<underfire> Religion, Politics, Media, and War
Michael H Goldhaber
mgoldh at well.com
Tue Nov 14 16:53:20 EST 2006
Dear Mary,
As an atheist, I found your explanation of religious feeling
moving deep, and illuminating. However, you omit the notion that if
religion is of "ulitmate value" to an individual there is no barrier
to trying to impose those beliefs on others, leading to a reprisal of
the entire gamut of religous horrors that the enlightnment order
arose partially in response to. I speak of human sacrifice, pogroms,
inquisitions and burnings and torturing of 'heretics," subjecting
members of non-dominant religions to second-class status, subjugation
of women, acceptance of slavery, racism, caste restrictions, etc.
More subtle manifestations include religious indoctrination in public
schools (I was subject to that here in the US, and against my will),
Prohibition (again, here in the US and fostered by the Women's
Christian Temperance Union) attempts (often successful) to ban
abortion, birth control and same-sex marriages, restrictions on
scientific studies and teaching, etc.
The dialogue between the religious and the secular, to be effective,
has to begin, on the religious side, with some willingness to limit
your concept of "ultimate value." Otherwise dialogue is not possible.
Best,
Michael
On Nov 12, 2006, at 9:26 PM, Mary Keller wrote:
>
> I recently had a friend ask me what was the difference between my
> sense of religion and a general sense of ‘culture.’ The difference
> is history and argument. That is all. History because we receive
> established traditions of dealing with unseen forces whose power
> does something to you but remains unseen by you by virtue of the
> fact that its power transcends your capacity to understand it or
> conceptualize—better still to represent—it. These traditions have
> been called religions. To use the word religion is to participate
> in an established game in which that signifier is recognized.
>
> Why continue with the word? Because of value. Some things are more
> equal than others. Some things are of ultimate value. If something
> is of ultimate value, it will drive humans differently than things
> that carry mundane value. It will drive humans to the borders at
> which they can discern and determine ultimate value. It drives
> humans out of their “numb” lives in search of something that will
> make them feel alive. It drives humans out of their sense of
> meaningless, insignificant anonymity to gain a sense of
> significance through acts that will bring them across a new border
> of experience. Because violence is an event of crossing mental and
> physical borders and boundaries, violence is intimately related to
> the responses people have to meaninglessness. Violence brings you
> into contact with a border against which you can orient yourself
> and your significance. Violence is an immature response to
> religious desire, but we are human and tragically immature in our
> ability to respond to meaning. Trying to make people go secular
> will not attend to their immaturity.
>
> Another reason to use the word religion: It doesn’t go away. We
> could make a brand new start as the newly elected democrats suggest
> they can do, and we could call it schmegli. We could call it an
> opiate and exhort our comarades to take down the transcendentals—
> although that sounds strikingly familiar to “the kingdom of humans
> is at hand.” That plan hasn’t worked yet, with icons of Chairmon
> Mao selling like hotcakes. We could call it projection and enter
> analysis interminable instead. Or we could call it religion.
>
>
> It is different. It is not an essence or essential difference, it
> is a matter of interpretation and argument regarding its
> difference. I cannot put a woman on the scale, with or without
> hijab, and weigh her in order to determine her religious essence. I
> can only argue why it is most useful to understand a religious
> identity at work in the borders and boundaries that woman
> cultivates to mark the significance of her location in the world.
>
>
>
>
> Mary Keller, Ph. D.
> Adjunct, African American Studies Program and Religious Studies
> Program
> University of Wyoming
> Independent Researcher
> Research Associate, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
>
> 1025 Cody Ave.
> Cody, WY 82414
> ph 307 587 5312
>
>
>
>
>
>> From: "bracha L. Ettinger" <brachale at zahav.net.il>
>> Reply-To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
>> To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
>> Subject: Re: <underfire> on compassion
>> Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:50:38 +0200
>>
>>
>> Kate, Sarah, Ryan, Wolfgang, Mary, Allan, Jordan, dear friends,
>>
>> The originary event of peace is compassion.
>> Peace is a fragile encounter-eventing, an ever re-co-created and
>> co- re-created fragile and fragilizing encounter-event, which I
>> can articulate only in terms of what I have named the matrixial
>> borderspace, a paradigm engendered from, with and within
>> particular epistemological parameters that I have developed and
>> elaborated during some 21 years of constant theoretical writing
>> intertwined with- in psychoanalytic practice and artistic
>> practice. It wouldn't be possible to present briefly how
>> compassion and responsibility meet in the matrixial sphere, but I
>> will try to open at least an entry, for those who would want to
>> go on and do some reading elsewhere. Through some kinds of
>> aesthetical working-through (in art for example) and ethical
>> working-through (in psychoanalytical healing for example),
>> compassion gives birth to responsibility while responsibility
>> gives birth to compassion to the extent that they are not
>> thinkable apart. Though we can think and talk on compassion and
>> on responsibility, their combination is not a thought but a
>> practiced affective encounter-event that becomes a point of view.
>> The following is extracted from my recent essay called " Com-
>> passionate Co-response-ability, Initiation in Jointness and the
>> link x of Matrixial Virtuality" [in Gorge(l) (ed. S. Van Loo),
>> The Royal Museum of Antwerp]. I hope that those who are not
>> familiar with my writing, who might find this language too dense
>> or idiosyncratic, would simply read enter this post with their
>> poetic antenne, since during so many years of theorizing I had to
>> find or invent words that fit the parameters of what I named the
>> matrixial encounter-event, and what I can bring here is just a
>> hint concerning a whole field, in which the definition of some
>> familiar words change. ( You are invited to read my book The
>> Matrixial Borderspace, and perhaps the essay "Matrixial Trans-
>> subjectivity" [TCS, 23(2-3)], to have a glimpse at this paradigm).
>>
>> "The pole of compassion resonates with the miracle of non-life
>> coming into life in jointness, with the ethical value of wit(h)
>> nessing and the virtual strings of matrixial com-passion. "
>> "Fascinance, compassion, awe and self-relinquishment participate
>> in the originary matrixial knowing of/with-in the m/Other and of/
>> with-in the Cosmos. Early empathy that arises in extreme psychic-
>> mental fragility and vulnerability leans on the matrixial tissue
>> of com- passionate co-response-ability. Response-ability,
>> vulnerability, fascinance, awe, compassion and self-
>> relinquishment are forever bound within matrixial nets composed
>> of psychic-mental strings and threads and working-through in
>> metramorphosis.
>> In a matrixial sphere, the bending of the aesthetical toward the
>> ethical and of the ethical toward the aesthetical is awakened by
>> artworking and healing that resonate the originary aesthetical
>> com- passion, co-response-ability and wit(h)nessing in and by
>> which pre- subjective primary compassion is already manifested.
>> The pre- subject's compassion and fascinance informs its own
>> emergence with-in a co-birthing (co-naissance) of trans-
>> subjective entities—composed of I(s) and non-I(s)—by way of
>> affective and trans-sensed knowledge. Trans-subjective co-
>> response-ability, inaugurated by and in the primordial matrixial
>> encounter-event—where pre-maternal hospitality, empathy and
>> responsibility encounters prenatal pre-mature response- ability,
>> compassion and fascinance—and inaugurated at the same time also
>> by and in interconnectedness in self-relinquishment and wit(h)
>> nessing in awe, is the primary psycho-aesthetical and psycho-
>> ethical basis upon which creativity and ethical potentiality can
>> evolve all throughout life with-in new matrixial clusters.
>> " (Gorge(l), pp.11-13. )
>>
>> I just came back from a Arabs/Jews/Palestinians/Israelis peaceful
>> demonstration at the Erez Crossing Gate between Israel and Gaza.
>> There will be a demonstration in Tel Aviv on the 2 of December.
>> Bracha
>>
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Under Fire http://underfire.eyebeam.org
>> 16 October - 10 December 2006
>> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
>> all writings copyright individual authors
>> no commercial use without permission
>> to post a message, send an email to:
>> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
>> to unsubscribe, send an email to:
>> underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get FREE company branded e-mail accounts and business Web site from
> Microsoft Office Live http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/
> mcrssaub0050001411mrt/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Under Fire http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> all writings copyright individual authors
> no commercial use without permission
> to post a message, send an email to:
> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> to unsubscribe, send an email to:
> underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://underfire.eyebeam.org/pipermail/underfire/attachments/20061114/15f61259/attachment-0001.html
More information about the Underfire
mailing list