<underfire> globalatinization and compassion

[John William Phillips]

Globalatinization is a rough translation from the French neologism "mondialatinisation" (rough because the notions of monde [world] and globe are hardly equivalent) and emerges in translations of seminars and talks by Jacques Derrida, principally, but has gained currency since the mid-1990s, especially in recent years, when diverse processes of globalization are nevertheless increasingly obviously Anglo-American. (Derrida's translator, Samuel Weber points out that the passage from "world" to "globe" does seem to suggest something of the Anglo-American nature of processes that globalatinization stands for).  

Paul Mercken observes (and I agree) that the reference to the Roman suggests St Paul but also the holy Roman Empire, on the one hand, and the several no doubt historically heterogeneous processes of schizm and secularization that rather precisely each time oppose themselves to the Roman or later to the Christian in general: oppose themselves to, but carry on, in concept, language and gesture, the Christianity that thus continues to bear them.  

This globalatinization governs not only Christian forms and secularised states (which, by being post-Christian and even, as we now sometimes say, post-secular, remain Christian) but also the Jewish and Muslim religions that in different ways share yet also fall out over e.g., Jerusalem, or the book(s) of Abraham/Ibrahim.  The Latin thus not only governs the globalization of Christianized values (whether politicized or mysterious, secret or sacred) but of any thought that is expressed in the Latinate forms of the modern monotheistic religions: com-passio, religio.  The problem comes to light (and in these terms has hardly been exhausted) in the Enlightenment or Aufklarung, and in the radical acts of les lumieres and is perhaps brought to a head by Hegel in his lectures on politics and religion.  

To talk of a compassion that would be other than the Latin, Christian, secular, post-secular: would that still not be to judge by the forms that compassion names?  It would thus be difficult indeed to elude this quite monumental ethnocentrism (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, European, American) and looking for the place of "compassion" in other cultures would hardly achieve this in these terms, the terms of compassion.  Religion too (the word and the concept) would not simply be found among non-western (non-Christian, non-secular) cultures, for whatever was found as an equivalent or of even as a different kind of religio would still be considered as and subjected to the judgement of religio itself (which is another question that should be posed, no doubt). 

It would perhaps be better to confront the notion of compassion itself (and in this respect I have some sympathy with Bracha Ettinger's complex discussions of originary compassion) with the question of its limits.  Not to limit it, of course, but rather to open the question of limits up to what I believe our sense of this notion could imply, that is, that compassion should have no limits.  So long as we repeat the idea or sentiment in a normative orbit we avoid this questioning.


The sense of compassion-that would be compassion itself-pure compassion-abstracted or at least wrenched from its Latin historicity: would it leave one feeling at a loss in the face of an impossible demand for compassion (the killer without a conscience, cruelty, asocial dis-passion, the genocidal act: all might provoke feelings of compassion in a struggle with its contraries). Are we less likely to offer compassion where we would not expect to have it returned, for instance, which would thus inscribe it within the limits of an economy of exchange? The difficulty or even impossibility of the pure act of compassion might then be the indicator of compassion in its radical possibility. In this respect it might reside at the foundation of religion (and, as Hegel would have added, at the foundation of the state) as the possibility also of absolute evil.  Then one would be talking again of violence and the supersophisticated machines of the contemporary milieu as well as the violence for instance of tortures and beheaddings.

Best

John Phillips

    

________________________________

From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf of Paul Mercken
Sent: Wed 11/15/2006 8:49 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: Re: <underfire> Evangelical Internationalism


In the context the term appears to be a neologism, referring to the western or (post)christian notion of globalization, as opposed to that of say an African or Asian based world view. The reference to the Roman as standing for the original christian (Saint Paul/Peter?) makes this clear. 
It might help to try and break thought this ethnocentricity by examining the place of compassion in other cultures (Allah as Rachman for instance of further away compassion as the fundamental notion of buddhism).

Paul Mercken 



Op 14-nov-2006, om 20:49 heeft Krosrods Moarquech het volgende geschreven:


	John;
	
	Will you please write more about  "globalatinization"
	
	
	
	This is the first time I encounter this term and would like to know where it comes from, what it really means in order to further understand your point.
	
	Best,
	
	raul
	

	John William Phillips <elljwp at nus.edu.sg> escribió: 

		Melani McAlister's post on evangelical internationalism has, I think, raised the stakes of the discussion somewhat and I'd like to remark (at this stage rather too briefly perhaps) on some of this. If, as Melani says, "the picture is far more complicated than is often acknowledged by those who see all evangelicals as trying to bring about Armageddon," then there are consequences that apply beyond the specific issues (of American evangelical politics) which should allow us to at least rediscover the connections between what we call globalization (or "globalatinization"), conflict, peace, religion and the question of any coherent notion of the secular. "Compassion" (the thing and its concept) has emerged in these discussions as a problem ("the difficulty," as Melani points out, "of finding a 'pure' act of compassion"); if so then this problem cannot be unconnected with the "evangelizing in all directions" that Melani refers to. The war on terror, the war in Iraq, the clash of civilizations: these designate the most evident, urgent, and evidently violent, concerns, yet we ought perhaps to be just as concerned with compassion, sympathy, tolerance, forgiveness, as modes of universalizing global language. When terms like this are evoked in order to solve a problem, to recover some lost "space" or "relation"--a redemption or cessation of some kind--then the possibility of the pure act of compassion is betrayed. It is inscribed within limits, subordinated to the purpose, normalised within measurable parameters. Moreover its simulation--or automatization--the ritualised action--gives rise to an unlimited global spread, the universalization of a norm. 
		
		A "pure" act: I wouldn't be surprised if the "difficulty" of finding the pure act turns out to be the difficulty. The evangelical international would not be "new" in the sense of an event or rupture that intervenes in the naturalised, or universalized modes of global discourse, if only because the christinazation of terms of compassion (forgiveness, tolerance, peace, sufferance) carries on quite independently of whether they are controlled by a Church or a religion in any of its evident forms. The repeatability of (in this milieu) Christianized languages (which both advance and yet threaten the Roman thus causing further internal schizms) allows it to extend beyond any supposed institutional limits and thus already governs anything that we might regard as the secular. In what ways does the "secular," as we understand the concept and as it emerges from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim religions, become an issue in Korea, Japan, Thailand, China, Brazil, Africa? It becomes an issue, probably, in the terms inherited from those religions and now tending towards the universal in normalized (Christianized) language of global politics.
		
		John Phillips
		
		
		
		________________________________
		
		From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf of Melani McAlister
		Sent: Mon 11/13/2006 6:13 AM
		To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
		Subject: Evangelical Internationalism
		
		
		
		November 13, 2006
		
		
		My goal for this post is to lay out some thinking I've been doing lately about US evangelical Christians and their perceptions of the Middle East, which is the topic of my current research. In the book I'm working on, I argue that many observers, including most people on the left, have misunderstood the nature of American evangelical politics, in part because they misconstrue the nature and direction of evangelicals' interest in global issues, starting with Iraq and the Mid East, but also in Africa and elsewhere. The picture is far more complicated than is often acknowledged by those who see all evangelicals as trying to bring about Armageddon.
		
		Yesterday, the _Washington Post_ reported on the narrowing of the "God gap" between Republicans and Democrats in the United States, arguing that the Democrat wins last Tuesday could be traced, in part, to shifts among white evangelical Protestants: in this election, compared to the House races in 2004, the Democrats got 28% of the white evangelical vote. It wasn't a tremendous increase from 2 years ago, but it was something. And it does leave us with the reality that almost 30% of white American evangelicals voted Democratic. African American evangelical numbers were undoubtedly much, much higher. I'm not one to see voting for the Democratic party as the sign of great liberalism, much less liberation, and it certainly was not either for many who cast their ballots. But for those of us opposed to the Iraq war and the "war on terror," there are some genuinely positive changes going on among American evangelicals, including not only some changes in voting patterns, but also a d
		ramatic increase in consciousness of global issues and increasing willingness to fight for certain global social justice issues (i.e. global poverty or environmentalism). But there is also among evangelicals a strong anti-Islamic strain that is actually accentuated and enabled by this globalization, and which positions evangelicals at the center of the deadly rhetoric and politics of the "clash of civilizations." (There are also evangelicals who are opposed to much of what I will trace below, who have positioned themselves in the forefront of "dialogue" with Muslims, although they are a minority. And of course, the "clash" rhetoric is not an evangelical invention; it is a secular concept, popularized by Samuel Huntington, and widely used as political shorthand.)
		
		Missionary work has been no small part of what I'll shorthand as the new evangelical internationalism, with the understanding that internationalism, like cosmopolitanism, is an ambiguous term. It's is important to note, however, that this "missionary work" no longer refers to an activity in which predominantly Western or Americans go off to unilaterally evangelize "native" peoples. Instead, with the rapid emergence what Philip Jenkins has called the "next Christendom" - the numerical and social ascendance of the churches of the global south-- the worlds' Christians evangelize in all directions. The United States remains the single largest "sending" country in the world, but South Korea, with its far smaller population, is second, and Nigeria, Brazil, and many others send large numbers of missionaries. (Well aware of, and often embracing, this globalization, US evangelical culture - through magazines, books, and even music video-- increasingly represents itself as impressivel
		y and necessarily internationalist in its outlook. At a conference recently, one white evangelical man said something to me that would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago: "I can't help thinking about global issues," he insisted. "I'm part of a third world religious group." And it's true that evangelicals are quite active on issues they once avoided or opposed, like increasing US aid for Africa. Maybe this speaks to some of the debate about compassion that we've been having; and, as I hope this post indicates, the difficulty of finding a "pure" act of compassion.)
		
		But Islam has also been a central concern in new missionary work, and in the concomitant "looking outward" of American evangelicals. In the 1990s, global missionary work took on a new intensity when Argentinian evangelist Luis Bush founded the "AD2000 and Beyond" movement, which proclaimed as its goal "a church for every people and a gospel for every person by A.D. 2000." The movement's more specific target was the "10/40 Window," that is, the rectangular region on the world map between 10° and 40° north latitude, encompassing North Africa, most of the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. This, according to activists, was an area where Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism "enslave" a majority of the inhabitants. Of these three religions, he argued Islam was of the greatest concern because it was "reaching out energetically to all parts of the globe; in a similar strategy, we must penetrate (its) heart with the liberating truth of the gospel."
		
		The AD2000 movement took off, and it included a commitment to proselytizing everywhere, including countries where proselytizing is illegal. And that has been the source of a great deal of tension on the ground - particularly when "outside" Christians, be they Americans in Sudan or Brazilians in Iran, come in and start evangelizing local populations. In many of those situations, local Christians are in fact discriminated against or suffer violence, and they are only more endangered with enthusiasts from elsewhere in the world show up to help. It should also be said that evangelical Christians -themselves- are very aware of this issue, as hotly contested debates in church magazines and missionary conferences attest; they are not ignorant of the problems, but disagree about what the strategies for addressing it should be. (Some of the participants in this discussion may be able to speak to specific situations better than I can. As part of my research, however, I have recently t
		raveled to Cairo with a missionary group, and will go to Southern Sudan with another soon.)
		
		In the context of this missionary expansion, stories of persecuted Christians are everywhere. In emails and on websites, in fundraising DVDs or in sermons, American evangelicals hear stories of the sufferings of fellow believers - pastors imprisoned in China, new converts attacked in India or Egypt... story after story, and horrific images, all delivered straight to their inbox. It is crucial to say here that I absolutely support freedom of religion, and while the tensions between religious groups globally are obviously an enormous topic I can only mention here, I am deeply disturbed by what seems to be a decline in the "secular" spaces that allow religion to be practiced freely. But the question is how the struggle is waged, the terms of the debate. In the evangelical community, those tensions have led many American evangelicals, -along with Christians from around the world- to see themselves as -fundamentally- persecuted.
		
		In evangelical culture in the US, the vivid accounts of suffering have led to a common refrain that there is a kind of global conspiracy against Christianity. At the international level, that conspiracy is posited as being one of Islam against Christianity. Domestically, however, the idea of persecution has been enormously productive for American evangelicals, who see themselves as fighting against secularists as well as "radical Islam" (to use the somewhat disingenuous phrase that is common in the US). Drawing on the general, global sense of endangerment and embattlement, the idea of a "war against Christians" in the United States has been used by conservative evangelicals to present every defeat or setback to their agenda (i.e. the Ten Commandments in the courthouse) as an example of persecution.
		
		Let me end this overly long post, though, by pointing out that, whatever else it is, the world view encoded in the missions work and the focus on persecuted Christians, it is -not- a code for white power. The imagined geography here is -not- the West against the Rest (as Samuel Huntington famously put it). Instead, it posits a great multi-racial coalition of Christians around the world, Christians (mostly evangelicals) missionaries and the persecuted Christians who "confront Islam" in their own nations. Nations do not mark the fault lines of this clash; the imagined communities are in key ways transnational and global; they are made up of believers across the globe who see their alliances with each other as more central than national or regional identities. For American evangelicals, it might well mean that ties to American nationalism and even identifications with "Western civilization" are in competition with, and perhaps even/one day subservient to, a new kind of Christia
		n globalism.
		
		
		Melani McAlister
		Associate Professor of American Studies
		and International Affairs
		George Washington Univ.
		mmc at gwu.edu
		
		Mailing address: Office location:
		2108 G. St. NW 609 22nd St. NW
		Washington, DC 20052 Room 203 
		Main office: 202-994-6070 Direct: 994-6073
		fax: 202-994-8651
		
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		Under Fire http://underfire.eyebeam.org
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