Foucault Magritte and Negative Theology

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Foucault, Magritte and negative

theology beyond representation
Petra Carlsson
Published online: 20 Feb 2013.
To cite this article: Petra Carlsson (2013) Foucault, Magritte and negative theology
beyond representation, Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology, 67:1, 63-79,
DOI: 10.1080/0039338X.2012.733729
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Studia Theologica, 2013
Vol. 67, Issue 1, 63! 79, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0039338X.2012.733729
Foucault, Magritte and negative theology

beyond representation
Petra Carlsson
Recent theological writings on the French philosopher Michel Foucault often

mention Foucault in relation to negative theology. This article discusses the
negative motion in Foucauldian thinking through Foucault’s essay on the
Belgian painter René Magritte. On the basis of this discussion, the article
sketches a renewed account of negative theology. It is a post-representational
account of negative theology in accordance with Foucault’s critique of
representation, as presented in his Magritte essay.
If the theology of the late 20th century was characterized by a close

relationship to psychology, and if that relationship contributed to the
emphasis of the theological and mystical as limited to the sphere of the
private and individual, then the 21st century’s encounter between
philosophy and theology would seem to reopen the political aspect of
theology and mysticism.
In this new landscape, theology and philosophy meet again after the
parenthetical modernist separation, and here a new field of theological
readings of the French philosopher Michel Foucault is opening up. In
these theological readings of Foucault, Foucault’s oeuvre is considered a
spiritual though nonetheless political and revolutionary academic
practice ! or even, in Foucault’s own words, indicatively picked up
by theologians of the 21st century; ‘‘a mysticism as revolt.’’1 According
to its two major representatives, James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrette,
this field ‘‘interrogates the limits of the human imagination and opens a
vision for the possibility of developing new models for human
engagement with each other, the world and the divine, a divine present
and absent in the fragile and all-too-human theology.’’2
In the neighbouring field of literary theory, the move from a
psychological interest towards a philosophical interest meant a step
away from symbolism, from representation towards a new linguistic
materialism ! a new materialism holding a political and revolutionary
# 2013 Studia Theologica
64 Petra Carlsson
potential. In the theological readings of Foucault, however, this aspect is

largely overlooked. It is not the political and revolutionary aspect as
such, which is the very drive of this field, that is overlooked, but the fact
that the political force in Foucault’s thought is dependent upon a move
away from representation, and that this move is enacted through a
negative motion in his thinking. The theological readings of Foucault
often focus on the deconstruction of the subject, and the related freedom
of the individual, in the figure of death-of-man/death-of-God in
Foucault.
However, I believe that this focus, though vital, at times gets in the
way of a more far-reaching political and revolutionary aspect of his
thinking. This, I find, is especially the case in Bernauer’s recurrent
description of Foucault as a negative theologian. According to Bernauer,
Foucault’s proclamation of the death of man makes his thought ‘‘a
contemporary form of negative theology.’’ Bernauer writes:
In its negation of those positive attributes which risk reducing the
mystery or the Transcendent, negative theology forced theologians to
distance themselves from their own intellectual creations. Foucault’s
negative theology is a critique not of the conceptualizations employed
for God but of that modern figure of finite man whose identity was
put forward as capturing the essence of human being.3
In Bernauer’s view, then, Foucault’s critique of the subject is a critique
of a modern God concept. In that sense, Foucault’s move away from
man is a move away from a conceptualization of God, and thus a
negative theology. Naturally, Bernauer’s interpretation has political and
theological implications (as do the other writings in this field, often
examining the theological consequences of Foucault’s thinking for body
politics, implications for homo- and bi-sexuals, etc.).4 Still, in my view,
to associate Foucault with negative theology, as Bernauer does, involves
the risk of overlooking an essential aspect of Foucault’s account of the
negative. Furthermore, it risks ending up in a modern reinvention of
pre-modernist mysticism rather than, as noted, ‘‘developing new
models for human engagement with each other, the world and the
divine.’’
The present article discusses the negative figure in Foucault’s thought
as a move away from representation. This move, I will argue, may make
possible a renewed account of negative theology. In other words, by
reconsidering the aspect in Foucault that has been associated with
negative theology (by himself as well, I might add, as an answer to a
direct question in an interview), this article indicates what a political
and post-representational negative theology could be.
Foucault, Magritte and negative theology beyond representation 65
The negative figure in Foucault and Magritte

Anyone who has ever read Michel Foucault has encountered what I here
call a negative figure of thought. This negative figure is not merely present
in his death of man that negatively opens thought beyond humanity or
humanism. Rather, his entire work is, in a sense, characterized by a
negative dramaturgy. It is a dramaturgy where that which is taken for
granted, e.g. the medical differentiation between mental illness and sanity,
is scrutinized until this given suddenly stands forth as negotiable. A

different world order negatively stands forth ! it could be otherwise!
The negative motion can be found on many levels of Foucault’s
thinking and writing. For the purpose of suggesting a few theological
implications of this negative figure of thought, I will show and discuss
but one example: Foucault’s essay on the Belgian painter René Magritte,
‘‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’’ (‘‘This is not a pipe’’), first published in
Cahiers du chemin 2, in January 1968.5 I will focus on his account of the
Magrittian destruction of representation, but also touch upon his
distinction between the affirmative world of the Russian painter Wassily
Kandinsky and that of Magritte. Subsequently, these notions of the
negative and the affirmative will be viewed in relation to theology.
Foucault’s famous essay takes its point of departure in the first of
Magritte’s two pipe paintings; La Trahison des Images (Ceci n’est pas une
pipe) from 1929.
Fig. 1. La Trahison des Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) [The Treachery of
Images (This is Not a Pipe)], René Magritte (1929)
66 Petra Carlsson
Foucault describes this painting as ‘‘a carefully drawn pipe, and

underneath it (handwritten in a steady, painstaking, artificial script, a
script from the convent, like that found heading the notebooks of
schoolboys, or on the blackboard after an object lesson), this note: ‘This
is not a pipe’.’’6
This painting, Foucault says, has a way of simultaneously making
contradictory statements. And this, we shall see, is due to a negative
figure that enables it to disrupt the economy of representation.
The sentence below the image of the pipe may be read in at least three
different ways, none more correct than the other, but true all at the same
time, Foucault states. It says, firstly, and most directly, that the image of
the pipe is not a pipe. Either, then, simply that the image is not an image
of a pipe, but of something completely different; or, that the image is an
image and therefore not a pipe.7
Secondly, the painting says that ‘‘this’’ ! the words written below the
pipe ! is not a pipe.8 This second statement is underlined, Foucault
suggests, by the fact that the image of the pipe is so clear; the image is so
obviously a pipe that it would be ridiculous to try to make it any clearer
by using words saying ‘‘this is a pipe.’’ This, in consequence, would
explain why the words must state that they are not, in any way, a pipe.9
Rather than making the pipe any clearer, the clearness of the image
makes the words stand forth as words since their function, in this case, is
obviously not in any way as efficient as the image or object they are said
to represent. Words are not their object ! statements are not visibilities
and visibilities are not statements ! as Gilles Deleuze will describe the
core of Foucault’s work years later.10
Thirdly, the painting says; ‘‘this’’ ! the combination of words and
image ! is, of course, not a pipe.11 A painting is never its object, it is not
a copy of a model existing in some absent reality, but a reality in its own
right. The painting is not referring to something outside of the canvas,
but is in itself an event on the canvas.
Now, what is it in this painting that makes the simultaneous stating of
all of these opposing statements possible? And that, in doing so,
questions the logic of representation? Well, it is naturally the whole
composition of the ideal pipe with the negative statement, but Foucault
(with an eye for that which is too obvious for the rest of us to notice)
points out what such a composition creates: the empty space between
the words and the image. It is the same white space as that existing
between image and text in an illustrated book, where it functions,
Foucault says, as the interstice where classifications, designations,
nominations and descriptions are established.12 In illustrated books,
the image is translated into words, so to speak, in the text below the
image, while the image gives substance and meaning to the text below.
It tells the reader what she is supposed to see in the image, what reality
outside of the page the image relates. In Magritte’s painting, however,
the seemingly innocent white space between image and text has
recognized its own power, and uses this power to question the very
idea of such classification. It refuses to play by the rules of resemblance.
And this leads Foucault to consider Magritte’s second painting of the
pipe, Les Deux Mystères (1966): ‘‘The same pipe, the same handwriting.
But instead of being juxtaposed in a neutral, limitless unspecified space,

the text and the figure are set within a frame. The frame itself is placed
upon an easel, and the latter in turn upon the clearly visible slats of the
floor. Above everything, a pipe exactly like the one in the picture, but
much larger.’’13
Fig. 2. Les Deux Mystéres [The Two Mysteries], René Magritte (1966)
Drawing out the implications of this second painting, Foucault pictures

a teacher (and with Foucault’s Catholic school boy background, this
teacher, we might assume, is also a priest) holding a ruler. The teacher is
standing in front of a class trying to sort out the different levels of
meaning ! or, rather, negations of meaning and signification ! in
Magritte’s first painting which is standing on the easel. The teacher’s
explanatory sentences turn to stutters through the many levels of
negation, the ever multiplying ways in which ‘‘this is not a pipe,’’ a few
68 Petra Carlsson
of which I just mentioned. More and more frustrated, pointing and

repeating the only usable yet hopelessly inoperative sentence; ‘‘this is
not a pipe.’’ The painting seems to negate and even to make impossible,
meaning as such, which is why the words for explaining the ‘‘meaning’’
of the piece fail the teacher. And then, as the teacher desperately seeks
the words for articulating the destruction of meaning, suddenly, behind
the teacher appears a large and unmistakably clear image ! a pipe! The
students cry out loud, laughing, shouting; ‘‘a pipe, a pipe, it is a pipe!’’
Making the voice of the teacher sink even lower, the teacher’s stuttering
turns to murmur; ‘‘this is not a pipe,’’ whilst the floating image of the
pipe rises behind the teacher’s back.
Yet, the teacher is still right, Foucault says. No matter how clear an
image, the image is not a pipe ! it is a drawing, and the words used to
explain the object are not the object, and the words and the pipe
together are not a pipe, etc., and thus Magritte has managed to make
‘‘the common place’’ of resemblance and illustration disappear.14
‘‘Nowhere is there a pipe!’’, as Foucault remarks. The common place
for word and object has disappeared, which is why the words are no
longer signifying, and the teacher is forced to go from statements
to murmur. And with the effacement of the common place of words
and objects the commonplace disappears also ! that which Foucault’s
friend and colleague Gilles Deleuze describes as ‘‘what everybody
knows and no one can deny,’’15 that is, those sets of truths that we
commonly share.
In Magritte’s painting, the words no longer signify a shared
transcendent conceptuality, but are used to erase the very ground for
such transcendence. Due to the disobedience of the white space, there is
no surface of projection, which is why there is nowhere for the teacher
to point the ruler and positively state: ‘‘this is . . ..’’ Yet, the illusion of
the transcendent, the pipe, still stands. The painting repeats the ideal
pipe sided by a white space refusing to do its job, and thus language
loses its ground for sense-making.
Negative theology
Before we move on to the affirmative in Kandinsky, let me compare
this negative figure of thought to an account of negative theology.
Andrew Louth, priest of the Russian Orthodox Church and professor
of theology, introduces an understanding of negative theology through
Denys, the Christian theologian and philosopher of the 5th! 6th
century also known as ‘‘Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.’’ In Denys
the Areopagite, Louth underlines that to Denys, cataphatic and apophatic
theology both refer to the same One God: ‘‘It is of the same God that
we are to make both affirmations and denials.’’16 Louth describes a
dual motion in Denys; the cataphatic use of earthly images for God
moves from the earth and up towards the divine, while a contrary
movement is present in the apophatic notion where the material
world merely is a negative image or reminder of the transcendent
divinity.17
Now, as we have seen, Magrittian negation has a different aim. It does
not aim to preserve the transcendence of ‘‘the same One God’’. It does not
say ‘‘the pipe is too fantastic to be put into positive statements, words
cannot capture its eminence,’’ and thereby preserve the pipe’s transcen-
dent eminence. Rather, by letting the white space between image and text
stand forth, the teacher’s negative murmur indicates the profound
nonsense of such an elevated account of meaning and meaningfulness.
This use of the negative aims to show that our account of meaning and
transcendence is created by an illusion: by a white space.
We begin to see, then, that the negative figure in Foucault differs from
at least a general theological account of the apophatic. In order to further
understand the negative figure in Foucault, and in order to finally
sketch a new account of negative theology through this figure, we will
need to understand the positive which Foucault’s negative figure reacts
against. Let me, therefore, briefly present Foucault’s critique of
Kandinsky, here representing the positive, or affirmative against which
Foucault reacts. As we shall see, the positive or affirmative in
Kandinsky differs vastly from the notion of a positive theological
language against which the negative theological language reacts, or, in
Louth’s reading of Denys, works alongside with.
The affirmative in Kandinsky

Foucault trusts two principles to have ruled the world of painting from
the 15th until the 20th century, and he suggests Kandinsky was the first
to break one of them. He believes that Kandinsky, as well as Magritte,
have left them both behind, but he suggests Magritte’s resistance is the
more subversive.
The first principle asserts the separation between plastic representation,
which implies resemblance, and linguistic reference, which excludes
resemblance.18 Simply put, images resemble while words explain.
Subsequently, images should not explain and words should not
resemble. A poetical reaction against this ‘‘principle’’ is expressed in
the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire, for example, where the words are
actually used for resemblance.
70 Petra Carlsson
Fig. 3. from Calligrammes, Guillaume Apollinaire (1918)
According to this first principle, words do not resemble reality, but

represent it, while images cannot represent, but merely resemble. The
meaning of a painting needs to be put into words in order for it to
represent, say, a political view.
The second principle ruling the world of painting is the equivalence
between the fact of resemblance and the affirmation of a representative bond. If
a painting resembles a pipe, there is a presupposed connection to the
representative statement; ‘‘that is a pipe’’: ‘‘What you see is that.’’19 This
second principle, Foucault holds, is ruptured by Kandinsky, who
explicitly and persistently maintains that the colours and the lines of
his work are ‘‘things’’ in the exact same way as a bridge or a church is a
thing. To that extent his painting affirms rather than resembles or
represents. Foucault writes:
Kandinsky’s is a naked affirmation clutching at no resemblance, and

which, when asked ‘‘what is it,’’ can reply only by referring itself to
the gesture that formed it: an ‘‘improvisation,’’ a ‘‘composition;’’ or to
what is found there: ‘‘a red shape,’’ ‘‘triangles,’’ ‘‘purple orange;’’ or
tensions or internal relations: ‘‘a determinant pink,’’ ‘‘upwards,’’ ‘‘a
yellow milieu,’’ ‘‘a rosy balance.’’20
Fig. 4. Schweres rot [Heavy red], Wassily Kandinsky (1924)
Comparing Kandinsky’s work to Magritte’s in this regard, they appear

to be complete opposites. Magritte seems devoted to exact resemblance.
72 Petra Carlsson
His paintings are generally meticulous images of ordinary, everyday

objects. But according to Foucault, this repetition of the ideal is exactly
what makes Magritte’s work throw light upon the white space and its
illusive power. In other words, Magritte makes use of the ideal in order
to create this negative figure, and for that reason, Foucault argues,
Magritte undermines the logic of the two principles even more
forcefully than does Kandinsky.
Magritte is so devoted to resemblance, that the multiplicity of
resemblance in his work ! as in the two paintings of the pipe(s) ! in

the end stands forth in its own right. He plays by the rules to the point
of absurdity and beyond. If an artist like Andy Warhol uses repetition in
order to deconstruct symbolic values, Magritte uses repetition to take
the critical art, the art of critique, even further, and uses it to undermine
the very principles behind symbolism, behind representation as such.
The first principle ! that of separating the function of images from
the function of words ! is made to stand forth in its absurdity through
Magritte’s very simple but persistent disconnection of image and
subtext.
This is also seen in the painting La clef des songes (1930), where Magritte
separates the words from the image and the image from the words.
Beneath the meticulously painted egg is written acacia, beneath the shoe,
the moon, beneath the hat, the snow, beneath the candle, the ceiling, beneath
the water glass, the storm and beneath the hammer, the desert.
Or, as Magritte himself puts it: ‘‘What one must paint is the image of
resemblance ! if thought is to become visible in the world.’’21 Through
his paintings, Magritte forces resemblance as such to stand forth.
Representation and analogy are made the objects of their own absurdity.
And with the erosion of representation, resemblance and analogy, the
possibility of a meaningful positive/affirmative language disappears also.
Kandinsky weaves signs and spatial figures into a unique and absolutely
novel form, he creates a new artistic universe. Magritte, on the other hand,
rings forth the familiar until it becomes absurd. Thus, a disorder is
introduced into the very meticulousness of resemblance, into the very
notion of a shared transcendence ! into the notion of a commonly shared
points of reference. Things are not necessarily what we think they are.
If Kandinsky has dismissed the connection between resemblance and
affirmation of representation, and has freed his own painting from both,
Magritte, Foucault argues, proceeds by dissociating the two, ‘‘pursuing
as closely as possible the indefinite continuation of the similar, but
excising from it any affirmation that would attempt to say what it
resembled. An art of the Same, liberated from the as if.’’22
Fig. 5. La clé de songes [The key of dreams], René Magritte (1930)
And here we touch upon what lies behind the figure in Foucault related
to negative theology on a more profound level. Because, as we can see,
the positive/affirmative against which Foucault reacts, e.g. in Kandins-
ky, is nothing like the traditional theological positive and dogmatic
language against which a negative language in theology reacts. Both
Magritte and Kandinsky left that position long ago (and so did Foucault
for that matter). Rather, a comparable expression of what Foucault
74 Petra Carlsson
reacts against, within the theological sphere, would be those theological

realms where the theological language is continuously reinvented,
where new words for the divine are made up, new liturgies created,
new theological symbolic universes are continuously built.
Why, then, would he indirectly react against such reinventions? Well,
simply because creating a new conceptual universe always also entails
creating a new shared transcendence; a new set of commonly shared
and hallowed truths. Thus, if there is a negative theology to which one
might relate Foucault, it is very far from the kind of negative theological
language that would preserve the eminence of the common ground,
secure its inaccessibility, while, at the same time, confirming and
legitimizing its existence. The positive against which Foucault reacts
is not anything like the notion of a cataphatic theological language where
positive attributes are used to describe God. What he reacts against is
rather the naı̈ve belief in the possibility of creating a new language or a
new imagery that will not create a new and just as absolute and
oppressive truth as the one it replaces.
I am sure that Bernauer, who speaks of Foucault as a negative
theologian, would agree that the idea of refraining from a positive
notion of God can be a way of admitting the subject’s lack of access to
the divine, to truth itself, and thereby also a way of affirming the
existence of, and safeguarding the place for, such a truth, as well as
safeguarding a place for the subject. He would probably also agree that
the negative figure in Foucault, on the other hand, uses the forms, the
absolutes, if you will, to continuously disrupt the common ground of
resemblance by pointing out the illusory power of the white space. Or,
as Foucault describes the subversive strength of the Magrittian world; it
‘‘rings forth the familiar expression until it becomes absurd.’’23
Subsequently, in Foucault’s reasoning, it is not merely the positive
language that fails while the negative stands as a possibility of correct
speech. Rather, the very common ground on the basis of which one
could be truer or more correct than the other has vanished.
Post-representational negative theology

If, then, this notion of repetition and negative murmur is put in relation
to our theological heritage ! the liturgical, the dogma and the repetition
of Christian truths ! then it does represent a new materialism (as in the
neomaterialist turn in literary theory24). It is ‘‘neomaterialist’’ in the
sense that it confirms the actuality and even the power of these ideals,
these dogmatic truths, but without confirming their reality. The pipe,
visible to everyone, makes the students shout and laugh when the
teacher negates its obvious presence. Correspondingly, to say that the

notion of God, or any Christian doctrine, does not exist and that it plays
no role in contemporary world politics is just as ridiculous, just as
laughable. Yet, to say that this notion, therefore, refers to an actual object
or an actual truth, is if not plain nonsense then at least a very limited
way of understanding any phenomenon.
If we would assume this outcome, and imagine a task for a post-
representational theology, then the task would not primarily be to find a
new language, new imagery or new liturgy to replace the old, but to
stubbornly and disobediently repeat the old truths until they stand
forth as negotiable. To speak, or murmur, while meaning is changing !
until meaning changes and becomes multiple.
Let me exemplify what this could entail on a more concrete level
through a brief reflection over two contemporary liturgy movements, or
at least tendencies, indicating the possibility of a third path. In the
contemporary theological landscape, there is one liturgical tendency,
inspired by thinkers like Andrew Louth and Vladimir Lossky, to name
just two of many. This contemporary mystic path is inspired by the
work of the early Church fathers (like Denys) and it often makes for a
repetitious liturgy. Within this sphere of thought, following the via
negativa, the liturgical words and gestures are understood to indicate
negatively that which no earthly expression could ever capture ! the
transcendent and profoundly mysterious divinity. Liturgical repetition,
then, safeguards simultaneously the inaccessibility of God, and God’s
higher transcendence.
A contrary position is held by another contemporary liturgical
tendency. In this theological and liturgical realm ! with thinkers like
Teresa Berger and Gordon Lathrop ! the liturgical words and expres-
sions are understood as expressing the ever-changing and always
contextual reality. As a consequence, the liturgical repetition is melded
with a continuous creativity where new liturgies and prayers are
produced in relation to their contextual setting and the needs of their
participants. Berger describes this liturgical trajectory, which she names
the Women’s Liturgical Movement, as a reaction against liturgical
manifestations of gender hierarchy. Common to the liturgies against
which this movement reacts, is an untouched and fundamental
assumption of gender dualism, she says.25
Lathrop quotes the seventeenth-century Anglican pastor and poet
George Herbert as the inspirational source for his own work. A good
sermon, for instance, is in Herbert’s words, created ‘‘by dipping and
seasoning all our sentences in our hearts, before they come into our
76 Petra Carlsson
mouths, truly affecting and cordially expressing all that we say; so that
the auditors may plainly perceive that every word is heart-deep.’’26
In other words, this trajectory reacts against a plain repetition of
inherited words and structures just because such a repetition will
preserve a hierarchal and dualist account of the world, and because
such repetition is not ‘‘heart-deep’’ and fully situated in the here and
now. A formal repetition that negatively indicates a mysterious divinity
does not capture the truth of the contextual now, but reproduces a
hierarchy: It reproduces the idea that the truer world which human
liturgy aims to represent is always other than our worldly expressions,
and always other than any female expression.
The liturgies in the later Women’s Liturgical Movement, as described by
Berger, offer creative universes of particular experiences ! creative and
momentary universes into which one may enter.27 In that manner, I
would like to suggest that these liturgical expressions actually resemble
the artistic reaction and production of Kandinsky.
However, the problem that faces these liturgies ! as well as the
creative universes of Kandinsky, in Foucault’s sense ! comes from this
very striving for ‘‘heart-deepness’’ and relevance in the present for all of
its participants. As soon as a new liturgical universe is created and
established, it easily turns exclusive. The aim to embrace all, and to be
fully relevant, tends to throw light upon what is not embraced, which
human experience or perspective is not represented in the service.
This brief description of two liturgical tendencies serves to portray
one contemporary theological position standing in the negative tradi-
tion and another standing in the affirmative tradition. The very basic
assumptions of the former draws close to those of classical art: it
assumes that representation points beyond itself and towards the object
represented. In the negative theology tradition, this object is of course
highly evasive. Still, the imperfect human representations point
towards this truer reality. This assumption, then, reproduces a
hierarchic and dualist account of the world against which the latter
movement, in turn, reacts through liturgical renewal and contextuality.
The very basic assumption of the former, and the consequences of this
assumption, make the latter movement turn to affirmative creation in
the present.
Now, obviously, Foucault, Magritte and Kandinsky do not reflect
upon liturgical matters. Still, I believe that Foucault’s reasoning on
Magritte could offer a third path for contemporary theology. How so?
Well, both Magritte and Kandinsky leave the classical notion of
representation behind for reasons similar to those of Lathrop and
Berger’s liturgical visions. They strive away from a dualist and
hierarchal account of the world. Kandinsky does this through an

affirmative motion and Magritte through a negative motion that,
however, as we have seen, differs from the theological via negativa.
As we have seen, Foucault chooses Magritte’s negative motion over
Kandinsky’s affirmative motion. The reason for this is that in Foucault’s
regard, the unnamed ‘‘otherwise’’ that eventuates from the erosion of
the given is always more multifaceted than a new universe created by
any one thinker or painter. There is, simply, more room for diversity in
the negative than in the affirmative. Relating to a theological context,

one might assume that a painting by Kandinsky could turn representa-
tion and resemblance on their head when hanging on its own in a
gallery, or when presented by the painter himself. However, the very
same painting used as an altarpiece is likely to be brought right back
into the logic of representation. The Church goers are likely to ask
themselves: ‘‘Where is God in this painting, how is the higher truth
represented now?’’
According to Foucault, we might always have to deal with the idea of
the Same. The idea of representation and the possibility of reproducing a
higher truth will always be with us. This, I believe, is especially true in
theology, which is why there is reason for theology to listen to his
proposal. Foucault suggests, then, that we should restrain our urge to
organize the world through a logic of analogy, the logic where this
relates to that until everything makes sense. Instead, he proposes a
disobedient repetition of the Same, of the ideal. This is because Foucault
believes ! and has shown in his own work ! that a dissident repetition
of that which we take for granted might actually and profoundly
rupture the world we know.
Magritte, Foucault writes, is pursuing ‘‘as closely as possible the
indefinite continuation of the similar, but excising from it any affirma-
tion that would attempt to say what it resembled. An art of the Same,
liberated from the as if.’’28 Through Magritte, Foucault expresses a
vision of the Same liberated from the as if ! in other words, a notion of
repetition liberated from analogy, representation, and the notion of a
higher truth.
To make theological use of the negative figure in Foucault, then,
would not mean that theologians should refrain from using the
Christian doctrine positively while still preserving a place beyond
knowledge for a higher or final dogmatic truth (as one might interpret
Bernauer’s comparison to negative theology or the contemporary
liturgical movement of the via negativa). Instead, it should note that
every dogmatic repetition, every Christian piece of art, every altarpiece
repeating its story, every liturgical repetition of words, every dogmatic
78 Petra Carlsson
repetition of ideas, is ! just as the pipe on the wall ! real, actual,

present, affecting our world, our bodies and minds, but therefore not in
any way final. With every repetition, these inherited truths are up for
grabs. The theological task in this theological vision is of course that of
Foucault’s schoolteacher: The task of a post-representational negative
theology would be to point to that which appears obvious, solid and
stable, in order to show that nothing ever is. To liturgically and
disobediently repeat the old truths until they stand forth as absurd
and open for the not-yet-spoken. To repeat and murmur, because a

theology at odds with representation would also be a slightly
embarrassed and somewhat desperate murmur by a theology without
statements. It would be without statements since it had come to realize
that meaning itself derives from the illusion of a transcendence
mediated through a white space ! an illusion that Christian theology
has kept alive for too long.
Petra Carlsson
Uppsala University
Department of Theology
Box 511
751 20 Uppsala
Sweden
petra.carlsson@teol.uu.se
Notes
1. James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrette, ‘‘Introduction: The Enduring Problem:
Foucault, Theology and Culture,’’ in Michel Foucault and Theology: The Politics of
Religious Experience (ed. James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrette; Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004), 8.
2. Bernauer and Carrette, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 9.
3. Bernauer calls Foucault’s work a ‘‘negative theology’’ rather than a ‘‘negative
anthropology’’ because, he says, ‘‘its flight from modern man is an escape from yet
another conceptualization of God.’’ (James Bernauer, ‘‘The Prisons of Man: Foucault’s
Negative Theology,’’ International Philosophical Quarterly 27 (December 1987): 365! 80.
4. See e.g. the collections: Bernauer and Carrette, Michel Foucault and Theology, Jeremy
Carrette, Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault (New York: Routledge, 1999), and
Bernauer’s excellent Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics for Thought
(Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities, 1990).
5. According to David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (London: Vintage, 1994; repr.,
New York: Pantheon, 1993), 505, n. 105.
6. Michel Foucault, This is not a pipe (trans. James Harkness; Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008); repr., 1983).
7. Foucault, This is not a pipe, 26.

10. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (London: Continuum, 2006).
11. Foucault, This is not a pipe, 27 f. There is also a fourth voice speaking through the first
and the second ! a voice suggesting that if the image of the pipe is not a pipe, are the
words then words or are they images of words, a painting of a sentence?
14. Foucault, This is not a pipe, 30f.
15. Harkness, the translator, underlines the French wordplay of ‘‘lieu commun’’ which
works just as well in English, in Foucault, This is not a pipe, 61.

16. Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (London: Continuum, 2001), 87.
17. Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 20.
20. Foucault, This is not a pipe, 34 f.
21. René Magritte, Exhibition of paintings by Reneı` Magritte opening Thursday, December 1st
from 4 to 7 p.m. at Sidney Janis, 6 West 57 thru December 31, 1977 (New York: Sidney
Janis Gallery, 1977).
24. See e.g. on language-poetry and language-materialism in Sigrid Nurbo, Sprawl
(Stockholm: Modernista, 2008).
25. Teresa Berger, Women’s ways of worship: gender analysis and liturgical history (College-
ville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1998), 145.
26. Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor: A Spirituality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), ix.
27. Berger describes (in 1998) a historical development beginning with, for instance,
attempts at minor changes in existing liturgies toward a more inclusive language, of
trying to open the ministry for women (Berger is Catholic) etc. However, there seems
to be a point in time where the larger Christian women’s movement came to realize
that these changes in liturgical practice were ‘‘too few, too cosmetic, too haphazard,
and too slow.’’ (Berger, Women’s ways, 121).

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Studia Theologica - Nordic

Foucault, Magritte and negative

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Foucault, Magritte and negative theology

Recent theological writings on the French philosopher Michel Foucault often

If the theology of the late 20th century was characterized by a close

potential. In the theological readings of Foucault, however, this aspect is

The negative figure in Foucault and Magritte

is scrutinized until this given suddenly stands forth as negotiable. A

Foucault describes this painting as ‘‘a carefully drawn pipe, and

But instead of being juxtaposed in a neutral, limitless unspecified space,

Drawing out the implications of this second painting, Foucault pictures

of which I just mentioned. More and more frustrated, pointing and

The affirmative in Kandinsky

Fig. 3. from Calligrammes, Guillaume Apollinaire (1918)

According to this first principle, words do not resemble reality, but

Kandinsky’s is a naked affirmation clutching at no resemblance, and

Fig. 4. Schweres rot [Heavy red], Wassily Kandinsky (1924)

Comparing Kandinsky’s work to Magritte’s in this regard, they appear

His paintings are generally meticulous images of ordinary, everyday

resemblance in his work ! as in the two paintings of the pipe(s) ! in

Fig. 5. La clé de songes [The key of dreams], René Magritte (1930)

reacts against, within the theological sphere, would be those theological

Post-representational negative theology

teacher negates its obvious presence. Correspondingly, to say that the

hierarchal account of the world. Kandinsky does this through an

the negative than in the affirmative. Relating to a theological context,

repetition of ideas, is ! just as the pipe on the wall ! real, actual,

and open for the not-yet-spoken. To repeat and murmur, because a

8. Foucault, This is not a pipe, 27.

works just as well in English, in Foucault, This is not a pipe, 61.

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