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ABSTRACT
The recent pandemic has accompanied a surge of protests against racial injustice in the United States and around the world, which together are occurring during a growing recognition that the world is in the midst of a sixth extinction event. These three events (and others) have in common the question of how we (human and other-than-human beings) shall live or dwell together on this one earth. In this article, I first sketch out the various existential features of dwelling. This sets the foundation for moving to a pastoral theological perspective on dwelling and its relation to the pandemic, racism/classism, and the Anthropocene Age.
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Notes
1 Gauthier, Martin Heidegger, Emanuel Levinas, and the Politics of Dwelling, 11.
2 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 152.
3 Weil, The Need for Roots, 43.
5 Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America.
6 See Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective. Doehring, The Practice of Pastoral Care. Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care. Gerkin, An Introduction to Pastoral Care. Patton, Pastoral Care in Context. Scheib, Challenging Invisibility.
7 Flesberg, The Switching Hour. Lester, Pastoral Care with Children in Crisis.
8 Scheib, Pastoral Care.
9 Poling, Render unto God. van Deusen Hunsinger, Bearing the Unbearable.
10 Marshall, Counseling Lesbian Partners. Sanders, A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth.
11 Kelley, Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry. White, Saying Good-bye.
12 Smith, The Relational Self.
13 Graham, Care of Persons, Care of Worlds.
14 Miller-McLemore, Also a Mother.
15 Helsel, Pastoral Power Beyond Psychology’s Imagination. Johnson, Race, Religion, and Resilience in the Neoliberal Age. LaMothe, Care of Souls, Care of Polis. LaMothe, Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship. Ramsay, “Compassionate Resistance.” Rogers-Vaughn, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age.
16 Bingaman, Pastoral and Spiritual Care in a Digital Age. Hamman, Growing Down. Hogue, Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past.
17 A brief definition of care and its relation to the political may be helpful to readers. Care is everything we do to help individuals, families, communities, and societies to (1) meet vital biological, psychosocial, and existential or spiritual needs of individuals, families, and communities, (2) develop or maintain basic capabilities with the aim of human flourishing, (3) facilitate participation in the polis, and (4) maintain a habitable environment for all. I add to this definition that care and pastoral care are political concepts that necessarily involve shared critical and constructive reflection on how the structures (and their accompanying narratives and practices) of the state, governing authorities, and non-state organizations (e.g., businesses, labor unions, religious and secular communities, etc.) and actors meet or fail to meet the four features of this definition of care. LaMothe, Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship, 8.
18 For Giorgi Agamben, the term “apparatus” refers to “a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient—in a way that purports to be useful—the behaviors, gestures, and thoughts of human beings.” Referencing Foucault, Agamben writes that “in a disciplinary society, apparatuses aim to create—through a series of practices, discourses, and bodies of knowledge—docile, yet free, bodies that assume their identity and their ‘freedom’ as subjects.” Agamben, What Is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, 13, 19.
19 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death.
20 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 142.
21 See Desmond, Evicted. Soss et al., Disciplining the Poor. Wacquant, Punishing the Poor.
22 Scientist Paul Crutzen is credited with coining this term, which means that human beings have initiated an extinction event. Northcott, “On Going Gently into the Anthropocene,” 20.
23 There have been five major extinction events in earth’s history. The sixth has been caused by human beings, which has revealed that human agency is a force of nature. This term is not without controversy. Jason Moore argues that we should call this the Capitalocene Age because he argues capitalism is the cause of global climate change. Klein, This Changes Everything. Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction. Moore, Jason. “Name the System! Anthropocene & the Capitalocene Alternative.”
24 Climate Science Special Report, https://science2017.globalchange.gov/. See also Northcott, A Political Theology of Climate Change, 1–9. See also, Parenti, Tropic of Chaos. Sassen, Expulsions.
25 Davenport, “Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change.”
26 DeCasper and Fifer, “Of Human Bonding.” DeCasper and Spence, “Prenatal Maternal Speech Influences Newborns’ Perception of Speech Sounds.” Beebe and Lachmann, “Representation and Internalization in Infancy.” Beebe and Lachmann, Infant Research and Adult Treatment.
27 James, The Principles of Psychology, 488.
28 Of course, infants are not speaking but infant-parent researchers use a term “proto-conversations” to refer to parents who are speaking to their infants as if infants understand them. Similarly, while infants have not yet developed the capacity for language, they seek to communicate. See Bonovitz and Harlem, Developmental Perspectives in Child Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Trevarthen. Playing into Reality.
29 Arendt uses this term to refer to political spaces. I am using it to refer to a pre-political space of early childhood, though I want to link pre-political spaces of dwelling with later political spaces. Arendt, The Human Condition.
30 Philosopher Axel Honneth argues that social-political recognition contributes to persons’ experiences of self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect, which accompany and are necessary for engaging in the political sphere. I am using these in the context of early parent-infant relations because I want to suggest a link between this space of appearances and the space of appearances in the public-political realm. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition.
31 Erikson’s first task of development is for parents and children to navigate trust and mistrust. Erikson, Erik. Childhood and Society.
32 Safron and Muran, “The Resolution of Ruptures in the Therapeutic Alliance.”
33 Winnicott, Playing and Reality.
34 Winnicott, Home Is Where We Start From, 123–7.
35 Garcia and Vanek Smith, “Unemployment and the Racial Divide.”
36 Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth address the relation between political misrecognition and failures in distribution of resources in society. Fraser and Honneth. Redistribution or Recognition?
37 Coates, Between the World and Me, 104.
38 Baldwin, Notes from a Native Son, 26.
39 Coates, 15.
40 Ibid., 16.
41 Ibid., 16–17.
42 Ibid., 126.
43 Sawyer’s excellent book on the political philosophy of Malcolm X discusses the intersection of geographical-public space and white racist institutions that operate to remove or marginalize African American citizens. Sawyer, Black-Minded.
44 Philosopher Avishai Margalit argues that a decent society does not humiliate citizens. The U.S. with its long history of racism (includes Native Americans and persons of color) is an indecent society. Margalit, The Decent Society. I would also wish to emphasize that classism intersects with racism, even though classism impacts white persons as well. Both lead to struggles with children transitioning from dwelling at home to dwelling in the public-political world. See Bradford, “Warren Buffett.” Garland, “When Class Becomes More Important to a Child’s Education Than Race.” hooks, Where We Stand. Karlin, “Banishing the Poor, Unemployed and Working Class from the Mainstream Media Implies They Are Worthless.” Lubrano, Limbo. Mercer, Joyce. “Economics, Class, and Classism.”
45 King, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., 7.
46 Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 38.
47 Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 25–6.
48 See Margalit, The Decent Society.
49 Taylor, The Executed God.
50 Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 24.
51 Agamben, Potentialities.
52 See Anderson, White Rage. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street.
53 Kathryn Yusoff’s interesting book addresses the intersection of geology and racism vis-à-vis the Anthropocene Age. Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None.
54 See Zimring, Clean and White. Taylor, Toxic Communities.
55 Hedges and Sacco. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.
56 Agamben, The Open.
57 Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 172.
58 Ibid. 173.
59 There are scholars and activists who advocate for nature being represented in politics. See Meijer, When Animals Speak. Meijer, Animal Languages. Rousseau, “In New Zealand, Lands and Rivers Can Be People Too (Legally Speaking).”
60 LaMothe, “Discerning a Theological Orientation for Pastoral Psychologies of Care.”
61 Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 13–14.
62 Hedges and Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.
63 Schell, “The Human Shadow,” 19.
64 See Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 15–76.
65 Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture, 32.
66 Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 43.
67 Cone, A Theology of Black liberation. Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation. Moltmann, The Gospel of Liberation. Radford-Reuther, Sexism and God Talk. Segundo, The Liberation of Theology.
68 Eaton, “Beyond Human Exceptionalism,” 204.
69 Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture.
70 Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 32–7.
71 Ibid., 134.
72 Ibid., 33.
73 Agamben, Means Without Ends, 15.
74 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 134. Agamben uses the term “bare life” to refer to the exclusion of zoe (to be alive) from bios (political/cultural life), which in reality means that human beings can be treated and managed as objects. The extreme of this is the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. For Agamben, modern politics reflects this state of affairs, which has been debated by other scholars. See Prozorov, Agamben and Politics. I would add here that Agamben’s notion of bare life is building on Hannah Arendt’s research on totalitarianism. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
75 John Lechte and Saul Newman depict “the barbaric treatment of stateless people” throughout the world, illustrating numerous examples of their deaths, incarceration, and surveillance. Lechte and Newman, Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights, 12–14.
76 Personal recognition or recognition of stateless people in their suchness necessarily means acknowledging their fundamental human rights. Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany, knew firsthand the plight of refugees. She wrote, “Their (refugees) plight is not that they are not equal before the law, but that no law exists for them.” Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 295–6.
77 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 11.
78 The notion of stewardship, as Christoph Baumgartner recognizes, is an ambiguous term in ecological literature, especially when linked to theology. Baumgartner attempts to recover the concept arguing that “A Christian understanding of stewardship can be defined as the God-given mandate of humanity to preserve the Earth for the future. The obligations of humanity in view of creation are direct obligations to God, who is understood as creator and owner of the Earth.” While I appreciate the attempt, what remains in place is the sovereignty of God (and owner) and anthropocentrism. A pastoral theology of dwelling advocates a non-sovereign (non-owning) God and a non-sovereign humanity that is one species among millions dwelling on the earth. Baumgartner, “Transformations of Stewardship in the Anthropocene,” 63.
79 Smith, Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World, 158.
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Ryan LaMothe
Ryan LaMothe is a professor of pastoral care and counseling at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. His two most recent monographs are Care of Souls, Care of Polis: Toward a Political Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship.