<underfire> Religion, Politics, Media, and War
sdv at krokodile.co.uk
sdv at krokodile.co.uk
Thu Nov 16 03:29:19 EST 2006
Mary,
I am sorry but I simply don't understand what the relevance of
describing this version of the christian case is. Perhaps if you could
explain why religion is relevant to describing the actual situation,
rather than implicitly condemning christians simply for functioning as
imperialists, it might be clearer what the relevance is....
steve
Mary Keller wrote:
> Michael,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I have the feeling this could dovetail
> interestingly with Melanie's post, and I need to spend more time with
> hers.
>
> You wrote: 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.
>
>
> This is where I still hear Charles Long in a graduate school seminar
> saying "The World is the Case!"
> In describing the role of ultimate value and the link that violence
> can have for providing a person with a sense of orientation to the
> ultimate value of their existence, I am describing the case.
>
> I think ethicists perform the work of designating the barriers within
> which one "should" act, but I am not an ethicist. I am reporting on
> how I see religious lives at work in the world. In the way that I see
> those lives, they are intimately related to territory, gender, memory,
> and they desire the power of feeling orientated--of attributing
> meaning to their place in the world. A moment's glance at the
> hymnbooks of any Christian denomination finds praise to the Power of
> the Almighty! These are people lining themselves up with power on
> their journey.
>
>> From this perspective the a-theist is signifying the significance of
>> their
>
> location in the world. When someone tells me, as you did, that they
> are an atheist I hear "I don't need God. I don't count on
> transcendentals. I am happy to become worm food. I'm not looking for
> wings." From my perspective the atheist and the theist are both
> exercising the cognitive desire to map out the significance of their
> location in the world.
>
> It is the repressive quality of religious discourse that I think is
> the greatest threat posed by religious traditions. When a discourse
> posits purity, originary states, good/evil dichotomies and builds up
> the forces of repression, that is when I am concerned. I am still
> curious to understand the import of some of Bracha's constructions for
> this reason. If I read her correctly, she is positing the existence of
> a pre-representational, originary moment of compassion that could not
> know war. I will be cheeky here a moment and say, "That scares me."
> Her training is far greater than mine in the world of psychology and
> psychoanalysis and I am sure that I have misunderstood and
> misrepresented her, and for that I apologize.
>
> Sometimes, as with the recently deposed Head of the Evangelical group
> in Colorado who had purchased Meth and had sex with a male prostitute,
> the return of the repressed erupts and we can smile knowingly at the
> hypocricy of it all. The effort to maintain rigid disticntions builds
> up such intense walls of desire that "temptation" is a blessed relief.
> Sometimes the return is too cruel as you have listed. In a late
> capitalist economy the walls of desire are most likely to be crossed
> at the level of individual boundaries, particularly sexual boundaries.
> To transgress the barrier is such sweet pleasure and provides a
> thrilling disorientation called "sin"for thousands of years in the
> Christian traditions.
>
> Some of Christianity is quite refreshing actually--the idea that all
> are born sinners locates one "in" the pool not "above" the pool. It
> allows one to slide and still seek forgiveness. It suggests humans are
> broken, not perfect, but still loved.
>
> Again, I am not promoting the case--just trying to describe the case
> as some Christiant theology provides.
>
>
> The inevitable, internal explosion of repressive discourse leads me to
> believe that the greatest threat to religiously motivated terrorism
> would be to gather as many of the people together for a month with an
> internal committee for the adherence to Truth (or Peace, or Love, or
> Justice). Rigid orientations will undo themselves if given enough rope.
>
> Perhaps this brings us to Melanie's work. The power and strength of an
> evangelical orientation is a force to be reckoned with. It is not the
> force that is the problem, it is the rigidity of the force that is the
> problem.
>
>
>
> 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: Michael H Goldhaber <mgoldh at well.com>
>> Reply-To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
>> To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
>> Subject: Re: <underfire> Religion, Politics, Media, and War
>> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:53:20 -0800
>>
>> 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:
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>>>
>>>
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>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>>
>>
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
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