Conversations in Cultural and Religious Theory 9781935790945, 9781934542439

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conversations in cultural and religious theory

Critical Studies in the Humanities Victor E. Taylor, Series Editor This open-ended series provides a unique publishing venue by combining single volumes issuing from landmark scholarship with pedagogy-related interdisciplinary collections of readings. This principle of cross-publishing, placing scholarship and pedagogy side by side within a single series, creates a wider horizon for specialized research and more general intellectual discovery. In the broad field of the humanities, the Critical Studies in the Humanities Series is committed to preserving key monographs, encouraging new perspectives, and developing important connections to pedagogical issues. Proposals for submission should be directed to the Series Editor, Victor E. Taylor, Department of English and Humanities, York College of Pennsylvania, York, PA 17405-7199. Sander L. Gilman, Nietzschean Parody: An Introduction to Reading Nietzsche Sharyn Clough, ed., Siblings Under the Skin: Feminism, Social Justice and Analytic Philosophy Dominick LaCapra, Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher Gregg Lambert, Report to the Academy (re: the NEW conflict of the faculties) Michael Strysick, ed., The Politics of Community Dennis Weiss, ed., Interpreting Man Jonathan Culler, Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty Geoffrey Galt Harpham, On the Grotesque Steven Connor, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text David D. Roberts, Nothing But History Julia Reinhard Lupton and Kenneth Reinhard, After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis Gregg Lambert, On the (New) Baroque Neil Hertz, The End of the Line Keith Gilyard and Victor Taylor, eds., Conversations in Cultural Rhetoric and Composition Studies

conversations in cultural and religious theory

victor e. taylor, editor

the davies group, publishers aurora, colorado

Copyright © Journal of Contemporary and Religious Theory, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in an information retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by any means – electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the express written permission of the publisher, and the holder of copyright. Submit all inquiries and requests to the publisher: The Davies Group Publishers, PO Box 440140, Aurora, CO 80044-0140, USA.

Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication Data: Conversations in cultural and religious theory / Victor E. Taylor, editor. pages cm ISBN 978-1-934542-43-9 (alk. paper) 1. Religion and culture--Miscellanea. 2. Interviews. I. Taylor, Victor E. BL65.C8C66 2013 201’.7--dc23 2013028780

Cover illustration by Emmanuel Asoanab http://www.emmanuel-a.com/

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For Carl A. Raschke, postmodern visionary, scholar, and friend of the JCRT

contents Preface A Conversation between Carl A. Raschke and Mark C. Taylor About About Religion

vii 1

A Conversation with John D. Caputo Loosening the Tongue: On Derrida and Religious Theory

15

A Conversation with Avital Ronell Refusing Theory: Avital Ronell and the Structure of Stupidity

31

A Conversation with Jean-Michel Rabaté Conversation on The Future of Theory

51

A Conversation with Richard Kearney

69

A Conversation With Slavoj Žižek

81

A Conversation with Jean-Luc Marion

111

A Conversation with Michael Hardt

127

A Conversation with Catherine Malabou

161

A Conversation with David Wood Moments of Intense Presence

179

A Conversation with Paul D. Miller Spooky Noises: Ghosts in the Music Machine of Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky)

207

An Interview With Hent de Vries Minimal Difference With Maximal Import: “Deep Pragmatism” And Global Religion

231

A Conversation with Carl A. Raschke From Alchemy to Revolution

257

An Interview with Thomas J.J. Altizer

273

Conversations in Cultural and Religious Theory, 2001-2013: A Preface In the non-linear movement from concept to creation to, eventually, perpetual re-creation, the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory has had several iterations since publishing its premier issue in the winter of 1999. Originally, the JCRT was planned as a “deracinating” venture to advance postmodern theological studies or, more expansively, postmodern religious theory as a sub-discipline of religion. Opening this dynamic “register” for thinking about theology and religion in a postmodern context was critical to the late Charles E. Winquist, the first advisory board chair and founding member of the Journal. For Winquist, publication venues in the wider field of religious studies had not seriously taken up the significant intellectual challenges of postmodern theory. This was especially true of long-standing, traditional discipline-bound religion journals, which, he thought, were largely and too narrowly focused on area studies. Publishing an alternative, “tree-based” religion journal, however, was seen as financially and logistically impossible, but a web based journal, an “e-journal,” was thought not only to be a novel idea but well within reach given the available, miniscule resources at the time. Liberated from the intellectual, financial, distribution, and space limitations of traditional journal publishing, the “founders,” Charles E. Winquist, Gregg Lambert, Carl Raschke, Neal Magee, Clayton Crockett, and Victor Taylor, soon began imagining the immense possibilities of e-publishing and, subsequently, conceptualized the JCRT as much more than a disciplineconstrained postmodern theology journal. While the JCRT, at first, would draw upon its available strengths in postmodern theology, the longer goal was to see it evolve into a transdisciplinary “gallery” of ideas, a hyper-expanded surface for theoretical inquiry. From the beginning, publications included essays, articles, and reviews on popular culture, art theory, continental philosophy, critical theory, media studies, and literary studies. In the first year, the JCRT had published an “e-art exhibit” (Christopher M. Taylor, winter 2000) and pieces on emerging digital culture and film studies. The “rhizomic” nature of the Journal appeared early on in its development and the JCRT over the coming years would continue to

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reach into diverse areas, topically and methodologically. A revised mission statement, which currently applies, reads that, The  Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory  is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to both disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship of a cutting-edge nature that deals broadly with the phenomenon of religious and cultural theory. Subfields include, but are not limited to, philosophical and cultural theory, theological studies, postcolonial and globalization theory, religious studies, literary theory, cultural studies, ethnic, area, and gender studies, communications, semiotics, and linguistics. In addition to its openness to diverse topics and methods, an important consistent feature of the JCRT was and is its “meta-cognitive” dimension. Regularly over the years, the editors prefaced issues with “interrogating, introductory texts”— theoretical inquiries into or manifestoes on the state and stakes of religious studies and theoretical research in general. Some of these introductory pieces outwardly challenged the intellectual limits placed on the selection of “objects of study” while others raised critical methodological questions about the “naturalized” status of disciplinary “objects” and “approaches.” One of the key features of a JCRT essay or article was and is its “self-reflective” character. Contributors must engage not only with the topic at hand, but also with their own theoretical commitments; this feature makes the research that is published in the Journal intensely self-assessing and, as a result, places a strong emphasis on the transcendental operations of inquiry. In other words, over the years, publishing essays, articles, reviews, and interviews with an informed, transparent theoretical methodology or a self-reflective critical awareness became more central to the JCRT’s mission. The first special issue, “The Future of Theory,” winter 2003, edited by Gregg Lambert and Victor E. Taylor, was inspired by Jean-Michel Rabaté’s book by the same title and focused exclusively on the “work” of theoretical inquiry in religious studies and the humanities. In an interview with Gregg Lambert (included in this volume), Rabaté describes what he sees as the primary character of “theory”: Fundamentally, Theory opens to another dimension of the library. It opens also to another dimension in your own discourse, and this is where things get complicated. This is not my complete definition

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of Theory, but it’s one aspect of Theory: you are supposed to account for what you do when, for example, you are reading or attempting to be concrete. This is what I often ask of my undergrads: I ask them to choose freely any topic they want, provided they can account for the reasons that made them decide to treat this topic. It looks simple enough, but in fact it’s not so easy to justify the choice of discussing a poster or a film. It is not easy if you want this choice to be relevant and to keep a connection with why you are a student, or why you want to do this and not something else, and so on. There is an added level of discursive responsibility brought in by Theory. Rabaté’s definition or partial definition of “theory” as an “opening of dimensions” of thought and an expansion of topics of inquiry coincided with a critical adjustment in direction for the JCRT (2002-2004). The editorial consensus was that it was important to have a multiplicity of topics, but it was equally important to have a high degree of transparency in theoretical inquiry…methodological accountability in the commitments and/or interests for treating a topic in one way as opposed to another. While the regular content of the JCRT became more diverse and formed around interdisciplinary theoretical inquiry, it was the inclusion of high profile interviews with figures across fields of inquiry that helped shape this new stage of development. For instance, in the same “The Future of Theory” issue, Victor Taylor interviewed Avital Ronell. The conversation, “Refusing Theory,” focused on her newly published book Stupidity (2002). The Ronell interview, like the Rabaté interview, emphasized the necessity of making theoretical discourse accountable, reflective, or, more precisely, less “stupid”. . . in the Flaubertian sense of the word. This transition to more diverse topics of inquiry alongside a greater emphasis on methodological transparency marked a significant and decisive shift in the JCRT from a postmodern theology journal to a transdisciplinary “gallery” of ideas. By regularly including interviews with prominent scholars from cultural and religious studies, the JCRT was able to follow important theoretical turns and innovations across fields of inquiry. The decade of interviews following the special issue on the “future” of theory concentrate on a crucial aspect of a figure’s scholarship . . . the why of research. In these interviews, the editors and contributing editors reach beyond the confines of religious studies proper, drawing in leading figures from other significant areas, e.g. “experimental

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hip-hop and the work of DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid.” In some instances, the names of interviewees will be familiar to those in religion and cultural studies . . . Slavoj Žižek, Jean-Luc Marion, Catherine Malabou, and Hent de Vries…but the conversations will be far-ranging and future oriented. The interviews or “conversations,” then, are an important part of the JCRT’s history as well as the history of theoretical research in the humanities, 20012013. Reading these conversations in the context of an evolving academic journal provides a significant view of the newly emerging field of “religious theory” within the wider horizon of the humanities. The conversations in this volume represent not only the work of the interviewees and their important place in cultural and religious theory broadly construed, but they also denote the changing shape of the JCRT as a theoretical “transdisciplinary gallery” of ideas. Future interviews will continue from where these leave off, showing the changing contours of the JCRT and the nature of theoretical work across a wide horizon of intellectual inquiry. The JCRT editors and staff thank Keith Davies, The Davies Group, Publishers, our graphic designer Emmanuel Asoanab, Debra Staley, the Faculty Development Committee at York College of Pennsylvania, and all the contributors to this collection of interviews: Carl A. Raschke, John D. Caputo, Mark C. Taylor, Avital Ronell, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Richard Kearney, Slavoj Žižek, Jean-Luc Marion, Hent de Vries, Catherine Malabou, Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid), Creston Davis, Chris Haley, Michael Hardt, Jason Craig, David Wood, Noëlle Vahanian, J. Aaron Miller, Joshua Delpech-Ramey, Lissa McCullough, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Victor E. Taylor, and Gregg Lambert. Victor E. Taylor March 13, 2013 York, Pennsylvania

The participants Thomas J. J. Altizer is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. His most recent publications include Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir (SUNY, 2006) and The Apocalyptic Trinity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). John D. Caputo,  at the time of the interview, was the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, where he had taught since 1968. His most recent publications include On Religion (Routledge, 2001), The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (Indiana, 1997) and Deconstruction in a Nutshell  (Fordham, 1997). He is presently at work on a book on deconstruction and the “kingdom of God.” Creston Davis is in the Philosophy & Religion Department at Rollins College.  He is the author of the forthcoming book The Contradictions of America (with Alain Badiou). Joshua Delpech-Ramey, PhD, has been making music as a song writer, drummer, and keyboard player since 1986. He was a member of such groups as Sidney, The Brothers Suggarillo, Kandy Whales, and The Extravagant Bastard, and has appeared as a sideman alongside members of Man Man, Death Cab for Cutie, Critters Buggin’, The Hoppin John Orchestra, and United State of Electronica. He has appeared in numerous musical theatre and cabaret projects including work with Pig Iron Theatre Company, The Big Mess Cabaret, and, most recently, in James Sugg’s “The Sea”. Currently DelpechRamey is a member of Philadelphia-based Virtual Virgin and The Mural and the Mint. He is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Haverford College, where he teaches contemporary European philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Hent de Vries is Director of the Humanities Center at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Since 2002, he has held a joint appointment as Professor in the Humanities Center and the Department of Philosophy.

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Since October 2007, he has held the Russ Family Chair in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Science. Before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins, de Vries held the Chair of Metaphysics and Its History in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam (1993–2002), where he remains a Regular Visiting Professor of Systematic Philosophy and the Philosophy of Religion. He was a co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and served as the Director of its governing board (1994–1998) and its Scientific Director (1998–2004). Since May, 2007 de Vries has served as Directeur de Programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, in Paris. He is the author of Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005), Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Johns Hopkins UP, 2002), and Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Johns Hopkins UP, 1999). He is the editor of Religion Beyond a Concept (Fordham UP, 2008). Among the volumes he has co-edited are: with Lawrence E. Sullivan, Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (Fordham UP, 2006); with Samuel Weber, Religion and Media (Stanford UP, 2001) and Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination (Stanford UP, 1998); with Henri A. Krop and Arie L. Molendijk, Post-Theism: Reframing the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Peeters, 2000); with Willemien Otten and Arjo Vanderjagt, How the West Was Won: Essays on the Literary Imagination, The Canon and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger (Brill, 2010); with Ward Blanton, Paul and the Philosophers (Fordham UP, forthcoming 2012). Michael Hardt is professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. He has written Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. His recent writings deal primarily with the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. In his books with Antonio Negri (including with Antonio Negri. Declaration. Argo Navis (self-published), 2012 and with Antonio Negri. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) he has analyzed the functioning of the current global power structure as well as the possible political and economic alternatives to that structure based on new institutions of shared, common wealth.

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Richard Kearney holds the prestigious Charles B. Seelig Chair in philosophy at Boston College and serves as a visiting professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and the University of Nice. He is the author of more than twenty books in the areas of literary studies, philosophy, and religion. He is the editor of fourteen titles and serves on the advisory or editorial boards of fifteen academic and literary journals, including the JCRT. Richard Kearney’s interests are far-ranging and include many creative works—two novels and several books of poetry. These scholarly accomplishments are augmented by his work in public affairs. Richard Kearney served as a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. In 1983, 1993, and 1995, Professor Kearney was involved in drafting several proposals for the Northern Irish Peace Agreement. His role as a public intellectual includes speech-writing for the Irish President, Mary Robinson, and a series on philosophy and culture for British and Irish television. His most recent titles are On Stories (Routledge 2002), The God Who May Be (Indiana UP 2001), Strangers, God, and Monsters (Routledge 2003), and On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva (Ashgate 2004). Gregg Lambert is the Founding Director and Dean’s Professor of Humanities, Syracuse University Humanities Center, as well as Project Director/Principal Investigator of the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor, which includes Cornell University and the University of Rochester.  At the time of the interview he was Professor of English & Textual Studies, Syracuse University, has written and published on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, contemporary literary theory, aesthetics, and the fate of the Humanities’ disciplines in the contemporary university. Publications include The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (Continuum, 2002) and Report to the Academy (Critical Studies in the Humanities, Davies 2001). Forthcoming in 2003 from Continuum is The Return of the Baroque: Art, History, and Theory in the Modern Age. Catherine Malabou is Maître de conférences at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. Her publications in English include The Future of Hegel (Routledge, 2004), Counterpath (with Jacques Derrida (Stanford University Press, 2004), What Should We Do With Our Brains? (forthcoming from

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Fordham University Press in 2008) and Plasticity at the Eve of Writing (forthcoming from Columbia University Press). Her latest book in French is Les nouveaux blessés: De Freud à la neurologie: penser les traumatismes contemporains (Bayard, 2007). Jean-Luc Marion is the John Nuveen Distinguished Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at The University of Chicago Divinity School and professor of philosophy and director of the Centre d’Etudes Cartésiennes at the University of Paris—Sorbonne (Paris IV). His many translated works include, God Without Being (1991), Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (1998), Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (1999), The Idol and Distance (2001), Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Giveness (2002), The Crossing of the Visible (2004), In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena (2004), Descartes’ Grey Ontology (2006), and The Erotic Phenomenon, forthcoming from The University of Chicago Press. Lissa McCullough recently edited and introduced a volume of essays by Altizer entitled The Call to Radical Theology (SUNY, 2012) and previously coedited, with Brian Schroeder, Thinking Through the Death of God: A Critical Companion to Thomas J. J. Altizer (SUNY, 2004). She is also editor of Conversations with Paolo Soleri (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012) and author of a forthcoming book on the religious thought of Simone Weil (I. B. Tauris, 2013). Paul D. Miller, known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as “illbient” or “trip hop”. He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel Nova Express by William S. Burroughs. He is a Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School[1] and is the Executive Editor of Origin Magazine. Jean-Michel Rabaté  is currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published around 15

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books on Beckett, Bernhard, Pound, Joyce, psychoanalysis and literary theory. Recent books include Jacques Lacan (Palgrave, 2001) plus a collection of essays, Lacan in America (Other Press, 2000). He has just published James Joyce and the Politics of Egoism (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and The Future of Theory (Blackwell, 2002). Forthcoming is the Cambridge Guide to Jacques Lacan (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He is on the curatorial board of Slought Networks. Carl A. Raschke is professor of religious studies at the University of Denver and senior editor of The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. He is the author of numerous books and articles that have defined the field of religious theory in the postmodern era. His early book entitled The Alchemy of the Word (published in 1979 and reissued as The End of Theology in 2000) was among the first serious studies of deconstruction and theology in the discipline. His recent books, including GloboChrist and The Next Reformation, have reached well beyond the academy to inform emerging Christian communities on the global stage. In 2012, Raschke published Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory, a work that resituates the concerns of postmodernism in the context of a new, revolutionary semiotics of the sign. Raschke is a contributor to the Political Theology blog (www.politicaltheology.com/blog) and regular contributor to the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (www.jcrt.org), which he was instrumental in founding in 1999. Avital Ronell is a professor of German, English, and comparative literature at New York University. Her scholarship includes major works in continental philosophy, technology and media, literary studies, performance art, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Ronell’s recent titles include, Loser Sons (2012), Fighting Theory (2010), and The Test Drive (2007). The JCRT interview focuses on her 2003 book entitled Stupidity, which examines the history of the concept of “stupidity” from Kant, Wordsworth, to Flaubert and contemporary philosophers and writers. J. Aaron Simmons (Ph.D. Vanderbilt) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Furman University. Specializing in continental philosophy of religion and political philosophy, Simmons is the author of God and the Other: Ethics and

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Politics After the Theological Turn (Indiana UP, 2011), co-author of The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction  (Continuum, forthcoming), and co-editor of  Reexamining Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with Religion (Duquesne UP, 2012) and Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Indiana UP, 2008).  Mark C. Taylor is chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. At the time of the interview he was the Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College and the Co-Founder of the Global Education Network. He is the author of numerous books on theology, philosophy, art, architecture, and technology. He is widely known for his reworking of the theological enterprise in terms of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and the movement within the humanities that came to be known as “deconstruction”. Taylor himself has denoted this approach as “a/theology.” In recent years he has turned his attention to the subjects of religion and “religious studies,” which he argues can only be compassed in an interdisciplinary, or non-disciplinary, manner. Victor E. Taylor teaches in comparative literature and humanities at York College of Pennsylvania. His books include Para/Inquiry: Postmodern Religion and Culture (Routledge 2000), The Encyclopedia of Postmodernism (Routledge 2001),  Postmodernism: Critical Concepts  (Routledge 1998), and  The Religious Pray, The Profane Swear  (Pen Mark Press, 2002), Religion After Postmodernism: Retheorizing Myth and Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2008). He is executive editor of the JCRT and currently completing work on several projects including, Jesus as Literary Subject. Noëlle Vahanian is Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. She is the author of Language, Desire, and Theology: A Genealogy of the Will to Speak (Routledge, 2003). She has been contributing to the JCRT since April 2000. David Wood is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches Continental and Environmental Philosophy. His books include Thinking After Heidegger, The Step Back: Ethics and Politics

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After Deconstruction, and Time After Time, and he has edited some 12 other volumes. He is also a practicing Earth Artist. Slavoj Žižek is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Ljubljana. His recent books include The Parallax View (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), The Universal Exception (New York: Continuum, 2005), Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (New York: Verso, 2004), Organs Without Bodies (New York/London: Routledge, 2003), The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), and On Belief (London: Routledge, 2001). Žižek’s earlier major publications are The Fragile Absolute, Or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (London/New York: Verso, 2000), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology (London/New York: Verso, 1999), Tarrying With The Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), and The Sublime Object of Ideology (London/New York: Verso, 1989).

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About About Religion Mark C. Taylor, Columbia University Carl A. Raschke, University of Denver

The following conversation between Taylor and Raschke engages in a freewheeling style the sorts of themes and issues that Taylor has brought to the forefront. It takes as a point of departure Taylor’s recent book entitled About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1999). There is something “about” religion? What is that all about? The conversation probes that question.

Raschke:  One of the most provocative statements you make in  About Religion is the following: “While I no longer believe in God, I can no longer avoid believing in the sacred.” You also talk about the sacred as the “denegation of God” and vice-versa. And in a little further on you characterize the sacred as “that which allows God to be God by enabling God to be other than everything that is not God.” Can you explicate these statements more fully as well as discussing the (semiotic) relationship between the “a” of “a/theology” and the “about” of About Religion? Taylor:  Whether conceived theistically or non-theistically, God in western theology has been inextricably bound up with the metaphysics of being. For many years, I have been convinced that this tradition is no longer viable. Nor do I think that the simple rejection of this tradition is possible. Somewhere Kierkegaard says: “to do the opposite is also a form of imitation.” The effort to negate the metaphysics of being—and all that goes with it—remains caught within it. This is why atheism has never been a serious alternative for me. Absence is merely one of the guises through which God’s presence continues to haunt us.

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In the passage you cite, I was attempting to use the term “sacred” to suggest that which is neither being nor non-being. The sacred is not God and is  not  not God. This  not/not  not is/does not involve a dialectical negation that turns negativity into positivity. That is why I appropriate the Freudian term “denegation” for theological or, more precisely, a/theological purposes. In contrast to dialectics, which negates negation, denegation neither simply negates nor affirms negation. While the logic of dialectics is  both/and, the logic of denegation is  neither/nor. If understood in this way, the sacred is, in a certain sense, the condition of the possibility and impossibility of both being and non-being. If the sacred were a ground, which it is not, it might be understood as the ground of the ground of being, which otherwise is “known” as God. There is, as you suggest, a relationship between the “a/” of a/theology and the “about” of  About Religion. When I wrote  Erring,  I was trying to articulate a domain between theology and atheism. What I was attempting to write was not theology and not not theology. By so doing, I was striving to establish a position that differs from the death of God theology as it appears in Altizer’s work. Though I have learned a great deal from Tom, I have always been convinced that his “Christian atheism” remains a radical version of the metaphysics of being. His atheism, therefore, is still too theological. A/ theology is neither theological nor non-theological. This neither/nor, which falls between Hegel’s  both/and  and Kierkegaard’s  either/or, can never be expressed, articulated, or represented directly. We can, therefore, only think, speak, and write about it. That is why I insist in About Religion that religion is about a certain about. Raschke:  It has always seemed to me that your articulation of a/theology amounts to a strategy of “overcoming” metaphysics, or ontotheology, or simply “theology” for that matter, in a manner that is neither Heideggerian nor Derridean—the two most prominent philosophical gambits of the twentieth century (I, of course, recognize your debt to Derrida.). At the same time, you don’t employ the semi-sophistical and crypto-theological sort of mystical sacramentalism that we find in movement of radical orthodoxy, which argues that the sign of the Eucharist itself is the true Überwindung of the metaphysical insofar as concretizes the transcendence of language.

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At the same time, you have been accused of serving up a subtle sort of “pomo” mysticism. You have been called a latter day hermeticist (I am thinking of the eye in the triangle of  Alterity) as well as a “negative theologian,” which is nevertheless still a theologian. I am reminded here of your remarks on “paralectics” as opposed to dialectics. How do you argue against the charge that  neither/nor  is mysticism a la “negative theology”? The Sanskrit formula neti neti (“not this, not that”), which “denegates” the attributes of Brahman, would seem to be remarkably close to the  neither/ nor of paralectics. Taylor: It is important to recall the context in which the notion of a/theology first appeared. I had been working on Hegel and Kierkegaard for a decade. (Indeed, I’ve never stopped working on them.) I had recently finished Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard,  which attempts to find a middle way between Hegel and Kierkegaard. My fascination with these two thinkers is not only a matter of historical interest. Just as Plato and Aristotle represent two alternative philosophical positions, so Hegel and Kierkegaard represent two alternative theological positions. The history of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury theology can be read as an oscillation—alternation—between Hegel and Kierkegaard. From the outset, it was clear to me that Derrida was somewhere between Hegel and Kierkegaard. Moreover, it was obvious to me that Derrida was engaged in a form of theology. At the time, the association of deconstruction with theology and religion provoked a critical response from all sides. Obviously, that situation has changed significantly. Now it seems all Derrida and his followers can talk about is religion. Though Derrida has always insisted that what he is doing is not negative theology, many have revived negative theology under a Derridean banner. My problem with most versions of negative theology is, as you suggest, that it remains ontotheological. Rather than eluding the metaphysics of being, God is being as such - or pure nothingness, which is the mirror image of being and, thus, imitation by reversal. I would, therefore, insist that the neither/nor is not to be understood in terms of negative theology. What is required is to think in terms of interstitiality  rather than oppositionality. The problem is that language is structured, as the structuralists have taught us, in terms of binary

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oppositions. Hence it is impossible to articulate that what we are attempting to think ABOUT directly. Our discourse must be, in Kierkegaard’s terms but with a different twist, indirect. This indirection entails an effort to make language slip and slide. The alternative is not speech or silence; rather, the struggle is to say the unsayable by making language fail. I have often thought that theneither/nor is, in fact, very close to the not this. Indeed, I have on occasion suggested certain similarities between a/theology and Nagarjuna’s co-dependent origination. Finally, one can think of theneither/nor in terms of the problem of relation. Rather than terms related, neither/nor is relation “as such.” Raschke: I like the expression “interstitiality,” as it captures what I think you have been up to for quite some time. If we can return to the original question, how then would your understanding of the “sacred” be an instantiation of the “interstitial,” so far as the question of religion is concerned? And can you say some more about “about” in this connection? Taylor: The site or, more precisely, the para-site of the sacred is the interstitial. I would not use the term ‘instantiation’ in this context because it suggests too much stability or fixity. Rather, the interstitial is the domain of alternation (one of the nuances of alterity) where the sacred oscillates in an approaching withdrawal and withdrawing approach. The interstitial is neither here nor there; it is not present and yet not absent. And, as you suggest, this is what the  about  that religion is about implies - no more than implies because, of course, it can never be specified, determined, articulated, or fixed. Raschke: I am wondering if you could draw some kind of (dis-)connection here between what you are saying about the sacred and Heidegger’s characterization of Being and language. Could you go along with Heidegger and say something like “the sacred sacreds”? Taylor: There is a relationship between what I’m thinking ‘about’ through the ‘sacred’ and Heidegger’s thinking ‘about’ thinking. For Heidegger, the task of thinking at the end of philosophy is to think what philosophy leaves unthought. This unthought is characterized in many ways in Heidegger’s

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work. In Alterity, I develop an analysis of the holy in Heidegger, which can be directly related to the notion of the sacred in  About Religion.  I do not want to suggest that they are precisely the same but there is a notable family resemblance. As Derrida has demonstrated, Heidegger both thinks that which the ontotheological tradition leaves unthought and yet remains devoted to ontotheology in a problematic way. While I can accept the former part of his work, I reject the latter. Heidegger’s neologisms become counter-productive so I would not claim something like “the sacred sacreds.” Rather, I would say that the sacred approaches by withdrawing and withdraws by approaching. In developing these ideas, I draw on a wide range of sources: Derrida’s différance, Blanchot’s neuter and/or disaster, Kierkegaard’s infinite qualitative difference, Lacan’s real. The different chapters of Alterity between the beginning (Hegel) and end (Kierkegaard) are explorations of different variations on this ‘theme.’ Raschke: The “sacred,” of course, is the operative and instrumental category for what historically has been constituted as the “study of religion.” The connotation of the technical term has oscillated in various directions, beginning with Durkheim’s understanding of collective representation and reaching a kind of crescendo in Eliade’s hermeneutic, which increasingly has been rejected by serious scholars of religion. Can you envision yourself, or one of your admirers, doing something akin to what Eliade did, i.e., forging a rhetoric of religious studies that banks on the language of post-structural linguistics? Or is such a feat impossible? Do you think you can meld together Derrida, Blanchot Kierkegaard, Lacan, etc. into a discourse of “sacrality” that could be deployed toward the data of religion after the fashion of the “classical theorists”? Taylor:  First, a few words about terminology. In your question, you use the words ‘instrumental’ and ‘technical.’ The sacred, I would argue, eludes instrumentality and the technical. It is, as Bataille has shown, nonutilitarian. This is an important point and should be stressed. The notion of non-instrumentality and non-utilitarianism operative in the sacred can be traced to Kant’s analysis of inner teleology in the Third Critique. That work is absolutely critical for everything that follows. One way to think about the

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reading of the sacred that I’m suggesting is as an appropriation and adaptation of Kant’s notion of art. This is one of the points at which my interest in religion and art intersect. Now for your question “proper.” Yes, I do think it is possible to use the notion of the sacred as I am describing it to weave together Kierkegaard, Blanchot, Derrida, Lacan, de Certeau, Kristeva, and others to form something like a theory of religion. This reading of the sacred would differ in significant ways from the suggestions of Durkheim and Eliade. It is important to note that all the figures I’ve mentioned are deeply interested in religion. While for many years, most of them did not highlight this aspect of their work, in recent years they have given it much more prominence. I should also stress that for me, the theory of religion must become a theory of culture. There is, I believe, a religious dimension to all of culture. The task of theory is to tease out that dimension in different places where it is hiding. Raschke: I wasn’t suggesting that the terms “instrumental” and “technical” are in any way predicative of the sacred, only that they are key to what might be considered the theoretical strategies of the profession. But, of course, the sacred eludes such strategies, or that is what I believe you are proposing. If that is the case, then perhaps what we talk about when we talk “about” religion, or speak of “the study of religion,” is not subject to theoretical intervention in the way we might anticipate. I guess my question, therefore, would be as follows: can the “sacred” be considered a site for the development of a postmodern “theory” of religion? If so, what are we really speaking “about”? What would be meant by “theory,” if anything? Taylor: It seems that this question turns on the precise meaning of ‘theory.’ Needless to say, this has been a hotly contested issue in a variety of fields and disciplines in recent years. While many insist that so-called post-structuralism leads to an anti-theory position, I do not think that is necessarily the case. If theory requires the delineation and thematization of an object of investigation in a way that stabilizes it, then, of course, the sacred cannot be theorized. It is, however, possible to understand the sacred as precisely that which eludes theorization when theory is understood in terms of stabilization. In this sense, the sacred calls into question every theory about it. I would insist that this

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is not an anti-theoretical position. To the contrary, what I am suggesting is that in order to think theory in relation to the sacred, and, hence, to develop a theory of religion, it is necessary, in Derrida’s terms, to use “theory” under erasure. This is a paleonomic gesture that simultaneously erases and preserves the notion of theory Raschke: If we understand in such a manner a “theory” of the sacred”—which also in a paleonomic sense may be considered theorizing “about” religion— then we are confronted, it seems to me, with the recurring question of the relationship between thinking “about” religion and “religious thinking” itself. You say that “the sacred calls into question every theory about it.” That would suggest the sacred “calls” in much the same manner as Being calls in the Heideggerian idiom. Does thinking respond to the call, and if it does, are we not within the venue of the “theological,” or perhaps the paratheological? Or the a/theological, rightly understood? In way manner, if at all, can a/theology be considered a “theory” at this level? Taylor: While there are lines of association to be drawn to what I’ve been writing ‘about’ for many years, Heidegger is not a major influence on my thinking. I don’t think it’s profitable to push the connections too far—at least I do not want to do that, though others might take up that task. I simply am not sure what to make of invoking the “call of Being”. As for the relation between thinking “‘about’ religion” and “religious thinking itself,” I have several comments. First, ‘religious thinking’ is never exactly itself but is always also other than itself. Second, religious thinking is always a thinking “‘about”. I would not draw a sharp distinction between religious thinking and theorizing religion. Somewhere I have argued that there is a “theological” dimension to all of theory, which usually goes undetected because it is unrecognized by those engaging in it. The deployment of theory that I am proposing would, as you suggest, be more in keeping with a/theology. Just as a/theology is neither theological nor a/theological, so theory in this context is neither theory sensu strictissimo nor anti-theoretical. Perhaps we should supplement a/theology with a/theory.

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Raschke:  Can you say more about the “‘theological’ dimension to all theory”? How is that the case? And what would it look like to “supplement a/theology with a/theory”? Taylor:  Theory seeks a comprehensive understanding or interpretation of diverse phenomena. In philosophical terms, theory tries to unify multiplicity or establish identity in the midst of differences. As you know, some “theorists” argue that there is no such thing as religion. The point is not merely that there are only religions and not religion as such; rather, the claim is that the category “religion” is a social construct devised for very specific and, in some cases, political purposes. While I would not necessarily disagree with this claim, the point I would stress in this context is that the unifying gaze of theory is a vestige of theological vision. But there is another point that is not precisely theological. The study of religion, as we know it today, began to emerge in the 1960s. Indeed, departments of religion, or religious studies, only began to differentiate themselves from philosophy departments and religious offices (usually Protestant) at this time. Until the time you and I were in graduate school, a Bachelor of Divinity degree was required before one could begin a Ph.D. program in religion. Many people who were trained in the Sixties spent most of their careers trying to convince themselves and others that they were not doing theology. One strategy for this identity-by-difference was to rush into the arms of the social sciences and to develop theories of religion. The enthusiasm with which such theorizing was embraced was—indeed still is—virtually religious. Moreover, the essentializing impulse of theoretical investigation remains thoroughly theological—or, more precisely, ontotheological. Raschke: You raise, of course, about the genealogy of religious studies as an academic field and the constructionist character of religious theory. However, one can make the same claims concerning all academic “disciplines,” as Foucault has shown us. That, as you suggest, is not the real issue. The question concerns the continuity, or discontinuity, between theological studies and religious studies. I myself have argued at various time and in various writings that the study of religion, as it is practiced for the most part in this day and

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age, harbors its own “theological agenda,” even if it dismisses out of hand the familiar theological formula of fides quaerans intellectum. The very concept of a religious “tradition,” as J.Z. Smith has observed, depends on a process of textual election and canonization that is a covert form of theological intermediation. So long as we adhere to the model of “religious traditions,” even when invoking sociology and anthropology, we are laboring within a  theo-logocentric  (i.e., a “theoretical”) framework. If we really moved into the a/theoretical realm, wouldn’t we be losing the “field” itself? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be addressed in all candor. Is there any way an a/theory of religion—a discursivity “about” religion—could be carried to its deconstructive frontiers and still keep in view “whatever” it is we are talking about when we do religious studies? Taylor: This is a difficult and complex question that involves more than the so-called disciplines of the study of religion and theology. Indeed, I don’t think your question can be addressed without considering the whole question of disciplines as they are currently constituted. I think we are in the midst of a moment of profound cultural transition, which is a function of what I have labeled emerging network culture. Network culture is not just a function of the Internet and World Wide Web but is symptomatic of a transformation of the very ‘infrastructures’—though this idea no longer holds in the same way it did for industrial society—of society and culture. One of the consequences of these developments will be the reconfiguration of the structure of knowledge. The way knowledge is structured is a function of the modes of production and reproduction in society. As these technologies change, so does the structure of knowledge. The structure of knowledge—and correspondingly of disciplines—as currently constituted is largely the result of modern industrialism. As post-industrial or information society takes shape, knowledge will no longer be organized in the same way. The issue is not merely the formation of ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘crossdisciplinary’ inquiry but a rethinking of the very notion of discipline itself. It is very difficult to anticipate what will happen to religious studies—or to any other field—when these changes occur. Rather than thinking of religious studies in terms of traditions, I prefer to think of the so-called field in terms of problems. The problems with which religion wrestles can be dealt with in

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other ways—through literature, art, music, architecture, etc. This does not necessarily make the notion of religion meaningless, though it does render the “boundary” between religious studies and other fields porous. We must stop thinking of disciplines as well-defined fields with clear borders and begin to think of areas of inquiry as something like nodes in an infinitely complex web of relations. Imagine knowledge structured like a hypertext rather than an assembly line. Raschke:  Okay, so let’s talk more about a/theory itself as a function of network culture. In a network culture knowledge is no longer domain-based. Knowledge emerges at the nodes. At the same time, I would distinguish a “discipline” from a “field.” A discipline implies an identifiable methodology that engenders its subject matter. Religious studies has none. But in the past it has been considered a “field,” inasmuch as there is within the work of religion “scholars” a transparent outline of signifying praxis that distinguishes their concerns from that of philosophers, or historians, or psychoanalysts. It all has to do with the division of academic labor. But I take it you are calling into question even the notion of the “field.” That would suggest to me you see the “religious” as a sort of episodic signal in the interpretation of culture on the whole. “Religion,” therefore, would be just one important link in the broader hypertext, and it is the hypertext that is at issue. The study of religion is a route for getting us somewhere else. But where does it get us? Not to other otiose “domains.” Does it move us toward the “sacred,” and if so, how does the notion of sacred function within a topology of network culture? Taylor: Let me approach this question or cluster of questions by distinguishing the issue of religious studies as a field and/or discipline from the issue of the function of the sacred within a topology of network culture. While I agree with your criticism of the discipline of religious studies, I’m not sure other so-called disciplines are any better off. Does literature, for example, have “an identifiable methodology that engenders its subject matter”? Indeed, the way in which the notion of the literary works in much recent criticism—I’m thinking especially of post-structuralism—is very similar to the way in which the religious functions in other contexts. Rather than trying to identify the

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distinctive domains of different disciplines, I think it is more fruitful to consider areas of inquiry as mobile sites of intersecting lines of investigation. I have no idea where religion ends and philosophy begins, or where art ends and religion begins. They intersect, overlap, are interrelated in ways that are unstable and constantly morphing. As a point of transition to the question of the sacred, I would rewrite your comment “the ‘religious’ [is] a sort of episodic signal in the interpretation of culture on the whole” to read “the ‘religious’ is a sort of episodic noise in the interpretation of culture as a whole.” It is a question of noise not of signal. That is to say, the sacred interrupts and disrupts lines of communication. It is important to realize that one of the most important systems of communication that the sacred interrupts and disrupts is religion. This disruption can have several results: the system can repress it; the system can reconfigure itself to take account of the disruption; or the system can collapse. Noise is not merely destructive because it can lead to a recasting of the system or interpretive framework that is more complex and more adequate. In this sense, this process gets us somewhere but there is no antecedent teleology at work. Since noise is aleatory, the transformation it occasions is, in important ways, a matter of chance. Raschke: The signal/noise paronymy you lay out is intriguing, but I am not persuaded that you can treat of the “sacred” (on anybody’s terms) simply in terms of the disruption of the flow of information. If the sacred is merely “noise,” how does one account for the naming of sacred “irruptions”? Hierophany implies hieronymy. It would seem to me that some kind of semiosis is involved, and that necessarily takes us beyond “noise,” if one is going to invoke information theory. I agree that the sacred disrupts the signifying process we call religion. Theologically speaking, that trenches upon what in the past has been called “revelation.” Or we can of course say “hierophany,” if we need to recur to Eliadisms. I am curious why you don’t introduce here some version of the “paralectic.” That might suffice to finish out the paronym. Taylor: One could use a variation of what I once described as paralectics at this juncture but at the moment, I’m more intrigued by thinking through some of these issues in terms of information theory and analyses of complex adaptive systems. This is new territory for humanists and I think has great

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potential. This is the subject of a new book I just finished,  The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. Suffice it to say that the relationship between noise and information is quite tangled. I would direct you to Michel Serres’ The Parasite, which I think is a very important book. I definitely would not invoke the category of revelation at this point—nor would I use Eliade’s notion of hierophany. What we are talking “about” here is precisely what cannot be revealed—or what is revealed as the impossibility of revelation. That impossibility is not simply silence but is more like static that interferes and interrupts so-called lines of communication. That interference is context specific and constantly changes. Raschke:  I certainly wasn’t expecting you to resort, or even give lips service, to theological categories such as “revelation” or crypto-ones such as “hierophany.” My point was simply that in the study of religion, historically and programmatically, locutions such as “sacred” have been utilized in the sense of “signal,” or “information,” rather than “noise.” The science of “sacrality” is an extension of linguistic science, which deals with the way in which signification emerges from randomized, or entropic, phonics. That is the basic principle of semiotic theory. Now this moment of signification may appear as an instant of “noise,” but its contrarian character is simply the occasion for the production of a more complex semantic order. Such is a “grammatological” rendering of what is implied in chaos science as well as complexity theory, as I understand those terms. It seems that this transitional link between noise and information is missing in your argument that the sacred is simply “aleatory.” Or do you want to make that simply equation? If so, we’ll go on to another question. Taylor:  You are certainly correct to insist that traditionally the sacred and related notions are associated with information rather than noise. I am suggesting that this equation needs to be reconsidered. I would not, however, use the phrase “science of ‘sacrality.’” The term “science” is simply too overdetermined in this context. Moreover, I would strictly avoid importing terms like “grammatology” into this discussion. There are, to be sure, connections to be made but if this move is made too quickly, the distinctive new resources of complexity theory are lost. I should also stress that there are

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important differences between complexity and chaos theory. I am in complete agreement with your suggestion that noise at one level can be the occasion for the emergence of more complex systems at another level. I would insist, however, that there is no necessity in this process. To the contrary, emergence always involves chance. This point is made consistently by complexity theorists like John Holland, John Casti, Stuart Kauffman, and others. Raschke:  Good. Now let’s head toward closure here with a wide open question. Could you characterize as decidedly as possible how you would re-(en)vision what has historically been regarded as the “study of religion,” including theological studies, in light of the above considerations. I am not talking about “religion” as the matter of discussion here. I am talking about what religious scholars do, and how they do it. If someone wanted to redo the academic curriculum along the lines you intimate, what sort of things might they do? Taylor: As you suggest, this is a wide-open question, which can never reach closure. At the outset, it is important to stress that it is impossible to reimagine religious studies without reimagining the structure of knowledge as such. Correlatively, it is necessary to rethink the structure of disciplines as well as the curriculum. I realize, of course, that this is a huge undertaking. Nonetheless, I think it is both necessary and unavoidable. In approaching this task within the context of religious studies, it is necessary to think in terms of problems or issues rather than disciplines. Consider, for example, the questions of transcendence, transformation, and transgression. These interrelated problems might be taken as points of departure for inquiries, which would draw on a broad range of what are now labeled disciplines. Needless to say, it is important to approach these issues from the perspective of multiple religious and cultural traditions. Moreover, it is very important to consider the historical development of these issues in different traditions. A central question to be asked is: Where has this issue been explored creatively and critically? My wager is that this way of approaching investigation will eventually recast every field of inquiry. I should also stress that I think the academy as a whole remains far too graphocentric in its research and teaching.

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The book as we have known it for centuries is, like the traditional curriculum and the classroom, a thing of the past. It is, therefore, necessary to reinvent the ways in which we read, write, and teach. New informatic and telematic technologies make this not only possible but unavoidable. One of the most important aspects of these new technologies is that they are multimedia. It is now possible to “write” not only with words but with images and sounds as well. By now we should realize that the graphic design of most scholarship and teaching is completely overdetermined both ideologically and intellectually. It is time to break the regime of print in all of its manifestations. The implications of this gesture are radical because the authority of the university as well as the scholar/teacher continues to rest upon print. The developments I’m suggesting involve complex feedback and feedforward loops in which nothing will remain the same. Yes, of course there are threats here. But there are also unprecedented opportunities. Rather than living out the eternal return of the same, I’d rather roll the dice and see what happens. Might be snake eyes but, then again, might not.

Loosening the Tongue On Derrida and Religious Theory John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus Syracuse University Carl A. Raschke, University of Denver

More than any contemporary American philosopher, John D. (“Jack”) Caputo has been instrumental in making both the name Jacques Derrida and the slippery term “deconstruction” household words. His three biennial conferences on “postmodernism” at Villanova University in Pennsylvania since the mid-1990s have not only drawn leading international figures, including Derrida, but also provided an opportunity for countless scholars to comprehend the players and issues connected to the movement itself. In this lively conversation with JCRT senior editor Carl Raschke, Caputo talks about his own project and style, particularly his effort to show us how Derrida is not only an illustrious philosopher, but a religious thinker as well. In that regard Caputo charts a trajectory for postmodernist thought that has only been dimly thought to the present. And he distinguishes his reading of Derrida decisively from that of Mark C. Taylor, whom JCRT interviewed a year ago.

Raschke:  You, along with Richard Rorty, have generally been credited with making the work of Jacques Derrida both accessible and respectable within the American philosophical community. Can you offer some brief autobiographical perspective on how you came to Derrida and by what trajectories? Caputo: I got to know Jacques Derrida in the most commonplace of ways—the way we academics meet almost everyone we know outside our own institutions—by rubbing elbows with him at academic conferences. I attended a summer conference in Italy years ago in which he led some very

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illuminating seminars on  Glas.  Then I remember giving a paper “on” him, as he sat in the audience listening, at a conference in Chicago twenty years ago, which was published under the title  Deconstruction and Philosophy. I remember being quite terrified about giving that paper. I was afraid he would say I had everything wrong, and then what would I do? Fortunately, he was very gracious with me then, as he always is. One of the things that impresses me about Derrida, that impresses everyone who gets to know him, is that he is an extraordinarily decent man, kind and appreciative of the work that others are doing, and disarmingly modest about his own importance. I knew him well enough to prevail upon him to come to Villanova in 1994 to help us launch our new doctoral program, and we have had frequent contact with each other ever since then in connection with the “Religion and Postmodernism” conferences. Although we are very different personally, and have extraordinarily different backgrounds, we see eye to eye about quite a lot of things. That is why I joke about a “game of Jacks,” about sorting out whose voice is whose when I write. In the end, what he says about the deconstructibility of the structures we cannot help but erect is the only way that religious communities can avoid violence. At the same time, deconstruction itself is structured like a religion—it lives and breathes a religious and messianic air; like religion it turns on a faith, a hope, even a prayer for the possibility of the impossible. I took up his work most seriously just as I was becoming disillusioned with Heidegger and had heard all that I could bear about the “history of Being.” Before it was published, I sent him the manuscript of  The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida,  because I was concerned about “coopting” him for religion, about domesticating deconstruction, and worried about whether I was respecting the difference between deconstruction and religion. Thankfully, he liked the manuscript a lot, and he said that I read him the way he “loves to be read.” One could interpret that narcissistically, of course, because I read him sympathetically. But I think he meant that I read him “affirmatively,” that I singled out the”viens, oui, oui,” which he himself takes to be central to his work and which lays to rest the usual academic and journalistic stereotypes of “deconstruction”—which is, in the end, a misleading term to characterize his thought—as some kind of nihilism.

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Raschke: In two places in your writing, I believe, you refer to Derrida as the one who “loosened my tongue.” This statement can probably be taken at face value or as a deeper, “Derridonymic” tropism of some sort. Given the context of your career, I am wondering if you can elaborate on that statement a bit— philosophically as much as autobiographically. Caputo: Here you touch upon something close to my heart. If you were to go back to my first books, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought and Heidegger and Aquinas, you would see that they conform perfectly to academic protocol, to the best manners of the university (not to mention my doctoral dissertation, which I earnestly attempted to make as boring as possible, with the understanding that this was the mark of seriousness). Nonetheless, in the background, even in those days, I nurtured a closet love of Kierkegaard. As a young Catholic college student in the pre-Vatican II days, indeed as a member of a religious order (the “Brothers of the Christian Schools”), I would read Kierkegaard secretly at night, after the lights went out, with a flashlight (that’s a joke). Kierkegaard was my secret hero—passionate, Protestant and provocatively funny—while during the day and with all due decorum I studied Thomas Aquinas, who was of course angelically calm, cool and Catholic. When I turned to Heidegger, and to his links with medieval mysticism, what I found was more solemn humorlessness, which lay behind his misunderstanding of the comic genius of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Heidegger was incapable of getting a joke. Then I discovered Derrida, a philosopher who said the most deadly serious things with humor, with a joke or a pun, for which he had a serious theory. The Hegel/aigle/eagle of savoir absolue  soaring over our poor empirical heads;  sa, s’a,  S(t.) A(ugustine). Outrageous. Outrageously funny. Here was a philosopher writing astute and searching criticisms of Hegel, while also making fun of him, while also respecting him. Kierkegaard encore. Derrida loosened my tongue, that is to say, he gave me the nerve to write like Kierkegaard. That means to write as clearly as I could in American English while all the while allowing what I said to be inwardly disturbed by an auto-deconstructing humor which allows my text to put itself in question and not to take itself too seriously. With Derrida, I found my voice, which is of course an import, a corporation, Danish American Deconstruction, Inc. That is why there is marked difference

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in style in everything I wrote from Radical Hermeneutics on. But this, to be sure, could never be just a matter of style; it goes to the substance of what I want to say, to the very stuff of the tragic-comic structure of our lives, in virtue of which we are or should be laughing through our tears. Like the story that Kierkegaard tells of the fellow who was invited to dinner and says he will be there—if he lives that long—and then the host laughs, and he laughs, too. Except that he is not kidding. Well, he is not just kidding. Laughter helps us heal the wound of our mortality. Raschke:  Let’s explore the Kierkegaard connection. You, of course, share similar intellectual antecedents with Mark C. Taylor, who started his career as a Kierkegaard scholar, but became captivated with Derrida. You and Taylor have gone in different directions. Taylor saw in Derrida the inspiration for what he dubbed “a/theology.” You on the other hand came to identify him as “Saint Jacques,” as the great postmodern “desert father” whose “prayers” and propitiations serve to humble philosophy before the tout autre. Where Taylor follows Derrida along the trajectory of Thomas J.J. Altizer into the sphere of total immanence, you pursue the “tracings” of Augustine and Levinas to the site of total otherness. You end up on a mountain in the desert (Mount Moriah), whereas Taylor ends up in a city looking out at the mountains—i.e., Las Vegas. Is that the difference between a Presbyterian and an Augustinian? WWJD? What would Jacques do? Caputo: Your question is right on the mark, if you will pardon the pun. You are absolutely right to say that Mark Taylor and I share a common lineage but that we have taken it in quite different directions, and you might well say, as you do, that this is a difference between immanence and the wholly other. In Erring Mark pretty much opened up the whole field of “religion and postmodernism,” which has become a prosperous academic “industry,” if you will, and we are all permanently in his debt for that. A lot of wonderful work has ensued in the aftermath of that book. But I like to thinkErring belongs to the “first generation” of this dialogue. In Prayers and Tears I was politely but insistently trying to say that  Erring  is not the final word, or even the best one, about the relation of Derrida and religion, that there is a religious motif in deconstruction that is much more recognizably religious, even more

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traditional—for example, there is a genuine “prayer”—than Mark is prepared to admit. Erring proceeds from a more Nietzschean conception of deconstruction as the free play of signifiers leading to other signifiers without respite. That is a 1970s reading of Derrida, which does not take account of a more powerful and Levinasian tendency in his work that is also linked to Kierkegaardian singularity, to his Abraham face to face with the wholly other. I am referring to the affirmation of the coming of the other in deconstruction, the possibility of the impossible, the Jewish and messianic motif of the justice to come, the gift to come, the forgiveness to come that has become dominant in the last fifteen years. Were Mark to go back to Derrida today—which he is not going to do, because he has his own work to do, his own trajectory—I feel he would have to say something different. Of course, I think he would have to write Prayers and Tears. I myself think that Mark does not rigorously observe the slash in “a/ theology,” that he allows God to dissolve without remainder into the glorious neon and electronic apocalypse of the postmodern city and the internet. He remains for me still too attached to Altizer and he misses a more radically “a/ theological” element in deconstruction, one more delicately poised upon the undecidable fluctuation between theos and atheos. Without getting into a long discourse, let me say that the heart of deconstruction, if it has a heart, is the Augustinian cor inquietum, the restless heart of Augustinian desire. But this heart is reinscribed in deconstruction as a certain faith and hope in the coming of something radically unforeseeable, something so unforeseeable that, to the extent that their object is determined and identified, which is what happens in the traditional confessions, faith and hope are actually compromised. From that point of view, and this will not make the advocates of Radical Orthodoxy happy, the faith and hope, the prayers and tears, in Circumfession are actually purer, more unknowing, less assured, constituting a more austere faith, more of a hope against hope, than in the Confessions. To be a little impudent, let us say that we are always already “hoping sighing dreaming” about an absolute future with a kind of quasi-atheistic, Jewish-Kierkegaardian quasi-Augustinian desire. That for me is more radically “a/theological.” That is the condition of faith, the condition of what Climacus calls the condition.

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Raschke: You make a powerful point, and articulate effectively what might be called the nagging disquiet within, if not the aporia that bifurcates, postmodernist thought. I really appreciate what you say, because I myself tried to speak against the “a/theological” tide in the early 1980s as not the way to go with Derrida. Prayers and Tears has had sufficient impact to provoke new readings, of course, but it bothers me there are so many out there who made up their minds in the Eighties about Derrida and won’t pay attention to him now. I find myself even blaming Derrida at times for the Derrideans. Following that thread, can you say more about what you call the “Levinasian” thread in Derrida? Where do you spot it exactly, and where do you see it leading us? In your most recent writings you seem to see it taking us on a journey to the desert, or at least up Mount Moriah. Can you give us a little sketch. Caputo: As I argued in  Against Ethics, the philosophy of difference has two sides: in the first, difference is taken as  diversitas, the production of polymorphic, polyvalent diversity, the play of differences, a certain “heteromorphic” excess, which is the Nietzschean side that is passed along to us through Bataille. But difference also has the sense of alter, of the other one, that one there before me, who confronts me and lays claim to me, which is not a heteromorphic but a heteronomic difference. This latter is the sense of the tout autre, the wholly other, which comes into continental philosophy from religious sources, from Kierkegaard and Levinas, two “Jewgreek” thinkers whose writings draws upon both biblical and philosophical resources. To oversimplify matters, we might say that the first sense of difference tends toward literature and aesthetics, while the second leads us to the ethicoreligious and political, which is what we see in the serious interest that many religious thinkers today show in Derrida, whereas literature departments have moved on to cultural studies. At the start, Derrida was quickly and mistakenly typecast as a neo-Nietzschean, which is too simple. Of course he has this side; he loves the invention of the other, the production of new and unforeseeable differences, of “innumerable genders,” e.g, as he says in “Choreographies.” But “invention” also has the sense for him of the “incoming,”  in-veniens, what breaks in upon me and shatters my horizons of expectation. This was always there for anyone who had the eyes to see, e.g., in “Violence and Metaphysics” (which was not simply a criticism of Levinas,

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as was widely assumed), but by the 1990s it was unmistakable to anyone who could read at all. For example, the first analysis of the “gift,” in the late 1970s in  Given Time, which took the form of a commentary on a short tale by Baudelaire, argued that the literary text is a gift without return that is not to be returned to the author’s intention but allowed to disseminate itself in endlessly new renderings. But in 1992, in  The Gift of Death, the gift referred to the unconditional responsibility I owe to the tout autre who lays claim to me, and the text that was commented upon was Fear and Trembling. But for many readers (or non-readers, for they had not kept reading), this all came too late. As you rightly say, they had made up their minds; they thought they already had Derrida’s number. This was especially true in the United States where Derrida was taken up by literary theorists rather than by philosophers. To see this side of Derrida you need to follow closely the argument of Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Mediation, a text which had of course had been studied very carefully by Levinas. For Husserl, the structural inaccessibility of the “other” (alter) ego is not a lack or defect, but rather constitutes in a positive and affirmative way the alterity of the other; complete accessibility would ruin the phenomenon. Here the non-appearing of the other constitutes its very appearance, constitutes the irreducible transcendence of the other, the “secret” of the other, as Derrida would say. So, after delimiting Levinas’s notion of the tout autre in “Violence and Metaphysics” —it cannot be simply and absolutely tout autre—Derrida later on associates himself with this phrase (Husserl himself had spoken of the ganz anderer) and in fact generalizes it: tout autre est tout autre, everything in its singularity, human or non-human, is wholly other. This avoids the anthropocentrism of Levinas’s formula, but it also reminds me of the medieval idea of transcendental alterity: omne ens qua ens est aliud, every entity as such is singularly itself and different from every other entity. Here there is a certain convergence of diversity and alterity, for this formula affirms the sheer multiplicity of things in their maximum plurality and, at the same time, it affirms each thing in its alterity. Where does this lead? Well, for those of us who have an ear for such things, we can hear in this the echo of the God who has numbered every hair on our head, who has counted every tear, who does not allow the press of the ninety-nine to outweigh the infinite value

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of the one hundredth. So it does not lead only into the desert, although we cannot avoid the desert, but I also see it as an opening to what is called in the New Testament the “Kingdom of God.” Raschke:  The suggestion that the “postmodern turn”, with Derrida riding shotgun, may actually be in the direction of “the Kingdom of God” will probably sound quite incendiary among our fashionable “a/theological” and “secular theological” colleagues. But it all quite coheres if one has the “eyes to see and the ears to listen.” At the same time, I am not necessarily as convinced as you are that it is as explicit in Derrida, even the later Derrida, as you make it out, but it is certainly implicit. Of course, you know Derrida the man very well, and the heart these days may have its reasons that reason, even “deconstructive reason”, does not know. At the same time, this move has been implicit in the religious and theological readings of Derrida all along. That seems to be why so many of our younger Protestant evangelical theologians, along with Catholic Augustinian types, such as hung out at the last Villanova conference, have been drawn of late into the repertoire of Derridean-style discourse. In my own essay “A-dieu to Derrida”—an obvious play on the latter’s “Adieu to Levinas”—I point out that the “a” of this “adieu”—and I am talking about the Derrida prior to his own sort of “turning”—may be far more consequential than the “a” of différance. Such a Levinasian turn, which may be a turning far beyond where Levinas himself would have turned, is only in its beginnings. My next question for you, therefore, is this: how do we speak, philosophically as well as theologically, with this new acknowledgement of the presence of “the Kingdom”? Do we now speak parabolically, as in the Gospels? Or do we go on writing? Both are appropriate modes of syntax for the desert. Or do we find a more urbane strategy of Rorty’s “conversation”? Or do we like Abraham trek up the slopes of Moriah, or like Jesus on the way to Golgotha, in silence? Caputo: Let me say at once that I agree with you about the extent to which any Kingdom talk is implicit rather than explicit in Derrida. I would take this to have a strictly virtual presence in Derrida, and to be but one of many virtualities and directions in which deconstruction could be and is taken. I am not trying to appropriate Derrida or take possession of him, to plant the flag of

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religion on his shores and claim deconstruction for religion. Deconstruction is less a set of theories and more a style of thinking, one that is—for those of us who have the ears to hear, who are interested in this—deeply resonant with motifs that we also find in the scriptures. But the dialogue of Derrida with Rorty, who is a completely secular figure (if that is what he is) is just as possible. Or Lacan, etc. Of course I particularly enjoy the insouciance, the impudence, the downright scandal, and I admit that I am giving myself pleasure when I say that he is a religious thinker, that it all reminds me of the Kingdom of God, that he is a quasi-atheistic Jewish Augustine. These are goads, provocations, meant to scandalize both secularist thinkers on the one hand and Christian conservatives on other hand, two eminently goad-worthy groups, I would add. In a certain way, it is a risky strategy, one that is not calculated to win a large following, since it sets out to alienate everyone! The hope is that it comes close to getting Derrida right, to being sensitive to the complexity of his thought, and to making him more interesting to people of good will on both sides, without hoping to reach the extremists on both sides. The acidic contempt for religion on the part of some secularist philosophers, and the intractable antagonism and fear of fundamentalists to interpretive free play—those are beyond reach. As to how we shall speak, there’s not much chance that academics will follow the way of silence, which is a style whose merits are lost on the various rank and tenure committees that we all have to contend with. Nor is there much chance that academics will be capable of creating brilliant parables to add to the stock of the New Testament stories. We shall in all likelihood continue to write books for one another, occasionally trying to reach out to a wider audience, as I did in On Religion, but perhaps these books will not be so boring. After you get tenure and promotion, you should try not to be so boring; before that, it is more or less required. Perhaps we will be able to invent new objects for study. The traditional “departments” are growing weaker in our colleges and universities and “programs” that implicate many disciplines are growing stronger. While I think that a rigorous training in a particular discipline is a good “boot camp”—it is like doing pushups and running laps in order to train for a game—I also think that it is does not end there; that is not the game. The reading and the writing of unclassifiable texts—that is the game, and that is also more interesting.

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That is the effect I hope to produce when I say (and I believe this, I am not  just  trying to produce a provocation), “deconstruction, the democracy to come, the gift, hospitality, forgiveness—yes, that is all like the Kingdom of God. Derrida talking about his circumcision—that sounds like the New Testament.” Shock, scandal, outrage, disbelief, red faces—on both sides; tweedy academics and black suited pastors fainting dead away (actually, today, these wardrobes are more likely to be reversed). And then, perhaps, this is the risk, later on, reflection. Reflection both about the Scriptures and about what is called deconstruction or “what is called thinking,” as Heidegger says; reflection both about religious institutions and about any institution or structure at all. So it would produce new hybrid analyses that would nonetheless be very pointed, analyses that, on the one hand, perhaps, would succeed in giving religion a new hearing (which is fitting, seeing that it has never ceased to have a hearing outside academic walls), but, on the other hand, would also make us take a new look at the social and institutional structures around us. Our social institutions do not often resemble the Kingdom of God, even as the churches do not often resemble the democracy to come. It would infuse Kingdom motifs into secular structures and at the same time demand that the Kingdom find a way to be embodied in the kosmos, the “present age,” the world of business and politics. It would be a way both to pitch the tents of the Kingdom in the world and also not to conform to the world, which is the double bind we are all under. So if all this were to succeed, the effects would be felt in ethics, politics, religion, the seminary and the academy, on many fronts, all of which would become more porous to one another, and more open-ended and revisable in themselves. Raschke: If I may venture a “religious” annotation here, I will say amen. But as an African-American Pentecostal pastor, who had a major impact on my thinking, once said, “if you’re going to have Kingdom men and women, you [as a preacher] have got to make them stop thinking like kings.” Foucault somewhere talks about regicide, separating from the body the head of the “king”, as the historical “sign” that brings to a close the self-referential (or what Heidegger would term “subjectist”) reflexivity that charts the history of Western philosophy. In a semiotic sense, the king is the political arche-

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presence, the transcendental signified, the anchoring representation of all “rationality”, the “what” that one really loves when they love their God (I am alluding here to what you and Derrida do with Augustine’s celebrated line). Along these lines I am intrigued by your referencing the “democracy” that is “to come”, and its signification with respect to the “Kingdom.” Perhaps the follow-up question, then, would be how to “write”, which is what you say we should be doing, in the anticipation of a “democratic” Kingdom without kings. If deconstruction is at heart a “style”, then it is a style that should be infecting all our other styles, including the style of writing. It should be infecting JCRT (Journal of Contemporary Religious Thought), which I am not sure it is even beginning to do. That is a far cry from the skandalon of Jesus, let alone its still-awaited (invienens) parousia. If we academics are only a scandal to ourselves, then we do not create much scandal. We are only creating “palace scandals,” titillating ourselves within earshot of the king, who remains ensconced on his throne. Now and then we announce that the “king is dead” (thanatotheology), which we don’t really know, so we can try to run the palace for a while. What is the style of writing in your estimation when writing is no longer in the “royal” (academic) style? Caputo: You are right. To speak of a “Kingdom” offends our democratic ears and sounds like the very opposite of a democracy, and your African-American preacher is right: the leaders of the churches behave like kings, and indeed Roman Catholic cardinals are spoken of as “princes of the church,” which is also how they dress. There is a wonderful text near the end of the famous “Différance” essay in which Derrida stresses the poverty of the word, or nonword, différance. He says this word is de-capitated, that it is not only defaced and scarred by a misspelling but that it is deprived of a head, without a capital letter—I am glossing this text a little. He goes on to say that différance does not “reign” over anything, that it lacks “authority,” that it “subverts every Kingdom”, and that it is “dreaded” by everything that desires a Kingdom, past or future. So, there could be no “Kingdom of différance”—except in a completely ironic sense. For what would prevent us speaking of a “Kingdom without Kingdom?” That would be, it seems to me, a paradigmatic Derridean gesture, although it is not one that he makes. There could be a Kingdom of différance only where there is no royal purple, not a king or a prince in sight, a Kingdom without

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kings and royalty, without a prince, principium, or arche. So were there to be such a Kingdom, which could only be what he would call—were he to say this, which he never does—a “Kingdom to come,” it would be an “an-archic” Kingdom, where what “reigns,” what hold sways, is what is an-archical, the out-of-power, out of luck, outcast and outlaw, the outsider. That is what I am calling in the book I am working on right now a “sacred anarchy,” a “hier-an-archy,” where what is valorized is precisely what is out of power. We maintain a tension between what is valorized, what has power, what is sacred, and, at the same time, what is out of power, outlawed and outcast. So the “power” here is precisely the power of powerlessness, which is the structure of the “other” in Levinas, who comes to me from on high just in virtue of the fact that he is laid low; the other’s claim on me arises from his destitution. That is how such a Kingdom, such a holding sway, could work its way into deconstruction. But is not all this very much like the basileia, the Kingdom in the New Testament, which is a most unlikely, a highly ironic Kingdom? Here is a “Kingdom” in which the favor falls on the lame and the leper, the poor and the outsiders, where, as the story of the wedding feast tells us, the ones who are “in” the Kingdom are precisely those who are “out.” When the soldiers dress up Jesus in purple and crown him with thorns, when they mock his Kingdom, is that not exactly right? From the point of view of the world, the Kingdom of God is an irony, an object of scorn, a joke. So, my hypothesis is that the “democracy to come” and the “Kingdom to come,” look very much alike on important points. But your question demands one more concession. The talk of a “Kingdom” to come, even an inverted, perverted and anarchic Kingdom, would be strategic since what would finally be envisaged is a radical community of equals, where no one is privileged. Derrida, incidentally, would be willing to say the same thing about the word “democracy:” in the radically unforeseeable future of the “democracy to come,” the “to come” is more important than the “democracy,” because in an absolute future, the future is radically unforeseeable and we cannot be sure we would want to call it democracy. As to how to break out of the palace, how to produce the effects of democracy on a wider scale, I do not know that I have anything to add to the obvious. I myself feel free to write in a style that gives scandal to academic protocol, to the A.P.A. or to the A.A.R., but as you say this is “in house”

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scandal and such provocation is miniscule. If Prayers and Tears could get on to Oprah’s list, would that make a difference? Are we prepared to say that is what we want? The “Jesus Seminar” people write in a traditional style but they have very good marketing skills and they have gone a long way to alerting a wider public to the radical results of historical Jesus research. They have even gotten on to television. That might be one example. Also, it is hard to imagine a book that has been more widely assimilated into the general culture than Kuhn’s  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—all sorts of people speak of “paradigm shifts” without even knowing where this phrase comes from—but that is a book written in a more or less conventional academic style—and not a very long book at that (perhaps that is the secret!). Kuhn’s book offers a radical and transforming way to think, not only about scientific change, but about any kind of transformation at all, so that anyone who can read understands that Kuhn is describing a process that goes on everywhere. His discourse on “revolution” is very much in an “establishment” style, but what he says is enormously provocative. Derrida himself is also the source of an enormous provocation but he writes for the most part in a way that almost no one can understand without extensive preparation and careful study. So he is easily misunderstood. For example, instead of being counted as an advocate of “democracy,” he has recently been included on a list of misguided intellectuals like Heidegger who fall for totalitarian regimes. I do not know what the law is here but if I had to venture a hypothesis I would be inclined to point to William James, who wrote a lucid, witty, scintillating American English that made the language dance and became a public figure of considerable importance. Rorty is a little bit like that today; he is a brilliant writer who has perfect pitch for the rhythms of American English and has a wide audience. Kierkegaard did the same thing with Danish, but there are few people in the world who can read Danish, so he has depended upon translators. That raises the question of the “monolingualism” of the world today, where everything must be in English. My hypothesis would be that we do not need to write in an  avantgarde style. But we do need to cross over disciplinary barriers and to write in a way that can be understood—unlike the way we train our doctoral students to write, in analytic or continental programs—and in a way that can in fact

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make the language dance! It also helps if the language in which you dance is English. Raschke:  Shifting back to Derrida, I’d like to move to the question of the relationship between deconstruction and religion, and where Derrida is really going as he increasingly takes up the “religious” issue. Is he talking about religion in a broad, concrete sense, or more about the “paradox” which generates the possibility of faith (in Kierkegaard’s sense)? If we read Derrida as Derrida, what do we really do with the “study of religion”? Don’t we really have to deconstruct it in a radical way and perhaps get back to the question of faith, which is independent of the vast formalities of the phenomenon? You have spoken of a “religion without religion.” How can we move in that direction—theoretically—without running aground on mere heurisms? Caputo: Let me distinguish in what you say between religion and the study of religion. First, religion. In an important way, deconstruction is all about religion because it is all about faith. The deconstructibility of the present is a function of the structure of hope and expectation, of the possibility of the impossible, of the very idea of the “to come.” Derrida says that the least bad definition of deconstruction, deconstruction in a nutshell, if you will, is the experience of the impossible. Here “experience” does not mean the ordinary course of experience of things in “now-time,” in a kind of smooth Husserlian flow of objects presented in perceptual intuition, given in a continuous series of present moments, which are adequately prepared for by protention. That, we might say, is the definition of “secular” (un-eventful) experience. Experience for Derrida means being taken by surprise by something completely unforeseeable, something that in a certain way blind-sides us, comes out of nowhere, which is what he means by the “event.” By “the impossible” he means the event, what is not possible relative to our horizon of expectation, what we did not see coming. The only thing that is truly “coming,” in this sense, what is truly “to come,” is what we did not see coming. If you see something coming, if you can anticipate it, then to a certain extent it is already present and it has already happened. That is the “future present” as opposed to the “absolute future.” So the relationship to the future cannot

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be one of seeing or knowledge but strictly of faith and non-knowing. As I said earlier, “knowledge” would actually compromise the faith. To the extent that we know what we want or expect or hope for, then the faith would be more determinate, more content-ful, more “credible,” much less a “pure” faith. Derrida takes the notion of faith and hope very far, farther really than in a confessional faith where the object of faith is relatively determinate. This expectant hope in the impossible draws upon deep religious resources and has a distinct and unmistakable religious flavor. With God nothing is impossible, the name of God is the name of the possibility of the impossible. But Derrida is not religious in a conventional sense—which is alright, since we already have a lot of conventional religion! When I speak of “religion without religion” I mean deconstruction is a religion without conventional religion. It is at most “structured like” a religion, like a prophetic religion, since the hope and expectation are always ethical and political, turning on a promise of justice and democracy. If we simply bracket this word religion we might say that deconstruction is an important form of “post-secular” thinking, thinking that has become critical of the various Enlightenment critiques, enlightened about the Enlightenment. In that way deconstruction avoids a reductionistic critique of religion and allows religious structures to resurface, to assume their rightful place in experience. Or rather, since Derrida dislikes the periodization that the family of “post-” words implies, we might speak of deconstruction as “para-secular” thinking, thinking that runs alongside mainstream secular thinking, that occasionally intersects with it but then drives off the road to wander in an open field, and then again intersects with the main highway later on, and so on. Derrida might prefer that image. “Para-” suggests that it takes up with something marginal—like Jesus dining with sinners!—or subsidiary, not officially sanctioned by the secular and academic enlightenment. Then it operates from this marginal position to disturb the business as usual of the secular enlightenment in a discourse and a style that those of us who have a religious tradition find congenial and instantly recognize. But it is not just style, or a heuristics, because I really do believe that what is going on in deconstruction in this more prophetic mode in a very substantive way disturbs the distinction between theism and atheism. Derrida rightly passes for an atheist but what is called for in deconstruction is what is called

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in religion “the love of God”—in spirit and in truth, loving God in a way that is not orthodox but orthopractical. Perhaps, if our secular colleagues listen to Derrida they will get an earful of religious discourse, all they need, without even knowing it, and it, the religion, will be very painless for them, even if Derrida is a pain to them in other ways. Or perhaps they sense the danger of a painless contamination by religion and this is what worries them and is part of the Enlightenment hostility to him. That is how I see the relation of deconstruction and religion. As to the “study of ” religion, religious studies, the most important effect of deconstruction is to relativize the particular confessions as so many instances or cases of this structure of hope and expectation. The religions of the book turn on this “pure messianic” as so many ways to determine this “pure faith,” to give it content and historical actuality, but one concedes, methodologically, that there are various turns possible here and no one has taken the final turn. Now since this relativization is really the opening move of “religious studies,” deconstruction should be a welcome guest in most religious studies departments, because it provides them with an affirmative and important meta-theory of religion. But if we distinguish religious studies from theology—an old religious war!—and if we say that theology is defined by the repudiation of confessional relativization, then deconstruction may look more like a poison/remedy, a gift/ Gift, a promise/threat, a monster instead of a Messiah. But even then I think that theology, if it is not to become doctrinaire and indoctrinating, requires this deconstructive opening. All this is complicated by the fact that the “pure messianic” depends upon the memory of the Messiah, or the memory of the hope in the coming of the Messiah, that is preserved in the concrete religious traditions. The study of the ancient texts is lovingly cultivated in these traditions, and without them the very texts that Derrida analyzes, maybe the very idea of religion, might not have been preserved.

Refusing Theory Avital Ronell and the Structure of Stupidity Avital Ronell, New York University Victor E Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

WARNING: The Telephone Book is going to resist you. —Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book Remember: When you’re on the telephone, there is always an electronic flow, even when that flow is unmarked. —Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book Can Schlegel’s kick in the ass be read allegorically?

—Avital Ronell, Stupidity

Date: Tue, 01 April 2003 5:67:08—0700 From: Avital Ronell [email protected] To:   “Victor E. Taylor”[email protected] Subject: Essay MIME-CONTENT: text/html 8.01 KB Dear Mr. Taylor, I am terribly sorry for my prolonged e/absence—I have been out of the country and find myself besieged by deadlines and political activities.  I hope you are well and deeply apologize for the rude appearance of my silence: I am truly swamped. Very warm greetings, Avital Ronell

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I Refusal, especially of theory and thinking, takes on many forms, visceral, fantastic, and linguistic. The first two are easily traced as “refusal” manifests itself as “strong reaction,” either in tossing or in the fantasy of tossing a theory book or colleague out of a window—the complement to Wittgenstein’s “poker.” The third form of refusal is much more difficult to locate since it appears or seems to appear as something not there or not understood or not gotten. These “refusals” are “performative contradictions” in speech. Not understanding1 or, too simply, stupidity follows in this direction insofar as it expresses itself by its incapacity to properly express itself linguistically. “Duh,” “er,” “um,” are instances of this refusal, a refusal of meaning. But is it altogether wrong to refuse meaning? Let’s examine “duh.” “Duh.”2 It is generally understood to be an extra or para-linguistic symptom of discourse’s pause or failure— something akin to Aristotle’s “mere voice” or an animal phone3 . It is not a word per se since it references the “unavailability” of discourse proper, but it is the title of a book, a website, and, now, included in an academic essay, perhaps not the first. “Duh” evokes presence through a feeling of absence, marking that which is unavailable to discourse or that which is obvious. For example, “‘Duh’ evokes presence through a feeling of absence, marking that which is unavailable to discourse or that which is obvious, duh (or ‘no duh’).” Since “duh” or even “no duh” is an extra or para-linguistic phenomenon expressing or performing an unavailability of or obviousness within discourse, it has theoretical consequences and, more precisely, consequences for the future of theory. “Duh,” as a pause or failure or refusal, has been and remains the response to theory. This is easily testable by saying “différance” in a departmental meeting. The testable “duh” transforms into the detestable “duh” as the pause or failure turns to “duh” as the expression or performance of the obvious—”duh (or duuuh), that’s theory,” a revving up or a coming to realization of some awareness, however minimal or previously unavailable discourse. “Duh” is not all bad, however. “Duh” has a significant place in the discursive practices surrounding academic, sometimes intellectual, discourse. “Duh” is evocative, calling up, as it were, stupidity’s rich tradition and within this tradition “duh” stands the ground of refusal. Refusing “duh” means resisting stupidity and its double, a “refusing duh,” conjures up a break between discourse and world.

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This duality of “duh,” the evocation of stupidity and its refusal, also elicits a response from knowing, stupidity’s reciprocal and necessary condition. “Duh” is an evocation of the obvious and an instantiation of discourse’s pause or failure, but not the pause or failure of thinking. “Duh” demonstrates the interval between the “constative” and “performative” aspects of language. To this extent, “duh” is a critical, performative figure within the space of theoretical inquiry. “Duh” is para/extra-grammatical, yet it provides meaning through a performance of the not there or the not getting it. More than a simple phenomenon of speech-act theory, “duh” draws language into deconstructive operations; or, as Paul de Man writes in Allegories of Readings, “[t]here can be no text without grammar: the logic of grammar generates texts only in the absence of referential meaning, but every text generates a referent that subverts the grammatical principle to which it owed its constitution.”4 He continues that “[w]hat remains hidden in the everyday use of language, the fundamental incompatibility between grammar and meaning, becomes explicit when the linguistic structures are stated.”5 “Duh” becomes the “subversive duh” as it means not there or not getting it and performs the possibility of “something” not there or “something” not gotten. The “subversive duh” enacts and betrays its own stupidity by marking its own allegorical structure and necessary relationship to knowing and not knowing. Avital Ronell’s Stupidity is an unreadable (see Paul de Man), dense, and comprehensive study of the phenomenon and concept of “stupidity” that at times seems to belong more to the field of epidemiology than to the disciplines of philosophy and literature. Stupidity is a condition, with an array of symptoms, definitions, and contexts within Western literary and philosophical culture. “The temptation,” Ronell writes in her introduction entitled “Slow Learner,” “is to wage war on stupidity as if it were a vanquishable object.”6 War on stupidity, as a war on anything else, presumes that some original order can be regained or restored—some state of purity achieved. Wars on drugs and disease revolve around the rhetoric of health—bodily, spiritual, and communal. Wars promise to return us to peace and harmony. Wars promise to right wrongs or vanquish “evildoers” or “theorists” or those not considered to be “the children of God.” Departmental or academic-ideological wars are more complicated, as anyone in higher education has learned, however slowly. These are designer wars, promising nothing other than change or business as

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usual and delivering on neither. These are wars for and against stupidity— wars that never can be won or lost. This fact of stupidity, to the extent we have facts of stupidity, moves Ronell’s analysis forward: “Stupidity exceeds and undercuts materiality, runs loose, wins a few rounds, recedes, gets carried home in the clutch of denial—and returns.” 7 Stupidity is not just “bad” thinking or cognitive, calculative error. It isn’t simply mistake: 7+5=13. It is much more and much less than those banal failures of information retrieval and calculation. Stupidity is “essentially linked to the inexhaustible … [it] is that which fatigues knowledge and wears down history.”8 Stupidity is heavy, dull, and slow, with no interest other than to have no interest … no thinking … only to advance procedure and format, ending in the perpetual violence that is the ineluctable status quo. The future of theory, then, will be, like the future of everything else, stupid, but not completely. What is stupidity? Where does one find it? Stupidity is amorphous— sometimes it appears as a pathogen suspended in droplets over the entirety of life. It enters into life, spreading throughout the world. It is there and it is here, which makes stupidity in many ways the ontological condition of all thinking, since all thinking misses something. Ronell charts stupidity’s clinical presentations and records her suspicions of its sub-clinical imperceptibility. The question inevitably arises, Who shall report it? Who can see stupidity— enough to say, there it is? It is undoubtedly someone’s responsibility to name that which is stupid. In the recent past the task of denouncing stupidity, as if in response to an ethical call, has fallen to the “intellectual” or to someone who manages language beyond the sphere of its private contingencies. At least this is part of the fantasy: consider the tone of French, German, and English writers, not to say certain academics, who ceaselessly expose that which is stupid or has failed in understanding. Locating the space of stupidity has been part of a repertoire binding any intelligent—or, finally, stupid—activity that seeks to establish itself and territorialize its findings. The relatedness of stupidity to intelligence and, of possibly greater consequence, the status of modulations, usages, crimes, and valuations of stupidity itself remain to a large degree absent from the concerns of contemporary inquiry. No ethics or politics has been articulated to act upon its pervasive pull. Yet stupidity is everywhere.9       

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Stupidity is “everywhere,” yet no one sees it in its entirety. Collectively, “we” know it or claim to know it, however. In the “intellectual’s game,” those with whom we disagrees are “stupid.” Those who write books we doesn’t like are “stupid.” Those who don’t write at all are considered really “stupid.” In maintaining the omnipresence of stupidity Ronell doesn’t advance a more forgiving and generous attitude toward “stupidity,” far from it. Those writing texts we don’t like and those not writing at all are still stupid or really stupid. They are just stupid, like everyone else, in a different, perhaps more rhetorically effective and obvious way. The degrees of stupidity are endless, since no one can ever completely miss something or completely get something. It is Flaubert, for Ronell, who sees not the essence of stupidity, but the force of stupidity—its trace: “Stupidity is something unshakeable. Nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it. It is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.”10 The hardness of stupidity is a reference to “Thompson”—the inscription on the Pompey column Flaubert encounters on his travels that generates a meditation of the  bêtise sublime. In this circumstance stupidity is defacement, a defecation, “answering the call of nature” or eternity within the space of the ancient. “The temple,” Ronell writes, “ was not destroyed by Samson or even the winds of God’s wrath but by the stain of stupidity, the excremental trace imperturbably bequeathed to eternity.”11 Thompson is Freud’s “Rat Man” to eternity and this association with the scatological is not accidental, especially considering the range of constructions linking stupidity with “shit” or excess: shit-for-brains, stupid shit. The point, however, is that this contaminating act is an uncalled for response, an excess to what is expected or, perhaps, not expected. Stupidity is excremental, leaving a trace or stain, an inscription or surplus where no inscription is required or desired: Now the story of Thompson’s signature, of what happened when Mr. Thompson, on that day, passed into perpetuity, cannot be restricted in range or significance to the status of example or anecdote, a parable in which the column would be left standing. In a rigorous sense, Thompson did pull the column from a context it might have enjoyed without his appropriative signature. It is as though the signing, a synecdoche of stupidity, defacing the memorial, had unstoppable consequences. Henceforth the monument essentially attributes stupidity and, for Flaubert at least, will have always been its attribute: Thompson has effected a substantiation of the attribute,

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for there is no stupidity without monument. Flagging the ancient, he answered a call that was no put out. The naïve and insolent arrogance that consists in responding where no response is invited is an effect of monumental arrogance.12 This uncalled for stain or response belongs to a category of symptoms, but the discourse of symptomology fails to render it in any meaningful way. “Thompson” is a symptom of stupidity, yet it exceeds any form of stupidity we can imagine. What can we say about “Thompson” and Thompson? Is “Thompson” a perverse “souvenir? An instance of “leaving” something behind as opposed to taking something away? A “skid-mark” on eternity? Was Thompson simply an ignorant tourist? The stupidity of “Thompson” cannot be quantified or cognitively exhausted or wiped away, which is what makes it fundamentally stupid. The inexhaustibility of stupidity underscores all of  Stupidity, with Ronell methodically closing down and opening up avenues of philosophical, literary, and theoretical inquiry. The sense we have of stupidity from Flaubert is further complicated by the introduction of Kafka and his trouble with “calling” and “responding” in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Where Flaubert sees “Thompson” as a paradigmatic act of stupidity for its indecorous act, Kafka sees Abraham occupying, as Ronell states, a separate “zone of stupidity,” with “reflexes of stupidity” becoming more and more sporadic and difficult to observe: “Acts of stupidity where no response is called for, whether by carving huge childlike letters into an Alexandrian column or, in the same neighborhood, answering the call of God as if you were the one being summoned (Kafka’s Abraham)—these are reflexes of stupidity.”13 Reflexes of stupidity,” to continue the “bodily” discourse surrounding stupidity, respond “to a call that was not made.”14 Ronell asks, “but how, precisely, can we know?” This “knowing” is posed in the negative, in the study of the predicament one who responds as if the call were “meant for him.” For Ronell, the perverse tourist Thompson finds some resonance with the “primal father,” Abraham. The stupidity of Abraham, just as the stupidity of Thompson, appears as a call to be answered or a “cut.” Thompson cuts his response to the call of eternity into the Pompey column as Abraham, first, cuts his response to God in himself (circumcision) and, secondly, into Isaac (uncut cut): “Abraham, primal father, turns into a kind of Thompson who has imposed his name in an act of monumental error.”15

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The difficulty with “stupidity” and Stupidity is that the subject of inquiry escapes explanation. Stupidity, inherently, occupies a non or pre-discursive space—a space not under the dictates of cognition. “That’s just stupid” points beyond discourse to the nonsensical. In other instances, “that’s just stupid” underscores the complete transparency of something. The two nodal points of “stupidity” create a vacuum in the center, an ongoing tension in which stupidity, more than knowing, determines the logic of a series of events or ideas. Stupidity has a brute force AND a philosophical trace that can be associated with the Oedipal Father and the law of mimesis: “Incapable of renewal or overcoming, the stupid subject has low Oedipal energy: he has held onto ideas, the relics and dogmas transmitted in his youth by his father.”16 Ronell, referring to the work of Jean Paul, examines the role of the “dummkopf reader,” a mimetic reader, one “remain[ing] loyal to the text.”17 More troubling than “loyalty” is the “dummkopf reader›s” “deadly repetition,” a repetition leading to a mechanical reprocessing of the text within rigid cognitive boundaries: “The stupid are unable to make breaks or breakaways; they are hampered even on the rhetorical level, for they cannot run with grammatical leaps or metonymical discontinuities. They are incapable of referring allegorically or embracing deferral.”18 This blindness to texts is also a blindness to others and oneself. “The stupid cannot see themselves.”19 and this invisibility allows stupidity to pass imperceptibly across the world, “avoiding the screening systems of philosophy.”20 If stupidity travels unnoticed, then what can be done about it? Capitulating to stupidity betrays our Enlightenment impulse to “wage war” on error and superstition. Are we not historically obligated to fight stupidity, especially the gross stupidity that accompanies the petty dictates of everyday life? Since the essence of stupidity is unapproachable, one must follow the forces or traces or lines of stupidity until they fade imperceptibly into the scene of thinking. In the preface to “The Question of Stupidity: Why We remain in the Provinces,” Ronell recounts her encounters with the topic of stupidity. The first is more personal, dealing with experiencing the generic unfamiliar. The second encounter involves a “call” from Gilles Deleuze: While I was resolutely not learning Tai Chi vocabulary, Deleuze had ended his life. In the memories and papers that remained, Deleuze, it was reported, had called for a thinking of stupidity: no one had

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ever produced a discourse, he was remembered to have said, that interrogates the transcendental principles of stupidity. I received this call as an assignment—when I write I am always taking a call, I am summoned from elsewhere, truly from the dead, even if they are my contemporaries.21

And Date: Mon, 3 2003 09:35:06-0500 From:  Avital Ronell [email protected] To:      “Victor E. Taylor”   Dear Victor, I’ve been going nutz with overwork (I’m chair of my dept. in addition to everything else). Tell me, is it too late to respond to you? Very best, AR > Quoting Avital Ronell [email protected]: > Professor Ronell, Thank you for your reply. I have until April 15th. Respond by email? Victor

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This special issue of the JCRT centers on Jean-Michel Rabaté’s “future of theory”—a “future” that encompasses both the possibility of theory “in” the future and the condition of theory”for” the future. Your many critical essays and books, Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania, Dictations: On Haunted Writing, The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, ElectricSpeech, Finitude’s Score: Essays for the End of the Millennium, and, most recently, Stupidity, have not only helped us define “theory” or theoretical inquiry across the humanities, but have extended our understanding of “theory” as a complex engagement with, among other things, the crisis in/for thinking and acting. While many scholars in this age of post-theory have turned or returned to more elaborate forms of historical, political, or aesthetic “explication,” you have continued with “theory.” That is, your writings resist this easy reductionism in style and content, leaving the reader with increasingly more “difficult” texts. Could you comment on this intellectual “burden”? The burden of theoretical inquiry in an age of born-again criticism?The “transcendental principles of stupidity”? Deleuze’s challenging “call” pre-empts the far easier task of delineating various literary, philosophical, and cultural “symptoms” or “acts” of stupidity. The “transcendental principles of stupidity” as an object of inquiry resists the very objectification of stupidity that would be required for such a comprehensive analysis. Deleuze, in  Repetition and Difference, states this with some apprehension, especially as he considers the shift in the conceptual plane from stupidity understood as error and stupidity recast as “structure of thought”: A tyrant institutionalized stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it. Slaves are always commanded by another slave. Here too, how could the concept of error account for this unity of stupidity and cruelty, of the grotesque and the terrifying, which doubles the way of the world? Cowardice, cruelty, baseness and stupidity are not simply corporeal capacities or traits of character or society; they are structures of thought as such. The transcendental landscape comes to life: places for the tyrant, the slave and the imbecile must be found within it—without the place resembling the figure who occupies it, and without the transcendental ever being traced from empirical figures which it makes possible. It is always our belief in the postulates of the Cogitatio which prevents us from making stupidity a transcendental problem. Stupidity can

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then be no more than an empirical determination, referring back to psychology or to the anecdotal—or worse, to polemic and insults— and to the especially atrocious pseudo-literary genre of the sottiser.22 The failure in “understanding” or addressing stupidity occurs as one, according to Deleuze, refuses to move stupidity from the space of empirical determination to a plane of transcendental inquiry. This lesson on transcendental thinking in relation to stupidity is relevant to the work of theory—theory as (quasi) transcendental inquiry. The first lessons of theory pre-dates “theory,” with Plato’s khôra opening a “third” space that negotiates the world of Forms and sensible things. “Stupidity,” then, marks a failure to see theoretically or see the structure of seeing, knowing. The obvious world is one sanstransgression and difference. Failing to see the obvious as obvious is the blindness of stupidity insofar as the “stupid-reader” mechanically reassembles the dominant logic of the text-world. Why can’t the stupid see themselves? Why does Deleuze “call” for making stupidity a transcendental problem? Why does Ronell answer the call? The answer: theory. The “stupid reader” is a reader without a sense of difference, a sense that the world and text open onto multiplicities, not just “interpretations” of historical, sociological, and biographical data, which are extensions of a primary “Cogitatio.” To see oneself entails an awareness of espacement—an interval between sensation and cognition as the early phenomenologists through Merleau-Ponty have contended. More to the point, “theory” resists the neurotic, often times mindless, reproduction of the same as something different. This resistance, as Paul de Man has written, places reading against itself as both a resistance “to” a form of unity and a resistance “from” a form of unity: “There can be no text without grammar.” There can be no stupidity without meaning, since meaning is grammar of stupidity. II Why does Avital Ronell answer Deleuze? Here, one must be a “disloyal reader” of Stupidity and respond, “because she knows it is impossible to answer and not to answer.” Deleuze’s call is false, already unanswerable; it requests that which is impossible, making visible that which is invisible. However, in accepting the impossibility of the task Ronell resets the parameters, making

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the (im)possibility and inevitability of stupidity the hiatus to be confronted: “Never hitting home, unable to score, language is engaged in a permanent contest; it tests itself continually in a match that cannot even be said to be even or altogether futile because the fact remains that this match is ongoing, pausing occasionally only to count its loses.”23 This seems to be less a response to Deleuze and more a rejoinder to Paul de Man whose “ghost” is visible (and invisible) throughout the book: The contestatory structure, yielding no more than a poor score, paradoxically depends upon failure for its strength and empowerment. In this regard it resembles the ironic consciousness and the experience of permanent parabasis, the ‘parabases of the ironic consciousness which has to recover its energy after each failure by reinscribing the failure into the ongoing process of a dialectic. But a dialectic, segmented by repeated negations, can never dance’. We might say, reinvoking the improbable pas de deux of Nietzsche and Hegel, that a dance, as contestatory match, can never be a dialectic but, being engaged in a fundamental (mis)match, must, in a more Beckettian sense, go on and on, seeking referent and refuge. It is not so much that it casts about for the “right referent,” as Paul de Man puts it, but that language as contest posits such a thing in order to fall short of it, to keep itself going.24 “Duh” functions as a parabasis insofar as it allows a deviation or transgression from narrative unity. The structure of knowing fails itself, keeps itself in an act of perpetual “reinscription” to disguise its lack of referent. Stupidity, then, appears as a seizure within language, a falling away to a limit, theory: “This epileptic reaction can be recruited into service by the commanding neurosis in order to help the mind-body detox surplus stimulants. It corresponds to something of a cleansing mechanism, having converted an excess that cannot be coped with into a somatic chute.”25 This parabasis as seizure also corresponds to the “future of theory” as a future prepared against the deferral of the “right referent.” Just as the parabasis/seizure responds to the call of the “commanding neurosis,” so too does theory—it eternally attends to stupidity as an anti-method of research. The point to be made here is that throughout  Stupidity  Ronell rewrites “stupidity” as a confrontation with a theory of “refusal”either as a refusal of the “commanding neurosis” to see itself or the refusal to accept that which Franz Kafka describes in “The Refusal” as

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a status quo in which “[o]ur officials have always remained at their posts.” The desire for or displacement or refusal of the “right referent” is the space joining stupidity and theory. Stupidity seeks and finds a “right referent” and theory refuses it. Theory seeks the hiatus and stupidity refuses that with even greater force. Ronell’s Stupidity gives us Kant›s, Nietzsche›s, Wordsworths, Heine’s, Kafka’s, de Man’s, Derrida’s, Deleuze’s, Musil’s, Heidegger’s, Paul’s, Lacan’s, Freud’s … refusal and acquiescence of and to stupidity.

From: Avital Ronell [email protected] To: “Victor E. Taylor” Subject: Re MIME-CONTENT text/html 8.01 KB Dear Victor, Thank you for allowing me the opportunity of speaking to this question (if it is a question). I’ ll be brief. What you are calling the age of post-theory collapses into the age of pre-theory, tending to disavow serious work that has been done which haunts and hounds the works that claim to skim off hard won theoretical insight. This effect of haunting, as well as the consequences of disavowal,are well known. We are also familiar with the syndrome that causes the dead to return. I work for the dead, am under their dictation. To be less cryptic, and even pragmatic, one material factor that distinguishes me from neighboring theorists or post-theorists, is that I hold a Ph. D. in German. Many scholars who practice theory come from other fields—English, French, Rhetoric. While most of my career unfolded in Comparative Literature at Berkeley, where I was the resident theorist (a resident with a not often subtle eviction notice nailed to her door), my background in German literature and philosophy is probably determinative. I spring from another source than others who are invested in critical thought. I’ d like to think that I belong to a lineage of German dissident writing—the ironists and troublemakers ranging (these are posited ideals not hallucinated identifications) from Schlegel, Heine, Jean Paul,

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Nietzsche, sometimes Arendt, part Benjamin, definitely Thomas Bernhardt, and possibly other historical ass kickers. There is an alternative lineage within the Germano-French registers. That lineage is inconceivable without a strong commitment and addiction to the literary work, to the arduous labor of reading in a way that only literature teaches and practices. So, unlike some other theoryheads, I am irrevocably trained on and by literature, instructed by the poetic word, baffled by its audacities. As for why I am relentless about pursuing difficult and dense locutions, texts, descriptions, etc.: Believe it or not, I consider this relation to language to be my political and ethical responsibility. Anything else would be, to my way of thinking, slacking or dozing off, giving up and extinguishing the light. As scholars and activitists I feel we need to avert the tendency, very American, to accommodate any version of thinking lite. My adherence to so-called difficult works may be a way of resisting American simplicities which, as we now see and know, have murderous consequences and are world-destructive. Totalizing narratives are firing up war engines; simplistic pre-Nietzschean notions of evil are spiking the death toll, the refusal to grapple with Levinasian passivity beyond passivity or Derridian clashes with the unforgivable or Judith Butler’s gender mutations result, in my view, in referential chaos, lazy losses, true aberrations and regressions. I am not trying (anymore) to change the world; just to read it. Nowadays this commitment in itself requires some separation form value-positing positions that have backed off the hard stuff. I am sure that everyone is doing her best. So I do not grade or degrade the efforts of others. For all of us, the work that we do involves renunciation, crashes, doubts, wall to wall rewrites. Not to mention in my case thankless days of solitude, listening to texts that are barely approachable or have been marked down as unfashionable, off base. I feel responsible to these works; I have a sense of their fragility and finitude. They need me to be there. The others have advocates and cheerleaders and shelters. Or that’s what I tell myself. Quoting “Victor E. Taylor” < [email protected]> >

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III Avital Ronell’s “high Oedipal energy” study, as it cuts across the various appearances of stupidity in literature and philosophy, makes its own call. It is, in many ways, a call to “refusal”—a refusal to set aside difficulty and complexity, to set aside the call itself. The future of theory, I’ll argue, is intimately related to the place of refusal in the humanities—refusing “duh” and “refusing duh”/ refusing theory and “refusing theory.” More than Bartleby’s “preference” not to, not to live, Ronell’s “refusal” is an anticipation of death, death as finality. As one thinks, one must be committed to life with this in mind, much in the same way Deleuze, ironically, championed vitality and creation, which is pure possibility. What, then, is the possibility of theory? Theory’s future as it engages, refuses, and loses to stupidity? The answer begins not with a refusal of stupidity, however, but with a refusal of theory. Everyone associated with “theory” has what Ronell terms an “autobiographical ordeal,” sometimes more than one, illustrating a resistance to theory. Ronell relates several in Stupidity—one early in her career and the other at UC Berkeley where, as she describes it, had an “eviction” notice tacked to her door. The lesson from these “ordeals” and others is that when stupidity refuses theory something complex occurs—stupidity acts contrary to its own stupid impulse. Theory forces stupidity to become “theoretical,” to, contrary to what Ronell argues, see itself or part of itself. In other words, stupidity reveals its own stupidity by drawing a contiguous line of thought from rhetoric to world, either in an “eviction” notice, rejection of a theory manuscript (“the fad of theory is over”), or in a negative tenure ballot (“His/her courses are too theoretical for our students”). In these instances, stupidity seeks refuge in “simplicity,” a simplicity that it unavoidably complicates by its own act of referral to a homogeneous reality that does not exist. The “stupid” line of thought forecloses on the possibility that things can be  otherwise, to reference Deleuze. The refusal of theory by a reduction of theory to a by-gone set of relations or a set of suspect practices and observances symptomatically reveals the process/structure of stupidity, a process that preempts or interrupts a creative line of thought. While the content of such a rhetorical move is overtly stupid (for some), it is actually the method that is more indicative of “stupidity.” The frenzied chase of impeaching facts reveals the structure of stupidity as it functions as a general model for research, a

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motivator for discovering “reality,” ideological or political. The so-called condemning “facts” regarding theory, derived by a list of exclusionary rules, become “important” as information “about” the future of theory—a future that for some should not exit. Rather than risk exposing the “structure” of stupidity, “disciplinary neurosis” rushes in at this precise moment to blind the reader to the dubious nature of the isomorphic relationship between language and world. This methodology, absent any specific data, is consistent with a widely available “mode” of literary and philosophical analysis that “cheats” the inquirer into thinking that no other possibilities exist. To a larger extent, this “mode” is the dogma of the humanities and the obstacle to theory in the past, present, and future. Stupidity obstructs theory with information; and, this gathering of information becomes research, an anti-theoretical endeavor to make the world clear and simple. Like the inscription “Thompson,” this is observable at many levels of university life. How many times do our students unwittingly reproduce Foucault’s “rules of exclusion” through plot summaries or litanies of “facts” about an author or literary work? “Just the facts” as a cognitive exercise within disciplines trains the brain to be anti-theoretical. “What time does the clock say on the mantel?” “What color is the gazebo?” What color are Madame Bovary’s eyes?” “How did people at the time understand Shakespeare’s  Othello”? “How many innings were played in game four of the 1978 World Series?” Information, retrieval, information, retrieval. The same instrumentalist or mechanical cognitive exercises appear across cognate fields in the humanities with a more direct antagonism to theory manifesting itself as a necessary “instrumentalism.” In the service of institutional monotony and mediocrity instrumentalism rises on stupidity’s tide, leaving theory on the shores of ruin. What would it mean to refuse this? To refuse not only the “facts” of stupidity but also its structure? A refusal would demand the creation of discourses needed to force stupidity to betray its own simplicity, its own place of refuge in thinking. Here one can just as easily refer to Deleuze as Ronell (to be a disloyal reader) for a first discourse that refuses stupidity: The philosopher, the scientist, and the artist seem to return from the land of the dead. What the philosopher brings back from the chaos are variations that are still infinite but that have become inseparable on the absolute surfaces or in the absolute volumes that lay out a secant

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[sécant] plane of immanence: these are not associations of distinct ideas, but reconnections through a zone of indistinction in a concept. The scientist brings back from the chaos variables that have become independent by slowing down, that is to say, by the elimination of whatever other variabilities are liable to interfere, so that the variables that are retained enter into determinable relations in a function: they are no longer links of properties in things, but finite coordinates on a secant plane of reference that go from local probabilities to a global cosmology. The artist brings back from the chaos  varieties  that no longer constitute a reproduction of the sensory in the organ but set up a being of the sensory, a being of sensation, on an anorganic plane of composition that is able to restore the infinite.26 And Avital Ronell from “Kant Satellite: The Figure Of The Ridiculous Philosopher; Or, Why I Am So Popular”: The satellite is set to gather information on the paradoxes and aporias of world-class popularity. As the device that tracks its findings, I can only open the dossier on this problem. A mere copier and data bank attached invisibly to a larger apparatus, I am programmed to situate the problem and respond to its call. Scanning and recording, I regulate the flow and generate further signals. There is something they’re trying to tell me about an ancient complicity among Kant, Kierkegaard, and Kafka, and this consortium, they maintain, is related to the coordinates of what has passed for French theory. A matter of top planetary priority, high maintenance: high as Mount Moriah. Archival anxiety turning the clock back to what it never finished telling.27 The chaotic, infinite stream of telemetry from the “satellite” sets into motion rules of decoding, with the reader as principal receptor, taking the sounds for “calls” to be equated with something real. The satellite is the “information retriever and sender” par excellence, as if technology re-created that which is most limiting, most stupid in humanity and made it its triumph. The overflow of data, however, betrays the “satellite’s” function as the collecting/sending process fails to complete that which is possible. For the future of stupidity, one must reserve this failure as a success, a success to the extent that receiving/ sending of data bears no excess. As long as excess is hidden or reabsorbed into the structure of thought stupidity will remain in full force. If, however, excess

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remains excess, not just more, stupidity will periodically fail itself, expose itself as “complexly simple.” As this occurs “the future of theory” will be possible, not as another code to unravel the data-stream but as other possibilities for thinking.   These possibilities are not all blessings. The indeterminacy of all possibilities makes for uneasy promises, even from God. The first and final call, then, comes from the divine, but the call is, as Ronell notes, not for “you.” In her closing analysis Ronell turns her attention back to Abraham and Isaac to place stupidity alongside the ridiculous: The biggest bluff, for all that, may have occurred when the delusion was implanted, the hope nurtured, of a chosen people. Isaac, he was and was not called. More radically uncertain than persecution (when you know they’re after you, you’re already dead meat; you are the ram caught in the bushes) is being cheated by the call. Too stupid to know whether your name was called, you are ridiculous . You are ready to go up for the sacrifice, but in the last moment you are benched. They don’t need you. An animal will serve the purpose, your purpose. This call, it told you that you were the one, the chosen. You set yourself up to receive it, you were set up. A cheated cheater. It was no longer recognizable whether the call meant to serve as punishment or reward. Your father took the call. You inherited it, with all the expected static; you inherited his burden, which you thought you could lighten. You followed your father in mute complicity. As you were walking, as he was preparing to give you up, you could not tell, you simply could not decide, whether this call that expelled you from your house was a blessing or a curse.28 Isaac, cast from his house (order), must experience the ridiculous, the excess of the world and God in ways different from Abraham. He must experience a “mute complicity” AND the terror of Abraham’s intention as he faces not only the ridiculous nature of the call, but the stupidity of the call. Is this a blessing or a curse? To know, which is not to know, the excess of the call? Perhaps it would have been better, more loving for Abraham to turn the blade toward himself—to keep the call to himself and thus leave the possibilities for being ridiculous and stupid open, undetermined. Abraham, were it not for his “duh,” could have been “theoretical” if he had thought otherwise, accepted all possibilities of an infinite God, even the otherwise than God. Isaac, however, is in a different place, a place where stupidity and the ridiculous dominate life. He is the displaced sacrifice who, for Ronell, comes to meaning for those

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refusing stupidity. In this sense, it is Isaac who answers the call of theory, a call to refusal, but not a refusal of one’s own. The refusal, the displacement was forced on him, leaving him with both the awareness and unawareness of stupidity. Isaac, at the end of Ronell’s study, seems to be the future of theory as he stands in the middle of something in excess of his own place in God’s universe. Is it a blessing or a curse? Are we to live by another law, a law of refusal, or a law of the ridiculous? How would we phrase it without sounding … stupid? Show infinite contempt and admiration for all things stupid.

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Notes 1. See Jacques Rancière’s Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 43–60. 2. In Stupidity, Avital Ronell refers to literary, philosophical, and cultural “stupidity.” “Duh” falls within the literary, Charles Bovary Bouvard, and Pécuchet stand as examples of literature’s “interminable duh”: “Whether in the precincts of the literary or the psychological, stupidity offers a whirligig of imponderables: as irreducible obstinacy, tenacity, compactness, the infissurable, it is at once dense and empty, cracked, the interminable “duh!” of contemporary usage. A total loser, stupidity is also that which rules, reproducing itself in clichés, in innocence and the abundance of world. It is at once unassailable and the object of terrific violence” (38). 3. Aristotle,  Politics, I, 1253b 8-12: “… [m]an is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals.” 4. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, p. 269. 5. De Man, p. 269. 6. Avital Ronell, Stupidity. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, p. 3. 7. Ronell, p. 3. 8. Ronell, p. 3 9. Ronell, p. 37. 10. Ronell, p. 14. 11. Ronell, p. 14. 12. Ronell, p. 13. 13. Ronell, p. 13. 14. Ronell, p. 13. 15. Ronell, p.14. 16. Ronell, p. 16. 17. Ronell, p. 17. 18. Ronell, p. 17. 19. Ronell, p. 18. 20. Ronell, p. 32. 21. Ronell, p. 32. 22. Gilles Deleuze.  Repetition and Difference, trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p. 151. 23. Ronell, p. 99. 24. Ronell, p. 99. 25. Ronell, p. 232.

50 | conversations in cultural and religious theory 26. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p. 202–3. 27. Ronell, p. 280. 28. Ronell, p. 310.

Conversation on The Future of Theory* Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania Gregg Lambert, Syracuse University

This public conversation between Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania and Gregg Lambert, Syracuse University was recorded at an event held at The Slought Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 1, 2002 as part of a series entitled “Conversations in Theory,” organized by Aaron Levy, curator.

Lambert: To begin with I want to recall a line from  Difference and Repetition, which forecasts a style of philosophy for the future, regarding what Deleuze describes as “a bearded Mona Lisa and a clean shaven Marx.” This line returned to me, Jean-Michel, as I read your account in The Future of Theory, particularly regarding your description of what you call “an hysterical Hegel.” Now, I always thought Marx was the hysterical one in relationship with Hegel, but here you seem to be saying something different. In the book there is a very dominant thesis that that Theory constantly risks becoming a little bit hysterical, or that its discourse itself is, in some way, hystericizing. Can you talk a bit about your use of the term “hysterical” with regard to the discourse of theory? Rabaté: I love your question, Gregg. Yes. Let’s begin with this image of the bearded Mona Lisa and the clean-shaven Marx. Having just read Williams’s biography of Karl Marx—a really wonderful book—I learned that the last photograph of Marx was taken in 1882, while he was in Algiers. Of course, that period, for me, was interesting—Joyce had just been born—and this last photograph shows a bearded Marx, but since he was under the sun of Algeria, had later decided to shave his beard and get a very short haircut, although he was never photographed clean-shaved. This is the last Marx I would like to keep in mind—an unimaginably clean-shaven Marx, balding like Lenin!

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We have already seen the somewhat comic portrait of Freud shaven, which is as unorthodox as the beardless Marx. And here, of course, Deleuze sends us to the bearded Mona Lisa transformed by Duchamp. If Duchamp, the exemplary artist-philosopher-theoretician of art, could paint Mona Lisa with a mustache and a beard and a goatee, which he signed L. H. O. O. Q. (“elle a chaud au cul”—there is no need to translate it), it was so he could later on reprint the Mona Lisa without a beard, a reproduction of the usual Mona Lisa entitled: “Mona Lisa, Shaved.” For me, this could allegorize what Theory does to canonical texts: first, it adds to the portraits of their authors a waggish beard or a funky mustache, then it lets them come out, as it were, “clean and shaven.” As I suggested in the book—there will always be a “future of Theory” since “tomorrow you will get a free shave”! I think that all of this has to do with the latent hysteria contained in Theory. The central question of hysteria in Lacan’s account is ultimately something like: “Am I a man or a woman?” Here is one of the questions that Theory should start asking of us. Not just because I’m interested in gender theory, but because one can take Judith Butler, who is emblematic of a certain discourse of gender theory when it tries to go elsewhere, although not necessarily further. When Judith Butler continues writing Theory while denouncing Theory, or pretending that she is beyond Theory—then I see her doing Theory, but “shaved.” In other words, to use a musical image, we seem to be always between Le Nozze de Figaro and the reprise of the Figaro theme (“Se vuol ballare...”), which is curiously heard at the end of Don Giovanni. My idea of the hysterization that Theory engenders takes its cue in Lacan. My starting point is Lacanian, although The Future of Theory is not a Lacanian book, strictly speaking. I have been interested in the theory of the “Four discourses” in Lacan, and I was trying to see why Theory, as it has been famously or infamously displayed, or produced, had to face the discourse of the university while, at the same time, never quite being reducible to the discourse of the university. Since I have started shaving in front of you, I can confess more. Most of this book—it may not be obvious—is autobiographical. When I came to Penn in ninety-two, the first local star who was mentioned to me was Camille Paglia. I never heard of the name but she was the most famous antitheoretician living in the US at that time. One day, an acquaintance suggested

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that I should invite her to my seminar because she had “kicked Derrida in the ass!” My response was: “Oh really? That might be interesting.” Then I heard Camille Paglia talk a few times and loved the way she kept contradicting herself without any qualms—indeed, it was an hysterical reaction to Theory’s hystericizing discourse. She was the living proof that that Theory could antagonize or hystericize, thus produce effects that, for better or worse, are similar to those of classical hysteria. This led me back to the discourse of the Surrealists who, in 1928, published a praise of hysteria. My gesture in the opening pages of the book was simply to take passages from this manifesto for hysteria written by Breton and his friends, and whenever the word “hysteria” was used, I replaced it with the word “theory.” And it works! Lambert: I think I remember Paglia, at that time, published an article where she recommended that we [Americans] have a second Boston Tea Party and throw all the French back into sea. Rabaté:  Yes, so this confirms the autobiographical element here. I like this idea of “importation,” a lot has been written about the French as these “interlopers,” like the Greeks were for the Romans. This is what Camille Paglia says, basically. These sophists were invited to American universities because they make more money in the states, but they pervert everything, and they now need to be sanitized and thrown back. Lambert: Well, even Derrida had made fun of this desire. I remember a lecture given at Cornell (later published as “The University in the Eyes of its Pupils”) where Derrida constantly referred to himself as a “professor au large,” which also means as you know, “from the high seas,” that is, somebody who’s just landed. So, in a sense, he constantly talked about his position in the United States as being equivalent to someone who has just come off the boat, so to speak. Rabaté: Right, this is indeed what I mean. Before I came to this country, I had worked with Derrida as a student at the L’Ecole Normale Supérieure, and it was interesting to compare how in France—maybe this has changed a little now—he was not really a star, even though he was rumored to be very big in America, like you might say, “big in Japan.” When we heard this, our response

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was “Oh really, is he?” And then we might have a coffee or a drink with him, and he’d say, “Oh, these Americans, they exhaust me!” That was the myth: to be a good theoretician, one had to make it big in America. Lambert: On the subject of imports, the figure of Barthes has always struck me as extremely important, and you devote a whole section to his influence, I think, in order to demonstrate a more subtle genealogy of his work than is often registered in the United States around the distinction between structuralism and post-structuralism. For example, Barthes’ earlier work did not find an audience that was exclusively located in universities, and despite the difficulty of the essay “Myth Today” in Mythologies, I am often amazed by the staying power of this programmatic little book, which is still taught in secondary schools today, and may even offer-if revised for a more contemporary social and ideological context-an alternative model for the analysis of popular culture than the British version of Cultural Studies. Finally, there is something about the variation of Barthes’ project, which cannot be reduced to any simplistic program, which seems to illustrate your understanding of “theory as literature,” the title of the last chapter of  The Future of Theory. Rabaté: Yes, I agree that I owe a lot to Barthes, although my love for Barthes derives from after having come to the U.S. When still in France, I had written on  Camera Lucida  in a number of discussions of the image, but it was the anti-semiotic and phenomenological “later Barthes” I was interested in, while I would never open again these old volumes associated with Structuralism and  Tel Quel. I remember telling French students that  S/Z  was beautiful, but also totally messy and unusable. It was only after I had started teaching “Theory” in the U.S. that I discovered how important, even necessary, the whole of Barthes’ oeuvre was. As you say, his first essays pave the way to a more subtle approach to cultural studies and also to social semiotics. More than that, it is the very sweep and reach of Barthes’ claims, the multiple ambitions of a polymorphous intelligence able to work and play everywhere—which did not preclude a series of embarrassing recantations—that provided a model of what Theory should do: be dynamic, launch processes without worrying where they will end, and never be afraid of internal dissentions and contradictions.

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Lambert: In the introduction to your book, you give a note, or “caution” as it may be, concerning what you describe as a burgeoning new “consensus,” which refers, maybe, to a second stage of this hysterization of Theory we just spoke of. There is, if I could quote you, “a spreading reluctance to ‘do’ or ‘let do’ Theory in the university.” As I was reading this, I was thinking of the various disparate signs of this new consensus, the most evident of which (for me) has been the gradual acceptance of a certain kind of historical narrative of Theory itself, in which Theory is capitalized, as sort of “High Theory” (like in “High Modernism,” or “High Baroque”), and has been supplanted—for reasons of history, agenda, politics, constituency—by a kind of acephalic or de-capitalized number of theoretical modes of inquiry (under the heading of “theories of ” . . . gender, sexuality, identity, race, etc.). I have witnessed two aspects of this myth as it began to become institutionalized at the level of departments and disciplines (especially, more recently, through the influence professional organizations like the MLA). The first was an explicit charge of “elitism” against the dominant historical modes of theory, mostly European in origin, such as deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and new historicism. (Although, I have to say, in the case of new historicism, I remember a line from one of Stephen Greenblatt’s essays, I believe, about coming back from Thailand in first class and reflecting on post-colonial topics over the jingling of ice in his scotch glass—and I could see why this might spark some charges of elitism). The second can be described as an “anti-systematic” impulse, which again, could be understood to actually refer to a certain style of Hegelianism that is now being reacted against. How do you understand these traits “elitism” and “system-building” to have become attached to the representation of Theory in the United States? Rabaté:  This is an important question, and this charge is based on a misconception of Theory. Personally, I do not think that Theory is elitist, per se, but rather that it poses the question of knowledge as well as a certain relationship to knowledge. One of the reasons why Theory seemed elitist when it emerged in the seventies in the United States was that, suddenly, it opened a new library. That is, suddenly, literary scholars were more or less forced—willy-nilly, quickly—to read through the works of Levinas, Heidegger, Bataille, Habermas, and other European philosophers. That was

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part of the seduction, but it was also what somehow precipitated it downfall, as this has been the rallying point for new critical schools in the university. Besides, what looked “elitist” by comparison to “politics,” as we said in the nineties, seems mostly an American problem. It doesn’t exist in France, for the simple reason that they don’t do “Theory” as we do it here. Of course, many of the thinkers we mentioned have been in contact with French writers, but not “Theory” as such. The name is always used as an Americanism, and Theory is not taught in French universities. You can be a philosopher, you can be a sociologist, or a literary researcher who has philosophical leanings, but it’s only now that a certain numbers of terms have been imported back in France. In Europe, it would be different, of course, but in France particularly, Theory is just “literary theory,” not the American meaning in which you have philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis and other such discourses included under the name. This is why I quoted Judith Butler in the introduction of the book. I was surprised to see how adamant she has been in saying “No, no. I’m not doing Theory. I’m doing activism. I’m doing politics. Theory is dead.” Well, for me, this is a semantic problem. What she does is indeed Theory, since her grounding is clearly in Hegel, in psychoanalytic discourse, gender discourse, Foucault and similar thinkers. I wondered why she would deny what she had been doing for some time. How can she—not really following Camille Paglia (who can be dismissed rather quickly), but employing the same gesture—simply say: “No, Theory is behind me. This is past. This was ten years ago, or a leftover from the sixties and seventies, and now in the nineties we have to be “political”? True, we are essentially still talking about elite institutions somehow, whether they are called Stanford or Penn, and about the problems associated with tenure and promotion in elite institutions. In this sense, I can accept that Theory has partly an elitist character, but this remains purely sociological. In fact, I don’t think that Theory is particularly opaque. It does require that you be conversant with a number of difficult texts, although reading Plato or Kierkegaard is not much more difficult than, say, reading Chaucer, Hopkins, Joyce or Shakespeare. Fundamentally, Theory opens to another dimension of the library. It opens also to another dimension in your own discourse, and this is where things get complicated. This is not my complete definition of Theory, but it’s one aspect of Theory: you are supposed to account for what you do

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when, for example, you are reading or attempting to be concrete. This is what I often ask of my undergrads: I ask them to choose freely any topic they want, provided they can account for the reasons that made them decide to treat this topic. It looks simple enough, but in fact it’s not so easy to justify the choice of discussing a poster or a film. It is not easy if you want this choice to be relevant and to keep a connection with why you are a student, or why you want to do this and not something else, and so on. There is an added level of discursive responsibility brought in by Theory. Lambert:  Current “anti-theoretical” positions have charged Theory with “missing the real,” and are implicitly described in your argument as stemming from hystericizing discourse. In the case of the substitution of the term “politics” for “theory,” as in the example of Butler who you cite, there is an implicit assertion that Theory becomes more concrete, or is suddenly restored to the real (which, interestingly enough, is given the status of “a missing object”), only when Theory takes on an overtly political subject of agency. In response, you write, “The post-Romantic yearning of an unattainable mother construed as more real or more alive has never sounded so true as when dealing with the subject of Theory.” Overall, many of the arguments, as well as a certain amount of irony that is detectable in your account of the historical modes of the debates around Theory, seem to be predicated on this thesis that the status of Theory concerns a “missing” relation to truth. It seems that almost all positions against Theory today are those in which truth is said to be either missing or elided in the kind of knowledge that Theory produces; hence the charges of its being a-historical, apolitical, partial (or Eurocentric) so that some aspect of the subject’s own agency is necessary in order to re-establish access to this register of truth. Can you comment on this? Rabaté:  Yes, this point is very important, if not crucial, and it is this idea that Camille Paglia and others conveyed in the early nineties. Indeed, the very connotations of the word “Theory” seem to lead you astray; that is to say, if you’re in Theory, then you’re in the realm of ideas and you’re not dealing with the real world. Consequently, a shift has been observed in literary theory from deconstruction, post-structuralism and psychoanalytic theories to neoMarxism and new historicism, a shift that claimed it heralded a “return to

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History.” The main implication was that Theory had always been essentially ahistorical. What interests me here is that the same has been said about high Modernism. Suddenly Modernism was perceived as both elitist and a-historical. Authors like Eliot and Pound were quoted as confirming the elitism and a-historicism of the “movement.” At the same time, people were embarrassed because of Eliot’s right-wing ideas, of Pound’s neo-Fascism. Even if their choices do not help, they tend to suggest that they were closer to history than one would imagine! The political discourse associated with P.C. ism was both rejecting their politics and blaming these political choices on a fundamental absence from history. I literally shocked many people when I said that I had worked on Pound precisely because he was a Fascist—that this was an excellent opportunity to study and perhaps undo or deconstruct certain aspects of fascism. What struck me when I came to University of Pennsylvania in ninety-two was the inflation of the term “the politics of . . .” At that time, all the students I had were working on “the politics of ” this or “the politics of ” that. I first thought, “Wow, they’re really political here!” I should’ve realized that the phrase was more or less empty. I even engaged in a sort of in-joke about this in the book, when I make fun of people who have “politics of ” in their title. Of course, as I had just recently published a book entitled James Joyce and the Politics of Egoism, I was making fun of myself as well. However, this inflation of the “politics of,” as in the politics of language, the politics of sexuality, and so on, was often blamed on the French. I would often hear, “But you taught us that everything is political; therefore, now everything has to be politicized.” This also led to the idea—which is very Romantic in a way—that the real Real is just there, a little further . . . . As one of my French students once said, “I renounce, I cannot write a PhD, life is too short.” This may be true—it will be, in the long run—but if you are a student engaged in some kind of writing and reading process, one can show to you that there is a specific “Real” to be dealt with in writing as well. At least I was successful in demonstrating this to him and having him finish a thesis! The belief in a “reality” leads, nevertheless, to different versions of what determines reality. When I was a student in 1968, “reality” was nobler. Many of my friends believed this and acted upon it when they stopped being students and started to work in factories. Some of them would go to demonstrations

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and that was it. At least what mattered was that you knew what the real was. However, even if you drop your studies and become a construction worker, you need a theory or at least an account of why you are doing that. Supposing you join a Renault plant with the idea of transforming your factory and co-workers into a revolutionary unit—can you do it? What degree of delusion and false consciousness must you try to avoid? Lambert:  This reminds me of an anecdote in one of the Seminars where Lacan talks, in a very funny passage, about working in Sardinia in summer as a fisherman. It is the little story of petit Jean, who says, “Do you see that tin can floating out there on the waves?” Lacan says “Yes, I think so,” and petit Jean says, “Well, it doesn’t see you.” Rabaté: Exactly—I have returned to this anecdote for a piece to be published in the Cambridge Companion to Lacan. I remember how in 1969 Lacan quoted himself and modified the punch-line of the same anecdote by simply replacing the sardine can with Freud. He added that when he was writing, even if he knew that Freud was not actually looking at him, he could feel the presence of his insistent gaze! This and other factors may explain why, in the early seventies in France, those who tried very hard to be political and had joined leftist groups ended up on Lacanian couches. Lacan was perhaps the only person who had a comprehensive and powerful enough discourse that seemed to speak to the subversive intent of the students and, at the same time, who situated himself elsewhere. This might force us to examine more systematically the function of the Master who is always implied in the discourse of hysteria. At that time, however, another model was provided by Foucault, who was rather antiMarxist and not very Freudian, and who actually taught people a lot about real politics, for example, when he worked with prisons and prisoner’s rights. Foucault once said that he found it was curious that we saw philosophers like Camus and Sartre, who elaborated a generous discourse about ethics, politics, commitment, engagement, while they happened to have done the least during the war; whereas there were also intellectuals like Jean Cavailles and Marc Bloch who ended up in active Resistance groups and paid the price with their lives. Both were executed during the war. Cavailles had invented his set theory and new logico-mathematical objects, and Bloch was a renowned specialist of

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the Middle Ages; neither really tried to connect their field of expertise with an ethical or political discourse but they enacted their ethical beliefs directly. Lambert:  Because this is partly scripted, we’re following the script, but at the same time, this is also supposedly organic, and our conversation has been developing in a way that I thought it would, that is, more and more of our discussion of Theory has been framed by psychoanalytic discourse, particularly that of Lacan, on whom you are an expert. I believe that psychoanalysis in particular may have something important to tell us about this specific problem we have been discussing concerning the subject of Theory in the university. In particular I’m thinking about the status of the university in the famous four discourses that you alluded to earlier, and how that’s related to the discourse of hysteria—since I’m guessing that your reading of the four discourses is behind the description of Theory as hysterical and hystericizing. I wonder if you could clarify this for the benefit of our audience. Rabaté: This is a difficult moment in Lacan’s seminar, but he distinguishes four discourses, one being the discourse of the master, the other the discourse of the academic (universitaire), the discourse of the analyst, where he tries to situate himself, and the discourse of hysteria. “Hysteria” is taken in a very broad sense. My main impetus in writing this book was to assert that “Theory comes from, or is like, hysteria.” There were immediately people who responded: “Oh, but you are then against Theory!” And I would reply: “On the contrary, I am all for Theory.” Inevitably, someone would cry: “Oh, how can you see Theory as positive and call it ...” Lambert: . . . call it petite hysteria. Rabaté: Right! But even the grand hysteria of someone like Camille Paglia can be interesting in her own manner. What Lacan is saying is that hysteria— it’s strange structure—is never satisfied with a neat answer, always asks for more in the name of a certain notion of truth. Therefore, some kind of knowledge is produced. You can only be a good scientist or intellectual when you question absolutely everything, you want to go back to elementals and redefine the terms, not accepting any pat answer you are given. For instance

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if today, we talk about building Europe, a new Europe, how can one account critically for all the good intentions that are deployed and also situate them as an alternative to the American model? Is the notion of “late capitalism” or “post-modern capitalism” that Jameson and others used really useful? Yes and no. What current political system could fall outside the scope of such a term? These are just examples of how a theoretical hystericization might function. Lacan tried to negotiate this in a productive way with a sort of later Freudo-Marxism. The crucial innovation is that he introduces an element which is rarely produced in Marxist discourse—the dimension of enjoyment, of  jouissance, something that is, I think, fundamental to any discussion of politics today. And in this sense, I think someone like Žižek has managed to make sense of all these strands of critique coming from Lacan and the NeoMarxists. Deleuze is another, with his critique of ego-capitalism from the point of view of schizophrenia, which is another interesting way of thinking about these issues. Lambert: I think that I recall a wonderful moment from Lacan’s Seminar on Ethics, which he describes the character of the intellectual in a manner that, I think, has a particular pertinence for today. He was speaking around the fifties, I believe; certainly it comes from the period of the creation of atomic energy and the atomic bomb as, perhaps, the central problem of jouissance. I believe he phrased this problem in terms of whether we would cross this threshold of jouissance, that is, whether we would rather extinguish the world than let the other ideological side get a chance to enjoy it. It is this context that he made a very canny—as he usually does in a moment of a joke—comment on the structure of the political which that I think still holds very true today. He said that, typically, the conservative intellectual, as an individual, could be characterized as what he called a “knave.” (At that moment he uses the English notion of knavery, the knave from, in fact, Shakespeare.) But he said that, as a group, conservative intellectuals are in fact a bunch of fools. I think that if you can see this with Bush today, and it’s almost a demonstration of this thesis that when you get a bunch of conservatives together, they’ll begin acting foolish. Whereas, you know, that behind every one of them in the group there’s a real knave at work—and I’m thinking here of Cheney, probably. But Lacan also said that the problem with the left, and with a certain orthodoxy

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that is common in the discourse of the left, is that, individually, the leftist critic is often a fool, whereas a group of leftists are often a bunch of knaves. And so, in a certain way—and I’m speaking about this in relationship to all you’ve been talking about—I find that there is a tendency to suspend a certain register of the truth for a political good, as if the presence of an overtly ideological decision is what guarantees, or in fact validates, the effect of truth at the moment when one lies. Rabaté: Precisely. And I think this is just as true today as it was then. This is where the academy, as a group of knaves perhaps, is right to refuse to be too foolish. But it looks as if there was a choice; in fact, you are either a knave or a fool in refusing the discourse associated with Theory, or a particularly bad version of postmodern theory in which there is no truth. If everything is constructed, then, everything is easily deconstructed too easily. This is where a reductive version of Derrida—transforming “there’s no “outside the text”“ into: “everything is a mere text”—played into the most fundamental and reactionary values of American life. If all that is being said about social discourse is that it is fundamentally constructed, meanings all these are just lies, why not just be ourselves, with all the old individualism coming back and nature as a sort of source and mother. One slips back into a reactionary ideology (Rorty). If this is what American “Theory” inevitably begets, I agree that it’s good to refuse it. However, this can only be stated after a series of total distortions. Derrida would immensely complicate such simplistic assertions. This is why I am still close to Derrida, even though I am a little baffled by the theological turn his thinking has taken recently. Although it is true that in an American context, it is necessary to go back to issues like “God” and the “name of God”. Lambert:  I remember even in the seventies and the eighties, during the period when reader response criticism was coming in, and I think there was a real American sense of the politicization of theory that was in readerresponse criticism, for example. But there was a real reaction at the same time, because people began complaining, “Well, what do critics have left to do if we do nothing but act like ethnographers and record the readings that students make of every text?” There was the danger of no transformative relation, or

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the evacuation of the critical position of knowledge and authority in that moment. In response to the entry of deconstructive criticism, there was also real terror in the idea that there is no truth. I think that both fears were characteristic of the early reception of theoretical discourse, which prompted a misrepresentation that was hysterical. And yet, the positions that followed from this reactionary period took this misreading as a true representation of Theory. What was worse, however, in my view, was that others simply took the first misreading literally; therefore, if there is no truth, and if everything is constructed, then it is all just “strategy”. Rabaté:  Yes, the same symptom appeared when it looked as if the main enemy was Plato or Platonism. This was something that struck me as being misguided when I came here to teach. Someone would say, “We do not want to read Plato,” and then add: “We are against idealism” or “Derrida teaches that presence is bad.” My response was always an “Oh, really?” by which I tried to establish as much distance as presence! Happily, at that time, in a number of discussions with Anglo-American students, Derrida insisted that presence is not bad as such and that it is even the best one can have. Even if we can question the “metaphysics of presence” denounced by Heidegger, it does not follow that we have to demonize presence. Deleuze could be blamed for an early knee-jerk anti-Platonism that would assert: “Platonism is idealism; we are materialists; materialism is good, idealism is bad.” Why not, after all? The real problem begins when this is understood to mean: “Let’s get out of Platonism as quickly as we can!” On the other hand, following Lacan, I see Socrates as the figure of the first hysteric in philosophy. In the Socratic method, if you play the role of Socrates, you have to play the role of the hysteric. “Why do you say that? Do you think that really? What do you mean when you use that word?” This is connected with the psychoanalytic method; in a hypothetical situation you cannot tell people— “Well, you believe, that individualism is “good”—as good as altruism, say—and that idealism is “bad”, but you know, you’re wrong.” From a psychoanalytic perspective, it is important to understand that people can know, but that they don’t want to know because there is too much enjoyment in their misinterpretations and misconstructions.

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Lambert: I’m going to shift the questions now to another tense and talk a little bit about the past. My genealogy begins much later than yours, from the beginning of the eighties and from another coast—as you say, from elsewhere. I studied at Berkley with the likes of Jean-Luc Nancy, LacoueLabarthe, and Avital Ronell. I remember quite clearly from this period the dominance of what could be called the first wave of DeMan’s students, Ronell among them, who could be said to have established the tone of a distinctly American brand of deconstruction. I look back on this period with a mixture of regret, disdain, and admiration for all the political intrigues, the back-stabbings, and the phantom assassinations. It was like watching a Chinese opera! Perhaps we need—we Americans, that is—someone like Elizabeth Roudinesco to sort out this important historical period for us. In fact, I sometimes think it’s the closest we’ve ever come as a culture to imitating Parisian social life. What I regret, however, was the sort of somewhat paranoid atmosphere and the heavy-handedness of the guerilla-like tactics that were employed by some of this group to establish the place of Theory in departments and in professional organizations in the 1980s. In my view, part of backlash that has occurred around the continued place of Theory was conditioned by the air of intimidation that was employed against members of the academy, and you can still see this today when people react with a sense of insecurity in response to someone who does Theory. Perhaps this is part of the implicit charge of elitism, which is that, early on, many people used theoretical discourse as a weapon, as a kind of bludgeon, as if to say, “You’re not smart enough to talk to me,” or something like that. Although this period does not play an important role in your book, I wonder if you could relate some of your own experience and perspective of the early to the mid-late eighties. Rabaté: Right. That’s a very important question because I think any school tends to create mannerisms by which you identify with or against. I don’t know whether you read this really good and funny book called Wittgenstein’s Poker which describes Cambridge in the 1930’s when all these British scholars had started imitating Wittgenstein’s habit of meditating, keeping silent and then suddenly having an illumination manifested by hitting his forehead with a loud, “Ach, Ja!”

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Lambert: Yes, I know of a contemporary analytic philosopher who was born in the states, but after he went to Australia started speaking with a heavy British accent. Rabaté: Likewise, I remember a time when, if you were a French communist, your grammar would deteriorate because Marchais, the Communist Party leader, would put on a proletarian mask and systematically use wrong subjunctives, bad grammar and so on. Everyone who wished to be thought of as an orthodox Fellow traveler would speak suddenly this terrible French. On their side, the Lacanians had devised a complex Mallarmean syntax and even used a few of their own phrases in imitation of the Master (they would never say “I am alluding to x,” they’d say “ je pointe” at something.) Indeed, any group will tend to create these signs; and flaunting one’s familiarity with Hegel, Nietzsche or Heidegger, this parading of Germanic erudition was the dominant mode by which de Man and his followers asserted their authority. Lambert:  Well, I am fond of the following aneCreston Davisote, because it describes a DeManian sort of encounter. I was phoned one morning by a graduate student, and during the conversation he asked me what I was doing. And I said, “Well I just spent the morning reading Henry James’ ‘Figure in the Carpet’ and I’m writing on it right now.” I usually work pretty quickly. And so, the response from my inquisitor was, “Oh Really? And to think that it took me two years to read that text.” So there was this pregnant moment, and this was typical of the DeManians, it would take years and years for them to finish anything, because the notion of reading was, of course, over-determined in a sense that no one could actually really read something in the morning, and I was a fool for thinking I was really reading. Rabaté:  Since you talk about de Man, a lot of what has to do with the hysterization of Theory has rebounded in the endless trial of de Man, a complex issue no doubt, perhaps too complex to go into right now. I’d say simply that I’m not a “DeManian” (it sounds like a bad disease). I like de Man’s work in some respects, but in too many of his essays I find at some point a more or less deliberate obfuscation. At any rate, it’s not because one has been a Nazi sympathizer as a young man that one’s writings should suddenly stop being

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readable. I have the same attitude facing Heidegger, Celine, and Pound. When I learned that de Man had been an extreme right journalist as a very young man, he became more not less interesting. And the American rejection that followed adulation was emblematic of the mistake I was denouncing earlier a propos of Butler. It is similar to the case of Céline, who is obviously one of the greatest French novelists of the last century. True, he turned into a Nazi sympathizer, and even worse, a rabid anti-Semite. But this is a symptom that we should try to understand. Since so much in the twentieth century had to do with fascism, let’s address that squarely. Lambert: Part of this earlier tradition that we’re tracing historically was the rise of a very experimental kind of theory, and I’m thinking of books like Avital Ronell’s  Telephone Book. It suppose it emerged partly in response to Derrida’s Glas and the period of Tel Quel, which was the dominant influence in Paris a decade earlier. But the period I am speaking of was at the height of the Reagan Era, and it’s a very odd and kind of interesting truism to say that a more conservative political environment produces a more hysterical leftist environment, in the sense. One of the things that I was part of in the early eighties was a group called “Radio Free Theory,” and this was in Berkeley, where we actually put on a radio show together that starred several people like Ronell and others who have gone on to make a name for themselves, or to disappear. But we created a radio program that had things like a “schizophrenic weather report” and a radio version of Freud’s “The Rat Man.” It actually aired on the PBS radio station. But it seemed like anything was possible in this environment, and the more radical and experimental that we became, the more possible it seemed, although I also think that we went way over the line of good taste in the process. But I wonder if you think about that and the period that followed, precisely around the emergence of the revelation of the wartime writings of de Man, that there was a closing down of some of the more surrealist and experimental forms of theoretical work in the United States? Rabaté: Of course, you could say that Lacan himself, with his very bizarre syntax, was one of the first to perform Theory. It’s a good suggestion for us: let’s immediately start these Rat Man’s talks ... But, indeed, the moment of experimentation seems to have passed. And my reaction here is to take precisely

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a historical perspective and go back to major texts like Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria or texts by Kierkegaard—this is a literature of theory, writing, experimentation, creatively blurring genres and boundaries. Most of the systematic rewrites of Theory of the eighties seem secondary to these. Take Derrida’s  Glas, for instance. I am surprised when I see people are baffled by it and speak of its radically innovative form. Next to Finnegans Wake, it seems rather tame in comparison. The avant-garde gestures toward subversion presupposes that by subverting language you can also subvert politics and culture as well. We have gone wary of these assimilations, back to a more conservative attitude. Interestingly, the experimental moment was avoided by de Man. But it is precisely when the de Manian discourse was getting predictable or stereotyped, that Derrida and other American deconstructionists like Ronell started playing with fonts, types and settings, radically opening the page to new assemblages. For me, of course, Theory is not opposed to poetry, and a lot of LANGUAGE poetry comes close to what I call Theory. I heard the same story from many poet friends in France; they would go all the way to California and chat with Californian “witnesses.” All they wanted to do was hear aneCreston Davisotes about Ginsberg or Kerouac, whereas these American writers only wanted to chat about the latest books by Derrida or Deleuze. Then, indeed, there was a time when one American avant-garde was fascinated by Theory, just when most poets in France had had too much theory and were getting back to more direct experimentation. Lambert: Well, this has been good. I’m going to now ask one final question, which is basically to rephrase or to repeat to you, in a very Lacanian gesture, the title of your book as a question. So what is the future of Theory? You have already spoken about this in terms of the possibility of an avant-garde, about the varied forms of experimentation that question the level at which we read the text, and that has to continue in some way, but what is the future of such practices? Rabaté:  Well, you know the prophecy of Rabelais who has a character announce: “Tomorrow, the blind will not see and the deaf will not hear.” Perhaps this is the “future of theory” as well: a neat tautology whose

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function is to keep alive the pleasantly soothing illusion that there is a future. Nevertheless, I do believe that theory will re-emerge as more visible simply because it is needed. One needs to update our “discourses on method,” one needs to keep a discursive take on concepts if one wishes to know what one does as an artist, as a scholar, or as a writer. There is nothing new to this, as this is what Socrates had already been urging fellow Athenians to do. Thus, it’s always good to look back in time and see parallels with, say, the age of Apuleius and the age of Dante, the age of Bruno and the age of the Schlegels. Because of the politicization of academic struggles and the recent “Theory Wars,” one forgets that there has been a longer history of Theory. One of these days, I will teach a class on Theory using only non-canonical books. No Derrida, no Lacan, no de Man, no Butler, no Bhabha. Just Protagoras, Democritus, Rabelais, Balzac, Bruno, Vico, Coleridge, Carlyle, Borges and a few others. If it is feasible, this should trigger an awareness that there is yet a much more complex history of Theory to be written. It might lose its capital “T” in the process, but that for now would be a worthwhile future project. But, in the end I would say that Theory is for today, is now, and that may be my final answer.

Notes * Jean Michel Rabaté, The Future of Theory (London: Blackwell, 2002). ** Presented through the generous cooperation of the Slought Foundation.

A Conversation with Richard Kearney Richard Kearney, Boston College Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

The following interview was conducted during the fall of 2004 between Richard Kearney, Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy, Boston College and Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania.

Victor E. Taylor: Poétique du Possible, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, Modern Movements in European Philosophy, and, the most widely read perhaps, The Wake of Imagination all approach philosophy from a transdisciplinary perspective. The more recent Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness continues this tradition but in a more pronounced fashion, with references to Sci-Fi film and Shakespeare. How has your earlier “turn to transdisciplinarity” evolved over the past two decades? And, how do you see the future of this form of scholarship in an era that seems to be still quarrelling about theoretical inquiry? Richard Kearney: From the beginning, I have been fascinated by the role of imagination in our lives and in our minds. When translated into philosophy, this inevitably calls for a transdisciplinary approach. If you think of it, there is a whole domain of experience which has been systematically excluded from traditional metaphysical analysis. For 2000 years and more there was little thought given to such crucial functions in our social and personal lives as myths, dreams, symbols, metaphors or social imaginaries like “ideology” and “utopia.” This began to change somewhat with the arrival of thinkers like Freud and Nietzsche in the later part of the nineteenth century. But it was really with the emergence of continental thought in the twentieth century—and especially such currents as phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory and poststructuralism—that philosophy was invited to actively retrieve these repressed or neglected realms. There were of course some exceptions to this

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“forgetfulness of imagination” in the history of western thought. Plato, at the very outset, was deeply ambiguous. This is obvious from a text like the Republic which deploys such imaginary means as myth, simile, allegory, fictional dialogue, drama, metaphor etc. while banishing, in book 10, the poet and artist from the Ideal Republic! This great Platonic paradox resurfaces at several key junctures in the history of metaphysics—for example, in Augustine’s Confessions or Kant’s first and third Critiques (where he both celebrates and curbs the primary role of transcendental imagination as a synthesizing, schematizing, productive power). But it is really only with existential authors like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre, for instance, that the strict dividing line between philosophy and literature, reason and imagination, is challenged both theoretically and performatively. And then hermeneutics—as it develops with Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur—shows how philosophy itself is less a science than an “art” of deciphering indirect and layered meanings. So these were some of the main figures of the intellectual itinerary I followed in coming to my own modest attempts—starting with Poétique du Possible in 1984 ( a work dedicated to my doctoral director in Paris, Paul Ricoeur)—to sketch out a poetics of transdisciplinary inquiry into the workings of the imaginary. And it is a furrow I have been ploughing and sowing and (to the best of my limited ability) harvesting right down to the publication of Strangers, Gods, and Monsters in 2003. The fact that I have also published novels and poetry and been involved in the teaching of film, as Chair of the Irish Film School at University College Dublin for many years, added another motivation to my commitment to traverse the traditional academic disciplines. I have always been raiding and foraging across frontiers! This is an old conundrum, and a productive one at times. The paradoxical tension between intellect and fantasy has been there from the very outset of western thinking, from the time Plato the poet set out to dialogue with Plato the philosopher! My own texts on the subject are no more than epilogues to this ancient and abiding quarrel. Taylor: I imagine that it has not been without some difficulty moving into and across these disciplinary fields, especially with the poetry and fiction projects. The academy, even in our postmodern age, is resistant to transdisciplinarity— perhaps not at the level of Plato, but resistant nonetheless. Would you say that

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the “ancient and abiding quarrel,” as you describe it, includes the politics of a “difference-in-thinking”? I ask this in the context of authority or in the context of the “crisis” of authority and all its attending crises. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, for instance, moves from an analysis of difference constructed externally to difference constructed internally. One can see a similar crisis in thinking as one compares and contrasts other/different objects of study and the postmodern process of critiquing an otherness/difference within objects of study. More clearly stated, perhaps, it is one thing to talk about myth or poetry and Plato and quite another to talk about myth and poetry in Plato. The latter, as you suggest, becomes a dangerous prospect—a crisis in the authority of thinking itself. To borrow and alter a question that you asked Paul Ricoeur in April 2001 (“On the Crisis of Authority”), “How do you think “thinking,” with all of its internal differences, might best respond to this climate of crisis in the future?” Kearney: Thinking is often dangerous for power in that it introduces difference into the political citadel of sameness, conformity, uniformity. The very practice of philosophy inaugurated by Socrates—dialectical dialogue—meant just that: dialegein—welcoming difference. And it proved to be dangerous not just for the state of Athens which condemned Socrates to death, but of course for Socrates himself! It is no secret how dissident intellectuals were treated in authoritarian regimes: one thinks of Mandelstam and Solzhenitsyn in the USSR, Thomas Mann and the Frankfurt School philosophers in Nazi Germany, Patochka and Tomin under the Czech dictatorship, and so on. Not to mention the students in Tiananmen Square. What is more surprising, however, is to see how dissident thinking is now becoming “dangerous” in certain democratic states also. Dissenting thinkers like Chomsky and Said have made much of how critical and alternative thought is being increasingly silenced by the dominant opinion in the US (especially under Bush) which amounts to what they call a “manufacture of consent.” But even if one con siders that view too extreme, it is certainly worrying to observe how minimal is the critical response to the Iraq war on most US university campuses, compared to the Vietnam war for example. Not that there aren’t many, perhaps a great majority of students and faculty, who are very unhappy about the situation. But there seems little organized resistance at public level. It gives pause for thought.

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At another level, we can also witness an internal resistance to differential thinking WITHIN the academies themselves. This expresses itself as a hostility to interdisciplinary work across traditional academic boundaries. Such work seems to jeopardize or subvert the security and authority of canonical divisions. It threatens to contaminate and confuse the purity of distinct disciplines. This fear is rarely publicly acknowledged. It expresses itself instead in indirect decisions regarding hiring, funding or the revision of the curriculum. And then think of the passionate antipathy to someone like Jacque Derrida who certainly challenged traditional academic divisions (e.g. between philosophy, politics, linguistics, theology, literature, languages etc.). The prejudicial reaction of certain Anglo-Saxon academic bastions— including those who so vehemently opposed Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate at Cambridge—speaks for itself. Taylor: If we could continue with a few themes from Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, I think it would be helpful. Dialogue or dia-legein, the welcoming of difference, doesn’t necessarily provide the condition of “welcoming” or “difference.” For instance, we see from across the political and academic spectra the welcoming of the “sacrificial stranger.” Or, the welcoming of the opportunity to affirm an identity by constructing a normative sameness and thereby defining a differing “perversity.” Theory, itself, has been the “sacrificial stranger” in the academy and Jacques Derrida the scapegoat for many who defend the “purity of disciplinarity.” The Cambridge incident was only a symptom of wider hostility to difference as I see it. While certainly not as significant as the events around Derrida’s honorary doctorate, I, as an untenured assistant professor, was once years ago invited to an inhouse political science “discussion” of postmodernism. At the end, and throughout, the conclusion was, “Michel Foucault, a postmodernist and a homosexual, intentionally infected people with the AIDS virus and his writings and postmodernism ought not be taught.” So, while I shared an intellectual interest with Foucault, I quickly found myself inscribed in other ways—in particular as the subject of a “rite of expiation.” You’ve already commented on this, but how far does this extend? For instance, Is there an ideological relationship here between the New York Times’ obituary of Jacques Derrida and the “anti-gay marriage amendments” on the ballot in

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eleven states during Tuesday’s election? Both make use of the rhetoric of difference and passion of vilification. Kearney: I think the ideological connection between the NYT obituary on Derrida and the ‘anti-gay marriage amendments’ in the recent Nov 2 election is disturbing. Both condemnations—of deconstruction and of gay marriage—are carried out in the name, explicitly or implicitly, of morality. And a specifically puritanical morality at that. What is unusual is that this new Puritanism is coming not just from the right, where we can identify it with the evangelical Christian Coalition movement, but also from certain left-wing academic quarters hung up on political correctness and scientific positivism (both remnants of a certain Anglo-Saxon rationalism hostile to continental thinking). But let me take each in turn. The “moral” hostility to gay marriage is a fear that strange and alien modes of sexual relations will contaminate the body politic. It is the Salem witch trials and New England Puritanism all over again. And the frightening thing about it is that it hijacks the name of “morality” in its campaigns against gay marriage and abortion, seemingly oblivious to the political morality of poverty in the US itself (not to mention globally) and of the war in Iraq. What is equally disturbing is the concomitant hijacking of religion by this same constituency, so beloved of Carl Rove. As if the values of religion and Christianity are the prerogatives of Bush and his right-wing followers. This is a huge challenge to the left today I believe: to reclaim the ground of political morality and emancipatory religious protest formerly championed by people like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King. Religion and morality are too powerful—and meaningful—to be hostaged to the Burning Bush of Texas and Company Ltd. Here we rejoin Derrida, for whom ethical and religious questions were at the very heart of his later philosophy. People like Jack Caputo, Kevin Hart and James Olthuis are part of a new movement in North American thinking determined to develop this radical aspect of deconstruction. It is telling, moreover, to note how the most virulent critiques of postmodern thinkers from the Continent—who are “different” to mainstream Anglo-American thought—are couched in terms of sexual perversion. Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze and so on are denounced as some kind of intellectually transmitted disease that rots the mind and corrupts the youth. Idioms such

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as AIDS, syphilis, anthrax and vampirism have been invoked. One might expect that from the outback of the Bible Belt. But when one finds it echoed by a certain “right-thinking” left in North American Academia (as witnessed in certain responses to Derrida’s death) it is really disquieting. We are back with the old scapegoating of the “sacrificial stranger,” but in very sophisticate disguise. Most of the American intelligentsia who vilify Derrida have not read his work and blithely ignore the fact that he was a persecuted Jew from Algeria (thrown out of school by the Vichy/Nazi laws) and a champion of progressive political and educational causes throughout his career. I personally had my differences with Derrida (mainly on the relation between critical hermeneutics and deconstruction) and we had several occasions to express these in dialogues, conversations and colloquia over the years. He was always most generous and modest in his response to my criticism and I can honestly say that he was one of the most ethically conscientious and politically committed philosophers I have ever met. Taylor: I do wish to take up Derrida more specifically later and your relationship to his more recent writings, particularly regarding the khora. On the topic of “sameness” and “difference,” however, as a philosophical and a political matter, do you see here the power of stories (in reference to Paul Ricoeur) to affirm a self-enclosed identity (idem) over an identity in relation to an other as self (ipseity)? For instance, all of the ideological positions that coalesce around “Derrida,” “Gay Marriage,” “Otherness” are attended by stories—perhaps variation of a “purity myth.” On Stories, especially the ninth chapter entitled “America and its ‘Others’: Frontier Stories is the best articulation of this phenomenon in the following sense; that reading it in the context of 2004 the “extra-terrestrial other” now seems less terrifying to the American consciousness than “Jacques Derrida” or the “gay couple” living next door. Kearney: Yes, there are many stories of Us versus Them, the pure versus the impure, the elect versus the damned. This “strategic lie,” as philosophers from Machiavelli to Karl Schmidt have called it, is practiced by the Bush administration today—like so many imperial administrations before it—to propagate an ideology of sacrificial purgation and power. To simply appeal

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to “facts” in the face of such narrative fantasies of the Enemy is to miss the point. Kerry and the democrats learned this to their cost. The role of narrative imagination—or the “social imaginary” as Taylor and Ricoeur refer to it— cannot be underestimated in the construction and administration of power politics. But the battle here is not just between narratives and facts, but between unjust narratives and just ones, disabling imaginaries and enabling ones. To come back to Ricoeur: if it is indeed true that narratives of selfenclosed identity (idem) are what bolster up ideologies of the imperial nation, the best antidote is not some appeal to neutral facts or to some disinterested transcendental spectator—that is the naivety of enlightenment rationalism and positivism. The claim to dispense with all myth, as Gadamer rightly reminds us, is itself a myth. No, the best response to destructive stories (which reduce otherness to sameness) is to counteract them with deconstructive stories—ones which undermine the illusory lure of fixated identity and open us to a process of narrative alternation and mutation (the self-as-another or ipse). The hair of the dog that bit you, if you like. The homeopathic remedy of curing the disease with more of the same (albeit with different dosage and intent). Stories can undo stories. Narratives that emancipate can respond to narratives that paralyze and incarcerate. History is full of such conflicting stories, as is psychoanalysis and religion. So why should politics be exempt from this complex play of narrative imaginaries? It is not. You are, of course, absolutely correct, I think, to point to the fact that the “extraterrestrial other,” which I identified as the emerging fantasy of the enemy threatening the American nation in On Stories, is now being replaced with more home-grown demons—that is, the gay next door who claims to be normal (marriageable) or the deconstructionist in your local school who claims, like Derrida, to be on the side of democracy and justice. After the ‘grounding’ of the monster in the wake of 9/11, the fantasy of the otherworldly Other came home to roost again: first as the Al Qaeda neighbors who fly planes into your cities; and then, by extension, the next door gays, postmoderns, liberals—who claim to be just like anyone else but are in fact threatening to undermine, pollute and contaminate the moral purity of the body politic. Highjacked American Airlines, anthrax, Aids and aporias (the stock and trade of deconstruction) are in a curious and perverse way all of a kind—as far as the fantasy of the Enemy is concerned. They all

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threaten—according to the fear factor—to infiltrate and infect our minds and bodies, from the INSIDE. The outsider as insider: this is becoming the dominant phantasmagoria of our post 9/11 times. Hence the desperate rush to externalize and territorialize the adversary in some far flung battle field in Afghanistan or Iraq. Hence also the need to deprive gays of their rights to legality and normalcy. And to treat a thinker like Derrida as some kind of “vampire” or “virus” (these images have actually been used!) who slips past our borders at night and corrupts our youth with his dark and venomous charms. It’s scary stuff, this scapegoating of the other—even in obituaries like that of the NY Times written within a week of Derrida’s death. Taylor: Would stories of “hospitality,” as you discuss in Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, provide a response to the vilification of the other? If you see a possibility here, Where is “hospitality” located? For instance, I always felt that Derrida’s “city of refuge” reproduced the dominance of “normality” within the political, even though he viewed it as a temporary extension of hospitality. Kearney: I do think hospitality is one of our best modes of response here. But one cannot be naive. Derrida is right, I think, when he alerts us to the double meaning of “hostis”—as both host and enemy. The fact that “hospitality” and “hostility” have the same etymological root (captured by Derrida in his somewhat overly-clever neologism, “hostipitality”) is telling. But while recognizing the double nature of hospitality, deconstructionists lack, in my view, an adequately critical means of judging between just and unjust “others.” There is no real room or rationale, in their books, for “discernment of spirits.” Derrida says that when someone knocks on your door you cannot know in advance if it is a mass murderer or a messiah who is about to enter. The arrival of the other is always a complete surprise which shatters and confounds any of our efforts to question or differentiate one kind of other from another kind of other. But I think it is important to be able to discriminate. As I said in Strangers Gods and Monsters, we need to tell the difference between true and false prophets, between Siddhartha and a strangler, between Jesus and Judas, between Etty Hillesum and Himmler. I am taking these dramatic examples here, following a logic of hyperbole to make my point. For of course there is just and unjust, good and evil, in different degrees in all human beings. So, yes,

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these are complex issues indeed and nothing is ever a simple matter of black and white verdicts. That kind of apocalyptic dogmatism leads to war, as we know only too well. But the opposite extreme of saying we can never know or anticipate anything at all when it comes to the advent of the stranger: this to my mind is TOO impossible to be lived or practiced. Deconstruction is an ethic for gods not mortals. Indeed, Jesus seems to admit as much when he asks his Father to forgive those who are crucifying him. As Ricoeur pointed out to me once, Jesus says : “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” He doesn’t say that he forgives them. Because maybe there are some acts of hospitality and pardon which are virtually impossible for humans (and in this case for the humanity of Jesus—he had to appeal to the paternal divinity in himself, for such unconditional openness to the enemy). This is, I think, an interesting limit-case. Hospitality is really difficult and complex at times. But that is not a reason to give up on the task of hermeneutic understanding, however provisional and tentative it may be. Basically what I am saying here, departing from the deconstructive account of hospitality, is that when we open the door to the Other, it does not always have to be in the dark. Sometimes we need to shed a little light on these matters. If we do not accept such a minimal need for critical interpretation, hospitality becomes utterly impractical and we become too paralyzed to act at all. For in that case, every attempt to discern is immediately a form of betrayal. That’s too hard. We need bridges between ourselves and others; even if they are only simple, makeshift rope ladders—even tightropes for that matter! Any port in a storm. Taylor: Like in the case of Lyotardian differends, there is a paralytic inevitability with “pure” Derridean deconstruction. The issue of “judgment,” however, is nevertheless critical here. While Ricoeur, as you mentioned, sees forgiveness as an act of God--that is something beyond the human—Derrida, too, it can be argued takes forgiveness away from the space of human judgment. For instance, his question, Do we forgive “someone” or forgive someone for “something”? resonates here. Locating judgment and forgiveness becomes a problem both philosophically and practically. The novelist José Saramago offers a slightly different problem and one I’d like you to respond to. In The Gospel According to Jesus Christ it is the dying Jesus who asks humankind to

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forgive God! “… Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.” For Saramago, “forgiveness” and “judgment,” it would seem are wholly human problems. Kearney: Yes, the question of judgment is crucial here, whether we are concerned with Lyotard’s “differend” or Derrida’s “undecidability.” I think this is where postmodern theories of value and justice need to be supplemented by some notion of hermeneutic understanding. We might usefully invoke here the role of “phronetic understanding” as developed by thinkers like Gadamer and Ricoeur. Ricoeur’s reading of Christ’s invocation of the Father to forgive his enemies is really a hyperbolic insistence on the difficulties and limits of the human capacity for judgment and pardon. It is not an abandonment of them. Elsewhere, for example in Time and Narrative and in Memory, History, and Forgetting, Ricoeur makes it clear that forgiveness is very much a human task and responsibility. In contrast with Derrida, Ricoeur talks of “le pardon difficile” rather than “le pardon impossible.” This nuance is crucial. However imponderable and impractical pardon may see, it is something we should strive for; acknowledging that at times a logic of “surplus” charity needs to supplement—if never supplant—the logic of legal justice. Phronetic understanding comes into play here drawing from the Aristotelian model of “phronesis” as a way of responding to both the claims of universal justice and of the singular particulars of unique persons, places and times involved in any specific judgment. It is a judgment of double fidelity if you will, appealing to reason and praxis at one and the same time. Phronesis offers an alternative to the classical model of “theoria” which is concerned with purely abstract ideas or axioms, as in mathematics or science—a mode of formal reasoning which would be quite inappropriate to the demands of a complex and contingent ethical situation. In Kantian terms, phronetic understanding would be a version of “aesthetic reflective judgment” rather than “determinate judgment” (as outlined in the “Third Critique”). It is really a question of trying to navigate a course between formal rationalism and relativist irrationalism. Not always easy. And it allows, also, that our ethical judgments have frequent recourse a) to phenomenological experiences of suffering and action (for example, Levinas’ appeal to the “face of the other” before me here and now as source of the commandment not to kill); and b) to the empathic and felt examples

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of narrative (if we want to know the virtue of constancy we tell the story of Penelope, of courage the story of Achilles, of loving-kindness the story of Siddhartha or Jesus or Etty Hillesum etc.). Abstract “categorical imperatives” are clearly not enough here. Such a disembodied approach risks degenerating into a kind of cheerless moralism. But on the other hand, the abandonment of all criteria and coordinates of understanding risks pushing us towards the other extreme—the cult of the “hysterical sublime” where all notions of just and unjust, good and evil, right and wrong, simply disappear. So the hermeneutic trick is to remain vigilant to the demands of the singular ethical event which calls ut for empathy and action and the more transcendental requirement of universal justice. In such instances, judgment and pardon become matters of difficult and delicate discernment. And I think that hermeneutic philosophy has a crucial role to play here in helping to sift through the various available and often competing criteria of evaluation. Regarding Saramago’s quote about humanity forgiving God for He knows not what He does: I share his desire to emphasize the human responsibility for forgiveness but I would dispute the implications of theodicy here. Namely, that somehow God the Father is willing the suffering of his Son on the Cross—and by implication of all those other ‘sons of man’ who have suffered over the centuries from torture, genocide, slaughter etc. If one were to accept such a view—as many of the churches have done over the centuries—then evil is part of God’s inscrutable design and all responsibility for human judgment regarding matters of good and evil goes out the window. I think theodicies, of whatever religious hue, are amongst the most pernicious doctrines of our history and are directly responsible for most of our wars. And needless to say humanist versions of theodicy—Stalinism, Hitlerism, Big-Brotherism—are just as destructive in their promotion of the view that all kinds of evil and injustice are a necessary “negative” part in the ineluctable march towards a secular Reich or Kingdom. This is very dangerous stuff and philosophy needs to be on the critical look-out for new and recurring versions of such thinking, even in our post-ideological, post-modern era. Taylor: We have discussed a number of issues and many have touched upon current events. I supposed that I have erred here insofar as the interview now is indexed to a time and place. So much of your work is about crossing

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disciplinary fields and establishing conversations where none had existed before. As someone invested in the “humanities,” I deeply appreciate your efforts. Considering your scholarly works, your creative works, and your wideranging interests, how would describe the future of this critical “look out.” It is an impossible question since we cannot know the future, but I wonder what you think we should be watching for, looking for, or being open to? Kearney: As you say, it is hard to predict these things, but I do believe the future of the humanities lies in interdisciplinarity and that the crossing of academic boundaries will not just be within the arts but across the faculties. The dialogue with science is, I think, crucial here, even though I personally have had little involvement in this somewhat neglected conversation. Analytic philosophy has often been more open to this—especially in recent developments in the cognitive sciences—but I feel that continental philosophy has a huge amount to offer here also. The whole Sokal fiasco didn’t help of course. Nor did Heidegger when he made simplistic declarations like ‘science doesn’t think’ (though I believe he was pointing to something more profound than the slogan suggests). The separation between Erklaren and Verstehen has passed its due date and we need to overcome this dichotomy. It is really a hangover from the old schism between enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. We need to move on. Pressing contemporary questions of ethics, politics, epistemology and the environment require answers from both the arts and sciences. And if the blurring of disciplinary boundaries sometimes causes confusion, I think it is a potentially creative confusion that is worth risking. Without taking the risk there is no leap forward. I myself have become increasingly interested in the debate between philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis and politics, particularly as it touches on the urgent question of interreligious imagination. I say ‘urgent’ because I believe that most of the conflicts in the world today—including the “War of Terror”—stem from a perversion of the religious imaginary (Bush and Bin Laden being two obvious cases). And I would wager that a re-appropriation of what is progressive, enabling and enlightening in the spirituality of the great wisdom traditions may have something to offer us by way of a response. Gandhi, The Dali Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Havel, Mandela, John Hume, and Aung San.

A Conversation With Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

Over the past two decades Slavoj Žižek has emerged as a leading transdisciplinary theorist, with critical writings on film, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. His breadth of scholarship, along with his novel understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis and politics, has lifted him to the status of academic celebrity—a position that Žižek rejects outright, but cannot escape.1 Living down this paparazzi style attention that follows him from lecture to lecture and the general problem of academic fanfare is the subject of Astra Taylor’s documentary film, Žižek!, that explores this tension between Žižek’s intellectual commitment and his celebrity obligations. Setting aside the burdens of academic “stardom,” if one were to fit Žižek’s scholarship into the available modes of academic discourse, it would most likely fall within Lacanian philosophico-cultural analysis, although Žižek’s Lacan varies from the received “structuralist” Lacan of the 1970s (see Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso, 1989). Žižek’s Lacanian-inspired scholarship is not limited to the internal debates of psychoanalysis; his reconsideration of Lacan in the context of the western philosophical tradition, namely German Idealism, has opened new lines of transdisciplinary inquiry. Presenting Lacan as a figure “outside” of the mainstream of American “ego psychology” redefines the place of Freud and psychoanalysis within contemporary cultural studies debates. “The genius of Žižek’s contribution,” Kenneth Reinhardt writes, “[is] to demonstrate that this version of Lacan offered an extraordinarily fruitful approach to thought, culture, and religion.”2 Not only could one describe Žižek’s work as generically “extraordinarily fruitful” for multi-disciplinary analyses, it also is significant for postmetaphysical political thought. Žižek brings together Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-Althusserian Marxist ideology critique for the express purpose of revolutionary thought and action. This possibility for transformative thought and action recently has been

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the subject of Žižek’s “religious” writings on St. Paul, for whom, along with Alain Badiou, the power of radical “belief ” is central: Christianity proper— the belief in Christ’s Resurrection—is the highest expression of the power of symbolic fiction as the medium of universality: the death of the “real” Christ is “sublated” in the Holy Spirit, that is, in the spiritual community of believers. This authentic kernel of Christianity, first articulated by St. Paul, is under attack today.3 Žižek, clearly not a “believer” in the actual resurrection of Jesus, finds Christianity worth defending for its power of belief. The “under attack” observation is not a call for a new apologia for Christian “spirituality,” but a defense of a “fidelity” to an absolute proposition. This position on “belief” is clarified by Žižek in his book On Belief (Routledge, 2001) and in a vigorous response to an essay by Geoffrey Galt Harpham published in Critical Inquiry.4 Citing G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic dogmatist, Žižek points out that everyone’s view is the “right one” or it would not be the view that is held: “Compare the struggle and pain of the fundamentalist with the serene peace of the liberal democrat who, from his safe subjective position, ironically dismisses every full-fledged engagement, every dogmatic taking of sides. Consequently, I plead guilty: in this choice, I without hesitation opt for the fundamentalist position.”5 In The Ticklish Subject, Žižek further describes the radical nature of Christianity’s unalterable “view” as sui generis. Christianity, as described by Žižek, is the paradigmatic example of a political movement that wholly rejects the world and aims unremittingly and “ruthlessly” to transform it into a “new symbolic fiction which erases the past ones.”6 My interview with Professor Žižek was framed by the St. Paul Among the Philosophers conference in Syracuse, New York. The conference featured the work of Alain Badiou and included noted scholars representing historical, rhetorical, philosophical, and theoretical methodologies. The “historical” St. Paul, the “rhetorical” St. Paul, the “philosophical” St. Paul, and the “theoretical” St. Paul intersected or, better, collided during the talks and discussions. Žižek and Badiou offered the most “radical” St. Paul, a St. Paul whose “universality” prepared the foundation for a transformative politics. My discussion with Žižek, however, only touched on these concerns. In preparation for the interview, I decided to invest in Žižek’s notion of engagement and present him

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with opportunities for thinking and experimentation—a better format than asking him to once again explain Lacan’s concept of the “Real.” The first “set” of questions attempt to have Žižek speak on the topic of reception or the problem of hearing, which came up during several of the discussion sessions. The “hang-up” joining Lacan and Ricouer was, I thought at the time, a useful “way” into the conversation. Regardless of my intentions, it did produce an opportunity for Žižek to say that if a phone conversation were to take place between Jesus and St. Paul, “Jesus would hang-up on St. Paul.” After the first “set” of questions, however, Žižek continued along his own path of inquiry and I, happily, followed. The “interview,” then, is a series of commentaries and observations, which, I believe, is superior to the explication-based interview one finds abundantly in a variety of publications online and elsewhere. I also feel compelled to apologize for my own remarks of acknowledgement, laughter, and paper rustling that one not accustomed to conducting interviews fails to squelch. The discernible second “set” of questions prompts Žižek to comment on the tension between tragedy and comedy. This opened a brief discussion of Franz Kafka and the rhetorical, if not political, power of the ridiculous. Žižek, in conversation, directly and indirectly elucidates many of his main concerns through a high speed drive through literature, film, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. “Enjoy” the next sixty-eight minutes!

NOTE: This interview took place during the “St. Paul Among the Philosophers Conference” in Syracuse, NY on April 15th , 2005. I would like to thank Professor Žižek for his time and John D. Caputo, Thomas Watson Professor of Religion, Syracuse University, for arranging the conversation during a very hectic time. I also would like to express my gratitude to Gregg Lambert, Syracuse University, for his technical help and determination to recover the interview when it was “lost” in digital space. My attempt to move Professor Žižek from the lecture hall to a quiet space for the interview was thwarted by wave upon wave of people wanting his autograph, his email address, or his approval of their dissertation or book proposal. The last interruption on our way to the

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interview came from a man who said, “I traveled for a day and half just to hear your lecture.” Žižek responded in sincere amazement with, “Surely, you had more important things to do.” With just one more burden to address before the next session, Professor Žižek invited me up to his suite for the interview, thinking, I imagine, “doesn’t he have anything better do with his time?”

Taylor: First of all, thank you very much for doing this. In a relatively recent volume of interviews, Paul Ricouer tells a story that one day after attending one of Lacan’s lectures that he received a phone call. It was Lacan. And, Lacan wanted to know Ricouer’s thoughts on the talk that was given that day. Ricouer reports that he told him, Lacan, that he didn’t understand any of it. And, upon saying that, Lacan hung up on him. I was wondering, is this the response of this “disconnection,” a response of a believer, and do you think that St. Paul, in effect, would hang up on us or hang up on those who didn’t understand his message? Žižek: First, it doesn’t surprise me. The only thing that surprises me here is that why did Lacan call Ricouer at all. I mean because I don’t think we should throw any big fundamental metaphysical . . . whatever message from it. It’s totally clear if you read Ricouer that Ricouer moves within a certain hermeneutic horizon. Out of which you simply, which is, basically totally incompatible with Lacan. Because the way I read Lacan, his reading of religion in general, his approach is radically non-hermeneutic. To put it . . . meaning is not the ultimate horizon. And here I am with Lacan that is to say what I tried to do is to precisely as I emphasized, reading Christianity beyond this horizon of meaning which is why I feel at the distance towards the mainstream Christianity in general is a religious experience whose problem is today scientific development, economic development . . . so how do we contain it within a meaningful experience. I don’t think this strategy works. I think this strategy is a lost strategy. So, going back to Lacan, so I don’t think there is any deep lesson to be drawn from it, the only basic message of this anecdote for me is simply Lacan’s vanity. I mean, like, he was vain. In the sense of he pretended to be the big arrogant professor you know but then he as it were from his high position . . . phoned down . . . to

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check the appropriate impression . . . was I dignified? There is really something comical about it; comical in a ridiculous sense you know like if you have a big master figure who pretends to be arrogant, no? Imagine you have a father who terrorizes you . . . who is strong. Who ignores you but after shouting at you he asks you, by the way my son was it arrogant enough? Did I scare you enough? . . . It doesn’t work, there’s something ridiculous about it. That’s the anecdotal part. The more fundamental of course aspect of your question; hanging up and so on. Would St. Paul do it? Well again, there is a more fundamental lesson of historical hermeneutics that I accept. Which is that, so what? Where is the truth? I mean my suspicion would have been that let’s just make . . . move this mental experiment a little bit further to the very beginning and ask: what if upon hearing what Paul is saying, what if Jesus Christ were to call him, I am sure that Jesus Christ would hang up . . . so the problem is already there. Without getting people’s specific historical details I don’t buy this stuff of . . . at the origin you have a moment of full understanding I don’t think so. I, you know, also in a theological tradition . . . Walter Benjamin . . . you know that wonderful metaphor of how film develops [and] how each epoche produces traces . . . like on a cinema reel and only later epochs . . . get the proper development to understand them properly. So later understanding even if it’s at some formal level of a misunderstanding can understand more. There are things which can become properly readable only later. So I think at the same level that it doesn’t say anything if we can prove that there would be miscommunication. Historically, miscommunication doesn’t prove anything at all. Taylor: The point that I am trying to connect is that there is something in reading that part of the interview where one naturally laughs when one reads Ricouer’s account. There’s some laughter that interrupts as if there were something more to be said. More and less to be said about that. And in your talk last night you did emphasize the comic over the tragic, in a sense that these moments that are comic are the moments of the ridiculous. Point to an excess. Point to something beyond cognition. Žižek: Not so much beyond cognition as I think beyond what we usually designate as normal everyday human subjectivity . . . with our dignity and so

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on. I think that . . . first . . . it’s clearly discernible the way I read it at least. Already in the sacred texts themselves not only there is something of a clown figure in Christ himself it’s clear that he plays with it. It’s even, I think in some passage I forgot where, Paul himself he first looked himself as being a little bit clownish here and so on and so on and so on. And again for me the key point is how to understand it. That to me is the usual notion of comical which is don’t forget we live on earth . . . don’t be too dignified . . . too bombastic . . . the reminder of the ordinariness of our terrestrial existence. All is there that think on the other edge, as it were, the comic dimension can touch something more terrifying than tragedy itself. Taylor: And I think at this point this is why last night as you were talking I was thinking of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. And there is this passage in the very first part of the Metamorphosis in which Gregor is trying to roll over on his side. And he tries it one hundred times and can’t do it. And he notices his wriggling legs. And then there’s this moment where Gregor exclaims his exclamation “Oh God!” he thought. And then one would think that he’s going to now reflect on his being an insect but he then says “What a strenuous profession I’ve picked.” And of course Kafka apparently thought this was a very humorous story. And what happens twice in that text in which Gregor makes the exclamation “Oh God!” and one thinks it’s going to be related to his transformation into a bug but instead it’s a reflection on his ordinary life. I’m wondering would this be an example of the way in which the comic does speak to something more terrifying than tragedy is able to. Žižek: Definitely. And I even think this is crucial to how we read Kafka. I think that Kafka is usually, what are the three big standard approaches to Kafka. First, let’s call it negative theological absence of God and anxiety blah blah people longing for some transcendent authority and you don’t find it and so on. And then we have simplified psychoanalytic reading . . . the Oedipal problematic confrontation with father and then we have simplified socially critical Marxist reading . . . Kafka critic of . . . alienating bureaucracy so on and so on. But I think they all miss the comical aspect of Kafka which I think is absolutely crucial. And although I don’t like Milan Kundera . . . the Czech writer, he wrote something in a very nice way in the Czech country

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of his origins. Kafka is rather perceived as kind of an author of comical stories like it precisely Metamorphosis. It is not a tragedy, it’s a crazy isn’t it funny the guy awake and my God he was an insect and so on. You restore this dimension to Kafka this comical aspect and I think that it’s not simply that Kafka had comical stories but more basic tragic novels and so on. In all Kafka you have in this comic, this comic dimension. And I think that this precisely this is crucial to standard misreadings . . . to avoid standard misreadings of Kafka. So I totally agree with you that Kafka should be saved from this how should I call it . . . pseudo-existentialist deep, deep, deep anxiety readings. But again, the problem is not to play one against the other. The problem is . . . you know who in philosophy was first to formulate this link? I think Kant because Freud already wrote somewhere Freud provided the clue. He wrote somewhere that super ego which is this ferocious agency of terror is also a comic agent. You know where you find this? You know in modern cinema this link? For example this is what always fascinated me and I think he has a deep agnostic theological side to it although . . . as a person he is bluffing, David Lynch. In his films how often this figures of terror of ultimate terror brutal figures who rape, terrorize. There is undoubtedly something ridiculously clownish comical about them. For example in Blue Velvet, Dennis Hopper . . . it’s obviously a comical aspect. This is brought almost to for example, the wonderful role played by Willem Dafoe, Bobby Peru, in Wild at Heart . . . Obviously there is something so excessive that you cannot but laugh. Vulture, terrifying, rapists terrorizing person. This is brought to extreme in Dune. Remember Baron Harkonnen? . . . He’s a monster, torturing but clearly a comic. So I think that there is deep insight into it how there is something comical in this terrorist agency. And I think in politics this is the reason why the phenomenon of Stalinism . . . not that I have any . . . my God . . . sympathy for it . . . fascinates me because if you in the Stalinist universe which is irrational rules . . . and so on. There is something comical about it and I think, I’m ready even to go a step further here, you know that this is how maybe we should reread Kafka’s the topic of Kafka as bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is central to Kafka and Kafka said somewhere that nothing that is as close to the essence of man as bureaucracy. But my point is that for example when Hegel proposes this ridiculous statement people usually laugh at it they don’t get the point . . . that the state is really the

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God coming to existence . . . effectively existing God. I think that in Kafka we attained, a strange truth of it. What is, I mean how, in what sense is bureaucracy is divine? For example, I remember we have in southern Europe especially in Italy and France, okay Latin Europe, there is a long mythology . . . reported in the media of these high irrationalities of state bureaucracy. For example I don’t know, for example, it happened effectively to a friend of mine in France its incredible. A woman, she was informed from the city hall municipal authority that her ID card was stolen and that she should go down and pick up . . . ask for . . . a new one. And she came there, this happened to a friend of mine, and she informed them that “I have it here. It is still valid.” They informed her, “You have it. But, no, officially it’s invalid . . . So you now officially have an invalid document so you should destroy the document and ask for a new one. Not to mention this wonderful metaphysics in France and Italy where the state can provide for you, you . . . document . . . a certifcat d’existence . . . but the state confirms that you do exist. Or this mistake which happens all the time in Italy you go to a town hall and demand something they inform you officially you are dead. So you cannot get it. You should ask for being recognized as alive again. And isn’t, that’s something, okay divine supernatural metaphysical in it. At this moment you are perplexed. It’s as if you are above this reality so maybe this is a divine dimension . . . of course another divine dimension. Divine in the sense of its super-ego irrational, cruel . . . cruel divinity, in which at the same time can be comical. And it would be interesting to again to approach it in this way, finding traces of it maybe even in Old Testament. For example you have this irrational cruel outburst which don’t . . . are ridiculous. For example, I didn’t have the time I wanted to refer to in my talk this title . . . of Johnny Cash song when the “The Man Comes Around.” Which is remember that story of how when I think that when once Moses is sleeping . . . God . . . Isn’t it that then God comes and wants to kill him and you know this all starts when the origin of circumcision. There is something terrifyingly comical God just comes wants to kill. So, this I think that . . . but . . . the problem theological problem is how to read this dimension of ridiculously excessively even evil God without falling into the cheap agnostic topic of course there is a good and bad divinity and so on and so on? And I think that theology has to confront this dimension. Okay I accept the basic insight of Agamben . . . which is some

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things happened in some extreme experiences in the twentieth century — like Gulag, Holocaust and so on. And any ethics that cannot confront this phenomena is not the ethics of our time. My idea is that we have to . . . the paradox for me is that again . . . that I learn seriously the Hollywood lesson. Why are the only good, relatively good Hollywood movies generally about Holocaust comedies? And even . . . I don’t think here . . . A Beautiful Life . . I think that Benini . . . towards the end makes a compromise. Comedy is turned into the authentic moment . . . in the end. The end is . . . . Taylor: Melodrama. Žižek: Yea, yea, yea turns into a melodrama. He’s not radical enough. So I think that there is there is a lesson . . . there is a dimension which is too horrifying, too much for tragedy. I think again that ethics today the ethical question today is decided, as it were, at this level and this is for me crucial to retain a religious experience as authentic. Because with all my criticism of Lacan yesterday remember . . . I’m sorry of Habermas . . . remember I quoted him positively I think there is wonderful insight in that Habermas . . . okay not original to him. This idea that precisely the very phenomena which usually are quoted against religious experience like Holocaust renders God meaningless. How could there be an omnipotent God to allow a thing like this? But on the other hand I think . . . Habermas was also deeply right when he emphasizes how the opposite also goes humanist ethics is not enough. To speak at the level of such horrors to speak about you know human responsibility and so on there is something obscene, ridiculous about it. So precisely to confront even something cosmic when you go through Gulag or Holocaust don’t you get necessarily a kind of a gut feeling the world is out of joint it’s not just a local crime. It’s like if there would be justice the world should fall apart. The sun should stop shining and so on you know. Taylor: I don’t know if it’s historically accurate but it’s something I’ve read that one of the coldest winters occurred in Poland in 1943. But one of the harshest winters, on record, actually coincided with Auschwitz. Žižek: Oh my God . I love these weird details . . . .

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Taylor: How does one, when one learns that, if in fact it is true, how does one approach that in terms of one could look to a God and think well if there were a God and he didn’t have control of the Holocaust and maybe he could have made the winter better you know warmer, but why would the winter be colder than any other and so there seems to be this conflict around the ethical questions and how one appeals to some sense making? Žižek: Yea, but for me, of course, the take of hermeneutics is you can also read it . . . it was God’s signal that we were doing something terribly wrong. So you can do everything. But the problem for me precisely . . . I think at the more fundamental level for me the big message of the book of Job which I think is still the big thing one of the key stories of the entire Bible . . . is precisely to reject this kind of hermeneutics. Because for me the greatest tragedy . . . for example when you have something like Holocaust like . . . Shoah . . . okay to use the more politically correct term of course there is a terrible pressure to look for meaning in it. It’s something we cannot accept that it just happens. So you know I refer to for example for me the most tragic phenomenon is here . . . you know there is a Rabbi in Israel who claims the Jews who were killed . . . this was a divine punishment for because although it’s a crazy solution which puts the blame on the Jews but somehow it reestablishes the economy of meaning. Taylor: That’s a very Christian notion in that catastrophe is God calling humanity back in a sense that God visits these catastrophes on humanity as a signal, another hermeneutic move to return. So instead of feeling abandoned by God there’s a religious perspective that would say the more we suffer it is more definitive and we can be more certain that God is calling us back. And that could be one part of this religious hermeneutic. Žižek: Yea, but again here I may be in some sense more Protestant or what. For me if there is . . . if there is something to be to . . . its precisely the great strength is precisely to resist this hermeneutic. I am rather tempted to read hermeneutics as a temptation. And if there is an image of God, because yesterday I had to shock my intervention in it . . . precisely when I make this move towards is there a religious experience beyond the horizon of where

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truth and meaning correspond. I have a couple of pages in the manuscript precisely about and I let go systematically through all the versions of how to account for the Holocaust. In religious terms. First I go to . . . to keep divine omnipotence and then you have you know one is . . . that you mentioned the other one is the most simple one, the punishment theory it was a just punishment. And then I go through theories of divine . . . which can relate in agnostic dualism. But then my solution then is the suffering God. It’s the suffering God. But literally that the ultimate divine position is compassion. He suffers with us. And I don’t think this is quite the same as limiting, as limiting to because I think that this idea of is God omnipotent and so on introduces a certain logic which is for me way too legalistic, how should I put it? I agree, at one point I agree with Badiou today. I think that the whole story of way your cross . . . crucifixion . . . I think that I might particularly appear a little bit crazy but I spoke with some theologians they are very sympathetic to me here. I think that one is totally to abandon . . . this change slavery metaphor which is God paid for our sins and so on. I mean paid okay paid to whom? I hear . . . I mean paid to whom? I know that this was hardly debated I read in the earlier centuries of Christianity and dualists again stepped in and said of course to the Devil. The idea was that there was a big deal, a deal in the sense of contact between God and Devil. Because when we live in sin we are under control of the Devil. He loved us so much that he said to Devil, “Okay I give you my most precious possession my own son if you give me humanity back and so on and so on.” So it is this idea. But I don’t I don’t think this works. Either you have dualism or you have some kind of strange divine narcissism that God wanted to impress people. I think that it should be read in a different way as a kind of a gesture which is not that crucifixion should be read as a gesture which is not part of some symbolic exchange. I think the moment you do this, you are . . . . Taylor: Let me give you another literary example . . . in the Gospel according to Jesus, Žižek: I haven’t read it but I was told, is it a good book? Should I, Taylor: It’s wonderful.

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Žižek: Oh my goodness because I know that Norman Mailer wrote one which . . . he also wrote one. And that’s why it didn’t work for me . . . the idea that Jesus himself wrote the gospel Taylor: And what’s sort of interesting is that at the end of the novel Saramago has the dying Jesus speak out to humanity and he says to humanity, forgive Him, him being God, for He knows not what He does. And so Saramago has this reversal and that now the death of Jesus the significance of the last pronouncement of the gospel of Jesus is that what humanity must do is forgive God for Jesus’ death. And I wonder how, what you think of that? Žižek: Wait a minute if this is for me, I would have to think about how to connect this to some Gnostic readings which I have read which goes that that the death of Jesus should rather be read as God’s apology to humanity. Like I screwed up. You know this drastic idea that God was imperfect. That He botched up creation. He made the bad world and so on. And yea that’s why okay all I can give you as an apology is to sacrifice my son, to let you know I’m sorry I screwed up creation and so on and so on. Elegant and paradoxical and intellectually speaking I . . . and this solution . . . I think . . . I don’t quite buy it. It’s too much of an intellectual game. An intellectual game in the sense that, I still think that one should trust, this may sound very pre-modern not postmodern but, one should trust ones gut feelings in the sense that this is not what people experience you know it’s too much of an intellectual play. I don’t think this is why way of the cross is such a shattering experience. It has something to do with the death of God of God himself. Here I buy Hegel’s version. The God who dies is the God of beyond. Taylor: Right. The complete emptying out of God into humanity and literally and dying. Žižek: But nonetheless here one walks on a very thin line. Because nonetheless this should not be read in the usual humanist way which is in Christianity simply, that Christianity is some kind of ironic spectacle which basically the message is there is no God it’s only us. No, it’s God who is doing it. So my big dogma is nonetheless how to put it, here I am very close to

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theological revelations of my good friend Eric Santner . . . who from a more Jewish perspective goes into this excess that the divine dimension is a name for a certain excess that the divine dimension means man is not only man there is an excess. And here now my psychoanalytic link enters that this excess was called by Freud “death drive” . . . and I didn’t have time to develop it yesterday. But my paradox is effectively if you look closely at Freud if you read him closely you will see that what effectively death drives means is its exact opposite. That death drive Freudian name for immortality for infinity. Death drive has nothing to do with this oriental stuff nirvana we want to no death drive is precisely if we look closely something that exists goes on beyond life and death. It kind of obscene infinity. It’s almost again I’m getting tasteless the Steven King topic the undead. It is an extremely interesting notion which I in some of my books . . . you know undead is precisely what you . . . the whole theory of different ways of negation. If you say . . . distinguishes between negating a predicate and affirming a non-predicate. If you say he isn’t dead this simply means he is alive. It’s simple. If you say not he isn’t dead but he is undead it is something different. It means that he is dead while alive. You open a third domain a kind of obscene life and death. Leaving that. Taylor: And this relates back to Kafka in the sense that for Kafka it seems to be and this is where the comedy comes back as well that through, through humor at least Kafka sort of explores this in that there is this, especially for Gregor, there is this metamorphosis into something completely non-human, yet there’s an existence there that we don’t have access to. There is a point at which not even Gregor has access to his own experience. Žižek: Yea, but again, I think that the point is precisely that all this metamorphosis into what is, as it were, in us more than ourselves this superhuman dimension like the one that I mentioned again comical like yesterday remember at the very end this wonderful scene in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights . . . a hiccup, something uncontrollable as if we were again this half comical half tragic. Taylor: And this happens in Kafka because I, and in the Metamorphosis that’s actually one of my questions. Is that in the very beginning Gregor’s

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responding to his mother and he writes that his voice blends with his earlier voice. And this painful insuppressible squeal comes out of him. Žižek: Oh my God wonderful . . . I didn’t know this. Is it because . . . as usual with intellectuals . . . I read in my high school. Taylor: But it’s this bug noise that . . . it’s as if what Kafka’s reporting is the moment of metamorphosis in which . . . . Žižek: I didn’t know that’s interesting sort of it starts as his voice that he cannot control. Taylor: The very first thing that Gregor realizes that he can’t manage is that he can’t respond to the call of his mother and he tries to respond to her and it’s this bug squeal noise that interrupts what Gregor refers, what the narrator refers, to as his earlier voice, which is his human voice. And then at that point . . . . Žižek: That’s wonderful because you know that in some of my books I had to read along the same lines I still think it’s wonderful Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. But precisely the bad guy Hinkle, Hitler is an entity of voice notice ridiculous body gives body to that voice. The shouting voice. First you hear Hinkle shouting. So but, but what interests me in psychoanalytic theories I think the main focus that measures precisely what Freud called “partial object” the kind of undead terrifying object in which voice becomes alive on its own or organs become alive on their own. So I think that again in order, not only for religious experience but even I think to understand our modernity our predicament as such I think it’s crucial to bear in mind this excessive something in man more than humans dimensions. I think this is absolutely crucial. So here again I think that . . . that’s my paradox. I’m, how do you put it, . . . usually for American at least fundamentalist religious people they have this negative word like humanists, secularists and so on and so on. Taylor: Terms of dismissal.

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Žižek: Of dismissal, yes. My paradox is that what I try to formulate is some kind of a materialist anti-humanism in the sense that . . . what I want to do is decide to formulate materialism which would not fall back into simple humanism. It’s just humanity it’s just our dimension of human life all other dimensions are chimeras . . . should be explained out of the contradictions of our becoming. Taylor: It becomes reduced to cultural phenomenon, cultural practice, yes. Žižek: Precisely this not, there is effectively let’s call it you know in old fashion terms excessive transcendent dimension. This is for me the lesson of . . . German Idealism . . . from Schelling onwards to Hegel . . . and so on and so on not to mention Schelling . . . who is the greatest here I think. This excessive dimension and again in a way I think Freud was . . . there is something in Freud. Freud was following the same path . . . but again here I think Freud should be opposed to Jung . . . because I think that in Jung . . . you have precisely a regression to some kind of agnostic universal hermeneutics. Taylor: Which is normative, ultimately. The interesting thing . . . . Žižek: Yea, yea, yea. No wonder, I mean . . . it is political blow below the belt . . . about to emphasize but then . . . but Jung supported Hitler for a little bit . . . and so on and so on. No, I think that this kind of a depth hermeneutic that was propagated by Jung is deeply a reactionary . . . particularly dangerous. I think one should at least more than ever hear the gap between Freud and Jung. Taylor: In an early, it’s not really a case study, it’s the Katarina case study in which you know Freud meets this young woman accidentally. What’s interesting there is that in the very beginning Freud is sort of taken aback because he’s so accustomed to dealing with people in the city that he’s surprised that neurosis is actually out in the clean mountain air. In the very first part he says . . . . Žižek: That’s a nice point though but here I see a sign of Freud sincerity because you know, at the very elementary level it happened to me not only I

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am so immersed in psychoanalytic theory. I’m not a clinician, obviously. And so that of course being so immersed in theory I automatically assume although it runs against my theory that this is theory but in everyday life we are normal people we don’t need all this psychoanalytic monstrous . . . no? So even for me when I simply discover in real life my God . . . my God but Freud is maybe true you know. Taylor: Yea he finds her and he’s first shocked you know as I said that neurosis is up in the clean air of the mountains and that she’s this young this “simple” German country girl. So there’s this sort of class issue. But what’s interesting about that case study is that he seems to sort of accept her on her own terms. And that when he actually is sitting on this rock apparently conversing with her . . . there’s a very different sort of rhetoric and approach with her than would have say his usual sort of case studies the clinical. And what’s interesting is it’s as if he sort of takes that particular aspect of Katarina and treats it almost as an experiment. Unlike the other case studies where he is steering he almost allows Katarina and she comes to it . . . she comes to this understanding of her trauma on her own. And Freud’s very clear that you know as he’s discussing with her, he’s asking these questions and she’s the one that has the revelation. Žižek: But it’s so interesting what you’re saying because this would be the good aspect of what of this, as you said, Freud’s class cultural bias. I can give you as a counter example . . . a bad, clearly a racist aspect and . . . in some of my earlier books namely Freud was in critical correspondence with Edoardo Weiss . . . who was the first Italian psychoanalyst who worked in Trieste . . . some Slovene minority there in and Weiss and Freud had a debate about a Slovene patient . . . who was totally corrupted even without any ethical constraint but at the same time impotent. And Freud replies . . .” these Slovenes they are so evil primitive to their beyond the art of psychoanalysis . . . is as if you know they are so corrupted that they are too much . . . you cannot apply psychoanalysis.” It’s as if you have to be a certain bourgeois, middle educated class and even . . . corruption . . . psychoanalytical coordinates. Taylor: Well, the Katarina text seems to be the exception here to that and what becomes interesting is that as she actually realizes what the source of her

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neurosis, her cough, she then reinscribes Freud and then she says well, as he, as it turns sexual, she says well I guess you can say anything, you can tell “anything to a doctor.” In which all of a sudden now, then as I read it, that last part where she has a revelation then it becomes more formal sort of structure in which Freud is then asking her what was before that and what was before that. Žižek: Because the problem for me, for my looking I don’t have a clinical experience but my friends analysts are telling me that today the problems are almost more and more the opposite ones that you get patients come to you already with prefabricated theories about themselves you know. Sometimes I love this as a strategy. My friends tell me that patients are so used that you accept what they are saying as kind of ethically neutral clinical stuff. Sometimes intelligent analysts consciously as a kind of a complicated strategy resort to their own role of kind of a severe moral authority. For example, a friend of mine, a clinician in Slovenia, told me that he had a very corrupted evil guy really bad guy who came to him because this bad guy had some problems and was telling him a dream. Taylor: Like The Sopranos Žižek: Yea, yea, yea. Was telling him a dream whatever it was clear that it was something against his father, no? Okay, now of course, the guy probably perceives and half calculated like now I will give you the Oedipal story now you will explain why I am evil because of problems with my father and everything will be okay and . . . I will be absolved. I’m sorry. It’s not me it’s my Oedipal complex and so on. And this friend of mine did something wonderful. He didn’t accept the game. He reacted to this by adopting a simple moralistic role when this guy told him his dream. He started to shout at him “You know all your father did for you? Aren’t you ashamed? Thinking like that your father!” and it worked wonderfully. It’s totally true. Out of joint this guy. It was a very intelligent move . . . I think to adopt a totally . . . how dare you sit and talk like this about your father. Taylor: And broke the frame.

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Žižek: Yea, it’s almost like you know that it’s too naïve it doesn’t work today you know that film Analyze Me the first one. Where you know Deniro? I think it’s a fake the film but I only like that at the beginning when . . . Billy Crystal explains to Deniro “your mother” and he says . . . “my mother, the old lady, do you know my mother” . . . we need a little bit of this naivety I think. We are all already so corrupted with this psychoanalytic hermeneutics. Where the fun that I usually make is that and it’s confirmed by some of my friends you know that classical Freudian story of . . . verneinung. Like the patient telling him “I don’t know who this woman is but it’s not my mother.” No, a couple of analysts told me today it’s the opposite a patient tells you a dream and then he says, “Well I don’t know who this woman is but I guess it has something to do with my mother.” I mean it’s the opposite and here I think we touched the nerve of Freudian discovery. How far from undermine this is the truth Freudian paradox it’s not, it’s not you have you want something but because of internalize ethical morals you cannot do it. It’s why a hedonist cannot enjoy. Why are there no prohibitions in trying to do. Like which is why I think that in contrast to those who claim today we live in a permissive era . . . psychoanalysis . . . I think that only now psychoanalysis is truly coming to its own because now we have this is our paradoxes now you know the Lacan that I always quote . . . turning around Dostoevsky . . . if God doesn’t exist than everything is prohibited. And I think that today’s experience confirms it more and more. I mean it’s enough to go to some environment isolated usually identified with other hedonism like I don’t know . . . Christopher St. or Castro St. . . . and what shocks me there is in what permanent anxiety we may perform . . . these people don’t really enjoy. That’s my spontaneous experience. That life is so, which is why I think here my proposal is that what we usually identify as fundamentalism at least that’s my experience in Europe. I refer to it I think briefly in The Fragile Absolute. It’s not as people say usually people get lost in hedonism you like a firm identity somebody starts their own value system. No I think that it’s a more complex strategy here. In the sense that modern societies . . . look it may appear that they are permissive but precisely on the account of okay the basic premise is you don’t have any higher causes to sacrifice yourself you can enjoy your life but then in order to organize this enjoyment to get more prohibitive than ever before. The paradox of political correctness it’s to enable our hedonism respecting each other but then you end

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up I cannot look at you its visual rape. I cannot do this. Our lives are at this micro level are more regulated than ever. So the idea is that if you subscribe to hedonism even if you subscribe to fundamentalism . . . I am not talking so much religious fundamentalism more so nationalist fundamentalism. It liberates you now I act on behalf of God . . . whatever . . . I can kill I can do whatever I want it comes as a big shock as I spoke to some Serb ethnic cleansers who identify . . . I met them. They gave me a big lesson in theory. They’re message was not you know we are lost in complexity of today’s world so we seek refuge. No, they their idea was modern life with all these rules you cannot even hit somebody you cannot rape a woman and so, “I proclaim myself ethnic fundamentalist and so then I can do whatever I want basically.” This kind of a false liberation. This is not such an original thing this . . . if you read closely a very good text by Adorno . . . on the effects of fascist propaganda. You already have this deep insight into how . . . totalitarian . . . Here I would have supplemented what Badiou was saying today. It’s a much more complex interaction. It’s not so simply on the one hand experimenting with pleasures on the other hand sacrifice. If you want the life of pleasures you get entangled in politically correct prohibitions and so on. On one hand, the very spirit of sacrifice legitimizes a kind of different level of unconstraint enjoyment. So I think it’s a more complex entanglement of the two dimensions. Taylor: Because of the because there is a hidden exchange in which one then adopts or makes one’s will subservient to a greater will. Žižek: Which kind liberates you and legitimizes you and you can do whatever you want. Yes it’s more complex its more it’s not as simple as that. First there is a clear sacrifice in being truly a hedonist and, on the other hand, there is a clear false liberation in being a fundamentalist totalitarian subject. You can basically do whatever you want. There is a false liberation there wonderfully detected by Adorno who even says that that was the whole message of Nazi strategy that you can kill, kill the Jews and so on and so on. You know sacrifice for Fatherland it was basically one big call to enjoyment. That’s the whole point of how totalitarianism functions. So here I will complicate a little bit Badiou. I think that the two options are not as clearly opposed it’s not simply a war between hedonism in the sense of experimenting with extreme thought of

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enjoyment and . . . Oh, but even at that level I think that the situation is more complex because why are we so terrified by drugs today? That’s my other old theory that we don’t really live in a society of consumption and this is another myth. Do we really live in a society of consummation and so on and so on. Isn’t it that on the contrary we are more than ever afraid of true unconstrained consummation. No, today which is why, this is my old joke I know, I know it’s like this phenomena like you know decaf coffee and so on. The dream is to be consumed but without the deadly substance we don’t pay the price for it. So we are if by unconstrained consummation we need like drink or eat whatever you want to the end enjoy. No, this is the most horrible thing for us to imagine today. On the contrary, the thing today to do it but in such a way they are being deprived of substance it will not hurt you. Sex, yes, but safe sex. Taylor: It demands the virtual. Žižek: Yes. So again I think that things are much more complex here. I think that at this level the Pope’s strategy was intelligent. It wasn’t simply against, if you read really closely intelligent theological propaganda . . . okay, propaganda . . . message today. It’s not simply . . . don’t follow hedonism restrain yourself sacrifice, no. The true message is if you follow secular hedonism you will lose not a divine experience you will lose the rest of your pleasures themselves. The true message is it’s only by following our path that you will get to the authentic satisfying terrestrial pleasures themselves. It’s a much more complicated matter. And again I think there is some truth in it. Truth in the sense that let’s go to the first one who as it were at least in his stories went to the end of this experimenting with pleasures . . . Marquis De Sade. It was pointed out already by that’s the message . . . by the reading of the Adorno and Horkheimer . . . reading de Sade you end up in kind of a pure abstract intellectualism. What is missing in Sade is precisely, this how to put it, lively experience, no lively pleasure of . . . it becomes totally mechanical. Taylor: Or institutional? The film . . . Crash. In the film Crash in which I think is a good example where you have these characters there involved and that they recreate his car accidents and the sex between characters and Rosanna Arquet has the braces on her legs and so she’s almost like it’s almost like a cyborg. And

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the section . . . the scene that opens up there’s this sex scene with Rosanna Arquet and I forgot who the . . . James Spader. Žižek: James Spider is it him or . . . James Spader, yea, you’re right. Not Spider. Taylor: There seems to be this sort of pleasure in their sexual act and then all of a sudden it just stops. And then he just says to her something like “Are you good?” and she just says “Yea, I’m good.” It was the purely kind of mechanical, physical aspect of it in which somehow it defeated itself because it was empty of any kind of subjectivity. Žižek: Which is why I have in the amount of my volumes I did a long text Tarkovsky you know the Russian guy Tarkovsky. I think that that’s the message of him. What fascinated me in his films is how for him spirituality means immersing into earth . . . filth and mud and so on. So for him precisely hermeneutic methods . . . stuff in its dirtiest . . . this countryside in decay, old factories modern so on. That’s for him. In his films people pray not up to get rid of the earth but by immersing yourself fully . . . He has in one of his other films The Mirror he says wonderful sentence . . . where he says in the same way the “naked body without dress is an obscenity.” So without the body it’s even a greater obscenity. This idea that spirit is something which is deeply material paradox transpired only in our recent context. Taylor: Only meaningful within the material. Žižek: Yea. That spirit deprived of matter. It’s radical evil. And interesting Schelling says the same. Shelling when he writes already that pure evil is much more spiritual than goodness. That pure evil is always spiritual. It’s kind of abstract blue, how should I call it, cold spirituality that’s evil. Evil is not creating from material and so on and so on. Taylor: I’m surprised. What a very Catholic sensibility. In the sense that for instance with the Pope there have been on the news shows kind of readings and quotes and one of the things he says “Nothing can separate one from the love of God.” Which is to say that everything that exists is part of the spiritual.

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And I would think what he’s trying to point to there is this notion of suffering of people who suffer of the handicapped that there’s something about the materiality of their bodies that is somehow marked more by the let’s say . . . I guess it’s not too politically correct but let’s say that the imperfections of their bodies become signs of a greater spirituality. Žižek: Yea and although I agree here a little bit with Badiou that one should be very careful here not to fall into this sacrificial trap. Any good theologist knows . . . there is a thin line dividing this authentic position from the position of so I will mutilate myself to be more . . . this is the temptation is here. You know . . . you don’t know you’re already on the other side in a way you know. Taylor: No, I think that’s absolutely right and then it becomes how does one then create. Well let me give you another instance another literary instance maybe can be maybe it will help this. In the in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s has a short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” And it’s a story and it takes place in a rural area in which an angel, a very old man a very old angel, falls out of the sky and lands in the mud in this courtyard. And . . . face down in the mud and his wings are, well not broken, but the feathers are coming out and he’s a mess. And a wise woman identifies him as an angel. And they call a priest and a priest comes and looks at the man, at the angel, and then decides that he’s not an angel because he’s too human, he’s too familiar. And therefore because he’s too familiar, and doesn’t have the kind of angelic body that now he is some undeserving of any assistance. And it’s a very chilling story in which the mud . . . the decrepitude the blindness of this angel in which the angel instead of being represented as this glowing figure of light actually takes on all the physicality, materiality of the world around him. And so . . . but the priest can’t recognize him. And so this family that discovers him what they do is they turn him in to a primitive chicken coop and turn him into a side show attraction. At the end the ironic end of the story is when the woman is in the kitchen and she notices that the angel feeling a little bit better manages to fly away. And she feels . . . she’s happy because this angel is leaving which is sort of ironic because usually people would feel better when an angel is coming. And so what Garcia Marquez is doing is as if, to pick up on our conversation, taking everything that’s spiritual and putting it within the context of, not just materiality, but a kind of brokenness. The physical brokenness of the very old man with enormous wings.

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Žižek: But it’s crucial because again I’m reminded here Benjamin . . . who I don’t know who draw my attention to this . . . there is this wonderful passage when Benjamin says that in order to experience history, what is history at its purest, you should see the monument of past culture in decay at the moment of being taken over by nature. Like you know remain of all its only . . . the spirituality of the spirit is broken materiality . . . is something . . . I tended to take this quite seriously . . . in order to have spirituality . . . I mean, okay this is even an old philosophical topic how you arrive at spirit through our crippled bodies human bodies somehow cripple. What interests me very much is how even how here, well this a big crazy speculation, psychoanalyst can even reconcile with some new modern intelligent cognitivists who point on for example one problem I cannot because I am a conservative privately in sexual matters but I never got it this crazy orthodox, I mean orthodox in the sense of official church, Catholic notion that if you have make love, if you have sex, not for procreation that you are debasing it. But my spontaneous . . . is exactly the opposite. Sorry, but animals do it for procreation. Isn’t it that I can imagine of a very loving spiritual sexual act precisely not for procreation. Because, my God, it can be the deepest personal experience not just vulgar hedonism whatever but. So, even more I think that isn’t this precisely what happens here, isn’t here I tend to be an orthodox psychoanalyst in the sense that far from being simply about the material needs of the body something happens in human sexuality which makes us spiritual. Besides that we are the most terrestrial there evolution occurred . . . in the sense that precisely in the elementary form of humanity that you that some activity which originally had a certain biological function that you turn it off its no longer meant to do that and its and this way. .

Taylor: It’s displaced. Žižek: Yea and in this way you make it into a space where some spirituality can appear spirituality has to be a form of materiality . . . in the sense that you don’t do it to the end . . . to its original goal . . . even at the most elementary level how does a personal relationship get sexualized. Through not being fulfilled . . . for example to . . . for example . . . let’s say I shake your hand what if instead of just shaking your hand I would keep it too long and started to squeeze it a

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little bit you would think am I gay or whatever you know what I mean it’s as if the movement gets stuck in repetitive. And it’s no longer justified by its official goal, it’s hindered like the . . . like hindered as to its end. So here I always have a problem, have a problem with this Catholic sense, my God what are they afraid of? Aren’t they repressing . . . precisely the spiritual aspect of sexuality. What is sexuality to do with procreation? Isn’t it becomes a spiritual experience precisely with the thought of it . . . animals do it. Taylor: Well even more precisely than that, any even sex between married people that is not intended for procreation is considered adultery. Žižek: Yea, but here I don’t see because what are they doing? Isn’t that and isn’t in the idea that sex is basically for procreation aren’t they missing the whole spiritual dimension of sexuality, my God, no? Taylor: Well, I think to come back to Kafka in the story “Country Doctor.” Žižek: Oh that’s my favorite. That’s one of my big hits. Taylor: Yea and where in which the groom the biting of the face there’s this sort of libidinal energy in the story it seems to me at least my reading of the story is the question of where does one place all this libidinal force that’s released, the horses coming out of the pig sty. Right, and then even at the end depending on the translation ends with the doctor “betrayed, betrayed” and the question betrayed by what betrayed by the inability to take that energy and put it into some meaningful space. I mean that’s one possibility . . . but what do you think? Žižek: No, no, no, I don’t have a good . . . I tried reading but I’m not satisfied with that reading but I think it’s definitely one of the stories that made the deepest impact on me. The ultimate Kafka for me because you have everything there . . . you have this on the kid’s belly you have this undead object with the open wounds . . . worms . . . and so on. For me, as a Wagnerian . . . that actually links to the . . . Fisher King. Wound which is a very Wagnerian wound a wound which makes you undead no it’s a wound of excessive life. And all you want to do is get rid of this wound so that you can die.

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Taylor: That’s what the young man says in the bed when the doctor comes. He whispers to him, “Let me die.” Žižek: Yea, yea that’s the whole point. The wound prevents him to die. It’s a very Wagnerian moment. I think that something incredible was going on spiritually at that time around . . . it started all with Wagner and going on this idea of the undead wound this idea of the ultimate. But you find it already in Kierkegaard . . . I think. Because when Kierkegaard . . . speaks about sickness onto death his idea is not that we are afraid of being mortal but that we are afraid of being immortal. He turns it around. Taylor: Well isn’t this the problem with Jesus. The question of why after the resurrection . . . why Jesus’ body still bears the wounds. Žižek: I didn’t know. This is a nice theological problem. Taylor: Isn’t it? And so you have the resurrected body of Jesus, the glorified body of Jesus still is a wounded body. And that the wounds become eternal wounds. Žižek: What’s the standard theological explanation of this? Taylor: I don’t . . . there is one; I think it becomes the question. Žižek: Okay, first how do we know? Does it say in the Bible, to be naïve, how do we know that the resurrected body still has the wounds? Taylor: Well when Jesus appears and he appears Thomas actually sticks his hand in the wound in Jesus’ side. Žižek: Oh, yea of course. Okay, okay I got it. We have the proof of course. We have the proof. Taylor: And, so this is again this becomes a kind of an undead moment where the wound, I mean . . . the power, and even with Lazarus right the resurrection

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it’s not that he’s healed, he’s just alive again. Right, and the way in which Lazarus is depicted it’s not as if he’s brought back to life in this kind of full capacity and physically . . . you know well, but it’s a strange almost liminal space alive with a dead body or spirit you know and Jesus I think in the same way when He appears this wound is permanent. Žižek: But here also . . . how to put it? With all my admiration he is one of my great inspirations . . . Badiou, no? I don’t think it’s as simple as is the position death life want pure life, life not death and so on. Taylor: I think my reading of . . . Badiou . . . talking about different categories I mean isn’t that sort of the category of life and the category of death? And that when he was speaking today I was thinking of Lyotard in the sense of there was however these are two heterogeneous fields. Almost two categories. And these two ways, it’s not as if they were opposite I don’t think but they just become heterogeneous and incommensurable. Is that wrong? I mean that’s the way I was, it’s not as if their kind of dialectically related or one is . . . the negation of the other. Žižek: Here I make the point that nonetheless I think that how to put it it’s not a kind of dialectical reversal . . . but nonetheless I think that crucifixion is more crucial in the sense that it’s not that there is crucifixion and then there is resurrection if anything I’m tempted in a kind of Hegelian way to identify them. That everything happened already in crucifixion. That somehow his death is already all that has to happen and that it’s just a new perspective. Something doesn’t quite, but then it’s a big problem with Badiou . . . he’s always involved in debates about finitude and so on and so on. Taylor: Well my question after today’s talk was if we follow, and I have been doing a lot of work on Lyotard lately, if we follow Lyotard, what is the event? Is the event the resurrection or is the event something in the future? In other words is the resurrection the event that defines, does one have a fidelity to the event of the resurrection or does one have a fidelity to some future event that we don’t know?

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Žižek: Badiou would here answer in a very simple way in his theory of the event you have the event, but then you have the final point. You know like event and then whatever would be the final judgment, beatitude whatever. For him it’s both at the same time in the sense that the event in itself content which opens the space for this final. Taylor: And contains all future possibilities. Žižek: Yea . . . but then this is how Badiou reads in his book the Faith, Hope, Love. Faith in the event, hope in this final event, love comes in between its work. Work out of the fidelity for the final. Taylor: Well, this would be very anti-Lyotard in the sense that the event could never, any event could never contain all its possibilities. Right, because there must be something, in other words there must be something, to come back to our other part, there must be something in excess even to the event. Žižek: Yea, Badiou . . . here gets complicated . . . for example the whole problem is the problem between event and its nomination. Somehow, sometime . . . Badiou, as it were, neglects . . . adopts an attitude of indifference toward the event. The event is kind of an empty point of reference all that matters is nomination and the work of fidelity. The event is almost reduced to kind of an empty pretext for us to work. Taylor: Right, whatever the, doesn’t necessarily have a content Žižek: Yea yea it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that under fidelity we work. What matters is what we make out of it. Taylor: The claim one makes or the claim it makes on you. Žižek: Yea, but on the other hand sometimes he emphasizes how we don’t have proper names for the event, as if there is some excess in the event. It’s very interesting because how this tension in Badiou reproduces Lacanian tensions with the notion of the real and so on. It’s real just a kind of empty pretext for the symbolic work or it’s real in excess and so on.

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Taylor: I heard a lot of Lyotard today because when I was thinking of this piece that Lyotard wrote very . . . in 1974, Adorno is Devil. In which for art, because as Badiou said in talking about art, there’s a sense there’s a kind of notion with Adorno where there are some truer truths to be found in art. And I think for Lyotard there’s a sense in which there are no truer truths there’s simply the displacement, the displacement of truth or this displacement of a rule and there you have Lyotard with his the event for Lyotard becomes also the event for experiment. Žižek: But I agree with you that here, but it is almost as if Badiou was getting a little bit more softer, postmodern. Taylor: That’s what I was thinking today as I was listening to it. Žižek: Because also how he answered the question about the evangelical question about ultimately he almost said that doesn’t matter fiction or nonfiction and so on . . . Taylor: One binds oneself to something. But then the question is and this is I think where Lyotard is interesting one doesn’t do it through epistemology doesn’t do it epistemologically. Žižek: Oh, but here, no, no . . . here but Badiou knows it. He makes it very clear. He has wonderful erotic fragment . . . Badiou about love for women. It’s the idea that precisely when you approach it epistemologically in the sense of there must be something in the woman which makes me love her you get caught into this feminist theory women is a beast you never get to know her. Taylor: Well, it’s like your example the Kinder Surprise. Minus the . . . Žižek: Yea, yea but then you . . . but no it’s a non-epistemological decision. It’s a decision I love you and you cannot ground it epistemologically and so on. It’s not there must be something in you. Sorry, I’m getting tired now can you . . . but if you can’t finish maybe you can do a little bit more later tomorrow or whatever if you want more but now I’m sorry I’m getting . . .

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Notes 1. In Žižek!, he directly describes his being “tired” of celebrity. 2. Kenneth Reinhardt, Paragraph, vol. 24.2 (2001), 162. 3. Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London/New York: Verso, 1999), 331. 4. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, “Doing the Impossible: Slavoj Žižek and the End of Knowledge.” Critical Inquiry (Spring 2003), 453–485. 5. Slavoj Žižek, “Critical: Response: A Symptom—of What?” Critical Inquiry (Spring 2003). 6. Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 331.

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A Conversation with Jean-Luc Marion Jean-Luc Marion, The University of Chicago Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

Over the past year and a half, the JCRT regularly has devoted space to the issue of “religious theory” after Jacques Derrida. My first questions to Jean-Luc Marion address this issue and the initial subsequent questions turn more toward the future of religious theory generally rather than the intricacies of Jean-Luc Marion’s thought1, with the exception of his view of the relationship or contest between philosophy and theology, which seems to follow naturally from his detailed analyses of phenomenology and hermeneutics. As a way to clarify this persistent relationship/contest and the implications of an “after Derrida,” I added the complication of a “postmodern (Lyotardian) aesthetics”2 to my line of questioning. This was in part to challenge or, at least, clarify the widely accepted notion that Jean-Luc Marion is a “postmodern theologian,” which I believe is a somewhat dubious designation. As the listener will note, Jean-Luc Marion interestingly changes the question of postmodernism into a larger question of phenomenology. The remaining portion of the conversation revolves around the status of the “object” as a “saturated,” “conceivable,” or “silent” thing, which is another way of addressing the significance of metaphysics in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and postmodernism. The end of the conversation coincidentally touches on the “phenomenology of religion” that one sometimes links with Mircea Eliade, another “Catholic theologian.” For Eliade, the “object” returns as “hierophany,” which Marion discusses in the context of the “icon.” This “object” at risk (at risk of being named) provides a point of entry into Marion’s work across theology and philosophy. The “eucharistic hermeneutic” that one associates with Marion has, I believe, interesting connections to Eliade’s dialectic of the sacred and profane and Marion provides an intriguing response to the comparison as a final comment in the conversation. Jean-Luc Marion’s writings begin with the question of metaphysics, particularly as it relates to Cartesian philosophy. His forthcoming book entitled Descartes’

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Grey Ontology, his doctoral dissertation, investigates the Aristotelian foundation of Descartes’ science. This use of “greyness” as a philosophical and theological concept allows Marion to re-situate phenomenology beyond Husserl and Heidegger. Marion’s post-Heideggerian phenomenology allows a new consideration of theology—a theology freed from the confines of reason, Being, and morality. In this postmetaphysical theology, “God” is not made visible against a terminal backdrop of Being; instead, Marion sees a “God” in relation to a “greyness” or, more recently, an “excess” placed beyond ontotheology itself. The so-called absolute condition one equates with Being and that simultaneously grounds metaphysics, then, is actually prior to or in excess of ontology and God, in this new formulation, is beyond or “without” Being. God without Being, the principal work in which this concept of excess is unfolded, as David Tracy notes in the preface, is a “brilliant” alternative to “correlational” theology in which “a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology” presents “the question of God freed from our usual philosophical reflections on the God of reason (Kant), the God of being (Aquinas) or the God of morality (Nietzsche).”3 Marion leaves us with a God of revelation or a God of excess, a God that comes to us, not a God we come to or can know “correlationally” through reason. In the context of religious theory, which includes philosophical, theological, and postmodern theoretical discourses, Jean-Luc Marion’s understanding of and distance from deconstruction represents a significant contribution to furthering the debates surrounding the politics of naming. Jeffrey Robbins, in Between Faith and Reason, notes an exchange between Marion and Derrida during a “Postmodernism and Religion Conference” at Villanova University4 in which “negative theology” came to be an openly contested term. In response to Derrida’s characterization of “negative theology” as an appeal to “hyperessentiality,”5 Marion redefines the contours of this “negation” to include a process of “de-nomimating” that stands in contrast to naming a “divine essence.”6 Robbins describes three specific parts to Marion’s challenge to Derrida’s equating the end of negative theology with a quest for “hyperessentiality.” The first is described as a treatment of “negative theology” and “metaphysics of presence” as “problems to be overcome” and not “descriptive concepts to be trusted.” 7 The second posits “negative theology” as

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a “rival” to deconstruction and the third, most interesting, addresses the issue of whether Christian theology is or is not subject to deconstruction.8 Robbins writes, Key to Marion’s answer to this all-important question is that apophasis is a part of a larger strategy “that includes not two but three elements . . . The game is therefore not played out between two terms, affirmation and negation, but between three, different from and irreducible to each other.” It is for this reason that the term “negative theology” is a problem to be overcome, for “negative theology” is not strictly negative, but neither is it fundamentally affirmative. Such predicative terms simply do not apply. It is not a matter of saying or unsaying, or naming or un-naming. In Marion’s words, “It is solely a matter of de-nominating.” Such denomination does not fix the divine essence, because it “does not name him properly or essentially, but . . . marks his absence, anonymity, and withdrawl.9 Marion, adhering to the precepts of apophatic thinking, steers between philosophy and theology, arriving at an ineluctable and inexpressible “excess” that and “only” that is given to us. So, this de-nominalized “excess” is not only quantitatively additional, like the mathematically sublime, it also is qualitatively abundant, radically beyond register and condition (dynamically sublime).10 While this at first may seem to resonant with postmodernism and specifically the Lyotardian limits on representation (point of the Lyotard question), Marion’s excess returns, as Richard Kearney makes clear in The God Who May Be, as a “mystical eucharistic encounter with the divine.”11 This transcendence that is “too transcendent”12 complicates or, in a manner of speaking, fails to complicate the commerce between theology and philosophy or the infinite and the finite that historically has presented itself as the impasse in religious and philosophical studies. To be fair to Marion, this “too transcendent,” as Richard Kearney and John D. Caputo describe it, could simply be formulated as the expression of the divine in the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, namely the Holy Eucharist. “Take, eat; this is my body,” could be nothing more or less than the pure “giving” that overcomes the “idolatry” of metaphysics that is at the center of ontotheology. Nevertheless, by placing God so far beyond the reach of philosophy or the reach of Being, reason, and morality, Marion, with insight and rigor, has invited a certain

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degree of acceptance or hesitation or rejection of a God that merely or purely comes to us through saturated phenomenon. In this sense, Marion’s God without being is, more precisely, a God without condition. In religious theory after Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion’s postmetaphysical discourse challenges the ontological foundation of Western philosophy and theology in such a way that his critique of idolatry (metaphysics), as Carl Raschke notes, is “more radical than Heidegger.”13 It is this radicality, this pure rejection of idolatry, however, that John D. Caputo sees as a running of “faith” off the “road of language and history.”14 For this reason, Caputo hesitates in front of this “God without Being” and reinstates a Derridean trace into the conversation. In doing this, Caputo and, to some extent Richard Kearney, places Derrida after Marion; that is to say, denominating God does not necessary free God from the work of différance—a work of constructing reality, not a work of revealing reality. In this sense of signifyingwork, God is not only subject to “difference,” God is subject to “deferral.” With God delimited by différance, the naming of God is not a problem of God’s magnitude as much as it is a problem of God’s involvement in and with difference and deferral. Again, one could refer back to Marion’s understanding of Derridean concepts as problems to be “overcome” not concepts to be “trusted.” John D. Caputo places this tension in the following context: But if Derrida is so far from feeling threatened by mystical theology that he distrusts any discourse that is not touched by mystical theology, then just what is Derrida saying about God? We have contended that Marion and Derrida are agreed in regarding the “intention” or the “concept” as an “arrow” which is aimed at the heart of God from which God must be “shielded” or kept “safe.” For Marion, who is thinking in terms of the Christian Neoplatonism of Pseudo- Dionysius, this is because the arrow of intentionality is too weak and narrow to penetrate or comprehend the infinite givenness of God; it would compromise the infinite incomprehensibility of God who has utterly saturated the intention “God” in a plentitude of givenness. But for Derrida, who is thinking in Jewish and messianic terms, not those of Christian Neoplatonism, the arrow takes aim at God and never reaches God precisely because the name of God is the name of what we love and desire, of that for which we pray and weep, something tout autre which is not “present,” not only in the narrow sense of conceptual presentation advanced by Marion,

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but also not given. For Marion the signifier “God” is flooded by givenness; for Derrida it is a dry and desert aspiration for I know not what. Inquietum est cor nostrum.15 This is just one dimension of the difference between Marion’s postmetaphysical phenomenology/theology and Derrida’s deconstruction— the limit of human comprehension and the limitlessness of God (Marion) and the perpetual nonpresence (trace) of the wholly other within language and history (Derrida). In each, God is not “there” to us, but, in Marion, God is “there” for us, which makes his, Marion’s, discourse on God an “overcoming,” as he sees it, of Derrida’s deconstruction in which “God” is a linguistic entity within a play signification.16 To the extent that there is an excess of God, it an excess that is, as Caputo observes, “promised,” hoped for,” and “prayed and wept over.”17 To follow this line of religious anticipation means to see the name of God as the name of the future: “It is a name of the structure of the future which is not merely a foreseeable future present, but a future beyond the horizon of forseeability and possibility, an impossible future always ‘to come’.” While Marion is ready to accept the inadequacy of language and history to totally reveal God, even a trace of God, he is not willing to abandon God as the radical excess of cognition. In a theological maneuver, Marion’s In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena turns to early Church writings (Fourth Theological Oration and Fourth Lateran Council) to uphold his philosophical conclusion. In this regard, “supplication” supplants “cognition” as a means of experiencing God: The Name does not name God as an essence; it designates what passes beyond every name. The name designates what one does not name and says that one does not name it… . “God as such cannot be spoken. The perfect knowledge of God is so to know him that we are sure we must not be ignorant of Him, yet cannot describe Him.” The theologian’s job is to silence the Name and in this way let it give us one—while the metaphysician is obsessed with reducing the Name to presence, and so defeating the Name. The dividing line has been established by an inescapable formulation: “between creator and creature no likeness can be recognized which would be greater than the unlikeness that is to be recognized between them.”18 With “unlikeness” greater than any degree of “likeness,” the creator, in its

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totality, ruptures any capacity for recognition in the creature. The Name, in this instance, cannot come from the philosopher or theologian; the Name, according to Marion, is one that only is given—a Name beyond cognitive reduction and accessible, in a minimal sense, through intuition. Anything other than this, for Marion’s postmetaphysical discourse, converts God into an idol, a representation within reason, Being, or morality, which becomes in the end an egregious limitation of God’s unlikeness. Marion’s “God without Being” and his challenges to the idolatry of Western metaphysics advance the field of religious theory, continuing and changing the great debate between philosophy and theology. I would like to thank Jean-Luc Marion again for his generosity and patience in this endeavor.

Taylor: First, Professor Marion, thank you very much for the interview. And, I thank my friend Hent de Vries for arranging it. The Journal for Culture Religious Theory lately has been focusing on the future for religious studies, broadly defined, the place of theoretically inquiry and the legacy of Jacques Derrida, specifically. Do you anticipate, to the extent that anyone can, any Cartesian bolt of lightning that will determine or shape the future of religious studies now that theory has allegedly come to an end, assuming that it has, with the death of Derrida. Jean-Luc Marion: Well, also I am deeply in debt to Derrida both as a person and as a thinker. I would not completely assume that the . . . as a future of religious studies may be closed or came to an end with the death of Derrida. It is an impossible interpretation of Derrida. You may also assume just the reverse with a greater achievement of Derrida would have been to reopen not only ethical issues in phenomenology, as Levinas and Michel Henry did, but also to have reopened the field of what, broadly speaking, we could call the religious dimension of the phenomenality. In a much broader and articulate sense, I think that even Heidegger did. So, I think that Derrida was very useful, at least for me, also we have discussed . . . we discussed these issues. I think that deconstruction, if you lead it to . . . if you lead it far enough, far from

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the awaiting origin of dimension of experience… reopens it to some extent I agree with you with Jack Caputo about that. I would be more positive than Jack Caputo on that issue because I do think that the theological field can, I would say, frame its own display by its own and that deconstruction is only the threshold of the thing, not the conclusion. And but the . . . Cartesian bolt, bolt of lightning, what is, what we can integrate from Descartes, now, we have some use . . . some possible use I think would be and to some extent with Levinas adding value to that . . . that would be the idea of the infinite and, more precisely, the articulation between the finitude of our . . . I would not say being, of our Dasein and the idea of the infinite. And even in the time of Descartes this very strange articulation was not taken completely seriously or understood until now. And this may be if not a bolt of lightning at least some shed of light. Taylor: Along those lines in the future of religious studies, as a field of inquiry, it seems to travel with another discipline or other disciplines. And in your work specifically Cartesian Questions you examine the ontological and epistemological concerns of theology and philosophy. And, then, the history of philosophy it is felt that theology benefits enormously from philosophy. But Cartesian Questions reverses this. Isn’t it the case that philosophy actually receives the benefit from theology, especially from the ideas of saturation and excess in revelation and love? Jean-Luc Marion: Well, I would disagree with the way you ask the final question. But I agree with the core of your argument. The core your argument, if I understand it well. It is not only that theology used to be deeply defined by presupppositions established by the philosophy during the same period. This is true indeed to a large extent, but it was my experience that in many other cases philosophy was deeply reshaped when philosophy added and this had been many time, many times, as to reshape its own presupposition . . . you know . . . simply . . . if not to take over at least to understand some theoretical issues. It was very clear in the Greek philosophy when for instance the view of creation imposed to Greek tradition… led to a complete modification . . . which relation between mind and body. And the interpretation of Being as the dimension of divine transcendence . . . this is a more recent move. Or, even in the days of

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Descartes, the question of human liberty was deeply reframed by theological issues. And same thing for the question of history . . . and historical exhibition indeed is the background of German Idealism and Hegel. So, there is a lot of philosophical issues that were in fact deeply influential on the philosophy. The last example being the rediscovery of the ethical dimension of experience by Levinas. The last Husserl and Derrida. Many times theology imposes some issues and indirectly plays a critical role for philosophy and not always the other way around. So, in looking at the part about which I would disagree with your question, is that to my, at least, it was my . . . the concept of such ration excess the possibility to understand revelation other dimension of phenomenality as such as always to my knowledge, at least it was my impression, is strictly a part of phenomenology. Simply phenomenology had opened a new dimension in philosophy to the extent that the phenomenality of visibility is a display of phenomena where not so subjected any more to the prerequisite of either Being because some phenomena cannot really be described as Being and nevertheless they do appear and the prerequisite also has objectivity because a lot of phenomena cannot be reduced to the objectivity and nevertheless they do appear and in fact in recent development of phenomenology most of the new, the new frontier . . . is all about non objective and non existing phenomena . . . so what I discovered that this question of the excess, the excess of . . . the saturation . . . as an excess of intuition over any possible identification. This in fact becomes quite an obvious possibility of phenomenality as soon as you disconnect the mere question, issue of how do things appear from those presuppositions which in fact are not phenomenological but are metaphysical presuppositions. And I would say, I shall contradict myself, in that case that philosophy opens . . . possibly . . . it’s not my business to answer that question . . . may open possibly, new opportunities for theology. It is not the case. They do not get taken seriously. Taylor: My question here, I think, is informed by my own experience with philosophy, having attended a Jesuit college in which the philosophy program was really a theology program and my former advisor and late friend Charles Winquist, who many years ago, decided to study theology because there was no place to study philosophy other than analytic. And I think my question revolves around this idea of an excess and perhaps, perhaps I’m wrong here

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but it seems to me that theology is better, has a better language for exploring the notion of excess. And I think there’s a running debate between let’s say phenomenology and hermeneutics as to when one abandons either for the other. And I believe it was Richard Kearney in an interview with you who wondered why you hesitated so long before hermeneutics. But Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutics, to which Richard subscribes, as I understand it, is endless in so far as the thing in itself never appears uninterpreted before consciousness. Yet phenomenology holds, like theology, holds onto the notion that this excess quite apart from interpretation is part of experience. And I suppose what I’m really thinking here is not of Ricouer’s hermeneutics, but of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s aesthetics. In which artifacts do not exist completely as objects of cognition and for Lyotard this excess, as he sees it, comes from silence as he says on his essay . . . Barnett Newman. The status of the artifact changes however when we consider theology when God, when it is introduced by God, that is the excess is God’s gift, not the gift of silence. And I’m wondering, is that the critical difference? A difference that separates perhaps you or phenomenology and hermeneutics from what we call the postmodern? Jean-Luc Marion: Well, there are so many arguments that warrant that question that I feel as if you’re allowed to make a choice. Let us leave a part of the question of Lyotard’s aesthetics . . . precisely because it is so strictly connected to interpretation . . . it cannot be used right here I think. But you have referred to that as a possible answer to that question between hermeneutics and phenomenology. It is clear that many people have asked me, and Richard Kearney was not the first, why I am not paying attention explicitly to hermeneutics. The answer is quite simple. Because before meeting the possibility of a concept with an excess of intuition over identification or any possible concept. I have no clear commitment to hermeneutics in the sense of Ricouer. It was only with the, if I may say so, . . . invention of the saturated phenomenon that hermeneutics became clearly involved. Because how can we make the experience of the excess without evading to a fake mysticism? It’s simply when a phenomenon to be described needs a hermeneutics, ideas first to admit that we cannot objectify completely in that moment the phenomenon is not an object. And so we have to . . . we have to ask ourselves to repeat the description of the phenomenon with a new set of concepts . . . go as far as we

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can with that set of concepts to make sense out of intuition and when those concepts clearly look saturated we have to start again with another set of concepts and possibly . . . without any end. At that moment it was very clear for me, perhaps I was not quick to understand that, as I should have understood that quicker. But, I think at that moment I discovered how important hermeneutics was. Hermeneutics . . . as verstehen . . . according to Heidegger . . . after all Heidegger had invented the thing . . . reinvented the thing. It was for me, first of all, as in Being and Time . . . one of the existentials of the Dasein. This was when I have no need to re-explain that again. But I discovered that hermeneutics is also a characteristic of the phenomenon when it is saturated phenomenon. Two ways to get into hermeneutics. You can look at . . . consider . . . hermeneutics as one of the determination of the Dasein. So far so good. And this was in fact . . . the track followed by Gadamer . . . and what I discovered is that hermeneutics is a clear claim raised by some phenomena but on the viewer and in that case, for instance, what is that, the work of a critic of art . . . or history. It’s simply to work out the hermeneutics objectively required by the painting . . . or by historical event. Taylor: I wonder if I could follow up on that? In another part from his questions. One of the figures that comes up is Mircea Eliade. I think in the same interview that Richard Kearney did with you and it was a question relating to that, there’s a, in Eliade’s journal, he writes about being interviewed . . . hopefully not like this interview . . . but interviewed by someone and the question goes on very long it’s about a tapestry. And the interviewer asks Eliade in what way . . . what was his method for coming to an interpretation of that and Eliade responds very briefly he simply says “I looked at it and that’s what I saw.” Quite apart from any methodology of interpretation. And I’m wondering, does that approach . . . the same kind, in that response that Eliade makes does that reinscribe this tension between phenomenology and hermeneutics? Which is to say one can understand that as saying somehow this tapestry is a work of art . . . somehow called to him in some way or presented something to him that he had to respond to that wasn’t necessarily within the framework of interpretation. Jean-Luc Marion: Could be. Possibly could be, but . . . .

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Taylor: I’ll tell you what my question is, there is, in the sense of a hierophany . . . Eliade understands it’s not that an object is infused with the sacred but it’s that any object can become and in some way can stand in for the sacred. Or, and I’m wondering, if this is a way in which somehow there is, there’s a presentation of experience that’s even beyond the object itself? It’s as if the object doesn’t really matter to its place. Jean-Luc Marion: This is exactly the point I would suggest to you. It is not that any object because precisely the object cannot do that. I think that any phenomenon perhaps to some extent can be seen as requiring the endless hermeneutics and as being saturated phenomenon. This could be argued because there is in fact no . . . You see when we say that phenomenon is an object in fact we have reworked and downsized the phenomenality of that phenomenon in order to reduce it to objectivity. And we also . . . we can ease, I would, say the phenomenon and allow it to overcome . . . overwhelm . . . its objective interpretation. And the more I think over that issue, the more I think that after all it is perhaps not the saturated phenomenon which should be seen as an exception in the field of phenomenality. But exactly the reverse. That is the downsizing of phenomenality and to the level of objectivity may be the exception. So, the rule, in fact, if average situation could be that of the saturated phenomenon. Taylor: And where, although Eliade doesn’t talk about it, where does desire fit into that? In some way there is a point in which someone has to take something as the phenomenal experience something, someone has, someone has to in some way respond to it as such? Jean-Luc Marion: Yes. Yes, but it is a broader issue that you may say that the more the input of the intuition of saturated phenomenon strongly falls upon you. The more you wait simply to face it; that is to seek it, to watch at it, to endure it should be described as something like an answer. And because truth indeed cannot be reconnected to an equation between the mind and the world. But not even only to the safe manifestation of the phenomenon . . . as Heidegger, for instance, used to say . . . because in certain case just to be fair to the visibility of the phenomenon you have to decide or to accept it and, time

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to time, to yield to the conditions imposed on you by the phenomenon. And let us consider the definition of truth given by Saint Augustine in the Book Ten of Confession . . . There are two kinds of truth. The truth which . . . very tough new chance . . . the light of truth; the more there is truth, the more there is light. And another situation when there is to be very tough . . . when there is too much of light. It’s become . . . truth itself becomes to be a trial for us. And perhaps not only a trial but really a judgment . . . on us. In that moment you can stand, you can stand to resist truth. Taylor: To stand against . . . . Jean-Luc Marion: To stand against, yes. The only way to stand against the truth is to love it. At that moment truth has to be loved. What does that mean? It is not a religious issue; it is indeed but it is not to deny it . . . It is not first a religious issue. It is the fact that in certain case truth is so disturbing, upsetting . . . that it may look a threat if you don’t accept it to the point to love it. And that’s my point. And it’s a way . . . an opportunity to argue against my friend Jack Caputo. We used to say that in my phenomenology’s there’s too much of the theology of glory and not enough of the theology of Cross. And, it should consider that the experience of the glory itself it’s a very disturbing experience because of the glory . . . of the saturated phenomenon in general is not a pleasure. It may be very often be pain . . . .a threat. Taylor: A terror? Jean-Luc Marion: A terror. And you cannot separate the glory from the terror because to forget in the Bible it is clear that any hierophany is terrifying and it is judgment. And it leads you to silence and time to time to obscurity . . . and this is in fact to say with any saturated phenomenon. But it can impose you to keep silence. And what is the reason for negative theology? It is not because we have nothing to say; that it is because what we should say is far beyond any possible language. Taylor: And this becomes my reading of Eliade . . . that that I’m actually in print saying . . . saying that I think Eliade rather than saying that this

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object then becomes an object of cognition I think for Eliade exactly what you described. That there’s some part of that that hierophany that is beyond cognition, yet somehow it is part of experience. And I, it seems to me that an example might be from Scripture in which you have Jesus who appears and says, “Be not afraid.” Where there is a presence there . . . it does involve some cognition there is a kind of empirical experience of the person of Jesus. Yet the response is that there is something in excess of that person. Jean-Luc Marion: When He says, “Be not afraid,” why should they be afraid? Because what do they see? And beyond any description it is an empirical experience what they see is something which cannot understand because it is as we say completely impossible. And so what they see and in the experience of glory, but the glory is quite disturbing. The first thing is that we should be simply frightened. So, what is needed is that this intuition, I would say, this incomprehensible intuition . . . of Christ being raised from death . . . should itself add . . . authorize meaning telling to them I tell you don’t be afraid . . . Say that to you because you at the sight cannot be but afraid Taylor: Anything but Jean-Luc Marion: Anything but afraid or upset by such a saturated phenomenon. Taylor: Rather than this being a kind of ontological moment of lack that it becomes this abundance, this excess, not just of the empirical experience or that or that kind of actual confrontation with the person of Jesus, but with all that conveys? In the sense that what becomes frightening, one could argue, is the fact that once confronted with something that is completely beyond all human capacity for understanding and yet one then is called to respond to it. Jean-Luc Marion: I think that the reason why the saturated phenomenon makes a difference here because we in that case we face the phenomenon which not only we cannot produce by ourselves, but which indeed we cannot strictly . . . speaking, understand. But which in fact impose on us its own interpretation of the world. Which is why we can be experienced as a churchmen, pastorless.

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Taylor: Professor Marion thank you very much for talking with me today. Jean-Luc Marion: Thank you.

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Notes 1. The JCRT interviews function more as conversations and this format allows for an exchange of ideas rather than an explication of the figure’s terminology. 2. My insertion of Lyotard into the conversation was to provide (provoke) a point of divergence as it related to the idea of representation. Lyotard’s essay “Newman: The Instant” provides an interesting and, I believe, relevant perspective on the notion of temporality and subject-matter, whether in painting, philosophy, or theology. Alas, the connections, if there are any, between Marion’s “excess” and Lyotard’s “differend” await a future consideration. 3. Jean-Luc Marion (1991) God Without Being: Hors-Texte. Trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, xiii–xiv. 4. See John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds, (1999). God, The Gift, and Postmodernism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 5. Jeffrey Robbins (2003) Between Faith and Reason: Essays on the Ontological Condition. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 118. 6. Robbins, 121. 7. Robbins, 119. 8. Jean-Luc Marion (1999) “In The Name: How To Avoid Speaking of Negative Theology” in God, The Gift, and Postmodernism, John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 23. 9. Robbins, 121. 10. See Immanuel Kant (1951) “Of The Divisions Of An Investigation Into The Feeling Of The Sublime,” Critique of Judgement. New York: Hafner Press, 85. 11. Richard Kearney (2001) The God Who May Be. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 32. 12. Kearney, 31. 13. Carl A. Raschke (2004) The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity. Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 50. 14. John D. Caputo (1997) The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 47. 15. John D. Caputo (1999) “Apostles of the Impossible: On God and The Gift in Derrida and Marion” ” in God, The Gift, and Postmodernism, John D.

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Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 198–199. 16. Hugh Rayment-Pickard presents this succinctly, if not controversial, in his 2003 book Impossible God: Derrida’s Theology. Burlington: Ashgate, 148. Derrida’s faith in God is structurally restricted to some extend by the antimetaphysical trajectory of deconstruction. The thinking of the impossible God emerges out of Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence and heads away from metaphysical conceptions of God towards a non-metaphysical theology. The possible forms of the impossible God do not include the existence of God as a ‘real presence’, or an agent able to act in human affairs. The simplest assertion of God’s reality is excluded by the ‘logic’ of his impossibility, indeed the argument for God’s impossibility is a way of protecting God from the restrictions of realist classification. 17. Caputo (1999), 199 18. Jean-Luc Marion (2002) In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena. New York: Fordham University Press, 157.

A Conversation with Michael Hardt Michael Hardt, Duke University Creston Davis, Rollins College

This interview was conducted on October 22, 2005 at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina and was filmed as part of a documentary about the present state of philosophy and the future. Jason Craig (Director) and Chris Haley (Producer) also asked questions.

Davis: First of all, I would like to thank you for your time, Michael; it is a real pleasure to be with you again. Let’s begin by situating your philosophical structure with and against one of your colleagues who also happens to be one of the greatest living Marxist theorists of our time, Fredric Jameson. How do you see your theoretical work relating to Jameson’s especially as outlined in his monumental argument, Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism? For example, how does your diagnosis of history and narrative structure both proximate and depart from Jameson’s idea of “History.” Hardt: Well one thing that occurs to me that is very similar or coordinated, is the assumption that there has been an historical break—that there has been an historical break sometime let’s say between 1968 and 1989 (I don’t know exactly what it is) and that historical break makes us rethink both the conditions of domination and the conditions of possibility. One can see in Jameson’s work the notion of postmodernism, which is quite complicated because it is trying to do both. It is not, of course, a celebration of the postmodern period as if it is the absolute freedom of expression of differences and so forth, but neither is it a kind of lamenting of the current postmodern condition as one of totalitarian commodity control and market control of all of life. Above all, Jameson tries to keep open those two, the two possibilities, and I think that that is fundamentally similar to the way I approach things. The global difference, if you could speak just in Marx’s theological terms [Hardt

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smiles] is that Jameson is much more interested in questions of consumption and of commodity fetishism and the logic of the commodity and its extension over artistic expression and social life in general. I am much more interested in the other side of the equation that is materially situated in the moments of production, productions not only of goods but also productions of subjectivity and possibility. And I have relatively little to say about consumption or about the nature of commodities for that matter. So, viewed that way, I would see it as a complimentary relationship but it is certainly quite different in the respects I have just highlighted. Davis: Yes, and maybe perhaps one of these differences can be seen in how each of you employ central figures that animate your specific ways of highlighting your various theoretical and material structures. Although each of you shares the central figure of Karl Marx you diverge on how you individually interpret the Marxist tradition in our contemporary epoch. For example one of the central philosophical figures for Jameson is the Hungarian Hegelian Marxist, George Lukas, whereas for you the figure might be more along the lines of a Gilles Deleuze, or for that matter the latter’s interpretation of Spinoza within the Marxist tradition through Negri and perhaps to a lesser extent Guattari. Hardt: Yes, there certainly are different histories of philosophy that go with these. You could say they are different faces of Marx which you could then line up, like you are doing, with different lines of Marxist tradition and maybe even with different traditions within Modern Philosophy as a whole that could stand in for them. It is true that everybody creates her or his own history of philosophy. Everyone that works in this way constructs his or her own history of philosophy that stands behind them and that is one way, like you are trying to do, of identifying the differences between two thinkers who like to look at the different history of philosophies that they have constructed behind them. Davis: Right, and for you, you talk about certain philosophies of history and one of these, the main “figure” if you will, as you talk about, you are interested in modes of production, and how subjectivity gets constituted, and I am curious exactly how would you understand subjectivity as a concept. What in general is subjectivity in your view?

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Hardt: Well, start by thinking about what we can do because that is really a lot of what interests me here: What are our abilities to think and what are the limits of our ability to think, to imagine a better world, to imagine ourselves in a better world—this power to think and then also the power to act. These are at least two aspects of what subjectivity is. So we both (with that kind of investigation), we both want to ask: What is it that we can do; what is it that we can do together; what kind of society can we build; what kind of things can we make, and also at the same time, what are the forces and structures that limit those abilities, that separate us from what we can do—you might say—that make it impossible for us to imagine a better world or impossible for us to bring about the world that we imagine. That is what, that is at least one way of approaching what the question of subjectivity is here. It has to do with our abilities to produce, produce ideas, imagination, and produce reality itself. Davis: And what would you say are some of the key obstacles, as an example, for what blocks, say, our ability to produce subjectivity, to connect, to relate to others in their own differences of production? What are some obstacles that you can see which are at once dominant and perhaps even unconscious to thinking and acting itself and the conditions that create the subject? Let me ask a basic question: Are there such obstacles at all and what do they look like? Hardt: There are numerous and enormous obstacles and sometimes it is hard because one is tempted either to give a general explanation which seems to lose the specificity or a specific one which then does not give justice to the generality of it. Let me just give a couple specific examples and then hope they can stand in. I have recognized recently in European Countries, in a kind of media discourse, a way that Islam and the threat of terrorism has made it impossible, at least at a general media level of the society, to imagine a world of difference—let us call it that for now. Suppose every difference is perceived as a threat, so that for instance, a couple weeks ago I was doing a TV interview on Danish TV and the commentator was saying, “You imagine a better world and please tell us what this better world will be like.” And I talk about world of globalization that could possibly bring together the free expression of differences—cultural differences, social differences, and so forth. But for him the trump card is “but there is Radical Islam.” And for him radical Islam

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stands in the way for everything and makes impossible that imagination of a world of difference, let’s call it. And, therefore through a strange kind of conflation, his imagination at least of the threat of Islamic Terrorism is also an argument against immigration, so that ‘a pure Danish society culture is required because all difference is a threat.’ Now that is a very small example I suppose, and yet it’s an example of the way that our ability to think a society of differences – a society comprised of true freedom and mixture in this sense – the way that that’s blocked by—it’s not only an ideological structure, but also a military structure, a sort of state of war that’s pervading the world today, So I guess you could try to describe differently what the blocks are, but at least you can see that in the case I have just given we’re being blocked from thinking something and it’s something that I, in particular, want, and I think that all of us desire. Haley: It is all bound up with the Nation-state system. It’s a by-product of that exact kind of mindset that you get with borders and homogenous cultures and National identity and it immediately produces all of these kinds of differences that are outside of the norm or whatever the way the nation-state gets configured culturally . . . . Hardt: And those differences are then . . . . Once those differences are all . . . . Once those differences can only be understood as threat then it blocks completely the ability to think differences. So I responded to this television commentator “a pure society is a dead society.” And he says, “but we have no choice, that’s the only thing we can do to preserve Denmark for the Danes because otherwise it would be destroyed” I mean, it’s a strange conflation because actually the immigrants in Denmark pose very little danger of terrorism, but nonetheless the kind of media ideological conflation between bombings in London and immigration policies seem to wipe out that possibility of thinking . . .calling it just a kind of multicultural world is already a kind of a degraded notion of it, but it’s kind of a society in which differences can be expressed with each other. It was in this regard that I loved a graffiti that I remembered in France from the 90s that said something like: “Foreigner’s please don’t leave us here alone here with the French.” Which is sort of expressing that notion that a pure culture is a dead culture. This is one

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way—of course the Danish TV commentator says to me then at that point, ‘oh well, you just say that because you are from the US and the US is, you know, by force, a nation of cultural mixture’ and it is. And one should recognize actually that with respect to notions of purity there are enormous possibilities within the US and its tradition—not to say, of course, that there aren’t horrible and enormous structures of racism and hierarchy in the US, but nonetheless, that possibility of mixture is itself a utopia. It is a utopian possibility let’s call it. Anyway, that is just one example that came to me off the cuff, an example it seems to me of an ideological blockage of thinking. It is like an obstacle to thinking under which we suffer I think today. We cannot even imagine today the world we want. Davis: It is happening not just on the material level but also on the level of thinking. Of course thinking and the material—it seems to me anyway—are not separable—they are in fact intertwined in a, dare I say it, “theological” mode. This is very interesting. Perhaps I should ask you point-blank: What do you mean by “thinking” on your terms? Are you not appealing to a kind of German idealism, in which thought or maybe a certain modern philosophy, in which thought is set over and against action and the material world? What is your notion of thought or thinking the logics of thought itself? How are you using this term? Hardt: I think it’s probably best to look at the imagination because the imagination works by reference to what already exists. We can’t imagine things that aren’t already on our horizon. The imagination always does bring something new to the world. I can, we can imagine the world being different but it is within certain limits that are related to reality. The imagination is not just, and I think it is wrong to think of the imagination as just some sort of unhinged fantasy that does not relate to reality. The imagination is always bounded to our times, but can move those times forward. Sometimes it seems just like a small turn, but that makes all the difference. So, I think that that is the kind of thing I am appealing to is the powers of imagination to see a different world. And I guess I put the link like this: I think that imagination can lead to desire. Like if I can imagine a better world then I can want a different world. And the desire is already the first step in bringing it to reality. With this

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notion of imagination, you might say, and now I am just paraphrasing a famous dictum, that humanity only poses problems for itself, that it already has the tools to resolve. And that I think this is inherently related to this notion of the imagination. We can only imagine a world that is already possible. The fact of our being able to imagine a better world is already, you might say, on the first step toward accomplishing it—passing through desire, and then actually the power to act that follows from desire. Davis: So, instead of thought being representational, like well, you have an idea or an image of an external object in reality that is projected within the closed space of the mind, thought or what you are calling “imagination” is actually already bound up in the world as such. Hardt: Right, there might be two ways, of approaching this which are classic modes that people who study utopias employ—two ways of thinking utopia. I mean, there is one way of thinking utopia, which is not what I am saying, which is a little bit like the idea/ notion you just said, which is a kind of blueprint of a world qualitatively different from our own. It is as if, there the power to create that utopia mentally, is somehow unhinged from our world, it is something completely different. Whereas I am talking about (I would also call this utopian thinking but one of a very different kind than the “blue-print” versions), which is based on the potentials within reality, passing through our desires and then leading to the creation of it. It is a kind of utopia that is already implicit in what is here. And I would say that each age does not, we cannot imagine a world, and a better world that is not already embedded in our own. That is what, in fact, a lot of the work of bringing a better world about is the kind of work done through the imagination in allowing us to imagine, more powerfully, on the basis of what exists, what could be better. Davis: And this notion of the imagination, would this be convertible to Deleuze’s idea of potentiality and desire and, on the other hand, creation as actuality? Is that fair to say? Can I put things this way? Hardt: Yes, that seems fine to me as long as, what is essential for me here is the, that link between imagination and desire. I think that, just as I was

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saying that once we collectively have the imagination of a better world, we are already on the way to making it. Or, at least, we have the possibility of making it. Also with desires the recognition of people’s desires for different social arrangements and so on and so forth. That too is already much more concretely on the way to creating it. So that when people tell us, when people will tell you that it is unrealistic to imagine our world being more democratic, we could have not only peaceful but constructive and enriching relationships across cultural differences etc. I think you first have to look at how much people want that, and the fact of wanting it already, I think, is a sign that what is seemingly impossible is in fact quite real and within our grasp. Davis: And once again, does the imagination really begin for you, as not just on the philosophical level, as you just have expounded, but also on the level of the literary, being in literature, does literature play into your notion of the imagination? And could you give an example? Hardt: Yes, I think that there are many ways in which all kinds of artistic production, and each era has the ability to work through social (and even philosophical problems) in different terms and sort of prefigure what the social is and then answers can arrive. This is certainly true with high literary texts but it might be better to talk about popular culture. I mean, we can think of examples of how fear and desire function and are configured within pop culture. Think . . . ok, here is a super banal example, but it might work anyway. Think about all the representations of vampires we have. Think for instance, of Buffy. One of the things that Buffy and her friends all learn (what we all learned in High School) is the basic fact that we are all monsters. That our difference makes us excludable and in some ways horrible. I mean we all have this experience from you know, our own pathological families, our own strange sexual desires, all these ways in which we realize, particularly in High School, that is why of course, many of these vampire things are located in High School, that we recognize the monster within ourselves. I mean, there is a real kind of terror of social exclusion that comes with that. However, what is combined, and I think Buffy is a perfect example of this, what is combined with that, is what seems like a fantasy element, because it turns out that all that . . . Buffy and her friends, not only are they all monsters, but there is also an incredibly

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powerful element to monstrosity. They all have supernatural powers, and what these supernatural powers fill in for, stand in for, it seems to me, is precisely our ability even superhuman ability to create the world, to make it different. All fantasy, even Lord-of-the-Rings fantasy, all of fantasy has to do with magic, magic is always that stands-in for the great human potential to create the world. I mean, that is what is magical. What is really magical, what is really divine, for that matter, is our ability to make the world, our ability to make the world different. And so we see, I think that we see in fantasy or even in elements of popular culture, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we see the combination of both the horrifying exclusion of recognizing our monstrosity, but at the same time, the empowerment of, and the realization of the powers we have, to create the world. I mean, they are not always; it is not always like Willow that we are all great witches, but, in fact, that Willow’s recognition of her magical powers is like all our recognition, or our collective recognition of our power to transform the world. I think these are ways, it seems to me, even what seems to be the most, what should we call it, the lowest levels of popular culture, are trying to work out the often, not abstract but, diagonal ways— you know, not confronting social problems head-on but working through them diagonally, trying to work out social problems with their own terms, with their own possibilities. Davis: And literature and, as you nicely put it in your example of popular culture in Buffy, are horizons in which we come to terms with our own destiny: the monster and the divine in our collective destinies. That was nice. Great, we started talking about, you know, how you understand a certain kind of cultural analysis that is different and similar to Jameson’s cultural analysis. I was wondering if we could just back up for a moment and re-approach it in terms of how you understand the notion of postmodernity as between, on the one hand, you said not a celebration, you are not celebrating a kind of postmodern difference nor are you lamenting it. So therefore, the question emerges, what then is the postmodern between celebration and lament? Hardt: It might be good to back up and look at the modern for a little bit, because I think that what is my general method, which I take from others obviously approaching these questions is to recognize the power of people to throw off forms of domination that in fact moves history forward, so that

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when we look at this passage from the modern to the postmodern, however we are going to understand it, it is first good, I think, to recognize how the refusals of modern forms of domination defined and even prefigured this passage. Like, even gave the terms of how this passage would be worked out. And so what are the dominant elements of modernity we are talking about? I mean it is a certain, obviously a certain kind of capitalist control, you know, dominated through nation-states, formed internationally through relations of imperialism, colonial regimes, economic domination of peoples of the southern parts of the world, etc. I think these are the elements of modernity, or at least these are some of them, which we call the disciplinary regimes centered on the factory. That is another element of the kind of regime, where you are defined by one task in a factory and you are guaranteed of that employment for forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year for life. And it is that kind of prison sentence of that job that really defines modern life. Other sorts of disciplinary regimes, one can say too, the discipline of the patriarchal family, the discipline itself of the prison regime, all kinds of things we can understand as modern institutions. I think it is good to understand postmodernity as first of all, the expression of throwing off these regimes of modern power: The defeat of imperialism and colonialism; the defeat or transformation of the factory regime; the attack on the patriarchal family itself. These are all, of course very different struggles that do not take place among the same populations even. Some of the peoples struggling against colonialism, for instance, are the most patriarchal ones, and they, and some of them also would like to have the discipline of factory production rather than the horrible forms of exploitation they already have. But nonetheless, if we try to think the modern life and modern forms of power as the intersection among all these different regimes against which all these people are struggling even if from different sides, it is in that regard we can see the passage to postmodernity as not exactly a kind of liberation but as a victory. Now victory quickly turns into defeats, but that is another matter. At first to recognize the victory and what do I mean by this, I mean think of ’68 for example, as just sort of an emblematic year. It is in many ways, you know ’68 is in many ways constructed explicitly against the discipline of the university system. That is quite clear in France, in Germany, in the US, and Mexico. ’68 is also a year of anti-imperialist struggles. Think of the Tet offensive as sort of emblematic of the long line of anti-colonial and

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anti-imperialist struggles leading up to it. ’68 is also a year of a first crest, let’s say, of second wave feminist movements. So all of the things that coincide then, it is in a way a defeat of modernity and an opening of a certain passage beyond modernity. Like I say though, that passage quickly turns into new forms of domination, that in many ways define the postmodern. So, the reason we call it postmodern is not because domination has ended but because a specific form of it, a modern, a specific modern form has ended. Davis: Does this get to yours and Toni Negri’s idea of “biopower”, a specific form of domination inscribed within a postmodern horizon? Hardt: It does eventually. Let me try one more link before getting into it, which is that, you know, it is a little bit like those, I was thinking in some ways what the great movements of the sixties, think of the US context, but similar in Europe, and really elsewhere. The great demands of the movements of the sixties, in some strange way came to pass. But they came to pass in a way that turned out to be horrible. It is like, it is a little bit like, I do not know if you would remember any of those Twilight Zone episodes, or, a lot of Twilight Zone episodes, where the message was beware what you wish for because it turns out that what someone wishing for comes true and it turns out to be horrible. You recognize by the end of the episode, “oh my god it came true” and they are suffering from it. And so, you know there are some ways in which economically you could look at the movements of the sixties as being against the factory regime, against the 40 hour work-week, as I was saying, against that kind of death of guaranteed employment. Well, that came true. There is no longer guaranteed employment; the working day is being destroyed; and we are recognizing a new kind of exploitation from that, and what do I mean by that? It seems to me that production now is dominated by what we call immaterial productions, like the production of immaterial goods: like the production of knowledge, the production of ideas, the production of images, the production of affects even like emotional relationships, you know like how working in a fastfood restaurant you have to sort of smile at people. You know, part of the affect is part of your work. Even your emotional life is controlled. Well, in these kind of jobs, there is a breakdown of the relationship between, the division between the work-a-day world and life that characterized previous form of domination.

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So that people, said, “we don’t want work to be separate from our life.” Well, you got. You got it in a way where there is no working day. You are like, where people are like working in fast food during the day and sweeping offices at night and so the working day has broken down. There is no guaranteed job for fifty weeks a year. There are no 8–5 or 9–5 working days. But, it turns out to be horrible. Or even at the upper level of the economy. Think about how in some ways the student movement, the feminist movements were demanding that our work life involved intelligence, that it involved the production of knowledge, that even it involves affects. That is a large element, especially of the feminist movement. So now I think that it is true that affective has become a central element of production but like I say in a horrible way. The way flight attendants, for instance, you know this kind of work, is what, it seems to me, becoming progressively dominant where you are being paid, you are being commanded to be nice to people. To have your affective life, your ability to be friendly, to love even, is part of the job and is commanded. So, this is what I am thinking, this is a very concrete way of thinking about the passage of the modern to the postmodern. The shift from the dominance of that factory production and all the social qualities that come with it, the well-defined working day, the guaranteed employment of a certain wage relationship, even the routine aspect that is not intellectual, let us say, that is not even affective of factory labor. That shifted its dominance to, what I was trying to describe as these new forms of labor. I do not mean, of course that people are not working in factories anymore or that they are not working in the fields for that matter. What I am talking about rather is the shift in the dominant form, the dominant qualities of labor, that I think are being progressively imposed over the others. Davis: Yes, you have nicely given us an economic example. But is this “economy” this, economy of producing certain affects, being “nice” and even “loving” someone (or in a fetishized sense, something) and so forth, is this a domain of domination from which a new struggle is birthed within our so called “postmodernism?” Hardt: Yes, with this economic example, that in a way is relating to the struggle. There are at least two things you can get out of it. One is the fact that the shift to the postmodern doesn’t involve the kind of liberation that

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would inspire us to celebrate it wholeheartedly because really it has been the author of, it has created new forms of exploitation and domination that in some ways are more sinister and horrible than the last. But it also should point to something else, which is the power of resistance, the power of resistance to these forms of domination. The fact that the resistance to the modern regime of power, resistance to the factory society, resistance to all the things that the 60s were against. It really underlines an enormous power, a power of creativity, even if that creativity turns out to be used in sinister ways. It is that power, I think, that one always has to keep in mind. It is that power that will be able to create a new world. There is some Patti Smith song that goes something like that “we made this world and there is no reason we cannot make another one.” You know like, recognizing our collective power in the construction of this world is in a way an enormously empowering recognition, an empowering way of reading history to. Davis: There is a sense in which to create a new world it always requires a kind of resistance. As you say, dominance and resistance are sort of counter-posed to each other. For example, let me lift a sentence from your book “Multitude.” It says here on page 54, “dominance, no matter how multidimensional can never be complete, and it is always contradicted by resistance.” Your analysis of dominance takes on Hegel’s “master” as the “capitalist” and resistance takes on a kind of “slave” that is, the “workers” like you and me and the majority of living people in our culture. Are you comfortable in my framing your notion of “dominance/capitalist and resistance/workers” in such dialectical terms? I know you don’t like Hegel very much because he is too idealistic, but is that a master/slave dialectic operating there in the heart of your analysis of the shift from the modern to a passage which we are now calling, by some shameful historical default, the “postmodern.” Hardt: I think that the primary point I would want to insist on in this regard, is that the current regime of power we have, whether we are going to describe it or think of it in terms of capitalist control or capitalist production or in terms of U.S. domination in military affairs or in other regards. The current regime we have is constantly dependent on “us.” It needs those who are resisting it in order to survive. Like for instance, the capitalist, you know, or

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the corporations etc. can’t just kill all the workers—it needs them, it needs them to produce, even if they’re opposed to it and resisting it all the time and antagonistic to it. It’s completely . . . capital is completely dependent on labor. Like, there is no way out of the relationship. And I think that is true also in a rather different way, in terms of U.S. military dominance or other ways one wants to think about the current global power structure that it’s completely dependent on the creativity and productivity of those below. Looking at this from the other direction it’s not the same. It’s not like those of us below need the boss. We don’t need someone to rule over us. It’s not the dependence of the relationship is only one way. Because if one were to say, if one were to think for that matter—that everybody needs a boss; we need a boss to have society; we need a boss to produce; we need someone to control and rule over us—well there would be little hope in changing things. If instead, though we recognize we are potentially autonomous we could actually rule ourselves. I see no other definition of democracy actually that we are capable of democracy that we have that power to produce autonomously, I mean working together, that we have the possibility, more generally, to produce society autonomously working together democratically. Well, that allows for a kind of freedom from that relationship, or a potential autonomy, let’s say. And without that, I would think that any of these notions of resistance would be just vain or useless. I mean, why should we go on resisting if all we’re doing is supporting a permanent relationship in which the oppressed or the ruled constantly maintain their position of subordination and have no way out of it. Davis: Do you think that there could be a kind of cyclical operation happening here in your analysis that suppose we resist the dominant rule, but then the resisters become the dominant and conversely the dominant rulers, say the capitalist robber-barons like the Ken Layes, or the George Bushes, suddenly are out of jobs, out of houses, out of their precious 401ks, and so forth. I mean, does this cycle simply continue an infinitum? Aren’t we all simply monsters in the final analysis awaiting our chances to actualize our dominance over others through various strategies of power. Hardt: No, that would suck. No, that is not the right way of thinking about it. I mean, there is the classic and inadequate response to this point is that the

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expropriation of the minority by the vast majority is already a step in the right direction. Which, ok, I mean, that, I think, is true. But that doesn’t correspond to what I was saying before, which would be the democratic self-organization of production and etc. The possibility of autonomy, though, I was talking about or think about as a possibility of democracy, if you would like, would mean, means that we don’t have to have exclusions and hierarchies in order to create society. I mean it might be true—this would the historical debate one could have—that the ancient Greeks, in order to construct their democracy in Athens, needed slaves. And that even if they were so willing, they couldn’t have maintained the Athenian society for thousands of years without slaves, you know, to make possible the freedom and democracy of the small group. I don’t think that’s true today. I mean that is the thing, of course, that has to be verified, one has to make an argument to say that people are capable of democracy today, to say that people are capable of organizing themselves. Like I say, that they don’t either require someone to command them or require someone below them that they command. But that, at least it seems to me is the only worthy aim. Whether it is true or not, whether we can do it or not, that is what we have to prove. I mean, the proof is in doing it, I think. But that is clearly what I want. Davis: Is this, your desired logic of “radical democracy” taking hold in various ways? MH: I think that there are probably things you could point to in the contemporary world about, I don’t know, workers taking over a factory, blah, blah, blah. That’s all good and everything. I prefer to take a historical view and look how human society is moving in that direction and making that ever more possible. Davis: Is that like a Hegelian historical analysis in that the spirit sort of unfolds and first there is an Athenian society and then, over time to the Christian empire and then eventually modernity, secular modernity, and post-secular modernity, or . . . ? Hardt: The difference would be this I think: it’s true you could say, “Oh Mike, what you are talking about is that there is an ultimate idea—democracy, freedom, etc.—that is pulling all of history toward itself.” I don’t see it that

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way. I see it rather as there is kind of an imminent desire that we have for freedom and that in each historical instance, we struggle for freedom, we struggle against slavery, in early 19th century United States. We struggle against slavery in Haiti. We struggle against Fascism. We struggle against all of these things, and they, all these forms of domination, let’s say, all these things that make our society unfree and undemocratic. It’s true of course that when looked at historically, that is pushing us unevenly, with fits and starts, in a certain direction, but it’s doing it from within [an immanent unfolding or desire] because that’s where our desire is pushing us. Davis: It is not a top-down Spirit? Hardt: It’s not that there is some force of history that’s using us as its tools. We are those who are creating history and we are creating it in the direction we want. There is no reason to deny that. That’s, in fact, it seems to me, what history, looking at these historical examples to try to resolve present problems. Like, I am not one who is actually terribly interested in history for the sake of the truth of the past. What I am interested in it for is what it can teach us about the possibilities today. Sometimes it is hard to interpret what it teaches us. Sometimes it is not so clear. But nonetheless, that is why it interests me for showing us how this has been done before. Let me put this in another way. I often get people asking me, “Mike you’re such an optimist. You know, your belief the world could be better etc. Your belief people will rise up against the present form of domination. We, today, sometimes seemingly facing insurmountable odds and enemies it seems like the global order, that capital itself is so impenetrable and so powerful, the U.S. military, capital itself, that there is no alternative. And, I really don’t think that this is optimistic in the least, if by optimism one assumes, or even hopes, that things will be better without a reason for it. It seems to me this is precisely where thinking historically can help because in every regime of domination we face, slavery, colonialism, every other one, people have always found ways to organize and successfully overthrow forms of domination. And that is why it is useful to look at: “what were slavery revolts about?; what were anti-colonial struggles about? What is the feminist movement about? What are gay and lesbian movements about?” If you look at this historically like that, it seems to me not optimistic, just a mere statement

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of fact—people have always risen up against the forms of domination they face. It would be unreasonable to think that people would stop. And so, it is not a matter of optimism, it is just a matter of confidence, confidence that humanity, that is, part of our abilities is to express our desire for freedom, express also our desire for equality in real terms and to resist and overthrow forms of domination. Like I say, it is not optimism at all; it’s a confidence in humanity that seems to me perfectly rational and even undeniable. Davis: There lies the balance you are trying to strike between celebration and lament, and this balance is found within confidence and even selfdetermination. Hardt: Right, yes, it is a confidence in our capacities, confidence in our capacities to create a different world. Something that has been done throughout history. Davis: How do our human desires create a future—what does a “human future” look like under your terms. Hardt: Well, I don’t actually have a, I’m usually reluctant to project what the future will look like. I think it is much more useful, at least for me to look at what people are already doing, and to try to, on the basis of what people are doing, in a way, think of them more like vectors. You know, where is it that various movements today are leading? What are they reacting against and which direction are they going? I don’t know if that is slightly different. Rather than imaging a point in the future like a science fiction novel might do, I’m much more, I think that that’s useful in many regards. Science fiction is useful for separating us from what seems natural today etc. But my inclinations are much more in thinking, in looking for inspiration but also knowledge at, I don’t know, the organizations of the unemployed in Argentina: what are they doing and what are they demanding? Like the movement against the construction of a large dam in India. How is it that people are organizing; what are they demanding; which direction are they going? That’s the, maybe another way of putting it is, what are the desires that are implicit in these. It is partly those desires that seem to me to be, let’s call it like, “heralds of the

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future.” That desire for self-organization and self-control and equality, these are the kind of things that are implicit in acts of resistance and that themselves project a future or point towards a future is a better way of saying it, you know because there are certainly firmly embedded in present reality but they’re pointing in a direction based on what they want, you know, what they are asking, what they are demanding to. Does that correspond? Davis: This raises the question Michael: How would you relate your notion of confidence, in what seems like a despairing moment in history especially when you look at it in terms of sustainability of the earth? How do you, is the contradiction of global capitalism sort of points out a major contradiction in our time, isn’t that less about optimism and more about a certain kind of pessimism, a certain kind of death-drive, a wave that we are riding into kind of nothingness? Hardt: By which you mean environmental disaster and we’re certainly seeing in recent years all kinds of examples of suffering from, let’s call them environmental disasters that have a large part of human component, a hurricane, tsunamis, earthquakes that might be in themselves natural events but the destruction caused by them are in large parts human made. I don’t see any contradiction really here. I mean, one thing we do want, and I think all of us want in a way, is a kind of, let’s say, security and peace. It’s not though that, when I say security and peace, this is one of those difficult instances where some concepts have been so corrupted that it is hard to use them anymore. Where we have to win back concepts themselves because we have been told, for instance, that for security we need to have the US military ruling over us or for. . . Davis: . . . with duct tape even, taping our windows up and so forth. Hardt: Well, ok, there are the absurd examples and then there also are the constructions of security and peace that, it’s true, sometimes devolve into a kind of George Orwell kind of nightmare where they say peace and really just mean by it a constant slaughter or they say security but what it really involves is a continual creation of new kinds of dangers. I think that one has to try to, you

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see, in this case, it’s not just struggle over the concept of security and of peace but to find what it could really mean, a real security, or a real peace that is a freedom from war and a freedom from suffering etc. what I mean is that there is sometimes a temptation to abandon these terms because they have been so corrupted: let’s not talk about security, let’s not even talk about peace because when they keep talking about peace they really mean something horrible by it. I think that we have to struggle over what peace really means and then find a way to achieve it. I don’t mean, and when I talk about confidence that people will resist, confidence also that we will come up with strategies to make the world better, that doesn’t mean that this is spontaneous and immediate. It doesn’t mean that that we are not facing horrible dangers and horribly destructive forces: environmental forces, like you say, but also the forces of militarization of our societies, the forces of degradation of social life, horrible kinds of poverty. You know this has to do with environmental disasters, but there is also another aspect to it. I think that one has to be lucid to recognize the horror of the present and at the same time struggle to transform it. I think it would be unreasonable and we would be lost in fact, if we were to only wallow in the degradation of our world and our society. I think that it’s necessary but also natural and inevitable that we will struggle against it. Davis: But you and your analysis, your methodology say, really operates on the notion of contradiction. You really look at certain phenomena that happen and you identify a certain kind of contradiction in that phenomenon. But unlike Marx, whose notion of contradiction, is imbued with the inevitable overturning in a kind of violent way, your notion of contradiction is something different; it’s not an immanent violence of an overthrowing an immediate spontaneous revolt, although it could be that, but I take it that your notion of contradiction is slightly different. Could you talk about the differences between your notion/analysis of contradiction and say, Marx’s? Hardt: Well Marx is complicated. The first distinction to make, I think, is between an objective notion of contradiction and what I think of as a subjective one. Let’s put it this way: and it’s useful, I think in many analyses, Marx’s own thought included, to recognize objective contradictions even in the structures of power. Like for instance, there is a contradiction today within the U.S.

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between a free market, pro-capitalist right that wants anything for profit and there is another right in the U.S. that is really focused on values, and that these two often comes to a point of contradiction with free-market ideologies because anything for profit runs against the notion of the preservation of certain traditional and conservative value structures. So, recognizing that contradiction, that can be useful. One can recognize the possibilities that are presented. I am much more inclined to think of contradiction though in subjective terms, which is to think of contradiction as antagonism. I think that the, so that the creation and reproduction and exacerbation of poverty in the world, that might conflict with, and it certainly conflicts with, or even contradicts let’s say, the desires and abilities of many people in the world who are poor. In the dominant countries and moreover in the subordinated ones, when that contradiction interests me is when it’s transformed into an antagonism and its transformed into kind of resistance and organized into a kind of resistance that can challenge, threaten, and eventually overthrow the kind of power that it is existing under. Perhaps it is a more dynamic notion of contradiction than the first one. But contradiction also, the difficulties sometimes of notions of contradiction is that they limit the field to two. Now I am just thinking in philosophical terms. There is some ways in which contradiction can’t recognize differences and can only recognize the extreme points. So sometimes, this perspective of antagonism is more open for a variety of perspectives that don’t just operate along one axis. For instance, you might say there is just, there is a contradiction between the forces of certain militarized Islamic fundamentalism and the U.S. government and its desire for Middle Eastern oil or global domination or whatever. But if we are only thinking those two and that contradiction, we don’t really recognize the field, we are not really on one side or the other. In fact, we are on a quite different side. So that it is that thinking about contradiction that sometimes can say, “well you’re criticizing the U.S. government and these Islamic fundamentalists are criticizing the U.S. government therefore you’re the same as them.” It is that kind of binary thinking that sometimes, thinking in terms only of contradictions can lead to. Davis: Would you call that binary thinking dialectical thinking over and against say, Deleuze’s univocal thinking?

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Hardt: We must be cautious here because we can get into all kind of difficulties here because the dialectic can mean many different things in different contexts, but it is a thinking that at least some forms of contradiction can lead to. If you want to get Marxiological about it, the place to talk about it, I would think or what occurs to me, is Mao Zedong’s essay on contradiction, where he tries to talk about various kinds of contradiction, various kinds of levels of contradiction. He says in order to analyze the present situation you have to look at a primary contradiction and a series of secondary contradictions, and if not that the primary contradiction defines everything else and in fact in each salutation they can act and interact differently. The contradiction between the European colonial powers and the subordinated colonized powers can sometimes be the primary contradiction but there can be various secondary contradictions: conflicts among colonized powers, conflicts within the colonial society itself that can, in fact, transform and radically alter that first one. This is just an example of a way in which within the Marxist tradition a certain kind of thinking of contradiction opens up to a greater plurality of thinking about it. I think what I was complaining about certain notions of contradiction is exactly what Mao was complaining about. The tendency of a certain kind of thinking of contradiction to close off the multiplicity of both conditions and possibilities. Davis: I am going to go briefly lighter and talk about you, “The Professor Michael Hardt!” Hardt: I like that appellation. Davis: How is that you who are dependent upon certain freedoms given by the United States power, being in one of the elite universities in the West, sitting in your office talking about this theory and all of this optimism, how is it that you can dare draw upon people like Mao Zedong or radical leftists who have opposed the very drive of the freedom that you presuppose to talk about them? Somebody might say, “How dare you talk in those terms.” It seems like you are not being fair to your own historical moment. Haley: Is that a legitimate argument?

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Hardt: Sure. Davis: To put it crudely: Why don’t you be a good American! Hardt: In some ways some of the noblest historical stories one can think of involve class betrayal, you know, betrayal of one’s own class. Think of the, or even of one’s own nation. Think of the German or the Nazi who aids the Jew to escape. Think of the slave owner who tries to conspire with the slave revolt. So in one sense you can say that the betrayal of the dominating power by its progeny are, and have been historically, wonderful elements of hope. But I think one should look a little differently at democracy and freedom and the democracy and freedom that we want. Let’s set aside the question for the moment about what kind of democracy there is and what kind of freedom there is in the U.S. but even if one were to accept that there were the kind of freedom and the kind of democracy we want in the U.S., why would one think that our desire for it stops there? Why wouldn’t one want, and in fact of course I am not the only one who wants it, and in fact, we generally want relationships of equality and freedom with others, and that we would profit from them. It is precisely in our interests; it is not a matter even of altruism. It is not that I want to aid the poor in order to deny myself. In fact, I want people to escape from poverty; I want people to be more powerful; I want people to be equal to me, to be free because that would aid me, because that would make my life better. Here is a stupid example, but nonetheless sometimes stupid examples are the best to start with: when you’re thinking about relationships and globalization, one thing that is being created throughout the world by capitalist corporations and etc. are global relationships. But when you look at them they turn out to be the most horrible, degrading kinds of relationships. Like, say I have Nike tennis shoes, and those tennis shoes were made by a factory in the Philippines. So that let’s imagine a woman in the Philippines working in this factory with whom I now have a relationship. It’s a horrible relationship we’ve got. She makes the tennis shoes and eventually I wear them. So, and she’s, there’s a relationship of inequality, a relationship of un-freedom, and even just in the most stupid personal sense, I don’t find it a very satisfying relationship. I would much more profit from a much more substantial and more over-free and equal relationship with people in the Philippines or people in other countries in the

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world. So there is no reason to think that, what I am sort of laying out is an old argument that you could think of as anti-slavery and anti-colonial. Think of both Thomas Jefferson and Dubois who say that the slave relationship not only degrades the slave it also degrades the master who says similar things in terms of the colonial relationship. There is no reason to assume that masters are; even if they benefit materially from the subordination of the slave really don’t have an interest and a desire for a relationship of equality. That would be the first way of saying it but then one would have to then broaden the meaning of what democracy means, what democracy could mean. You know what freedom is and what the blocks of freedom in today’s world are. It is much more generalized of course than thinking about those in the U.S. as free and those outside the U.S. as not free. But at least that is a first step to recognize how freedom and equality not only for ourselves but for everyone is something that, it makes us all more powerful even; it makes us all more, you know when I say it makes the world a better place, it partly is to make us more powerful; it makes us more able to think, more able to act. This is what the joy would be— joy precisely conceived as the increase in our abilities to act and to think. This would be the joy of these relationships of freedom and equality. That is why I want it. Not because I want to give up my privileges, on the contrary. Haley: Do you think that it is a matter of people not, let’s say commodity fetishism, there sort of is an idea that we don’t really know what that relationship is-- we’ve lost sight of that. People don’t have the cognitive map Do you think that in general people if they understood that kind of relationship what it means to buy a pair of cheap shoes that were export processing zone or whatever. Is that part of the solution? That is to show the full ramifications of our life in America at the beginning in the 21st century. Are we going to be willing to make the material sacrifices that would entail a better life for other people? How much traction do you believe that has as an argument? Hardt: I think that there is an enormously important pedagogy that works against the commodity fetishism you’re talking about. I mean because one aspect of commodity fetishism in Marx’s argument is precisely like you’re saying a kind of eclipse of the production process of the commodity itself. So that simply from the taste of the oats we know nothing about the farmers

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that grew them, you know that sort of thing. And so that I think of these as pedagogical movements that have been enormously useful. Think of students against sweatshops as one. Think of Naomi Klein’s No Logo as another. These are ways that reveal from the perspective of consumers the kinds of relationships that stand behind the commodity choices etc. I think that is enormously productive and has a, like I said, a pedagogical value that can open up political possibilities. But I am also reluctant to see this strictly in terms of sacrifice. Of course it involves some sort of sacrifice. I mean, I think that the sharing of the world in an equal way will involve and should involve a restriction of certain privileges and wealth—no doubt about that. But I think the gains are much larger than the sacrifices. That is what I wanted to point towards. And so, it just doesn’t seem to me like, that’s why I think of it like not simply in a relationship of altruism. It’s not out of charity that a desire to change the world comes about. In fact that is where the shift from charity towards love as political would be a very interesting shift, if we were going to stick within the Paul-Augustine model. Craig: I have a question on this while we are talking about liberation. It seems that there are certain political structures that are trying to—freedom, freedom for instance, are trying to put more controls, are trying to control the elements of more and more aspects of our environment, and that will lead to a certain type of freedom. And it seems what you’re offering is that what we need is to sort of get back to a kind of faith in community, like to make choices based on just a faith in people rather than trying to control elements. Hardt: I am reluctant to call it faith only for the reason that faith can sometimes imply an irrational attachment. Like if one were to say: there’s no reason really to believe in humanity but have faith, you know, they will do it. I would rather think of it, this is what I meant by confidence, and confidence that springs from our experience. And it also depends on real empirical evidence. What is it that people do in their lives that suggest to us or even prove that they are able to organize themselves and even produce social relationships corporately? And that they don’t necessarily when left to their own devices end in mutual destruction and destruction of the world. It does require some empirical evidence. That is the only reluctance I have to use the term “faith” there. If

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by faith you mean rather a perfectly rational, it seems to me, and informed recognition of people’s powers, then that seems to me exactly the point. Davis: This faith in a divinity that doesn’t arrive from beyond, but a faith in a divinity that erupts from within, though not erupts even, but is already within the desire of the human—striving. . . Hardt: . . . and our abilities. If we conceive divinity now as strictly as that human capacity or even capacity of life to produce and to create. If one thinks about creation as a divinity, and I could imagine a reading of Genesis that would do this sort of thing that would read, if you read Creation as divinity then you look at people’s capacity for creation and precisely, what is necessary here in this context of this discussion, is creation of society, creation of a peaceful, secure, productive, joyful society. It is those kinds of things that one has to verify for this not to be an irrational leap of faith. One thing I have been interested in, in the last few years is the reaction of theological scholars to my and Toni’s work. And one of the things I have figured out, because I have thought, you know Toni and I often write about the history of theology and my feeling like we’re political thinkers, and of course when we’re thinking the history of politics, we think the history of theology. It’s like, art historian, if you had an art historian you say, “well why do you talk about images of the Madonna and Child?” They say, “Well, that is where European history of art was.” It is sort of like, that is what you look at. Of course we look at theological arguments where politics was done for many centuries. That is where the history of European political thought is found. But it is a little more than that that interests me. I have found that the, let’s say, the attraction of our work for theological scholars, or rather the point of contact isn’t so much the history and concepts that are proper to theological tradition, that intersect, like I say, with the tradition of political thought. It’s rather that Toni and I are both always focused on the possibility of a project, and what I think I’ve understood as a frustration of many theological scholars with much of the political theorizing is its inability to or refusal to pose a political project. I mean, it’s closure at critique let’s say, that that seems unsatisfactory, and that in some ways people who work in preaching or people who work in all other forms of the theological enterprise require that transformative moment, and I

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think that that is the real point of contact. I mean there are others that don’t, that seem to me like, I have been worried about, in fact, false points of contact like, so in our book Empire Toni and I say, well, the current global order is becoming something like the Roman Empire we say, in various qualities. And so that, what will be, of course, the logical next step, well, you know early Christianity in some ways critiqued the corruption of empire, posed an equally global, that is, Catholic movement as solution to the corruption of empire. So then, certain theologians respond and say, “Yes! We too think that Christian cults are the answer to today’s problems.” Am I am like, “well, no, that isn’t exactly what I meant.” So I still think that is a false point of contact because I am perfectly atheistic in all of my beliefs about this. But, nonetheless, I think the real point of contact is that need for a collective and human moment of transformation, which at least certain theological traditions and our political work both have. Davis: Let’s pick this up. I like how you worked into the theological and in some way Negri’s work has been in fact dubbed by people like Slavoj Žižek as being theological, but by theological, of course, perhaps Negri and yourself don’t mean again a kind of a drawing upon a transcendent power. But theological in the Spinozian sense of, that is that suddenly the divine is imbued within the order of the world. And so, in that sense, it is a theological enterprise in fact. Hardt: Sure, I think that it’s important when saying these things to recognize that the theological was also not one thing, and that there’s not one theological tradition. So when, Carl Schmitt famously says that, “the political is a theological form,” by it he means that thinking the political for him requires a power, a transcendent power that is specifically a power that stands above society and rules over it the way that in a certain theological framework, one imagines a god that stands separate from the world that rules over it—a creator that is separate from the created. Therefore, it requires a ruler who is separate from the ruled, and you can imagine, and I’m sure its immediately familiar, the long tradition of thinking the divine in terms of kings etc. When we think theologically, it is precisely the other, another aspect, but seems to me a radically contrasting, opposed aspect, which is, like you say, the divine abilities

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of the human. I mean, or even of life. And so, someone might say, “well what do you get by saying human creativity is divine? Why don’t you just say it’s what people do? One of the things it does, there is something magical about the world. I mean, there is something magical about our own abilities—that human ability, especially that collective human capacity for creating the new, for invention. There is something magical about that, or at least using that language can help us recognize and defamiliarize it to us as not just a repetition of the same but there are certainly great historical moments, in which we have created something radically different—think of the great revolutions for instance. There are many great historical shifts, historical events that do that. But even in your own daily life we can recognize myriad ways that there is a wonder let’s say of our power, of human collective power, of wonder that is precisely embedded in creativity and innovation. And so, I think that is what at least a large strand of what theological traditions are trying to get at. The same way I think, that’s what Joss Whedon is trying to get at in Buffy. When he talks about Willow having magic and that the relationship between Willow and Tara being based on this magical union, it’s trying to grasp something that he can’t yet comprehend or we can’t yet comprehend, which is precisely the magic of love, the magic of creativity and productivity we have together. And so, you might say I am being, I’m treating these theological concepts, in a way you might say, with bad faith, but . . . Davis: . . . in a Sartean sense? Hardt: . . . well, also it’s just, you might even say I’m being dishonest because I don’t think there’s, that it involves god in any, with god being separate from us, with being separate from the world. But I do think quite sincerely that what we do is adequately captured by that divine quality, by that magical quality. Davis: In so far as, and I think you will disagree with this, but in so far as you are identifying this mystery of life, this newness of love, of connection that circumvents a kind of banality of our time, of relationships, aren’t you in some kind of way a shaman or priest because you’re talking, you’re preaching about that love. You’re saying, “Look! Look at the possibilities here,” and in so far as you’re identifying and talking about the “good news of this newness” called

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mystery, albeit, very different from an outside mystery, a mystery from within, in a certain way you’re kind of being, preaching the good news of this mystery of love. Would you say you’re sort of acting as a kind of priest? Hardt: I’ll tell you the way I usually think about it. I usually think about it this way, and it’s partly, I think it’s partly a compensation or even a guard against the long tradition of a kind of privileging intellectuals. I think that, the way I normally think about it is what I’m simply doing, this is the way I also insist mine and Toni’s work is unoriginal—Toni hates it when I say this— it’s unoriginal in a sense that we are really reading what people are doing. Like, rather than writing “what is to be done,” what we’re doing is. . . Davis: . . . Lenin’s famous work, What is to be Done . . . . Hardt: . . . or even any notion of a manifesto that outlines what people should do, what we’re generally doing is writing what people are already doing . . . Davis: . . . so, you’re more of an anthropologist . . . Hardt: . . . well, no, I think of this is precisely as what political intellectuals do, and it’s not, also that it’s theory learning from practice, it’s rather this kind of theorizing learning from the theorizing that’s going on every day in political movements and people’s own lives. So, I sort of think of us as writing within a wave—or something like that. Anthropologist may be—but anyway, that’s how I mostly think about it. Davis: Plus, you probably dispense or reject the hierarchical inscription when I drop the language of “priest” or “shaman” or something like that because it poses a certain kind of hierarchy. Hardt: Certainly, right, and so that is how I normally think about it. But I think it’s probably true that there is an element of, or let’s put it this way, there is certainly also the desire and assumption on my part that the kind of work that we do, the intellectual kind of work does help people think more clearly and does help people recognize what they can do. So, I think there

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is some connection to at least certain elements of the tradition of preaching or rabbinical work or you could think of it in a number of ways in religious communities that intellectuals have played a similar role. I would of course, at each moment, like you suggest, argue against the hierarchical conception of it. But I think it’s probably right to recognize the possible effects. We do this largely to help ourselves figure out what’s going on in the world and understand things, that’s why people write books but there is also the hope that they will help people in thinking about the world, help people in being able to do more, to link to what they can do. Davis: One of the effects your work has already started to do among theologians, especially younger theologians—like Jeffrey Robbins, who doesn’t really think of himself necessarily as a theologian or at least not in the conservation sense of one who tries to police the dogmas of the Church, but Clayton Crockett and even myself, is that you’re providing a new, and I know you don’t like this way of thinking about it, this is sort of my work that I do, we’re providing a certain way of conceptualizing human possibility in ways that are divine, and in ways certainly drawing from the rich history of philosophy with Spinoza, Marx, Deleuze, Negri, and even Badiou and Žižek, but even going beyond that and from within this context, and this is what’s really interesting for me, within this context of your ontology of life, your ontology that strives for joy and love: cupiditas and amor, is that we can start to see theological and even Christian theological arguments in light of what you’re doing. And what this does, I think, is it makes it interesting to see how . . . suddenly, there is a god, ok, who’s above, in some sense and transcendent—exterior to the world, so there is a transcendence and there is an immanence, and neither the twain shall meet. There is a kind of dualism that you’re talking about earlier. But in a theological way you see god suddenly enter the material world—what Badiou calls the “multiple,” and so suddenly god now can no longer be conceptualized as strictly external to the world, god empties himself out, as we talked about earlier into the world itself, becoming human, becoming material, and in so far as that happens, suddenly the material world lifts up; something more than just the banality of reductive materiality exists! There’s a famous expression by an early Christian theologian, who says Athanasius who says: “The Divine became human so that humanity could become Divine,” something like this.

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And in this way, suddenly the polarity of transcendence and immanence breaks down into a radical and infinite flux, into something wholly new, certain magic (as Joshua Ramey is arguing) or certain mystical operations start to open up, and so although we would like to keep a concept of god as not totally collapsing into the immanent, and thus a certain—I’m sorry I’m talking so long—a certain production of the pure immanent, as Deleuze would say perhaps, but suddenly the world looks even more dynamic and revolutionary. There is a kind of transcendence but that transcendence can’t be understood and constituted without that pure immanence of god operating and walking around on the earth among the poor, among the poor announcing similar good news that you’re announcing, you and Toni are announcing. Hardt: Right. That seems good to me. Davis: And so, I just want to say, just sort of tip my hat to your work and how your work is suddenly reinterpreting theological arguments—that even add to a radical orthodox tradition that, as Žižek and Badiou maintain—drawing on Althusser’s idea of the “irruption” recently seen in the figure of St. Paul—the irruption that disrupts the status quo, “the state of the situation” and so forth. Hardt: Right, and there also is, or there should be, something like what Max Weber called, “a heterogenesis of ends”—that is, the “law of unintended consequences.” There should be for any work like having effects in ways that had no intention for, which is a credit to the readers more than the writers. Davis: What do you make of that? I mean, isn’t it a better . . . Hardt: . . . It’s a great thing . . . Davis: . . . isn’t it a better kind of aesthetic, if we want to draw on that notion— we might have to unpack that—just let’s follow this line for a minute. Isn’t there a better aesthetical view of the cosmos of being whereby the dynamism between pure immanence and pure transcendence or a kind of antagonism between transcendence and immanence suddenly is intertwined and kisses, the infinite kisses the finite, the finite suddenly kisses the infinite and there’s

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something new that happens, and that dynamic, the dynamism that happens with that, it seems to me on the whole, interesting and can open up political possibilities that would certainly comport with your concept of the political. Hardt: Yes, I can see how there is a relationship, that there can be, right, I can see how these ways of thinking can communicate, not quite coincide though. But because I think that it still doesn’t make sense . . . . I think that the relationship between the transcendent the immanent doesn’t quite make sense with my way of thinking about it. But, on the other hand, someone might want to say that this is a kind of transcendence that I keep talking about in human capacity . . . Davis: . . . yes, precisely! Hardt: . . . as long as you make it completely grounded in “us,” I’m ok with that . . . Davis: . . . “in us” meaning “us” as our co-creation with a divine power? Hardt: No. In our own [i.e. human autonomous] creation, call it divine if you want. And even what I was saying before about that which is magical and wondrous in the power of creation of us and of life, partly the reason I feel we need this language of wonder and magic is partly because we don’t yet understand. Like, these are ways of almost, placeholders for approximating things we don’t yet comprehend. But nonetheless, that’s, you know what, Spinoza says that a miracle is: namely, just a phenomenon for which we’re still ignorant of the cause. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop talking about miracles because we’re ignorant a lot. But it’s again not then assuming that miracles are in fact . . . Davis: . . . caused by . . . Hardt: . . . events outside the world or anything like that. No, they are but we have a limited understanding, and we still remain ignorant—over time we’ll come to a better understanding of things. Spinoza, of course, in a quite

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charming way, wants to go through every miracle of both scriptures and explain how they were just ignorant of the causes, how the light at a certain time of day changes the color blah, blah. I think I am much more in line with that. If you want to say that’s the same thing as you’re saying, well then maybe it is. Haley: What is going to happen is that, Creston, you just can’t make Michael a Christian. Davis: I’m not trying to, goddamn! May I ask just one more question? There is a trend in the humanities back to the return to the religious, back to perhaps a return to the theological, the theological in ways I think you were describing and in ways, I was describing. The theological is no longer a kind of centrality by the Church; it’s not a dogma controlled by Rome, nor by Constantinople, but certainly a dogma, not even a dogma, but a way of understanding the logics of the world. One of the key figures of this recent trend is St. Paul, St. Paul of Tarsus, who in the scriptures was at one point a legal enforcer of the Jewish laws and would go off and slaughter Christians. And suddenly, on the way to a Damascus sees Jesus, and is knocked down off his horse and blinded in fact. Paul is being interpreted as someone who is suddenly announcing something new. In terms of Badiou’s notion of Paul, it’s the event, the event that is unannounced and breaks with the status quo. How does your work and perhaps Toni Negri’s work relate to and would like to approach or reconstitute this notion of Paul with Jacob Taubes or even Agamben and Slavoj Žižek. How do you approach this ontology of the new announced by Saint Paul? Hardt: I think it is interesting and it would be an interesting analysis of the times, like you suggest why Paul now? Some of the answers, I think, do have to do— well there are two really. One is, but these are still initial answers that someone else is going to have to do this better than I. One has to do with the political conception of Paul. That Paul, that really in the New Testament or even in the entire tradition, Paul is most successful at thinking the political mandate of the organization of the Christian community, and so that looking for new models of the political, or political formation, Paul is an obvious choice—specifically having to do with temporality, both the notion of the

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event and then even the notion of the possibility of a new time. This is what Agamben tries to capture when he talks about the “messianic time” in Paul. I think that this too is trying to answer in a way the crisis of thinking politics today, that this offers a suggestion of an alternative. The third possibility, which might interest me most in Paul, is the notion of love. Again, I actually find interesting suggestions in Paul, but I don’t find their notion of what I want out of a political conception of love. But nonetheless, there is quite clearly a political conception of love in the epistles, and of love specifically that’s aimed at the formation of the community. Sometimes even just for the initial thing helping us separate the concept of love or broadening the concept of love from the mere cloister within the family or the couple. It’s recognizing love as a properly political concept as the foundation of the community. Davis: It’s the mystical body of Christ, as Paul would say. Hardt: I’m not so pleased with that part. Davis: But, there is a community nonetheless? Hardt: Yes, in fact, what politics is—is an act of love. That seems to me worth pursuing and figuring out. I think not a love that should be separated as radically different from the kind of love we experience within the couple. Davis: Sentimental love, those kinds of things. Hardt: I think there shouldn’t be a radical division between Eros and agape, between the personal and the political. And there are many other things that I would say about the concept of love. Leaving that aside, I think that Paul does present one means of beginning to think that. And you can add Arendt to this list too because Arendt’s book on Augustine is really about Paul. That is trying to think freedom. What is interesting, and this is Arendt’s dissertation, writing under Heidegger’s influence, (and K. Jaspers is the director—so it’s a very powerful committee she’s got there.) And it’s about Augustine’s conception of love, which is of course directly taken from Paul, or at least it is an interpretation of Paul, and the two things that she wants to get at, which

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are influential for her entire career, is a notion of love that is autonomous, and can found the political in a way that separates the political from the social. This notion of freedom, of politics and freedom, that she will in a later book for instance affirm in the US revolution as opposed to the French, this is already she finds in the notion of caritas, Augustine’s in a way of freeing of love from need—that’s her way of putting it. That love, the properly political love she wants does not have to do with craving but is a love that is freely given. And that is really the foundation of her notion of the political that she will continue throughout. Anyway, that would be an interesting one to add to the mix of Badiou and Agamben and Taubes too. Davis: What do you make, finally in the end, of Paul’s, a quick gloss on Paul’s Galatians, where he says, “There 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. . ..” Paul is not an identity politics kind of guy. In fact, he sort of has cast asunder this notion of identity politics. Hardt: I think already in the concept of love it refuses those, it is implied in that refusal of these identities. Davis: But not the refusal of identity per se but certain kinds of identities that are generically attributed to the human and thus boxes humans up into status quo functional robots that simply follow the state dominate paradigm. Hardt: There is a way in which I think that love is corrosive of identity, and that would be in the same way I think political organization is corrosive of identity. The kind of political organization I want and the kind of love I want obviously, because there are many different ways of posing it. There is a notion of love that really is love of the same: racist love, Nazi love. In the last chapter in Foucault that is sort of like the notion of racism and love, and that is love of the same, love of the genetically same. But, I think that any love that is really a love of difference is corrosive of identity. Davis: You don’t want neither the love of pure identity nor the love of pure difference.

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Hardt: Well, Badiou says something lovely at one point, in the Paul book or somewhere else, love is the experimentation with differences. I don’t know if that is love of pure difference, but it’s a love based on difference rather than sameness, which does at least qualify one division between, I think of the concept of love you have to make a lot of sortings out. Davis: And it is on this subject of love that we unfortunately must stop. Michael, this has been fantastic. Thank you.

A Conversation with Catherine Malabou Catherine Malabou, University of Paris X-Nanterre Noëlle Vahanian, Lebanon Valley College

The questions of the following interview are aimed at introducing Catherine Malabou’s work and philosophical perspective to an audience who may never have heard of her, or that knows only that she was a student of Derrida. What I hope this interview reveals, however, is that Malabou “follows” deconstruction in a timely, and also useful way. For one of the common charges levied against deconstruction, at least by American critics, is that by opening texts to infinite interpretations, deconstruction unfortunately does away with more than the master narratives; it mires political agency in identity politics and offers no way out of the socio-historical and political constructs of textuality other than the hope anchored in faith at best, but otherwise simply in the will to believe that the stance of openness to the other will let the other become part of the major discourses without thereby marginalizing or homogenizing them. How does Malabou “follow” deconstruction? Indeed, she does not disavow her affiliation with Derrida; she, too, readily acknowledges that there is nothing outside the text. But, by the same token, she also affirms Hegel’s deep influence on her philosophy. From Hegel, she borrows the central concept of her philosophy, namely, the concept of plasticity; the subject is plastic—not elastic, it never springs back into its original form—it is malleable, but it can explode and create itself anew. In this way, there is nothing outside the text, but the text is no less natural than it is cultural, it is no less biological than it is spiritual (or mental), it is no less material than it is historical. That is, the subject is not merely and ineluctably the social-historical-economic construct of an age (at the peak of modernity, a rational autonomous subject; in a post-industrial and global world, a highly adaptable, flexible, and disciplined subject). Instead, the subject can resist hopeless determinism by virtue of a dialectic inscribed at the heart of her own origination. So Malabou is a “follower” of deconstruction in that she affirms inventionalism, and in so doing, she is able to transcend the limit of deconstruction—différance—with “plasticity.”

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But even this oxymoronic characterization of Malabou as a “follower” of Derrida and Hegel is improper; to be fair, one could add that she is also a “follower” of neurobiology and neuroscience. She will claim that the subject is a neuronal subject, and, in agreement with recent neuroscientific research, that such a subject is plastic; she will claim that capitalistic society mirrors the neuronal organization of the brain, and that the brain mirrors capitalistic society in that both are de-centralized and highly adaptable and flexible; she will anchor the origin of the self in a biologically determined brain. At the same time, however, she will also be aware of the reductionist tendencies of scientific discourse to deny its own ideological paradigm and to bracket out the genius of plasticity: the neuronal subject is docile, pliable, and adaptable, but, she emphasizes, it is also capable of resistance and rebellion. And so the program of Malabou’s philosophy, unlike that of much of typical philosophy of mind and neuroscience, is not about promoting a capitalist ideological paradigm by seeking ways to enhance the docile and disciplined neuronal subject; instead, it is about inciting us to take charge of our own brain, of our own subjectivity, and thereby, of our society. We can do this, not by denying that there is continuity between our brain and our thoughts, between the neuronal and the mental, between the natural and the cultural, but by recognizing that this continuity is not without contradiction, by recognizing that the passage from the neuronal to the mental is the site of contestation whereby freedom is established precisely because the brain is naturally plastic. The interview was conducted at Professor Malabou’s apartment in Paris in July 2007. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Malabou for her hospitality and to Carissa Devine for her assistance with the transcription.

Vahanian: You are a philosopher, professor of philosophy, author of the Future of Hegel, Counterpath, Le Change Heidegger, Que faire de notre cerveau?. You were a close student of the late Jacques Derrida. But you’re not a follower of deconstruction; for that, of course, would go against deconstruction itself. How did you come to be a philosopher, and how did you come to work with Derrida?

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Malabou: I think the way I became a philosopher and the way I happened to work with Derrida are about the same thing. I would say that I wasn’t a philosopher before I met him. I used to be just a student in philosophy, and things really started when I met him. At the same time, you’re right, I wouldn’t define myself as a follower of deconstruction; unless we define the word to follow, what “to follow” means. The issue of “following” constitutes one of the leading threads of Derrida’s book The Post Card.1 In this book, Derrida undermines the classical order of filiation: first comes the father, then the son or the daughter. He undermines this order and shows that “to follow” may sometimes (or perhaps always) means “to precede.” Let us think of this extraordinary postcard showing Socrates writing under Plato’s dictation: “I have not yet recovered from this revelatory catastrophe: Plato behind Socrates. Me, I always knew it, and they did too, those two I mean. What a couple. Socrates turns his back to Plato, who has made him write whatever he wanted while pretending to receive it from him” (12). Then if to follow does not always mean to come after, or to imitate or to copy, if following implies a certain dimension of anticipation, then in this case, I would accept to define myself as a follower of deconstruction. Vahanian: Derrida once said in a film interview something to the effect that no philosopher could be his mother. I am paraphrasing here. He hoped that deconstruction would change or disrupt the patriarchal alignment of philosophy, reason, and thought. And this being the case, a philosopher could, if I am remembering correctly, perhaps be his daughter. So what would the philosopher look like, think like, write like who could be your mother as opposed to you father? Malabou: A mother-like philosopher would of course be a figure of exclusion. As you know, I’ve always worked on major philosophers, who occupy a central position in history of metaphysics (as well as in its deconstruction). A mother philosopher would on the contrary come from a secluded site, a repressed locus. Such a maternity, if there is one, implies that exists a mode of transmission, of inheritance, of genealogy which exceeds the traditional definitions of these terms within the history of philosophy. Which exceeds also, by the same token, the traditional understanding of the mother. The woman philosopher

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who says the most accurate things on this point is no doubt Luce Irigaray when she shows that the mother is traditionally seen as “matter” or “materiality” as opposed to “form.” She in fact thinks the feminine as what is excluded by this binary opposition itself, as what also exceeds such an opposition. In Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler writes: “Irigaray’s task is to reconcile neither the form/ matter distinction nor the distinctions between bodies and souls (. . .). Rather, her effort is to show that these binary oppositions are formulated through the exclusion of a field of disruptive possibilities. (. . .) Irigaray’s intervention in the history of the form/matter distinction underscores ‘matter’ as the site at which the feminine is excluded from philosophical binaries” (35). My mother philosopher would then certainly belong to this “constitutive outside” or to this excessive materiality.2 Vahanian: With that in mind, does your philosophy envision a kind of subjectivity that allows a legitimate philosophical voice to a woman? Malabou: The problem is that there is no “essence” of femininity. This statement is something on which most women philosophers or writers agree (Beauvoir, Kristeva, Wittig, Butler. . .).The excessive materiality I just mentioned cannot be said to be something, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to transgress the limits of ontology. It is then somehow impossible to create or imagine what a “feminine-philosophical” subjectivity might be. . . Vahanian: Why not? Malabou: Again, an ontology of the feminine would no doubt bear all the symptoms of the traditional ontology — that is, an exclusion of the feminine itself. As we know, the discourse of and on property, propriety or subjectivity is precisely the discourse which has excluded women from the domain of Being (and perhaps even of beings). I will refer to Irigaray again on this point : “Woman neither is nor has an essence.” At the same time, Heidegger’s definition of the subject as Da-sein, that is, an instance which is neither man nor woman, but Da-sein, or Es, as in the German neutral gender, is not quite satisfactory either. It would still be too

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ontologically rigid to characterize the feminine. Woman has no essence, but that doesn’t mean that woman is neutral either. I refer to Derrida’s decisive analysis concerning the motif of gender in Heidegger (Geschlecht, in Psyché).3 Vahanian: When you write philosophically though, especially about what it means to be a subject or an individual, do you think that this is representative of what you understand is a feminine voice, or a feminine philosophical voice? Or is it representative of what some men might say is a feminine philosophical voice? Malabou: I wish to say a word about my own conception of the matter/ form problem in relation to the feminine. If we consider, as I do too, that the feminine is a kind of materiality which is produced as the outside of the matter/form opposition, then a feminine philosophical voice may be heard either from within this opposition (as what has always been repressed in it), or from a total exteriority. As we know, Irigaray made up her mind to mime the philosophical tone as well as the philosophical rationality in her writings. This mimicry was supposed to be a way of subverting the metaphysical discourse. I myself chose to settle my thinking at the very heart of this discourse, to dwell within it. This a very classical way of doing, and there is nothing original in this gesture. That said, I am investing the concept of plasticity which, in Hegel, means less the interplay between matter and form than the interplay between form and itself, that is, the relationship between form and form. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel show that the subject is plastic in the sense that she or he is able to receive form (passivity) and to give form (activity). I certainly do not intend to show that these modes of being of the subject represent the masculine/feminine relationship. I am interested in showing that this relationship between form and itself is not founded on a difference. The two modes of being of the subject are not different from one another, but each of them transforms itself into the other. With plasticity, we are not facing a pre-given difference, but a process of metamorphosis. In other words, the Hegelian subjects trans-subjects itself constantly. Its form is its matter. We know that Deleuze’s very strong critique of Hegel lays a foundation on the fact that dialectics is a logic which supersedes difference. According to Deleuze, the sublation of difference by contradiction amounts to an erasure

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of non-dialectical differential relationships. Working on plasticity allows me to present another version of the superseding of difference. To give up difference may mean that “difference” is not the right word to characterize the relationship between the two modes of being of the subject. If we relate this inadequacy of difference to the gender binary problem, then we may state that the concept of “sexual difference” is not accurate. I would like to turn towards Foucault on this point. In The Hermeneutics of the subject,4 he insists upon what he calls the process of transsubjectivation (214), which consists in a trajectory within the self. This transsubjectivation doesn’t mean that you become different from what you used to be, nor that you are able to absorb the other’s difference, but that you open a space within yourself between two forms of yourself. That you oppose two forms of yourself within yourself. Foucault writes: “Clear a space around the self and do not let yourself be carried away and distracted by all the sounds, faces, and people around you. (. . .) All your attention should be concentrated on this trajectory from self to self. Presence of self to self, precisely on account of the distance still remaining between self and self (. . .)” (222–223). This transsubjectivation, conceived as a journey within oneself, is the product of a transformation. Foucault4 underscores the Greek word ethopoiein: “Ethopoiein means making ethos, producing ethos, changing, transforming ethos, the individual’s way of being, his mode of existence” (237). There would then be a kind of transformation which would sublate the difference between the self and itself, which would create, produce a new self as a result of the opposition between two forms at work in the self. Plasticity might be the name of this transsubjectivation. We would find in Hegel the possibility of understanding dialectics as a process of “ethopoiein.” A plastic subject would be able to transform its way of being. This plastic ontology implies of course a plasticity of gender itself. Such is my interpretation of the relationship matter/form in Hegel. Vahanian: Did you ever run into prejudice? Malabou: Yes. It started very early when I was a student in what we call in France “les classes préparatoires,” and I was preparing for the Ecole Normale Supérieure. My teacher said, you will never succeed because you’re a woman.

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I have been told that philosophy was a masculine domain or field. And, ever since, I am always introduced in reference to deconstruction, even today, even if it is at a distance with deconstruction or by the question of my being a student of Derrida. People associate my name to a man’s name all the time, I am thought of as a specialist of Hegel or as a specialist of Derrida; I’m never myself. I would like to add that I suffer greatly from social exclusion. I am still a Maître de conférences in Paris (and not a full professor even if I have written much more than all my colleagues). I do not find any support in the United States either and I discovered that the so called “feminine” or “feminist community” was a myth. Vahanian: Let’s move on to that concept of plasticity, if you will, because it does have a prominent place in your work. Can you explain what it entails, what is its origin? Malabou: I found it for the first time in Hegel. He uses it when he defines subjectivity in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. The subject is not supple and soft, and it is not rigid either; it is something in between. The subject is “plastic.” Plastic, if you look in the dictionary, means the quality of a matter, which is at the same time fluid but also resisting. Once formed, it cannot go back to its previous state. For example, when the sculptor is working on the marble, the marble, once sculpted, cannot be brought back to its original state. So, plasticity is a very interesting concept because it means, at once, both openness to all kinds of influences, and resistance. Vahanian: The notion of plasticity has its origin in Hegel, but it is also a corruption of Hegel. And you achieve this corruption through the incorporation of neurobiology into your philosophy. Could you tell me why this interest in neurobiology, what does it offer? Malabou: “Plasticity” is not a corruption of Hegel. It may be the locus for a thought of transsubjectivation, as I said previously, but it is not a corruption. Neurobiology and Hegelian philosophy may seem very remote at first sight. In fact, the concept of “plasticity,” which plays a major role within both of them, has the same meaning: it characterizes a certain kind of organization,

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the system’s one. Between the system of absolute knowledge or of absolute subjectivity in Hegel and the nervous system in neurobiology, the difference is not so dramatic. It is the same mode of being, the same functioning, the same economy. I allow myself to refer on that point to my book What Should We Do With Our Brains? (translation of Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004), by Sebastian Rand3Forthcoming from Fordham). In this book, I am insisting upon the community between different kinds of systematic plastic organizations. It is also clear that neurobiology today offers a new perspective on subjectivity. Continental philosophers have always despised this field. They say: “No. It doesn’t concern us. It’s for analytical philosophers. It’s for Anglo-American philosophers.” Even Derrida has very harsh words against it. He says that the concept of “promise” is alien to neurobiology, which can only be concerned by the notion of “program.” This opposition between promise and program has to be deconstructed, because it marks the limits of deconstruction itself. Vahanian: So you think that deconstruction would be resistant or closed to neurobiology or neuroscience? Malabou: There was a time when continental philosophers or psychoanalysts were right to fight against a hard reductionist tendency which at work in neurosciences in general. Neurobiology was a field that was completely unto itself and refractory to continental theory, structuralism, and poststructuralism. But about fifty years ago, things totally changed. I would like to refer here to scientists like Mark Solms, Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, Eric Kandel. . . In his preface to Mark Solms’ and Oliver Turnbull’s The Brain and the Inner World, An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience, Oliver Sacks reminds us that according to Solms, psychoanalysis would have been for Freud a “moment of transition” (Solms’s first book, coedited with Michael Saling, was entitled A Moment of Transition): “The reason for this was the very inadequate state of neurological (and physiological) at the time, not any turning against neurological explanation in principle. Freud knew that any attempt to bring together psychoanalysis and neurology would be premature (. . .). Neurology itself had to evolve, from a mechanical science that thought in terms of fixed ‘functions’ and centers, a sort of successor

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of phrenology, through much more sophisticated clinical approaches and deeper understandings, to a more dynamic analysis of neurological difficulties in terms of functional systems, often distributed widely through the brain and in constant interaction with each other.” (viii). Further, Neurology has now “entered the age of subtlety.” Sacks adds that “Solm’s approach, then, is a double one: to make the most detailed neuropsychological examination of patients with brain damage and then to submit them to a model psychoanalysis, and, in so doing, hopefully, (. . .) to bring the mechanisms of the brain and the inner world of the patient together” (ix). It is then very difficult to criticize such an open definition of neurology. Besides, many of the advocates of the “neuro-psychoanalytical” trend acknowledge a philosophical tradition in order to do what they’re doing. For example, Damasio’s famous books like Descartes’ Error or Looking For Spinoza very explicitly claim to belong somehow to the continental philosophical tradition. I think that Derrida didn’t have time to become really conscious of that. Once again, the difference Derrida used to make between the program and the promise is a distinction in which we can’t believe anymore. A machine—and I think that Pascal was the first to say this—can also promise. You remember this passage in Pascal’s Pensées when somebody says, “Yes, but what if I don’t believe in God?” And Pascal answers “You just have to kneel down and mechanically repeat your prayer, and God will come:” that’s the promise inside the machine. You can’t really draw a line between the mechanical and the messianic. This is also what is very interesting in the brain, and in the computer: somebody like Daniel Dennett now shows that a computer may be said to be plastic. Vahanian: For the sake of those who are not familiar with your recent work on the brain, when you distinguish the blind brain from the Freudian unconscious, why is this important? Doesn’t the notion of a biologically determined unconscious—the blind brain—as opposed to a Freudian, imaginary unconscious, threaten the subject’s freedom by foreshadowing a certain natural determinism? Malabou: This was a very important discovery that the brain wasn’t entirely determined. Some anatomic structures of the brain are, of course, genetically

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programmed, but a significant part of the neural organization is open to outside influences and develop itself consequently to these influences or interactions. It means an important part in the structure of your brain depends on the way you’re living and on your experience. History is inscribed within the biological. That is what “plastic” means when applied to the brain. Vahanian: Please describe your latest work on Freud? Malabou: The French title of my latest work is Les nouveaux blessés. I think it would need a little bit of translation. Perhaps “the new injuries,” or “new wounds” (rather than “the new wounded” or the Newly Wounded?). So let’s call it The New Wounds. It’s about the kind of injuries or wounds or brain damage that psychoanalysis never took into account. It’s a reflection on brain lesion or pathology (Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease) but also on trauma in general (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, all kinds of what I call “socialpolitical” traumas). To what extent neurology today helps us to enlarge the Freudian conception of the trauma and of the psychic suffering: such is the issue. It seems that in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud fails to define what might exceed the pleasure principle, what this “beyond” may exactly mean. Neurological traumas go beyond this principle, and discover something that has nothing to do with pleasure, but with every kind of serious trauma. This book is a reflection on those wounds that love and hatred or internal conflict simply cannot explain. Vahanian: So, the wounds of trauma are material wounds rather than merely psychic? Malabou: If we are able to admit that the difference between “material” and “psychic” is very thin and even perhaps non-existing, if we agree on the absurdity of regarding the brain and the psyche as too separate and distinct instances, then we will have moved forward a great deal . . . We know today that every kind of serious shock—it may be a wound on the battlefield, a shell shock, but it also can be domestic trauma or moral abuse without any physical injury—we know that every kind of serious trauma causes destruction in what is now called the ‘emotional brain,’ which is located in the

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frontal cortex. This material destruction obviously and undoubtedly implies psychic alterations or modifications. It’s the end of the frontier, the borderline between psychic diseases as such and neurological diseases. Vahanian: Fascinating. Malabou: Fascinating, true. I’ve read many interesting books on military psychiatry. It’s very interesting that what happens with Vietnam vets or people who go in Iraq today, or what happens on the battlefield, but also, when you’re a hostage, or you’re caught in a bomb attack, or when you’re quietly at home and suddenly there is a gas explosion, for example, that what happens in all kinds of apparently different situations has a common point, which is the shock as such, and the way it alters your psyche. Vahanian: Perhaps going back or linking this to the concept of plasticity again, or even going back to what you said about finding hope or promise in the program; how does neuroscience or this concept of plasticity, how do they help you to rethink the dynamics of subjectivity such that the singular individual isn’t always already under erasure, but is produced and affirmed instead; is made public without contradiction, without alienation, without being lost to the public realm. Or are this loss and conflict inevitable? Malabou: Reading neurological or neurobiological books helped me to become aware of a certain change in the philosophical thought of death. A transformation of the Heideggerian notion of “being-toward-death” in particular. Heidegger says that death is at every moment possible. Neurobiologists make us conscious of the fact that my own metamorphosis after brain damage is at every moment possible; there is something like a break of the subject which is not death, which is another kind of possibility. To be destroyed as a subject when you suffer from a concussion, for example, means that you become someone else. The possibility of becoming someone else at every moment and for everybody equally—for even if we know that certain people are more likely to be the victims of such damage, we also know that everybody may undergo this kind of destruction at any moment—this possibility alters how we conceive of the subject. The fact of being mortal is one thing, and the fact of being plastic means being able to

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be totally transformed and become somebody else. For example, Damasio will say of one of his patients: “Elliot was no longer Elliot.” So, subjectivity must be confronted to the risk of the loss of itself at every moment, and this loss is not death; it is something different. Vahanian: Frightening. Malabou: It is very frightening, yes. But at the same time, because we don’t want to get prepared for it, we’re always disarmed when someone we know suffers from Alzheimer’s or any kind of disease. We don’t know what to do, yet this is a constant existential possibility: Kafka’s Metamorphosis, it’s something like that when you become, when you wake up as somebody different. This, then, is according to me the great metaphysical teaching of neurobiology today: not to consider brain damage as an isolated possibility, rare things that happen in hospitals, but to consider them as a constant possibility. Vahanian: Since you broached the subject of this constant existential possibility, let me ask what is the self? Malabou: The self? This is a very interesting question because there is a total redefinition of the self. Damasio, for example, says that the self is at the same time everything and nothing. It is the elementary process of self-dialogue: “How are you doing?” “I’m alright.” “How are you doing?” “I’m alright”— like the beating of the heart. It is the self-information of the vital processes, life itself, the very elementary dialogue between the body and the soul. And this very fragile instance may at every moment be modified or wounded. And while this is a self-dialogue, at the same time, as I said to start with, this selfdialogue doesn’t reflect itself. It is not a speculative instance, because there is no mirroring of it. You can’t see it really. It cannot see itself. Vahanian: And what do you make of this reading of the self offered by Damasio—is this a good thing? Malabou: Well, it’s deconstruction inscribed within us. It is the biological deconstruction of subjectivity. In this sense, it is what you call “a good thing.”

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Vahanian: Say it again in other words maybe. What then constitutes the self? Is there a true singular identity or subjectivity? Or, is the self always a public phenomenon? Malabou: Of course the general process of self-information is common to everybody, so in this sense it is a universal structure. But, if we take for granted that at the same time the way your brain builds itself it departs from this structure, on the ground of this structure, then auto-affection, the way we keep ourselves informed about ourselves, is always individual. It’s impossible to draw a line between universal and singular here, you know. There is a common structure, but at the same time the way it takes place in you and the way it takes place in me is not the same. The self is clearly not a substance. Vahanian: Can you say something about the relationship of the individual to the public realm? Malabou: The most recent and current research in neurobiology reveals a new kind of brain organization that may work as a model to understand all kinds of organization today: society, for example. On this point, I’m very close to what Žižek tries to think when he says that he’s looking for a new materialism, which implies this concept of society as a whole, as a closed totality without any kind of transcendence. That is also something he develops in The Parallax View in particular. I don’t believe in transcendence at all. I don’t believe in something like the absolute Other, or in any kind of transcendence or openness to the other. So in this sense, as a Hegelian, I am quite convinced with Žižek that we’re living in some kind of closed organizational structure, and that society is the main closed structure. But at the same time, this structure is plastic. So it means that inside of it, we have all kinds of possibilities to wiggle and escape from the rigidity of the structure. What happens in the brain is the paradigm to figure out what happens in society as such. We are living in a neuronic social organization. And I’m not the only one to say it. The neuronic has become the paradigm to think what the social is, to think society and social relationships. So it is clearly a closed organization; if by closed we understand

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without transcendence, without any exit to the absolute Other. But, at the same time, this closed structure is not contrary to freedom or any kind of personal achievements or resistance. So I think that in such a structure, all individuals have their part to play. Vahanian: You speak of this neuronal structure; what if I said there is no hors-texte? Malabou: Yes and no. In Derrida, there is no hors-texte, and at the same time, there is something, in this very thought, like an outside. A totally open space. That of the “utterly other”, or of the “arrivant absolu.” Vahanian: With this in mind, both this notion for you of neuronal structure and there is no hors-texte, how would you respond to those critics who see in deconstruction the end of political agency? Some people might ask how this sort of totality does not lead to quietism or relativism? Or what would you say to those for whom this closed structure must be opened up by way of a soteriological gesture of love and desire for a radical, unforeseeable other? Or, how would you address those who might view this closed, albeit plastic, structure as a new kind of fundamentalism? Malabou: Well, we have to admit that there is no alternative to capitalism; this is something that is, I think, inescapable today. So we clearly live in the absence of an alternative if we compare our situation with the one of our fathers fifty or sixty years ago. It’s very different because we can’t work out a different social or economic model. So it’s very likely that we have to stay inside capitalism. Does it imply fundamentalism? I don’t think so because although the general structure is given and unchangeable as such in that it cannot be transformed into another model, although we take for granted that the form is given, that the structure is given, once and for all—which seems to be true with capitalism—at the same time, all moves within this form are allowed. For example, if you consider today, capitalism in the USA and in Europe, and capitalism in the Far East, like in China, if you take into account that the most achieved form of capitalism occurs in a Marxist country, then you discover that capitalism is multiple.

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And I think that when people say that they’re afraid of China, what they’re afraid of is to see that a Marxist country is able to demonstrate what capitalism is to us. But this may help us to think how a single form is able to differentiate itself almost infinitely. I think that we can use the little gaps within the form—the way in which the same form is not always the same— to build resistance. I am very influenced by structuralism, here. What I mean is akin to what Lévi- Strauss says with respect to the various ways in which gods are represented; from country to country, you always find the same pattern, but inside of this general frame, you also find many little differences which forbid us to consider the structure as the same. So the sameness is the difference. I know this is very abstract, but from this general pattern we can evolve toward much more concrete social determinations. Vahanian: Can we establish a hierarchy of values? What does this do for ethics? Malabou: Well, it’s true that it clearly opposes Lévinas’ vision of ethics as defined by some radical other. It seems that a genuine ethical vision of the social implies a kind of openness to change, and if we understand by change the way in which the other is susceptible to come at any moment. On the contrary, my definition of structure might seem very violent. And it’s true that it is very close to the Hegelian one, and we know that it implies fight and struggle and everything. But, at the same time, it also implies that in this kind of structure, everybody is equal to everybody; and to be responsible for the other allows you to do something for him. If you read Lévinas closely, sometimes he seems to say, and Derrida says the same thing, that the other is so remote that it is impossible to act in his or her place. You can’t decide for him or her. For example if you have a child, or it is his or her decision, there’s nothing I can do for him and for her. This is the way in which this ethical vision is not so pure. The other is so remote that it creates a sort of loneliness of the other as such. My vision of things is much more based on reciprocal and mutual relationships. I think that you can do something for the other, and sometimes I’m not bothered to know that I can act in your place if you’re not able to do so yourself. You know, I don’t feel guilty because sometimes I’ll say my son will do this. So the difference

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between the two conceptions relies on a sort of horizontal schema. Lévinas was very much against the Heideggerian notion of Mitsein, the fact of being with the other. He says that’s not ethical. I’m not so sure. I like this idea of being with the other. Vahanian: There’s a notion of reciprocity there. Malabou: Yes, and also of course the old problem of recognition and of reciprocity in recognition. And I think that if there should be an ethical value, the notion of recognition would be the one for me, and, of course, this notion implies fight and struggle. Vahanian: Very good. So no radical Other? Malabou: No, unless you admit that you can be readily other to yourself. As when I was talking about brain damage. Vahanian: So this is frightening. Malabou: This is monstrous. Vahanian: This is monstrous, yes. Well, incidentally, in the United States, there are some theological moves toward claiming a radical other who’s not omnipotent but weak. I am thinking of Gianni Vattimo, John Caputo, Catherine Keller. This notion of the weakening of being or something like that could be frightening as well. Weak because the claim to power leads to visions of this world that are apocalyptic, for instance, or violent visions. Weak because, people say, this is the only world, and so, if this is the kingdom, we have here a realization of God, of the weakness of God. So, I think that in that notion you have an attempt to say that this is it; this world is it. It’s a notion that does away with transcendence. This is it. And yet that notion for some might hold a kind of promise, however impossible or unforeseeable. Malabou: And here we have messianism?

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Vahanian: Yes, well something like that. So you’re more of a pragmatist. Malabou: I think so, yes. Vahanian: Which brings us back to the earlier discussion about determinism and materialism. Malabou: I believe in determinism to a certain extent because I believe that the structure is given once and for all. And when you read Marx you know that determinism is inescapable. But, I believe in dialectics, and it’s true to me that Hegel was right to say that freedom was always a struggle between determinism and its opposite. There’s no pure freedom and no pure determinism; they’re always sort of a negative transformation of both of their mutual relations. And that’s what plasticity’s about. Vahanian: To conclude our discussion then, tell me a bit about what you anticipate for the future. Malabou: I’m very curious to know what will happen in China. I’m very fascinated by this conjunction of Marxism and capitalism. So I’m sure that one day or the other we’ll know more about the kind of achievement of social freedom—well, so called social freedom and individual achievement—in liberalism. This is the first organization in my vision of the future. What will happen? Second, I am very curious about what will happen in the neurological field. I’m sure that there will be many more discoveries that will change the vision we have of ourselves. And third, I think that philosophy will be totally transformed by these two: economic and political promise on the one hand, and on the other, this new way of defining subjectivity. So I’m not really optimistic, but at the same time I’m very excited by what happens today.

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Notes 1. Jacques Derrida (1987) The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, tr. Alan Bass,Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2. Judith Butler (1993) Bodies That Matter, On the Discursive Limites of Sex.” New York: Routledge. 3. See Jacques Derrida (1983) “Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference,” trans. Ruben Berezdivin, Research in Phenomenology, vol. 13, 1983, pp.65–83. 4. Michel Foucault (2004) The Hermeneutics of the Subject, New York: Picador.

Moments of Intense Presence David Wood, Vanderbilt University J. Aaron Simmons, Furman University

Simmons: I have always been fascinated by the accounts that philosophers give of their influences and their own explanation of how they have gotten to where they are. How would you characterize your own philosophical genealogy? Wood: Well, answering that question is a truly philosophical enterprise. One could start at various points in answering the question “how did this happen?” For example, how did someone like me ever get into philosophy in the first place, or into something like continental philosophy in particular, and then how these kinds of questions are best pursued. When I look back at the boy who at the age of seventeen started reading philosophy, it was someone who at the age of ten had been uprooted from one context in England and thrown into a very different world in New Haven. Some of the things that I had been told were absolutes turned out not to be. For example, my teachers in England had told me that when you formed a ‘t’ that it had to go two-thirds of the way up to the line above and then when I got to America I was told that it had to go all the way up. How can both of these be true? It dawned on me that they were both true in the sense that they conformed to local norms. This may seem trivial, compared, say to Derrida being excluded from his Algerian school because he was Jewish, but it made quite an impression on me at ten. The second thing that I remember was going every week to the local YMCA pool for school swimming and that we boys were expected to completely strip off and swim naked. I had never been asked to do that in my life and I thought “what is this?” The force of cultural specificity hit home. The third thing was a six-week trip, driven by my family, around the United States seeing unbelievable landscapes such as the Grand Canyon that I could never have imagined and couldn’t quite take in. It was an aesthetic trauma—a wonderful trauma—a taste of the sublime. This happened over and over again all over

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the Southwest and elsewhere. We drove10,000 miles over six weeks camping everywhere. It changed the wiring in my brain—I was a different person after that. The shape of my imagination, my sense of what was possible, and my sense of the natural world had changed. This experience gave me what Heidegger would describe as a sense of not exactly being at home in the world anymore— in a positive way. It was as if the unheimlich was now on my shoulder like a parrot. That, I think, was what I brought into the study of philosophy and perhaps what brought me in. Simmons: If I remember correctly, your early training in philosophy was not what we would understand to be a typical “continental” approach—at least within the graduate programs in America. There was clearly some sort of shift that occurred. To what do you attribute the transition to continental philosophy as the mode in which you would eventually do philosophy? Perhaps continental philosophy resonated with these early experiences and your own lived existence in a way that other approaches to philosophical inquiry did not? Wood: The first degree I took was at the University of Manchester, and Manchester was an extremely interesting department when I got there. It had several really significant philosophers. There was a very distinguished Whiteheadian—Dorothy Emmett —from whom I took a couple of introductory classes. She had a real sense of philosophy as a systematic activity and was an extraordinary mind. I am very lucky to have met her. There was a somewhat charismatic Polish logician called Czeslaw Lejewski with a curious wartime background. I was drawn to this guy because he was extremely imaginative and creative in coming up with logical systems. He had all sorts of formal accounts of Being (mereology, stereology, chronology. . .) on the basis of simple operations and minimal premises. I just fell for him. Although little of his grand scheme actually got completed, he was a man of much promise. He believed in what Strawson called “descriptive metaphysics,” that you could, as it were, give logical accounts of the nature of the real. And there was also his colleague, another of my teachers, Arthur Prior, who wrote on formal logic and ethics. He was a very severe kind of guy. There was also a young German lecturer, Petravon Morstein, who, along with many of my friends, I fell in love with. She had just come up from Oxford where she had studied

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analytic philosophy, and she was also a poet. Youthful passion helped me take analytic philosophy seriously! An American Larry Chase was a window on a Wittgensteinian approach to philosophy, which I also appreciated. But in addition to all these people the person who really influenced me was Wolf Mays. Mays had been a student of Piaget and had also become something of an expert in phenomenology. He was the president of the British Phenomenological Society and the editor of the Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology. I had a class with him and about five other students on Husserl’s Ideas. We spent the entire year reading about half of it in a very intense way. This was like an opening onto another world. I guess that this set my course somehow. Wolf was a very unusual, diminutive man who spoke very quickly and very excitedly. He had an encyclopedic mind and was completely dedicated to the intellectual life. And yet, despite being a serious phenomenologist (he would have said because of it), he had a very limited tolerance for Heidegger. Heidegger was completely out and I had to come to Heidegger by myself. After Manchester I went to Oxford as a graduate student and I started off working with Stephen Lukes, a brilliant sociologist of knowledge, and Peter Strawson, a creative interpreter of Kant. Then I fell in with Alan Montefiore, a moral philosopher at Balliol College, who was Oxford’s most visible “Continentalist.” He had a strong connection with Derrida in Paris and would bring him over to talk a couple times a year. Ultimately, I fell for Derrida. He was in his early forties at that time and extremely charismatic, intense, and authentic, to use a strange word about him. He was completely committed to dialogue, to thinking and writing differently, and to many of us graduate students, he was utterly engaging. Simmons: Do you remember the first time that you met Derrida? Wood: In (I believe) the Spring of 1968, he gave the “Différance” lecture at Balliol and we went back to Montefiore’s house and, although I can’t remember what it was that we all talked about, I do remember that we all sat on the carpet. We were all very laid back. One just didn’t sit on chairs. And Derrida sat on the carpet with the rest of us. In retrospect what is astonishing is that I met Derrida before he was ‘Derrida,’ or as he was becoming Derrida, before he published all his books. He was then, as he always was later on, unassuming,

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charming and quite the opposite of the person many people imagined. Undoubtedly, meeting him led me down a certain track, not least towards a broader interest in continental philosophy, especially French. I had also become really interested in environmental issues from a practical and political point of view. In 1971, I started a short-lived group called Ecology Action. I was also very heavily influenced by two Canadian philosophy graduate students—Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch—who had come down from Montreal as something like vegan evangelists and they started a revolution in Oxford. They brought the good news, as it were. Simmons: They brought the Gospel? Wood: Yes, they brought this Gospel and they spread it, certainly in the philosophy community. Through rational argument (and food)! Many people were influenced by them, including Peter Singer, who quickly wrote Animal Liberation. The rest is history. We published a collective volume—Animals, Men, and Morals in 1972, which was a turning point in my becoming an animal right’s person. I then became a vegetarian. Simmons: This actually raises a question that I wanted to ask about the progression of your own work. Many argue that there was something of an “ethico-political” or even“ethico-religious” turn in Derrida’s later work. I know that you claim that these concerns are there from the near beginning of Derrida’s authorship and should not be viewed as a transition in his thought, but rather as a shift of emphasis. Could one say of your own work that there has been something of an “ecological turn” over recent years? From the account you give of your time at Oxford in the early 1970’s, it seems like these concerns were formative and not subsequent developments. It sounds like there was an ecological sensitivity at the heart of your philosophy even at this early stage. Is that right? Wood: Not really. Strangely enough, I dealt with these things out of different sides of my brain and I did not bring them together philosophically or theoretically. It is odd; it was as if they were partitioned. The environmental stuff took a back seat for more than twenty years. I didn’t teach it, I didn’t

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pursue it; I thought it was important, but I didn’t really take it very seriously philosophically. As for the animal rights stuff, well, my friends had done a better job with it and I let them move forward with it. I can only think that when it came to philosophy, I tended to pursue problems, issues, texts, and people that I didn’t understand or couldn’t quite understand. Whatever was just out of my reach intrigued me and drew me on. The animal right’s stuff just wasn’t like that. It just felt obvious. And pursuing it took a toll on one’s relationships. You had to explain over and over again to people why their moral intuitions forced them into positions that they didn’t want to hold. They often did not appreciate it. It was hard not to sound self-righteous, and I just got bored with the whole business. Simmons: But over the past few years, you have clearly taken the environment very seriously as a philosophical question. In one of your essays “What is Eco-Phenomenology?” you seem to lay out the different directions that phenomenology opens to ecology and that ecology opens to phenomenology. Now that you have moved into this decidedly philosophical engagement with such issues, what do you understand “Eco-Phenomenology” to be as a contribution to debates in environmental philosophy generally? Wood: Eco-Phenomenology can be taken in two different ways. You can understand it as an ecological framing of phenomenology or you can understand it as a phenomenological way of capturing ecological principles. That essay tries to weave together these two projects. It is meant as a reprise of Merleau-Ponty’s opening question in the preface to Phenomenology of Perception—namely, “what is phenomenology?” My essay was meant originally as a contribution to a volume on Eco-Phenomenology edited by Ted Toadvine, who has pioneered this approach. My exploration of the connections between ecology and phenomenology arose at a time when I was more willing to be a bit more speculative. In my book Deconstruction of Time—the original title of which was “The Structures of Time”—I mention what Strawson called a “descriptive metaphysics” which sounds like it is falling back into a pre-critical mode. I was thinking along the lines of such a project when I wrote this essay on Eco-Phenomenology. It struck me that there were things that one could say about space and time which would open up a sense of experience that could

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both be attached, if you like, to what we call “subjects,” but also open those subjects not just onto the immediate sensory world, but also the background dimensions of that world. Simmons: This sounds similar to what Heidegger refers to in 1973 as a “phenomenology of the unapparent.” Would you deploy such a description? Wood: Well it is certainly a phenomenology of the background and of the depth structure of experience. At least that is the idea—a structural phenomenology of space and time. I am trying to talk about ideas of compositionality, integrity, and temporal construction as they get witnessed in our experience and, in particular, in the natural world. I got interested in how you could think though the different kinds of “integrities,” as I called it, of rocks, creatures, and humans. Ina sense, I tried to replay that march from the stone to the lizard to the human that Heidegger describes. Simmons: It sounds like you take the environment to be the “ultimate” background for all the relatedness that experience presents to us. Wood: Yes, and very much in space and time. I think that the thing that totally intrigues me can be marked by the experience that I had out at Yellow Bird1—of having a friend there who is a geologist. She pointed out marks in a limestone slab and asked “you know what that is?” I said no, and in fact I couldn’t even see them. She drew my attention to these strange markings and said “that’s coral fossil.” I asked how old it was and she replied that it was somewhere between three hundred and fifty and four hundred and fifty million years old. It is that old and yet simply sitting right there in front of me. I then looked at my hand and I think “how old is that?” Well, we know how old it is literally, but then we realize that it is the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. The past in all kinds of levels and ways is sedimented, we might say, in the present—in what we see in front of us, in the rock, in who we are. Simmons: Would it be right to say that you are attempting to expand the genealogical accounts of someone like Nietzsche to include geological time?

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Wood: Geological time, biological time, species time. I am deeply fascinated by “the question of ethics” (which is of course not simply one question), especially questioning the idea that ethics could be radically opposed to ontology as we seem to find it in Levinas, for example. I suspect that the idea that ethics is radically different rests on a narrow sense of the ontological. For example, we might suppose that when we look at another creature—a non-human, say— that we have to engage in some complex ethical extension to allow this creature to be the ethical beneficiary of my moral intuitions because such notions only properly apply to other humans. I think that this is Levinas’s position and Kant’s position. We only have indirect duties to non-humans. Simmons: They might politically signify, but not ethically signify? Wood: Right. Now, my sense is that when we think like that we identify ourselves in a rather restricted way as simply human. But, I don’t see myself as just human. I think that I am a mammal, I am a living being, etc. Look at your hand, open your shirt. We have nipples (even us guys); we’re mammals! We know this; it is obvious. Moreover we are, more broadly, participants in a life stream that is, perhaps, unique to this planet. My sense is that the moral imagination is fed very powerfully by grasping this sense of multiple temporal dimensions of my existence, and does not need “extending” as much as one might think. I am only here as a product of all this extraordinary background work of evolutionary change and natural selection. Simmons: Would you then say that “gratitude” is the right moral feeling, rather than “respect” as Kant claimed? For Levinas, morality seems to convey a sense of dependence and boundedness to the Other, but for you it comes across as more of an open-ended gratitude—a relatedness without a specific relation. Wood: I wouldn’t automatically reject the word “gratitude.” It is compelling in a certain way. But it then does raise the question of to whom, or to what, or for what is one grateful. In that way lies religion and theology. Simmons: Which might make for a good segue into some questions about religion.

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Wood: One obvious, and very seductive, thought is that we need to feel grateful. We do constantly want to transform aporetic moments into relations with two identifiable parties. So the feeling say of gratitude demands a relation to something or someone to whom one is grateful. We end up with my relation to God or something like that. That example offers, I believe, a general formula for how we can begin to deconstruct theology or religious belief in the first place. For we can see just how compelling it is. Just as it is compelling, when we think we are “under attack,” to believe that there has to be an enemy. We need this category to respond in a way that reduces the awful anxiety regarding our inability to know what to do. Nietzsche would clearly be an ally in this thought. These are all ways of capturing the experience that reduces the anxiety and allows us to deal with the experience. That, in a sense, is why religion is so double-edged. It does properly capture experiences that we must not deny or refuse. But it charges a price for these services—a storage tax. Simmons: Which we are obligated to pay? Wood: Perhaps the question is how to pay it. With what currency and for how long. Returning to the question of gratitude, it may be that ‘gratitude’ is the wrong word, or certainly not the only appropriate response. It may be better, or sufficient, to speak of acknowledgement or wonder at what I am; what we are. It is not strictly personal but rather an extraordinary sense of being part of something bigger than oneself. Simmons: The “here I am” that Levinas and Derrida make quite a bit of is, for both of them, a response to a prior call from the Other. For Levinas, the caller seems to be more clearly located and, at least to some readers, even potentially has theological echoes that, for Derrida, tend to be lessened (or at least made more opaque). But for you the “here I am” is better understood as a sort of question to oneself that is internal to these structures of time and space as possibilities. That is, we must always already acknowledge these horizons of relatedness in which we find ourselves in order to even stand as a self at all. The phrase “here I am” is, then, not a reply to a call to ethical action, but instead signifies as a question about my own standing. On such a model, ethics and ontology come into a complicated relationship rather than a clear priority

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of one over the other. Of course, one could argue that even for Levinas and Derrida, each in his own way, this relationship between ethics and ontology is also more complicated than their own rhetoric might occasionally indicate. Wood: As you were talking, I realized that while there is considerable depth of reflective and intuitive possibility open to this path of, let’s call it “recollection” in Plato’s sense, Heidegger’s sense . . . Simmons: And Kierkegaard’s sense of “repetition” as “recollection forwards?” Wood: Yes, Kierkegaard’s sense as well. I want to think through the different levels and layers of what it means to collect oneself, which is not any longer just oneself, and to project that collection or collectedness forward. That is a neverending thought and it is deeply intriguing. But, of course, it still sounds like an expansion of me. Even in this story there is not any room for the encounter with the Other. How has that been left out? Well, it both has and it hasn’t been left out. One of my problems with Levinas is that he thinks Heidegger has left out all of this stuff. My response is parallel to the way that I think Heidegger would respond: you can’t separate your relation to the Other from your relation to the Other’s mortality. At some level, Levinas has to agree with me. The command “Don’t kill me” only makes sense if (a) the Other is mortal and (b) doesn’t want to die. Actually, the significance of the statement changes with the sense that the Other has of her own mortality. What that suggests is that all that Heidegger says about being-towards-death, the abyss, and the self-as-a-potentiality-for-being, continue to be crucial even if these reflections are not included in Levinas’s account of the encounter with the Other. So, the question of who the Other is (and why the Other might matter) is not separable from the question of this connectedness with a life-stream— namely, the connection with our biological past which generates this moral being that we each are. In other words, there is a connection between what’s at issue, what’s at stake, why it might matter that the Other can address me in certain ways on the one hand, and my grasp of myself as part of something a whole lot bigger, on the other. Simmons: I know that some of your close friends and philosophical interlocutors, particularly John Caputo and Catherine Keller, have been on

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the forefront of recent debates in process philosophy/theology. There seems like there are substantial resonances between your descriptions of the levels and layers of biological connectedness in the life-stream and this general process approach. However, for both Caputo and Keller, “God” shows up as a functional reality. The term/name “God” signifies something unique in their work that you might resist. I draw from your remarks not only that you don’t think that ‘God’ is required, but that using the term ‘God’ is, perhaps, a strategic misstep. The price that one pays for introducing such a term is too high. Do you see a sort of process approach as something that allows for you to speak of God in a different way? Or, do you find God to not just be an “unnecessary hypothesis,” but actually a necessarily problematic way forward? Wood: Well, without using concepts of this second order, you can’t have a process philosophy or a philosophical orientation that attempts to get at ways in which the real is integrated, purposive, creative, or open to radical transformation, and all in space and time. I am very reluctant to take a small set of those concepts, the teleological ones for example, and privilege them (while discarding the others) and then say that these concepts are themselves organized by a central concept of a theological sort. What I am committed to is the value of these second order concepts and the struggle between them in our own thinking and discourse. Take something like creativity . . . is the cosmos creative? Well, yes, but it is also destructive and these terms are inseparable; alongside creativity there is chaos and catastrophe. We need the theater of conflict in which these terms are the actors. Do we need a director of this play? Well, I don’t think that we do. But, we do need the theater. If someone says that she needs the word ‘God’ that is fine but I would then translate that into a statement about the need for there to be a stage on which these issues and levels of understanding get taken seriously. Simmons: Let me just extend the metaphor a bit more. Recently, there has been a debate internal to phenomenology that was largely inaugurated by Dominique Janicaud’s very critical account of the post-Heideggerian transition in phenomenology toward what seems to be a comfort with God-talk. This happens in the work of figures such as Levinas, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion, and Derrida among others. We

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could say that this expanding circle could then include such thinkers as Gianni Vattimo, Merold Westphal, John Caputo, Bruce Benson, and Jeffrey Bloechl. For Janicaud, to do phenomenology is to be closed off to talking about God. God is inappropriate as an object of phenomenological inquiry. Yet, for these proponents of “new phenomenology,” God becomes a topic of conversation in diverse ways. Marion’s discussions of givenness, Chretien’s conception of prayer, Levinas’s account of the Other, Henry’s discourse on Life, Lacoste’s expansive notion of liturgy, Derrida’s deployment of Justice, etc. can all be read as displaying some sort of “theological” overtone. In Vattimo, for example, we find long considerations of how kenosis is the key for understanding political emancipation in a nihilistic world. Seemingly, phenomenology has taken a “theological turn” or, as Hent De Vries will term it, a “turn to religion.” Do you see this development as a turn away from phenomenology, as does Janicaud, or do you simply see it as one possible way of constructing the theater of postHeideggerian inquiry? That is, it might be legitimately phenomenological, but it is not the way that you would advocate going forward. In other words, is this a fundamentally flawed theater or simply one that you simply have decided not to be an actor within? Wood: When I think about these questions I start out noticing that the God question can be posed from two different directions. I am not actually sure whether I prefer one direction more than the other. One direction would go something like this: We have these religious commitments whether we are Jews, Catholics, Protestants . . . Simmons: Or rightly pass as atheists? Wood: Oh, right. And that could take us into a brief discussion of Sartre’s extraordinary essay on Kierkegaard—the “Singular Individual.” Therein he says that Kierkegaard has taught him the importance of “becoming an atheist”. . . . If you start with faith and become a philosopher, then one of the questions that you will ask yourself is where can I park God? You have this concept, but as Kant says of a regulative idea, you can’t derive it from experience. So where do you park it? How do you connect it to your phenomenology? You could claim direct experience of God—that would do the trick, at a price. But,

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there seem to be all sorts of more plausible ways to answer that question— the idea of the holy, or the unknowable, unthinkable, the sublime, and all the various expressions of it offered by the thinkers that you mentioned above. What is happening here is that we are trying to give some sort of grounding for what turns up on the other side of the river as “God-language” or “Godtalk.” And I have nothing against that at all. This goes along with my sense that the relationship between philosophy and theology can be understand in the following way: At certain times in the history of philosophy, philosophy has refused to acknowledge or take seriously particular kinds of experience. I imagine philosophy as a homeowner who has a lot of stuff in the garage but doesn’t know what to do with it. So, he puts it out in the yard with a sign saying “free to a good home.” After dark, the theologians come by and take it all away, storing it in their homes until such time as philosophy realizes that it needs that stuff and wants it back. We have to knock on the door of the theologian and ask “can we please have some of that back?” At that point, we realize that we, illegitimately, excluded it in the first place. This reminds me of Hegel in the late 1790s when he thought that philosophy just doesn’t cut it, simply because philosophy only “cuts”—that is, it is only an analytical enterprise—and so in a world that cries out for healing, we need to call on the force of religion. In Christianity, Hegel found the idea of communion, community and so on. But then Hegel discovered dialectic, and dropped primitive Christianity to return to a philosophy offering new tools. With this sort of second stage philosophy (not only analytical, but also dialectical), he stitches the broken world back up together again, synthesizing connections instead of just being left with the rubble of history. I am saying that the relation between philosophy and theology waxes and wanes with the capacity of philosophy to take seriously the experiences that it tends to exclude or, at least periodically, has excluded. Of course, what I want to have happen—and here I am really very close to Derrida—is that whatever we might want to call ‘discourse’ or ‘philosophy,’ what matters is not the label, but how we understand thinking, the shape of thinking, the direction of thinking, the point of thinking to be. And that, in a sense, is where I use the expression “the step back” or “negative capability” in my own work. The point of philosophizing is to acknowledge and to activate those marginal seams—those boundary situations, those moments of undecidability—in such a way that you don’t just resolve those situations and tie

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them off in a neat bow, but that you find ways of permanently activating what is in play there. Here we can ask a strategic question: does “God-talk” mobilize the resources available in these moments or close them down? And how can we best accentuate difficulty and vibrancy, while steering clear of the sclerotic tendency? Simmons: This reminds me of something I have often heard you say—‘God is trouble.’ It seems like this phrase functions as a possible way of hearing God-talk activate this call for contestation, interruption, and even constant critique. Wood: Yes, consider the question “What is Jesus for?” Is he there to save me? And from what? For me it would have to be to save me from complacency; from being deaf, dumb and blind to the poor, the sick and the hopeless. That is what I mean. It is not that God is trouble, God should be trouble. This is a bit unfair, but I think that as soon as God starts holding your hand and says that everything you are doing is fine and I am with you in your complacency then the game is up. Simmons: This seems to echo Kierkegaard’s contestation of “the Established Church” in his attempt to “bring Christianity to Christendom.” Wood: Indeed, and his grasp of how close we are to despair is important too. In castigating the God of complacency, I don’t want to be thought to be cruel. There are of course times when it seems impossible to go forward or to know why you are even alive. There are times when you weigh your own resources and ask how you can carry on given the situation that you are in, or your friends are in, or your town is in, or your race is in. Why not simply despair? In that situation, God is not trouble, but hope and possibility. I am really interested in the almost Feuerbachian thought, (with all the attending ambiguities given that Feuerbach did not take himself to be an atheist but thought himself in an odd way to be promoting God), that the relation to the other is a virtual relation that is empowering even when there is no Other. Imagine that you are shipwrecked on a desert island and you believe, on the basis of false evidence, that you are going to be rescued in exactly a month, but you only have enough

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food to last three weeks. Nonetheless, you hang on, and by chance someone actually turns up. I am saying that the structure of faith is independent of the existence of its object and is deeply wired, not only genetically, into what it is to be human. Our brains are essentially connected devices. Like the absurdity of a lone cell-phone, it just doesn’t make any sense to omit this connectedness. I see religious belief as a potent and accurate expression of that hard-wired relatedness. Simmons: It is difficult to hear your account of what we might call a “structure without an object” without thinking of the Derridean notions of “religion without religion” and a “messianism without a messiah.” Wood: Right. Simmons: But what is interesting about Derrida, and also the account that you are providing here, is that the move to structures without objects is more accurately a question about the “without” rather than a dogmatic assertion of it. For Derrida, these questions arise at the same place in his authorship when he makes moves towards questions of the political. “Messianism” is prominent, for example, in Derrida’s Specters of Marx in which he interrogates the ideas of hope and expectation that we have inherited from Marx’s own vision. However, despite this discussion of political life, deconstruction is often charged with speaking a lot about ethics and politics, but failing to provide any sort of clear model for how to move forward in social life. As Richard Rorty might say, Derrida doesn’t seem to help us in the project of “making tomorrow better than today.” Perhaps it gives us a certain kind of political theory, but it seems very far removed from anything that could be considered a public policy. Can the messianistic impulse yield an immigration policy, or a cap and trade system, or a plan for health care, etc.? How do you see this shift from theory to practice, or from words to action from within a deconstructive framework? Wood: I would start by pointing out that when we talk about public policy we are talking about the future. What is possible? And we are always talking about what might be possible in the face of the way things are and our fears

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of how they might continue. Then there are these questions that get recycled in objections to deconstruction that what we want may seem impossible, or utopian, or that it is hard to see how we could get there. Simmons: So at the same time it is utopian and nihilistic. Both options are two sides of the same coin of resignation and quietism. Wood: Yes. And there is another dimension of this that Derrida doesn’t directly take up, but it becomes pretty clear whenever you engage in political action, which is whether it makes sense for me to act not knowing whether other people are going to join in. That then opens up a number of different dimensions of how to admit of a certain kind of incompleteness of knowledge, assurance, and guarantee. First, whether what we want is really possible given the present situation. Second, whether when I act enough other people will act in concert to actually bring about the change. Third, whether when we think about what we want, we are tempted to direct ourselves towards achieving an end-state which, once realized, will allow us to go back to sleep. Most conceptions of utopia are static or problematically self-replicating. But, when you see that this doesn’t work, you have to imagine a “goal” that, for those reasons, would not be achievable. Or, put another way, to achieve what we intended, what we achieve would need to be dynamic rather than simply repetitive. When you put these considerations together something like a “democracy to come” begins to make sense. When Derrida talks about democracy to come, he is not talking about a future democracy that will be made present. It is not a future present that could be achieved. Derrida calls this the im-possible. By impossible, Derrida means at least something that, although it can’t be realized, can always be that in relation to which something that is realized can still be measured or judged, and so on. Although he doesn’t want to call it a regulative idea; however, he is somewhat ambivalent about this. Sometimes he accepts that it is not that far from a regulative idea, but he makes clear that he does not want the architectonic baggage that accompanies this notion in Kant. The point that I am trying to get at is that it is not simply that there might not be enough people acting along with me (the free rider problem, for example), but also whether action, my action, my agency is the center of all this, or whether it is also necessary to have a certain faith. I once asked Al Gore how he gets

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up in the morning and continues to believe, given all the doubts that he has about being successful. His answer was that “I believe that what we fear in climate change—namely reaching an irreversible tipping point—is also true in political life as well.” Your actions, small though they might seem, might just make the difference. And if you don’t act then you might be responsible for it happening when it might not have. The notion of the democracy to come presents us with these key problems, issues, and questions: (1) we don’t actually know what actions will make a difference,(2) we don’t actually know whether others will join or follow us, (3) we don’t know if our own powers are going to be sufficient, and (4) we don’t know what will happen. And there are other unknowns. Let me give you an example of that from a conference that I am organizing “Giving Voice to Other Beings.” [15] The frame of that conference is something like the realization that we don’t actually believe that we could have a parliament of other creatures in which they could actually speak or be properly represented. Simmons: We don’t live in Narnia. Wood: We don’t live in Narnia. Nonetheless, we do have some kind of idea of what it would be to listen to, or to respond to, or to acknowledge, or to give voice to, all the creatures of the planet—without knowing quite what that would mean. You might say that this will be very difficult, or that it would be impossible, or that it would let too many cats out of the bag, or open too many cans of worms. What on earth would this mean? That is democracy to come. I don’t even know what I mean by this, but I do know that there is something anticipated in this project that would be unending and unrealizable, but still points in the right direction. Simmons: Could we say that expectation is active? Wood: Yes. It is active, creative and responsive and it opens a certain trajectory of engagements whose shape is not determined from the outset. That is a good example of how you could understand this sense of expecting something without the expectation that it will happen. You open yourself to the possibility of something coming.

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Simmons: It like a phenomenological filling-in of the age-old adage to “expect the unexpected.” Wood: It is a filling-in and an opening-up. It is a celebration of possibilities and an activation of one’s orientation toward those possibilities that are not definable . . . completely. Simmons: Let me ask one more question in this same vein. Regarding the conference “Giving Voice to Other Beings,” you can imagine someone saying that as a result of this conference we should get together and advocate a policy to make vegetarianism the official commitment of the American government, say. Surely this could be one of those unexpected horizons towards which we should strive. Wood: Yes, but we might perhaps start with our local university campus. Simmons: Granted. Nonetheless, elsewhere you have said that “vegetarianism is deconstruction” and we might hear this as a call for a specific possibility for public policy. But, then we could also imagine someone responding to this call for vegetarianism by asking, “why should we be committed to this vision?” The conference participants might reply, “Given certain premises . . .” and the imagined interlocutor jumps in and says, “No, why should we even take ourselves up as having these sorts of relationships to other beings? Why should we care about their voices? Why not simply affirm a strong notion of ethics that begins from humanism that sees every other relation as derivative?” In other words, I am wondering how one justifies such a commitment to an expansive, deconstructive vision of relationality rather than a narrowly humanistic one, say? How does one stand in the public square and appeal to reasons that will be recognized by non-deconstructionists? This is series of questions that I don’t think are asked frequently enough in continental discussions of ethics and politics. Post-Rawlsians political philosophers are very good at considering this topic, but post-Derrideans tend to avoid it. Wood: Well, let me try out a few lines of response to typical arguments that lead in the direction you are headed. Kantians, for example, believe that there

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is some sort of inner connection between rights and duties and you just can’t attribute rights to a being that doesn’t also have duties. I think that this is a logical mistake. Rights and duties are indeed conceptually connected, but that does not require a connection between a particular object of rights and subject of duties. This is crystal clear when you think about babies and the insane and so on—who have rights but not duties. If you then say, “yes but they belong to a species which (...)” this is, in my view, just speciesist prejudice, a bad philosophical argument that rests nonetheless on a truth. There is a connection between rights and duties but it doesn’t have to be realized in any particular case. Just as we have duties to recognize the rights of children we can have duties to nonhuman animals without then demanding that they have duties to us. Next, and you can see this in Kant, Levinas, and probably in Heidegger, it is said that animals can’t speak, that they don’t have language, and hence there is something radically different about them which disqualifies them from being proper moral objects. But let’s take Heidegger for a minute. Heidegger doesn’t understand the essence of language to be the uttering of words, but is rather wrapped up with the disclosedness of truth—grasping things as such, as beings. This is something, which humans are able to do and nonhumans cannot do. His example would be that the lizard lies on the rock but does not grasp the rock as a rock. But this is totally question-begging. Does the human bather lying on the rock grasp the rock as a rock? In what sense? Does she need a degree in crystallography? I don’t think so. There is a beautiful poem “The Lizard” by Theodore Roethke in which he asks whether the terrace belongs to me or to the lizard. He says that it belongs to the lizard. “Belongs?” This is property! Simmons: Property rights for lizards? Wood: Yes, and some will insist that property surely begins with the law. I would turn it the other way around. The law doesn’t just begin with legislation, but with the idea of a home. And if you can’t see that this terrace is the lizard’s home, then you are blind. “Home” here is not just a metaphor. That is where the lizard lives. You could respond that we just apply the notion of “home” derivatively when we talk of the fox in its den. I would say that it is almost exactly the other way around. It is pretty clear that the fox has its den, the

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rabbit has its burrow, and the bird has its nest. It is not as if we have our suburban house and then somehow the bird gets its nest as an extension of a sense of home that we have invented out of nothing. That would be crazy. Simmons: Could it be that the law actually reflects the fact that we begin with an understanding of the relationships of animals to their place and then extend this to our own conception of human sociality? Wood: Yes. Heidegger says that we have a capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of others and that we do this as humans constitutively—being-with. But, I want to say that it is not as humans that we do that, but that it is just as likely as mammals that we do it. When you look at the deer walking through the woods, you don’t have to say, “Hmmm—I walk with two feet and it is a bit like a human walking with four feet and I will just transpose . . .” No. You look at it without analogy. You can see what is going on. Simmons: Are you appealing to something like a deconstructive version of moral intuitionism? If someone doesn’t “see” this fact about the deer or fox immediately, is it that something has gone wrong in her mammality? Or is it that something has failed about hersociality? Wood: Well there are various senses of failure. There are psychopaths who fail to transpose even to other humans. And yet the capacity for a certain emotional distance is one of the extraordinary achievements of human beings. In war, for example, we somehow can flip into this. And we do this with animals in all kinds of contexts. We are very grateful that surgeons can do this, however. They must not feel. If they did, then they couldn’t cut in and heal people. These are all value-laden terms, but I think that there is a real empirical basis for what can turn into a pathological capacity. We have whole institutions based on this capacity to allow suffering. We have seen this recently with torture scenarios in American politics. In The Animal That Therefore I Am, Derrida speaks of a general war on pity conducted against non-human animals on this planet. It would be hard to describe this absence of affect simply as a ‘failure.’ It seems rather to be a successful way of allowing certain kinds of institutional violence to continue. But maintaining this anesthetic wall is not easy. I have said that

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Heidegger’s claim that the animal doesn’t relate to things as such, is question begging. And Heidegger himself is clearly troubled with this. He talks about the abyss between oneself and the animal and yet refers to the appalling proximity between myself and the body of the animal. He continues to talk about the infinite difficulty of thinking this through. The claim that the lizard doesn’t grasp the rock as such rests on a very narrow sense of what “grasping it as such” means. The lizard doesn’t have a conception of “rock.” But what does that mean? That the lizard doesn’t know what rocks are? That he always reduces it to “sleeping place?” Well, who knows? There might be certain kinds of worms that creep up on that rock. Couldn’t it be that the lizard thinks that the rock is good for sleeping and for worms? Must it always be connected to a particular function? I don’t know, but Heidegger can’t rule this out. Derrida makes this point against Heidegger regarding death as such. As we have seen, Heidegger is not talking about language in the sense of making squawks, but in the sense of disclosure . . . Simmons: In the sense of projecting a horizon of meaning? Wood: Right. Look at Heidegger’s discussion of Rilke and the “open.” In fact it is an open that is circumscribed by an “inhibiting ring,” a capacity within a certain space to respond to stimuli. Well, this is a model that we have of the animal. To circle back to your question, if we look at Levinas again (and along with my friend John Llewelyn), I would make the following argument: When Levinas talks about the “face-to-face” he is not talking about an actual face, but rather the face is a cipher for the ethical significance of the Other. The shoulder would do. Perhaps even a shadow would do. The question of whether the animal has a face is a dumb question. Levinas thinks that the dog has a face, but is unsure of whether a snake has a face. One has to think that there is some Biblical baggage here. It is not that when we look at a snake we really wonder if it has a face. Rather we wonder whether we are able to connect with it. He ends up saying that the snake doesn’t have language. And just as Heidegger doesn’t require particular squawks as a proof of language, neither does Levinas. The issue is not whether they can speak, but whether they can engage, existentially if you like, in what is at stake in language. And that then raises the question Derrida asks of whether a cat can address me.

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Simmons: Or, can a cat see me naked? Wood: Well, let me set that aside for a moment. I want to focus on those modes of performativity that we attach to language—can it address me, ask for something, insist on something. The answer is absolutely yes in all these categories. You would have to be La Mettrie or Descartes to say that the cat can’t ask to be let in, or insist on being fed. This language seems to appropriately apply and if these conceptions are central to language then Levinas doesn’t have a leg to stand on, as it were, when he denies language to the animal other. Now if you take these sorts of arguments to legitimate my response about relations to humans and non-humans, then these arguments actually look to be just speciesist re-inscriptions of humanism by another name. Our ‘failure’ to grasp directly a certain intimate connectedness with the deer in the forest is no simple lapse, nor the refined capacity for distance of a surgeon, it is a deeply embedded reflection of what Wittgenstein called a ‘form of life’ which, as we witness massive terrestrial species loss, may yet prove to be pathological in a strong sense. This is some sort of philosophical justification for the sort of deconstructive position I advocate. Simmons: So we are justified because we have good arguments? Wood: No, no. I am not saying that we should do this because we have good arguments, but that these arguments are ways of capturing our moral intuitions. When you are brought in front of these intuitions they are pretty hard to deny. Of course you can deny them. Simmons: The psychopath is always possible. Wood: It is not just the psychopath. Not every hunter is a psychopath. They might have been brought up that way and possess a complicated fabric of beliefs and feelings according to which this practice makes sense. Nonetheless, that practice might turn out to be bio- or eco-pathological, as I have suggested. Simmons: In our conversation today, you have, in various ways, stressed the importance of a critical interruption or challenge on the one hand and a hope

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for a different future on the other. This might be termed a critical vision in the sense of a critical engagement that opens new visions of how to move forward. In light of this, I am interested in how we might then apply this to the state of contemporary philosophy. With the death of Derrida some might argue that there are other thinkers and texts that are extremely important, but that there is something of a clearing out of continental philosophy in which new possibilities confront us. Viewed negatively we might term this a philosophical vacuum, but viewed positively we might term it the dawn of a new day. Given the unbelievable succession of interlocutors in the conversation that is the history of twentieth century continental philosophy, what do you see as the state of continental philosophy now? And, where do you see it going? What is your “critical vision” of/for continental philosophy? Wood: We are fortunate to have people like you who will continue these traditions. Simmons: Well, at least continue it in continuing to be concerned about these questions. Wood: Yes, and this is such a complicated issue. I wrote an essay in the late 1980s entitled “The Future of Continental Philosophy”2 and I almost got drummed out of the ‘continental’ community as a result. (Not really.) I argued that the future of continental philosophy lay in giving itself up. Not to analytic philosophy, but to pursue its questions in a receptive relation to other traditions. This did not go down well with some people. I got attacked by my friends who said that I didn’t understand the history of SPEP (The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) and the struggles that they had been through. It is like someone from Kenya coming to America and saying that the black guys should stop thinking about slavery. Simmons: That is an interesting example considering the current presidential race in which Barack Obama, a Kenyan-Kansan, who sees a different way forward and is being called to the mat by many leaders from the civil rights movement who claim that he doesn’t understand the history of the struggle.

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Wood: Yes, the claim was that I didn’t see that continental philosophy was under attack, that the dominant (analytic) tradition would just as soon squeeze us out of existence and that the suggestion of any sort of assimilation was suicide. It is only by claiming some sort of determinacy of our own that we could survive. Simmons: Isn’t that close to saying that only if we maintain our status as victims—as marginalized—that we preserve our voice? It sounds to me like this could be self-defeating except in certain historical contexts. The better strategy seems to be claiming that continental philosophy is now, legitimately, part of the philosophical conversation rather than simply continuing to occupy the status of an unwanted sibling. Isn’t it time to move forward in conversations about engagement rather than conversations of competition? Wood: The question is whether peace can be declared by one side. If the lamb puts down its arms in the presence of the wolf, the wolf may just eat it. This is what they were worried about, and I think, given the political situation, they may have been right. But I was also calling for a certain self-criticism. There is barren scholarship everywhere. And there is both productive and also unproductive continental and analytic philosophy. I was trying to say: let’s cut the cake, in terms of quality, while at the same time recognizing the distinctive importance of tradition and developing conversations between traditions through history. Although, even what conversation and dialogue look like maybe problematic. Analytic philosophy certainly tended to privilege the latest paper and its conversation would only go back a few years at most. If, when I write about Heidegger, I draw on the whole history of philosophy since the pre-Socratics, and you are referring to a few key journal articles, it looks as if we have a stand-off about the very terms and shape of a dialogue. On the one side it can seem like we have the authority of tradition and on the other side we have light footed, nimble, lawyer types. That does set up a kind of differend and a difficulty for easy engagement. Fortunately, there is a lot more middle ground. A good example is the recent collection Philosophy and Animal Life3 , which makes much of the traditional philosophical divide seem antiquated.

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Simmons: Do you think that part of the tradition that needs passed on to the next generation of continental philosophers are these obstacles to dialogue? Or, does there need to be room in continental philosophy for it to start looking different from what it has been over the past few decades? Isn’t this an example of a way in which the notion of the democracy to come seems to demand continental philosophy not be bound by its own tradition, but receive it as a challenge to move on towards new spaces of thought and practice? Wood: Well, I have two lines of thought here. One would be to stress the distinctiveness of the European tradition as opposed to the American. One perhaps weird example I could give you would be public environmental policy. There are real differences in how people think about environmental policy indifferent countries and this largely has to do with the difference between the individualistic, neo-liberal line of thought so prevalent in America and the more communitarian, social-justice based orientation in European thought. I am grateful for the fact that Europeans in general have protected their philosophical legacy and I begin to get worried when Europeans, not only philosophers, but motorists, and consumers, slide towards a more liberal orientation in philosophy. There will be more SUV’s on the road, and more obesity in the general population (and perhaps in thinking itself!). Currently, all of these are on the rise in Europe and it looks as if they will be increasingly prominent. In sum, I would rather see a certain tradition maintained in order for there to be productive dialogue between traditions than see a convergence that eliminates the distinctions. Secondly, Derrida once said that he thought that his peers from the1960s had never properly been read. I have to say that I agree with him although it may seem in some ways very parochial view to stress figures such as Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, Althusser, (and Derrida), and I may seem false—surely these guys have been read and read again! Nonetheless, I believe they were really revolutionary figures and that they opened a window of extraordinary creativity and fertility. Heidegger once said that German Idealism was never refuted, but that the German people just weren’t ready for it. In a way, I think that the 1960shave not been refuted, but that the world just wasn’t quite prepared for them. I am tempted to generalize and repeat the move that Derrida makes in The Specters of Marx with other figures that have “died.” They may have died, but if they went to heaven we are now awaiting their return.

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Simmons: Only an angel can save us now. Wood: I am not saying that we should feed on corpses, that only the dead are great. We need to see the great among us. How many German philosophers thought highly of Heidegger while he was alive? Not many. I don’t see any sort of theoretic deficit at the moment. There is a whole lot of stuff still being worked through. Simmons: So you are hopeful? Wood: Yes, but I would not deny that, as Sartre put it, les choses sont contre nous. Hope is largely independent of the facts. People distinguish between being optimistic and being hopeful. I am certainly hopeful in ways that reflect what we have discussed about the to-come and our inability to control the future. Nonetheless, we have a duty to imagine, await and facilitate the unexpected and the unpredictable. This is why I am fascinated by Heidegger’s Beiträge, [21] a text written in wake of his recognition that he had put his money on the wrong number when it came to Hitler. He talks about the need to prepare the way. When I first read this I thought that it was so weak; I don’t want to just prepare the way, I want to build something and make something happen! But in terms of our contribution to history and the emancipation of humans and other creatures, I really do think that history throws up moments, forks in the path, and whether a certain way has been prepared for may make all the difference as to whether we go that way or another way. So, preparing the way can be the causal precondition for something happening and it is far from being a weak, secondrate strategy. Simmons: We are all John the Baptist? Wood: Yes, we are all in the position of inaugurating the possibility of something happening. Simmons: As a way of concluding then, let me ask you to say something on the event of having been interviewed. At the intersection of the interview’s being past and the reception of it being yet to come, how do you envision the task of the interview here at this moment, where you/we are?

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Wood: Self-understanding can seem like a turning inward of the searchlights of the mind and then reflecting upon what we see there. But no one really sees that as an adequate model. A much more powerful source of self-understanding is conversation and interaction. Consider one’s engagement with the world in general and conversation with one’s friends. In casual conversation, people often just tell you what you want to hear. It is not aimed at discovery. As Heidegger4 says, we pass the word along. What is so interesting about an interview is that even when you are being thrown some juicy bones that prompt the rearticulation of existing thoughts, it is a real opportunity to think through things anew. An interview might be thought to be like squeezing a bottle to see what is in there. But, at least in this case, it is not like that at all. Rather, each question is a chance to think though something afresh. That means that the process of self-understanding is being dramatically accelerated by the significant Other actually addressing you and returning to you, with a twist, the things that you think. Simmons: As Levinas makes clear, real dialogue only occurs when there is the possibility of surprise. Wood: Right. That is what is so interesting about responding to questions that one has not anticipated. Even the idea of self-understanding is not just an understanding of the self, but is a kind of understanding that puts the limits of self in question. An interview is a bit like Gadamer’s conception of art and play in which you are drawn out into a space in which you are not just yourself, but you are swimming around noticing the limits of selfhood while dealing with the relationships between selfhood and issues that are bigger than you. I have no doubt that this interview will have an impact on my subsequent thinking about things and maybe even on what others think that I am doing. So, this moment of intense presence will have a future which will itself be folded back into future presents. It is an intriguing educational event. It draws out . . . no, it does more than just draw out, it generates stuff that was never there. When you ask me [?]

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Notes 1. Yellow Bird is an artist’s retreat, nature preserve, and nascent sculpture park in central Tennessee run by David Wood. 2. David Wood, “Translating the Differences: The Futures of Continental Philosophy,” in Writing the Politics of Difference, ed. Hugh J. Silverman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 291–296. 3. Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John MCreston Davisowell, Ian Hacking, and Cary Wolfe, Philosophy and Animal Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 4. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, From Enowning, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

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Spooky Noises: Ghosts in the Music Machine of Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) Paul D. Miller, DJ Spooky, Thirsty Ear Records Joshua Delpech-Ramey, Haverford College

Fetishized as a commodity, music is illustrative of the evolution of our entire society: deritualize a social form, repress an activity of the body, specialize its practice, sell it as a spectacle, generalize its consumption, then see to it that it is stockpiled until it loses its meaning. Today, music heralds—regardless of what the property mode of capital will be—the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore. But at the same time, it heralds the emergence of a formidable subversion, one leading to a radically new organization never yet theorized, of which self-management is but a distant echo.1 In the years since the dot-com crash, analyses of cyberculture and digital media have begun to reveal—beyond the initially hyperbolic utopianism and apocalyptic portents—both a more profound set of social potentials and a deeper set of political, economic, and even spiritual ambiguities. Digital music in particular has become a flashpoint for both despair and hope. There is despair over the stranglehold that monopolistic capital continues to maintain over content, copyright, and there is hope that in music a “radically new organization” of exchange and creativity (through file sharing and collective composition) may yet be breaking through. The above quotation, which describes our current situation so well, was penned in 1977. It is from Jacques Attali’s Bruits: essai sur l’ économie politique de la musique (translated in 1985 as Noise: The Political Economy of Music), a text as provocative today as it was when it first appeared. Attali’s thesis was that music has an essential and dynamic relationship to noise, such that what can only be heard as noise in one historical moment is the harbinger of what will be heard as music in the moment forthcoming. But what Attali means by noise is at once musical and political. For Attali, music as a means of sign-production has an eminently social function. Music is no

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simple dimension of the ideological dimension traditional Marxism reduced to a mere “superstructure” of cultural activity (as opposed to the hard facts of political economy, the “substructure”). For Attali music has a prophetic function of revealing the future shape of political economic organization: as the noise in music is, the sound of society will be. In fact, Attali argues, since political economy is itself a form of coding, an act of establishing or assigning value, insofar as music also assigns value and orders noise, music is essentially a form of power. Thus sound is not accidentally but essentially important to state formations. Attali writes, More than colors and forms, it is sounds and their arrangements that fashion societies. With noise is born disorder and its opposite: subversion . . . . All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power center to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all its forms. Therefore, any theory of power today must include a theory of the localization of noise and its endowment with form . . . Equivalent to the articulation of a space, it indicates the limits of a territory and the way to make oneself heard within it, how to survive by drawing one’s sustenance from it . . . to listen, to memorize—this is the ability to interpret and control history, to manipulate the culture of a people, to channel its violence and hopes. Who among is us free of the feeling that this process, taken to an extreme, is turning the modern state into a gigantic, monopolizing noise emitter, and at the same time, a generalized eavesdropping device. Eavesdropping on what? In order to silence whom? The answer, clear and implacable, is given by the theorists of totalitarianism. They have all explained, indistinctly, that it is necessary to ban subversive noise because it betokens demands for cultural autonomy, support for differences or marginality: a concern for maintaining tonalism, the primacy of melody, a distrust of new languages, codes, or instruments, a refusal of the abnormal—these characteristics are common to all regimes of that nature.2 As Noise unfolds, Attali traces how reproductive technologies—from written music to sound recordings—tend towards an impossible yet dialectically necessary objective: the silencing of noise. Dialectically, the suppression and control of noise finally gives rise, in the twentieth century, to a subversive and

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noisy music, a violent music intended to counteract the violence done to music (and to society) by the censors of noise. Attali posits that in the early twentieth century, the rise of a record industry that could normalize and administer society by organizing and standardizing sound prophesies a coming era in which all sound would be reduced to manageable data. The book also uncannily anticipates the way in which, by the late 1980’s, “alternative” subgenres and subversive counter-cultures, from punk to death metal, and from hip hop to jungle and trance, would be overcoded and confined to their appropriate places within the market. But even more uncanny is how Attali’s text seems also to anticipate the “listening” that it is now possible for state power to do through the internet, from the potential surveillance machine that sites like MySpace and Facebook can become, to the possibility, already realized, for search engines such as Google to become sources of information about citizen activity. In Noise, Attali foresaw that as record sales would come to dominate the possibility of making a living as a musician, the space of performance would become less and less important, and that the interior or virtual spaces of music—the multiple indexes of music’s now-digitized existence—would take on more and more significance, both aesthetically and economically. Perhaps the ultimate evidence for this cooptation of noised is the fact that probably the most important indicator of a piece of music’s popularity is its function as a ring-tone, a private command to participate in the cartels that profit from meaningless global interconnectedness. Attali’s argument thus anticipated how recording technologies would enable the apparatus of state and capital power to penetrate our physical bodies to the point at which anonymous technologies can map and mirror and predict our “preferences.” As Attali foresaw, it is increasingly the case that people compose music in relative isolation, at electronic consoles and in front of their computers, and that in the listening stages, music is heard, for the most part, in the private club of one’s own headphones. And it is arguable that despite its potentially democratizing and subversive potentials, the internet tends to perpetuate social alienation—not so much because it further isolates us from others (although it does), but because it encourages the formation of monadic cliques centered around shared tastes or shared fetish systems. The visibility of these cliques and micro-connections of desire makes our microfascist surveillance and control ever more feasible.3

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One of the most interesting aspects of Attali’s analysis is his reading of the diminishing power of music to make and subvert borders. Whereas in earlier moments, especially the high medieval era, music permeated work and festivals and street life, and music would have had to be noisy enough to compete with the other noises around it, over time there is an increase of silence around music. Attali traces how music first went from the noise of sacrificial rituals, street fairs, and religious festivals into the quieter spaces of the court, the homes of the bourgeoisie, the controlled environment of concert halls, and finally onto records (and now into data processors). Even today, when society makes room for loud concerts, the walls of the thumping clubs are soundproofed to protect the neighbors from noise pollution, or have been cloistered into warehouse districts, out of sight and out of mind areas of urban industrial wasteland. In all this, for Attali, what is silenced is not so much music itself as music’s message to society. But in the end this trend is nothing new, since music is a message that can only be passed as noise, as the viral contagion by music and in music of that which is not yet intelligible or recognizable to society. If noise is violence, the displacement of noise outside music (and outside society) is a repression that manifests in as much undirected violence as it does in “noise pollution,” from airplanes and industry to the sounds of war. If the form of future political economy is transmitted not by music but by noise, then although there is more music “out there” than ever before, there is also ever more silence, because the methods of distribution and even the right to hear music (even on your own Ipod©) are ever more rigidly controlled. But Attali was not a doomsday prophet. He did not prophesy the end of music or of society, but saw the history of the commodification of music as a revelation of the potentials and ambiguities of an unfolding capitalist situation. And Attali imagined an authentic and subversive mode of music making that would emerge from within what he called our “repetitive” society. This musicmaking would be a “composing” that, as opposed to mere reproduction and blank repetition, would be a new way of linking music and pleasure. Composing would spontaneous, local, and subversive of the demands of professional standardization and marketplace requirements. Writing in the mid-1970’s, Attali did not offer many specific examples of successful acts of composing. But he saw the Rolling Stones and John Cage as “the liquidation of the old,”

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and as “announcing the void, voicing insufficience, refusing recuperation.”4 Susan McClary, writing an “Afterword” in 1985, pointed to late 1970s and early 1980s New Wave as a genuine movement of composing. (McClary also highlighted the ambiguities of the fame those in the movement garnered).5 Yet the New Wave movement, even insofar as it eventually was co-opted into the mainstream, had profound and lasting effects on the possibilities for making and performing music, from the collaborations between Philip Glass and various dance and theatre groups to the performance art possibilities captured by artists like Lori Anderson. There was much emergent at the time of Noise that Attali did not perceive but somehow sensed evolving around him. (Attali makes no mention of Jamaican dub, for instance—emerging yet still very much underground in 1977).6 In a way, it might seem that the digital era would be the realization of Attali’s dream for revolutionary promise of composing, since software and the internet place not only the music but the means of making, recording, and distributing music directly into the hands of composers. And yet Attali seems acutely and prophetically aware of the ambiguities that the apparent “democratization” of the means of music might represent, even in a fully digital age that would not come until years after the publication of Noise. Attali writes, of the coming era of “composing,” in which everyone can be a creator (or perhaps where “you” are Time magazine’s person of the year)7: Music is no longer made to be represented or stockpiled, but for participation in collective play, in an ongoing quest for new, immediate communication, without ritual and always unstable. It becomes nonreproducible, irreversible. “If we compose music, we are also composed by history, by situations that constantly challenge us” (L. Berio). Music is ushering in a new age. Should we read this emergence as the herald of a liberation from exchange-value, or only of the emplacement of a new trap for music and its consumers, that of automanipulation? The answer to these questions, I think, depends upon the radicality of the experiment. Inducing people to compose using predefined instruments cannot lead to a mode of production different from that authorized by those instruments. That is the trap. The trap of false liberation through the distribution to each individual of the instruments of his own alienation, tools for self-sacrifice, both monitoring and monitored.8

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That Subliminal Kid Are there digital experiments radical enough to break with the traps of automanipulation? Or is the digital age simply exposing, as Slavoj Žižek and others have worried, the elements of our innermost fantasies to total control by state power? Into these ambiguities enters Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Drawing on a vast array of influences, from William S. Burroughs to the Jamaican dub masters, Spooky is a black conceptual artist who works in the medium of sound.9 Since 2004’s Rhythm Science, Miller has championed sampling as simultaneously time travel, gnosis, and a spiritual path through the digital age he is willing to dub “digital dharma.”10 I originally studied Miller’s Rhythm Science in the context of teaching a course at Villanova University in 2006, Philosophy of Contemporary Music, in which I also taught Attali’s Noise. I was struck by Rhythm Science’s manifesto for the compositional powers of sampling, and for how it both continued and diversified the possibilities of the “black electronic” that emerged in Jamaican dub and extended into Afrikaa Bambataa, Grandmaster Flash, Chuck D., and into the underground electronic scenes that began to flourish with the rise of new technologies in the early 1990s.11 Miller’s own music is cut-up art that uses sounds as images to create travelogues of the virtual. Spooky is not trying to make us dance, at least not physically. But he is trying to let us travel through the as-yet-unexplored regions of virtual space opened up by the resources of forgotten or over-coded sounds. Early in 2008, I proposed to interview Miller by having him respond both to my questions and to some key texts of Attali’s Noise. The following is a transcription of that interview, conducted via email in the fall of 2008. Following the transcript of the interview I try to articulate some of what I see as the promise of Spooky’s noise as a technique of composing, in Attali’s sense. Delpech-Ramey: In Noise, Jacques Attali lays down some lines that seem eerily prophetic about the way in which music might become complicit in totalitarian info-regimes. He writes, of the age of “repetition” in which we now live, Taking the analogy further, we might say that the listener in front of his record player is now only the solitary spectator of a sacrificial

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vestige. Doubtless, a hereditary memory of the process preserves music’s power of community, even when it is heard in solitude. But the disappearance of the ceremony, and even the sacrificial spectacle, destroys the entire logic of the process: there is no longer a closed arena of sacrifice, the ritual or the concert hall. The threat of murder is everywhere present. Like power, it slips into homes, threatening each individual wherever he may be. Music, violence, power are no longer localized in institutions. When this happens, music can no longer affirm that society is possible. It repeats the memory of another society—even while culminating in its liquidation—a society in which it had meaning. In the disappearance of the channeling sacrifice and the emergence of repetition, it heralds the threat of the return of the essential violence. Thus, from whatever dimension we approach it, music in our societies is tied to the threat of death.12   Do you think that rhythm science as you and others practice it can help affirm that “society is possible”?  Are you at all concerned about the diffusive character of virtual space, which, since inhabited by anonymous users, may also be inviting the kind of random violence that Attali fears is the logical outcome of the era of repetition?   Miller: We live in an era that writers as diverse as Edward Said and Salman Rushdie have posited as moving into a multipolar, fractured world of overlapping forms of governance and finance. Let’s think of it as a kind of polyphony, where political issues refract off of the surface of our deeply interconnected, multi-segmented market driven culture. What’s the soundtrack to that? How does music map this kind of complex terrain? It’s hard to think of anything that cannot be a reflection of the deep structural changes that are going on now, and to see how music relates that to whether or not we can think of what one of my favorite writers, J.G. Ballard liked to call “myths of the near future.” “Virtual space” is something akin to what Antonin Artaud liked to call the “symbolic theater”—if you look to the root of “drama” it simply comes from the Greek “dran”—“to do, act, or perform.” We now live in an information economy: there is no question about that. But when we think of society’s norms for cultural production, we still have a lot of

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overlapping frames of reference, and I think that sampling is a good mirror to hold up to that kind of situation. My works are inter-related to looking at how that kind of multiplicity of perspective is the hidden architecture of the early twenty-first century. How do we “do, act, or perform” information? One of my current film projects is a remix of D.W. Griffith’s film “Birth of a Nation” from 1915. But the idea for the new film’s appropriation of the original is: “director as dj.” I think that the main thing artists and theoreticians need to be aware of is this—for the twenty-first century it’s all about convergence of form: you have to think that multimedia is absorbing ALL previous modes of production—including identity. The trailer for the film [can be found at the following]: http://www.djspooky.com/art/rebirth.php. I think of the film as a metaphor for this kind of confusion, and it resonates with some of the issues that you mention with Attali and repetition. For me, it’s time to hit the reset button on digital culture. Who should be able to tell you where and when you can play music back (in clubs or in public spaces, in Europe this is problematic!): the answer—you should! Who owns your credit card code: not you! Are we all digital sharecroppers? One could argue that our current financial crisis says: yes! Open source systems are all about integrating unexpected developments, and I think that music is a preset scenario for getting people to think about the absence of many of the things that the twentieth century took for granted. Musicians who I think really have explored this kind of copyright/open system music—Nine Inch Nails, Saul Williams, Radiohead, Matthew Herbert, Jeff Chang, Mad Professor, E-lp, Girltalk ... I really think that there are a lot more people who are into this kind of thing, but who don’t have the tools to be able to explore what’s going on. Like people say in the U.S. military—freedom isn’t free! Let’s reverse engineer that phrase and see what pops out of the remix. So when you think about Griffith’s work you can see some of the issues that drive conceptualists like Attali—Griffith’s innovations: he pioneered multiple screen narrative, the “close-up,” huge battle scenes . . . and above all, violence in cinema based on what the characters response to racial and class divisions being “breached”— you can now see a re-inscription of that kind of trace in our culture through the politics of perception. “Virtual spaces” like www.youtube.com didn’t exist in 2004—and that was where the real battle for the 2008 election was fought. My film “Rebirth of a Nation” explores these kinds of paradoxes from

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the viewpoint of play with the archive—in this case, I look at Griffith’s work as the DNA of American cinema, and try to unravel it. Whether it was scenes from “Apocalypse Now” that “quote” the infamous “ride of the Klansmen” to the previous Bush administrations use of the infamous Willie Horton ads about blacks and crime, to the last election cycle’s attacks of Obama’s preacher, to the ads the Clinton campaign used . . . one can still see some of these issues as lingering traces. To remix Artaud’s concept of the “theater and its shadow” we now are in a “shadow administration”—which can be a very interesting thing. One has to ask: are Europeans the new Other? That’s just something I thought I’d throw out at you.13 Delpech-Ramey: Maybe to focus the question, what do you think of the kind of random anti-social violence Wired magazine recently reported on, about groups of hackers that work to destroy Second Life, and so on, or groups like Team Satan that are busy making hoax crop circles. Might these tricksters be good for us?   And are we kidding ourselves that a utopia is really being constructed through virtual spaces, while most of the planet›s population lives off-line and goes unrecognized and unnamed? Miller: When you think about “Utopus”—the ruler of the fictional realm of Utopia, Thomas More’s pro-novel of 1516 AD, you have to ask yourself—is it about Eutopia, or Utopia? Which is the name derived from? There’s a lot to argue about the word-play. Is it a place of perfection, or a place of (as the actual Greek word says “no-place” eu-topos) “non-existence.” One could argue that Utopus is a being on “no-place”—a subject of his own realm. Let’s look at the books that have been inspired by it: George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Yvgeny Zamyatin’s We, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon; and films like the Wachowski Brother’s “The Matrix,” Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” or even Katsuhiro Omoto’s “Akira”—we tend to see that heavily regimented societies (like our own) need tricksters. I think that “anti-social” behavior is always something outside of the norms that we use to define regularity, and in a lot of cases, that kind of irreverent play is healthy and good to see. I dread a world where everyone has the same playlist mentality for life, and I celebrate play in all its aspects. On and off-line play mean that we have a kind of eternal childhood to engage. It doesn’t matter that whether half the world’s

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population is on or offline—the impulse is the same. Ask Utopus . . . I would be the noise in the system. Delpech-Ramey: I’m also curious to see if you think that your artistic practice potentially addresses Attali’s concern about the power of community becoming a mere memory. Your music seems to work through and as memory, as a kind of voodoo séance of pop ancestors, a Warholian shamanism of the mysteries of pop iconography. Is this the creation of new meaning, or the voyeuristic repetition of the meanings of others, or is that opposition itself superseded by this activity of rhythm science/rhythm séance?  Is yours the music of the living dead?   There is something Spooky about it, in the insistent presence of the ancestral lives: your music has a disturbing, arresting quality, as if the voices of the past were not really dead, as if they were lying in wait, waiting to take some kind of revenge on the present for its passivity, for modernity’s hysterical insistence on creating distance from the past. Is Spooky’s the music of an undead archive or a spirit body, a body that is more alive than than our docile, anemic self-consciousness?   Miller: Let’s look at this in terms of [what] people like Slavoj Žižek like to think of as a false multiculturalism. Yes! Yeah, the world is getting wilder and wilder while other kinds of things keep in decline—there are species and languages (literally—LANGUAGES! you know, people who speak dead languages...), that are dying every day. My material links this kind of stuff to the fact that we’re also pro-creating new forms and artificial scenarios that can never replace that lost nature. My film projects explore this kind of thing. Earlier this year I went to Antarctica to shoot a film about the sound of ice. The trailer is at: http://www.djspooky.com/art/terra_nova.php All I can say is this: who owns the ice? Who owns the environment? What happens if all aspects of intellectual property are assigned “value”—I think we need to find a reasonable middle ground. Copyright limits are meant to encourage creativity. Instead, what is happening in the U.S. is simply that corporations are extending copyright far and beyond anything reasonable. The backlash is that people will have a totally irreverent attitude towards copyright law. Your average kid is into the whole “rip-mix-burn” type scenario. Because they’ve been conditioned by the networks that undergird our information-

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based society. All I can say is that this is just the beginning. What happens in the near future when information itself is like the environment? Will we treat it like a scarce resource like oil, or like something that is meant to be a community resource—like water? Water or oil—the choice is ours. William S. Burroughs was and still is an inspiration for me, but when you look at what the Beat Poets responded to—hyper-conformity, mass man, and the Cold War, we have a lot of things to think about in the twenty-first century. Has the “war on terror” replaced the Cold War? What is the artist’s response to this kind of thing? I can’t really answer these questions, but I think art is a good place to start. There are only around two thousand people on the entire continent of Antarctica— the only way to maintain human presence on the continent is through science. The whole idea of a scientific community based on shared principles of human inquiry into the nature of . . . nature. That’s what I look at when I think of the inspiration for my compositional strategy. Pan-humanism, I guess is the driving theme for all of my work. Pop iconography’s relationship to graphic design is a part of the way I communicate with my audience. It’s a dialect of our consumer culture that speaks to every class and ethnicity at this point. The concept of community is evolving. I definitely think that we need to celebrate instability, transcience, and above all, impermanence. As we move further and further into the twenty-first century, we really have to accept that everything is connected. I like to think that the process of sampling is about collision between the expected and unexpected results of collage: it’s a process that has made an entire generation of musicians, software engineers, code writers, and yes, normal artists, free from the constraints of how older genres limited the way people could perceive their work. As a composer, I make material that is unapologetically complex, and as an artist much of my work is an essay on the kind of lyrical form of poetry and music combined with the fine arts. Multimedia, the digital arts, and a sense of interconnectedness are what drives my inquiry into how creativity can evolve in an information based world like ours. I want people to think about music and art with an eye towards literature’s invisible hold on how we tell stories. Is a song an art piece? Can art be a text? Can a film foster a sense of transcendence? Entropy of form, instability, transience, and above all—a possibility that art can say, simply—another world is possible. These are things that linger in my mind when I engage the creative act. I never, ever, ever want people to think that life is simple. It is not.

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Ellison the trumpet player and composer-in-training who became a writer. Claude Mckay, the poet who wrote “If we Must Die,” Paul Robeson, actor, singer, inspiration—these are my heroes. It’s kind of like mental software—it’s a kind of Ellisonian equipment for those deciding not only to shun the noise but to live with the momentum implied in jazz music and electronic music’s inheritance from all forms of complex human expression. Like they used to say—it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing . . . ” Lawrence Lessig is a big hero of mine because he gives people a different perspective on what copyright means in the era of relentless connectivity. In hip hop, it’s just called keeping true to the “street”—but for me, the new streets are the web, and the connected commons of things like mix tapes, graffiti that moves along systems of messages (networks can be train systems or fiber optic cables... you just have to adjust perspective). Again: it’s all connected. That is the new community. And no, I don’t have a blog!14 Delpech-Ramey: Listening to your music, I always have a strong sense of a dialectic at work there between sacrificial priest and victim playing out in your compositions. As DJ, you sacrifice the ancestral spirits to the mix. As victim, you subordinate your creativity to these voices. Can you conceive of the political angle here?  Is this a model for a return to a more aboriginal or chthonic inhabitation of time? DJ Spooky: New media!!!! Its obviously a loaded term that gets thrown around without much thought as to its real meaning, but with the convergence of media increasing at an alarming pace, it seems only expected that this word pops up in every newspaper/magazine/blog. Is new media beneficial on the whole? Are we losing something as this process races past us without much analysis? My work, given its multidisplinary nature and collaborations with writers, filmakers, falls under the umbrella of “new media” but exists in a continuum with some of the people I look to for inspiration—it traces things like “appropriation,” remixing, plagiarism, and out and out theft as basic cultural production processes, and it says they’re OK. I know that sounds controversial, but it’s the way we live these days. For me, composition is all about “concept.” To me, everything is connected. Sound is writing, writing is music, music is art. It’s all about composition. So

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the basic idea is to get people out of the twentieth-century mentality where everything was broken into separate components like a factory. Today, we are all factories. I rip-mix-burn CDs and DVDs every day, all the time. A couple of years ago I would have had to go to some kind of factory, etc. The way we’ve consolidated production tools allows the DJ metaphor to really move to the forefront—it all becomes linked to selection instead of the production of physical goods. You gotta remember the twentieth century was all about mass production, and economies of scale. The twenty-first century is about mass customization. What have computers done to us? My book is about sound art, digitalmedia, and new compositional strategy. My book, Sound Unbound, explored this kind of scenario by asking people to write directly about oblique strategies.15 It has essays from Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Chuck D, Moby, Pierre Boulez, Saul Williams, Bruce Sterling, Jonathan Lethem, etc. etc. The audio companion has rare material: Allen Ginsberg, James Joyce, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Liam Gillick, Trilok Gurtu, Sun Ra, George E. Lewis, Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, Philip Glass, Iggy Pop, etc. I was really interested in how much I could squeeze out information from radically different sources, like a mix-tape. It’s just another kind of shareware. “Popular” software is just operating systems that let people look at the “interface” of a process that they can share with their community. So you move from web 1.0 type issues of “privacy” and anonymity to web 2.0 issues of intensive social space. The music industry isn’t even at web 1.0—they still think everyone will pay for music. That’s a wrong-headed approach, and it’s costing them a fortune! New media are leveling the playing field—artists like Damien Hirst are utterly bound to perception of the market value of their works. But if you look at what’s happened with Google and social network sites like Facebook, etc. I guess it all depends on what avatar you’re into. The playlist killed the album. Your Facebook recommendations define a public sense of presence. Your MySpace page is an advertisement for yourself. It’s OK. Delpech-Ramey: Attali writes, about the alternative to repetition he called “composing”: Composition . . . makes a collective creation, rather than an exchange of coded messages . . . it gives voice to the fact that rhythms and sounds are the supreme mode of relation between bodies once the

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screens of the symbolic, usage, and exchange are shattered. In composition, therefore, music emerges as a relation to the body and as transcendence . . . Music, directly transected by desires and drives, has always had but one subject—the body, which it offers a complete journey through pleasure, with a beginning and an end . . .16 Obviously re-mixing and sampling is something done in solitude, in quiet spaces, without much physical movement. How does being a rhythm scientist affect your body, and do you think Attali’s notion of a kind of transcendence is an appropriate way to describe what’s going on in the mix? DJ Spooky: When you think of “metaphysics” of sound, you are taking on a pretty daunting task in trying to explore the history of digital music and sound recording and the ways in with different methods have combined to offer new creative outlets for musicians and composers. Sound, like one of my favorite composers, John Cage, always pointed out, was about how we perceive the flow of patterns around us. When I’m making tracks, I’m guided by key-clicks on a keyboard, movement of a mouse, and my eyes interacting with icons on a screen. There’s a haptic quality to the flow of movement, but it’s mainly perceptual. My first book, Rhythm Science,17 was all about how we can think of mix culture as a kind of pan-humanist kind of scenario—it related graphic design to music in a way that almost anyone who has seen a CD or record cover sleeve anywhere in the world can attest to. Look back at how Edison’s recording cylinder’s led to the popularization of recorded media, and how that in turn changed the way we perceive the flow of information (yes, music is information) around us. It was a proto-process—Edison didn’t have the metrics of sites like Itunes or Youtube to show how many tracks have been downloaded or videos have been seen. Software is culture now. The new software has really democratized the creative process—you have to think that almost anything you do will be involved in some kind of network—whether it’s on-line collaborative filters like last.fm and amazon.com’s “collaborative filtering” recommendation services and mechanisms, or that you will have people remixing and doing the whole “rip-mix-burn” scenario. A lot of musicians from the old mentality are really into the idea of something staying “the same”—the new mentality is to say that anything, and everything, will always change. And that’s OK. The creative act mirrors the tools that are used

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to create the music. That’s OK. The composer is faced with learning a different kind of literacy. Again: that’s OK. That’s what my second book Sound Unbound looked at. It’s thirty-six essays by people like the senior Legal Counsel for Google (who wrote the essay about copyright law), Moby talking about what it was like to sample black voices, Erik Davis on dub and technology. Chuck D about the media environment, or Pierre Boulez and Saul Williams . . . Steve Reich and Cory Doctorow, who does “Boing Boing,” wrote the introduction.18 Delpech-Ramey: Attali writes, . . . this constitutes the most fundamental subversion we have outlined: to stockpile wealth no longer, to transcend it, to play for the other and by the other, to exchange the noises of bodies, to hear the noises of others in exchange for one’s own, to create, in common, the code within which communication will take place. The aleatory then rejoins order. . . . There is an innovation that is only now beginning to play out its role, a herald of this mutation: the recording of images . . . the essential use of the image recorder seems to me to be elsewhere, in its private use for the manufacture of one’s own gaze upon the world, and first and foremost upon oneself. Pleasure tied to the self-directed gaze: Narcissus and Echo. Eroticism as an appropriation of the body.19 I think there is a really interesting ambiguity in Attali at this point. He is talking about the potentially revolutionary effects of composing, but he is also talking about this in terms of a radically individual form of pleasure, an autoeroticism, even a kind of narcissism. And he thinks the culmination of this kind of pleasure would be in being able to manipulate images. I know you are starting to work on film in the way you worked on music. Can you say something about what drives you to that practice?  What is pushing that shift, for you? Miller: I started DJing as an art project that focused on collage narrative. Simple and direct. I did not think my DJing would be “popular” but it became popular. I guess alot of the response to my work has been accidental—I never thought I’d be “DJing” but basically putting material that was made from the collage process into the “normal” art discourse. For some reason the normal

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artworld. I really don’t see them as separate. My work looks at text: text made from fragments of found sound, found visual material, and found written materials. I read Attali when I was an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, and it had an influence on me because he mapped out a relationship of noise to the social economy of music. If you look at some of the most influential albums of the last 50 years—Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” or Sun Ra’s “A Joyful Noise” etc. and even Tricia Rose’s seminal “Black Noise” book, there’s something that resonates with the issue of whether noise is a seduction because of the absence of recognizable motifs and patterns, or if it’s something that creates disturbance through its destruction of the familiar patterns of everyday life. On this, I’d take the John Cage approach and say that you really have to think of noise and its role in our culture as a way of defining pattern recognition. Neitzsche’s “eternal return” could be a metaphor for this kind of pattern recognition, we just have to expand our definitions. That’s probably why Wagner and him had a big falling out! Hah!20   Delpech-Ramey: In one of your pieces in Sound Unbound, “In Through the Out Door,” you write that “the loop of perception is a relentless hall of mirrors in the mind. You can think of sampling as a story you are telling yourself—one made of the world as you hear it, and the theatre of sounds that you invoke with those fragments is all one story made of many.”21 Isn’t there a danger that we will lapse into a kind of autism here? A kind of self-imprisonment?  Or are we on the verge of a new form of connectedness that only appears temporarily to isolate us?  Perhaps this is what Attali was thinking of when he affirmed that “tolerance and autonomy” would be the politics of the future?   Miller: My first book Rhythm Science made a link between graphic design and music composition because it was centered on exploring how to apply the idea of “remix” to seemingly disparate production processes, but basically, it says that we blur the line between self and other with joy, with play, with sharing the information that gives meaning to the work we create. I look at that kind of sharing as a kind of chaos, a pandemonium where any sound can be you. Sampling is truly an open source creative process because it’s omnivorous. I don’t think that chaos is really something that human beings know how to dig into. It’s the order of the universe—quantum, deep structure,

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fractal . . . for me, music is our way of just trying to make sense of how weird it is to be alive in this strange universe that exists in our imagination—are we dreaming the world, or is the world dreaming us? My work has a Borges kind of impulse to look at layers and layers, reflections within reflections— it’s an appraisal, an attempt to think of music’s digital update of how people relate to the “discursive/recursive” nature of human inquiry. The remix has been around a lot longer than people want to admit—for me, the remix is a critique of language itself. William S. Burrough’s is the last sound on the audio companion to “Sound Unbound” for a reason: he simply said “language is a virus”—I’d add: language functions as a code embedded in the deep structure of how human beings create meaning and value—and remixes are a kind of transformative unit. They exist in reflection of the “original.” But the original is nothing but another reflection, and the whole scenario keeps going to a point where there’s nothing really “original”—everything is a cover version. That’s the metaphysics of the soundsystem. Jamaica just made the link explicit.22 Rip, mix, burn—it’s an aesthetic that is inherited from the Jamaican dub tradition, which itself comes from the African tradition of call and response. Everything is connected. Digital Africa is the global digital network echo chamber. The essay that focused on this was a remix of a piece Erik Davis wrote a while ago. Sound Unbound was an update on this kind of thing—with essays from Ron Eglash (a mathematician who studies African polyrhythm) and Daphne Keller, the Senior Legal Counsel to Google. Her essay looks at how sampling reflects alot of the way digital material moves through networked systems. For me, music isn’t music—it’s information. Delpech-Ramey: You sometimes compare the possibilities for exchange in the information age to the way in which people once shared mantras or prayers or alliances to certain deities.23 Can you say more about how rhythm science can be a spirituality or a spiritualization of existence? I’m also really interested in your take on nature, on the fact that we no longer believe that trees or wolves or sunsets have anything to say to us.24 Can we re-learn to listen to trees by learning to listen better to samples?  Can digital recreation teach us how to recreate a lasting relationship with earthly life?  Or are we left to bring what was once our communion with nature into our communion with data?  Or is this is a false dichotomy?

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  Miller: Life should be fun! If it’s not fun, leave it alone!!! I wanted to do books and art that keep things interesting for me! Music is art, art is literature, literature is music. Keep the loops flowin’!!! It’s the way we live in the twenty-first century. I have seen so much that seems to affirm humanity’s relationship to dynamic systems in the last 10 years. As the internet has reached out and changed people’s relationship to the social process of how culture is produced, technology has changed far more quickly that our society’s ability to absorb the change. Government (literally in all its forms) and the norms of several centuries of colonialism have conditioned the way the bulk of the human species relates to the idea of “the future”—it’s like the idea of the “future” in philosophers like Hegel or Marx led towards the ultimate redemption of humanity. I don’t think so... The web will change almost everything you can describe as “fixed and focused”—multiple perspectives, versions, and contexts at every angle, all the time. It’s OK—that’s the way kids are growing up!!! The idea that music is a kind of shock absorber that has been absorbed: we’ve internalized the process of thinking about the future so much that we basically look at everything as “scripts” (again, that William S. Burroughs moment!). I’m influenced by alot of the issues that drove the Beat Poets—William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Amiri Baraka—but updated from the viewpoint that digital media has taken over where their sense of nonlinear process in their writing, and the kind of irreverence that made them so charming left off. Amiri Baraka is the last one alive. That is a beautiful thing. Artists that have grown up in the contemporary model of YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, or stuff like mixi in Japan (www.mixi.jp), have transformed the whole way people think about the “production of social space.” That’s cool, but it’s also a very open situation, where anything can jump out. I encourage people to expect the unexpected in my mixes, music, art, and writings. It keeps things fun. Feedback is kkkooooolllll!!! We are part of nature, and nature is part of us. Technology in that light, is just part of nature. We need to accept that we have agency, but that we are also part of a much much much larger pattern. Maybe dj culture is teaching us about the real eternal return, linking us to systems we never really thought of because they were too deep in our cognition to be foregrounded. That’s just a thought, but I hope that in one way, it opens a door to get us to re-think many of the things that have plagued us since the advent of the modern mindset. This is just the beginning.

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 When Jacques Attali sang the praises of “composing” in 1977, he wrote primarily of the potential that a more experimental, itinerant, non-professionalized music making might have for a renewed relation between individuals and their own affects—in archaic terms, Attali seemed to be talking about a rehabilitation of the relation between body and soul. But one of the most provocative aspects of Miller’s project is that insofar as it can—and should—be understood as an act of “composing” in Attali’s sense, it explores noise (of samples, of a polyphony of voices) not only for physical or affective liberation, but also a quest for a specific type of spiritual or even esoteric knowledge. Through projects like Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica and Rebirth of a Nation, Miller seeks to reveal archaic codes. He explores the soundscape of ancient ice as revelatory text, and reads the images of D.W. Griffith’s film as a DNA of American cultural politics as much as of its cinema. These codes, once exposed, unmask modernity and “the contemporary” as itself an overcoding or a sampling of ancient sources. As Miller’s last remark in the interview indicates, there is an undoing or undermining of modernity going on in the extrapolation and exploration of the tools and techniques and possibilities modernity made possible. Miller’s work points to a new shamanism of culture, a techno-shamanism built on an eco-web-nology where nature and culture blur. In this way Miller’s work resonates with Bruno Latour’s insistence that all of the objects of modern technology are themselves complex mediations between human and non-human, natural and cultural worlds.25 At the same time, Miller’s work also seems to touch upon a kind of mysterious “outside” of the modern dialectic of myth and enlightenment, and to find a way through sampling back to that enchanted world Horkheimer and Adorno identified as a lost world of magical flows, the world of local powers and regional divinities operative along itineraries of human desire prior to that priestly governance and mythical histrionic overcoding that would eventually become the progressive rationalization of society.26 Yet Miller works directly with what Attali seemed most to fear in the age of repetition: the reduction of music to information. Miller clearly revels in the fact that music is information, music is code. Yet, through sampling, Miller makes information noisy. This is why we should see Miller’s art as a kind of

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renegade necromancy: if the means of making music noisy are physical, the means of making information noisy are spiritual. In any case, the goal seems to be the same: the enjoyment of difference, of possibility or potential, and the exploration of elevated states of consciousness where there might be a renewed possibility for interconnectedness and shared affect across ordinary divisions of class, race, gender, even across time and space. Attali was prophetically lucid about the tremendous risks involved in something as simple as sampling and re-mixing. To compose is simultaneously to commit a murder and perform a sacrifice. It is to become both the sacrificer and the victim, to make an ever-possible suicide the only possible form of death and the production of life. To compose is to stay repetition and the death inherent in it, in other words, to locate liberation not in a faraway future, either sacred or material, but in the present, in production and in one’s own enjoyment.27 The question that remains for Miller and for all artists working within the hyper-saturated world of repetition really is a pragmatic one: which sounds unbound will reveal a geography, even a geology, that we can continue to inhabit? There is something both beautiful and terrifying about the search for knowledge in uninhabitable wastes of ice, just as there is something intimidating and threatening about the prospects of mining the codes of our ancestors’ prejudices, sampling the way they imagined history, truth, and humanity. But Miller’s sampling lives on this dying edge: the future sounds of melting ice and of the image of ancient vendettas that will not fade into the past. A spooky new model of freedom seems to want to emerge here, a kind of re-sampling of the inevitable, an amor fati staked on the transformation of ecological and economic end-game into a quest for subliminal new territories. Whether Spooky’s “multiplex consciousness,”—reveling in the multiplicity of the emerging networks—can model a viable post-human future remains to be seen.

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Notes 1. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 5. 2. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 6–7. 3. The danger of course with internet-based groups is that rather than being open-ended groups or what Deleuze and Guattari called “multiplicities,” their borders are often all too clearly and rigidly marked. On the notion of a multiplicity, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 32–33. In her “Afterword” to Noise, Susan McClary expressed hope that the emergent forms of music-making in the early 1980’s New Wave movement—a movement that deliberately subverted not only by being noisy but also by bucking dominant paradigms of race, class, gender, and professionalization in music—would prophesy “a society in which individuals and small groups dare to reclaim the right to develop their own procedures, their own networks” (158). The fact that so many punk and new wave artists became popular or were “coopted” into the normalizing music industry should not discourage the act of subversion, but only remind us that it has to be incessantly re-created. I explore below the ambiguities involved in how DJ Spooky attempts to engage in what Attali calls Composition, or putting-together, in a way that seeks to subvert the classification and organization system that digital media might otherwise be. 4. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 137. 5. The Sex Pistols, founded in 1975, famously disbanned as soon as they realized they had become famous, in 1978. 6. It may be a part of Attali’s general focus on dominant economies rather than marginal or emergent social milieus that he says nothing or perhaps knew nothing of Jamaican dub. 7. “You” were the person of the year, according to Time Magazine’s December 13, 2006 issue, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html 8. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 141.

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9. For complete information on DJ Spooky, including biography, bibliography, and discography, consult http://www.djspooky.com/. 10. In response to a question put by the author at the New York launch party for Sound Unbound, in April 2008. 11.See Erik Davis’ excellent article on this topic, “Roots and Wires: Polyrhythmic Cyberspace and the Black Elecronic,” http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=articles 12. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 120. 13. What Miller references here is an idea contemporary philosophers like Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou (and theologians like John Milbank) have latched onto, an idea of the European as “other.” The idea is that in her bid for “universality” or “concrete universality” the classic “European intellectual” is now more or less working with a relic of rationality. In other words, for this imagined European resists the kind of rationality that Miller celebrates, namely the one that affirms our relativistic global village, with its idea that rationality manifests as an ability to see and create connections. The older European model holds to truth as a confluence of the universal and the singular such that truth places a demand upon us, a demand which excludes some options in favor of others. This notion of truth as singular or hegemonic is obviously opposed to the idea that truth is the continuous unfolding of the network, for it is an idea that the search for truth is marked by lack, by an urgency or even an anxiety (a la Kierkegaard) at its core, and that the discovery of truth demands fidelity, allegiance, partisans in a cause. This idea of truth runs totally contrary to what Žižek in particular sees as a kind of faux Buddhist pan-perspectivist relativism that dominates the consumerist ethos of our age. Žižek’s argument, much like that of Adorno and Horkheimer, is that, at least for people who are the products and producers of the culture that originated in European ideals of truth, this move to a Buddhist perspective is either insincere or self-deceptive. Miller obviously thinks there is more substance to contemporary relativism. For Žižek, see especially Slavoj Žižek, On Belief (London: Routledge, 2001). 14. This is true, but it is also true that Miller is a regular contributor to www.realitysandwich.com a forum for new ideas about spirituality, culture, arts, and society.

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15. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Ed. Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. 16. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 120. 17. Paul D. Miller, Rhythm Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984. 18. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Ed. Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. 19. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 143-144. 20. It is interesting in this connecting to note that Slavoj Žižek is a major Wagner fan. From Spooky’s perspective, Žižek also holds onto an older, “European” model of freedom that locates freedom in a certain attachment to key paradoxes or to a central parallax, a certain specific location of the human between freedom and determinism that Hegel called “absolute knowledge,” since it is the place or perspective from which, within every historical constellation or social antagonism or psychic tension, one can see the manifestation of the gap between the ideal and the real, or the spiritual and the material, or consciousness and unconsciousness, etc. Indeed, for Žižek, there is only one “pattern” to recognize, namely, the pattern of the Real as modeled by Hegel and Lacan. This is the pattern of parallax, the logic of a “gappy” or ontologically incomplete world. But the patterns Spooky is talking about are continuums, Riemannian spaces where a singularity organizes an overcoded field. The fact that this is an operation imposed upon or emergent within a given field is what is odious to Žižek, who insists a la Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Christianity on the co-incipience of organization and field, with nothing “pregiven.” Žižek thus sides with Wagner conrta Nietzsche’s vision of the will to power and eternal recurrence. See Slavoj Žižek, Opera’s Second Death (London: Routledge, 2001) and Joshua Delpech-Ramey, “For Example, Opera, For Example . . .A Preface to Slavoj Žižek’s “Why is Wagner Worth Saving?” http://www.philosophyandscripture.org/Issue2-1/ Josh_Ramey/josh_ramey.html. 21. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (Ed. Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), p. 12. 22. For more on Jamaican dub in relation both to its West African precursors and to the emergence of mix culture, see Eric Davis, “Roots and Wires:

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Polyrhythmic Cyberspace and the Black Electronic” at http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=articles 23. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (Ed. Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), p. 10. 24. Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (Ed. Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), p. 7. 25. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). 26. Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002). 27. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 141

Minimal Difference With Maximal Import: “Deep Pragmatism” And Global Religion Hent DeVries, The Johns Hopkins University Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

Taylor: Thank you for agreeing to the interview. Could you describe your intellectual history? For instance, who were the key figures that shaped your early interest in philosophy and religious studies? de Vries: No doubt what has originally brought me to theology (or, more precisely, religious studies) and immediately sparked my interest in the philosophical questions that the modern phenomenon of religion more than anything else, to my knowledge, seems to call for was the example of inspiring role models I found in certain teachers and even ministers. Paradoxically, it was also the liberal-minded, quasi-secular upbringing that I had enjoyed in my family. My parents had both come from opposing orthodox milieus and factions in the Dutch Reformed tradition, but having left their respective parental church communities, they felt disinclined to impose on their children the strict religious outlook they had fled, while at the same time keeping a lively interest in the wider intellectual, moral, and emotional resources for which a more broader-minded conception of ecumenical Christianity, but notably liberal Protestantism, stood in their eyes.At the same time, I grew up in a village, just north of Amsterdam, which was “rooms-rood [RomanCatholic and politically “red,” i.e., socialist] meaning that the dominating denomination and, hence, religious background of many of my school friends was Roman Catholic, whereas its overall political outlook was SocialDemocratic, with a relatively strong presence of the local Communist Party, whose cultural influence was, as so often in postwar Europe, far greater than the number of its adherents, that is to say, members and voters or even intellectual fellow travelers might have suggested. Indeed, my political coming of age was to no small extent initially framed by the very effective and disciplined way

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in which this party’s broader social movement orchestrated the anti-cruise missile demonstrations in the late 1970s when the Vietnam protestations had run their course and the next big thing was the so-called neutron bomb that the Reagan administration tried to impose on NATO. One thing you didn’t want to be in those days, as a young high school and then university student, was “anti-communist.” It was only after I had read Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Mandarins and Arthur Koestler’s two-volume autobiography and his novel Darkness at Noon, Stefan Heym’s Fünf Tage im Juni, and, especially, after I attended a speech by the then Social-Democratic (PvdA) Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, that I understood how silly this was. Being a democratic socialist could only mean that one did precisely not espouse “the communist hypothesis” (to cite Alain Badiou’s recent title, which inaugurates an interesting attempt to disentangle the very idea of communism from the seventy years of failed statist experiments). I soon came to realize that to insist on capitalism’s abrupt or ultimate destruction instead of opting for targeted and incremental reforms and compromises was a vain idea, the empty hope of a schöne Seele, nothing more. Yet I still remember being perversely impressed by the narrative of the father of one my high school teachers, who as a functionary of the Communist Party’s (CPN) newspaper De Waarheid (The Truth) had literally defended the party building Felix Meritis in Amsterdam with his own hands against an angry mob, first in 1956 and then again in 1968, when so-called real existing socialism and Stalinism had shown its teeth first by crushing the Hungarian uprising andthen also the democratic Spring in Prague. My later repeated travels to the East block, first to the German Democratic Republic, then the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and eventually alsoCuba, cured me from any remaining political romanticism with respect to the communist hypothesis in its real existing state socialist variety, once and for all. Nothing really seemed to work there and it was hard to imagine how the Warsaw Pact and its third country allies could be much of a military threat, as the NATO propaganda tirelessly hinted. And, lest we forget, during the post-war and post-cold-war era, some of the worst calamities happened after the Berlin Wall fell (the ethnic cleansing and genocides in the former Yugoslavia, the ethnic strife in Russia, Georgia and Tjetsjenia, etc., not to mention the wars in the Gulf and Iraq, all of which would in all likelihood not have been unleashed so easily under the old dispensation).

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Although I had originally imagined to prepare for a medical career, I decided that the academic study of religion in an interdisciplinary perspective and at a respected non-confessional institution, the University of Leiden—which based its curriculum on the so-called duplex ordo of two distinct modes of approaching religion, namely theologically, biblically, and dogmatically, on the one hand, and in terms of its textual, social and cultural history (i.e., as Religionswissenschaft), on the other—fitted my intellectual and political interests much more. I studied religion and theology,therefore, but with a mindset and attitude that was engaged and somewhat disengaged at the same time. This ambivalent relation to religion had, no doubt, its background in my upbringing, as indicated earlier, notably in my parents self-chosen exile from their religious communities and the repercussion this as to how they portrayed the darker and brighter—indeed, more enlightened—side of their tradition to me, but also in the fact that, growing up, I very much felt a Protestant in a largely Catholic community (and understanding and appreciating that tradition only much later and increasingly so). Yet, also beyond the biographical and anecdotal, the problem how one could be “in” on a phenomenon while staying “out” of it as well soon became not just an existential and political concern but also an explicit intellectual question and challenge, one that I may have not fully solved or lived up to until this very day. This much seems to me certain: my current inclination to adopt a quasi-Spinozist and -Wittgensteinian “dual aspect theory of reality” (the expression I borrow from Stuart Hampshire) or, at least, a “double vision” in our way of perceiving and evaluating that reality, is on the whole much closer to a plausible answer to this predicament and the genuine chance of situating oneself at once inside and outside tradition than any of the reductionist—whether naturalist or confessional—approaches that I have come across in the literature and in public debates so far. Before completing my PhD in theology and religious studies, in which I would specialize in the philosophy of religion, in 1989, I made a long detour and sought further training in two distinct fields, namely that of Judaic and Hellenistic studies, concentrating on Philo of Alexandria, as well as in Social Ethics, Political Economy, and Public Finance, during a year spent in the Faculty of Law, also in Leiden. During this period, which lasted roughly from 1976 until 1988, I had the privilege to study withProfessor Hendrikus Berkhof, who taught Christian

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dogmatics, with Jürgen Lebram, whointroduced me into the world of Judaic Hellenism but also of Qumran, and with Herman de Lange and Victor Halberstadt, two economists and prominent members of the Labor Party (PvdA), both of whom paired an interest in economic ethics with a solid understanding of the world of public finance and the political sustainability of the social- and Christian-democratic compromise that was the European welfare state (now so easily despised for its current woes, but arguably one of the greatest social experiments that offered people a halfway decent life, healthcare-, income-, and pension-wise). During my studies with these mentors, I wrote my MA thesis on the subject of democracy and welfare economics in the work of the late Hans van den Doel while also engaging several issues in the debates on capitalism, progress, and sustainability, notably in the writings of Bob Goudzwaard and de Lange. In addition, I spent two semesters at the Interuniversity Institute for Norms and Values in Society, in Rotterdam. In this context, I was privileged to extensively meet and discuss with the imposing and deeply inspiring Nobel laureate in Economics and one of the founding fathers of econometrics, Jan Tinbergen, who had headed the Central Planning Bureau of the Dutch Government for many years. In the same period, I also spent some months as an intern at Royal Dutch Shell’s Pernis oil refinery, at the time Europe’s largest plant, as part of a program that was, no doubt, modeled after the example of priestworkers, who mingled incognito among working class populations and under the worst of working conditions, to learn and “be there and ready,” just in case general strikes and revolutions would trigger more wide-ranging changes than labor unions, on the priest-worker movement’s views, were able to achieve. It was the political liberation theology of a quasi-Maoist bend and, no doubt, the closest I ever got to this type of religious socialist experimentation. Its naïveté and hubris still makes me shudder and it was only when I was quickly identified at the assembly line by officials from the Shell human resources department who had become suspicious of my ulterior interests beyond earning the minimum wage—and who in a manner that seemed moresaddened and intrigued than irritated said to me “Now that you mention this, why hide, don’tyou think Shell could use theologians?”— that I realized the near-inexhaustible resourcefulnessand resilience of real existing capitalism.

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My main source of inspiration during these long years, however, was Hendrik Johan (Han)Adriaanse, professor of the Philosophy and the Encyclopedia of Religion at the University ofLeiden and my “Doktorvater,” who introduced me to the work of Emmanuel Levinas and whoseerudition, intellectual integrity, together with his seminal and deeply original work on Karl Barthand Edmund Husserl, entitled Zu den Sachen selbst, has been a source of inspiration for me to this day. He was the first who taught me what a genuine phenomenology of religion might look like. Indeed, his conception of theology as a disciplina arcana as well as his later plea for a rigorous philosophical conception of so-called post-theism were important markers along the path I tried to cut out for myself and increasingly on in my own terms. For this the slow reading and even slower digestion of several twentieth century thinkers from different, seemingly opposed—German neo- Marxist and hermeneutic, French phenomenological and existential, and, much later, Anglo-Saxon analytical and moral perfectionist—traditions would prove crucial.To respond even more directly and precisely to your question: my deepest theological andphilosophical interests originated in these early readings and found their first tentative expressionin a comparative study of the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, which I wrote and published in German under a title, Theologie im pianissimo, that was an homage to and gentle parody of Max Weber’s famous essay “Wissenschaft als Beruf ” (Science as a Profession and a Vocation). As you will recall, in this essay Weber referred to the retreat of the prophetic fire that ran through the streets in earlier times into the domain of the private and the interpersonal. I tookthis motif into a different direction, though, suggesting that if religion withdrew more and morefrom the public square and from the general criteria of the theory of rationality it did so increasingly and permanently, with no endpoint in sight. In other words, the ongoing reduction of its substantial content went, I suggested, hand in hand with an ongoing formalization and, indeed, intensified use of its more and more reduced figures of thought as well as of its morally and otherwise exemplary figures of conduct that secured it an undeniable permanence, in its turn. I have only recently come to think of this indelible minimal theological feature—which I laid out in Minimal Theologies (Theologieim pianissimo, technically my first book)—as a genuinely global element and structure of the religious in the contemporary

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day and age, notably its political and especially media phenomenon, as well. Without it, I now think, we would not have witnessed a resurgence of “global religion” on a worldwide scale. Nor would any reference to what Claude Lefort has called the “permanence of the theologico-political” make any sense in the current debate about the renewed prominence of religion in the public domain. Taylor: Let ask me you to discuss the “minimal” as a “global element and structure” in more detail before we continue with a discussion of Minimal Theologies. Why is its presence so significant to the “‘resurgence of ‘global religion’”? de Vries: Let me put it this way: it is my contention that a new “transformation of the public sphere [Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit]”—one far more radical than Jürgen Habermas’s groundbreaking work with the same title ever anticipated—has been taking place in recent decennia. I am claiming that this historical and socio-cultural change of paradigm and perspective remains inexplicable in its original meaning and unprecedented force without invoking the specific and especially effective role played by “global” religion, as distinguished from its “political,” “civic,” “private,” “public,” “historical,” “revealed” and “natural” counterparts, all of which identified something important in its historical and overall phenomenon or “total social fact” and, indeed, as theoretical designations and empirical references have dominated debates in the scholarly study of religion and the social sciences over the last few centuries. In fact, they continue to direct and limit most current research programs, which, I think, would profit from a more sustained reflection upon the meaning and force of the “minimal” and “global” that Minimal Theologies and my current work on miracles, events, and so-called special effects, analyzing the politics of religion in an age of new media, seeks to capture. In order to substantiate this claim, I will have to explain and further detail what the adjective “global” (as in the relatively recent denominator “global religion”) connotes and also what it, perhaps surprisingly, enables as an innovative interpretative key that helps us unlock some of the most promising and most disturbing political and media driven phenomena

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of our time. In sum, I will need to explain how the “minimal” and the “maximal”—or “global”—are related and revert into each other, for good and for ill. In order to do this, I need to recall that the designation “global” means much more—and, in a sense, also much less—than the all too direct reference to the (in themselves undeniable) processes in and through which economic and capital markets, helped by analogue and digital media for telecommunication and social networking have furthered their reach, not so much gradually but explosively, exponentially, indeed, extensively and intensively, leaving virtually no region of the globe—indeed, no social surface and no cultural debt—unaffected, unaltered, intact. For the term “global” also hints at something else and beyond, before or around, these social historical and empirical trends and indices: I mean at something, perhaps, older—deeper and wider—and more-dimensional, stratified and multi-layered, that warps and curves the worldly realities we live by, indeed, our very sense of so-called real and symbolical time and space. This, if you like, minimal—that is to say, far more elusive and ultimately irreducible— “globality” comes to us from a certain distance, albeit one that is virtual rather than real. Yet, it is also strangely present and emerges, resurges, at times, upsurges from an “archive” whose ontological or, rather, metaphysical nature must be determined, read and seen, in what are, fundamentally, non-criteriological terms. The need for learning once again to read the “signs of the times,” the “writing on the wall,” is no bad metaphor to convey this point. Learning to “see” the almost invisible and “hear” the nearly inaudible—again, the pianissimo of which Weber spoke in Wissenschaft als Beruf—expresses the same task for philosophy, indeed, for what (with a nod to Merleau-Ponty and Lefort) one might call a “thinking politics.” Taylor: We see this first taking shape in Minimal Theologies? de Vries: Yes. Theologie im pianissimo, completed in its first outline in 1989, was translated into English and published in 2005 in a considerably expanded and completely revised paperback edition by The Johns Hopkins University Press under the title Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas. I still consider it to be an extensive prolegomenon to my subsequent work and writing. While the

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book was primarily devoted to Adorno and Levinas, it contained a lengthy exploration of Jürgen Habermas’s “blue monster” (the two-volume Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns as well as of accompanying writings, notably those preceding his somewhat unhelpful critique of twentieth-century French thinkers, in Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne) as well as a first attempt to sound out major themes—and, in my view at the time, far more consequential insights—in Jacques Derrida’s earlier thought. To Habermas I have returned only recently, at Craig Calhoun’s, Eduardo Mendietta’s and Jonathan van Antwerpen’s friendly invitation to participate in a workshop at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) devoted to this author’s recent excursions into the relationship between religion and naturalism as well as his, more tangential, explorations of the meaning and use we might still have the metaphysical concept of “the political” or even “the theologicopolitical.” To Derrida, however, I have returned time and again, ever since I read his early commentary on Levinas, in “Violence et métaphysique,” the first serious intellectual engagement with this author’s oeuvre (also in the eyes of the latter). Notably Derrida’s philosophical writings—not always the ones that Richard Rorty characterized somewhat hastily as specimens of “private irony”—have accompanied my subsequent work and will, no doubt, continue to do so. But the Derridian legacy that appealed to me had and has little in common with the American phantom of “deconstruction” in its literary and especially de Manian variety, nor did I find any use for the appropriation and domestication of Derrida’s thinking under the rubric of so-called “Continental philosophy” (yet another phantom, in my view, that insulates a deeply original thinking whose universalizing and analytical impulses are undeniable—Rodolphe Gasché was one of the first to point that out). Minimal Theologies sought to distill a contemporary framing for theological questions in critical discussion with the basic ideas and concepts of so-called Frankfurt School Theory as I found them not only in Habermas but also in Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Albrecht Wellmer, Axeln Honneth, Seyla Benhabib, and Martin Seel—and, in a more qualified way, also in Herbert Schnädelbach, Michael Theunissen, Christoph Menke, and others— with whose positions I contrasted my own reading of Adorno’s paradoxical logic of so-called negative dialectics and negative metaphysics. But the book

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further attempted to establish its argument by situating itself at a crucial distance from the earliest beginnings of so-called poststructuralist thought (yet another unhelpful designation I would soon realize), notably in the writings of Jacques Derrida. The book’s central claim was that the philosophy of religion has a proper perspective, distinct from—but in dialogue with— dogmatic, biblical, and systematic or philosophical theology, on the one hand, and the scientific study of religion as an empirical and a cultural object (i.e., as Religionswissenschaft), on the other. Espousing a paradoxical and, more precisely, aporetic model of thinking, inspired by Adorno’s dialectical critique of dialectics (i.e., negative dialectics) and Levinas’s phenomenological critique of phenomenology (i.e., the thinking of the Other), Minimal Theologies investigated the chances and perils of a so-called non-bisected rationality under post-Enlightenment and presumably secular conditions. Its argument culminated in a critique of political idolatry, inspired, albeit differently articulated, by Raymond Aron, Avishai Margalit, Moshe Halbertal, and others, while in an appendix it also sought to cast doubt on the efforts of some scholars, such as Manfred Frank, to rubricate Derrida’s legacy under the heading of so-called “Neostructuralism” (which, I claimed, was precisely to miss it ethico-political, call it more Levinasian, point). In sum, my main concern was to prepare a third path for a philosophical approach to religion and theology that would be neither “dogmatic” (“confessional”) nor “scientistic” (“historicist” and “culturalist”). Instead, Minimal Theologies charted a terrain that my later interest in so-called political theologies, religion and media, and especially my current research on “events” and “special effects”—investigating the alternative registers or dual aspects (namely, religious-miraculous and technological-artificial) with the help of which we can describe them—address in a more systematic, developed, and, I hope, more satisfactory fashion. In one word, Minimal Theologies summed up what I had learned since my studies in Leiden and in its open and loose ends pointed to the sequels that sought to fill in its remaining blanks, without negating any of the necessary steps that brought me there. Taylor: Could you describe some of these “remaining blanks,” the wider intellectual context for the development of your work, especially the transdisciplinary nature of your scholarship?

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de Vries: After my PhD defense in Leiden, I went for a semester to Paris at the invitation of Jean Greisch, then the Dean of the Department of Philosophy at the Institut Catholique and currently the Romano Guardini chair holder at the Humboldt University in Berlin, who had been one of the two external readers for the dissertation (Klaus-M. Kodalle was the second). I started to attend Derrida’s classes and met twice extensively with Levinas who kindly invited me to his house to discuss my dissertation, which he had asked me to send to him on an earlier occasion when I had briefly met him at [a] conference on Franz Rosenzweig in Aachen and Roermond. As Levinas had sworn not to set foot in Germany again after the war, the concluding roundtable of that conference, whose transcript was published some years later, took place just across the Dutch border and with all conference participants I was transported by bus just three miles into The Netherlands to the abbey of Roermond to hear Levinas speak on the subject of Jewish-Christian relations (something he did without great appetite but without the slightest hint of irritation: if his interlocutors really felt they needed to have this discussion, he was willing to have it). This was also the first time I met Stéphane Moses, whom I would get to know better in later years and whose work on German-Jewish letters and thought continues to set a high—so far unparalleled—standard for any current and future work in this field. His passing was a tremendous loss for our fields and his subtle and precise studies on Rosenzweig, Kafka, Benjamin, Celan, and so many other thinkers and literary authors have not yet found the attention in the English-speaking world they deserve. Following that all-too short stay in France, I moved to the United States, to Baltimore, in August 1989, where I taught for two consecutive years as a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of German at Johns Hopkins University, at the invitation of Werner Hamacher and Rainer Nägele. From there, I went on to teach philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, which would prove to be an important experience for me, at a very different institution than Hopkins was, but one I came to respect enormously for its intensive core curriculum, its commitment to philosophy overall, and its deep engagement with the city and the communities from which it attracted many of its students. In September 1993, however, I took up a position in The Netherlands, first in the Department of Theology, responsible for teaching and research in the history of philosophy, then almost immediately as a Full Professor of Philosophy,

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serving as the Chair of Metaphysics in its systematic and historical aspects. Meanwhile, however, I continued to teach and do research at American universities, as a Visiting Professor of German and at the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins (in 1994, 1996, 1997, 2002), as a Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion (now called The Martin Marty Center) at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, in the Spring of 1993, and in 1997/98 as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. It was my stay at these inspiring American centers of academic learning that would deeply influence my further professional orientation and overall interests. In it, a long standing engagement with the history of classical and modern theology and the philosophy of religion goes hand in hand with an almost limitless openness toward interdisciplinary and, more precisely, comparative approaches to contemporary society and politics, culture and media, and literature and the arts, technology and the natural sciences. Increasingly, I found it hard to draw the line anywhere. In principle, it seemed to me that everything is potentially relevant, just as almost “anything goes” (as Paul Feyerabend famously said), where issues of general philosophical concern and a fortiori so-called global religion and its ethical implications are at issue: that is to say, virtually everywhere. Trans-disciplinary interests manifest themselves throughout my publications, I think, as well as in my involvement with an international book series, entitled Cultural Memory in the Present, of which I have served as co-editor, together with Mieke Bal, for over some fifteen years at Stanford University Press. This series has by now brought out more than 160 original titles and translations, many of them dealing with the complicated relations between memory and modernity, postcontinental and post-analytic philosophy, faith and the global world, espousing methodologically diverse approaches to religious studies with innovative studies in anthropology, literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory, and gender as well as visual (film and media) studies. Indeed, in addition to my own writing projects, I have continued to be deeply involved in several institutional efforts of an academic but also policy-oriented nature that operated across traditional disciplinary lines of demarcation between scholarly and practical fields, methodological

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orientations, and political preconceptions and affiliations. In Amsterdam, I was one of the co-founders, in 1994, of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), an institute that was premised on the principle of “local internationalism” rather than seeking disciplinary identification with other universities in The Netherlands along simple departmental lines (e.g., Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Art History, etc.), as was the first impulse of scholars nationwide, especially when the Ministry of Education issued an invitation to structure graduate programs and their curriculum in a more rigorous and sound way during the mid-nineties: a measure that was soon followed by a laborious process of accreditation by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences with little promise of improvement in the funding bases of those institutes (“research schools”) but proved successful. ASCA soon became the second largest research institute and graduate program at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam and is still flourishing and has become somewhat of a model for other institutes in The Netherlands, even though it never received the necessary support of vision and leadership at the central level of the university’s administration, let alone other incentives, that we cherish at American research universities and that might have allowed research institutes and graduate schools of this kind to develop into genuine international “centers of excellence” (to stay in the jargon) in The Netherlands as well. This is not to say that nothing was or could be done under these challenging institutional circumstances, which, sadly, remain fairly typical of the European context of higher education and research policy. Beyond this experimentation with trans-disciplinary efforts in the humanities, I was also involved in attempts to foster dialogue and cooperation among humanists and social scientist sat the national and international level. From 2002 onwards, I served as the Chair of the interdisciplinary program The Future of the Religious Past: Elements and Forms for the 21st Century, sponsored by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), whose councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences granted a proposal conceived under my direction an unprecedented sum of 5.4 million Euros for advanced research and international workshops at Dutch universities from that year onwards through 2011. In my function as Chair of the national program committee, I was the General Editor of five collective volumes with proceedings resulting from the program. The first published volume was

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entitled Religion: Beyond A Concept. In its extensive introduction, I sought to spell out the premises of the program and to suggest that the future of religious studies should be seen in a renewed appreciation and revaluation of its overall, indeed “global,” if also virtual, “archive.” I further insisted that the cooperation between philosophical approaches in the humanities and fieldwork and other empirical modes of inquiry in the social sciences call for an approach that, for lack of a better term, is that of deep pragmatism. We should probably return to this term in a moment, since it encapsulates much of my current convictions and epitomizes a promising research agenda for the study of religion—or, again, “global religion”—as I see it. To complete the picture and sketch out the larger context for my most recent work, from January 2006 until October 2009, I was an official advisor to the Netherlands Scientific Council of Government Policy (WRR), in The Hague, and a member of its project group on Religion and the Public Domain. Its preliminary report was widely discussed in the Dutch national press and consisted in a courageous intervention in an intellectual and political climate poisoned by the reaction to the murder of Theo van Gogh, the threats made to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and GeertWilders, events that were lucidly presented and analyzed by Ian Buruma in his book Murder inAmsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. As Buruma recalls, The Netherlands, for all the aura and past glory of its Golden Age, its Humanist as well as radical Enlightenment culture of openness and tolerance, experienced much more difficulty in coping with immigration issues than the more traditional immigration countries, such as the United States, Canada, or even France. Post-war and early 21st century Dutch public life, Buruma claims, remained largely characterized by “Calvinist restraint,” “bourgeois disdain for excesses,” and “phlegmatic preference for consensus and compromise,” just as in the 1990s,during the so-called “purple” government coalitions of market liberals and social democrats, the “polder model” became the answer to all existing and potential political conflicts in the “welfare state,” whose administrative and “self-perpetuating” elites—in spite of the officially professed “multiculturalism”—remained largely the “Our Kind of People” reminiscent of the virtuous and self-satisfied “regenten” Frans Hals portrayed so faithfully in his well-known paintings. Buruma recounts a disturbing tale, documenting the inability and unwillingness to face a larger problem

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that hardly limited itself to the effects of mass immigration from Islamic countries into The Netherlands’ major cities. For one thing, there were the felt or imagined detrimental effects of disempowerment as a consequence of European unification and the ongoing process of globalization. For another, there was a general sense that the substitutes for the early and mid-twentieth century “pillorization [verzuiling]” and the subsequent “erosion of organized faith”— namely, the revolt of the 1960s, multiculturalism, and the purple “polder model”—had offered no viable alternatives. Especially, among socalled “progressives” there was an abrupt shift “from a position of automatic, almost dogmatic advocacy of multicultural tolerance to an anxious rejection of Islam in public life.” It is a view, Buruma suspects, that was the result of “a certain yearning for something that may never really have existed, but whose loss is felt keenly nonetheless.” Yet, questions of national identity and, hence, inevitably of religion continued to simmer below the surface, waiting to erupt. In a 2002 lecture, Job Cohen, then the Mayor of Amsterdam, suggested that the main question in modern European societies such as The Netherlands was going to be whether “a new adhesive” could enable both so-called autochthonous and recent immigrant citizens and subjects to “glue society together” under radically new—post 9/11—conditions, characterized by a dramatic “switch.” The possibilities for “accommodation” of immigration populations he saw could be relayed to a sense of “belonging” that would begin by giving the religion of their origins its public face and place once again. In Cohen’s words, “The easiest way to integrate these new immigrants might be through their faith. For that is just about the only anchor they have when they enter Dutch society in the twenty-first century.” It was a suggestion that provoked an avalanche of criticism. But Cohen’s premise was bold. If religion was not the problem, could it be the beginning of the answer? Could it be a source for social cohesion where all other societal tendencies—not least those related to globalization, the Internet, etc.—had become centrifugal forces that seemed to steadily undermine all sense of “belonging”? Or was this latter sense of “belonging” a nostalgic-romantic fiction all along, a retrospective projection, nothing more? These seem pertinent questions that are still relevant and continue to guide the recent debates on so-called “political religions” and “political theologies” both in academia, journalism, and policy venues.

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It is only more recently that a more fundamental discussion has emerged to address these issues in The Netherlands. I am thinking of a series of detailed reports published by the aforementioned Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) over the last few years, focusing on questions of national identity, the role of Islam, Turkey’s admission to the European Union, and, most relevant for the purposes of my current research, a thorough investigation of religion and the public domain in all of its aspects. These WRR reports have provoked vehement discussion in national media and invited several critical reactions. The dust is still settling and much will depend on how actual policy recommendations withstand the test of further study of empirical data, theoretical analysis, and, of course, also the principal and practical input of municipal, provincial, and national publics and functionaries that form their primary audience. This much is clear, however: in so far as the more principal—i.e., conceptual and normative—framework for its analysis is concerned, the WRR, on the whole, has promoted a “post-secular” stance, of sorts. By this I mean that its considerations and overall recommendations do not so much intend to revise existing constitutional arrangements—notably, the relationship between Church and State (which no one in his or her right mind would want to touch, even though they are certainly not sacrosanct per se either)—but to contribute to a change in the perception and appreciation of public, political and, eventually, “global” religion, to begin with among government officials and their advisors, but also of public educators, journalists and other media representatives. This view, by the way, resonates with themes in the recent writings of Habermas and Hans Joas (notably in his Warum brauchen wir Religion?)who have emphasized a “post-secular” understanding of our current dispensation, not least in the larger—“global”—context of an emerging “world society” (as Habermas puts it). Taylor: There are many themes and issues running through your scholarship and before we discuss your current scholarship specifically, could you situate your prevailing concern(s)? Is there are coalescing point? de Vries: I would situate my work first of all against the background of several collaborative interdisciplinary projects and volumes in which I have been involved and from which I have learned a great deal.

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Related to my first book project, Minimal Theologies, mentioned earlier, I co-edited volumes of essays on the concept of Enlightenment and the debate between the Critical Theory of the first, second, and third generations of the Frankfurt School and recent developments in French phenomenological and so-called poststructuralist thought. These volumes, entitled Die Aktualitätder “Dialektik der Aufklärung.” Zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne and Enlightenments. Encounters between Critical Theory and Recent French Thought, published in 1989 and 1993, respectively, brought together thinkers from very different methodological schools of thought (Herbert Schnädelbach, Gianni Vattimo and Jakob Rogozinski, among many others). Indeed, encounters of this kind framed my early projects up to the point where I started to feel that certain complementary insights were to gleaned from the tradition of socalled Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy in its post-Wittgensteinian variety, on the one hand, and in the more neo-pragmatist and moral perfectionist vein, on the other. To this latter insight my encounters, relatively late in my formation, with thinkers such as Rorty, Stanley Cavell, and Hilary Putnam played an immense role, as did my timely exposure to the work of my more epistemologically oriented colleagues in philosophy at Johns Hopkins, such as Michael and Meredith Williams. This said, it is fair to say that the tradition of so-called Western Marxism and its dialectical or, more broadly, paradoxical, indeed, aporetic model of critique has remained a prevailing concern for me, even though this interest, as already indicated, always went in hand with a commitment to phenomenological themes and methods. The alternation between these two styles and figures of thought seemed to me more all the more natural since two my original heroes, Adorno and Levinas, had first started out from inquiries into phenomenology and a certain dialectics, respectively, before embarking upon a journey in which these terms and allegiances switched places effortlessly. What did it mean that this could have happened at all and also that one could discern similar reversals in other authors as well (as my further points of reference at this time, namely Habermas and Derrida, illustrated with the development of their own thought all too clearly)? This said, new themes and concerns, other references and authors, have become at least as important to me since then. Since the early projects condensed in Minimal Theologies, my work has evolved in multiple directions. Parallel to publishing two further monographs,

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entitled Philosophy and the Turn to Religion and Religion and Violence: Philosophical Reflections from Kant to Derrida, I pursued my scholarly interests in philosophy and systematic theology within the frameworks of further extended international and interdisciplinary collaborative projects, without which they would have remained exercises in dry swimming. It is hard to think of philosophical matters without invoking particular empirical situations and problems and exemplars—often down-to-earth things, even “banal phenomena” (to cite Jean-Luc Marion)—that have triggered them, even and especially when one’s own predilection goes in the direction of the abstract and formal, metaphysical and mystical, as, I suppose, it does in my case. And we all know that for at least some of us the longest detour on the way to concretion leads through the icy desert of abstraction (as Adorno mused on the opening page of his Negative Dialectik) and is also the shortest. In this spirit, then, I was a co-editor, with Samuel Weber, of the volume on Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, published by Stanford University Press in 1997, as well as of the volume on Religion and Media, published by Stanford in 2001. The latter book has often been credited for setting some of the methodological parameters and standards for a relatively new field of study, and it is along these lines that I have continued to think, teach, and write. The two larger monographs, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion and Religion and Violence, in their turn, sought to solidify my earlier claim that contemporary post-Enlightenment, secular, and post secular thought draws on a semantic, axiological, rhetorical, and figurative “archive,” whose virtual presence and, if we can still say so, origins are of a religious and theological nature and whose intellectual, ethical, political, and affective potential under current conditions of the global expanse of markets and media we have not yet begun to fully realize. In addition to adding new themes and concerns, concepts and arguments, these books allowed me to considerably broaden my own horizon, allowing me to bring very different interlocutors, such as Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jan Patocka, Michel de Certeau, and Marion. I also co-edited a volume on Post-Theism, in honor of my aforementioned mentor, Han Adriaanse, collecting essays in philosophical theology, and I brought out a lengthy volume, published by Fordham University Press in 2006, with the proceedings of an international research project on Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, directed together with

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Professor Lawrence E. Sullivan, the former Director of the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. With Religion and Media, the latter volume proved to be the more programmatic of these series of edited volumes, together, perhaps, with its more recent follow-up, entitled Religion Beyond a Concept and published by Fordham University Press in 2008. And I have modest hopes that yet another volume I recently co-edited, this time with Ward Blanton, an extensive collection under the title Paul and the Philosophers to be published by Fordham in 2012, may serve a similar purpose as a catalyst of innovative debate across disciplines. In all these collective projects the intensive cooperation between philosophers and theologians, cultural historians and anthropologists, political scientists and specialists on media, gender, and race, has been essential and I strongly believe that their results have profoundly influenced the course of my own thinking. Their results also indicated novel paths for future inquiry that I hope to make good on one day. Without exception, these collaborative volumes investigated contemporary modes of religious and cultural symbolization and assembled a host of direct and indirect inquiries into their present-day situation as well as into the everincreasing urgency of ethics and values (including critical scrutiny of the very value or values of “value” itself). This, I believe, is true a fortiori of a series of recent monographs that have been long in the making butthat I am about to complete and to which we should perhaps return in a moment. Taylor: I am always struck by the intense flow of disciplines in your work… philosophy, religion/theology, literature, politics, and culture and media studies. Some of these “flows,” as I have described them, are directed by metaphysical and epistemological concerns. Others seem to be more thematic at times, “violence” for instance. You manage all of this without developing a system, which seems to be required in academia. How do you resist that demand? Do you want to resist that demand? de Vries: I have nothing against a “system.” In fact, I am all for it, and deeply admire theorists who give it their best shot, in full awareness of the limitations of totalizing views, grand narratives, and the like. So I too aspire to a system, an anti-system, if you prefer, that would be systematically developed and explicit to the fullest detail. If I have not integrated the bits and pieces yet—

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although I have published my share of programmatic statements, notably in several longer introductions to the collective volumes I mentioned earlier— then I am solely to blame. For I think that I should aim at nothing else and I also do think that the current and planned studies are, no doubt, insufficient efforts to do just that: namely, articulating a vision for what I now like to call “deep pragmatism,” again, for lack of a better term. My most recent work aims at demonstrating how this vision emerges out of a reappraisal of the religious and theological “archive” and, indeed, moves freely in and out of it, with a curious mixture or oscillation of engagement and disengagement. I still think that Derrida found the best formulation for such approximation in distancing and vice versa, when he formalized this paradoxical movement back and forth (an aporetic movement on the spot, if you like) by characterizing himself as le dernier des juifs que je suis (in“Circonfession”) and, again, with regard to Blanchot’s reading of Heidegger in particular (in “Apories”). On each occasion, he suggested that one can at once feel closest to and at the furthest remove from the same author or same tradition, just as one can have the distinctive feeling of being an “anachronistic contemporary” (“Apprendre à vivre enfin”) of past generations and the archives they generated and guard, as it were. I agree with your differentiation between metaphysical and epistemological concerns, on the one hand, and thematic emphases, on the other. This is no doubt a fair description, even though I feel it is hard to avoid also the methodic(al) back and forth between more conceptual and topical excursions, both of which are certainly not unrelated and which are not worth much without the constant reference to their counterparts. This might be another way of adopting and transposing the Wittgensteinian motif of dual aspect seeing, without saying all too much about a (Spinozistic) “dual aspect theory of reality” that this might or might not imply. And, surely, there must be more “aspects” than just two (infinite attributes or dimensions, if you like, of which we, finite theoreticians, know nothing yet)? Be that as it may, I have always attempted to generate systematic insight and refine certain conceptual tools from within the historical and present state of the debate, taking as my point of departure the views of a limited number of significant authors and texts, philosophical and theological, literary and popular, including authoritative think tank reports as well as telling examples from a host of visual media.

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In so doing, I have tried to pay utmost respect to what has been researched and written or stated by others—listening to some of the most traditional and orthodox religious as well as heterodox and so-called idolatrous or blasphemous voices—while also taking the freedom to interpret their texts not just e mente auctoris, but rather to ventriloquize and allegorize them, showing their analyses to have implications that they might not have intended, envisioned or accepted. As I have suggested elsewhere, the greatest fidelity and ultimate betrayal—in textual, interpretative matters, and not just here (after all, ethics and politics are no different matter)—often go hand in hand. What we should simply accept—affirm and always suspect—is that we have no firm criteria ready at hand to navigate ourselves out of this predicament, once and for all. My method and aim, if one can still say so, is thus neither empirical nor analytical; nor is it vaguely intuitive or constructive. In some respects, it is more hermeneutical—some would say, deconstructive—than it is speculative; also, it is less an exercise in conceptual analysis than it is one in pragmatics, broadly and, especially, “deeply” understood. But to the extent that I focus on singular and, as it were, concretely lived historical and contemporary experiences, their implicit horizons of meaning and their peculiar—and, often, unanticipated, novel, or, as I would now say, miraculous, eventful, and special effective— mode of givenness, my approach is phenomenological as well. In sum, I feel that I am mostly proposing a different way of thinking about things—historical, empirical, and textual givens or data—that are either known or handily available. It is, however, a matter of combining the dots differently (or, in decisive cases, not at all). With this method and aim in mind we can bring classical-theological discussions and modern philosophical critiques of the belief in miracles—from the so-called Old and New Testament, through the Church fathers, Spinoza, and Hume up to contemporary treatments of testimony—to bear on attempts to analyze and track revised self-definitions of “religion” in their present day political transformation and mediatic effect. It is my wager that to do so can have implications for understanding some of the most pressing issues in contemporary philosophy, media studies, anthropology, and cultural analysis, as these disciplines increasingly reflect on global religion and the social, cultural, and political impact of the new technologies of communication that have steered its resurgence.

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In terms of my current research: study of theologies of the miracle, philosophies of the event, and theories of the special effect can deepen our understanding of the meaning, power, and end of religion today. And it is precisely in comprehending and engaging the relatively new phenomena of global and mediatized events of what I have (quite conventionally) called a theologico-political nature that the comparative and philosophically attuned study of religion finds its most daunting task. This much we can predict with some confidence for its likely—and, it seems, for the time being only possible— immediate future, which is also to say, for its different, yet intersecting and overlapping, virtual and present pasts. Taylor: How you would situate your work on “political theology” in relation to Milbank, Žižek, Marion, and Caputo. How do you frame the key issues? de Vries: That is a difficult question to which I have no simple answer, not much of an answer at all, in fact. And, lacking both syncretistic and polemical appetite, I am not sure that whatever I can say here will satisfy you or your readers. These authors are all in a different league, for one thing. To put things bluntly and all too schematically, without doing justice to any of these very different thinkers, whose writings I have been following from a certain distance in some cases: I do not work within the framework of a critique of so-called bio-politics, let alone within the program of so-called Radical Orthodoxy, however defined, nor do I have much of a psychoanalytical mindset, training, or general frame of reference (although I am happily married to a psychoanalyst who continues to educate me in things I should know or should have known all along), nor, finally, is my concern religious or confessional per se, in any strong or weak sense of these terms. That said, each single one of these authors has worked hard and creatively to formulate ways to receive and revive the traditions I deeply care about. No doubt, I continue to learn from them or should do so even more. Yet I have no taste and skill for pointing out differences, points of contact, or overlaps, even when gently prompted (which happens at times, often to my surprise). Too much time in modern and contemporary philosophy is, I think, wasted with the wrongly understood need for syntheses or, even worse, with vain and futile polemics (which is always a sure sign that sometimes else goes on, but not something I think much of). This said, it is fair to say that

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I feel probably closest in orientation, if not inspiration, to Jean-Luc Marion’s overall philosophical project in its rigorous mode of argumentation and strict insistence on making a phenomenological rather than merely theological claim (or, at least, in trying to separate these two types of claims while fully realizing how difficult, indeed impossible, this is). I am deeply in awe with regard to the scope of his historical learning, steeped as it is in the tradition of Western metaphysics and in the very attempt to overcome its central premises, just as I am also impressed by the extent of his often relentless radicalism, which selects a seemingly classical motif (say, the apophatic discourse of “love”) and then takes its analysis all the way. Finally, I am greatly appreciative of Marion’s skill to write and work in altogether different disciplines and registers: from his groundbreaking Cartesian studies to his profound probing of the method of phenomenology (in Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas and Michel Henry, in particular), to his subtle and resolutely theological meditations, not to mention his insightful contributions to modern visual art and, occasionally, literature. All these aspects of his oeuvre set the bar very high for us all. To return to your question, I don’t think that either Marion or the other authors you mention have much positive use for the term “political theology,” as I have found it possible and helpful to define it, widening its scope to cover contemporary phenomena in so-called “global religion” and deepening its pragmatics in the more formal and analytical philosophical idiom (with the help of the writings of Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Robert Brandom, among few others). Nor do I think that any one of the authors you have mentioned would have much patience with my hopes to tie some of my strands of thoughts (even the ones I share with them) together in a conception of political thinking that seeks to pair this so-called “deep pragmatism” with some of most profound insights of offered by “moral perfectionism,” as notably Cavell has revived it. Again, Marion would seem most open to such an endeavor, given his episodic but very interesting excursions into world of analytical thought, beginning in Étant donné (Being Given)and extending into more recent discussions of the perlocutionary features of the so-called “passionate utterance” (Cavell) as well as in the recent essays collected and translated in his The Reason of the Gift, which confront the phenomenological definition of givenness with the much debated Sellarsian “myth of the given,” among other topics.

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Taylor: Now that we are approaching the conclusion, could I ask you to discuss your current research … works in progress? de Vries: My next project, which I now hope to publish in two or three installments, consists in completing a volume, entitled Of Miracles, Events, and Special Effects, and a volume, Miracle Workers of the Eleventh Hour, while a third is planned under the somewhat different heading Out of the Ordinary: Moral Perfectionism, Religion, and the Case for Deep Pragmatism. The sober descriptive subtitle of this eventual trilogy will be The Politics of Global Religion in an Age of New Media. The first volume, Of Miracles, Events, and Special Effects, seeks to establish a dialogue between classical theologies of the miracle and miracle belief, modern philosophies of the event, and contemporary theories of special effects. The larger question of religion and media, broached in the earlier collaborative interdisciplinary project with the same title (Religion and Media), is submitted here to a more thorough philosophical and, if you like, systematic theological reflection, centered around a well-circumscribed motif: the emergence of the new—epitomized by miracles, events, special effects—and the thought and action it inspires, interrupts, and carries out. The second volume, Miracle Workers of the Eleventh Hour, seeks to spell out the fate of the theologico-political and of concrete policyinduced political theologies under the expansion of economic markets and technologies, in light of this logic—and rhetoric or imagery—of the new and the beliefs we invest in the phenomena that express it. It does so by relating traditional, modern, and contemporary theories of the “spiritual automaton,” from Spinoza and Leibniz to Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and beyond, in order to theorize the “special” effects of present day religious discourse, testimony and affect, which often reveal themselves in the least expected of contexts (for example, in the debates on artificial intelligence and computational models of the mind, but also in the expansive uses of the Internet, blogs, political spin, and so on). I argue that the tradition inspired by the miraculous offers us a useful interpretative key to understanding the structure and impact of even the most ordinary, banal and down-to-earth events, whether in everyday life or in the hyped—and politicized—reality of contemporary media.

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The third volume, Out of the Ordinary, draws together my published essays devoted to Cavell’s writings and elaborates on several motifs that I introduced in my opening essay in Religion Beyond a Concept. In a more analytical register, it seeks to make the case for “deep pragmatism” with constant reference to certain helpful intuitions in the tradition of so-called moral perfectionism. It raises the question what “deep pragmatism” could mean, given the fact that pragmatism (with the exception of William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience) has not been very receptive to the specific religious motifs and motivations, moods and modalities—to say nothing of miracles—that interest me (and seems not finely attuned to the question of modern, especially new technological media either). In this current overall project, then, there are two main lines of argument. First, it has struck me that one cannot study, describe, and analyze, let alone comprehend, what an “event” is without immediately tapping into historical sources and intellectual registers that claim what—in the language and imagery of religion or, as it were, theologically—constitutes a “miracle.” Nor, I have felt compelled to add, although this may seem somewhat of a stretch, is it possible to understand either one of these notions—“event,” “miracle”— without addressing what in the language of cinema and so-called new media is called a “special effect.” What is important is to realize that this does not only—or even primarily—hold true for so-called major events, for example world-shocking historical events, the determining or effective causes of which likewise elude us. The comparison can also be made with what we take to be ordinary events or the eventfulness, even “uneventfulness” (as Cavell called it) of the everyday. The religious testimony of the miracle—the very phenomenon or set(s) of phenomena for which it stands—can be said to epitomize and flag, but also condense or magnify, foreground and highlight, the most material, profane, and secular difficulty in our coming to terms with virtually any culturally mediated and, indeed, ever more mediatized given. As Walt Whitman wrote in a notebook and also suggested throughout in a beautiful poem entitled “Miracles,” published in Leaves of Grass: “We hear of miracles.—But what is there that is not a miracle?” My second theme throughout this larger project relates directly to the first. One cannot theorize “the political” or concrete contemporary forms

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of “politics” without drawing, once again, on its theology, more precisely, its “political theology,” just as one can hardly assess its current forms and reshapings without reference to technological media, old and especially new. This is particularly clear in the ways that violence, in random terror no less than so-called justified wars, is differently—and never fully or convincingly— legitimated but always clings to grounds and motivations that remain transcendent to any cause. “No violence without religion, no religion without violence,” I once wrote in a somewhat metaphysical mood. “No events without miracles, no miracles without special effect,” I would now add. This is the case for A second larger project I am currently preparing consists in a series of detailed studies of the relationship between philosophy, literature, and temporality in the tradition of spiritual exercises from Antiquity up to Wittgenstein and beyond. It is entitled Instances: Spiritual Exercises and the Literatures of Time. In this planned book, I take my point of departure from the writings of Paul Ricoeur (notably his Temps et récit) and from the writings of Pierre Hadot in order to demonstrate how the interrelation between philosophy and literature hinges on a specific understanding of temporal experience, revolving around “the instant” as an elusive and abiding presence, whose religious overtones are undeniable. I see this volume as the elaboration of a corollary and existential basis for the analyses propounded in my other project. This study is further crucial for a proper understanding of the logic of testimony, confession, and conversion that governs the “turn to” and “away from” religion (à-dieu, adieu), which I discussed in detail in Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. In a certain sense, therefore, this set of meditations will allow me to come, if not full circle, then at least back, once again, to motifs and motivations that drove my earliest work: spelling out how one can and, indeed, must inhabit a tradition and even world, while never fully being absorbed in or by it (after all: “The matrix cannot tell who you are”); but also: seeking one’s way into (and out of) these historical legacies and contemporary situations, zooming in on (and snapping out of) the most minute of moments, especially those that have the potential of revealing, perhaps, producing maximal (i.e., “global”) effect.

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From Alchemy to Revolution Carl A. Raschke, University of Denver Victor Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania

Taylor: The Alchemy of the Word (republished as The End of Theology, 2005) was, as I have said on previous occasions, the “first” book of postmodern theology. That was in 1979 and no one at the time was really using the word “postmodern” in theology. “Deconstruction” was the preferred term. However, in that work, you do more than give a deconstructive reading of already available theological concepts and issues—that is you didn’t treat deconstruction as a method of criticism. In many ways, deconstruction becomes “postmodern” when it re-radicalizes hermeneutics . . . when it opens the interpretive horizon to a multitude of “little narratives,” as Lyotard would have described it. Could you describe the intellectual-historical context for your insights? What led you to see the “postmodern” in deconstruction?  Raschke: In 1977 when I first started writing The Alchemy of the Word the two dominant, cross-disciplinary theoretical discourses in the Englishspeaking world were Anglo-American analytical philosophy and Marxism— or at least the kind of socio-cultural, “humanistic” Marxism that had been fashioned in the previous generation by the Frankfurt School and strongly influenced the New Left during the 1960s. At the end of the Vietnam era these discourses seemed spent and obsolete. Within the much narrower ambit of what was then known as “philosophical theology” a kind of neo-Kantian constructivism, focused on reviving in some ways the Romantic concept of the “productive imagination,” prevailed. Everyone was quoting the line from Wallace Stevens “God and the imagination are one.” Ray Hart, Langdon Gilkey, Gordon Kaufman, and David Tracy were the leading theological lights of this period, and they all worked off this same type of neo-Kantian, neo-romantic theological hermeneutic. It was also about the time that Paul Ricoeur—especially

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after taking on a chair at the University of Chicago—became all the rage. As someone who had been browbeaten into acknowledging analytical philosophy as the only way to philosophical truth at Harvard in the same way that contemporary evangelicals are indoctrinated into the pseudo-intellectual arcana of “inerrancy,” yet who found neo-Romantic constructivism both airy and somewhat pretentious, I was looking for a “third way” that would (1) be faithful to the subtleties of the cultural linguisticism pioneered decades earlier by Saussure (2) lay the foundation for a new, sophisticated theory of meaning (i.e., “semantics”) that left the banal logicism of analytical philosophy behind in the dust while not succumbing to the airy pseudo-metaphysics of the imagination popular during that period. In the summer of 1977 I had my initial “aha” experience through an intensive reading of the later Heidegger (the Heidegger after the socalled Kehre), which were just coming out in a stream of recent translations in the early and mid-Seventies. The Heideggerian philosophy of language (not so much the well-known Dasein-analytic of the 1920s, with which everyone was familiar, including myself) produced in me almost a Sinai-like “revelation” in me at the time; It allowed me to (1) understand the genuine philosophical limitations of the legacy left by Russell and Wittgenstein (2) marry what we now call “Continental philosophy” (at that time it was still called “phenomenology and existential philosophy”, a designation still retained in the well-known name of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, which is still alive and vital nowadays) to a more sophisticated theory of linguistics. It was out of this process that I began writing the book on Halloween 1977. The book was written in a short period of time, though I didn’t find a publisher until about 18 months later. During the time I was writing I started to share my insight with a local faculty reading group, which included a young Continental philosopher, Jere Surber, who is still my colleague at the University of Denver. The group was organized primarily around reading and sharing ideas regarding the latest trends in literary and cultural theory. We had just finished with the latest book by Claude Levi-Strauss, and Jere suggested we might want to read Derrida’s Of Grammatology. Virtually no one at the time outside of literary theory had any idea who Derrida was, or what “deconstruction” meant. I picked up the book only to remain au courant in the context of the group,

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but as I read I realized that the Derridean theory of signification implicit in Of Grammatology improved considerably on Heidegger, and that it offered certain solutions that could not be found in the vast earlier literature known as “structural linguistics.” Keep in mind that the word “postmodernism” was not at all in use at the time. Charles Jencks had just coined it to christen contemporary architecture. The general term for the context in which Derrida appeared was then “post-structuralism,” and it was more often than not associated with Foucault, who was hotter than Derrida. The word “postmodernism” didn’t really come into fashion until Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition in 1985. By then it was simply a broad term for the new trends in French literary and cultural theory. Lyotard used it to describe what Foucault would have termed the “episteme” of that period. Reading  Grammatology  spurred me to go back and get hold of Derrida’s Speech and Phenomena, which was considered more intelligible by the few “Continental philosophers” of the period who were familiar with it. Most philosophers had no idea who Derrida was (to this day many AngloAmericans still don’t consider him a legitimate “philosopher”) until Richard Rorty, who was a prominent defector from the same analytical tradition, wrote about him in an article in 1979. It was Rorty who was the first to give Derrida some kind of legitimacy in English-speaking eyes.   In a nutshell, putting Derrida into Alchemy of the Word was an afterthought (an add-on for what might be called a “new and improved Heidegger”), but it was an incredibly fruitful afterthought.   Taylor: This is an intriguing history of relating divergent disciplines and contexts, especially in terms of exactly how various discourses are brought into conversation under very precarious conditions. I recall our mutual late friend Charlie Winquist saying that [he] wanted to study continental philosophy but could find only theology. You were able to access these discourses “locally,” through a faculty reading group at DU, but how would you characterize the reception of the result? That is, when people in the field read Alchemy what did they get or miss in your view? Raschke: It was not clear at the time how many people read the book, since it was technically a Scholars Press monograph. Most of the key scholars in the

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field at that time read SP publications, but only them. As far as I know, more people have probably read it as a backlist and in the reprint form than probably read it in the early 1980s. It should also be noted that in the 1970s and early 1980s there was little recognition in either philosophy or religious studies of a significant phenomenon known as “Continental philosophy.” That term only gained currency (though it had been around before) in the 1990s. The operative term at the time was “philosophical theology,” as distinguished from “philosophy of religion”, the latter of which usually carried the implication of a series of problems and issues largely addressed through the analytic or empirical traditions. Few use that term anymore, which has been replaced by the expression “Continental philosophy of religion,” or “Continental theology.” As I’ve indicated before, the general word for Continental philosophy when Derrida first came on the scene was “existential philosophy” and/or “phenomenology.” In  Alchemy  I talked far more about the importance of Heidegger than Derrida, who was then as well as now associated almost totally with the phrase “deconstruction.” As I discuss extensively in my new book coming out next year, and to a lesser extent in the one on which I am currently working, the genealogy of the phrase “deconstruction” can be traced directly to Derrida’s efforts to play the anti-Husserlian refrains in Heidegger in a totally new key that was largely informed by structural linguistics and Lacanian semiotics. The way in which even prominent scholars use the term “deconstruction” today has little to do with how Derrida originally intended it. If you read closely everything Derrida wrote before about 1978, that becomes pretty clear. The term “deconstruction” has been so diffused and bastardized these days I increasingly try not to use it.   Alchemy sought to carry forward with as much attention to Heidegger as Derrida what was really at stake in the latter’s early writings. But a number of early theological “entrepreneurs”—Mark C. Taylor in particular—instantly seized on the kinds of themes I developed in  Alchemy and used much of Derrida’s rhetoric to foment a much different sort of agenda. The early Taylor was transfixed by Thomas J. J. Altizer, who is the true eminence gris behind the so-called “theological turn” of the last twenty years. The genetic makeup of such movements as “secular theology” as well as the latest version of “death of God theology”, for which Taylor carried the torch through most of the

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Eighties and Nineties, is overwhelmingly Altizerian, not Derridean. No one, believe it or not even John Caputo, has really appropriated what was most radical in the early Derrida. Virtually all of the current crop of “deconstructive theologians”, if there are such creatures, are really old-style left-wing Hegelians in disguise—something at least Taylor himself has admitted, though others are oblivious of their own patrimony. Altizer, of course, has always admitted it, and been proud of it. But Derrida, like Deleuze, laid the groundwork for the ultimate collapse of the Hegelian project, first foreshadowed in Heidegger’s proclamation of the “end of philosophy.” The subtitle of  Alchemy  of course was “Language and the End of Theology.” I don’t know any prominent theological type to this day who has the barest recognition that what Derrida actually meant by deconstruction itself necessitates a companion proclamation of the “end of theology.” Nor did they take seriously anything I really advanced in the book, other than to use it an occasion to get the now bygone Derrida bandwagon rolling. Theology hasn’t really undergone a revival in the last fifteen years. It never went away. It would, however, as I predicted in the book thirty years ago, take a long while for the wheel to stop turning, even if the force behind theology was no longer applied. The proclamation of the “end of theology” is analogous the proclamation that “God is dead” by Nietzsche’s madman. As the madman says, it takes a long while for the news to reach us. Like the Japanese soldier who hid out in the jungle for decades after the end of World War II, our “theologians” still haven’t gotten the news. Taylor: Post-structuralism, coined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her translation of  Of Grammatology  still remained within a narrow context of “after structuralism”; that is, “after” Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, and Barthes. Lyotard carved out an entirely new meaning for the “post,” beyond its temporal reference. “Deconstruction,” as you mentioned, was very much a part of the Heideggerian tradition. In fact, in his “Letter to a Japanese Friend” Derrida discusses his desire to stay close to Heidegger’s “destruktion”   or “Abbau.” Here is Derrida’s reflection from the “Letter.” Would it be fair to say that Alchemy was interested in the “end of theological structure? At that time structuralism was dominant. ‘Deconstruction’ seemed to be going in the same direction since the word signified a certain attention

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to structures (which themselves  were neither simply ideas, nor forms, nor syntheses, nor systems). To  deconstruct was also a structuralist gesture or in any case a gesture that  assumed a certain need for the structuralist problematic. But it was also an  antistructuralist gesture, and its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity.  Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented (all types of structures, linguistic, ‘logocentric’, ‘phonocentric’—structuralism being especially at that time dominated by linguistic models and by a so-called structural linguistics that was also called Saussurian—socio-institutional, political, cultural, and above all and from the start philosophical).” Raschke: It was a little more complicated than that. Structuralism was by and large a European—one might even be more restrictive and say “French”— obsession, even though it had its own coterie of American disciples. Most of the latter congregated in literary criticism and literary theory, which is why Derrida first secured his American beachhead among the Yale School that included Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. Even the majority of so-called “post-structuralist” literary theorists, who gained notoriety in the late 1970s, did not see themselves as offering primarily what Derrida called “anti-structuralist” gestures. “Post-structuralism” was a term coined in France in the late 1960s, and it referred primarily to the ongoing impact of Derrida’s 1966 lecture “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” From the very beginning the “post-structuralist” movement, later fuzzed in its range of connotation as it was re-baptized “postmodernism,” was closely associated with Derrida. And Derrida, as the quote below indicates, was doing something unique. The real context for the insemination of post-structuralism in this country was the simple fact that more and more scholars in the humanities were fed up with the regime of analytic philosophy. It is hard to imagine from the vantage point of 2012 how thoroughly dominant and pervasive analytic philosophy was in the academy from the early 1950s until well in to the 1970s. Continental philosophy, whether French or German, was considered a weird kind of “cult.” I did my doctoral work at Harvard, and I remember a brief conversation I had at a party with Willard Quine, one of the most famous analytic philosophers of all time. I told him I was doing my PhD dissertation on Kant, and as a response he sniffed, “oh, that mystic.” However, just as French post-structuralism was

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the intellectual by-product of the political turmoil in France during the late 1960s, its adoption by the American academy not quite a decade later can be seen as a kind of methodological revisionism that mirrored the cultural revolution that had largely run its course by 1975. Philosophy and what was then known as “philosophical theology”, however, was probably the last bastion of the academy to take an interest in “post-structuralism,” or to even hear about it for that matter. I personally had never heard about it until 1977, and that was because I was at the time part of an interdisciplinary faculty reading group at my university, dominated by literary theorists. What I had been doing ever since I started publishing academic papers about 1974 was to try to find a philosophically sophisticated— and legitimate—alternative to analytic philosophy. I was already steeped in Hegel, Heidegger, and the phenomenological tradition, but I knew that such a tradition was powerless to challenge analytic philosophy on its own terms—as a philosophy of language. Any innovation in philosophical method at the time had to be focused solely on language. Wittgenstein had already “hypnotized” us into making that assumption. Earlier in the decade I had begun to plunge into the various philosophical theories of the imagination, especially if they had specific application to the theory of language, as in the case of Owen Barfield and Philip Wheelwright. However, it was the spate of translations into English of Heidegger’s later works on language during the mid-1970s by Joan Stambaugh that really forced me to start thinking in new directions. To be honest, my main interest in Alchemy was Heidegger, not Derrida. As far as I was concerned, Derrida as a “post-structuralist” was originally intended to play the “bad cop” in interrogating analytic philosophy, while Heidegger remained the “good cop”. In the 1970s Heidegger was always the “kinder and gentler” form of fallback for literary theorists who wanted to resist the “scientizing” trend of analytic methodology (that of course was long before the whole 1980s controversy over Heidegger’s Nazism blew up). Because “deconstruction” was construed then mainly as a more radical kind of “hard theory”, focused exclusively on the game of signifiers without a smidge of the essential ingredient literary theorists called “pathos,” it played the suitable bad cop role, so far as I was concerned. And because Derrida in Speech and Phenomena made it clear he was taking Husserl and Heidegger to a new level, the choice was obvious for me. Please

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remember that the subtitle of  Alchemy  (which in the 1990 republication became pretty much the actual title) was “Language and the End of Theology.” I chose the expression “end of theology” deliberately because it imported into my critique the terminology of Heidegger’s own core project of “overcoming metaphysics”. It also had a provocative implication, which was bound to gain attention. Since most academics were unfamiliar with the more technical (and less colorful) connotations of the actual phraseology which Heidegger adapted from the Hegelian dialectic, the strategy worked well. However, Derrida was, while thoroughly novel and trendy, perceived as bit weird throughout the 1970s, while Heidegger’s star, despite the introduction of the late Heidegger to English speakers, was slowly fading. At the same time, it was Richard Rorty, the “bad boy” analytic philosopher who scandalized the American philosophical association with publication of his prize-winning book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1980, who actually made Derrida respectable in the more cutting-edge philosophical and theological circles. Rorty had written an article or two in the late 1970s that introduced Derrida to the philosophical world and treated him in a very approving manner. It was Rorty’s endorsement of Derrida (even though the two thinkers had entirely different agendas) in my estimation that actually kindled widespread interest outside literary circles. It was also the sensation surrounding Rorty and his appearance at an AAR plenary (which I, as I recall, moderated) that stimulated initial interest in Alchemy.   By the mid-1980s no one knew or cared much any more about “poststructuralism,” and nowadays only a few connoisseurs of contemporary French intellectual history are conversant with the debates over “structure” that raged in France from about 1966 to 1973. If one is interested in that original context of the debates, I strongly recommend Deleuze’s important essay on structuralism that can be found in the collection of essays in English titled Desert Islands. Taylor: I would like to ask more about your next book  Force of God, but before I do I’d like to follow up on the Derrida and deconstruction issue. As you know, I’m working on a volume entitled Divisible Derrida, which shares some of your understanding of Derrida’s (mis) appropriation by various interests. Nevertheless, Derrida and deconstruction did open religious studies

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to other fields and disciplines that it would not have “contacted” or would not have as significantly contacted were it not for post-structuralist thought. For example, religious studies today largely remains “area studies,” but Derrida and deconstruction made for a prolonged interaction between  religion and Continental philosophy, leading, in my view to a new field of “religious theory.” Even so-called area studies today are heavily influenced by post or de colonial theory that  is very much influenced by deconstruction and Derrida. My question, then, has more to do with this future of Derrida and deconstruction than with a “fidelity” to what Derrida meant or emphasized. That is, could a “real” Derrida, in  ”true” deconstructive fashion, be “on the way” or “to be”? Will we have a better understanding of Derrida when a field or concern emerges that is beyond the context of his thinking? Raschke: I would agree that Derrida has influenced other fields in the humanities in a salutary manner as well as given an unprecedented boost to religious theory and interdisciplinary studies. However, in my estimation the causal connection is a little more indirect. It was the pre-eminence and fame of Derrida more than anything else sparked a fascination in the Anglophone world with Continental philosophy as a whole. Because of Derrida’s notoriety academic publishers began commissioning translation of other major French thinkers (specifically Deleuze, but of course later such figures as Badiou). Lacan, of course, was known before Derrida, and his impact also shaped the mounting interest in Continental thought. If you look at the level of “influence” on interdisciplinary studies in the Anglophone world as late as 1990, Lacan had somewhat more of a presence in interdisciplinary studies as well as Marxist thinkers such as Althusser. Derrida was still considered a little “out there” (with the exception of avante-garde literary theorists). And there were also suspicions that he was a tool of conservative and anti-Marxist interests, which of course was totally unfounded. On the other hand, conservatives thought he was a tool of left-wing interersts, but that double-bind more the consequence of the perceived obscurity of his writings along with the fact that he didn’t seem easily deployable toward any current “ideological” bent. When I taught my first graduate seminar on Derrida in 1999 I only had three students, all from philosophy. Six years later the class was full, and it was mostly students from a wide range of fields in the humanities. I think the difference was by

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then Derrida was not only a famous person, but he had written a lot that touched on political theory, questions of higher education, etc. But many of these same interdisciplinary students to this day don’t get deconstruction, and increasingly don’t even care.  You mention postcolonial theory, which is an interesting case. Gayatri Spivak, who really “founded” what we now term postcolonial theory, was a faithful student and translator of Derrida. However, today she is frequently cited mainly for her pioneering work while reviled concomitantly for her “obscurity” (i.e., her early Derridean discourse and style). Identity, globalization, and so-called “borderlands” theory have come to overshadow much of the postcolonial conversation. And the somewhat recent fashion of changing the modifier “postcolonial” to “decolonial” (pushed largely by Walter Mignolo, who is not in any way Derridean) derives more from historicist and ethnographic premises than philosophical ones. But, again, Derrida made the reading of Continental philosophy in certain disciplinary contexts as a critical auxiliary exercise not only respectable, but necessary. The indirect value of Derrida for postcolonial theory in that sense has been immense. The long-range impact of Derrida’s theories in my estimation has more to do with a general paradigm shift than with the future of “deconstruction” as a specific philosophical or theoretical enterprise. Deconstruction has been much like Einstein’s theory of relativity. It changed forever the way we look at and do theory, even though its immediate application is not as extensive. Since Derrida theory can no longer pretend to be—to use Hegel’s term—a “positive science.” It can only be about fluid boundary conditions, vanishing points, erasures, shifting parameters, “mobile metaphors” (Nietzsche), and circulating as well as ”sliding signifiers” (Lacan). The notion of the determinate entity or the fixed idea has gone the way of the ether in physics. The general principle—if we can call it that—of “deconstruction” comes down simply to shift happens (if I›m allowed here to be a little flippant). As to the last question, I think the more Derrida is consistently read by philosophers and in an omnibus, rather than a merely selective, way that we will have a better understanding of not only what he has been saying, but what the broader implications of thought are. One of the problems all along has been that Derrida has rarely been as Derrida. He has been read for the sake of various academic and even ideological agendas, most of which are now going

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into eclipse. Hegel was right about the owl of Minerva taking flight at dusk, and that applies to Derrida as well. Taylor: I think that you are right to point out the intellectual commerce that one finds in Derrida studies. I’ve always found a tension in this wide field between those who wish to find a methodology in Derrida and then apply it . . . imitate Derrida . . . more or less . . . and those who saw what Derrida was trying to do, trying to open and then work to accomplish something related. We’ve devoted a lot of time to Derrida, but it has been to point to the latter, I think. Alchemy, early on, and your more recent work has been oriented, as I see it, to keeping a conversation going in the context of religious theory. In your forthcoming book,  The Revolution in Theory, you begin and end with a call to think “actively.” It is Heideggerian in a sense . . . thinking beyond philosophy, beyond the closure of discourse. You place a great deal of emphasis on “religious theory’s” potential as an “active force.” It is almost apocalyptic in tone. Religious theory uniquely “discloses” the status of other discourses, political, economic, etc. Are you emphasizing an apocalyptic force? Raschke: The reason I put so much emphasis on religious theory is not so much because I want to emphasize theory, which in some ways has been “overtheorized” since the advent of deconstruction, but because the religious remains to this day in need of a profounder theoreticization. Generally speaking, The Revolution in Religious Theory maps the general terrain of postmodern theory in the past several decades and shows how such theory has evolved from a preoccupation with “difference”, which can be traced to the post-structuralist revolt against all variants of conceptual totalism, to a consideration of the “event”. In this new book I develop for the first time the notion of the religious as an  event horizon  for all our theoretical acts of signification. I deliberately choose the well-known scientific term for black holes in the universe, because I want to stress that we are not dealing simply with just another phenomenon in the universe like microbes or dust clouds. We are dealing with a force or energy—I use Deleuze’s well-known term “active force” from Nietzsche and Philosophy— that has real effects in the world. The re-Islamization of the Middle East is a case in point. When the “Arab Spring” suddenly erupted well over a year ago the conventional wisdom was that

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we had finally witnessed the beginnings of some kind of Islamic Enlightenment, where religion would finally be trumped by the values of secular democracy and pluralism as well as the assertion of a certain version of the European notion of “human rights”. The same wisdom of course confidently maintained that the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been fighting Western secularism since the 1920s, was not a major player. Of course, we now know the opposite was true. In earlier books such as GloboChrist I show how this same force is playing itself out in terms of the expansive growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in Europe’s former colonial domain, though that book (given the requirements of the publisher) is as much “theological” as it is analytical. In my forthcoming book Force of God: Religion, Globalization, and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy (working title) I argue that the Enlightenment is over, and that the “singularity” of the religious will increasingly be the motivating factor in historical change. The current fashion in Continental philosophy of religion—and the religious academy is more susceptible to the dictata of fashionistas than Justin Bieber’s twitter followers—trends toward various retro renderings of “atheistic materialism” in trying to revive somehow the golden age of Western secularism. But these obsessions strike me more as the final (secularist) orgy in the last days of Pompei. As I’ve written and said on numerous occasions Derrida got it right in 1993 when he proclaimed the return of the religious. He was probably speaking, however, with a certain doublemindedness about what that meant in the long run. His characterization of it as a sort of autoimmune pathology probably betrays his own secularist bias, but it did shift the discourse, even if somewhat unintentionally. I myself think we need to be more serious about the meaning of this “force” than was Derrida, who despite Caputo’s reinvention of him as “Saint Jacques” was more concerned really with the political than the religious. Even after 9/11 happened Derrida was far more beset by the actions of the Bush administration than by the implications of the new militant Islamism for world order. Bush and the neo-cons have now faded from the historical stage, but the “return of religion” is casting an ever broader shadow by the day. The force is not only still with us. It is reshaping the planet, and it is not at all a “religion without religion.” It is religion in the most element sense— the singularity of passionate motivation and political commitment. It is something we have not seen since the Westphalian peace of 1648, when the

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wars of religion ended and the infant Enlightenment was birthed. We are, to paraphrasae Nietzsche in one of his aphorisms from The Gay Science as the runup to the madman’s announcement of the catastrophic “event” of God’s death, in a new horizon of the infinite where all the familiar sightings of boundaries and landfalls have suddenly vanished. Taylor: Could I follow up on this notion of a vanishing horizon? Recently Žižek has made a great deal of the ways in which the Occupy Movement has been dismissed by those on the Right and Left. The shared criticism is that the Occupy Movement has no “plan,” no “vision” of the future, or no “formula.” One could say that a “political” movement without a goal is limited; however, one could just as easily say, as Žižek does, that the future cannot be seen from where we are . . . that certain things must be revealed about Capitalism, ideological structures, et al before a sense of the future can be determined. Perhaps this where politics could learn something from religion? Could a theorizing of religion from your view significantly contribute to the formation of a future politics? More than let’s say a Derridean perpetual deferral of the future? Raschke: Of course, per your question that is exactly the tack I take in my forthcoming book Force of God: Political Theology and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy. Loosely defined, “political theology”—a category that has gained sudden prominence in the last two decades in academic thought—means the investigation of religion as the key to the solution of political issues. I won’t elaborate on what is happening—or not happeningùin this particular field. If anyone is interested, they can go to the blog www.politicaltheology.com/ blog where I have posted already a number of reflections and analyses on this kind of question, including an overview of both the current and next books. But as a direct answer to the question, I can say the answer is a definite “yes.” Why exactly? First, let’s examine the classical legacy. If anyone reads Aristotle’s Politics carefully, they must realize that the fundamental issue around which circulate his well-known views is the question of how to discern “the good” (to kalon) as the guiding principle for the formation of the polis. Now I am not at all advocating any of the classical solutions—either  implicitly  or  explicitly— which have occupied philosophers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first

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centuries, particularly figures like Alasdair Macintyre.  But the question of the good is ultimately a political question, as both Plato and Aristotle understood, and since Augustine at least we have been compelled to admit, even in the epoch of triumphal secularism, that questions of “faith” are vital, if not absolutely essential, to crafting some kind of appropriate answer. That in my mind is the underlying message of Charles Taylor’s monumental musings on the problem of the secular, though I personally believe it is a lot clunkier and complicated than he makes it. Now, let’s return to Derrida. It is not because he had this insatiable craving to be fashionable that he moved during the 1980s from the preoccupation with the meaning of texts to what might be termed political philosophy in the conventional sense. The “religious turn” was merely a natural outcome of the political turn. Political theorists ceased in the eighteenth century constructing grand “thought experiments” à la Plato’s Republic that might somehow offer a blueprint for how sovereignty might be ultimately codified and the “good” enforced. Derrida seemed to have realized, especially when he waded during the early Eighties into the controversy over Heidegger’s politics, that how one construes intellectual legacy has at minimum indirect political consequences. Accused as he was of cultural conservatives of corrupting the youth after the fashion of Socrates, he probably had to say something in his defense, which of course he did. It was in this context he seemed to have discovered that “deconstruction” is isomorphic with theological iconoclasm as well as the kind of “eschatologism” that powered Marx. His declaration in Spectres of Marx that “the time is out of joint” is more profound than many realize. As a deconstructive political thinker, Derrida is perhaps more relevant than then long term than even Žižek. As I’ve already insisted throughout this interview, what matters in Derrida is not mainly “what was”, but what still remains “to come.” Derrida wears the prophetic mantle in a form  of which no Western intellectual has been deserving since Nietzsche. L’avenir is “eschatological|” insofar as it implies the full indeterminacy of an event-ful futureness that continues to shock and surprise us. Is it possible to talk, finally, about how a theorizing of religion can “contribute to the formation of a future politics?” The answer unfortunately is a decided “no.”  The future, as Ernst Block reminds us, is radically open. So politics does not belong to the sphere of discourse we call l’avenir. The politeia is

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always, as the Greeks remind us, about striving for the good in the best way we can formulate it, given current circumstances. But does religion “remind” us that politics per se, which is always present, fails when confronted with the power of the future? Yes, decidedly! The future is constituted by the event, and the event is by definition indeterminable. It is the temporal trajectory of time-bound (“political”) incidents connected in accordance with the overflow of the actual consequences of these unpredictability “eventualities” that the religious mind relegates to the mind of God. A future “politics” is impossible. A political theology of the future is possible. Politically speaking, that is what we can take away from Derrida.

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Interview with Thomas J.J. Altizer Thomas J. J. Altizer, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies SUNY at Stony Brook Lissa McCullough, Independent scholar, Los Angeles

Thomas J. J. Altizer is a radical theologian known for his creative exploration of the theological implications of the death of God in many books spanning over fifty years. Educated at the University of Chicago in the history of religions, with sociologist of religions Joachim Wach as his adviser and enjoying a close personal friendship with historian of religions Mircea Eliade, Altizer has ever viewed Christianity from a post-Christian comparative outlook. His early writings correlate Buddhist mysticism and Western apocalypticism. In 1965–66 the print media (first The New York Times, then Time magazine) discerned a “death of God movement” where none existed per se, giving the 38-year-old Altizer and several fellow scholars a platform from which to expound their theological perspectives before a very broad popular audience, provoking a wide range of responses from the curious and enthusiastic to the reactionary and hostile. A fervent national and even international media event was thus in fact generated, which peaked in the years 1966–68 and gradually ebbed in the early 1970s. Altizer’s deep immersion in the study of Hegel during the 1970s began to define the mature period of his thinking, which markedly begins at about age 50 with The SelfEmbodiment of God (1977) and culminates in History as Apocalypse (1985). The latter study establishes what Altizer has characterized as the Christian epic tradition, tracing profound interconnections between ancient Greek and biblical traditions and the imaginative writings of Dante, Milton, Blake, and Joyce. Conceptual breakthroughs of this period are more fully developed in Altizer’s later works, which embody a more and more systematic theological voyage, culminating in a radical Protestant understanding of the apocalyptic Trinity. This interview was conducted by e-mail and telephone, November 18 to December 8, 2012.

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Hegel–Nietzsche–Schweitzer McCullough: Pardon my beginning with a long question intended to set the stage. Several of us who follow your work would characterize it as essentially a synthesis of Hegelian and Nietzschean insights into apocalyptic negation of the Christian God. Hegel “saves” the eternal absoluteness of Godhead, but in the form of a historical-dialectical self-negation that releases Godhead into historical determinacy. Nietzsche dissolves eternal Godhead into a selftransfiguring Will to Power. Both can be called philosophical expressions of the death of God. Your work is novel in conjoining these paradigms with the new understanding of Jesus that emerged from late modern New Testament scholarship (ranging from Franz Overbeck to Albert Schweitzer to Rudolf Bultmann); you correlate the apocalypticism of the original Jesus movement unveiled by these biblical scholars with the philosophical expressions of the death of God in late modernity. In a sense, as I see it, your theology displaces the triumphal “second coming” of Jesus anticipated by traditional Christianity with an apocalyptic “second crucifixion” of Godhead. God died in Jesus two millennia ago, but that death was soon construed by emerging orthodoxy as a triumph over death—an absolutizing of Life without death—rather than a universalization of death. Only with the dissolution of former Christendom and the death of “God the Father” is the claim to immutabilitas undone and the universalization of death completed. In effect, after two millennia of anti-apocalyptic counterrevolution, God at last becomes the apocalyptic Crucified. I think one of the most difficult stumbling blocks for your critical readers is this embrace and celebration of universal death. Why must divine death be embraced as the core meaning of Christianity—in diametric contradiction to those Christians who claim Christ’s absolute triumph over death? Altizer: I am a committed radical Christian who has been inspired both by the Radical Reformation and by radical Christian thinkers and visionaries from Paul through Joyce. Perhaps the center of this Christianity is the apprehension that Christianity has profoundly reversed itself, becoming the very opposite of Jesus and primitive Christianity, as most decisively manifest in its reversal of an original Christian apocalypticism. But this

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reversal has itself continually been reversed in revolutionary Christian movements. The most open of these reversals is the uniquely Christian epic, one comprehending Dante, Milton, Blake, and Joyce, but with genuine philosophical parallels in Hegel and Nietzsche. Of course, this is the most heterodox of all expressions of Christianity, but this is a heterodoxy that we can discover in such deeply Christian thinkers as Kierkegaard, the young Heidegger, and the early Barth, and it is writ large in the greater body of our biblical scholarship, so that orthodox theology has removed itself from truly critical biblical scholarship. Indeed, it is orthodox theology that is most moribund today, scarcely speaking outside the realms of practical ethics and ecclesiology, and then always speaking though the voice of the political right. The vast majority of people today can only encounter a conservative or orthodox theology, and hence are closed to all Christian depth or subtlety, and thus are wholly closed to radical Christianity. Nonetheless there are those of us who are called to bear witness to radical Christianity, and if this is now difficult to do through the churches, many paths are at hand through our most radical thinking and vision. While this is clearest in Hegel, Hegel is our most difficult thinker, and just as this radicalism is purest in Nietzsche, Nietzsche is our most offensive thinker; but when Hegel and Nietzsche are truly conjoined, as in Derrida and deconstruction, an enormous power is at hand, and thus it has been my path to conjoin Hegel and Nietzsche theologically. All too ironically, Nietzsche’s The Antichrist (1895) may well be the philosophical work in which Jesus is most decisively called forth, and called forth as one whose own way has been totally reversed by Christianity, but reversing that reversal draws forth an actual way of compassion as is impossible in all orthodox theology. Now it has been crucial to my way to recover or discover a genuine biblical theology, one that has virtually perished in our time, and here I have been most affected by Weber, Gottwald, Schweitzer, and Bultmann, and the real challenge here is to conjoin Schweitzer and Bultmann, one that is attempted in my book The Contemporary Jesus (1997). Note that this is the only book attempting to ingrate the Jesus whom we know critically through New Testament scholarship with the Jesus whom we know imaginatively in the Christian epic, and thereby Milton and Blake become decisively manifest as

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revolutionary theologians. Apparently this is of no interest to the theological world, but is that world now closed to radical Christianity? Or closed in its most manifest expressions even if not in its most powerful expressions? Socratic wisdom itself was directed to the challenge and reversal of all manifest or common thinking, and if this inevitably led to the hemlock for Socrates, many Christians conjoin Jesus and Socrates at this crucial point, and repudiate every Jesus whose way is not the way of the cross. Thence we speak of the kenotic or self-emptying Jesus, and all too significantly it is Hegel who first gives us a totally kenotic philosophy; until then philosophy had been closed to Christian thinking. Kenotic philosophy fully dawns in Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which is a revolutionary enactment of the death of God, but precisely thereby it is the discovery of an absolute self-negation, one that becomes the center and ground of a uniquely Hegelian philosophy. But The Phenomenology of Spirit is also our first apocalyptic philosophical work, one revolving about the advent of the final Age of the Spirit, and this is even a Joachite age of the Spirit that dialectically negates the ages of the Father and the Son. McCullough: How does death figure in this apocalypticism? Altizer: Already in Paul, Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection are not only conjoined but identified dialectically, and if this creates a uniquely Christian dialectic, that dialectic is not fully developed until Hegel, even if it is imaginatively realized in Blake. Yet this dialectic is wholly lost in the great body of Christianity, as a pagan immortality usurps a biblical resurrection (cf. Oscar Cullmann), and a uniquely Christian death threatens to disappear or is recovered only in the purest expressions of Christianity. How fascinating that Heidegger’s recovery of a uniquely Christian death could have such an enormous impact on twentieth-century philosophy, just as Rilke’s recovery of that death so deeply affected twentieth-century poetry, a Christianity that a Kierkegaard could know as having become completely pagan is now most challenged by authentic renewals of an original and radical Christianity. That is the ultimate challenge of a uniquely modern realization of the death of God; it is far more deeply and purely Christian than is modern orthodox Christianity, and far more deeply biblical, too, as can most

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clearly be apprehended in Blake’s vision. Blake’s ultimate vision of the “SelfAnnihilation of God” is a genuine renewal of that Kingdom of God enacted by Jesus, one that had wholly been lost in a de-eschatologizing Christian tradition, as it distanced itself from apocalypse. But that apocalypse is recovered by ultimate radicals such as Blake, Hegel, and Nietzsche. This is possible only by way of a virtually absolute heterodoxy; if Gnosticism was previously the absolute heresy or heterodoxy condemned by Christianity, now that Gnosticism itself is inverted and reversed in modern thinking—far more so than it had been by Christian orthodoxy. Is it not highly significant that heterodox Christianity is so powerful in late modernity, deeply darkening orthodoxy itself and calling forth a radical Christianity that is as promising as Christianity has ever been? And this is a heterodox or radical Christianity that dissolves all secularism or “atheism,” for it is far more atheistic than “atheism,” as witness not only Nietzsche but Hegel and Blake. Here ultimate depth is certainly called forth, one that theologians such as Tillich knew as a Christian depth, but one that is far more manifestly a Christian depth in Hegel and Blake. Yes, that Christian depth is a Christian death, but it is an absolute Death or Crucifixion, and therefore and thereby is Resurrection itself, but only by way of the ending of all Christian paganism, or all that is commonly and manifestly Christian. McCullough: Can you provide a working definition of apocalypticism? Altizer: Apocalypticism is the final expression of biblical revelation, and thus the original form of Christianity, but one that was almost immediately reversed in the most comprehensive transformation of a world religion that has ever occurred. Nowhere else in the history of religions can one encounter such a pure and total coincidentia oppositorum, or full conjunction of radically dichotomous opposites. Even if it remains a mystery to us, here lies an absolute summons or calling. For the deepest expressions of modern secularism, such as Marxism, are genuinely apocalyptic, and no greater theological challenge exists than that of relating an original apocalyptic Christianity to its ultimately secular descendants. Now even if apocalypticism is the expression of a total and final ending, that very ending creates an absolute beginning in the totally new worlds that it calls forth.

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Each new world born from apocalyptic is a total assault upon every previous world, an assault inseparable from its radical newness. Only here is there manifest a genuine novitas mundi, an absolute newness of the world, a new creation that is the very essence of the apocalyptic. Reformation–revolution McCullough: Essentially, only the ending of an established world enables a truly new world to come into existence. It follows that any person or movement that strives to transform the world radically—in the direction of justice, for instance—embodies an apocalyptic impulse. Congruent with this, ever since writing History as Apocalypse (1985), you have shown keen interest in modern political revolutions as manifestations of religious reformation—and here I mean “reformation” in an expansive sense, including but not limited to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and after, encompassing the radical and tumultuous reformations of society that violently tore away at established Christian institutions and reconfigured the world as we know it. Here your work resonates profoundly with Jacob Taubes’s Occidental Eschatology (1947). Would you say something about how you understand the relationship between “divine” or “sacred” authority and political revolution. The latter, it seems to me, introduces a new horizontal “authority” powerful enough to underthrow the authority of sacred hierarchies. Certainly modern science and technology have been key factors in this emergent new form of authority. How do you think about the interrelations of these forces: religious reformation, political revolution, and scientific-technological revolution?  Altizer: Radical Christianity is inseparable from existence in an inverted world; only that inversion calls forth radical Christianity, so that a revolutionary consciousness is essential to radical Christianity, just as it is true that world revolutions have occurred only within a Christian horizon and world. Moreover, all world revolutions have been apocalyptic revolutions, beginning with the English revolution of the seventeenth century—which initiated world revolution—and continuing through the French and Russian revolutions, possibly up to that Maoist revolution that

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would have been impossible apart from a Marxism that was a consequence of the secularization of Christianity. Indeed, apocalypticism has been the driving power of genuine revolution, even including the scientific revolution of the seventeen century, a revolution that literally turned the world upside down and created an absolutely new world. If Newton was the primary creator of the greatest of all scientific revolutions, it is not accidental that Newton was a passionate apocalyptic believer and creator, nor is it accidental that the deepest of all biblical revolutionaries is the apocalyptic Paul. For genuine revolution and genuine apocalypse are inseparable, just as counterrevolutions have invariably been anti-apocalyptic, as can be observed even in contemporary life. Nothing is more fundamental in Christianity than its universalization of apocalypticism. Thereby an ultimately revolutionary power is released that provokes a counterrevolution in Christianity, a counterrevolution that itself becomes what we know as Christendom, embodying the most dichotomous of all historical worlds: a world whose dichotomy inevitably arises from its revolutionary and counterrevolutionary poles. Yet this is a dichotomy releasing an absolute energy and life, one that can be and has been known as a Faustian energy, an energy embodying an absolute selfnegation or self-emptying, and an energy that can be stilled only by the most ultimate passivity. Authority–anarchism McCullough: If we accept your insistence that apocalypse and revolution are inseparable from each other, does this mean that to be a radical Christian is to be an anarchist? Today we see anarchist political philosophy emerging with renewed seriousness, advocated by highly respected figures including Noam Chomsky and David Graeber. But I am especially interested in hearing how you conceive the transformation of authority in apocalyptic revolution. Is all authority per se underthrown, or is a new radical understanding of authority needed to “fight fire with fire”? The New Testament gospels often remark that Jesus “speaks with authority.” Reformers of all stripes charged ahead on the basis of biblical authority, at least in their own minds, understood as authorizing the free Christian conscience to rebel against and assault

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corrupt “institutions of men.” What role for authority do you accept as a radical Christian  thinker—or do you see it as dissolved into a freedom without authority?  Altizer: Certainly an overwhelming pragmatic problem for radical Christianity is the question of authority, for even if it is dedicated to the inversion and reversal of all established authority, it cannot escape the actuality of authority. Already this can be observed in what little that we know of the Jesus community, and while we cannot know the nature of the authority that Jesus exercised, there can be little question that he deeply embodied an actual authority. We can observe a comparable authority in prophetic communities throughout history, as most fully manifest in the Hebrew Bible, for the canonical prophets were prophets with a canonically sanctioned authority. Of course, radical Christianity has been profoundly affected by noncanonical prophets such as Blake, who can even be known as antiprophets in inverting and reversing all established authority. The Father is the primal authority in all established tradition, and this is true in the Bible, too, the primal Christian prayer is the “Our Father,” and Paul and the Fourth Gospel are truly challenging in minimizing the role of the Father, as is also the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. Our most conservative traditions commonly speak in the name of the Father, a name that is virtually never evoked in truly radical movements. If Freud’s most radical thinking was his discovery of the Oedipus complex, nothing else has so challenged the reign of the Father unless it is radical Christianity itself. For radical Christianity is an ultimate challenge to the Father, a Father whom it can know as being dead, and whose death is the source of an ultimate liberation. Now this liberation embodies an anarchistic freedom, as so deeply known by Milton and Blake; as Milton and Blake deeply dissolve the Law, the Law disappears as the Law of the Father and is reborn as an absolutely new freedom. But that freedom is inseparable from a dissolution or reversal of the Law, as first known by Paul, a revolutionary Paul who as such is an ultimate enemy of all establishments. Nonetheless there is no Christian authority that is greater than Paul’s, not even the authority of Jesus, which the Christian can know only through Paul.

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Freedom McCullough: It seems that freedom—or transformative belief in freedom—is the core revolutionary motive that empowers apocalyptic Christianity, both ancient and modern. Freedom is a product of faith. Even if Rousseau could write that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” it is much more historically accurate to claim that everywhere human beings are born under various forms of bondage and need to discover—or invent, rather—the idea of freedom, whether it can be realized or not. We take this revolutionary idea for granted today, not understanding how exceptional it is as an expectation, and how little human history confirms it from a multi-millennial point of view. How would you characterize radical freedom as it is invented by Jesus and Paul and the Jesus movement? How is it connected with love? Is there a negative or tragic aspect to this faith, a price to be paid? Are all these reformations and revolutions a quixotic quest to attain a freedom that must ever evade and withdraw? Is the struggle for freedom—or faith in freedom—the only form of freedom attainable?  Altizer: Is freedom the primal motive empowering apocalyptic Christianity, both ancient and modern? If so, what could such freedom mean, does it have anything in common with modern freedom, or only with an Augustinian and Pauline freedom, in which case is it inseparable from predestination? A deeper predestination is profoundly modern, as in Hegel and Nietzsche, wherein necessity and freedom wholly coincide in a destiny that can be understood as an apocalyptic destiny. If Hegel is our greatest philosopher of freedom, and Nietzsche our greatest philosopher of destiny, can a coincidentia oppositorum be realized between them, one realizing apocalypse itself? Now the Christian knows freedom as a gift of the grace of Christ, one only realized in the Crucifixion, which delivers us from the bondage of sin, a sin that is an ultimate slavery. Simply to become aware of that sin is to awaken to a fallen consciousness—one discovered by Paul as self-consciousness, thereby for the first time releasing an actual self-consciousness into the world. A unique freedom comes with that self-consciousness making possible a wholly new self-exploration, and with it a wholly new pride and illusion, although an illusion and pride integrally related to a new creativity. Only now does a

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profound imaginative creativity become possible, as inaugurated by Dante, one truly individual as creativity never is in the ancient world, and hence a consequence of freedom itself, even if a freedom inseparable from destiny. Finally this freedom is impossible apart from apocalypse, but it is actual as freedom even in nonapocalyptic horizons, so that Hegel can understand freedom as the driving energy of world history and Nietzsche can understand antifreedom or an inverted freedom as the dominant condition of humanity. Both Hegel and Nietzsche are deeply Pauline thinkers—nowhere more so than in their understanding of freedom—for if it is Paul who first becomes conscious of an interior freedom that is an interior necessity, it is Hegel and Nietzsche who are our greatest philosophers of necessity, and are so as profoundly apocalyptic thinkers. Hence both are philosophers of an absolutely new age that is an absolutely final age, and both realize a profound freedom that had never been known before, and this is finally a necessary freedom for each and every one of us. Love–compassion McCullough: In your published work, it is extremely rare that you write about love or even employ the word “love”—and this despite the great power with which many of your major influences write about love, from Paul and Augustine to Dante and Kierkegaard. Many think of Christianity as first and foremost a religion of love. Do you accept that characterization? If so, where is love in your theological thinking—is it in disguise?  Altizer: If nothing else Heidegger has taught us a new silence in confronting our primal questions, and above all the question of God; but this is true of other primal questions such as love, about which Heidegger and most late modern thinkers are silent. Once again our poetry is the decisive arena to explore, and most clearly so our epic poetry, and the ultimate transformation of that poetry between Dante and Joyce is certainly a transformation of everything that is actual for us as love. Now love is more comprehensive in Finnegans Wake (1939) than it is in any other epic, yet it is comprehensive as the apparent opposite of love, as an absolutely transfiguring power that turns everything into the opposite of itself, including all that we have known as love.

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The word “love” occurs again and again in the Wake in truly multiple and even conflicting modes, but it never occurs as it does in our common or established speech, for the Wake is the most apocalyptic of our epics; it can only actually evoke an absolutely new world. Seemingly love disappears in that world, or everything that we have known and named as love, but this is absolutely necessary to evoke an absolute apocalypse, and an absolute apocalypse of love itself. This is what Blake knows as the New Jerusalem, and all too significantly it is Blake and Joyce who are our most erotic writers, or most profoundly erotic writers, and even as such our most challenging or offensive writers. Perhaps Dante is our greatest poet of love, creating a truly new love in which the love of God and the world and humanity and our beloved truly coincide, so that Dante gave us the most comprehensive love known to us, one that is repeated and renewed in Joyce. But this is a love that cannot be translated into a common language, or even spoken in such language; language that can give witness to it only by way of a new and comprehensive silence. Now it is true that the New Testament is absolutely new in terms of its enactment of a new and total love or compassion, but it is inseparable from the death or crucifixion of God, and theologies incapable of speaking that crucifixion are incapable of speaking or evoking the totality of love. Moreover, as the world and theology itself have evolved, any such love becomes ever more unspeakable, then a silence about this love can be a genuine witness to it, just as all chatter about love is now a defamation of it. This is openly manifest in a new mass culture and society, as Heidegger and many other thinkers have decisively demonstrated, so that in such a world, silence, and silence about love, is truly necessary. Only thereby can there be a genuine witness to love in such a world. While we can encounter such witness in our greatest imaginative creations, as in Dostoevsky and Proust, these are absolutely discordant with everything that we commonly know and name as love, and only thereby can they be genuine evocations of love. Sacrifice–evil McCullough: You just referred to a “new and total love” in the New Testament that is connected with the crucifixion, and you claim that

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theologies incapable of evoking crucifixion are incapable of evoking the totality of love. It seems to me, consistent with that, your theology evokes love primarily through the kenotic self-sacrifice of God. The theme of divine sacrifice, important all along in your work, seems increasingly prominent and tragic in recent books such as Godhead and the Nothing (2003), Living the Death of God (2006), and The Apocalyptic Trinity (2012). Whereas historically Christian orthodoxy affirmed a God who is at once absolute love and absolutely immutable, you counter that such a nondialectical God cannot be affected, touched, or transfigured. Only absolute kenosis manifests the Christian God as a God of absolute love (as in Phil. 2:6–8). Does real and actual love presuppose crucifying diremption, a fall into evil? Indeed, your work is obsessed with evil (fall, darkness, death, abyss, the Nothing); is this because evil is the condition of that which transcends it? Why must theology contend with evil? How do you understand evil theologically? Altizer: Yes, there can be no absolute compassion apart from absolute evil, no absolute Yes apart from absolute No, and this is true of the depths of the Godhead itself. Now even if we appear to be closed to the absolute No of the Godhead, this is not true of our depths, even if the No of God is disguised in virtually all our theological thinking. For it is not disguised in the depths of our imagination, as witness not only our deeper tragedies but our deeper novels as well. Indeed, neither would be possible apart from an absolute No, a No finally inseparable from the depths of God. Kafka embodies this most clearly, and the immense impact of Kafka is a primal witness to the universality of an absolute No, yet the darkness of Kafka’s writing is inseparable from the darkness of God, as manifest in the overwhelming theological impact of Kafka. Kafka stands forth as a primal prophet for us, the prophet of an ultimate and inescapable darkness, one not only omnipresent but absolutely ubiquitous. Jacob Böhme first discovered the darkness of God, or first openly called forth the absolute No of the Godhead, a discovery that ironically made possible German idealism, the first absolute idealism of the West. Böhme profoundly knew a divine fall that is a felix culpa or fortunate fall, fortunate because it makes possible an absolute transfiguration that is the very center of German idealism. But that is a transfiguration impossible apart from a

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primordial fall of God—a fall deeply known to Schelling, Hegel, and Fichte alike—a fall realizing an absolute No essential to an absolute transfiguration and apart from which an absolute Yes cannot realize itself, cannot fully and finally be actualized. There can be no denying that such a transfiguration is finally a sanctification of evil, which is the ultimate scandal of this tradition or way, but this scandal has always been implicit in Christianity, at least in that Christianity deeply grounded in a felix culpa or fortunate fall. Accordingly, the harrowing of Hell is the most marginal and hidden of all Christian dogmas, above all hidden as the final redemptive act of Christ apart from which there can be no redemption. Dante knew this profoundly, which is why the Inferno is so absolutely fundamental in the Commedia, just as Hell is absolutely fundamental in the epic visions of Milton, Blake, and Joyce. Hell is the very arena of an eschatological redemption, a Hell that is absolute evil, an evil that is inseparable from that redemption or inseparable from an absolute transfiguration. Could there be a greater sanctification of evil, or a greater realization of the necessity of evil, of the absolute necessity of an absolute evil? Nihilism–atheism McCullough: You propose in Living the Death of God that it may not be possible “to think an absolute transfiguration without thinking nihilistically” (166), shattering our deepest theological categories. It seems to me that this thought connects with your affirmation of atheism as “an inevitable expression of faith itself ” earlier in the book; for even a deep mysticism realizes a kind of atheism, “dissolving or negating every God who is manifest as God” (93). So then, as I understand your thinking, nihilistically dissolving God creates an “atheistic” moment in which God ceases to be other or transcendent and becomes—let us say—a holy spirit at work in the prophetic or mystical present, here and now. Is your nihilistic theology a quest for a God who can never become a fixed or idolized identity because it is the activity of a holy spirit that itself is in constant transformation—a continual new birth or “resurrection” that is always also a perishing of every previous identity of God?

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Altizer: Nothing has transcended our Western theology so decisively as has the Holy Spirit, for even if it is affirmed in our creeds and dogmas— above all in the dogma of the Trinity—the Holy Spirit always eludes such formulations and does so precisely as Holy Spirit. As the doctrine of the Trinity develops in Christianity, it ever more comprehensively veils the Holy Spirit, a Holy Spirit that here remains truly subordinate or secondary to the Father and the Son. Not even the Christian imagination can envision the Holy Spirit, despite its full envisionments of the Father and the Son. Inevitably such subordination led to a calling forth of an ecstatic Pentecostal Christianity, the most rapidly growing Christianity today, one witnessing to the primacy of the Holy Spirit and thereby witnessing to a resurrection occurring even now. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is most integrally related to resurrection—a resurrection of the dead—yet this resurrection is subordinated by the proliferation of a pagan immortality in Christendom, disguising or eclipsing resurrection itself. Despite the fact that it is resurrection, not immortality, that is affirmed in Christian creeds, Christianity can be said to have forgotten resurrection or so merged it with immortality as to lose it altogether. Hence nothing is more difficult theologically than a recovery of resurrection, and this is inseparable from an opening to the Holy Spirit, for Holy Spirit is an eschatological Spirit, a Spirit only wholly released by apocalypse itself. This is the Spirit that dominates New Testament language of the Spirit, yet it soon becomes peripheral in Christianity, a process inseparable from a radical Hellenization. Now a truly pagan “Spirit” comes to dominate Christianity, one that can be understood to have actually reversed biblical Christianity, so that Spirit itself becomes an absolute challenge to everything that is simply given or manifest as Christianity. Hence it is virtually impossible to serve or give witness to the Spirit apart from an ultimate rebellion against Christianity; this rebellion occurs throughout all the truly major imaginative and intellectual expressions of Christianity, or at least it does so after the closure of the Middle Ages. One can be nostalgic about an Aquinas or a Dante, but one knows that such orthodoxy can never occur again, just as we have forever lost a Luther or a Calvin, for nothing is deader than Christendom—as Kierkegaard was the first to know—and once this is known there can never be a recovery or

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renewal of Christendom. But that is just the condition making possible a renewal of the Spirit, a renewal of the eschatological Spirit that was eclipsed by the advent of Christendom and buried in the triumph of Christendom, a triumph whose ending makes possible a genuine renewal of the Spirit. Trinity McCullough: In this context, can you explain why you decided to write a book on the Trinity? What did you seek to achieve in The Apocalyptic Trinity? Altizer: Having spent my theological life largely evading or escaping the dogma or doctrine of the Trinity, being persuaded that it is an inherently reactionary doctrine, I was finally virtually summoned to the Trinity by a realization that the death of God is impossible apart from the Trinity. The death of God is clearly impossible in Judaism and Islam, just as it is in Hinduism and Buddhism, and I had long affirmed that the death of God is only possible or real in Christianity, and is indeed the deepest ground of Christianity. The Crucifixion is ultimately primal in Christianity—in radical as opposed to orthodox Christianity—for the Crucifixion is the death of the divinity as well as the humanity of Christ, as affirmed by radical Christianity beginning with Milton himself. In the perspective of the history of religions, nothing is more distinctive of the gospels than their enactment of the passion, and nothing more unites the gospels than does the passion. If the celebration of the passion is unique to Christianity, it is so as a celebration of the death of God; here Christianity is truly unique, just as it is universal in its celebration of the resurrection. The challenge in understanding the death of God is to understand how this could be the death of God; such a death could not simply be a dissolution of God, a dissolution that does not affect what we know as God. Only a selfemptying of God could effect an actual death of God. Such a self-emptying or kenosis is not realized in thinking until Hegel, and then kenosis is inseparable from Hegelian trinitarian thinking, the most radical trinitarian thinking in history. Hegel’s trinitarian thinking is modalistic, knowing each of the persons or modes of the Godhead not only as the fullness of

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God but as the fullness of Godhead itself. Then the presence of one mode or person of God is necessarily the absence of the others, for the presence or actuality of the Son is necessarily the absence or death of the Father, and the actuality of the Spirit is necessarily the inactuality of the Father and the Son. Hegel is primarily a philosopher of Spirit, and not only of Spirit but of the Spirit—the Holy Spirit—and he is the first philosopher of the Holy Spirit, or at least the first Western one. Yet Hegel is a genuine thinker of the Trinity only by being an absolutely heterodox thinker, not only in his modalism but throughout his thinking of God, a God who is a triune God only in his absolute alienation and estrangement from himself. This estrangement and alienation make possible the genesis of God from primordial Godhead, which is the genesis of the Trinity. At this point Hegel is under the overwhelming impact of Böhme, that Böhme who not only made possible German idealism but who envisioned the genesis of God as it had never been envisioned before: a genesis of God that is the fall of God or the Godhead. Nonetheless, this fall is a felix culpa or fortunate fall, making possible an absolute redemption that is celebrated not only throughout German idealism but in all the apocalyptic expressions of our imagination. Here the Trinity itself is the apocalyptic Trinity, a Trinity that is not only destined for absolute apocalypse, but whose very generation makes possible that apocalypse, and does so by its ending of a primordial One or All, allowing the advent of an absolute body or life. “Essence” of Christianity McCullough: In response to modern thinking’s wholesale assault on the very identity of Christianity, nineteenth-century German thinkers like Adolf von Harnack felt impelled to define the “essence” [das Wesen] of Christianity. Even if Christianity has proved to have a multiplicity of essences through its history, from place to place, and from one era to another, it may be that every coherent theologian has a singular intuition. What is the “essence of Christianity” in your view, assuming you do not object to the question? Altizer: Despite the virtually innumerable expressions of Christianity, there is nonetheless a fundamental or essential Christianity, even if it has never been decisively captured or understood theologically. Certainly Christianity

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is centered in Christ as witness its very name, and centered in the sacrifice of Christ which it knows as the one source of redemption, and a sacrifice that is thereby a uniquely Christian redemption. An overwhelming challenge to Christianity is to call forth that Jesus who is the Christ, a Jesus inevitably transcending all understanding, but who has been profoundly expressed in the Christian imagination. Jesus taught primarily by way of parables, parables not critically understood until the twentieth century, and then not understood theologically. A fundamental problem here is the relation between these parables and that Kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed, for although the Kingdom of God is enacted in the parables, this enactment is beyond our understanding, and above all so when we understand the Kingdom of God as the “reign” or “rule” of God. Nothing has so blocked our understanding of Jesus as has a literal understanding of the Bible, and this is most decisively illustrated by a literal understanding of Kingdom of God; everything that Jesus enacted is truly inverted and reversed, a reversal that can be detected throughout the history of Christianity. The crucifixion or passion of Christ can most clearly be understood as the very opposite of a literal kingdom or reign of God, and this passion is the very center of all four canonical gospels, just as it is the center of a uniquely Christian life and worship. The anamnesis of the Eucharist is a renewal of the crucifixion; a renewal of the Christ of Passion—as opposed to the Christ of Glory—who can be understood as enacting himself in the parables, enacting himself as an absolute self-emptying. This is the kenotic Christ who is the true center of Christianity, the very essence of Christianity, an essence betrayed by all exaltation or glorification, by every evocation of absolute power or absolute sovereignty. Accordingly, our common or established understanding of God is the very opposite of the uniquely Christian God, the very opposite of an absolute passion or an absolute sacrifice; hence Blake could name this common or manifest God as Satan. Blake called forth the “Self-Annihilation of God” as the true naming of God, or the true naming of Christ, a Christ who is absolute sacrifice or absolute self-annihilation, and as such is the very opposite of Satan, the opposite of absolute sovereignty. Perhaps more than any other poet or visionary, Blake continually and profoundly evokes the name of Jesus as an absolute sacrifice that is an absolute transfiguration, and thus is

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apocalypse itself. There is a decisive parallel between Blake and Hegel, our greatest apocalyptic thinker, whose absolute self-negation or self-emptying can even be understood as a philosophical enactment of Jesus, and is so precisely as our greatest kenotic thinking. Is not such thinking a profoundly Christian thinking, one embodying the very essence of Christianity, even if that essence is an absolute negation or an absolute negativity? Nihilism–globalization McCullough: If we look for the deepest origins of nihilism, the potency of nihil in the monotheistic West derives from the absolute dependence of the creation on God: creatio ex nihilo. Nihil is visible in Augustine’s thinking, for example, where “nihil signifies the absence of everything but God” (Marcia Colish). In the trajectory of the death of God in modernity, the nihil becomes universal and consumes or usurps God—or at least God’s pre-apocalyptic or nonapocalyptic form. Do you think that with the globalization of invasive Western concepts over the past several centuries (Western “objectivity” as embodied in techno-science, Western “secularity,” Western “free market” neoliberalism, and similar) each culture that absorbs these concepts absorbs the impact of absolute negation—the death of God—in some degree? What are the implications of this complex eventuality? What is the role of theology here? Altizer: Do you mean, does the globalization or universalization of Western culture now entail the universalization of that absolute negation which is the death of God? McCullough: Take the question as you like. Altizer: A full nihilism is only realized in late modernity, then it becomes all pervasive or universal; even if it is not open as such, it is nonetheless actual and real, as fully foreseen and enacted in the deeper expressions of the imagination of late modernity. Perhaps nihilism is most universal in America, an America whose primal epic Moby-Dick (1851) is an enactment of the Nothing—the first such epic enactment—and one foreseen in Blake’s

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first epic America a Prophecy (1793). Melville’s White Whale remains our clearest symbol of the Nothing, and it can be known as evoking a distinctively American Nothing, one embodied in a new mass culture and society and truly universal today in the most universal empire in history. Originally America could envision itself as a rebirth or renewal of ancient Rome; even if this was grounded in a love of the Roman republic, it was accompanied by a deep sense of a destiny paralleling the Roman republic’s evolution into the Roman empire. America was the first founded nation, just as it created the first secular republic, and thereby it decisively realized a new secular world and even inaugurated a universal secularity. America advanced itself not only or primarily by an exterior violence but by a new internal and pragmatic discipline, one truly unique to America, inevitably desanctioning or demythologizing all established worlds. Only the void created by that desanctioning made possible a new and universal nihilism. This gets expressed in a new American literature and a new American drama, as most forcefully embodied in Eugene O’Neill, but is given universal expression in the world of the movies created in America. American entertainment and advertising created a new and all pervasive passivity, as now a new empire is established by way of an interior violence, a truly new violence creating the largest and most pervasive empire in the history of the world. When America became a full empire in the wake of the Second World War, its very victory ironically issued in a series of military defeats, as the greatest military power in history was again and again defeated by minor powers and was seemingly incapable of a genuine military victory. No doubt inept military leadership played a role in this, just as did a weak political leadership—the weakest of any empire in history—but the seemingly weakest American presidents were at bottom the strongest, as for example Truman and Carter, thus pointing to a genuine irony of American political power: an irony wherein an absolute strength is inseparable from an absolute weakness. Nothing like this is present in previous empires, for the American empire is understandable as such only if it is understood as a nihilistic empire. The Roman empire has also been understood as a nihilistic empire, and there are clear parallels between the two; each indeed inaugurates a new and absolute emptiness, and an emptiness that is a universal emptiness.

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Perhaps this parallel is most clearly reflected in a uniquely Roman and a uniquely American religion; in each, mind itself is deeply suspended or bracketed as it is nowhere else in the worlds of religion. With that suspension, a religious passion is made possible that is a pure passion, and if this created a Roman Catholic church that is the most powerful religious body in history, it created an American piety or an American religion that is far and away the strongest one in the developed or industrial world. The Roman church has masked itself by creating a comprehensive philosophical theology, but its dogmatic power is wholly independent of theology and unchallengeable by any outside source, just as a uniquely American religion is independent of other powers and is unchallengeable in itself. Never before has American religion been so isolated from theology, or from real thinking and the imagination, a condition that can be known as an empty or nihilistic condition. McCullough: Is the purported “strength” of American religion just phony, an illusion? Altizer: It is impossible to dissociate the strength or apparent strength of contemporary American religion from the weakness of its ground—its theological ground. Never before has American religion been so devoid of intellectual and imaginative expressions, which, when they exist, are truly banal or hollow. Yet this is a condition fully continuous with American nihilism and can even be known as an expression of that nihilism, as it surely is in its emptiness. Even if that is a banal emptiness, it is nevertheless actual and real. Although this is a situation in which the meaning and identity of religion are deeply in question, and open to the expression of a wide variety of subterranean religion, it is not wholly discontinuous with the traditions of American religion, and above all not in its immersion in a secular world. The secularity of American religion can be understood as its most characteristic quality, one that the papacy itself could once condemn, and if that secularity is writ large in the imaginative expressions of American religion, these can be understood as sanctioning a uniquely American nihilism.

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Faith–theology McCullough: In your memoir Living the Death of God you wrote: “Is theology itself by an innermost necessity unable to reach that faith which it claims as its ultimate ground, and therefore finally a betrayal of that ground?” (97). Personally, I feel a kind of relief in this distinction between theology and faith: that faith has no essential dependence on theology, that theology may even be a betrayal of faith. (Incidentally, it seems to me that Derrida makes a parallel claim for justice: as theology is to faith, so the law is to justice.) Is there a domain where faith is perfectly itself even when one cannot say what it is, where it is, or why it is the thing that matters, as it redeems everything? Hence there is no need to believe in faith to have faith? Care to comment on the enigma of faith in relation to theology? Altizer: Faith is both our deepest and our most questionable ground, we both affirm it absolutely and question or deny it absolutely, and the one cannot occur apart from the other. Hence there is a genuine dialectic of faith, and one that is real to us even in our denial of it, for despite those forms of Protestantism and Bhaktism that embrace it, faith is simply impossible as an unloseable faith, as every historian knows. Nonetheless, Bhaktism is fascinating; even Barth could know Bhakti Hinduism as a genuine expression of faith, though Protestant Pietism is alien to Barth, and indeed alien to every major thinker apart from Kant. Yet as William James makes clear in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), the purer Protestant conversion experiences bring an overwhelming conviction that the salvation realized here can never be lost, and never lost no matter what subsequently occurs. This conversion experience led James to a new understanding of immediacy and immediate experience, an immediacy so overwhelming that it transcends everything else and can truly be known as an absolute experience. This is the only absolute that James will allow, and it does parallel that new faith known by Protestant neo-orthodoxy, a faith that is absolutely unchallengeable no matter how profound its conflict with everything else. A genuine Protestantism does not know a faith that transcends reason; it is far rather absolutely beyond reason, therefore there can be no theology of

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faith, or no understanding of faith whatsoever. Such conviction can bring with it a remarkable serenity, for when it is impossible to know anything about faith it is impossible to doubt it, and with that exclusion all deeper doubt is excluded, and a deep peace is realized. But can that peace be actually real or actually realized? “Yes,” say the evangelically converted, “no” says virtually everyone else, and if this is a profound gulf in our world, it is apparently an unbridgeable gulf. Yet ours is the first truly and comprehensively secular age, the first age of the death of God. Only now can an absence of faith be a common condition, and only now does faith itself become an ultimate challenge. In Kierkegaard we can encounter such a challenge realizing a truly new faith, a faith only possible in a godless world, but a faith all the deeper just because of that. This new faith is only possible through an absolutely new subjectivity, a subjectivity that is the very opposite of a uniquely modern and universal objectivity, and therefore one demanding an absolute leap. So it is that Kierkegaard created our greatest dialectic of faith, one that can be understood as underlying every genuinely modern expression of Christianity, and can be observed in the sort of evangelical conversion that can only occur in a godless world. Once that conversion has occurred, a total distance is established between the converted and the “world”—far more so than in any presecular world— for the death of God makes possible an absolutely new faith. Then faith itself becomes not only a mystery but an absolute mystery, an absolute mystery that is only possible as a consequence of the death of God.