Multiculti gender & ethnical ethics: Euro~BNLuxury



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While
Paul's impulse
toward the founding of a non-differentiated,
non-hierarchical
humanity
was
laudable
in my opinion,
many of its effects in terms of actual lives
were not.

In terms
of ethnicity,
his system required
that all human cultural specificities
- first and foremost, that of the Jews -
be eradicated,
whether or not the people in question
were willing.

Moreover,
since of course, there is no such thing as cultural
unspecificity,
merging of all people
into one common culture means
ultimately
(as it has meant
in the history of European
cultural imperialism)
merging all people into the
dominant culture.

In terms
of gender,
for Paul (as indeed,
for nearly everone until now),
autonomy and something like
true equality for women
were bought
at the expense of sexuality
and
maternity.

Also,
analogously
to the culture question,
the erasure of gender
seems always to have ended up
positing maleness
as the norm to which women can
"aspire."






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Rabbinic Judaism
is in part a reaction formation
against both of the Pauline moves - or, at the very least,
a typological
antithesis.

Ethnic difference,
cultural specificity,
specific historical memory,
and sexuality were highly valued in that cultural system,
providing a partial,
useful model for contemporary
culture.

IF Paul's solutions
were unsatisfactory from ONE point of view,
however, those of rabbinic Judaism seem equally
unsatisfactory from
the OPPOSITE
point
of view.

In terms
of ethnicity,
the Jewish system has created the danger
(and in our times, the realization of that danger)
of a racist social system,
while rabbinic marriage,
for all of its warmth and valorization of sexuality
(including female sexuality) and childbirth,
left precious little room for female autonomy, equality,
and freedom.

In Carnal Israel,
a detailed description of the rabbinic side of
this dialectical tension is
attempted.

But now and here
in myDi I hope to produce
a more nuanced and rich account
of the Pauline side
of the dialectic.
The mode of argumentation and thought
in these myDistories
is thus one
in which there is no winner or loser.
My concern is not to promote or defend either the Pauline
or the rabbinic discpourse but to show
how they participate together
in the articulation of a set of cultural, social,
and moral dilemmas
which still plague us - "(social) Gender Trouble" and
the "Jewish (religious)
Question."

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The argument
of most of these myDistories is
that this tension between the same
and the different,
in both gender and ethnicity,
indicates the precise quandaries
in which our sociocultural formation is trapped
through the present;
the dilemmas of multiculturalism and feminist theory
seem to grow, then,
out of cultural dilemmas that were first
seriously encountered
in the first century.

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The Pauline corpus is, moreover,
one of the main textual sources for Christianity,
the most powerful of hegemonic cultural systems
in the history of
the myDiworld.

Paul
and the reactions to Paul
are thus a major source for a historicization of
our cultural predicament.

In the
reception history of Paul,
his texts have generally served what might be broadly called
conservative
cultural-political interests;
they have been used as props in the fight against
liberation of slaves
and women as well as major supports for
theological
anti-Judaism.

I will usually argue here
in myDi that Paul need not be read THIS way,
indeed, that his texts support, at least equally well,
an alternative reading,
one that makes him a passionate striver for human liberation
and equality.

Furthermore
I will claim that this very passion for equality led Paul,
for various cultural reasons,
to euqate equality with sameness, and that,
despite what I take to be the goodness of his intentions,
his social thought was therefore
deeply
flawed.

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IT IS
important
that this claim not be misunderstood.
I am not suggesting, of course, that Paul literally called for
cultural uniformity in the sense that he demanded
that all people
speak alike, dress alike,
and eat alike.

Indeed,
one could argue - and it has been argued - that Paul's
declarations that observances of the Law are adiaphora,
matters of indifference, represent rather
a cultural "tolerance."

HIS argument
is precisely against those who think
that what one eats is
of significance.

IT IS, however,
THIS very tolerance that deprives
difference of the right to be different,
dissolving all others into a single essence in which matters
of cultural practice are irrelevant and only faith in Christ
significant.

THUS for
a Pharisee of Paul's day
or e religious Jew of today, to be told that it is a matter
of indifference
whether Jews circumcise their sons or not,
and therefore that there is no diffenrence
between Jews
and gentiles hardly feels like regard for Jewish
{or moslim}
difference.

HERE
differences do persist,
it seems, between many Jewish and Christian
readers of Paul.

A recent interpreter
who argues strongly - and cogently -
for the thesis that "Paul did NOT hold
that Christians should lose their cultural identity
as Jew or Gentile and become
ONE new humanity
which is neither" shows this difference
of perception in his very
formulation, since the question
for me is NOT the relative statuses of
Jewish and gentile Christians
but the statuses of those
- Jews and others -
who choose not to be
Christians.

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Similarly, the claim that
"Paul believed that the Gospel gave him the freedom
to be flexible in his
keeping of Jewish
food laws" -
a claim with which I agree entirely -
for me thoroughly undermines any argument
that Paul intended Jews
to ramain Jewish, although Paul, were he here
in myDi TODAY,
would probably argue that he was redefining Jewishness
in such a way
that everyone could be
Jewish.

THOSE
who would
contend that the maintenance
of Jewish practice
is simply a life-style
and that tolerance consists in insisting that it is
a matter of indifference
whether Jews follow that life-style or not
are simply "buying into" Paul's ideology,
NOT commenting
on IT.

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Jewish difference
does not mean only
permitting Jews to keep kosher or circumcise
within Christian communities;
it means recognizing the centrality and value of
such practices for Jews
as well as their "right" to remain unconvinced
by the gospel.

THIS
does not, however,
constitute an accusation of intolerance on the part of Paul.
Paul's gospel was one
of tolerance.

I claim rather
that tolerance itself is flawed - in Paul, as it is today.
ITS opposite - by which I do not mean intolerance but insistence
on the special value of particularity -
is equally flawed.

The themes of
these myDistories
are that the claims of difference and the desire
for universality are both -
contradictorily -
necessary;
BOTH are also equally
problematic.

The challenge
of Paul's positive call to autonomy,
equality, and species-wide solidarity cannot be ignored
or dismissed
because of the reactionary uses to which
it has been put,
but just as surely the insistence
on the value of ethnic
- even genealogical - identity that the Rabbis
put forth cannot
be ignored
or dismissed because of
the reactionary uses to which it can
and has been
put.

I hope
those different stories
will suggest in the end (and even now every
now and then?)
some dim glimmers of light to brighten
up these darker
portrayals.
engel
17 okt 2004 - bewerkt op 04 feb 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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