Status Report

Most people won't care about this, but some of you periodically ask how things are going with my research, if the directions have changed, and to what degree. For the helluva it, I thought I'd post the theoretical model of theology with which I'm working this evening, as I desperately try to find the words for a conference paper proposal. The more I look at it, the more I realize it's not really proposing much of a paper, and just asserting my perspective on things; plus, I'm really quite wary that I seem to be more obviously interested in aesthetics than theology. Then again, is there a difference? Oh, dear me, this could prove to be a long evening.

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What becomes of theology when its beginning can only be known as such in the midst of the ironic interrogation: 'What is the character of theology?' Indeed, where and how does theology begin to reply? When 'character' betrays a necessary essence that is to be unveiled, theology's character is a revelation. And yet this revelation (essence) can only begin, that is, can only return to itself, as revelation, in an economy of self-identity. Thus continues the interrogation in which theology begins. Theology's essence, then, its revelation of itself, its beginning and ending, appears as a 'characterising' return. This appearance of self-reflection, which is the masking of essence, however, changes the interrogation only slightly to 'Who is the character of theology?' The self-imposed split of reflection -- the ‘I Am that I Am’ of theology -- is theology's immeasurable problem, its necessary search for an essence / nature by way of a reflection / discourse that can only ever mask it. As a result, theology is always emerging both as question and answer, subject and object; as such, theology's character becomes then one of essence and problematising reflection.

Provocatively, the theological discourse described here, as ironic characterisation, perhaps even peculiar theatricality, is more complex than what critical theory usually allows. What is too often missed in any economy of deferred return is that confusion and uncertainty are only ever apparently the deferral's natural consequences. In fact, on the stage suggested here, the appeals to syllogism and correspondence cannot actually be silenced. Importantly, these recalcitrant appeals are thoroughly theological, inasmuch as they seek to articulate the differences between 'beginning' and 'ending' that mark the identity of self and other, an articulation which assumes an unspoken essence that precedes and encompasses this articulation's reflection upon itself. That which identifies a character 'as' a character, must (and yet, problematically, still cannot) remain unspoken; articulation, like consciousness, remains a necessarily impossible avoidance. The resultant play of complexity and characterisation implies a repositioning of one's perspective from the binary logic that inevitably leads to identification for both structuralism and post-structuralism, to that of more complex, decentered networks, in which identity is an evolutionary emergence within a complex of variegated networks whose identities are also being constructed similarly.

From this perspective, theology (as that which is unspeakable) only ever truly emerges in an apparent inter-disciplinary confusion, often between the likes of literature, philosophy, and science. Moreover, theological discourse is a reflection upon the necessary attempt of any such discipline (including, even, that of Religious Studies) for an impossible cognisance of its incognisance, and thus is the dynamic attempt within a discipline and discourse to explore the liminal moment of its becoming-itself. Concerned with the boundary between chaos and order, the character of theological discourse conforms to the pattern of self-organised networks, and is staged on the critical, precipitant point where a small, seemingly isolate change has the potential to push it into chaotic madness or lock it in an inert stasis. Not surprisingly, most contemporary theorists regard this point as the site of the most interesting behaviour that occurs in any complex system. More importantly, this is where all such systems tend to gravitate when given the chance to do so. Because many inchoate 'Artificial Life' systems are assumed to operate here as well, it is not merely anecdotal that we find a suggestive parallel with the knotted network of theology.

For much critical theory, the character of theology is one of hyperreality and duplicity. And yet to follow this trajectory beyond the liminal movement between order and chaos is, I suggest, self-defeating, as the necessarily impossible avoidance of speaking the unspeakable awaits either pole. The interplay between the two is, rather, a non-linear, intransitive point of complexity and adaptation. By continually morphing shape and changing masks, the character of theology is seemingly chaotic; however, it also unexpectedly hints at a predilection for the self-organised, interdisciplinary stage of order and homogeneity. The result of this play is a network of radical and spontaneous moments of uncertain discursive and disciplinary directions. Consequently, theology, as the intransitive moment that blurs just before it blinds (i.e., the subject), remains vital outside the classical realm of disciplinary theology. Because the pragmatic adaptability and reified systemisation of reflection are always already conditioned by evolutionary complexity, theology's character, as theological discourse (i.e., the object), emerges on the indispensable interdisciplinary stage of a self-reflection that makes any discipline or discourse comprehensible but altogether inadequate to explain why this is so.

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What was I saying earlier in the week about my research keeping me distant from the 'real' world?