Most Popular Post: Mozart?

I guess the thing to do is to reevaluate what post gets the most views at the end of the year.  It has been a busy year because it is the first as a father.  Next year will be especially challenging because I will start the year taking my Comps and then writing my bloody dissertation.

It seems like the most popular post was the one I did on Mozart and Barth.  It was based on the last few pages of Andrews' postmodern reading of Barth and Derrida (a project that I am very much inclined to rehabilitate).  Again, Barth looked to Mozart for what he affirmed about creation much like Deleuze (nein to resentment).  When one gets trapped by a one dimensional reading of Barth as saying No to everything then one fails to see the creative tendencies in his theology.  Frankly, after CD II/2, I am starting to see a type of Deleuzian affirmation of things especially since God elected to be for "this" world and "this" humanity to the extent that God covenanted with it.  Thus, the nihilistic tendencies of Barth's negative period are more of a No to the safe answers that things like nationalism bring; Mozart's joy is then a way to look past these comforts and enjoy the creation with all of its questions and insecurities and possibilities.

Said: Seeing from Engaged Eyes

It took me a while to finally finish Edward Said's classic Orientalism. His claim is that Western philologist's/historian's writings depict the people of the Middle East in a way that makes them a mythical Other. In other words, the Orient becomes an enchanted place to the Western viewer. A good example is the Aladdin story of genies and magic carpets.

Anyway, as I have begun to read current strands of philosophy and theology of the engaged follower of the Event, I am left wondering, with Said, that perhaps there is a time to suspend engagement and to try to open oneself to a universal, rational public world where the East/West views will no longer become clouded by engaged eyes. This view is obviously a little naive in light of the postmodern turn in the academic world or the multicultural turn to the celebration of a plurality of narratives. However, perhaps we should double the attempts to temper our engagement with a little indifference. Blind engagement for the sake of a cause is the ultimate betrayal of justice to a good cause.