Seventy years ago today a small group of people meet for ninety minutes at a lovely villa in a Berlin suburb to articulate how they would systematically murder another "group" of people.
It's difficult at best not to come across as polemical when trying with great effort to think philosophically about that statement, those words. He doesn't contest that the "group" in question tended to have a common religious heritage, namely Judaism. The injustice was not (so much) that the victims were Jewish (or tended to have some affiliation, however slight, with Judaism) but that they were human beings. Individuals. With families and lives and cares and loves.
He doesn't want to romanticize the victims either: some of those murdered by the Nazi death machine lied, cheated, beat their children, stole. Some of the Nazis themselves, on the other hand, created great art, wrote engrossing fiction, unquestionably loved their partners, earnestly believed in the salvific blood of Jesus.
All this to say: all "interested" parties of this conference were human. And that is what barbarous history teaches. The humanity of this fateful anniversary teaches him to be, in Paul Celan's words, mindful of the date, mindful of language, mindful of one's own humanity held always in common and mostly in abeyance.
To be human is to be complicit with and guilty for both groups and to recognize the yawning gap between oneself and another. This is a humanity that won't easily or soon be surpassed.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
On touching
In touching others, he touches himself. In touch, he becomes the object of his own touch insofar as the surface of others touches back, insofar as he receives in return the touch he gives. He thinks he may touch solely for this return of touch. In giving touch, he never completely only gives touch.
He seeks in his work, in his philosophical research, a pure touch. He pursues a touch that dissolves in pure intransitivity. One that does not transform what is touched into an object, all the while dispelling any necessary subject, knowing full well that what is touched is pure touching itself that takes no object, no subject, no formal relational structure that would assert itself as the image of touch. A touch, in short, that removes itself from the possibility of any image of touch.
He would want to find a touch that doesn’t touch another, that doesn’t translate his touch into a touching of himself. Ordinary touch always finds an object, always turns the touching back on itself, making he who would touch ultimately the one touched. Pure touching would be a selfless gift, beyond recompense and the possibility of recompense. Pure touching wouldn’t return the gift to its owner. Pure touching cannot be owned.
A touch this pure would not have touch as its thought, its ideal, its goal. A touch this pure would be beyond thought, beyond ideals, beyond goals. Such a touch would be outside all intentionality, subjectivity, objectivity, historicity, iterability. Such a touch would disavow the slippage from “I here now” to “he there then.” Pure touching would ceaselessly touch upon the impossibility of touch, and no one would ever feel it.
He would like to feel how pure touching felt.
He seeks in his work, in his philosophical research, a pure touch. He pursues a touch that dissolves in pure intransitivity. One that does not transform what is touched into an object, all the while dispelling any necessary subject, knowing full well that what is touched is pure touching itself that takes no object, no subject, no formal relational structure that would assert itself as the image of touch. A touch, in short, that removes itself from the possibility of any image of touch.
He would want to find a touch that doesn’t touch another, that doesn’t translate his touch into a touching of himself. Ordinary touch always finds an object, always turns the touching back on itself, making he who would touch ultimately the one touched. Pure touching would be a selfless gift, beyond recompense and the possibility of recompense. Pure touching wouldn’t return the gift to its owner. Pure touching cannot be owned.
A touch this pure would not have touch as its thought, its ideal, its goal. A touch this pure would be beyond thought, beyond ideals, beyond goals. Such a touch would be outside all intentionality, subjectivity, objectivity, historicity, iterability. Such a touch would disavow the slippage from “I here now” to “he there then.” Pure touching would ceaselessly touch upon the impossibility of touch, and no one would ever feel it.
He would like to feel how pure touching felt.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Barabbas, Son of the Father (In Our Age)
It was unanimous: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have the Jews calling out the name Barabbas, calling out for Barabbas's release, calling for the crucifixion of Jesus, the other Son of God the Father. But only the overly zealous author of Matthew betrays the true intentions of this political fiction: to have the upstart religion of Christianity sever all ties to the Jewish religion, for "ethical" monotheism to inflict its fatal auto-immunization, a self-sacrifice. Matthew's indiscreet supplement is the original libel.
A people intimate with blood would never call out for His blood to be on their heads and on the heads of their children. That was a curse reserved for the most detested of enemies, which is precisely how the Cult of Jesus would have the Romans understand their relationship with the Jews. But Matthew puts these words in the Jews' own mouths, attempting to absolve himself of the necessary consequences of his account.
Thursday morning prophetic dreams of false memories startled me awake twice in a matter of hours. My first nightmare consisted of the phone at my grandparents' house ringing with the call announcing the death of their youngest son. My aunts who were still living at home were sternly hushed as the television volume was lowered on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was October 31, 1965, a Sunday evening. In the second nightmare I was riding in a Jeep with my uncle, my namesake, in South Vietnam. There was a flash, a crash, an explosion, that crippled the scene in grainy Zapruder slow-motion.
The Second Vatican Council promulgated the Nostra Aetate on October 28, 1965. In effect, it was the Catholic Church's attempt to undo the damage done by Matthew's blood libel. It was a Thursday, the day my 19-year-old uncle was killed in Vietnam. It took three days for the news to reach a farm in East Texas.
I imagine my grandmother baking a vanilla cake with white coconut frosting that Halloween, the day my uncle was turning--was to have turned--twenty. Even though I was born two-and-a-half years later, some of my earliest memories were false memories of that day when some government official dialed my grandparents' telephone number to perfunctorily deliver the news that would devastate my grandparents, my family, my father, and instill in me a lifetime of false memories about that day, those events, providing material for a lifetime of nightmares. In effect, the US government rendered me and my family guilty of a crime that it itself had committed. Forty-six years and counting. I wonder how many other calls were made by other government officials that day. I wonder how many other families are haunted by events that happened long before these bedeviled individuals were born.
Perhaps in a couple more millennia some official will finally declare the end of my blood libel, the curses visited upon my family and me in the name of "freedom," "democracy," and those other phantoms and false gods. "Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless...."
A people intimate with blood would never call out for His blood to be on their heads and on the heads of their children. That was a curse reserved for the most detested of enemies, which is precisely how the Cult of Jesus would have the Romans understand their relationship with the Jews. But Matthew puts these words in the Jews' own mouths, attempting to absolve himself of the necessary consequences of his account.
Thursday morning prophetic dreams of false memories startled me awake twice in a matter of hours. My first nightmare consisted of the phone at my grandparents' house ringing with the call announcing the death of their youngest son. My aunts who were still living at home were sternly hushed as the television volume was lowered on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was October 31, 1965, a Sunday evening. In the second nightmare I was riding in a Jeep with my uncle, my namesake, in South Vietnam. There was a flash, a crash, an explosion, that crippled the scene in grainy Zapruder slow-motion.
The Second Vatican Council promulgated the Nostra Aetate on October 28, 1965. In effect, it was the Catholic Church's attempt to undo the damage done by Matthew's blood libel. It was a Thursday, the day my 19-year-old uncle was killed in Vietnam. It took three days for the news to reach a farm in East Texas.
I imagine my grandmother baking a vanilla cake with white coconut frosting that Halloween, the day my uncle was turning--was to have turned--twenty. Even though I was born two-and-a-half years later, some of my earliest memories were false memories of that day when some government official dialed my grandparents' telephone number to perfunctorily deliver the news that would devastate my grandparents, my family, my father, and instill in me a lifetime of false memories about that day, those events, providing material for a lifetime of nightmares. In effect, the US government rendered me and my family guilty of a crime that it itself had committed. Forty-six years and counting. I wonder how many other calls were made by other government officials that day. I wonder how many other families are haunted by events that happened long before these bedeviled individuals were born.
Perhaps in a couple more millennia some official will finally declare the end of my blood libel, the curses visited upon my family and me in the name of "freedom," "democracy," and those other phantoms and false gods. "Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless...."
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Day Two
Of the days on which I may have received an email or a phone call informing me that someone somewhere (see previous map) wants to interview me based upon my stellar dossier and outstanding research program. I go into Day Three a bit more deflated, yet nevertheless excited to get another essay submitted for publication. And before the December 1 deadline. I wish I had completed that other essay I worked on over the summer and had gotten it submitted as well, but that just gives me something to pursue at a later date. And now to devote December to a massive rewrite of yet another essay to be published in a European journal early next year. (And I keep thinking about a few minor revisions I'd like to make on an essay submitted already months ago. Perhaps it's time to contact my co-editors for advice.)
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Map of Hope and Hard Work
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