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From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: a Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas

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Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Dissertations (1934 -) Projects From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas Benjamin Suriano Marquette University Follow this and additional works at: https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Suriano, Benjamin, "From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas" (2016). Dissertations (1934 -). 628. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/628 FROM MODES OF PRODUCTION TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY: A LABOR THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECTIVITY & RELIGIOUS IDEAS by Ben Suriano A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2016 ABSTRACT FROM MODES OF PRODUCTION TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY: A LABOR THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECTIVITY & RELIGIOUS IDEAS Ben Suriano Marquette University, 2016 In this dissertation I attempt two needed tasks within historical materialism: first, to reestablish the standpoint of labor as the normative basis for critical theory beyond irrational bourgeois categories, and second, to show that labor’s own self-mediating rationalization, if it is to move beyond these contradictory categories, necessarily requires a certain religious-utopian consciousness. The dominant Weberian and Marxist paradigms for understanding labor and its relation to the religious variously perpetuated irrational bourgeois conceptions of labor as a bare efficient cause, with religion paternalistically positioned as an inherently idealist or mystifying external form. I argue, however, that the concrete rationality of labor’s revolutionary nature necessarily hinges on a ratio to emergent final causes for which consciousness of such is itself the rational kernel of the religious. Thus I retain the historical materialist primacy of the modes of production as an organizing concept but with a more comprehensive account of its self- transcending movement. Herein the religious arises internally as a non-reductive function of labor’s self-understanding as more than a disposable instrument. I claim any materialist critique of alienated labor implies this religious-utopian consciousness, and therefore any critique of religion must presuppose the normative form of the religious as revolutionary rather than reactionary, reflecting ideal trajectories generated from the productive forces in their basic revolutionizing transformation of nature. More specifically, I argue that theoretically the one religious-utopian ideal transcendentally necessary for grasping the normative standpoint of the laboring body as its own emergent final cause, without external mediation, is the resurrection of the body. I then substantiate this historically. The comprehensive rationality of the modes of production demands that the Marxist distinction between historical periods of formal and real subsumptions yield new assessments of pre-capitalist religious ideology as positively integral to labor’s self-mediating history. I then genealogically trace a Hebraic discourse on bodily resurrection whose revolutionarily demythologized form emerged directly from and for social consciousness of its communal mode of production. I further demonstrate historically that prior to capitalism the laboring body became intelligible to itself as constitutively active without idealist inversions under this certain Judeo-Christian articulation of the resurrection of the body. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ben Suriano I would like to thank first and foremost my wife, Taryn Coles. Without her love, support, encouragement, insights, diverse interests, patience, kindness, firmness and humor I would not have been able to complete this dissertation. I also owe a debt of gratitude to her parents, Michael and Donna Coles, whose wide-ranging forms of support and generosity allowed me to keep to my tasks in a way otherwise not possible. My son, Ezra, kept me human throughout the process by engaging me in digging, building, planning, drawing, playing and biking—those real material labors that provided the stuff for my intellectual labors. I would like to thank my Marquette readers, Fr. Robert Doran and Andrei Orlov, for their willingness to be a part of my committee. Fr. Doran has been especially kind in providing much academic support throughout my career at Marquette. I am pleased that Jeffrey Bishop of St. Louis University graciously consented to be an outside reader of my work. His scholarly work provided a spark for this dissertation even if my own project has veered into various other trajectories. Lastly, I am grateful for the countless years of support from D. Stephen Long. His scholarly commitment, passion and discipline provided me with a template for academic integrity and excellence, but also his capacious intellectual interests and generosity gave me the freedom to fully launch into this project. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. i INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Deconstructing the “Science” of the so Called “Man as He Really is” ..................8 Exposing the Social Production of the Reified Bourgeois Body ...........................22 Challenging Marxism to Rethink Labor and the Religious ...................................39 Overview of this Work ...........................................................................................45 CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE: THE NEW VALORIZATION OF LABOR IN THE MIDDLE AGES ..............................................................................50 The Weberian Influence .........................................................................................53 Antiquity and Labor ...............................................................................................60 Monasticism, the Middle Ages, and the Valorization of Labor .............................65 The Late Medieval Uprisings .................................................................................89 Conclusion .............................................................................................................93 CHAPTER 2: RESURRECTING LABOR AS RESURRECTION: RETHINKING LABOR AND THE RELIGIOUS FROM WITHIN HISTORICAL MATERIALISM .......................................................................................99 Historical Materialist Treatments of Religion .....................................................104 The Self-Transcendence of Labor as a New Creative Act ...................................114 Labor’s Intrinsic Religious Consciousness ..........................................................130 The Religious Ideals Necessary for Labor’s Self-Understanding ........................147 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................177 CHAPTER 3: THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOCIAL BODY OF PRODUCTION AND THE IDEAL OF ETERNAL LIFE: RECONSTRUCTING A HISTORICAL RELATION .........................................................................................180 Setting the Socioeconomic Base for the Concept of Eternal Life .......................183 iii The Emergence of the Village Commune ............................................................193 The Tributary State and its Ideological Metaphysics ..........................................204 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................229 CHAPTER 4: THE EMERGENCE OF THE HEBRAIC IDEA OF BODILY RESURRECTION FROM THE SOCIAL BODY OF PRODUCTION .........................231 The Cultural Memory of the Prior Social Body of Production ............................236 The Social Body as a New Creative Act ..............................................................244 From the Modes of Production to the Perfection of Eternal Life ........................249 The Non-Inverted Idea of Eternal Life as the Resurrection of the Body .............264 The Apocalyptic Distortion ..................................................................................281 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................293 CHAPTER 5: THE AMBIVALENT CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF BODILY RESURRECTION: ADVANCING AND SUPPRESSING THE MEMORY OF THE LABORING BODY ..............................................................295 Jesus and the Normative Standpoint of the Rising Lower Body .........................298 Paul’s Resurrection of the Pneumatic Body and its Crossing Out .......................309 The Cross, Empire, and the Reproduction of the Docile Body ...........................336 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................347 CHAPTER 6: THE EMERGENCE OF THE IDEA OF BODILY RESURRECTION FOR THE RISE OF THE LABORING BODY ..............................................................352 Undoing the Debt to Death: Resurrection and Change Without Corruption .......354 Origen and the Corporeal Eidos ...........................................................................359
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