Dalit Theology after Continental Philosophy

Y.T. Vinayaraj

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9783319312675
• eBook ISBN: 9783319312682
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book, steeped in the traditions of both postcolonial theory and Continental philosophy, addresses fundamental questions about God and theology in the postcolonial world. Namely, Y.T. Vinayaraj asks whether Continental philosophies of God and the 'other' can attend to the struggles that entail human pain and suffering in the postcolonial context. The volume offers a constructive proposal for a Dalit theology of immanent God or de-othering God as it emerges out of the Lokayata, the Indian materialist epistemology.  Engaging with the post-Continental philosophers of immanence such as Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Catherine Malabou, and Jean-Luc Nancy, Vinayaraj explores the idea of a Dalit theology of God and body in the post-Continental context. The book investigates how there can be a Dalit theology of God without any Christian philosophical baggage of transcendentalism. The study ends with a clarion call for Indian Christian Theology to take a turn toward an immanence thatis political and polydoxical in content.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Y.T. VinayarajDalit Theology after Continental PhilosophyPostcolonialism and Religions10.1007/978-3-319-31268-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Y. T. Vinayaraj¹

(1)

Dharma Jyoti Vidya Peeth, Faridabad, New Delhi, India

Abstract

The introduction explains the hypothesis of the study. The hypothesis of this study stems from three specific questions: (1) Do the Continental philosophies of the ‘transcendent Other’ attend to the agonistic politics of the ‘other others’ in the ‘Third World’? (2) How do the Spivakian notions of ‘detranscendentalized sacred’ and the ‘subordinated other’ (subaltern) initiate a ‘postcolonial turn’ in the Continental philosophies of God and the other and how does Spivak address the question of the postcoloniality of subaltern bodies? (3) What would be a Dalit theology of God and body in this post-Continental context of ‘turning towards the political and the plane of immanence’?

Keywords

Continental philosophyPost-metaphysical GodHypertranscendenceDetranscendentalized sacredLokayataNecropoliticsAgonistic politicsSubordinated otherEmbodied transcendenceMaterialist epistemologiesEnmattered transcendence

End Abstract

If God is immaterial, God doesn’t matter.Catherine Keller ¹

A discussion about God and the other elucidates the inherent dialecticality of transcendence and immanence in Christian Theology. Christian Theology, as it signifies Western philosophical heritage, has always had a ‘transcendentalist’ theological sense from Plato to Kant and Hegel. Modern metaphysics and ontology substantiated a totalitarian Being/God. The other in modern Western philosophy was considered as a derivative of the Being/God and the alterity of the other was denied. Continental philosophy, as reflecting post-Enlightenment Western thought, offered a critique of modern metaphysics and ontology and initiated the ‘postmodern turn’. However, even the post-metaphysical God in the postmodern era—the ‘God after the death of God’—was not able to deny the inherent ‘transcendentalism’ of the Western imaginary.

The post-Continental philosophers like Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Luc Nancy, Judith Butler, and so on envisage a ‘radical turn’ towards the ‘political’ and ‘immanence’ and interrogate the contemporary Continental philosophies of ‘hypertranscendence’ (Caputo and Scanlon, 2010) for being inadequate and impotent to attend to the question of bare life—people live outside of the territory of laws of immigration, nationality and citizenship, which reconfigures the notions of state, law and justice. ² Locating myself in this post-Continental philosophical turn towards the immanence and political, and critically engaging with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who initiates a ‘postcolonial turn’ in the Continental philosophy through her notions of ‘detranscendentalized sacred’ and the ‘subordinated other’ (subaltern), this book explores the possibility of reformulating the Dalit theology of God based on the Indian materialistic philosophical tradition—Lokayata as it takes on the ‘transcendentalism’ of Christian philosophy and theology.

The hypothesis of this study stems from three specific questions: (1) Do the Continental philosophies of the ‘transcendent Other’ attend to the necropolitics(Achille Mbembe defines it the material destruction of human bodies and populations in the postcolonial context) and the agonistic politics (Mark Lewis Taylor refers to the struggles that entail human pain and suffering in the postcolonial context) of the ‘other others’ in the ‘Third World’? ³ (2) How do the Spivakian notions of ‘detranscendentalized sacred’ and the ‘subordinated other’ (subaltern) initiate a ‘postcolonial turn’ in the Continental philosophies of God and the other, and how does she address the question of the postcoloniality of subaltern bodies? (3) What would be a Dalit theology of God and body in this post-Continental context of ‘turning towards the political and the plane of immanence’?

The Problem of God and the Other in Continental Philosophy

The term ‘Continental philosophy’ is often used to a describe philosophy that emerged in post-World War II European thought. It is generally defined as the outcome of a series of critical responses to the dominant currents of modern European philosophy, and in particular, the Enlightenment, which includes Hegelian idealism, Marxism, the ‘critical theory’ of the Frankfurt School, existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, ‘post’-postmodernism, and some forms of feminisms. ⁴ As David West and Simon Critchely discuss, the term Continental philosophy is not a monolithic or fixed category that de-limits itself in any particular philosophical thought or a specific continent in a geographical sense. For Critchely, ‘it is a highly eclectic and disparate series of intellectual currents that could hardly be said to amount to a unified tradition.’ ⁵ Critchely distinguishes Continental philosophy from Analytic philosophy even though they share a common central European ancestry. However, following a series of studies on contemporary Western philosophical thought like J. Aaron Simmons’ God and the Other: Ethics and Politics after the Theological Turn (2011), this volume uses this term Continental philosophy to denote the ‘postmodern turn’ in Western philosophical thought both in deconstructive and phenomenological veins. ⁶

The ‘postmodern turn’ in the Western philosophical tradition emerged out of the contentions with modern metaphysics and ontology. In modern metaphysics, Descartes held the view that God exists as an innate ‘infinitist thought’ available to human mind and reason. Kant, on the other hand, offered a revision to the Cartesian philosophy and rehabilitated God as the universal moral idea that regulates all human experiences within the extension of phenomenon. Whereas Hegel held the view that God exists as an absolute self-conscious spirit (Geist) within the dialecticality of human consciousness. Frederic Nietzsche denied this notion of God who stands as the ground of all totalitarian claims of truth. By arguing for the ‘death of God,’ he rejected the modern idea of God as the universal center of all human values and life. In Nietzscheism, God as ‘the super Being,’ ‘the absolute Truth,’ and the ‘absolute Goodness’ came to an end. It was a clear rejection of the monotheistic, monadic, and unifying modern Western notion of God beginning from Descartes, through Kant to Hegel.

Correlated to the notion of Being/God in modern metaphysics, ‘the other’ is also integrated within the totality. For Descartes ‘the other’ is nothing but an object of his thinking. ‘The other’ is denied its difference in the totalitarian philosophies of Kant and Hegel. In the universalizing and unifying Kantian approach, ‘the other’ is only taken into consideration in a negative way. Gabrielle Hiltmann calls the Kantian approach a monistic and universal rationalist logic, which excludes the positive recognition of the other’s individuality. ⁷ In the Hegelian thesis of negation, which ultimately leads to wholeness, the many belong to the One. Taking a cue from Hegelian negative dialectics, the Frankfurt School held the view that it is in this negative dialectics—that the binarism between sacred and secular, theory and theology, thinking and doing are reimagined and reconciled. ⁸

On the other hand, Nietzsche’s critique of Oneness opened the ground for multiplicity and difference. The Heideggerian philosophy of ontological difference accentuated the process of dismantling the Western idea of totality. Heidegger’s de-ontological God and the other were brought to the ethico-political realm by the philosophers of the ‘new phenomenology’ or ‘the theological turn’: Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and so on, who offered the irreducible singularity of God/Other in contrast to the modern Western theistic, monistic, totalitarian philosophy of God. God as the ‘transcendent Other’ shifts radically from the Western onto-theology and attends to the postmodern question of the Other as a parallel to it. Of course, the Other in the postmodern context denies any kind of othering and locates itself in a ‘location’ of alterity and irreducible singularity.

However, following some of the critical engagements with the Continental philosophies of God and the other, this volume explores whether these postmodern philosophies are just repetitions or re-locations within the Western imaginaries of God, being, and the other. ⁹ It further tries to ask whether these philosophies of the constitutive otherness of God and the other can account for the ‘lived experiences’ of the ‘othered selves,’ or the ‘concrete others’ in the ‘other worlds’? I argue here that the postmodern apologetics of God and the other are still tied to the Western epistemological trajectories of being, other, and God, and thus they become inadequate in the context of the agonistic politics and the necropolitics of the ‘other others’ who hesitate to be accommodated within the category—‘the transcendent Other.’

Spivak and the ‘Third World Turn’ in Continental Philosophy

The indeterminacy and contingency of God and the other in Continental philosophy has evoked varieties of epistemological, philosophical, and theological responses within and outside of the Continental tradition. ‘Post-Continental philosophy,’ otherwise known as the ‘turn towards immanence,’ offers a sharp criticism against the ‘hypertranscendence’ of the postmodern Continental philosophy. Thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Ranciere, Judith Butler, Michel Henry, Isabelle Stengers, Jean Luc-Nancy, and Slavoj Zizek take a critical philosophical stand within the contemporary Continental philosophy and try to interrogate the inadequacy of the transcendentalism of Western philosophy to account for the political oppression against the ‘repressed others’ in the ‘other worlds’. For Alain Badiou, ‘the impossibility’ of the philosophy as it is proposed by Derrida is nothing but a ‘conceit’ and a ‘dangerous deficiency’ with regard to the politically repressed others. ¹⁰ Deleuze connects the notion of ‘transcendent’ with its political correlate—Sovereign: the absolute legislator. Thus, Deleuze constantly calls to ‘hunt down transcendence.’ ¹¹ Because of this radical political inclination, David West calls post-Continental philosophy ‘the return towards of the political.’ ¹²

On the other hand, Julia Kristeva, Luis Irigaray, Judith Butler, and Le Doeuff criticize the postmodern thinking of God, being, and other in which the question of gender is silenced. These feminist thinkers offer a new philosophical engagement with the forgotten, repressed, and silenced within Continental philosophical traditions. Irigaray argues that the Continental philosophical God is a ‘radically estranged God’ and he is ‘an unknowable entity of the beyond.’ ¹³ Irigaray proposes a ‘transcendence between us’ through which she offers an intersubjective, interpersonal, and embodied relationality. ¹⁴ Judith Butler argues that the ‘transcendentalism’ of Continental philosophy is apolitical in concrete situations of violence, violation, and discrimination in the ‘other worlds’. ¹⁵ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on the other hand, critically engages both Continental and post-Continental philosophies of transcendence and immanence based on a postcolonial deconstructive feminist theoretical framework, and she discloses a ‘Third World turn’ in the post-Continental philosophical tradition.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak addresses the question of God and the other, or the transcendence and immanence, by interacting with the theory of postcoloniality in the post-Continental philosophical tradition. Engaging critically with Edward Said, she offers a postcolonial deconstructive feminist theory in order to problematize the location of the ‘colon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. God as the ‘Transcendent Other’: A Critical Engagement with ‘The Theological Turn’
• 3. Spivak and the ‘Subordinated Other’: The “Third World Turn” in Continental Philosophy
• 4. God, Human, and Creation: Spivak and Postcolonial Theologies
• 5. De-othering God: Dalit Theology After Continental Philosophy
• 6. Conclusion
• Backmatter