Writer and theorist Stanley Fish wrote a column on Friday for the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled One University under God, which has a little bit of everything, and as such might serve as our first non-Dusty "topic of mutual interest": political and economic theory for our friends in DC, literary and cultural theory for the academics, and even references to Law and Order and Die Hard for anti-PhDeezzz like Aeijtzsche. I'd love to hear responses.
An excerpt:
"As we entered the last decade of the century, it could still be said that the wall of separation was pretty much in place. But in the last 15 years a lot has changed, and by 2000, observers were alert to the change and commenting on it. Peter Beinert, in the midst of the Bush-Gore election campaign, predicted that 'religion will increasingly replace electoral politics as the realm where battles for the national soul are fought.'
"We now know that he was not quite right: What we saw in the election of 2004 was the inter-penetration of religion and electoral politics, with professions of personal faith becoming as important or more important than the announcement of policy positions. "
and just one more:
"When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion. "
Discuss among yourselves.
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23 comments:
I think the ultimate for me would be Derrida making an appearance on a Law and Order episode.
A few comments after a first reading:
1) The direction of Fish’s rhetoric seems fundamentally unsure; I think he’s wrestling over whom he can ask astute audience to become. I mean, he appeals to us as citizens, American citizens, but at the same time, he seems to be coming to grips with the social fact that the active senses of “citizen” are beginning to loose their meaning as the active senses of “religion” (formerly a foil term against which “citizen” could define itself) take over center stage in almost every sphere of public life. I don’t think he likes this landscape, but he sees no where else to go. It’s like he’s trying to stand tip-toed on the solid rock “citizen, academic, reasoned one” as mysterious liquid of “religion” churns its curiously ominous way upwards. And what is left? Again, he seems fundamentally unsure. His “Are we ready?” seems to resound with “who are we to become? What selves are we to feed our students as these curious waters rise?”
2) I’ve never known what to make of the term “religion.” It is a curious thing to say, as a Christian, “Christianity is a religion” because in saying “a religion” from a believing perspective, you must relegate the term to mean nothing more than the functioning shell of the network of actions similar in all religions while holding to the notion that there is something peculiar to a segment of the Christian religion that cannot be described with “religion”; and what do we call this? (especially in light of the public square mutations described in Fish’s article: we’d be missing some major points is we wanted to call it “truth”). Yet, as public square actors, I’m not sure what we’d be doing if we simply tried calling Christianity* “the Religion,” forcing a substantive definition on a word that has become militantly functional. So what are we to do with this word? How are we to use it?—seeing as how we can’t avoid it.
*not that Christianity is adequate, but just pretend for a moment that it is
"Christanity" as a term...as a term! Adequate = fufills the naming task to a degree that makes me relax.
I agree that "religion" is a problematic term. It's so vague, and to me there is an underlying connotation that suggests the over-aureate. For some reason, when I hear the word "religion," I almost automatically think of the pope holding mass.
However, I think the term is the right one for the sort of discussion that Fish is leading here, because on the political side of the coin, the religious influence is always going to be vague; Likely controlled by organized blocs.
Wow, I didn't realize that Derrida had died. All the way back in October... it may sound weird to you guys, but this is kind of a blow to me. I'll write something on Fish a little later...
Coye...I would have told you, but I assumed you were keeping up with such literary news. There were several interesting obituaries that you can find by searching the archive of aldaily.
Wow, for such a long piece on religion's influence on society no longer being able to be swept under the rug, I don't think religion was ever defined.
Any true adherent of a relgion is bound to have it influence their thought and approach to the rest of life. Otherwise, they never believed. It's like in James where authentic faith leads to good works. I would propose that the definition of religion that this article drives at is the overarching belief in persons lives that influence the rest of their actions. Everyone has some belief that shapes their framework whether it be Islam, the work and person of Christ, the Occult, unity in diversity/individualism/everyone has the right to whatever they want, materialism, civic nationalism, Red Sox fanaticism, etc.
I suggest that religion did not fade in influence on the world during some liberal enlightenment; it just took on forms that many are reluctant to label as religions. Now, I suspect that there is a combo effect in our country occurring. One, revivals are occurring of making what would traditionally be called religions their acutal religion. Two, many people who adhere to non-traditional religions are using traditional religions as a mask, because it's advantageous. Some fakes are consciously trying to mislead others for gain. Other fakes do not even realize that they are fake.
After pontificating off the cuff for so long, I suspect that there will not be unanimous agreement with my comment. Heck, I might not fully agree with it in ten minutes. Let the criticism fly!
Does this article really drive you to such a definition of religion?
After reading this article, I have to say that I'm rather disappointed in Stanley. He really doesn't seem to be on his game here, and this piece lacks many of the rhetorical and intellectual moves I expect from Fish. Yes, he has the obligatory references to pop culture as a starting point, but where is the twist at the end where the two diametrically opposed views miraculously meld into a single answer that seems so full of common sense that it couldn't be otherwise (at least for a moment)? This lacks argument, this lacks motivation, this lacks inspiration. It sounds like a current events project for social studies class. I kept waiting for the "Stanley Fish moment" when we see how he has been setting us up the whole time just to knock us back into our first assumptions (back where we started but upside down), but the article ends in a rather banal anecdote. Where is the until-now hidden third way that dismisses the question as simply unnecessary? All we get is a journalistic description of an answer to a journalist.
But this is just where it should have been winding up, heading towards crescendo. Here is where we can find the plateau that looks flat and empty until we try to climb down. And Stanley should have seen it. Someone who talks about texts as much as Fish does should have taken more time to consider the context. What comes with a text? More specifically, what comes with the texts with which the acadamy is concerned? Stanley mentions three at the end of his piece: race, gender, class. This "triumvirate" of academic interest have not functioned in the acadamy as neat manageable specimens: they have already broken down the borders of liberal (in the classical sense) objectivity. Take gender in literature for example. It does not suffice that women are discussed as a topic in literature; it is also important that books by female authors are studied and that research is done by female academics-- that is, by women. The experience, beliefs and embodiment of individual women are important for the academic study of women, and not as things to bracket for the sake of objective conversation. Women in the acadamy must be heard as flesh and bone WOMEN who have breasts and vaginas, who bear children and menstruate, who are wives and sisters and daughters. The same could be said for African-American or Indian authors and critics, not to mention Queer Theory and any number of postcolonial schools. Context (things that come "with the text") have been the focus of the humanities for years now. The margins move towards the center and ruin the pure objectivity of our "marketplace of ideas". But the market is still open. Women can be women at the table and still take part in the discussion (this has not always or often been the case). A Nigerian can be Nigerian. The old "objectivity" has long been exposed as affluent European male subjectivity. You can easily add "agnostic" to that list. Why shouldn't we expect people who truly live, believe and experience a set of religious beliefs to bring that context with them to discussion? We don't expect (or want) a Muslim woman to cease being a woman before she enters the conversation; why should we expect her to cease being Muslim? Religion is as much a part of culture as gender, race and class (which are all constructs to some degree), so why shouldn't it appear in the contexts of the acadamy.
My late esteemed teacher Jacques Derrida could have told Stanley to expect much of this; especially when religious texts are objects for study in the university. It doesn't matter how thorougly you try to sanitize a religious text through objectivity, the text still reaches out into other texts, carrying the vibrations of its religious meanings into antiseptic classrooms and echoing from the chrome tables and clean swept tile floors. Religious belief always has been in the acadamy.
wow, all this from an online community that names Mr. Satan as one of its members.
1) coye, perhaps you can help me with this one: what, exactly, does it mean to be an accademic these days? If things can't be quote studied unquote, if the rhetoric of the instituion now pushes its members toward a state of resonant communities resonating with and against each other in strange kind of patchwork aesthetic so that the villiage leaders can say "ah, ah, the magic and the beauty of it all!" within their cleverly woven utterances--what is all this? Why should I be enchanted by it? Am I even asking the right questions? Hmmmm.
2) have to go now, more later.
"By what evidence would the determination be made? Is evidence the right measure to employ when answering such questions?...Will the puzzles of such queries be solved by rational analysis? Is rationality the right standard to invoke in the context of matters of faith? Can faith and reason be reconciled? Should they be?"
--Stanley Fish
Here we see Stanley trying to formulate the question: Are evidence and rational analysis the proper tools for dealing with religious questions? Are they adequate for dealing with religion? Are the two things compatible?
First, Is reason a sufficient methodology for evaluating or establishing religious truth? No. But neither is it a sufficient method for establishing truth in any field (although it is often a necessary method, it is never sufficient); therefore, religion is not disqualified from academic discourse any more than race or sexuality. Which brings up Dave's question: "then what the hell is left for academics to do?" The same thing they've always done (though not the same thing they've always claimed to be doing). And what is that, you ask. Interpret.
Human beings have a fundamentally hermeneutical experience of the world. That means everything a person approaches is essentially a text, and texts must be read and interpreted. It also means that there will be no final answers (sorry, Regis); this is the case not only because of our own finite intellects but also because texts support multiple readings simultaneously. By the way, just because there is not a definitive finalized reading of a text does not mean that there are not bad readings and unsupportable interpretations. There may not be a single RIGHT answer, but there are a lot of wrong ones. How do we evaluate this? By re-reading the text and seeing if it supports an offered interpretation. It is more art than science (actually, science is more art than science, too). It requires conversation and argumentation and evidence and all of that (which is why the "marketplace of ideas" or the proverbial table to which we bring an idea for discussion is so important), but objectivity and factual evidence is not sufficient. All evidence requires interpretation. Interpretation is impossible without prejudice. Our prejudice comes from context (as Heidegger says, you are always already in possesion of a historical self). If we did not have a race, gender, class, religion, etc, then we would have no prejudices and would thereby be incapable of interpreting texts. There would be no conversation without those things that some call "conversation stoppers" (take that, Rorty!).
When Jack McCoy (in Law and Order) asks the jury whether they will vote as Jews or as citizens, he is asking an unanswerable question. Unanswerable because you cannot be a citizen without first being a Jew, a Christian, an agnostic. Civic duty (in the state or the acadamy) is first of all conversation, and conversation is impossible without the contexts which make interpretation possible. (This hermeneutical model of knowledge is primarily found in Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida and their tradition). So what does an academic do? She brings her best reading to the table and discusses it with as much charity and trasparency as she can muster. Sounds like fun.
Yes, it seems perfectly true that "human beings have a fundamentally hermeneutical experience of the world," but that is not the end of the story by any means. Human beings are more than texts, the human soul is more than a text! And we are are always doing much more than interpreting, we are always feeding and changing growing toward becoming either more like Christ or less like him. The fundamental fabric of all existence is not textual: it is personal. God is a person, He is in essence personal, and we were given the grace to somehow feed from the overflowingness of his person through the person of Jesus Christ.
Is this an outrageous mystery? Yes. Has it been so spit upon by the white male establishment (and all kins of others in all kinds of settings), by people that turn their thirst toward more concrete things like power and fame and lust and money and so on? Yes. But, still, we must believe that grace exists, for we cannot escape the responsibility we have to feed both ourselves and others. We cannot claim at the end of the day, "I never realized I had so much (or any) power"; and, to be honest, this makes me tremble constantly whenever I think of it.
A person may be more than a text, but can we really know them in non-hermeneutical way? That is, if our experience of the world is fundamentally hermeneutical, how can we circumvent the hermeneutical structures of our knowledge and experience in order to achieve a "personal" knowledge that exceeds the textual? Understand, I'm not talking about the fundamental fabric of all existence because I don't have access to it. I'm talking about the world as experienced by human beings, and, if our experience is fundamentally hermeneutical, how can there be anything outside the text?
Levinas thinks there is an unmediated experience of the other through the "face". I'm not sure if it's justified, but it is a very interesting concept.
Is our growing and changing to be more like Christ a hermeneutical act of interpretation? If it is something that WE do, then it must be. If it is an action on the part of God (Sacramental intervention), then perhaps not. This is what Marion talks about in "God Without Being". His introduction has this sentence: "One way of proceeding, as far a God is concerned, stems from the Eucharist: in it the Word leaves the text to be made flesh." LEAVES THE TEXT! That idea is radical in the context of hermeneutical thinking, but it means the possibility of an experience that exceeds our capacity to interpret. But then it exceeds our ability to understand through our normal mode of experience (textual interpretation), and so it also falls outside our ability to speak. But how do we evaluate such an experience if we cannot even speak of it? "love is made more than it is analyzed," Jean-Luc Marion.
I was reading my last post in context of Fish's article. The kind of religious experience that Marion talks about may not, after all, have any place in the academy. If you cannot discuss something, then how does it live in the university. This is also a two-way street, this sacramental experience of God does not belong to the academy, it belongs to the Church. I would say (with Marion) that it belongs exclusively to the Church. But that doesn't mean that religion has no place in the university: the human, hermeneutical experience of religion still exists and can be discussed in the academy. But what is its relationship to the Sacramental?
"Is our growing and changing to be more like Christ a hermeneutical act of interpretation? If it is something that WE do, then it must be."
Dosn't the essence of grace lie in the mystery of God acting through our acting? That might not be the best way to put it, but I'm trying to get at this: the believer is inextricably linked to Christ. Paul speaks of it in this way, ". . .and he gave [Christ] as head over all things, to the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." I cannot say that things we do as believers are things WE do in the strict sense, just as things my body does is not things my BODY does in the strict sense. This is a mystery! "The two shall become one flesh," says Paul later, "this mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."
I cannot relegate this grace only to an action that goes on at a table inside a Church building. I know you weren't necessarily quoting Marion to say this, ( since he says "ONE way of proceeding. . .") but I'm conserned with the language you use when you seem to put some wall between what is the Church and what are interactive settings (like the accademy). The Church was designed to expand into all kinds of places where its action is strange and far from welcome.
On one level, I can call the Church's action "herminutics," but on another level--the level of grace, it has to be much more than this. Again Paul, "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak about the things that they do in darkenss. But when anything is exposed to light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light." Again, this is a profound mystery; but I have to say that what Paul describes here is the active process of transforming and feeding that the Church does, in the world, as it longs for and speaks of and obeys Christ Jesus her Lord, her Head her Creator.
Coye, I misread you're last comment. You wern't putting up walls between the Church and the University per se. You were speaking in terms of ownership.
Please forgive my hastyness.
And I'll leave us with your question:
"But what is [the university's] relationship to the Sacramental?"
Actually, the Eucharistic moment has a singular and irreplaceable importance for the self-saying of the Word in words. I can and probably will elaborate more later, but I would really like to hear what some other people think about this relationship of the sacramental (or Christian or religious if you prefer) and the academic. I think we can benefit by limiting this current conversation with the boundaries of Fish's concerns, and we can always talk about hermeneutics and theology later (or concurrently in a different post).
That is, unless you feel that the current direction of our conversation is necessary for discussing the confluence of the religious and the academic/civic.
well, seeing has no one has anything to say about this (which is dissapointing) shall we continue our conversation? I'd like to hear more about how the "Eucharistic moment has a singular and irreplaceable importance for the self-saying of the Word in words." Specifically, what were you intending when you typed "importance?" What were you reacting to in my text?
And what are your reactions to my understanding of grace within the present contexts? I think these things are terribly important to at least reach at before we turn back to Fish because they have to do with the nuances of how the we approach the word "religion". I would agree with you that the functional characteristics of "religion" (:the immitatable and transferrable aspects of the deeper level action we are talking about here--we can call it sacramentalism) can and should be open to accademic exploration. But where does the boundary lie between the mearly religious and the sacramental (when sacramental means: self-saying of the Word in words)? I am not comfortable with making clear divisions within the "Holy Place" of the believing community.
OK, Davey, let's do this. I'm going to have to ask you to hang with me for a little while, and I promise that I will get to both the importance of the Eucharistic moment and my response to your ideas about grace. Given the amount of writing I've been doing over the last couple of days, I may have to do this post in two or three stages. That might work better anyway; I can check to see if you are following with me through a couple of tricky turns. Let's start...
We are assuming that our everyday way of living takes place as a hermeneutical experience of the world. When we read a text, we project our own prejudices (literally our pre-judgments of what the text means) onto the text, but the text brings us up short by contradicting our preconception of its meaning. This is Heidegger's hermeneutical circle (later developed by Gadamer). All experience works this way: I project a meaning onto the world around me, and the world brings me up short. I project my revised conception of the world, and am brought up short once again. (That's the circle part.) I walk into my room and see someone sitting at Josh's desk. I believe it to be Josh. On further examination, I find that it is not Josh but Dave sitting at his desk. I then presume a reason that Dave is in my room and test it out against the "text". It is sort of like a bat with echo location: I send out a signal and see what is reflected. Forgive me if you are already familiar with this, but it is vital to understand what I'm talking about.
Because my understanding of a text (all things are texts or function as texts to my understanding) begins with my projection of my pre-understanding, the answer I receive will always bear traces of me. To put it another way, you only get answers to the questions you ask, and because my questions come from my concerns, the answers will be a sort of reflection of my own image. Marion (following Nietzsche and Heidegger) sees this as the origin of idolatry: I ask questions about God and receive back my own reflection. This differs somewhat from a projection theory of God because it is not based on a hidden psychological need; rather, it is the necessary result of the functional structure of my consciousness. No concept of God escapes the traces of my own image because all knowledge is gained through hermeneutical inquiries that require my prejudiced questions. All my conceptions of God are necessarily idols: little gods formed by my own image.
Our next move will take us towards the Sacramental action of God and a kind of experience that supercedes the text and so escapes our idolatrous concepts, but I will stop now and ask if you are ready to move on. I also need to go to sleep. Tell me if this makes sense and if you're ready for me to continue.
Please continue. I've been familar with each of these steps as a unit, but your lucid weaving definately helps me see how these concepts fit together into the current herminutical tradition.
Also, I'd like to see how you handle the next few turns before I comment on anything.
Can you email me when you do write so that I don't have to keep checking the site for your update? Thanks!
Before I begin again, I want to quote Marion, "We must ask forgiveness for every essay in theology." That is to say, I offer the following in humility as a possible way of escape from idolatry. This is only a piece of an ongoing conversation that I hope will never stop.
The goal of theology is the saying of the Word in words, but if they proceed from us, our theology and our interpretation of Scripture will only return us to ourselves. The Word of God (the Word that is God) cannot be said by our words; only Christ says [himself] the Word, and He does this in the name of the Father. Even when we confess Him as the Word, we cannot say Him as he says Himself the Word. When we interpret Scripture, we cannot in our everyday hermeneutics go beyond the word to the Word-- instead we are returned to ourselves by the words of the text. We cannot speak the Word, and we cannot reach the Word through interpreting words.
This is where you, Dave, rightly point us to the mystery of Grace: God acting in our action; this is also where we need to think about the Sacramental. The Church teaches that Christ is the One True Sacrament-- He is the fullness of the Godhead come to us in flesh. As such, Christ is the One who offers the sacraments (such as baptism and communion) to us. It is God who baptises (not the priest), and it is Christ who offers us Himself in the bread and wine. We receive the Word made flesh. Within the Church we find the continued and continuous action of God.
What is the action of Christ in the Eucharist? (Keep in mind that the Eucharist is not merely bread and wine but the action which surrounds it.) Christ gives His body to us, and through our eating makes us into the body of Christ of which He is the head. We who share his mystical body become members of that body. This not only makes us one with Christ, it makes us one with each other since there is but one body. In the Anglican Church, we say: "We who are many are one body because we all share the same bread, the same cup." That is why we call it communion. If we can hope anywhere for a non-textual non-idolatrous experience of God, it is in this Sacramental action of Christ. The Eucharist is a transformational experience of the Word; in it, the Word presents Himself in a way that exceeds our intentions and answers questions that we could not formulate: it goes beyond the text. But even if we experience the Word beyond our hermeneutical limitations, we could not speak about it in our words without transgressing the Word; our saying of the Word would be idolatrous.
The singular importance of the Eucharist lies in its relationship to Christ's body: it is the action which characterizes our unity in the body of Christ and it is the characteristic action performed by that body. Simply put, of everything the Church does, the Eucharist is most closely tied to our identity as the body of which Christ is the head. In it, the Word becomes flesh among us; the Word takes on our flesh.
The Word does not take on my (Coye's) or your (Dave's) flesh, but in Communion we ARE the body of Christ. It is at this site that the Word says Himself the Word in our words. Christ the Word incarnates Himself in the words of the Church: He says Himself in the mystical body (the Church) He has created by giving us His body (the Eucharistic Sacrament). Theology within the Church is the Word speaking Himself.
What does that mean practically? This is a question that I'm still working on quite a bit. In fact, I'm not sure that I believe it, but I believe it's worth thinking about. Basically, it means that theology belongs to the Church. No, actually it means that theology belongs to Christ and is spoken within the Church. I don't believe it means that we all go take communion and are suddenly speaking infallibly Ex Cathedra. I think it means that when we come together as the Church, Christ is in the midst of us; He inhabits our speech and continues to speek Himself to humanity as He did when He was incarnate in Palestine. It means that theology done in the acadamy (as a place separate from the Church and its Sacramental identity) can reach nothing but idols. It means that the word of God is only the Word of God within the Church, and that I cannot separate myself from the Church and claim to truthfully interpret the Scriptures.
Well, I'm sure I left something crucial out or put it all in an entirely inappropriate order, but I'm going to leave it as it is and see what you think about it. (I take this almost in its entirety from Marion's "God Without Being", but I don't claim to do justice to his writing.)
Now that I've said that, I'm going to end with Marion's reading of the road to Emmaus: Jesus accompanies the two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and along the way he interprets all of the Scriptures for them, explaining that the Christ had to suffer and die. "curiously, the account of Luke 24, which expressly informs that Christ 'carried out the hermeneutic' of the text, does not recount the argument to us, or a fortiori the developments of the argument. Oversight? ... The hermeneutic lesson appears truncated, even absent, only if one takes it to be different from the Eucharistic celebration where recognition takes place; for immediately after the breaking of bread, not only did the disciples "recognize him" and at last "their eyes were opened" (Luke24:31), but above all the hermeneutic went through the text to the referent: "and they said to one another 'did not our hearts burn within us when he was speaking along the way, when he opened to us [allowed us to communicate with] the text of the Scriptures?'" (Luke 24:32). The Eucharist accomplishes, at its central moment, the hermeneutic (it occurs at 24:30, halfway between the two mentions of the Scriptures, 24:27 and 24:32). It alone allows the text to pass to its referent, recognized as the non-textual Word of the words. Why? We know why: because the Word interprets in person. Yes, but where? Not first at the point where the Word speaks of the Scriptures, about the text, but at the point where he proffers the unspeakable speech, absolutely filial to the Father-- "taking bread, he gave thanks" (24:30)...The Word intervenes in person in the Eucharist to accomplish in this way the hermeneutic..."
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