Government and Politics

The ecclesiastical organization uniquely characteristic of the Christian East is the autocephalous ("self-headed," or self-governing) church, which in the modern states of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Balkans are truly national churches, whose boundaries, administrative structures, and identities closely mirror those of the state. Conventional wisdom attributes autocephaly to nationalism: Christianity inevitably becomes closely associated with national identity in those states whose churches are of Byzantine political patrimony, and autocephaly is the organizational manifestation of that association. This study argues that a better explanation for the prevalence of autocephaly lies with the church's institutional framework. Formal and informal institutions, or "rules of the game," structure the relationships between groups of local churches and provide incentives to observe constraints upon actions that restructure

Many rapid, difficult to grasp, and seemingly unrelated changes in societies, economies, and international relations are refracted through transnational migration. We see and interpret such changes in particular ways in the presence of migration. The numbers and diversity of migrants seem to be growing, so, in consequence, we attribute many of the changes in our world to their presence. Their status and intentions are often difficult to pin down, so feelings of uncertainty, and sometimes even insecurity, linger in our minds.

In ‘The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man’, Herbert Marcuse regretted the loss of the bourgeois individual with a strong ego. Not because he thought such an individual
was good, but because of what came next, what he calls mass man, whose ego is merged with others. In an entirely different utopian context, laid out in Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, the
loss of the autonomous ego would be a good thing, an expression of liberation. In this world, the loss of the autonomous ego simply leaves individuals more subject to manipulation. Recently, several affect theorists, as they are known, have argued that the autonomous ego is an
illusion. Or rather, ego is a rationalizing machine, giving reasons for actions that we know to be retrospective rationalizations. It might seem as if this loss of ego is good, a step in the direction of liberation. In fact, the idealization of the loss of ego, sometimes called the de-situated subject, by theorists such as Brian Massumi and William Connolly is dangerous, because it is happening now, in a world far from utopia. Massumi and Connolly employ recent neuroscientific
discoveries as metaphors in their account of how individuals might liberate themselves from their egos. This essay concludes that while a genuinely neuroscientific study of sychoanalysis is possible and desirable, one must choose between utopia and science. Marcuse chooses utopia;
the new affect theorists choose neither.

A number of psychoanalysts have become excited about mirror neurons, as they are called by neuroscientists.  Mirror neurons have the remarkable property of responding identically to an action I intend as well as an action you intend.  The argument of some psychoanalysts is that mirror neurons open a new pathway to understanding the intentions of others.  They make possible a new type of empathy, more direct and less mediated by the typical defenses.  One result of such a perspective on psychoanalysis is the virtual death of the countertransference.  If one has direct empathic contact with another mind, then countertransferential experience is only a barrier, not a guide.  The essay not only looks at the evidence for mirror neurons, which is ambiguous, but also at what need they might be filling in our contemporary culture.

Reinhold Niebuhr could not think thoroughly about the Holocaust.  This may surprise some, for Niebuhr is generally known as the hard-headed realist who understood sin and evil to be real and active in the world.  Niebuhr could not think thoroughly about the Holocaust because he could not think thoroughly about the emergence of a new type of evil.  If Germans took pleasure in the destruction of Jews for its own sake, then the meaning of history is itself put at risk, at least for those who would learn from Niebuhr.  For all his realism about sin and evil, Niebuhr cannot imagine a world in which the mysterious meaning of history will not be revealed at the end of days.  For many who survived the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the end of days.  This does not make their experience definitive for the rest of us.  It does mean that evil, when pursued for ends that are fundamentally meaningless, threatens both faith and confidence in the meaning of history.  In thinking about the Holocaust, this essay draws not only on Hannah Arendt, but also on my own research in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale University.

W. R. Bion experienced terrible trauma as a tank commander during WW 1.  Though one doesn't ordinarily think of Bion as a trauma theorist, one can see this trauma reflected in many of his works.  Only in his last work did the details more fully emerge.  They are horrendous, his guilt enormous.  It made him a better therapist.

Wilfred Bion's late work, especially his speculations about "O," are awfully weird.  I think it's most useful to see them as a way of talking about experiences that are beyond words, even psychoanalytic ones.  From this perspective, psychoanalysis itself becomes a defense against experience.  That's not all bad.

Judith Butler, like several other contemporary authors, has sought to build a political theory based upon an ontology on the interrelated, imbricated human, quite different from that of the liberal individual modern political theory is associated with.  In creating this theory, she draws upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, a Talmudic scholar whose work has become influential among postmoderns among others.  The ironic result is to show the disadvantages of "ontologizing" political theory, for it is Levinas who would move ethics beyond being.  Political theory is best practiced when we remember that it is about the power to move what seem like ontological givens, such as human suffering, from one group to another, at least in the short run.  But then again, politics is almost always about the short run.

Levinas and Political Theory
How best to avoid the Levinas Effect, as it has been called, the tendency to make Emmanuel Levinas everything to everyone?  One way is to demonstrate that Levinas’ thinking does not fit into any of the categories by which we ordinarily approach political theory.  If one were forced to categorize Levinas’ political theory, the term inverted liberalism would come closest to the mark.  As long, that is, as one emphasizes the term “inverted” over “liberalism.”  Levinas’ defense of liberalism is likely the strangest defense the reader has encountered.  We should, argues Levinas, foster and protect the individual because only the individual can see the tears of the other, the tears that even the just regime cannot see. The individual is to be fostered and protected for the sake of the other individual.  Whether this has anything to do with “real” liberalism, and whether it should, is the topic of this essay.

The most ambitious attempt to use Emmanuel Levinas to justify a new moral philosophy in a postmodern world is that of Zygmunt Bauman in Postmodern Ethics.  Levinas cannot be used.  Bauman would use Levinas in order to "desocialize" the subject.  That is, to render the subject less a creature of the organization, community, and group, each of which is the enemy of ethics.  While Levinas would also desocialize the subject, the terms and concepts he employs are only superficially similar to those employed by Bauman, as well as other social theorists.  Terms such as  "the other" or the "face" are employed by Levinas in such unique ways that they are unavailable to be used as  guidance or inspiration for social theory.  In many respects this is a good thing, for it means that Levinas must be encountered on his own terms.

Emmanuel Levinas writes a fair amount about trauma.  If one takes trauma theory seriously, it seems as if he sometimes idealizes trauma.  For Levinas, trauma is not just an encounter with the Infinite.  Trauma is the way we escape being trapped in being, what he calls the il y a.

Review of History Beyond Trauma and The Shell and the Kernel. 

History Beyond Trauma, by Françoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudillière, has been well-received for over ten years.  I could hardly find a negative review.  But, in my view the book provides no evidence at all for its most fundamental claim: that historical and social trauma is the origin of madness (pp xxii-xxiii).

A little background on the origins of the category of moral injury may be helpful. Currently the term is used only about experiences faced by soldiers.  I think it applies equally as well to the lives of many civilians.  It's advantage is that it reveals the political power behind private suffering.