Who is the P03T-1CP1-RAT3?
What is Piracy and Poesis? How can piracy be poetic? How can Poetry be piratic? What do we mean by Poetry? What is it to be a pirate in this day and age? Arggh!
What underlying violence is inherent in the very conception of language? Of speech? of writing? of discourse?
How do we respond to such violence? What are our tools?
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Politics and the wound pt. 1 (Old Blog repost)
Perverting Justice and Demanding a King
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
1 Samuel 8:4 & 5
Judges successfully ruled and protected the people of Israel from the time of their original appointment until now. But what has changed? Why do the elders come to Samuel, the last Judge of Israel? They claim he is old, surely; and his sons do not walk in his ways. First they judge him unworthy in his ways because of age, but then uplift his position by stating that his sons do not walk in his ways.
Rather than blaming God, they seek to circumvent their own guilt (of blaming God) by blaming Samuel and his line. This is the same line of logic that Adam follows when God asks him about eating the fruit, “It was the woman you gave me.” Rather than blame himself (or Eve, which amounts to the same in this part of the text) Adam is blaming God, but simultaneously, it is through the woman, as if he weren’t really blaming God at all, but the woman (this is what blame is, cutting yourself out of the picture by doubling).
The elders reject Samuel because they can never be seen to reject God. But in their rejection of Samuel there intentions are clear: “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” Rather than getting their own houses in order they beguile themselves by substituting Samuel’s house and his problems for their own (the mote and the plank). And this is their sin continued in the very asking for a king. Rather than remain special, as God’s chosen people, the elders desire to be “like all the nations.” Their rejection is come full circle, they reject God, hearth, and heritage. In their zeal to be like other nations they have now a true need for a messiah (in a realm that till now, stood outside of the Judaic, that is, the political). In their desire for a king they have lost their own regalia.
The argument the elders bring against Samuel’s house is but a picture of their own houses, a prophecy of the state of a nation turning from YHWH. “And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside, took bribes, and perverted justice.” Just as God commands Samuel to speak to the people about how the people will be treated by a King his words seem an explication of the elder’s accusal and an exacerbation of the same situation. But here the children of Israel have hedged their bet, rather than each man be judged by his own works the whole nation will be judged by the acts of a single king. So once again we see this shirking of responsibility in what seems, at first, to be a genuine request for justice; in what is attempting to pass for justice is a continuation of its perversion.
The Hebrew word translated perveted here is natah (H5186), literally meaning to stretch out, extend, and spread out. Whereas justice stems from the Hebrew root that caries the idea of setting up and erection (Gesenius compares the word to the German richten). We have already in the elder’s finger-pointing, as a sort of preliminary denouement, these two tensors perversion and justice whose corresponding force lies in the spatial movement of flattening and raising.
The flattening of justice makes it brittle and shifts its conceptual stance by means of subversion. Samuel’s sons are accused of re-appropriating justice for there own means, and the Elders –in their fear - seek to control and resituate the very meaning of the word justice. Conceptually, the word-signifier stays the same, however, being rooted in the very speech act is no surety for its meaning, justice will begin to mean something else. (Just as the “good” begins to mean something different after Adam eats of the fruit) And, rather than have justice be defined by Samuel and his sons or God, the elders will allow a king to take charge. It is in that place that Justice will change from being about solely the just and will now contain a connotation of rightness.
I want to say something about this rightness, that is, about the right to right. We should first of all not confuse this word with uprightness nor righteousness, though this new justice will seek to undermine and redefine these concepts by the rule of the king (this is what Divine Right means), rather, what is at stake here is the end of judgment without politics. Now all justice will be relatable and quantifiable, flattened as it were, the justice of the children of Israel will be commensurable with that of the nations.
Perhaps it is out of fear of diaspora that they do this, let us be like other nations, let us now make treaties and covenants with other peoples because our own covenant is not assured and, if ever we end up outside of our land again (as in Egypt) we will be at home. And this is what rightness is, making a home, to have the right to. But the right to what? And what sort of home?
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
1 Samuel 8:4 & 5
Judges successfully ruled and protected the people of Israel from the time of their original appointment until now. But what has changed? Why do the elders come to Samuel, the last Judge of Israel? They claim he is old, surely; and his sons do not walk in his ways. First they judge him unworthy in his ways because of age, but then uplift his position by stating that his sons do not walk in his ways.
Rather than blaming God, they seek to circumvent their own guilt (of blaming God) by blaming Samuel and his line. This is the same line of logic that Adam follows when God asks him about eating the fruit, “It was the woman you gave me.” Rather than blame himself (or Eve, which amounts to the same in this part of the text) Adam is blaming God, but simultaneously, it is through the woman, as if he weren’t really blaming God at all, but the woman (this is what blame is, cutting yourself out of the picture by doubling).
The elders reject Samuel because they can never be seen to reject God. But in their rejection of Samuel there intentions are clear: “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” Rather than getting their own houses in order they beguile themselves by substituting Samuel’s house and his problems for their own (the mote and the plank). And this is their sin continued in the very asking for a king. Rather than remain special, as God’s chosen people, the elders desire to be “like all the nations.” Their rejection is come full circle, they reject God, hearth, and heritage. In their zeal to be like other nations they have now a true need for a messiah (in a realm that till now, stood outside of the Judaic, that is, the political). In their desire for a king they have lost their own regalia.
The argument the elders bring against Samuel’s house is but a picture of their own houses, a prophecy of the state of a nation turning from YHWH. “And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside, took bribes, and perverted justice.” Just as God commands Samuel to speak to the people about how the people will be treated by a King his words seem an explication of the elder’s accusal and an exacerbation of the same situation. But here the children of Israel have hedged their bet, rather than each man be judged by his own works the whole nation will be judged by the acts of a single king. So once again we see this shirking of responsibility in what seems, at first, to be a genuine request for justice; in what is attempting to pass for justice is a continuation of its perversion.
The Hebrew word translated perveted here is natah (H5186), literally meaning to stretch out, extend, and spread out. Whereas justice stems from the Hebrew root that caries the idea of setting up and erection (Gesenius compares the word to the German richten). We have already in the elder’s finger-pointing, as a sort of preliminary denouement, these two tensors perversion and justice whose corresponding force lies in the spatial movement of flattening and raising.
The flattening of justice makes it brittle and shifts its conceptual stance by means of subversion. Samuel’s sons are accused of re-appropriating justice for there own means, and the Elders –in their fear - seek to control and resituate the very meaning of the word justice. Conceptually, the word-signifier stays the same, however, being rooted in the very speech act is no surety for its meaning, justice will begin to mean something else. (Just as the “good” begins to mean something different after Adam eats of the fruit) And, rather than have justice be defined by Samuel and his sons or God, the elders will allow a king to take charge. It is in that place that Justice will change from being about solely the just and will now contain a connotation of rightness.
I want to say something about this rightness, that is, about the right to right. We should first of all not confuse this word with uprightness nor righteousness, though this new justice will seek to undermine and redefine these concepts by the rule of the king (this is what Divine Right means), rather, what is at stake here is the end of judgment without politics. Now all justice will be relatable and quantifiable, flattened as it were, the justice of the children of Israel will be commensurable with that of the nations.
Perhaps it is out of fear of diaspora that they do this, let us be like other nations, let us now make treaties and covenants with other peoples because our own covenant is not assured and, if ever we end up outside of our land again (as in Egypt) we will be at home. And this is what rightness is, making a home, to have the right to. But the right to what? And what sort of home?
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