Slightly OT?: truth vs the truth

This is slightly off topic, I fear, but reading Jay's thoughts on Kristeva and the challenges of speaking to and engaging with questions of religious ideology and absolutism, I was reminded of Nick Bromell's recent American Scholar essay, in which he uses his friendship with Scooter Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff currently on trial for perjury, to reflect on fundamentalism and how one grapples with it honestly, both at the personal and on the public level.

Teaching Help?

I suppose it's too late now, but if anyone has any advice on teaching sci-fi writer Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" I'd appreciate it for next time around. I've assigned this story in my Bible And Literature course, but I find it a bit thin, unfortunately. This week we're reading Ecclesiastes, as you might have guessed. In the story a vain writer from Earth and a pessimistic Martian community clash and yet join together to produce hope for the future. The writer takes it as one of his tasks to translate into Martian the Book of Ecclesiastes, and then reads it to the community of Martians he's living with in order to show them how a culture (in this case, western Judeo-Christianity) can be dark and pessimistic and yet brazen enough to push the boundaries of possibility and to succeed in unexpected ways. Zelazny misreads Qohelet's hebel, and doesn't acknowledge the biblical text's skepticism either. Having said all of this, though, I think I've said it all . . . and I've got 75 minutes of teaching time on my hands!

Lessons of Empire Not Learned

From USA Today:

'In an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, [Virginia state legislator Frank D.] Hargrove said slavery ended nearly 140 years ago with the Civil War and added that "our black citizens should get over it."

The newspaper also quoted him as saying, "are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"'

As punishment for his anti-Semitic ignorance (not to mention his racism), perhaps Hargrove should be made to visit an exhibition of Fernando Botero's recent paintings of the victims of torture in Abu Ghraib. Those paintings comment upon the obscenity of the 'war on terror.' But, iconographically, they may also link Abu Ghraib to the punishments endured both by American slaves and by Jesus in the Passion narratives.

More from MLA's Profession 2006

As though in response to Kristeva's thesis (see my post on Kristeva's piece in Profession below), Ariel Dorfman writes in the same volume: "the most formidable intellectual challenge of our era is not how to reach out yet again to the thousands who admire Susan Sontag but how to connect with the sixty-five million Americans who read the apocalyptic Left Behind series."

Idea for an Edited Collection on the Bible and Popular Music

Roland Boer recently took note of oblique biblical references and analogues in Nick Cave's music in a study which advocates a hybrid of biblical criticism and cultural studies. The idea is to read the Bible not only in terms of later texts clearly dependent upon it, but also through a more ad hoc juxtapositioning in which "[b]iblical texts and cultural products are thrown together for mutual illumination, revealing aspects of each that only show up in light of the other."

I was reminded, as I read Boer's piece, of the biblically-inflected music of Tom Waits, and in particular of his song "Sins of the [or 'my'] Father" (from his 2004 album Real Gone), which includes the verses: "God all mighty for righteousness sake / Humiliation of our fallen state / Written in the book of tubold Cain . . . ." Punning on the name of Cain's great-great-great-great grandson, Tubal-Cain (from Gen. 4:22) such that the book of the history of Cain and his descendants is the book of the 'too bold,' while at the same time reflecting self-referentially upon the musical style of one who (in the curious words of the Golden Legend) "had delight in the sound of his hammers of which he made the consonants and tunes of accord in his song," this Waits song creates interesting options for scholars of reception history-as-juxtaposition. Taking a step beyond even what Boer proposes, I'd suggest reading Waits and the Bible in juxtaposition with commentary traditions and a specific history of appropriation. I could refer, for instance, to the ways in which this song intimates (or exploits, or mocks) something of Calvin's grudging respect for Cain's descendants in his Genesis commentary: "Let us then know, that the sons of Cain, though deprived of the Spirit of regeneration, were yet endued with gifts of no despicable kind." It's not a matter of establishing lines of influence, of course, but rather it's a question of deploying, via suggestive juxtaposition, and the broadest possible understanding of intertextuality, cultural products such as this song for the purposes of a critical, productive and entertaining rhetorical/cultural studies.

Any takers?

Kristeva in MLA's 'Profession'

In an annual publication of the MLA, Profession (2006), Julia Kristeva asks whether or not we're facing a global threat of religious war, and what a renewed literary/philosophical humanism can do about it. What spurs her to these questions are the riots in France late in 2005 -- or at least she takes these riots as a specific instance of the (only apparent) clash of religious cultures tearing at the fabric of the postmodern global order. Her argument, it seems to me, is a contribution to recent versions of the secularization debate, in which she comes down on the side of reason v. religion. I'm oversimplifying to a very great extent here, not only because Kristeva rejects this binary, but also because (in my reading at least) her psychoanalytic models are just as fully an instance of belief as is religion itself. But reading her pithy analysis of the present moment, it's difficult not to conclude otherwise: "The problem we're facing at the beginning of this new millennium is not one of religious wars but rather the rift that separates those who want to know that God is unconscious and those who prefer not to, so as to be pleasured by the show that announces he exists." As for those youthful Parisian rioters, Kristeva has this to offer: "beneath the vandalism, there is the long-neglected [and, moreover, 'prereligious'] need to believe" in ideals typical of adolescents. She even hints, through a couple of oddly unnecessary references, that there's something "primitive" or at least "Medieval" about these prebelievers. And while she doesn't return to the questions with which she began her essay to consider whether or not Sunni v. Shia violence in Baghdad is equally adolescent, the notion is there for the reader to consider.

I don't mean to disparage Kristeva's essay (entitled "Thinking in Dark Times") entirely. It doesn't withhold a certain sympathy for the "pyromaniacs" torching Paris, nor is it without political awareness of the real sources of the crisis. Still, it's brought me a new appreciation for friends who work, ever so creatively, at the fluid margins of theology. For a long time I've wondered why non-religious thinkers would want to engage in theological discourse; but if the alternatives are an increasingly irrelevant rejection of religious belief, or worse, a Kristevan condescension, then theology becomes rather more attractive as an option. At the very least, I think the humanities can do a far better job than this to mend wounds and build bridges.

From the old version!

You won't be able to add your comments to any of the posts below. Another consequence of my blog blunder. All new posts, though, will function as they should. Also, please note that the URL for this blog has changed. It's now: www.bibleand.blogspot.com.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Christmas Eve on FOX NEWS and CNN

On Dec. 24th I found a front-row vantage on the annual "War on Christmas," while running on a treadmill at my hometown gym: two televisions side by side, one set to CNN and one to FOX News Channel.

It was the afternoon, and FNC was exploiting (and perhaps positively shaping?) the religious commitments of its base audience, by showing a special on Rick Warren (famous evangelical pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the multi-million dollar bestseller The Purpose Driven Life) entitled "Purpose Driven Life: Can Rick Warren Change the World?" The story explored Warren's new found commitment to reverse-tithing and fighting poverty around the globe... and his wife's struggle against cancer.

FNC was also advertising (every 2 minutes or so) its evening line up for that night: a special pandering to the right-wing of the religion-and-public-life set, hosted by Newt Gingrich, and entitled One Nation Under God: Religion and History in Washington, D.C.. Families could sit down together after Christmas eve supper and tune into Fox for a discussion of why America really is a Christian nation—dontchaknow?

CNN, in the meantime, had it's own religiously themed line-up slated for prime time: After Jesus: The First Christians. This would be a special interviewing Bart Ehrman and Amy-Jill Levine, among others.

I found the juxtaposition telling: the evangelical right (or left?) on FOX, lined up against the historical critics on CNN. Who would win the ratings war?

I managed to tune into "After Jesus" that night. Parts of the show were good. For instance, the graphics were truly incredible: some techie had turned hundreds of beautiful classical paintings of early Christian scenes into moving, "three dimensional" panoramas.

But on balance, the show was terrible.

The music and dramatic narration (by Liam Neeson) was straight-up DaVinci code sensationalism, while the slap-dash review of the years 30–325 C.E. was, to say the least, confusing and over-simplified. (To say a bit more: it was also occasionally uncritical with regard to the Biblical sources used). The interspersed interviews with the critical scholars — most of whom offered only freshman-level summaries of old-school scholarly consensus dressed up as "news" — lent only a touch of credibility to the project.

Of course, the worst part was the commercials: they occurred about every 5 minutes. For some reason I forced myself to sit through the whole two hour program, watching with my mom and dad.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas,
and in states blue and red,
we all got religion
while the execs got fed.

The Gingrich special is being rebroadcast on Jan 1st.

Happy New Year!

Saturday, December 9, 2006

A Worthy Biblioblog...

I don't know if y'all have seen The Bible Films Blog by Matt Page but it is worth a look!

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Brilliant!

Congratulations to Matt! His book, Whose Acts of Peter?, which is a steal at Amazon for just $81.57 used, was declared brilliant by a reviewer at RBL.

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Religion and Literature at 2007 MMLA

The call for the 2007 Religion and Literature session of the Midwest Modern Language Association follows. Interested parties please respond with short (250 word) proposals and contact information.

Spiritual Anarchists and Sacred Troublemakers: (Auto)Biographies of the Saints as Subversive Discourses.

The lives of exemplary religious figures can exert a disruptive effect on accepted canons of religious literature. While accounts of the lives of saints and other religious virtuosi eventually play a central role in the lives of ordinary practitioners, these same exemplary figures often stand in opposition to authoritative religious and cultural institutions of their times. Attempts to bring these figures into the fold of orthodoxy typically involves an elision of the more seditious aspects of saintly lives. This session seeks papers that address the subversive elements that reside in the (auto)biographies of saintly personages. The organizers are particularly interested to address the topic from multiple religious traditions; papers addressing figures outside the Judeo-Christian tradition are especially, though not exclusively, invited.

Friday, December 1, 2006

From Thirteen to Nativity

After watching the well-crafted but extremely desolate film Thirteen, by director Catherine Hardwicke (2003), I vowed to lock my future daughter in a closet between the ages of 11 and 18.

Hardwicke has a new movie now: The Nativity.

I'll be very curious to see what's motivating this film. Which side of the "War Against Christmas" is "The Nativity" fighting on? Lol.

Predictions, reviews, reactions?

Sovereign assistance

I'm currently working on a number of ideas which seem interrelated but need, I feel, a defining center. My SBL paper dealt with theories of political sovereignty in Giorgio Agamben's book on Paul (The Time That Remains), and I'm interested in extending this work, but in a way that would allow me not only to discuss theoretical, but also literary and pop-cultural appropriations of the New Testament. I've written on violence and theology in British playwright Sarah Kane's work, on Johnny Cash's fictional life of Paul, on Jonathan Edwards' polemical/political readings of certain Pauline texts, on Derrida's readings of the NT, and so on. What all of my recent work has in common, I think, is an interest in exploring how issues of sovereignty and political community are given shape via creative (mis)appropriations of NT texts. The question is how to bring it all together. I'd welcome your thoughts, as well as any suggestions you might have for further reading.

By the way, be sure to check out David's (aka WDH) comment to my initial post for information on the upcoming M/MLA session he and Meredith are organizing.

OK I'm on

Jay
Thanks for starting this. I'm on - my first blog posting ever. Will look forward to lively discussions.

Posted by Glenn whitehouse at 10:06 AM 0 comments