Non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem. St. Augustine
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his essay, “The Subject and Power,” Foucault defines the exercise of power as “a mode of action upon the actions of others.” The exercise of power can be either positive or negative. Considered from a positive point of view, it involves the “governing”—understood in the broadest sense as training, shaping, or directing toward a goal or set of goals—of human beings. In these types of power relations, Foucault insists that we are dealing with relations among free subjects. For example, he says,
Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized. Where the determining factors saturate the whole, there is no relationship of power; slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains. (In this case it is a question of a physical relationship of constraint) (“The Subject and Power,” 790).
Power relations presuppose relations among free subjects. One cannot have a power relation with an inanimate object or with a non-human animal. Thus, it seems that power relations can obtain only among human beings because they possess volitional and rational capacities that set them apart from other animals. However, Foucault recognizes that certain social configurations (e.g., chattel slavery) create a situation in which human freedom is so constrained that for all practical purposes it does not exist. However, because Foucault qualifies the kind of slavery he has in view, his position on slavery and power relations is more complicated than it appears on the surface. Foucault’s claim is that “slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains.” When a slave’s body is bound, and the possibilities for basic physical mobility much less resistance and creative responses are so restricted, he is no longer considered free. Since the (physical) freedom of the slave has been annulled, the relationship is not one of power but of physical constraint. If this is correct, the description does not seem to correspond to historical instances of slavery. Slaves in the antebellum period were of no use to their masters unless they were “free” to work. That is, the slaves were not confined to prison cells or bound in chains for the duration of their enslavement; rather, they were forced to work in the fields for sixteen hours days, to manage the master’s household, and to do numerous other tasks that required physical mobility. Thus, it seems that American slaves were involved at least intermittently in something like a power relation with their masters. This is not to deny that they were at times bound physically (e.g. for beatings); however, the majority of their service for the master necessitated an unbound (physical) existence. In addition, as many slave narratives attest, various forms of resistance were possible within these the constraints of the slave system. For example, slaves often interrupted work routines, stole from their masters, had love affairs with the mistress, attempted to escape, and even physically confronted their masters. Though these and other forms of resistance and response were incredibly risky and could cost the slave his or her life, they were genuine possibilities of action which the slave could choose. One wonders, however, how effective the majority of actions were in terms of social (racialized) structure as a whole. Did interrupting work routines really change the way a slave was viewed in the society? No. These actions, though no doubt important for the slave’s psychological well-being, did not overturn the racial and other mechanisms embedded within the society. These kinds of actions and responses for the most part seem analogous to what Foucault describes in “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” as “tricks which never brought about a reversal of the situation” (12).
Continuing the passage above and having just described a physical relation of constraint, Foucault says,
Consequently, there is no face-to-face confrontation of power and freedom, which are mutually exclusive (freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised), but a much more complicated interplay. In this game freedom may well appear as the condition for the exercise of power (at the same time its precondition, since freedom must exist for power to be exerted, and also its permanent support, since without the possibility of recalcitrance, power would be equivalent to a physical determination (“The Subject and Power,” 790).
What is unclear to me about this passage is why Foucault says that “freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised.” His conclusion seems to apply to the situation of the slave in chains. That is, power and freedom have no possibility for confrontation because the bound slave is not free; there is no freedom to confront. But why then does he add that freedom and power are “mutually exclusive” and that “freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised”? Repeatedly, he emphasizes that both sides of a power relation must be free (at least to some degree). Thus, freedom is the condition for the possibility of power relations to obtain; freedom makes possible the maintenance of power relations. Perhaps what he means is that in power relationships, e.g., a pedagogical relationship, one side has to willingly take the subordinate role (the student). The student is not forced to learn from the professor, but places himself willing under the professor’s direction. Thus, from the student’s side, when the professor has the “lead” role, the student’s freedom is necessarily limited—but limited by choice. Such a relationship, if it remains positive and productive, does not translate into a dominating relationship, as the student could at any time decide not to listen to the professor’s advice, or s/he could choose to stop attending the professor’s lectures. Also, it seems that the professor must be open to correction by the student. When the professor accepts the correction or challenge to his/her argument, thesis, etc., the student then exerts power (in the Foucauldian sense), which results in a reduction of the professor’s freedom. If this is what Foucault is saying, are we then dealing with a kind of zero-sum game between power and freedom? Foucault does describe the reciprocal relationship between power and freedom as a kind of ongoing provocation and struggle.
The relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to submit cannot, therefore, be separated. The crucial problem of power is not that of voluntary servitude (how could we seek to be slaves?). At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to speak of an ‘agonism’[1]—of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle, less of a face-to-face confrontation which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation (790).
Notes
[1] “Foucault’s neologism is based on the Greek meaning ‘a combat.’ The term would hence imply a physical contest in which the opponents develop a strategy of reaction and of mutual taunting, as in a wrestling match.—Translator’s note” (p. 790).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In this post, I revisit (by way of Heller’s essay) Foucault’s articulation of a power-diagram and discuss the differences between tactics and strategies. Heller provides a helpful explanation of Foucault’s seemingly paradoxical claim, “power relations are both intentional and non-subjective.” First, Heller reminds us that a pre-existing power-diagram must be in place in order for power to be exercised. With this in view, Heller adds,
While the decision to exercise power is always intentional, the mechanisms of power that individuals use to exercise power are inherently non-subjective, because they do not depend on the existence of those individuals for their own existence. Power mechanisms, because they are structured and reproduced by a multiplicity of power-relations that are not reducible to the individuals who exercise them, are necessarily incapable of being controlled by any particular individual (“Power, Subjectification, and Resistance in Foucault,” 85).
Because the complex interplay of power relations which form power mechanisms cannot be reduced to the individual subjects who exercise power through them, they in effect take on a life of their own. In this sense, we are all caught in the power-diagram machine and no one individual (or group) can possibility control or direct the flow of power in a particular power-diagram. This state of affairs, however, does not rule out the fact that some individuals and groups within a power-diagram do “control more of a diagram’s mechanisms of power than others.” Nor is it the case that subjects, because they are “located” within the machine, are unable to execute intentional and volitional actions. In light of their function and weight within a particular societal formation, certain groups do occupy more influential positions within the whole.[1] Thus, it is incorrect to label Foucault’s theory of power “pluralist.” As Heller observes, “[p]ower may indeed be everywhere, but that does not mean power is equally distributed—it means only that absolute power (economic, political, cultural, etc.) is a structural and thus a practical impossibility” (86). In short, Foucault claims that power is “the value-natural medium of social-change” (Heller, 87). The exercise of power can of course be oppressive, but it can also be utilized for social reformation and to achieve other positive collective goals.
Non-subjectivity arises not only as a result of the irreducibility of the various mechanisms of power to the individuals within a society, but an “individual’s use of power can be non-subjective” as well due to the “inevitable disjunction between an action’s intention and its actual effect” (87). For example, I may have a clear understand of my own intentions in connection with a particular action—supporting an international humanitarian group which aids the poor. However, I have no control whatsoever over how this organization applies my gift and how their actions “on the ground” impact the community as a whole, as well as how the recipients’ perception of Western humanitarian endeavors are affected by the activities carried out by this particular organization. In short, my intentional action—giving money to an organization to help the poor—bears within itself a number of potentially positive or negative unintentional social and political consequences. According to Heller, Foucault uses the terms “tactics” and “strategies” to highlight whether or not an action is intentional.
“[T]actics” are the intentional actions carried out in determinate political contexts by individuals and groups; “strategies” are the unintentional—but institutionally and socially regularized—effects produced by the non-subjective articulation of different individual and group tactics. Both tactics and strategies involve power, because both create social change; only strategies, however, involve non-subjective power (87-88).
So why do certain institutions whose unintentional effects are clearly out of sync with the original intentional aims continue to exist (e.g., the modern prison system)? Foucault’s answer: because certain groups within a particular diagram benefit (economically and otherwise) from the institution.
Notes
[1] See Foucault’s, “The Eye of Power,” p. 156.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his essay, “Power, Subjectification and Resistance in Foucault,” Kevin Jon Heller argues against common misreadings of central notions in Foucault’s thought. For example, many scholars claim that Foucault’s understanding of power-relations leaves us with a wholly passive subject, in effect a non-agent unable to resist oppressive cultural, political, economic and other impositions. In order to counter these and related misinterpretations of Foucault, Heller engages in a detailed exposition of the following Foucauldian themes: power and the exercise of power, intentionality, power-diagrams, the difference between tactics and strategies, the process of subjectification, resistance and freedom.
Heller begins by unpacking Foucault’s seemingly paradoxical statement that “power relations are both intentional and non-subjective” (79). As Heller explains, many scholars have focused exclusively on the latter part of his statement and have failed to take seriously that Foucault acknowledges intentional, conscious actions on the part of subjects involved in various power relations. Anthony Gidden, whose conclusion is shared by many of Foucault’s critics, claims that for Foucault Power is the real subject of history (80). Interestingly, as Heller points out, the statements that follow Foucault’s aforementioned statement make clear that he does not see power as the real agent of history. For example, Foucault says,
If in fact [power relations] are intelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that “explains” them, but because they are imbued, through and through, with calculation: there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims or objectives (History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, 94-95).
For Foucault, individuals can function as either subjects who exercise power or objects upon which power is exercised.
According to Heller, in Foucault’s genealogical accounts of disciplinary practices and bio-power as presented in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, he provides numerous examples of subjects exercising intentionality to accomplish various aims and goals. For instance, in Discipline and Punish, he explains how capitalists devised new surveillance techniques in response to the need to supervise an ever-growing labor force (DP, 174-75). Likewise, Foucault describes how new, modern “economies” of punishment were developed. In contrast to the ancient regime in which the exercise of power was centralized and explicitly linked to a personal monarch, the new economy of punishment created diffusive power networks, allowing the flow of power a more extensive reach as well as a more intensive impact upon the social body. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault explains how in the 18th century sex gradually became a discourse and how this “led to the intentional transformation of pedagogical institutions”—transformations that extended even to the architectural design of dormitories, classrooms and classroom facilities (Heller, 82). Given these and other similar examples, Heller states,
None of these 18th-century transformations—in factories and workshops, in the legal and police apparatuses, in military and naval hospitals, in educational institutions—can be understood without taking seriously the idea that power-relations change, for Foucault, as a result of the intentional exercise of power by specific, historically-situated individuals and groups. Those transformations did not take place behind the backs of the capitalists, magistrates, police officers, architects, and educators whose interests they promoted; those individuals were the subjects of those transformations, not their passive objects. Intentionality is not, for Foucault, simply an anachronistic humanist illusion (83).
Next, Heller addresses the question, what is power? Foucault gives a helpful, multifaceted answer to this question in his essay, “Subject and Power.” As he explains,
The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others. Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with or without a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a concentrated or diffused form, does not exist. Power exists only when it is put into action, […] In effect, what defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action which does not act directly and immediately on others. Instead it acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future. […] A power relationship can only be articulated on the basis of two elements which are each indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship: that “the other” (the one over whom power is exercised) be thoroughly recognized and maintained to the very end as a person who acts: and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up (788-789).
Heller summarizes Foucault’s notion of power as “transformative capacity, the ability of an individual to influence and modify the actions of other individuals in order to realize certain tactical goals” (83). Power relationships are the condition for the possibility of change, whether personal or societal. If the relationship is one of total domination or controlled by violence such that one side has no freedom and cannot act in any way upon the dominating partner—then it is no longer a power relationship. Thus, for Foucault, power and resistance, as Heller discusses later, are correlative concepts. Heller links the misreadings of Foucault’s understanding of power to the inability of scholars to “free themselves from the conceptual paradigms of conventional social theory (mainstream or Marxist), which has always equated power with ‘repression’” (83). For Foucault, who simply follows the meaning of the French verb, pouvoir (to enable), from which the noun form is derived, power has a positive aspect and creates possibilities for change. Of course, change can be for the better or the worse; however, Foucault’s use of the term should not be reduced only to the negative aspect.
Having explained what Foucault means by power, Heller then turns to the issue of how an individual exercises power. All the various economic, political, institutional and other structures that constitute a particular society make possible the exercise of power. As Heller notes, “Foucault’s term for the totality of these structurally-determined differentiations—what he normally calls the ‘mechanisms’ of power (DP, 28; SP, 786)—is the ‘diagram’ (DP, 28)” (85). For Foucault, mechanisms of power and the exercise of power exist in a dialectical relationship. “[T]he exercise of power continually transforms a diagram’s mechanisms of power, yet is only possible through the utilization of those same pre-existing mechanisms” (85). As power is exercised by intentional subjects or as it operates through unintended consequences arising from the overlap and interplay of complex, dynamic mechanisms within the totality, the various mechanisms themselves which constitute a particular diagram are modified. From the other side of the dialectical relation, social change and other transformations, which involve the exercise of power, presuppose the specific pre-existing networks or mechanisms. With these things in view, we can better understand Foucault’s statement, “[e]very relationship of power puts into operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and its results” (“The Subject and Power,” 792).
In part II, I shall discuss further Foucault’s idea of a power-diagram, as well as, his distinction between tactics and strategies and how intentionality relates (or doesn’t relate) to each.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In Frederick Douglass’s first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, he describes his first six months with “master” Covey, a well-known “slave-breaker” to whom he had been sent due to his so-called “disciplinary” issues. Douglass was about sixteen years old during his stay with Covey, and in spite of significant obstacles, had learned to read. Though his literacy opened up new worlds for him and allowed him to express himself and even to know himself more profoundly, it also brought about a deep sense of loss—a realization of all that he could have been had he been a (white) freeman rather than a (black) slave. In other words, Douglass’s literacy indeed produced in him a kind of freedom within the oppressive, racialized society in which he lived, but it wasn’t sufficient—after all under the white gaze, no matter how educated he became, he remained a mere thing, property, chattel. The insufficiency of this “inner” freedom is seen in Douglass’s famous account of his fight with Covey.
When Douglass’s former owner, Thomas Auld, could no longer deal with Douglass, he sent him to Covey. Douglass describes his time with Covey as follows: “the first six months, of that year … scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from a sore back” (p. 56).[1] He then recounts how Covey worked him day and night and in all weather conditions and how at last Covey’s “discipline” broke him.
I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (p. 58).
Although Douglass had attained a level of freedom through literacy—an accomplishment that was itself an “argument” against the white hegemonic discourse which claimed that blacks were subhuman, incapable of “higher” rational reflection, and thus in need of (white) masters—and thus had within himself moved from an animal-like existence to a more human existence, he as an embodied being was still in bonds and subject to the (irrational) whims of white society. In fact, Douglass indicates in the passage above, that Covey’s “disciplinary regime” (i.e. torture and inhumane work routines) transformed him back into a beast-like existence.
After one particularly brutal and near-death beating at the hands of Covey, Douglass decides to flee. He returns to his former owner, Mr. Auld, who rather mercilessly commands him to go back to Covey. As Douglass’s “dark night of slavery” continues, he contemplates suicide, living in the woods until he eventually dies for lack of food etc., or returning to Covey. At last he decides to go back to Covey’s plantation, knowing that a bloody beating awaits him. As Douglass is climbing over a fence to enter Covey’s field, Covey runs out to meet him with whip in hand. Douglass manages to escape again and hides in the woods where he meets another slave named Sandy. He and Sandy discuss his situation, and Sandy convinces him that he must return to Covey’s house. However, before Douglass departs, Sandy gives Douglass a root with supposed magical, protective powers. Sandy claims that if Douglass carries this root on his ride side, Covey will not come near him. Douglass is highly skeptical but takes the root to please Sandy. Douglass heads out a second time, this time returning on Easter Sunday. Once Douglass enters his master’s property, he passed Covey, who, as a good Southern “Christian” is on his way to church. To Douglass’s surprise, Covey interacts positively with him, which makes Douglass think that there might be something to Sandy’s root. However, Monday is a different story; with Monday, we’re back to business as usual. While laboring that morning in a stable, Douglass catches sight of Covey approaching with a long rope in hand. Covey tackles Douglass and attempts to bind him with the rope. Rather than remain a docile slave, Douglass decides to resist and fights back. “At this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose” (p. 64). Douglass’s response took Covey by surprise, and Douglass could see for the first time fear in Covey’s eyes. The two struggled for over two hours until Covey finally gave up.
If we bring Douglass’s narrative (as a hermeneutical “tool”) into conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, some rather interesting insights surface. After Douglass’s act of physical resistance or more strongly put, his act of violence, Covey never again physically abuses Douglass. Here contra Hegel’s account of the docile slave who cared more for his life than his freedom, the slave is willing to risk his life for freedom. Douglass himself interpreted the fight with Covey as a decisive moment in his struggle for freedom.
The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me (p. 65).
Here it seems that something beyond intellectual freedom (i.e. literacy and what I’ve called “inner freedom”) was required for Douglass’s “resurrection.” As an embodied, political being, Douglass’s experience of freedom was necessarily limited so long as Covey and the socio-political slavery apparatus had dominion over his body. According to Douglass’s account, some kind of physical resistance or force was needed not only for his own sense of freedom but also so that Covey might recognize him as an Other with volitional and rational faculties capable of producing deliberate and purposeful acts of resistance. (Though my knowledge of Marx is quite limited, I suppose that a Marxist would be delighted with this reading). My final point is to highlight the fact that in Douglass’s narrative, the slave does not gain freedom or bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship through his labor (The Marxist would not, however, find this point delightful). To the contrary, Douglass says that the excruciating labor he endured under Covey’s supervision crushed his spirit—“ I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (p. 58). Although acquiring skills through labor does not bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship, the master’s identity is (as Hegel claims) dialectically related to the slave’s. How so? Covey chooses not turn Douglass in for a public “whipping.” Douglass’s explanation for Covey’s seemingly inexplicable decision is that Covey’s reputation as a slave-breaker was on the line. He failed to break Douglass, and to turn Douglass in would be to admit that failure and lose his reputation. In short, Douglass worked within the power mechanisms of an oppressive slave society, and his resistance proved successful on multiple counts. Power relations, as Foucault emphasizes, are not merely oppressive. Rather, when power relations obtain, genuine resistance is possible.
Notes
[1] Douglass Autobiographies, ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: The Library of America, 1994.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Does a study of the NT itself show that that the apostles unequivocally believed that Christ’s return was imminent in their lifetime? Is it the case that as a result of this belief, the apostles and their early followers lived a radically devout life of prayer, contemplation etc. and likewise de-emphasized “worldly” (for lack of a better word) endeavors? Although this interpretation has been at times accepted and promoted by the Church, I am not convinced that NT itself sustains such a position. It seems to me that one could make a strong case for a development of the early Church’s view on eschatology within the Pauline letters themselves.
As current Pauline scholarship emphasizes, St. Paul’s eschatological orientation was rooted in his Jewish, Pharisaic past. Christians were not the only ones who looked forward to the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment—the Pharisees did as well. Their position was rooted in the OT, in God’s promise of a glorious future (e.g., 2 Sam 7, Isaiah). St. Paul, already operating within this Jewish eschatological, apocalyptic framework, reinterprets the schema in light of the Christ-event. That is, with the death and resurrection of Christ—the key Christian eschatological event and new “hermeneutical lens”—the future age is in part brought into the present. Put slightly differently, in the Christ-event and the experience of the Holy Spirit, God’s followers experience prolepticly the future age. So the eschaton of Jewish expectation had already arrived, but it is arriving in two stages: stage one is the Christ-event, the first coming, and the second coming is the second stage. Hope then becomes the fundamental virtue connected with the Christian eschatological vision. This hope is not a fleeting, sentimental hope, but a hope grounded in the reality of the Christ-event. In short, St. Paul has transformed a traditional Jewish eschatological schema Christologically—the eschaton has become partially present now, and the gift of Spirit is God’s assurance of better things to come (2 Cor 5:5).
With this brief background in mind, I can return to my claim of development or a revised eschatological view within the NT, particularly in St. Paul (the undisputed letters) and other “Pauline” texts. Most NT scholars today consider 1 Thessalonians to be the first of St. Paul’s epistles (c. 50-1 A.D.). An interesting way to read the letter—not “the” way but a way—is to focus on the triad of theological virtues mentioned twice in the letter. The triadic order in this letter, in contrast to, 1 Corinthians 13 where we have faith, hope and love, is faith, love and hope. The last item in the list becomes thematic and is related to the specific epistolary occasion of the letter. (For example, the Corinthians had all kinds of divisions within their community; they were puffed up with pride etc. and needed to be reminded about the importance of love). The situation is quite different in 1 Thessalonians. In this letter, hope is thematized and is closely related to eschatology, as eschatological themes permeate the letter. As a pastor of a newly formed (mostly) Gentile flock, St. Paul wanted to communicate to this fledgling Christian community the importance of eschatology to the Christian life.
There are many examples from the epistle that I could cite to show that eschatology is a major theme of the letter. However, let me mention two very important passages. First, 1 Thess 1:9-10, which reads:
For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (NRSV).
Here we may infer that St. Paul was likely addressing a largely Gentile Christian audience, as he states that they “turned to God from idols.” This, of course, would not apply to monotheistic Jews who had “converted,” as they already worshiped the true and living God, YHWH. Then St. Paul mentions the second coming (“to wait for his Son from heaven”) and the “wrath” to come—again, eschatological themes. Scholars have postulated that verses 9-10 are perhaps a summary of what St. Paul preached when he first visited Thessalonica. So he is reminding these new Gentile converts of what he taught them previously. Since they did not have an eschatological framework (as the Jews did), they needed to be reminded of the significance of eschatology for Christian existence.
Second, we have 1 Thess 4:13-5:11, which is the eschatological “heart” of the letter. Here St. Paul is addressing concerns of the local community. Because some within their community have died, questions have arisen regarding the status of dead Christians. Was there something wrong with them? Are they second-class? Etc. These questions then naturally raise concerns about the parousia. Perhaps this early group did in fact have an imminent expectation of the parousia. If so, they were now unsure as to the status and meaning of fellow Christians who had died prior to the parousia. St. Paul has been made aware of their concerns and is responding to their questions in this letter.
The literary framing of the letter is by way of the aforementioned triadic inclusion of faith, love and hope (the first instance occurs at 1:3 and the final instance at 5:8). Then if you turn to the middle, exhortation part of the letter, you find an incomplete triad at 3:6. Here St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians regarding their faith and love, but hope is not mentioned. Why? The Thessalonians are struggling with this Christian virtue, and St. Paul as a pastor wants to encourage them. He tells them specifically grieve, but don’t “grieve as others who have no hope.” The resurrection and the coming parousia[1] are sources of Christian hope, and St. Paul wants them to draw from these sources and to encourage one another with them.
Here I enter into highly “problematic” territory, but philosophers tend to do this, so here I go! The authorship of 2 Thessalonians, of course, is disputed. There are, in my opinion, very good arguments on both sides. Given that I am not a NT scholar etc. etc., my personal view regarding the authorship is open—perhaps it was St. Paul, or perhaps it was written by a later Pauline follower under the pseudonym, “Paul.” Either way, what interests me is the development of the eschatological views presented in 2 Thessalonians. Here, particularly in chapter two, “Paul” addresses concerns of false reports that “the Day of the Lord” has already occurred. “Paul” denies that it has come and says that certain signs must happen prior to the end (2 Thess 2:2-9). (How does one reconcile this claim with the statement in 1 Thess 5 that the day of the Lord will come like a “thief in the night?”). Likewise, in 2 Thess “Paul” exhorts rather sternly those in the community who have stopped working (3:6-15). Why have they stopped working and are now idle? Presumably, because they believe that the end is near; thus, “furthering” their career is pointless. There is, however, no clear indication in the text for that inference. Nonetheless, given the eschatological themes linking 1 and 2 Thess, it is a plausible suggestion. At any rate, it does appear that some kind of revision has taken place regarding the imminent return of Christ. The parousia could still happen at any time (now only following certain “signs”), but a space has opened for the possibility that the event may occur in the distant future, a future beyond the life-span of the early Christians.
I’d really like to hear from my NT scholar friends and readers. Please send your thoughts/comments!
Notes
[1] Regarding the
parousia, Thessalonians seem to have many questions—questions that focus on orderings of end time events; see, for example, 4:14-15 where St. Paul’s response indicates that he was responding to some very specific questions.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Rowan Williams’ little book on the church, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the historical and theological complexities of the continuity and discontinuity of the Church. As usual, Williams does not offer overly facile solutions, nor does he tell a triumphalist story in which the Church marches forward untainted, having never soiled herself along the way. Rather, Williams admits the various failures of the Church—from the early fathers 
misogynistic tales to historic Protestantism’s “embarrassing record of collusion with uncritical nationalism” (73) to the Church’s overall failure on the issue of slavery. Nonetheless, Williams does not leave one in despair. He emphasizes throughout that the Church is founded and sustained by divine action, particularly one divine action which is both “a set of historical events and an eternal act, the self-giving of the Son to the Father in the Trinity” (96). If the survival and resilience of the Church depended solely on humans, the story would have ended some time ago. Thankfully, it doesn’t; yet, Christians must be active and continue to put themselves, the Church and the world into question. We must study our past, our tradition, our Scriptures, (and, as St. Thomas taught us, truth wherever it is found) bringing to light our failures and learning how to translate what is true, good and beautiful into our present contexts. Williams, attentive to the interplay between historical contingencies and the ways in which history “makes” us on the one hand, and the reality of transcultural (yet contextually-applied) truths on the other, denies that we are stuck in a hermetically-sealed present or unable to break into a hermetically-sealed past. As he explains,
To engage with the Church’s past is to see something of the Church’s future. If we relate to the past as something that settles everything for us, something whose meaning is utterly and finally plain, it is to treat the texts of the past as closing off history, putting an end to our self-awareness as historical persons involved in unpredictable growth. If we dismiss the past as unintelligible, if we read its texts as closed off from us by their alien setting, we refuse to see how we have ourselves been formed in history; we pretend that history has not yet begun. And in the specifically theological context, we shall on either count be denying that we can only grow in company, can only develop because summoned by a word that is not ours. That word is made concrete and immediate for us in the human responses that have constituted the Church’s history; all of this has made our present believing selves possible. T.S. Elliot, faced with the glib modern claim that ‘we know so much more than our ancestors’, riposted, ‘Yes; and they are what we know.’ As was said in the first chapter, we must become aware of our hidden debts for who we now are (94-95).
If only Williams’ critics would actually read his works with care.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In the middle of a paragraph discussing how sex gradually became a discourse, Foucault writes,
Silence itself–the thing one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers–is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies. There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p. 27).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
A commenter recently asked a good question related to this post on Fanon. The person asks whether Kant’s categorical imperative might militate against Carter’s accusation that Kant manifests a “possessive-tyrannical disposition” in his writings. Since this is a natural question that anyone who has at least some familiarity with Kant might raise, I have decided to post my (slightly edited) response.
I assume you have in mind Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative which states that we must always treat human beings as ends and never as means. On the surface, of course, this sounds great. However, when you place it within Kant’s larger philosophical schema, it is problematic (at least for the Christian who rejects racism and all forms of racialized essentialism). As Robert Bernasconi has shown, Kant’s hierarchical view of race, in which whites are superior and all other “races” inferior to various degrees, does not sit well with his cosmopolitanism, unless one is willing to admit that the only true, fully autonomous and hence free individuals are a particular group of white males. Also, the Christian claims that humans ought not to be instrumentalized because they are created in God’s image, which is of course a claim based on divine revelation. Neither in prelapsarian paradise nor in the eschaton are human relationships characterized by domination. Slavery, then can be understood as something that comes about due the Fall. In his text, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant speaks of the “kingdom of ends,” which refers to the moral universe created by rational humans willing the moral law. (The moral law is willed from “pure reason”). Kant claims that in this moral universe/kingdom of ends, each rational person is equal and sovereign. People are equal in so far as they will the moral law in accordance with reason, and they are sovereign because by doing so, they each contribute to the building of this “kingdom” or “moral universe.” From this idea of a kingdom of ends, Kant comes up with a variation on his first formulation of the categorical imperative. This version reads as follows, “For all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves.” Here Kant explicitly articulates the sovereignty and dignity of the (rational) individual, and he states that we are always to treat others as ends not as mere means. Again, on the surface this sounds great. After all in this formulation of the categorial imperative, Kant declares that we must never use other people or treat them as tools for our purposes because to do so is to disallow their participation as equal, sovereign individuals in the moral universe and likewise to deny their dignity. Yet, in Kant’s writings on race he indicates that Indians, Africans and more or less any non-European (white) ethnic group can in fact be used as tools. According to Kant’s estimation, American Indians are “uneducable,” the “race of Negroes can educated, but only to the education of servants,” Hindus are “educable to arts and not to sciences. They will never achieve abstract concepts”; however, “the race of whites contains all motives and talents in itself” (of course he means white males of a certain sort) [Menschenkunde 1781/82]. In short, Kant’s problematic views on race are in serious tension with his cosmopolitanism and his ethical views, and the more I study the literature “from the underside of modernity” the more I believe his position as a whole to be un-salvable. For an excellent theological critique of Kant’s view of race, see chapter two of J. Kameron Carter’s book, Race: A Theological Critique.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon presents his two-fold schemata, the historico-racial (schéma historico-racial) and epidermal racial schemata (schéma épidermique racial) as a corrective to Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema (schéma corporel). In brief, Fanon’s historico-racial schema brings to light the historical contingencies and mythological narratives imposed upon blacks, whereas the racial-epidermal schema speaks to the sedimentation of the so-called “black essence.” In other words, once the (white-imposed) narrative of what it means to be a black person, which includes the various meanings that have been assigned to phenotypic differences, has become fixed, ossified and even naturalized in the social consciousness, various “scientific” discourses, and cultural and legal practices, the black essence has been “successfully” created.[1]
When the transition to the racial-epidermal schema takes place, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythological narrative as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection. Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[2] As soon as the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged. In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata point to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe.[3] These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.[5]
When the white mythology has its way, it gives birth to black subjugation, which has both an external and an internal dimension. The external aspect is socio-political in nature and is often manifest in discriminatory legislation and unequal educational and employment opportunities. The internal aspect comes when the black person can no longer bear the weight of the white alienating gaze and internalizes the narrative. To return to Foucault’s metaphor, when the black person breaks down and accepts the white mythos, there is a sense in which the panoptic surveillance is no longer needed.[6] In Fanon’s description of his self-fragmenting descent, he draws attention to the sense of powerlessness that he felt in a colonialized context wherein mis-recognition by the white other was the norm. “Disoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[7]
Fanon is cognizant, in other words, of the black person’s participation in this already-given white-scripted history. His statements, “I transported myself” and “gave myself up as an object,” acknowledge his active involvement in accepting the white mythology. Although this particular act is negative, it nonetheless highlights the fact that the black person in a colonialized or similarly oppressive context is in reality not a mere res, a thing determined from the outside and lacking genuine freedom. Fanon, in fact, makes numerous statements affirming his freedom—a freedom that involves his ability to creatively re-script his own narrative and to refuse to be shackled by a pre-given white narrative.
I find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself: the right to demand human behavior from the other. And one duty: the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom. […] I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction. I must constantly remind myself that the real leap consists of introducing invention into life.[8]
These declarations in no way undermine Fanon’s schemata, particularly his account of the coming-into-being of a fixed black essence once the racial-epidermal schema has been established. This is the case because his genealogy of racial sedimentation (i.e., black essentialism) or the giving way of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema to the racial-epidermal schema is not a necessary but a contingent event, which qua contingent can (in theory) be undone or at least significantly dismantled.
In other words, Fanon’s agonized cry of alienation, although genuine and intensely felt, should not be interpreted as a despairing last word. Rather, Fanon calls for a counter-narrative which refuses to be frozen in a white-scripted past.
Notes
[1] On the movement and interpretation of Fanon’s schemata, I concur with Weate’s analysis, which characterizes the racial epidermal schema as “a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation” (“Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 174). Weate goes on to discuss the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon’s attempt to trace a “genealogy of racial essentialism” (p. 173). As he explains, “[b]y marking the two stages of the ‘historico-racial’ and then the ‘racial-epidermal’, he is therefore contesting the view that essentialism, and in particular black essentialism, is grounded in a biological problematic. For Fanon, the essentialization of blackness is the product of a concealed perversion of history. It is only once this concealment is consolidated (through epidermalization) that questions concerning the
biological ground of race arise. The distinction he makes between the two stages of schematization or epistemic enframing therefore allow biologistic discourses around race to be seen as phenomena derivative upon a prior perversion of history that is subsequently concealed” (
Ibid., pp. 174-75).
[2] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
[3] See, e.g., Fanon’s critique of Monsieur Mannoni in chapter four of Black Skin, White Masks. Contra Mannoni’s claims, Fanon draws attention to the fact that the very “structure of South Africa is a racist structure” (p. 68).
[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.
[5] In his chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Fanon recounts his experience on a train of being “fixed” by a white other—an other which happened to be a child who had already been habituated to see blacks as defined by the white imagination. As the child’s refrain, “Look! A Negro!” crescendoed forth and came to a close with a fearful questioning of the “Negro’s” next move, Fanon not only experienced the gaze of the white other, he also began to see himself through the white gaze. See Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[6] See Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 176. See also, Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92. Again, Foucault’s account of the effects of being constantly seen but never seeing share similarities with the experience of a black person in a white-dominating context. “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects” (Discipline and Punish, p. 203).
[7] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[8] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 203-4. Fanon goes on to say, “[t]he density of History determines none of my acts. I am my own foundation. And it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom” (p. 205).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
As Carter shows, Maximus the Confessor’s Christological vision has much to contribute to contemporary 
discussions on race, both theological and otherwise. Love for Maximus is central to all actions, divine and human. The “otherness” of creation came into being not by necessity but through unconstrained divine love and generosity. Human beings, though the pinnacle of God’s creation because they image or reflect God in a unique way (imago Dei), chose to turn from their Creator, which resulted in a triple alienation. Instead of intimate communion with God and one another, we experience discord, fragmentation and even hostility. Instead of a respectful, cultivating relationship with the created order, we manipulate nature, giving little or no thought to its telos and purpose in God’s cosmic plan of redemption. With God no longer our primary love, our “love” becomes self-focused and tyrannical. This misdirected love is transposed into a dominating, monotone key in which polyphonic harmonies have no place. Carter, in his appropriation of Maximus’ reflections on love, argues that distorted self-love (philautia) has the propensity to harden into a disposition of ‘possession’.[1] If such a disposition becomes entrenched in the social consciousness, we have at least one of the essential ingredients for large-scale mechanisms of oppression.[2] Carter believes that certain core teachings of the Enlightenment, especially those traceable to Kant, not only gravitate toward the possessive-tyrannical disposition, but are also integrally related to the emergence of various racialized mechanisms of modernity.[3]
For instance, in a colonialized situation, ‘philautia functions as a substitute for a doctrine of creation inasmuch as the self-constituting I creates a reality and draws all else into it by making it utility or assigning it a use value in the world of the I.’[4] Bringing Maximus’ theological critique to bear on the modern problem of racism, Carter interprets the modern self, driven by its misdirected self-love and armed with its Enlightenment, pseudo-scientific teachings of racial hierarchies, as a variation of Adamic transgression but translated onto the socio-political level. That is, just as Adam (and Eve) unsatisfied with their sub-creator roles in God’s story, sought to become narrators of their own story, so too the Enlightenment discourse on race offers its own narrative of origins and human destiny. This narrative, however, is rigidly monochromatic. When taken up by certain misguided Christians, it transmutes into “a narrative of how human beings came to be bearers of race and how within this narrative whiteness became theologically supreme as a modality of religious dominance and world commerce.”[5]
As both ancient (Maximus) and modern (Fredrick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr.) Christian witnesses proclaim, the Christian narrative, which begins with creation out of love and climaxes with re-creation through the resurrected life of Jesus Christ, is not inherently a discourse of oppression. It does, however, involve suffering, the shedding of blood and even violent death. The Christian scriptural account does not present us with stories of perfect human beings. Rather, it portrays humans—including those who are part of God’s covenant people—in their failings and achievements, in their faithfulness and recalcitrance. Perhaps the most inexplicable part of the story is why a completely sufficient, content Trinitarian God willingly decides not only to begin and to continue the story but likewise to enter into the story and to assign himself a seemingly tragic role in which he suffers and dies at the hands of those whom he came to save. Even so, when the Word became incarnate and made himself vulnerable to the vicissitudes and strains of human existence—misunderstanding, rejection, and even death-by-crucifixion—he proclaimed to the world that his Lordship was not the way of colonization or domination. Rather, this omnipotent Lord set aside his privileges and became a slave, dying a slave’s death yet simultaneously conquering death, of which his resurrection is the definitive sign.[6]
With the incarnation and humiliation of Christ, the corporeal schema and the master/slave dialectic are undone, nullified and ultimately replaced by an inexplicable ‘logic’ of love wherein, paradoxically, a seemingly tragic death opens the way to life. Christ’s particular, poor, Jewish flesh becomes, in Carter’s words, ‘the site of God’s wealth,’ the place where ethnic, class and even gender ‘binaries’ no longer serve oppressive purposes.[7] In other words, Christ’s flesh becomes the place where human diversity finds unity—a unity that saves difference. We see this unity-in-diversity in the New Testament itself. For example, Jewish Christians are not forced to relinquish their Jewish heritage and practices, though both must be re-interpreted in light of the Christ-event. Nor are Gentile Christians compelled to become Jews and adhere to traditional Jewish customs (e.g., circumcision). Rather, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh opens the way for all to participate in Trinitarian life. Unlike philosophical schemata that flatten difference for the sake of unity (or vice versa), Christian conceptual categories, particularly those related to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, provide a model for a unity that upholds difference. For instance, the horizontal one-and-many union between Christ and his people—people of diverse languages, ethnicities, and social classes—is an image of the one-and-many reality of the Trinity. At the heart of Christian teaching is the proclamation that vertical and horizontal “communities” of unity-and-difference can (and in the case of the Trinity do) coexist in non-violent, non-dominating, reciprocal relations of love.
In light of the organic relationship that Christianity has with Judaism, the significance of Christ’s Jewish flesh must not be overlooked—a point that brings us back to Fanon. In his critique of Merleau-Ponty’s generic corporeal schema, Fanon drew attention to the ways in which the white-scripted narrative (mis)colors black skin with multiple negative connotations. Fanon’s analysis shares structural similarities (and dissimilarities) with the Christian’s emphasis on the importance of Christ’s particular embodiment as a Jew; however, the particularities involved are not racial in the modern, biological meaning of the term. Christ’s Jewish flesh, nonetheless, exhibits the same polysemous and metonymic capacities—encompassing within it Israel’s covenantal history and reconfiguring that history in light of the central events of his embodied life: Incarnation, death and resurrection.[8] Unlike the white-imposed narrative which closes off the black person’s freedom, Christ’s Incarnation and invitation to intimate union break down barriers of exclusion and thus open possibilities of freedom which transcend anything philosophy has to offer.
Notes
[1] J. Kameron Carter,
Race: A Theological Account, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 345. Carter goes on to say that the ‘basic structure of colonialism’ is “grounded in a will-to-possess and intellectually sustained by a will-to-forget” (p. 345).
[2] Of course numerous other factors would have to be taken into account in order to give an adequate explanation of the rise of colonialism and racism.
[3] See also Robert Bernasconi, ‘Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race’, in Robert Bernasconi (ed), Race, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Bernasconi argues that although Kant was not the first to use the term “race,” he was the first to give the term definitional precision. ‘By setting out clearly the distinction between race and variety, where races are marked by hereditary characteristics that are unavoidable in the offspring, whereas the distinguishing marks of varieties are not always transmitted, Kant introduced a language for articulating permanent differentiations within the notion of species’ (p. 17).
[4] Carter, Race, p. 345.
[5] Carter, Race, p. 348. See also Carter’s commentary on Maximus’ Epistle 2 and the ways in which it ‘becomes an interesting and unexpected resource for probing whiteness as a racial-colonialist way of ordering the world, that, in fact, deploys the discourse of Christian theology to do its work’ (p. 345).
[6] ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited [ἁρπαγμόϛ], but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:5-8, NRSV). See also 1 Cor 15 and Rev 1:18.
[7] Carter, Race, p. 368. St. Paul says something along these lines in his epistle to the Galatians. Describing the new reality of God’s people, those baptized into Christ who now form an alternative community operating against the grain of the world’s logic, St. Paul says, “[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28, NRSV). Of course, I am not suggesting that this alternative community has been realized. According to Christian belief, the full actualization of such a community will occur only in the eschaton. However, even in the midst of the already-not-yet eschatological tension that characterizes the Christian life in via, the redemptive benefits of the Christ-event make possible proleptic glimpses of communal life in Christ’s kingdom.
[8] See Luke 24:27 where Jesus says that the law and all of Hebrew Scripture must be re-interpreted Christotelically. In addition, though Carter does not develop this idea, the giving of Christ’s flesh in the Eucharist is another significant way that the many are continually made one in their present already-not-yet eschatological existence.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.
*From Light Unlocked: Christmas Card Poems, edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lawrence Sail, published by Enitharmon . Originally from The Poems of Rowan Williams, published by Perpetua Press
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In the closing section of Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon emphasizes the need for the black person to be future-oriented and to actively reject the white-scripted narrative into which he was born while creatively carving out a new present and future. For Fanon, this meant a willingness to employ violence and to risk his own life so that human beings would no longer “be enslaved on this earth”.[1] Yet, his vision also included a call to human solidarity, a call to blacks and whites and to all human beings to “move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a genuine communication can be born”.[2]
Does his appeal to human solidarity, his repudiation of the past and his refusal to allow the “density of History to determine” his acts mean that Fanon has no interest in his ethnic roots or that he sees no value in highlighting the distinct contributions of people of color?[3] One need not draw such conclusions. Rather, because he is acutely aware of the power of socio-historical forces to create systematic, racialized mechanisms and eventually essential-ize a people group, Fanon understood the need for a “disalienation” to occur.[4] This disalienation requires that the black person break the bonds of his historical (white) inscription and begin to write his own narrative. Here we should not overlook Fanon’s affirmation of human free agency even in extreme situations of oppression. As human beings, we are not determined completely by socio-historical conditions. However, in the colonial situation where skin color defines in advance a person’s value and his or her place in society, abstract philosophical schemata—such as Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema and Hegel’s mythological master/slave dialectic—come up short because they fail to consider the existential reality of racial difference.[5]
Among other things, Fanon’s account of his experience in a white-scripted world points to the human need to understand oneself as part of a larger narrative—a narrative in which both human freedom and cultural and ethnic diversity are valued and respected. Though the context was slavery and not colonialism and the dissimilarities between the two should be acknowledged, it is instructive to consider the ways in which some African Americans re-constituted their identity by bringing an ancient narrative of oppression and liberation into conversation with their present circumstances. As Rowan Williams observes, if the dominant group takes on the role of defining the out-group’s identity, we should not be astounded if the latter’s response is, “‘We don’t need you to tell us who we are’. Certain kinds of separatism are necessary to highlight the reality of a difference that has been overridden by the powerful conscripting the powerless into their story”.[6]
In fact, such a response in the form of counter-narratives of non-white-defined identity and creative strategies of resistance was precisely how many African-American slaves chose to struggle against white oppression and the brutality of American slavery. Given the theological and specifically Christian approach that my account will discuss, it is necessary to acknowledge that Christianity has not been faithful to its own best teachings related to the issue of slavery. In fact, under the banner of Christianity and with the “justification” of Scripture, many proclaiming the name of Christ fought to preserve the inhumane institution of slavery.[7] Nonetheless, in spite of such oppression, the African spirit resisted a reduction to white sameness.[8]
This resistance took many forms from physical violence to seeking a new life in free territories to purposely disrupting work routines. Whatever shape the opposition took, a common conviction driving the slaves’ subversive maneuverings was a refusal to accept the degraded, sub-human existence imposed on them by white masters, coupled with a commitment to assert a self-defined, rather than an other-defined account of black identity.[9] Another area in which resistance manifested itselfwas in what we might call the specifically religious sphere. “Slave religion”(Cone’s term), which continually asserted the dignity of blacks because they too are created in God’s image, not only affirmed “freedom from bondage” but also “freedom-in-bondage”.[10] That is, though Christian slaves did seek an ultimate end to their sufferings in the next life, they also believed in and sang spirituals about a God who was actively involved in history now—in their history—“making right what whites had made wrong. Just as God delivered the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, drowning Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, he will also deliver black people from American slavery”.[11] The spirituals are often inspired by biblical passages which emphasize God’s care for and active involvement in liberating oppressed people, as well as his willingness in the Person of Jesus Christ to enter into an exiled existence and even physically touch the untouchables.
While the black spirituals communicate an abiding trust in God’s promise to deliver his people, they also provide an avenue for the slaves to cry out in their suffering, thus creating their own version of Israel’s “How long, O Lord?”[12] Here we not only have an eschatological hope on the basis of who God is and what he has done in history and is doing in the present, but we likewise have an acknowledgment of the eschatological tension experienced now where injustice often prevails. When the day finally came and the slaves were freed from their bonds, these African American believers experienced an “eschatological freedom grounded in the events of the historical present, affirming that even now God’s future [the eschaton] is inconsistent with the realities of slavery. Freedom, for black slaves, […] was a historical reality that had transcendent implications”.[13] In other words, even though a form of liberation had come—a proleptic view of the eschaton—the very fact that slavery existed and thus required a decree of emancipation underscores the dislocated character of our present world. In short, one of the central theological themes of black spirituals is the belief that God has not forsaken his people, coupled with the conviction that he will one day deliver them from their unjust human oppressors. However, it must be stressed that the faith in view here was not a mere passive waiting for divine deliverance but involved creative strategies of active resistance to a white-defined identity. “Resistance was the ability to create beauty and worth out of the ugliness of slave existence. Resistance made dignity more than just a word to be analyzed philosophically”.[14]
Notwithstanding the genuine differences between Fanon’s colonial (and postcolonial) context and the African-American’s enslaved (and segregated) context, the oppressed in both situations are given an other-scripted narrative—a narrative which is one component of a socio-political, racialized apparatus that seeks to destroy difference. Whether the narrative comes from “enlightened” Europeans or “Christian” slaveholders, the latter having more in common with the former than with the teachings of Jesus the suffering servant, the goal is domination and a reduction to white sameness. If in fact colonialism and modern institutions of slavery are fueled by a desire to possess, destroy and re-make others in one’s own (white) image, and Christians who have supported these projects have been in grave error, is it possible to vindicate Christianity so that it might still be considered a valid option for the possibility of saving difference? J. Kameron Carter believes it is possible and has recently made a case for rescuing Christianity from its perverse instantiations.
In part two, I shall discuss Carter’s reading of Maximus the Confessor.
Notes
[1] Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks, p. 202.
[2] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 206.
[3] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 205.
[4] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 206. This is not to deny the complicity involved in the black person’s internalization of the negative other-scripted narrative.
[5] This is not to suggest that Fanon’s critique resulted in his repudiation of all philosophical analyses and methodologies. Rather, Fanon’s project can be seen as a needed corrective and expansion of the philosophical tradition. On Fanon’s original contributions to the master/slave dialectic, see Nigel Gibson, ‘Dialectical Impasses: Turning the Table on Hegel and the Black’, parallax 8 (2002), esp. pp. 33-41. As Gibson explains, ‘[r]eciprocity in the colonial experience is not so much deformed as closed off. The colour barrier stops the dialectic. Fanon further maintains that the slave cannot win recognition through labour; since the master wants only work, he is not at all interested in recognition’ (p. 36).
[6] Rowan Williams, ‘Nobody Knows Who I Am Till the Judgement Morning,’ in On Christian Theology, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 281.
[7] See, e.g., James Cone’s discussion of slave catechisms created by white ‘Christians’ for the purpose of producing docile slaves and to attempt to convince slaves that they were in fact created to be slaves (The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 22-23. Here one sees more continuity with Aristotle’s notion of ‘natural slaves’ than the biblical teaching that all humans are created in the image of God and are therefore equal before God.
[8] As Cone explains, ‘[w]hen white people enslaved Africans, their intention was to dehistoricize black existence, to foreclose the possibility of a future defined by the African heritage. White people demeaned black people’s sacred tales, ridiculing their myths and defiling the sacred rites. Their intention was to define humanity according to European definitions so that their brutality against Africans could be characterized as civilizing the savages. But white Europeans did not succeed; and black history is the record of their failure’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, pp. 23-24).
[9] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 25.
[10] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 28. In chapter two, ‘The Black Spirituals and Black Experience’, Cone highlights the numerous ways in which African-American slaves actively resisted the white-imposed narrative and refused to accept the biblical hermeneutic of their ‘Christian’ masters. ‘The slaves were obliged to create their own religion out of the remnants that were available and useful, both African and Christian. These elements were woven together to provide a historical possibility for human existence. While white religion had taught blacks to look for their reward in heaven through obedience to white masters on earth, black slaves were in fact carving out a new style of earthly freedom’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 28; italics added).
[11] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 32.
[12] Commenting on the slaves’ expression of faith in the midst of unjust suffering, Cone writes, ‘[f]aith in the righteousness of God was not easy for black people, since God’s liberating work in the world was not always when they expected it. Their faith did not cancel the pain of enslavement’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 35).
[13] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 42.
[14] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 27.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Walter Lammi, Kathleen Wright, Brice Wachterhauser and others have highlighted Heidegger’s influence on Gadamer. Gadamer readily acknowledges his indebtedness to Heidegger, after all he was a student of Heidegger’s for many years. In Truth and Method, Gadamer mentions his use of Heidegger’s “hermeneutical circle” (an on-going movement between whole and part and part and whole in our interpretative endeavors) and embraces Heidegger’s understanding of truth as aletheia (a dialectic of concealment and 
unconcealment), yet Gadamer is also critical of Heidegger. For example, Gadamer rejects Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit thesis (the “forgetfulness of being”) and denies that the Western metaphysical tradition necessarily culminates in nihilism. In fact, Gadamer detects nihilistic tendencies in Heidegger’s views in the latter’s separation of questions of Being from questions of the human good. According to Gadamer, Heidegger’s critique of the Western metaphysical tradition fails because he employs a univocal understanding of metaphysics. Here Gadamer’s study of Plato, particularly the later dialogues causes him to reject Heidegger’s read of Plato as a “metaphysics of presence” advocate. Gadamer sees the later Plato as endeavoring to work out an ontological vision that overcomes a certain misread of his theory of Ideas, viz. the interpretation that the Ideas constitute a separate realm (i.e. a view of the Ideas that suggests a strong dualism in Plato). Instead, Gadamer interprets the later Plato as sharing similarities with Aristotle (non-dualistic) and developing what subsequent thinkers have called the “transcendentals” (good, true, unity, beauty etc.). Gadamer argues that the center of Plato’s thought is not the theory of the Forms but rather the relationship of the One and the Many. On Gadamer’s read, there is a kind of “movement” in the Forms in that when they reveal themselves they simultaneously conceal themselves (i.e., in their relation to the whole, that is, the other Forms and of course the ever-elusive Form of the Good). Thus, for Gadamer, Plato does not promote a “metaphysics of presence” philosophy. Rather, he acknowledges our finitude and our incomplete (yet real) grasp of the Forms.
Reappropriation of Platonic Insights: “Metaphysics of Light”
At the end of Truth and Method, Gadamer turns explicitly to Plato’s view of beauty and self-validating truth. Beauty is that which draws us to itself; it shines forth and presents itself as tangible in its visibility. Truth likewise exhibits radiance and manifests itself in the beautiful, thus functioning as a “mediator” between the ideal and the real. Given his rejection of the modern foundationalist project and its attempt to make knowledge completely transparent along with its search for a “method” to justify its every move, Gadamer suggests that an appropriation of this ancient version of self-validating truth, in which knowledge is not identified with certainty, is a possible way beyond the impasse of skepticism and the ruins of (modern) foundationalism.
In keeping with the overall vision of his dialogical, hermeneutical project, Gadamer continues his “fusion of horizons,” interacting with both ancient and modern thinkers and philosophical traditions and suggesting a way forward through an appropriation of the past and present so that the tradition can continue to speak, flourish and “surprise” us and generations to come.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Another key aspect to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is his emphasis on human finitude. Here Gadamer’s understanding of history and language comes into play, as these function as two conditions of our all our knowledge endeavors. We cannot fully comprehend these conditions, as their origins stretch back into a past that escapes our complete grasp. Yet, Gadamer believes firmly that we do in fact have some, though limited and partial, knowledge of these conditions even if we cannot make either fully transparent to ourselves. In this vein, Gadamer speaks of Wirkungsgeschichte (“effective history”). For example, we are not fully aware of the extent to which language shapes and “makes” us. As Gadamer puts it, “Language is always out in front of us.” The same is true of culture, tradition and customs. (If you have ever spent any significant time outside of your own culture, this cultural “shaping” becomes readily evident). Likewise, we see “effective history” in the various ways in which different communities of inquiry employ certain analogies, as well as choose (and reject) certain metaphors etc. Language, in other words, is pregnant with tradition, culture and in fact opens up a world to us (Heidegger)—a world unlike the mere “environment” of non-rational animals who lack the kind of freedom we as linguistic, rational beings have.
Here I should discuss Gadamer’s well-known but often misunderstood statement, “Being that can be understood is language.” First, Gadamer does not mean that words create reality. As Charles Taylor, B. Wachterhauser, Joel Weinsheimer and Robert Sokolowski argue, Gadamer is not a linguistic constructivist. On Gadamer’s account, both language and reality “participate” in intelligibility. The function of language (at least one function) is to enhance the intelligibility of the already intelligible world. There is no re-doubling of the interpreter in the otherwise uninitelligible world in Gadamer’s account. Rather, language functions as a lens that makes reality come into sharper focus than would be the case if language were absent. Thus, language does not stand between us and reality, as a kind of shroud or hindrance. Language functions instead as a “medium” through which we gain access to the world—it has a kind of “iconic” function. I emphasize the world to highlight the fact that Gadamer is a realist (cf. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being: Gadamer’s Post Platonic Ontology, and Robert Sokolowski, An Introduction to Phenomenology). Though we no doubt have our horizons, are conditioned by culture, history and language, we are not trapped in our horizons or imprisoned by our prejudices and thus cut off from the things themselves. Gadamer is adamant that as rational, linguistic beings, we are free to step back, reflect and allow the world (and texts) to disconfirm our “projections”.
In addition to the intelligibility of both language and reality, Gadamer emphasizes the Zugehorigkeit (“belongingness”) of language and thought. What may come to as a surprise to many is Gadamer’s interaction and largely positive, though not uncritical, appropriation of both the ancient and medieval traditions. In Truth and Method, Gadamer devotes significant space to a discussion of the “theology of the verbum,” interacting with Greek theories, as well as, the teachings of Augustine, Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa. Gadamer rejects the medieval view of a pure, mental language, as in his account we always think in a particular (natural) languages. Yet, Gadamer employs the medieval, Christian teaching of the unity of the Father and the (pre-incarnate) Son, as well as St. Thomas’ discussion of the “processual” nature of this relationship in order to explicate his own theory of the “belongingness” of thought and language. Just as the Father and the Son/Word share exhibit both a unity (in substance) and diversity (they are different Persons), thought and language share a similar unity or prior accord prior but are not reducible to each other. As the Word “proceeds” from the Father (non-temporally), so thought unfolds “within” the mind (think of the way deductive reasoning unfolds) which is an image of the discursive nature of our thinking. Yet, as noted above (and here the dis-anaologies enter), Gadamer rejects Augustine and Aquinas’ view of a pure, mental language, focusing instead of the various “incarnations” of natural languages (even prior to their utterances “outside” the mind). Here Gadamer appeals to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in which Christ’s taking to Himself of human flesh (and one might add à la J. Kameron Carter, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh) in no way de-values his divinity. Similarly, the incarnation of thought by particular natural languages does not hinder intelligibility; yet, given our finitude, each language opens up partial yet true views of the world. (In this section and with regard to our finitude, Gadamer highlights the difference between the discursive nature of our knowledge and God’s knowing in one intuition).
Wachterhauser provides another way to understand Gadamer’s notion of the “belongingness” of thought and language and the “productive” function of language in connection with reality. Gadamer speaks of language as symbol, that is, as a symbolon in the Greek sense. In ancient Greece, a member of one family would break a piece of pottery into two halves, keeping one half and giving the second to the member of the other family. The pieces were then handed down through the various generations of each respective family. If a member of one family (born at a later date) presented his half of the broken piece of pottery to a member of the other family, the pieces would be re-united, showing the prior accord of their families. The pottery functioned not as a mere empty sign but actually effected what it symbolized. Similarly, language and thought exhibit a unity prior to the various (extramental) utterances and dialogical encounters with others in which language gives us access to and enhances (already intelligible) reality.
Wachterhauser then turns to Plato’s Symposium and Aristophanes’ myth of how humans have to come in their present state to further elucidate the unity of thought and language, as well as the “achievement” of language—here emphasizing its creative function as employed by free, rational beings. As Aristophones explains, originally humans were spherical and needed no “other” to complete them sexually or otherwise. However, due to their arrogance they upset the gods who then divided them and turned their sexual organs outward (as we find humans in their present form). Given this “fall” and division, humans now seek an “other” for completion, and here the emphasis is on sexual completion. Just as the two halves of the lovers share a prior unity, so too do thought and language. Yet, the new completion for which the lovers seek is not predetermined or predestined. That is, a kind of achievement or work of sorts must occur. Here the analogy turns to the work required for true hermeneutical engagement and transformation. In order for the interpreter to be transformed by the alterity of the text, s/he cannot exhibit the characteristics of a false lover. A false lover is not interested in what the other has to say; rather, s/he simply re-creates her/himself in the other. By contrast, a true lover allows the other to speak, to call her/him into question and thus is open to the “event” of understanding which exhibits a “surprise” character.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
As mentioned in my opening post, Gadamer’s overall project in Truth and Method is plausibly understood as an attempt to work out the notion of identity-and-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience. That is, on Gadamer’s view the “being” of texts (and works of art and music) exhibit a flexibility which allows for multiple, true interpretations, as different communities of inquiry approach the text with new questions. Yet, these multiple, true and very diverse (yet non-contradictory) interpretations are of the very same text or work or art/music and thus exhibit an identity through time. In this view, interpretation is not mere re-production but involves a productive aspect given the new questions and new “horizon fusings” that take place as various communities of inquiry engage the texts of the tradition over time. Here Gadamer speaks in phenomenological language, using terms like “aspects” (=the multiple, true interpretations) and “things themselves” (=the subject matter of the text).
As I’ve suggested on numerous occasions, a helpful way to understand what Gadamer has in mind with his view of the expansive “being” of texts is to consider a musical analogy . In jazz, the performer works with a “lead sheet” (something akin to a text) which contains a given melody and harmonic progression. Thus, there certain givens/structures to which the performer must submit. However, various performers interpret the (very same) piece differently and bring out new aspects not seen—or rather heard—up to that point. This is not to suggest a kind of hermeneutical anarchy, as the interpretation/performance must be recognizable by particular musical community/tradition as a valid instance of that particular piece. Likewise, the performer cannot simply impose onto the piece whatever harmony s/he chooses. To do so would be to produce an illegitimate interpretation, just as imputing any meaning onto a text would likewise not count as a valid interpretation. Because the “being” of musical works (like texts and works of art) contain this built-in-flexibility, multiple, true interpretations are not only possible but to be expected. However, in order to count as valid, legitimate, true interpretations, they must exhibit continuity with the tradition in that each (to use Gadamer’s term) “aspect” manifests the thing itself in its presentation, though no two aspects are exactly the same. This flexibility allows the tradition to grow and continue its influence through time, as the “being” of texts and works of art show themselves differently in different historical epochs, yet they retain continuity with the tradition. (Though some scholars have begun to explore the ways in which Gadamer’s work might be brought into conversion with the development of religious traditions, including Christianity, there is certainly room for additional work in this area. Those working in biblical hermeneutics have, of course, already enjoyed the fruits of his labors).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer displays his knowledge not only of the modern tradition (Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Schleiermacher) but likewise his knowledge of and interest in the ancient and medieval traditions (Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Augustine, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa). Gadamer, unlike many moderns and postmoderns, believes that the ancient and medieval tradition still has something to teach us. Yet, he also sees value in thinkers like Heidegger and Hegel. Gadamer’s entire project might be understood as a “fusion of horizons” (to be explained later) between the ancient (and medieval) and the modern (and postmodern) traditions. One might also rightly characterize his efforts in Truth and Method as the working out of the notion of identity-in-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience.
Rejection of the Enlightenment Prejudice Against Prejudice
Gadamer finds the Enlightenment’s rejection of authority and tradition an impossible and pointless path to trod. According to Gadamer, though many key Enlightenment thinkers reject tradition, claiming it an impediment to the progress of true Enlightenment (e.g., Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?”) and riddled with unjustified prejudices, Gadamer turns their critique back on them and shows that they in fact hold rather dogmatically to a “prejudice against prejudice.” As Gadamer explains, the Enlightenment has so stressed the negative aspect of the word, “prejudice”, that its positive meaning, “pre-judgment” (Vor-urteil) has been lost. One can in fact (and here Gadamer appropriates insights from Aristotle) by way of proper upbringing, customs and embracing one’s tradition, hold true “prejudices” and biases. Thus, for Gadamer, just because one cannot justify (or as Aristotle might say, give the “why”) of one’s beliefs, it does not follow necessarily that these beliefs are wrong, false or misguided. Because of his positive view of tradition, many contemporary thinkers (Derrida, Caputo) have labeled Gadamer a “dogmatist.” On this point, it seems that some postmoderns have not thrown off the prejudices of modernity either.
On a more positive note, Charles Taylor in his essay, “Gadamer and the Human Sciences,” highlights Gadamer’s rejection of key Enlightenment notions, particularly the desire to make knowledge conform to the image of science or what Taylor calls, “scientific knowledge of the object.” In contrast to this model, Gadamer argues for “coming to an understanding” through a dialogic encounter where the modus operandi is question and answer (here Gadamer draws explicitly from Plato). Gadamer’s model is characterized by the following three features: (1) bilater-ality, (2) party-dependence, and (3) an openness to goal-revision. Regarding (1) and (2) the text or Other is not a silent “object” to be mastered; rather, it “talks” back and can put the interpreter into question, thus challenging her “prejudices” and horizon and allowing for potential self-transformation. Regarding (3), because one’s prejudices and biases can be altered (i.e., if one is open) by a dialogic encounter with the text (Gadamer views texts as a kind of dialogue partner), one must be willing to revision his or her objectives.
Fusion of Horizons
By “horizon” Gadamer does not mean that we are sealed off from others due to our cultural, historical and linguistic conditioning; rather, taking his cue from Husserl, upon whose concept of “horizon” he builds (see Walter Lammi, “Gadamer’s Notion of Horizon”), Gadamer understands horizons as fluid and ever open to new expansions. Consequently, a dialogical encounter with a text, work of art, or an Other involves a “fusing of horizons,” as the text or Other is also constituted by a horizon. Given the fluidity of horizons, Gadamer rejects the notion of radical incommensurabilty between communities of inquiry. According to Gadamer, though “translation” between communities is often difficult, there is enough common ground to allow for a fusion to occur. Thus, it is a mistake to label Gadamer a “strong” relativist and to group him with contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty.
As we’ve seen, openness to goal-revision is part of a true hermeneutic experience, as horizons are characterized by fluidity. On this point, as Joel Weinsheimer in his commentary on Truth and Method observes, we see Hegel’s influence on Gadamer. That is, Gadamer follows Hegel’s understanding of experience as essentially negative. As Gadamer puts it, “the experience of negation has a curiously productive function.” By “negative” Gadamer draws our attention beyond the confirmation aspect of true experiences, which include hermeneutical experiences, and to the disconfirming aspect in which our expectations are often disappointed or shattered. For example, we approach a text (or an Other) with a certain expectation of what the text means; yet, in the process of attempting to understand the text, we run into problems as our “projections” (as Heidegger would say) do not seem to match the text. If we allow the text to speak to us and respect its alterity, we must revise our projected expectations. This process of expectation, negation, and newly revised expectation characterizes our hermeneutic experience unless we grow “static” and become closed to new experiences. The truly “experienced” person, according to Gadamer, is not a dogmatist who is unwilling to listen and be changed by the Other (which includes texts), but one who is open to the “event” of interpretation where surprise plays an essential but sometimes painful role. (Perhaps one could appeal to the experience of the freed prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave as appropriate analogy here).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Below are excerpts from a post on catholicanarachy.org. I find the reflections both provocative and worthy of serious consideration.
Thanksgiving in the united states is a holiday observed by pious Christians without much thought. What could be more Christian than thanking God for the blessings God has given us? The reality of this “secular” feast day is, of course, much less innocent and much more monstrous than we assume. [...]
…aside from the holi-day’s idolatrous core, there remains much to be concerned about. One is the obviously troubling history of the holiday and its relation to Native peoples. The story that is celebrated by mainstream white america is a lie, and indeed is not the story remembered by those who originally inhabited this land, which is a white supremacist story of extermination. And we Christians should not forget and should not fail to repent the fact that Christians and Christianity were complicit with this genocide, explicitly providing the theo-ideological justification for it.Secondly, the “blessings” that “we” (white, middle and upper class americans) celebrate are simply not shared by significant portions of the american population, let alone much of the rest of the world. Indeed, the poverty and misery experienced by many both inside and outside of the united states is not an accident of history, but is rather the dark underside of the “blessings” we feel so inspired to celebrate here in the so-called First World.
Third, in its “secular” form, this holi-day’s concept of “giving thanks” has become virtually unintelligible when God is taken out of the picture. This should make Christians concerned about who exactly we are thanking on such a holiday. In the absence of the Creator, what fills the “empty shrine” (in the words of Bill Cavanaugh) of the american empire on this holiday? Who or what are “we” thanking for “our blessings?” The fact is, the holi-day is delightfully vague, and this vagueness is precisely part of what makes american civil religion work.
Fourth, in the absence of any intelligible sense of true “thanksgiving,” we are left with a holiday that tends to be reduced to “being with family and loved ones,” something that is, of course, nice to do, but which can quickly become an opportunity for the virtual worship of family and blood ties, another important aspect of american civil religion. Jesus, despite what the Religious Right has done to him, could hardly be called a “family values guy,” and resisted such notions of blood ties in his own day. [...]
Pro-life Christians who choose to be thoughtful about such things should be deeply troubled by the reality of Thanksgiving. Indeed, it is perhaps the holi-day par excellence of the culture of death [e.g. the slaughter of Native Americans]. Of course, the best option for Christians would be simply not celebrating Thanksgiving at all. After all, Christians have their own thanksgiving, only we use its Greek name, eucharist. It is a celebration of liberation and resurrection, not invasion and extermination. It is a celebration that embodies new familial relationships not based on blood or nationality but our common life in Christ. It is a celebration whose purpose is not to say “thank you for all the stuff we have when others are not so fortunate,” but rather “thank you for inviting all of us to this table.” And of course, the one we thank is the Author of Life, the One who is not to be replaced by sentimentalism or the idols of state, of “freedom,” of “choice” and the like. No wonder Jesus made the eucharist a vegetarian feast, a true foretaste of the banquet of the Kingdom of God.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
The history of black people, as mentioned previously, is simultaneously erased and re-written by the white imagination. This new history defines what a black person is—intellectually inferior, in need of a (white) master, incapable of contributing positively to (white, European) society and culture. The black person does not create this narrative, but is scripted into it and constructed by it. Nonetheless, a time comes when a black person is confronted with the white mythos by way of a particular, concrete and often painful encounter and thus begins to accept and internalize the mythology. In Fanon’s words, “[d]isoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[1]
Fanon’s dramatic re-telling of the train episode and the pre-theoretical, racial assumptions apparent in the child’s remarks about Fanon serve a two-fold function. First, the narrative calls attention to the deficiencies of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema. Second, the narrative highlights the way in which phenotypic or so-called “racial” differences—as negatively interpreted by the dominant group in a given historical epoch—close off or a least severely hinder the possibilities of freedom, as well as personal and cultural transformation for the oppressed group. Hence, Fanon offers his historico-racial schema as a corrective. Yet, his account also includes the racial-epidermal schema. Whereas the historico-racial schema brings to light the historical contingencies and mythological narratives imposed upon blacks, the racial-epidermal schema speaks to the sedimentation of the so-called “black essence.” In other words, once the new narrative of what it means to be a black person, which includes the various meanings that have been assigned to phenotypic differences, has become fixed, ossified and even naturalized in the social consciousness and cultural and legal practices, the black essence has been successfully created.[2]
Once we transition to the racial-epidermal schema, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythos as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection. Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[3] Once the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence has been fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged. In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata points to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe. These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.
Notes
[1] Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[2] On the movement and interpretation of Fanon’s schemata, I follow Weate, who views the racial epidermal schema as “a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation” (p. 174). Weate describes the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon’s attempt to trace a “genealogy of racial essentialism” (p. 173). As he explains, “[t]he epidermal marks the stage where historical construction and contingency is effaced and replaced with the facticity of flesh. The colour of skin now appears to be intrinsically significant. With the outset of epidermalization, we are at the edge of being-for-others sedimenting into an essence, a ‘fact’ of blackness. Fanon is therefore demonstrating that essentialism is a discourse derived from a perversive repression of history. By marking the two stages of the ‘historico-racial’ and then the ‘racial-epidermal’, he is therefore contesting the view that essentialism, and in particular black essentialism, is grounded in a biological problematic. For Fanon, the essentialization of blackness is the product of a concealed perversion of history. It is only once this concealment is consolidated (through epidermalization) that questions concerning the biological ground of race arise. The distinction he makes between the two stages of schematization or epistemic enframing therefore allow biologistic discourses around race to be seen as phenomena derivative upon a prior perversion of history that is subsequently concealed” (“Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” pp. 174-75).
[3] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his book, Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon challenges Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive notion of a 
corporeal schema and substitutes his own schemata, first an historical-racial schema, and second an epidermal racial schema. Briefly stated (and more on this later), Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema describes the way in which the body’s agency makes manifest the historical world. For Merleau-Ponty, our bodies are not objects in space, rather they inhabit space and through them we experience the world and the other. In so far as the body is able to participate in and transform its historico-cultural horizon, it is free; in so far as its capacity for expression and its ability to alter its own history and given context are denied, it is not free.[1]
With this background in mind, we turn to Fanon’s text in order to understand why he substitutes his historical-racial schema and epidermal racial schema for Merleau-Ponty’s notion of a corporeal schema. Fanon argues that a phenomenology of blackness—the experience of skin difference and of being the black other—can only be understood in the encounter with whiteness or more precisely, the white imagination.[2] That is, in a mostly black community in the Antilles, Fanon was “content to intellectualize these differences”; however, once he entered the white world and felt the weight of the “white gaze,” he experienced his otherness and became aware of pre-theoretical racial attitudes which up to that point had not existed for him.[3] In his chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Fanon recounts his experience on a train of being “fixed” by a white other—an other which happened to be a child who had already been habituated to see blacks as defined by the white imagination. As the child’s refrain, “Look! A Negro!,” crescendoed forth and came to a close with a fearful questioning of the “Negro’s” next move, Fanon not only experienced the gaze of the white other, he also began to see himself through the white gaze.
I cast an objective gaze over myself, discovered my blackness, my ethnic features; deafened by cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism, racial stigmas, slave traders, […] Disoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from my self, and gave myself up as an object. What did this mean to me? Peeling, stripping my skin, causing a hemorrhage that left congealed black blood all over my body. Yet this reconsideration of myself, this thematization, was not my idea. I wanted simply to be a man among men.[4]
As Fanon takes up the white view of himself, he experiences its all-encompassing reach. That is, his becoming a white-defined black other involved more than his present encounter with the child on the train; in essence, he entered into the white erasing and re-scripting of black history. Not only is his present fixed by the white other, but his past is fixed as well. The child’s unison refrain gives rise to polyphonic lines of “cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism” and the like.
A few paragraphs before his description of the train episode with the child, Fanon mentions Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema, highlighting the difficulties that a black person experiences in a white-scripted world because of his skin color and the various meanings that have been given to these and other embodied differences. In Merleau-Ponty’s account, the reciprocal and fitting relation between body and the world gives rise to the possibility of a mutual constructing and transforming of both. The body is not a mere object in space, but rather is our way of being in a spatio-temporal world; it is the background “always tacitly understood.”[5] With his corporeal schema, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the body’s free agency in its ability to both disclose and transform the historical world.[6]
Fanon, however, is not satisfied with this generic schema and thus introduces his historical-racial schema, which is imposed on him by the white other. For Fanon, Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive, universal rendering of the corporeal schema through which the self and world emerge does not account for the disparity of experience between whites and blacks with regard to their ability to actively participate and transform themselves and the world. As Jeremy Weate explains,
In the interracial encounter, the White is able to participate in the schematization of the world, whilst the Black may not, for his skin difference closes down the possibility of free agency. A white mythos inserts itself between the black body and its self-image, becoming the ‘elements used’ in a reflexive understanding of black subjectivity. In contesting the terms of Merleau-Ponty’s account of bodily freedom, Fanon provides a genealogy of the existential unfreedom of the black body in the racialized encounter.”[7]
Notes
[1] Admittedly, I am speaking of the body in a reified way; however, body should not be understood as a
res, but rather as a crucial aspect of the psychosomatic whole, which constitutes a human being.
[2] Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 171. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 89. In addition to Merleau-Ponty, Fanon perhaps also has Hegel and Sartre in mind, particularly the former’s dialectical understanding of recognition and reciprocity. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 191–97. For an analysis of Fanon’s reflections on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, see Turner, “On the Difference between the Hegelian and Fanonian Dialectic of Lordship and Bondage,” in Fanon: A Critical Reader, ed. Lewis R. Gordon et al., pp. 134–51.
[3] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 90.
[4] Ibid., p. 92.
[5] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 115. Elaborating his notion of body schema, Merleau-Ponty explains, “[b]odily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop its parts instead of spreading them out, because it is the darkness needed in the theatre to show up the performance, the background of somnolence or reserve of vague power against which the gesture and its aim stand out, the zone of not being in front of which precise beings, figures and points can come to light. In the last analysis, if my body can be a ‘form’ and if there can be, in front of it, important figures against indifferent backgrounds, this occurs in virtue of its being polarized by its tasks, of its existence towards them, of its collecting together of itself in its pursuit of its aims; the body schema is finally a way of stating that my body is in-the-world” (Ibid., p. 115).
[6] Fanon describes with ironic overtones Merleau-Ponty’s account as follows, “[a] slow construction of my self as a body in a spatial and temporal world seems to be the schema. It is not imposed on me; it is rather a definitive structuring of my self and the world” (Black Skin, White Masks, p. 91)
[7] Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 172.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
“By the time the first texts in the New Testament were being written, Christians were aware of tensions over whether they still shared the same identity as Jews; there were no short answers (there still aren’t in some important respects). There was, they believed, fulfillment; there was also redefinition. And while these texts were being written and developed and responded to, the dramatic events which marked the end of Jewish political independence (the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE) added a further element in Christian interpretation, with some long and unhappy consequences.
Thus what we read in the New Testament is not a simple record of what happened, but also a hugely creative and innovative attempt to make one story out of a set of memories that covers events of great disruptive force. Jesus brings the earlier history to a climax, yet in such a way that the history is seen quite differently; what mattes in the earlier story will be different depending on the point of view of the telling, and passages and incidents that did not necessarily occupy the foreground now take on fresh significance. This, incidentally, is why Jewish-Christian dialogue can be very complicated: the Christian will read Hebrew Scripture looking for answers to questions that the Jewish reader isn’t asking. But the point is that the New Testament writers know quite well that they have to present a story that is both coherent in essential ways and yet does justice to the novelty of what happens in the life and death of Jesus. They cannot unequivocally say either yes or no to the history of God’s people as the Hebrew Scripture they were reading sets it out.
In this, they are doing nothing that is not already happening in the Old Testament itself, which goes on rewriting its own history. Look, for example, at Hosea 1:4, where the massacre of Jezreel, implicitly celebrated elsewhere as the triumph of orthodox faith over idolatry, is roundly condemned. Because God works in a long and varied historical process, the perspective within the Hebrew Scriptures is necessarily one that is constantly developing and moving; if Jesus is the culmination of that process, his life and death will provoke an unprecedentedly far-reaching shift of perspective, and thus a major essay in historical revision” (Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, (pp. 6-7).
