God and the Meaning of Matter: Theological Engagements with the New Materialisms
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God and the Meaning of Matter: Theological Engagements with the New Materialisms Sonya Christine Lewthwaite A thesis submitted to the degree of Master’s in Theology At the University of Otago, Dunedin New Zealand 31 st August 2016 Abstract Post-structuralism and feminism have been uneasy allies in feminism’s third wave. Critics of feminism’s cultural turn are calling for a critical theory and emancipatory politics that takes materiality as its starting point, without losing the central insights gained in radical attention to the operation of power through language. This thesis explores the promise of the “new materialist” turn for addressing the crisis of post-structural emancipatory politics, and seeks a theological engagement with the ontological propositions of some central figures implicated in this theoretical shift, including Diana Coole and Karen Barad. Taking up Jane Bennett’s argument that Christianity is inherently dualistic and that divine transcendence supports a life/matter binary, this thesis uses Rowan Williams’s articulation of the doctrine of creation to respond to the implication that the Christian understanding of divine transcendence is incompatible with non-dichotomous accounts of culture and nature or meaning and matter. The doctrines of creation ex nihilo and divine transcendence (which assert a fundamental dichotomy, rather than a dualism, between God and creation) prompt us to think of creation as a material, finite, and vital whole. Williams’s theology of language moreover suggests that reflection on the non-dichotomy of matter and meaning may be one way into a reflection on the existence of a transcendent God. Index Introduction 1 1. Introducing the New Materialisms 4 2. The Doctrine of Creation and Non-Dichotomous Thought 47 3. God and the Habits of Language 64 Conclusion 121 Appendix 126 Bibliography 128 Introduction If post-structuralism and feminism have been allies within feminism’s third wave, it has been an uneasy alliance. In the wake of the “cultural” turn, many feminist theorists claim that despite the ways in which this critical theory has made feminist discourse more accommodating of “difference”, the political agency of the movement has been undercut by the new orthodoxy, which states that if subjects are constructed by the discourses that purport to emancipate them, to highlight the oppression of people bearing certain identities is to construct those very identities. Collective political action, which demands the organisation of people under the banner of shared interests, has become more difficult with the awareness of this problem. Moreover, the constructivist account, which aimed to deconstruct the binaries which serve patriarchy (among them the culture/nature and language/matter binaries) has arguably served to further entrench these binaries by granting constructive power to language alone. Matter is presented as a passive entity, the “stuff” that language works on. Yet a return to naïve realism would not be desirable for feminism because of its associations with biological essentialism, and out of engagement with this conundrum, a group of feminist theorists are calling for approaches to the construction of identity which take the agency of matter into account. The new materialist feminists are a diverse group of theorists operating from within a variety of disciplines. Their work is to challenge the unilateral ascription of constructive power to language, without either losing the central insights of post-structuralism, or falling back into Cartesian or representationalist models for the relation between matter and meaning. Can theologians make a constructive contribution within the new materialist conversation? Some significant voices within the new materialisms express their doubts. This thesis is an attempt to take up the challenge that these voices put to dogmatic Christian claims. It seeks to demonstrate that the terms on which these theorists believe theology should be excluded from the discourse are problematic. Its specific focus will be on the question of whether the doctrines of creation and of divine transcendence can be hospitable to non-dichotomous conceptions of matter and meaning. Towards this end, the discussion will be divided into three parts. 1 Chapter One will look at feminism in its third wave, with attention to what we have called the “uneasy alliance” between constructivism/post-structuralism and feminism. Emerging responses to the problems of third-wave feminism as we have just presented them will be explored. From here we will look closely at the work of Karen Barad and Diana Coole as theorists who are active in theorising the relationship between matter and meaning at the ontological level, in ways that feed constructively into more practical propositions for emancipatory political movements. Their ontologies bear certain resemblances to each other, and these similarities will be noted so that the contours of a new materialist ontological position can be sketched. Within their accounts, matter is presented as active both in meaning-making, and in the construction of the subjects and objects of discourse. The material existence from which knowledge practices emerge is presented as an unstable and innovative whole. Chapter Two will ask whether the doctrine of creation can allow for the kinds of ontological reflections that Barad and Coole are engaged in. Could such a doctrine even sponsor non-dichotomous thought? Taking up Jane Bennett’s argument that Christianity is inherently dualistic and that divine transcendence supports a life/matter binary, this chapter will use the work of Rowan Williams to propose the contrary. The doctrines of creation ex nihilo and divine transcendence (which assert a fundamental dichotomy, rather than a dualism, between God and creation), far from presenting creation as an act of cultural power over an inert matter, may actually prompt us to think of creation as a material, finite, and vital whole. Humans, according to Christian theology, are embedded within this created whole, imaging God precisely through their acceptance of materiality and finitude. Chapter Three will push this idea about the compatibility of divine transcendence with ontological monism further – again with reference to Williams – by elucidating Williams’s proposition that thinking about the non-dichotomy of matter and meaning may be one way into a reflection on the existence of a transcendent God. Bennett claims that Christianity, as a naïve form of vitalism, takes the mechanistic nature of matter as given, and slots God into the gaps that inhere in this model in order to explain the mystery of innovative “life”. But Williams’s theology of language drives between the poles of dualism and physicalism and posits a universe in which intelligence is an implicate feature of materiality. Our discussion will show how Williams’s understanding of language as material feeds into his argument for a natural theology re-conceived in the 2 tradition of Aquinas : the conclusion will be drawn that Williams’s interest in moving beyond binary thought sits compatibly within an account in which God and creation are fundamentally “other”. Our exploration of Williams’s natural theology will also help us to demonstrate that Christian thought is not dependent on positing a “god of the gaps”, and it therefore does not have interests to defend where mechanistic materialism is concerned. Some final comments will tie these themes together, and the conclusion will be drawn that there is a productive and mutually beneficial dialogue to be had between theology and the new materialisms. Some directions for further research will be suggested in this concluding section. 3 Chapter 1 Introducing the New Materialisms: Matter and Meaning in the Crisis of Identity Politics I hereby acknowledge and affirm that the Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace…I also expressly acknowledge and affirm I do not find my duties, uniform requirements or work environment to be intimidating, hostile or unwelcome. 1 The above is a contractual clause which United States employees of “Hooters”, an American restaurant chain with establishments in the United Kingdom, are required to sign as a condition of employment. When a Hooters bar opened in Sheffield in 2008, rather than voice their opposition in terms of the structural “sexism” of the sex trade, the local Sheffield Fems opted to mount their argument against the bar on the grounds that it would be “tacky”. This example is used by Kath and Sophie Woodward to illustrate the malaise of feminism in its third wave, a phenomenon which it has become common-place for feminist writers of the second wave to lament. Groups like the Sheffield Fems, it seems, are bound now to making tactical choices based on which arguments are more likely to garner popular favour in a time of dwindling support: 2 young women, even those who take the feminist label, no longer rally around the same banners as their predecessors. Amongst the confluences that have led to this inertia – a neoliberal market mentality sponsoring freedom of individual choice, 3 combining with a popular belief that the work of feminism was completed with the liberal feminist achievement of equality under the law –4 another explanation points to the effects of the “cultural turn”, and the alliance between constructivist and post-structuralist theories, and feminism, that has 1 Hooters Contract Clause, cited in Kath and Sophie Woodward, Why Feminism Matters: Feminism Lost and Found (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 106. 2 Ibid., 107. 3 Ibid., 106. 4 Ibid., 109. 4 characterised the third wave. 5 In the wake of these critical theories an awareness prevails that to evoke a politics of difference is always to implicate sameness or homogeneity. 6 The Sheffield Fems could not refer to structural sexism without presuming to speak for “women”, that is, without reinforcing the same “linguistically constructed” category which has led to the oppression of people identified with that marker.