model is close to PD in its general aversion to theological discourse but in contrast to PD this model thinks it almost impossible to avoid theological discourse. PE understands thought to be contaminated by theology and so must attend to it in order to think through it. This can be seen in the ‘turn’ to religion in Continental thought in such figures as Derrida, Zizek, and Agamben. God and Nature represent an problematic relationship.

The first three models of thought are united in their interest or confidence in being able to resolve the tension between theology (God) and philosophy (Nature). PE does not posit a resolution and in this respect is in keeping with immanence. Where PE falls short (according to Barber) is its inability to begin to think through the problematic relationship between theology and philosophy and what that says about the conditions of thought. “Immanence makes its agreement with PE into an occasion for going beyond PE, and it does this by thinking the differential tension of philosophical, or ontological, register (namelessness) and a theological register (signification) as mutually constitutive, or as relays of one another.”[9] As will be demonstrated, it is the holding open of the relay between naming and namelessness that resonates deeply with Hadewijch in a way that the rival paradigms of immanence do not.

To summarize, most expressions of philosophy and theology work within the framework of transcendence. Most basically, this involves a commitment or appeal to a prior unity which is able to identify and stabilize (at least in part) the naming and experience of difference. This is not the case for immanence. With immanence, emerging out of an understanding of univocity, difference (or a differential relation) is the only way of being able to think reality. Rather than a closure of the relay between God/Naming, or Nature/Namelessness immanence facilitates the relay which points to the excessive and productive expression of reality.

This introduction to immanence is sufficient to outline an conceptual framework by which to read Hadewijch. A principle problem for thought from classical Greek, through medieval and into modern times has been articulating the relation between Principle-of-Life / One / Creator / God / Being and life / many / creature / nature / being. The dominant paradigm has held belief in a transcendent presence (or prior unity) that stabilizes and is able to close off the relay between these two realities (or at least allow one pole to remain unaffected). This transcendence can come in a varieties of forms. It can come in the straightforward ascription of authority to a divine scripture; the belief of the One who is unaffected but emanates knowledge; the belief of divinely formed reason which can secure appropriate analogies of mediation; or the otherworldly void of negative theology.

Key to the trajectory of univocity and immanence outlined here is drawing attention to the problematic nature of trying to foreground a stable relation between God and Nature. Indeed, the trajectory, as it culminates in Deleuze, is to actively problematize this model to keep the relay open. A conceptual paradigm of immanence is invaluable to mystical texts as they provide an important contrast to accusations of incoherence or meaninglessness. Furthermore, this paradigm offers conceptual weight to accounts that lodge mystical expressions fully in the realm of experience or performance. Experience and performance are important, however, they are not the only way of speaking about this sort of expression but are indicators for how the common condition and necessity of namelessness (Nature) and signification (God) functions. The only way of thinking this excess is to perform it.[10] The excessive expressions of immanence begin to create space for a fruitful engagement with Hadewijch.

 

[1] Barber, On Diaspora, xi, 1.

[2] This is consistent throughout Barber’s work on immanence but for a helpful introduction see Barber, Deleuze and the Naming of God, 4-9. See also Daniel W. Smith, “The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence,” 167-183.

[3] What follows can be considered a summary of Barber, On Diaspora, 1-10.

[4] Barber, On Diaspora., 2.

[5] Barber, On Diaspora, 8.

[6] Barber, On Diaspora, 2, emphasis mine.

[7] Barber, On Diaspora, 10.

[8] The following is a summary of Barber, On Diaspora, 11-20.

[9] Barber, On Diaspora, 20.

[10] On Diaspora, 8. I should also note that in an article dealing with Ruusbroec and Eckhart, Eugene Thacker has already made a gesture towards this type of thinking when he articulates the difference between metaphysical and mytiscal correlation. Metaphysical correlation (between subject and object) already accepts a certain ‘given’ within the real as such “is always after a response that is has already posited before it begins the task of thinking. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a self-congratulatory gesture. It has caught its prey before the hunt as begun. By contrast, mystical correlation can receive a response, precisely because it is after that which is simply without-thought (or non-thought). . . . [I]t is always oriented towards something that is understood to be in excess of thought.” Thacker, “Wayless Abyss,” 94.

I. Introduction
II.  Univocity in the Medieval Period

III. The Trajectory of Univocity to Immanence

Thomas Aquinas attempts to mediate the relation between Creator and creature through the process of analogy. Analogy maintains the absolute distinction between Creator and creature through the notion of proportional difference. This is a ‘middle-road’ between the impasse of agnostic equivocity and the endless relation of univocity. While this becomes the dominant mode of theological orthodoxy it does not go unchallenged. Duns Scotus draws attention to the unending nature of trying to ‘relate’ seemingly disparate terms. In contrast to the method of analogy, Scotus “argues that univocity ‘never stops’ and that the real philosophical challenge is in accounting for the persistence of univocity, despite the most radical assertions of differentiation.”[1] The typical criticism of univocity is that if all is of the same substance and there is no end to relating then there is no formal way of acknowledging difference at all. In response to this criticism Scotus argues that when analogy mediates A (God) and B (Nature) via X then X becomes the higher principle by which both are subordinate. This way of relating never comes to a clear end which is not in some way arbitrary. While Scotus “always stops short of a full-fledged pantheism or a fully immanent materialism” he does finally “take up the position of univocity as the only viable philosophical position if the relations between Creator and creature, Life and living, are to be thought at all.”[2]

The work of Gilles Deleuze enters decisively into this trajectory where he states in Difference and Repetition,“There has only ever been one ontological position: Being is univocal. There has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which gave being a single voice.”[3] Deleuze does not simply receive Scotus’s ontology but passes it through his own repetition which includes significant engagement with Baruch Spinoza. With Spinoza, decisive attention is given to relation itself (as opposed to objects trying to be related). Clearly departing from the analogical model which has its basis in Aristotle and is expressed clearly in Aquinas, Spinoza rejects a notion of essential difference, which is distributed by One (God) and received in part by Many (Nature), and emphasizes the existence of difference itself drawing attention to “difference as a degree of power.”[4] Analogy used relations to think the difference between objects while the relation itself remained unthought. Spinoza attempts to think the relation itself.

For Spinoza being, or what is real, is the process of variation or differentiating itself; the variation of a single substance. We can speak of difference through attributes (thought/mind and body/extension) but “attributes are less mediators or vehicles of divine causality, and more like the very viscosity of relation itself.”[5] Analogy demands a transcendent One because there is a unity of these attributes in God before there is the dispersal of these attributes in part. “In other words, what makes individuals separate from God is that God possesses these forms in an essential, unified manner; God transcends individuals because unity transcends difference. Deleuze, on the other hand, makes formal distinction (distinction between attributes) essential to substance (or God), which means difference becomes intrinsic to God, or substance, itself.”[6]

This focus on relation and difference clarifies Spinoza’s famous ontological statement regarding the univocity of being as “God, or Nature”. This phrase is not meant to position one term as the reference for the other (by God we really mean Nature or vice versa).[7] The significance of the phrase is the way in which it keeps the relay of mediation and relationality open, knowing that we must name (speak of Life or God) but that naming remains insufficient, even inappropriate, to reality (the endless differences in Nature). Taken up in the work of Deleuze, the univocity of Scotus and the indeterminacy of Spinoza are heightened in a push towards ‘pure immanence’.

This brief introduction to univocity as it is developed into the concept of immanence demonstrates the relevance of the question of mediation and relationality in the medieval period and how univocity remained a marginal position within the more dominant model of analogy. The following section will more clearly unpack elements of Delueze’s concept of immanence (and as such his critique of transcendence) particularly as it relates to reading Hadewijch.

 

[1] Thacker, After Life, 114.

[2] Thacker, After Life, 114, 119.

[3] Cited in Thacker, After Life, 136.

[4] Daniel W. Smith, “The Doctrine of Univocity,” 178.

[5] Thacker, After Life, 138.

[6] Barber, Deleuze, 42.

[7] Barber, On Diaspora, 25.

 

I. Introduction

II.  Univocity in the Medieval Period

In his recent book After Life, Eugene Thacker tracks a conceptual trajectory starting with Aristotle’s distinction (or problem of distinguishing) between Life and living. Aristotle is unable to articulate this ontology of life fully because “it is as if, in proposing a concept of the principle-of-life, Aristotle is forced to think ‘life’ in terms other-than-life.”[1] This is a fundamental question of mediation that continued to play out in the medieval period taking up questions of how to speak about the relation or non-relation between Creator and creature or God and nature/humanity. Thacker goes on to outline the various theologies and philosophies that approached this relation that was deemed both necessary and problematic.

Thacker begins by introducing neoplatonism. In this model (deriving from Plontinus) the transcendent One (Life/Creator) emanates the Many (living creatures/nature). The Creator is wholly unaffected by creation residing above the creatures, though in its spiritual or theological forms there are ways in which creatures (or more accurately their Souls) are able to re-trace their steps and find union with the Creator, though this union never alters the transcendent position of the Creator. So while positing the soul as a sort of mediator the God/nature or the Life/living relation remains directly unthinkable (we remain forced to think God with something other-than-god). Two schools of medieval thought emerged wrestling with this continued problem.[2]

• Positive (kataphatic) theology – Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas are used as notable examples. In this mode the transcendent divine, while inaccessible by human means, eventually pours forth in the excessive or overwhelming imagery of light or radiation. Talking about God in this mode meant filling all the partial attributes that are accessible in nature lifting them to a divine status. Human is x and God is the perfect x.

• Negative (apophatic) theology – In contrast to positive theology, thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena relay on the imagery of darkness and nothingness to indicate the gap between nature and the transcendent divine. Talking about God in this mode meant emptying language of anything associated with nature and in attempting the soul reside in that darkness / absence / nothingness. Human is x – God is not-x.

Both positive and negative theology typically worked with some understanding of analogy as mediating Creator and creature. Analogy was the compromise between the two poles of equivocity (no relation between realms) and univocity (all relation of one substance). In this way it was possible, or at least maintained, that positive theology could speak of God in nature in proportion to the relationship of cause and effect while maintaining the transcendent and unaffected otherness of God.

While theological orthodoxy maintained a hierarchy and unassailable procession of order mediated by analogy there remained elements or traces of univocity later referred to as pantheism that, as developed in the work of Deleuze, began to influence the emerging concept of immanence.

 

[1] Thacker, After Life, 20-21.

[2] Thacker introduces this distinction in 37-40.

It is unexceptional to comment that mystical accounts in the medieval period produced something of significant difference to established or at least majority expressions of faith or theology. While preserved and revered by some, these expressions were often met with derision (if not persecution).1  This sort of reaction can be said generally of the movement but also specifically of the notable rise in accounts by women.2 While scholarship has moved some way past the easy modern dismissal of all things medieval there remains significant opportunity around the extent to which we can think or conceptualize the accounts of medieval woman mystics.3

The purpose of these posts is to articulate a conceptual framework for reading and understanding the conditions of thought in the works of Hadewijch of Brabant. Hadewijch was a 13th century Dutch beguine whose work is characterized by an extreme (perhaps exhaustive) notion of Love as that which informs and pervades all of life. While increased attention has been given to Hadewijch in recent times her work has not been brought into conversation with the concepts of Gilles Deleuze. It is particular elements of Deleuze’s thoughts on immanence that I will employ for reading Hadewijch.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to navigate the debates of how Deleuze is understood and deployed. Further, I am not interested in demonstrating an accurate reading of Deleuze as such or in total. Rather, I intend to direct my engagement primarily through the recent work and focus of Daniel Colucciello Barber and Eugene Thacker.4 While there has been some recent work published on the intersection of Deleuze and medievalism in general5 (as well as some engagement with mysticism specifically)6 I have come across no work that has considered the relationship between Deleuzian immanence and Hadewijch in particular or female mystics more generally.

I will continue these post by first orientating the question of immanence as it emerged in the medieval period and then how it was taken up and developed in the work of Deleuze. I will then highlight some of the elements that demonstrate how immanence can be understood in contrast to transcendence. After outlining a conceptual paradigm of immanence I will then engage the extent works of Hadewijch making notes on how her discourse relates to some of the key elements of immanence. I am not interested in suggesting or defending a position situating Hadewijch as a cause or practitioner of immanence. My interest is more basic in expanding the conceptual tools for engaging religious texts and thought and the extent to which Hadewich’s work resonates with such a framework. The bulk of this series consists of orienting the reader to the concept of immanence as it relates to the western medieval tradition and my engagement with Hadewijch should be considered an exploration with a more extensive treatment laying beyond the scope of the present work.

 

[1] Already by the 16^th century Michael de Certeau notes a sustained attack on these accounts calling them ‘gibberish,’ full of ‘strange absurdities,’ The Mystic Fable, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 108-09.

[2] Luce Irigaray notes that the extent to which men enter this ‘madness’ it is by following ‘her’ lead. See Luce Irigaray Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 191.

[3] For a recent account of scholarship and conceptual approaches to religious medieval texts by women see Patricia Daily, Promised Bodies: Time, Language, and Corporeality in Medieval Women’s Mystical Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 2-5.

[4] See Daniel Colucciello Barber, On Diaspora: Christianity, Religion, and Secularity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011) and Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-secularism and the Future of Immanence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2014). Eugene Thacker, After Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010).

[5] See Peter Hallward, “‘Everything is Real’: Deleuze and Creative Univocity,” New Formations 49 (2003): 61-74 and Daniel W. Smith, “The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence,” Deleuze and Religion, ed. Mary Bryden (New York: Routledge, 2001).

[6] See Patrice Haynes, “Immanence, Transcendence and Thinking Life with Deleuze and Eckhart,” Medieval Mystical Theology 22.1 (2013): 5-26 and Eugene Thacker, “Wayless abyss: Mysticism, mediation and divine nothingness,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 3.1 (2012): 80-96.