Category: world

A Call for Theo-political Readings

I was sent a link to the following youtube video.  The Messiah continues to strike me as an overwhelmingly political statement and given the context and players involved in this video I started feeling great dissonance.  Was the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ through irruptive means?  Was the kingdom of Lord and of his Christ reified as a free toy for your food court meal?  I welcome readings to clear the dissonant and disturbing sounds still ringing my ears.

Making a Sad Story Sadder

As though a story of sexual assault is not sad enough this is the description of the suspect as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press,

Police released the following description of the suspect. He is aboriginal in appearance, about 25 years old, approximately six-feet tall, weighing 120 pounds, with short, dark brown hair.

He has yellow teeth and was missing an upper tooth. He also had acne scars on his face.

Are there any parts of society that this person would not be alienated from?

Image as Everything

Thanks to zunguzungu for clarifying some important points in my last post.  That image raises the ongoing question of the image’s power or value.  The image in the previous post shows a cop with what almost looks like a posture of fear facing some unknown and unseen presence (surely he is justified in the face of what must be horrible).  Even the hippie in the background looks taken off guard.  Perhaps we should have re-thought this. Then below you have a burly police officer looking like he is about to put the full force of authoritarian stick into the gut of some un-sporty student who just wants to get inside the hallowed halls of academia.

 

This reminds me of the also recent student protests in England (50,000 + I am told).  ads without products offers these two images.

And then a wider frame.

I am sure this issue has many well-worn conversation paths that I am not aware of.  But I am a consumer of these images far and above being a critic and participant in understanding the issues at hand.  Is it simply another form of Capitalism-as-Universal in which these expressions are immediately captured in the lenses of those who will in turn profit from portraying all parties in all lights to ensure maximum return?

The Gospel According to Adam Kotsko; And a Kotskotian Conspiracy

I recently checked the price of Adam Kotsko’s recent book The Politics of Redemption and fortunately it came up with “Look Inside” feature.  I came across a content and tone of writing that may not regularly surface over at AUFS (note well that I am saying nothing of how the two forms relate . . . yet).

Christ restores connections that have been cut off, yet he doesn’t repeat the logic of possession by trying to control those he encounters.  He forgives sins, but is remarkably reticent about how the forgiven should behave in the future, reflecting how often “sin” functions as a stigma rather than a good-faith moral assessment.  He is chastised for his self-indulgence, and in his interactions with others, he very often seems to playing with them.  His persuasiveness is therefore based not on rational argument, but first of all on his general way of being in the world – his simply willingness to be with people whom others shun or simply ignore, his evident enjoyment of them.  His way of being does not end just with him, but spreads to others as a kind of “contagious sovereignty,” an empowerment that is predicated on empowering others rather than dominating them.  Several of those he empowers are sent immediately to continue the work among their own people, implying that no implicit instruction is needed.  His actual public teaching fits within this general pattern, mobilizing surprise in order to invite his readers to come to their own conclusions, a technique that is perhaps also motivated by the sheer pleasure that accompanies an unexpected narrative or discursive twist.  Perhaps the clearest indication of Christ’s approach is the feeding of the multitude, where simple generosity and sharing result in a wholly unanticipated abundance.

Pages started breaking up too far apart to continue reading with any coherence after this quote.

Two things struck me.  First this could have been plucked almost directly out of some of Jean Vanier’s works (especially content related to fear that surrounds this quote).  Secondly this quote led me to a conspiracy theory.  The Adam Kotsko of AUFS is a kierkegaardian pseudonym of the same name (to further nuance the matter) introducing an aesthetic form to the clear the way for his later moral and dogmatic expressions.  It all makes sense now!

The Good Neighbourhood

My wife and I recently purchased our first home.  The house is located in a neighbourhood of Winnipeg in which I have spent the vast majority of my adult Manitoba life.  Moving back from Ontario it was like coming back home.  I am referring to the Spence Neighbourhood in the West End of Winnipeg.  I have lived on Spence St, Young St and I now reside on Langside.  What is clear to me is that everyone, everyone from Winnipeg somehow knows this is a ‘bad’ neighbourhood.  This is so implicitly ingrained in my psyche that when I tell people where our house was I began to rationalize or justify or downplay our decision.  The truth is that I am not sure I can think of a more desirable neighbourhood to live in (maybe the Exchange District).  I love it here.  So I have decided to stop making any additional commentary when I tell people where our house is located.

What I have noticed (after the pause in conversation when I tell them) is that people are now filling in the justification for me or making explicit the public perception (One person actually asked, Isn’t that a scary neighbourhood?).  What is going on here?  Are people actually concerned about my safety?  Maybe.  Do people have a clue what this neighbourhood is actually like?  Probably not.  I would like to propose that maybe part of the need to react to my choosing and (of all things) embracing this neighbourhood is that it subtly questions dominant cultural motivations for home owning . . . namely fear.  In as much as people choose homes out of desires and preferences for this-that-and-the-other I found that house hunting played as much on my fears as anything else.  Will this place retain its value?  Is this a safe neighbourhood?  How will our house and neighbourhood reflect how people view us? These can quickly become dominant motivations as cities have driven for decades now away from the depraved city centres to faux Edens with green lawns, no sidewalks and high fences.

I recognize that our house purchase does not give me any moral high-ground in this larger conversation but our decision has exposed something in myself and seemingly in others.  Our decisions are caught up in a larger system in which we are all participants.  We affirm each other in our decision in live in a ‘good’ neighbourhood.  What defines a good neighbourhood?  I would venture the definition of a good neighbourhood as one in which I do not need to think about anything outside my immediate concerns.  A ‘bad’ neighbourhood then in is one in which outside concerns run in conflict to my own pattern of living.  Living in a ‘bad’ neighbourhood then becomes a call in itself to question our existing pattern of living.  It demands that I make explicit and conscious choices about the things that our world and society are being confronted with and how I am responding to them.  A good neighbourhood then is the capitalist dream.  It caters to my choice and provides the goods and services that will maintain my flow of interests and desires without obstruction.  So what is it again that is good about a good neighbourhood?

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.

Nourishing an Impoverished Theology

Over at AUFS another lacerating post and comment thread has been levelled against possible symptomatic trends in theology that divert attention from the ‘flesh and blood’ powers that actually affect people (the target this time is a post by Ben Myers).  I particularly appreciate the description of powers as flesh and blood.  I am becoming increasingly convinced of the need to teach and demonstrate the practice of description, a phenomenology of sorts.  This position is not incompatible with a discursive interpretation of situations but it demands an account of how discourse is constructed.  If we move simply from discourse to discourse we begin trading in unreliable fictions which is how I understand APS’s critique of Myers’s post.  This was a feeling I also got from Myers’s earlier post on writing.  The sentiments were pleasantly structured but they never seemed to ‘touch down’ (this of course being a personal response unformulated as a criticism at the time).  I suspect I am entering theoretical waters I am unable to swim in but I want to work out at least this thought.

What we are doing in theology or any other discipline or perspective may be the manufacturing, editing and recycling of discourses but this does not mean there is no evaluation and no resources outside of discourse.  The trouble with theology tends to be something like a multi-layered discourse on incarnation without someone’s flesh touching fire, experiencing ecstasy, or willfully sacrificing.  In this way theological discourse becomes a layering and protecting of nothing; and so an engagement with nothing but postures and prose.  APS called Myers out on this and demanded that if he look (at least in Europe) one will find matters quit to the contrary.  Theologians do indeed need to step back and simply look at what is going on around them and describe it, not as though they will arrive at some homogenous neutral view but that they become engaged in flesh and blood.  And here APS’s response also falls short (as all descriptions do).  In his description there is no account for ‘progress’ under right-wing policy.  If someone would come to Winnipeg’s West End and ask about Harry Lehotsky you would soon be inundated with stories of man whose vision of dignity and quality of life for a forsaken community changed countless lives and all this based on a right-wing approach to government and economics that was the result of repeated frustrations with left-wing approaches to social support.  In this description I make no meta claims about economics only that a man engaged the flesh and blood powers of oppression found tools more readily available under a right-wing government (this description of course needs to be contextualized within the Canadian context and historical which greatly affects its possible transferability).  In any event I struggle with over the top claims like the ones made by APS.  I take them to heart as a theologian or Christian (as I have become increasingly grateful for the overall contribution many of the folks at AUFS make) because they are needed but then his post must be further problematized or at least nuanced because of the varied stories of engagement.  An apparent global perspective does not trump and cannot trump a local engagement with flesh and blood.  This, again, should not be read as an attempt to overturn APS’s post but simply to add description which may allow resonance with others for getting on in the task of ‘progress’.

Money Mart, Money Fart

Since Winnipeg has experienced an exceptionally warm October (still cracking double digits!) I have tended to wander a little outside during my lunch break.  Yesterday I walked into small corner store.  The sign on the front said 25% off and they were doing work outside so I assumed they were closing down or making some changes.  As I walked in I saw a new counter roughed-out with some other renovations underway.  I am always excited to hear about new ventures and businesses starting up in the downtown area so I asked what was happening.  The man behind the counter, reading a magazine, barely looked at me and responded by saying he thought a Money Mart was coming in.  Money Mart has been described by others as legal loan sharking.  Basically a Money Mart exists to exploit those desperate for money who should not have money lent to them through traditional means.  In fact an ongoing court case has accused Money Mart of charging literally criminal interest rates which exceed 60%.  All this to say that my heart sank when I heard him utter those words.

But, but, but I need money now for my cell phone contract, to get my cable hooked up, to score a little something-something tonight.

These people will refuse almost no one the opportunity of feeling, smelling, and touching actual cash.  You can go in and come out with cash.  You can come out with the most the valuable object in our society, well almost the most valuable, perhaps the second most valuable.  Cash is nothing if not integrated into a complex of power made up by human beings.  The most valuable object then is that mechanism which puts you most directly in control of the human-complex.  Wealth is that which another does not have.  The equation of wealth then must include the variables of human beings.  Money Mart literally gives you less then it takes.  It gives you cash and takes control.  So to reduce the exchange it is accurate to simply say that it takes.  Is this the definition of power?  Is this the definition of rape?  But we would rather be raped then be denied access to the game that is established for the very purpose of abusing us (consumerism).  So cash is not valuable.  Cash is simply that which allows us to role the dice one more time hoping we will hit a ladder and not a snake without even knowing if there is anything at the top.  We know no other game . . . this appear to be life for us.

Spiritual Mastery

Economic activity constantly seeks to transcend itself, not only by extending its domain into the artistic realm, but also in exertion within its own proper sphere, in its own inner dynamic.  It is striving to become not only one sphere of life, but the only on, or the ultimately definitive one, recognising no extra-economic or supra-economic court of appeal.  The result is economism as a fundamental perception of the world, a world-view.  Its class expression is ‘economic materialism’, a many-faced and many-faceted phenomenon, although it has come to be associated with the name of one its boldest exponents, Karl Marx.  Man is aware of his being in the world only as an economic subject (economic man, homo economicus), for whom economic activity is pure commercialism: economic instinct or egoism is laid down as the foundation of life itself.  This egoism is simply the pure manifestation of the universal, metaphysical egoism of creation as a whole.  Economic activity founded upon egoism in inevitably afflicted by disharmony and strife, personal and communal (‘class war’), and there is no possibility of any ultimate harmonising of this economic egoism which would lead it towards the ‘solidarity’ of which socialist thinking makes so much.  Economic egoism is an elemental force which is in need of regulation, both external and internal (spiritual and ascetical); left to itself, liberated from all restraint, it becomes a destructive power.  Where economics is concerned, it is just as wrong to turn away from it in disgust as to be enslaved by its concerns. Economic labour is imposed upon us as a penalty for sin, and we are bound to see it as a duty [obedience] laid upon all mankind.  There is nothing common between fastidious aristocratic distaste for economic activity and that freedom from economic concern which the gospel enjoins: this freedom aims not at neglect or contempt but at spiritual mastery.

– The Unfading Light; Sergii Bulgakov (1917)

I have not ventured far into Bulgakov but I am intrigued and hopeful in his earthy and fleshly spirituality and how it engages the world; the practice of spiritual mastery (as if I needed incentive to read more turn of the century Russian authors).