Religion Outside The Limits of Religion; or Another Letter to a Young Theologian [Part 1]

What is theology's character, you ask? The polyvalence of the question, identifying where it might begin and end, is as dizzying as its implications. Might we strip it bare, the question and theology, to get beneath their textual, textile surface, and behold them in their natural glory? Might we yet behold the question, the problem of theology, in its truth and origin, in its naked nature, as it strives to understand what it can of God? What, though, would be the character of this undressing? Would it be rape or consent, this theology, violence or foreplay? When surfaces are compound, when theology's flesh is textual and textile -- published, bound, and disseminated -- its undressing cannot go simply skin-deep. Pierced and tattooed, theology bleeds, as it is riddled anew with innumerable cuts beneath the surface that go beyond the quick, to the blood and the bone and the sinew. Unable to escape the ontological and perspectival dilemma, the theologian's attempts at meticulous dissection of theology, be it through systemising, narrating, or even deconstructing, crack open the subject's breast plate and reveal a voluminous blood flow of ink.¹

Hegel may best represent the systemically redemptive fetish that, its cries of protest notwithstanding, still grips traditional theology. Through his classic dialectical logic he humbly sought (and, so he believed, achieved) a totalisation of identity-in-difference and thus also the culmination of all philosophical thought. Personal subjectivity, he argues, is 'pure self-recognition in absolute otherness', in which the subject 'relates itself to itself and is determinate, is other-being and being-for-self, and in this determinateness, or in its self-externality, abides within itself; in other words, it is in and for itself? (Phenomenology of Spirit [1977], 14, 18). The subject (or identity), then, is never self-present. Identity becomes itself only in-and-through difference, and difference becomes itself only in-and-through identity. In other words, to affirm itself, identity must negate itself and becomes its opposite, i.e., difference, because 'identity is different from difference'. At the same time, however, because identity is in-difference, 'as difference that is identity with itself', its relation to its other is naturally a subjective relation to itself. (Science of Logic [1969], 413-17).²

It is not a coincidence that in developing the all-encompassing implications of his System, Hegel incorporated the three classical arguments for the existence of God: the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs. First, with the cosmological proof, Hegel demonstrated that the finite is not simply identical with itself, but inherently and self-contradictorily, needs the infinite (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1987], 2: 254-55). With the teleological proof, he continues, God's purposeful wisdom and activity are demonstrated. Purposefulness, he writes, 'marks the beginning and end of the process . . . hence it is the final end' (ibid. 2:405). Teleological purposiveness demonstrates the consequences of the cosmological argument inasmuch that it is 'fixed', 'exempt from the [dialectical] process', and 'determined by the free self-determining of the subject' (ibid.). Furthermore, the reunion of beginning and ending, of subjectivity and objectivity, Hegel continues, is demonstrated in the ontological proof, which essentially replays the double-negation at work in his System. This unity of subject and object, beginning and ending, in sum, is truth (or the Absolute Idea); and God, in turn, is the realised-eschatological 'essence of all reality' (Science of of Logic, 86).

Though he does not cite Hegel or his philosophical System, Tyler Roberts recognises a similar totalising tendency in the seminal works of two of your favorite contemporary theologians, Stanley Hauerwas and Mark C. Taylor ('Theology and the Ascetic Imperative: Narrative and Renunciation in Taylor and Hauerwas', Modern Theology 9 [April 1993], 181-200). Specifically, he argues persuasively that each fall prey to the metaphysical recalcitrance of narrative. For instance, while Hauerwas claims that self-identity, or, in his suggestive words, 'character', is derivative of one's knowledge of and submission to God, one's knowledge and trust are always already deeply embedded in a preexistent Christian narrative in which humanity recognises itself as 'contingent', 'historical', 'sinful' creatures of God (The Peaceable Kingdom [1983], 27-29, 46-49). According to Roberts, this is the very sort of 'master narrative' of which the postmodern theologian, we who have been made wary by those most incredulous insights by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Frederic Jameson, and Francois Lyotard, ought to be especially mindful ('Theology and the Ascetic Imperative', 188). Nevertheless, even Mark C. Taylor -- who is as suspicious as they come, especially of beginnings and endings, and who is delighted by the notion of a 'nomadic self' who endlessly errs and sempiternally puns in carnivalesque discourses that would make Bakhtin blush and Zarathusa proud, because that is all one does (Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology [1984], 149-65) -- is undermined by an 'internal narrative':

Once there was a pre-modern subject who embraced faith in God. But in its journey to modernity the subject overturned the God-human relationship, making God its own creation as well as dominating others and hoarding possessions in a futile attempt to secure a foundation for itself and escape from death. But, when the subject recognized this futility and embraced the difference at the core of its identity, it emerged into postmodernity, an eternity of play. There the subject threw off lacerated consciousness, entered the divine milieu, and erred happily ever after. ('Theology and the Ascetic Imperative', 186)

What makes Roberts's essay so compelling is not simply that he questions whether Hauerwas adequately addresses the disruptive interplay of 'history and the world' on the 'unity and plot of the Christian narrative' (ibid., 188), nor that he points out Taylor's slippage back into metaphysics; rather, it is the coherence with which he points out the necessary (i.e., structural) and liminal linkage of theology and narrative. The ramifications of this are, like the best of stories, far from obvious.

Unable to free itself fully from a beginning and an ending, the peculiarities of what Gordon Kaufman has described as its 'imaginative construction', cannot be lost on or in theology. As such, who then is the character of this characteristic undressing? Torn apart, theology's heart still pounds. Is it the character of theology to beg the theologian to peek inside and g(r)asp? Does theology whisper to its spectator, 'All this I did for you. Pulled myself apart so that you might see, and touch, and taste the blood, all that blood and pain for you. You didn't know a heart could pump so much blood, did you? It's endless?' Here, violence and foreplay seem to masochistically merge, and the theologian can only pull away a bloody, ink-stained member. Theology, as such, becomes a sacrament, a spectral spectacle, upon and into which the theologian cannot help but attempt to gaze or probe, a violence from which the theologian, like Bataille's bacchant, cannot be fully differentiated.³

*************
¹ Cf., 'Although it may be obvious to us that the constructive work of the imagination has in this way always been constitutive of theological activity, theologians have seldom understood themselves to be engaged primarily in imaginatively constructing a theistically-focused worldview; on the contrary, they have largely regarded themselves as attempting to express in human words and concepts what the divine King had objectively and authoritatively given the church or synagogue in revelation. The fact that their work was thoroughly imaginative and constructive in character was simply not recognized' (Gordon D. Kaufmann, 'Theology as Imaginative Construct', Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50 [March 1982], 78).

² Hegel explains that 'identity is the reflection-into-self that is identity only as internal repulsion, and is this repulsion as reflection-into-self, repulsion, which immediately takes itself back into itself. Thus it is identity as difference as difference that is identity with itself' (413).

³ Cf., Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-39 [1985], 238:

'I AM joy before death.'

'The depth of the sky, lost space is joy before death: everything is profoundly cracked.'

'I imagine the earth turning vertiginously in the sky. I imagine the sky itself slipping, turning and losing itself. The sun, comparable to alcohol, turning and bursting breathlessly. The depth of the sky is like an orgy of frozen light, losing itself. Everything that exists destroying itself, consuming itself and dying, each instant producing itself only in the annihilation of the preceding one, and itself existing only as mortally wounded. Ceaselessly destroying and consuming myself in myself in a great festival of blood.'

For Something Completely Different

Most of Silentio's readers, for better or worse, but surely not surprisingly, are Americans. For them, this link may prove something of a shock; or, at the very least, a bit perplexing. For those of you from Britain and Belgium, though, this is kind of old news. But, oh ho ho, important all the same.

The topic is, generally speaking, if you've not yet bothered to click the mysterious link, the relationship between the 'sacred' and the 'secular'. More specifically, it is about headscarves in French (and Belgian) public schools -- namely, whether they should be permitted. Your appetite for something new whetted? Go ahead . . . don't be afraid . . . click the link.

Upon doing that, be sure also to note the new home for this post's author, Scott Martens. I've been shamefully slow on getting that announced. For my money, Scott is one of the best bloggers out there. His is not a daily go-to site, not typically anyway, as he, well, has a life. But when he's on, which is most of the time, he's bound to write something that'll make you want to either tear your hair out in frustrating disagreement -- just after he made you scratch it in confusion -- or he'll make you wish you had that idea first. Not for the faint of heart or the short of attention.

A Must Click2

A couple of weeks ago I linked to Dwight Meredith's excellent post on scare tactics used by the tort reform lobby to convince us that America's courts are out of control -- that they're handing money out left and right to the litigious cranks who are sullying the good name of corporate America. Today, he has posted a follow-up. And it is good.

Breathe Deep

I love the smell of an unregulated industry at work. It smells like, like, a slow death.

Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.

At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.

Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.

[. . .]

Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for future government regulation, according to industry insiders.

Most of what the administration hopes to accomplish in terms of reduced emissions will not become apparent for many decades to come, experts agree. The president's more immediate goal, announced on Valentine's Day 2002, is to reduce greenhouse gas intensity -- the amount of gas put into the atmosphere per unit of economy -- by 18 percent over the next 10 years. Congress's research arm, the General Accounting Office, concluded in October that Bush's plan would reduce overall emissions only 2 percentage points below what the nation would achieve with no federal program whatsoever.

One more reason that electing anybody, a horse's ass, a pig's right testicle, is better than voting for Bush. (Okay, I exaggerate. Make it the pig's left testicle.)

Out With the New. More of the Same

A couple of days into this new year, 2004, and things of old do not die easily. I'm still in Belgium (one more day)... I'm the same weight I was two days ago (a stone more than last year, I fear)... I'm still listening to the same set of Kate Rusby songs I downloaded upon my arrival... and I'm still reading, for reasons that elude me altogether, about religious pluralism (which is, for those who do not know, the opposite of religious dogmatism, of the sort that says 'I'm right' and therefore 'You're wrong'). In desperate search for something new, but nothing to make me assess all that I have and take for granted -- this is not the time for soul-searching, these cold January mornings in stone houses surrounded by snow -- my mid-morning pancake, caked in brown sugar (mmmm!), was accompanied by the Best Books of 2003 lists in the San-Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Though I've only read a couple of the books on either list, there is some nice looking stuff in there. A couple of the highlights for me included:

Gilligan's Wake. By Tom Carson. A loopy, exuberant novel-type prose event that sees 20th-century America through the lives of the castaways on ''Gilligan's Island.'' The originals are augmented by culturally significant characters, from Amelia Earhart and Holden Caulfield to Richard Nixon and Maggie the Cat. [Note to one of my Hoosier guest bloggers of old: this looks to be up your alley.]

Oracle Night. By Paul Auster. An up-to-date metasomething novel on a dizzy rotation between life and invention, situated in a writer's notebook; the writer, Sidney Orr, recently very ill, has lost his will to write until he buys an exotic notebook in Brooklyn. Immediately stories begin to proliferate, right from the bottom of the page upward, in a stew of creation and discovery, communication and concealment.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. By Azar Nafisi. Recalls how Nafisi secretly gathered a group of women in her home in the Islamic Republic of Iran every week to study such banned authors as Austen, Fitzgerald, James and Nabokov. The question of "how great works of imagination could help" them negotiate their "present trapped situation" allowed the women's own stories of brutality and hope to entwine with those of the characters they studied. In this account of her experience, personal insights such as the texture of Nafisi's marriage or her relationship with her two children are tucked away within the larger questioning of literature, her students, her friends and the regime.

Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. By Jessica Stern. "Religion is a kind of technology," as Jessica Stern puts it in "Terror in the Name of God." "It is terribly seductive in its ability to soothe and explain, but it is also dangerous." Religious violence springs from a desire to find a clear purpose in the confusion of a world dominated by American capitalism, Stern asserts. A Harvard professor and former government policy wonk, she spent five years traveling around the globe to research this remarkable study, which combines psychological depth with forensic scholarly rigor.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. By Jon Krakauer. Krakauer's new work is a fantastic read, right up there with "In Cold Blood" and "The Executioner's Song" in its depiction of that strange American blend of piety, violence and longing for the End Times. His book's bizarre tale revolves around the true and horrifying 1984 murder of a young woman and her baby daughter by Dan and Ron Lafferty, two brothers who joined a fundamentalist, polygamist Mormon splinter group and soon began following their own twisted revelations. Krakauer masterfully weaves Mormon history and modern polygamy into a seamless story about the strangest subculture of the American Southwest.

Vernon God Little. By DBC Pierre. A first novel that is smart, ridiculous and funny even though it is nourished chiefly by the Columbine High massacre of 1999; its 15-year-old protagonist, whose best friend has killed 16 classmates, is the focus of the town's lust for retribution. [ed. I've been hearing insanely good things about this. Most Booker Prize winners lose their luster over time, but this one might prove exceptional.]

Out With the Old. In With the New

It's getting late here in Belgium, and I've yet to recover from my evening of hell in Leuven -- it's not worth blogging about, trust me -- but I just wanted to say, because I'm so bad about doing it in person, or on phone, or in emails, Happy New Years everybody. I hope your celebration did not find you stuck in the freezing cold with narry a taxi to be found (and when you thought you found one, the driver turned out to be, in fact, a dick who plead ignorance as to your destination and drove away in haste) and facing the prospect of an hour-long walk to the nearest available warm bed. No, I wish none of that on you.

Oh, unrelatedly, but while I'm thinking about it. I just watched the finale of World Idol, and while it was complete and utter crap, and not even the utter crap that I find enjoyable, part one on Christmas Day more than prepared me for that expectation. Nevertheless, congratulations to the Norweigan troll who won. With luck, we'll all see him on top of every school kid's pencil, his blonde hair baroque with erratic tangles and twirls. Just kidding, he was a good singer. Huzzah!

Imperium

There's nothing incredibly new here, and I'm not sure I agree with it all, but it is well-written summary of reasons of reasons that more people dislike America's foreign policy than like it.

A few highlights:

Finer connoisseurs of human nature have suggested that Arab anti-Americanism stems from a scapegoating campaign meant to divert the people's attention from their own governments' failings. Its motto: Praise your leader for all that is good; blame America for all that is bad. After all, the scapegoat theory goes, isn't US policy unabashedly, overwhelmingly, ridiculously pro-Muslim? (Hint for those who are having trouble with this homework exercise: Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo.) Were it not for decades of manipulation at the hands of shameless leaders, the Arabs would know how good we are.

They would also know how stupid we are. For what else would you call people who give billions in financial assistance to Arab leaders only so that they can better whip their people into an anti-American frenzy? Why didn't the scapegoat theorists tell us earlier? If only we'd known! Of course, one may criticize al-Jazeera for lacking American-style impartiality, be it the fairness and balance of Fox News or the cool objectivity of Clear Channel. But to think that the Qatar-based TV news network is just a vehicle of power intended to keep the restless Arab masses from turning against their governments is borderline delusional. This is not to say that transference of self-pity into loathing of others might not play a role. (After all, John Ashcroft does it all the time.) But to claim that it is the whole story suggests that Arabs in dozens of nations, thousands of miles apart, suffer from some sort of collective mental disorder: A slur that does not even rise to the level of an idea.

[. . .]

When Condoleezza Rice calls us, war critics, racists, she misses the point. We never said that Iraq could not be a democracy. We simply said that Condi and her friends could not make it into one. The most likely outcome for Iraq in the short term is Lebanon-style guerrilla warfare leading to a mini-Saddam or a civil war. It was ugly before. Bush has ensured that it will remain ugly for a long time to come. Meanwhile he has subverted the war on terror by diverting enormous resources away from it and redirecting them toward fanning the flames of anti-American hatred.

Oh, to hope -- to dream -- sanity returns to the American electorate in November.

UPDATE: Related to this essay on America and empire, I've been hearing some good stuff about about George Soros' new book on the subject, The Bubble of American Supremacy. Might be worth a skim if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

Holiday Reading

Yesterday I boarded a plane for Belgium. Regular readers here will note that this is not extraordinary, since I've been doing this for quite some time now. The best thing about these journeys, besides the amazingly good beer that is made available to me, is that I'm afforded many hours of unfettered reading. Rural Belgium, let's say, is not the hotbed of attention-diverting activity. To my horror, though, upon unpacking yesterday I learned that I'd only packed one book for my week's stay: Joseph Stephen O'Leary's Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth -- not the most compelling title or subject, I must confess. One can only blog and read blogs so much, however, so I've been dipping into bits of it. Turgid prose notwithstanding, there is some very good stuff in here -- his is an understanding of 'truth', more rationally aesthetic than philosophical, religious or otherwise, I can get on board with. I'll spare you the details of that, though.

A quote:

[I]t may be doubted whether any of the great traditions is yet ready to face fully the consequences of its historicity. Since Kant, a basic task of thinking has been to face our finitude, to put ourselves back in our skin, to return to where we already are. If the religions refuse to see the real conditions of their historical existence, the reason is that they transfer to their language, epresentations and history the ultimacy that properly appertains only to that supreme reality to which these have served to witness, thus falling into self-idolatry. 'What is basically wrong with humanity', according to Simone Weil, is 'the substitution of means for ends. It it this reversal of the relation between means and ends, this basic madness, which accounts for everything absurd and bloody throughout history'. Only by taking stock of their extreme fragility can those 'means' which are the religions testify to their 'end' -- to that mystery which can be felicitously named in certain conditions, but which eludes any definitive grasp.

[. . .]

What lends urgency to the problem of meaning created by religious pluralism is the pressure of an ulterior problem, that of truth. To appreciate all religions seems to imply that real assent is refused to any. The great world religions lose their appearance of permanence when one treats them as human institutions born in function of the needs of an epoch, deploying the range of their possibilities over time, and now, to a skeptical observer, nearing the exhaustion of their resources. Yet as they broach a millennial threshold the religions seem in better shape than had been foretold, their mighty engines purring, their rich traditions relucent, despite -- or rather because of -- critical contestation and pluralist dispersion. Perhaps the greatest challenge they face is that of assessing, rationally and responsibly, their status and function, so that in addition to arousing faith and devotion they will also continue to illuminate human minds questing for what is not only meaningful but true.

[. . .]

The question 'how true is religion?', may best be met by asking another question: 'how is religion true?' According to what modalities can religious propositions legitimately be expected to make sense? What sort of reference should we expect them to have? Under what conditions are they statements of truth? How does this truth differ from other kinds of truth? To what procedures of verification or falsification should religious propositions be subject? Since religion is not a unitary entity, the answer to these questions is likely to vary from tradition to tradition.

Many people think of religions as 'supreme fictions', poetic interpretations of the world with no objective cognitive content. They plausibly suggest that the reality underlying the fabrications of religious discourse is nothing more than 'the foul rag and bone shop of the heart'. Yet within the constructions of the religious imagination, so easily dismissed as wishful projection, there are found at key points words which rupture the predictable fabcrications and allow a glimmer of the ultimate reality to penetrate.

A vital religion harbours a capacity for stepping outside the circle of inherited concepts to mime their breakdown before what they attempt to designate. This can be done by an act that speaks at a pre-conceptual level, as when Zen Buddhism names some homely object as the locus of ultimate truth, or when Christianity points to some despised neighbour as the presence of Christ. It can be done in a secondary way by inventing new words or words with new meanings ('emptiness', 'charity', 'grace') which spell an overhaul for the entire discourse in which they are inserted. Such creative acts and words are experienced as a step in the direction of lived truth, rather than as defensive moves to prop up a crumbling belief-system. Assessment of the basic revelation-event (as we may call them), and of the detailed historical claims and doctrinal underpinnings that attend them, seems to demand that we exit from religion as conventionally understood to retrieve its heritage in a more discerning, critical mode, making explicit the subversive potential lodged in it.

Not sure why I share that. Consider it my tireless attempt to justify my interest in, if not adherence to, religion.

The Other That is Me

There's all kinds of talk and writing in my part of the academic world about 'the other', and how our response to that which is other than us is one of the key issues for contemporary thinking -- due in no small part to 9/11. Obviously, this is important, and really quite helpful. However, focussing exclusively on the other without often blinds us to the other within -- the other that looks like us, sounds like us. Indeed, is us. When this happens, when we've unreflectively bought the 'marketing of terrorism' presented to us by our governments and our media, when the war on terrorism is an excuse for political maneuvering, we may eventually find that the danger was a whole lot closer all along. Orcinus explains.

'Welcome to Wal-Mart, Can You Spare Some Change?'

I've been harping on this with friends for the past year now -- not sure at all what sparked it -- but people in America -- not sure if the phenomenon is worldwide -- do not have a very firm grasp on relative levels of poverty and wealth. Considering my current level of debt, I'm not entirely sure I do either. Nevertheless, it would take a blind person to not recognize something is fundamentally askew:

If poor Americans were a nation, the population would top Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia combined.

That's using the Census Bureau's lowball poverty count of 35 million Americans.

[. . .]

The poverty thresholds for 2002 were $8,628 for a person 65 and older, $9,359 for a person under 65, $12,400 for an adult and child, $14,480 for a couple with one child, and $18,244 for a couple with two children. That $18,244 isn't enough to buy the Patek Philippe gold watch and Hermes purse on the Forbes index of luxury goods.

By the official measure, a senior with just $719 a month in Social Security and other income was not poor. In reality America, many people above the poverty line can't afford housing, utilities, food, health care, transportation and other basic expenses, including taxes.

[. . .]

The poverty rate hit its best mark way back in 1973. The 2002 poverty rate of 12.1 percent was 9 percent higher than 1973's. The 2002 child poverty rate was 19 percent higher than its lowest point in 1969.

None of this, perhaps, is news to anybody. Of course, we all know there are a lot of poor people in America. But who are they?

Answer: Wal-Mart employees.

The Walton's combined $102.5 billion – up from $94 billion in 2002 – nearly matches the wealth of the three richest men: Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates ($46 billion) and Paul Allen ($22 billion) and megainvestor Warren Buffett ($36 billion).

The Walton's $8.5 billion wealth gain in the past year is more than the total budget for Head Start, serving nearly 1 million children.

While the Wal-Mart heirs are among America's richest, Wal-Mart workers are among America's poorest.

Wal-Mart's U.S. workers – most without health benefits – average just $8 an hour, compared with $12 in retail trade generally. Wal-Mart's average wage is lower than the 1968 minimum wage of $8.51, adjusted for inflation. Now the world's largest company, Wal-Mart is rolling back wages in the growing areas it dominates from America to China.

Wal-Mart's CEO pay, by contrast, rose 1,767 percent between 1995 and 2003, according to compensation expert Graef Crystal. CEO Lee Scott's 2003 pay package of $29.8 million amounts to more than $3,400 for every hour of every day of the year.

Shopping at Wal-Mart is hell on earth for a reason, folks.

A Holiday Shout-Out

I'm not a huge fan of the song of Desperado, but a good friend of this blog is -- he knows who he is. More importantly, though, he is also a big fan of Johnny Cash. It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that I link to this. Happy holidays, Pat.

And Thus Begins a Thesis; or Writing an Introduction After Chapters One and Two

'Beginning is going on. Everywhere. Amidst all the endings, so rarely ripe or ready. They show up late, these beginnings, bristling with promise, yet labored and doomed. Every last one of them is lovingly addressed: "in the beginning." But if such talk -- talk of the beginning and the ending -- has produced the poles, the boundary markers of a closed totality, if "the beginning" has blocked the disruptive infinities of becoming, then theology had better get out of its own way. -- In the beginning, theology starts again.' (Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, p. 3)

'I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were doing when they begot me.' (Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, p. 1)

'THIS WAS UNCALLED FOR.' (Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

Where to begin? An introduction, in addition to being a formal greeting or welcome -- hello, out there -- is meant to set the tone and the tenor, and to limn the aspirational ambit of a particular project, so as to hint at the chorus of voices and themes that will, in due course and manner, emerge. In so doing, its ending is translated, or in the case of some malignant tomes, metastasises, to its beginning. Typically written after the book's body, and maybe even its conclusion, introductions can often be slightly shady. They are, Mark C. Taylor affirms, 'awkward, embarrassing affairs -- coy games of hide-and-seek, revelation and concealment, appearance and disappearance.' Which is to say, one's conclusion can never be too far very far from the introduction.

Filled with as yet unsubstantiated assertions, an introduction tends to be, according to G. W. F. Hegel, 'a string of random statements and assurances about truth'. The insidious implication of these 'random statements' and 'assurances', he fears, is that they unfaithfully belie truth as an autonomous, constructive particular that illegitimately precedes an author before she attempts to develop an argument or narrative. Such a truth could range from an author's historico-cultural preconceptions and agendas, to the intentions and purposes read into an absent author by her reader. Following his signature dialectical logic, the immediacy of truth this would assume, versus its eventual emergence through the dialectical play of identity-in-difference, is naive irrationalism; as he famously mocks, it is to present the 'Absolute as the night, in which, as people say, all cows are black'. On the contrary, he continues, 'One can say of the Absolute that it is essentially a result, that it is only at the end what it is in truth'. Introductions, then, Hegel sniffs with contempt, are 'not only superfluous but, in view of the nature of the subject matter, even inappropriate and misleading.' Censure of introductions duly accomplished, he thus begins his Phenomenology of Spirit, the mammoth introduction to his vaunted, and often vilified, philosophical system. While I do not make similar systemising claims for my own project here, I dare not miss the importance of his interrogation, nor the instructive irony. After all, appearances do not always deceive, no matter the cliche, for sometimes things are not as they appear.

* * * * * *And so it goes from there. This thing, the thesis, it is finally beginning to take shape.

A MUST CLICK...

Wow, the courts are just outta control with giving stupid people enormous, insane settlements, aren't they? Tort reform!! Tort reform!! We need tort reform!

Don't be so sure.

Oh, to Wish

Man oh man, I wish liberals were more like conservatives and never resorted to cheap, dishonest shots at the opposition.

Then [Tom] DeLay lit into "extreme extremist" Howard Dean who was said to have opposed the war in Afghanistan (he didn't) and was accused of lying for accurately noting that Bush's deficits are the largest in history. In the ensuing dialgogue with Tim Russert [a la Meet the Press] on the subject of balanced budgets, DeLay insisted that Bill Clinton deserves "no credit" for the budgets he signed -- in fact, not a single Republican in Congress voted for Clinton's 1993 package -- and claimed that in the nineties the GOP majority passed the first balanced budget in "well over forty years" when the correct number is somewhat less than thirty. DeLay also claimed that the Bush administration has held spending growth below 4 percent after allegedly big increases during the Clinton years, while in fact spending grew 7.6 percent in 2003, and 7.9 percent in 2002, both figures far higher than anything from the Clinton years. Next he insisted that balancing the budget will require more tax cuts and then seemed to liken the whole balanced budget concept to Communism anyway.

[. . .]

Faced with this massive lies-to-airtime ratio, we got basically nothing from Russert. His only efforts to point out the truth consisted of hypothesizing what "the Democrats would say" in response to DeLay, as though the question of what's in the federal budget was somehow subjective. Russert enjoys trying to trip his guests up by bringing up contradictory statements from the past, but when he's faced with someone who's willing to lie consistently he's helpless. In short -- he's the perfect host for today's Republican leadership.

Strange, That

Just looked at my hits, which I rarely ever do, and only just realised that I get far fewer hits when I actually update my site; whereas the place is booming with activity when I don't update for weeks on end. Yeesh, people, is this a hint? If so, you're going to have to try harder than that!

Join the Fight!

I've been thinking a lot more lately about political action, right -- exhorting you all, each and all, to step into the fray and give of your time and your money. Well, friends, the time has come for a specific plea! We gotta fight for the right to get off with a vibrator in Texas.

It's a court case the likes of which this quiet county hasn't seen.

It brings to the historic Johnson County Courthouse a striking defendant, a feisty female defense lawyer, a media-shy prosecutor, a sting operation by small-town police, talk of an anonymous tipster and a parcel of evidence with names such as the Double Hot and the Nubby G.

Some of the players convened Monday in Judge Robert Mayfield's County Court at Law No. 1 for a first appearance by Joanne Webb, proprietor of Passion Parties and a former elementary school teacher now charged with criminal obscenity for selling products she says "enhance relationships" [ed.: I know what you're thinking: double-ended dildos, right? But, surprisingly, no, the case hingest on a vibrator -- which, yes, was a pretty funny sentence to write.]

[. . .]

Joanne Webb said she was ready to stand up for her right to sell the sex toys.

"Our whole purpose in fighting for it is to keep marriages together," she said. "I'm not looking for what's easy. I'm looking for what's right."

Makes you feel downright patriotic, doesn't it? Forget that Sadaam fella . . . this is America, people, we got vibrators to protect! If they take that from Texans, what'll they take away next? Veggie Tale-themed sex toys. (I don't know if there are such toys, but I had a funny thought last night over a delightfully alcoholic cup of eggnog that a ball gag with that little cartoon tomato on the front would be really funny.) No I say! I've yet to find a legal fund for Ms. Joanne Webb, but surely there must be one out there. She's a feisty one, that Webb, and I think we should all get behind her. (Ahem, no, not w/ the vibrator, you sickos).

Something to Wake Up To

I've been no fan of the Iraqi war, as you well know, but it is difficult not to be happy when a war criminal is arrested. My more cynical friends will say, 'Well, this is just going to help Bush.' Fair enough, and maybe so. More importantly, though, it helps the Iraqi people, who we liberals too often, at least latently and silently, maybe just before we fell asleep or after too many drinks, don't mind see suffering a bit -- so long as Bush was placed in a difficult position. I don't mind playing dirty in politics, indeed I espouse it from the hilltops, but for the most part let's keep it there. Anyway, if S. Hussein has truly been arrested we all should be, even if only ambivalently because of the truly fucked up circumstances that finds us in Iraq looking for him, pleased. Which, of course, is not to say we necessarily must be pleased with how Bush & Co. deal with its repercussions. I have the utmost confidence in them that they'll lose any solidarity on this, too. (By, say, declaring victory once again, installing an amiable strongman, and high tailing it out of the country?)

UPDATE: Speaking of ambivalence.

UPDATE²: Oh, bugger all. Of course, we knew none of this would stem the violence immediately . . . but the difference between preparing for the worst and the worst actually happening is vast.

Crikey!!

Had a conversation with a friend the other day about the flu epidemic in America -- I think she was trying was trying to empathize with me, the sickliest of the sick here in Scotland this year -- so while I was sort of prepared for this article, I still found myself scared witless by this new Fujian strain of the flu. *shudder*

As the virus now spreads from its original epicenters in Texas and Colorado, many of those most at risk of dying from the flu—the old, the very young, and those with underlying medical problems—will not be able to get vaccinated. In addition, because health care workers have been notoriously lax about getting their shots (a mere one-third got vaccinated last year), we could soon be witnessing emergency rooms crowded with people violently ill with the flu and without enough medical staff to care for them.

Is such a drastic scenario inevitable? The virus could die out and not strike other places as hard as it hit the first states, but based on past years, that seems unlikely. Nowadays, doctors can also prescribe four antiviral drugs to treat and prevent influenza—but, no surprise, those already are in short supply because in many parts of the country where the vaccine has run out, doctors already have been using them, and there is no plan for ramping up production. If the epidemic does get very bad, our best defense will be thorough hand-washing and medical masks for health workers and patients brought into hospitals where there are not enough isolation facilities, but we could soon face a shortage of masks as well.

[. . .]

Bad as they are, the difficulties in coping with this year's influenza epidemic are like the tiny tremors in California that remind you of the looming Big One. In the world of influenza, the Big One is a pandemic—a strain of influenza so different from what has circulated before that people have no immunity. That's what happened in 1918 when the flu killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide. Pandemics that killed well over half a million also struck in both 1957 and 1968.

La la la la... not reading any more. La la la la la.

Oh, Feel the Power!

It's good to see America's economy is getting healthier by the day. Happy Holidays to each every 378,000 newly unemployed this month!

Hmm...

Never let it be said that the U.S. doesn't know who its real friends are.

The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.

[. . .]

The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available for 71 cents wholesale.

But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.

[. . .]

She said the contract was also expensive because it was hard to find a company with the trucks necessary to move the fuel, and because Halliburton is only able to negotiate a 30-day contract for fuel. "It is not as simple as dropping by a service station for a fill-up," she said.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Bob Faletti, also defended the price of imported fuel.

"Everyone is talking about high costs, but no one is talking about the dangers, or the number of fuel trucks that have been blown up," Mr. Faletti said. "That's the reason it is so expensive."

Yeah, and we all know those snipers and suicide bombers out there have been oh so discriminate in their target selection thus far, huh? They're singling out Halliburton trucks . . . riiiiiight. War profiteering? What war profiteering?

Iraqi's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides to Mr. Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO — and by Halliburton's subcontractor — are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.

The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.

The money for Halliburton's gas contract has come principally from the United Nations oil-for-food program, though some of the costs have been borne by American taxpayers. In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning early next year.

Goodie!!