89G. CHAD SNYDERElon UniversityPREDICAMENTS!A review of Gavin Hyman, T - PDF document

89G. CHAD SNYDERElon UniversityPREDICAMENTS!A review of Gavin Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy orNihilist Textualism? Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001.OSTMODERN THEOLOGY. In some sense it is a new game and in somesense it is an a new space for theological reflectionby paying attention to certain limits of or foreclosures and by which strategy theubiquitous Òpost-Ó will best be put to use. For better or worse, tacticians havecoalesced into camps. Teams have been formed, scrimmages scheduled. Onemight, if prone to such metaphorical flights, even understand the Atlantic as atrench co-opted to separate the combatantsÑan image supported by ascendance As much of contemporary thought inspired by 1 Carl Raschke, The Alchemy of the Word: Language and the End of Theology (Missoula: Scholars Press,1979); republished as is necessary between two positions attempting,based forthe former, radical orthodoxy and, predominantly, its most prodigious exemplar,John Milbank, for the latter.These two positions have a little something in common, says Hyman. Theyunderstand their projects as intimately involved in the issue of narrativity. Cupittand lightness, and nonseriousness of narratives; the overcoming of thedistinction between signifier and several tasks the way for an orthodox theological rendering. First andforemost, if knowledge is constituted by that the Lyotardian structure Hyman finds implicated inthe entirety of position by which a metanarrative must be chosen. It is this choice which occupiesthe orthodox imagination. ÒFor Milbank, postmodernism is to be welcomedbecause it means the end of the particular metanarrative of secular reason andthereby opens the clearing for the return of a as a metanarrative which (to use MilbankÕs word) ÔpositionsÕ all othernarratives, discourses and disciplines completely and without reserve.Ó (4)Here is the either/or of HymanÕs title. Postmodern theologyÕs predicament lies in MilbankÕs metanarrative ofChristian harmony. Or rather, as Hyman points out, the real predicament is thelack of such an encounter. ÒIt may be said that radical orthodoxy and nihilisttextualism provide two radically antithetical theological responses to ourpostmodern predicament. What is particularly striking, however, is that thesetwo responses have largely failed to confront and engage each other.Ó (4)For the most part, compatriots (an equally intensive Wittgenstein, Hyman proffers that, for any discursive encounter to be successful, as manifestations of a much more fundamentalshift that took place within theology itself during the fourteenth century.Ó (33)This shift regards the question of being, in relation to God, as it plays out in thetheological ascendance of Duns Scotus over the Thomism of the time. Theargument avers that Thomas AquinasÕ notion of one insofar as the quantitative distinction must eventually be understood asinfinite. Hyman ably recounts the consequences of such a history, including thewell-noted modern phantoms of certainty, scientism, and its opponents, Hyman unfortunately misses a one,and as he finds the analysis Òconvincing,Ó there is some expectation that theconsequences of the differing genealogies, narrative or otherwise, would besignificant. If the metaphysical ruination of the then the very constitution of HymanÕs relianceupon Lyotard, Wittgenstein and de Certeau is in need of radical reflection. Forthe swath of continentalist thinkers constituting postmodernismÕs vague canon,the occasion of the Enlightenment constitutes an important and insistent hostobject for its parasitical activities. Indeed, as Derrida has found it necessary tocomment, even if the Enlightenment is in dire need of a critical repetition of thetraces of transcendence, ÒWe cannot and must notÑand this is a law and adestinyÑforgo the Aufklarung.Ó7!An interrogation of the compulsion and analysis, one critically fundamental consequence and unavoidable Milbank fails ofnihilism. A distinction needs to there is nihilism of a metaphysical and positivist nature, one thatremarks a presentable nihil. Alternately, there is nihilism of a fictional nature,which, by virtue of its commitment to narrativity, entertains deferral completelyand thus avoids the perils of metaphysics. At the center of this distinction is thefigure of Nietzsche, who has occupied, in the hands of various readers, both enjoined by outside the question of Being. In HeideggerÕs ear, this reversal still soundsas an interrogation of what Òis.Ó Hyman asks, ÒIs this not a metaphysics of thenothing, the nothing that ÔisÕ? And is the will-to-power not a metaphysicalprinciple that represents the ÒtruthÓ of the human condition?ÓSituating Milbank in this tradition opens his view of nihilism to the morecontemporary Nietzsche of by the process of its own elucidation. Inother words, nihilism in its metaphysical appearance is always only departing and it raises questions, for Hyman, about howthat choice is reflected in other terms. If nihilism is a positivist endeavor then it isresponsible for a certain ontological consequence. MilbankÕs reading of nihilism,then, involves an understanding of the nihilist metanarrative as an ontology ofconflict, war, difference and violence. Against this, the Christian metanarrativeoffers an ontology of peace and unity that is, perhaps, more desirable. However,if postmodern nihilism is of the fictional variety, and its proponents are more we not do better to say that theyrefuse ontology? This would be more consistent with the clash ofontologies, Hyman rightly notes that there is something rather suspect about thesingularity and reductionism of MilbankÕs blanket use of the term Ònihilist.Ó Itseems to substitute all too neatly for the names of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze,Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida. So much for a narrative of peace, or, as Hymanoffers, ÒIn a particularly violent act, therefore, Milbank obliterates all differenceboth within as well as among these thinkers.Ó (108)Fictional nihilism, the broad side of the either/or choice we get from HymanÕsown title, it seems, provides a finer-grained and more successful engagementwith metaphysics than MilbankÕs metaphysics is now overcome.Ó (105)However, the notion that theology, armed with its indefatigable fictionalist flip-side, enacts this Òtwisting freeÓ is a troubling conclusion. It is rare that anythinker involved in the 20th century tradition surrounding the critique ofmetaphysics or ontotheology might make such a claim.!Certainly, sinceHeidegger has been set toward such animpossibility. But is not the very importance always seemed to view thinking as interminably preparatory,why Derrida has insisted on the parasitical nature of deconstruction in relation toenduring institutional structures, and why Mark C. Taylor has consistently askedafter the very possibility of Òa/theologyÓ. repeated again and again incontinentalist thought are almost never choices related to this overcoming, butrather are choices concerning vital existence in the difficult face of HymanÕs encounter with Milbank regards the question ofmetanarrative itself. ÒMilbank claims that is functionally positionedby a particular philosophyÉ.Ó (89) MilbankÕs supplement, which Hyman locatesin his particular reading of Augustine and, further, within his Trinitariansensibility, reflects the relationship of theology to the nihilism of the recit, and, as of this ÒotherÓ and itstreatment by Cupitt, Taylor and writes within a place or sitethat is responsive to the heterological significance marked out by the variedsupplementarities of fictional nihilism. This can be seen postmodernities of the likes of of every positioning narrative. ÒThis neither/nor opens up a space in whichotherness and difference of perpetual departure, the problem on HymanÕs mind reducesto a query of the or left behind in the name of ofnihilism necessitates a turn away from the modernist assault on the infinitetowards an embroilment within a and potentialities marked by theoverabundance of narratives. One may, throughÓ them, a strategy Hyman attributes should dispel such a notion. Thechoice of the desert t(r)opology is not a sees as an impossibility. If Taylor understood the ÒdesertÓ inthe former sense he would be of traditional who Hyman lauds as a properexemplar of fictional nihilism, is are themselves of howde CerteauÕs movement of departure does not pass over locations and traditionsbut moves through them. We must ÔfollowÕ the movements of the mystics but Ôat adistanceÕ; we must ÔcommitÕ ourselves to them but also Ôleave them behind.ÕÓ(132) The relationship Hyman applauds seems to bear a certain resemblance torepetition, to which de Certeau holds no unique claim. In addition to theaforementioned repetition of the Enlightenment in the continental tradition,HymanÕs example definitely calls to mind TaylorÕs own repetition of the traditionof negative theology. ends in a defense ofthat exile logicand concern for the ÒotherÓ in a theologically conservative or eucharistic light.Theology, it must be reckoned, is one of those particular sorts Erring begins and ends with rather than neologism, within the title of four of the book's six chapters).The Predicament of with its critiqueof Radical Orthodoxy. HymanÕs isolation of the theological discourse of ontologyin a certain and HymanÕs significantly short-shrifted engagement with the breadth of the continental tradition and finalrushed and out-of-place