Criticism of Heaven

497 Pages·2007·5.68 MB·English

by  Roland Boer

Criticism of Heaven
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Historical
Materialism
Book Series
Editorial Board
Paul Blackledge, Leeds – Sébastien Budgen, Paris
Michael Krätke, Amsterdam – Stathis Kouvelakis,
London – Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam
China Miéville, London – Paul Reynolds, Lancashire
Peter Thomas, Amsterdam
VOLUME 18
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Criticism of Heaven
On Marxism and Theology
By
Roland Boer
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
ISSN 1570-1522
ISBN 978 90 04 16111 5
Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission
from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by
Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
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For Ken Surin
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Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................. xi
Introduction ................................................................................................... xv
Chapter One Bloch’s Detective Work .................................................... 1
Argument and advocacy ........................................................................... 4
From the Bible to sentence production, and back again ...................... 7
Method: class con(cid:2) ict as a hermeneutical key ....................................... 14
Vagaries of writing ................................................................................ 14
Oral and written texts ............................................................................ 15
Forces of redaction ................................................................................. 17
Biblical criticism ..................................................................................... 18
The politics of interpretation ................................................................ 20
The critique of myth .................................................................................. 26
Exegesis ....................................................................................................... 36
The Hebrew Bible ................................................................................... 37
New Testament ....................................................................................... 45
The return to theology ............................................................................... 47
Atheism ................................................................................................... 48
Teleology ................................................................................................. 50
Transcendence ........................................................................................ 51
Faith, hope, sin and death ..................................................................... 52
Conclusion .................................................................................................. 55
Chapter Two Benjamin’s Perpetuation of Biblical Myth .................. 57
Trauerspiel .................................................................................................... 63
Demons, allegory and (cid:2) esh (allegorical level) ................................... 65
Fall and Eschaton (moral and anagogic levels) ................................. 67
Passagenarbeit .............................................................................................. 70
Method: collector as allegorist ............................................................. 70
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viii • Contents
Passages ................................................................................................... 72
The double allegory of Marxism and theology ................................. 74
Myth and history ........................................................................................ 79
Appropriation of the maternal function ................................................. 82
Genesis ......................................................................................................... 86
Language ................................................................................................. 86
Ursprung .................................................................................................. 90
Salvation history [Heilsgeschichte]: the return of biblical myth ............ 96
Conclusion .................................................................................................. 103
Chapter Three The Ecclesiastical Eloquence of Louis Althusser ..... 107
Ecclesiastical form: theological writings ................................................. 109
From absent cause to philosophy of religion ......................................... 128
The logical necessity .............................................................................. 129
Elements of a materialist philosophy of religion ............................... 132
Ideology ............................................................................................... 133
Myth ..................................................................................................... 143
Conclusion: the terminus of (auto)biography? ...................................... 159
Chapter Four The Heresies of Henri Lefebvre ..................................... 163
Threshold .................................................................................................... 164
Exploration .................................................................................................. 169
Worship ....................................................................................................... 177
Archaeology ................................................................................................ 178
Heresies ....................................................................................................... 187
Blondel ..................................................................................................... 189
Joachim de Fiore and mysticism .......................................................... 192
Jansen and the Albigensians ................................................................. 194
The Devil ................................................................................................. 197
On religion: reading Lefebvre against himself ...................................... 198
Everyday life ........................................................................................... 200
Space ........................................................................................................ 204
Women ..................................................................................................... 209
Conclusion .................................................................................................. 214
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Contents • ix
Chapter Five The Ecumenism of Antonio Gramsci ............................ 215
Ecumenism .................................................................................................. 219
Politics: the ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’ of the Holy See .............................. 228
Catholic Action ....................................................................................... 228
Internal con(cid:2) ict: integralists, Jesuits and modernists ....................... 234
Bewilderment? External alliances ........................................................ 239
Intellectuals ................................................................................................. 245
Reformation ................................................................................................ 258
Counter-Reformation and Reformation ............................................. 260
The Italian Luther ................................................................................... 267
Conclusion .................................................................................................. 273
Chapter Six The Apostasy of Terry Eagleton ....................................... 275
Wit and the encyclopaedia, or the tensions of style .............................. 278
Orthodoxy and orthopraxis ...................................................................... 283
Asceticism ............................................................................................... 285
Evil and the humble virtues ................................................................. 287
The absence of sin, or, the politics of forgiveness ............................. 294
Radical christology .................................................................................... 301
Theology redivivus? ................................................................................ 309
The desire for a historical Jesus ............................................................ 313
Christological metaphors ...................................................................... 315
The problem of the personality cult .................................................... 321
An intrinsic Eagleton? (The question of ecclesiology) .......................... 324
Chapter Seven The Conversion of Slavoj Žižek .................................. 335
The darkness of Lacan: the challenge of Butler and Laclau ................. 338
Of truth-events and sundry matters: the challenge of Badiou ............ 343
Materialist grace? ....................................................................................... 359
A glimpse .................................................................................................. 360
The cul-de-sac of ethics and love ......................................................... 364
The Protestant turn .................................................................................... 372
Badiou, or militant gratuitousness ...................................................... 372
The grace of V.I. Lenin .......................................................................... 377
Kierkegaard’s snare ............................................................................... 383
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