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    100 views11 pages

    Rozitchner Thing and Cross

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    Roger Wenceslao
    Rozitchner Leon - The thing and the cross

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    32 y 9 2 Are There Any Saints Left? more descriptive overview of Rozitchner’s work, ce Sebastén Scolnik, "Notas para un. raterialismo argentino. Una lectura de ls textos de Ledn Rezitchnes” La Biblioteca 2-3, (2005): 24455 In this same issue, the reaéer will also find an extensive interview with Sebastién Scolnik, “Leén Rozitchner:'El Ser se devela hablando en castellano” ibid, 6-3. | want to thank Miguel Maiden for passing along this last reference and for sharing his ‘thoughts on Rozitehner with me. Rozitchner, La cosa yla cru, 10, Foran alternate translation se, in this issue, Roztehner, st Ibid, 1.For an alternate translation see, in ‘his issue, Rozitchner, 3. See, for example, Alberto Moreiras, Linea de sombra: Eno sujet de lo politic (Santiago de Chile: Palinodia, 2006) Lacan, 5. Ronitchner, “Filosofia terror” in Freud yl problema del poder, 245-46: Ibid, 250. The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism (About Saint Augustine’s Confessions) (1997) LLeén Rozit:hner ‘Translated by Karen Benezra and Rachel Price Introduction and Appendix! To reads to resuscitate ideas buried on the page Every word isan EPITAPH, and to make that kind of MIRACLE one has to know the SPIRITS of the dead ‘or to have EQUIVALENT SPIRITS to replace them. —Simén Rodriguez, Luces y virtudes sociales (8) Introduction ' Why the Confessions of a Christian Saint Augustine interpret ed by a ncn-believing Jew? First, because after sixteen cen turies the debt accumulated by Christianity in the persecu tion and genocide of the Jews has not been settled: the crimes committed in the name of love can be neither redeemed no! repented for. Second, because we believe that triumphant capitalism, the infinite quantitative accumulation of wealth under the abstract monetary form, would not have been pos sible withcut the human model of religious infinitude pro moted by Christianity; that is, without the imaginary and symbolic reorganization operated upon subjectivity by the new religion of the Roman Empire. It is no coincidence that the crtical-philosophical analyses that paved the way for both the social tansformation of the modern State and the adven Polygraph 19/20 (2008) 34 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism of the socialist revolution began with the critique of religion as a method of social subjection, a critique now dissolved in the paltry and anodyne philosophizing of liberal postmodernism. The insufficiency of that critique—of religion considered by Marxism to be onlya fact of consciousness—and the complete incomprehension of the “material” (sentient) production of men by religion—which is previous to the production of commodities that Capital describes—has much to do, we believe, with the failure of socialism in the world its political action did not reach the nucle us ofthe most tenacious subjective submission. A radicalized social transformation ‘must modify that which religion has organized inthe depth of every subject if we do ‘not wish to repeat the heroic but sterile sacrifices of our recent past. ‘We said to ourselves then, that if we were to read Augustine and reveal the fun- damental equation of his model of humanity—the “Love” and “Truth” ofthe divine ‘Word that only the chosen hear, that wh.ch demands the denial of the body and of ‘outside lfe asthe necessary sacrifice that permits love and truth to place themselves with impunity beyond crime—wouldnt we, in this ct, be denuding a cultural system that utilizes death by concealing it and making it into an unavoidable demand of its politcal logic? If we take this human model considered to be the most sublime, and demonstrate that in the exaltation cf the most sacred the commitment to the ‘most sinister also makes its home, wouldn't we thus have discovered the obscene ‘mechanism of Christian religious production? This isthe challenge: to understand a ‘model of being human that carries with it sixteen centuries of subtle, refined, brutal and miserable subjection. At the risk of being called “vile’—only a vile sprit can put the greatness of Saint Augustine in doubt, says Marrou'—I must, almost implacably, continue to ask about the truth of his mcdel in order to understand the path that it offers us so that we may believe in the same thing he does. ‘We thus asked ourselves about the “profound” psychic transformations that Christianity prepared as a mode of subective domination in the field of ancient politics, and which made it possible for capitalism to then establish itself; in the twentieth century, as we are seeing, the two converge—economy and reigion—both triumphing atthe same time. What was the psychical innovation inthe historic con- struction of subjectivity that brings this experience near to our own? Will unraveling it help us to comprehend the globalized and merciless domination that continues to exercise itself over us? It was necessary frst to impose a basic premise through terror: that man’s body, sentient and lovesick, was devalued and considered a mere residue of the abstract Spirit. Only in this way could the body be left free for com- pPutation and calculation, for the cold predominance of the quantitative infinity of all human qualities. ‘We believe that Christianity, with its radical contempt for the sensual pleasure of life isthe premise of capitalism, without which the later would not have existed. Given that in order for there to bea syster in which, gradually, all human qualities— even the most personal—acquire a price,a quantitative value as a “commodity” that is the generalized form of valorization of everything that exists, it was necessary to have previously produced men adapted to the system on aleve diferent from the merely economic. Christian technology, organizer of the human mind and soul, an- Leén Rozitchner tecedes the capitalist technology of the means of productions the former paves t ‘way for the later. It is not by cccident that when finance capitalism abstract a monetary infinity triumphs ané“globalizes” itself, nothing ess than the infinite vo of Christan religion appears to fill the hole ofthe defeated social revolution as only other horizon left; accomplices implicated in the spoliation of body and sou Our hypothesis should not be considered excessive. It depends on the pow ‘granted it by the permanence of the Christian stamp on the long duration of h torial time. We simply need tc seek a slower time that circulates on another, mo subterranean level of social and psychic stratification. Even if we accept the prima ‘of economic production asthe point of departure for understanding history we mu think that since the origin of Christianity until the present day—twenty centurie there has not been a fundamental change either in the religious model or in symbolic schema, Throughout its development, even with its multiple variants Protestantisms, the West has maintained the figure ofa tortured and executed Chr as its determinant image and the narratives of the New Testament sits sacred wo Let us not forget that Augustire was also the model for those who confronted (Church, for Luther and for Erasmus. It willbe said that the contemporary incidence of Christianity, and, particula ‘of Catholicism, is radically different from that which originated in the Middle Ag ‘Who could deny it? We are only saying that if now as postmoderns the lif of ev subject organizes itself far from ancient fears and regulations, from its hierarchi and phantasms, the image ofthe crucified rebel continues to organize subjectivity the West. Even in crisis, or perhaps because of it, Christianity is indissolubly link to capitalism. And not only forthe reasons that Max Weber, a Christan, presents Hence we became interested in finding the fundament of the politica int which is most specifically religious. And we wondered whether it might truly | possible for every believer, with the content of the Christian imaginary—despite good intentions and the fact that it is inscribed in Liberation Theology—to crea 8 political experience that might be essentially different from the politics that t experience combats. We are asking if every Christian religious fundament isnot al ‘one of domination through religion. Moreover, we believe that even we non-religi people are strictly determined, beyond our conscious decisions, by the structuring ‘our deepest imaginary in the Christian culture of the West—including Jews. Thu is that, historically, Christianity appears producing subjectively conquered men ‘masse, conquered not only physically by terror and external threat, which was t situation ofthe slaves, but in the most elementary marks that structure the singular of every “free” and democratic postmodern citizen. " ‘Why do we need to return to the cultural origin of Western history—not only t economic history of capitalism and its beginnings, but the denser history of t imaginary and phantasmal origins of our culture? Because this felt configurati closer to sensual flesh than to the abstract concept, precedes and thus paves the w for the economic relations that capitalism establishes. Marxist analysis consider 36 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism the expropriation of the worker's body in the production process, ut not the history previous to the mythico-religious expropriation of the living, imaginary and archaic body which also constitutes, as we believe, the premise* of all economic relations. Despite knowing this, Marx maintained hope: he thought that withthe triumph of scientific rationality the social life of myths and religions would disappear. ‘What does Marx mean, though, when he afirms that Christianity, with its cult of the abstract man, isthe most adequate religious form for the “undifferentiated labor” required by a productive system of commodities? Undifferentiated labor proceeds from the devalued body, torn to pieces and quantified, but itis Christianity that rakes way for the contempt of the “use af bodies” that capital expropriats. It was required first thatthe body of the generative mother, with whose image each person animates even his own body, be excluded aa life-giving body in the Virgin. In order to be effective, this denial had to penetrate as faras the unconscious. This is why the body of the Virgin Mother is the first atstract social machine to produce bodies summoned to death. As ifreligious, Christan capital (both spiritual and patriarchal), anticipating the use that capitalism would make of t, engendered its own crucified son as a sacred commodity in order to deny the living material that goes towards death, constructing him as physically metaphysical, murdered and resurrected; as a currency such that all those subjected might protect themselves from the social terror that announces their necessary annihilation. We only know the end of the profane history of the crucified Son: the story of his industrial creation in the productive usufruct and martyrdom of men who manufacture things. But capitalism also has its own religious premises that Augustine pronounces and anticipates. In his theological libidinal economy the saint proposes the most profitable original investment for the accumulation of sacred capital: “What you save in flesh you may invest in the Spirit” ‘Capital and the Christian Spizit have complementary metaphysical premises. ‘Our intention with such comparisons s neither to revalorize nor to lend prestige to the Jewish religion (or any other). But its myths differ in ways that should be ree- ognized. The Jewish Bible traces the mythical-historial account ofa people during ‘many centuries; the Christian Bible recounts the mythical fable of one lone man in the brevity ofa lifespan. We will only confront the schematism posited by Jewish ryth in Christian myth and its historical consequences. We dontt ask ourselves if God exists. In following the experience that Augustine relates, we eck only to grasp the recourses by which God is subjectively constructed in order to produce those ef- fects in historical reality. Our aim is to understand the moment in which the politics that was rebellious and resistant to Roman imperial power was supplanted by the religion ofthe State through a strategy of domination; to understand how itis that through this operation it transforms an eminently political fact—the rebellion of a Jewish Jesus against the religious and imperial power—into a purely religious one— Christ, God's son resurrected who dies not for having confronted the Empire, bt for purging our sins through his death. This narrated, ritualized and institutionalized conversion transfigures the entire historical memory of the West it metamorpho- ses the historic violence suffered into a necessary and divine one, ‘Wealso wanted to see the way in which Augustine’ Confessions prepares the way Leén Rozitchner 3 for the Manual withthe Instructions for social subjection and religious domination ‘anew politics to organize the subjectivity of the new subject of the Empire. ‘The consequences ofthe application of patriarchal rationalism to the social cor struction ofthe conscious and effective body require us to look for its antecedents no only in ‘pre-capitalist economic formations” as Marx does forthe economy, but als in “pre-capitalist (subjective) psychological formations” that are contained in the “ss cred” myths ofthe West, in both bibles, symbolic-imaginary determinations that ar historically more stable and permanent than changing economic relations. George Devereux accentuates the tenacious persistence ofthe place where religion make its home. From an anthropological perspective it confirms for us “the invariance o the unconscious through time and generations. which is what is most dificult fo “progressive” people to accept, exen the most thoughtful and politicized ones Is possible thatthe primary formation centered in Christ for twenty centuries perhap continues to inscribe an archaic subjectivity generation after generation, despite th fact that adult social formations nave changed? ‘We are not unaware ofthe long process through which forms of social, religious political, economic and juridical domination have created different and newer forms tions since the womb that was Christianity. Nevertheless, is not the primary religiou: and social formation centered or the complex configuration of the model of Chris and the Holy Trinity stil rooted inthe subjectivity ofeach one of us, despite the fac that other historical formations and periods—the bourgeois revolution of 1789, fo example—have developed as if they had transformed it? Christianity, as a religio and s aculture, continues, in the West, to occupy and mold the most archaic stratum a layer always present in everyone and which emerges, as if novel and indispensable at certain moments—momentsin which a population terrorized by social, economic and political crises similar to the ones we are living today, withdraw into themselves In Augustine we wish at least to glimpse the obscure logic of this emergence. m ‘We might begin with a naive question, one more personal and innocent: Car anyone—a man, Augustine, for 2xample—renounce sex (the love of woman) and his body, in order to give himself over solely to salvation in God, to that which i ‘most abstract but felt as most proximate? We thus depart from the most intimate and least “economic” question. No longer merely to fetter women with multipl rites of purification, as the orthodox Jews do, in order to receive a timid and chaste pleasure from them, excluding the threat of destruction by impure and excessive impulses. No, in the religious Caristian model the idea is to excise these women absolutely from sentient and sensual desire: to make of the mother’s belly a sacred shrine. And, affirmed in the guilt of the mortal sin par excellence, consequence ol the disobedience in Paradise, Augustine takes “fornication” as a point of departure to explain not only the fall of man—with the original sin of Adam and Eve—but also the fall of the Roman Empire. Moreover, he attempts to justify the characte of the latter through its puerile but no less deep-seated fantasy as a universal and necessary truth. And that thought, transformed into a Church of stone, has traced 38 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism the triumphant model that culminates in the capitalist West, despite the appearance ‘of uncontainable sexual eruption that would indicate the contrary. Christianity was thus diminished to an impoverished paganism of isolated, in- timate and subjective individuality, the reduction of that imaginary plenitude—the Jurassic reserve of mythological animal: thet grazed in the mysterious spaces and secrets of life, The Christian distanced himself from the few primary idols spared by the patriarchal terror of his empty monotheism; he distanced himself from the variegated multiplicity that, with the old gods, had expressed the density of com- ‘munal life and the popular elaboration of quotidian dramas which the people of the village wrote in the open book of myths. The subject isolated with his deepest internal phantasms was then reawakened,* restricted to the only dramatization that the power of death, embodied in the emperors, the Pope and the bishops, imposed ‘upon him. But there is another fundamental condition as well itis the first evan- gelical and catholic—which it to say, imperial—religion that set forth for itself the ‘universal and political expansion of its Truth, considered as unique and absolute converting infidels by threat and death The Roman Empire of the Later Empire, “the most ancient of the totalitarian states” triumphed in its fll, dragging with the Christianity ofthe State al of the idols ofthe multiple cultures that had taken refuge in ts pantheon; they were all reduced tothis terminal and unique form thatthe ter ror of historical failure imposed upon them: the domination ofthe Catholic Church, its imperial successor. ‘The mythical pagan narration that embodied the multiple density of human life was reduced to a dogmatic drama whose characters froze the elaboration of phantasms operative in free symbolic and imaginary exchanges, both corporal and collective. Now they found themselves -educed, traveling along the narrow defile of familiar canonical forms that ratified the most primary expectations. Myth—an archaic and collective complex—was congealed as an exclusively familial one, along with the social and political base for reflective consciousness. In the three People of Use Holy Trinity, the models fixed by power ae absolaized forever. Of these, the generative maternal figures exorcised and, with her, ll nature is made inferior. The feared and negated body of the mother—the Great Mother—was transformed intoa ‘ystical-insttutional body; its rational nd ascetic opposite was the “nomenclature” of the Church that served as the suppor for the One ofthe Roman Emperor in the cevangelized empire, as always, through terror and menace. The amorous Augustine could thus be considered “the first theoretician of the Inquisition’ (Brown) * Christianity translated sensibility and imagination into cold metaphysics and pure rationality, placing side by side the most supreme and subtle abstractions, and the presence of impoverished fetishes which were its imaginary, ascetic and queru- Jous companions. It solidified in dogmas the abstracted and evacuated coordinates ‘of human historicity It accompanied itself with one unique and obligatory story for everyone, a coercive myth whose figures received, as summary and condense tion, the canonical form ofan icon cructfied and tortured to death—Christ spilling tears of blood for his heart circled and crowned with thorns. Al believers were then condemned to readin his dismal cadaver, executed by the same Roman law that still Len Rozitchner 3 rules over us, the sign of the earthly world that continues to impregnate all huma enterprise with anguish and dea-h. wv ‘Augustine is of interest to me inshis endeavor only forthe apparatus of dominatio and war with witich he constructed man’s subjectivity under the insignia of lov and truth. This is what abides. Augustine knew to find the intimate place wher power vivilies and stokes emotion, arousing the most sinister phantasms to activa the body, and in that terrible hour in which the old world crumbles, yoke it to th war vehicles of politcal and economic power, inthis case “the patria, defended b the citizens of the heavenly emperor” (Confessions VIl:cx4.27), to which Augustin granting himself this new religioas denomination, now commends himself, to avo death. He knows what Jesus sufered because of the terrible and merciless arbitra ness of State Justice: “in whom the Prince of this world found nothing worthy 0 death, yet killed he Him?"* and he wants to keep safe the irrational and arbitar terror ofthe pagan Empire within the Christian Empire. From the Confesions to th Gity of God, such isthe via crucis that runs from the new Father tothe State ‘With Christianity is produced the most unexpected equivalence between though and action, and the most profound penetration by an external legality made interna (One example lies in what Catholicism calls the “new justice, superior to the olé ‘which sto say the internal Christian justice that followed the external Jewish justi ofthe Ten Commandments You have heard that it was suid, “You shall not commit adultery” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with het in his heart (Matthew 5:27). ‘To covet the woman in thought, to merely fel desire and imagine pleasure wit her's to declare oneself guilty, as fone had actually forniated: one “has already cor titted adultery with her in his heart” The most profound persecution was achieved feeling an imaginary desire is made equivalent to realizing it with the external, rea person—with her—to whom we fee attracted, Intention is now punished before th acti realized, for merely possessing desire. It duplicates legality, doubles the externa and political law of Caesar, now become divine internal persecution. But given tha this founding desire—to desire a woman—lies at the origin of life, this equivalenc and reverberation in the most archaic corners of adult desire is therefore convert’ {nto the foundation forthe deepest prohibition against feling, imagining and think {ng—or all thought thinks from. foundation of the imaginary and affective. ‘This exorbitant and monstrous making equivalent of subjective thought and ot jective reality alows, from the perspective of political reality, penetration into th deepest and most personal dominion of feeling, imagination and thought of ever subject, who from now on must anticipate himself to contain, while denying, th overflow of his most intense spontaneous yearning, that which explodes from hi desiring heart, without being able to experience his own human condition and situ 40 The Thing and the Crass: Christianity and Capitalism ate it socially. Thus the new religious affirmation extends external policing intro subjective spaces itbecomes, even asitchims tobe spiritual, a terror of carnal drives and of life. ‘Augustine, in his persecutory zeal, ses visions: he takes allegories for the thing itself and “realizes” the symbol; he attempts to flee and never again fornicate with ‘women. The metaphor, understood and felt as such, is animated with all its phan- tasmatic contents and most elemental terrors. And its this primary logic that will determine his adult thinking and organize his passions. Perhaps this mad, spiritual vvehemenee, fanatically cerebral in its justificatory intent, already prepared long ago science’s mechanisms for “knowing” and dominating nature, first subjugating the earthly body of the maternal goddesses, and, in transforming the material of life, reaching by other means eternity and unlimited life ever after. Pagan rites of ado- ration for the Magna Mater were fertility rites dedicated to land and nature. With ‘Christianity the pagan Magna Mater was excluded and repressed from the mas- cline imaginary. The patriarchal, abstract reason that dominates her necessarily. culminates in technical reason, linked tothe infinite productivity of capitalism, with no satisfaction of living desire, and bestows death on nature as earlier it bestowed death on live bodies to save the soul. In order to dominate and calculate nature it ‘was necessary to first subject nature in her very fibers; terrorize her inthe lvest [mas vivo] core of pleasured fiesh and derive srength from the desires ofthe terrified and trapped body. It was necessary to conceive of her as stil life [naturaleza muerta} in her excessive transformation. The god of Christianity, eternal and unchanging spirit, was the prototype for disparaged humar. qualities. ‘What corporal metamorphosis is produced out ofthe wellspring of desire and lst for the mother's body, frst love objet, such that this impetus culminates in the desire for quantitative accumulation in the numerical “body” of capital, but also such that it cloak itself in the mystical body of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy of the “Mother Church? Thisis the question we ponder. One might also say that Christianity expresses the extension of ancient slave relations, to the point of achieving a subjec tive technique for control prepared for by the knowledge of its psychic mechanisms. With Christianity death itselfas subjective feeling—not only the ancient, real and ex- ternal threat of death—became an objective technique of domination, and, propped ‘upon the Augustinian-Pauline model, penetrated into history to a degree hitherto unknown, It is this new fractured bod, not the old one—invaded by a different terror—which capital appropriates. Therefore ata time in which a globalized society is achieved and capital triumphs, is not the frozen matrix of the archaic Christian ‘model, that degraded substitute, the idel spiritual replacement material made avail able to man by a Church that grants himonly the maternal body as mystical body, in usufruct and substitution for his own, lost and terrorized, so that finally the encoun- ter between the City of Capital and the Augustinian City of God might be realized? Christianity describes, configures ard codifies, then, a new collective modality for confronting historical collapse. Thus even a Catholic historian, Marrou, was able to affirm that Augustine’ historical support consisted in the fact that “he teaches us, with his example, an art of living in times of catastrophe” (10). Lain Rozitchner 4 v Its not surprising that Augustine should turn to the Confessions as a rhetoric form for his theological philosophy. It isthe key place—his own life—from whic he deciphers the assumptions that unite the two extremes ofall future proposals: the one hand childhood and social instruction, imaginary and conscious, and 0 the other the premises that organize adult thought and action, and eventual polit cal conclusion. What begins with fight from a childhood drama culminates wit the adult drama of politics. What begins as the Confessions culminates in the City c Gods substitute forthe Roman Empire, interiorized. What begins with the colaps ofthe ancient world culminatesin the Catholic Empire. From th fel of subject {ty so constitute the classifying categories ofthe political postions in Western an Christian culture are legible One ought to recall that the image ofthe crucifix ‘was frst the terrifying threat of Roman domination over every living subject. To ti {mage is now added, in our own times that of those disappeared, hooded, torture and assassinated by our own military, heroes summoned once again by the fgur ofthe Virgin Mother, general ssit of armed forces, supported by the Church tha consistent, sanctified new torture on the foundation ofthe old. Colophon I willbe said that we rely excessively on “psychoanalytic” interpretation, But thi ‘would be to reduce Freudian psychoanalysis to its function as a liberal professio and to exclude it from the field of philosophy (or to not consider itas transcendent philosophy, as Merleau-Ponty wished). But Augustine himself authorized it; his ps chological descriptions are in an ontological Key. Augustine anatomizes that whic {is most feared and proposes we instal it in the most recondite corner of every man- but first he must reveal a model of such efficacy in his own self. Hence he tells u his own history in the Confessions that we might follow his example. This subjectiv probing narrates the admirable experience of subjecting oneself—and of proposin, ‘oneself 28 a model—to a fight in which control ofthe body itslf, lived as atrium! ought to penetrate the most obscure folds of subjectivity in order to escape death menace. To anatomize subjectivity, to bring into relief its profound structure, is ne essary work when attempting tc carve out an internal space that would protect u from the abyss: to recuperate a persistent childhood yearning inthe persecuted an hounded adult. Saint Augustine dreams up and constructs the terrifying mytholog later prolonged in the Christian West throughout sixteen centuries. The Confession laborate a new literary figure for religious conviction, a form of evangelization f the possessed: another guide for errants ‘Augustine importance for us is this: he assumes to an extreme limit this co tradictory destiny played out within himself, and he constitutes it as a new subject the abysmal comes to the fore because it has been activated down to its roots. “Th elevated truth does not open up to any but him who fully enters into philosoph and not only intellectually, which isolates” (Jaspers, Saint Augustine)" to the pois of discovering that extreme point of the body in which ought to be included th deepest repression. And this is pronounced in the human residuum left behind: i 42° The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism the mystical exclusion of the material, haloed but de-hierarchized in all its sensual qualities. Augustine is “the spiritual model of the West” say his followers, Ifthe word “truth” were not the connecting thread. like some affective syllogism, of his vivid demonstration, thought from and with :he body, his narration would pertain to the genre of fictionalized autobiography; it would be merely the literary description of a life without pretensions of instituting itself asa true model forall kinds. It would not have become the spiritual model for Western Christianity. fit had remained a per- sonal confession its proposal would meet with no objections: only when Augustine tums it into absolute Truth and draws support from the political power ofthe Empire to apply it does he become the prototypical fundamentalist and, as such, dangerous for human freedom. This is why we insist on taking him so seriously. So seriously that we are moved to try to understanc, again with a criterion of truth—diferent than his own—all the descriptions he wants to show us in detail—and with what ‘meticulousness!: the most intimate nooks and crannies of his life, demonstrative of the truth he enunciates. For the frst time we have access to the elaboration of a subjective religious experience parallel to the creation of the rational concepts on whose model these theoretical, teleological and politcal “truths” are affirmed, go- ing beyond the imaginative sphere of he who produces them as “catholically” valid Logical discourse, theological affirmation and psychological phantasmagoria con: verge in the Confessions. ‘Time then that we ask ourselves about the fall of contemporary empires: the decadence that we ive amidst despite apparent economic plenitude for those enjoy- ing life Is it strange that some postmoderns should have encountered in the figure of Augustine the model solution that again reveals to us a limit in the face of another new decadence? [sit enough to replace the ‘Pour Marx” of Althusser with the “Pour Saint Augustine” of an unknown, post-marxist, frustrated ‘“68er—Claude Lorin to bbe exact—to confront the present catastrophe? Appendix! ‘The Triumph of Death Over Life (A Method for Social Control) Augustine is aware that itis necessary to belabor deathis menace to make men saints and obedient followers of God's law. The imperiled Christian wishes never to die, the protective Jewish God long ago revealed himself to be impotent, the pagan gods were hapless before their own death, the world falls apart, death “inundates” and invades” it. In the City of God Augustine wishes to use death itself as a method for controlling and subjugating men. Jewish baptism—circumcision—is a symbolic defense that may serve, with the ‘mark of castration, to protect us, via the paternal law that regulates us and separates us from the devouring mother. But now there isa real, social, and widespread terror, Leén Rozitchner 43 ‘much more terrifying and angry than any threat from the father: the Roman Empire ‘comes undone, the barbarians advance, and the emperors exercise a sinister power. ‘Thus when the symbolism of protection does not find its empirical referent in the real power that confirms it, nor in the defensive force of institutions, nor in the social relations that prolong the paternal protection we grasp at, nd social life appears only asan immediate threat of death, we need something more than a sign and mark: we need a different protection, one that would assure us of eternal salvation in the face of the annihilation that stalks us at every moment. But this protection prior to the paternal mark and given us by the archaic return of the mother comes ata price: God grants us eternity with the Christian baptism, but he does not pay us in advance. ‘And faith would not be tested by the fact that its reward was unseen; indeed, itwould not be faith any longer, since the reward of the act of faith would be demanded and taken immediately (City of God XIIL.4)." Let us first retain the economic category of immediate payment for the debt of un- seen reward. Submission paid for with life, future life with present death. Immediate payment, no time for doctrinal credit. God advances us nothing. When the threat appears, time disappears, conquered by the infinity of the instant that demands this immediate payment, life as hard cash. The relationship between the law and the threat of death is inverted. the punishment of sin [death] has been turned [convertida) by the great and ‘wonderful grace of our Saviour to a good use, to the promotion of righteous- ness. (ibid.)* How is this internal conversién—with respect to external Jewish law—realized? In order that justice and the law profit from sin, death must penetrate further inside, ‘must be installed in the most profound part of the subject. “The Christian martyrs, forced to choose between death and abjuring their faith {in God, preferred to die, renouncing this life, to be reborn in the eternity to come: such are the teachings applied by followers of Christ's model. Augustine takes plea sure in signaling the difference between Jewish and Christian law, and the utility of the death brought by Christianity to increase political power, paying up front, with neither future nor time, just like the martyrs. It was then [in the Old Testament] said to man, “You will die ifyou sin.” Now [in the New Testament] it is said to the martyr, “Die, rather than sin.” It was then said [by the Jewish Goe], “If you break the commandment you will certainly die” Now it is said, “If you shrink from death, you will break the commandment.” What was then an object of fear, to prevent man from sin- ning, is now something to be chosen, to avoid sinning. So by the ineffable mercy of God even the penalty of manis offence is turned into an instrument of virtue, and the punishment of the sinner becomes the merit of the righ- 44 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism teous. Then death was purchased by sinning; now [with Christ] righteousness is fulfilled by dying ("now justice is achieved by dying”? (City of God XITL. 45 Rozitchner’ emphasis) “Now Justice is Achieved by Dying” ‘The model offered to humanity is the martyrdom of saints, just as the saints’ model is Christ’ martyrdom. And the negation of the future and ofthe time of life, the lat- ter thereby invalidated: quantified time, moneyed instant. Christ dies o save us and redeem us from sin; we must imitate him, die a corporal death to save the soul, die the first death—of the body—to save usfrom the second death—of the soul. For the threat of @ new death accompanies the divine engendering of mani soul. The fist death consists of sacrificing the body to God to preemptivey rid it of sin if it sins itis already dead from the second death the eternal death, which necessarily drags with it the frst, but forever. In which case death has invaded time and killed it. Christianity opens a new life, the eternal one, but in fact it does so to (eternally) adda second death to rel life, which we ae in turn to renounce. One sole death no longer: now there are two, and itis the second which is proposed as true, not the first that we really suffer in our bodies. The frst the real death, we must suffer contentedly ‘we must sacrifice now to attain life eterral. We are asked to accept death in life, to be obedient in order to be eternal ‘The problem is the external nature of Jewish law, the external threat of anni- hilation that obliges us to fulfill the law as God mandates. With Christianity, itis said, doctrine is furthered: we must be good not because of external threat, but by internal election. Now we arrive at a death that menaces from within, a threat stil ‘more profound: the internalized law of the circumcised heart. Death must find living receptacle, ever present as an internal threat, in our own body. It constructs us as terrified subjects from the moment of the emergence ofthe repressed, central primary drive. Weare nat tempted hy the possibility of challenging the law: we vol- uuntarily kill drive itself. The sting, Paul says, or the “weapon which overcomes death is sin, and the aw isthe virtue or strength of sin’ —and Augustine interprets: “Most certainly true; for prohibition increases the desire ofilict action when we do not love justice, such that withthe desire and delight in her [justice] we conquer the appetite to sin” (City of God XIIL 5)" ‘That the law be only external, as forthe Jews, was already a mode of historcia- ing it, of taking it away from men and outting upon God the obligation to make it absolute. God mandated, but the law could yet be confronted: it was to be interpreted, discussed, its meaning discerned, On the coherence in interpreting man and the law was staked the fate of the only life thereis. Infractions of the law brought enjoyment. ‘This pleasurable moment of disobeying the law is the enjoyment ofa transgression that heightens pleasure, and jas a fundamental importance in historical life: the pleasure of confronting arbitrary power, which call itself divine right, keeps what is ours both individually and collectively, and impedes our enjoying it. Every amorous hhug brushes up against and violates divine law; threatens it Leén Rozitchner 45 ‘This moment of violating the law reveals the subjective moment in the externa confrontation as an historical cordition for internal satisfaction. It reveals that there {sa mediator interposed between drive and object, and that that abstract mediator “which pays us no heed—may be confronted. Later it can be amplified, and in fact the ‘entire social field appears in the Jewish Bible as a place in which such confrontation ‘unfolds. The subjective infractior. that challenges the law will later be expanded into a collective, social challenge to oppressive laws. ‘The Subjectivized Law, to be Invincible, Ensures that External Martyrdom Penetrate the Soul Itself ‘This absolute anteriority of Christian death, in contrast, needs no external law: by in ‘troducing death into the very body of subjective, drive-oriented life itself, it disarms and annuls man’s power at the very source of desire. Christianity doesn't promise life without preemptive killing, as does Jewish law; it promises us an illusory and fantastical maternal eternity if in life, we first subject ourselves, obediently, to the legality ofthe rational power ofthe new father. But Gods instructions demanded obedience, and obedience is in a way the ‘mother and guardian of al the other virtues in a rational creature, seeing that the rational creation has been made that its to man’s advantage to be in subjection to God, and itis calamitous for him to act according to his own will, and not to obey the will of his Creator (City of God XIVa2).” The Jewish God's infinite distance is bridged by the Christians, who erase it and in teriorize God. In Christianity there is no radical exteriority between the infinite an the finite, there is internal mediation via the model of Christ. But those of us who dc not refute the importance ofthe frst, sensual, archaic imprint ofthe mother knov thatthe only absolute infinity which can mediate with eternity, as thought incarnate is maternal infinity. Maternal ininity is internal, paternal infinity is external (Cit of God X.24). Christianity’ threats makes us appear “good” for two reasons: 1) because we believe that there is another life outside ofthis one, which, consequently, remain: devalued and sacrificed; and 2) because we are menaced by a death from withia given that another death, fantasized as lif, is appended: as is another life fantasizec as death. But there is no longer a living father and a dead father, as in Totem anc ‘Taboo: there is only one dead father, the true one, and a deed son as well—he whc negating life, returned to the maternal uterus tobe protected by [the mother’s] God Father, not ours. Inasmuch as there are two corpses, the sacrifice of lif (disdain fo the frst death) is obligatory. If there are two deaths then there also are, as we have seen, two lives: one rea and the other imaginary. Eterallife (fantasized due to internal threats and terrific regression before social ones) as ‘heaver's kingdom” prevails, as iit were more val able than real life, the only one we have to live 46 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism To Conquer the Desire to Live and Enjoy Together {Te Potion cae he deo comma te nlf a when be love of righteousness is not tong enough to overcome the sinfl deste by the delight it affords (City of God XIIL.5; Rozitchner’s emphasis)" ” ‘That i the objective: to conquer the appetite to sin, not this or that illicit action, to find the “iove" in righteousness {el gusto y delete de (Ia justicia)) to conquer desire itself and redirect i The external (Jewish) law has an objectivity that continvall "nfl in the fel of epposing soll force, where the sense of good and el undone by th effects achieved, verifying the subjective in the collective. Being the absolute, not the historical law, and given the disappearance of the violence that had been a previous condition for justice, the law is, though, validated by its effect, Sei a spear ia eas imposition on people still enslaved and fearful of the Law thatehimsel ered in stone The cowed men, frced to wand forte generations in the desert in order to transit from slavery to freedom, delegated col- lective power to a wise and valiant man that he might mediate between them and God. It implies accepting the preeminence ofa finite man whose wisdom and con- trol is elevated tothe infinite: he isthe one chosen to speak with God himself, face to face. He verifies the external death tkreat in the Father, who speaks to him from afar and, indeed, writes to him. He acts ikea mediator between the dead father and the resurrected father, whois projected in the eternal heavens ata distance that will forever remain inf. Here one appli Freud's schema af the masses, but not the ristian masses of capitalism, whose God is different from the Jewish one, The Greatest Prizein the Other World: The Good Well Though Deaths an Ei tn Chita theres area of be hoi eld wh tion ofthe Human ae debated. ian individual not inating concep ton that separates us rom other men, anit pushes us onwards, lone, without ay index of ely cach ct moive by tet of eth that shoots though os ‘Thus it is that the evil make bad use of the law, though it is a good thing, and the good die a good death, although death itse aidshe good death, although death itself isan evil (City of God Tey de well an el death, because they believe thar another etc ais them. What really happens th thee ones that se tebe ds the evi ones de. who canton the lw annoy ifeby destying thes Alen forgnen. There, objectively no parshment. onli the beyond do soul oes eterally. Ther peraps alr divere ove othe el ones In resty tes ee no elective forms to confor the vars ave thet of aking fete oe fod ether Church that sare the poner that they have. Teva te word wee Len Rozitchner 47 srmed into a subjective protlem, though we stick together collectively in the al body of the mother Church. ‘But the truth ofthe Jewish relationship to the law—which is good—between the ‘and the infinite between the individual and the collective, between the infantile the adult, is posited on guilt about the dead father (who announces the truth of, ‘own death atthe same time). It opens a social field that verifies, inthe collective, ‘ruth of the fulfillment of that which the law promises. The Jewish god is always nal, even though he reverberates within and speaks to us sometimes. But he ‘to us above all through the law: the Jew only hears voices that come from sde. God continues to be So distant that even the Book is eaten to interiorize the ofits Word. The truth ofthe aw is indeed debated in history asthe fulfillment the divine, but subject to interpretation; interpretation and risk. There is no other Haw because: 1) God is infinitely distant forever; 2) there is no other life but this ones, ) and the fulfillment of the aw is collective insofar as it involves the “chosen people” ‘Bach one is the human site where, both for the individual and the collective, the truth of the divine law is verified. Hence the confrontation between the poor and the rich, ‘masters and slaves, the powerful and the subjugated, married women and abandoned. ‘widows, prostitutes and respectable women, children and adults. This will also be taken up again by Christ, a rebell ous Jewish believer whose story was spoiled and ‘accommodated to power by the repentant assassin and architect of a number of ‘works, whose name was Paul But the subjective penetration isthe actualization of ‘the masked, archaic and impossible encounter of its “reality” in the world. ‘And in fact, Judaism opens itselfin two directions, the traditional religious one of the chosen people, subjected to the law of the synagogue, and the lay revolutionary ‘one that is verified by that Jews mythology as an historic truth to be conquered among men. Marx and Freud are in this line, among so many others. And this is because in both of them the mother remains the place of recognized difference. The mother is denied in the imaginary, despite which, thanks to her strength, she is truly found in adult life os « constant internal presence, but also as difference and similitude in the most self same. Marx, as a Jew, posits the problem of the homo and heterogeneity of woman andman and, in the couple, verifies the sense of social systems: he opens the maternal and the ferninine excluded by religion onto adult abjectivity, where “In this relationship (of man and woman) it can be understood to what degree man has been made into a social being, etc” With Christianity the ‘canonical Oedipus is annihilated, Not even submerged: he simply does not exist ‘There is unconscious guilt only before the mother, but also clandestine and negated guilt in the name of his Father. In Christianity sin Kills; death is present in the ver act of committing asin, The mother, who protects also kills if we do not experience her spiritually. The field of moral experience is restricted; death is always interposed between desire and the imaginary relation with the desired object. Christian Equivalence ‘One sins with the heart even ifthe act is not realized. A corset of death in desire itself ‘Before, sin had a historical character. There was a confrontation with the imaginary 48 The Thing and the Cross: Christianity and Capitalism father; he could appear and had to confront the consequences of death persecuting him. There was a play of power and force. The law of an eye for an eye was the limit. No longer. With Christianity death lies inthe sin itself, which can also be a thought, ‘s good as action, without external or internal input: I am already dead in the act of desiring something. There is no acting; I can only declare myself long defeated. Since when? Since the moment in which n order not to confront the mother I had to construct alongside her a father that coald contain her, disguise her and deny her. Tkilled desire itself in her cloister" And ia so doing I distance her: Christian death, for he who folded in terror and obedience, is no longer felt as an absolute tearing and upheaval. It becomes an “unpleasantness” (City of God XIIL.6). A “distressing sensation’ (ibid.); “harsh and unnatural experience” (ibid). [Death] becomes the glory of those who are reborn, if it isthe price paid for piety and righteousness; and death the recompense of sin, sometimes ensures that there is no sin to be recompensed (ibid.).” ‘The external social bond that ties life and death the tie of domination that unites rich and poor, the powerful and the defenseless, becomes an internal bond which, as an essential cut, divides and opposes the soul and body: "From the general evi of death, with which society is divided fom the soul and the body” (City of God XLS). Death as an Instrument of the Christian Social and Political Order Death is an instrument and a method of ordering social and historical life: ‘That which before was disposed to the punishment of he who sinned had already become an instrument in which the most copious and abundant fruits of righteousness were bora to man. Thus death should not seem good because we see it transformed in such a considerable utility, not for its own virtwe, but for divine grace, whick determines that what was then proposed as terror and impediment so that they would not sin, is now proposed so that they suffer soas not to sin; and so thatthe sin committed be pardoned and the necessary hand of justice be conceded to such a plausible victory (City of God XIIL7; Rozitchner’s emphasis). Absolute Reason Dominates the Body ‘Augustine lives amidst nostalgia for ah criginal time—Paradise—where the enjoy- ‘ment of concupiscent sexuality did not exist. Absolute reason dominates reason absolutely. In Paradise, God's reason coincides with the flesh: there was no distance between the divine moral order and the natural one. God creates nature, and hu- ‘man nature, as good; man corrupts it with sin by including vice within it. God culcated rational obedience as a maternal virwe: Leén Rositchner 49 But God’ instructions demanded obedience, and obedience isin a way the ‘mother and guardian of al the other virtues in a rational creature, seeing that the rational creature has been made that itis to man's advantage to be in subjection to God, and it is calamitous for him to act according to his own will, and not to obey the will of his Creator (City of God X1V.12; Rozitchner’s emphasis)" Bad will, as willbe true for rationalism, isthe decisive site reason requires to implant {Heel within and to orient the body. It is a judgment of the thinking conscience. It ‘ends in Kant and Hegel: always the same thing, the demarcation of nature as that which should be denied, Reason has 2 power that is always occupied by Power and placed inits service. In the case of Augustine, this power arises from the confronta- ‘tion with the body of the mother transformed, along with its strength and qualities, in paternal words and power: inthe beginning was the verb, before flesh. At the end of his via crucis, Augustine reaches the pure and indisputable reason of the Father, but the negation of the mother—this is what is important in the Confessions—appears encircling everything as denied enjoyment, as contained ire and yielded will, Divine truth disobeyed falls back upon “bad will” and would seem to involve the

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