Kind of like this one....

One of my favorite scenes from the Tim Burton Batman was the scene where the Joker (Jack Nicholson) and his goons trash some great pieces of art. However, when one of his goons tries to knife the picture above (Figure with Meat by Francis Bacon) the Joker stops him and says: "I kind of like this one, Bob. Leave it."

The fact that the Joker likes Bacon and wants it left alone illustrates just how screwed up or warped Bacon's art is perceived. I think this is one of the reasons French philosopher Gilles Deleuze turns to Bacon's work; it serves as a good testing ground for how we may perceive things. Deleuze was ahead of his time in picking subjects outside of the typical canon to analyze. I'm currently reading another intro to Deleuze at this time and plan to jump into his book on Bacon next week.

One of my goals as an adjunct history professor is to also pull from the works of literature, art, cinema and music as ways to understand history rather than simply looking at the typical, great, so-called human events. There are more forces and factors that determine what we humans experience. Art is one of the best ways to see this fact more clearly.

See this link for the Joker scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tgxIWgJ_DE

Getting History Right?

Some may find it surprising to read Barth's short essay on history in his Protestant Theology and find him to be so charitable. In it he cautions those who mishandle history in two different ways. The first are those who find only problems in history, and the second are those who lift up the historical on a pedestal. In short, it is to be guilty of either presentantism or traditionalism. Instead, Barth advocates an openness toward history (and specifically the texts of the past) because one may discover something new in it. This may even lead to looking at a so-called heretic anew.

Barth's thought led me to ask what do we really want with the works of the past (both its events and texts)? Do we section off parts of it to fit within the time line of our liking? Do we dismiss it as irrelevant to the concerns of the present and the future? Are we trapped by it because it is the cause behind the effects we see all around us?

There is certainly a narrative aspect about it. When I put together lecture notes I inevitably choose some events and persons apart from others (time only permits such a choice). From Deleuze I have learned that History can be stifiling when it becomes an "official" all-encompassing story, so I am okay with the conscious decision that I am creating something out of the raw data of facts that have happened in the past. This is not making stuff up, but instead trying to be creative with the historical stuff that is there. Perhaps a more open and creative attitude toward history can help avoid the useless debate over telling history as it "really was" versus the idea that there is no such thing as history but only stories/fictions.

I think one of the best examples of this is the use of film for telling historical events. It sometimes connects the audience to history in a better way than a dense textbook even though the director may not have dotted all his i's and crossed his t's when it came to historical accuracy. Frankly, who cares! A good film may push someone to then read a good book.

Rancière: Wikipedia as a levelling force

As an adjunct lecturer of history (and a history major during my undergrad years) I often tell my students that if they really want to begin to grasp an event or a person to first check out Wikipedia. The response to this suggestion is usually one of surprise. Why?

Most history teachers or historians do not like Wikipedia for at least two reasons. One, because it is not scholarly enough (even though most posts have scholarly references at the bottom of the page); and second, because the author of the post is anonymous and posts can thus be updated or written by an anonymous other. Perhaps this other is not a qualified historian!

The philosopher Jacques Rancière (who I have just started reading with great delight) in a recent interview discusses reasons why there is a certain distrust of things on the internet. One of the reasons is that there is an accessibility there. It also allows the bypass of the teacher. In short, anyone from any station of life has access to literature on the net. So, when people decry the use of websites like Wikipedia there may be an underlying distrust of the student to understand what is real historical knowledge. Wikipedia may in fact be a real democratic way of learning that truly levels out the "enlightened" teacher with the "ignorant" student.

So back to the question. Yes, I always tell my students to check Wikipedia first because it is frankly trustworthy in most occasions and universally accessible; it is the method I use. However, I always follow that up with reading the actual books and articles that deal with the subject as well, if the Wikipedia essay has led to my interest in the topic.

NOTE: love the picture because Rancière looks lost on the side of the road or something.

For more information see Nina Power's interview with Rancière:

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/10-1/10-1rancierepower.pdf

Cowboy Morality

The anti-hero has always been a compelling figure for me whether it has come from the Westerns that I have watched (John Wayne/Clint Eastwood and a slew of others) or from Comic heroes (my favorites of course are Batman and Wolverine).

The typical scenario for these figures is to do the dirty work because the "good people" of the town or city are incapable of it. It was not until reading Kotsko's short review of Milbank's and Zizek's debate in their recent book that the "light-bulb" turned on. Zizek's ethics I would argue are anti-hero ethics. The anti-hero is different from two other types: the Fascist type of heroes become totalitarian whereas Liberal types only put band-aids on the problem while giving some kind of "we work within the boundaries of the laws" speech.

One of the best examples of this is when, for example, Captain America objects to Wolverine's additon to the Avengers because he is a killer. Iron Man (the flawed capitalist-pragmatist) responds that Wolverine will go were none of us are able. You never know, in other words, when you need someone to take the step in actually killing the enemy. Does that make Wolverine more unethical? Actually, as fleshed out in most good stories and movies, Wolverine and Batman are the ethical compass of the Comic world because they constantly stand in the gap between the Good and the Monstrous...They are often self-questioning in what they have become.

Where does Zizek come in? His whole point about his ethic is that it has to respond to the situation in its total cruelty. Zizek writes at the last section of the book of MC: "This is where I stand – how I would love to be: an ethical monster without empathy, doing what is to be done in a weird coincidence of blind spontaneity and reflexive distance, helping others while avoiding their disgusting proximity. With more people like this, the world would be a pleasant place in which sentimentality would be replaced by a cold and cruel passion." Here I see images of the Cowboy drifter who goes into a town to fix the problems of the town (usually by terrorizing the villains) simply because he sees injustice there and the people's cry for help (a kind of Shane/Paladin/Man With No Name who doesn't get paid). Is not typical morality suspended in this situation? Are we as the audience okay with that? However, the true anti-hero always leaves when the job is done. To stay would make him a tyrant; the people will hopefully adopt his stance in his absence.

A good example of this is the movie Warlock starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Richard Widmark. Here Widmark, a former villain, becomes the towns protector and has to inevitably kill Fonda because of the tendency of the hero to become a Fascist tyrant. Fonda has brought some order to the town, but has become in a sense consumed with power. Therefore, it seems the dirfter or anti-hero does the ethical action because something in his gut tells him to even thought his mind insists this is not his problem...

Deleuze Again?

It seems that I can not escape the works of the French thinker Gilles Deleuze. Even back when a number of my fellow Fuller seminary students took it upon ourselves to read a little Deleuze (we started with his book on Foucault; I even took my French language qualifiers by translating Foucault's preface to Anti-Oedipus), I came to the conclusion that something special is here.
It appears that his popularity is growing and a renewed interest is here especially as it relates to the realm of the political and the spiritual (thanks to Hallward I believe).
My project from the start is to take Karl Barth's works and have him in conversation (not debate) with so-called postmodern thinkers. This has led me to read and enjoy the works of Derrida, Badiou, Foucault and especially Zizek. When it came to Deleuze I decided to take a Directed Reading with Dr. Carl Raschke on Deleuze because he seemed to be enamored with him (he seems to advocate a rhizomatic theology in his GloboChrist). He recommended that we read the man himself. So I read his book on Nietzsche, Logic of Sense, Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy with the help of Negotiations and Dialogues as guides not to mention the commentaries by Badiou, Zizek and Hallward. It was tough reading and quite frankly I keep going back over a number of those texts not simply to glean info but to be moved a bit by his style of thinking.
Where did that study go? Into a look at Deleuze on humor. Deleuze is clear that thinking should be a more dynamic, fluid thing that is not controlled by opinion or certain static ways of thought. I found that Deleuze was open to thought-forms that were not reactionary and resentful (see the influence of Nietzsche). Humor itself can be rather reactionary, so it takes a special type of humor to get away from the "I-told-you-so" ironic versions of it.
This now leads me to try to use Deleuze and Barth to open up a creative way to look at post-modernity in all the various ways it appears to us. Is Barth the right thinker to do this with? We shall see. For starters, one of my goals is to see how they view modernity in an accepting way and at the same time to see the opening up of movements of thought whether or not they have a spiritual bearing. For starters, I have been consuming the Substance article on Deleuze and the spiritual/political. Lets see how the weekend goes in fleshing this out...

A Tale of Two Zizeks

I recently finished Matthew Sharpe's new study of Zizek's Politics. The first thing to note is just how clear the analysis was on Zizek's corpus. Job well done! I have read a lot of Zizek introductions and I have to say that next to Kotsko's (which I frequently return to) this is a good place to start if you are interested in this particular theorist.

The crux of the book is the idea that there are two theorists in Zizek: 1) Zizek as the Radical Democrat (which could also be called the early Zizek up into his works on Schelling; here Zizek is more concerned with the Symbolic) and 2) Zizek as the Revolutionary/Vanguard (which is post Schelling and his so-called Christian works; here Zizek leaps into the Real). The current Zizek is the Zizek2 even though Zizek1 has not entirely gone away. Sharpe beleives that there is a turn with Shelling into a much more pessimistic turn to Zizek's overall work. Sharpe ultimately criticizes Zizek2 for basically becoming a closet admirer of Hobbes/Schmitt.

I have been wrestling with this thesis for the last couple of weeks especially as I have been reading some Derrida lately. I wonder, as my brother pointed out, that this pessimism that offends people is the deferment of easy solutions, or real concrete acts of justice, or of the real ugliness that is out there in the world... I really do think that the "theology" that theorists like Zizek have been dealing with lately (as opposed to the "impossible god") is worth something that can perhaps awaken believers from their dogmatic slumbers. So reading Barth (like always) and Derrida with Zizek in the background continues to open up new dimensions for me; at the most part, it is a comfortable unsettling that he brings.

Barth's Dialectic: 1 of the hinges

I absolutely loved Terry Cross's book on Barth's dialectic in the Doctrine of God where he makes a good case, following Bruce McCormack, that Barth never simply abandoned his dialectical thinking after the Anselm book.

Cross notes that Barth has a number of uses for the dialectic, but what I thought was most helpful was the way he used the idea of the door and hinge to explain Barth's thinking. The door is the Word of God. The hinges are analogy of faith (correspondence) and the dialectic. In fact, the dialectic keeps the use of the analogy of faith humble and human. So even though Barth moves more toward the fact that the God-Man, in the historical movement of Christ, fixes the gap between humans and God, the human side of that fact is still veiled. Because God has spoken humans can now speak of God, yet in a dialectical way; thus, I would say we are commanded to be heralds and witnesses to the Event of revelation, yet we are in essence limited witnesses.

Barth seems to have never abandoned the idea of the veiling/unveiling of God's self-revelation. In other words, God reveals and is hidden in revelation. Even in the person/work of Christ this is a fact. For example, the primary mover of revelation in the life of Christ is the resurrection where the "It is finished" of the cross is revealed to Christ's followers. Without the resurrection, we would be in the dark that God had reconciled the world on the cross. Now Badiou, for instance, sees the resurrection on its own merit without a need of dialectic; the Event of the resurrection fashions a new subject like Paul in light of its revelatory action. Zizek rightly criticizes Badiou's optimistic thought for being too much of a theology of glory without the dialectic of the cross. I think Barth, because of the dialectic, is not in need of such chastening.

So Barth's theological theme that grace is revealed through Jesus Christ is a consistent message throughout his corpus. The dialectic serves as a way that limits the teleological movement found in the Christian narrative. There is definitely some end and goal to the work of Christ, yet we are merely witnesses to it and our job is to be open and faithful to that witness and not to try to bring into fruition by our own merits.