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all explicit christological content.128 This subversion of the incarnation is precisely what is entailed by ‘conceptual violence’ – a utilization of the concept, which is always already in service to another end. Concepts are never ends in themselves. In other words, it is not the impossibility of the sign that is at stake. It is the impossibility of the sign to escape systemic and structural violence that is at stake. As has been said, there are no innocent words. Certainly, the Word is no exception, if the history of Christianity and Western civilization is anything to go by.
1.4.2 Language and the Nonviolent Concept
Smith’s project is committed to the ethics of the concept. He wants a non-violent
‘concept,’ and he argues that non-violence is equated to non-predication. However, across a variety of disciplines in the twentieth century we are repeatedly shown that violence is housed in structures and systems, the very systems that give rise to language and meaning. There is an economy of language and signs – systems of signification.129 Levinas recognizes something like this when he says that “language, far from presupposing universality and generality, first makes them possible.”130 Language imposes a heteronomy upon speakers, which allows for universality and generality – at least, in its expressive function, which seems to be the function that Smith is interested in. In this expressivist, generalist case, things “disappear beneath their form.”131 Ultimately, Levinas claims, that:
language is universal because it is the very passage from the individual to the general, because it offers things which are mine to the Other. To speak is to make the world
128 Smith, Speech, 10.
129 For example, see Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, trans.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
130 Levinas, Totality, 73.
131 Ibid., 74.
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common, to create commonplaces. Language does not refer to the generality of concepts, but lays the foundations for a possession in common.132
Importantly, it is the direction from the Same outward that establishes the power dynamics and economics of language, making universal claims based on subjective, particular experiences.
Smith’s silence on the economy of language and signs is startling. Yet, when Augustine prayed for ‘mercy’ due to the incapacity of language,133 we today can sympathize with this prayer:
“Lord, have mercy due to the economic exploitation at the heart of our language.”
Augustine is concerned with what can be learned with(out) signs.134 What if only
‘worldly’ or ‘fleshly’ things could be learned within the system of signs that is language? Is this not similar to Husserl’s phenomenological claim in the Ideas?135 What if only economic things can be learned within this system? What if transcendent things, like justice or love or hospitality, required another linguistic mode beyond a system of signs and referents? In such a case, it would
132 Ibid., 76
133 “Have mercy so that I may find words.” Augustine, Confessions, Henry Chadwick, trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 5.
134 In the dialog, Augustine says to Adeodatus, “. . . you have explained words by means of words. That is to say, you have explained signs by means of signs and familiar things by the same familiar things.” Augustine, Against the Academicians and The Teacher, Peter King, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995): 99.
Adeodatus later says, “I admit that sound, smell, flavor, weight, heat, and other things that pertain to the rest of the senses, despite the fact that they can’t be sensed without bodies and consequently are corporeal, nevertheless can’t be exhibited through [pointing] a finger” (Ibid., 100). Augustine responds by reminding Adeodatus how deaf people and pantomimes communicate so effectively with hand gestures. Augustine says that the pantomime is so good that
“ he . . . won’t indicate a word with a word. He’ll nonetheless still indicate a sign with a sign” (Ibid., 101). As Augustine continues to explore the role of signs and indications in communication, he fails to note the cultural genealogies of gestures and finger arrangements themselves. When pointing at an object, it is culture that tells us what the finger arrangement indicates. In Japanese martial arts, complex finger arrangements are made to channel energy: mudras. When I point at an apple, what is to say that I am not trying to channel my energy toward the apple or the apple’s energy to me? Why am I not communicating with the spirit of the apple? Or why follow the direction of my finger toward the apple rather than backwards towards me? After all, three other fingers on my hand are pointing back to me whenever I point at an object. In part, this was Wittgenstein’s point about language games. The rules of the game determine meaning in a context. Gestures are not transferable between games; not if their meaning is to be preserved.
135 While I sympathize more with the ‘new phenomenologists’ on this topic, Smith has clearly aligned himself with Husserl throughout ST. He has not sufficiently addressed Husserl’s mandate that phenomenology bracket God.
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not be the incompleteness of the sign pointing beyond itself that yielded the transcendent. That incompleteness would be only another mode of power relations.
Smith, like many great thinkers, notes that Augustine frets over the incapacity of language to express what Augustine wants to say.136 This leads me to wonder, why must language be the means of praising God and communicating God? Why can justice or ethics not do these things? If the Psalms talk about the heavens and earth declaring God’s glory, what makes us think that human language is the paramount mode of praise? If Ludwig Wittgenstein recognized that communication encompassed more than just language, why has Smith not recognized that? Yet Smith, and presumably Augustine, are committed to a linguistic mode of praise, which is reasonable, even if giving primacy to such a mode is perhaps more questionable.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising to find Augustine praying: “Have mercy so that I may find words.”137 So many of the ancient and early modern writers began their writings like this or came to this point in their writings. One thinks of Anselm alongside Augustine.138 What if this prayer was more than just empty piety? What if this prayer expressed the truth of the
structure of knowledge and communication – that knowledge comes from mercy and grace?
What if the ‘mercy’ were precisely the incapacity of words? What if ‘mercy’ was the excess of transcendence that called us beyond ourselves and our words? That caused us to recognize our
136 Smith, Speech, 114.
137 Augustine, Confessions, 5.
138 “Let me discern Your light whether it be from afar or from the depths. Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek You if you do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself.” Anselm, Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998): 86.
As he begins his Confessions, Augustine quotes from the Psalms: “Grant me Lord, to know and understand (Ps.
118:34, 37, 73, 144) . . .” (Augustine, Confessions, 3).
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cognitive-linguistic, even our tribal, inadequacies? That called us to something higher – humility, love, justice, and responsibility for the Other?
1.4.3 Theological Colonialism
Musings aside, Smith finds in Augustinian accounts of praise a non-objectifying, non- predicative language about God.139 Smith again returns to the point that it is not the what, but the how, that matters. But if language is more than semiology, if it is economic in nature, then there may end up being nothing about praise that protects it from corruption.140 Anecdotally, I have attended Christian worship services that praise God for how much God loves us and has
sacrificed for us. That message is biblical and true,141 but the consistent and seemingly exclusive emphasis on that message across many weeks creates another possible message capable of shaping the experiential horizon of the congregants: God worships us. This message drives a good portion of Evangelical America. God loves us so much and would do anything for us, even to the extent of sacrificing God’s only beloved Son to a torturous death. Could God possibly love us anymore? We are that special to God. You are that special to God!142 We come to think that we deserve this love, that it is our right. In fact, it starts to seem that God’s life revolves around us, almost as if God worships us, perhaps the ultimate colonialization – theological colonization.
139 Smith, Speech, 128-29.
140 In regards to praise and worship, Karl Barth reminds us that “even public worship as the center of the life of the community is at every point a human action . . . Hence the whole occurrence is not protected from misunderstanding and abuse.” Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, vol. 4, part 2, Church Dogmatics, G. W. Bromiley, trans.
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958): 709.
141 We have only to consider John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Is it coincidental that this verse is probably the most well-known verse in the Bible among Americans? It affirms us.
142 This is certainly a liberating message for the oppressed, but in the context of the empowered and wealthy it merely becomes another mode of self-affirmation and theological colonialization. After all, if God is willing to sacrifice God’s own Son to a torturous death for us, why not brown and black people too?
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There is always a message behind any sign, indicator, or icon. There is always content. And that is why the how must be considered the source of ultimate meaning because it is the origin of the message that is received and heard and ultimately shapes our pretheoretical expectations for daily life. There is always content, but the how must be the interpretive and authorizing source of the what.
My argument here is that even the icon can be betrayed when the direction it points is co- opted or subverted. The Bible, perhaps the most mainstream icon in the West, can be subverted to point to racial, cultural, and economic imperialism rather than gracious redemption. Jürgen Moltmann had previously made the point that the cross itself has been idolized across Christian and Western history.143 Icons are not impervious to idolatry no matter how sacred they may be.
This fact reiterates that what is at stake is the how rather than the what. And while Smith may focus on the young Heidegger, Heidegger’s concern for the how above the what was a consistent theme across his lengthy career.