Fall History classes and Theology Fail

One of the Fall classes I will be teaching is Historiography. So far I have a few books planned out and a number of essays/journal articles for the class ( a lot of new stuff so I am excited to try it out especially on reading Agamben). The aim of the class is to teach the writing of History and also to help the students prepare their own writing project by doing a historiographical survey.

I think I have been a historian by heart more than a theologian. One of the themes without a solid answer is the tension between concepts (metaphysical, philosophical or theological) and the historical context. Theology has at times rubbed me the wrong way because it seems to deal with a discussion in the clouds totally divorced from history. Now the other side of this coin is that if you go too forward with the historical context then the charge of relativism is leveled at the historicist. But it's that Nietzschean suspicion of concepts that I think are more than ever necessary as we try to work out or at least live within this tension.

On a side note, I just recently had a paper rejected that I wrote on Barth and Zizek on the human subject. This response reminded me of a similar one I had at community college when my essay was read in front of the class as an example of a crappy paper (this was especially enlightening after having my essays from a previous class published). Still, it taught me to write for an audience and to keep working on the craft. So the criticism boiled down to "this is a graduate paper, with all its promises and faults" because it ended up being more of a survey than a critical piece. What I might end up doing with this paper is to see Zizek as radicalizing a Barthian stance especially as I would classify both as part of the Hegelian tradition since Zizek has a pragmatic use for theology.

So one of the issues that I'm having I posted on last week: finding my critical voice. I think the historian in me likes to layout the scholarship but the theologian in me has a hard time saying were I stand in this landscape. For example, I am at the point of figuring out my thesis and the fact that I have to boil it down to its smallest point is a little daunting. I have themes and ideas I have written about in the last 3 years but to completely commit to something is a little scary especially because it has to be new to scholarship. The point is that it is time to put the cards on the table and move away from the somewhat facile comparisons and start to boldly say: "I claim."

Barth's Ethics: Week 3

Beginning the 3rd week of my Barth's Ethics seminar. Just finished David Clough's book on Barth's ethics where he argues there is a consistent thread of reading the ethics from Romans II to the Church Dogmatics as an ethics of crisis via dialectics. It is a pretty good read and I think it provided a good ground on where I think I would like to take Barth's thought. This week I begin to read CD III:4 on his ethics of creation.

So what is the aim of this reading?

1. I want to see how Barth's idea of ethics fits with his thoughts on dialectics and his theology of election (Barth's strongest point in my opinion). I like the openness of his ethics so far even thought he betrays this move sometimes. How does an ethic get formed in light of the Event of revelation for Barth?

2. To then see how his ethics fits into the realm of the 4 moves for social-political framework laid out by Ken Surin: 1)politics of identity, 2) politics of subjectivity (Levinas-Derrida), 3) politics of Event (Badiou and Zizek) and 4) politics of multitude (Deleuze and Negri). At this point he is somewhere between 2-3, I would guess, but Negri is a source of intrigue for me lately and I may ultimately use him to critique Barth's position.

3. Does Barth's ethics provide a way to resist the state of exception and biopolitics? I am beginning to read Barth's attack on the 19th century and WW1/WW2 as an attack on a form of biopolitics. If I can find the time to read Agamben along with Barth then I might try to make this connection. Agamben already did this himself by referencing Barth's "live 'as if'". Could Barth then advocate an ethic of Bartelby-"I prefer not to"? Or is his ethics of crisis line up with Zizek's more ethics that acts without a firm foundation of acting?

Disability & Performance

The next turn in my studies is to look at Karl Barth and power relations especially in the social-political sense. Two of the main contemporary thinkers looking at this topic today is Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler and I am considering putting him in dialogue with them.

What we define as normal or human is something that often gets taken for granted. However, it is the philosopher's (and I would argue the theologian's) place to continue to probe this question. Butler points out how important performance is when considering human action. Many theologians like to talk about our being made in God's image, yet how does that look with regard to performance? In the actual everyday practices, the glances, ticks and movements of every-day human beings. I would argue that one of the absolute tragedies of the traditions of the Church is how often uncompromisingly they reflected the essentialist tendencies of the culture. Essentialist thought that basically says men, women, dogs, plants, etc. work in this way, all of the time.

Looking at performance from a Christological standpoint, one can see how the incarnation of Christ illustrates the idea of performance in a way that no one foreseen (Kierkegaard saw this the best). A "king" or God-incarnate, born in a stable, walked among the sick and lame and was murdered as a criminal. Perhaps if our understanding of what is human started with this model, then perhaps theology would have a more adaptable place in understanding all manifestations of life, whether it is human or inhuman.

See discussion with Taylor and Butler below: