Tag Archives: identity

Individualised Subjects

There is a trend in America — and likely elsewhere — to decontextualise events like the mass shooting last week by turning the perpetrator into a completely autonomous, loner, mentally disturbed, ‘sinful’ individual. I’ve heard this from both religious and non-religious people over the weekend. However, I’ve begun to wonder about such a move — especially the last one (the ‘sinful’ part). In discussing this with ministerial figures, they were quick to differentiate ‘killing’ (especially that ‘sanctioned by God’ in the HB/OT) and ‘murder’. For him, at least, there is a prior commitment to accept the literal (well, literal in English at least) wording of the Biblical texts as being directly from God and, therefore, to reject seeing the language of ‘divinely-sanctioned murder’ as political insertions by religious and political leaders of the time. This person was also quick to declare the actions and life of the shooter as ‘sinful’ as a result of his final act. Yet, I wonder if the share of ‘sin’ extends far beyond simply the act of shooting children in a school room. Ignoring the additional argument that ‘guns don’t kill people’, I want to explore the ‘sins’ of the community which far outweigh the shooting of American children.

First, while the shootings occurred in Connecticut, the American military has been involved with an ongoing campaign of murdering people indiscriminately in Pakistan. This includes children just as innocent as those in American elementary schools. When this fact is brought up in conversation, most people shrug their shoulders as if it is an inconsequential number (as is attributed to Stalin: ‘if a person kills a dozen, it is a tragedy; if five million, a statistic’). Interestingly, there was another mass killing on Friday in China. While this did make mention in the news, it was lost soon after in the deluge of speculation about the latest shooting in the US. Apparently, it is only newsworthy to the media when American children are gunned down by posthumously ostracised ‘individuals’.

Secondly, there is the looming question of gun control. This shooting — like the many before it — has rekindled the debate regarding gun control. There is a liberal knee-jerk reaction every time which shuts down this debate in the name of ‘respect for the victims’ — as if it would not be respectful to discuss a way of preventing further instances. It is a myth to say that outlawing handguns and removing them from public access will not affect how ‘criminals’ can acquire weapons — as if there is a gaping hole in the government’s oversight of its borders whereby guns flow freely. I believe the issue stems from an American romance with the Wild West in which laws were suggestions and ‘individuals’ could interpret ethics and legalities by the gun. For these people, outlawing guns would be a tragedy because they think by giving a person a gun, that person is empowered as a defender, equipped with deadly force, trained as sharpshooter, and prepared to become a vigilante at a moments’ notice. Never mind the fact that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are not stopped by average citizens with guns (and in fact, those who have tried to do so have become part of the body count) but by people who are actually trained and prepared to deal with mass shooters (i.e. the police and military). In other words, the general American romance with the mythological Wild West is one in which lawmakers and upholders of the law are also individuals decontextualised from their positions as government employees. They are freed from the constraints of the legal system and community mores in order to protect it. The same could also be said of the military. This kind of liminality makes the individual somehow superior to the urbanites who rely on civil services. It also implicates the desire to return to a post-civil society in which laws are relative to the individuals who are the sole and final arbiters of law (a la Judge Dredd).

Third, there is a meta-narrative which develops around each of these shootings whereby the assailant is a mentally unstable individual who must bear the complete guilt, shame, and sin of his actions against a ‘tight-knit’ community. Time and again, the police and the media work together to sell the story of the lone gunman who had serious signs of mental instability and was able to acquire (legally!) numerous weapons prior to his assault on the community. Rarely, if ever, does the ‘tight-knit’ community actually see the warning signs of such an individual, yet they are quick to excuse their own lack of care (how ‘tight-knit’!) for the assailant. In other words, if the assailant is an outcast of the ‘tight-knit’ community, it is mutually decided between the person and the community.

Fourth, the meta-narrative of ‘tight-knit’ communities is made to decontextualise the location from its embedded-ness in a city. Newtown, CT, for instance is a suburb of Danbury and part of the greater New York City region. Columbine is a suburb of Denver. Oftentimes, these ‘tight-knit’ and ‘non-city’ communities are part of an urbanised landscape. However, this decontextualisation is done to fabricate a fantasy of a Wild West town in which legal systems are superfluous and all the citizens of the town are as closely connected as can be without being related.

To speak, then, of the ‘sins’ of the shooter is misleading at best. Had the community been as close to its fantastical utopian narrative as it claims to be, the event of violence which actually occurred would not have happened. The ‘sins’ of the community may be that of the narcissist whereby nothing and nobody is of a concern except for the ‘tight-knit’ community which has a bad history of excluding people who do not fit the orthodoxy of the community. Adam Lanza, for example, was a stranger in his own community, alienated by the very narratives which construct Sandy Hook and Newtown as ‘tight-knit’ communities. If that is the case, then his violence was more than just violence for the sake of violence but also a cry of desperation for the community to see its narcissistic reflection. To put this in terms of ‘sins’, Adam Lanza was the sacrificial scapegoat by which Newtown and Sandy Hook can continue their ‘sinful’ practises of alienating those who live within their borders. Please do not misinterpret me here: yes, Adam Lanza shot and killed dozens of people; however, it is short-sighted to blame him as an individual for the sins of the community which produced him as the alienated individual.

Joss Whedon and Theology Abstract

Since I received news that my abstract was accepted for the Joss Whedon and Theology book, I thought I’d post my abstract in the hopes that it would generate some helpful comments.

‘Religious Selving in Dollhouse‘

The short-lived television series Dollhouse is about the question of identity — both whether one still possesses one’s original identity after it being removed and also whether one’s identity is singular. I think the second issue is the more interesting one through which to view Dollhouse because it provokes thoughts on the construction of identity. In particular, can one be both religious and non-religious (even ‘secular’)? What is the self if it is a collection of identities? Is it singular? Multiple? These last two questions highlight the struggle to maintain several identities — as all humans do — while still maintain them together as a single self.

I wish to explore the tension between multiple identities as a theological and social issue. By looking at dialogues of religious pluralism, ecumenism, and dual religious practitioners (e.g. Buddhist Christians), I shall argue that identity is always a collection of identities in which many different, and perhaps even competing, ‘selves’ construct an individual. Here is where Dollhouse comes into focus because, as the later part of the series explores, Echo becomes analogous for humanity precisely at the point that she begins to see herself as something other-than-human and as a collection of humans. As Echo tries to find echoes of herself throughout the series, this image can be applied both to individuals as they find echoes of themselves and to universal identities such as religion as practitioners find echoes of their faith everywhere (cf. the various Finding God in… books).

Disequilibrium of the Self

‘For when Kant puts rational theology into question, in the same stroke he introduces a kind of disequilibrium, a fissure or crack in the pure Self of the “I think”, an alienation in principle, insurmountable in principle: the subject can henceforth represent its own spontaneity only as that of an Other, and in so doing invoke a mysterious coherence in the last instance which excludes its own — namely, that of the world and God’. (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 58).

Entitlement Madness

One of the key phrases being wielded in response to the House’s second passage of the healthcare insurance reform has been ‘entitlement’. This struck me as strange because ‘entitlement’ is typically used to denote benefits being given to a specific group (e.g. military veterans, Midwest farmers, displaced victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, etc). Yet the healthcare reform bill, as passed is not specific to a particular group but to all Americans. Sure, there are parts which provide graduated assistance to those who are under a certain percentage of the poverty line, but is that enough to claim the entirety of the reform bill is a great entitlement — as these same opponents also decry of programmes such as welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid?

This kind of crying foul that the government should not help the less fortunate is faulty on two counts. It rests on the assumption that ‘social justice’ is something that should be voluntary. This is particularly difficult for religious conservatives who tend to accept that humans are inherently ‘bad’ (whether it be moral corruption through Calvinism’s ‘Total Depravity’ or something similar). If humans are inherently bad (or at the very least morally cuplable), why should we accept that humans will reach through this fault and give willingly and unselfishly? In other words, humans are selfish (and I believe this is something implicit in my previous post on social justice). If it weren’t for humanity’s selfish nature, I could accept voluntary giving as a viable alternative.

The second assumption this line of thinking rests on is the assumption that ‘social justice’ is not part of the government’s role. This is problematic because equality for all people and the right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ is written both explicitly and implicitly throughout the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. However, it has changed over the last century as the public sphere has degraded into a culture of opposition and war. In fact, I would go so far as to say that notions of the ‘common good’ have been superceded by the notion of the private consumer (the four part BBC documentary Century of the Self has a good analysis here). We can see this in a historical look at actions such as exorcism in which people were removed from communities because they were harmful to the community has become a battle between the many fragments of Self and Other within individuals. We’ve tried to erase the public sphere in order to protect our isolations, to protect our Selves from the Others. What we did not expect was to find that even individuals have many Selves and Others already from which an identity emerges. And now, we isolate ourselves so that we do not meet the Other face-to-face, we turn the mirrors away so that we do not see the Other within. Instead, we seek exorcism of the individual in the hopes that we will find a complete Self beneath the rubble, equally afraid that we will only see fragments! From this, we have transformed government into our own pet that should console us, pamper ourselves as individual Selves, and hide the Others from our sights. This is most evident in the lack of cooperation between political parties as all major votes now fall to partisan lines: as long as Our Party is in power, we can have our way and excise the Others from our midsts! ‘Social justice’ and ‘equality’ are within government’s role only if they benefit us! We don’t truly care for democracy, equality, liberty, or freedom; we only care for our own as we pay for it! We, as social-political creatures, have become consumers of rights! We should only have the right to buy; if one cannot pay the costs, one does not deserve it! If one does not deserve it, then that one is not of Us! — And all outsiders should be rejected lest they reveal our own inadequacies! The role of government is to continue to isolate Us from Them, equality and freedom be damned! Perhaps these opponents are using entitlement in terms of rights, but do they seriously want to contend that people have no rights whatsoever to healthcare? Only the right to consume is needed in our perverse consumer society where those unable to consume are less than human and worthless…

I think this kind of view turns government into a capitalist corporation. For the kind of thinking above, the best government is one which operates like a for-profit industry, subjugating people by marketing — as our present day capitalist corporations do — and to do so without concern or apathy. The documentary The Corporation did a good job in arguing that if capitalist corporations are persons (which the Supreme Court of the US just ruled), then they are amoral psychopaths. We want fascist dictators — not the kind that tell us directly what politics are right but the ones that tell us what to buy and use product placement to tell us which politics are good to buy!

This is, I believe the heart of the matter when it comes to criticising something as ‘entitlement’: it runs against the grain of capitalist consumerism. People are provided necessities not on the basis of their status as a consumer but on their status as a human who is part of the public sphere which haunts the consumer market. We’ve created many illusions of the public sphere (such as the American Idol phenomena in which we believe we get direct representation for once!) because we fear there may be a reality ‘out there’ in which not everything fits our utopian fantasy. Movies like Avatar are horrific because they’ve turn the Real into a fantasy which we consume as a brief foray into entertainment (‘it was a good movie with awesome effects, but the story’s been done before in Fern Gully or Pocahontas‘) before returning to our own fantasies that we mistake for the Real! Programmes like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and welfare need to be opposed because they don’t fit our fantasy of consumerism — and that is why many conservatives criticise the healthcare insurance reform as it interrupts our utopian consumerist fantasy and makes us look at Others for what they are: human beings.

The Problem with Identity

I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi TV. One of my current favourites is the canceled-but-still-bleeding series Dollhouse. In one of the recent episodes (2×05), there was a good segment that reveals a lot about identity construction (OK, so I think the whole series has been playing with that). So, I posted that clip to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Before getting to the video, I want to frame the scene (which will contain spoilers).

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