an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 9, July - December 2012,
ISSN 1552-5112
Of Religion and Politics: Refusing the
Space-Between
1. Categorical Imperatives
The
argument of this paper is that ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ do not refer to
discrete experiences, possibilities, realities or truths, but are mutually
determining, determined, and contested categories – aspects of each other –
that sink or swim together. Neither independent of nor indifferent to each
other, each term functions only in the
context of the other, and relies on the other as its other to secure its own
legitimacy, authority, alibi and guarantee. Each is, that is, the différance
– the interminably deferred structural, historical, supplementary difference – of the other. Religion and/or
Politics. Politics and/or Religion. One and other. Kith and kin. Like sister
and brother.
Experiences are
personal and particular, singular and unique, chaotic, contingent and concrete;
bound to specific people, places, practices and times; and do not come with
their meanings attached. Meanings are neither spontaneous nor self-evident but
depend on context, contestation, change and chance; and, most importantly, on
the availability and sanction of the words to say it. Meanings do not, that is,
spring full-blown from the forehead of Zeus or any other deity ex machina.
And there is no transcendent realm in which they inhere and from which they
derive their authority and good (or bad) sense. On the contrary, they are
conditioned by and conditional upon local and historical specificities of
language, culture and tradition: always partial and provisional and subject to
rejection, revision, reversal, disavowal, denial, dismissal and dispute.
Categories, on the
other hand, are the products of systematic and collective reflection. They are
abstractions from experience (and often abstractions from abstractions),
authorized by a scriptural and heretofore exclusively male élite, returned to
experience to provide the order, stability, continuity and right-thinking necessary
to secure the interests of these élites alongside those of the established or
emerging powers they serve. They order selected experiences in selected ways,
enabling some things to happen and appear, and ruling out (disabling,
suppressing, repressing) others. As such, like all ruling ideas, they are the
ideas of the ruling class and ideological in the precise sense of ideology
outlined by Althusser: alluding to reality in imaginary ways, idealizing
(mystifying) and naturalizing (reifying) reality by presenting partial truths
as if they were the whole truth (mystification/idealization), and historical or
contingent truths as if they were necessary and/or universal
(reification/naturalization).1 And, whether they are posited as
Aristotelian categories: one of the possibly exhaustive set of basic classes
among which all things might be distributed; or Kantian categories: one of the a
priori conceptions applied by the mind to sense; or more loosely, as with
any fundamental philosophical concept, categories are never experienced
as such. We do not experience the categories of experience. We inherit
them, or make them up, and we apply them. And because they are historical,
contingent and abstract, we are differentially invested in their contested
operation. And, of course, they are never adequate (commensurate) to their
presumptive task: the exhaustive containment of all that is and is not, to be
or not to be, said and done, in their name.
One must move toward whatever it is all the belligerent parties, at the
height of the war now raging in the public arena, agree to exclude together. What does the unanimity of clienteles
want to have nothing to do with? In other words, out of what exclusion is it
constructed? What does it desire to vomit? (Derrida, 1995: 43)
What
Religion and Politics (what is said and done in their name) agree to exclude
together – an exclusion which constitutes each as an aspect and therefore rival
of the other – is precisely this irreducible space-between category and reality (experience, aspiration, truth)
and thus the historical and structural limits, irreducible residues,
remainders, and excesses of their idealized, universalized categories and ends.
And these, they consistently strive to obfuscate, appropriate or deny:
alienate, denigrate, deviate, demonize, pathologize, disavow, control, conceal
or destroy. In an endless task of re-citation, re-cuperation and re-vision
which guarantees the infinite business of their future.2
There are two aspects of this constitutive exclusion which Religion and Politics (what is said and done in the name of) have in common that I want to draw attention to here: (i) their implicit if not explicit presupposition of patriarchy, i.e. of the inevitability of male dominance vested in the natural and/or cultural law of the Father (which is routinely perpetuated in their relentless use of the pronoun he and the word Man to designate humanity as a whole); and (ii) their corresponding presupposition of an objective World: the World as One, an instrument and object of representation and manipulation which makes no claims on Man but is there for Man to serve his interests and ends, and that is dedicated to ‘the self-establishment of Man’ as the essential ‘subjectum’: the knowing subject, ‘the being that thinks and represents,’ ‘the referential center of beings as such,’ ‘that being upon which every being, in its way of being and its truth, is founded,’ ‘that which lies at the basis as ground.’3 An objectification of the World and reciprocal subjectification of Man that defines a modernity that has indeed gone global: as in World music, World leaders, World religion, World trade, etc. ‘From this objectification, however, which is at the same time the decision as to what may count as an object, nothing can escape’ (Heidegger 83).
To give some substance and detail to these claims I invite you to consider two spectacular events of recent years which were systematically conducted, choreographed and conceived to demonstrate the conjunction of Politics and Religion to maximum effect on and for the world stage, and which reproduce, reiterate and reinforce the two constitutive aspects of Religion and Politics I have just outlined: (i) the presupposition of Man as the norm and measure of humanity, and thus and thereby of patriarchy, i.e. the inevitability of male dominance vested in the law of the Father; and (ii) the presupposition of the objective World: of a World as an object of representation and manipulation, which is there for Man – the essential subjectum – to serve his interests and ends.
3.
Ground Zero
The phallic symbol of
Nobody can
deny, though many do try in the interest of preserving the purity of one
category or another, the conjunction of Religion and Politics that made a
spectacle of itself on 9/11. For me, and I suspect for many, including the
former military officer cited above, the most arresting moment of this event
was the collapse of the World Trade Center and the enormity of the material
devastation it left behind, and from which the World of the World Trade
Center – the object World of modernity, manipulation, and reflection – of World
leaders, World religions, World music, World trade (World peace and World war)
remains in a state of shock and awe. For, this singular event (if indeed it is
one) thrust that World and those who took its inevitability for granted into
the space-between in a most
spectacular fashion, throwing all the categorical imperatives by which we are
accustomed to make sense in and of that World into question and dispute:
religion, politics, freedom, power, leadership, democracy, security, sanctity,
sanity, strength, fantasy, reality, intelligence, myth, reason, knowledge,
truth, courage, cowardice, poverty, weakness, privilege, wealth, idealism,
patriotism, friendship, faith, fear, loyalty, terror … success.
So much
so, that almost ten years later we still do not know how to name it other than
as a number and a date: 9/11. As if there were only one 9/11.5 As if the World of the World Trade
Center ended on that day. Words fail us. Not so, for the devastation it left
behind which was quickly named and collectively proclaimed (to be) ‘Ground
Zero’. A particularly apt turn of phrase that reveals perhaps more than is
suspected or intended in its routine invocations. For what the twin towers of
the
Seeing them collapse themselves, as if by
implosion, one had the impression that they were committing suicide in response
to the suicide of the suicide plane. (Baudrillard 43)
Disclosing
thereby the truth of the abyss of ground – ground zero – at the basis of
Western, i.e. American (i.e. European, i.e. Christian) self-establishment,
self-assertion, self-certainty, self-idealization, self-salvation: liberty,
democracy, technology, prosperity, reason, progress, science: the reciprocal
objectification of World and subjectification of
For the
sovereignty of Man vested in the law of the Father – as origin and end of being
and becoming whether in this world or the next in Politics or Religion – is founded
on the systematic disavowal, denigration and denial of the truth of (his) human
origins in and as the body of a woman and likewise of his primordial
entry into language in/by/through the la langue of the mother tongue
which precedes, exceeds and sustains any discourse of the Father. A fact that
cannot in fact be discredited, denied, or overcome. No matter how much it is
mystified, vilified or veiled in secrecy, sanctity, science or smut. This truth
of maternal origins – and of its strategic obfuscation and suppression –
remains as a symptom of patriarchy: as a constitutive weakness in the
self-establishment of Man as the essential subjectum (that which lies at
the basis as ground), a deficit in (his) being that cannot be made good, a
trauma that insists, an open wound that can be neither healed nor concealed –
by construction or destruction – on its/his own terms precisely because
it is constitutive of them. Leaving individual men who aspire to fulfill the
measure of Man with an abyss of ground – a constitutive lack at once revealed
and concealed in the figure of the ‘smoldering vagina’ and a corresponding
‘passion for the real’ – that can only by eliminated (redeemed) by the
elimination of the self (the Man) that is founded upon it.6 Hence the suicide missions – ‘the revenge of
the body proper’ (Derrida, 2002: 89) – at home and abroad of (usually, though
not exclusively) young men in the depths of despair who have been promised the
whole World and receive nothing – ground zero – in return. ‘Revenge is taken
against the decorporalizing and expropriating machine’ (Derrida, 2002: 88).
Indeed:
…it will be like the LA riots, the
4. The Largest Gathering of Statesmen in
History
The
funeral of Pope John Paul II which took place on 8 April 2005 is my second
example of a spectacular event of recent years systematically choreographed,
conducted and conceived to demonstrate the conjunction of Religion and Politics
to maximum effect on the World stage and thus and thereby to reproduce,
reinforce and reconfirm the two constitutive aspects of Religion and Politics
identified above: (i) the presupposition of Man as norm and measure of
humanity, and thus and thereby of patriarchy, i.e. the inevitability of male
dominance vested in the law of the Father; and (ii) the presupposition of the
objective World as One, World as object of representation and manipulation,
which is there for Man, the essential
subjectum, to serve his interests and
ends.
Almost
200 countries expressed interest in sending representatives to the funeral of
Pope John Paul II.
The list
of invited dignitaries seated in the basilica for the requiem mass at the
funeral of Pope John Paul II in April 2005 runs to sixteen single-spaced pages
on the Wikipedia website, thirteen of which name the official delegates of the
113 countries who sent representatives ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe,
including Algeria, Burma, China, Iran, Israel, Lesotho, Pakistan, the
Palestinian Authority, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Syria, and
Turkey, for example. The remaining three pages of the sixteen page list names
dignitaries representing International Associations, Religious Leaders, and
Unofficial Delegations. For a total of approximately 600 invited dignitaries
who assembled in the basilica on 8 April 2005 for the funeral of Pope John Paul
II.
Now how
many of these 600 named dignitaries do you think were women? And by what title,
entitling them to be there, do you think these women were most often
designated? Well, I found a total of forty-nine women’s names on this list of
600. And the title they were most often listed by – forty-two of forty-nine –
was their familial relationship to a previously named male dignitary of the
same delegation: two as ‘daughters’ and the remaining forty as ‘spouse’,
‘consort’, or ‘wife.’ Which means that only seven women of the approximately 50
women and 550 men who attended Pope John Paul II’s funeral in April 2005 were
invited dignitaries ‘in their own right’ and not by right of one of the 550
male dignitaries to whom they happened to be related by marriage or birth.8
The
largest gathering of statesmen in history.9
Indeed.
So, what
is going on here with these 550 statesmen – Protestant, Catholic, Atheist,
Hindu, Muslim, Jew – from 113 countries, many of whom are otherwise at war with
each other, gathering with dignity and mutual respect (together with the
world’s media) for the funeral of Pope John Paul II in April 2005? This is the
Pope after all: erstwhile heretic, anathema, anti-christ.
5. Conclusion
One
must move towards whatever it is all the belligerent parties, at the height of
the war now raging in the public arena agree
to exclude together. What does the unanimity of clienteles want to have nothing
to do with? In other words, out of what exclusion is it constructed? What does
it desire to vomit?
It is
obvious to me that what the otherwise belligerent parties gathered at the
Pope’s funeral agree to exclude together is precisely the unspeakable, obscene,
abysmal truth revealed by 9/11: the large smoldering vagina – the zero ground –
at the basis of patriarchy, of the presupposition of male dominance vested in
the right of the Father and constituted in, of, and by the subjectification of
Man and the corresponding objectification of (the) World. This unanimity of
clienteles agreed to set aside their differences and disputes in order to
collectively confirm and reaffirm as
One – One World: One Body Politic: One Man – the transcendent ‘sanctity of
the phallic effect’ (Derrida, 2002: 83), the inevitability and sustainability
of which had been thrown into question by the spectacular collapse of the twin
towers. They gathered, that is, to participate in the collective production of
the equal and opposite spectacle of its resurrection: of phallic power
universalized, spiritualized, normalized, naturalized, idealized – globalized –
to maximum effect on and for the World stage, under the guise of respect for
the Catholic Pope. A power that functions, let us remember, only when veiled –
under one category or another – Freedom,
Democracy, Spirit, Science, Reason, Right, Soul, God, Man.
Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.
Religion
and Politics: obfuscating origins of language and life.
Men/man: refusing
the space-between.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 9, July - December 2012,
ISSN 1552-5112
Notes
1. See
Louis Althusser, Essays on Ideology (London & New York: Verso,
1993).
2. For a
more detailed elaboration of the space-between
categories and experience with particular relevance to theories and practices
of spirituality, politics, and ethics, for example, see ‘The Politics of
Spirituality: The Spirituality of Politics’ and ‘The Space-Between Ethics and
Politics. Or, More of the Same?’ in Geraldine Finn, Why Althusser Killed His
Wife. Essays on Discourse and Violence (New Jersey: Humanities Press,
1996): 152 – 165, 166 – 177.
3. For a thorough,
detailed, and sustained elaboration of this understanding and critique of
‘modernity’ in terms of the objectification of ‘world’ and subjectification of
’Man’ see the works of Martin Heidegger in general and ‘The Age of the World
Picture’ in particular (in Off The Beaten Track, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002: 57 – 85) from which the quotations in this paragraph
have been taken. See also Benjamin Crowe’s recent study on Heidegger’s
Phenomenology of Religion. Realism and Cultural Criticism (
4. From “The Land
of the Smoldering Vagina,” Men’s Action to Rebuild Society, http://www.mensaction.net. Cited by Susan
Faludi in The Terror Dream. Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11
5. As my colleague
and friend Alex Bruzzone was quick to point out, for him 9/11 had already
happened 28 years earlier in September 1973 when a military coup in his home
country
6. ‘Is this not an
exemplary case of what Alain Badiou has identified as the key feature of the
twentieth century: the ‘passion for the Real [la passion du reel]’?’
(Zizek 5). The reference is to Alain Badiou, Le Siecle (
7. ‘From the
journal of Eric Harris, who, with Dylan Klebold, committed suicide after
killing thirteen people in April 1999 at
8. From the “List
Of Dignitaries at the Funeral of Pope John Paul II’ available from Wikipedia.
The numbers are my calculations based on information from the site and should
be regarded as approximate figures only. I did not have them checked by others
and Wikipedia was my only source of information. I determined whether a
dignitary was a man or a woman from the names and designations as they appear
on the list. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List
of_dignitaries_at_the_funeral_of_Pope_John_Paul II.
Althusser,
Louis (1993). Essays on Ideology.
Baudrillard,
Jean (2002). The Spirit of Terrorism. Translated by Chris Turner.
Crowe,
Benjamin D. (2008). Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religion. Realism and
Cultural Criticism.
Derrida,
Jacques (1995). ‘Ja, or the faux-bond II,’ in Points …
Interviews, 1974 – 1994. Translated by Peggy Kamuf and Others. Edited by
Elizabeth Weber.
__________
(2002). ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of
Reason Alone’, translated by Samuel Weber in Acts of Religion. Edited by
Gil Anidjar.
Faludi,
Susan (2007). The Terror Dream. Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11
Finn,
Geraldine (1996). Why Althusser Killed His Wife. Essays on Discourse and
Violence.
Harper’s
Magazine. (2002) February.
Heidegger,
Martin (2002). ‘The Age of the World Picture’ in Off The Beaten Path.
Edited and translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List
of_dignitaries_at_the_funeral_of_Pope_John Paul II_.
Zizek,
Slavoj (2002). Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Five Essays on September
11 and Relatied Dates.