Empowering Memory and Movement: Thinking and Working across Borders

26. Critical Reflections on Philosophy and The*logy: An Interview with Michael Norton

26 Critical Reflections on Philosophy and The*logy An Interview with Michael Norton This interview1 introduces the concluding, fourth part of the book, which explores Scripture as a site of memory, struggle, and vision. It spells out again my understanding of Scripture as a site of memory where struggles take place and empowering visions are articulated. Engaging in such struggles and visions for changing kyriarchal structures and inspiring justice may recover the power of Scripture as the word of G*d. Hence, it is especially important that our discourses about G*d do not continue the rhetorical situation of exclusion in which the tradition of the the*logical and philosophical disciplines places us. In order to recover Scripture as a site of memory, struggle, and vision, we must constantly question the kyriocentric academic and ecclesiastical discourses that, consciously or not, exclude a vast majority of people as philosophical and the*logical subjects. Michael Norton (MN): The conference in which you are here to participate—Religion & Postmodernism 4: Transcendence and Beyond—is for the most part a philosophical one. So, simply put, why are you here? Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ESF): I accepted the invitation because this conference engenders a very important discussion on a very significant topic. I am here because I am concerned that we critically reflect on how such scientific discourses—philosophical and theological discourses—have been constructed traditionally on the basis of the positive exclusion of women and 1. First published as Michael Barnes Norton, “An Interview with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: ‘Critical Reflections of Philosophy and Theology.’” Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 1.2 (Spring 2004): 27–31. 405 all people who were subjugated or subordinated, who were not counted as full citizens or as fully human throughout most of Western history. This is the problem I am always concerned with when I accept invitations to conferences where the discourse is set in a disciplinary way. It is especially important when the discourse is about God. The challenge is to get people to think about this rhetorical situation of exclusion in which the tradition of the the*logical and philosophical disciplines places us. I am always hoping that participants will question the set academic discourse that consciously or not excludes a vast majority of people as philosophical and the*logical subjects. I need to bring up this question again and again in order to insist on the responsibility connected to engaging in disciplinary discourses such as this one. MN: How would you say philosophy and religious discourse influence each other? ESF: As disciplinary discourses both philosophical and theological or religious studies discourses share a lot in common: they have been articulated by an elite group of educated (clergy)men and have fulfilled ideological functions of exclusion and kyriarchal legitimation of domination. Philosophical discourses may be more strongly oriented toward society at large, and theological discourses more strongly to the churches or religious communities, but they both have often been discourses of domination. For instance, if one looks at democracy and political philosophy in antiquity, one will see that the classical political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle have ideologically rationalized the exclusion of the Others. The same is true for Aquinas and the whole theological history. You find theologians as well as philosophers formulating arguments as to why certain people cannot participate fully in a democratic society or in church and religion. A critical feminist analysis as I have developed documents that theology and philosophy have a lot in common because of their common history of ideological legitimization and exclusion. Hence, they both have also a lot of work to do to rectify this common heritage. MN: So, do you see the domains of philosophy and theology—respectively, as you said, society-at-large and religious communities—as being two separate arenas, or are they in some way intertwined? Is one a subset of the other? ESF: If one looks at them as scholarly disciplines, then historically speaking, philosophy has been a subset of theology. With the secularization of the university in modernity, this relationship has changed drastically and has become almost the reverse since in modernity philosophy took over many of the functions that theology had in the pre-modern age. I suggest that in each case this relationship between philosophy and theology needs to be looked at 406 | Empowering Memory and Movement critically, since it has been construed in terms of subordination. In...