rough edges

salvation lies in the trope, says dan.

the trope of rabbinic judaism is irony, and that of its law is metaphor.

the trope of christian logocentrism is metonymy, and that of its hermeneutics is allegory.

the trope of islamic logocentrism is synecdoche, and that of its law is allegory.

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The difference between the midrashic and the allegorical lies not in the thematics of the interpretation but in the language theory underlying the hermeneutic. This is the reverse of what is usually claimed. That is, one typically finds it stated that the method of midrash and of allegory with regards to the Song of Songs is identical, and only the actual allegorical correspondences have changed, but this is not so in my opinion. In the allegory the metaphors of the language are considered the signs of invisible entities, Platonic ideas of mystical love, while in the midrash they are actually spoken love poetry of an erotic encounter. For many allegorists, the allegorical reading becomes a sublimation of physical love, while for the Rabbis, I would suggest, it is the desublimization of Divine Love, an understanding of that love through its metaphorical association with literal, human corporeal sexuality. It is not irrelevant to note that the Rabbis all had the experience of carnal love.

- Daniel Boyarin, “De/Re/Constructing Midrash” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos (Brill, 2005), 317. i laughed aloud when i read the last sentence above.

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it is possible, therefore, to think of mystical hermeneutics as a kind of appropriation, not of the sacred text but of the archive of interpretation that surrounds it. one’s understanding of the text is not mediated by tradition; rather, one’s understanding of tradition is mediated by one’s experience of the text. mystical hermeneutics is a hermeneutics of experience – only we should understand that experience here must be taken, if at all possible, in a nonsubjectivist sense; experience is not an event that sets the individual subject up as an institution of its own the way the cartesian ego cogito supersedes whatever has preceded it and underwrites whatever follows. quite the contrary, experience as al-ghazali conceives it subsumes the subject, who can no longer be thought of as a self-possessed, self-contained agent. indeed, the very idea of mysticism is incompatible with a modern theory of the subject. having said this, however, it remains the case that what this experience wins for the individual is something like a free interpretive space or, more accurately, a region of meditation, an open place of study, where one is able to abide with the text in what amounts to a condition of personal intimacy. so we should take it that the purpose, or effect, of hermeneutical experience is not to produce new interpretations that would replace tradition – this would be to impose a cartesian model on al-ghazali’s hermeneutics. rather, the point is simply to open up this place of intimacy, this intimate dwelling place with the qur’an. we have already seen this sort of hermeneutical intimacy both in the case of philo’s hermeneutics and in midrash. hermeneutics in these instances is not a techne of interpretation but a praxis, a form of life. its task is not the unveiling of the meaning of the text – “as for the full unveiling of all the secret meanings,” al-ghazali says, “there is no coveted object in it” (p.103) – but meditation throughout one’s life upon what the text discloses.

- gerald bruns, hermeneutics ancient and modern (yale university press, 1992), 134-145.

this isn’t exactly what i’m supposed to be reading right now. eh.

compare chapter 8 of moosa’s ghazali and the poetics of imagination (university of north carolina press, 2005), where he describes how a heteronomous ethics constituted through hermeneutical practice subjects the self to particular ends (concepts of discipline and teleology in the service of the virtues).

i’ve said this before, but quite aside from the arguments made (so much of what passes for “islamic studies” in the academy is so extremely superficial), often i’m just impressed by the fact people are talking about these things in english.

but my primary interest in bruns right now is his work on midrash and allegory, not his chapter on ghazali. i do like him, even though he doesn’t share my knee-jerk reaction against rorty.

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no attempt will ever be sufficient that presents midrash and its hermeneutics in simple opposition to logocentrism, with the latter being characterized as a greco-roman or christian development [or philhellenic, christonormative, globalatin...] and the former as a jewish one. to read midrash [or: islam, or ibn arabi, or, or, or...] as a rewriting of derrida, jacques lacan, or edmond jabes is equally misguided. the alternative, however, is not to study midrash through its own methods, which is essentially the way it has been read within traditional jewish circles since the middle ages; rather, it is to approach midrash with a theoretical interest, fully prepared to take a stance toward literary theory roughly analogous to the marginal stance midrash (and rabbinic judaism) historically assumed in relation to the intellectual categories of hellenism (and, in subsequent jewish history, both christianity and islam), that is, simultaneously receptive and resistant to their universalist ambitions. such an approach to midrash would be open to the categories of literary theory, yet conscious of their Otherness and ready to transform them by recontextualizing them.

- david stern, midrash and theory: ancient jewish exegesis and contemporary literary studies (northwestern university press, 1996), 16.

two comments: first, i do not think studying midrash (or: islam, or ibn arabi, or, or, or…) today “through its own methods” is “essentially” the way it’s been read historically (and so, the implication runs, has nothing to offer critiques of logocentrism). following gadamer and charles taylor we can gain a lot from being attentive to the shifts in the ways people perform religious readings in the secular. the contours, the horizons of expectation, the criteria for inclusion in the interpretive community all rearticulate themselves, yielding registers for diachronic analyses.
second, the equivalence implied between christian and islamic universalisms rubs me the wrong way. i’m not trying to downplay the islamic self-perception of superseding prior dispensations, but i think there are crucial differences with the christian version and equating them so only aids in the obliteration of a history of the politics of difference.

in general, though, i think stern demonstrates very well the ways in which i’m trying to think hermeneutical alternatives to pauline allegoresis: as receptive, resistant, and respondent to models both of logocentrism and “post-structuralism”.

eid mubarak.

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following a line of thought:

in the paper i presented at the europeanists history colloquium last month (“relating alterity in al-andalus: historiography, maimonides, difference”) i tried, among other things, to broach the ways maimonides employs metaphor in his codification of the Law specifically as it regards muslims – how, by making muslims the halakhic analogues of the gerim toshav (itself already an uncertain category), he performs the act of a bricoleur: employing the materials of received tradition (in this case the halakhic categories and case-studies) with crucial difference, transforming the very idea of community. by applying figurative halakhic categories across the grain of regimes of temporality, he generates a political space in the present for the enactment of ordinary life. he encodes messianic categories with an entirely unapocalyptic lexicon that does not supersede but continuously supplements received tradition. this textual supplementation is not (i would argue) subject to critiques of ‘commentary’ levelled by foucault and others (eg. the introductory pages in the birth of the clinic), but is a different kind of ’scriptural reasoning’ that can exert passional commitments without these being exclusive claims.

this is exciting, but i remained a little wary of my own interest. i’d read as i could, given time constraints, but was well-aware that i am not really trained in maimonides and so had little assurance as to how far i could justifiably extrapolate. this past weekend, though, i was skimming an edited collection on the midrashic imagination when i came across an article on his discussions of circumcision. circumcision is in many ways a metonym for the Law in general and, by extension, the sign of inclusion in the covenantal community. in the guide to the perplexed rambam first summarizes the writings of prior rabbis to note that circumcision is only for the descendents of isaac who follow abraham’s way of life. ishmael is thus excluded because he isn’t isaac (ie. the muslims are out), and so are the christians (because despite their connection to esau they do not follow the abrahamic way/ the Law). later he doubles back to this same issue to elaborate further, shifting his position a little: the ishmaelites, he says, were historically incorporated into the descendents of keturah to the extent that you can’t tell one from the other, and so, because the keturites did have an obligation to circumcise ( = they were bound to the Law), so too muslim circumcision gives ishmaelites a certain place in the abrahamic covenant. “the keturites” isn’t really a category that is invoked in such legal discourse – indeed, rashi believed it to have been useful only for two generations – and so maimonides’ use is anachronistic or, at the least, catachrestic: he continues to exert a virtuosic ability for legal fiction and figuration in order to make his philosophic arguments within the halakhah. turns out there’s more going on in those legalist, carnal, literalist, fleshy religions (judaism, islam) than we thought, eh.

anyway, i hope to write a paper about allegorical hermeneutics, diasporic reading practices, and the orientalist gaze.

as an aside, i quite enjoy a. kevin reinhart’s “impurity/no danger” (history of religions 30/1) analyzing the fiqh of taharah. consider this a recommendation.

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it is in the light of all this that i propose now to try and elaborate the first part of a theory of semiotics, valid in the main for both medieval and modern islamic theology, starting with the dictum already stressed before that everything signifies. this may ultimately be developed semiotically in four distinct ways or directions. the first three styles of signification were actually used in medieval times: none is closed off from another in the rigid style of foucault’s epistemes and authors may have freely crossed the boundaries from one to the other at various times, or mixed significantly [sic] insights from the various styles.

1) the ‘way of the ‘ulama” is a convenient term for the ‘method’ of classical hanbali-ash’arite bila kayf, which signals an artificial closure and an intellectual cul de sac. and it is really more than that: it is an emptying of the Saussurean Sign of meaning and so, in a very real sense, a rejection of signification.

2) the ‘way of unknowing’…is the attitude of quiescence and acceptance, which has something in common with the above, before the absolute transcendence of god. it signals a radical and deeply-felt agnosia in the face of the mystery of ‘god’ and was espoused both by the islamic neoplatonists and the islamic proponents and partisans of the via negativa.

3) the ‘way of the mystic’ characterizes the method of signalling the unity of being by dissolving all language into that which is indicative of the one reality. it is the real and ultimate logic of the emanationist model, recognized by ibn al-’arabi as well as by eco, for that model never makes the world sufficiently separate from god. the logic of the neoplatonist philosopher, pursued to its ultimate conclusions, and that of the sufi here converge.

4) the ‘way of the deconstructionist’ best describes the fourth, hypothetical, post-medieval method of ’signification,’ as yet unused by devout muslims (and unlikely to be used by such a constituency!). it is the method of emptying language of all meaning, including the word ‘god’. it signals a lack of meaning as that word is commonly understood in our logocentric intellectual universe. it is the contention of this book that the logic of the first three styles or modes of signification outlined above contained within it the tiny seeds of this fourth mode. (…) islamically, the ‘way of the deconstructionist’ may be said to have its origins in the refusal by the ash’arite-hanbalite constituency to specify the exact modality of any predication of god and the consequent break or disruption between signifier and signified. the language is indeed ruptured.

- ian richard netton, allah transcendent: studies in the structure and semiotics of islamic philosophy, theology and cosmology (curzon press, 1994 [1989]), 324-325.

what a strange book. wonderful too, though i sometimes have real trouble with the contrast he draws between what he calls the ‘qur’anic creator paradigm’ and the ‘islamic transcendence paradigm’ of classical theology. his case-studies (al-kindi, al-farabi, ibn sina, isma’ilism, and al-suhrawardi & ibn al-’arabi) do seem to demonstrate such a general trend, but i wish he’d included a chapter on imam ghazali. that would in some ways help bridge or trouble the categories he is drawing.

aside from this book, a couple of disappointing articles in islamochristiana a few years ago, and ian almond’s sufism and deconstruction: a comparative study of derrida and ibn arabi [sic] (routledge, 2004), i haven’t really come across serious attempts to approach islamic ‘god-talk’ (via chittick, inclusive of many of the traditional islamic sciences) with the more recent insights into language offered by the continentals. let me know if you know of any other sources. (i’m not including the less astute attempts of hanafi, abu zayd, et al., all of whom, as i read them, dovetail, in varying degrees and in varying ways, into a vulgar liberalism. i prefer a traditional semantic analysis over something by them any day. izutsu over sachedina. yes.)

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the seasonal saskatoon trip earlier this autumn became a harvest trip, returning loaded with clover honey and all colours of tomatoes, red and white potatoes, squash and peppers. the combining was not quite done, and the patchworked fields followed the weather patterns in varying stages of undone. some swathes lay waiting, thick ribbons across the hills; some bales sat lonely on stubbled ground; whole stretches fallen to root lodging and stem breakage. in stark contrast to the weather system vagaries, the punctuality of the migratory impulses: on the road, driving east. and, above, thousands of birds in the sky, silent, undulating waves in the sky and rising from the horizon: canada geese, snow geese, sandhill cranes, swans, even pelicans. hundreds of them in the fields, settling in the sloughs, jostling the combines and swathers, picking the fields clean.

this winter is an odd season (i say this every year), even now the days warm like late spring and some grass yet green. i am spending my days waiting for snow.

jeffrey foucault – geese fly by

remembrance days 1

postcolonial…? what!

did i miss something?

have they gone?

- bobbi sykes

in the houses of history, ed. green and troup (manchester university press, 1999), 278.

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a couple of weeks ago i was returning home after an anti-bush protest (gwb is on a speaking tour, and made it to edmonton – i have things to say about speechifying like that in general, and about activism in alberta, and about energy, but these will be another post sometime): i’d got to the LRT station just as the cold was beginning to bite and dusk was settling and, shouldering my bike and watching my feet, i made my way down the stairs to the platform, waiting for the train to take me back across the river. i looked up as someone approached to stand by me. i couldn’t be certain, given his dark sunglasses and the faded green cap pulled firmly over his forehead, but something about his features seemed familiar and i nodded through my music. after we started speaking i remembered who he was, the classes we’d shared over the past two years, the few times we’d tried making awkward small talk. speaking to him then was oddly different: away from the isolating dynamics of the classroom, and each having passed through a year of strange knocks, i no longer found his reticence unsettling. and i was struck by the singularity of the moment: paths crossing on a subway platform, wondering just how many people i know who finish (or almost finish) their degrees and then drift. i use the word ‘drift’ not because it is the best word to describe us – certainly i don’t intend to imply that without the imposing structures of academe we are without mooring, thrown about like flotsam. but i am interested in what-all we are doing, often indivisible remainders to the albertan economy. he is unemployed, living in a basement apartment, and the edges to his jacket seemed honestly frayed. “but the term ‘victory lap’ is so positive!,” lara laughed tonight, and steve commented on the dis-consonance of being on campus again, calling us the undergraduates who would not go away. these are patterns forming, among these friends of mine, giving the lie finally to all the alienating effects of the university.

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there was the method of kneeling,

a fine method, if you lived in a country

where stones were smooth.

the women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,

hidden corners where knee fit rock.

their prayers were weathered rib bones,

small calcium words uttered in sequence,

as if this shedding of syllables could somehow

fuse them to the sky.

there were the men who had been shepherds so long

they walked like sheep.

under the olive trees, they raised their arms -

hear us! we have pain on earth!

we have so much pain there is no place to store it!

but the olives bobbed peacefully

in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.

at night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,

and were happy in spite of the pain,

because there was also happiness.

some prized the pilgrimage,

wrapping themselves in new white linen

to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.

when they arrived at Mecca

they would circle the holy places,

on foot, many times,

they would bend to kiss the earth

and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

while for certain cousins and grandmothers

the pilgrimage occurred daily,

lugging water from the spring

or balancing the baskets of grapes.

these were the ones present at births,

humming quietly to perspiring mothers.

the ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,

forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

there were those who didn’t care about praying.

the young ones. the ones who had been to America.

they told the old ones, you are wasting your time.

time? – the old ones prayed for the young ones.

they prayed for allah to mend their brains,

for the twig, the round moon,

to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

and occasionally there would be one

who did none of this,

the old man fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,

who beat everyone at dominoes,

insisted he spoke with god as he spoke with goats,

and was famous for his laugh.

- naomi shihab nye, “different ways to pray”, from words under the words: selected poems (far corner books, 1995), 18-19.