Major Paper - Power and Exile

Exile and Power: A Foucaultian Analysis of Jeremiah 29:1-7 in Conversation with Daniel SmithChristopher’s A Biblical Theology of Exile By: D. Marco Funk Hermeneutics and Critical Theory Course #: 10.472/3 Chris K. Huebner, Professor Canadian Mennonite University Winnipeg, MB March 2008 1 “My point is not that everything is bad but that everything is dangerous” – Michel Foucault – “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” – St. Paul the Apostle – Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29:4-7, NRSV1 Michel Foucault was interested in power. He was interested in how power works. He was not interested so much in finding out exactly who has power and who does not. Foucault would have criticized any account of power that assumes a one-directional account of power-flow, as though there are some with power who take advantage of those without power. Power, for Foucault, is always multi-directional. This essay is a reflection on Foucault’s understanding of power. It would be inappropriate for us to examine his account of power without noticing that he was always interested in very specific modes, practices, and relations of power. He was not interested in power as such, but in the way power relations work in different aspects of life. He enquired about the relations of power at work in criminal punishment and discipline. He was also interested in the ways in which sexuality functions as kind of a nexus of power interests - interests held by the state and by individuals. And so, in order to reflect some kind of faithfulness to the manner in which Foucault worked on the issue of power, this essay also intends to examine the power relations at work in a particular historical occurrence rather than some purely theoretical examination of the topic. This essay will examine the relations of power in the Babylonian exile as accounted for in the OT. The literature on the Babylonian exile is broad, and so Jeremiah 29:1-7 will serve as a focus for our analysis. The work of Daniel Smith-Christopher will be the third dialogue partner in this study. His A Biblical Theology of Exile charts the relations of power between the exiles and their captors, suggesting that a third posture is possible between the two common view points. The common view is that the exiled foreigner is either someone who is openly engaged in finding a new expression of nationalism, either through fight or flight, or that person is actively engaged in grafting themselves into the structures and institutions of this new homeland. The ‘third posture’ is neither the revolutionary desire to overthrow the oppressor, nor the passive acceptance of the oppressor’s rule, but is instead the discovery that exilic existence is itself a creative engagement and critique of the given structures of power. In other words, power is not ‘in the hands’ of the oppressors or the revolutionary fighters; power can be seen to also name the relations and practices that make up the lives of those exiles who stay in the land, seeking the peace of the city, being given to participate in the to-and-fro power relations that go on locally. In his own words, Christopher intends to “reread texts associated with the Babylonian exile 1 All scripture passages quoted will be from the New Revised Standard Version. 2 with the presumption of resistance, but not necessarily a resistance based on nationalist aspiration, even if this was not entirely absent.”2 The thesis of this essay is to demonstrate whether or not, or to what extent, Christopher offers a convincing account of the Babylonian exile in light of the description of power found in Foucault’s work. What counts as an argument here is whether or not Christopher gives sufficient attention to the complicated notion of power instead of offering a reified and mono-directional account. In order to accomplish this we will require an outline of Foucault’s work relating to power so that a helpful engagement can be made with Christopher’s reading of the exile. At the same time, and throughout, the scripture text itself will focus the discussion. Foucault’s work is intellectually challenging and difficult to summarize; yet for our purposes it is important to say some things about Foucault’s understanding of power. Foucault was involved in a project that focused on rethinking power and resistance as strategic, techniques, a field of forces, a micro-politics. For Foucault, there is no simple agent of oppression, no simple agent of resistance. There is no inside and outside in the power relation. Instead, Foucault’s work names an attempt to unthink the preoccupation with the centrality of power, a central agency of controlling power. He argues, instead, that there is a kind of diffusion of power , such that power is decentralized, but not less visible. There is no straightforward directionality in the power configuration of human relationships. This means that power is no longer a purely negative function that says ‘no’, kills, destroys, or stops those at the heel of its use. Rather, Foucault works to reimagine power as something positive and not merely negative. Power is a positive force that creates, not merely negatively destroys or oppresses. Power, even power applied by nation states and rulers, is generative, scripting those it affects into new disciplines designed to alter behavior, often functioning under the radar so that those whom it affects are unaware of its dominance. A helpful demonstration of this Foucaultian analysis is the work of Bill Cavanaugh in Torture and Eucharist. In this book Cavanaugh examines the strategy of atomization (via torture) employed by the Pinochet regime, and the counter-strategy offered by the Church in the Eucharist. Pinochet’s power is positive power, creating an atomized citizenry, including the power to produce allegiance and confession. This atomizing power is grafted into the citizen’s consciousness via the strategy of surveillance. The Eucharist, on the other hand, names different configurations of the same power relations – re-enscripting these atomized bodies into the Eucharistic performance – such that this atomization is undermined by a new body-forming (rather than body-splintering) discipline.3 In both cases, both the technique of torture and the Eucharistic practice, you have what Foucault would call a positive power. Pinochet’s torture was negative only to the extent that it caused pain and punishment. Yet, according to Cavanaugh, this reading of torture is superficial. Instead, for Pinochet, torture had, as its goal, the positive affect of generating a pure and simple allegiance, a solid-line relationship between the atomized 2 Daniel Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), 24. William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1998). 3 3 citizen and the state. Torture was used not primarily as a tool to retrieve important information, as its traditional function is understood; instead, the Pinochet regime used torture to produce a different kind of vocalization: the fake confession, but most importantly the rumours of distrust among neighbours and even families. By splintering all the social groups, the power techniques of torture were in fact creating loyal citizens. The Church’s response in re-imagining the Eucharistic practice undermined this atomizing strategy, not by opposing it with revolutionary violence, but by rebuilding social ties, and ‘producing’ confessions of a different sort, and allegiance to a different lord. In Foucaultian terms, we find in Torture and Eucharist an account of power that exposes the lie of one-sided power; instead, we find an account of ways to redirect power techniques, creatively flipping-over the strategy of atomization in order to foster, and powerfully perform, authentic Eucharist community. For Foucault, resistance to ‘the powerful’ is not a simple tug-of-war between those in power and the usurpers. The ‘state’ names numerous power relations in itself, which together work together to ‘get things done’, and any resistance to these relations involves not a clearly opposed set of powers, but a different alignment, or perhaps a different way of configuring those same power relations that are at work in the ‘legitimated’ power processes of the state. In the end, however, Foucault is not interested merely in political states, in his analysis of power, precisely because this hides the ways in which power relations extend beyond ‘the state’. The state is usually understood as a negating power. These negating power relations function as a kind of ‘metapower’, yet their power is premised on the existence on subtle, indefinite, diverse, local, and also positive power relations.4 If the power of political rule is a fragmented power, made up of many power relations, which exist as a kind of non-lethal war between different parties, and if we try to separate power with its “techniques and procedures” from the legal system of the state, then Foucault asks whether the ‘peace’ experienced in the modern nation state is in fact not peace at all but war. In Foucault’s own terms, this means that politics is merely war by ‘other means’.5 Along with the fragmentation, or proliferation of power relations, a new power relation is discernable between lord and subject. In earlier times, a ruler’s power was understood as the power to kill, stop, punish, and sentence. This view of power is wholly negative, engaging in an attack against the body, purposing to stop or kill the body for whatever reason. According to Foucault, contemporary configurations of power are altogether different. The political figure is no longer as interested in putting people to death as integrating political influence into life in all its relations. The state became increasingly interested in “a power whose highest function was perhaps no longer to kill, but to invest life through and through… The old power of death that symbolized sovereign power was now carefully supplanted by the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life.”6 (emphasis mine) Sovereign power has given way to ‘biopower’, power invested in life itself. This ‘sovereign power’ over the body is fused to a person’s soul and, in other words, the person becomes his or her own disciplinarian. Foucault says it best: “A stupid 4 Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 63-64. 5 Ibid., 65. 6 Ibid., 262. 4 despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas; it is at the stable point of reason that he secures the end of the chain; this link is all the stronger in that we do not know of what it is made and we believe it to be our own work…”7 In relation to the atomized Chilean citizen, the tortured victim is made to believe that his friends or neighbours have given him up as a communist or terrorist, and so the individuating discipline of the state is grafted, or chained onto the very soul of the tortured person. Although this is somewhat oversimplified, Foucault’s discussion on the relations of power opens up a field of vision that allows us to notice the different disciplines and practices that we participate in and are lured into, and also allows us to see the ways in which we express power and have power in relation to others. We now turn to Jeremiah, the Israelite experience of exile, and Christopher’s discussion on exilic theology. The Babylonian exile names the period of expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom of Judah and their exile to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzer in the 6th Century BC. The specific passage that focuses our discussion (Jer 29:1-7) is a letter from the prophet Jeremiah “to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” (v.1) The letter is addressed not only to the heads of power among the people, but to the prophets and ‘all the people’; in other words, it includes normative instructions. At first glance it seems that the people and their leaders were merely passive prisoners, being chained together and dragged off, literally ‘taken’, into a horrible existence in a foreign land; to be sure, this was how the exile was understood by many of those who experienced the exile first hand. Nevertheless, the very first line of the letter to be read to the people reconfigures this whole picture entirely. “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (v. 4) Already in the initial address, the prophet provides a different imagination from which the Israelites were to understand their exile into Babylon. This was not meant to be a simple punishment in which they were subjected to their overlords as prisoners without power. Already here we see an alternate narration of their predicament. They are sent into exile. God intends their non-national existence in a foreign land. It is in this new circumstance that they are to “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (v.5-7) The verbs “build”, “live”, “plant”, “eat”, “take”, “have”, “give”, “bear”, “multiply”, “do not decrease”, “seek”, “pray”, and “find” are all active verbs. They name processes, disciplines, practices, and relations in which power is at stake, and in which a new form of life opens up that is in tension with the life that they are being ‘taken’ into. The Babylonians had no idea what they were in for, or maybe they did, but it must have seemed to them that they were taking home the spoils of war or new 7 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 102-103. 5 slaves or prisoners; yet if Jeremiah’s letter was heard and taken to heart, and its inclusion in the OT canon suggests that it was, at least to some extent, then this move into Babylon can be seen as nothing else than an extension of the Abrahamic covenant. God sent the Israelites into exile for a purpose already evidenced in the covenant found in Genesis 12; namely, to be a blessing to all nations, to seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile. Read with Foucault’s analysis in mind, we can see that right from the beginning what we have here is a multi-leveled power configuration in which there is no plain flow of power from oppressor to oppressed. On the surface it can be said that the Israelites were being taken off into captivity; yet theologically, and more interestingly for Foucault and for our study, the Israelites found themselves sent for a specific purpose. This missional imagination would prove to be challenging for the Babylonians. Their efforts to absorb the Israelites and erase their culture would be difficult when faced with counterpractices, promoted among the Israelites, such as strict Monotheistic worship, and purity laws. The power that is at stake in this sentness into exile is in serious tension with the negative move to ‘take into exile’. One might even understand this move to the exile as a positive generating power relation, on behalf of the captors, in that the Babylonians considered the final victory complete only in absorbing the victim into Babylonian national existence, thus not only eliminating the enemy but producing out of the victim yet another citizen under their own flag, so to speak. Yet, if Foucault is right, the Israelites are no mere passive bystanders in all of this, and our text even highlights their act-ivity. The Israelites push on towards exile, not being sluggishly dragged off, and they come not as passive slaves, but with their own maneouvers, techniques and strategies of power. Nebuchadnezzer thought he had a perfect prison cell figured for them – exilic existence – but he was mistaken. Daniel Smith-Christopher, in his book A Biblical Theology of Exile, argues that this exilic mode of existence was not passive at all. He wears his exegetical interests on his sleeves, introducing his project as a discussion designed to empower the contemporary Church to see its own post-Christendom existence as analogous to Jewish experiences of diaspora. Christopher draws spiritual, theological, sociological, and political resources from experiences of diaspora so that the Church of our time can better understand its own activity as meaningful, purposeful, and its own situation as one of sentness rather than taken-ness. The details of his work involve careful exegetical and critical research, especially of Ezra and Nehemiah. Christopher challenges common views of Ezra and Nehemiah that presuppose their full support for Persian rule and the ‘salvation’ offered by Cyrus. Instead, Christopher argues that there is a ‘hidden transcript’ of resistance to Persian authority as well as a continued allegiance to the authority of God. Christopher finds in Ezra and Nehemiah a ‘subversive theology’ that resists Persian allegiance and rather involves the exiles in a community that worships Yahweh alone.8 Much of his work is aimed at defending the historical existence of the Israelites as accounted for in the books of the Old Testament against those who see all of these writings as Persian authorized literature for a minority group. Despite these important arguments, what is interesting about his work is what he is trying to accomplish theologically. Christopher’s work 8 Daniel Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), 45. 6 assumes that the Israelites in exile were viable communities, even when they had no nationalist aspirations or possibilities; not only viable, but they were also dynamic and transforming communities. This is precisely because, as Foucault would argue, there is no such thing as pure passivity – existence without power – and that all communal practices and every existing community entails power relations. This is why Christopher is also careful to avoid any notion of ecclesial purity, because Israel and Christianity are themselves implicated in power relations that are demonic and violent. Moreover, he argues that Christians need to repent from and resist their own histories of imperial terrorizing of other peoples.9 Yet there is a sense in which Christopher still assumes a kind of mono-directional power when he asks, “how ought modern Christians cope with this loss of power?”10 Foucault would challenge any sense of a complete ‘loss’ of power. It may be possible for the power relations to shift such that the people involved are formed differently, yet this by no means exists as a complete loss of power. Is it true that Christians today live with a lack or loss of power? He asks this question in the context of an engagement with Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought. Niebuhr was known for labelling as sectarian any ideas of transforming society that did not assume a kind of top-down approach to effective change. It is for this reason that he understood pacifism to be a cop-out, or idealist vision at best, which in the end failed to responsibly attend to the way change really happens in society. Christopher shows some promise in opposing Niebuhr’s view, saying that it would be true “only under the assumption that violent power is the sole viable context that is characteristic of Christian morality. I would further argue that an ecclesiology built on “exile” as a biblical paradigm represents a revolutionary regrouping, rethinking, and restrategizing option for contemporary Christian existence.”11 With this it seems that he is suggesting that the resisting ‘strategy’ would be a non-violent ‘power’, yet a power relation nonetheless; but then we may ask why he later, and just a few lines down, describes this as a ‘loss’ of power. In the quotation above we can get a glimpse of what Christopher has in mind when he speaks of exiles as escaping the typical powerlessness associated with nonnational life in a foreign land, and also what he has in mind for how this relates to our modern post-Christendom churches. He uses the terms ‘revolutionary regrouping’, ‘rethinking’ and ‘restrategizing’ as descriptors for the exilic mode of existence. This closely resembles the work of Christopher’s theological mentor, John H. Yoder, who often argued that an exilic stance allows people to see options that are otherwise not seen, and pursue options that those in power cannot afford to pursue. There is a dynamic quality to exilic existence, especially when coupled with eschatological hope that opens up creative thinking and makes alternative strategies possible, strategies that are otherwise deemed ineffective. These three exilic practices name a community that is anything but powerless; they exist as a different kind of agential configuration in which power does not ‘rest’ on any one person, it does not ‘rest’ at all. Power names a stream of relations that one cannot be removed from – for Christopher this means that we cannot help but get wet! 9 Ibid., 25. Ibid., 191. 11 Ibid. 10 7 In the end, Christopher is able to appreciate a Foucaultian analysis of power, at least to some extent. He insists that the church’s alternative today is not to flee from exile, nor join the ranks of the Babylonian army, nor fight against them. The alternative, I insist, is not to reinvest in power by statecraft. Lest we also react by further romanticizing the nation-state, exiles are after all not merely sufferers, nor are they inevitably incomplete, nor are they always handicapped without the trappings of statehood. This is not to deny the often negative conditions under which many exiled peoples must function; it is rather to recognize fully the creativity and resourcefulness with which these peoples remain firmly engaged in the world despite their inability to assert themselves violently—among other privileges of a state! Exiles cannot be reduced to mere sufferers of statelessness. Exiles can be creative master strategists and often dedicated students of the realities of the world.12 (emphasis mine) Here we get a glimpse of the positive power that is operative in exilic existence. It is not mere passivity, but creativity, strategy and transformation. Foucault would nodoubt be critical at some of the lingering notions of mono-directional power employed by Christopher. A page after the quote above Christopher speaks about these strategies as tools for ‘survival’ in exile, as though the task and calling of the Israelite, and also of the Church today, is simply to survive.13 This still maintains a lingering passivity, or inward focus, which is not present in Jeremiah’s letter to the people sent into Babylonian exile. This ‘quiet in the land’ posture of survival only gets at the negative aspect – being set apart – of what it means to be sent into exile. Foucault would be quick to point out, along with Jeremiah, that any relational existence includes an interpenetration of strategies for control and transformation. Sure, the people may be ‘taken’ into exile, yet the God of Creation has SENT them into exile. The power configuration is not one of oppressoroppressed, predator-survivor. Daniel Smith-Christopher’s A Biblical Theology of Exile presents a compelling read of the exilic writings in the Old Testament. He offers a sound defence against those who would argue that the exilic literature is but a mere prelude to a more positive view of Persian ‘salvation’. But even more importantly, Christopher shows how exilic existence did not negate the missional covenant between God and Israel, but presented itself as one more situation in which the divine mandate is borne witness by the more or less faithful community. This witness names a set of practices that are themselves maneouvers, strategies, and relations in which power is at stake. The exiles are no mere sufferers but master strategists. Our discussion has answered the question posed in the introduction, and in answer to our thesis we can say that Christopher’s narration of the Babylonian exile points us in a helpful direction even as it fails to nuance the discussion in ways that Foucault requires. Christopher is sensitive to Foucault’s concerns about power and its multi-directionality; yet some of his comments betray a lingering sense of defeat or passivity among those who have ‘lost power’. In the end, however, I think Christopher’s reading of the exile pays closer attention to the nature of power and its relations, and the possibility for 12 Ibid., 197. This is not to say that strategies for survival are less active or less involved in power relations than other modes of non-national existence; yet survival suggests an internal focus over against the hostile environment, whereas Jeremiah is pushing his readers to see themselves in an outward movement, a mission towards exile and a sentness towards a specific calling and purpose. 13 8 dynamism and creativity in exile, than those for whom exile is automatically dismissed as a passive and culturally degenerative mode of existence. To end our discussion, and as a side note, we join Christopher in asking what kinds of lessons the contemporary Church can learn from the Jewish diaspora. Christians are called and sent into this world, as strangers or exiles, to bear witness to God and his coming kingdom. The Church is not called to power over others (Mt. 25:25-27), yet the Church’s calling to servanthood is not a calling away from power relations either; instead, the Church exists as an alternative set of powerful practices. Although Foucault may or may not give us adequate categories for determining the justness or goodness of these alternate power relations, the Christian story does provide some signposts that shape our imagination on these matters in a specific way. One of the first lessons that the Church must learn about its exilic existence is simply that it is not a passive existence - it is purposeful and meaningful, naming a time in which strategic and creative practices bear witness to the power of God. Secondly, since the Church names a set of practices and relations of power, it must awaken itself to the ways in which it has partnered with the powers of evil and oppression in the wrongs it has committed and in the good work that it continually fails to engage in. To put it differently, the Church must repent from the practices and modes of existence that shape Christians whose life and character are fundamentally at odds with the Truth embodied in Jesus Christ. And, as a concluding thought, alongside Christopher’s notion of the Church in exile as a creative master strategist, Christians ought to scheme for the Kingdom, and continue to clarify their existence as a tactics of servanthood – seeking the peace of the cities into which they have been sent into exile. Bibliography Cavanaugh, William T. Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1998. Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Smith-Christopher, Daniel. A Biblical Theology of Exile. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002. 9