Kathleen Biddick's "Dead Neighbor Archives" offers a complex response to the "political theology" of Neighbor-love by way of her critique of the rhetoric of "sovereign decision" in the theories of Santner and others. Crucial to this critique is her sense that these theories retain a medieval historiographic structure of "typology," that is, a method of thinking about time (and text) that privileges the "figural" over the "literal." She argues, in sum, that "the undeadness of Christian typological decisionism has insinuated itself into the heart of contemporary political theology and its theories of the . . . "miracles."
While some of us no doubt have a fairly clear notion of "typology" and its medieval functioning, I thought a little explanation might help. A typological notion of history understands Christian time as the fulfillment of notions prefigured by Jewish history in the pre-christian era. Established by Paul (primarily, but not only, in his Letter to the Romans), this view holds that Christ brought the "New (living) Law" as a fulfillment of the "Old (dead) Law of Moses." Thus, Christ is the New Adam, Paul the New Moses, etc. etc. The structural relation between Judaism and Christianity is one of prefiguration (Judaism) and fulfillment (Christianity), also of a (deadening) commitment to the literal (Jewish) superseded by a (life giving) commitment to the figural (Christian). You can no doubt see already the problem this notion of history raises to the politics of "neighbor-love." Augustine developed these ideas in the direction of an entire mode of reading: texts have, in the theory of reading developed from his ideas, two primary level: the literal level (that contains and can subsume) the figural level. By the twelfth century, the literal level is regularly equated with the "bran" or the "chaff" of a grain of wheat (and with what Chaucer will call "solaas"--the "surface" pleasure of the text). The figural level is equated with the "kernel" of wheat to be ground into flour (what Chaucer will call "sentence"--the "truth" or "meaning" found at the heart of every grain of text). [NB: Chaucer uses these terms, but often plays with them in very interesting ways.] The implication of this way of thinking is that the (Christian/figural) "kernal" gives us our real "food"--with obvious resonances to Eucharistic/panis angelica, etc.--while the (Jewish/literal) bran is spiritually undigestible until superseded by the Christian meaning.
The column at the French Cathedral of Vezelay (picture given above), is one of Biddick's prime examples. The flour mill is common iconography for typological meaning. In this picture of the capital, we can just make out the OT prophets (sign of Jewish Law) pouring sacks of grain into the Mill while the Apostle Paul turns the Mill handle. Paul is thus enabling the process by which the flour is taken "out of the bran." The Apostle Paul is prominent in much of the "new" political theology.
So: I wonder what you think of Biddick's account of the typological "remainder" in the rhetorics of miracle and, thus, of "neighbor-love." What is at stake, do you think, in her critique of "typological decisionism"? What to you think of her larger argument, that typology HASN'T gone away from the "theology" of "neighbor-love"?
I think Biddick offers a provocative indictment of political theology, but I was left with the simple question: what is the alternative to typology? If there is a "murderous typological relation" between philosophy and theology, and if it necessarily involves "excarnating" Jews and Muslims, it seems that the alternative is, put simplistically, to stay with the particular. If Jews and Muslims are not to be deprived of a body, of the specificity of life experienced in Jewish or Muslim terms, it seems, they cannot be read or interpreted in anything but these terms. Biddick is right that this is the particularism that political theology wants to oppose, but on her reading their universalism is just as violent an imposition of a singular vision of life as Enlightenment universalism (according to its critics). It seems to me valuable, always, to figure out how the gears move, and we have been doing some of this work in this class, to dismantle the gears of contemporary political theology, but I'm not persuaded by her evidence that typology always and necessarily requires the dead Muslim neighbor, for example (it's crucial, I think, that she uses Anidjar's argument to link her medieval evidence to political theology today, and perhaps it would be more persuasive if I had read his piece). So, to recap: if the problem with Agamben's version of typology is the certainty with which he deploys it, does Biddick want to suggest that uncertainty--an uncertainty that might let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak, and let Jews be understood solely in Jewish terms and Muslims in terms appropriate to Islam, and so on--is the crucial antidote to the murderous effects of typology?
ReplyDeleteChristian Decisions
ReplyDeleteThe project in which Biddick participates is that of "unbind[ing] politics from sovereignty" (which is at its core a search for unassailable peace) by attacking typology. But how can we approach the decisions of others? What if, as Constance points out above, others type themselves? I agree with her reading of Biddick who seems to want to let “sleeping dogs lie” by remaining aloof to the others’ typing of themselves. The problem is that, whatever we in the post-Christian West decide or ignore about Jewish and Muslim others, they are hardly asleep, nor can we even hope to sedate them.
An interesting answer to this problem comes from Christ (as distinct from the medieval church). In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ assumes suffering, as the victim is already attacked. The project of protecting ourselves by subverting sovereignty is always already failed. What then? Let us identify for a moment with the victim, desperately in need of a friend. What choice does he have? What agency? If he is truly near death, perhaps he could not even refuse help if he wanted to. The victim is the subjective non-agent, the non-decider, as I will argue Christ’s good man must be. The priest and the Levite, as the story goes, pass by him, perhaps in subjection to the horror of the neighbor’s face. The Samaritan, however, transcends the barriers of “race” (to problematic to really address here) and religion to act out neighbor love.
Now Christ confronts us. Who is the victim’s neighbor? Clearly, the victim did not decide. The decision was made for him. The priest was not his neighbor, nor the Levite. The Samaritan was his neighbor, because he (the Samaritan) decided to be. Christ’s good man, then, is called to love across types: friend, enemy, neighbor. But this cannot mean he has no enemies. He loves every man as himself, and thus submits to the decision of the other, ultimately ensuring for himself a vulnerable, dangerous position.
Just a quick response here: "Typology" (in Biddick's and Constance's usage) refers to a certain structuring of history and meaning, not, as more conventionally used, a culturally function like the "stereotype." So in terms of the structures of typology, it's not really possible for "others to type themselves," as Trevor writes here. So, the "neighbor" in the way we've been thinking about it, is not a "type" so much as a feature of the structuration of otherness.
ReplyDeleteThat said, what I think Trevor is trying to get at here--perhaps your persistent question since we've started, Trevor? correct me if I misunderstand--has to do with what we might call the "threat" posed by the neighbor. One way to think about this is to query where and how this threat gets into Santner/Zizek/Reinhard. Trevor's remarks indicate something of the role of threat--in the standard Christian version of the imperative of Neighbor-love