Category: aesthetics

Taking as its medium

I have for some time now moved away from using language that refers to life and action as somehow ‘poetic’.  This shift has happened for a couple of reasons.  First, I had developed a theological writing style that employed a certain type of poetic language.  And what I mean by this is that I wrote about theological topics in a style that was simply supposed to ‘sound good’.  Theology, along with other disciplines, can afford one this opportunity.  No one can really verify if my explication of the Trinity is really valid or relevant.  Rather, it is supposed to move or  persuade.  This style tends to work fine when keeping the conversation theologically ‘in-house’.  As I began to expand my theological discourse I found that my language was running aground on folks who simply did not share some of my presuppositions and basically had the refrain of bullshit called out to me on several occasions.  This presented a clear intersection in how I was going to proceed.  I could entrench my approach and state that the conversation stalled on mutually incompatible presuppositions.  Or I could head back into the workshop and take another look at how I was going about things.  I decided on the latter.

This experience was part of larger theological shift that saw me move away from theology and practice as a discipline of orthodoxy (yes I can be challenged on how I understand orthodoxy) to theology and practice as a mode of understanding and engaging joy and brokenness in the world.  And I should also note that this past year found me heavily influenced by Kierkegaard for whom ‘the poetic’ is a false attempt at immediacy in life which actually puts oneself at arm’s length from life through ‘pretty’ language (I am grossly paraphrasing here).

This process also left a profound mark on how I now read theology.  Theology that was once inspiring now came off flat.  I don’t think I have many illusions about some neutral or material access to reality ‘as such’.  But I am much more interested in beginning from a phenomenological perspective which attempts to describe and not only describe what I see and intuit but also describe my location and perspective.  If I could now characterize my theology I would call it something like an existentially minded attempt at liberation theology.

All this to say that I was somewhat taken aback by Tim McGee’s recent post which outlines James Cone’s understanding of theology as a sort of poetic task.  Now as I read it I could see that the use of ‘poetic’ was different than the understanding I had moved away from.  It still struck me, however, that I had almost completely discarded any expression of the ‘poetic’ in how I express theology and practice.  Poetics for Cone is a response to the possibility of liberation.  We are creative and evocative because we are free.  This is an embodied and holistic poetics.

I had posted a comment on Tim’s blog stating briefly something of what I here stated above.  After that comment I went to a hospital to do some visits.  At the hospital I encountered what we all encounter at hospitals.  I saw bags of urine stacked on a cart in the hall.  I saw a bloody skid mark on the floor next to one person I visited.  I hear the calls for and saw the silhouetted nursing aids clean soiled patients.  I saw a neighbouring patient with a foot bloated literally like a blown-up surgical glove.  I heard sounds and moans coming out of doorways; one with the never ending refrain
Deloris . . . please help me, Deloris . . . please help me, Deloris . . . please help me . . .
I experienced all these common hospital scenes and I thought of the pretty words that people hold on to in this time; the pretty words people look to me for in this time.  It is many of these pretty words that I am trying to speak less of.  I am trying now to understand what theological poetics would look like and sound like taking as its medium the piss and shit of these places.

The problem of presence

It would seem that a work or ‘the works’ of a particular philosopher cannot be complete without addressing the question of presence.  Do we have access to some-thing?  This was first impressed on me when I was introduced to philosophical hermeneutics and the question of meaning.  This question seemed stretched to its logical conclusion in the work of Derrida who denied our ability to capture or lay hold of meaning explaining that the nature of language is to remain in motion always being deferred in relation.  Kierkegaard picks up this question in Practice in Christianity when raising the question of ‘reflection’.  He criticizes the pastoral movement in his time that encourages ‘reflection’.  I think this marks a shift in this thinking away from earlier formations of developing ‘inwardness’ as the arena of faith.  Or at least he is developing a corrective or preemptive claim.

To reflect means, in one sense of the word, to come quite close to something which one would look at, whereas in another sense it implies an attitude of remoteness, of infinite remoteness so far as the personality is concerned.  When a painting is pointed out to one and he is asked to regard it, or when in a shop one looks at a piece of cloth, for example, he steps up quite close to the object, in the latter instance he even takes it in his hands and feels it, in short, he gets as close to the object as possible.  But in another sense, by this very movement he goes quite out of himself, gets away from himself, forgets himself, and there is nothing to remind him that it is he that is looking at the picture or the cloth, and not the picture of the cloth that is looking at him.  That is to say, by reflection I enter into the object (I become objective), but I go out of or away from myself (I cease to be subjective).  . . .

For Christian truth, if I may say so, has itself eyes to see with, indeed, is all eye; but it would be very disquieting, rather quite impossible, to look at a painting or a piece of cloth, if when I was about to look I discovered that the painting or the cloth was looking at me – and precisely such is the case with Christian truth.

Kierkegaard is interested in contemporaneousness with Christ.  And it took me a little while to realize is how dramatically this must be distinguished from historical knowledge of Christ, that is reflection on Christ.  There are of course many questions to be asked about this distinction but it always pushes for, better or worse, is a subjective engagement.

As I was writing out this quote I was reminded of a recent art installation I happened across as my wife and I were walking in our neighbourhood.  The installation was inside the new Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art.  It was created by Lani Maestro and entitled ‘her rain’.  The installation was sparse and what I would call ‘conceptual’.  Below is a picture of one of the works that made up the four room installation.

This neon light filled a room accompanied by second mirrored piece which ran ‘NO BODY LIKE THIS PAIN’.  The works throughout the installation are ‘unframed’.  They are meant to immerse the space they inhabit which include the subjects and subjectivities that move past them.  What I appreciate about this installation is that it makes it difficult to both take it seriously and remain objective about the pieces.  One has the option of dismiss the installation as being ‘artsy-fartsy’ rubbish but one can hardly ‘admire’ it or ‘reflect’ on it in the Kierkegaardian sense above.  One moves through it and must make a subjective decision about it.  It is bodily but not framed and so it opens itself to touch other bodies.  It is subjective.  This word has been so maligned that I think it is time again to slowly build up its intended place, which is not only a place, but also and primarily its impact.

Deep calls to deep

I became an ordained minister this past Sunday.  While it is not always the tradition to do I decided to speak at my own ordination.  The preparation for this ‘sermon’ was different than how I had prepared for a sermon in the past.  My guiding thought was not about communicating the meaning of some particular text but in communicating a sense of how I understand my role and my calling.  As such the sermon developed more along the lines of ‘imagination’.  It was, I guess, poetic.  I sat somewhat uneasy with that direction.  I became concerned that it was too pious or was just some pretty window dressing.  My hope was that it was an inhabitable imagination that would draw, challenge, and invite change for those who heard it.

Well, in any event, here it is.  Based on Psalm 42:1-2, 7-8.

Continue reading “Deep calls to deep” →

Some hate for The Tree of Life; Or, my apparent obsession with AUFS

I wrote an initial comment over at AUFS on my first impression of The Tree of Life.  And the more I think about it the more I can’t stand the film.  This is a reflective position and not a commentary on aspects of the film.  However, the movie lends itself to being processed in a larger cultural and political context and I think the context demands more of the movie than it offers.  I think the movie can be viewed in part if not entirely as Jack processing his childhood.  So Jack wakes up aloof from his beautiful wife (who I don’t think he says a word to).  Lights a candle for his dead younger brother.  Goes to work and sits atop a high tower.  Calls the other alpha male (his father) to apologize for something about the dead brother.  As I process the movie another conversation at AUFS comes to mind in which Brad states that the church has never been able to appropriate or face up to modernity.  That may be true but why is there any need when you have a movie like this which causes modernity’s implosion in the psyche of the man who builds modernity (powerful ‘modern’ architect).  This modern man traverses and encompasses all of evolution in order to find meaning for the death of his brother.  Oh, and who was that middle child again?

I don’t think it is helpful to minimize the white middle-class male experience but how can this expression not invite scorn in our context?  What if Jack was the First Nations man I encountered walking down the street a month ago.  I suspect he might have a few more things to ‘process’ from his childhood experience but he has no high tower in which to brood.  In this neighbourhood being young and native tends to invite things that do not allow for contemplation and so he is jumped and hit with an eight-ball over the head.  He continues on down the street with blood flowing down over him.  Oh wait, where was I again?  Oh yes I was up to the dinosaurs.  The AUFS view of this movie is all the more striking with its general tenor of liberation.  There seemed to be nothing here that would change the modern capitalist man or system.  He found his inner-peace.  Isn’t this the kind of thing that gets disemboweled over at AUFS?

It’s funny I was actually planning to right a post on my ‘conversion’ experience that I attribute in part to the posts and related scholars and thought that floats around at AUFS.  I am trying to shed vacuous and bankrupt theological language or at least press it for its implied meaning and implications.  This is a good time as I am entering into the ordination process with my conference and need to comment on our confession . . . well, we’ll see how good it turns out.

In any event I am not trying to take some jab at the general thinking and expression at AUFS.  I just find the engagement with this movie to be a little dissonant with the larger environment.  I should also point out that many of the comments were not actually made by AUFS regulars.  But as I mentioned in my comment over there I was really surprised it did not get a harsher review.   I suppose it provided some good intellectual and aesthetic fodder . . . and maybe that is all that it amounts to though the movie and the conversation seemed to be pointing to more.

There were two audible responses to the movie in my theatre.  First was a loud yawn.  This was only a partially accurate review in my mind.  I was sucked into the ‘evolution’ (but would have been just as happy to see it as an I-Max piece) as well as moved by many other visual landscapes.  Some of the social and psychological commentary was suggestive and provocative (as Brad elaborates in his original post).  The other audible review was probably more accurate.  It was a sarcastic wow-wee.  Of course this probably spouted by a white middle-class male.

On being seduced

I am almost finished the first volume of Either / Or and as I have mentioned earlier it has been a more rewarding experience than the first go round in which I did not finish.  The book seems to read with two clear book-ends.  The first is Mozart’s Don Juan. Don Juan represents pure and immediate sensuality.  The highest form of this is music.  As soon as the focus shifts to lyrics then an element of reflection is immediately introduced.  The closing book-end is the Diary of a Seducer which is collection of reflections and letters in which a man seduces a young woman to engage him.  This still represents an aesthetic mode like Don Juan but is clearly now also a reflective mode.  What I find interesting about the Diary is the way in which it begins themes which will later be taken up by Kierkegaard.

Having done some earlier research on Kierkegaard’s influence on psychology and counselling much was made of his approach as ‘mid-wife’, that is, of clearing space for the individual to come to his or her own conclusions; to existentially engage the individual, to set them in motion (though without knowledge of this having been facilitated by someone).  Towards the end of his life Kierkegaard reflects on this practice as an author but already here in the Diary Kierkegaard uses similar language as a seducer.  Leading up to the proposal of engagement the seducer writes,

The whole episode must be kept as insignificant as possible, so that when she has accepted me, she will be able to throw the least light upon what may be concealed in this relationship.  The infinite possibility is precisely the interesting.  If she is able to predict anything, that I have failed badly, and the whole relationship loses its meaning.  That she might say yes because she loves me is inconceivable, for she does not love me at all.  The best thing is for me to transform the engagement from act to an event, from something she does to something that happens to her, concerning which she must say: “God only knows how it really happened.

Then later in the Diary are collections of short ‘notes’ that are to arouse the erotic (the immediate) in her.  These are notes of absolutes and totalities.

I am poor – you are my riches; dark – you are my light; I own nothing, want nothing.  And how can I own anything?  It is a contradiction to say that he can own something who does not own himself.  I am as happy as a child, who can and should own nothing.  I own nothing; for I belong only to you; I am not, I have ceased to be, in order to be yours.

It does not take much to see how these notes extend from the aesthetic to the religious.  But first it seems they must pass through the ethical.  And I am about to enter volume II.

The Revelatory Texts of Kafka and Proust

I am starting to get into the swing of the one sentence a day translation project.  While it seems to be cluttering up my other blog posts quickly driving all-too-important blog posts down into the depths of scrolling where no will venture I will (for now) continue to pop them up here.  In any event, I find myself fascinated by the daily unfolding of these two writers.  What intrigues me is the stark contrast in the navigational world offered to the reader.  Proust from the outset allows existence to pour out its possibility shifting between dream-life and waking-life, exploring relationship with objects, consider light, sound, memory, clarity, obscurity, etc.  All is phenomena but phenomena is more.  Kafka on the other hand is revelatory in his limitations.  He offers a stranger we don’t know, a narrator we don’t know, a room they are in, an adjoining room with other people we don’t know, a predictable land-lady who is now suddenly unpredictable.  Revelation is a mystery in its depth according to Proust.  Revelation is a mystery on its surface according to Kafka.  Both draw us forward because we know, we know certainly that something will be revealed.  But just as importantly both styles instill in us an equal certainly that what they reveal is not all . . . there is more.

Debt, time, [and the new] wealth

Here is an extended quote from Franco Berardi’s The Soul at Work,

The postmodern domination of capitalism is founded on the refrain of wealth, understood as cumulative possession.  A specific idea of wealth took control of the collective mind which values accumulation and the consent of the postponing of pleasurable enjoyment.  But this idea of wealth (specific to the sad science of economics) transforms life into lack, need and dependence.  To this idea of wealth we need to oppose another idea: wealth as time – time to enjoy, to travel, learn and make love.

Economic submission, producing need and lack, makes our time dependent, transforming our life into a meaningless run towards nothing.  Indebtedness is the basis of this refrain.

In 2006, the book Generation Debt (subtitled: Why now is a terrible time to be young) was published in the United States.  The author, Anya Kamenetz considers a question that finally came to the forefront of our collective attention in 2007, but has been fundamental to capitalism for a long time: debt.

Anya Kamenttz’s analysis refers especially to young people taking out loans in order to study.  For them, debt functions like a symbolic chain whose effects are more powerful than the real metal chains formerly used in slavery.

This new model of subjugation goes through a cycle of capture, illusion, psychological submission, financial trap and finally pure and simple obligation to work.

. . .

Our young fellow signs the loan, goes to university and graduates: after that, his/her life belongs to the bank.  S/he will have to start work immediately after graduation, in order to pay back a never ending amount of money. . . . S/he will have to accept any condition of work, any exploitation, any humiliation, in order to pay the loan which follows her wherever s/he goes.

Debt is the creation of of obsessive refrains that are imposed on the collective mind.  Refrains impose psychological misery thanks to the ghost of wealth, destroying time in order to transform it into economic value.  The aesthetic therapy we need – an aesthetic therapy that will be the politics of the time to come – consists in the creation of dissipating refrains capable of giving light to another modality of wealth, understood as time for pleasure and enjoyment.

The crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has opened a new scene: the very idea of social relation as ‘debt’ is now crumbling apart.

The anti-capitalist movement of the future won’t be a movement of the poor, but of the wealthy.  The real wealthy of the future will be those who will succeed in creating forms of autonomous consumption, mental models of need reduction, habitat models for the sharing of indispensable resources.  This requires the creation of dissipative wealth refrains, or of frugal and ascetic wealth.

in the virtualized model of semiocapitalism, debt worked as a general frame of investment, but it also became a cage for desire, transforming desire into lack, need and dependency that is carried for life.

Finding a way out of such a dependency is a political task whose realization is not a task for politicians.  It’s a task for art, modulating and orienting desire, and mixing libidinal flows.  It is also a task for therapy, understood as a new focalization of attention, and a shifting of the investments of desiring energy.