Emphasis on Scripture can teach us to be credulous of the miraculous and hostile to empiricist forms of reasoning

Lest this great debate terminate, a few posers: 1. When we are so passionately speaking against the political/religious detractors, how do we locate them as the other and under which ontological paradigm?

2. Whether the thoughtless affiliation to some political/religious praxis has any potential of kindling emancipatory instincts in the individual? If yes, then whether it is a desirable phenomenon? And,

3. Should it evolve through the ambiguity of complex moral choices instead of settling for simplistic black and white labels? Tusar N. Mohapatra said this on May 1st, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Tusar, these are terrific questions. Very briefly, with regard to question 1 I’m working with an ontology of assemblages, where organizations are formed through constellations of individuals that have stronger or weaker bonds with one another depending on the assemblage in question. You and I, for instance, form an assemblage when we interact but our bonds are very loose as we seldom talk with one another and the duration of our connection is short (we’ve only just met in the last month so it’s unclear whether our assemblage will persist in time). A bureaucracy can be a very strong assemblage in that the positions composing the institution persist even when people move on to other jobs (they’re filled by other people), they have well defined protocols for interpersonal interactions and how things are done, and they are very slow to change. An assemblage is only maintained, in my view, through the interactions of the elements that compose it but cannot simply be reduced to these interactions. Consequently, the ontology I presuppose is

1) nominalist (there are only individuals at greater and lesser scales, i.e., a city is an individual composed of individuals),

2) process oriented or interactivist (these entities are products of interactions),

3) premised on immanence (there aren’t any transcendent essences defining true identities, only different assemblages that are auto-defining).

I would hold that all social formations are assemblages, so I would make exactly the same arguments for political movements, nations, neighborhoods, cities, bureaucracies, tribes, fans of sports teams, etc., etc., etc. Anthony, et al, have claimed that I am practicing faux sociology. They might be right that I’m not a particularly good sociologist, but they seem to miss that these principles flow directly from my ontology and my theories of individuation. I am, of course, obligated to give compelling arguments that social formations should be understood in those terms. At any rate, these claims aren’t restricted to religion.

With regard to question 2, I think it is absolutely the case that religious praxis has the potential for kindling emancipatory instincts and has, in many cases, done so. The obvious example is the relationship of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement to his religious belief. Now, we need to understand that there were a variety of reasons people participated in the civil rights movement. Some were motivated by religion, others were not. But certainly this was on assemblage that was motivated in such a way. From what I understand the Chiapas movement has a strong religious dimension. The point is that we need to look at assemblages on a case by case basis to see how they’re organized and what motivates them. There are other religious assemblages that work in a very different direction. Pre-17th century political arrangements (monarchy) were guaranteed by divine right and supported by the church, so here we have a non-emancipatory assemblage. There were other religious assemblages during this same time period that were perhaps emancipatory. The assemblages composing the religious right are often apologists for capitalism and highly oppressive regimes with regard to women, minorities (religious American nationalism and xenophobia), and homosexuals. But there are other assemblages that are committed to various forms of emancipation and they are gaining in strength. Badiou defines intensity as the degree to which something exists in a given situation. I think Badiou’s theorization suffers from being merely descriptive, but we could say that these emancipatory religious movements are “gaining in intensity”. Where before they were almost entirely invisible they are now becoming recognizable presences.

I am not sure that whether this is a desirable phenomenon is the right question to ask. This would presume that it is religion that is the problem and that we should thus necessarily have emanipatory politics without religion. Think of the issue in biological terms instead. Does it make sense to ask whether it is desirable for reptiles or mammals to be a solution to the problems posed by a particular ecosystem? No. They are one solution that has evolved, period. The varieties of religious assemblages are one particular solution among many. Now, I might be inclined to have concerns about religious assemblages. I think that religious upbringing trains persons to think in particular ways that can have negative side-effects– Emphasis on Scripture can teach us to be credulous of the miraculous and hostile to good empiricist forms of reasoning. Religion can train us to be defensive in forms of discussion, where we attack those who disagree with us on a personal level, where we attack messangers rather than the issue at hand, where we distort unpleasant facts, etc, etc. It can also lead to in-group/out-group forms of social relation or tribalism, where two parties that might otherwise agree or have shared values and aims enter into conflict because they belong to different “tribes”. However, these problems can occur in a wide variety assemblages that aren’t religious in character. That is, they are problems that plague group relations in general.

With regard to 3 I don’t have a whole lot to say. Generally I think black and white moral rules were effective technologies when human assemblages tended to exist in smaller and more homogenous communities that didn’t have many relations with other social assemblages. As capitalism has prgressed and we’ve been thrown in with groups from all over the world, these sorts of moralities have become increasingly impracticle, causing more conflict, etc. In my view we need situationally based ethical systems that are sensitive to the organization of assemblages in question and their context. larvalsubjects said this on May 1st, 2007 at 4:51 pm Difference and Givenness Levi Bryant