Nutu Incarnate Word Inscribed Flesh Speech Derrida Lacan Text chapter (original) (raw)
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WORD INTO FLESH/ FLESH INTO WORD: THE MAKING OF AN INCARNATIONAL TEXTUALITY
‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . .’ In his remarkable trilogy on theology, literature, and the arts—The Sacred Desert, The Sacred Body, The Sacred Community—David Jasper often turns to the text of John’s prologue in what could be described as a decade-long meditation on the theme of ‘dwelling poetically’. The latter phrase originates in a Hölderlin poem, ‘Of lovely blueness . . .’: ‘Full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth.’ It is taken up by Heidegger, in his late poetic writings, to explore what it might be like to dwell poetically, which is, as Jasper puts it, ‘to move toward a new way of thinking itself and a new way of being—that is, finally, what it is to be fully human.’ Hélène Cixous, the French theorist, explores this same territory in her practice of écriture feminine, which includes a deeply incarnational component with its idea of ‘writing the body’. Cixous is also influenced by her readings of the later Heidegger, which cause her to take what has been called an ‘ascetic’ turn. In this essay I engage the work of these three thinkers to mark a place in-between two perspectives: Either word made flesh, or flesh made word. What Heidegger, Cixous, and Jasper do in their reading/writing practices is something that changes that ‘either/or’ to a ‘both/and’. They enact in their writing an embodied poetic textuality in which the form itself is as important as the content in transforming the way we think and live.
Hello, and good afternoon! My name is Benjamin Diego and I am a junior studying medieval art and literature at Stanford University. Rukma and I work together a lot, actually, investigating texts and art objects that offer insight into the way medieval people understood the nature of the human body and its physicality. Like Rukma, I believe that this line of inquiry can help us to more effectively explore issues of gender, identity, and experience in the Middle Ages. This paper draws from a wide range of textual and visual sources from the eighth through the thirteenth centuries that discuss the nature of medieval identity with regard to the body. In keeping with the theme of this conference, I define identity as an orientation; I use it not to refer to one's personality, but to his affiliation with and position relative to others in a particular group. Identity in the Middle Ages was exclusive-one could belong to a particular group only if he could conform to its standards of inclusion. Such standards made identity something that one could either be inside of or outside of. The sources that I will discuss in this presentation presumptively correlate the conceptual boundary between inside and outside with the physical limits of the body. They imagine the body as a vessel that holds inside and shapes one's sense of self, and keeps outside the things that might threaten it. The medieval body purportedly gave its person an identity, an orientation-a place on either side of the divide between inside and outside. In theory, such a vantage point would clarify the distinction between self and Other that formed the foundation of medieval identity.
Psychosocial textuality: Religious identities and textual constructions
Subjectivity, 2010
This article tries to articulate what it might mean to talk about a 'psychosocial' approach to certain kinds of performative texts. The texts in question are those that are drawn upon by members of specific groups to define their group identity and to lend meaning to individual experiences and to define personal worldviews. It is suggested that 'psychosocial' readings, which draw on narrative, discursive and psychoanalytic traditions of interpretation, might embrace a political project of opening out these texts for inspection of the 'subjugated' or non-hegemonic narratives embedded in them. This involves constructing grounded readings that, as well as attending to the 'traces' of alternative arguments to be found in the texts, also appreciate and engage with the interpretive practices of the communities to which these texts speak. One implication of this is that such psychosocial readings have to embrace both an 'insider' and an 'outsider' view of such texts, and in particular to deploy a marginal practice that acknowledges and contests traditional or 'orthodox' readings.
Identity texts: their meaning for their writers and readers
The effort to delineate and identify communication and ourselves, within a limited or a broader community, lies within the context of sociolinguistics. This is so as through our own linguistic production, the voice of " insignificant people " , we can approach greater issues, such as communication and education. Characteristically, Joshua Fishman, who is called " the father of sociolinguistics " , claims that " there is much more than what science can explain and, I personally, need the contribution of poetic, philosophical, artistic or any other kind of speech, to understand everything that concerns me " (Fishman, 1990:123). Through linguistic productions, or texts of various content, we can approach our membership in social groups, especially within a dynamic educational context. This membership implies multiple dimensions (Maalouf, 1994), or identifications, which connect us with others who share some of these elements, and thus our identity is forme...
Afterword: texts and narratives
Religious Individualisation, 2019
The 'texts' portion of this part of the publication has explored narratives of religious individualisation that have set in motion discourses which, to varying degrees, empower and promote religious individualisation. The authors of these narratives are, in a sense, the founders of discursivity, from whom currents of thought seem to flow which have informed modes of religious individualisation. It is, however, often the 'modes of circulation, valorisation, attribution, and appropriation' (Foucault, Faubion 1998, 220) that provide insights into the cultures and social relations of a process of individualisation. It is the production and modifications of the 'author function' that indicate the emergence of institutions that propel and valorise the 'individual' author. In this section, we have discussed how the author does not necessarily connote a specific individual; several narrators, selves, and subjects confuse and complicate the link between author and individual (historical or imaginary). The author may function as a mere 'scriptor', the composer of a text, but its ultimate use, meaning, and destiny are in the hands of the recipients of that text (Barthes, Heath 1977, 145). Some of the contributions here have engaged with the idea that the author/scriptor plays a smaller role in the emergence of conventions than the community that rallies around their texts. For it is this community that valorises the author as an exemplar to be emulated. Yet other contributors have examined the intentionality of an author's narrative strategies to initiate discursivity and to provide a model for posterity. We have discovered, in contrast to the 'Practices' section of this part of the publication, that texts intuitively tend toward collective efforts of stabilisation and conventionalisation, sometimes tangential or even at variance with the pronouncements of the author. Processes of text composition, reception, and itinerancy, and the many ironic and quirky stances that authors, characters, and audiences take with regard to texts, suggest that previous assumptions about sequential and/or dialectical dynamics of religious institutionalisation and individualisation need to be reconsidered. Is it possible to think of individualisation and institutionalisation as intertwined processes rather than opposing or contrasting and sequential processes? In other words, can we think of a process in which the narrative creates the author? And one in which the individual author is produced when he or she is institutionalised or stabilised through the work? In such a scenario, individualisation and institutionalisation, rather than being ambiguous and ambivalent processes, can become mutual, reciprocal, and coeval, and the congealing of
Em(Bodied) Texts: A Consideration of the Hermeneutics of Identity Formation in the Pauline Tradition
Physiognomy is concerned with how we read bodies. In this paper I explore the hermeneutical relationship between textual bodies and physical bodies by looking at the Pauline letters within the context of Roman Imperial ideology. With an understanding of the contextual backdrop against which and within which Paul's letters are to be understood, consideration is given to the ongoing influence of a body of texts, such as a Pauline corpus, in shaping bodies, arguing that bodies of texts rub up against physical bodies shaping identity both positively and negatively. Careful analysis of the scripted nature of bodily comportment is given by drawing attention to the regulative, normativising role of textual bodies on physical bodies, whether ancient or contemporary. In so doing, this paper seeks to wrestle with the hermeneutics of identity formation both in the Pauline letters and in the reception history of these letters for the church.
Theatre Research in Canada-recherches Theatrales Au Canada, 2014
Almighty Voice and His Wife tells the legend of a Cree man who lived in Saskatchewan during the end of the nineteenth century. After being arrested for killing a cow, he escaped prison and died in a shootout with over one hundred Mounted police. This essay explores the performed transmission of "I am" declarations in encounters between historical Indigenous figures and perceived white colonial audiences in Moses's play. In a work that seeks to reshape earlier versions of the Almighty Voice myth, performative utterances are a key strategy for speaking back to colonial legends and a history of enforced Christianity in Canada. Almighty Voice features a series of "I am" statements, such as "I'm no ghost" and "I am the wife of Almighty Voice;" yet, the final attempt at selfassertion-"Who am I?"-does not leave the audience with truth claims but with questions. Integrating J. L. Austin's concept of speech acts with Judith Butler's performative identity theory and Miri Albahari's theory of possessive subjecthood, this paper outlines four main functions of "I am" statements: 1) to constitute the self; 2) to perform belongingness; 3) to assert ownership over identificatory categories; and 4) to emphasize individuality. The conclusion returns to the larger questions of the subject-making capacities of self-narration in Canadian drama. La pièce Almighty Voice and His Wife de Daniel David Moses raconte la légende d'un Cri vivant en Saskatchewan à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle. Après avoir été détenu pour avoir abattu une vache, il s'est échappé de prison et a trouvé la mort dans une fusillade l'opposant à une centaine de policiers de la Gendarmerie royale. Dans cet article, Wright explore la mise en scène des « Je suis » qui ponctuent la rencontre entre les figures historiques indigènes et le public de Moses, perçu comme étant composé de colons blancs. Dans cette oeuvre qui cherche à revisiter le mythe d'Almighty Voice (Voix du Grand Esprit), les énoncés performatifs sont une stratégie clé qui permet de répondre aux légendes coloniales et à une longue expérience de christianisme forcé au Canada. Almighty Voice met en scène une série d'énonciations du type « Je suis », telles que « I'm no ghost » (« Je ne suis pas un fantôme ») et « I am the wife of Almighty Voice » (« Je suis l'épouse de Voix du Grand Esprit »). Or la dernière tentative d'affirmation de soi laisse le public non pas sur une affirmation de la vérité mais sur une question : « Who am I? » (« Qui suis-je? »). Dans cet article, Wright s'appuie sur le concept d'acte de langage de J. L. Austin, de celui de genre comme performance développé par Judith Butler et de la théorie de Miri Albahari sur le sujet et la possession pour décrire quatre grandes fonctions de l'énoncé « Je suis » : 1) construire le soi; 2) jouer l'appartenance; 3) signaler son appropriation de catégories identitaires et 4) souligner son individualité. Dans sa conclusion, Wright s'interroge sur la capacité du théâtre canadien de construire le sujet par l'autonarration.