Foucault on Jesus

Here is an excellent summary of some trendy philosophical buzzwords that everyone uses and no one can define.

"Soon came another word, "critical", as in "critical legal studies". How is "critical legal studies" different from, say, "law"? The defining feature of the critical-studies course is that it takes almost nothing at face value. The goal is to deconstruct, to uncover the hidden, multi-faceted meanings and thereby to reveal the codes of power. This ambition owes much to two French thinkers. One, Jacques Derrida, who died in October, is credited with inventing "deconstruction"—the attempt to interpret texts, while keeping in mind the notion that meaning itself was elusive. The other, Michel Foucault (1926-84), saw language as a product of power. For him, truth was not fixed and immutable. It was relative and flexible, defined by whoever is in charge." The Economist, 16 December 2004.

From a deconstructionist standpoint, you don't have to "take anything at face value". As a deconstructionist, you can automatically discount, or simply ignore, the plain meaning behind any truth-claim--say, "God exists"--and instead ask the question "What advantage or power do you gain by making the claim 'God exists'?" The power of "God exists", says the deconstructionist, is its power to impose guilt, compel obedience, and create an order that entrenches the privileges of church authorities.

A contemporary example that almost turns to self-parody is the (in)famous Jesus Seminar. In his opening remarks at the Seminar's inauguration in 1985, Robert Funk--the intellectual progeny of Foucault if ever there was one--explained the premises behind the approach to their search for the "historical Jesus". "We now know that narrative accounts of ourselves, our nation, the Western tradition, and the history of the world, are fictions" he said. "A fiction is...a selection—arbitrary in nature—of participants and events arranged in a connected chain and on a chronological line with an arbitrary beginning and ending. In sum, we make up all our 'stories'—out of real enough material, of course—in relation to imaginary constructs, within temporal limits." He went on, "the Bible is said to form a narrative and to embrace in its several parts a coherent and continuous structure. And it is also in this same sense that the Bible, along with all our histories, is a fiction." Funk appears to be saying the Bible's arrangement with a beginning, middle, and end in a coherent narrative structure is evidence that it is make-believe.

Funk ends by discovering the motive behind the Bible's mythology: "the fiction of Revelation keeps many common folk in bondage to ignorance and fear" and calls for action: "We require a new, liberating fiction..." Armed with this, the Seminar Fellows pick through the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life to determine what Jesus really said and did and conclude, not surprisingly, that a mere 18 percent of the sayings and 16 percent of the deeds ascribed to Jesus are accurate and the rest pious myth.

Deconstructionists treat words as tools for exerting power. They should know: the words they deploy are hugely powerful. The assumption on which their thought rests is a reflexive skepticism that relieves them of the burden of actually contemplating the truth or falsity of the Almighty's existence or the Bible's inspiration in favor of assuming that truth or falsity is a "construct" to shore up the believer's social power--from which, take note, the deconstructionist can liberate others: the deconstructionist is a new hero who spreads enlightenment and frees us from the ignorance that keeps us in thrall to hidden patterns of power. The system is a tool of awesome power, an intellectual weapon of mass destruction.

Except that it is so transparent. We are justly suspicious of something that begins by arrogating to itself so much power and proceeds by reflexively assuming all other thoughts and words are not to be taken seriously. In the face of these assumptions, no belief system or truth claim can stand--except deconstructionism. Such an obviously self-ratifying (not to say self-congratulatory) system cannot escape its accusation that its own words are nothing but tools and weapons in a struggle for power. If it cannot establish credentials as an independent arbiter of truth and not a naked ploy to seize academic authority, it is not to be taken seriously. Deconstructionism proves all too easy to deconstruct.

At least Funk is honest that the products of the Jesus Seminar are "fictions"--though one wonders if the followers and adherents of their work share that understanding. By declaring themselves the new authentic interpreters of the Gospels, the Jesus Seminar has merely set up a new power hierarchy founded on a fiction in place of what they saw as the old one. I have a hunch that a deconstructionist would accuse a simpleton like me of naivete for rejecting their sophisticated hermeneutics. Perhaps what they think of as naivete is what Jesus might call the "child-like faith" necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But then, I suppose he never really said that, either.