Grandeur of Reason: Conference Report

So I’m aware I am writing this post-conference report a full week after returning, but as any who was there can testify, this much time was needed to fully recover from the stress that was placed on our minds, stomachs, and most importantly, our livers, during this 4 day tour-de-force conference.

Much has been said already about this conference (here, and here), so I will try not to repeat what has already been said.

To quickly summarize my thoughts, it was a pretty good conference. There were some really good keynotes, lots of interesting student papers, and a generally fun atmosphere. I met more impressive students that I’d expected (including ‘legendary student of the conference’ Leif Weatherby from UPenn), and was encouraged by a similar sensibility that seems to be emerging amongst younger students of theology and philosophy.

The opening plenary of the conference featured James Williams, Cyril O’Regan, and Graham Ward. It was a big much for an opening plenary, with 3 hours worth of papers. Being that I’m not really a ‘Hegel’ person, I found Williams paper by far the most interesting. His paper, ‘Reason, Thought and Universal’ dealt with issues of life and thought in the works of Henry and Deleuze, and was presented in a ridiculously clear and well argued manner. One can only hope he continues to make appearances at these conferences.

The session of the conference was without a doubt the O’Donovan-Hauerwas-Milbank panel. Although O’Donovan’s paper started off a bit slow, it really started to come together during the questions afterwards. Hauerwas then gave what was one of the best, if not the best, papers of the conference. Two of my favorite moments of this conference occured during this paper, first of all, when Hauerwas got to a point about non-violence in his paper he casually looked up and said “Screw you John”, to Milbank who was on his left. This led to laughter and applause from the audience, and Hauerwas followed up by explaining, “John doesn’t want Christians to kill other Christians…but thinks its fine for them to kill everyone else”. Later, during the question time, someone asked Hauerwas a question that more or less suggested that his paper didn’t provide a proper ‘platonic’ account, to which Hauerwas quickly replied, “I don’t need more Plato, maybe you need more Jesus”. Brilliant. I for one am constantly frustrated by how little the radically orthodoxy theologians avoid topics like “jesus” and “the church”, so it was good to see Hauerwas handling the issue so bluntly. The next paper in this session was Milbank’s which in some senses was his response to much of the work being done in recent continental philosophy (figures mentioned in the open 5 minutes alone: Brassier, Toscano, Meillassoux, Laruelle, Mullarkey) and ended up with a discussion of habit (drawing on Ravaisson) which alluded to Hegel to an extent. The most interesting thing about his paper from the perspective of one of his students is that his paper basically reflected our reading list for a course we had with him this spring. We read Brassier’s Nihil Unbound, Toscano’s Theatre of Production, and Desmonds God and the Between, and in this paper Milbank used and responded to all of them. One of the shortcomings of the paper was in trying to cover so much, some of his readings, particularly of Brassier, seemed a bit shallow and unaware of the whole of his published work. He also pulled a typical Milbank move at the end and alluded to his forthcoming ‘Trinitarian Metaphysics’ which will give sense to much of his recent work; I for one would like to see Milbank START with Theology in his work, rather than presenting a 40 minute paper on contemporary metaphyics and ending with a brief allusion to theology. If he wants to be considered a theologian and not a ‘philosopher of religion’, this move is necessary.

A personal highlight of the conference was the session in which I gave my paper, which was also the only session consisting of all Nottingham students. Our chair was Stanley Hauerwas, which for some of us was quite an honor, and it turned out to be a really ‘fun’ session. All of the papers (Tommy Lynch, Anthony Paul Smith, Ben Kautzer) were creative and well argued, and most of the questions were constructive and not the least bit masturbatory. At the end of the session Hauerwas announced that as the chair, he was adding ten minutes to our time to ask us all some questions. At first I figured we were all about to get grilled by the worlds greatest theologian, but it turned out he was just interested in the diversity of our work considering we all came from the same department. I think much of it has to do with the fact that people ‘expect’ a certain style of work from Nottingham students, and to their surprise, almost none of the students live up to that expectation. Hauerwas asked us about the motivation behind our work, who we were writing for, and how we situate our work in the contemporary climate. There was a bit of squirming from us all, but eventually it turned into a great discussion and (I think) helped all of us to better understand our own work. After the panel a couple of Hauerwas’ more notable students (Dan Bell and Steve Long) told a couple of us how honored we should be that Hauerwas took the time to engage us in that way, and said that Hauerwas refered to our group as the ‘new school’ of young theological thinkers. Quite the honor indeed.

One of the biggest disappointments of the conference was the total collapse of the Speculative Realism panel I had worked to set up. Iain Grant dropped out about a month before because he was ‘moving’, and sadly, Meillassoux had a family tragedy a few days before that prevented him from coming. The remains of that panel ended up manifesting as a session consisting of Laurelle, Dustin McWherter, and Michele Lenoci, who is an italain philosophy professor. Now, as a whole, it was a good panel. The main problem was that two of the papers were presented in languages other than english, so everyone had to wear headphones and try to follow along with a live translation. This was fairly easy for Laurelle, as we had a print out of the paper in english, and I think most people have a decent grasp of french. Lenoci’s paper on the other hand, was almost impossible to follow, with most people seeming to give up half way through. After two hours of translated papers, we finally got to hear Dustin McWherter present (in english!). His paper dealt with the topic of indifference and irreligion, drawing mostly on Schelling, and to be blunt, was really good. Milbank moderated the session and had some decent questions at certain points. James Williams (Dundee) also ’saved the day’ by doing on the spot french translations after Laruelle’s paper. Guy is a legend.

The other plenary session that I found notable was Fergus Kerr’s paper, “…From Hume to Wittgenstein and Back?” in which he showed the latent Marxist leanings in the work of Wittgenstein. It was a good enough paper to keep the interest of many who have barley read Wittgenstein. The only disappointing part was the fact that Kerr had to sit up front by himself for over ten minutes while we all had to wait for the chair to show up and start the session. It was quite embarassing, as Kerr is a king among men and should get more respect than than.

Many of the disappointing parts of the conference come down to the fact that certain people (that have names which rhyme with Bohn Tilbank) have a tendency to talk way too much. This lead to sessions going over and cutting into other peoples time, certain students not having an adequate time for questions after their paper, and most embarrassingly, having to end an already too-short session with Agamben after he had said he was willing to stay and answer questions for at least fifteen more minutes! Hopefully at the next conference they can get over their fetish with this ‘person’ having to chair every other panel, and just let him give a paper at the end of the day as to not cut into others time.

As with most conferences of this size, the best part ended up being the time spent on the patio having drinks and talking to friends both old and new. It was great to have the whole ‘nottingham crew’ (including those of us moving on, as well as that one guy from norway…) together in the same place, and it definitely made me a bit sad to see that the band is breaking up this fall. Along with the old crew, it was great to meet such legendary figures as Nate Kerr, Dave Belcher, Chris Simpson, Jeff Hanson, Craig Keen, Steve Long, John Mullarkey, and the countless others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

On the closing night they announced the next conference, entitled ‘What is Life?’ will be taking place in Poland in the summer of 2010. From the topic alone I have high expectations for this conference, so everyone should start joting down paper topics so we can up the ante a bit, as there were a lot of ‘well argued’ papers full of ‘good scholorship’ at this conference, but a noticeable lack of real creative and exciting work being done.

Okay. That’s all.

Laurelle…in Rome??

Well, according to the updated conference poster, the internet sensation Francois Laruelle will be presenting at the Grandeur of Reason conference in Rome this September. Although many on the interweb were quite skeptical about this conference intially, we now have a speculative realism panel (featuring Grant and Meillassoux), a presentation by Francois Laurelle, as well as Zizek, Agamben, John Mullarkey, and James Williams. Should be a great time, and hopefully those of us attending will have the common sense to get some audio/video/notes and post them on the internets soon afterwards.

the writing process

I have attempted to spend a majority of my time writing over the past few days. While the whole ‘writing’ thing has not panned out very well, I have managed to spend a good amount of time drinking tea, sleeping, watching tv, cooking delicious mexican meals, reading, and cleaning my flat. At this point I have a few hours this evening and all day tomorrow to finish the paper I am presenting on Tuesday. I am a bit stressed, but have learned that these things always, although sometimes painfully, work themselves out.

The thing I’ve realized through all of this is that while I’ve recently developed a good set of habits in regards to reading, I have yet to develop a habitual system for writing. The only writing habit I have at this point is always hand writing my first draft, but that’s more of a technique than a habit.

So out of curiosity, does anyone have a certain system they find helpful for writing?  I’d be willing to take any and all advice on this topic, as my current system makes it possible to rush through 4,000 or so words, but will be nothing short of hellish if I attempt to use this system to produce over 15,000 words this summer. Also, while I’m fishing for advice, does anyone have anything different they do when preparing a paper for presentation as opposed to an assignment or publication? and does anyone have any ‘tricks’ for presenting? I find myself getting very tense during my presentations and usually have small panic attacks during the question and answer period…

kierkegaard and politics

I am currently in the process of reading/writing for the purpose of preparing a paper I’m presenting at the Society for the Study of Theology annual meeting at the University of Durham next week. As the topic of the conference is ‘Theology and Politics’, I’m attempting to explore an alternative political subjectivity in the works of Kierkegaard. This is partly due to selfish reasons, as I want to figure out if it actually is possible to map out a non-deconstructive/postmodern political reading of Kierkegaard, as my projected PhD involves doing just that in relationship to contemporary french philosophy, and particularly in relation to the political ontology of Alain Badiou. Thus far the most exciting thing I’ve read is Kierkeggard’s Two Ages, which up until this point I had never read. I honestly think anyone reading Kierkegaard, and especially anyone looking for a solid political line to emerge in his thought, should read this book immediately. So far I have found that going back and reading Fear and Trembling, Practice in Christianity, and The Sickness Unto Death, with Two Ages in mind has really illuminated the political potential to be found within the work of Kierkegaard. I don’t have my notes with me at the moment, but I’ll try to post some of my favorite quotes from Two Ages in the near future. Along with this re-reading of political subjectivity in Kierkegaard, I am also going to (possibly) attempt to build a bridge between the political thought of Kierkegaard with recent Latin American Liberation Theology. Luckily, I stumbled across a passage in Mark Dooley’s The Politics of Exodus, in which he states that “..Kierkegaard’s God is the God of Liberation Theology…” (p. 19); this should help provide at least a smudge of credibility to making this claim. If anyone has any thoughts/advice/suggestions on re-thinking Kierkegaard’s political thought, please share.

Alain Badiou & The Event of Liturgy

Here is the previously promised paper I presented at Oxford last weekend. Still a bit rough at this point, I’m currently preparing a longer version, so comments appreciated.

When one begins to consider the oft-overlooked relationship between philosophy and liturgy, their first inclination is often not to explore the work of a self-described “militant atheist” who considers the life, death, and resurrection of Christ to be “precisely a fable”, as it relates to the Christian liturgy; but this work will attempt to do just that. In this paper I will argue that Alain Badiou, who is undoubtedly the most significant living French philosopher, is capable of offering some much needed insight to the church in regards to both the philosophical and political significance of the Christian liturgy. I will also show that while Badiou goes to much effort for the sake of avoiding an ontology of “the one”, which he equates with theology, this only leads him to the development of a secular ontology which subsequently acts as a groundless parody of the true liturgy.

Before moving on it is necessary that Badiou’s ontology be outlined and briefly explained. I will attempt to do this as concisely as possible, but it is necessary that one understand the contours of his ontology if they are to catch a glimpse of the relevance his work possesses for helping us to properly, and creatively, think about the liturgy. After this brief sketch of Badiou’s ontology, I will move on to exemplify the way Badiou can help us better understand the nature of liturgical praxis; finally I will show how a liturgical understanding of truth and reality can overcome many of the problems found within Badiou’s ontology.

The first thing that must be noted is that for Badiou, “mathematics is ontology”; thus for Badiou the foundation of being is to be located in mathematical discourse, and for him mathematics’ primary field of inquiry is that of being (ontology) itself. Badiou has located the system of math which best explores the nature of ‘being as such’ in post-cantorian set theory. Badiou has said, “mathematics articulates be-ing itself” and that “mathematics is the thought of nothing but pure being as be-ing”.

It would take far too much time to provide a detailed introduction to set-theory and the manner in which it is employed by Badiou to develop his ontology; but for the sake of the present argument a few things must be noted.

It is crucial to note that for Badiou  “the one is not”. Simply stated, the “one” is any singularity which is said to provide the “ground” for being. Badiou notes that the only philosophy of the one is theology, and it is useless because “God is truly dead”. This absolute prejudice against the one is a cornerstone of Badiou’s ontology, and is the impetus for many of his arguments. Peter Hallward has noted that in this way Badiou is “ontologically atheist”.

Now, because there is no “one”, and absolutely no God, for Badiou, there is only “the multiple”, and each set of multiples is only a multiple of other multiples and so on. Initially it can be seen that this creates the potential for an unending chain of multiples; which resembles the post-modern sophistry, and it’s lack of a ground on which truth can rest, that Badiou adamantly speaks against.

Badiou avoids this fall into “postmodern sophistry” by grounding this series of multiples in “the void” or “empty set”; which is another name for the point of absolute nothingness. (It must be noted that for Badiou the “empty set” is not the point of “nothing”, but of absolute nothing-ness, similar to the way this term is used by Sartre, one of his primary influences). Thus for Badiou every set of multiples comes from the empty set; which is equivalent to something emerging from pure nothingness, thus quite similar to the theological concept of creation out of nothing.

The next important move in the development of Badiou’s ontology is the way in which he conceives of truth. In Badiou’s ontology truth emerges from an “event”; and this event comes from the “empty set”, or void. These “truth-events” can be produced within four possible fields, or “generic procedures”. For Badiou the four fields, or conditions, for a truth’s emergence are Science, Art, Politics, and Love. A truth can only emerge through an event in one of these categories.

Another important point in Badiou’s ontology is his notion of ‘situation’. Each new inaugurates a new ‘situation’ with it’s own set of rules. Each situation has a ‘count’, and any element of the situation is a part of the ‘count’ of the situation. Thus, each element of a situation ‘counts’ as a part of the whole.

For example; the inception of Jazz music was an event that took place within the “generic procedure” of Art. The initial occurrence of Jazz music emerged from a void, which was nothing but the empty space existing in the absence of what would later come to be known as Jazz music.
The event of Jazz subsequently changed the situation in which it emerged; before its founding event Jazz simply didn’t ‘count’ as part of the situation, but after this emergence Jazz inaugurated a new situation in which it was included in the ‘count’ of elements within the situation.

For Badiou, truth and subjectivity are intertwined in a fashion quite similar to that of Kierkegaard; and each emerges from the founding of an event. Subjectivity takes place when an individual claims fidelity to an event; and the truth of that event is proclaimed in a subject’s “militant proclamation” of that event and the truth it has inaugurated.

The proclamation must be militant because nothing is ‘real’ or ‘settled’ in the situation, so a subject must make things happen, or make ‘shape’, of the situation. This can be seen in marriage. Although two individuals participate in a ceremony on a certain day and at a certain time, nothing truly happens. The next day each remains the same person they have been their entire life. Thus, they must live in a militant fidelity to the ‘event’ that was their marriage, and subsequently ‘make shape’ of their new situation through this fidelity.

Thus, at the inception of the music which would come to be known as Jazz, certain individuals witnessed the founding event, and were subjectivized through their witnessing and subsequent fidelity to this event. The “truth” associated with this new form of art emerges through the faithful proclamation of this founding event.

With this structure in mind, it comes as no surprise that Badiou’s prime example of the inauguration of truth and subjectivity in response to an event is the story of Saint Paul’s conversion and subsequent missionary journeys in which he “militantly proclaimed” the truth following from the “Christ event”.

To quickly sum up what has been said thus far; for Badiou truth and subjectivity are both tied to the emergence of an Event. This event emerges from the nothing-ness, or non-place, that Badiou names ‘the void’. Subjectivity is only gained through fidelity to the truth brought into being from this event. Each event must also happen within one of four generic procedures; Science, Politics, Art, and Love.

Now that Badiou’s basic ontological structure has been presented, we will consider the interaction and similarities of his philosophy with concepts present in liturgical discourse and praxis.

First, we must note the similarity between the function of truth in his ontology with the function of truth in the Christian liturgy. The crucial similarity resides in the idea of truth as encounter, which Badiou inherits from Lacan’s notion that “all access to the real is in the order of an encounter”; but whereas ‘encounter’ is the sole from of access to the ‘real’ for Badiou (and Lacan), in the liturgy the real is found in a non-encounter. We encounter the ‘real’ in the Eucharist by the very fact that we only perceive bread and wine, not the actual body and blood of Christ we are told is present. The Eucharist remains indifferent to our perception, and thus functions as a traumatic event, leaving us to either walk away from the table with doubt and unbelief or to live in militant fidelity to this (non) event. The truth found in the Eucharist is indifferent to our perception of it, so the ‘real’ of the liturgy actually is the bread and wine.

Another important similarity found between Badiou’s conception of truth and that of the liturgy is the interaction of truth and event. As was previously noted, for Badiou, truth emerges through a subject’s fidelity to an event. Once again, only an “event” can introduce a new truth. In Christian liturgy, Truth is also inextricably linked to an event, which is the death and resurrection of Christ. For Badiou an event must always be singular, with only those present at it’s original inception having original access to the truth offered by that event. In the liturgy, the truth producing ‘Christ-event’ is singular, but not in a strictly temporal sense. Whereas only those encountering an event’s original inception can have access to truth through subjective fidelity in Badiou’s ontology; the liturgy offers access to the original event repeatedly through the sacramental offering of the Eucharist, and thus each participant in the Eucharist has access to the founding event of the truth proclaimed in the liturgy.

It is crucial to note that the sacrament of the Eucharist is not a mere reenactment of an event that has already occurred and is thus forever relegated to historical memory. Each time the bread and wine are consecrated, access to the actual event of Christ death and resurrection is given, and the actual resurrected body of Christ is consumed by those partaking of the Eucharist.

We will now examine the way in which Badiou’s conception of subjectivity interacts with the liturgical emergence of the subject. We have previously noted that for Badiou subjectivity is only gained through fidelity to a truth-event. In the liturgy subjectivity has not only to do with fidelity, but participation. Before participation in the liturgy one is simply an individual, which William Cavanaugh notes is an “ontological category created by sin”, but through Christ appearance in the Eucharist, individuals are restored to the group; thus liturgical subjectivity involves a loss of individuation and a re-participation in a group. This is seen in the words of the congregation during the Eucharistic sacrament, “…though we are many we are one body; because we all share in the one bread.” Before the sharing of the bread one is merely an individual, but through the consumption of Christ’s flesh one enters into the subjectivity found in Christ’s body alone. Thus Catherine Pickstock notes, “…without the liturgy, there is no subject”.

To continue on the theme of participation, it is important to note the function of participation in the thought of Badiou. Whereas Christian theology, and the Liturgy in particular, offer participation in the divine plenitude of God through the ‘analogia entis’ (or, analogy of being); for Badiou each individual gains her subjectivity through a participation in an event founded on the pure multiple of nothing, which could also be named the ‘analogia nihil’ (or, analogy of nothing). Just as Christian theology offers participation in absolute plenitude, Badiou offers a participation in empty nothingness.

This leads us to the question of nihilism and nothingness; if Badiou’s ontology ultimately grounds being in the absolute nothingness of the “void” or “empty set”, does the Liturgy simply respond by offering the opposite; a being grounded in the overflowing plenitude of existence given (as gift) by God?

The answer to this question cannot be given with a simple affirmation or negation, as the Liturgy does not only offer “pure existence” in opposition to Badiou’s “absolute nothingness”; in actuality, the liturgy offers the only space of pure nothingness, thus showing that the problem with Badiou’s nihilism is that it’s simply not nihilistic enough!

The only way in which true nothingness can be seen is in the shadow of the overwhelming plenitude of God; pure darkness can only be perceived when one has first encountered absolute light. Jean-Yves Lacoste has noted, in his work Experience and the Absolute, that “liturgy is non-place”. This is striking when read alongside Badiou’s claim that the “void” is the “non-place of place”. Lacoste goes on to note that in the Liturgy there exists a “will to powerlessness” which is “deprived of any hold over the absolute” and instead “totally submits itself to the will of another”; this will to powerlessness thus opens up the space of liturgy as “nothing but an empty space.” Lacoste finally notes that the work of Liturgy is “indistinguishable from nihilism”.  In this way, the ‘event’ of Chirst resurrection as embodied in the Eucharist emerges from the absolute non-event of the Liturgy.

This non-event, or nothingness, found in liturgy thus acts as an “empty, but enabling, nothingness.” In this way the non-event of liturgy is like an empty canvas, such that the empty canvas is the necessary pre-condition for the creation of something new.

Thus it can be seen that while Badiou finds the “empty set” of the “void” the only place (or more properly non-place) capable of giving way to events; the Liturgy already accomplishes this, and to a much greater extent, by creating a space of absolute nihilism from which the absolute plenitude of God can emerge. This is why Robert Sokolowski notes, “the resurrection (which is encountered during the liturgy through the Eucharist) brings being and life not out of nothingness but out of the deeper nihilism of sin and death”. Only the liturgy has the power to make this “deeper nihilism” visible.

In conclusion I hope it has been seen that a liturgically minded reading of Alain Badiou does not only lead to a reconsideration of the function of radical truth and subjectivity within the practice of Christian worship; but also to the way in which much of Badiou’s philosophy can be seen as a secular and a-historical parody of the one true liturgy. Oddly enough, it seems as if a liturgical embodiment of the philosophy of Badiou is the only way in which it could ever come to the realized political potential it strives for.