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A Body of Nostalgia: Pasolini's Self-Portrait in the Film Project Saint Paul

Armando Maggi

in The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Saint Paul to Sade

This chapter analyzes Pasolini's film Saint Paul. The film is a double biography, of Paul the apostle and of Pasolini the artist. Moreover, Pasolini contends that Paul is a divided figure, a figure ... More

This chapter analyzes Pasolini's film Saint Paul. The film is a double biography, of Paul the apostle and of Pasolini the artist. Moreover, Pasolini contends that Paul is a divided figure, a figure of internal oppositions. Paul is both a priest, the founder of a repressive institution (the Church), and a prophet who announces the apocalyptic end of that institution. For Pasolini, analogical is also the apostle and the poet's view of time and the sacred. In Pasolini's interpretation, the apostle lived in a historical era split between the past of Jesus' sacred time, and the present dominated by a longing for that original manifestation of the sacred. Pasolini also believes that in our present times Paul's statements have lost their sacredness because modernity cannot understand the longing that characterized the apostle's message. To yearn for the sacred today means to yearn for something that does not exist. Pasolini's longing for the sacred is defined as nostalgic in that nostalgia is the rejection of the present in favor of a past that the subject has never experienced and will never experience.Less

Paul

Christopher Bryan

in The Resurrection of the Messiah

This chapter examines Saint Paul's account of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul's letters have provided a basis for subsequent theological reflection in virtually every Christian tradition, ... More

This chapter examines Saint Paul's account of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul's letters have provided a basis for subsequent theological reflection in virtually every Christian tradition, and they have been able to do this because underlying their variety of subject and expression we can discern a single fundamental and consistently held belief: namely, that the crucified Jesus is Son of God and exalted Lord. Paul's purpose in his letters is evidently not, in general, to inform his hearers about the life of Jesus but to assist and encourage them in living the life of Christian discipleship.Less

Idiocy on the Verge of the Novel

Jason M. Wirth

in Commiserating With Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlements of Thinking

The final two chapters belong together and explore in genealogical detail the nature of a novelist’s authorial voice in relationship to the problem of History (the grand march of reason). These two ... More

The final two chapters belong together and explore in genealogical detail the nature of a novelist’s authorial voice in relationship to the problem of History (the grand march of reason). These two chapters do so by broadly taking up the question of imitation (μίμησις‎) or repetition in relationship to the universe of the novel. How does the novel take itself up again when it does not claim the power to represent itself to itself and when its compositional forms are subject to ongoing negotiation? The novel does not recognize itself because it both eschews representation (of its universe and of itself) and continues to experiment with its forms. Nonetheless it is possible to speak of a history of the novel, albeit a history that is a revenge on the grand march of self-representation that we call History. What is this elusive temporality that allows the novel to develop discernible lineages without ceasing to be a question to itself? How do we grasp the history of the novel, “which is not a mere succession of events but an intentional pursuit of values” (Art of the Novel, 154)? Given that this present study locates itself in the mobile border between the universe of philosophy and the universe of the novel, these two chapters address the problem at hand by examining the borderline persona of the idiot. This chapter begins with a consideration of Nietzsche and then traces this figure from Saint Paul via Cusanus, Descartes, and Ignatius of Loyola.Less

Saint Paul's Shudder

in Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition

This chapter describes Saint Paul as a theorist of communication. The discourse network of Paul's time informs his reflections on communication, specifically, about the difference between speaking by ... More

This chapter describes Saint Paul as a theorist of communication. The discourse network of Paul's time informs his reflections on communication, specifically, about the difference between speaking by letter and speaking in person, presence, and absence. Paul effectively adapts the letter as a genre of preaching and intervention in Christian culture. His scribe for the epistle to the Romans was appropriately named Tertius, who takes the liberty of adding his own greeting to Paul's long list of personal greetings to the saints at Rome. His letters began and ended as voiced speech, and were designed to be read and heard aloud in the assembly, not as private silent reading, which was relatively rare in antiquity anyway. Paul's vision of a collective that is united ritually at a distance is a central source for the western tradition of theorizing mass communication, and anticipates print culture's national readerships and electronic media's simultaneous but dispersed audiences.Less

Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social

Carol E. Harrison

in Romantic Catholics: France's Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith

This chapter explores the relationship between the believing Catholic and the wider community by focusing on Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam. Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the lay Catholic charitable ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between the believing Catholic and the wider community by focusing on Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam. Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the lay Catholic charitable Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, was a prominent Catholic republican in 1848 when he articulated a Christian response to the social question. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul grew out of his desire to remain connected to the world of bachelor male friends, but as this chapter shows, marriage to Amélie Soulacroix transformed Ozanam's sense of his obligations and led him to reconsider his rapport with the society in which he lived. The chapter also discusses Ozanam's views on charity and social justice in relation to the Catholic Church, his concept of a Catholic social, and his role in fin de siècle social Catholicism.Less

The Indian is Not like the Negro

Brett Rushforth

in Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France

This chapter considers the forces that shaped slavery in the Saint Lawrence Valley. The dynamics of slavery were especially pronounced in Montreal's Rue Saint Paul but were more or less seen ... More

This chapter considers the forces that shaped slavery in the Saint Lawrence Valley. The dynamics of slavery were especially pronounced in Montreal's Rue Saint Paul but were more or less seen throughout the settlement. The chapter presents narratives of four enslaved Indians from this neighborhood, providing a glimpse into the social, legal, and cultural contours of this slave system.Less

Platonism for the Masses: On the Sacred Cement Shoes of Paul the Apostle

Ward Blanton

in A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life

This book explores the political economies of Western cultural memory in relation to the apostle Paul, imagined founder of Christianity. Focusing on the “afterlives” of Saint Paul in relation to more ... More

This book explores the political economies of Western cultural memory in relation to the apostle Paul, imagined founder of Christianity. Focusing on the “afterlives” of Saint Paul in relation to more recent genealogies of a new materialism, it examines how Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud saw Christianity as metaphysical escapism, with the former calling the religion a “Platonism for the masses” and faulting Paul for negating more immanent, material modes of thought and political solidarity. It also considers why Jacques Derrida deconstructs—or reads in what he calls a “materialist” mode—Platonic assumptions about intentionality in craft production or authorship in text production while rejecting and lampooning what he perceives to be the retrograde dualistic metaphysics of Paul. It suggests that Plato's dualistic metaphysic is worked into a model of complex material immanence, whereas Paul is simply expelled as a purveyor of a Platonism for the masses, a thinker of “the veil.” Finally, it analyzes the New Testament book of Acts' narrative appropriation of Paulinism and the eventual apparatus of a Platonism for the masses.Less

Moral conscience

Richard Sorabji

in Gandhi and the Stoics: Modern Experiments on Ancient Values

The Greek expression for conscience meant in the 5th century BCE: sharing with oneself, as if one were split into two, knowledge of a personal defect, not yet always a moral one. The Christian Saint ... More

The Greek expression for conscience meant in the 5th century BCE: sharing with oneself, as if one were split into two, knowledge of a personal defect, not yet always a moral one. The Christian Saint Paul was to link knowledge of the personal with knowledge of a general law of both right and wrong. Gandhi paraphrased in Gujarati Plato's Apology, in which Socrates is portrayed as having an inner warning voice. Platonists were to identify it with conscience, and, like Gandhi, to discuss how it worked. Gandhi treated his own inner voice, like Socrates but unlike Saint Paul, as indubitable, but conceded that it takes practice to hear it aright. He regarded the voice as God's, but as reminding one of values, not as supplying them, and as binding, even when mistaken. Conscience, he thought, speaks only to the individual, but may tell one to change the conduct of others.Less

Passage: Katechon

Roberto Esposito

in Two: The Machine of Political Theology and the Place of Thought

The concept of ‘katechon,’ which Carl Schmitt talks about especially in his book The Nomos of the Earth, is taken from a passage in Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians. What Paul means by this ... More

The concept of ‘katechon,’ which Carl Schmitt talks about especially in his book The Nomos of the Earth, is taken from a passage in Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians. What Paul means by this enigmatic expression is a historical or spiritual power that holds back the arrival of the Antichrist, thereby delaying it. But in doing so, the katechon also delays the Second Coming of Christ (parousia) and the final triumph of Good over Evil. By containing within itself the evil that it opposes, the katechon is a classic figure of political theology. It is difficult to identify the historical subject of the katechon: it may refer to the Roman Empire but also to the Church. In our current state of globalization, the katechon can be recognized in a unification of the world based on its division between a wealthy, dominant part and a poor, subordinate part.Less

Introduction: Sodom, Its Inhabitants, and Its Language in Pasolini's Final Works

Armando Maggi

in The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Saint Paul to Sade

This book shows how Sodom and its practice against nature dominate the last phase of Pier Paolo Pasolini's poetics. The screenplay Saint Paul, the scenario Porn-Theo-Colossal, the novel Petrolio, and ... More

This book shows how Sodom and its practice against nature dominate the last phase of Pier Paolo Pasolini's poetics. The screenplay Saint Paul, the scenario Porn-Theo-Colossal, the novel Petrolio, and the film Salò are carefully examined in the light of their multiple sources. The four works analyzed here are strictly connected to one another and obsessively revolve around the problem of sodomy and the sodomitical subject. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

The Queerness of Christian Faith

Melissa E. Sanchez

in Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition

This chapter analyzes the theological roots of secular understandings of erotic temporality and fidelity. It begins with a discussion of Saint Paul’s Epistles, in which the radical humiliation that ... More

This chapter analyzes the theological roots of secular understandings of erotic temporality and fidelity. It begins with a discussion of Saint Paul’s Epistles, in which the radical humiliation that manifests divine love is necessarily beyond human capacity. It then turns to Saint Augustine’s conviction that the divided human will renders confession incomplete and conversion provisional. Based on the premise that as a human creature he can always change, Augustine’s depiction of faith as a result of miraculous passion is cause for optimism as well as anxiety about who he will be in the future. Salvation for Augustine inheres in the consequent realization that professions of faith are in fact ambivalent prayers for it. Finally, this chapter traces the centrality of Pauline and Augustinian theology to the structure of fidelity in Francesco Petrarch’s secular love lyrics, which limn in excruciating detail the mille rivolte—the thousand turns, revolts, and returns—of his competing attachments to Laura, God, and his own worldly ambition. These poems confront a fragmented self incapable of the conviction and fidelity to which it desperately aspires but does not entirely want.Less

Contingency; or, Covenantal Comedy: In Praise of Strange Paulinist Federations

Ward Blanton

in A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life

This chapter examines a moment in earlier materialist philosophy in relation to Saint Paul, namely, Louis Althusser's step toward an “aleatory materialism.” It considers—by way of the Paulinism of ... More

This chapter examines a moment in earlier materialist philosophy in relation to Saint Paul, namely, Louis Althusser's step toward an “aleatory materialism.” It considers—by way of the Paulinism of Althusser's intellectual ally Stanislas Breton—how we could understand Paul and the vexing political problem of singular, immanent enjoyment. It places Pauline klēsis at the center of the “underground current” of materialism and Jacques Derrida's dogmatic repetition of Friedrich Nietzsche. It argues that in repeating Nietzsche, Derrida effectively leaves the real issue—the excess of phenomenal immanence that disturbs everyday life—outside his readerly frame. This, in turn, causes him to repeat tales of a mistakenly imagined two-tiered metaphysics or ontotheological Paulinism, which helps neither a “religion” that remains undisturbed in an imagined world of private, identitarian ownership nor a new materialism which continues to imagine that the archive of “religion” must be proscribed, prohibited as off limits to the life of thought.Less

On Being Called Dead: Splitting the Imperative of Being

Ward Blanton

in A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life

This chapter examines the Paulinism of Stanislas Breton in relation to the implicit turn toward aleatory materialism in Louis Althusser. It considers Breton's philosophical encounter with Saint Paul ... More

This chapter examines the Paulinism of Stanislas Breton in relation to the implicit turn toward aleatory materialism in Louis Althusser. It considers Breton's philosophical encounter with Saint Paul in order to understand the fundamental paradox of recent readings of the apostle: that he would stand in as perhaps the best indication, the shortest pathway, to a theory of subjectivity that is avowedly materialist. Breton's reading allows us to feel the rhythms of Althusserian notions of ideology in Paulinist conceptions of predestination. He also invites us to intuit a form of Pauline sovereignty and Paulinist allegory in Althusserian notions of ideology. Wiring all these links back into his construction of Paul, readers of Paulinist texts of predestination and mysticism are therefore led to the heart of a logic in which, as Meister Eckhart had it, “the being (of things) is the verb by which God speaks all things in speaking to them,” or, even, “(the creatures) are the adverb of the Verb”.Less

Insurrectionist Risk (Paul Among the Parrhesiasts)

Ward Blanton

in A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life

This chapter argues that Michel Foucault missed a chance for a subversive genealogical encounter with Saint Paul. It describes Paul as the parrhesiast of experimental finitude in relation to care of ... More

This chapter argues that Michel Foucault missed a chance for a subversive genealogical encounter with Saint Paul. It describes Paul as the parrhesiast of experimental finitude in relation to care of the self and Christian metaphysics and compares him with the Greco-Roman philosophers—those peddlers of oddly paradoxical “spiritual exercises.” It examines historiographical traditionalism within Foucault's work and his failure to elucidate Paul in relation to the Hellenistic philosophers at the conclusion to the third volume of The History of Sexuality. It also discusses Foucault's assumption that the “religion” of Paulinism constitutes a difference that forecloses real comparative analysis, Paulinism being consigned to becoming the founder of a form of moral system in Christianity whose inventive machinations will engender a “self” constituted by its being turned against itself, at once constitutively guilty, fallen, and also profoundly normalized by the universalization of its underlying metaphysical narrative. Finally, it explores Theodore Zahn's Christian historiographical conservatism.Less

Singularity; or, Spiritual Exercise (Paul and the Philosophical Immanence of Foucault and Deleuze)

Ward Blanton

in A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life

This chapter considers Saint Paul as an important figure with which to wrestle at a very specific philosophical moment, a moment in an unfolding ontology Michel Foucault does not resist calling an ... More

This chapter considers Saint Paul as an important figure with which to wrestle at a very specific philosophical moment, a moment in an unfolding ontology Michel Foucault does not resist calling an opening of and toward a “nihilism.” It compares Foucault's philosophical immanence with that of Gilles Deleuze and discusses messianism through a very particular sort of philosophical or theoretical aperture, along with some of the dimensions of this aperture as it operates within important parts of Foucault's work. It explains how, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault articulates the singularity of the presentation and explanation of power relations. For Foucault, an emergence of a logic of singularity was the essential distinguishing mark between his nineteenth-century “modernity,” with its emergent biopower, and a “prehistory” as the nonmodern. The chapter also discusses the utter loss of a site of emancipation and a paradoxical explosion of new life within the context of Paulinism, along with the political problematic of agency and liberation within Foucauldian immanence in relation to the Paulinist paradoxes, perverse inversions of value, and the hollowing out of power for the sake of rogue agencies.Less

Entrepreneurship, Networking, and the Success of Early Christianity

Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and Robert D. Tollison

in Economic Origins of Roman Christianity

This chapter has three primary goals: (1) to initiate an integration of the economic theories of entrepreneurship and networking with sociological and historical analyses of the initial spread of ... More

This chapter has three primary goals: (1) to initiate an integration of the economic theories of entrepreneurship and networking with sociological and historical analyses of the initial spread of Christianity; (2) to relate these developments to historical Christianity, and (3) to present some statistics showing how Saint Paul played an important role in this spread. It concludes that the early spread of Christianity resulted from the interplay between entrepreneurial activities and network effects spawned by the teachings of Paul to the Gentiles and through the Jewish Diaspora.Less