Review of Milbank/Žižek The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?

First published September/October 2009

Some of the most memorable debates have occurred at a point when the subject

in hand is at a crossroads or crisis. Take for example the event that took place on

30 June 1860 with Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel

Wilberforce (as well as Benjamin Brodie, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Robert

FitzRoy). “Was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his

descent from a monkey”, quipped Wilberforce, though in vain since time and

evidence have shown that the theory of evolution has (rightly) displaced the

image of man from the centre of the earth to a decentred component of the

animal kingdom.

Some of the most memorable debates have occurred at a point when the subject in hand is at a crossroads or crisis. Take for example the event that took place on 30 June 1860 with Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (as well as Benjamin Brodie, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Robert FitzRoy). “Was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey”, quipped Wilberforce, though in vain since time and evidence have shown that the theory of evolution has (rightly) displaced the image of man from the centre of the earth to a decentred component of the animal kingdom. (Continue)

Review of Alain Badiou’s Number and Numbers (2008)

First published September/October 2009

Despite the fact that the book in question deals with some very important

concepts that Badiou raises in his magnum opus Being and Event, it has only

last year (2008) been published into English – 15 years after it was written.

Thanks largely to the popularity of Slavoj Žižek, Badiou’s work has found a

larger audience in English-speaking countries, and, along with

contemporaries such as Giorgio Agamben, is a figurehead for a philosophy

that maintains a distance from the worldlessness of the postmodern

landscape. In order to properly commit to Badiou’s mathematical concepts I

shall provide some context.

Despite the fact that the book in question deals with some very important concepts that Badiou raises in his magnum opus Being and Event, it has only last year (2008) been published into English – 15 years after it was written. Thanks largely to the popularity of Slavoj Žižek, Badiou’s work has found a larger audience in English-speaking countries, and, along with contemporaries such as Giorgio Agamben, is a figurehead for a philosophy that maintains a distance from the worldlessness of the postmodern landscape. In order to properly commit to Badiou’s mathematical concepts I shall provide some context. (Continue)

Tatchel has his logic all wrong

First published July 7 2009

I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with ol’ Mr. Tatchel on his statement that Saturday’s gay pride has been ‘depoliticised‘. For me, this spells an end to back foot identity politics, by which I mean, all elements of identity politics emerge out of a position of vulnerability. Its easy to forget sometimes that identity politics is a mere means to an end, they are not meant to be a given attitude. (Continue)

Cornel West: The Modern Day Griot

First posted March 12 2009

2009 marked the 100th year anniversary of the birth of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, and January the 18th marked the date in which he was executed 14 years ago. Taha was a Sudanese liberal reform figure and believer in a version of progressive Islam. His vision of Islam – one in which maintained the equality of women and was dedicated to socialist republicanism – along with his protests regarding the imposition of sharia law stirred Sudan’s dictator Jaafer al-Nimeiri in the 1970’s and 80’s to the point that he, after efforts to curb his influence and ban his lectures, called for Taha’s blood. (continue)

The New Radical Establishment

First posted January 14 2009

In a statement that buttresses so-called Tory “modernisation,” David Cameron recently called for the ‘day of reckoning’ against bankers who triggered the economic crisis, saying that the nation’s modest earners – “nurses and cleaners and [sic] teachers” – should not have to fund the “multi-billion pound taxpayer bail-out of the banks” adding “[t]here cannot be one law for the rich and another for everyone else.” (continue)

The Cyborg Future of Enjoyment

First posted November 5 2008

Popular culture has created many fictional forms of the cyborg, from Rachel in Ripley Scott’s Blade Runner to The Terminator. But for some, the cyborg is not simply a fictional myth. Foremost cyborg theorist Donna Haraway in her Cyborg Manifesto has defined it as a cybernetic creature of both lived society and fiction. Since there are no indicated boundaries between the two, there is a struggle to define and control the cyborg properly, this “border war” being fought vie an “optical illusion” (149). Modern Medicine, Haraway continues, is already full of cyborgs. Indeed the possibility of a complete scanning of the human body in order to replicate a digitized 3-D figure for digital slicing, an effort known as VHP (Visible Human Project), will be made common medical practice in the near future (for more see Hayles). The cyborg, also, is not defined by gender; “it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis […] or other seductions to organic wholeness [constituted by] all the powers of the parts into a higher unity” (150). For some who are anxious of those who, like Haraway expresses in her Informatics of Domination, embrace genetic engineering, such as R. Klein who Nadia Mahjouri in her paper on Techno-Maternity quotes as saying “[g]enetic and reproductive engineering is another attempt to end self-determination over our own bodies” (para. 4) Haraway is keen to show that techno-science has already begun the process of such engineering, and the feeling of being mediated by it already exists. (continue)

The God for atheists

First posted September 6 2008

In the latest attempt to disclose Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams’ personal attitude towards homosexuality a series of letters dated from 2000 and 2001 have revealed Dr. Williams having paralleled that “[a]n active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.” (continue)