Columbus Day: Ralph Ellison and the Waters of Meribah

My previous post suggested that attempts to construct the proper grounds on which to meet the other is an attempt to control the relationship, even if that comes masked in good intentions.  What must be clarified is that to reach out and actually touch the other, in Fanon's language, is to be exposed to another whose existence you cannot control and whose consciousness you cannot predict.  This exposure provides a helpful way to approach Columbus and anti-Columbus day festivities.

Pragmatic Identity

"The Gospel of Christ is a shattering disturbance, an assault which brings everything into question"  Karl Barth, __The Epistle to the Romans__, 225.

"We are under grace, and we are ourselves the objective of its attack" Karl Barth, 216.  

"May God never relieve us of this questioning!  May God enclose us with questions on every side!  May God defend us from any answer which is not itself a question!  May God bar every exit and cut us off from all simplifications!" Karl Barth, 254.

"Broken men, we dare to use unbroken language.  We must not forget that we are speaking in parables and after the manner of men [Rom 6:18]" Karl Barth, 221.

A major theme in the Commentary on Romans is that grace produces something in us beyond our possession.  Grace is the dissolution of our selves, of every human possibility, even and especially the most religious and pious of human endeavors.  But the "new self" is not the object of empirical observation; it is not equivalent to a certain mystical experience or ethical standpoint.  The person that I was has died in Christ.  I now live in Christ, or Christ lives in me.  Yet this new person that I am eludes my own understanding.  I know who I am...by faith.  But faith is faith in the unseen.  Therefore, the life I live now is one that is beyond my own understanding.  We live by faith, not by sight. 

In discussion about the future of Rwanda, I frequently hear two ways of "moving beyond" Tutsi and Hutu differences.  The first option places our hope in a new national identity:  a person is neither Hutu nor Tutsi, one is simply Rwandan.  The other option eschews the language of national identity in favor of religious identity:  one is not Hutu, Tutsi, or Rwandan, one is Christian.  The problem with these attempts are numerous.  First, everyone still knows who is Tutsi and who is Hutu and everyone knows that these distinctions continue to carry weight:  one cannot speak of of one's place in or after the genocide without recourse to these identities.  Secondly, one cannot dissolve and restructure identity by changing the words.  Thirdly, the national option still operates on a structure of inclusion/exclusion and cannot cope with hybrid or unclear national identity (e.g., what about Tutsis who were born to Rwandan parents outside of Rwanda and only came to Rwanda 5 years ago, and thus after the genocide?).  Fourthly, the religious option also generally follows a pattern of exclusion (what about Rwandan Muslims, a small group of people but one that generally didn't participate in the genocide).  Fifthly, and more problematically, the religious option fails to question how Tutsi and Hutu were constructed as racial identities as part of the process of Christianizing Rwanda.  While it may be true that colonial missionaries and later Rwandan priests converted people to "the church" instead of to "Jesus," one can say that about every Christian failing and thus it is a fairly unhelpful thing to say.  Further, every preceding generation that creates a "Christian" culture has been reminded by the following generation just how worldly that "Christian" identity was.  Finally, both the religious and the national responses presuppose that the only way forward is to construct a new form of identity.  They are both committed to providing a new story through which I (we) can clearly articulate my (our) sense of myself (ourselves).  

It is on this final point that I find Barth confusing, but helpful.  To be helpful Barth has to be confusing, for he is trying to undermine our attempts to use Christianity to disclose the truth of who we are.  Barth is struggling to make us uneasy about who we are.  The Gospel shatters our sense of ourselves, as Americans or Rwandans, men or women, Hutu or Tutsi.  It is a shattering disturbance of who we are as Christians!  No identity, whether national, racial, ethnic, communal, local, individual, gender, sexual or religious (including Christian!) can withstand the judgment of Jesus.  All forms of identity are brought into Jesus' body and there, in his body, brought to death.  All forms of identity now live in--and only in--Jesus' body.  They have all been questioned and judged.  

But what comes after?  A new, superior, and holy form of identity?  By no means!  The same ones, only, not the same.  We are who we are...but also not.  We are dead to those old forms, yet, still living in them, or perhaps, Christ is now living in them through us.  It's hard to say.  We are undoubtedly new creations, dead to sin, alive in Christ, filled with the Spirit.  Yet, this new "I" seems distinct from my conscious self.  Who, then, am I?  

The key, I am beginning to suspect, for sorting through the problem of identity in post-genocidal Rwanda is the same as sorting through the problem of identity in the late-modern or post-modern global era.  The question is not about creating a new self or new national (religious, racial, etc) identity.  The question is about how to live without one.  

But that is still too easy.  The struggle is how to live with various, competing, and ambiguous identities without making these ambiguous forms operate as new solid or self-possessed forms (e.g., hybridity or ambiguity as the new "authentic" cultural form).  We cannot place our hope in a new national or even religious identity for Rwanda, or for the U.S.A.  We cannot do so because we know that any idea of ourselves that we can articulate, grasp, and represent is a merely human form of life.  If so--if the "new" form of identity stands as one human possibility related to others--then it must fall under the judgment of Christ.  

Nevertheless, we cannot abandon this process.  We are committed to speaking the truth about ourselves.  Those who profess faith in Jesus must bring every aspect of who they are--gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, weight, etc--to Jesus and let Jesus have his way with it.  The end result is not a brand new, "untainted" or "pure" form of existence--it is a relative human form, reworked, altered, and now much more questionable and unclear than before!  We never know who we are but must always receive who we are again, anew, from God.  Who are we, then?  May God enclose us with this question on every side!

*I don't think this is the clearest post.  My basic point is that one cannot erase Hutu or Tutsi identity anymore than I can cease being a white guy.  Nevertheless, in Jesus, I find my whiteness drawn into question, not in a way that makes me more confident (that my being is the "universal" mode of human existence or that my being is a perfectly fine particular mode of being) but that makes me less confident, more uneasy (who do I identify with and why?  whose lives help me understand my own life, and why them?).  It is not that this tentative form of existence is now the new, superior form.  However, being enclosed with questions on every side reminds us that we are always asking and answering these questions as humans, as God's finite and broken creatures.  It opens us up to more pragmatic answers to questions about identity--we can only give limited, partial, stuttering answers to the question, and only in response to particular questions in particular spaces asked for particular reasons and in hopes of a particular result.  We never know if we got it right but place all of our confidence in God's judgment and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.*

utopian genocide

"Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building...[Genocide] was promoted as a way not to create suffering but to alleviate it.  The specter of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual--always an annoyance to totality--ceases to exist."

Philip Gourevitch, __We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families:  Stories From Rwanda___, 95.  

It is tempting to analyze a few aspects of contemporary American politics from this perspective (post-9/11 wars, the reasoning behind torture) but I will resist.  Instead, I want to think about the role and function of utopian thinking in Christian theology.  It isn't something I've thought about--and Micah D., if you read this, you should let me know what you think.

Genocide builds community in two distinct ways.  First, it brings the community together against a common enemy, a plague or parasite that must be eliminated.  Secondly, the community is brought together for the sake of a better world.  The first aspect--being against an enemy--is subordinated to the second aspect--being for a new world.  The prospect of a new life, a new community, and a new world explains the necessity of being against the enemy.  After all, the enemy is the threat to this new order.  Genocide is never an end in itself, but a means to an end.  The end--the desired goal of genocide--is a new community and a better world (or perhaps a new situation for an existing community, again, for the sake of a better world).

One can trace this genocidal logic back even before colonization (which is where H. Arendt lodges it).  The genocidal logic was built into late-medieval Christian identity, in which Spain needed to expel the Muslims and use blood purity laws to keep track of Jewish converts in order to stabilize Christian European identity.  Right during this time--late 15th century--Spanish explorers started discovering "new" worlds.  Very quickly, these "new" worlds became spaces in which (and through which) Europe could build a new world (and through this new world, express its own identity).  Europe began the process of "reinventing Eden" (to use the title of a great book on the conquest of nature and peoples).  It was this quest for a new world--a new, better, harmonic, edenic world--that justified the abuses of those deemed "native" and the land on which they dwelled.  Acquiring the land was necessary for building a better world; civilizing the natives would bring them into this new world.  Those who were lost were unfit for this new world.  Some--Africans--were fit to labor for this world but must, like Moses perhaps, remain outside of the promised land:  they are useful for but unfit to live in the new world.

Since genocide is an exercise in the quest for a better world, is there any space for the utopian in Christian theology?  What do we make of the "kingdom of God"?  How do we rethink the story of fall/redemption given the way a genocidal impulse has been operating within this story since at least the late middle ages (redemption from the fall through spreading Christian civilization)?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says (in "History and Good [1]" from the __Ethics__), "Christ did not cause the world to cease being the world, and every action that seeks to confuse the world with the kingdom of God is a denial of both Christ and the world.  By grounding responsible action in Jesus Christ we reaffirm precisely the limits of such action.  Because we are dealing with worldly action, this responsibility has a limited scope.  No one has the responsibility of turning the world into the kingdom of God" (224).

For Bonhoeffer, every dream of utopia fails Christologically, for it fails to realize that in Christ, "the world that is passing away has been claimed by God" (224).  All human reality has already been taken on in Christ.  To try to build a new community ignores the fact that Christ has loved and claimed this already existing sinful community.  The community--as it presently exists--has been claimed by Jesus, and thus there is no reason to try to create the kingdom of God on earth.

But does not this claim by Jesus reconstitute the community?  Yes!  There is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Greek!  But doesn't this reconstitution of the community in Christ enable the utopian project to begin afresh?  No!  Why?  Because the community is reshaped and formed by Christ (through the Spirit).  It is never a human work; the formation is not mediated by our community (or any outside community) but is Christ's work (it is this point I've been trying to work out in the exchanges with Nick).  The Church testifies--witnesses--to Christ's work and urges others to see and believe it as well.  But it does not possess a form itself that it can then reproduce elsewhere (that belief lies at the very foundation of Christian imperialism, past and present).  

So, then, are utopian writings banned?  To use a Pauline expression--by no means!  But they are welcomed as judged and forgiven.  In other words, following every utopia stands Christ's "not my will but yours be done."  God's work is God's work, not ours, and our calling is to surrender our dreams and hopes to God.  Utopian thought can be valued and appreciated as long as one never forgets that any utopian scheme is sinful and must be surrendered to Christ (placed inside of Christ's cruciform obedience).  We are not excused from wanting to see a more just, more peaceful, more loving and harmonious world; we are not freed from our longings to see a new creation, a reconstituted Eden.  But we know, and must continually remind ourselves, that these dreams are dreams to be surrendered.  They are dreams to be brought into Christ's body, and from there, within that cruciform space, they are dreams that can be embraced.  In Christ, our dreams can be cleansed from our hidden hatred of the world (of the merely human); our hopes can be reordered by Christ's love for the world and for humans as they exist now.  Our actions, therefore, can be organized not by the attempt to create a new world but to let the world exist as the world--to let those in the world live merely human lives.  This work is always partial, always limited, always risky, and hence always needing humility and always standing in need of grace and forgiveness.  "Ultimate ignorance of one's own goodness or evil, together with dependence upon grace, is an essential characteristic of responsible historical action" (Bonhoeffer, 225).  "In God's own good, human good and evil are thus overcome" (227).  

We never know if our actions coincide with God's good (e.g., Judas' action of betraying Christ actually coincided with God's good...).  Far from excusing us to do evil, this fact causes us to know that even our best attempt to do the good might be horrendously evil (it certainly was for those missionaries trying to bring the natives into Christian civilization...).  We must let go of any attempt to be justified, righteous, good, beneficent, or otherwise free from blame.  But, instead of prohibiting action, the acknowledgement of our guilt frees us to act--as merely human actors striving after a merely human world (the merely human world that God has loved and reconciled to Godself in Christ).  

Utopian writings can be valuable--but only from within this perspective:  they are valued as long as one is reminded that what is hoped for is ultimately sinful and must be brought into judgment by Christ.  Therefore, they are extremely valuable--like everything else "merely" human.  But, like everything human, they must be filtered through Christ's love for the individual as he or she is now.  That only spells the death of utopia if utopia is nothing more than the hatred of the concrete, historical human person.  But if that is all utopia is, then genocide--hatred of the concrete human for the sake of the ideal human community--will always be at the core of any utopia.  And genocide will remain the most accurate expression of utopian ideals.  

Civilizing the World: Missionaries, Hutus, and Tutsis

During the "exploration" and colonization of Africa, European intellectuals kept stumbling upon a disturbing fact:  the Africans were not always the uncivilized brutes they ought to have been.  According to racist ideology--summarized beautifully and disturbingly by Hegel--true Africa (and Africans) lacked all historical, cultural, and intellectual development.  To account for the appearance of progress and civilization within Africa, Europeans restructured the "biblical" basis for enslaving Africans, the Hamitic Hypothesis.  

According to the Hamitic Hypothesis, Africans descended from Ham, the son of Noah.  The curse of servitude upon Ham's descendants, therefore, applied to the Africans:  African enslavement was divinely-ordained.  During the early 19th century, this hypothesis was flipped upside down.  Now, the Hamites were not Africans; they were more like a middle ground between Europeans and Africans.  The Hamites were the civilizing force within Africa; they were not indigenous to Africa, but came to Africa, settling there and bringing cultural advancement along with them.  By the 1870's, this hypothesis gained such strong ground that a group of theologians and missionaries at the Vatican I council could call on a mission to rescue the "hapless Hamites caught amidst the Negroes" (Mamdani, 86).  

In Rwanda, this Hamitic hypothesis was used to explain the differences between Hutus and Tutsis.  Even before colonial times, Tutsis had been the leaders over Hutus (which became a single ethnic identity only after Tutsi rule:  Hutus were all those who weren't Tutsi).  During the colonial period, this hierarchy was altered in two ways.  First, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi became racialized.  Earlier, one could "become" Tutsi by climbing the social ladder.  In other words, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was permeable:  it wasn't common, but one could--and some did--move from one group to the other.  The colonial period made the distinction a racial distinction, and hence closed:  one was biologically either Hutu or Tutsi and there was no movement between the two.

Secondly, the colonial workers explained Tutsi rule through the Hamitic hypothesis:  Tutsi's were natural leaders because they were not, properly speaking, African at all!  They were a foreign and superior settler race (Hamitic).  They represented, therefore, a kind of degraded Caucasian presence.  Tutsis were not white, but they were not African (like the Hutus).  

Missionaries and church leaders recognized this "Tutsi" superiority from the outset and organized Rwandan society around it.  At one point, many Tutsi leaders were resisting conversion to Christianity.  The Belgian authorities started deposing these non-Christian leaders--they were "unredeemable" and hence unfit to rule.  To fill the vacancies, the Belgian officials appointed Hutu leaders.  Christian missionaries (here, Catholic) were shocked:  the colonial officials were undermining the "traditional" and natural social arrangement (Mamdani, 91).  

It is an interesting shift:  the Belgian colonial administration thought it was more important to have Christians (whether Hutu or Tutsi) in leadership positions, whereas the missionaries believed Tutsi leadership was essential.  To place Hutus in positions of power undermined not just the missional-colonial structure in Rwanda, it undermined the very logic and rationale of the European civilizing mission:  racial superiority justifies European hegemony, and if the logic of racial superiority is denied (between Hutu and Tutsi), the justification of European rule will be denied as well.  Only the racially advanced can rule in a civilized fashion; accordingly, any instability in the racial order (European--Hamitic/Tutsi--African/Hutu) undermines the whole project of Christian civilization.  

One of the many problems in this situation--and there are so many--is that the state's pragmatic interests would have better served the Rwandan people than the Church's Christian convictions.  If Hutus had been allowed positions of power, perhaps the sharp distrust between the Hutus and Tutsis would not have escalated.  Perhaps the identities between the two would have not have become hardened, perhaps the Hutus would have had ways to protect themselves....But the Church was committed to a particular vision of the world (and its place in it, at the top).  The Church "acted as both the brains and the hands of the colonial state" (Mamdani, 99).  It governed the state--prophetically, one might say.  It challenged the state to live beyond mere pragmatic calculation, to see things from a biblical perspective, to understand what was at stake:  not just Belgian power, but the Church, Europe, [and] the kingdom of God! 

Why tell this long history?  Why implicate the church so heavily?  What does that mean for us--for me--today?  First, the situation in Rwanda highlights the problem of modern theology.  Fanon (my last post, May 2nd) points out in the 1960's what was true back in the 1800's and even before then (to the medieval era):  Christianity and the Church were the expression of European civilization, and more importantly, the project of European civilization (to bring all others into the true and authentic expression of human existence, Christian/European culture).  Without a doubt, this problem still exists (think of the "clash of civilization" and the "culture wars" rhetoric prominent today); we are still in it.  Though very few would endorse the Hamitic hypothesis or use the language of race, most Christians can't help but feeling that Christianity has something central and essential to offer to the project of modern civilization (whether through direct oversight or through outside "prophetic" witness to the state).  The terms have certainly changed, but are we certain we have left the problem behind?  Do we even know how to diagnose the problem?

Secondly,  to move beyond Hutu-Tutsi difference in post-genocidal Rwanda, one cannot just appeal to the "baptismal" unity, to "Christian" identity, or to "Rwandan" identity.  Unless we analyze how all of these identities can be articulated as forms of cultural possession (we know who we are, and who we are is set off against, separate from, and opposed to some others, whether Congolese, Muslim, or whatnot), none of them will help move us beyond the problem. 

Thirdly, as a white American male looking into the situation from afar, I have to find ways to speak into the problem without positioning myself as the new western missionary, possessing the truth--the latest gospel--of who we all are and how to effectively bring everyone else into it.  How can I preach or teach in this situation?  That is a real question and a real problem.  

TLM

*All references to Mamdani come from Mahmood Mamdani, __When Victims Become Killers:  Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda___.*