JOMEC Journal

Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies

Published by Cardiff University Press

Education as Event: A Conversation with John D. Caputo

John D. Caputo

Syracuse University and Villanova University

Keywords
Academic protocols
Asceticism
Disciplines
Environment
Event


Abstract

This interview with John D. Caputo conducted by T. Wilson Dickinson discusses the
implications of the event for the philosophy of education. It addresses various aporias the
event poses for academic standards, protocols of writing, teaching as formation or
transformation, the post-secular, the new technologies, the old versus the new asceticism
in the face of the environmental crisis.

Contributor Note

John D. Caputo, the Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University) and the
Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University), writes and lectures in the
area of postmodern theory and theology for both academic and general audiences. His
latest books are Hoping against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (Fortress,
2015), The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (Polebridge, 2015), The Insistence
of God: A Theology of Perhaps, 2013), and Truth: Philosophy in Transit (Penguin, 2013). His
major books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down
(Radical Hermeneutics), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology (The
Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida), and that theology is best served by getting over its
love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul,
The Weakness of God, which won the 2006 AAR book award for works in constructive
theology. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in On Religion and
What Would Jesus Deconstruct? He has an interest in interacting with church and
community activists and has long been interested in Emergent Church. He is currently
working on a book entitle Interpretation from the Margins: The Pelican Guide to
Postmodern Hermeneutics, which should appear in 2017.

Citation

Caputo, John D. (2016), ‘Education as Event: A Conversation with John D. Caputo by T.

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Education as Event: A Conversation supporting a particular confessional
with John D. Caputo1 religion. We do not want to be ‘post-
secular’ if that would mean undermining
that constitutional restraint. In that
T. Wilson Dickinson: Decades ago, sense, the Christian Right, and their
Heidegger presciently observed that claim that the United States is a
information – and the positivist episte- Christian nation, could claim the mantle
mological framework that accompanies of post-secular. That is very dangerous
it – was coming to serve as a and I do not want to be post-secular in
constricting limit for thinking (Heidegger that sense. Again, when it comes to
1996: 29). This constriction does not universities, citizens without a religious
seem to be due merely to some kind of affiliation have the right to study free
cognitive mistake or conviction, but it from religious proselytizing or mandatory
seems to be constantly reinforced by the religious practices. So in the practical
practices of the university, extending order, this word ‘secular’ protects us,
from the classroom practice of lecture even as it allows religiously minded
and examination, to the self- people to found religious institutions
understanding of scholars as researchers from their own resources. Of course, this
(Heidegger 2002: 64). It seems that one is easily said but carrying it out in reality
of the more common forms of resistance involves difficult negotiations.
to this tendency is to counter this
secular model of the research university But as a philosophical theologian there
with a more confessional approach to is another sense of ‘secular’ and ‘religion’
education. So rather than simply serving that interests me, and in this sense I
as a conduit for the accumulation and think the university should not try to be
communication of information, ‘secular’ and should expose itself to a
universities redirect their concern toward certain ‘religious’ impulse. In fact, I think
the formation of students. Might there be that if it does not, it will destroy itself. I
a third way forward, or one that would go so far as to say that, in this
hauntingly inhabits the boundaries sense again, not only the university but
between these secular and religious also the political order should be ‘post-
options? Could you imagine a sort of secular’. Here everything depends upon
post-secular university? seeing what I mean by ‘religion’, since I
obviously do not mean ‘confessional’
John D. Caputo: The first question for religion. What I mean is what I call the
me would be: what is a ‘secular’ religion of the ‘event’, a word that
university? Today this word means a circulates felicitously among the great
person or an institution not affiliated with philosophers of our times. Without the
or sponsored by a church or religious ‘event’ I would run the risk of forgetting
organization. We define it negatively but that I exist, as Johannes Climacus
it is very positive. It is very important in quipped. We must not forget the event,
the political order, where the constitution for it is the event that ‘forms’ or
restrains the government from ‘transforms’ our existence. So if we
search for a third possibility between
1
The following interview first appeared in JCRT secular ‘information’ and religious
(Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory) 12. 2. ‘formation’, this would be the possibility
Fall 2012. We are grateful to John D. Caputo, T.
of the event. The crucial distinction for
Wilson Dickinson, and Victor Taylor for
permission to reprint this interview here. me is between the event and the lack of
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the event. To be post-secular means that student’s life is changed. The teacher
I do not want to lack the event, where does not know she did this, and at the
this lack is what ‘secular’ would mean for time neither does the student. That is the
me. event.

Let me add a word about ‘event’. This WD: I am thinking here not just about
word is all over contemporary philosophy the idea of such a university, but about
but I mean it in Derrida’s sense of the its practices. In The Weakness of God
coming of something we cannot see you drew a distinction not simply
coming, the coming of the unexpected, between an overly abstract theoretical
unprojected, unprogrammed, which of reason and practical reason, but within
course we hope will make everything practical reason you differentiated
new but may make everything worse. Aristotelian practical judgment (or
With the coming of the event, things are phronesis) from the heart (or kardia) of
reopened, reinvented, undergo a the disciple of Christ. Whereas the
paradigm shift, a new being, and this former is capable of adroitly applying a
happens everywhere, in history and general schema to a particular situation,
everyday life, in philosophy, in art, in the latter gives oneself over to ‘the
science. The Copernican Revolution, demands of singularity’ (Caputo 2006:
Picasso’s cubism, the recent ‘Arab 142-3). So while the pedagogy of
Spring’, these were transformative and formation might exceed the limitations of
unpredicted. Of course, we cannot make information, it seems to still lead to
events happen – we cannot even see some kind of conformity. I wonder what
them coming. But we can prepare the a pedagogy of radical transformation
conditions under which they happen by might look like? Is it possible to speak
keeping things relatively unstable, in a about the practices of a pedagogy of the
state of optimal disequilibrium, not too heart?
much but enough, and this requires
judgment and discernment. That I think JC: I do not know if you intended just
is the condition in systems theory where now to use the word ‘transformation’
the system is capable of innovation and instead of ‘formation’, or even in contrast
reinvention without simply collapsing. If to formation. If so, I approve. I think that
the system is too tight, too ordered, the university must provide the milieu for
nothing new can happen. I admit this is the event and therefore I would prefer
risky business. But the point is that not to say a place of ‘formation’. It must
playing it safe all the time is also risky allow the event to happen, which is why I
business – it risks the prevention of the myself would speak of ‘transformation’
future, of the event. Nothing is safe. rather than ‘formation’. I think ‘form’ and
Everything is risky. Now having said this, ‘formation’ work against the event. The
we can ask, is this structural exposure to coming or incoming of the event – in
the event not a perfect way to describe French, this is l’invention de l’événement
the institution in general and in – is the occasion of a transformation. So
particular educational institutions – the instead of ‘forming’ ‘habits’ (literally
administration, the curriculum, teaching ‘havings’) we have to do with
‘methods’, testing and evaluation, transforming happenings, with events,
everything that goes on in education. A and what we seek is a certain readiness
teacher gives a class, or maybe just for the event, which is paradoxical since
makes a comment in class, and a the event is what we cannot see coming
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and hence something for which we So if we say the university must be a
cannot be ready. We must make ready scene of the event, not a place of
for what we cannot be ready. formation, then it must take every
precaution not to the prevent the event.
Although I see a certain limit in Aristotle, This means it risks a certain anarchy, an
still it was Aristotle who first taught us open-endedness of thought – the right to
about this aporia and in this sense he ask any question – and a proliferation of
was the first philosopher of the event. practices, a rainbow coalition, as Jesse
The phronimos is not merely the man Jackson says, of people of many different
(and we know he did not mean women) sorts, different cultures, etc. That is more
who knows the ‘rule’ and can ‘apply’ it. If easily accomplished with the resources
the situation is rule-governed, a machine, of the larger urban universities.
a computer, a robot could apply it. The Furthermore, something like this is much
phronimos is the one who knows what to more likely to happen when ‘information’
do when faced with an idiosyncratic flows freely, across closed borders. So I
situation, when the rules do not simply do not think we should engage in
apply but have to be ‘reinvented’ in order caricatures about big universities – the
to respond to the demands of the large state university, large classes, no
‘singular’ situation. I have always thought personal contact, a degree-processing
of myself as some kind of an Aristotelian factory, as opposed to a small
on this point, a dissident or heretical confessional college, more intimate,
Aristotelian, to be sure, with all kinds of more concerned with the personal
reservations about the conservativism by character of the students – or even
which we are threatened in Aristotle. But about ‘information’. We would also need
I am always trying to reinvent this to rethink ‘information’ beyond
phronimos, to expose a ‘more radical Heidegger’s criticism. I agree it was
phronesis’ (Caputo 1987: 262). One way I extraordinarily prescient of Heidegger to
do so is to say this phronimos fellow is a single out this word – not only did he
little too cool, too smart, too aristocratic, thematize the ‘T’ in ‘IT’, but also the ‘I’ –
and that he needs a little less ‘insight’ but we cannot forget how reactionary
and a little more ‘heart’, to be ‘melted’ by Heidegger was about democracy and
the demands of the other, not simply to technology, and we need to recognize
coolly see what the demands of the how much democracy requires the free
situation are. There is nothing ‘unmanly’ flow of information. Furthermore, in
in being tender. Now the ‘heart’ is the quantum physics, ‘information’ may turn
Biblical model, the prophetic model, and out to be the very nature of the universe.
it shows up in the Christian ‘Fathers’ of It may be that on the most elemental
the Church – here we must add ‘sic!’ – level, the most basic units of existence
above all in St. Augustine’s Confessions. are bits of information, even as in genetic
Its opposite is ‘hardness of heart’. That, I theory, the very basis of life lies in some
think, breaks the grip of the elitist and kind of information system. That is what
conservative streak in Aristotle and turns is so prophetic in the way that the young
our hearts (and our minds) to what Paul Derrida singled out the paradigm of a
calls ta me onta, the little nothings and generalized archi-‘writing’, coded
bodies, the homeless and the hopeless, differential systems, which led him to the
the ‘rogues’ and marginalized who never Heideggerian heresy that a ‘techne’ lies
make an appearance in Aristotle’s ethics at the very heart of the ‘physis’ Heidegger
(except as ‘slaves’ and ‘women’). celebrated. Maybe information is an
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auto-deconstructing system of trans- (Foucault 1995: 140). What seems to be
formation and there is no difference at at stake, then, is not an opposition
all between them. between an overly theoretical way of
proceeding and one that is practical, but
But to return to the issue that you are a complex and contested differential
concerned with in this question, no field of practices. As your own education
college or university can neglect the has its roots in De La Salle’s order of
‘heart’ because it cannot neglect the Christian Brothers, I wonder if this
event, which is its heart. You see this historical connection was something that
quite vividly in Quaker and Anabaptist was readily apparent to you as a student
colleges, institutions of distinguished and then a teacher, or do you see a stark
academic achievement that also have a divide between the life of the academic
heart. I remember once that a man and that of the religious life? And on a
named John Coleman, then president of more personal note, how have these
Haverford College outside Philadelphia, various formations come to inform your
took a leave of absence in order to work?
spend time working as a trash collector,
reminding himself and everybody around JC: Now you have exposed my allergy to
him of the privileged circumstances of the word ‘formation’ and why I prefer to
most academic communities. This speak of ‘transformability’ to signify an
extraordinary act also reminds us also of alternate order of practices. Yes,
the mission of community colleges and ‘practices’ is not a panacea. We must
public urban institutions to serve the distinguish among different sorts of
least privileged students. Our institutions practices, as we have already done by
must be open-ended and if ‘open distinguishing phronesis and kardia. I
admissions’ has not worked, we need a was born in 1940 into a church that had
massive commitment of resources to not changed in any significant way in
prepare the least advantaged to meet four hundred years and, as you point out,
admission standards. The Christian Right I entered a Catholic religious order. That
would object to this, of course, on the was in 1958, the year that Pius XII died
grounds that they do not want the and was succeeded by John XXIII. This
Sermon on the Mount to mean that we seemed at the time to be the beginning
are going to raise their taxes. of the end of a very conservative period
in the Church. My novitiate life was, if I
WD: This distinction between information may say so, a very ‘formative’ experience
and formation is quite obviously a for me, quite literally, especially since we
heuristic schematization that easily were still steeped in the culture of the
breaks down. Foucault, for example, pre-Vatican II church. What will interest
traced the genealogical roots of modern you to learn is that, in a religious order,
disciplines of knowledge to the monastic the time spent preparing for entering the
technologies and Christian spiritual active ministry is called ‘formation’ and
exercises. He often cites none other than the novitiate is called a ‘house of
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle as an formation’. And they mean it! We might
intermediary figure between the ascetic think of this as a Nietzschean camel
attention to detail in the ‘mystique of the stage or alternately, as you indicate, a
everyday’ and the ‘discipline of the very Foucauldian space and time. The
minute’ that organized ‘the school, the hours of each day, the days of each
barracks, the hospital or the workshop’ week, are rigorously articulated and
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structured, even as the grounds are houses of formation, will be more
walled in. Here the young person is welcoming and open-ended places. (In
‘formed’ in the ‘spirit’ of the ‘Order’ by fact, the places where teachers expected
means of obedience to the ‘Rule’. This is to ‘form’ students are called ‘normal’
quite like a military boot camp, as your schools, normalizing, inculcating norms.)
reference to Foucault on the ‘barracks’ Now the baroque, counter-Reformation
indicates, and it works best with eighteen pre-Vatican world in which I grew up –
year olds. The individual novice is four centuries of Catholicism from the
ordered, formed, disciplined, by a blanket Council of Trent to the opening of
of practices and micro-powers, affecting Vatican II in October, 1962 –
everything from what one reads and disappeared quite quickly. Today, the
studies to clothing, a change of name, Catholic Church in the United States and
bodily posture, modes of expression, diet, Western Europe, as well as the religious
table manners, including the very orders, are today in a state of crisis.
condiments one uses at meals, Orders like the Christian Brothers, which
prescribed times when one is allowed to are ‘active orders’, have abandoned old
speak, even relaxation. One never relaxes models, which were taken from the
the rule but the rule provides for fixed ‘contemplative orders’, and have tried to
times of relaxation, where as a matter of ‘reinvent’ themselves for a modern or
religious obedience, one is told to relax. rather postmodern world. They have, I
Of course, the idea, the ‘form’, is the would say, abandoned the paradigm of
imitatio Christi. They want to engender monastic ‘formation’ for one more suited
someone Christ-like not produce a robot, to contemporary life, but this may be too
but it is a massive disciplinary operation little too late. They are beset with a crisis
which reaches down into the bones, of numbers that may finally see them all
‘forming’ ‘habits’ that last a lifetime. but disappear.

Foucault was interested in the way De la That would be a loss, and this brings me
Salle transcribed analogous practices to to my second point. The old monastic
the modern elementary school, the model of formation and the
‘distribution of bodies’ in ‘grades’, ‘technologies’ it deployed were construed
arranged by age, gender, etc. At the time, around a ‘vow’, a promise, an affirmation,
we were very proud of the place ‘St. La which I would now describe as a
Salle’ held in the history of education, response to an event. So while I shed no
and in fact the American ‘Christian tears over abandoning the old
Brothers’ today run first-rate schools. I disciplinary system and its ascetic ideal,
would say two things about this. First, as which I think is a world well lost for all
I have been saying, I would distinguish but a very few people, the loss of these
the practices of ‘formation’ in the orders will mean the loss of the religious
singular, which suggests a single form to passion that drives the members of
be inculcated – Christ, the warrior, the these orders to run schools and shelters
good Christian child, the good citizen, the and clinics in neighborhoods from which
good socialist, etc. – from the practices the rest of us keep a safe distance. It is
of ‘transformation’, which suggests a kind these people above all else who serve ta
of endless transformability or me onta. That is also where celibacy
reinventability. The latter for me is closer (voluntary not mandatory!) has a role to
to the ‘event’. Schools organized about play. If you have children to raise, it is
the paradigm of transformability, not very difficult to live and work in such
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dangerous neighborhoods, the way poetics of salt, which is always a little
celibate priests, nuns and brothers do. befuddling to my students when I teach
The De La Salle Brothers take a fourth the book in my introductory classes).2 If
religious vow, the Christian education of this is the case, then even the seemingly
the poor. They renounce the choice of secular practices of the classroom and
the priesthood in order to be completely academic life could be interpreted in
committed to teaching, undistracted by religious terms. This is also something
the priestly duty to administer the that Augustine does throughout the
sacraments. For them teaching is a pages of the Confessions – interrogating
religious vocation, a vow they have taken, the manner in which intellectual
their ‘apostolate’ or calling, and not only disciplines shaped his desires. This leads
a job. That is the most precious thing I me to wonder, then, what is it I love
have learned from them, and it is when I undergo the typical practices of
something I still believe, although I would academic life? How do the specific
now use the word ‘religious’ in a more practices of the classroom educate the
open-ended way. Here you clearly see desires of our students? What are
the workings of the event and of people different disciplinary mechanisms (tenure
galvanized by the event. The committees, accreditation reviews, and
disappearance of these people means peer-reviewed journals) training us to
that schools that serve the poorest of the love?
poor are being closed and increasingly
scarce resources are shifted to the JC: I appreciate the irony of your
prosperous suburban schools. question. You return us, in the context of
Furthermore, the nuns are the most the schools, to one of Derrida’s most
radical women in the Catholic Church famous aporias, between justice and the
today, women who both are deeply law, but now the aporia is set between
religious and acutely conscious of the our love of philosophical and theological
violent patriarchy of the Catholic searching and the tenure committee,
hierarchy. The bishops know that and which is the law. Let us say, the aporia of
they don’t trust them and well they the philosophical and theological quest
should not. Some nuns are being and the quest for a job and tenure. So let
ordained in open defiance of the us go back to the event. Teaching and
Church’s prohibition – a kind of Christian writing, reading and learning, teachers
disobedience, not civil but ecclesiastical and students, all are about the event. We
– which is at least a first step in may even speak of a pedagogy of the
overturning the violent misogyny of the event. Everything is about the event,
Church. Perhaps these nuns will be the inside or outside the academy, religion,
Rosa Parks of Catholicism. everyday life, in sacred space or secular
space. Indeed, since the event as I have
WD: In On Religion you reject the division been discussing it has an inherently
that is often drawn between the secular religious force, I would say there is no
and the religious on the grounds that it strictly ‘secular’ space, if that would
appeals to the largely cognitive mean a space without the event. For me,
opposition drawn between reason and all the ‘professions’ – medicine, law,
faith. Instead, taking a page out of education – concern the event. The
Augustine’s Confessions, you propose

that religion is about passion and love 2
See especially Caputo (2001), ‘Religion is for
(more specifically you appeal to the Lovers’ in On Religion, New York: Routledge.
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professions are made up of people who religious calling, whether or not the
have been ‘called’ by one event or institution has any relationship to a
another; they are vocations, callings. As I confessional ‘religion’, as many hospitals
have just said, I have no hesitation in in fact do. In Great Britain, in fact, the
calling them ‘religious vocations’. I once nurse is still called ‘sister’, and the garb
was sure I had a religious vocation in the of a nun and of a nurse are similar. You
strict or narrow sense. But I have come will recall that when the ministry of Jesus
to see that I had, that we all have, or is first introduced in the New Testament,
should have, a religious vocation in the it is said he came ‘teaching and healing’.
terms that I have been discussing, which
means being visited by the grace of the The questions you are raising arise from
event, in any of several orders. We can an experience of the same aporias, the
see this in the legal profession, where same structural conflict between the
the event that galvanizes the law is the events to which we in the university are
passion for justice, which give rise to the all responding and the monster of laws,
aporiae of the passion for justice and the the flow of the academic power chart
rule or force of law so powerfully from the administration to the students,
elaborated by Derrida. The law deals with the requirements placed upon the
matters of life and death, in the most students for graduation, the ‘grading’
literal sense, and so it deals with sacred system, etc., and upon the faculty to
or solemn matters, which is the event. meet the standards of tenure and
promotion. This is the conflict between
The same aporias are found there as in our vocation, our religious vocation, and
all the professions. In the medical the disciplinary system, the distribution
profession, the event that insists in the of micro-power across the bodies who
name of ‘healing’, to which they all take make up the university, the administered
an ‘oath’, by which everyone in that society of the university. On the one
profession has been summoned (I am hand, I am writing from my heart, writing
speaking optatively, I am dreaming), has something because my life is at stake,
to contend with a monster of laws – of because I am confounded by the
hospital regulations, professional codes mysteries of my existence, and on the
of conduct, health insurance company other hand, I need another publication
regulations, malpractice litigation, for tenure. I am doing both of these
hierarchical conflicts among hospital things at the same time. Is that possible?
administrators, physicians and nurses, It seems not. I am not sure. Maybe we
and even the laws of the market, so that regularly do things like that, something
hospitals now advertise for patients. I like the Knight of Faith who looks for all
have been invited to speak several times the world like a tax collector.
by nurses and nursing educators, and
they have helped me see the religious I am not sure I can improve upon
quality of the medical vocation of the Derrida’s solution to such aporias, which
nurse. The nurse is relatively low on the is to say that we do not solve them but
hospital power chart but no one is move in the distance between the two
closer, more intimately involved, with extremes. We must at one and the same
patients, with the singularity of the time both prove ourselves according to
patient’s situation, which lies below the the protocols of the university and also
rules up above. Those who nurse the transform them from within. There are
dying in a hospice have a palpably many experimental institutions, not
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enough, which treat the rules with a opportunities, albeit risky ones. Of
measured suspicion, but those are at course, churches, courts, hospitals,
best limited solutions. They are not going museums and schools are structures,
to replace mainstream institutions, which institutions, economies, jobs, and they
cannot be replaced but can be renewed need money and they need rules. But
by inventive administrators and faculty there must always be something unruly
who can devise new unprogrammable about the rules, some anarchic energy,
‘programs’, new ways of meeting some event, for these institutions contain
requirements, new ‘requirements’ that something they cannot contain,
are duties without duties, new courses something uncontainable, which is the
not merely in content but in method, event. The justice is always found in the
new courses that do not proceed as a opening, the crack, the crevice. The rules
simple matter of ‘course’. We must find must be ‘plastic’, to borrow Catherine
new ways to weaken the protocols Malabou’s word; they must be
without jettisoning them, new ways to welcoming, open-ended. Everyone must
break down the barriers between the understand that the task is not to apply
disciplines and the colleges, etc. One the rule but to reinvent it, that the
danger I see is the growing individual is never a ‘case’ that ‘falls
professionalization of people who run the under’ (cadere, casus) a rule, but the rule
universities, a separate culture of is a finger pointing at a moon of
upwardly mobile professional singularity.
administrators who move from university
to university in search of higher This can all be written down quite
positions. They do not arise from the elegantly, of course, but the reality is
faculty and return to the faculty and so never as elegant. I spent over twenty
they risk insulating themselves from the years on promotion and tenure
event, which can only take place in the committees and time and again we were
classroom, which is the heart of the presented with idiosyncratic situations.
university. How do you evaluate the ‘research’ of a
professor in the performing arts if,
So the idea is not so much to eliminate instead of writing critical essays the
these aporias but to make them maxims, professor actually performs, as an actor
the impossible conditions under which or a director? Is a published book of
we must make something possible. We poetry, or a text book, ‘published
cannot, we ought not to try to separate research’? Those are the easy questions.
justice and the law, the gift and the The hard one is, how do we truly
economy, the event and the systems in evaluate a teacher? How do you measure
which it is always already found. Instead, whether the students have been touched
we want to make them porous to each by the event of a teacher who has herself
other. The aporias are inescapable, been transformed by the event? If this
irreducible; we could even say happens at all, it may not happen until
‘structural’, albeit in the paradoxical many years later when someone realizes
sense that the structure is de- how a teacher has changed her life. But
structuring, that the event prevents the we cannot let such impossible
structure from closing over, from conundrums turn us into ‘beautiful
enclosing the event by submitting the souls’, as Hegel called them, too
event to rules, to the program. That beautiful for the harshness of the world.
means that the aporias are openings,
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WD: In my own work, I have suggested prevent the event (and also makes for
that the writings of a number of good teachers). The event is the most
continental philosophers, like deadly serious thing of all and so it can
Kierkegaard and Derrida, can be be approached only or best in the comic
interpreted as contemporary trans- mode, as when Climacus tells us about
formations of ancient and Christian the man who accepts an invitation to
spiritual exercises and technologies of dinner with the proviso that he is not in
the self.3 So rather than being nihilistic the meantime killed by a slate falling off
theorists, they could be thought of as a roof as he passes by. Everyone laughs
practitioners of a radical pedagogy. In but he is ‘deadly serious’. The comic is
what way do you think it is possible to the incognito of the religious. The style of
recover and re-interpret these resources their work is of course completely
of philosophy and theology, and in what incommensurable with modernity and
way would such a turn to the past run the rule of method, which is why we have
the risk of repeating its mistakes and both found in them echoes of
shortcomings? premodern figures like Augustine, where
the passion of the event is palpable and
JC: I like this expression ‘radical the rules of modernity had not yet been
pedagogy’ and I think you do well to formed. I am not saying that Augustine or
single out Derrida and Kierkegaard as early Christian writers were humorists, of
prototypes. They are the most important course, but that they write from the
philosophers in my work as well, in my heart, I would say ‘autobiographically’,
own search for something radical: not as a strict literary genre but in the
Kierkegaard because of his articulation sense that they were not writing papers
of the ‘single individual’, which we today to deliver at conferences or for the
call ‘singularity’, and Derrida because of advancement of academic careers. They
the account of the event, of the coming were writing with their blood about
of the singularity of the other, as a basic matters of life and death. The earliest
structure of our experience. They are for theologies were forged in the closest
me the prototypes of thinkers who write collaboration with the communities of
from the passion of life, who are touched faith, as opposed to the gulf that today
by a transformative event, and that I separates the ‘bishop’, the official
think has been the source of our shared teacher of the faith, and the ‘theologian’,
interest in them. They also share who is writing books and papers for
something in common that I very much fellow theologians and for tenure.
treasure – they are both comic-tragic Kierkegaard exposed the fraudulence of
writers, both laughing through their tears, the academic setting in which
which I think the only style that is philosophy and theology are housed in
congenial to the event, that does not modern times and he recalls for us the
apostolic passion of Christian antiquity.
He once went so far as to question the
3
See T. Wilson Dickinson (2011), ‘Repeating, Not
Christian credentials of anyone who is
Simply Recollecting, Repetition: Kierkegaard’s
Ethical Exercises’, Sophia 50, 4: 657-675; (2012) not martyred!
‘Teaching with Fear and Trembling: On the
Classroom as a Space of Dramatic and You ask about dangers inherent in such
Bewildering Trial’, Journal of Cultural and a retrieval of the ancients. For me, in
Religious Theory 12, 2; (2011) Specters of Truth:
every case the danger is always that we
Exercising Philosophy and Theology, PhD diss.,
Syracuse University. will prevent the event, that mundane
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forces, the powers of the world, will still breathed with the breath of the
prevent the event, and so it is worth event, where you would risk your life to
contrasting the different dangers in be a Christian. So Kierkegaard did battle
Christian antiquity and in the work of with the mundane powers of the Church
Kierkegaard. The times are different, the and the politics of the modern university.
task is different, and so the danger, the Accordingly, Kierkegaard ran the
forces of the world, are different. The opposite danger, and by the end of his
early theologians were engaged in an life I think he succumbed to it, a deeply
apostolic struggle to construct a memory anti-institutional condemnation of the
of Jesus in a theological edifice that church and the university which leaves
would house a way of life, a way of no room for any institution, along with an
repeating Jesus in their life. As you have elitist distrust of modern democratic
shown, they are writing from an institutions that he shared with
existential passion, which is why we love Nietzsche and Heidegger. I do not mean
them. The danger here – a danger to to set Derrida on a white horse at this
which I think they finally succumbed – point but I have to say that Derrida does
was the institutionalization of their not make either mistake. He is insistent
passion. I think they allowed their about the inside/outside structure, about
passion for the event that took place in the roguishness of democracy, and
the name of Jesus to freeze over into an about the need for ‘negotiations’, for
obsession with the construction of moving in the space between justice and
‘Christianity’, with imposing doctrinal the law, events and institutions. He is a
rectitude, as you have pointed out in lover of heretical dissent while at the
your work. That allowed their theology, same time he can even say that
which is supposed to be a theology of deconstruction is a philosophy of
the originating event, to devolve into institutions. Still, it pains me to oppose
heresiology. Although this may sound Kierkegaard and Derrida, because what I
strange to orthodox ears, ‘Christianity’ love about the two of them, what you
was the mundane force that suppressed and I both love, is that they pose to such
the event by which they were driven. a ‘scandal’ to the business as usual of
Practically everything we know about the philosophy and the university. Their very
‘Gnostics’, for example, comes from names are a summons to do things
citations in the writings of the people differently, to reinvent the university
who were denouncing them as ‘heretics’, under the impulse of the event, which is
the old story of history being written by itself a heresy to the spirit of objectivism
the winners. I think that the fear of that hovers over the university today.
heresy is the fear of the event. They are consciously, intentionally
eccentric and incommensurable figures.
Kierkegaard, on the other hand, lived in That is why I love them both and will not
an almost perfectly opposite time – not a choose between them.
church ‘militant’ but a church
‘triumphant’, a post-Constantinian time – WD: In Against Ethics you drew a
when Europeans thought they were all distinction between bodies and flesh –
Christian. That led Kierkegaard to make with the former designating the aspects
his famous distinction between a of our existence that are characterized
fraudulent and complacent ‘Christen- by intentionality, agency, and strength,
dom’, which is a power of this world, and while the latter is associated with that
a genuine apostolic ‘Christianity’, which which is weak, vulnerable, and subject to
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suffering (Caputo 1993: 203). You have turn. Teaching is a matter of being
used this distinction to criticize the touched by the being-touched of the
philosophical and theological fantasy of a teacher, not mind to mind but flesh to
body without flesh, of a form of existence flesh.
that is able to rid itself of its limitation,
weakness, and vulnerability. Are there As you can see I am putting the student
pedagogical practices that reinforce this and the teacher or professor in the same
fantasy, that imagine the professor to be position, in the position of responding, of
an authoritative font of knowledge, that saying yes to something by which they
presume the classroom to be a place have been touched, of receiving the
where fleshless intellects interface, event, rather than positioning the teacher
where frailty and limitation are as a sovereign subjectivity who has
examined, graded, and if found wanting, ‘mastery’ of her field. This is the position
failed? How might the body and the flesh of flesh not body, of the patient not the
remain integrated in the classroom? agent, of receptivity and responsiveness,
of being exposed, vulnerable to the
JC: When I write, and when I teach, I coming of something unforeseen. Of
always want to touch the event, or rather course, it is dangerous for the young
to let the student or the reader be teacher to assume such a posture
touched by the event, and so there is a because the sociology of the modern
‘homiletic’ element in my ‘pedagogy’, for university is centered on a series of
which my writing has been criticized agencies, of teaching ‘effectiveness’, of
(instead of being congratulated). I want to having a mature research ‘program’, and
evoke the event, to let the event happen, having credentials that assure everyone
but of course I cannot and I do not want that she is a ‘master’ and a ‘doctor’ of
to abandon my ‘training’, my ‘formation’, her field. But, the truth is that we serve
in the ‘discipline’. I want to be faithful to the event, are in bonds to the event, and
the discipline while not allowing the we are not a ‘master’, just as we are not
discipline to prevent the event. First and a ‘doctor’ of the event but a patient. But
foremost, it is the event that has confessing on such non-agency,
assembled the students and the receptivity and non-knowing is not a
professors in the same classroom, that recommended course at a job interview
has assembled us as colleagues in the or a conference presentation and it is
‘college’, meaning those who associate not a path to tenure. At such times we
under a common calling, who have are expected to be upright bodies not
responded to the event. That is the beings of flesh. The best advice I can give
‘religious’ dimension of the college or you on this point is this. For a long time,
university. It is like a religious assembly, at least, this confession may be
an ‘ekklesia’, meaning that it is the event permitted only as an aside, an
that calls (kalein) and assembles the apostrophe, when for a moment, an
students and the professors who Augenblick, in the midst of a lecture or a
respond, who are the ones that are dialogue one notes, by the way, just in
called together, the ekklesia. That is why, passing, as if this were not a serious
and we all know this, the teacher point, almost as if we were joking (the
teaches by contagion, by contact, which comic as the incognito of the religious),
means by touching. It is the evident fact that we none of us know who we are.
that the teacher has been touched by Then we get back to ‘business’.
the event that touches the students in
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By the way, just as an aside, allow me to is impossible to identify who is making
note in passing the presence here of the promise and impossible to deny that
what Derrida calls the implicit we are being given a promise. That is
theologeme that accompanies this what Heidegger meant when he said
distinction between body and flesh. I am ‘language speaks’, although ‘democracy’
not modeling the teacher after a was not a word of promise for him as we
sovereign, strong God, a supreme ‘agent’ all know.
(actus purus) the governor of the
universe, who creates things ex nihilo, WD: Do you think there is a desire for
which would in turn be the model of the bodies without flesh that is often
‘magisterium’, the teaching authority of operative in academic writing, which
the church, as well as of the college, as demands complete authorial control,
an administered society, administered of and pursues the ideal of clarity (of
course by the administration from the making the fleshy matter of our language
top down. The implicit theologeme is transparent for the sake of
rather to think of the teacher as one who communicating meaning)? What would it
has received a ‘grace’, as a patient not mean to abdicate the assumed authority
an agent, who has said yes to a grace, of the author and to admit one’s
who welcomes it, and that I think is not weakness? Are there ways that you try to
merely an analogy. It is the grace of the perform this type of pedagogy in your
event. That is what ‘binds’ – if we accept own writing?
the old and now questionable etymology
of religion as re-ligare – the teacher and JC: As I have just said, such authorial
the student as such, and it is their command is expected and it is therefore
common bond to the event, so that dangerous, especially for young
neither is a master. As you know, I do not professors, to assume a position of non-
think of either God or the event as an knowing. But your question allows me to
‘agent’, as ‘somebody’, ‘someone’, some add an autobiographical point which
‘thing’ doing something, but rather as a may be of interest to others. When I
happening, as the happening of a started teaching, I was more interested
promise and a memory, which is wispy in teaching than in publication, and I first
even spectral thing. Both agent and felt impelled to publish in order not to
patient need to be rethought in terms of perish, because it was expected of me.
the grammatology of the middle voice, as But I have always loved to write, ever
we have learned from Heidegger. That since high school, where I learned I was
means an intermediate state between a better writer than an athlete. So it was
the much vaunted ‘autonomous very easy, almost natural, that the work
individual’, the self-sufficient agent, and of publication took on a life of its own for
pure passivity. This is the state in which me and I became quite swept up in it,
something is getting itself said in a which is one of the marks of the event.
discourse, or getting itself done in a But it was not until I got to Radical
series of actions, but it is impossible to Hermeneutics, where my first sustained
identify the one doing it but it is encounter with Derrida took place, that I
happening. Something is happening in even conceived a desire to write
what is going on, but no one individual differently, to push up against the limits
can be said to do it. For example, a of academic propriety. So Radical
promise is getting made in language with Hermeneutics, was something different
words like ‘democracy’ or ‘justice’ – but it for me, both in terms of style and of
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content, of what I said, when I spoke for instructively homiletic about the event,
the first time in what Derrida would call and in theology what is true of the event
a ‘circum-fessional’ way. This is seen as such is all the more salient.
clearly at the end when I say, we do not
know who we are, none of us, not if we At that point in my life, I was a tenured
are honest, or whether we believe in full professor and I was annoyed but
God, or whether what we believe when unphased by such criticism. The only
we say ‘God’ is God at all. I make a viable way for a young person, who still
confession of not knowing, a profession depends upon ‘peer review’, is to
of learned ignorance. emphasize the learned in the learned
ignorance and to make sure there are
If you look at my first books, I was plenty of footnotes. In my own case, this
already very much interested in was neither cowardly caution nor a
apophatic theology, but the authorial cunning strategy. I was not waiting until I
voice is different. It is much more the was in a protected position as a full
assured voice of the scholar, of the professor. Before that, before I got to
dispassionate investigator, of someone know Derrida well, I did not conceive or
whose ‘research program’ is that of the nourish a desire to write differently,
relationship between philosophy and which means for me at least to write
apophatic theology. The voice of Radical more directly from the heart. It is this
Hermeneutics is circum-fessional. I incommensurability of the ‘heart’ with
speak from the heart and I was criticized the institutional system that, I think, is
for this. An academic friend at a behind all your questions.
seminary once told me that when he
read What Would Jesus Deconstruct? he WD: In your more recent work you have
said to himself, ‘that will preach’. This noted the uncanny resonance between
was meant as a congratulation, but for the medieval theological imaginary
many, perhaps for most people, in the concerning bodies without flesh (in both
‘academic’ community, this would be an resurrected bodies and angels) and
accusation, a violation of the protocol, a recent scientific breakthroughs in the
kind of pandering or purple prose, fields like robotics, biological
replacing thought with edification, etc. engineering, and computer technology.4
Am I to be ‘accused’ for what sometimes As you observe, these technological
sounds like preaching – or breakthroughs are often accompanied
congratulated? Should I, like Kierkegaard by hopes of bodies without suffering,
separate works of edification from the individuals without place, and of life
other works? I write in such a way that without death. Computer technology is
the objective and the edifying are
mutually contaminated by the other. 4
See, for example, John D. Caputo (2010), ‘Bodies
Each has its own danger, but I think that Still Unrisen, Events Still Unsaid: A Hermeneutic
it is the one without the other that is of Bodies without Flesh’, in Apophatic Bodies:
Negative Theology, Incarnation and Relationality,
most dangerous. I think that the
ed. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, New York:
‘homiletic’ is a risk, that the danger of Fordham University Press, 94-116; and (2011) ‘On
preaching, is real but I think it is a the Wings of Angels: Post-humanism and Info-
salutary risk, because there is an technotheology’, The Twenty-Sixth Annual
opposite risk in simple academic Symposium of The Simon Silverman
Phenomenology Center, ed. Jeffrey McCurry,
propriety, which is greater. There is
Pittsburgh: The Simon Silverman Phenomenology
always something dangerously and Center Duquesne University, 8-28.
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already transforming the organization been thrown in question, thoroughly
and practices of the contemporary revolutionized, which is why it is
classroom, sometimes locating the entire nonsense to say that science does not
educational experience within the virtual think. It may very well be that what we
domain of the internet. In what ways do call ‘matter’ in ordinary experience
you think that these technological comes down to vibrating filaments called
changes hold the risk of seeking to form superstrings, which is not so very far
bodies without flesh? Could fears about from the image that the Franciscans had
such changes simply be a repetition of of angelic bodies. The old mockery of
the ‘metaphysics of presence’? Does this medieval angelology, how many angels
technology also hold promise of can dance on the head of a pin, has a
transformation and hospitality? close contemporary counterpart in
computer miniaturization: how much
JC: This is a complicated question and it information can be stored on a
is one that I am still thinking about. I microchip the size of a pinhead? Mock
keep promising to say what I have to say that! In both cases, medieval Franciscan
in a book on bodies without flesh, which angelology and contemporary info-
I keep postponing. In the simplest terms, technology, the model of the body is
it is the problem of the dangerous pure agency, action and activity,
supplement. My point of departure for insulated from suffering and even
this discussion has been to develop the mortality itself.
analogy between the new information
technologies and the figure of the angel, The advances made by science and
which I first learned from Michel Serres’ technology are steady, swift and
book on angels. What is the angel irreversible (unless we blow ourselves off
(angelos, messenger) if not an instant the face of the earth). They are changing
message system? When the Lord God everything and pushing up against the
needs to get an instant message to horizons or thresholds of our very
Abraham to stay the patriarch’s hand, carnality and mortality, producing a
and there is no time to lose, he sends series of what Donna Haraway calls
his angel. Nowadays the Most High could ‘border breakdowns’. The seemingly
have used an iPhone. The analogy is crazy sci-fi idea which we see in
elaborate. It is not just ‘information’, a Battlestar Galactica (the new series,
word about which you and Heidegger are 2002-2005) of ‘downloading’ ‘conscious-
very suspicious, but also ‘guidance’ ness’ onto computer chips and
(guardian angels, global positioning ‘uploading’ it into shiny new robot bodies
systems), war (warrior angels like Michael (which would mean that one could store
and ‘smart bombs’), and interestingly the a back up ‘copy’ of yourself in case of an
nature of the ‘body’ itself. Thomas accident or computer crash) is actually
Aquinas said angels are purely being pursued by perfectly respectable
immaterial, not bodies at all, while the scientists. I am not a specialist in the
Franciscans said they were made of analysis of popular culture, but I find
some kind of ethereal matter, which is Battlestar Galactica quite instructive in
quite like what I call bodies without flesh. this regard. The new technologies are
On this point, the Franciscans are more meant to be supplements but they
interesting because today, in age of threaten to take over, like the ‘Cylons’
quantum physics and relativity, the very who were created by humans but who
meaning of matter, space and time have overtake their human creators. The
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obvious ‘battle’ in the title, then, is this Cylons is also theological. They both have
war between the humans and the religions and occasionally they argue
Cylons, whom (which?) the humans mock about theology. The Cylons are
by calling them ‘toasters’, stupid monotheists while the humans are
machines. This is something that always polytheists, which suggests that religion
comes up, the fear that we will be survives even when ‘consciousness’ is
enslaved by our own creation. But there digitalized, where it takes a monotheistic
are several other battles going on in this form, while ‘flesh’ is polytheistic. That is
series that I find instructive. One of the worth thinking about.
more interesting things is that the Cylons
have the ability to synthesize human The current transformations taking place
bodies for themselves, which they do in in info-technology are deeply
order to infiltrate the human race and confounding. What we can be sure of is
spy on them. But in the process of so that everything we think about birth and
doing they discover human feelings and death, about sickness and health, about
the pleasures of the human flesh. Then materiality and carnality, sexuality and
the Cylons have another battle on their gender, will be affected, and maybe even
hands, between their rationally totally transformed or even ‘overcome’.
programmed Cylon self and loyalties to We are approaching a technological
their ‘race’ and their acquired human ‘event’ which, interestingly, has been
feelings and passions, making them dubbed the ‘singularity’, using a word
something of a ‘monstrous compound’, (inadvertently of course) that has a
we might say. The quite voluptuous special prestige in continental
woman in red on the cover of the CD philosophy, to describe a radical
collection is a Cylon and her sensuality is technological transformation that will
central to the story, as is the sympathy of render debates like the current one
another Cylon character whose between zoe and bios obsolete and
‘sympathies’ lie with the humans. When parochial. Here would be the ultimate
the Cylons assume human form, they body without flesh, pure deathless
expose themselves to human suffering agents, achieved not by the ‘resurrection
and death. It is possible to kill a Cylon, of the body’ but by information
but only temporarily, as he or she will be technology; theology, angelology is
reduplicated and in the process get very realized by technology. But is this truly
annoyed at you for being put through an ‘event’? The futurists and the sci-fi
such a painful ordeal. The suggestion is writers can see it coming already. They
that even were info-technology to realize say the singularity is near, and some
this seeming fantasy, it would retain the techno-apocalyptic prophets even have a
life of flesh as an available option, almost date in mind, predicting it will take place
like a vacation one would take or in 2045. So it is not an event. But what is
nostalgic visit to an outdoor museum coming, perhaps, is a change so vast and
like Williamsburg, Virginia, which tries to transforming that we cannot see what it
reproduce a by-gone world. The is that we think we see coming. That
pleasures of the flesh are made would be the event. Furthermore, if we
available, and even death and suffering object that this will be a disaster, that
are possible, but they are reduced to does not mean it is not an event. There
strictly temporary inconveniences. Finally, is nothing about the idea of the event
and this is also very interesting, the that says it will not be a disaster; indeed
battle between the humans and the
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the event is constituted by the risk of advantages for many people in different
disaster. situations but it is also very dangerous,
threatening to produce atomized,
Now, as professors of the ‘humanities’, unsocialized and unhappy people and
you are asking what are we to do? We stunted learning, learning without heart.
cannot afford, as a pragmatic matter, to Do the new technologies induce the
be reactionary and to fall behind the illusory ideal of the perfectly
pace of change or we will quickly fall out programmed autonomous self, a digital
of touch with our students. My little four version of Descartes’ res cogitans? That
year old grandchild is completely is also a real risk. But the risk will not be
comfortable with remote controls and averted by cupping our ears and saying
touch-screens. Whether we like it or not, that science does not think. It will be
we must incorporate the new averted by understanding science better
technologies as far as possible into the and differently and by abandoning this
classroom, with all the attendant dangers reactionary slogan. For those of us who
this poses. As a theoretical matter, we – are interested in religion, I think that the
and here I have particularly in mind right posture has been struck by the
those of us in the ‘humanities’ – must Dalai Lama, who loves contemporary
get past obsolete ideas of science as physics and sees all kinds of
atoms-in-a-void mechanism and come convergences between his meditative life
to grips with the profoundly revolutionary and speculative physics, where he thinks
character of contemporary speculative that what we call the ‘mystery of Being’ is
physics. As a curricular matter, I think alive and well and flourishing. Please do
this means we need to make sure that not tell me that these are ‘problems’ not
humanities students get a level of ‘mysteries’, which I think is a kind of
scientific education that is at least at the postmodern dualism. These are
level of being able to read the works of investigations into the very make up of
people like Brian Greene. One cannot matter, time and space that leave us
understand these matters thoroughly breathless. Of course these
without mathematics, but there is a great mathematical problems are problems,
deal we can and must understand. There but they are also mysteries and they are
are ‘picture theorists’ and ‘equation latent with the event. That is why I think
theorists’ and we can understand the that continental philosophers must look
‘picture theorists’. Sean Carroll, one of to new models, to people like Catherine
the popular expositors of these ideas, Malabou, whose work represents
puts the equations in the footnotes. something genuinely continental but
importantly new, and Zizek, despite his
But where is the ‘event’ in this amazing outrageous caricatures of what he calls
scene? Does the coming of the new postmodernism, and Michel Serres and
technologies spell the death of the Bruno Latour, who was deeply influenced
‘teacher’, of the person to person by Serres. When Malabou discusses the
contact, of students touched by teachers neurosciences in terms of ‘plasticity’, and
who have been touched by the event? when Zizek speaks in terms of parallax
We cannot imagine that happening but it shifts and the non-all, and when Latour
is a real threat. ‘Distance learning’ means describes the historical construction of
one learns in isolation, by staying at the natural sciences, they provide
home, on a computer, removed from openings within which the event can
human contact. This has many take place. In my recent work, The
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Insistence of God, I have tried to think a demand that we begin to take certain
the event as an event of grace, and to limits seriously?
extend this model beyond a theopoetics
to what I call a cosmo-poetics, where I The in-breaking of the event in our
treat the sheer stupid luck of life on future, then, might be less the possibility
earth, a completely fortuitous happening, of angelic bodies, and more a matter of
cosmically speaking, as the stupidity of the unpleasant reminder of our flesh – of
grace, the grace of the event. It just our frailty and vulnerability. In this
might be that God does play dice with configuration, philosophy might not
the world, or rather, since God is not an simply need to study up on the natural
agent who does things like play dice, it is sciences, but it might provide resources
better to say that the dice game, the that would help people cultivate simpler
being-played of the dice game, in the forms of living. This might mean that
middle voice, which is not being played theology needs to be less systematic and
by someone, the element of play or more ascetical (while remaining skeptical
chance, or what Derrida calls the of old modes of discipline and
‘perhaps’, peut-être, is the divine element formation). So might there, then, be a
in things. This I believe was first pointed different Franciscan legacy – one not of
out by Heraclitus, in a saying that was angels but of apostolic living – that is
beautifully interpreted by Heidegger in needed to accompany the findings of
the same book in which he frets over the science?
age of ‘information’.
JC: Your anxieties are well founded. As I
WD: I must confess that the recent said above, nothing guarantees that the
findings of the natural sciences that have event will not be a disaster. The event is
gripped my imagination speak of a the very possibility of disaster. So your
different future. The emerging accounts anxiety is integral to the picture I have
of global climate change seem to just been imagining. My guess is that,
confront us with the material realities although I have not done an empirical
and limitations of human life. In this case survey on this matter, the scientists are
it is the presumption of science – or its on your side. It is they who brought the
use by other cultural forces – that there threat of global warming to our attention
are no limits to what we are capable of before anyone noticed it and they who
that have led to immense destruction have been alarmed and who can prove
and waste. So I wonder if this notion that we have reason to be alarmed. The roots
our material limits are coming undone is of the problem are multiple. It is first of
more the business of science fiction than all the cooptation of science by techno-
of an inevitable future. When my capitalism, the vast amount of money
physicist brother and I have our that is to be made by exploiting the
perennial science versus theology environment, and the politicians whom
debates I like to chide him that I am still that money has baldly, brazenly bought.
waiting for the flying cars and It is also the refusal of the people who
teleportation devices. All I have seen live in the technologically advanced
coming out in my lifetime are smaller societies to restrain their indulgence, and
computers, bigger televisions, and wider so you are right to call for a new kind of
varieties of Viagra. So when we look to asceticism. And we cannot forget it is
the future, should we assume that also the result of very poor people in
everything is up for grabs, or is there not poor nations to get out of poverty by
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exploiting their national resources. The universes. The more we learn, the more
solution is to be found in the optimal we should appreciate our limits. Science
mix of conservation and vigorous is on your side; it tells us we are very
research into new clean technologies. finite, all headed for entropic oblivion.
That would require a degree of Even were we in some unimaginable
enlightenment in public policy that we future to come up with robot bodies and
find impossible to imagine in the manage someday to escape the earth,
degraded politics of today, where the that would be temporary – we can run
common good is up for sale to the but not hide from entropy. N. T. Wright
highest bidder. I myself am worried that tells us that the coming heaven is
the steady advance of miniaturization actually earth, that when Jesus comes
along with Moore’s Law, that we double again, we will not go up to heaven, but
computer capacity about every two he will come down to rule here on earth.
years, is hastening the advent of hand- Therefore we should conserve the earth.
held nuclear weapons, which will make it Well, I agree we should conserve the
all but impossible to prevent a earth, with or without this story, but even
catastrophe. that would provide only a temporary
residence for Jesus, since in five hundred
I am trying to imagine the ‘to come’, million years or so the earth will be toast!
what today many theorists do not shirk I think we should see our lives on this
from calling the ‘post-human’ age, or little corner of the universe as an event
what Donna Haraway called the coming of grace, the grace of an event, a lucky
age of ‘cyborgs’, in which the rigorous break – the stupidity of grace – nothing
distinction between the human and the but a passing moment in the immense
technological breaks down, which is also history of something, we know not what.
a point upon which Derrida has insisted In the meantime, we should show some
right from the start. But I am not gratitude for this grace and foresight
endorsing everything I can see coming in about the planet we leave to our children
this future we cannot see coming. What and grandchildren. But I think that
you are saying tests the faith that I have science gives us new reasons for saying
in what Derrida once said, that ‘the that. I think that science is on the side of
future is always better’, not because it is, the philosophers, accompanying them,
which is certainly false, but because that as you say.
is our hope, our faith. So this is a hope
against hope, a faith in something WD: In a recent essay, ‘Theopoetics as
impossible to believe, which is what faith Radical Theology’, you differentiate
and hope are, just the way love means between confessional theology – which
loving the unlovable, loving the enemy. I ‘reports back’ to religious communities –
think that what we have called God up to and radical or postmodern theology that
now means a kind of immensity against reports back to the academy. Surely, this
which we measure ourselves and then relationship with the academy is one
feel our finitude and mortality. I think that is fraught with ambiguity. In Radical
that the work of that immensity, that Hermeneutics, for example, you spoke of
infinity, is now done by the infinitival ‘to the necessity for reason and
come’, the vastness of what lies before philosophers to be ‘able to slip back and
us in history but also, as we are forth’ between the confines of an
beginning to realize, in the universe, in institutional setting and roaming freely
universes endlessly spawning other on the streets (characterizing these two
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possibilities as ‘forms of life’) (Caputo presumes they are lucky enough to find
1987: 228-9). What is the relationship a job. So even though they do not have
between theology and the academy, and to report back to a confessional
in what ways does embracing the task of community, that does not mean they do
theology (rather than just philosophy) not report back to anyone. They do not
make this slipping back and forth have to deal with bishops but they do
between both more necessary and more have to deal with search committees,
difficult? tenure committees and deans. They do
not have heresy trials, but they do have
JC: Yes, there is ambiguity from ‘referees’ who read the manuscripts they
beginning to end and it is precisely the submit for publication and scrutinize
ambiguity that allows for the event, and it them for ‘errors’ of method or content,
is precisely the event that calls for the which makes for a certain counterpart to
nimbleness of slipping back and forth. To the Vatican’s ‘Syllabus of Errors’.
answer this question, let me start by
saying that I like this expression ‘reports Both the confessional theologians and
back’ because it suggests the circle of an the radical theologians are in an
economy, reminding us that the ‘ambiguous’ position. It is never a
‘expenditure without return’ is inevitably question of simply and unambiguously
drawn back into a certain ‘contract’, and leaving behind an economy but of
hence is expected to return a dividend making the economy more open-ended
after all. The ambiguity is that there is no and auto-revising, of giving economy a
question or possibility of simply leaving chance, as Derrida says. Give economy a
an economy behind; the question is break and do not dismiss it as the work
rather of making economies more open- of the devil. Construct an economy that
ended and flexible and less contracting. allows for the event. Of course, that is a
When I say that radical theologians paradox, since it demands that we
report back to the academy I am saying provide for the unforeseeable, which is a
this as a reminder, a qualification, which grammatical contradiction as well as a
comes after first contrasting them with real one, since to provide is to foresee.
confessional theologians. The latter do So we are always negotiating these
theology within certain confessional ambiguities, everyone, not just
constraints and their livelihood (and theologians.
sometimes even their very life) depends
upon the ability of the community to The confessional theologians know about
recognize itself in their work. By contrast, the need for constant negotiation very
the ‘radical’ theologian seems free as a well. I say this because their work, when
bird, no bishops, no excommunications, it is sustained and earnest, very often
no heresy trials. But then to be free as a causes them to test confessional limits,
bird is an illusion, even for the bird itself, think up against the borders of the
as Kant once pointed out, since the bird community, skirting the edge of ‘heresy’.
is inclined to feel the wind by which its My own explanation for this is that
flight is sustained as a resistance without radical theology is implicit in
which it could fly all the more freely. For confessional theology, that when we dig
if the truth to be told, when we speak of deeply enough, we find it lying there in
radical theologians, if we started to make wait for the confessional theologians to
a list, we would find that virtually all of stumble upon it, expose it, expound it
them have day jobs as academics, which and maybe even espouse it, and when
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they do that, it can cost them their jobs. is another kind of orthodoxy, to be sure,
Radical theology spooks the confessional but it is real. One must meet certain
theologian, and the confessional standards, submit to a ‘discipline’. It is
theologian spook their communities, and not an accident that we use the same
ideally this can take place without a word to describe both an ominous
heresy trial or exorcists to drive out the ‘disciplinary’ power, a force of
spooks. Many confessional theologians normalization, and to describe our
reach a point where they say things like, chosen field of study, the ‘discipline’ we
‘we do not know what we mean when love and to which we devote our lives.
say “God”’. They are not saying this in a One must learn to operate within the
safe way, as a higher form of praise for university. That is not the devil. It is only
God, but they are saying, we really do not diabolical if it is totalizing, if it encloses
know what we mean. Perhaps it is an everything, for then the system will only
illusion, a neurosis, a projection, etc., and produce clones, more of the same. Then
this ‘we do not know’ qualifies everything there is no event. So I would advocate
else we say. If they say this clearly and the ‘weakness of the university’, meaning
publically they risk the wrath of the that the system, the discipline must be
community. Elizabeth Johnson, a weak, open-ended, pliable, reinventable,
distinguished Catholic theologian at which means eventive, while the
Fordham University, has recently run individuals are called upon to be bold,
afoul of the American Catholic bishops. inventive, reinventive. Sometimes bold
This is testimony to the authoritarianism young people can break the molds and
and ignorance of the bishops and it has still manage to break into the system.
managed to make them look even worse More often, I am inclined to think, there
than they did before, if such a thing were is a sliding scale here, that with each
possible after the recent scandals by step along the academic way, each
which the Church has been engulfed. In hurdle scaled on the academic path, the
the course of this controversy a more freedom there will be to speak and
spokesman for the Bishops said that write and act differently, to blur
theologians are sometimes a ‘curse and established disciplinary borders. The idea
a plague upon the Church’. That to me is is to violate academic protocols but not
a sign that the theologians are doing to simply smash them, neither idolatory
their job. To be a curse upon such power nor sheer iconoclasm. As Aristotle says
is a blessing and the church should be about the phronimos, we start by
always grateful for blessings. imitating the one with mastery, and his
example is learning archery by first
The radical theologians on the other imitating the skilled archer. Or we can
hand are negotiating with the disciplinary use the example of a good metaphor: we
systems of the university, with external bend the rules, shock the system of
systems like the politics of state established use, while drawing upon the
supported public universities or of the resources of the very system we are
wealth of donors to private universities, shocking, which we must first learn. First
but also with systems internal to their the camel, then the lion, then the child,
discipline, like the normalizing force of Zarathustra says.
the scholarly protocols, of standards for
tenure and promotion, the standards of Now what I am saying holds true for
journals and academic presses, every academic, not just for academic
professional societies, and the rest. This theologians, confessional or radical. But I
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think it is especially true, or let us say name (of) ‘God’ can take place with or
revealingly true – it’s a revelation! – in without religion.
the case of theologians because what
they are talking about, theos, God, is in I think the question you are raising, all
an especially poignant way not reducible your questions, circulate around the
to an object of disinterested scholarly tension between the event and the
research. I hasten to add that such ‘object’, purely objective, disinterested
disinterest is an illusion in any research, thinking, which I think is what ‘secular’
any discipline. Latour shows that Louis would finally mean. In that case, the
Pasteur was deeply and passionately event is the ultimate resistance to the
devoted to his faith in microbes (and in ‘object’ and ‘secularism’. Were there to
protecting public health)! God or be such a thing as a pure object, that
microbes, either one, spells passion. But would mean something devoid of an
it is easier to see with God. The name of event, and that would be possible only if
God is the name of an event, or of a we were dead. Objective thinking means,
deed, Johannes Climacus said, to quote we try to think of how things are if or
a hero you and I share. That means it is when we are dead. This has its place. I
a matter of life and death, of what Tillich am not trying to run it off the grounds. I
called a matter of ‘ultimate concern’; it am just trying to stop it from taking over
touches upon the passion of our lives. I and driving everything non-objective off
think of ‘God’ in terms of the event, and I the grounds. I am trying to prevent it
think of the ‘event’ in terms of God, from preventing the event. So the event
because I think each is in a certain way means how things lay claim to us while
a helpful paradigm for the other. ‘God’ we are still alive, how they call upon or
signifies the claiming power of the event, are visited upon the living, who are of
its power to address us, but the event course living mortals. Things happen in
signifies that God is a weak force, that our lives by the event. By the impossible,
God’s power is a weak force because it is Derrida says, things begin, in whatever
the power of a claim, a call, an invitation, order – art, science, ethics, politics,
a solicitation, an ‘insistence’, but without religion, no matter what, inside or
an army to enforce it. Calls can always outside the university, inside or outside
be ignored. The event signifies what is what we call in Christian Latin ‘religion’.
going on, what insists, in the name of There is always the event and the
God; it means that the name of God is university is the assembly, the collegium,
not the name of a being that does things of those who have been overtaken by the
but the name of a claiming event. So event. Everything really important in our
‘God’ and ‘event’ are each in their own lives happens by the event and in that
way paradigmatic of something that is sense, to come back to your first
going on not only in ‘theology’ but question, there can be no purely secular
everywhere, in the other ‘disciplines’, and university. We have never been secular.
outside academic life, which is why the Secularity will set in only about fifteen
event that overtakes us when we use the minutes or so after we are dead.

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References

Caputo, J. D. (1987), Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic

Caputo, J. D. (1993), Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant

Caputo, J. D. (2006), The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

Foucault, M. (1995), Disciplines and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage Books.

Heidegger, M. (1996), The Principle of Reason, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, M. (2002), ‘The Age of World Picture’, in Off the Beaten Track, New York: Cambridge
University Press.

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