Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

Bodies of the Void: Polyphilia and Theoplicity

 Bodies of the Void: Polyphilia and Theoplicity R O L A N D FA B E R What is an ‘‘apophatic body’’? Is there a phenomenology of ‘‘apophatic bodies’’? Probably not! Instead of an essentializing definition, let me try this: The ‘‘apophatic body’’ is a paradox that lives from a negation, an ‘‘un-naming’’ or ‘‘un-signifying’’ that is a twofold process of ‘‘negating bodying’’ and ‘‘bodying negating.’’ What is negated? What is un-, and in this way, embodied? It is the ‘‘What’’—essence—itself! This What that cannot be named or signified, is un-bodied. However, in un-naming ‘‘essence ,’’ we do not negate the process of ‘‘bodying,’’ but ‘‘what’’ is negating it, fixating it, pre-stabilizing it as the That of the body. That body is negated; and that body is un-said: its individuality as this body and its generality as some body. In this negation, what is embodied? What the What was before it was fixated, before it was identified as that body and that body. The double process of ‘‘negating bodying’’ and ‘‘bodying negating’’ does not negate the process of ‘‘bodying,’’ but ‘‘what’’ negates its un-preformed singularity; and it does not embody negation (as such), but ‘‘what’’ negates its bodying (as such).1 The thesis is that apophatic negation works in two directions: It can negate the bodying itself, carrying with it the peril of a negation, which, embodied again, destroys the body; but it can also negate what negates the bodying, thereby freeing the process of ‘‘bodying.’’ In uncovering the first apophasis as ‘‘peril’’ (especially of negative theology), I will mark some of the ‘‘characteristics’’ of the second apophasis as pure affirmation, especially with the help of Butler’s, Derrida’s, Deleuze’s, Kristeva’s, and Whitehead’s respective accounts of concepts that indicate, imply, or can r o la n d fa b e r 兩 2 0 1 be directed toward an understanding toward what I mean by ‘‘apophatic bodies.’’ INFINITE UN-BODYING AND BODYING THE INFINITE What is un-said in negative theology is any ‘‘attribute’’ that could grasp deity. Although we may start with positive characterization, for example, knowing, in un-saying knowing, we negate the finite character of knowing in which we live, and we project its absolute negation as the position of the deity: as absolute knowledge beyond any creaturely restriction. This method of negation is a process of ‘‘un-bounding,’’ of ‘‘de-limiting,’’ in proposing that the deity is in its ‘‘essence’’ un-bound and in-finite. In relation to the cosmos, the theology after 1277, the theological decisions published by the Parisian faculty about the orthodox notion of God in the medieval Church, named this the immensity of God, which led to a ‘‘spatialization’’ of the infinite deity and a deification of infinite space.2 Although this ‘‘sea of infinite substance’’ has been conceptualized since Gregor of Nazians (pelagos ousias apeiron kai aoriston) and John Damascenus (est enim deus pelagus infinitae substantiae et per consequens indistinctae ),3 it was implanted at the heart of negative theology by John Duns Scotus. In his Quotlibetal Questions, he writes: Damascene confirms this corollary when he says that the essence is an infinite and limitless sea of substance. Substance, then, insofar as it represents what is absolutely first in the divine, he calls a sea, and as such it is infinite and boundless. But substance in this sense does not include either truth, or goodness, or any other attributable property . Therefore, infinity as such is a mode of essence more intrinsic than any other attribute it has.4 For Duns Scotus, this bound-less infinity is the ‘‘innermost attribute’’ of the essence of the deity, which is in se beyond any ‘‘character’’—even Goodness or Truth. Its infinity is the expression of pure negativity, the negation of any finiteness. It cannot, therefore, be embodied at all. It is the negation of embodiment, of bodying, of the body. It is the expression of pure transcendence, unsaid, unheard, silent, empty of whatever it may characterize. Paradoxically, although it is without essence, its essence is Infinity itself. Whatever ‘‘embodies’’ this pure negativity must die! No 202 兩 p o ly p h il i a an d t he o p li c i ty body can ‘‘see’’ this infinite substance. And as Meister Eckhart...