Foucault, 'the Gang of Four', and the postmoderns

This was originally part of the thread introduced by Jacob on Foucault: The Shepherd’s Power. However, it took up wider themes, and I would like to invite participants on the site to make their own contributions.

A bit of personal history - I missed May 1968 (see below) by matriculating at Oxford University in September 1969. By then it was all over. I have spent the intervening 40 years trying to catch up! I was immersing myself in Sartre, when Sartre was already being dismissed by the intellectual avant garde, and I didn’t even realise it! (My background, like Andrew’s, is in English Literature). How do you think the postmodern agenda influences theology today - for better or worse - and how should theology address the postmodern as a feature of today’s cultural mindset?

Meanwhile, here is the post which is duplicated from my submission to Jacob’s thread.

There has been a great deal on the UK radio this week (eg ‘1968: Philosophy in the Streets’/BBC Radio 4, 11.00am 30 April) recalling the student uprisings in Paris and France in May 1968 (from some of its chief protagonists), and the subsequent ‘retreat’ into the universities and philosophical/literary/sociological theory of the student movement, when the workers went back to work, and De Gaulle came back into power.

Foucault was one of the elite group of thinkers who came to be associated with this continuation of the uprising by intellectual means - along with the post-structuralists and post-modernists - Barthes, Levi Strauss, Lacan and Derrida. Umberto Eco also pursued the post-modernist track, both in literary works (Eg The Name of the Rose) and philosophical and literary theory. Barthes published his ‘Death of the Author’ in 1968, which denied authorial intention and presence as an authentic guide to the meaning of a text. Lyotard was the historian of the movement.

What is the relevance of all this now? A great deal, apparently. Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted in a pre-presidential speech furiously attacking the aims and values of the 1968 student movement. Evidently he still thinks that all that is wrong with France can be traced back to the thinking of this time.

I noticed with our two daughters at primary school, that English teachers, even at their very young age, talked about learning to study a text, rather than reading a book - by an author. Texts are in, books are out. The concept of the autonomous text is one beloved of postmodern deconstructive theory.

Today, issues which are common currency in academic circles are also of importance to the wider community, and nowhere more so than in faiths which rest on the interpretation of their sacred ‘texts’. Where does meaning reside? Is it in the head of the author, the reader, or the text? And what are the unseen power systems and structures which govern our understanding of texts in perhaps unseen ways, and which need to be unmasked and exposed?

Built into the Judaeo-Christian faith is something fascinating. YHWH is of course the ‘unseen’ power; but his authority is constantly being challenged and subverted by other power systems - not least the misapprehensions concerning him and their faith by the Jewish people. Built into the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the phenomenon of self-critique - which was performed by the prophets, as YHWH’s spokespersons, but perhaps supremely by Jesus himself.

Jesus was the subverter of power systems and structures par excellence. He came in weakness and vulnerability. He exercised his right to rule not through coercion but love and compassion, and ultimately by surrendering himself to be put to death. He brought a critique of his own people, and their ingrained perception of how God worked within their national faith systems and structures. He also brought a critique of their attitude to pagans, and of pagan power. ‘Critique’ is perhaps too mild a word - it was devastating.

Jesus is also the archetypal ‘postmodern’. He came not to establish an institution, but worked through relationships, especially through a small group of friends. He worked not through pronouncing key propositions of the faith, but embodied truth in his own person, and through the stories he told. And yet he did not deny the history of Israel and his role within it; without advocating suspicion of overarching metanarratives, he set a critique of one narrative against a suggestion of a true metanarrative - which he had come to fulfil. But you could almost miss the metanarrative he brought - such is the self-effacement of the way in which it is brought. Yet it is there, all the time.

His own metanarrative was the most overarching of all narratives. I have set out to explore these in my posts on Christ and Eschatology - especially in posts 2-4.

Postmodernism can itself become a power game that needs to be subverted. My suggestion is that in Jesus, we have a model for faith and praxis which operates effortlessly within a postmodern environment, and yet subverts the postmodern - just as it did, ultimately, the modern. Jesus eludes captivity in all the power systems and power games on offer, and all the philosophical enterprises which seek to capture this thing called life in their nets, holding them ultimately for display in the museum cases of history.

Jesus especially eludes the power games of our churches and denominations. Incredibly, he expresses himself through them, in ways they have not been able to control. Remember the moving of the Spirit in the 1960’s/70’s -now so much derided? It was revolutionary. Yet who in the institutional churches of the time was calling for such a phenomenon?

Jesus will also not allow himself to be contained in the systems we have created for him, and just as we think we have, sightings are reported of him elsewhere - in the shanty-towns, the shebeens, the rubbish dumps of our world and culture. Woe to those who think they have him perfectly represented in whatever system or structure they devise - be it theological or ecclesiological. Long live the radical movements - and for that reason, long live the student movement of 1968!

As one of the student leaders said: ‘Let’s be realistic. Let’s think the impossible!’ How do we think we should do that today?