God, the Gift, and Postmodernism

11. Re-embodying: Virginity Secularized

1i Re-emBo Virginity Secularized Franc;oise Meltzer 1 want to frame my essay with three subtexts, which run like various threads through it. The first is Jacques Derrida's "The Double Session" from La Dissemination-a text that treats, among other issues, the hymen (Mallarme , Hegel, Plato). The second is Jean-Luc Marion's notion of "donation" from his new book, Etant donne, and the third is the following initial remarks of my own. Hippocrates, it will be recalled, classified under sacred maladies those that are specific to young girls.! They experience hallucinations, delirium, anxiety, and so on because, he says, the blood is blocked from flowing through the orifice by the membrane (1 do not say hymen because it is not clear that the Greeks believed in it). This obstruction causes the blood to put pressure on the internal organs, thus causing the symptoms described. Such a hydraulic economy , 1 would suggest, is no different from that of Freud's notion of feminine hysteria. For both, the pleasure principle strives for a lack of pressure, the opening of canal locks which obstruct the flow-whether it be of unconscious drives or of menstrual blood. For both Hippocrates and Freud, hysteria or sac260 leven Re-em6orr'ymg Virginity Secularized Fran<;oise Meltzer I want to frame my essay with three sublexls, which run lih.: various threads through it. The first is Jacques Derrida's ~The Double Session" from La Dissemination-a tcxllhat treats, among other issues, the hymen (Mallarmc , Hegel, Plalo). The second is Jcan-Luc Marion's notion of "donation" from hIS new book, Etant donne, and the third is the following initial remarks of my own. Hippocrates, it will be recalled. classified under sacred maladies those Ihal arc specific to young girls.l They experience hallucinations, delirium, anxiety, and so on because, he says, the blood is blocked from Aowing through the orifice by the membrane (I do not say hymen because it is not clear that tl.e Creeks believed in it). This obstruction causes the blood to put pressure on the internal organs, thus causing the symptoms described. Such a hydraulic economy , I would suggest, is no different from that of Freud's notion of feminine hysteria. For both, the pleasure principle strives for a lack of pressure, the opening ofcanal locks which obstnlct the Aow-whethcr it be of unconscious drives or of menstrual blood. For both Hippocrates and Freud, hysteria or sac260 Re-embodying red malady is sexual in aetiology and can be cured by a puncture, by a man, to the hymen-that dam which holds back access to normal femininity. This view leaves the virgin, then, not only in a state ofabnormality, but of clotted pre-existence: always in potentia hovering on the threshold (hymen) of complete womanhood. In this sense, female virginity is like a metaphor of female subjectivity. Paradoxically enough, she will be rendered "complete" by being punctured, when the repression barrier is penetrated. The virgin is, in Edward Leach's sense, a third term marking the place of danger and the sacred. Not yet woman, she also mirrors what complete womanhood is itself: a subject which does not exist as such, and thus a monstrosity (to use Richard Kearney's term in a different context); a foreigner to male subject agency; a ghost of subjectivity. For woman herself is a subject always to come. Virginity is a mise en abyme of the uncanny, of doubled contradictions. The virgin is respected, even revered, from Plato through Freud and beyond because she echoes the notion ofnot quite being. As woman, she will continue to escape being and so (unsurprisingly perhaps) female virginity is consistently tied to the holy (in its literal notion ofset apart) in the West: the Nicht Ich, in Fichte's sense, which helps to imagine das absolute Ich. Which brings me to the issue of the voice: The probing hands of the midwife to ascertain Joan ofArc's virginity are echoed by the probing interrogation of Church authority. The Church forced a written confession (or signature to one) - a representation of the spoken "Truth"- in order to force Joan into a heresy they had already determined. Thus the paradox, or ecclesiastical (fatal) double bind: If she died at the stake unrepentant, she was from Satan. If she died looking at the crucifix and calling for God or Jesus (both of which she did), she was a saint wrongly, and too tardily, revealed. What remains unquestioned is the necessity ofthe fire. As Simone Weil noted, those who declaim about Joan ofArc today would nearly all have condemned her. We return, inexorably, to psychoanalysis, which Kristeva, for example, sees as a natural link to love in the theological sense.2 Freud's Dora came to him with the symptom of aphonia. She too, was interrogated by the probing eye (and voice) ofpsychoanalytic practice (which Freud himselflikened to the job of a prosecuting trial lawyer, with the patient standing in place of the criminal). Freud, like Joan's Church, had already established the answers. Thus Dora's voice was not heard, as if her aphonia was the symptom of her absence of agency. If Dora's is an internalized lack of voice, Joan's is externalized. This is an unsurprising shift given the move since Descartes, for example, from external to internal experience. Joan's voice by itself would be as unheeded as was Dora's, and this by definition. So whereas Dora internalized her absence as subject, and acquired hysterical symptoms (sore throat, aphonia, and so on), Joan projected or ventriloquized her voice onto three saintly sources of command .' These three external voices which told her what to do gave her own discourse authority in the eyes of the Church. Indeed, they gave her a voice to 261 Re-embodying red malady is sexual in aetiology and can be cured by a puncture, by a man, to the hymen-that dam which holds back access to normal femininity. This view leaves the virgin, then, not only in a state ofabnormality, but of clotted pre-existence: always in potentia hovering on the threshold (hymen) of complete womanhood. In this sense, female virginity is like a metaphor of female subjectivity. Paradoxically enough, she will be rendered "complete" by being punctured, when the repression barrier is penetrated. The virgin is, in Edward Leach's sense, a third term marking the place of danger and the sacred. Not yet woman, she also mirrors what complete womanhood is itself: a subject which does not exist as such, and thus a monstrosity (to use Richard Kearney's term in a different context); a foreigner to male subject agency; a ghost of subjectivity. For woman herself is a subject always to come. Virginity is a mise en abyme of the uncanny, of doubled contradictions. The virgin is respected, even revered, from Plato through Freud and beyond because she echoes the notion ofnot quite being. As woman, she will continue to escape being and so (unsurprisingly perhaps) female virginity is consistently tied to the holy (in its literal notion ofset apart) in the West: the Nicht Ich, in Fichte's sense, which helps to imagine das absolute Ich. Which brings me to the issue of the voice: The probing hands of the midwife to ascertain Joan ofArc's virginity are echoed by the probing interrogation of Church authority. The Church forced a written confession (or signature to one) - a representation of the spoken "Truth"- in order to force Joan into a heresy they had already determined. Thus the paradox, or ecclesiastical (fatal) double bind: If she died at the stake unrepentant, she was from Satan. If she died looking at the crucifix and calling for God or Jesus (both of which she did), she was a saint wrongly, and too tardily, revealed. What remains unquestioned is the necessity ofthe fire. As Simone Weil noted, those who declaim about Joan ofArc today would nearly all have condemned her. We return, inexorably, to psychoanalysis, which Kristeva, for example, sees as a natural link to love in the theological sense.2 Freud's Dora came to him with the symptom of aphonia. She too, was interrogated by the probing eye (and voice) ofpsychoanalytic practice (which Freud himselflikened to the job of a prosecuting trial lawyer, with the patient standing in place of the criminal). Freud, like Joan's Church, had already established the answers. Thus Dora's voice was not heard, as if her aphonia was the symptom of her absence of agency. If Dora's is an internalized lack of voice, Joan's is externalized. This is an unsurprising shift given the move since Descartes, for example, from external to internal experience. Joan's voice by itself would be as unheeded as was Dora's, and this by definition. So whereas Dora internalized her absence as subject, and acquired hysterical symptoms (sore throat, aphonia, and so on), Joan projected or ventriloquized her voice onto three saintly sources of command .' These three external voices which told her what to do gave her own discourse authority in the eyes of the Church. Indeed, they gave her a voice to 261 Fran<;oise Meltzer be heard, even if it was merely as a medium speaking for invisible deities. Double ventriloquism: Joan projected, or heard, her desire in the celestial personages of Catherine, Margaret, and Michael, to whom she gave voice. They in turn spoke through her mouth. She gave lip service, in other words, to her own desire. Or at least, that is how she presented herself, since nothing can "prove" that there were, in fact, no voices. Is the female subject perpetually before the horizon of being? Does the female virgin iconize this state in a saturated way? Whose voice do we hear through the transcripts of Joan's trial? Whose voice does Freud give us when he quotes Dora? Let me finish the frame for this essay with comments on a passage by Kristeva. It is taken from Au commencement itait ['amour, the work mentioned earlier which partially elides psychoanalysis with love. "Let us admit," writes Kristeva on the analytic situation, "that it is legitimate to speak of a subject when language gathers an identity in an instance of enunciation and at the same time confers to it an interlocutor and a referent."4 What is the "we" here? If the analysand is female, let me say it now: I do not admit it. The French is better for such an expression: Je ne l'admets pas. The textual voice here, because it is in the language of the academy, is heard (to some extent) like that of a foster child nicely aping its temporary family. Were the "je" of such a subject real in the sense - experiential, political, etc. - that Kristeva means it, Joan ofArc would have had a very different trajectory. In the midst of his autobiographical text L'Avenir dure longtemps, Louis Althusser opens a chapter on his relationship to marxism with a comment on the eye: "L'oeil est passif," he writes, a distance de son objet, il en rec;oit l'image, sans avoir a travailler, sans engager Ie corps dans aucun proces d'approche, de contact, de manipulation .... L'oeil est ainsi l'organe speculatif par excellence, de Platon et Aristote a saint Thomas et au-dela.5 As is so often the case in late European capitalism and even modernism (in its broadest sense-that is, since the seventeenth century), the polarity between intellectual and manual labor is foregrounded. What is significant here is that Althusser corporealizes this polarity between speculation (philosophy and theology) and the body's labor into a contrast between the eyes and the hands; the body parts, in other words, already prepare for the privileging of embodiment . The eye is passive and does not "work"; while contact and manipulation are the purview of the hands (the word "manipulation" in this passage is followed by a parenthetical remark about why Althusser has always enjoyed having dirty hands). Althusser writes that as a child, he was captured in the realm of the eye "without any contact, or body, for all contact clearly must 262 Fran<;oise Meltzer be heard, even if it was merely as a medium speaking for invisible deities. Double ventriloquism: Joan projected, or heard, her desire in the celestial personages of Catherine, Margaret, and Michael, to whom she gave voice. They in turn spoke through her mouth. She gave lip service, in other words, to her own desire. Or at least, that is how she presented herself, since nothing can "prove" that there were, in fact, no voices. Is the female subject perpetually before the horizon of being? Does the female virgin iconize this state in a saturated way? Whose voice do we hear through the transcripts of Joan's trial? Whose voice does Freud give us when he quotes Dora? Let me finish the frame for this essay with comments on a passage by Kristeva. It is taken from Au commencement itait ['amour, the work mentioned earlier which partially elides psychoanalysis with love. "Let us admit," writes Kristeva on the analytic situation, "that it is legitimate to speak of a subject when language gathers an identity in an instance of enunciation and at the same time confers to it an interlocutor and a referent."4 What is the "we" here? If the analysand is female, let me say it now: I do not admit it. The French is better for such an expression: Je ne l'admets pas. The textual voice here, because it is in the language of the academy, is heard (to some extent) like that of a foster child nicely aping its temporary family. Were the "je" of such a subject real in the sense - experiential, political, etc. - that Kristeva means it, Joan ofArc would have had a very different trajectory. In the midst of his autobiographical text L'Avenir dure longtemps, Louis Althusser opens a chapter on his relationship to marxism with a comment on the eye: "L'oeil est passif," he writes, a distance de son objet, il en rec;oit l'image, sans avoir a travailler, sans engager Ie corps dans aucun proces d'approche, de contact, de manipulation .... L'oeil est ainsi l'organe speculatif par excellence, de Platon et Aristote a saint Thomas et au-dela.5 As is so often the case in late European capitalism and even modernism (in its broadest sense-that is, since the seventeenth century), the polarity between intellectual and manual labor is foregrounded. What is significant here is that Althusser corporealizes this polarity between speculation (philosophy and theology) and the body's labor into a contrast between the eyes and the hands; the body parts, in other words, already prepare for the privileging of embodiment . The eye is passive and does not "work"; while contact and manipulation are the purview of the hands (the word "manipulation" in this passage is followed by a parenthetical remark about why Althusser has always enjoyed having dirty hands). Althusser writes that as a child, he was captured in the realm of the eye "without any contact, or body, for all contact clearly must 262 Re-emboclying occur through the body." These comments are followed by a curious statement . Althusser "is told," as he puts it, that in 1975, he pronounced a "terrible sentence": "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes" (206). That such a sentence should need to be stated, and that it could be uttered as a discovery rather than as a fact too obvious to mention, says as much about "postmodern" (which I am using here as a signpost) thought as it does, ultimately , about Louis Althusser. Indeed, it has been frequently noted that postmodernism is characterized, in part, as a return to materialism. The anthropologist Thomas Csordas has written that "the body is not an object to be studied in relation to culture, but is to be considered as the subject of culture, or in other words as the existential ground of culture."6 For Althusser himself, such a move entails the "discovery" of his body, which began when, as a boy, he lived with his grandfather. Walking in the forest, running, riding his bicycle, digging for potatoes-all of this "replaced forever the simple speculative distance of the futile gaze." He adds: Je n'avais rien a voir avec Ie saint Thomas de la theologie qui pense encore sous la figure de l'oeil speculatif, mais beaucoup plus avec Ie saint Thomas des Evangiles qui veut toucher pour croire. Mieux, je ne me contentais pas du simple contact de la main pour croire a la realite, il me faIIait la travaiIIer, la transformer pour croire, bien au dela de la simple et seule realite, a rna propre existence, enfin conquise. (207) Aquinas's conviction of the comparability of reason and faith, his scholastic moves to "think" Christianity, are discarded by Althusser in favor of the doubting apostle Thomas who needs tactile proof. For Althusser, however, even contact is insufficient to alleviate doubt concerning one's own existence. What is needed is the transforming work of the hand in order to believe, in turn, in the body, and thus in existence. It is necessary, says Althusser, to "think" with the body in order to apprehend reality; not to speculate with the eye. The speculating doubt of Descartes (which, it will be recalled, is laced with immense scientific discussions on the eye and its anatomical parts) is here rejected for the outstretched hand of the apostle Thomas's need for proof. If the first is satisfied to establish existence by means ofthe scopic deductions of an inner, philosophical eye, the second will believe only by the sensory eyes and by the touch ofthe hand. Descartes' famous move away from Plato's Ideas includes being as non-material, and materiality itselfas something from which to free oneself. Touch is specifically excluded, for example, as grounds for knowledge: Nous ne concevons Ie corps que par la faculte d'entendre qui est en nous, et non point par I'imagination ny par les sens, et que nous ne les connoissons pas de ce que nous les voyons, ou que nous les touchons, mais seulement de ce que nous les concevons par la pensee.7 For Descartes, the way to avoid confusion between materiality and soul is to 263 Re-emboclying occur through the body." These comments are followed by a curious statement . Althusser "is told," as he puts it, that in 1975, he pronounced a "terrible sentence": "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes" (206). That such a sentence should need to be stated, and that it could be uttered as a discovery rather than as a fact too obvious to mention, says as much about "postmodern" (which I am using here as a signpost) thought as it does, ultimately , about Louis Althusser. Indeed, it has been frequently noted that postmodernism is characterized, in part, as a return to materialism. The anthropologist Thomas Csordas has written that "the body is not an object to be studied in relation to culture, but is to be considered as the subject of culture, or in other words as the existential ground of culture."6 For Althusser himself, such a move entails the "discovery" of his body, which began when, as a boy, he lived with his grandfather. Walking in the forest, running, riding his bicycle, digging for potatoes-all of this "replaced forever the simple speculative distance of the futile gaze." He adds: Je n'avais rien a voir avec Ie saint Thomas de la theologie qui pense encore sous la figure de l'oeil speculatif, mais beaucoup plus avec Ie saint Thomas des Evangiles qui veut toucher pour croire. Mieux, je ne me contentais pas du simple contact de la main pour croire a la realite, il me faIIait la travaiIIer, la transformer pour croire, bien au dela de la simple et seule realite, a rna propre existence, enfin conquise. (207) Aquinas's conviction of the comparability of reason and faith, his scholastic moves to "think" Christianity, are discarded by Althusser in favor of the doubting apostle Thomas who needs tactile proof. For Althusser, however, even contact is insufficient to alleviate doubt concerning one's own existence. What is needed is the transforming work of the hand in order to believe, in turn, in the body, and thus in existence. It is necessary, says Althusser, to "think" with the body in order to apprehend reality; not to speculate with the eye. The speculating doubt of Descartes (which, it will be recalled, is laced with immense scientific discussions on the eye and its anatomical parts) is here rejected for the outstretched hand of the apostle Thomas's need for proof. If the first is satisfied to establish existence by means ofthe scopic deductions of an inner, philosophical eye, the second will believe only by the sensory eyes and by the touch ofthe hand. Descartes' famous move away from Plato's Ideas includes being as non-material, and materiality itselfas something from which to free oneself. Touch is specifically excluded, for example, as grounds for knowledge: Nous ne concevons Ie corps que par la faculte d'entendre qui est en nous, et non point par I'imagination ny par les sens, et que nous ne les connoissons pas de ce que nous les voyons, ou que nous les touchons, mais seulement de ce que nous les concevons par la pensee.7 For Descartes, the way to avoid confusion between materiality and soul is to 263 Fran<;;oise Meltzer free oneself from the body. The founder of modern subjectivity, then, proceeds on grounds of what Charles Taylor has called "disengaged reason."8 But Althusser wants, as we have seen, to reengage the body, and marxism for him offers the opportunity for embodied thought. Through labor and contact Althusser claims to experience the physicality of thinking, and the capacity to recognize the materiality of existence and ideology. It is Spinoza who leads Althusser in this rejection ofthe cogito, principally because Spinoza 's substantial monism refutes Descartes' division of the human being into thinking soul and extended body. For Spinoza, the human mind is the idea of the body; they are the same thing with different attributes. There is a parallelism between mind and body such that thought cannot be separated from its embodiment. Spinoza, writes Althusser, "is an author who refused all theories of knowledge (of Cartesian or later Kantian type); an author who refused the founding role of the cogito in Cartesian subjectivity, and who was content to write 'man thinks,' without drawing any transcendental conclusions." It is clear that Spinoza is important for Althusser because he reappropriates thought as part of extension after its Cartesian exile as mind. Althusser notes that for Spinoza, the body possesses mens (which Althusser translates as "idea," not spirit or soul), and this "idea" is a potentia for Spinoza. It is both a fortitudeo (surge, character) and an opening onto the world, generositas , which Althusser calls a don gratuit (an unmotivated gift). The notion of a gift which is unmotivated will help lead us from Althusser to Marx.9 Generositas , which Althusser will later see as a prefiguration of Freud's libido, becomes the door to hope. Far from being the Cartesian divide of mind/body, generositas is in itself the gift ofthought to the body; it is the "Desire by which each one strives to aid other men and join them to him in friendship." Such a Desire will lead to joining others in the forming of a political state; and so we arrive at Marx. Equally significant, however, is the sense that Althusser has somehow gone full circle by way ofa nostalgia for the pre-Cartesian mind, the one that sees, not with instruments and internal scopic deductions, but with the eyes of the body. Althusser's text articulates the postmodern anxiety, not only concerning Cartesian subjectivity, but also of its transcendental implications. Here "man thinks" has an automatic corresponding mode in thought; and subjectivity is the fragile and fragmentary result ofprivileged moments when the body is not in doubt because its manual labor permits a fleeting acknowledgment of being. So too, Simone Weil, following the teachings ofAlain, has claimed that thought itself must be manual labor if it is to be productive. The resulting syllogism-the body can be felt working, therefore man can think, therefore there is (material) existence-is more than the Marxist dictum that work gives meaning to life. For even though Weil and Althusser, both Marxists ofvarying sorts and both activists, foreground labor as a necessary aspect of materialism, far more than the centrality of labor to human life is at stake. "I was finally 264 Fran<;;oise Meltzer free oneself from the body. The founder of modern subjectivity, then, proceeds on grounds of what Charles Taylor has called "disengaged reason."8 But Althusser wants, as we have seen, to reengage the body, and marxism for him offers the opportunity for embodied thought. Through labor and contact Althusser claims to experience the physicality of thinking, and the capacity to recognize the materiality of existence and ideology. It is Spinoza who leads Althusser in this rejection ofthe cogito, principally because Spinoza 's substantial monism refutes Descartes' division of the human being into thinking soul and extended body. For Spinoza, the human mind is the idea of the body; they are the same thing with different attributes. There is a parallelism between mind and body such that thought cannot be separated from its embodiment. Spinoza, writes Althusser, "is an author who refused all theories of knowledge (of Cartesian or later Kantian type); an author who refused the founding role of the cogito in Cartesian subjectivity, and who was content to write 'man thinks,' without drawing any transcendental conclusions." It is clear that Spinoza is important for Althusser because he reappropriates thought as part of extension after its Cartesian exile as mind. Althusser notes that for Spinoza, the body possesses mens (which Althusser translates as "idea," not spirit or soul), and this "idea" is a potentia for Spinoza. It is both a fortitudeo (surge, character) and an opening onto the world, generositas , which Althusser calls a don gratuit (an unmotivated gift). The notion of a gift which is unmotivated will help lead us from Althusser to Marx.9 Generositas , which Althusser will later see as a prefiguration of Freud's libido, becomes the door to hope. Far from being the Cartesian divide of mind/body, generositas is in itself the gift ofthought to the body; it is the "Desire by which each one strives to aid other men and join them to him in friendship." Such a Desire will lead to joining others in the forming of a political state; and so we arrive at Marx. Equally significant, however, is the sense that Althusser has somehow gone full circle by way ofa nostalgia for the pre-Cartesian mind, the one that sees, not with instruments and internal scopic deductions, but with the eyes of the body. Althusser's text articulates the postmodern anxiety, not only concerning Cartesian subjectivity, but also of its transcendental implications. Here "man thinks" has an automatic corresponding mode in thought; and subjectivity is the fragile and fragmentary result ofprivileged moments when the body is not in doubt because its manual labor permits a fleeting acknowledgment of being. So too, Simone Weil, following the teachings ofAlain, has claimed that thought itself must be manual labor if it is to be productive. The resulting syllogism-the body can be felt working, therefore man can think, therefore there is (material) existence-is more than the Marxist dictum that work gives meaning to life. For even though Weil and Althusser, both Marxists ofvarying sorts and both activists, foreground labor as a necessary aspect of materialism, far more than the centrality of labor to human life is at stake. "I was finally 264 Re-embodying happy in my desire," writes Althusser, "that of being a body, of existing above all in my body, in the irrefutable material proofwhich it gave me that I existed really and at last" (207). Doubt of Being is allayed (but not erased) by bodily activity, not philosophy (or indeed, theology). Thus the subject becomes embedded in the body; its sovereignty is not only in question (as in, over and over again, so many ofthe postmodernist texts) - the very possibility of its existence is captured only in those moments when the body speaks. "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes" is a "terrible sentence" in the sense that what is most obvious, intellectually, to existence- the body- has been lost in our era to such a point that its "rediscovery" is a source of near incredulity. The old Sartrean cliche, then, "existence precedes essence," can in this light be read as more than a refutation ofpre-determinism; Sartre, too, is making the body (materiality) the foundation ofthought. As Judith Butler has pointed out, in the chapter on the body in Being and Nothingness Sartre makes "efforts to expel the Cartesian ghost," but his efforts at "surpassing the body" in themselves presuppose the mindlbody dualism. Nevertheless, in Butler's words, "As a condition ofaccess to the world, the body is a being comported beyond itself, referring to the world and thereby revealing its own ontological status as a referential reality. For Sartre, the body is lived and experienced as the context and medium for all human strivings."10 Although Sartre, unlike Althusser, is concerned with "selftranscendence ," nevertheless Being and Nothingness betrays an ambivalence toward Cartesianism and the embodiment (or not) ofconsciousness which can be read as an earlier, less radical version ofAlthusser's concerns. Sartre cannot decide whether or not consciousness has an ontological status apart from the body; Althusser decides that it does not. Obvious as this point may seem, Althusser's is a move to ontologize thought in a manner which not only materializes it, but also substitutes the fragmentary for the progressive, syllogistic genealogy of Being proposed by Descartes. In one ofthe famous passages on "shock," Walter Benjamin articulates this fragmentary aspect of thinking and elides it into the historical materialism Althusser will espouse: Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation ofhappening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out ofthe homogeneous course ofhistory- blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework.I I It is significant that in this passage, as in that of Althusser, the paradigm of religion serves as metaphor to express a secular conviction. The messianic 265 Re-embodying happy in my desire," writes Althusser, "that of being a body, of existing above all in my body, in the irrefutable material proofwhich it gave me that I existed really and at last" (207). Doubt of Being is allayed (but not erased) by bodily activity, not philosophy (or indeed, theology). Thus the subject becomes embedded in the body; its sovereignty is not only in question (as in, over and over again, so many ofthe postmodernist texts) - the very possibility of its existence is captured only in those moments when the body speaks. "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes" is a "terrible sentence" in the sense that what is most obvious, intellectually, to existence- the body- has been lost in our era to such a point that its "rediscovery" is a source of near incredulity. The old Sartrean cliche, then, "existence precedes essence," can in this light be read as more than a refutation ofpre-determinism; Sartre, too, is making the body (materiality) the foundation ofthought. As Judith Butler has pointed out, in the chapter on the body in Being and Nothingness Sartre makes "efforts to expel the Cartesian ghost," but his efforts at "surpassing the body" in themselves presuppose the mindlbody dualism. Nevertheless, in Butler's words, "As a condition ofaccess to the world, the body is a being comported beyond itself, referring to the world and thereby revealing its own ontological status as a referential reality. For Sartre, the body is lived and experienced as the context and medium for all human strivings."10 Although Sartre, unlike Althusser, is concerned with "selftranscendence ," nevertheless Being and Nothingness betrays an ambivalence toward Cartesianism and the embodiment (or not) ofconsciousness which can be read as an earlier, less radical version ofAlthusser's concerns. Sartre cannot decide whether or not consciousness has an ontological status apart from the body; Althusser decides that it does not. Obvious as this point may seem, Althusser's is a move to ontologize thought in a manner which not only materializes it, but also substitutes the fragmentary for the progressive, syllogistic genealogy of Being proposed by Descartes. In one ofthe famous passages on "shock," Walter Benjamin articulates this fragmentary aspect of thinking and elides it into the historical materialism Althusser will espouse: Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation ofhappening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out ofthe homogeneous course ofhistory- blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework.I I It is significant that in this passage, as in that of Althusser, the paradigm of religion serves as metaphor to express a secular conviction. The messianic 265 Franc;oise Meltzer "cessation of happening" overcomes the homogeneous course of linear history . Further, the monad, that figure of unity within fragmentation, amplifies a peculiar longing for totality. We will return to this longing. The quiltlike (or aleatoric and quotational) productions of"postmodernism " are founded, not only upon a dismantling of the cogito and the speculative empiricism it engages. They also idealize the body as a totality; a kind of otherness within the self not unlike Freud's topographical unconscious, or the mirrored imago in Lacan's Imaginary. Such a totality is suggested even as the body is continually metonymized: "The body, its exuberant exercise," wrote Althusser, "all of this life at last found and become mine had replaced forever the simple speculative distance ofthe futile gaze" (207). In Althusser's reading, epiphany itself yields awareness, not of noumena (as in Kant, for example ), but of the material basis for being. Cogito ergo sum becomes Ie corps put penser. Both the inflected "I" of the cogito and its substantiation, sum, are modified clauses ofthe body. The body must be in parallel mode with the mind if there is to be any source of knowledge. This insistence on the materiality of existence is hardly new. It was, after all, Aristotle who noted that for an entity to exist as an individual there must be matter. What one senses in postmodernism however is a nostalgia for a mens before the Enlightenment, before the Cartesian subject, and before modernism . As such, this passage by Althusser, which ostensibly explains his attraction to marxism, is more a demonstration of the force underlying the present obsession with critiquing subjectivity. But it is the notion of unity that is at issue, and an imagined time before the Cartesian divide, and its doubts, that is longed for. It is no surprise then, that Althusser is drawn to Spinoza. As Harry Wolfson has argued, Spinoza "introduces no novelty." For Wolfson, what Spinoza did was to "reinstate, with some modification, the old principles of classical Greek philosophy."12 Ifmodernism is defined as a repression ofthe discoveries of the seventeenth century;ll perhaps postmodernism, with its ability to celebrate the technology which modernism frequently disdains, has its own agenda of repression, even as it seeks to reconsider seventeenth-century thought. That agenda might be articulated as the attempt to repress the fragmentary nature ofits own project, and its ensuing uncertainty, through a different turn. Wolfson sees "the great question in the history of religious philosophy" as having only two alternatives: the Hebrew Scriptures or the Greek philosophers . Postmodernism finds a third: early Christianity. Theological figures from the pre-modern period haunt Althusser's texts (the two Thomases, for example). It is worth noting here that Aquinas, who, one critic claims, "first recognized and defined the principle ofsubjectivity,"14 is obsessed with the divide which was the legacy of the Fall. The Fall can be said to have created a wandering of the self not unlike that described by Althusser before he discovered the body. For postmodernism has its own prelapsarian era: before the Enlightenment. Ifknowledge is distance, as inter266 Franc;oise Meltzer "cessation of happening" overcomes the homogeneous course of linear history . Further, the monad, that figure of unity within fragmentation, amplifies a peculiar longing for totality. We will return to this longing. The quiltlike (or aleatoric and quotational) productions of"postmodernism " are founded, not only upon a dismantling of the cogito and the speculative empiricism it engages. They also idealize the body as a totality; a kind of otherness within the self not unlike Freud's topographical unconscious, or the mirrored imago in Lacan's Imaginary. Such a totality is suggested even as the body is continually metonymized: "The body, its exuberant exercise," wrote Althusser, "all of this life at last found and become mine had replaced forever the simple speculative distance ofthe futile gaze" (207). In Althusser's reading, epiphany itself yields awareness, not of noumena (as in Kant, for example ), but of the material basis for being. Cogito ergo sum becomes Ie corps put penser. Both the inflected "I" of the cogito and its substantiation, sum, are modified clauses ofthe body. The body must be in parallel mode with the mind if there is to be any source of knowledge. This insistence on the materiality of existence is hardly new. It was, after all, Aristotle who noted that for an entity to exist as an individual there must be matter. What one senses in postmodernism however is a nostalgia for a mens before the Enlightenment, before the Cartesian subject, and before modernism . As such, this passage by Althusser, which ostensibly explains his attraction to marxism, is more a demonstration of the force underlying the present obsession with critiquing subjectivity. But it is the notion of unity that is at issue, and an imagined time before the Cartesian divide, and its doubts, that is longed for. It is no surprise then, that Althusser is drawn to Spinoza. As Harry Wolfson has argued, Spinoza "introduces no novelty." For Wolfson, what Spinoza did was to "reinstate, with some modification, the old principles of classical Greek philosophy."12 Ifmodernism is defined as a repression ofthe discoveries of the seventeenth century;ll perhaps postmodernism, with its ability to celebrate the technology which modernism frequently disdains, has its own agenda of repression, even as it seeks to reconsider seventeenth-century thought. That agenda might be articulated as the attempt to repress the fragmentary nature ofits own project, and its ensuing uncertainty, through a different turn. Wolfson sees "the great question in the history of religious philosophy" as having only two alternatives: the Hebrew Scriptures or the Greek philosophers . Postmodernism finds a third: early Christianity. Theological figures from the pre-modern period haunt Althusser's texts (the two Thomases, for example). It is worth noting here that Aquinas, who, one critic claims, "first recognized and defined the principle ofsubjectivity,"14 is obsessed with the divide which was the legacy of the Fall. The Fall can be said to have created a wandering of the self not unlike that described by Althusser before he discovered the body. For postmodernism has its own prelapsarian era: before the Enlightenment. Ifknowledge is distance, as inter266 Re-embodying preters of the Fall have frequently noted, the modern Cartesian subject imposes a fall and a distance of its own: mind from body; thought from being; speculation from materiality. Small wonder, therefore, that in the contemporary agenda to shed the legacy of the Enlightenment, there is a move to critique the Cartesian subject through a "return" to the body. Althusser has to rediscover, almost re-enter the body; and in this, he is not alone.15 Iwould argue that our interest today in this nostalgia for the thinking body before the Enlightenment constitutes an attempt to participate in what JeanLuc Marion calls a"saturated phenomenon." Such a phenomenon, for Marion, is one which "an excess ofintuition shields from objective constitution."16 The second type of saturated phenomenon, for Marion, is that of revelation: "an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination" (l2l). There is in secular thought today a nostalgia for religious (theological, hagiographic) texts of the middle ages and before, as any glance at a current bibliography in critical theory will attest. I will be arguing that this is an attempt to witness the witnessing of revelation - to try to see how such a totality (as it is imagined to be) was experienced. Indeed, we already find the attempt to depict such a time when the body was totality in the writings of the eighteenth-century historian Vico: "It is ... beyond our power to enter into the vast imagination ofthe first men whose minds were not in the least abstract, refined or spiritualised, because they were entirely immersed in the senses, buffeted by the passions, buried in the body."17 Marx himself, it will be recalled, used religion as an analogy for explaining the fetishization of objects in capitalism: We are concerned only with a definite social relation between human beings, which, in their eyes, has here assumed the semblance ofa relation between things. To find an analogy, we must enter the nebulous world of religion. In that world, the products ofthe human mind become independent shapes, endowed with lives of their own, and able to enter into relations with men and women. The products of the human hand do the same thing in the world of commodities. I speak of this as the fetishistic character which attaches to the products of labour, as soon as they are produced in the form of commodities. It is inseparable from commodity production.18 We might say that Althusser fetishizes the body (we are back to the "human hand") which is itselfcuriously objectified as a product oflabor. The echoes of Freud are clear (and have been amply noted in recent critical theory). A society which turns the penis into a commodity, for example, and (as in Lacan) "transcendentalizes" it into phallus (his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding ) is in an object relations economy with the other and with itself. The life of almost any early saint in such an economy is particularly evocative.19 As Edith Wyschogrod and others have shown, the question of saintly corporeality offers a unique example ofthe problem ofthe body as both 267 Re-embodying preters of the Fall have frequently noted, the modern Cartesian subject imposes a fall and a distance of its own: mind from body; thought from being; speculation from materiality. Small wonder, therefore, that in the contemporary agenda to shed the legacy of the Enlightenment, there is a move to critique the Cartesian subject through a "return" to the body. Althusser has to rediscover, almost re-enter the body; and in this, he is not alone.15 Iwould argue that our interest today in this nostalgia for the thinking body before the Enlightenment constitutes an attempt to participate in what JeanLuc Marion calls a"saturated phenomenon." Such a phenomenon, for Marion, is one which "an excess ofintuition shields from objective constitution."16 The second type of saturated phenomenon, for Marion, is that of revelation: "an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination" (l2l). There is in secular thought today a nostalgia for religious (theological, hagiographic) texts of the middle ages and before, as any glance at a current bibliography in critical theory will attest. I will be arguing that this is an attempt to witness the witnessing of revelation - to try to see how such a totality (as it is imagined to be) was experienced. Indeed, we already find the attempt to depict such a time when the body was totality in the writings of the eighteenth-century historian Vico: "It is ... beyond our power to enter into the vast imagination ofthe first men whose minds were not in the least abstract, refined or spiritualised, because they were entirely immersed in the senses, buffeted by the passions, buried in the body."17 Marx himself, it will be recalled, used religion as an analogy for explaining the fetishization of objects in capitalism: We are concerned only with a definite social relation between human beings, which, in their eyes, has here assumed the semblance ofa relation between things. To find an analogy, we must enter the nebulous world of religion. In that world, the products ofthe human mind become independent shapes, endowed with lives of their own, and able to enter into relations with men and women. The products of the human hand do the same thing in the world of commodities. I speak of this as the fetishistic character which attaches to the products of labour, as soon as they are produced in the form of commodities. It is inseparable from commodity production.18 We might say that Althusser fetishizes the body (we are back to the "human hand") which is itselfcuriously objectified as a product oflabor. The echoes of Freud are clear (and have been amply noted in recent critical theory). A society which turns the penis into a commodity, for example, and (as in Lacan) "transcendentalizes" it into phallus (his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding ) is in an object relations economy with the other and with itself. The life of almost any early saint in such an economy is particularly evocative.19 As Edith Wyschogrod and others have shown, the question of saintly corporeality offers a unique example ofthe problem ofthe body as both 267 Franc;;oise Meltzer the exemplum and literalization of thought; and as a totality whose valence, but not wholeness, shifts. I would put it this way: Postmodernism's longing for its prelapsarian world finds a strange comfort and fascination in the frequent paradox ofthe saint's body both as a prison obstructing grace and as a possible gift to God through the Christian notion of caritas.zo The body of the saint is fetishized and becomes itself, through what Marx calls the "nebulous world of religion," an object of postmodern cathexis. Anote ofclarification: My use ofthe term "postmodernism" here is almost exclusively meant to include texts that see themselves as outside religion and theological concerns, from the point of view of faith, in general. Clearly, the kind ofnostalgia which I am attempting to articulate has a completely different valence, and telos, in a strictly theological or religious context (questions of faith from the perspective offaith). Secular nostalgia for the time ofearly saints is to be understood as a move to recuperate the metaphysics and (even) experience of what I have argued is seen as a seamlessness between body and idea. As such, therefore, secular postmodernism sees caritas (for example) as a philosophical and cultural concept; not as doctrinal or as an issue within the institutionalized faith of Christianity. While all of this may be seen in itselfas a nostalgia for religion, or at least the idea of (the memory of) unity provided by religiosity, the fascination with approaching sacred issues comes in part, and paradoxically, from the fact that secular postmodernism sees itself as rigorously outside religion, outside questions of faith, and unconcerned with issues of divinity except as a cultural, historical aspect.Zl It is then the otherness of faith and of the idea of divinity which, from this contemporary view, motivates the fetishization. It is perhaps Heidegger, one ofthe ur-texts ofpostmodernism, who formulates the chasm between theology and philosophy the most succinctly. "Being and God," he says, "are not identical and I would never attempt to think the essence of God by means of Being.... Faith does not need the thought of Being. When faith has recourse to this thought, it is no longer faith." For the early Heidegger, the Christian experience is "so completely different that it has no need to enter into competition with philosophy." Theology must hold fast to the view that "philosophy is foolishness," or it will itself become foolish in the eyes of philosophy.zZ The otherness offaith from a postmodern perspective, then, lies precisely in the fact that postmodern texts are committed to the problem of being, with its concomitant problematics ofthinking the subject (as in the example I have been using, Althusser). Theology, on the other hand, addresses issues of revelation. In Heidegger's words, "The thinker speaks of the 'manifestness' [Offenbarkeit] of Being; but 'Being' is an untheological word. Because revelation itself determines the manner of manifestness" (Marion, 62). For faith, philosophy is a Totfeind, a mortal enemy, says Heidegger. In Hegel's master/slave confrontation, as in Freud's double ("the harbinger ofdeath," notes Freud), the mortal enemy is ofdanger precisely because he 268 Franc;;oise Meltzer the exemplum and literalization of thought; and as a totality whose valence, but not wholeness, shifts. I would put it this way: Postmodernism's longing for its prelapsarian world finds a strange comfort and fascination in the frequent paradox ofthe saint's body both as a prison obstructing grace and as a possible gift to God through the Christian notion of caritas.zo The body of the saint is fetishized and becomes itself, through what Marx calls the "nebulous world of religion," an object of postmodern cathexis. Anote ofclarification: My use ofthe term "postmodernism" here is almost exclusively meant to include texts that see themselves as outside religion and theological concerns, from the point of view of faith, in general. Clearly, the kind ofnostalgia which I am attempting to articulate has a completely different valence, and telos, in a strictly theological or religious context (questions of faith from the perspective offaith). Secular nostalgia for the time ofearly saints is to be understood as a move to recuperate the metaphysics and (even) experience of what I have argued is seen as a seamlessness between body and idea. As such, therefore, secular postmodernism sees caritas (for example) as a philosophical and cultural concept; not as doctrinal or as an issue within the institutionalized faith of Christianity. While all of this may be seen in itselfas a nostalgia for religion, or at least the idea of (the memory of) unity provided by religiosity, the fascination with approaching sacred issues comes in part, and paradoxically, from the fact that secular postmodernism sees itself as rigorously outside religion, outside questions of faith, and unconcerned with issues of divinity except as a cultural, historical aspect.Zl It is then the otherness of faith and of the idea of divinity which, from this contemporary view, motivates the fetishization. It is perhaps Heidegger, one ofthe ur-texts ofpostmodernism, who formulates the chasm between theology and philosophy the most succinctly. "Being and God," he says, "are not identical and I would never attempt to think the essence of God by means of Being.... Faith does not need the thought of Being. When faith has recourse to this thought, it is no longer faith." For the early Heidegger, the Christian experience is "so completely different that it has no need to enter into competition with philosophy." Theology must hold fast to the view that "philosophy is foolishness," or it will itself become foolish in the eyes of philosophy.zZ The otherness offaith from a postmodern perspective, then, lies precisely in the fact that postmodern texts are committed to the problem of being, with its concomitant problematics ofthinking the subject (as in the example I have been using, Althusser). Theology, on the other hand, addresses issues of revelation. In Heidegger's words, "The thinker speaks of the 'manifestness' [Offenbarkeit] of Being; but 'Being' is an untheological word. Because revelation itself determines the manner of manifestness" (Marion, 62). For faith, philosophy is a Totfeind, a mortal enemy, says Heidegger. In Hegel's master/slave confrontation, as in Freud's double ("the harbinger ofdeath," notes Freud), the mortal enemy is ofdanger precisely because he 268 Re-embodying or she mirrors, in some way, the sovereignty of consciousness. Perhaps these metaphors will help to articulate the predicament of secular contemporary thought with, for example, early Christianity and theology: Revelation and being constitute a chasm which, as Heidegger notes, cannot and should not be bridged. And yet we see in many texts today the attempt to do so- in its usual demarche ofputting together apparently inappropriate moments (from architecture to texts), postmodernism of the kind we have been considering seems to want to have it both ways: revelation with being. The idea of caritas in this context cannot fail, it seems to me, to intrigue us by virtue of its spontaneous totalization-a move which, I have been arguing , in itself constitutes an intriguing alterity for postmodernism. Totalization belongs to revelation; being to division. Even Heidegger falls prey to the nostalgia: "Some ofyou know," he says, "that I come from theology, that I still guard an old love for it and that I am not without a certain understanding of it. If I were yet to write a theology- to which I sometimes feel inclined - then the word Being would not occur in it."zl Postmodernism, too, comes from theology in a certain manner, as we shall see; and it, too, is not without a certain understanding of it. Faith is as if the last taboo; and therefore, all the more desirable for a culture that fetishizes the body and, even as it interrogates it, Being. At its most concrete (e.g., the martyrdom of a saint), caritas (as any sacrifice ) entails not only self-overcoming, or the erasure of self-love in the face of the divine; it also entails the erasure or at least the denial of the concept of otherness. What I mean by this is that difference is willfully unrecognized in anticipation of the transparency to be achieved between the soul and divinity through the gift of the body.z4 It is this transparency, as Starobinsky has so compellingly shown, that haunts Rousseau, that figure whose paranoia positions him outside the ordered categories of the Enlightenment.zs In the Christian notion of caritas lies the promise of generositas, Ie don gratuit, in Spinoza's sense. Only it is the don gratuit ofthe body, in the service of faith, with little if any consideration for "mind." It is this ability to give the body, that, I am arguing, fascinates much of contemporary thought.z6 From that perspective, which is clearly one of back-formation, such a gift enacts an agency whose definition falls outside the parameters of the cogito. In other words: We may wish to discard the cogito, but it has come to be the mental apparatus by which we also attempt to judge it. What Freud said of the unconscious we can also say of the cogito: we are both the seeker and the unexplored terrain whose limits are being mapped. The gift of the body is the most material, concrete form ofgenerositas of both mind and body; the divide of mindlbody is not only overcome, it is not imagined. What early saints often do is persuade with reason, which they then enact through the bodyY Consider Saint Catherine ofAlexandria, one of the few female saints, as Marina Warner points out, renowned for her intellect.z8 To the pagan king who wanted to kill her if she did not renounce Christianity, 269 Re-embodying or she mirrors, in some way, the sovereignty of consciousness. Perhaps these metaphors will help to articulate the predicament of secular contemporary thought with, for example, early Christianity and theology: Revelation and being constitute a chasm which, as Heidegger notes, cannot and should not be bridged. And yet we see in many texts today the attempt to do so- in its usual demarche ofputting together apparently inappropriate moments (from architecture to texts), postmodernism of the kind we have been considering seems to want to have it both ways: revelation with being. The idea of caritas in this context cannot fail, it seems to me, to intrigue us by virtue of its spontaneous totalization-a move which, I have been arguing , in itself constitutes an intriguing alterity for postmodernism. Totalization belongs to revelation; being to division. Even Heidegger falls prey to the nostalgia: "Some ofyou know," he says, "that I come from theology, that I still guard an old love for it and that I am not without a certain understanding of it. If I were yet to write a theology- to which I sometimes feel inclined - then the word Being would not occur in it."zl Postmodernism, too, comes from theology in a certain manner, as we shall see; and it, too, is not without a certain understanding of it. Faith is as if the last taboo; and therefore, all the more desirable for a culture that fetishizes the body and, even as it interrogates it, Being. At its most concrete (e.g., the martyrdom of a saint), caritas (as any sacrifice ) entails not only self-overcoming, or the erasure of self-love in the face of the divine; it also entails the erasure or at least the denial of the concept of otherness. What I mean by this is that difference is willfully unrecognized in anticipation of the transparency to be achieved between the soul and divinity through the gift of the body.z4 It is this transparency, as Starobinsky has so compellingly shown, that haunts Rousseau, that figure whose paranoia positions him outside the ordered categories of the Enlightenment.zs In the Christian notion of caritas lies the promise of generositas, Ie don gratuit, in Spinoza's sense. Only it is the don gratuit ofthe body, in the service of faith, with little if any consideration for "mind." It is this ability to give the body, that, I am arguing, fascinates much of contemporary thought.z6 From that perspective, which is clearly one of back-formation, such a gift enacts an agency whose definition falls outside the parameters of the cogito. In other words: We may wish to discard the cogito, but it has come to be the mental apparatus by which we also attempt to judge it. What Freud said of the unconscious we can also say of the cogito: we are both the seeker and the unexplored terrain whose limits are being mapped. The gift of the body is the most material, concrete form ofgenerositas of both mind and body; the divide of mindlbody is not only overcome, it is not imagined. What early saints often do is persuade with reason, which they then enact through the bodyY Consider Saint Catherine ofAlexandria, one of the few female saints, as Marina Warner points out, renowned for her intellect.z8 To the pagan king who wanted to kill her if she did not renounce Christianity, 269 Fran~oise Meltzer Catherine replied, "Whatever the tortures you may imagine for me ... hurry, for I desire to offer my flesh and my blood to Christ as he did himself for me."29 She also told the same king, "If spirit govern you, you will be king; if it is the body, you will be slave" (388). Here the body is a temple if devoted to God; but it is a husk of defilement if in the service of other human bodies. At once obstacle and vehicle to grace, the body presents this constant paradox in early hagiographic texts (martyr acts). The mind expresses and unfolds from this paradox; it is not divided from it. In this sense, then, the martyrs whose stories are told in Voragine's Legende doree (including that of Thomas the doubting apostle) are profoundly not subjects in the modern sense. Division and difference play themselves out in the polarized metaphors of body as temple and body as shell of filth in the longing for grace. A successful saint does not overcome the body; he or she uses it as a pure vehicle for expressing caritas, ifit means self-sacrifice, through whatVoragine continually refers to as "the crown": martyrdom. Contemporary moves to deconstruct sovereign subjectivity, and to refute therefore any transcendental impulse, is, in a strange way, already achieved through faith in the stories ofthe writers ofthe Gospels and Voragine. This may seem like an odd claim. And yet the willed scandal of martyrdom contradicts any possibility of rational subjectivity as we understand it. These stories literalize , or concretize, the realm of the divine, such that what even Kant was willing to grant as "intellectual ideas" (numena) are indistinguishable (by the saint, and by the narrative) from phenomena, or the material realm. The nostalgia which lurks in Althusser's passage is, I am arguing, motivated by a longing for such a seamlessness, such a radical insistence on the materiality of thought. Or, as Althusser puts it, after a long comment on how prophets neither hear nor understand the word of God, This filled me with admiration, as did Spinoza's concept ofthe connection between the religious ideology of the Jewish people and its material existence in the temple, the priests, the sacrifices, observances, rituals, etc. In following him on this last point, as I also did Pascal whom I greatly admired, I was later to insist vigorously on the material existence of ideology, not only on the material conditions of existence, but on the materiality of its very existence. (210) Agency flows through, and is realized by, the body. One ofthe most striking examples for such a claim again engages the saint from the time of the martyrs: the miracle. The miracle of early Christianity is "religious ideology" become "material existence," to use Althusser's terms. The doubting Thomas of the gospels himself becomes the producer of miracles in the apocryphal book The Acts ofThomas. Again, postmodernism reveals its nostalgia for a time before modernity: Althusser, in siding with this Thomas, is himself longing to touch in order to believe in the miracle of the body speaking as one with itself. A similar impulse can be seen in Roland Barthes's 270 Fran~oise Meltzer Catherine replied, "Whatever the tortures you may imagine for me ... hurry, for I desire to offer my flesh and my blood to Christ as he did himself for me."29 She also told the same king, "If spirit govern you, you will be king; if it is the body, you will be slave" (388). Here the body is a temple if devoted to God; but it is a husk of defilement if in the service of other human bodies. At once obstacle and vehicle to grace, the body presents this constant paradox in early hagiographic texts (martyr acts). The mind expresses and unfolds from this paradox; it is not divided from it. In this sense, then, the martyrs whose stories are told in Voragine's Legende doree (including that of Thomas the doubting apostle) are profoundly not subjects in the modern sense. Division and difference play themselves out in the polarized metaphors of body as temple and body as shell of filth in the longing for grace. A successful saint does not overcome the body; he or she uses it as a pure vehicle for expressing caritas, ifit means self-sacrifice, through whatVoragine continually refers to as "the crown": martyrdom. Contemporary moves to deconstruct sovereign subjectivity, and to refute therefore any transcendental impulse, is, in a strange way, already achieved through faith in the stories ofthe writers ofthe Gospels and Voragine. This may seem like an odd claim. And yet the willed scandal of martyrdom contradicts any possibility of rational subjectivity as we understand it. These stories literalize , or concretize, the realm of the divine, such that what even Kant was willing to grant as "intellectual ideas" (numena) are indistinguishable (by the saint, and by the narrative) from phenomena, or the material realm. The nostalgia which lurks in Althusser's passage is, I am arguing, motivated by a longing for such a seamlessness, such a radical insistence on the materiality of thought. Or, as Althusser puts it, after a long comment on how prophets neither hear nor understand the word of God, This filled me with admiration, as did Spinoza's concept ofthe connection between the religious ideology of the Jewish people and its material existence in the temple, the priests, the sacrifices, observances, rituals, etc. In following him on this last point, as I also did Pascal whom I greatly admired, I was later to insist vigorously on the material existence of ideology, not only on the material conditions of existence, but on the materiality of its very existence. (210) Agency flows through, and is realized by, the body. One ofthe most striking examples for such a claim again engages the saint from the time of the martyrs: the miracle. The miracle of early Christianity is "religious ideology" become "material existence," to use Althusser's terms. The doubting Thomas of the gospels himself becomes the producer of miracles in the apocryphal book The Acts ofThomas. Again, postmodernism reveals its nostalgia for a time before modernity: Althusser, in siding with this Thomas, is himself longing to touch in order to believe in the miracle of the body speaking as one with itself. A similar impulse can be seen in Roland Barthes's 270 Re-embodying notion of punctum: "I am looking at the eyes that looked at the eyes of the Emperor," he muses while contemplating a photograph of Napoleon's nephew . Punctum is the moment that pierces the modern subject with an imagined memory of full presence.3D In this metaphor of piercing the body there is something akin to Althusser's awareness ofembodiment through physical toil, as if only a wound (to return to Thomas the apostle) could produce the knowledge of being. And of course, this returns us to the virgin. Through miracles, the gift of the body, and what we might call a relation to the material realm, the saint appears to achieve a transparency which elides the polarity between external and internal. Alterity, or difference, cannot be personally acknowledged in caritas.31 What this translates into is that after the saint has achieved the rupture from family in order to follow an apostle, e.g.,32 the body and mind position themselves as indistinguishable in their surge toward God. Parousia ofdivinity radically transforms logos. And while such is the case, clearly, in the Hebrew Scriptures as well, early Christianity adds a twist which seems to hold particular fascination for postmodernist malaise: the call for chastity. It is a call which engages the body in such a radical manner, given the historico-cultural context from which it springs, and which places alterity in such an economy of denial, that secular postmodernists overwhelmed with issues of otherness cannot avoid being obsessed by it. In the first place, those who answer the call to chastity in the texts of early Christianity demonstrate a kind ofcertainty which in itselfmust attract our age (for want of a better term). The predicament of modern moral culture, writes Charles Taylor, stems in part from its multiple sources. "The fact that the directions are multiple," adds Taylor, "contributes to our sense ofuncertainty. This is part of the reason why almost everyone is tentative today, why virtually no one can have the rooted confidence in their outlook" (317). In an era of uncertainty replete with multiple directions, the single-minded and totalizing ecstasy of the early saint does indeed carry some "icy overtones," as Peter Brown puts it. Not only, I would argue, because of celibacy itself (which is, after all, only one ofthe several symptoms ofthe pious life in early Christianity) but because ofthe attraction, and anxiety, generated by an engagement (in the Sartrean sense) so encompassing, particularly from the perspective of the secular, that it dissolves the burdensome ubiquity of the very notion we labor relentlessly to undermine: subjectivity. The cult ofthe individual in the age of late capitalism may be at issue in every text generated by the Frankfurt School to Foucault, Derrida, Benjamin, Certeau, etc. Nevertheless, individuality is so engrained in our perspective on the world that we scarcely question, on what Andreas Huyssen calls an experiential level, Kierkegaard's remark that "subjectivity is the only truth." There is a significant aspect to Peter Brown's conclusion to his work The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Ritual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988): The Christian world with its "forbidding presences" replaced the Roman Empire and became the foundation of modern Europe and America. 271 Re-embodying notion of punctum: "I am looking at the eyes that looked at the eyes of the Emperor," he muses while contemplating a photograph of Napoleon's nephew . Punctum is the moment that pierces the modern subject with an imagined memory of full presence.3D In this metaphor of piercing the body there is something akin to Althusser's awareness ofembodiment through physical toil, as if only a wound (to return to Thomas the apostle) could produce the knowledge of being. And of course, this returns us to the virgin. Through miracles, the gift of the body, and what we might call a relation to the material realm, the saint appears to achieve a transparency which elides the polarity between external and internal. Alterity, or difference, cannot be personally acknowledged in caritas.31 What this translates into is that after the saint has achieved the rupture from family in order to follow an apostle, e.g.,32 the body and mind position themselves as indistinguishable in their surge toward God. Parousia ofdivinity radically transforms logos. And while such is the case, clearly, in the Hebrew Scriptures as well, early Christianity adds a twist which seems to hold particular fascination for postmodernist malaise: the call for chastity. It is a call which engages the body in such a radical manner, given the historico-cultural context from which it springs, and which places alterity in such an economy of denial, that secular postmodernists overwhelmed with issues of otherness cannot avoid being obsessed by it. In the first place, those who answer the call to chastity in the texts of early Christianity demonstrate a kind ofcertainty which in itselfmust attract our age (for want of a better term). The predicament of modern moral culture, writes Charles Taylor, stems in part from its multiple sources. "The fact that the directions are multiple," adds Taylor, "contributes to our sense ofuncertainty. This is part of the reason why almost everyone is tentative today, why virtually no one can have the rooted confidence in their outlook" (317). In an era of uncertainty replete with multiple directions, the single-minded and totalizing ecstasy of the early saint does indeed carry some "icy overtones," as Peter Brown puts it. Not only, I would argue, because of celibacy itself (which is, after all, only one ofthe several symptoms ofthe pious life in early Christianity) but because ofthe attraction, and anxiety, generated by an engagement (in the Sartrean sense) so encompassing, particularly from the perspective of the secular, that it dissolves the burdensome ubiquity of the very notion we labor relentlessly to undermine: subjectivity. The cult ofthe individual in the age of late capitalism may be at issue in every text generated by the Frankfurt School to Foucault, Derrida, Benjamin, Certeau, etc. Nevertheless, individuality is so engrained in our perspective on the world that we scarcely question, on what Andreas Huyssen calls an experiential level, Kierkegaard's remark that "subjectivity is the only truth." There is a significant aspect to Peter Brown's conclusion to his work The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Ritual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988): The Christian world with its "forbidding presences" replaced the Roman Empire and became the foundation of modern Europe and America. 271 Fran~oise Meltzer Thus to look back to the early saints is to contemplate our cultural ancestors and to try to glimpse something ofourselves in what seems utterly foreign. Like Freud's definition of the uncanny (taken from Schelling), the vision of the saint seems to be something long familiar and yet repressed at the foundations ofour own cultural constructs. To "look back," in Maurice Blanchot's sense, at early saints, is to undertake a perilous and simultaneously obsessive journey in which an attempt is made to recapture beings who, like Eurydice, no longer belong here but are nevertheless somehow a part of us. Certainly the plethora of recent books on the subject of the early Christian notion of virginity attests to such an Orphic obsession. In any case, a return to the "founders" ofmodern European and American culture, early Christianity, also engages ofnecessity issues ofnascent nationalism , patriotism, and community. But things are not that simple, as Peter Brown notes along with Foucault, who echoes him. Even though we claim that the call to chastity was specifically Christian, destabilizing the ground of pagan culture and identity, it is at best difficult to draw a clear line between a JudeoChristian sexual morality and antiquity. Foucault adds: The advent of Christianity, in general, as the imperious principle of another sexual morality, in massive rupture with those which preceded it, is barely perceptible. As P. Brown notes, with respect to Christianity in the texts of global Antiquity, the cartography of the parting of the waters is difficult to establish.13 It may be difficult, but we seem intent upon establishing boundaries ofwhere, for example, Rome begins to ebb and Europe starts to appear. Such a massive change is a large part of the drama in the acts of the martyrs. Brown puts it succinctly: "We can chart the rise to prominence ofthe Christian church most faithfully by listening to the pagan reactions to the cult of the martyrs." By insisting upon their new faith, they not only rocked, and ultimately destroyed, the old order; they also, by virtue oftheir very beliefin transparency, paved the way for a Cartesian subject, the divide of which (body and mind) is founded upon an a priori, historical conviction in unity despite the appearance of separation from the divine. Division, in other words, is posited upon a preliminary faith in a totality which defies the material realm; a faith which is no doubt unavoidable with the individualism the cogito posits (e.g., Paul Tillich). A critique ofthe Cartesian subject, founded as it is in postmodernity upon rejecting that sovereignty, seems with notable frequency to entail a paradoxical examination of what is perceived as the time of unity. Ironically enough, Augustine and other early Christian writers are obsessed with restoring unity to postlapsarian man. Contemporary thought, caught in its own prelapsarian myth, echoes such an attempt at restoration on secular grounds. Here too may lie the motivation for the interest in the life of chastity in early Christianity. Foucault's reading of chastity as a combat, for example, relies upon the 272 Fran~oise Meltzer Thus to look back to the early saints is to contemplate our cultural ancestors and to try to glimpse something ofourselves in what seems utterly foreign. Like Freud's definition of the uncanny (taken from Schelling), the vision of the saint seems to be something long familiar and yet repressed at the foundations ofour own cultural constructs. To "look back," in Maurice Blanchot's sense, at early saints, is to undertake a perilous and simultaneously obsessive journey in which an attempt is made to recapture beings who, like Eurydice, no longer belong here but are nevertheless somehow a part of us. Certainly the plethora of recent books on the subject of the early Christian notion of virginity attests to such an Orphic obsession. In any case, a return to the "founders" ofmodern European and American culture, early Christianity, also engages ofnecessity issues ofnascent nationalism , patriotism, and community. But things are not that simple, as Peter Brown notes along with Foucault, who echoes him. Even though we claim that the call to chastity was specifically Christian, destabilizing the ground of pagan culture and identity, it is at best difficult to draw a clear line between a JudeoChristian sexual morality and antiquity. Foucault adds: The advent of Christianity, in general, as the imperious principle of another sexual morality, in massive rupture with those which preceded it, is barely perceptible. As P. Brown notes, with respect to Christianity in the texts of global Antiquity, the cartography of the parting of the waters is difficult to establish.13 It may be difficult, but we seem intent upon establishing boundaries ofwhere, for example, Rome begins to ebb and Europe starts to appear. Such a massive change is a large part of the drama in the acts of the martyrs. Brown puts it succinctly: "We can chart the rise to prominence ofthe Christian church most faithfully by listening to the pagan reactions to the cult of the martyrs." By insisting upon their new faith, they not only rocked, and ultimately destroyed, the old order; they also, by virtue oftheir very beliefin transparency, paved the way for a Cartesian subject, the divide of which (body and mind) is founded upon an a priori, historical conviction in unity despite the appearance of separation from the divine. Division, in other words, is posited upon a preliminary faith in a totality which defies the material realm; a faith which is no doubt unavoidable with the individualism the cogito posits (e.g., Paul Tillich). A critique ofthe Cartesian subject, founded as it is in postmodernity upon rejecting that sovereignty, seems with notable frequency to entail a paradoxical examination of what is perceived as the time of unity. Ironically enough, Augustine and other early Christian writers are obsessed with restoring unity to postlapsarian man. Contemporary thought, caught in its own prelapsarian myth, echoes such an attempt at restoration on secular grounds. Here too may lie the motivation for the interest in the life of chastity in early Christianity. Foucault's reading of chastity as a combat, for example, relies upon the 272 Re-embodying writings of John Cassian who disagreed with Augustine on the role of sexual desire in the nocturnal life ofan otherwise chaste monk. In contrast to Augustine (who condemned all concupiscence), Cassian argued that nocturnal emissions were useful reminders to the hapless monk that the danger of egotism and anger were constant. Only when these passions were stilled, writes Brown, "would the monk come to sense a delicious freedom from sexual fantasy, associated with the state oftotal purity ofheart" (421). It is this concept of total purity, which we can read as transparency, that fascinates Foucault in Cassian. Cassian's last stage in the fight for chastity is experienced by the saint, notes Foucault; it is grace. "That is why non-pollution is the mark of sanctity, of the highest chastity possible; a blessing to be hoped for, not acquired"(22). Grace entails a process of"subjectivization": the subject is erased in its abandonment to grace.34 In this mociel, then, the state ofgrace will be attained only if (but not necessarily because) chastity of mind and body has been achieved. In the words of Kenneth Woodward, "Just as the martyrs were made pure by their suffering and death, so, it was thought, were the ascetics purified by the rigor of their spiritual discipline" (61).35 Psychoanalysis, with its articulation of an inaccessible and atemporal unconscious, has many affinities with notions ofdivinity.36 It is no coincidence, in this sense, that many contemporary studies on early Christianity and on saints in general have recourse to psychoanalytic theory. The idea that the mystics and saints were capable ofwhat I have been calling a transparency, for example, can readily be translated into contemporary psychoanalytic terms: primary narcissism, that stage at which the selffeels no boundaries, and makes no distinction between itself and the other, or internal and externaJ.37 Postmodern reflections on the ascetics betray a nostalgia for this totalizing stage as well. Indeed, primary narcissism is a prelapsarian time of its own: before the Fall from the mother or, in Lacan's terms, before the recognition of lack as constituting the subject. As Kristeva puts it, "the most intense revelation of God, which occurs in mysticism, is given only to a person who assumes himself as maternal." The monks who led lives ofpure chastity, in other words, "played the part of the Father's virgin spouses." She continues: Freedom with respect to the maternal territory then becomes the pedestal upon which the love of God is erected. As a consequence, mystics, those 'happy Schrebers' (Sollers) throw a bizarre light on the psychotic sore of modernity: it appears as the incapability ofcontemporary codes to tame the maternal, that is, primary narcissism.18 "Stabat Mater," from which this passage is taken, is a postmodern reverie on early asceticism; one of the many which conflate the discourses of psychoanalysis and mysticism. While Kristeva is specifically concerned with the cult ofthe Virgin Mary, she directly addresses in psychoanalytic terms the modern fascination with mystics. She does so through what she calls "maternality": 273 Re-embodying writings of John Cassian who disagreed with Augustine on the role of sexual desire in the nocturnal life ofan otherwise chaste monk. In contrast to Augustine (who condemned all concupiscence), Cassian argued that nocturnal emissions were useful reminders to the hapless monk that the danger of egotism and anger were constant. Only when these passions were stilled, writes Brown, "would the monk come to sense a delicious freedom from sexual fantasy, associated with the state oftotal purity ofheart" (421). It is this concept of total purity, which we can read as transparency, that fascinates Foucault in Cassian. Cassian's last stage in the fight for chastity is experienced by the saint, notes Foucault; it is grace. "That is why non-pollution is the mark of sanctity, of the highest chastity possible; a blessing to be hoped for, not acquired"(22). Grace entails a process of"subjectivization": the subject is erased in its abandonment to grace.34 In this mociel, then, the state ofgrace will be attained only if (but not necessarily because) chastity of mind and body has been achieved. In the words of Kenneth Woodward, "Just as the martyrs were made pure by their suffering and death, so, it was thought, were the ascetics purified by the rigor of their spiritual discipline" (61).35 Psychoanalysis, with its articulation of an inaccessible and atemporal unconscious, has many affinities with notions ofdivinity.36 It is no coincidence, in this sense, that many contemporary studies on early Christianity and on saints in general have recourse to psychoanalytic theory. The idea that the mystics and saints were capable ofwhat I have been calling a transparency, for example, can readily be translated into contemporary psychoanalytic terms: primary narcissism, that stage at which the selffeels no boundaries, and makes no distinction between itself and the other, or internal and externaJ.37 Postmodern reflections on the ascetics betray a nostalgia for this totalizing stage as well. Indeed, primary narcissism is a prelapsarian time of its own: before the Fall from the mother or, in Lacan's terms, before the recognition of lack as constituting the subject. As Kristeva puts it, "the most intense revelation of God, which occurs in mysticism, is given only to a person who assumes himself as maternal." The monks who led lives ofpure chastity, in other words, "played the part of the Father's virgin spouses." She continues: Freedom with respect to the maternal territory then becomes the pedestal upon which the love of God is erected. As a consequence, mystics, those 'happy Schrebers' (Sollers) throw a bizarre light on the psychotic sore of modernity: it appears as the incapability ofcontemporary codes to tame the maternal, that is, primary narcissism.18 "Stabat Mater," from which this passage is taken, is a postmodern reverie on early asceticism; one of the many which conflate the discourses of psychoanalysis and mysticism. While Kristeva is specifically concerned with the cult ofthe Virgin Mary, she directly addresses in psychoanalytic terms the modern fascination with mystics. She does so through what she calls "maternality": 273 Franc;oise Meltzer "Christianity is doubtless the most refined symbolic construct in which femininity , to the extent that it transpires through it-and it does so incessantlyis focused on Maternality" (161). Thus the "psychotic sore of modernity" is baffled by the early mystics who (psychotic as well, but happy) are able, unlike our contemporaries, to "tame the maternal." Gender consciousness (or self-consciousness), another postlapsarian division , seems to disappear into the transparency achieved when one is the "Bride of Christ." But if femininity "incessantly" transpires through Christianity, there is more than one catch. On the one hand, the Virgin Mary is as close to a goddess as Christianity has to offer: Virginal and mother of a god, she is a model to all Christians, especially those ofher sex, in her chastity and unquestioning piety. But there are major difficulties here. To begin with, Mary is not a woman in any of the ways in which the feminine is defined and, indeed, essentialized. She is rather a being divested of nearly all human female attributes : She becomes pregnant without intercourse; gives birth without pain; remains a virgin before, during, and after the birth ofJesus; does not menstruate ; and does not die, but is lifted into heaven. She is also born without sin, unlike the rest of humanity. As Marina Warner, whose remarkable book on Mary directly inspired Kristeva, notes, "The Virgin Mary is not the innate archetype of female nature, the dream incarnate; she is the instrument of a dynamic argument from the Catholic Church about the structure of society; presented as a God-given code.39 Warner ends her book with the conviction that the Virgin's days are over; she will not be viable in "the new circumstances ofsexual equality" (339). She adds: "[T]the reality her myth describes is over; the moral code she affirms has been exhausted." The moral code is the innate inferiority of women, which Mary both reinforces and gives succor for. Warner 's optimism is heartening but not entirely convincing. Ifthe revelation ofGod, to return to Kristeva, allows monks to play the role of the young virgin girl, the Desert Fathers make clear that the chosen are ultimately male, even if they are born women. This is not contradiction in early Christianity. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, argues that the distinction between male and female is absent in God's nature; gender is not an issue in his ontology. Nevertheless, Gregory uses gendered attributes as symbols for the progression of the soul.40 Consider as well (again) the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says, "Every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom ofHeaven." The full text, which has been much cited oflate, concerns an argument between Jesus and the disciple Simon Peter about Mary's adherence to the group. Simon Peter begins the argument by saying, "Let Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of life." Jesus answers, Behold, I myself shall lead her so as to make her male, that she too may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. (114) Fourth-century communities of Christian ascetics consisted of both genders, 274 Franc;oise Meltzer "Christianity is doubtless the most refined symbolic construct in which femininity , to the extent that it transpires through it-and it does so incessantlyis focused on Maternality" (161). Thus the "psychotic sore of modernity" is baffled by the early mystics who (psychotic as well, but happy) are able, unlike our contemporaries, to "tame the maternal." Gender consciousness (or self-consciousness), another postlapsarian division , seems to disappear into the transparency achieved when one is the "Bride of Christ." But if femininity "incessantly" transpires through Christianity, there is more than one catch. On the one hand, the Virgin Mary is as close to a goddess as Christianity has to offer: Virginal and mother of a god, she is a model to all Christians, especially those ofher sex, in her chastity and unquestioning piety. But there are major difficulties here. To begin with, Mary is not a woman in any of the ways in which the feminine is defined and, indeed, essentialized. She is rather a being divested of nearly all human female attributes : She becomes pregnant without intercourse; gives birth without pain; remains a virgin before, during, and after the birth ofJesus; does not menstruate ; and does not die, but is lifted into heaven. She is also born without sin, unlike the rest of humanity. As Marina Warner, whose remarkable book on Mary directly inspired Kristeva, notes, "The Virgin Mary is not the innate archetype of female nature, the dream incarnate; she is the instrument of a dynamic argument from the Catholic Church about the structure of society; presented as a God-given code.39 Warner ends her book with the conviction that the Virgin's days are over; she will not be viable in "the new circumstances ofsexual equality" (339). She adds: "[T]the reality her myth describes is over; the moral code she affirms has been exhausted." The moral code is the innate inferiority of women, which Mary both reinforces and gives succor for. Warner 's optimism is heartening but not entirely convincing. Ifthe revelation ofGod, to return to Kristeva, allows monks to play the role of the young virgin girl, the Desert Fathers make clear that the chosen are ultimately male, even if they are born women. This is not contradiction in early Christianity. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, argues that the distinction between male and female is absent in God's nature; gender is not an issue in his ontology. Nevertheless, Gregory uses gendered attributes as symbols for the progression of the soul.40 Consider as well (again) the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says, "Every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom ofHeaven." The full text, which has been much cited oflate, concerns an argument between Jesus and the disciple Simon Peter about Mary's adherence to the group. Simon Peter begins the argument by saying, "Let Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of life." Jesus answers, Behold, I myself shall lead her so as to make her male, that she too may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. (114) Fourth-century communities of Christian ascetics consisted of both genders, 274 Re-embodying the argument being, as one critic has noted, "if there is neither male nor female in Jesus Christ, then the symbiosis of male and female ascetics represents the highest form ofascetic perfection."41 But what would such a symbiosis entail? Elizabeth Castelli has commented on the same text: The double insistence attributed to Jesus in the Gospel ofThomas sayingthat Mary should remain among the disciples at the same time as she must be made male-points to the paradoxical ideological conditions that helped to shape the lives ofearly Christian women. At once they are to have access to holiness, while they also can do so only through the manipulation of conventional gender categoriesY The martyr acts are full ofstories of women dressing as men to follow an apostle, the most famous one being the story of Saint Paul and TheclaY Thecla hears Paul preach and is entranced. She subsequently refuses all sexual relations with her husband, cuts her hair, dresses like a man, and follows Paul throughout his travels. In The Acts ofAndrew, the apostle insists that Maximilla leave the marriage bed in order to preserve her mind: "I beg you then, 0 wise man, that your noble mind continue steadfast; Ibeg you, 0 invisible mind, that you may be preserved yourself." Voragine tells the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch (one of the three saints to appear through Joan of Arc), who on her wedding night cut her hair as well and, disguised as the monk Brother Pelagius, lived in a monastery and then became the head of a convent of virgins. She was accused of impregnating a nun and exiled to the desert without a trial. There she lived until she died. At her death, she wrote a letter saying that her body would be proof of her innocence, and that the women attending to her body would "know" that she was a virgin. Thus virginity, again, becomes proof of purity and virtue, and the body itself evidence of piety. To the prefect who tries to save her from execution , Margaret retorts, "this torment of the flesh is the salvation of the soul" (voU, 453). There are many such stories and, while it is true that early Christian men emulated women as well, it is clear in either case that gender categories neither dissolved into androgyny nor in any way were erased from early Christian society. Moreover, as these stories attest, a woman who wishes to lead the true life ofchastity and to follow an apostle must do so as a man. The body of a woman, in other words, shows chastity through the anatomical proof of virginity. Saint Margaret can leave her body as "proof" of her virginity; the same cannot be said of a male ascetic. But the Gospel of Thomas also contains a passage in which, rather than the hierarchy of male over female, the Platonic idea of oneness, or union, is espoused. "When you make the two into one," says Jesus, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and female will not be female, when you make eyes replacing an eye, a hand replacing a hand, a foot 275 Re-embodying the argument being, as one critic has noted, "if there is neither male nor female in Jesus Christ, then the symbiosis of male and female ascetics represents the highest form ofascetic perfection."41 But what would such a symbiosis entail? Elizabeth Castelli has commented on the same text: The double insistence attributed to Jesus in the Gospel ofThomas sayingthat Mary should remain among the disciples at the same time as she must be made male-points to the paradoxical ideological conditions that helped to shape the lives ofearly Christian women. At once they are to have access to holiness, while they also can do so only through the manipulation of conventional gender categoriesY The martyr acts are full ofstories of women dressing as men to follow an apostle, the most famous one being the story of Saint Paul and TheclaY Thecla hears Paul preach and is entranced. She subsequently refuses all sexual relations with her husband, cuts her hair, dresses like a man, and follows Paul throughout his travels. In The Acts ofAndrew, the apostle insists that Maximilla leave the marriage bed in order to preserve her mind: "I beg you then, 0 wise man, that your noble mind continue steadfast; Ibeg you, 0 invisible mind, that you may be preserved yourself." Voragine tells the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch (one of the three saints to appear through Joan of Arc), who on her wedding night cut her hair as well and, disguised as the monk Brother Pelagius, lived in a monastery and then became the head of a convent of virgins. She was accused of impregnating a nun and exiled to the desert without a trial. There she lived until she died. At her death, she wrote a letter saying that her body would be proof of her innocence, and that the women attending to her body would "know" that she was a virgin. Thus virginity, again, becomes proof of purity and virtue, and the body itself evidence of piety. To the prefect who tries to save her from execution , Margaret retorts, "this torment of the flesh is the salvation of the soul" (voU, 453). There are many such stories and, while it is true that early Christian men emulated women as well, it is clear in either case that gender categories neither dissolved into androgyny nor in any way were erased from early Christian society. Moreover, as these stories attest, a woman who wishes to lead the true life ofchastity and to follow an apostle must do so as a man. The body of a woman, in other words, shows chastity through the anatomical proof of virginity. Saint Margaret can leave her body as "proof" of her virginity; the same cannot be said of a male ascetic. But the Gospel of Thomas also contains a passage in which, rather than the hierarchy of male over female, the Platonic idea of oneness, or union, is espoused. "When you make the two into one," says Jesus, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and female will not be female, when you make eyes replacing an eye, a hand replacing a hand, a foot 275 Franc;oise Meltzer replacing a foot, and an image replacing an image, then you will enter the kingdom. (22) Here gender distinction is to be obliterated in the perfection of unity. Thus even this apocryphal gospel, for example, problematizes gender in the context offaith, since there are two possible models: Either the woman becomes a man to attain salvation, or woman and man dissolve into one in preparation for the genderless afterlife. Indeed, the famous passage from Galatians on this matter demonstrates in its varying translations the ambivalence of the gendered role of salvation. The Oxford Annotated Bible reads: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Jesus Christ" (3:28). But the translation used by Mary Douglas reads, at the end of this citation, "for you are all one man in Christ Jesus" (Douglas, 186). The first translation can be used to argue for the unity model; the genderless oneness into which the soul enters with faith. The second version supports the notion that true salvation must come in the form of man. Douglas cites the passage from Galatians to argue that virginity was important to "the primitive church of the Acts" because Christianity was "setting a standard of freedom and equality which was against the traditional Jewish custom." Virginity was a notion which substituted the Old Eve ofthe serpent, together with sex pollution, with a "Second Eve, a virgin source of redemption crushing evil underfoot" as a potent new symbol (187). We have seen, however, that the Virgin Mary, potent a new symbol as she was, could only be problematic as a feminine gender exemplum: Precisely because she falls outside any notion of pollution, Mary helps very little in the image of the feminine , or indeed of gender imaging in general. Pollution, in other words, as Douglas argued over thirty-five years ago, not only structures our social codes, but actually gives meaning to existence (Douglas's terms). IfMary were recognized as a goddess, her lack of human gender qualities would be less significant . As it is, however, she is precisely not a goddess by doctrine (although mother of a god) and so, the great cults devoted to her notwithstanding, confusing as a model for women. Even when gender is to be elided into oneness, the specific characterizations of each sex remain clear in the here and now. As Castelli notes, the firstcentury Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus catalogues them in his larger attempt to combine Platonism and Judaism. For Philo, spiritual progress is indeed nothing else than the giving up ofthe female gender by changing into the male, since the female gender is material, passive, corporeal, and sense perceptible, while the male is active, rational, incorporeal, and more akin to mind and thought.44 Except for the fact that this passage is meant to describe the progress of the soul, it could come straight out of Freud. Contemporary culture is still laboring under the same gender stereotypes at the base of its social constructs, 276 Franc;oise Meltzer replacing a foot, and an image replacing an image, then you will enter the kingdom. (22) Here gender distinction is to be obliterated in the perfection of unity. Thus even this apocryphal gospel, for example, problematizes gender in the context offaith, since there are two possible models: Either the woman becomes a man to attain salvation, or woman and man dissolve into one in preparation for the genderless afterlife. Indeed, the famous passage from Galatians on this matter demonstrates in its varying translations the ambivalence of the gendered role of salvation. The Oxford Annotated Bible reads: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Jesus Christ" (3:28). But the translation used by Mary Douglas reads, at the end of this citation, "for you are all one man in Christ Jesus" (Douglas, 186). The first translation can be used to argue for the unity model; the genderless oneness into which the soul enters with faith. The second version supports the notion that true salvation must come in the form of man. Douglas cites the passage from Galatians to argue that virginity was important to "the primitive church of the Acts" because Christianity was "setting a standard of freedom and equality which was against the traditional Jewish custom." Virginity was a notion which substituted the Old Eve ofthe serpent, together with sex pollution, with a "Second Eve, a virgin source of redemption crushing evil underfoot" as a potent new symbol (187). We have seen, however, that the Virgin Mary, potent a new symbol as she was, could only be problematic as a feminine gender exemplum: Precisely because she falls outside any notion of pollution, Mary helps very little in the image of the feminine , or indeed of gender imaging in general. Pollution, in other words, as Douglas argued over thirty-five years ago, not only structures our social codes, but actually gives meaning to existence (Douglas's terms). IfMary were recognized as a goddess, her lack of human gender qualities would be less significant . As it is, however, she is precisely not a goddess by doctrine (although mother of a god) and so, the great cults devoted to her notwithstanding, confusing as a model for women. Even when gender is to be elided into oneness, the specific characterizations of each sex remain clear in the here and now. As Castelli notes, the firstcentury Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus catalogues them in his larger attempt to combine Platonism and Judaism. For Philo, spiritual progress is indeed nothing else than the giving up ofthe female gender by changing into the male, since the female gender is material, passive, corporeal, and sense perceptible, while the male is active, rational, incorporeal, and more akin to mind and thought.44 Except for the fact that this passage is meant to describe the progress of the soul, it could come straight out of Freud. Contemporary culture is still laboring under the same gender stereotypes at the base of its social constructs, 276 Re-embodying Warner's optimism notwithstanding. More to the point, however, is the fact that already for Philo (and he is hardly alone), the body is feminine and the mind masculine. "I am a woman by nature, but not by reason," says Amma Sara, who led the pious life.45 This cleavage, which will have its echoes in Descartes, demonstrates the extent to which gender is implicated especially in what regards the soul, which ostensibly transcends the male/female distinction in the face of divinity. "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes." The greatest of early Christian female martyrs are virgins: Agnes, Agatha, and Cecilia, for example. There are notable examples ofmarried women who are martyred for the Christian faith, such as the mother mentioned in the second Book of Maccabees who witnesses the deaths of her seven sons before being martyred herself.46 For now, however, I wish to stress that the martyred Christian woman and the feminine virgin who devotes her life to Christ are, according to the Church Fathers, the holiest state to be attained by a woman. The combination of these two is even more glorious. In both cases, and especially in their combination, the specificity of femininity is erased in the socio -cultural (and political) context. Neither male nor female, nor even androgynous , these are Brides of Christ for the Apocalypse, but without clearly gendered attribution in the meantime. Despite the praise of the Church fathers, female virgins by virtue oftheir social unconventionality (their refusal to be wives and mothers, or dutiful daughters) disrupt the social sphere. Their exalted state is double-edged. On the one hand, as Mary Beard has noted of Vestal Virgins in Rome, on an official, ceremonial (religious) level, their virginity gives them special status.47 On the other hand, because they blur traditional gender roles, they are also seen as dangerous to the social code. Ambiguity, as Douglas notes, is always a menace to the social structure. Female virginity is then both the most sacred vocation for a Christian woman, and the most fragile, even aberrational, state. This double valence persists, and over one thousand years after the great treatises on virginity, this twinned valence underlies the drama ofJoan ofArc.48 In looking at the female virgin in early Christianity, we need to listen again to what Brown calls "the strange tongue of a long-lost Christianity." NOTES 1. Hippocrates, "Des maladies des jeunes filles," in Oeuvres completes d'Hippocrate , ed. E. Littre, vol. 8, (Paris: Chez J. B. Bailliere, 1853),466-71. 2. Julia Kristeva, Au commencement etait I'amour: Psychoanalyse et foi (Paris: Hachette, 1985). 3. It should be noted that Joan's voices were named and identified by her only at the trial and at the insistence ofthe prosecutors who refused to believe that for her they were voices ofdivine but unspecified origin. In this sense too, Joan pitched her voice to a timbre the judges agreed to understand. 277 Re-embodying Warner's optimism notwithstanding. More to the point, however, is the fact that already for Philo (and he is hardly alone), the body is feminine and the mind masculine. "I am a woman by nature, but not by reason," says Amma Sara, who led the pious life.45 This cleavage, which will have its echoes in Descartes, demonstrates the extent to which gender is implicated especially in what regards the soul, which ostensibly transcends the male/female distinction in the face of divinity. "And then there are bodies, and they have sexes." The greatest of early Christian female martyrs are virgins: Agnes, Agatha, and Cecilia, for example. There are notable examples ofmarried women who are martyred for the Christian faith, such as the mother mentioned in the second Book of Maccabees who witnesses the deaths of her seven sons before being martyred herself.46 For now, however, I wish to stress that the martyred Christian woman and the feminine virgin who devotes her life to Christ are, according to the Church Fathers, the holiest state to be attained by a woman. The combination of these two is even more glorious. In both cases, and especially in their combination, the specificity of femininity is erased in the socio -cultural (and political) context. Neither male nor female, nor even androgynous , these are Brides of Christ for the Apocalypse, but without clearly gendered attribution in the meantime. Despite the praise of the Church fathers, female virgins by virtue oftheir social unconventionality (their refusal to be wives and mothers, or dutiful daughters) disrupt the social sphere. Their exalted state is double-edged. On the one hand, as Mary Beard has noted of Vestal Virgins in Rome, on an official, ceremonial (religious) level, their virginity gives them special status.47 On the other hand, because they blur traditional gender roles, they are also seen as dangerous to the social code. Ambiguity, as Douglas notes, is always a menace to the social structure. Female virginity is then both the most sacred vocation for a Christian woman, and the most fragile, even aberrational, state. This double valence persists, and over one thousand years after the great treatises on virginity, this twinned valence underlies the drama ofJoan ofArc.48 In looking at the female virgin in early Christianity, we need to listen again to what Brown calls "the strange tongue of a long-lost Christianity." NOTES 1. Hippocrates, "Des maladies des jeunes filles," in Oeuvres completes d'Hippocrate , ed. E. Littre, vol. 8, (Paris: Chez J. B. Bailliere, 1853),466-71. 2. Julia Kristeva, Au commencement etait I'amour: Psychoanalyse et foi (Paris: Hachette, 1985). 3. It should be noted that Joan's voices were named and identified by her only at the trial and at the insistence ofthe prosecutors who refused to believe that for her they were voices ofdivine but unspecified origin. In this sense too, Joan pitched her voice to a timbre the judges agreed to understand. 277 Franc;oise Meltzer 4. Kristeva, 18. 5. Louis Althusser, L'Avenir dure longtemps, suivi de Les faits: Autobiographies (Paris: Stock/IMEC), 205. All English translations are my own. 6. Thomas J. Csordas, "Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology," Ethos 18 (1990): 5. 7. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: L. Cerf, 1973), ix-I.26. 8. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 143-58. 9. See Jacques Derrida, Donner Ie temps, and Jean-Luc Marion, Etant donne, on the gift. 10. Judith Butler, "Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault ," in Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 130. II. Walter Benjamin, "Thesis on the Philosophy ofHistory," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968),26263 . 12. Harry Austryn Wolfson, From Philo to Spinoza: Two Studies in Religious Philosophy (New York: Behrman House, 1977), 64. 13. Wolfson, for example, sees modernism as "a variety ofatavism or regression or archaization" (13). 14. Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 38. 15. See, for example, Jane Beizer, Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives ofHysteria in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits o{"Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993); Peter Brooks, Body Work: Objects ofDesire in Modem Narrative (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980); Jane Gallop, Thinking through the Body (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Thomas Laquerur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking ofthe World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1988); Susan Rubin Suleiman, ed. The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986). 16. Jean-Luc Marion, "The Saturated Phenomenon," trans. Thomas A. Carlson Philosophy Today 40 (Spring 1996): 103-124. 17. Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, 1948), para. 378. 18. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, vol. I (London: Dent, 1930),45-46. 19. By "early" I will be meaning here the second through fourth centuries in the Common Era: the time of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which tells of the conversion to Christianity by upper-class women; the third-century Acts ofthe Christian Martyrs; and Jacques de Voragine's La legende doree (written around 1264 but concerning the early martyrs). 278 Franc;oise Meltzer 4. Kristeva, 18. 5. Louis Althusser, L'Avenir dure longtemps, suivi de Les faits: Autobiographies (Paris: Stock/IMEC), 205. All English translations are my own. 6. Thomas J. Csordas, "Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology," Ethos 18 (1990): 5. 7. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: L. Cerf, 1973), ix-I.26. 8. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 143-58. 9. See Jacques Derrida, Donner Ie temps, and Jean-Luc Marion, Etant donne, on the gift. 10. Judith Butler, "Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault ," in Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 130. II. Walter Benjamin, "Thesis on the Philosophy ofHistory," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968),26263 . 12. Harry Austryn Wolfson, From Philo to Spinoza: Two Studies in Religious Philosophy (New York: Behrman House, 1977), 64. 13. Wolfson, for example, sees modernism as "a variety ofatavism or regression or archaization" (13). 14. Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 38. 15. See, for example, Jane Beizer, Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives ofHysteria in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits o{"Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993); Peter Brooks, Body Work: Objects ofDesire in Modem Narrative (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980); Jane Gallop, Thinking through the Body (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Thomas Laquerur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking ofthe World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1988); Susan Rubin Suleiman, ed. The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986). 16. Jean-Luc Marion, "The Saturated Phenomenon," trans. Thomas A. Carlson Philosophy Today 40 (Spring 1996): 103-124. 17. Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, 1948), para. 378. 18. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, vol. I (London: Dent, 1930),45-46. 19. By "early" I will be meaning here the second through fourth centuries in the Common Era: the time of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which tells of the conversion to Christianity by upper-class women; the third-century Acts ofthe Christian Martyrs; and Jacques de Voragine's La legende doree (written around 1264 but concerning the early martyrs). 278 Re-embodying 20. My definition of caritas relies on David Tracy's "The Catholic Model of Caritas: Self-Transcendence and Transformation," in On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church (Maryknoll, N. Y: Orbis Books, 1994),94106 . A measure of the centrality ofcaritas to Christian thought is demonstrated by the fact that the Dictionnaire de Spiritualiie: Ascetique et Mystique, Doctrine et Histoire (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1953) devotes 185 pages to the concept of "charity." 1am aware that there are several definitions of caritas in Christian thought. For my purposes here, caritas is understood as the synthesis of eros (human longing, striving of the self for happiness) and agape (the pure gift of God's love, grace). The meaning of agape is also still debated; for example, Eugene Outka's Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) gives three meanings of love: 1) equal regard, 2) mutuality (desire, but not demand, with an erotic component ), 3) self-sacrifice. I am using agape in the third sense-for the woman it is necessarily the third because the first and second are impossible for her. Where, one might ask, is the self of self-sacrifice for woman? 21. In Passage to Modernity, Louis Dupre describes a nostalgia for lost unity. 22. In Aussprache mit Martin Heidegger an 06/Xl!l95 1, privately issued (Zurich, 1952) and now in Seminare, G. A., 15 (Frankfurt, 1986),436-37. The English translation used here is by ThomasA. Carlson, pp. 61-62 in Jean-Luc Marion's God without Being: Hors-texte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 23. Cited in Marion, God without Being, 61. 24. Here I am diverging from Edith Wyschogrod's reading of Merleau-Ponty on the body. "Because the body," writes Wyschogrod, "integral to the manner in which perception occurs, can itselfbe seen, it is in that respect no different from the house or the cube or any other visible object that can be inserted into a world ofobjects. But as Merleau-Ponty argues, the body is not an object like others because one cannot distance oneselffrom one's own body so that it can give itselfas a totality" (Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy [Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1990], 17). I am not convinced that this is what Merleau-Ponty meant. Indeed, the quotation Wyschogrod gives from his work to prove her point is, it seems to me, open to a different interpretation in light of the nostalgia we have been discussing here: "Movement is not thought about movement and bodily space is not space thought of or represented.... A movement has been learned when the body has understood it. ... We must avoid saying that our body is in space or in time. It inhabits space and time." The Phenomenology ofPerception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 139. In postmortem discussions on the body, it is already experienced as distanced from the self, as we have seen in Althusser. It is precisely the desire to inhabit space and time (one thinks here of Heidegger's use of the verb to "dwell" [wohnen]) which helps to motivate the fascination in saints who do give the body "as a totality." Certainly, one does not distance oneself from the body in unconscious moments ofmovement. But the point is that the body has been rendered self-conscious for postmodernism in a manner which others it even from its possessor. 25. Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Transparence et ['obstacle (Paris: Gallimard,1971). 26. In Voragine's stories, early Christians are constantly being told to sacrifice animals to the pagan gods in order to cleanse themselves of monotheistic tendencies and to demonstrate, through animal sacrifice, that they have returned to a "normal" (and reasonable) religion. Of course the Christians (most of whom are saints in 279 Re-embodying 20. My definition of caritas relies on David Tracy's "The Catholic Model of Caritas: Self-Transcendence and Transformation," in On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church (Maryknoll, N. Y: Orbis Books, 1994),94106 . A measure of the centrality ofcaritas to Christian thought is demonstrated by the fact that the Dictionnaire de Spiritualiie: Ascetique et Mystique, Doctrine et Histoire (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1953) devotes 185 pages to the concept of "charity." 1am aware that there are several definitions of caritas in Christian thought. For my purposes here, caritas is understood as the synthesis of eros (human longing, striving of the self for happiness) and agape (the pure gift of God's love, grace). The meaning of agape is also still debated; for example, Eugene Outka's Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) gives three meanings of love: 1) equal regard, 2) mutuality (desire, but not demand, with an erotic component ), 3) self-sacrifice. I am using agape in the third sense-for the woman it is necessarily the third because the first and second are impossible for her. Where, one might ask, is the self of self-sacrifice for woman? 21. In Passage to Modernity, Louis Dupre describes a nostalgia for lost unity. 22. In Aussprache mit Martin Heidegger an 06/Xl!l95 1, privately issued (Zurich, 1952) and now in Seminare, G. A., 15 (Frankfurt, 1986),436-37. The English translation used here is by ThomasA. Carlson, pp. 61-62 in Jean-Luc Marion's God without Being: Hors-texte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 23. Cited in Marion, God without Being, 61. 24. Here I am diverging from Edith Wyschogrod's reading of Merleau-Ponty on the body. "Because the body," writes Wyschogrod, "integral to the manner in which perception occurs, can itselfbe seen, it is in that respect no different from the house or the cube or any other visible object that can be inserted into a world ofobjects. But as Merleau-Ponty argues, the body is not an object like others because one cannot distance oneselffrom one's own body so that it can give itselfas a totality" (Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy [Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1990], 17). I am not convinced that this is what Merleau-Ponty meant. Indeed, the quotation Wyschogrod gives from his work to prove her point is, it seems to me, open to a different interpretation in light of the nostalgia we have been discussing here: "Movement is not thought about movement and bodily space is not space thought of or represented.... A movement has been learned when the body has understood it. ... We must avoid saying that our body is in space or in time. It inhabits space and time." The Phenomenology ofPerception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 139. In postmortem discussions on the body, it is already experienced as distanced from the self, as we have seen in Althusser. It is precisely the desire to inhabit space and time (one thinks here of Heidegger's use of the verb to "dwell" [wohnen]) which helps to motivate the fascination in saints who do give the body "as a totality." Certainly, one does not distance oneself from the body in unconscious moments ofmovement. But the point is that the body has been rendered self-conscious for postmodernism in a manner which others it even from its possessor. 25. Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Transparence et ['obstacle (Paris: Gallimard,1971). 26. In Voragine's stories, early Christians are constantly being told to sacrifice animals to the pagan gods in order to cleanse themselves of monotheistic tendencies and to demonstrate, through animal sacrifice, that they have returned to a "normal" (and reasonable) religion. Of course the Christians (most of whom are saints in 279 Fran~oise Meltzer Voragine) hotly refuse, rejecting animal sacrifice as barbaric and sacrilegious. It is a curious fact, however, that in Voragine these same Christians almost inevitably end up sacrificing their own bodies to God, as if Christianity had not quite thought itself outside of pagan paradigms (notwithstanding the obvious influence of the crucifixion of Jesus). The point is also that a body cannot be sacrificed in the martyr tradition unless it is assimilated to thought. For a view of the gendered aspect ofsacrifice for the purpose of maintaining patrilineal ties and as a remedy for having been born of woman, see Nancy Jay's Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 27. The cult of relics (which demands a separate study) deals with, of course, fragments of bodies. 28. Marina Warner, Joan ofArc: The Image ofFemale Heroism (New York: Knopf, 1981),134. 29. As Kate Cooper notes, taking her point from Bernard Shaw, the enthusiasm of many female Christian martyrs for torture at the hands ofa male executioner is almost identical to that ofheroines in early Greek romances. The status ofthe body is not only Christian in this tradition. See The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 30. See also Page Dubois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge, 1991). 30. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). Punctum is in fact very close to one of the three aspects ofthe second type ofsaturated phenomenon Marion delineates: the idol ("the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at" [121]). There is, however, no real "piercing" here, only contemplation . 31. Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 62. I am aware that Christianity has been criticized for precisely this reason; for example, by Barth, Luther, and Nygren. Kierkegaard, in his work on love, insisted that faith is above love because you can't acknowledge the otherness of the loved one. Outka's first and second definitions would be problematic in such a formulation. Also see F. W. Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Viking, 1954). See also Lorraine Daston's Classical Probability in the Englightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) chap. 6ff. 32. A topus which has been frequently noted. See, for example, Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1987), 34-35ff. Burrus does a Proppian analysis of the apocryphal narratives. 33. Michel Foucault, "Le combat de la chastete," in Communications: Sexualities occidentales 35 (Paris: Seuil, 1982),24. My translation. 34. It has been noted oflate that Foucault's history ofWestern sexuality relies too heavily upon Plutarch. See, e.g., Simon Goldhill's Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 156-61 ff. 35. The most celebrated example of the ascetic life was The Life of Antony, attributed to Athanasius (355 C.E.). Antony's combat for faith is described as a form of daily martyrdom. 280 Fran~oise Meltzer Voragine) hotly refuse, rejecting animal sacrifice as barbaric and sacrilegious. It is a curious fact, however, that in Voragine these same Christians almost inevitably end up sacrificing their own bodies to God, as if Christianity had not quite thought itself outside of pagan paradigms (notwithstanding the obvious influence of the crucifixion of Jesus). The point is also that a body cannot be sacrificed in the martyr tradition unless it is assimilated to thought. For a view of the gendered aspect ofsacrifice for the purpose of maintaining patrilineal ties and as a remedy for having been born of woman, see Nancy Jay's Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 27. The cult of relics (which demands a separate study) deals with, of course, fragments of bodies. 28. Marina Warner, Joan ofArc: The Image ofFemale Heroism (New York: Knopf, 1981),134. 29. As Kate Cooper notes, taking her point from Bernard Shaw, the enthusiasm of many female Christian martyrs for torture at the hands ofa male executioner is almost identical to that ofheroines in early Greek romances. The status ofthe body is not only Christian in this tradition. See The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 30. See also Page Dubois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge, 1991). 30. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). Punctum is in fact very close to one of the three aspects ofthe second type ofsaturated phenomenon Marion delineates: the idol ("the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at" [121]). There is, however, no real "piercing" here, only contemplation . 31. Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 62. I am aware that Christianity has been criticized for precisely this reason; for example, by Barth, Luther, and Nygren. Kierkegaard, in his work on love, insisted that faith is above love because you can't acknowledge the otherness of the loved one. Outka's first and second definitions would be problematic in such a formulation. Also see F. W. Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Viking, 1954). See also Lorraine Daston's Classical Probability in the Englightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) chap. 6ff. 32. A topus which has been frequently noted. See, for example, Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1987), 34-35ff. Burrus does a Proppian analysis of the apocryphal narratives. 33. Michel Foucault, "Le combat de la chastete," in Communications: Sexualities occidentales 35 (Paris: Seuil, 1982),24. My translation. 34. It has been noted oflate that Foucault's history ofWestern sexuality relies too heavily upon Plutarch. See, e.g., Simon Goldhill's Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 156-61 ff. 35. The most celebrated example of the ascetic life was The Life of Antony, attributed to Athanasius (355 C.E.). Antony's combat for faith is described as a form of daily martyrdom. 280 Re-embodying 36. See Charles R. Elder, "Psychoanalysis, Grammar, and the Limits ofCritique" (PhD. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1991). 37. See Julia Kristeva, "A Pure Silence: The Perfection ofJeanne Guyon," in Tales ofLove, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 38. Julia Kristeva, "Stabat Mater" in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 39. Marina Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983),338. 40. See Verna E. F. Harrison, "A Gender Reversal in Gregory of Nyssa's First Homily on the Song ofSongs," Studia Patristica (1992): 35-38. 41. Susanna Elm, "Virgins ofGod": The Making ofAsceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), ix. 42. Elizabeth A. Castelli, "'I Will Make Mary Male': Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation ofChristian Women in Late Antiquity," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991),33. 43. Cf. Elizabeth Schusser Firenza's In Memory of Her, which argues that the post-New Testament tradition ignores the role of women in the New Testament, marking the fact that the hierarchical church took over. 44. Philo, Quaesteniones et Solutiones in Exodum 1:8; cited in Castelli, '''I Will Make Mary Male,''' 32. It is a curious fact that Philo, a Jew, was more influential to the Christian than to the Jewish tradition. 45. Apophthegmata Patrum/Sayings of the Fathers, PG 65, 420D. 46. The story is in 2 Maccabees, VI, 18-31; VII, 1-41. See also Butler's Lives of Saints, ed. Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater (New York: Kenedy, 1956), iii, 237-38. 47. Mary Beard, "The Sexual Status ofVestal Virgins," Journal ofRoman Studies 70 (1980): 2-27. 48. Joan ofArc is a martyr for the faith and not a martyr for France. What kind of martyr was she for the Church? She died, after all, for her faith, which is one of the definitions for martyr the Church has itself established. 281 Re-embodying 36. See Charles R. Elder, "Psychoanalysis, Grammar, and the Limits ofCritique" (PhD. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1991). 37. See Julia Kristeva, "A Pure Silence: The Perfection ofJeanne Guyon," in Tales ofLove, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 38. Julia Kristeva, "Stabat Mater" in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 39. Marina Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983),338. 40. See Verna E. F. Harrison, "A Gender Reversal in Gregory of Nyssa's First Homily on the Song ofSongs," Studia Patristica (1992): 35-38. 41. Susanna Elm, "Virgins ofGod": The Making ofAsceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), ix. 42. Elizabeth A. Castelli, "'I Will Make Mary Male': Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation ofChristian Women in Late Antiquity," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991),33. 43. Cf. Elizabeth Schusser Firenza's In Memory of Her, which argues that the post-New Testament tradition ignores the role of women in the New Testament, marking the fact that the hierarchical church took over. 44. Philo, Quaesteniones et Solutiones in Exodum 1:8; cited in Castelli, '''I Will Make Mary Male,''' 32. It is a curious fact that Philo, a Jew, was more influential to the Christian than to the Jewish tradition. 45. Apophthegmata Patrum/Sayings of the Fathers, PG 65, 420D. 46. The story is in 2 Maccabees, VI, 18-31; VII, 1-41. See also Butler's Lives of Saints, ed. Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater (New York: Kenedy, 1956), iii, 237-38. 47. Mary Beard, "The Sexual Status ofVestal Virgins," Journal ofRoman Studies 70 (1980): 2-27. 48. Joan ofArc is a martyr for the faith and not a martyr for France. What kind of martyr was she for the Church? She died, after all, for her faith, which is one of the definitions for martyr the Church has itself established. 281 ...