A profound difficulty often faces us when attempting to obey the demand of one we love. Of course there is the superficial difficulty of doing something that we may find difficult, for example obeying the demand located within statements such as, ‘I never want to see you again’, ‘we can’t keep meeting like this’, ‘I want you to find someone else and forget about me’. But at a much deeper level we are faced with the problem of asking ourselves what the demand really demands.

We must remember how communication always involves communicating more than is expressly stated and that, as such, overt demands can conceal deeper, clandestine and disavowed desires. While a demand explicitly asks that we obey, it may, for instance, implicitly act as a demand to reject the demand: to protest against it, to rage in the opposite direction or to ignore it.

So often demands, such as those mentioned above, act as an unconscious provocation by the other that is designed to draw out and uncover the desire of the one to whom it is addressed: do they like me, do they want to be with me, will they fight for me. The demand of the other thus belies a desire to smoke out the others desire, to bring to light what lies in darkness. The demand is thus a demand that demands to be rejected (though in a disavowed manner).

Bruce Fink, the Lacanian analyst explores how this operates in the psychoanalytic setting. An analysand (the one attending the sessions) may say, for example, ‘I can’t attend our session this week because I have a meeting with work’. Instead of taking this for granted the analyst must use this seemingly innocuous statement as a possible site for analytic work. The analyst neither takes the demand to cancel a session at face value, nor quickly concludes that they can penetrate to its true meaning (something that remains to be worked out). Rather they feed the demand back to the analysand, asking if they chose to have the meeting at the time of the appointment or, if not, if they had tried to rearrange. In short, the analyst attempts to unearth the desire that operates beneath the demand. The desire that is likely to be unknown to the person who is voicing the demand.

The difficulty we face when those we love make demands upon us is thus the attempt to work out whether the demand that is made is one that asks to be challenged, obeyed or rejected.

Another issue worth reflecting upon concerns the inauthentic response that we often make to a demand. This relates to the way that someone may obey a demand because, while they understand that the underlying desire of the other is different, they want what is expressly said. In this way the individual relieves themselves of the responsibility of doing what they do by claiming, ‘but I just did what you wanted’ (for example, moving out of the house, or going to the pub with friends). Here the response, ‘I just did what you wanted’ is a ploy. The deeper discourse is as follows,

Expressed demand,

‘I want you to leave’

Hidden desire

I want you to fight to stay with me

Expressed response,

‘O.K. I will leave, but only because you are making me’

Hidden desire

I want to leave, but I want you to take the responsibility for it

Here the real argument looks something like this:

‘I only did what you wanted’, ‘yes, but you know very well that I did not want what I wanted’.

My point in this post is not a psychotic one that would claim we should not play these games. This is part of the very structure of communication and we could not operate in the world if we were constantly expressing the desires hidden within language (something that would be impossible anyway). What is of interest to me is, firstly understanding this structure, secondly exploring how it can help us understand religious discourse, and thirdly to explore how an application of this knowledge can help us instigate real change in the religious landscape.

My friend Jonny McEwen posted this on his facebook this morning. It is simply breathtaking…

I have been working with the artist Laryn Kragt Bakker on a limited edition Jack T. Chick style tract based on one of my new parables (not in the book). This tract will be ready by Greenbelt and I am hoping that we will be able to give free copies away with the UK edition of The Orthodox Heretic at the festival. The tract will also be available as a gift during my pub tour (which is now being put back to 2010 in order to give time to secure sponsorship). Finally, I hope to be able to sell copies directly through my website.

O.K. so I promised that I would offer some reflections on a way out of the deadlock described in The Bridges of Madison County. While I am beginning to feel a little embarrassed by the fact that I am on my second posting about this romantic drama (it is doing nothing for my attampt at a manly image) I feel duty bound to finish what I began. Especially as some of you doubt I can offer a solution to the deadlock expressed in the film!

So basically the film, as I have analysed it so far, offers a quiet beautiful expression of the dilemma between the drive for the Thing that appears to lie beyond the Law (manifested in the person of photographer Robert Kincaid) and the renunciation of that drive for the sake of fulfilling more circumspect and mundane desires (i.e. staying with her nice but domesticated husband and teenage children).

What is important to keep in mind here is the fact that Francesca realises that the Thing does not really exist. This is expressed in the fact that she acknowledges that if she ran away with Robert things would not work. So she opts instead to stay with her husband, and immortalise Robert.

In this way she obeys the Law (custom, the expectations of the community, religious norms etc.) and simultaneously maintains the illusion that she had been on the threshold of the Thing. While she decides to settle for small desires and forsake what seems to promise real fulfillment, the renunciation is itself an enlivening experience. In a way she is able to find a perverse pleasure in the pain of her decision. Nietzsche once commented about his experience of woman by saying, ‘we still prefer a more violent displeasure to a weak pleasure’. Francesca found a way of embracing both.

So how can we break out of this deadlock? For Francesca, Robert stood for all her unfulfilled desires (to travel, to escape small town America, to meet exciting new people etc.), while for Robert, we can guess that Francesca offered what he felt he was missing (stability, contentment, roots etc.). As such one can say that their love affair, despite the passion and intensity, is evidence of a failure to embrace love in its most basic co-ordinates. For love (in the Christian understanding as exemplified by Kierkegaard) does not place the individual into the space of the Thing but rather sees through the Thing and embraces the individual in their humanity.

There is a rejection of the Thing (which could be described as the Platonic Idea) in the Christian understanding of love. This does not mean that we overcome the drive for something more than we could ever gain. Rather this drive is refocused onto what Lacan called the object petit a. The object petit a is not some huge Thing that exists forever beyond our reach, but rather the tiny excess, the indescribable radiance that emanates from the flesh of the one we love. In love the individual is not rendered into a manifestation of the Thing, rather the Thing is reduced to some(no)thing that emanates from our beloved in their human, all too human, existence. That some(no)thing that causes us to love our beloved when another, who agrees concerning all their actually existing properties, does not.

This transition can be described as the shift from saying, ‘there is something that I am driven to grasp and you are a concrete manifestation of it’ to ‘your presence manifests an indescribable something that drives me’. In the first, the one who occupies the position of the Thing will always disappoint us and turn out to be less than what we wanted or anticipated. While in the second position the individual, while still not giving us what we strive for, is the site where we come close to it and rotate around it. In the first case the illusive Thing is distant, in the second it is brought close (in the mode of immanent transcendence).

In the former the inaccessible Thing is kept at a distance through the Law (as exemplified in the Christian understanding of God as found in the Torah) while in the later this inaccessible kernal is manifested in a flesh and blood other who is simultaneously human and more than human (as exemplified in the Christian understanding of the New Covenant).

In The Bridges of Madison County one can say that Francesca never found what she was looking for because her relationship with her husband was based on a desire that obeyed the Law (that kept her from the Thing) and her relationship with Robert was based upon a drive that sought to transgress the Law to reach the Thing.

This can thus be described as a film that portrays, not the tragedy of love, but the tragedy of never reaching love. The result is a deadlock that is explicitly expressed in the fact that (1) while she stays with her husband in life her ashes are scattered where Robert’s ashes had been scattered in death (2) While she remains with her husband, her husband applogises, shortly before his death, for never being able to help her pursue her dreams.

For Francesca the problem was that she failed to love either of the men in her life, being in a patronising relationship with one (treating him as a castrated man whom she stays with out of duty) and immortalises the other (as a potent god she can never possess).

So perhaps this film, far from being about love, is actually a film about the failure to love. The small town attitude that acts as an opaque background to the films main story providing an oppressive context that makes love in its Christian rendering (as a forsaking of the Platonic ideal for fragile flesh – not in its bare totality but with its elusive excess), almost impossible.

***Post includes spoiler***

On a recommendation from a friend I watched The Bridges of Madison County this evening. The film (which is adapted from the best selling novel of the same name) focuses upon a brief (only four days) but intense and passionate affair that takes place between a woman called Francesca and a photographer who happens to be passing through the town where she lives. Francesca is married with two children. However, while the husband is a good man, it is obvious that she is lonely and bored with her life as a housewife. The independent and free-spirited photographer whom she falls in love with brings this to light and offers a glimpse of a more exciting and carefree existence.

One of the films central tensions arises in the palpable and inevitable antagonism that the affair creates in the life of Francesca. In the four days that she is with her new lover she is reborn. Her body is alive, perhaps for the first time, with passions, dreams and desires. So what should she do? Return to the existence she had before the affair or run away and risk everything for her new love?

To help us understand the dilemma let us introduce some technical terminology. Firstly, the Freudian idea of ‘drive’. While instincts refer to fairly specific biological needs (e.g. eating, drinking, copulating) the drive signals an insatiable push toward something beyond what we merely need or want, it is not simply a desire for something but an unrelenting push beyond mere desires (think about a famous inventors drive to create something in the face of all obstacles, or an adventurer driven to achieve something never before accomplished).

Freud draws out how the Law (that which attempts to manage our drive) is not, as popularly thought, designed to limit our enjoyment (for the sake of societal stability) but rather to maximise it. The Law helps to manage this (in)human drive by demanding that we give up what we really want (say sex with whomever we want whenever we want) and be satisfied with lesser things. By doing this society functions in a smoother manner and we get to enjoy life to a greater extent than if we were all pursing our pleasure regardless of others.

It is natural to feel resentment at the Law (this Law being manifested in cultural mores, family traditions, parental prohibitions etc,), imagining that if we were exempt from it we could gain what we truly want (what can be called the ‘Thing’). However the truth is that there is no Thing that will satisfy us. All there is are concrete things (excessive money, a romantic figure, sexual experimentation, etc. etc.) that briefly inhabit the void of the Thing. Once these are grasped we realise that, even if they give us some pleasure, they are not the Thing that we really wanted. By transcending the Law and directly grasping what we desire we find that what we grasp is not really what we desire. The Law is thus like a huge wall with the words, ‘no entry’ printed across it, but which has nothing on the other side. Yet, because it seeks to prohibit our climbing over, we think that there must be something just beyond our reach.

The law thus prohibits us from grasping what doesn’t exist anyway (that Thing which would make us complete). Those who attempt to break through the law and reach the Thing do not find pleasure but rather pain and suffering (becoming addicted to the pursuit of things that do not give the pleasure they seem to promise, and which often lead us into deep pain). Freud’s ‘Pleasure Principle’ is the name he gives to the act of minimising pleasure (of putting the breaks on our drive for the Thing), so that we can at least get some enjoyment out of life.

So, in the film, Francesca faces the problem of whether to go beyond the Pleasure Principle, giving into her drive to transgress the law (what her family and friends would think of her leaving) for the Thing (manifested in the figure of the photographer), or embrace the Pleasure Principle, renounce the Thing  and return to her family life in which she can find many small, but circumvented, pleasures.

Faced with this dilemma Francesca makes what, on the surface, seems like the right choice. She embraces the Pleasure Principle, realising that the Thing (her love affair), would only lead to suffering and pain. Why? Because the Thing does not really exist (if she did run away with him the affair would likely be a failure – he is already divorced once because he was never around and loves to be alone).

What makes her choice appear correct lies in the way that she does not completely renounce the Thing, but continues to relate to it negatively. Living in fidelity to the memory of her lover, always remembering him, thinking of him and longing for him. Eventually being united to him in death (through the manner of her funeral). Here she is presented as making the only possible choice – forsaking, and yet not forgetting, what she cannot have so that she can feel the exquisite pain of having lost it and the hope of perhaps one-day being (re)united to it.

However, beautiful as the film is in its melancholic wonder, there is a way out of this deadlock that the film does not explore. A way that transcends the choice between either renouncing what one can never have (thus being resigned to small pleasures and unfulfilled dreams) or chasing after the Thing only to forever miss it and get caught up in addiction or the desire to constantly transgress (a path that leads only to suffering and regret).

I shall explore this third option in the next post (unless I get carried away with another thought, which often happens)

Outsider pop duo Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip exhibit a refreshingly playful and provocative style of music that fuses intelligent spoken word with a mix of industrial, electro and hip–hop sounds to form music that actually has something to say.

Despite their success with songs like Thou Shalt Always Kill they signed with indie record label Sunday Best and remain true to their outsider values.

They are playing at the Greenbelt festival this year where I will be speaking. Can’t wait to see them in action,

I have recently worked out dates for the Žižek reading group. My email has been out of action for a couple of weeks, and may be down for another few days so the best way to register interest is via the facebook page. There has been a lot of international interest in these theological reading groups with many requests for people to conference call in and for them to be recorded. I am guessing the former will be too hard to set up this time around (though I am looking into it) however I will try to record the gatherings and post up highlights. We can also use the facebook page for discussion so that those reading the material along with us at other locations can contribute thoughts, insights and questions.

The dates and readings are as follows (venue TBC),

Sunday | 9th August | 19:00

‘Slavoj Žižek’ in Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, By Frederiek Depoortere, p92-115

Sunday | 16th August | 19:00

‘Slavoj Žižek’ in Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, By Frederiek Depoortere, p115-143

Sunday | 23rd August | 19:00

‘The Christian Experience’ in Žižek and Theology, By Adam Kotsko

Sunday | 30th August

No meeting – I would suggest watching some Žižek’s lectures (I have included some on the facebook page)

Sunday | 6th September | 19:00

‘The Fear of Four Words’, in The Monstrosity of Christ, Ed. Creston Davis, p25-57

Sunday | 13th September | 19:00

‘The Fear of Four Words’, in The Monstrosity of Christ, Ed. Creston Davis, p57-End

Having said this, if anyone has suggestions for more appropriate readings I would be very interested to hear them. There was a mountain of possible material to choose from, and I am keen to extract the most suitible for this group.

There is a question that would appear to haunt all of us at different points in our journey through life. For some it is a question that only ever brushes past like a gentle breeze. While for others it presses down like a heavy yoke. The question might arise early in life, or be raised late in the day. But however much we wish to avoid it there will be times when we ask ourselves why we have chosen the path we are on. The question will haunt us as much concerning the decisions we make about relationships as it will concerning our political commitments, career choices and social activities. Even when these things appear to be going well it is easy to wonder if the path we choose to walk, or the path that was chosen for us (because of other peoples decisions or Fortuna’s careless hand) is the right one.

The question ‘Why do I do what I do’ disturbs the smooth running of our lives because it involves a certain amount of anxiety. Yet, far from seeing its manifestation as a minor disturbance in our ongoing life, perhaps we should see it as a site of truth. As a moment in which the foundations of our decisions are momentarily manifested to us in their underlying contingency.

Most of us do not feel the full force of this question either because we never fully commit to a cause (choosing to travel through life without real investment – allowing the TV we watch and papers we read to experience life on our behalf) or because we attempt to ground our theological/philosophical/political projects, or romantic ones, in some absolute (God, Reason, Destiny, Historical Necessity etc.). In the former we never truly make a radical commitment to some cause, while in the latter we never experience the fear and trembling which such a commitment should engender.

The former can be said to relate to a facile liberalism in which the only real sins are ones such as using the wrong wine glass over dinner (here we ought to remember Nietzsche’s cutting attack on his peers in which he wished that there were more hypocrites, because at least hypocrites believed something they failed to live up to; rather than those who could not even bring themselves to really believe anything in the first place). While the later refers to fundamentalism; where the responsibility of commitment to a cause is effaced by the idea that ones choice is in accord with the Absolute.

Let us flesh this idea out via reference to a marriage proposal. Let us imagine someone settling for a partner they like but are not genuinely passionate about. Perhaps they fear being alone if they do not chose this person, or that this is the best relationship they are likely to find. And so they propose. While such a relationship may blossom into something more the act itself arises out of fear and a lack of passion. In contrast let us imagine a young couple deeply and passionately in love. In their zeal they believe that they are meant to be together (perhaps they believe God has ordained it, or Destiny has demanded it). Here when one proposes to the other there is no fear and trepidation. The act has already been written in the stars and requires no courage to enact.

However, in contrast to these, what if the only truly romantic proposal is the one in which the two people deeply feel the horror and disgust of the commitment they are planning to make. Here we can imagine a couple who know the madness of getting married. They realise that the person they love is only a human being, they know that people change, that divorce rates are through the roof and that the vast majority of relationships are riven with clandestine affairs. And yet they do not cower and hide in the face of this. Instead they resolutely commit to each other in the full knowledge of the tragedy that befalls so many relationships over time.

Is it not this couple who are the real romantics, the ones who know what it is to actually live before they die? In this commitment they neither renounce their passion (because passion is a breeding ground for deep pain), nor do they attempt to protect themselves from its negative effects by attempting to ground their passion in an Absolute. Rather they acknowledge the danger and contingency of what they are doing all the while throwing themselves at it wholly.

This does not, of course, mean that reason is without a place in such decisions. It is deeply important. There are many things that a couple can work out in advance to help them see if they might be compatible (if the person seems honest and faithful etc.). The point is simply that the passion involved will always exceed the amount of evidence that one can gather and reasoning that would be required. If we were to wait until we could know for certain that the person was right for us we would never be able to commit because new evidence could always be gathered. Also, to judge purely by reason would mean that we could only ever commit in proportion to what the evidence and reasoning allowed. But this would mean that we could never unconditionally throw ourselves into the arms of the other, affirming with a joyous ‘yes’ our lover.

It is today very common to see reason opposed to faith in popular literature (with reason or faith being the better depending on which side the apologist sits). The point is not that they are opposed but rather that reason is saturated with faith. In other words, all real decisions, no matter how reasonable, involve a faith act. Neither the facile liberal nor the crude fundamentalist examples mentioned above allow for the anxiety of making a real decision about love, politics or prayer. While the former only ever minimally commits (not making a full blooded decision), the latter knows what to commit to in advance of doing it (thus not making a real decision, as one can only ever make a decision when one does not know what needs to be done – thus making a choice).

My theological project involves attempting to show how this idea is a profoundly Christian one (though it is rarely found in actually existing Christianity). I will be exploring this in my Greenbelt seminar in August; which is entitled ‘The Birth of Christianity and the Death of Meaning’

There was once a minister who loved nothing more than relaxing on a Sunday afternoon by playing a round of golf. However, so as to maintain his reputation and ensure some peace and quiet, he would pretend to everyone that he really helped out with a charity after church. So, every Sunday while his friends, family and congregation thought that he was busy helping the poor, the minister would be secretly enjoying a leisurely game of golf.

After a year or so some of the angels noticed what was happening and, in their monthly report, informed God of the deception.

‘This is indeed a problem’ replied God as he put a note in his diary, ‘I shall have to teach him a lesson’.

While it is well known that God hates sitting though church, He made a point of going to the Ministers service the next Sunday so that He could witness what would transpire afterwords. Sure enough, once the service was completed the minister announced to everyone that he needed to go serve at a charity for the remainder of the day. Then he jumped in his car, waved goodbye to his family and drove straight to his favorite golf course.

But this Sunday was different for God had decided to quietly help the minister. As a result each stroke he made was flawless and every ball found the hole with one shot. Only when the game was finally over did God silently withdraw.

All the while the angels watched the game in disbelief.

‘We thought you were going to teach this man a lesson’ they shouted, ‘but instead you helped him to achieve the greatest golf score in the history of the world’

‘True’ smiled God, ‘but ask yourself this, who can he tell’

——————

I have offered an interpretation of this story here

What can I say. I want to communicate what a great time I had at Poets, Prophets and Preachers and how grateful I am to Rob Bell for not only inviting me to speak but standing side by side with me on the stage in an act of solidarity. In the battle for what Christianity will look like in our current epoch Rob Bell is an important figure and one who I hope we heed. For, as I hinted at in one of my talks, some of the alternatives are frightening in their impotent violence.

Anyway, there were a couple of practical things that I wish I had mentioned at the conference but totally forgot about. The first concerns the album I mentioned called ‘Hymns to Swear By’. Lots of people have been asking me about it. I am hoping that Pádraig Twomey (the singer/songwriter) will have it recorded by October and that we will be launching it during my pub tour. However ikon has produced a CD called ‘Dubh‘ (Irish for ‘Black’) on which Padraig has a couple of songs. Here is a taste of Pádraig on the CD (it is not by me, despite what it says on soundcloud),

The second thing i wanted to remind people of is that I am running a parable competition as part of the launch of my new book, ‘The Orthodox Heretic‘. There is still a few weeks for you to write something before the deadline so please do get writing. More information here.