Death of god part V

Unedited; please read forgivingly for I have transgressed.

God is described by Peter Bebergal as "the supreme referant" and the death of god, then, is the removal of this supreme referant. which gives rise to the question; what provides identity to do the body without the existence of the supreme referant?

Transgression then is the interrogation of limits that exist symbiotically with prohibition and taboo. In that moment of transgression where be are neither and both the ocean and the beach, a moment in which meaning in language reaches its limits and fails, there is nothig but limit and the limitless.

Sexuality can only profane itself; there is no external object of profanation which can be desecrated by sexuality and therefore it does not have the ability to profane. Profanation needs an object and sexuality has no object. Sexuality is pure transgression which tests limits, defines new limits, but not in a contestive manner but in a way that illiminates the limit in a flash of phosphouresence on the beach while at the very same time defining foaming outline of the new limit.


The ocean does not experience its oceanness by sitting on the ocean floor. It creates no new limits by being a millpond. It must experience its limitlessness through transgression of its limits but even in seeking new limits the ocean creates a limit through an implied search for the infinite referrant.

The key then, is to affirm the limit without God. And this is accomplished by transgression, which as we saw, is only what it is in context to the limit it seeks to transgress. This limit can only be known through transgression.

The transgression of limits is the interrogation of the very limits of the self.

This interrogation of the self, is an interrogation of the limit and a movement towards recapturing the self, without God. But this movement involves taking the self to the limit, which is where madness exists.

Transgression offers the hope for this finality, for by pointing out the limit, it exposes the possibility for the return of the Limit, the return of the sacred, without God.

Transgression is not then transcenance but limit within the body.

From: A Meditation on Transgression: Foucault, Bataille and the Retrieval of the Limit

Death of god Part IV

Here I am attempting to get a handle on Battaille's concept (as it's read by Foucault) of transgression and the death of god.

Garth Gillan states: "the concept of transgression says that meaning is confronted not as an absolute transcendence grounding language, but in the limits of meaning. Language is the existence of sense in the recognition of limits...[b]ut sense is not created by remaining within limits, such as the analytic of finitude, as if they constituted a new set of positivities within which humanity is reconstituted. Sense is, rather, in the excess that transgresses those limits" (p. 66).

In Battaille eroticism arises when sexuality crosses the limits of a taboo or limit of sexuality. Transgression relies on and needs the existence of the limit but in the crossing of the limit in eroticism the taboo is not lifted, it still exists. The movement creating the transgression is the limitlessness that is required for the transgression of limits in the absence of an absolute "Limit". At this point language is no longer dialectic or binary but merely recognises difference. One could say that it is neither wrong nor right but simply is. Contestation takes place without being resolved.

The language of transgression is distinct from the language of finitude by which man is known and knowable in the world. We are known by that which ontically defines us as in our "life, labour, and language" (p. 67) and it is various discursive fields that define our limits and what can be know about our body and being. "Mans finitude mirrors the finite content of the areas of knowledge through which he is known. The limits in the analytic of finitude are positive limits within which Man appears as an object of knowledge."

Transgressive knowledge does not have man as its centre. "Transgressive thought does not presuppose an ontic ground for the division of reason and madness, the true and the false"; it rejects the theological foundation of Western thought. Limits exist within finitude as a priori means to create a homogenous and integral whole, but within transgression limits are constantly interrogated and acts of transgression replace the dialectic.

And this was Foucault's genealogical programme to constantly interrogate the limits of reason, madness, penality, and psychiatry. Whilst he mentions limits, transgression, and excess mainly in his philosophical texts, such as Preface to Transgression it is these concepts which inform his approach to his analyses.

Reason is at play within all of the ways in which power has its effects on the body; and this forms its own transgression in that reason has transgressed its own nature by docily taking sides with the dichotomies it has created with its violence.

Lemert, C., & Gillan, G. (1982). Michel Foucault: social theory and transgression. New York: Columbia University Press.

Death of god Part III

Now I'm onto A Meditation on Transgression. An new article but my reading so far has turned my thoughts on the death of god upside down. I'll keep reading.

Death of god part II

This article could be worth a read at some point. If writing is a contemplation of death then it is also the killing of god and the removal of limits. In the absence of the writing self to the audience, which, in turn has not been born at the moment of writing, the subject is effaced. Or perhaps I'm just full of shit.

Taboo, transgression, and crime: Bataille and beyond.

The death of god

I'm working on a concept proposed by Battaile that transgression, limits, and the death of god are connected. A friend sent me a link to a post on Larval Subjects, some of which I quote here.

"As such, the death of God signifies first and most fundamentally the end of the primacy of the One in whatever form it might take. To announce the death of God is, as both Deleuze and Badiou have declared, to simultaneously declare that the One, the identical, the same, is only a product, a result, a term-become rather than a foundation or first. As such, metaphysics in the wake of God is a metaphysics that seeks to think difference first and to see identity as a result or product. That is, we must be vigilant in tracking down and eradicating all remainders of theology within such a thought."

What I take from this is that god can only be thought from the position of a homogenous individual -- the One -- and to die as a subject is to bring about the death of god.

As you can probably here I'm on shaky ground here. In a perfect place really.

Making progress

I crossed a threshold yesterday. I'm now over the 10 000 word hurdle. It's kind of funny because I'm now getting concerned that I'm not going to fit everything in.

I read an article last week that had me a bit excited about the intersection of transgression and subjectivity. In particular this idea of the death of god had me jumping a bit. But I think I may have been a bit literal with my reading of the theory so I'm almost ready to ditch it. Still, they're may yet be a critique coming along feminist lines. One of my peers said that I might be classed pro-feminist. Labels, labels, labels. Perhaps I'm just an apostate.

Tomorrow I'll put the finishing touches on a section about the development of sex as a scientific base of knowledge. It feeds into the development of sex as discourse and the telling of truth to power. The confession of truth to power is a means by which power can hide its operation until it can act on a subject. In the case of the Mormon church it doesn't need to hide for too long as it starts the subjectivation process while kids are in the cradle. In their defense capitalist societies do the same thing with kids by telling them they need to be consumers from a very early age. Is their any subject position that we can inhabit in a truly creative and free manner?

A can of worms | dooce ®

Here's a striking post from Heather Armstrong which begins to address the intersection between power and sexuality. Whilst Armstrong's observations amount to a candid dislike of the Mormon church along human rights lines, her post opens up issues of how pastoral power is used in conjunction with the creation of sexual identities.

I prefer not to use such long quotes, however the manner in which Armstrong connects homosexuality, polygamy, and monogamy as a problematic for relationships of power within the church is rather striking. What is also worthy of note is the way Armstrong here carefully renegotiates a new boundary to her subject position. In previous posts she stepped back from saying anything overtly political about the church, but here she is directly critical and asserts a position whilst reinforcing a subject position that is respectful to her parents beliefs as practicing Mormons.

A can of worms | dooce ®:

"Mormons believe that polygamy will be practiced in the afterlife, and what I can't help thinking is that when the civil right of marriage is ultimately extended to homosexuals and then to polygamists, why wouldn't the Mormon Church start practicing it again? And when they do start practicing it again, how are the members of the church going to handle it? If Mormons truly believe their religion they have to believe that polygamy is their destiny, so why are they always trying to distance themselves from it? I think that many of them don't want to ask themselves that question because they might be terrified of the answer: they aren't okay with it.

It was this very issue that started me on my way out of the religion, this issue and that of the role of women in the church. I realized that I valued myself too much to ever be okay with sharing my partner with anyone else. I deserve all of him, and he deserves all of me, nothing less. I had a hard time reconciling the fact that my father (although he has a civil divorce from my mother) is married to both my mother and my step-mother in the Mormon temple, but my mother, unless she gets a temple divorce from my father, can never remarry another man in the temple. She doesn't have the same rights as a man in the church. That isn't okay to me."

Religious power and it's conspiracy

So I'm reading about subject creation today putting together some words for my thesis and it struck me the efforts fundamentalist religions go to ensure adherence from their followers. Mark Poster says that a post-structuralist understanding of the subject is that the subject is never fixed or fully sutured. Of course the working of power is to attempt to do the opposite - to fix a subject position to the maximum extent possible. And that's precisely what religions attempt to do by creating rules for every conceivable situation in an attempt to close off a subject position at as many points of resistance as possible. Sex, diet, behaviour all become moments for the circumscription of the boundaries of the form expected of a subject position. It's all fascinating stuff when it comes to the textaul analysis dooce. Heather Armstrong grew up as a Mormon.

And it's something I'm particularly interested in being I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness. From a very early age I was told about the evils of drugs, pre-marital sex, masturbation, blood, you name it there was a rule to be followed, something to do or to avoid doing. And the more a person self-identifies as a JW the more the form of their subject position is developed. As Poster recognises, the working of power is to position the subject so that power acts on them before they are aware of their position infuenceb by power. Which is precisely the project of the JW's. With the seemingly innocent bible studies that work a person into a position as an object of the power of the church and with teaching children bible "truths" before the child has developed a sense of critical and rational thinking these efforts produce individuals as objects of power.

As you can imagine, I can't say too many (read nothing) favourable about the working of power within these religions. They're little more than a machinery of control and manipulation.

The agony of writing a thesis

I wrote about fifty words today. It doesn't sound like much but it means a lot to me. I wrote about the way subjects use the subjection of power to obtain agency. Subjects are created through power and it is the power that creates the subject that is, in effect, surplus and which is then used by the subject to assert agency that is conditioned by the power that creates the subject position in the first instance.

The narration of the subject is problematic. Power is a pre-condition for the emergence of the subject and yet power cannot exist without the existence of the subject. Kind of a chicken or the egg problem. So it's impossible to narrativise the emergence of the subject without positing the preexistence of the subject. To narrate the emergence of the subject the subject must speak of itself in the third person whereby the subject disappears only to give rise to the narrating subject.

Just a few months ago I asked for the first time what subjectivity was. I simply did not know, had never heard the concept before. Now I'm writing about it. It was only late last year I heard about Michel Foucault for the first time. He now informs my theoretical approach to my thesis. At times I feel daunted, almost afraid of being found to be an intellectual fraud. But today I simply enjoyed learning. I read Judith Butler. It was one of Butler's easier pieces. She has a reputation for writing in an inaccessable style, but she writes about subjects that require a new state of consciousness to grasp, not a simple, intellectual understanding. And after spending a considerable amount of time reading and re-reading, I was finally able to write a piece. This is what I wrote:

Judith Butler (1997, p. 12) poses the question in a similar vein: “How is it that the power upon which the subject depends for existence and which the subject is compelled to reiterate turns against itself in the course of that reiteration?” In response, Butler contends that, whilst power enacts the subject through subjection, it is also used productively by the subject to create itself as the precondition of agency and the “guarantor of its resistance and opposition” (p. 14). Subordination, therefore, becomes an important strategy on the part of the subject to obtain agency. For Butler, “the subject emerges both as the effect of a prior power and as the condition of possibility for a radically conditioned form of agency” (p. 15; emphasis in original). Thought in this way, power delivers to the subject the very agency it attempts to suppress. 

It may not win a Pulitzer prize but it's my unfolding in the agony of the delete key trying to suppress the slow formation of words.

Bulter, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: theories in subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press.