How to speak of the body?

Abstract

In this article I discuss the question of how to speak of the body in theology after Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as nihilistic. A purely theoretical and a-historic approach, such as could be found in much doctrinal theology as well as philosophy after Descartes, runs the risk of objectifying the body through its representations of it. The phenomenological approach to embodiment would instead help theology to avoid treating the body as a thing and instead as a communicative and expressive medium for relationships with divinity as well as other human beings. A critical theological somatology after Nietzsche would have to speak of the body through genealogical accounts of the traces of the body in biblical and theological texts as well as in religious practices such as prayer, liturgy and hymns with the aim of correlating this theological tradition with the articulations and configurations of embodiment today.

Notes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (trans. R. J. Hollingdale; London: Penguin Books, 1968),.

2. See my book Himmelska kroppar: Inkarnation, blick, kroppslighet (Logos/Pathos 6; Gothenburg: Glänta, 2006),.

3. See Dalia Judovitz, The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of Modernity (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001), 70 and Drew Leder, “A Tale of Two Bodies: the Cartesian Corpse and the Lived Body”, in Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader (ed. Donn Welton; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998), 119.

4. See Lilli Alanen, Descartes's Concept of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 44–77 and 165–207.

5. Gail Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment and Intercorporeality (New York: Routledge, 1999), 5.

6. Cf. Henri de Lubac, Corpus mysticum: L'Eucharistie et l'Église au Moyen Âge, étude historique (2d rev. and enl. ed.; Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1949).

7. See my book that bears the preliminary title Postsekulär politisk teologi: Religion, modernitet och mänskliga rättigheter (forthcoming).

8. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality (vol. 1; London: Penguin, 1990), 140.

9. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J Hollingdale; New York: Vintage Press, 1989), 45.

10. Stephen Crites, “The Narrative Quality of Experience”, in Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology (ed. Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 85.

11. Susan Hekman, “Material Bodies,” in Body and Flesh, 67f.

12. Gisberth Greshake, “Theologiegeschichtliche und systematische Untersuchungen zum Verständnis der Auferstehung”, in Resurrectio mortuorum: Zum theologischen Verständnis der leiblichen Auferstehung (ed. Gisbert Greshake and Jacob Kremer; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buschgesellschaft, 1986), 193.

13. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (3d ed.; Harlow: Longman, 1986), 163–166.

14. Donald M. MacKinnon, “'Substance’ in christology – a cross-bench view”, in Christ, Faith and History (Cambridge Studies in Christology; ed. Stephen W. Sykes and John P. Clayton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 291.

15. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2.

16. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (trans. Colin Smith; London: Routledge, 1992), xvif.

17. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (trans. Colin Smith; London: Routledge, 1992), xvif, xx.

18. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. 2, Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4; ed. Marty Biemel; Haag: Nijhoff, 1969).

19. Michel Henry, Incarnation: Une philosophie de la chair (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 27.

20. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ibid., 148.

21. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 198 f.

22. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 82.

23. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 47.

24. Judith Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist Critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception”, in The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy (ed. Jeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1989), 85–100

25. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 178.

26. Donn Welton, “Biblical Bodies”, in Body and Flesh, 229.

27. Luce Irigaray, “Equal to Whom?” in The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader (ed. Graham Ward; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 203.

28. Martin Heidegger, “Phenomenologie und Theologie”, in Wegmarken (vol. 9; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976), 53.

29. John Swedenmark, “Bortom bortträngningen – Kristendomen och dialektiken oidipus – identifikation”, Divan: Tidskrift för psykoanalys och kultur, 1–2 (2004): 72.

30. Jacques Derrida, “On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion”, in God, the Gift and Postmodernism (ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1999), 73.

31. Cf. Mats Rosengren, “On Being Downstream”, in The Past's Presence: Essays on the Historicity of Philosophy (ed. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin; Södertörn Philosophical Studies 3; Huddinge: Södertörns Högskola, 2005), 203–218.

32. Paul Ricoeur, “Expérience et langage dans le discours religieux”, in Phénoménologie et théologie (ed. Jean-François Courtine; Paris: Criterion, 1992), 20.