If you’re like me, ‘justice’ is an idea that stirs up a complicated mix of hope and resignation—especially lately. The pain and struggle that I see when I look at the world around me do make me long deeply for justice and healing. But they also make that healing feel so far away—barely out of reach even at the best of times.
Race & anti-sacraments
I’ve spent much of the afternoon pondering a Broderick’s suggestion that Black people—and I think more specifically, Black bodies—are anti-sacramental in the white imagination. Much to the chagrin of my boss, who caught me staring off into space. It is, to use Broderick’s word, an enthralling thought. And his suggestion came just after I listened to an episode of The Liturgists Podcast that played with the idea of sacramentality beyond the 7 recognized sacraments.
dangerous unselfishness
"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....
Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother."
Mysticism & Marx, II
Following up on the threads of my previous argument, laying out a critique of Marx’s humanism that approaches the problem from mystic spirituality rather than poststructuralist theory, I want to explore how an understanding of mysticism might help us generate a new kind of political ethic. An ethic that decenters humanity, particularly the rational and autonomous/sovereign humanity that modernity naturalizes. An ethic that provides for the undoing of the Heading of capital(ism), not by providing Another Heading, but by providing the Other of the Heading. An ethic that dissolves the fundamental logic of capitalism.
Mysticism & Marx, I
Note as of November 2020: This essay and its sequel were written around the time I started a PhD at the University of Minnesota. I was Muslim at the time and wrestling with the shortcomings in Marxist thought that I was coming up against. It doesn’t reflect my current thought very well, but these ideas were important in my intellectual formation.