24 November 2005
11 November 2005
Dialectics of Suspicion
I'm finally starting to formulate a vocabulary to name the difficulties I have with new historical and other "hermeneutics of suspicion"-style treatments of Christianity. It's not that there's critique simpliciter--theologians and pastors critique parts of Christian thought and practice all the time. It's that critical theorists treat the Bible and Augustine and such entities in manners that would make little or no sense to pastors and theologians.
Of course, as soon as this occurred to me, it became evident that "anti-intellectual" (a misleading designation in most cases) Christian writers treat critical theory in similarly uncharitable manners. I wonder whether some sort of hermeneutic of sympathy might serve as an antithesis for both parties to their hermeneutics of suspicion. I know Kenneson taught us to read this way long before I thought these thoughts, but it's just now occurred to me to look at it in terms of hermeneutics.
At any rate, I might try to theorize about this a bit more and include some of it in my thinking-out-loud when I present on an article on King Lear next week--it exhibits the normal moves of suspicion, and it could present an opportunity to propose different models of reading to the class--I think I've earned enough respect to make this move; I suppose I'll find out with some certainty if I make that move Wednesday.
Of course, as soon as this occurred to me, it became evident that "anti-intellectual" (a misleading designation in most cases) Christian writers treat critical theory in similarly uncharitable manners. I wonder whether some sort of hermeneutic of sympathy might serve as an antithesis for both parties to their hermeneutics of suspicion. I know Kenneson taught us to read this way long before I thought these thoughts, but it's just now occurred to me to look at it in terms of hermeneutics.
At any rate, I might try to theorize about this a bit more and include some of it in my thinking-out-loud when I present on an article on King Lear next week--it exhibits the normal moves of suspicion, and it could present an opportunity to propose different models of reading to the class--I think I've earned enough respect to make this move; I suppose I'll find out with some certainty if I make that move Wednesday.
09 November 2005
07 November 2005
Proposal Approved
And so I'm going to Atlanta in April...
It looks like the three papers for our Merchant of Venice panel have gone through, and I'll be able to add another conference paper to my CV. Now I've got to resolve this next summer to work up a paper for submission to journals.
Oh yeah... and I've got to write a Merchant of Venice paper...
It looks like the three papers for our Merchant of Venice panel have gone through, and I'll be able to add another conference paper to my CV. Now I've got to resolve this next summer to work up a paper for submission to journals.
Oh yeah... and I've got to write a Merchant of Venice paper...
04 November 2005
Abstract Done
Sure I've got more work to do, but my abstract for April's Shakespeare and Pop Culture panel is done, so I'll blog.
Last weekend Mary and Micah and I took a trip back to Johnson City that turned out more bittersweet than I expected. It was good to see folks at ESR and Milligan and West Main and in the area in general, but for the first time, Johnson City did not feel like home. I came to realize that I've become more a part of Georgia than I am a part of Tennessee, and that pill was a bit hard to swallow. On the other hand, I had my first real homecoming to the Athens area Sunday evening.
I've been listening to Clark Pinnock's recent lectures at ESR, and I'm glad I didn't give up after his first two lackluster lectures. Number three showed improvement, and the final lecture was phenomenal. I've never read any of his books, but his history of and vision for the loose coalition called evangelical gives me new energy in my own academic and ecclesial pursuits, and I've got some new thoughts to digest with regards to my own Bible teaching. I might blog about this later.
Mary and I also made a Mr. K's run on this trip, and I've been enjoying Allen Mandelbaum's translation of The Aeneid that I picked up. To think that I've got a favorite translator of Latin texts is amusing; I suppose I'm getting closer and closer to becoming a real live academic.
I hope that this post will signal a pickup in my old blogging habits; reading back on my EC-era blog, I'd like to be able to reproduce some of that energy here. Here's hoping.
Last weekend Mary and Micah and I took a trip back to Johnson City that turned out more bittersweet than I expected. It was good to see folks at ESR and Milligan and West Main and in the area in general, but for the first time, Johnson City did not feel like home. I came to realize that I've become more a part of Georgia than I am a part of Tennessee, and that pill was a bit hard to swallow. On the other hand, I had my first real homecoming to the Athens area Sunday evening.
I've been listening to Clark Pinnock's recent lectures at ESR, and I'm glad I didn't give up after his first two lackluster lectures. Number three showed improvement, and the final lecture was phenomenal. I've never read any of his books, but his history of and vision for the loose coalition called evangelical gives me new energy in my own academic and ecclesial pursuits, and I've got some new thoughts to digest with regards to my own Bible teaching. I might blog about this later.
Mary and I also made a Mr. K's run on this trip, and I've been enjoying Allen Mandelbaum's translation of The Aeneid that I picked up. To think that I've got a favorite translator of Latin texts is amusing; I suppose I'm getting closer and closer to becoming a real live academic.
I hope that this post will signal a pickup in my old blogging habits; reading back on my EC-era blog, I'd like to be able to reproduce some of that energy here. Here's hoping.
17 October 2005
12 October 2005
04 October 2005
A Day to Breathe
One would think that a work day that begins at 8:00 AM and ends at 8:00 PM would be something other than a break, but I returned the last of my first batch of freshman papers today.
And the next batch comes in Thursday.
Micah got sick on the first one's due date, so that threw the whole process off. I'm fairly certain I'll get this batch put away far more efficiently.
But I have paper proposals due next week, so still no time to post substantially. All the same, look for baby pictures later this week--I'm sure I can sneak some in!
And the next batch comes in Thursday.
Micah got sick on the first one's due date, so that threw the whole process off. I'm fairly certain I'll get this batch put away far more efficiently.
But I have paper proposals due next week, so still no time to post substantially. All the same, look for baby pictures later this week--I'm sure I can sneak some in!
23 September 2005
Hard Work
Okay, so it's been nearly a month with no new posts...
I'll just say that working on a Ph.D, teaching classes, raising an infant, and doing a hundred other things takes up some time, aight?
Posts will come... we must be patient.
I'll just say that working on a Ph.D, teaching classes, raising an infant, and doing a hundred other things takes up some time, aight?
Posts will come... we must be patient.
06 September 2005
Unease with Libertarianism, Part Deux
No, I haven't posted the sequel to that last reflection. Let the one who can write long theoretical blog posts while starting a Ph.D program cast the first stone, eh?
Anyway, I've been thinking, even if not writing, and I wonder what goods can come of Christian reflections on nation-state politics. Theology is supposed to be the disciplined reflection on the practices of the Church for the sake of edifying the Body. What would an analogous practice look like for a Christian reflecting on Caesar's practices? I'm certain folks have written books on it, but if you're reading this, you'd prefer what I can cook up here in front of a computer screen, so let me get to cookin'!
I'd say that the Christian's role within an empire (and I mean that in as neutral a sense as is possible--I don't think that England or Japan or any nation-state with an armed border is outside the category) is to join and remain a member of a counter-politics, an Ekklesia in the midst of the Imperium. I think that the eucharist and baptism, being transnational and transgenerational practices, stands as the faithfulness-embodying counterparts to the military parades and pledges to flags and other disciplines that make people believe in entities called "nations." (As is often mentioned in conjunction with space exploration, the lines that we draw on maps don't show up when one gets high enough above the planet's surface.) From within that counter-politics, the Christian gains a critical perspective (one that acknowledges neither Jew/Gentile nor male/female nor Scythian/barbarian divisions in the ways that empires do) from which she or he might speak Truth.
That's the framework from which I'm attempting to operate here. I believe that the Church, as God's semiotic/martyrological/eschatological Body, can speak to nation-states the truths that their violence would otherwise blind them to. I'm intentionally comparing apples and oranges, churches and states, because I believe that the oranges would be better oranges if they tasted more like apples. (In reality, I'm more of an orange-eater myself.) Against the Machiavellian tendency to excuse nation-states and rulers of nation-states for being Machiavellian, I'll claim that the Church, the real politics that stand in resistance to the travesty-politics of empire, stands as the standard by which nations now are judged.
Of course, my grasp of theology and my grasp of history in the age of nation-states are both tenuous. That won't stop me. Instead, I'll welcome critiques from historians and from theologians as I attempt to forge some kind of theoretical framework, knowing still that others have likely fashioned better ground rules. Such is the hubris of the blogger.
So for those who have waited for my next venture into economics and politics and theology... keep waiting. This was just a taste and some methodological musings. I'll get back to the task at hand... but right now, I've got Shakespeare to read. Back anon.
Anyway, I've been thinking, even if not writing, and I wonder what goods can come of Christian reflections on nation-state politics. Theology is supposed to be the disciplined reflection on the practices of the Church for the sake of edifying the Body. What would an analogous practice look like for a Christian reflecting on Caesar's practices? I'm certain folks have written books on it, but if you're reading this, you'd prefer what I can cook up here in front of a computer screen, so let me get to cookin'!
I'd say that the Christian's role within an empire (and I mean that in as neutral a sense as is possible--I don't think that England or Japan or any nation-state with an armed border is outside the category) is to join and remain a member of a counter-politics, an Ekklesia in the midst of the Imperium. I think that the eucharist and baptism, being transnational and transgenerational practices, stands as the faithfulness-embodying counterparts to the military parades and pledges to flags and other disciplines that make people believe in entities called "nations." (As is often mentioned in conjunction with space exploration, the lines that we draw on maps don't show up when one gets high enough above the planet's surface.) From within that counter-politics, the Christian gains a critical perspective (one that acknowledges neither Jew/Gentile nor male/female nor Scythian/barbarian divisions in the ways that empires do) from which she or he might speak Truth.
That's the framework from which I'm attempting to operate here. I believe that the Church, as God's semiotic/martyrological/eschatological Body, can speak to nation-states the truths that their violence would otherwise blind them to. I'm intentionally comparing apples and oranges, churches and states, because I believe that the oranges would be better oranges if they tasted more like apples. (In reality, I'm more of an orange-eater myself.) Against the Machiavellian tendency to excuse nation-states and rulers of nation-states for being Machiavellian, I'll claim that the Church, the real politics that stand in resistance to the travesty-politics of empire, stands as the standard by which nations now are judged.
Of course, my grasp of theology and my grasp of history in the age of nation-states are both tenuous. That won't stop me. Instead, I'll welcome critiques from historians and from theologians as I attempt to forge some kind of theoretical framework, knowing still that others have likely fashioned better ground rules. Such is the hubris of the blogger.
So for those who have waited for my next venture into economics and politics and theology... keep waiting. This was just a taste and some methodological musings. I'll get back to the task at hand... but right now, I've got Shakespeare to read. Back anon.
04 September 2005
02 September 2005
27 August 2005
21 August 2005
20 August 2005
I will only delete spam
I just deleted a comment from one of my posts, and I feel as if posting this promise will make me accountable: if someone disagrees with me or questions me or whatever, I'll leave those comments there. If someone spams my blog, that I'll delete.
Okay, I feel better now.
Okay, I feel better now.
14 August 2005
08 August 2005
Unease with Libertarianism
I was thinking about politics today, particularly about the terms in which politics could more helpfully be talked about. As it stands, folks in the churches I know and love generally talk about "issues" without really engaging what it means for people to be political or rational or even spiritual animals, and I think that our Christian witness suffers for it; if we're merely partisans of one or another American political faction, to what extent can we call our common witness Christian?
More specifically I was thinking about wealth and the ways we speak about it. It's no big surprise that capitalism is the dominant economic ideology in the lands claimed by Washington. But the church's unwillingness (or inability) to speak critically about such things is troubling. While churches agree and disagree about whether or not centralized governments should regulate lying or sex or those such things, nobody seems to question the purely monetary model of "property" that underlies the way that we live together.
Even Plato seems to have known better. In his Republic, the city is the locus of property. The producers generate material goods and perform specialized services, and the civil servants police things and fight wars, and the philosopher-kings rule using noble lies among their other stately tools (I'm becoming more and more convinced that the U. of Chicago group, the students of Leo Strauss, are intentionally reclaiming this Platonic tool). What is proper to each class, and thus to each person, is duty and function. There's no sense that any of the producers is thinking that "my" crops or coins or whatever are ending up in the hands of the kings; rather, the city itself is the "proper" steward of these things. Later, in monastic life, similar things happen--whatever was once proper to this or that man becomes the common "property" of the community, and each monk's "property" becomes not a monetary holding but a participation in a larger social body.
But modern notions of property, whether capitalist or communist, seem to presuppose "property" as a liquid asset, something to be bought and sold without any eye for its function as a communal good. Marx is no less guilty of this than any capitalist; the revolution presupposes that a finite, liquid pool of resources is the aim of the revolution (if I've got this wrong, any Marx scholar is quite welcome to correct me). In The German Ideology, the end of revolution seems to be a collection of functionally equivalent individuals, not any sort of community.
In libertarian/Republican frameworks, it's even scarier and even more Nietzschean. It doesn't matter how the rich got rich or the powerful got powerful; their duty is to retain that power and money. Not to do so would be to cave in (according to Nietzshce) to the ethics of resentment (echoed in the last fifteen years or so by Limbaugh and company's rants about "class warfare"). If a few of the poor win or deal or work themselves to death and earn a little wealth, the moneyed class points to them with great rejoicing and says that "anyone can make it in America." But if someone points to the thousand who can't accumulate wealth, even while working themselves to death, it's "class warfare." In the meantime, they continue to congratulate themselves for being wealthy and powerful, sneering at the working poor as "the lazy class."
I'll probably post more on this in the days to come; right now, I'm just trying to establish some sort of theoretical framework within which I can talk and write about national politics without automatically falling into one or another megaparty's camp and, more importantly, without assuming that the nation to whom a person pays taxes automatically becomes that person's primary political identity-maker. More later.
More specifically I was thinking about wealth and the ways we speak about it. It's no big surprise that capitalism is the dominant economic ideology in the lands claimed by Washington. But the church's unwillingness (or inability) to speak critically about such things is troubling. While churches agree and disagree about whether or not centralized governments should regulate lying or sex or those such things, nobody seems to question the purely monetary model of "property" that underlies the way that we live together.
Even Plato seems to have known better. In his Republic, the city is the locus of property. The producers generate material goods and perform specialized services, and the civil servants police things and fight wars, and the philosopher-kings rule using noble lies among their other stately tools (I'm becoming more and more convinced that the U. of Chicago group, the students of Leo Strauss, are intentionally reclaiming this Platonic tool). What is proper to each class, and thus to each person, is duty and function. There's no sense that any of the producers is thinking that "my" crops or coins or whatever are ending up in the hands of the kings; rather, the city itself is the "proper" steward of these things. Later, in monastic life, similar things happen--whatever was once proper to this or that man becomes the common "property" of the community, and each monk's "property" becomes not a monetary holding but a participation in a larger social body.
But modern notions of property, whether capitalist or communist, seem to presuppose "property" as a liquid asset, something to be bought and sold without any eye for its function as a communal good. Marx is no less guilty of this than any capitalist; the revolution presupposes that a finite, liquid pool of resources is the aim of the revolution (if I've got this wrong, any Marx scholar is quite welcome to correct me). In The German Ideology, the end of revolution seems to be a collection of functionally equivalent individuals, not any sort of community.
In libertarian/Republican frameworks, it's even scarier and even more Nietzschean. It doesn't matter how the rich got rich or the powerful got powerful; their duty is to retain that power and money. Not to do so would be to cave in (according to Nietzshce) to the ethics of resentment (echoed in the last fifteen years or so by Limbaugh and company's rants about "class warfare"). If a few of the poor win or deal or work themselves to death and earn a little wealth, the moneyed class points to them with great rejoicing and says that "anyone can make it in America." But if someone points to the thousand who can't accumulate wealth, even while working themselves to death, it's "class warfare." In the meantime, they continue to congratulate themselves for being wealthy and powerful, sneering at the working poor as "the lazy class."
I'll probably post more on this in the days to come; right now, I'm just trying to establish some sort of theoretical framework within which I can talk and write about national politics without automatically falling into one or another megaparty's camp and, more importantly, without assuming that the nation to whom a person pays taxes automatically becomes that person's primary political identity-maker. More later.
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