Cosmological postmodernism

[Edward theurj Berge]

This article seems like it might be a bridge to some recent threads and posts, including the “quantum” theme. It's by Sam Mickey called “Cosmological postmodernism in Whitehead, Deleuze and Derrida” (Process Studies, 37.2, Fall-Winter 2008, 24-44). He notes some similarities between the referenced authors through four concepts: event, creativity, rhizome and chaosmos. Here are some relevant excerpts:

 

Event

 

According to Keller, a common factor in process thinking and postmodernism in general is the rejection of the modern conception of a world of self-identical substances in favor of a conception of a world characterized as "an open universe of mutually constitutive relations," that is, "a fluid nexus of mutually constitutive events".... The organism is situated in the world and receptive to all other occasions expressed throughout the entire antecedent universe. Whitehead uses the term "event" to designate "a nexus of actual occasions, interrelated in some determinate fashion in one extensive quantum" (27).

 

Deleuze considers how... an event is the extension of a part to become a whole that includes all other parts in an infinite series....a philosophy of events is a philosophy of mutually immanent occasions-nomadic monads whose windows open into one another. As a process of becoming that prehends the antecedent universe, the nomad "is always already in the past and yet to come" (28).

 

Derrida invents a concept of event...[which] implies that self-contained things are abstractions that are ultimately situated in vibrant waves of the creative process.... The surprising occurrence of an event is something for which no anticipation, expectation, or "horizon of waiting" is available, because this surprise is precisely an e-vent, a coming-out of that which is wholly other and completely novel in relation to any program, order, or expectation (29 – 30).

 

Creativity

 

The concept of creativity...made it possible for Whitehead to revise the traditional dichotomy between the act of creating and the created entity. Creativity is not opposed to the creature: "there are not two actual entities, the creativity and the creature. There is only one entity which is the self-creating creature" (31).

 

A creative or productive difference is a central theme throughout Deleuze's works.... This concept of difference is not to be understood in terms of a dichotomy between identity and contrariness.... This ...does not mean that precedence is given to contrariness as opposed to sameness. Identity (essence, model) and difference (appearance, copy) only seem mutually exclusive if difference revolves around identity. If identity revolves around difference, then primacy is given neither to sameness nor to contrariness, but to the productive power that makes possible any identical or differential relations (31-2).

 

Like Whitehead's creativity [Derrida's] differance is "a constitutive, productive, and originary causality" which....does not produce occasions within a fixed spatiotemporal framework; rather the spatial and temporal actuality of occasions is generated by the principle.... Thus, spatiotemporal relations are internal to events and are not imposed on them. That is, different modes of spacing and timing emerge from the contexts of different events, or in Whitehead's terms, relations of measurement are themselves derivative from societies of actual occasions.... Differance cannot be reduced to the ontological categories that it makes possible. This implies that...it functions as an originating "trace" or "archi-trace" that creates an opening for the emergence of ontological categories (32-3).

 

Whitehead mentions that creativity has no actuality of its own. Creativity... is through creation and creatures, that is, through the "accidental embodiments" of creativity apart from which creativity "is devoid of actuality" (33).

 

Rhizome

 

The rhizome is a system that "connects any point with any other points"....'A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo"....the concept of the rhizome implies that roots and rhizomes are intimately intertwined....what seem to be mutually exclusive opposites for arborescent thinking seem mutually implicative for rhizomatic thinking (36).

 

Chaosmos

 

Insofar as the concept of chaosmos functions as a sort of middle term that opens a place between the order of a self-identical cosmos and the differences of chaotic becoming, this concept can be likened to the concept of khora which is mentioned in Plato's Timaeus.In this dialogue, khora spoken of as a third thing that constiturts a generative place...wherein interrelations of being/becoming or identity/difference can come together. As Bracken notices, both Whitehead and Derrida take up the concept of khora, slightly changing the concept to be less like a matrix that passively receives events and more like a field of mutual immanence or interrelation that actively opens a place for novelty.... with Whitehead, the concept of the receptacle implies that all events take place in a chaosmos in the sense of a network of mutual immanence, that is, a "community of locus" that provides a receptive place for occasions to become internally interconnected with one another (41).

[Edward theurj Berge]

Recall when Joseph said this in the “what might come after pomo” thread:

“KW & others in the Integral scene have made proclamations about creating an Integral Christianity. Mostly this has been about encouraging meditation & contemplative practices with an AQAL perennialist theoretical overlay. Which is OK as far as it goes. What is interesting to me is how they missed the boat completely on the evangelical engagement with postmodern thought that's been going on for the last 15 years.”

Following is one such Christian engagement where we see many of the same themes as Mickey's article. The following excerpts are from Pieterse, Hendrik R. (2002) "Neopragmatism and the Christian Desire for a Transcendent God: Is a Meaningful Dialogue Possible?," Essays in Philosophy 3:2. The bolding is mine to emphasize the confluences.

“Let us note the stark dichotomies that have become apparent in Rorty’s philosophy thus far: either objectivity or solidarity; either transcendence or contingency; either obedience to nonhuman powers or dionysian self-creation. Moreover, observe that the quest for objectivity and transcendence is always an attempt to escape from history, language, and contingency. The "nonhuman powers" are always absolute, ahistorical, beyond time and chance. Rorty’s position thus creates a logic of mutual exclusion, presenting the thoughtful interpreter with an simple either/or choice in terms of the self-image and the allegiances she may aspire to: either a pragmatist or a metaphysician, either a believer in an ahistorical God or a strong poet and self-creator, and so forth. Furthermore, the logic of mutual exclusion creates a relationship of power that is absolute: that which is ahistorical and beyond time and chance is not malleable, not subject to human manipulation, and thus floats free of human creative influence. Such imperviousness to human power makes these ahistorical realities not only useless for human projects, it makes them positively anti-human.

It is precisely because Rorty’s argument creates such absolute conceptual oppositions between, say, objectivity and solidarity, or transcendence and contingency, that the notion of transcendence comes to be seen as the very opposite of human freedom and flourishing. In other words, Rorty’s ethical objections to transcendence gain their argumentative force only because of the sharply dichotomous way in which terms like "transcendence" and "solidarity" function in Rorty’s conceptual apparatus. To be sure, if transcendence is necessarily ahistorical, atemporal, and extralinguistic, then it falls victim to Rorty’s criticism of metaphysics, foundationalism, realism, and so forth. Further, if transcendence is necessarily the metaphysical construct that Rorty claims it is, then its power is unilateral, confrontational, oppressive, and inimical to human flourishing. But there is no need for the theologian to accept these forced dichotomies in Rorty’s argument. Indeed, whether Christian theology has ever construed God’s transcendence in the ahistorical, absolutist terms that Rorty suggests, is highly debatable.* In any case, the theologian should refuse to accept the strained oppositions of Rorty’s argument. Instead, she should extricate talk about God from the metaphysics with which Rorty lumps it, and make the case for a postmetaphysical and postfoundationalist construal of God’s reality. Such a view of the divine Other floats free of Rorty’s dichotomies, and reinscribes the desiderata of human freedom and creativity, and of God’s transcendent otherness in ways that are thoroughly historical, contingent, and liberative.

Wallace proposes that a fruitful way to bypass the reifying metaphysical categories of being is through a retrieval of the biblical-theological understanding of God as Spirit (Wallace 1996:65). Admittedly, to accomplish this means overcoming modern suspicions of spirit as either Hegel’s all-consuming World Spirit (78) or as a supernatural, vapid, ethereal reality transcending history, language, and contingency (121-122). For Wallace, these suspicions are countered, however, by rendering the Spirit’s reality not in the terms of substance or being but rather rhetorically "in relation to the structures of lived existence" (122). A rhetorical construal of the Spirit means that the Spirit exists in a transformative relationship with the concrete social systems that alternately serve to block and enable human renewal. The Spirit is not a self-subsistent, static entity that exists apart from its coinherence with other living beings. Rather, the Spirit has its very life in communion with the liberative and healing relationships that various persons and groups share with one another. This approach desubstantializes the Spirit and understands the Spirit’s work in adjectival rather than nominative terms, in spite of the way the word "Spirit" is conventionally used as the syntactic subject. Far from this model denying the reality of the Spirit, it rather posits this reality as a dynamic life-force that circulates among the transformative power relations that undergird aspects of postmodern culture (Wallace 1996:122-123).

By "desubstantializing" the Spirit’s reality—by refusing to consider the Spirit "a self-subsistent, static entity"—and by insisting on the Spirit’s "coinherence with other living beings," a rhetorical understanding of the Spirit affirms the utterly historical, linguistic, and contingent nature of God’s reality. Indeed, as Spirit, God has no reality apart from history, time, and language. The Spirit’s radical inherence in the concretions of history, time, and language is of a piece with thinking of the Spirit’s work as "adjectival" rather than "nominative." "Adjectival" delineates the Spirit’s as power. Specifically, the Spirit emerges as the normative power of transformation and healing in "concrete social systems." Power is radically relational, which means it has no reality apart from its concretions in historical and social situations. Limning the Spirit as power suggests that the Spirit need not—indeed, should not—be hypostasized: The Spirit is not self-subsistent, capable of sustaining an existence apart from the dynamic of power relations that constitute concrete social and historical contexts. Instead, the Spirit reality—God’s reality—just is the normative power to effect transformation and healing in concrete historical situations. For my model, then, God’s reality—God’s "being," if you will—is historical without remainder. God’s reality is coterminous with its instantiations in the contingencies of history, time, and chance. Such a radically historicist construal of God’s reality renders the divine fragile, subject to vicissitudes of renewal and decay that accompany historical change.

Perhaps the place to begin is to uncouple the issue of God’s transcendence from Rorty’s problematic construal of it. As we saw, Rorty’s interpretation of transcendence as necessarily a relation of the historical to the ahistorical, the temporal to the atemporal, and so forth, occludes a radically historicist understanding of God’s transcendent Reality—for it construes transcendence as a static, ontological relation of mutual exclusion: either historical existence utterly devoid of epiphanic moments ("the gods are dead") or epistemic and moral constraint by ahistorical, metaphysical powers. A postmetaphysical theologian will not be misled by the "contrastive" logic of Rorty’s dichotomous view; in fact, she will reject it. For if, as the historicist theologian would have it, God is not the ahistorical, metaphysical Entity Rorty makes him out to be, but instead is thoroughly insinuated in the passage of history, time, and contingency, then God’s transcendence—God’s "otherness"—is entirely historical too. The ineluctably historical nature of God’s otherness, therefore, necessarily requires a different logic from that of Rorty’s position. I contend that a rhetorical construal of the polyphonic witness of the biblical text suggests a logic of the Spirit’s transcendent reality which moves the historicist theologian beyond the tired stalemate Rorty’s position has created.

But how exactly will it do that? It does so by suggesting that the logic of God’s otherness derives crucially from the identity of the divine Other mediated through the plural discourses of the biblical text. Contra Rorty, God is not a metaphysical entity "discovered" underneath the multiple layers of the text, waiting to be adequately represented by the proper theological or metaphysical language. Rather, as we saw earlier, limned in the register of power the divine Other is a reality whose very identity emerges from within the dynamic play of the concrete interpretive situation. The historical nature of the Spirit’s reality means that God’s transcendence, far from being a static, ontological relation between history and the ahistorical, is actually a function of the dynamic relational interplay between text and interpreter in a concrete context. But of what exactly does God’s transcendence exist in a concrete interpretive situation? How exactly is God "other"? Once again, it is the identity of the divine Spirit emerging from the polyphonic interplay of the Bible’s multiple discourses that holds the clue to the meaning of the transcendent relation. Recall that we described the Spirit as the normative power of transformation, liberation, and healing in a given social context. The "otherness" of the Spirit resides precisely in the normativity of the power relations comprising the hermeneutical context. That is, God’s transcendence constitutes the othering power of liberating love in a historical situation. Precisely to the extent that it enables liberation the divine love transcends the constraints and limited resources of a given situation. Divine transcendence is thus transposed into a moral-ethical key: The Spirit is experienced as transcendent in a concrete interpretive context just insofar as she brings to the situation morally and spiritually superior resources for transformation, liberation, and healing. Put another way, through a rhetorical imaginative engagement with the biblical text, the "otherness" of God is experienced as the lure of new modes of being—of transcendent existential possibilities. Or, in the language of the Christian theological tradition, the otherness of the divine Mystery is the otherness of grace, of the promise of a radically new way of being in the world.”

* Ok, he's wrong on that one. Still...