We seem to be in a Schmittian political nightmare at the moment. Republicans and Democrats disagree strongly about the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Disagree strongly underplays things. We see the world entirely differently. We read the same summary of a transcript and come away either unimpressed (There's no "there" there) or unnerved ("I would like you to do us a favor, though..."). And both sides seem exasperated that the other side doesn't just see it, plain as day: just look at the transcript!
It's a twist on the Emperor's New Clothes, only with half the crowd insisting, What do you mean, he's naked? He's bundled up! Can't you see that? Deciding who in this analogy is who--well, that's another debate. (It seems obvious to me the GOP is insisting on seeing clothes that aren't there. Or half of them are insisting on that while the other half makes a straight-faced argument that Emperors are never naked, that they by definition don't require clothes to be clothed, or at least that Imperial nudity is never call-out-able. But the other side would likely allege that progressives will cry nudity no matter how elaborate the outfit.)
For Carl Schmitt, such disputes are irresolvable. None of the usual means humans rely on work. We can't just go to the tape and check the evidence. The debate concerns fundamentally opposed views of what the evidence says. We can't default to a shared sense of ethics. Both sides deeply doubt ability of the other side to engage in ethical deliberation. We're not even 100% in agreement that this process is legal or constitutional. (See David French on that here.)
We're divided, as Schmitt would say, into friend and enemy camps. There's no way out but direct conflict. For Schmitt's more recent, non-Nazi interlocutors like Chantal Mouffe, such conflict need not devolve into civil war. Mouffe distinguishes antagonism, naked animosity and no-holds-barred aggression between foes, from agonism, intense struggle within a shared understanding of the political parameters. In Mouffe's agonism, there's still friend/enemy struggles. You cannot, should not, attempt to avoid or mitigate conflicts. But agonistic participants recognize and honor the right of their enemies to disagree and struggle against them.
In agonism, I may (hopefully) win a political struggle, but I don't hold it existentially against you that you fought on the other side of the conflict. I do not, after winning, seek to disenfranchise, imprison, expel, or murder you. Neither do I, after losing, declare the entire system corrupt and go to war. I put work and trust into the powers of granted to the political minority, biding my time and adjusting my strategies so that one day I might regain the majority.
The weakness of Mouffe's argument (an argument I largely endorse), however, is the idealized ethos of struggle. She wants the uncompromising bite of Schmittian conflict without the lethal potentials.
So many political struggles today, however, feel existential in their stakes. We can't afford to lose. Or, instead: We can't afford to let them win. If you see the enemy's victory as the destruction of you and your way of life, then the agonistic approach is a sham. You can't just go along with the system if they win. Nor can you simply forgive and forget the enemy's stances even if you win. If the other side holds some version of "you aren't due full civic personhood," then there will be some lingering bad faith for a while that no single political victory will quite dispel.
The problem, though, is that existential stakes can too easily become a trick to make politics impossible. How dare you debate this or question me when doing so undermines my very being? There's also the fact that humans aren't always great assessors of existential threats, nor do we think clearly or behave at our best when we feel threatened.
The real sine qua non for agonism, it seems, is a mutual trust in your enemy (and in your allies) that they will take reasonable steps not to turn agonism into antagonism. That's a depressing thought, though, given the lack of trust in today's politics.
Showing posts with label fundamental disagreements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fundamental disagreements. Show all posts
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Infinity Gauntlets
Today I led a special, all-church Sunday School session. My topic was "Christian Witness in a Polarized Age." In practice, it was Better Angels but with a Christian twist.
It went over well, I think. I need to try to arrange a formal Better Angels workshop soon.
One illustration that isn't Better Angels but that I find endlessly useful concerns the Infinity Gauntlet created and wielded by the supervillain Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. I really loved those movies. In particular, I liked how they gave Josh Brolin's Thanos a relatively rational, sensible motivation. In contrast to the 1990s comic book Thanos (who is in love with Death), the movies' Thanos believes that suffering comes from universal overpopulation. His solution involves creating a weapon hat combines the power of the "infinity stones," ancient artifacts of immense power. The result is the Infinity Gauntlet, which I described to my mainly non-superhero-savvy Sunday Schoolers as "a kind of magic glove that lets you destroy your enemies with a snap."
I simplify. But, essentially, that's what it is.
SPOILER FOR THE MOVIES--
At the end of Infinity War, Thanos achieves his goal, snaps his fingers--and half of all living things disintegrate into dust. It's pretty shocking, especially watching Tom Holland's Spider Man jabber in terror to Robert Downy, Jr.'s Tony Stark, who watches the young man vanish. Fast-forward to the sequel, and (long story short), Tony Stark makes his own gauntlet, snaps his fingers, and Thanos and his minions vanish.
I'm a sucker for superhero movies, and these are done especially well. (How I wish I could send a message back in time to young, nerdy me in the 80s and 90s: Just wait! All the stuff you're a nerd for liking becomes mainstream and cool in 25 years!)
But the Infinity Gauntlet is an especially cool metaphor for my work. Specifically, it's a fantasy of perfect victory--and perfect threat. You defeat your opponents, and they disappear. OR your opponents win--and you disappear.
In class today, I explained the "magic glove that destroys your foes."
"I gotta say," I admitted, "I'd be awfully tempted, especially after reading the latest newsfeeds. I held up my hand, poising my fingers to snap. "Uh-uh!" someone said.
I nearly snapped, and nearly snapped, sorely tempted.
But I didn't.
"But see," I said, "what if I'm certain that 'they'--the other team--wouldn't hesitate to use the gauntlet if they got their hands on one? What if they're very close to having one even now?"
That feeling underlies a lot of affective polarization: a zero-sum contest with existential stakes. We must destroy them before they destroy us.
But it is fantasy. Within liberal democracies, at least, political defeats never result in the losing side's mass evaporation. They persist, stubbornly, to return and fight again. The best we can hope for is that the force of our side's ideas eventually wins over a stable majority and the contestable becomes common sense. Only then are political battles fully won (and even then, the potential for re-politicizing issues exists). We don't get the tidy victory of a superhero movie.
Nor would we want that to be the case. In Endgame, it's a high-point, a cheer-moment, when Tony Stark snaps his fingers and Thanos sighs in defeat before blowing away to so much ash.
But Thanos's forces were inhuman monsters. We're dramaturgically primed not to see their existence as mattering. In real life, we face actual human beings. They may do monstrous things and act in inhuman ways. But they are nevertheless human. Destroying them all as a group--well, that's something a Thanos would do.
I loved the Avengers movies. But I wonder what would have been different had Stark and the other Avengers had a conversation about the Gauntlet similar to Gandalf's warnings about the Ring of Power. The Ring cannot be used for good, he says. IT would do too much evil through the desire for good.
Endgame skirts around this by having an unimpeachable character--Captain America--dispose of the gauntlet. But Captain America is as fictional as Thanos. I do not have an unimpeachable character. And the other side can sometimes look to me very much like monsters, my struggle against them very much like, well, an endgame, an infinity war.
I'm glad there's no gauntlet.
More tomorrow,
JF
It went over well, I think. I need to try to arrange a formal Better Angels workshop soon.
One illustration that isn't Better Angels but that I find endlessly useful concerns the Infinity Gauntlet created and wielded by the supervillain Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. I really loved those movies. In particular, I liked how they gave Josh Brolin's Thanos a relatively rational, sensible motivation. In contrast to the 1990s comic book Thanos (who is in love with Death), the movies' Thanos believes that suffering comes from universal overpopulation. His solution involves creating a weapon hat combines the power of the "infinity stones," ancient artifacts of immense power. The result is the Infinity Gauntlet, which I described to my mainly non-superhero-savvy Sunday Schoolers as "a kind of magic glove that lets you destroy your enemies with a snap."
I simplify. But, essentially, that's what it is.
SPOILER FOR THE MOVIES--
At the end of Infinity War, Thanos achieves his goal, snaps his fingers--and half of all living things disintegrate into dust. It's pretty shocking, especially watching Tom Holland's Spider Man jabber in terror to Robert Downy, Jr.'s Tony Stark, who watches the young man vanish. Fast-forward to the sequel, and (long story short), Tony Stark makes his own gauntlet, snaps his fingers, and Thanos and his minions vanish.
I'm a sucker for superhero movies, and these are done especially well. (How I wish I could send a message back in time to young, nerdy me in the 80s and 90s: Just wait! All the stuff you're a nerd for liking becomes mainstream and cool in 25 years!)
But the Infinity Gauntlet is an especially cool metaphor for my work. Specifically, it's a fantasy of perfect victory--and perfect threat. You defeat your opponents, and they disappear. OR your opponents win--and you disappear.
In class today, I explained the "magic glove that destroys your foes."
"I gotta say," I admitted, "I'd be awfully tempted, especially after reading the latest newsfeeds. I held up my hand, poising my fingers to snap. "Uh-uh!" someone said.
I nearly snapped, and nearly snapped, sorely tempted.
But I didn't.
"But see," I said, "what if I'm certain that 'they'--the other team--wouldn't hesitate to use the gauntlet if they got their hands on one? What if they're very close to having one even now?"
That feeling underlies a lot of affective polarization: a zero-sum contest with existential stakes. We must destroy them before they destroy us.
But it is fantasy. Within liberal democracies, at least, political defeats never result in the losing side's mass evaporation. They persist, stubbornly, to return and fight again. The best we can hope for is that the force of our side's ideas eventually wins over a stable majority and the contestable becomes common sense. Only then are political battles fully won (and even then, the potential for re-politicizing issues exists). We don't get the tidy victory of a superhero movie.
Nor would we want that to be the case. In Endgame, it's a high-point, a cheer-moment, when Tony Stark snaps his fingers and Thanos sighs in defeat before blowing away to so much ash.
But Thanos's forces were inhuman monsters. We're dramaturgically primed not to see their existence as mattering. In real life, we face actual human beings. They may do monstrous things and act in inhuman ways. But they are nevertheless human. Destroying them all as a group--well, that's something a Thanos would do.
I loved the Avengers movies. But I wonder what would have been different had Stark and the other Avengers had a conversation about the Gauntlet similar to Gandalf's warnings about the Ring of Power. The Ring cannot be used for good, he says. IT would do too much evil through the desire for good.
Endgame skirts around this by having an unimpeachable character--Captain America--dispose of the gauntlet. But Captain America is as fictional as Thanos. I do not have an unimpeachable character. And the other side can sometimes look to me very much like monsters, my struggle against them very much like, well, an endgame, an infinity war.
I'm glad there's no gauntlet.
More tomorrow,
JF
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Performative Certainty
I've just made my brain pour out a big long response to my peers on a roundtable, so I'm a bit like a flat tire currently. Here's some B-side--stuff I wrote last night but ended up not sharing in quite the same way. Also--I wrote this on 7-26 but forgot to press "publish" until the 27th. Oops. Anyway:
A framing concept that kept imposing itself on my
thoughts as I reflected on your papers comes from philosopher Amy Olberding. For years, Olberding had been a regular contributor to the
influential (in philosophy) blog Feminist
Philosophers. In late 2018, though, she retired from blogging there,
posting an explanation on her personal page. The post is worth reading in full,
but I’ll give a TL;DR snippet here:
Reading both social media and blog conversations among philosophers, I often feel demoralized. The people who speak most and most insistently seem not only to be absolutely clear about what they think, but think there is no other legitimate, respectable, or even moral way to think. My trouble is usually not that I think otherwise, but that I don’t entirely know what I think. And not knowing what to think is itself sometimes cast as shameful. In too many contexts, to confess confusion or uncertainty is to confess deficiency – sometimes in philosophical acumen, sometimes in “smarts,” sometimes in moral clarity, sometimes even in basic humanity.
Most broadly, I despair of the quick condemnation, scorn, and contempt that so often animates the commentary offered by the certain, whatever the direction of their certainty. I worry that we incentivize both certainty and hiding confusion. Or, more accurately, that we encourage people to *perform* their engagement in online conversations as if their views are confidently, firmly settled – worse, as if all alternatives are justly derided and scorned. We also thereby suppress contributions by those who can’t or won’t do this.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of performative
certainty, how especially in nonpersonal encounters (online but also in our
written work) we use rhetorical certainty or vehemence as a stand-in for the
strength of our argument. I recognize in many past conversations the degree to
which I feel pressured to present my views as the only views—or the only acceptable views—on a particular subject. And
part of this certainty performance involves condemning any heterodox views, including
nuance or uncertainty. Or, more often, I find I come into a conversation already
in progress. There I suss out the consensus among my peers, discerning what the
“correct” (my side) view is. The pressure then involves performing certain
conformity to that view, repeatedly.
The performative aspect
comes in when I find myself more firmly committed to a belief after several
exchanges asserting/defending that belief. It’s rarely the case that I earn that level of certainty (via long
and careful study, fully consulting and considering possible alternative views).
Rather, I become certain because I’ve repeatedly performed certainty. My
performances summon into being an investment in that assertion.
Olberding had occasion to reflect on this dynamic again a
few months ago. I mentioned yesterday about Justin Weinberg's post about trans philosophy on Daily Nous and about the ucky conversation that followed it. Performative certainty on all sides abounded. Olberding’s
notion of performing certainty was invoked.
She herself eventually
weighed in (again, just a snippet):
One more discouraging aspect of these debates to me is how their implications launch out into my life at large. I often feel that the rhetoric of the debate demands much more than that we take a “side” or, rather, that what is required to be on a “side” is to exile, despise, and generally remove from our respect those on the other “side.” [. . .]To take [a] side is to commit to not respecting those on the other side, where “respect” just means to treat with ordinary courtesy, to assume that the other morally cares and struggles, to assume that the other suffers. So, to take the “side” is to take up a kind of arms against the other side, not only disagreeing but separating myself from those on it, treating them as enemies it would be traitorious to engage as people both serious and sincere, as if one is required to be unkind to “them” precisely to demonstrate one’s kindness to “us,” those on the “side” one takes.
The problem is, Olberding continues, is that this kind of
performative certainty just does not, cannot translate to her real life (Olberding
teaches at the University of Oklahoma). She notes that most everyone in her
life (rural Oklahoma) operates well to the right of everyone involved in this
debate. She suspects that “some philosophers would find my life, or me, morally
monstrous because I decline to purify the company I keep to those whose views
mirror my own.” Nor can she simply bracket off the reality that everyone participating
in this debate is in fact a person, a colleague. She continues:
All of this is perhaps a roundabout way of saying that the disregard of civil norms in these conversations is not confined to these conversations’ subject matter. “Civility” is regularly derided, I know, but one of the things incivility is being used to signal across these conversations is just who among us can be tolerated among us, with incivility being a way to say that “these people” are pushed out beyond the pale, that we hold “these people” in contempt. We don’t count ourselves bound to them and we actively unbind from them by treating them or speaking of them in ways colleagues do not treat colleagues. But since these are not just colleagues but also people, the concern is that there are much, much wider normative claims being implicitly made here, ones about ethics in relationships, in one’s sociality, and so forth.
Olberding laments “the dissonance entailed in realizing
that I can have more humane conversations with my rural conservative friends
amidst profoundly deeper moral disagreements than I could expect with
philosophers whose political distance from me is comparably microscopic.” She
ends by reflecting that, were she to post a simple (certain, sure, strong) “Fuck
you, you miserable aching asshole!” reply on her Facebook feed, she’d get tons
of instant likes, supportive replies expanding on the insult, etc. Whereas if
she did that in real life, her friends would think she was having an aneurism.
I think you can (as several people in replies on the comment thread did) take issue with Olberding's response vis-a-vis the specific issue of trans identities in philosophy. But as a general account/lament of how online ucky conversations go, I think she captures my sentiments perfectly.
I'd want to add, though, that I think there are occasions where some performative certainty or something like it is important--expressing sympathy for someone who is suffering, reassuring someone who needs it, setting a boundary with a difficult person. I learned early on as a teacher that having a gear of no-question-about-it certainty to shift into now and then was very useful.
But reactive certainty, defensive certainty? The certainty I find myself sliding into when I feel the need to signal my belonging to a group? This is dangerous.
More tomorrow,
JF
Friday, April 16, 2010
Differences and Deadlines
It's that time of the year again, when a deadline for some research project I've committed myself to looms ever closer. This time it's a mega-conference on performance studies. I've done that thing--that trick I tell my PhDs to try when they need to discipline themselves into working, that trick that I've pulled on myself multiple times, that trick I inevitably kick myself for using: if you need to write a brand-new piece of research, just sign up for a conference where you'll be presenting the work before a group of influential critical scholars. You'll get it done.
It works like a charm--most of the time--but it comes at the cost of some heavy stress when said due date is near and said research product is, well, still in the subjunctive phase. Thus my heavy stress.
The project I've promised to complete involves a brief paper laying out some connections between evangelical proselytism and liberal--anti-capitalist, to be exact--activism. In my work on various modes of evangelical outreach, I've run across more than one present-day evangelist referencing some mid-century evangelicals who noted how committed communists (the Stalinist/Maoist/Castro-esque variety) were to spreading their Marxist gospel of anti-capitalism. Why, plead the evangelists (past and present) can't Christians be at least as committed as the godless commies?
My seed of a contention--as yet untested by the rigors of research and writing--is that the situation in US left-leaning activism has reversed itself. That is, I think the time has come for some on the left to ask if anti-capitalist progressives can't get a little old-time religious fervor for spreading their own gospel.
Yet a quick glance at national headlines suggests that we're currently undergoing one of the most polarized and polarizing times in--well, in my memory, at least. I just watched a clip about the Tea Party protests rallying support to overturn the health care reform bill, to return to a more pro-market system (though, as many journalists and pundits point out, the reform bill itself uses market tools, not socialism). Any religious fervor about anti-capitalism must encounter a similarly passionate set of beliefs from Tea Partiers. There's a fundamental difference here that renders the hopes for conversion to or from either side dim.
I've long been drawn to writers and theorists who deal with the problems of plurality, tolerance, and disagreement. To whit: how shall we disagree? and to what end? In a number of different works, literary critic Wayne C. Booth asks us to consider "the company we keep" in life and in fiction. How do we imagine and interact with the other who passionately holds beliefs at odds with our own?
Booth had some personal experience with this as a dean during the 1960s eras of protests and student-led sit-ins. There he found himself confronted by and engaged with activists who were asserting views--or at least methods--at odds with the stances he was obliged/convinced to take as dean. Such was the intensity of disagreement, he says, that at some points one side wouldn't really launch criticisms so much as merely repeat their opponent's views verbatim ("You believe X, Y, and Z!"), assuming that the restatement stood as an obvious rebuttal of the point itself.
I was caught by that image--the disbelieving repetition of another's thesis as (and instead of) an actual rebuttal. Examples from my own life spring to mind: "You believe that health care should be a right guaranteed by government!" To me, or to an audience of like-minded progressives, such a statement functions as a simple affirmation or a happy discovery. But to others, uttering such a statement would be a call for boos and hisses. It would be formally (though not in magnitude) similar to a let-me-get-this-straight-you-really-believe-this statement that, say, person X thinks that kittens should be ground up into dogfood.
The disbelieving repetition-as-argument (I'll have to see if Booth has a better term for it) depends utterly on shared conventions between audience and speaker (repeater, I should say). It's an anti-manifesto. Rather than stating affirmatively what one's side really does believe, you state your opponents' views so baldly as to throw your own side's views into sharp relief.
It's important to distinguish this rhetorical maneuver from a related but unfair variant--the straw man technique or willful falsification, where someone attributes to an opponent views that the opponent simply doesn't espouse. No, in the kind of speech scenario Booth describes, both sides are able to state the others' views fairly and without distortion. I know exactly what you believe, an activist in this situation says, and I disagree to such an extreme that the belief as such is anathema to me and mine.
Now this is fundamental difference. Many of the critics I draw on regularly--Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Ranciere in particular--insist on the value of this level of difference to the operation of democratic politics. Mouffe sees a great deal of danger in the will to mute or smooth over disagreements through the search for consensus or moderation. Honest antagonism--or as she would prefer agonism--is in her view the fuel for the democratic motor.
My problem? I agree intellectually with Mouffe that fundamental disagreements are inevitable and ought not be rationalized away as malfunctions to be repaired. But emotionally, such conflict--the kind of conflict Booth recalls--makes me queasy. I know it's odd for a scholar of theatre to say this, but I hate conflict.
I'm all the more impressed, then, by people such as Booth who make it their life's work to begin at the fundamental disagreement scenario ask "What now? What's the ethical thing to do?" Much of Mouffe's work (and I suspect much of Booth's) involves not so much advocating an exact, silver-bullet answer but warning against the will to give up, to dismiss the other totally and--on that pretext--pursue their destruction.
To restate--what attracts me to present-day evangelism as a subject is how it, too, very often begins from an assumption of fundamental difference--those who believe on the risen Christ and those for whom the gospel is foolishness--and refuses to give up. I'm intrigued especially by worldview evangelisms that enjoin Christians to educate themselves so fully in other (i.e., non-evangelical-Christian) beliefs so that the evangelists could in fact state those beliefs fairly and clearly.
I'm not yet convinced that the capitalist/anti-capitalist disagreements going on in this country (which for the most part are more like very-strict-capitalist versus slightly-less-strict-capitalists) have reached even the point at which either side can state the other's point of view clearly and fairly. I wonder, then, if there isn't the potential for anti-capitalist progressives like me to be the first to show empathy for the other's worldview as a first step to progressive evangelization...
Hm.
More later,
JF
It works like a charm--most of the time--but it comes at the cost of some heavy stress when said due date is near and said research product is, well, still in the subjunctive phase. Thus my heavy stress.
The project I've promised to complete involves a brief paper laying out some connections between evangelical proselytism and liberal--anti-capitalist, to be exact--activism. In my work on various modes of evangelical outreach, I've run across more than one present-day evangelist referencing some mid-century evangelicals who noted how committed communists (the Stalinist/Maoist/Castro-esque variety) were to spreading their Marxist gospel of anti-capitalism. Why, plead the evangelists (past and present) can't Christians be at least as committed as the godless commies?
My seed of a contention--as yet untested by the rigors of research and writing--is that the situation in US left-leaning activism has reversed itself. That is, I think the time has come for some on the left to ask if anti-capitalist progressives can't get a little old-time religious fervor for spreading their own gospel.
Yet a quick glance at national headlines suggests that we're currently undergoing one of the most polarized and polarizing times in--well, in my memory, at least. I just watched a clip about the Tea Party protests rallying support to overturn the health care reform bill, to return to a more pro-market system (though, as many journalists and pundits point out, the reform bill itself uses market tools, not socialism). Any religious fervor about anti-capitalism must encounter a similarly passionate set of beliefs from Tea Partiers. There's a fundamental difference here that renders the hopes for conversion to or from either side dim.
I've long been drawn to writers and theorists who deal with the problems of plurality, tolerance, and disagreement. To whit: how shall we disagree? and to what end? In a number of different works, literary critic Wayne C. Booth asks us to consider "the company we keep" in life and in fiction. How do we imagine and interact with the other who passionately holds beliefs at odds with our own?
Booth had some personal experience with this as a dean during the 1960s eras of protests and student-led sit-ins. There he found himself confronted by and engaged with activists who were asserting views--or at least methods--at odds with the stances he was obliged/convinced to take as dean. Such was the intensity of disagreement, he says, that at some points one side wouldn't really launch criticisms so much as merely repeat their opponent's views verbatim ("You believe X, Y, and Z!"), assuming that the restatement stood as an obvious rebuttal of the point itself.
I was caught by that image--the disbelieving repetition of another's thesis as (and instead of) an actual rebuttal. Examples from my own life spring to mind: "You believe that health care should be a right guaranteed by government!" To me, or to an audience of like-minded progressives, such a statement functions as a simple affirmation or a happy discovery. But to others, uttering such a statement would be a call for boos and hisses. It would be formally (though not in magnitude) similar to a let-me-get-this-straight-you-really-believe-this statement that, say, person X thinks that kittens should be ground up into dogfood.
The disbelieving repetition-as-argument (I'll have to see if Booth has a better term for it) depends utterly on shared conventions between audience and speaker (repeater, I should say). It's an anti-manifesto. Rather than stating affirmatively what one's side really does believe, you state your opponents' views so baldly as to throw your own side's views into sharp relief.
It's important to distinguish this rhetorical maneuver from a related but unfair variant--the straw man technique or willful falsification, where someone attributes to an opponent views that the opponent simply doesn't espouse. No, in the kind of speech scenario Booth describes, both sides are able to state the others' views fairly and without distortion. I know exactly what you believe, an activist in this situation says, and I disagree to such an extreme that the belief as such is anathema to me and mine.
Now this is fundamental difference. Many of the critics I draw on regularly--Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Ranciere in particular--insist on the value of this level of difference to the operation of democratic politics. Mouffe sees a great deal of danger in the will to mute or smooth over disagreements through the search for consensus or moderation. Honest antagonism--or as she would prefer agonism--is in her view the fuel for the democratic motor.
My problem? I agree intellectually with Mouffe that fundamental disagreements are inevitable and ought not be rationalized away as malfunctions to be repaired. But emotionally, such conflict--the kind of conflict Booth recalls--makes me queasy. I know it's odd for a scholar of theatre to say this, but I hate conflict.
I'm all the more impressed, then, by people such as Booth who make it their life's work to begin at the fundamental disagreement scenario ask "What now? What's the ethical thing to do?" Much of Mouffe's work (and I suspect much of Booth's) involves not so much advocating an exact, silver-bullet answer but warning against the will to give up, to dismiss the other totally and--on that pretext--pursue their destruction.
To restate--what attracts me to present-day evangelism as a subject is how it, too, very often begins from an assumption of fundamental difference--those who believe on the risen Christ and those for whom the gospel is foolishness--and refuses to give up. I'm intrigued especially by worldview evangelisms that enjoin Christians to educate themselves so fully in other (i.e., non-evangelical-Christian) beliefs so that the evangelists could in fact state those beliefs fairly and clearly.
I'm not yet convinced that the capitalist/anti-capitalist disagreements going on in this country (which for the most part are more like very-strict-capitalist versus slightly-less-strict-capitalists) have reached even the point at which either side can state the other's point of view clearly and fairly. I wonder, then, if there isn't the potential for anti-capitalist progressives like me to be the first to show empathy for the other's worldview as a first step to progressive evangelization...
Hm.
More later,
JF
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Health Care, Faith, and Kengor's column
In the wake of the Healthcare Reform victory (hurrah), I found a curious response from conservative Christianity, an opinion piece by Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College. It's reprinted here on Warren Throckmorton's blog.
Kengor bemoans the fact that so many on the partisan left have invoked Christian themes in their pro-Reform Bill rhetoric, asserting in his view that this bill was God's own bill, affirmed by Christ himself. Kengor contrasts that embrace of Christian rhetoric with the "eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith" leveled by those same liberals. The left's mobilization of Christian "social justice" rhetoric is all the more galling, continues Kengor, in that it includes provisions for abortion coverage, which Kengor sees as a disqualification for the bill's having anything at all to do with achieving Christlike goals. His piece concludes thus:
First, as a left-leaning Christian, I've not been shy about citing my faith as the grounds for my support for the health care reform (i.e., steps toward socialization of health care--and I reemphasize that the bill that just passed is nothing like the full-scale socialization I think ought to happen). I think it's unconscionable that our society makes health care--even and especially life-saving (or quality-of-live-saving) health care--contingent upon a patient's ability to pay for it. My convictions regarding love for the neighbor over love for oneself, the proper ethical treatment of the poor and the sick, the skeptical attitude toward worldly wealth accumulation expressed in the gospels--all of these move me to resist a society where profit for a very few outweighs the good for a great many.
To affirm that my faith inspires me to support this bill, however, is something utterly different than asserting that God personally supports this particular piece of US legislation. I understand God as imposing upon Christians certain ethical guidelines to be applied (in the rich sense of checking in with, thinking deeply about, wrestling with) to life in general. I do not see God or Christ as writing (via verbal inspiration or by proxy) specific laws to be passed. Nor have I ever heard any health care supporter assert anything of the sort. Nor does Kengor cite a single politician, theologian, or social group who asserts anything of the sort.
Kengor charges the liberal left with unfairly castigating George W. Bush with religious fanaticism every time he so much as mentioned his prayer life, even though practically every president before him and Obama after him invoked Christian-religious themes in a variety of circumstances. Now, I believe one can study how and to what extent Bush II mobilized Christian rhetoric (and the kind of Christian rhetoric so mobilized) versus how and to what extent Obama mobilized it and conclude fairly that some stark contrasts separate how each used Christianity and to what ends.
But, insofar as critics decry Bush's (or any politician's) mention of his religious faith in the public sphere as inappropriate, I can agree. I've argued before against the idea that faith is purely private and must remain segregated from public stances. Rather, one's faith (in the broad sense, not just a religious sense) inevitably plays a role in the dynamics of one's positions and arguments. Banning faith from public sphere discourse only drives complicates the democratic process of exchanging ideas and fighting for/against/about different ideals. We need to become more adept at discussing faith-based stances, not less.
Problems arise, however, when faith gets played not as one factor in a decision-making process but as the only factor, a debate-stopper. The battle over abortion provisions in the health care bill,and the related struggles by many faith-based opponents of abortion over whether or not to support the bill illustrates this distinction. For Christians undergoing this struggle, their faith moves them to consider prenatal life as invested with personhood, generally from conception onward (not at all my own conviction, for the record). A bill that refuses to ban abortions in the strongest, most stringent terms, then, is from this perspective, a bill that tolerates medical murder. Yet so much of the rest of the bill moves in directions that do good--that provide coverage for the uninsured, that prevent companies from denying coverage for specious reasons, etc. And proponents of the bill strove mightily to craft policies that limited abortion provisions. The result? Some pro-life advocates ended up supporting the bill; others did not.
This was, I offer, a political struggle in which dynamic conversations about a faith-based conviction played a large role. At the fracture point were people--some people, at least--on both sides who understood and respected the faith convictions of their opponents, even if they disagreed with them.
I detect none of that respect in Kengor's column. For him, the abortion issue in the context of the health care bill isn't a difficult ethical issue that people of good faith--people within the overall Christian pro-life community--can disagree on. Rather, in Kengor's argument Christian faith emerges as a black-and-white stance against abortions (apparently, all abortion, anywhere, at any time, in any conceivable circumstance). Faith doesn't foster debate or conversation; it's instead an end to conversation, a shutting of the books that brooks no nuance or disagreement. Moreover, it wipes away any possible consideration of other things the bill in question might accomplish.
This stance of Kengor's I submit, is as contradictory as the stance he attributes to the liberal left. Faith can and should be part of the public debate, he argues, but apparently only when that faith matches his own exactly. Bush II's faith was fine, for Kengor, and any disagreement with it was just liberal grousing. But Obama's faith, Pelosi's faith, and the faith of other bill supporters (Christian and otherwise, pro-choice and pro-life)--this faith is a fraud. It's illegitimate. Why? Because it isn't his own.
But if you argue, as Kengor does, that faith can and should play a part in the public sphere and in political debates, then you must accept that faith itself--what it is, what it's not; what it enjoins, what it prohibits--becomes an object for debate, a thing contested rather than simply and homogenously affirmed. I suspect that Kengor and other religious right pundits who call for faith in the public sphere don't actually want to talk about faith; rather, they want their own specific faith to end all talk. Because once you start talking about faith, then you have to acknowledge a plurality of faiths, even and especially within your own faith community. This, I submit, has never been a strength of organized Christianity, especially not in its Protestant evangelical iterations.
More later,
JF
Kengor bemoans the fact that so many on the partisan left have invoked Christian themes in their pro-Reform Bill rhetoric, asserting in his view that this bill was God's own bill, affirmed by Christ himself. Kengor contrasts that embrace of Christian rhetoric with the "eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith" leveled by those same liberals. The left's mobilization of Christian "social justice" rhetoric is all the more galling, continues Kengor, in that it includes provisions for abortion coverage, which Kengor sees as a disqualification for the bill's having anything at all to do with achieving Christlike goals. His piece concludes thus:
I want to make several quick observations here.
It’s a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior “supports” a certain agenda. Who says conversions don’t happen?
First, as a left-leaning Christian, I've not been shy about citing my faith as the grounds for my support for the health care reform (i.e., steps toward socialization of health care--and I reemphasize that the bill that just passed is nothing like the full-scale socialization I think ought to happen). I think it's unconscionable that our society makes health care--even and especially life-saving (or quality-of-live-saving) health care--contingent upon a patient's ability to pay for it. My convictions regarding love for the neighbor over love for oneself, the proper ethical treatment of the poor and the sick, the skeptical attitude toward worldly wealth accumulation expressed in the gospels--all of these move me to resist a society where profit for a very few outweighs the good for a great many.
To affirm that my faith inspires me to support this bill, however, is something utterly different than asserting that God personally supports this particular piece of US legislation. I understand God as imposing upon Christians certain ethical guidelines to be applied (in the rich sense of checking in with, thinking deeply about, wrestling with) to life in general. I do not see God or Christ as writing (via verbal inspiration or by proxy) specific laws to be passed. Nor have I ever heard any health care supporter assert anything of the sort. Nor does Kengor cite a single politician, theologian, or social group who asserts anything of the sort.
Kengor charges the liberal left with unfairly castigating George W. Bush with religious fanaticism every time he so much as mentioned his prayer life, even though practically every president before him and Obama after him invoked Christian-religious themes in a variety of circumstances. Now, I believe one can study how and to what extent Bush II mobilized Christian rhetoric (and the kind of Christian rhetoric so mobilized) versus how and to what extent Obama mobilized it and conclude fairly that some stark contrasts separate how each used Christianity and to what ends.
But, insofar as critics decry Bush's (or any politician's) mention of his religious faith in the public sphere as inappropriate, I can agree. I've argued before against the idea that faith is purely private and must remain segregated from public stances. Rather, one's faith (in the broad sense, not just a religious sense) inevitably plays a role in the dynamics of one's positions and arguments. Banning faith from public sphere discourse only drives complicates the democratic process of exchanging ideas and fighting for/against/about different ideals. We need to become more adept at discussing faith-based stances, not less.
Problems arise, however, when faith gets played not as one factor in a decision-making process but as the only factor, a debate-stopper. The battle over abortion provisions in the health care bill,and the related struggles by many faith-based opponents of abortion over whether or not to support the bill illustrates this distinction. For Christians undergoing this struggle, their faith moves them to consider prenatal life as invested with personhood, generally from conception onward (not at all my own conviction, for the record). A bill that refuses to ban abortions in the strongest, most stringent terms, then, is from this perspective, a bill that tolerates medical murder. Yet so much of the rest of the bill moves in directions that do good--that provide coverage for the uninsured, that prevent companies from denying coverage for specious reasons, etc. And proponents of the bill strove mightily to craft policies that limited abortion provisions. The result? Some pro-life advocates ended up supporting the bill; others did not.
This was, I offer, a political struggle in which dynamic conversations about a faith-based conviction played a large role. At the fracture point were people--some people, at least--on both sides who understood and respected the faith convictions of their opponents, even if they disagreed with them.
I detect none of that respect in Kengor's column. For him, the abortion issue in the context of the health care bill isn't a difficult ethical issue that people of good faith--people within the overall Christian pro-life community--can disagree on. Rather, in Kengor's argument Christian faith emerges as a black-and-white stance against abortions (apparently, all abortion, anywhere, at any time, in any conceivable circumstance). Faith doesn't foster debate or conversation; it's instead an end to conversation, a shutting of the books that brooks no nuance or disagreement. Moreover, it wipes away any possible consideration of other things the bill in question might accomplish.
This stance of Kengor's I submit, is as contradictory as the stance he attributes to the liberal left. Faith can and should be part of the public debate, he argues, but apparently only when that faith matches his own exactly. Bush II's faith was fine, for Kengor, and any disagreement with it was just liberal grousing. But Obama's faith, Pelosi's faith, and the faith of other bill supporters (Christian and otherwise, pro-choice and pro-life)--this faith is a fraud. It's illegitimate. Why? Because it isn't his own.
But if you argue, as Kengor does, that faith can and should play a part in the public sphere and in political debates, then you must accept that faith itself--what it is, what it's not; what it enjoins, what it prohibits--becomes an object for debate, a thing contested rather than simply and homogenously affirmed. I suspect that Kengor and other religious right pundits who call for faith in the public sphere don't actually want to talk about faith; rather, they want their own specific faith to end all talk. Because once you start talking about faith, then you have to acknowledge a plurality of faiths, even and especially within your own faith community. This, I submit, has never been a strength of organized Christianity, especially not in its Protestant evangelical iterations.
More later,
JF
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Tabatha and Truth-Telling
Back home from a day of driving with my father! So--I'm tired out from the trip, gearing up for the semester, about to jet off to see my partner in the upper midwest (hopefully beating the January Terror Blizzard of '10)--basically I have 1,001 things I should be doing.
What do I do instead? I watch three back-to-back episodes of Tabatha's Salon Take-over (TSTo). For those who don't know, the Bravo reality-TV series features Tabatha Coffey, a platinum-blond Australian salon owner whom struggling salon owners invite in to critique and re-vamp their businesses. Like many Bravo shows, TSTo works by formula: Tabatha watches video of struggling salon, makes various exasperated and shocked observations, swoops in, tells everyone how and why they're in trouble, makes people angry/ashamed/weepy, and then wins everyone's hearts by introducing various innovations (sometimes impressive tricks of the trade; sometimes just commonsense suggestions), which saves the struggling salon from bankruptcy.
I don't think the show is any more or less well-done than any of the other accented-expert-gives-people-needed-wake-up-call (e.g., Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, Supernanny). I have no real interest in hair salons or hairstyling. And while I've grown to respect her pedagogical techniques (she's not all sassy British put-downs) I'm not going to go out to start a fanclub for Coffey.
Why did I watch three (count them!) hours of the darn show, then? I watch, I realize, because each episode showcases glowing moments of authoritative truth-telling. "You think things are like X," says Tabatha (or Jo, or Gordon, or what have you), "but I'm here to tell you that I know X, and this [gestures contemptuously] is definitely not X. It's more Y."
It's the same scene, really, as those I most like in shows such as The West Wing--where someone legitimately aware and empowered asserts a Hard Truth to someone who needs to hear it. The scene is even better when the someone being told really thinks he or she is cock of the rock (e.g., the salon owner, the top stylist, President Bartlett).
That dramatic moment--related, I think, to what Aristotle called anagnorisis ("the recognition")--just makes my little self-confidence nerves go all a-buzz. Self-assertion has never been a strong suit of mine. I have bad emotional reflexes. Usually I tend to under-react or react after the fact to slights or boundary violations that I should confront in the moment of their occurrence. At other times I turn my insult-radar up to high, unleashing all my pent-up "Let me tell you how it really is" at the wrong person, in the wrong time, about something that does not merit any such drama. Those few times where I have actually and maturely asserted a difficult truth feel not pleasurable but fraught with anxiety (will the person listen? will my relationship with them survive this confrontation?).
These shows, however, present me with the vicarious fantasy of effective truth-telling, where the Hard Truth gets told without passive aggression or sugarcoating, and--the fantasy part--where the Telling produces results. Inevitably, the recipients of the truth-telling scenes in those shows I like absorb the news, hurt and angry, perhaps, but ultimately surrendering to the epistemic authority (or perhaps just rhetorical authority) of the teller. "Tabatha really pissed me off," says the stylist being dressed-down, "but I realize she's right. I need to do X much better. The truth hurts, but it's important to hear."
How rare that reaction is in life! How much more often my attempts at righteous truth-telling result in the person ignoring me, exploding, or (worst of all) telling me how things really are and making me realize how foolish I was to think X was the case. How rarely do I myself react productively to being told hard truths! Truth-telling of the really satisfying kind presented on TV remains, well, the purview of TV shows. It's the product of editing, dramaturgy, acting, and direction.
But confrontation and truth-telling is nonetheless necessary. My sister (the counselor) often reminds me that confrontation and self-assertion function often more for the benefit of the asserter than they do for the listener. I cannot control how the other person might take my words, but this does not absolve me of the responsibility to make my position--here's how things are--plain to them. The person to whom I speak might recognize my truth, reject it, or sever ties with me. But side-stepping such confrontation can exact longer and deeper costs.
Certainly I see the wisdom of this kind of truth-telling in interpersonal relationships.
What about political relationships? More to my point on this blog, what about relationships within the body-politic that is the Church? My time in Oklahoma this last holiday break alerted me to a number of culture-war battlefields where I feel a particular stance by some person or group--especially one labeling itself Christian--demands from me a strong response. Certainly I wish I could don an accent and a platinum-blond wig and swoop in, giving to this or that person my authoritative take on where and how his or her stance is wrong.
Intra-Christian disagreements about culture war issues, however, differ from such a fantasy in two ways: 1) often the person I want to tell off sees his or her initial statement as the "difficult truth" that needs to be told. 2) I want the other person not only to listen to my counter-statement but to agree with it, to be convinced of it.
We are urged by the author of Ephesians to speak the truth in love. How, I wonder, does that lvoe manifest in moments of confrontational honesty, especially in and around evangelical culture war issues?
More tomorrow (hopefully--still more traveling in internet-dry places),
JF
Saturday, November 7, 2009
An Off-Key Bandwagon
Sigh--just when you think it's safe to hop on the bandwagon, you hear a badly out-of-tune note in the brass section.
I ended yesterday's post half-convinced to finally join the Facebook group protesting the proposed Bahati Bill in Uganda, the bill that, among other things, condemns homosexuality as an act on par with rape and calls for the death penalty for people caught having homosexual relations. I don't see the group itself literally doing much to persuade Ugandans not to adopt the bill. Ugandans are capable of debating such bills themselves, and Western disapproval of anti-homosexuality bills can be/has been used as "proof" that the decadent homosexuals of America wish to further corrupt pristine, authentic Uganda.
Rather, I argued that the utility of such a group consisted in getting people who otherwise wouldn't be in community to join together and perhaps even begin re-encountering each other's differences. Culture war veterans who almost never have a kind word for each other now--for the space of this one issue at least--find themselves united. As they join on this one issue, as they talk and listen (well, write and read) each other's testimonies, they may in the future be less likely to dismiss their opponents as thoughtless or immoral.
But, as I checked the pro and anti Bill Facebook pages today, I find a plethora of posts by one gentleman, clearly anti-Bill, whose views are in their own way just as toxic as those contained in the Bill. A taste of two posts by this person (and, to warn, these are pretty offensive), the first from the pro-Bill page, where he's filled the visible fields with posts like this:
The african struggle for democracy - as evidenced by the creators of this group - was and still is an exercise in hypocrisy. It wasn't about liberty and the protection of human rights. It was, in retrospect, only about taking what the "bwana" or colonial master had - the big buildings, the mercedes benz, the nice sui...ts... [sic] If black people had TRULY suffered under oppression, I think we would find that they would today be the biggest supporters of freedom, the right to express oneself, the right to be who you are. That just clearly is not the case. It seems, for Ugandans (and other african people), it's alright that other people suffer, as long as "I" don't.
Or this (from the anti-Bill page):
I wish people would realise that there is no point trying to help Uganda (or the rest of sub-saharan africa for that matter) in any way. The more you try to help, the more that help is turned against you, with accusations of "imperialism", "neo-colonialism" and so on. They don't want to be helped, that much is clear. All the west has been doing for the last few decades is to encourage the dependancy cycle in african countries: liberal, white-guilt advocacy groups encourage governments to send more aid and poverty-relief schemes into Africa, the aid is rapidly used up or siphoned off by corrupt governments who use it to further entrench themselves, while asking for yet more aid. Meanwhile, on the ground, the pathetic, half-literate population follow the dictates of their own backward culture which encourages the view that political leaders are always right and the leader who shouts the loudest is the "most right".
Blech. With friends like these... I don't know the gentleman in question here, but regardless of who he is, the things he says are about as ethnocentric-racist-classist as can be. Worse, his arguments--especially as he posts them (again and again and again) on the pro-Bill page, do absolutely nothing but play into the Uganda-versus-the-West melodramatic propaganda that assists the Bill's proponents in Uganda. Nothing makes a draconian anti-homosexuality bill seem all the more vital as a defense of "authentic" Ugandan culture than a pro-homosexual rant that disparages Ugandan culture.
In defense of the Anti-Facebook page's administrators, his comments have for the most part been roundly denounced or dismissed. It's painful, though, that on the pro-Bill page he and his supporters seem to be the main face of the West.
Such are the vicissitudes of using Facebook as activism.
If there's any kind of bright side, he seems at least not to be trying to represent Western Christians. The more I think about/write about this debate, the more I think that it's a testament to the ways that Christianity can operate in ways that bypass nationalist loyalties and ideologies. Westerners as Westerners may not have much of a place to stand in criticizing Ugandans' anti-gay attitudes (attitudes which are of course by no means shared by all Ugandans). But Western evangelicals as Bible-believing conservative Christians--and, yes, as opponents of the GLBT movement--may have the ability to speak (some degree of) truth in love.
Again, I think the importance of this debate isn't so much the debate itself; indeed, I think this debate will flare out soon and people will barely remember it six months from now. Rather, this debate is a staging ground for how the Christian West relates to the Christian South.
God help us your children of all nations to recognize each other. Let all who see us engage cry out, "see how much they love one another!"
More tomorrow,
JF
I ended yesterday's post half-convinced to finally join the Facebook group protesting the proposed Bahati Bill in Uganda, the bill that, among other things, condemns homosexuality as an act on par with rape and calls for the death penalty for people caught having homosexual relations. I don't see the group itself literally doing much to persuade Ugandans not to adopt the bill. Ugandans are capable of debating such bills themselves, and Western disapproval of anti-homosexuality bills can be/has been used as "proof" that the decadent homosexuals of America wish to further corrupt pristine, authentic Uganda.
Rather, I argued that the utility of such a group consisted in getting people who otherwise wouldn't be in community to join together and perhaps even begin re-encountering each other's differences. Culture war veterans who almost never have a kind word for each other now--for the space of this one issue at least--find themselves united. As they join on this one issue, as they talk and listen (well, write and read) each other's testimonies, they may in the future be less likely to dismiss their opponents as thoughtless or immoral.
But, as I checked the pro and anti Bill Facebook pages today, I find a plethora of posts by one gentleman, clearly anti-Bill, whose views are in their own way just as toxic as those contained in the Bill. A taste of two posts by this person (and, to warn, these are pretty offensive), the first from the pro-Bill page, where he's filled the visible fields with posts like this:
The african struggle for democracy - as evidenced by the creators of this group - was and still is an exercise in hypocrisy. It wasn't about liberty and the protection of human rights. It was, in retrospect, only about taking what the "bwana" or colonial master had - the big buildings, the mercedes benz, the nice sui...ts... [sic] If black people had TRULY suffered under oppression, I think we would find that they would today be the biggest supporters of freedom, the right to express oneself, the right to be who you are. That just clearly is not the case. It seems, for Ugandans (and other african people), it's alright that other people suffer, as long as "I" don't.
Or this (from the anti-Bill page):
I wish people would realise that there is no point trying to help Uganda (or the rest of sub-saharan africa for that matter) in any way. The more you try to help, the more that help is turned against you, with accusations of "imperialism", "neo-colonialism" and so on. They don't want to be helped, that much is clear. All the west has been doing for the last few decades is to encourage the dependancy cycle in african countries: liberal, white-guilt advocacy groups encourage governments to send more aid and poverty-relief schemes into Africa, the aid is rapidly used up or siphoned off by corrupt governments who use it to further entrench themselves, while asking for yet more aid. Meanwhile, on the ground, the pathetic, half-literate population follow the dictates of their own backward culture which encourages the view that political leaders are always right and the leader who shouts the loudest is the "most right".
Blech. With friends like these... I don't know the gentleman in question here, but regardless of who he is, the things he says are about as ethnocentric-racist-classist as can be. Worse, his arguments--especially as he posts them (again and again and again) on the pro-Bill page, do absolutely nothing but play into the Uganda-versus-the-West melodramatic propaganda that assists the Bill's proponents in Uganda. Nothing makes a draconian anti-homosexuality bill seem all the more vital as a defense of "authentic" Ugandan culture than a pro-homosexual rant that disparages Ugandan culture.
In defense of the Anti-Facebook page's administrators, his comments have for the most part been roundly denounced or dismissed. It's painful, though, that on the pro-Bill page he and his supporters seem to be the main face of the West.
Such are the vicissitudes of using Facebook as activism.
If there's any kind of bright side, he seems at least not to be trying to represent Western Christians. The more I think about/write about this debate, the more I think that it's a testament to the ways that Christianity can operate in ways that bypass nationalist loyalties and ideologies. Westerners as Westerners may not have much of a place to stand in criticizing Ugandans' anti-gay attitudes (attitudes which are of course by no means shared by all Ugandans). But Western evangelicals as Bible-believing conservative Christians--and, yes, as opponents of the GLBT movement--may have the ability to speak (some degree of) truth in love.
Again, I think the importance of this debate isn't so much the debate itself; indeed, I think this debate will flare out soon and people will barely remember it six months from now. Rather, this debate is a staging ground for how the Christian West relates to the Christian South.
God help us your children of all nations to recognize each other. Let all who see us engage cry out, "see how much they love one another!"
More tomorrow,
JF
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
More About the Ugandan Bill
The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill debate proceeds apace, both within and without the country itself.
This editorial from Sylvia Tamale of Makerere University provides some helpful background information on Uganda's longstanding criminalization of homosexual behavior as well as more evidence that Ugandans are not of one mind on this issue. From a US, conservative-Christian perspective, Warren Throckmorton writes this rather eloquent editorial posing the cliched-but-compelling question, What Would Jesus Do? The Facebook pages, both anti-Bill and pro-Bill, continue to garner members.
From the comments and from the text of the bill itself, the mentality behind the legislation appears to view homosexuality (primarily male homosexuality) as an always coercive violation of another person. Several of the Ugandan commentators ask perplexedly why Western Christians would deny them the right to criminalize an offense they consider to be as awful as rape or molestation. The idea that any male could be homosexual and enjoy consensual sexual contact with another homosexual male seems well-nigh unthinkable. Other arguments for the bill cite nature, reasoning that since sex is of course for procreation, homosexuality is contrary to nature itself.
Christian groups, both conservative and otherwise, both from Africa and from abroad, continue to issue denouncements of the bill, urging Ugandan Christians to reconsider their support for its draconian measures. Several pastors from the Church of Uganda have in fact recommended that the death penalty clause be removed, though many still support the life imprisonment clauses.
Disturbing sentiments such as the latter from some Ugandan Christian leaders ("don't kill them, but do lock them away forever") highlight the tensions emerging in global Christianity as Western denominations encounter the explosion of members in developing nations. In the Anglican and United Methodist Churches, for example, the influence of African members have breathed new life into the conservative wings of those denomination, as they almost uniformly take extremely conservative stands on issues such as sexuality and the role of women in ministry.
In the General Conferences of the UMC (i.e., the once-every-four-years meeting of representatives from the entire denomination) I've been to, the African delegations played a particularly important role in debates about GLBT issues. Their testimonies and arguments draw special attention--one might even say deference--from the US members who are keenly aware of the need for conscientious fellowship with overseas brothers and sisters.
Distressingly from my perspective, statements about GLBT issues by African delegates often mirrored the exasperated, why-is-this-even-up-for-debate tones of the Ugandan blog commentators. Pleas by various US-based delegates for their overseas brethren to extend to US congregations the same degree of cultural considerations (e.g., realize what it means to be a pastor in San Francisco) that the brethren themselves enjoy (non-US Conferences have a greater degree of flexibility in following UMC Discipline than US Conferences do) largely fell on deaf ears. The GLBT issue, in the arguments I heard from several African delegates, is an all-or-nothing litmus test of Christianity. That the church would even consider the possibility of, say, ordaining an openly gay or lesbian person is evidence of how decadent the American church has become. Of course, such anti-GLBT sentiments jibed perfectly with those of the more conservative sectors of the US delegation, who were for once happy to be the advocates of diversity within the church.
US conservatives in the Anglican Communion have similarly reached out to African Anglican Bishops as a way to disassociate themselves with the US Episcopal Church, creating the novel situation of African missionary outposts in the US. With these African Anglicans, US conservatives find a church home that conforms to their beliefs about sexuality (heteros only, please) and female ordination (none of that, please).
I am curious, then, to see how United Methodist and Anglican clergy in and around Uganda feel about this bill. I spoke yesterday of "intervention." As I hope was clear, I do not see that the US has any real authority to intervene in Uganda's internal affairs.
As a Christian living in communion with Ugandan Christians, however--more, as a Methodist, I feel a different kind of intervention is possible and appropriate. While I am skeptical that a Facebook page against the Bill can exert much persuasive power, I support overtures by people like Throckmorton that attempt to meet pro-Bill Ugandan Christians on their own ground.
I've noted that some more liberal GLBT advocacy groups have argued that various conservative and (especially) ex-gay ministries bear much of the blame for the Ugandan bill to begin with and that such ministries have been slow or tepid in their response. Though I have considerable qualms about ex-gay ministries (a label, I should note, that many such ministries do not embrace), I do not see such criticisms as entirely fair. Uganda, it seems to me, did not require the special intervention of a handful of US ministers over the summer to suddenly decide to prosecute homosexuality. Moreover, as much as I may disagree with the pathologization of homosexuality, the bill's provisions convince me that seeing GLBT people as people in need of prayer or treatment is preferable to seeing them as rapists or (as one facebook commentator put it) "sewage."
Randy Thomas of Exodus International (the premiere "ex-gay" ministry) was quoted on one anti-ex-gay blog: "It isn’t going to be a gay activist yelling at the Ugandan government that will actually get our ssa [same-sex-attracted] brothers and sisters out of jail. It will be people like me pleading with these leaders to recognize the Christ-likeness inherent in respecting self-determination and the dignity of every soul that draws breath." (quoted on this page). I have to admit that Thomas has a point. Reading the conservative commentators on Throckmorton's blog doing their darndest to make a reasoned, Biblically sound argument against the bill reinforced Thomas's point: if the anti-gay conservative Christians in Uganda are going to change, it will likely be from people like Thomas, Throckmorton, and others.
That reality, in turn, forces me to rethink how I position myself in relation to such people.
Part of what makes this whole situation so murky is how it reformats the topography of faith-based culture wars. As the century progresses, conservatives in the US are likely to find, I think, that what counts as "conservative" or "traditional Christian" here in the States differs quite a bit from what is meant by those same terms in Africa. Indeed, Christianity itself takes different forms in various parts of the global south, where Pentecostal traditions of speaking in tongues, faith healing, ecstatic worship styles, and a much more strictly conservative theology seem to enjoy the most robust growth rates.
I am curious, then, to see how this debate turns out.
More tomorrow,
JF
PS: I am curious about the stance of the United Methodist Bishop of the East African Annual Conference, Daniel Wandabula. Anyone know?
This editorial from Sylvia Tamale of Makerere University provides some helpful background information on Uganda's longstanding criminalization of homosexual behavior as well as more evidence that Ugandans are not of one mind on this issue. From a US, conservative-Christian perspective, Warren Throckmorton writes this rather eloquent editorial posing the cliched-but-compelling question, What Would Jesus Do? The Facebook pages, both anti-Bill and pro-Bill, continue to garner members.
From the comments and from the text of the bill itself, the mentality behind the legislation appears to view homosexuality (primarily male homosexuality) as an always coercive violation of another person. Several of the Ugandan commentators ask perplexedly why Western Christians would deny them the right to criminalize an offense they consider to be as awful as rape or molestation. The idea that any male could be homosexual and enjoy consensual sexual contact with another homosexual male seems well-nigh unthinkable. Other arguments for the bill cite nature, reasoning that since sex is of course for procreation, homosexuality is contrary to nature itself.
Christian groups, both conservative and otherwise, both from Africa and from abroad, continue to issue denouncements of the bill, urging Ugandan Christians to reconsider their support for its draconian measures. Several pastors from the Church of Uganda have in fact recommended that the death penalty clause be removed, though many still support the life imprisonment clauses.
Disturbing sentiments such as the latter from some Ugandan Christian leaders ("don't kill them, but do lock them away forever") highlight the tensions emerging in global Christianity as Western denominations encounter the explosion of members in developing nations. In the Anglican and United Methodist Churches, for example, the influence of African members have breathed new life into the conservative wings of those denomination, as they almost uniformly take extremely conservative stands on issues such as sexuality and the role of women in ministry.
In the General Conferences of the UMC (i.e., the once-every-four-years meeting of representatives from the entire denomination) I've been to, the African delegations played a particularly important role in debates about GLBT issues. Their testimonies and arguments draw special attention--one might even say deference--from the US members who are keenly aware of the need for conscientious fellowship with overseas brothers and sisters.
Distressingly from my perspective, statements about GLBT issues by African delegates often mirrored the exasperated, why-is-this-even-up-for-debate tones of the Ugandan blog commentators. Pleas by various US-based delegates for their overseas brethren to extend to US congregations the same degree of cultural considerations (e.g., realize what it means to be a pastor in San Francisco) that the brethren themselves enjoy (non-US Conferences have a greater degree of flexibility in following UMC Discipline than US Conferences do) largely fell on deaf ears. The GLBT issue, in the arguments I heard from several African delegates, is an all-or-nothing litmus test of Christianity. That the church would even consider the possibility of, say, ordaining an openly gay or lesbian person is evidence of how decadent the American church has become. Of course, such anti-GLBT sentiments jibed perfectly with those of the more conservative sectors of the US delegation, who were for once happy to be the advocates of diversity within the church.
US conservatives in the Anglican Communion have similarly reached out to African Anglican Bishops as a way to disassociate themselves with the US Episcopal Church, creating the novel situation of African missionary outposts in the US. With these African Anglicans, US conservatives find a church home that conforms to their beliefs about sexuality (heteros only, please) and female ordination (none of that, please).
I am curious, then, to see how United Methodist and Anglican clergy in and around Uganda feel about this bill. I spoke yesterday of "intervention." As I hope was clear, I do not see that the US has any real authority to intervene in Uganda's internal affairs.
As a Christian living in communion with Ugandan Christians, however--more, as a Methodist, I feel a different kind of intervention is possible and appropriate. While I am skeptical that a Facebook page against the Bill can exert much persuasive power, I support overtures by people like Throckmorton that attempt to meet pro-Bill Ugandan Christians on their own ground.
I've noted that some more liberal GLBT advocacy groups have argued that various conservative and (especially) ex-gay ministries bear much of the blame for the Ugandan bill to begin with and that such ministries have been slow or tepid in their response. Though I have considerable qualms about ex-gay ministries (a label, I should note, that many such ministries do not embrace), I do not see such criticisms as entirely fair. Uganda, it seems to me, did not require the special intervention of a handful of US ministers over the summer to suddenly decide to prosecute homosexuality. Moreover, as much as I may disagree with the pathologization of homosexuality, the bill's provisions convince me that seeing GLBT people as people in need of prayer or treatment is preferable to seeing them as rapists or (as one facebook commentator put it) "sewage."
Randy Thomas of Exodus International (the premiere "ex-gay" ministry) was quoted on one anti-ex-gay blog: "It isn’t going to be a gay activist yelling at the Ugandan government that will actually get our ssa [same-sex-attracted] brothers and sisters out of jail. It will be people like me pleading with these leaders to recognize the Christ-likeness inherent in respecting self-determination and the dignity of every soul that draws breath." (quoted on this page). I have to admit that Thomas has a point. Reading the conservative commentators on Throckmorton's blog doing their darndest to make a reasoned, Biblically sound argument against the bill reinforced Thomas's point: if the anti-gay conservative Christians in Uganda are going to change, it will likely be from people like Thomas, Throckmorton, and others.
That reality, in turn, forces me to rethink how I position myself in relation to such people.
Part of what makes this whole situation so murky is how it reformats the topography of faith-based culture wars. As the century progresses, conservatives in the US are likely to find, I think, that what counts as "conservative" or "traditional Christian" here in the States differs quite a bit from what is meant by those same terms in Africa. Indeed, Christianity itself takes different forms in various parts of the global south, where Pentecostal traditions of speaking in tongues, faith healing, ecstatic worship styles, and a much more strictly conservative theology seem to enjoy the most robust growth rates.
I am curious, then, to see how this debate turns out.
More tomorrow,
JF
PS: I am curious about the stance of the United Methodist Bishop of the East African Annual Conference, Daniel Wandabula. Anyone know?
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Interventions and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill
I've been thinking about the bystander issue in relation to GLBT issues lately largely because of this bill, which was proposed in Uganda.
The bill (which seems to be known in various internet debates by both supporters and opponents as Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill), at least in current drafts, essentially defines homosexuality as a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even execution. Also criminalized in the bill are offenses like "aiding and abetting homosexuality" or "conspiracy to engage in homosexuality," each punishable by a sentence of seven years in prison.
The proposed bill, not surprisingly, has drawn sharp criticism from those in the GLBT rights community. Indeed, even conservative Christian groups are raising protests against the bill (see this Facebook page, for example, or this statement from Rick Warren). The Obama administration has condemned the bill, as have other countries and human rights organizations.
Uganda, never a go-to locale for GLBT rights, has largely rejected what it sees as outside attempts to meddle in its affairs. Supporters of the bill have started their own Facebook group, even as a number of Ugandans--including many Christian groups and speakers--have spoken out against the bill.
Complicating this issue, of course, is the fact that a number of ex-gay ministers had recently visited Uganda to hold a mini-conference regarding ministry to and help for homosexual people (i.e., get them to stop living as homosexual people, convince them to see their sexuality as a corruption or disorder, etc.). I need to do more research on this, but least some of the ministers supporting the bill in Uganda appear to be drawing on arguments used by these ex-gay speakers. Several in the "ex-ex-gay" movement who watchdog and criticize ex-gay organizations, have laid the blame for Uganda's current bill at the feet of ex-gay ministries. The ex-gay ministries themselves, of course, take offense at this allegation, firing back with posts and protests of their own.
For a taste of the depth of the debate from a number of sides, I recommend this posting on a blog by Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian psychology professor who has been very active in organizing US-based opposition to the bill (he founded the anti-bill Facebook page I linked above). This post, which relates a statement by Ugandan ministers and groups opposed to the bill, fascinates me largely for its ongoing (as of this writing) comments section. There you can read posts from a surprisingly wide spectrum of viewpoints, from ex-gays to gay-affirmative Christians and everything in between.
Particularly striking are comments from a poster who identifies himself (I believe it's a himself) as a Ugandan national very much in favor of the bill. In addition to lambasting the other posters for meddling in Uganda's own affairs, the poster expresses flat disbelief that anyone who calls herself a Christian could possibly be against the legislation.
The comments from that poster and from others provoke a startling realization about just how radically apart we who exist in the global body of Christ can be. I write often of fundamental disagreements between believers, but here is a fundamental disagreement of an order rarely seen in present-day US contexts. Indeed, the example of the bill's supporters (which would no doubt include many non-Ugandan Christians such as Fred Phelps) contrasts starkly with most of the pro-family/anti-gay/ex-gay movements here. Compared to people who see homosexuality as worse than murder and homosexuals as richly deserving of death, ex-gay ministries look positively liberal.
Mucking up all of these debates, of course, is the postcolonial context of massive, long-term Western and European interventions into African cultures. Indeed, "interventions" of various sorts (economic, military, governmental, cultural, religious), many of which cloak themselves with the best of intentions, have long defined the West's approach to African affairs, casting "the West" and "Africa" as characters in an old fashioned melodrama. In more recent narratives, the West becomes "intervener"--blessed or tasked with the power (ability, maturity, moral superiority) necessary to save the poor, benighted, self-defeating African nations (who cannot or will not help themselves). Centuries of such unequal roleplay contaminate present-day relations, making the question I've asked in the last few days--how and when to intervene--almost impossible to answer.
That vexed and vexing relationship, however, promises to grow only more pressing throughout this century as the locus of energy for Christianity shifts to the global south. Issues like the current Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill--itself redolent with conflicting histories of Christian interventions and counter-interventions--presage similar conflicts yet to come.
This is already apparent in the United Methodist Church.
More tomorrow,
JF
The bill (which seems to be known in various internet debates by both supporters and opponents as Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill), at least in current drafts, essentially defines homosexuality as a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even execution. Also criminalized in the bill are offenses like "aiding and abetting homosexuality" or "conspiracy to engage in homosexuality," each punishable by a sentence of seven years in prison.
The proposed bill, not surprisingly, has drawn sharp criticism from those in the GLBT rights community. Indeed, even conservative Christian groups are raising protests against the bill (see this Facebook page, for example, or this statement from Rick Warren). The Obama administration has condemned the bill, as have other countries and human rights organizations.
Uganda, never a go-to locale for GLBT rights, has largely rejected what it sees as outside attempts to meddle in its affairs. Supporters of the bill have started their own Facebook group, even as a number of Ugandans--including many Christian groups and speakers--have spoken out against the bill.
Complicating this issue, of course, is the fact that a number of ex-gay ministers had recently visited Uganda to hold a mini-conference regarding ministry to and help for homosexual people (i.e., get them to stop living as homosexual people, convince them to see their sexuality as a corruption or disorder, etc.). I need to do more research on this, but least some of the ministers supporting the bill in Uganda appear to be drawing on arguments used by these ex-gay speakers. Several in the "ex-ex-gay" movement who watchdog and criticize ex-gay organizations, have laid the blame for Uganda's current bill at the feet of ex-gay ministries. The ex-gay ministries themselves, of course, take offense at this allegation, firing back with posts and protests of their own.
For a taste of the depth of the debate from a number of sides, I recommend this posting on a blog by Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian psychology professor who has been very active in organizing US-based opposition to the bill (he founded the anti-bill Facebook page I linked above). This post, which relates a statement by Ugandan ministers and groups opposed to the bill, fascinates me largely for its ongoing (as of this writing) comments section. There you can read posts from a surprisingly wide spectrum of viewpoints, from ex-gays to gay-affirmative Christians and everything in between.
Particularly striking are comments from a poster who identifies himself (I believe it's a himself) as a Ugandan national very much in favor of the bill. In addition to lambasting the other posters for meddling in Uganda's own affairs, the poster expresses flat disbelief that anyone who calls herself a Christian could possibly be against the legislation.
The comments from that poster and from others provoke a startling realization about just how radically apart we who exist in the global body of Christ can be. I write often of fundamental disagreements between believers, but here is a fundamental disagreement of an order rarely seen in present-day US contexts. Indeed, the example of the bill's supporters (which would no doubt include many non-Ugandan Christians such as Fred Phelps) contrasts starkly with most of the pro-family/anti-gay/ex-gay movements here. Compared to people who see homosexuality as worse than murder and homosexuals as richly deserving of death, ex-gay ministries look positively liberal.
Mucking up all of these debates, of course, is the postcolonial context of massive, long-term Western and European interventions into African cultures. Indeed, "interventions" of various sorts (economic, military, governmental, cultural, religious), many of which cloak themselves with the best of intentions, have long defined the West's approach to African affairs, casting "the West" and "Africa" as characters in an old fashioned melodrama. In more recent narratives, the West becomes "intervener"--blessed or tasked with the power (ability, maturity, moral superiority) necessary to save the poor, benighted, self-defeating African nations (who cannot or will not help themselves). Centuries of such unequal roleplay contaminate present-day relations, making the question I've asked in the last few days--how and when to intervene--almost impossible to answer.
That vexed and vexing relationship, however, promises to grow only more pressing throughout this century as the locus of energy for Christianity shifts to the global south. Issues like the current Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill--itself redolent with conflicting histories of Christian interventions and counter-interventions--presage similar conflicts yet to come.
This is already apparent in the United Methodist Church.
More tomorrow,
JF
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Moderation, Nuance, and Boal
To recap--I'm dubious of well-meaning calls to "agree to disagree" in ongoing debates about the status of GLBT people. This sentiment often cloaks itself in the authority of the "silent majority" or "massive middle" of people wanting just to get back to things as usual, unperturbed by squabbles about whether lesbians can be ordained or two gay men married. But such standoffish neutrality all too often bespeaks privileged disinterest, not consensus-finding. The people who call for fighting to stop are the ones who have the least stake in the battle.
This is not, however, to baptize extremism as the ideal route. I see a difference between the kind of "moderation" that results from disinterest and a moderation that results from careful, ongoing thought. Someone who thinks carefully and empathically about both sides of a debate and finds herself unable to side fully with either side occupies a wholly different position from one who simply shuts himself off from the appearance of conflict. The former's nuance contrasts starkly with the latter's simple-mindedness.
The tricky thing is, however, that nuance and standoffishness often look the same. This is never more apparent to me than in those situations where I find myself standing on the outside of a conflict looking in.
The late Brazilian theatre artist and theorist Augusto Boal created a form of social-change performance he called "the Theatre of the Oppressed." His goal, initially, involved helping people who were oppressed (economically, politically, culturally) to be able to use theatrical techniques to express and think beyond the situations in which they found themselves. Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques typically take the form of workshops for non-trained people (i.e., not professional actors) moderated by a trained artist known as the Joker. Through a series of simple games, the Joker helps the people to use staged images (e.g., frozen tableaus) to create pictures of various aspects of their lives. Feedback from other participants (in TO, everyone is called a spect-actor--watching and doing at once) help the group to see how images and, later, scenes may be sharpened to communicate clearly.
The signature TO technique is "forum theatre," in which a person stages a scenario from her life in which she felt oppressed. Perhaps the scenario replays a time when a boss told her she had to work overtime without pay, and the person felt powerless to stand up for herself. Spect-actors from the group re-create the key scene (where the boss tells her to stay late), playing it out once. The Joker then leads the group into a conversation about whether the scene seems real, who the oppressed person is, and who the oppressor seems to be.
The scene then re-plays, but with one difference: any spect-actor may call out "stop" at any point and "tap out" the person playing the oppressed person. After the switchout, the new spect-actor re-starts the scene from the stop point, but this time the new actor tries out a different strategy. The spect-actor portraying the boss must react realistically--not playing overly evil or overly lenient. Different spect-actors tap out the protagonist, trying and re-trying different techniques.
At the end, the past situation hasn't changed, but--such is the hope--the person who shared the story now sees that she has more choices available to her than she felt like she had before. Powerlessness, in Boalian theory, equates to a lack of choices. Boal's theatre does not offer a clear Key To Revolution beyond critical examination of situations that appear to have few choices. By multiplying possible choices, the person can in the future better navigate situations in which she might feel powerless.
Boal's TO (and the numerous spin-off techniques inspired by him) works like gangbusters in certain situations, particularly those in which relationships of oppression are clear and sharp. When Boal began touring and working more in "industrialized" nations (the "first world"), however, he found that his audiences often balked at identifying clear oppressor/oppressed relationships. Part of the trouble, Boal discovered, was that the people attending his workshops in, say, France or the United States often felt that classically TO scenes such as a corrupt military officer bullying a peasant were the purview of "other" nations. The "first world," went the sentiment, rarely offers such black-versus-white scenarios.
More common, Boal found, were scenes in which the spect-actors described themselves as helpless bystanders, third parties to scenes of, say, racial injustice or gender/sexuality discrimination. The struggle in those cases involved whether to intervene and how best to do so...
How, in other words, does nuance keep from stagnating into inaction?
More tomorrow,
JF
This is not, however, to baptize extremism as the ideal route. I see a difference between the kind of "moderation" that results from disinterest and a moderation that results from careful, ongoing thought. Someone who thinks carefully and empathically about both sides of a debate and finds herself unable to side fully with either side occupies a wholly different position from one who simply shuts himself off from the appearance of conflict. The former's nuance contrasts starkly with the latter's simple-mindedness.
The tricky thing is, however, that nuance and standoffishness often look the same. This is never more apparent to me than in those situations where I find myself standing on the outside of a conflict looking in.
The late Brazilian theatre artist and theorist Augusto Boal created a form of social-change performance he called "the Theatre of the Oppressed." His goal, initially, involved helping people who were oppressed (economically, politically, culturally) to be able to use theatrical techniques to express and think beyond the situations in which they found themselves. Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques typically take the form of workshops for non-trained people (i.e., not professional actors) moderated by a trained artist known as the Joker. Through a series of simple games, the Joker helps the people to use staged images (e.g., frozen tableaus) to create pictures of various aspects of their lives. Feedback from other participants (in TO, everyone is called a spect-actor--watching and doing at once) help the group to see how images and, later, scenes may be sharpened to communicate clearly.
The signature TO technique is "forum theatre," in which a person stages a scenario from her life in which she felt oppressed. Perhaps the scenario replays a time when a boss told her she had to work overtime without pay, and the person felt powerless to stand up for herself. Spect-actors from the group re-create the key scene (where the boss tells her to stay late), playing it out once. The Joker then leads the group into a conversation about whether the scene seems real, who the oppressed person is, and who the oppressor seems to be.
The scene then re-plays, but with one difference: any spect-actor may call out "stop" at any point and "tap out" the person playing the oppressed person. After the switchout, the new spect-actor re-starts the scene from the stop point, but this time the new actor tries out a different strategy. The spect-actor portraying the boss must react realistically--not playing overly evil or overly lenient. Different spect-actors tap out the protagonist, trying and re-trying different techniques.
At the end, the past situation hasn't changed, but--such is the hope--the person who shared the story now sees that she has more choices available to her than she felt like she had before. Powerlessness, in Boalian theory, equates to a lack of choices. Boal's theatre does not offer a clear Key To Revolution beyond critical examination of situations that appear to have few choices. By multiplying possible choices, the person can in the future better navigate situations in which she might feel powerless.
Boal's TO (and the numerous spin-off techniques inspired by him) works like gangbusters in certain situations, particularly those in which relationships of oppression are clear and sharp. When Boal began touring and working more in "industrialized" nations (the "first world"), however, he found that his audiences often balked at identifying clear oppressor/oppressed relationships. Part of the trouble, Boal discovered, was that the people attending his workshops in, say, France or the United States often felt that classically TO scenes such as a corrupt military officer bullying a peasant were the purview of "other" nations. The "first world," went the sentiment, rarely offers such black-versus-white scenarios.
More common, Boal found, were scenes in which the spect-actors described themselves as helpless bystanders, third parties to scenes of, say, racial injustice or gender/sexuality discrimination. The struggle in those cases involved whether to intervene and how best to do so...
How, in other words, does nuance keep from stagnating into inaction?
More tomorrow,
JF
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