Rev. Dr. TWH

Rest From Cruel Dominion: Embracing Mercy on the Sabbath Day

A Sermon Based On Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-3:6

I.

We rule the land. We rule the air. We rule the seas. Human animals have dominion over the earth.

I completely agree with Matthew Scully, a Republican, when we argues in his eloquent and moving book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy—I entirely agree with his argument that “[t]he term dominion carries no insult to our fellow [,non-human animal] creatures. We are all set forth into the world with different gifts and attributes. Their gifts, the ones their Creator intended for them, are good for many things—governing just isn’t one of them. Someone has to assume dominion, and looking around the earth we seem to be the best candidates. . . “ (12).

That truth doesn’t make us better or more valuable or less animal than, say, pigs, octopuses, cows, elephants or batts. Our dominion merely reflects our difference, our unique—yet completely animal—place in the world.

So the question we face today—and every day—is not whether we have dominion over the earth—we manifestly do—the question we face is a much more difficult one: What kind of sovereigns are we?

Are we merciful, compassionate, filled with wonder at the sheer diversity of life all around us and so are sovereigns committed to respecting and protecting the inherent dignity of all animal life?

Or, Are we cruel sovereigns, rulers who thwart access to justice and to restoration.

II.

We are so very often cruel sovereigns of the earth.

Our cruel reign is sometimes expressed through our faith in what Martha Nussbaum, in her powerful and life-changing book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility—identifies as a Romantic view of nature.

We enjoy Romantic thoughts of “Natural” spaces—and of “Natural” people, too. We love to imagine that there are, out there somewhere, pristine, self-regulated, balanced places and self-sufficient, rural people.

The Romantic idea of “Nature” intoxicates us, but when we sober up and actually observe nature, I think we start to agree with the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill: “Nature is cruel and thoughtless.”

When we sober up, when we are truly in nature, I think we begin to learn what ecologists teach us: “balance of nature” is a nice slogan for fruit and veggie supplements, but no such thing exists in nature.

And rural poverty and isolation from needed resources, like quality healthcare, may be, from the Romantic point of view, the “Natural” order of things, but that is just another reason for us to sober up.

Our faith in “Nature” makes us neglectful; it enables us to ignore the suffering of our fellow creatures.

But we are not always neglectful, are we? Sensing that our fellow creatures, including our own species, can serve the needs of some dominant group, we force them to serve the free market.

Consider the slaughterhouses throughout our county. Who works there? What do they do all day? And what creatures are killed there? How many are killed there? And how are they killed there? For some answers, read a book like Steven Wise’s An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominio on the Banks of the Cape Fear River.

The cries for mercy rise up from those allegedly pristine Natural places and from farms and slaughterhouses all over our country, and they summon us to rest from our cruel dominion.

III.

We heard God, in the 4th Commandment we read earlier, asking us to take a break from our cruel dominion. We are asked to rest from cruel dominion on the Sabbath and to remember that God liberated us from the regime of cruelty.

That sounds nice—but carefully consider the logic of the Sabbath Commandment: Liberation from slavery in Egypt is the justification for pausing the institution of slavery among those liberated from it. You heard the text: Let your male and female slaves rest on the Sabbath day. I guess you can take the slaves out of Egypt but you can’t take the Egypt out of the liberated slaves—except, maybe, on the Sabbath Day.

But cruel dominion is the policy of the Sabbath Day, too.

The story we read from Mark teaches us that cruelty has become a Sabbath Day tradition. Consider this story, another version of the policy of pious cruelty Mark is critiquing:

All of 17-years-old, I attended a winter church retreat in McCall, Idaho. I managed to get very sick while at the retreat.

I will spare you the details of all the ways my body was trying to expel the sickness.

Anyway, I ended up in hospital, stayed the night on an IV, and returned to the retreat in the morning, in time for breakfast. I walked into the cafeteria and nearly vomited at the sight and smells of sausages and bacon. I consigned myself to hunger.

Later that morning, we gathered for worship and for communion. The chunk of communion bread I ate was so satisfying that, after the service, I went back to the communion table, and I started to chow down on the huge loaf of leftover bread.

It felt so good.

As I was being restored, clergy So-And-So walked over to me and calmly, but with a tone, reminded me that I was eating the body of Christ—and he suggested I stop eating it like a wild animal, by which he meant I should just stop eating it altogether; communion was over.

Being a good teenager, I just completely ignored him. I was not going to be blocked from what I needed to heal.

I hope we have the courage to teach our youth that lesson: sometimes holy trouble will look like totally ignoring religious people. Sometimes, even as your hand is being swatted away by church folks, you just have to keep reaching out your hand and ripping off huge chunks of bread, of justice, of healing.

Cruel dominion, all the ways, through inaction and action, we block animals from justice and restoration—cruel dominion is so often a Sunday tradition. But tradition is not destiny. We can do something different, if only for one day a week. We can rest from our cruel dominion.

IV.

Some of you have may noticed a story about the Hurricanes a few weeks ago. I know we have Canes fans in here today. Maybe you saw a story about them entitled, in part, “Hurricanes Use Rest As A Weapon.”

What they did was refuse to practice early in the morning on game day. They went out of their way to get on the ice the day before the game, choosing to rest on the morning of the game. The Canes know what we all know: rest impacts how we perform.

Rest makes us smarter. Rest makes us stronger. Rest makes us patient. Rest makes us merciful and compassionate. Rest makes us woke.

Woke just means that cruel dominion exhausts us. If we’re woke, that just means we want a break from all forms of cruel dominion; woke means we want to rest from cruel human dominion.

Rested, we may forsake all forms of slavery, all forms of cruel dominion.

Rested, we may even begin to hear that part of the 4th Commandment that asks us to give animals a rest. Rested, we may start to consider animals as something other than property to be used and as something other than food to be eaten. Rested, we may find it in ourselves to liberate animals from slavery.

V.

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham was right when he compared our treatment of animals to slavery. Our cruel dominion over animals can even be hidden in practices that are actually good from our fellow creatures. Think about some of the reasons we stop eating meat:

We stop eating meat to save rainforests, as our meat eating habits require more and more land to raise all those cattle.

We stop eating meat because cows produce methane gases, more than all the cars in the world, changing our environment.

We stop eating meat because it is not healthy for us.

We may even stop eating meat because we oppose cruelty to animals, and industrial farming is terribly cruel to animals. We have an intuitive sense that if we are cruel to animals, that if we support such cruelty, we will also be cruel to one another.

But notice: all that concern, it’s all about us.

Rested, we may realize what Aristotle did: animals like pigs, cows, and chickens “are self-maintaining systems who pursue a good and matter to themselves.” Rested, we may grasp that most animals, including all the ones we like to eat, are sentient creatures.

Sentience is about a lot more than feeling pleasure and pain. It also means that you have an opinion of yourself; you see yourself in a certain way, and you see others in your group, and other objects in the world, in a certain way. And you move accordingly, you move in a way that aligns with your sense of yourself and your sense of how the objects in your world conform to your understanding of what is good and what is bad for you.

Rested, we may grasp that the sow is sentient; she was not created to be food for us; she was created to pursue her goods: a long, satisfying life, and friendship, intimacy, family, nutrition, play, secure housing; rested, we may now understand that the sow desires to pursue her projects and to accomplish her goals.

Rested, the smell of sausages and bacon on the Sabbath may make us want to vomit.

Rested, we may come to this table and reach out our hands, not to kill and eat our fellow creatures, but to be restored by the taste of bread and of grapes.

VI.

Now, I understand if you were with me until that last bit about not eating sentient animals, like pigs. I get it.

I became a vegetarian just last November after I read Nussbaum’s book—and by the reactions of many family and friends, you would think being a vegetarian is the most weirdest thing to be in the world!

Yes, of course vegetarianism is weird, especially if the reason you are a vegetarian is rooted in animal studies, in the fact that most animals, including all of the ones we just love to eat, are sentient in the most expansive sense of the word.

Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy. Humans creatures are above animality, above the body and endowed with heavenly reason—we deserve justice; animals deserve ketchup.

Again, I completely agree with Matthew Scully. He writes, “I am betting that in the Book of Life ‘[They] had mercy on the creatures’ is going to count for more than ‘[They] ate well” (45).

Rested, we may even learn that it’s possible to forsake cruelty and to eat well!

VII.

On the sabbath day, just for one day, let’s rest from our cruel dominion; let’s eat more bread and drink more wine (I mean, grape juice).

Today, let’s embrace the deepest truth of our faith: God liberated us from cruel dominion.

Today, let it be heard and believed that God gave the middle finger to cruel dominion: God delivered the Messiah Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, from the grave.

So today, let us really rest from cruel dominion; it’s just done day; it’s just one small act—but tomorrow, rested, you may wake up woke, ready to play the game of dominion differently, ready to become the human animals God created us to become: kind and merciful sovereigns of the earth.

May it be so.

Amen.

Martha Nussbaum, Justice for Animals, and the Ethical Problem of Animal Predation

I.

Animal predation is an ethical problem. Smart human intervention is required to address it. Or so Martha Nussbaum argues in Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022):

We need above all to convince people that predation is a problem. Too many people grow up excited and enthralled by predation, and this has had a bad effect on our entire culture. It’s important to keep pointing out that antelopes were not made to be food, they were made to live antelope lives. The fact that they so often do not get to live those lives is a problem, and since we are in charge everywhere we need to figure out how much we can and should do about it (252).

Nussbaum’s analysis of “the wild” comes late in Justice for Animals (see chapter 10, “The ‘Wild’ and Human Responsibility”), and there is a reason for that: the idea that we should somehow intervene in “the wild,” especially in “wild” behaviors like animal predation, will likely strike many readers as totally bizarre. So, it’s important to step back and acquaint ourselves with the development of Nussbaum’s argument before we directly engage the character of animal predatory behavior as an ethical problem in chapter 10.

Below is an outline of what is covered in this overview:

What is justice? (chapter 1, section II. below)
Inadequate approaches to animal ethics (chapters 2-4, section III. below)
Nussbaum’s Capability Approach (CA) to animal justice (chapter 5, section IV. below)
Sentience and the subjects of (in)justice (chapter 6, section V. below)
When is death a harm? (chapter 7, section VI. below)
The Problem of Predation (chapter 10, section VII. below)

In a forthcoming post, “What Do Sentient Creatures Want?,” I will test Nussbaum’s argument for human intervention in animal predation against serious philosophical and ecological objections to said interference. In that post I will also explain why I ultimately side with Nussbaum. For now, our task is to trace the ecological and philosophical trajectory of Nussbaum’s overall argument in Justice for Animals, namely that animals are subjects of (in)justice.

II.

Nussbaum begins by defining what she means by justice. She defines justice largely by contrasting it with injustice. “[T]he general intuition should be emerging more clearly: injustice centrally involves significant striving blocked by not just harm but also wrongful thwarting, whether negligent or deliberate” (8, emphasis original).

“Significant striving” means that particular animals move with intention to obtain what is significant to them (e.g., shelter, play, friendship, etc.). When significant striving, deliberate movement to obtain “what is reasonably significant” to a particular animal, is unjustly blocked, it entails more than harm. An animal may encounter any number of harms in the course of their significant striving, harms such as illness or a storm that destroys their nest (or worse). These harms are no one’s fault. Wrongful thwarting entails fault.

We are right to think that when someone with the power to act does so in a way they know, or should know, will wrongfully thwart another animal’s thriving, we are dealing with unjust action. We are also right to think that when someone with the power to act fails to exert that power in a way they know, or should know, will prevent the wrongful undermining of another animal’s thriving, we are dealing with unjust inaction (i.e., neglect).

For example, a child destroying a bird’s nest is wrongful thwarting of a bird’s significant striving. Likewise, a parenting standing idly by as their kid smashes the nest is inaction that constitutes a wrongful thwarting of a bird’s significant striving. Justice, by contrast, is related to laws, norms, and institutions that reasonably support and enable significant striving.

But how do we get here, to the place where we (human animals) understand animal lives in terms of (in)justice? How do we get beyond the view of someone like John Rawls who thought that while animals are worthy of our compassion, “they could not be treated justly or unjustly” (9). The ultimate answer to those questions is animal sentience. But for now, Nussbaum emphasizes three emotions that “have the potential to help us beyond our daily context” (9). They are:

Wonder, “like love, is epistemic: it leads us out of ourselves and awakens a nascent ethical concern” (12).
Compassion is feeling “pain at the significant suffering of another creature” (12).
Outrage “is a form of anger . . . . [this] species of anger turns to face forward, and its aim is to create a better future. For that reason I will call it Transition-Anger [because it is without a retributive wish] (15).¹

When these emotions are ethically attuned and joined together they lead us in the right direction: “Wonder arrests our attention and draws us out of ourselves, inspiring curiosity about an alien world. Compassion links us to the suffering animal in a powerful emotional experience. Transition-Anger prepares us for action” (16).

In addition to these ethically attuned and intertwined emotions, we need a good theory for comprehending animal lives as subjects of (in)justice. Nussbaum carefully assesses three major approaches to animal ethics, and she points out how they fail to adequately comprehend animal lives as subjects of (in)justice.

III.

The “So Like Us” approach to animal ethics is the first of the three approaches to animal ethics Nussbaum reviews, and it is the the subject of chapter 2. The most influential advocate of this approach is Steven Wise.

The idea is that certain animals are like human beings, approximating human capabilities, and so they should be treated accordingly. Nussbaum contends that “[t]his theory is too narrow, unworthy of the alienness and sheer diversity of animal lives. And it is counterproductive as a strategy to expand animal entitlements” (19-20).

Yet, this approach has managed to strike the ears of US judges with a basic Western education. It is that Western education that Nussbaum summarizes and to the end of further highlighting why the “So Like Us” theory is too limited in its scope and inadequate to guide our future efforts toward animal justice.

The main idea underlying a basic Western education in animal ethics is the religious idea of the scala naturae: a fixed, natural ladder with humans on the top and other animals following on a descending scale of value/worth. This religious idea is often attributed to Aristotle, but Nussbaum is not convinced it is his idea, at least not in its popular, religious form.²

The “So Like Us” theory plays on the religious idea of the scala naturae, arguing that while apes, for example, have not risen to the level of human beings on the ladder, they have come up pretty close. So, it would seem reasonable to grant them legal rights associated with human personhood.

There are many problems with this view. They are:

“[M]ost of the animal world still lies outside [as they are too unlike us] in the dark domain of thinghood” (31).
“The image of the scala naturae is not drawn from looking at nature, and it does not correspond to what we see when we look at nature . . . “ (31).
“It leads to ugly projects in which humans imagine transcending their animal bodies by casting aspersions on the smells and fluids of the body” (32).
“[I]t leads to a focus on artificial performances that are not really characteristic of the species as it lives its life in the wild [i.e., (sign) language abilities]” (33).
Wise and others, like Thomas White, privilege “likeness over strangeness [although White has since adopted the CA approach]” (38).

The second view of animal ethics Nussbaum assesses is that of the British Utilitarians. They are the subject of chapter 3. While they emphasize “the commonality of all animals in our shared pain,” they still come up short of animal justice in some essential ways (39).

The British Utilitarians Nussbaum has in mind are Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sedgwick. She also includes Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and close follower of British Utilitarian ideas, in her analysis of Utilitarian thought applied to animal ethics.

Utilitarian thinkers advanced animal rights in critical ways. Bentham, for example, compared “our treatment of other animals to slavery” (40). He also recognized that animals suffer; “suffering [is] a common bond among all animals” (56). The key ethical facts for Bentham are pleasure and pain. “The aim of a rational politics should be to maximize the net balance of pleasure over pain in the universe” (40).

Bentham also challenged the idea of the natural ladder. “[Animals] should not be treated as things or property, and their interests should be treated with as much attention as those of humans, ‘allowance made for the difference in point of sensibility.'” In other words, “similar interests should be treated similarly, but something that is irrelevant to the interests of the creature should not matter in thinking about its needs” (43). Utilitarians also recognize animal sentience, and the importance of sentience as a threshold for defining the subject of (in)justice (see section V. below).

The main problem with Utilitarian animal ethics is the singular focus on pain and pleasure. While Mill takes a more nuanced view of pleasure (including the fact that we may take pleasure in terrible things, like killing animals), the singular focus on pleasure and pain ignores the fact that animal “lives have other relevant aspects: dignity, social capacity, play, planning, and free movement among others” (56).

The third theory of animal ethics Nussbaum reviews is that of Christine Korsgaard. Korsgaard fashions animal ethics in Kantian terms: animals are ends in themselves and not merely means. The difficulty with her theory is the character of and undue emphasis on human rationality or moral reasoning.

Kant did not hold animals in high esteem because he believed they lacked “the capacity for ethical choice” and so, citing Kant, they may be used “as we please” (58). Kant did, however, argue against the cruel treatment of animals. He thought unkindness to animals made humans unkind to one another. Nonetheless, Kantian ethics is important for its emphasis on the “inviolability and dignity of the individual creature” (58).

The central idea Korsgaard takes from Kantian ethics and applies to animal ethics is the second version of the Categorical Imperative: “So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” How this imperative applies to animals, and not just to “humanity,” is in need of further explanation.

Kant thought that humans, on account of our unique ability to reflect ethically and to make choices, are the only species “who can be obligated and have duties” (65, emphasis original). Korsgaard argues that it does not follow that “we are the only creatures who can be the objects of duties, creatures to whom duties are owed” (65, emphasis original). This is so, not for Kantian, but for Aristotelian reasons.

Aristotle thought animals are “self-maintaining systems who pursue a good and who matter to themselves” (65). If we accept this view, as both Korsgaard and Nussbaum do, it follows that human animals are ethically obligated to respect and value the, to use Nussbaum’s term, “significant striving” of animals. We have an ethical obligation to treat animals as ends and not merely as means, that is, if we wish to be ethically consistent.

The fact that my cat is an animal with goals and purposes does not, however, collapse the difference(s) between my cat and myself, leading us back to a “So Like Us” approach to animal ethics. My cat is to be treated as an end and not merely as a means because of his catness and not because he resembles something approximating my humanness. Korsgaard, Nussbaum contends, “avoids most of the errors of the ‘So Like Us’ approach, but in the end she ties herself to a version of it: the value of animals is derivative from likeness to humanity” (67).

The significant difference between Korsgaard and Nussbaum is the line the former draws between special human rationality (i.e., autonomous will) and animal nature. For Nussbaum, “all of our capacities are part of our animal nature” (65). So, human rationality, human ethical reasoning, may make me different from, say, my cat, but it doesn’t make me somehow less animal (to be clear, Korsgaard rejections human superiority), and it doesn’t make my cat a machine of instincts, a creature incapable of a cat specific kind of ethical reasoning.

Animals studies alert us to the ethical capabilities of many kinds of animals. “[Sperm whales, macaws, chimpanzees a]ll have social mechanisms for teaching young members appropriate social norms, thus developing instinctual endowments in a direction that promotes group and individual welfare. And isn’t that really what all good parents are trying to do?” (75). In other words, good sperm whale parents teach their children how to be good sperm whales.

Nussbaum takes from Kant the emphasis on individual animal worth. She takes from Aristotle the emphasis on the dignity of all animals. Developing her own approach, she avoids all the pitfalls mentioned earlier: the split between rationality and nature, the myopic focus on maximizing aggregate pleasure, and the emphasis on animal likeness to human animal capabilities.

IV.

In chapter 5, Nussbaum describes her Capabilities Approach and begins to show how it applies to animal ethics. What is the Capabilities Approach?

The CA “argues that a society is even minimally just only if it secures to each individual citizen a minimum threshold amount of a list of Central Capabilities, which are defined as substantial freedoms, or opportunities for choice and action in areas of life that people in general have reason to value. . . it emphasizes material empowerment more than do many rights-based approaches [, and] it leaves spaces for individual freedom” (80, emphasis original).

Like Korsgaard’s Kantian inspired theory, CA understands “each individual creature . . . as having dignity that law and politics must respect, treating that individual as an end, not simply as a means” (81). It does not, however, set human moral powers above “other aspects of animal living, and it sees all human powers as parts of the equipment of a mortal and vulnerable animal who deserves a fair shake in life–as do all sentient animals” (81).

CA moves beyond a simple, singular focus on GDP, a national measure of economic health. “Short-sighted development policies often aim to make people feel good rather than to empower them. ‘What are people (and what is each person) actually able to do and to be?’ The [CA] asks, and answers, that very practical question” (84, 86). Again, CA recognizes significant striving, in this case, the fact that we humans, each of us, are “active beings seeking a flourishing life that they themselves create” (87).

Each human being needs certain things, certain entitlements or rights, in order to flourish. The 10 central capabilities are listed below (see 89 for a full explanation of each). “One way of thinking about what all the items on the list have in common is that they all seem to be inherent in the intuitive idea we form of a life that is worthy of human dignity” (91):

Life
Bodily Health
Bodily Integrity
Senses, Imagination, Thought
Emotions
Practical Reason
Affiliation
Other Species
Play
Control Over One’s Environment

We don’t all need or want all of the above capabilities (at least not every aspect of what each entails); we, each of us, are free to choose among them to create the lives we want for ourselves. Yet, if any one of the capabilities were subtracted, we would rightly feel like human life is being treated as a means and not as an end.

The role of government, of law and policy, is to secure “the capabilities for all.” The capabilities list “is a list of fundamental tasks of government” (92). Critically, “[t]his doesn’t mean that people always should rely on government to solve their problems. . . . But it does mean that the whole matter of justice depends on getting a stable political structure that is able, enough of the time, to deliver the capabilities to the people who chose and empowered it” (92).

Both Nussbaum and Korsgaard go beyond the Kantian focus on human dignity, taking into their theories an insight from Utilitarian John Mill: “all sentient animals have a dignity of their own, which deserves respect” (92). Human dignity is, of course, different from the dignity of a dolphin, and the dolphin’s dignity is different from the elephant’s. But dignity is there, made manifest in each animal’s “pursuit of valued goals” (96).

What follows from this insight is an emphasis on the idea of “characteristic form of life.” “Each form of life is different. . . . Being more like a human would not be good or pertinent for a magpie. We humans are similar to magpies, dolphins, and elephants in groping for survival and flourishing in a mostly hostile world; we differ in the specific nature of the goods we seek” (97).

If we concede that our human “strivings should not be thwarted,” why would we allow the thwarting of the particular strivings of other animals? While humans make laws, why must we make laws only for humans? Animals cannot speak in Congress, but they do “speak” to us about their situation. Why should animals not have collaborators in Congress and in the courts, experts who carefully observe them and describe their situations to us? We do something similar when we hire an attorney to speak for us, to make our case, before a judge in a court of law.

There are many, intricate issues Nussbaum clarifies in this chapter, but I focus on only a few here. First, Nussbaum emphasizes individual dignity. Species level thinking is helpful, and each species requires its own capabilities list (though Nussbaum’s list can act as a general guide for, say, what might be important capabilities for octopuses), but the individual, and their freedom to choose which capabilities are important to their own form of life, is privileged.

Individual freedom within an entitlement structure is what is in view here. So, any one list may need to be modified to make room for unforeseen capabilities. Focus on the species takes on importance to the degree that, say, opportunities for affiliation is what individual members of a species need to flourish (e.g., for some octopuses, hanging out with their own species is not a big part of what they seek, although it is necessary for reproduction. However, many do seem to value community with different kinds of octopuses and with different species, with fish like groupers and with humans).

But are “rights” the right way to think about animal (in)justice? It’s difficult, for many reasons, to think animal rights, rights that can actually be reasonably guaranteed or supported. One reason is animals do not live neatly within local or even national borders. Nussbaum, following Kant, argues, “At the base of our rights is a very simple idea: every human being has a right to be where he or she is. . . to having a share of control over what happens in the world” (114).

Extending rights to animals is a consequence of their dignity. They, too, have a right to be where they are, and so to have, like us, “a say” in what happens. Animals rights are “‘imperfect rights’ . . . rights not against any definite person or animal, but, rather, against all human beings, against humanity imagined as capable of collective action” (113). Some animals, like dogs and cats, may be assigned specific responsibilities/duties to other animals (e.g., not to attack humans, other dogs, or birds), but animal rights are largely what human animals owe to all other sentient animals.

V.

In his elegant and moving book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, Republican Matthew Scully gets at why, in Nussbaum words, we need a “working boundary,” like sentience, when thinking animal rights.

Scully cites animal rights skeptic, his friend and conservative, Joseph Sobran:

This would put us, the human race, in the position of policing the entire animal kingdom, making sure they don’t violate each other’s rights . . . . We would reduce our workload by allowing each species to police itself . . . even (if we mean business) the fly against the spider. . . (136).

Sobran’s intention is to mock animal rights, or, in Scully words, to mock “any notion of moral status for animals,” by showing that it “ends in absurdity” (136). The concept of sentience serves as “a working boundary” in Nussbaum’s approach to animal rights, and it is a critical idea, that is, if we want to avoid the absurdity of “policing” in the relationship between flies and spiders.

The subjects of (in)justice are sentient animals. Sentient animals are entitled to rights because they are animals capable of significant striving. But what does sentience mean more exactly?

Sentience means that the world looks like something to you. It relates to subjective experience, a way of feeling about the world and what is possible for you in the world. It means that you do not simply avoid pain and move toward pleasure; it means you pursue things that are good to you, and you avoid thing that you discern are bad for you.

Sentience is, as Nussbaum observes, often reduced to the ability to feel pain (and pain is very bad for sentient creatures). But it also means that you have an opinion of yourself; you see yourself in a certain way, and you see others in your group, and other objects in the world, in a certain way. And you move accordingly, in a way that aligns with your sense of yourself and your sense of how the objects in your world conform to your understanding of what is good and bad for you. That is sentience.

“What I am saying,” Nussbaum writes, “is that my core notion of injustice can apply only to creatures who are capable of significant striving, and that involves [sentience]” (119). And most animals are, we know from scientific studies, sentient, “including all mammals, all birds, and teleost (hard-boned) fish . . . ” (119).

Nussbaum goes on to lay out the reasoning, the evidence grounding the identification of sentient creatures, including humans. Nussbaum concludes, “Significant striving, then, includes subjective perception of things that are helpful and harmful (the world looks like this to the animal), plus a variety of subjective attitudes, such as pain and pleasure, and, in addition, numerous other subjective states that motivate behavior: desires and emotions. The sentient animals we are describing have all of these abilities” (140).

There are serious reasons to doubt that insects are sentient (however, bees may be sentient). So, we likely need not worry about rights for flies or spiders (although, flies and spiders [and trees and plants and sharks] merit other kinds of ethical concern). What we know with certainty is that the most ambiguous cases need not keep us from identifying the subjects of justice: animals that are, just as clearly as we are, sentient and so capable of significant striving.

VI.

We know that pain is harmful to the significant striving of sentient creatures. So, we might think that killing animals humanely, that is, in such a way that they experience little to no pain, and for “legitimate” human purposes (e.g., to eat), is acceptable. While one may take such a view, and it is far better than those who believe animals may be killed however and for any reason, that view does not live up to the demands of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Killing animals humanely and for legitimate human purposes is to treat them merely as means and not as ends.

Nussbaum draws our attention to the fact that animals also kill one another, a topic she takes up in chapter 10. At the moment, the subject is the “fringe” case of humans killing animals that are reasonably healthy (killing a companion animal because their cancer is incurable, for example, is a different matter [see 156]) and who have lived reasonably long and good lives. Animals killed by factory farming are not killed painlessly, and so their deaths are not the topic of this chapter.

The main philosophical source of this chapter is Epicurus. He argued that death is no harm because when I die, there is no “I” to which to attach harm. The argument is compelling, but there is a problem: it does not take into account how our human lives actually unfold.

Nussbaum expands on what she calls the “interruption argument.” “[D]eath [not only “premature death”] interrupts activities that unfold over time,” activities like love and friendship, reading a long novel, planting a garden and so forth (160). “Death. . . cuts short the pleasant flow of life’s many projects. . . . Epicurus, then, builds on an impoverished picture of human life and value . . . many or most deaths are bad for the person who dies . . . in a perfectly straightforward way: they change the life that was lived, and for the worse” (160, 161).

The goal of this argument is to make a descriptive distinction (not a new ladder of worth) between those animals who undertake projects and those who do not undertake projects. “When a life contains a temporal unfolding of which the subject is aware and which the subject values, death can harm it. However, not all [sentient] creatures are like that. . . and therefore the argument does not establish that death is a harm to all creatures” (161). To underscore an important point: MANY creatures, almost all the creatures we kill and eat, are like that: aware of a temporal unfolding that they value.

The issue is especially complex in the case of many bony fish, sentient creatures who seem to live in the moment, moment by moment. Thus, a painless death is no harm to them, as such a death does not interrupt their lives. And much else follows from this, for example: “Even if it [painlessly killing and eating fish] doesn’t actually harm the being, it is still a kind of domination over that other life,” the very thing rights-based approaches are meant to stop (171). The possibility then arises that while we are not harming fish when we painlessly kill and eat them, we may be doing them an injustice. Humility and vigilance are required of us: “With our specific life-form comes responsibility” (171).

VII.

We are now prepared to grasp the sense of the argument that our responsibility extends to animal predation, that animal predation is a problem that requires a smart human response. The following ideas are in the background as we work through Nussbaum’s thinking on animal predation in chapter 10:

(In)Justice: Justice is bound up with the enablement of a creature’s significant striving, while injustice is the wrongful thwarting (actively or passively) of the same.
The Subjects of (In)Justice: Sentient creatures, those who significantly strive in characteristic life-form ways, are the subjects of justice and so are to be treated as ends and not merely as means. Most animals are sentient.
Harm, Injustice, and Death: Death is, generally, a harm to sentient creatures, as it interrupts their significant projects. While it may not constitute a harm to all sentient creatures, especially creatures incapable of significant projects, death may well constitute an injustice when it is a form of domination of one species over another.

The question framing chapter 10 has to do with what role humans are to play in “the wild,” if any. What role should we play in treating wild animal illnesses? Should we address starvation in the wild? What of zoos as a form of intervention? Should we fashion “a cooperative multispecies society, where wild animals are concerned?” (223-224) And, our question, what should humans do about animals killing other animals, if anything?

Concepts like “the wild” and “nature” are, Nussbaum points out, wildly Romantic. “The Romantic idea of ‘the wild’ is born of human anxieties, particularly about urban and industrial life. Nature, in this conception, is supposed to do something for us; the idea has little do with what we are supposed to do for Nature and other animals” (225). “Other animals” includes rural humans; romanticism idealizes rural poverty.

As both Scully and Nussbaum point out, “the wild” is a great deal more “benign” than factory farming, but, as Mill thought, “Nature is cruel and thoughtless” (228). Moreover, ecological thought has taught us that there is no such thing as the “balance of nature.” There is no such thing as “the wild,” either. Humans control everything: land, sea, air. And so when we make a case for “the wild,” what we are saying is that we do not want to take responsibility for the world that our species in every way dominates.

And “it is not clear that we can ethically be standoffish, even instances where have not caused the problem. If we are looking on, in control and monitoring animal habitats, it seems like callous stewardship indeed if we permit . . . . thoroughly ‘natural’ types of pain and torment” (230). Human stewardship and animal autonomy are not incompatible, as “Nature is not a glorious site of freedom” (231).

The contours of (in)justice are starting to form: humans, in ways both deliberate and neglectful, thwart animal thriving. We either smash the nest or we stand idly by while it is smashed by another animal. So, just stewardship of “the wild” must not be avoided; rather, it must be ethically principled (see 232) and attuned to the kinds of animal capabilities we are responsible for recognizing and protecting (233-237).

It is a common practice (and widely accepted) for humans to intervene in “the wild” when there is starvation, drought, and so forth. We are likely to blame for all of that anyway. But something seems different about predation, about the act of animals killing other animals.

We are cautioned against interfering in predation for several reasons. First, instincts. Predators are not doing anything wrong when they attack and kill other animals. That is true. What they are doing is expressing something characteristic of their life-form. Our interference may, in fact, degrade their dignity, wrongfully interfering with their significant striving, frustrating important to them instincts. And, and Nussbaum does not make this exact point, it is equally possible that our interference in predation would frustrate an important to, say, the gazelle instinct to recognize and to evade danger(s). Instincts, however, can be (re)directed in many different ways. . . ways that do not entail the unspeakable suffering of another creature or the death of a thrilling existence of constant vigilance and escape.

We are cautioned against interfering in predation for another reason: we have no idea what impact such interference would have on animal populations. Yet, predation and hunting are not the only ways of managing animal populations. They are certainly not the most painless ways of managing animal populations.

And even if we think there are good reasons for not interfering in animal predation generally, we may think it unsavory for humans to enjoy it or to become predators in “the wild” themselves. Therefore, we will oppose sado-tourism, the practice of humans taking great enjoyment in scenes (and paying a lot to see them) of vulnerable creatures being torn to bits by, for example, wild dogs. We must also outlaw big game hunting, the practice of humans killing, for example, elephants with weapons of war.

Additionally, we may think there are good reasons for not interfering in animal predation generally, but we may also identify some special circumstances where we think intervention is necessary. For example, we may seek to protect animals that have not evolved to recognize and evade the dangers posed by non-indigenous threats (think of the kakapo).

Speaking of the kakapo, predation may even be encouraged in certain circumstances. The CA allows for self-defense, so rats may be acceptable objects of predation, becoming a food source for creatures, like cats, also managed out of eating the kakapo. There may be other “nuisance animals” that fall into this category.³

Animal predation is not a simple phenomenon, one that requires little to no thought or concern on our part. Nussbaum’s approach to it is nuanced and cautious, and, even so, we identified instances of acceptable and reasonable human interventions in “the wild,” and in animal predation specifically.

We are now well situated to understand why most instances of animal predation constitute a serious ethical problem, one that requires a smart human response:

To start, animal predation is not, not straightforwardly, an injustice. The lion, for example, is not somehow in the wrong for killing and eating a warthog. Yet, both the unspeakable suffering the warthog experiences as it becomes the lion’s food and the threats to life and limb the lion risks to kill it should at the very least alert us to the possibility that predation is, nonetheless, a form of wrongful thwarting of significant striving. Lions are not in a postion to recognize that, and warthogs aren’t, either. But we are in a postion to recognize injustice, and we can do something about it.

It is also highly questionable that respecting the dignity of both lions and, say, gazelles requires predation as a capability, namely the capability to hunt and the capability to escape being eaten. Must lions kill other animals to be (happy) lions? We have no reason to believe that is so. Moreover, we may grant that all creatures are, indeed, food (or are edible), but is that want sentient creatures, like the gazelle, want, at least while they have a say in the matter, while they are still living? We have no reason to believe that is so.

Finally, death does harm to both the lion and to the gazelle, to each of their respective projects. And, as we saw in the case of fish, death may become an injustice when it represents a tool of domination of one species over another. Predation seems to me to qualify as a form of domination. While the lion cannot recognize their eating of the gazelle as unjust, and while the gazelle, even if it could recognize the injustice of predation, is powerless to do anything about it, we can both recognize predation as a problem and do something about it.

There are serious ecological and philosophical objections, and I have alluded to some of them above, to human interference in animal predation, objections that go well beyond a straightforward concern for what we do not know (e.g., how such interference will impact animal populations) and the possibility of making alternatives to “wild” behaviors available in ways that respect the dignity of animal lives. One is right to ask: Are human interventions in animal predation a form of domination, a means of humanizing the entire animal world?

Nussbaum’s argument, namely that animal predation is, in most cases, an ethical problem that requires smart human intervention, stands up well against serious objections to it. Or so I will argue in a forthcoming post, “What Do Sentient Creatures Want?”

Endnotes:

For more on anger, see Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). ↩︎
While Ibram X. Kendi links the scala naturae to Aristotle, Stamped from the Beginning shows how the idea plays out in terms of the history of race and racism in Western thought. See Stamped, e.g., 15-21. See also Nussbaum, in the present context, on page 32. ↩︎
Although, if we take lessons from Trash Animals: How We Live With Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species, we will approach the management of such “nuisance” animals with great care. Even in the case of rats, Nussbaum does suggest birth control efforts as a strategy of population control. ↩︎

The Figuring of Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

*

Lori Lightfoot is, according Gregory Pratt, a political failure.

“Some of Chicago’s problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor. . . ,” Pratt contends in his recent book, The City Is Up For Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led And Lost A City In Crisis, “[b]ut some are the result of [Mayor Lightfoot’s] poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn’t been told in full until now. . . ” (xii). Pratt continues, “In some ways, the past four years of Lightfoot’s tenure as mayor are a model for how not to lead a big city. Her failures weakened the office . . . ” (xv).

I was born and raised in Idaho, but I consider Chicago to be my birthplace. In 2002, a twentysomething, I moved to the city with a bar on every corner and bridges that (until weed was legalized in 2020) smelled like chocolate.¹ I grew up in Chicago during the Daley regime. I moved to the East Coast during the first few years of the Emanuel regime. I entirely missed Lightfoot’s surprising rise to power, her 4 year reign, and her just as surprising fall from grace.

Why do I care about Lightfoot?

I care about women in politics. More specifically, I am interested in how women in politics get figured, how they (actual women politicians) get defined/portrayed in art (literature, film, etc.). What I care about is Pratt’s artistic rendering of the former Chicago mayor.

Pratt would likely reject the idea that his book is an artistic rendering of Lightfoot. Yet, the real Lightfoot refused to participate in his project (xv). So, whatever Pratt’s book is about, it is not about the real her. Nonetheless, and this is important to grasp, Pratt’s rendering of Lightfoot does tell us something true and accurate about how she is perceived as a political figure, a figure of what Chicagoans want and what they can do about it.

How is Lightfoot figured by Pratt? What is true about it? Why does it matter?

**

What follows is a description of Pratt’s picture of Lightfoot. The quotes below are numbered to indicate groupings of interrelated texts that, when taken together, constitute Pratt’s figuring of the mayor. In the ensuing analysis of these texts, I refer to each grouping as a set (e.g., Set 1 = quotes 1[a-d]).

1(a): “Noticing a couple of ornate chess sets hand carved by members of a church in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, I asked Lightfoot if she played. She chuckled and responded that she’s more of a checkers player. Her brother tried to teach her, Lightfoot said, but she wasn’t able to get into the game. It showed over the next four years of chaos” (ix-x).

1(b): “[Mayor] Emanuel came out of the meeting boasting to staffers that [Lightfoot] said [she would not run against him for mayor]. Weeks later, she bought campaign websites . . . . It’s one of the top points Emanuel’s people make when they say she isn’t trustworthy. For her part, Lightfoot says she wasn’t running for mayor but wanted to keep her options open. It’s a level of hairsplitting that makes someone hard to trust” (28).

1(c): Jeanette Taylor, “heart and soul of Chicago’s left-wing City Council slate,” describing Lightfoot: “The difference is, Toni [Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners] will say, ‘Bend over, I’m about to fuck you.’ With Lori, you look up, and your ass is sore’” (86).

1(d): “Though the conversation [with Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union] was amicable, the aftermath worsened the dynamic between the mercurial mayor and street-fighting union” (108).

2(a): “Originally from small town Massillon, Ohio, Lori Lightfoot grew up working class” (4).

2(b): “But she made a big splash at the University of Chicago when she wrote an article about a Baker McKenzie law firm partner asking racist questions to prospective hires” (4).

2(c): “Contemporaries recall Lightfoot as a hard-charging prosecutor with a mean streak, in the courtroom and at the office. Everyone respected her intellect, but she was considered controversial for how she treated people” (5).

2(d): More aptly, she’s a corporate lawyer who appreciates the status quo for what it is while trying to change things around the margins. She appreciates order” (32).

3(a): “In one interview, Lightfoot promised not to be ‘window dressing,’ according to a Chicago Defender profile that praised her as ‘petite, apparently feisty and scheduled to take the reins [of the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards]” (7).

3(b): “In truth, Lightfoot ran the agency in a way geared at protecting the system’s legitimacy and promoting the bad-apple theory of policing that most problems are isolated” (8).

4(a): “Like her denunciation of the Baker McKenzie racist interview, Lightfoot’s handling of the reform efforts after being appointed to the task force [publicly criticizing Emanuel’s ‘memorandum of agreement’ with the Department of Justice] was arguably her at her best (23).

4(b): “But it also highlighted a certain opportunism from Lightfoot, who was angry with Emanuel and lashed out. Channeled effectively, that sense of grievance and clarity of purpose could do a lot of good for the city” (23).

4(c): “Nothing really came from Lightfoot’s [negative] public comments [about the Chicago Police Superintendent], which meant the incident didn’t do anything other than piss people off and illustrate that her tough talk is often just bluster” (96).

5(a): “Years later, she gleefully recalled her relationship with Emanuel in a New York Times interview. ‘He supposedly once said to somebody about me, “I gave her a platform and a microphone, and she took it and shoved it up my ass” (31).

5(b): “While she attempted to portray herself as a progressive alternative to Emanuel, she didn’t embrace particularly left-wing policies . . . (32).

5(c): “Lightfoot spoke a big game about equity and underdogs, but it never jibed with her conservative views on spending and taxes, or her history as a corporate lawyer. ‘Frankly, you take the rhetoric about equity and racial justice out of what Lori Lightfoot says, and she’s a pretty neoliberal politician,’ Sharkey [a leader of the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU)] told me” (43).

6(a): “Depending on perspective, the story [a situation when Lightfoot was a prosecutor, being confronted by a bank robber in court] highlights Lightfoot’s loyalty to a friend [a fellow prosecutor, harassed by the bank robber for being a Jew] and her decency in the face of nastiness—or her tendency to suddenly wind up in a fight [Lightfoot responded to the robber, “That’s about enough, Mr. White]” (8).

6(b): “The confrontation [a press conference interruption by state representative Robert Martwick] has taken legendary status. . . . [I]t helped show people the best of her, standing up for herself and diagnosing a problem . . . .The only downside was the lesson it internalized for the candidate: that slapping rivals works. . . . [T]he occasional beatdown is fine, particularly when someone else starts it, but nobody wants to be around someone who’s in a daily brawl with a new opponent” (56).

6(c): Critics weren’t able to get anything to stick against Lightfoot, who kept the worst elements of her personality under control, though she showed flashes of it off camera” (61).

7(a): “[After she won the election] [h]er treatment of people started to change. There was a growing sense among some in her circle that she didn’t think she needed anyone. . . . The victory went to her head” (69).

7(b): Describing an incident with the aforementioned Alderperson Taylor at a City Council meeting: “To me, the scene highlighted how Lightfoot didn’t fully understand her power. The mayor presides over City Council from an elevated dais. To speak with her, alderpersons must get permission to walk past security. It is, simply, a throne. And the king [Lightfoot reportedly claimed ‘to have the biggest dick in Chicago’] or queen never vacates the throne for a fight, particularly not one they then lose” (164).

8(a): “Lightfoot staff would tell [Gilbert] Villegas [floor leader of Chicago’s City Council], ‘She isn’t a politician.’ [Villegas] would respond, ‘When you become mayor of the third largest city, you’d better become a politician.’ It was a common refrain for Lightfoot and a recurring theme worsened by staffers who indulged her feelings rather than explaining that she was, in fact, a politician the moment she put her name on the ballot and won” (78).

8(b): “[Inspector General Joe] Ferguson had been optimistic about her potential to be a great mayor but was worried she had ‘completed the transformation’ into ‘politician who cares about things politicians care about” (100).

9(a): “Lightfoot felt like she was on higher ground due to her popularity and landslide victory. Lightfoot’s team would defend her to people who didn’t like her approach, saying she won the election by being demanding and prosecutorial. It fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the election win and the elusiveness of political popularity” (109).

9(b): “He [Lightfoot aide Michael Fassnacht] took a lesson from the memes [of Lightfoot during the Covid pandemic]: people liked Lightfoot and wanted to see her in authentic situations” (125).

9(c): Heading into more forums, Lightfoot faced a tough balance: Be tough, but not off-putting” (198).

10(a): “She made a decision [to shut down the lakefront] and stuck with it, even after it became clear that the [COVID] virus was less likely spread outdoors. Leadership requires resolution, but unwillingness to adapt to new facts is death” (125).

10(b): “Her early waffling about shutdowns and false threats to close businesses if cases spread in the fall highlight the indecision and lack of vision that plagued her administration” (129).

11(a): “Lightfoot can’t acknowledge fault” (155).

11(b): “Lightfoot addressed her broken promise to reopen Chicago’s mental health clinics shuttered by Emanuel in a rare example of successfully taking a change of mind head-on” (197).

That’s Pratt’s artistic rendering of Lightfoot.

***

We now stand before Pratt’s figure of Lightfoot, but what are we to make of it?

Set 1 defines Lightfoot as lacking any interest in a game that requires strategy to win. At the same time, she is portrayed as a very strategic person: Taylor didn’t know she was being fucked by Lightfoot until it was too late. Lightfoot is not always blunt, but “mercurial,” assessing her opponent’s strategy. Like all political operatives, she does not wear her plans on her sleeve, refusing to give her opponents an opportunity to move against her objectives. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)strategic.

Set 2 situates Lightfoot in an unremarkable social position. She is from small town Ohio, and she grew up working class. Her hard work also earns her a spot at the University of Chicago Law School where she is said to make a “big splash,” calling out racism at a prestigious law firm. She is also a status-quo loving, wealthy corporate lawyer who doesn’t give a damn about people or meaningful change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (anti-)elitist.

Set 3 paints Lightfoot as a true reformer. She is not “window dressing.” She is also, “in truth”, just that: a facade, another Chicago politician that gives cover to corruption. According Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)authentic.

Set 4 gives us a Lightfoot who speaks truth to power. At the very same time her words are self-serving. Her truth is also just “bluster.” According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)trustworthy.

Set 5 describes Lightfoot as the progressive alternative to moderate Democratic mayor, Emanuel. She is also a moderate politician in sheep’s clothing. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (im)moderate

Set 6 defines Lightfoot as either friendly or prone to picking fights. It is always unclear which Lightfoot one will meet: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)predictable.

Set 7 presents Lightfoot as a loner, above the need for help. She is also criticized for not acting like a king or queen, for not understanding her power, improperly leaving her throne to seek help from Alderperson Taylor. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)democratic.

Set 8 offers us a Lightfoot who unwisely rejects the governing style of a politician. Lightfoot is also a politician, a politician who cares only about what politicians care about. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (a)political.

Set 9 reveals a Lightfoot liked for being herself: tough and demanding, a (grand)mom-like figure for the city. At the very same time, she is disliked for those very same qualities. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)likeable.

Set 10 is a Lightfoot who is decisive and unyielding. She is also “waffling” and without resolve. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)decisive.

Set 11 leaves us with a Lightfoot who is unable/unwilling to adapt to change or to admit the need to change. She is also someone capable of changing course and of explaining the need for such a change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (mal)adaptive.

To be fair, Pratt likely intended to portray Lightfoot in a singular way, as a political failure. In his figuring of Lightfoot, he places the emphasis on her negative qualities. In fact, he calls out what he believes are her good qualities only a few times, namely Lightfoot’s toughness, her champion spirit, and her sometimes willingness to take “a change of mind head on.”

Yet, as the final chapter of Pratt’s book, “Breaking Up With The Mayor,” suggests, he was once into Mayor Lightfoot. So, it is not surprising that his portrayal of her exceeds, like Lightfoot’s suits, his intended framing. In fact, I think Pratt’s (un)intended portrayal of Lightfoot as perfectly (ill-)suited to be Chicago’s mayor is compelling, comprehensive, and coherent, all of the qualities that make a body of art pleasing to a viewer.

****

Pratt figures Lightfoot as ill-suited for Chicago politics. But he makes little of her ill-fitting suits.

The City Is Up For Grabs begins with a cute story about four-year-old Idris Lockett dressing up as Mayor Lightfoot for Halloween: “[Idris’s] mother, Catherine, had picked Idris up from her cousin’s home and found him in a jacket that was way too large for his little frame. This visual reminded Catherine of the city’s new mayor, who often wore suits that exceeded the limits of her arms and legs” (vii).²

Pratt uses Lockett’s story to bookend Lightfoot’s single term as mayor, one that begins with her celebrating a cute kid who went viral for dressing like her and ends with her refusing to meet with him after he sat for hours at her last City Council meeting. But he makes nothing of Lightfoot’s fashion style. I don’t fault him for that, as many of us think style is trivial, unimportant, meaningless. But there is a reason Lockett went viral: Lightfoot’s style has social meaning.

And so the question arises: What is the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits?

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits are what set her apart from another female politician who wears a kind of suit and is (in)famous for it: Hillary Clinton. Sketching the social meaning of Hillary’s pantsuits (a decades long topic of popular conversation) will hone our sense of what is relevant in our interpretation of Lightfoot’s suits.

I do not know if the real Lightfoot has shared why she wears ill-fitting suits, but we do know Hillary’s reasoning for wearing pantsuits. Hillary switched out skirts (the typical style of the First Lady) for pantsuits in the 1990s when photographers started taking (or attempting to take) up-the-skirt shots of her. Hillary started wearing suits to prevent these sexist violations of her bodily integrity.

But Hillary’s clothing style(s) did nothing to protect her from the normative male gaze. One cover of Spy Magazine, for example, reveals the gendered politics that framed Hillary as First Lady. According to the cover of Spy Magazine, what Hillary’s dress attempts to hide from public view is her dick.

Throughout the 1990s Hillary was portrayed as “the man.” And when you are a woman, being framed as “the man” is not a compliment. A masculine woman is a man-hating woman, an emasculating woman, a kind of dominatrix eager to stuff a man’s asshole with her cock. She is a monstrosity, at least from a normative male perspective.

Whatever the intentions of the real Hillary Clinton, the pantsuits actually called attention to her masculinity, to her dick. Suits are a fashion staple of professional males. Yet, the way she wears them (they are well fitting) and the way they are styled (usually elegant in their own way and/or colorful) help to feminize her masculinity.

Discerning the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits requires attention to the same kinds of details we identified to make some gendered sense of Hillary’s suits, but those details must always be understood in their own right, in their own context.

To start, Lightfoot is a Black lesbian, and so she is (like Hillary but for different reasons) masculinized from the start, and (unlike Hillary) doubly so. Black women are gendered masculine. Ditto lesbian women. They are women who, according to a racist, homophobic, and sexist logic, depart from the norms of “proper” (i.e., white and straight) women.³

On the one hand, Lightfoot’s suits do not serve to feminize her. They don’t fit well, and they are not flashy. Lightfoot’s suits more closely resemble working-class(?) male fashion. Moreover, Lightfoot seems to enjoy publicly displaying her BIG dick. She reportedly claimed to have the biggest dick in Chicago. Lightfoot does not seem to care about downplaying her phallic prowess. Lightfoot’s suits, quite unlike Hillary’s, seem to masculinize her masculinity. Lightfoot seems to take pride in being “the man.”

On the other hand, Lightfoot’s suits exceed her masculinist presentation, highlighting the petite figure wearing the big suit. Her suits may invite us not to take her big dick too seriously. Lightfoot’s suits may (like Hillary’s but in a different way) ironize her masculinity.

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits correspond perfectly well to Pratt’s portrayal of her as ill-suited to lead the City of Chicago. Her suits reveal the social truth about her. And the reason for that is a whole host of social terms are, like Lightfoot’s suit, gendered.

Terms like (in)authenticity, (anti-)elitist, (a)political, and so forth are other ways of getting at what is masculine (and so legitimate) and what is feminine (and so trivial). Authenticity, elitism, and politics are all socially gendered as masculine, as they speak to what is taken socially as real and powerful. And so they speak to what “we” should desire.

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot, like the figuring of Hillary, confounds straightforward, normative political desiring. That is what Pratt’s book, perhaps unintentionally, helps us to grasp as the social meaning of Mayor Lightfoot.

*****

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot is but one instance of such cultural manufacturing. Each figure of Lightfoot should be understood on its own terms and in its own right. Although, I imagine there will be common themes across the different portrayals of Lightfoot.

But why does Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matter?

I think it matters not for what it teaches us about the real Lightfoot. “Feminine” political figures are obviously related to the real women who inspire them, but we should always mind the gap between social perceptions of such women and the women themselves. I think Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matters for what it may reveal about the distinctive subjectivity of Chicagoans, their specific way of feeling about the City of Chicago and what is possible in it.

Chicagoans once felt like the figure of Mayor Lightfoot, and might they feel it again?

And what does Pratt’s figure of Lori Lightfoot have to offer the real Mayor Lori Lightfoot? What do feminine political figures offer, if anything, to the women they are based upon?

I don’t have answers to those questions. But I think that if Chicagoans want Chicago to be(come) a uniquely great American city, then it is worth their time and the effort it takes to grasp the social meaning(s) of their first Black lesbian mayor.

END NOTES:

See here, Act 3. ↩︎
The story is cute, but the gendered dynamics of it could be read in less cute ways. For example, Pratt likely does not intend to define Lightfoot as a petulant little boy (especially during her last days in office), as that would be homophobic, sexist, and racist–but as we have already noticed, one’s writing often exceeds one’s conscious intentions. ↩︎
e.g., see https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Spillers_Mamas_Baby.pdf ↩︎

The New in the UnHoly

*

In a recent dream, I was surprised by the appearance of the Greek word for S/spirit, πνεῦμα. It was a well-planned move, coming just after what was a disturbing scene.

Another surprise: the ν and εῦ of πνεῦμα reversed places.

A third surprise: the meaning of the new word, πεῦνμα, was explicitly spelled out in the dream. In the lexicon of the dream, πεῦνμα means companionship.

**

In dreams, unconscious thoughts are translated into consciously recognizable/acceptable forms. The goal of the dream is not to disturb consciousness (because the purpose of dreams is to keep us asleep). If consciousness is disturbed, the results are wakefulness and the end of unconscious communication.

Πνεῦμα is a positive, upbeat word, and its appearance in the dream, just after a bloody moment, was an attempt to soothe consciousness. Consciousness was getting ready to hit the wake up(!) button—and at just that moment, it was reminded to breathe. The strategy worked. A win-win. Consciousness was spared catastrophic disturbance and the unconscious received more time to makes its next move.

***

One way to make sense of the moving ν (nu) is to attend to how it sounds. When ν takes a back seat to εῦ, it makes πνεῦμα sound differently. Εῦ is a diphthong in Greek; it sounds like the eu in feud. The sound is subtle, so here is another way to get at it: when ν moves, we no longer hear newma (the pi is silent) but ewnma. The bloody scene prior to this wordplay was, indeed, ew.

We may also understand the moving ν more literally.

****

The dream is clearly emphasizing what is happening internally to, or in the context of, πνεῦμα. So, we are right to focus there, on what is new about πεῦνμα.

I am an academically trained, Christian biblical theologian and ordained minister, so I was naturally curious about what the Greek of the Christian mythos may have to do with the new word, πεῦνμα, and with the dream’s translation of it as companionship.

Interestingly, there are only six words in the relevant Greek that begin with eun (allowing for a variously accented epsilon [for the sake of easy writing, I’ll be omitting accents throughout]; in any case, the unconscious makes meaning via chains of seemingly random associations). They are:

Eunike: a female name
eunoeo: to be well-disposed to make friends
eunoia: a positive attitude in a relationship
eunouchia: a state of being unmarried
eunouchikso: to cause someone to emasculate another
eunouchos: a castrated person

Again, I am surprised: these six words make perfect sense of all the yet undisclosed aspects of my dream. They are:

One figure in my dream was ambiguous, in terms of both sex and gender. It was this ambiguous figure that was being anally penetrated by a more typically masculine figure. This happens as a third person watches the scene unfold.

Each of those elements of the dream are related to the above string of words: a feminine male (combining words 1 and 6) being anally penetrated, roughly in fact, by another male (word 5), in a situation ménage à trois (words 2 and 4 if we allow both to mean something other than monogamy).

Yet, what are we to make of word 3? What is positive about the relationship(s) in the dream, especially between the ambitious [I meant to write ambiguous] bottom and the rough top?

What was disturbing about the sex scene was the aforementioned blood . . . gushing out of the ambiguous figure’s anus as they were being anally penetrated rather roughly (the cock was coming out fully, allowing for blood to gush out, before being thrust back in). It was the presence of blood itself that was disturbing and not all the rest. It was immediately following this scene that S/spirit appeared.

Interestingly, the gushing blood had the quality of gushing water from a fountain of water (rather than out of a traumatic wound). In the Christian mythos, S/spirit is associated with both blood and water (e.g., 1 John 5:6; John 19:34), each in turn is associated with redemption and baptism. The blood/water may have been a way of signifying redemption/baptism. But of what?

It would seem that the ambiguous figure was baptizing the top, or more specifically, the cock, as the blood was gushing from them as if from a baptismal font. The top is the object of baptism.

According to Paul of Tarsus, baptism is associated with a change of style, and one that results in the nullification of significant social distinctions, like male and female (Gal 3:27-28). The Trans* figure may be teaching the cock to be less aggressive, defensive, fearful (perhaps that is also the point of the nu’s detachment or fluidity–along with it’s moving to the “backside”). And herein is the positivity of the relationship: it is a scene of redemption, the nullification of immobile (hardened) masculinity.

*****

Πεῦνμα seems to signify something new, a new kind of relationship with masculinity. The dream, however, makes its own sense out of πεῦνμα: companionship.

There is a word in the Greek of the Christian mythos that gets at what we may think of as companionship: συγκοινωνός (see Phil 1:7; Rev 1:9). Sugkoinonos means “participant, partner.” Significantly, sugkoinonos is also one of three words that shares a similar “core.” The other two are:

sugkoimaomai: to sleep with (also as in to have sex with)
sugkoinoneo: to be associated with someone in an activity

Yet again, the chain of words makes sense of the described elements of the dream—but this time, these words add something that was not explicitly in the dream.

My dream manifestly includes a sex scene (word 1 above, but that mu makes it somewhat less significant at this point than the other two words, both hanging onto a nu as part of their “cores.” Yet, when the nu moves to the “backside,” it does link itself to a mu). It would seem that the dream’s translation of the new word πεῦνμα as companionship is also an invitation to participation.

The dream is calling out to the observer, to the voyeur (and maybe even calling into question the notion of voyeurism as participation) to join in the act . . . to join in as the object of baptism (?) or the subject of it (?) or both (?). This association is only strengthened if we follow the Greek to words beginning with koin.

******

What the dream wants to make common (see koinoo) is what is taken as defiled or impure: a gay masculinity. It is calling one to move, to transform, to become more fluid in one’s masculine comportment.

It is a S/spiritual calling. It is a calling born out of πνεῦμα.

Internal to S/spirit, to newma, is something new, what is often considered or taken as ewnma. The (un)holy work of the (un)conscious is to provoke a recognition of the new in the ew, of the holy in the unholy.

Serious Reading

*

In her recent book, Who Is Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler asks us to think critically about gender. Thinking critically about gender entails actually reading texts that seriously investigate and explore the (dis-)contents of gender. Butler explicitly defines what is at stake in the practice of reading, namely “democratic life”:

Reading is not just a pastime or a luxury, but a precondition of democratic life, one of the practices that keep debate and disagreement grounded, focused, and productive.
Judith Butler, Who Is Afraid of Gender? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), 18-19.

The specific point Butler is making is that when there is disagreement about a subject, like gender, reading the same texts enables community; reading the same texts enables a conversation about a shared set of terms or details. It is in that way that reading grounds and focuses conversation. Reading the same texts may not ultimately produce agreement or consensus, but the practice will likely produce space for further conversation and collaboration. Or so Butler seems to think.

**

Butler argues that reading common texts makes democratic life possible, is a “precondition of democratic life.” Sharing a text, much like sharing a meal, opens us to the experiences and insights of others. Reading gets us out of ourselves and into the world. Mark Jordan, in his book, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault, describes how reading a text, the words on a page, opens the reader to the experience of the O/other:

Some scholars, like some fans, end by substituting relics of a fetishized life for the work. Perhaps they were first impassioned by the work or by rumors of it. Then it slipped out of reach. So they began slighting the work to seize tokens of its maker. For old-school Hollywood fans, these were autographs and photo spreads. Scholarly fans of this species prefer journalistic interviews, dedicated blogs, tales of conferences sightings . . . . I skimmed the biographies [of Foucault], examined some photographs, heard or watched a few recordings, but I got little satisfaction from them . . . My pleasure in Foucault’s bodily life comes from reading what he wrote. I am lured not by his bodily life but by whatever lured him to write endlessly about the bodily production of our words for bodies.
Mark Jordan, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 2.

Jordan contrasts two kinds of “reading” habits, two kinds of “fandoms.” The first is a fandom that values the life of/body of the author more than the author’s text. The second kind of fandom is one that values the life of/body of the author for their text. And notice: the author’s words are of immense value not because they are the words of that particular author, in Jordan’s case, the word’s of Foucault. No, they are valuable because they incarnate what is Other than the author, namely the “whatever” that “lured” Foucault to “write endlessly about the bodily production of our words for bodies.”

Jordan’s devotion to Foucault is not about Foucault at all. “[Jordan] needs [Foucault’s body] only for what it writes. If [Jordan] mourns [the loss of Foucault], [he] regret[s] especially that there will be no more of his books . . . .” (4).

***

Jordan defines reading as an encounter with the “whatever” that lures an author to write. The “whatever” is related to the author; it is something the author expresses in their writing, but it is not reducible to the author. For Jordan, the shuffling between author (other) and “whatever” (Other) seems to entail another, related shuffling: shuffling between an author’s words, between, perhaps, their meaning, and the aesthetics of the “whatever” the words on the page incarnate or express:

Imagine authorship that forswears fame in order to attend only to the transient effects of it its textual surfaces. That strives only to register ripples on a skittish surface. That strives to be ripples, undoing its own propensity to become a closed object. Imagine writing that is only interested in the play of its light and shadow than in plots and personages . . . . Imagine above all writing that doesn’t secure its unity or its relations to bodies by appealing to the personage of the author.
Mark Jordan, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 6, emphasis is Jordan’s.

Jordan asks the reader to imagine the author’s writing as a piece of art (worth collecting?). He asks us to imagine authorship that gets lost on the surface of a moving, watery cavas/text. Jordan asks us to imagine writing as a sketch or photograph, “only interested in the play of its light and shadow.” He asks us to imagine writing that doesn’t need the ordinary artist/author to have an impact on the viewer/reader. Jordan further invites us to imagine the reader “as an event yet to arrive. From that meeting, surprising effects may follow–so long as they are not precluded by discounting in advance what a text may say or do” (Convulsing, 7).

The author’s writing, an expression of the “whatever” that also lures a reader to the watery surface(s) of the text, works on the reader. The effects of that working on the reader are not (necessarily) predictable. One possibility is that the reader will write. It is possible that reading is preparation for the event of writing (Convulsing, 7).

****

Reading, the encounter with the O/other, with the lure of the “whatever” the author’s writing expresses, may be the reader’s preparation for the practice of writing. Reading may harbor the event of writing. In other words, reading may disclose the connection between the reader and the author by provoking the reader to write.

Leo Bersani, in his reading of Proust, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art, describes what is at stake in the practice of writing:

The pressures of daily life necessarily reduce a personality to a more or less simplified expression; but the particular privilege of literary activity is the leisure it offers to give play to a range of feeling, of being that would never be tolerated in ordinary life. It is, then, useless to look to the writer’s life for an explanation of what is in [their] books, for the conditions in which [they write] those books allows [them] the freedom to express desires, fears, and interests that are either not at all or feebly and confusedly expressed elsewhere in [their] life. . . . [T]he writer’s work is so deeply [their] life that it is foolish to expect [their] life to illuminate it.
Leo Bersani, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 15.

We are by now familiar with the distinction between the author in “ordinary life” and the author’s work. We have already explored the idea that reading is practice in encountering the “whatever” that lures an author to write, that something at once related to and other than the extra-textual author. But now we can understand that insight from a different standpoint.

It is now possible to see that writing is preparation for reading. Writing harbors the event of reading. Writing discloses the connection between the writer and the reader, namely the “whatever” that lures the writer to create textual surfaces, the same “whatever” that lures the reader to those same surfaces. The “whatever,” the O/other, is the precondition for this textual relationship.

*****

We began with Judith Butler’s observation that “reading . . . .is a precondition of democratic life.” Butler does not draw out exactly what that means in practice. But it is possible to read between the blinds, to discern the light and shadow of her textual surfaces.

If we refuse to read (and reading about gender is, Butler contends, what anti-gender folks refuse to do), we are refusing to encounter a mysterious (maybe disturbing) sense of complexity and difference in the world. Likewise, and moving beyond Butler’s point, when we refuse to write (perhaps about gender), we are refusing an encounter with that same mysterious (maybe disturbing) sense of complexity and difference in ourselves.

Reading is certainly a precondition of democratic life. But we cannot live on reading texts alone. We have to write them, too.

What do you ~~think~~ write?

Advocates of Grace

A Gay Sermon based on Exodus 32:1-14 and Matthew 22:1-14

***

I started preaching when I was 17 years old. I preached with some regularity at a small church, in a small town, in Oregon, close to the Idaho border.

There was a retired pastor in that church, and by that time he had lost his eyesight entirely. One Sunday he approached me after worship. He had brought his robe, his Geneva gown, to church. He had brought it with him that Sunday because he wanted to give it to me. He knew that one day I would become a pastor, and I would need his robe.

His robe is the robe I wear every Sunday, and his initials are embroidered on it.

Have you ever wondered why some clergy or preachers wear robes, some with stripes and stoles?

The stripes on my robe signify blood, sweat and tears; what they tell you is that I have worked very hard, and at great cost to myself and to my family, to learn how to be a servant of Christ. These stripes don’t say I am smarter or better than you; what they say is that I take serving you as a pastor very seriously.

The stole is also a symbol of service; it is a symbol of the towel Jesus Christ used to dry the feet of his disciples.

And the robe is itself meant to equalize us; it is meant to erase whatever wealth my clothing may signify, and it is meant to reduce attention to anything like my own status—because I am not the point; the point is not my personality; the point is not loyalty to me.

The robe is meant to remind me, and it is meant to remind you, that my singular calling is to serve you, the church, and—by way of God’s grace—to use the gifts given to me by the Holy Spirit to direct us to what is not me or you, namely the good and gracious God, the God of Jesus Christ, and the giver of the Holy Spirit.

I am sure you heard, in the parable Jesus told the religious and the religious leaders (Matt 22:1-4), the folks we learned a few weeks ago who make God unbelievable—you heard about that guy who did not wear a robe, the guy who wanted to enter the feast of grace even though he was not loyal to grace, even though he was not changed by grace?

You heard about what happened to him, right? He was cast out.

Grace has a dress code.

And while the robe I wear literalizes it, we are all supposed to wear the right gown to church, to this feast of grace.

And we talked about that clothing-style, that Christ-style, when we celebrated two baptisms a few weeks ago: “As many of you as were baptized in Christ have clothed yourself in Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female” (Gal 3:27-29).

When we clothe ourselves in grace, social distinctions become worthless, harmful idols, ideologies that serve only to make us feel better in the face of total uncertainty about what we are to do now that all the normal categories, all the idols, all the ideologies we relied on have been rendered and are even now powerless in Jesus Christ. . . .

We create idols when we are uncertain, when we find ourselves away from home, away from the normal, away from what is familiar.

That seems to be why Aaron made his bad choice (Ex 32:1-14). He was unprepared for the new world he was in, for the freedom made possible by Moses’ civil rights movement.

Yet, shouldn’t we blame Moses for not preparing Aaron and the Israelites for the uncertainly caused by his prolonged absence, by their leader being away from them for a long time? He was up on that mountain in God’s presence for 40 days and 40 nights . . . . Surely, Moses could have done more to make sure Aaron had the right theological education, the right kind of spirit before letting him step into the pulpit?

But that didn’t happen—and Aaron gave in to the demands and imperatives of fear, of certainty, and he created the golden calf. He attempts to make his choice, his answer to the people’s fear and anxiety, God.

Aaron made a bad choice.

And we get it; it happens—but the problem is: Aaron refused to take responsibility for his bad choice.

Later in the story, Moses comes down the mountain and confronts Aaron about his ungodly sermon, his ungodly leadership—and how does Aaron respond?

Well, he says, I just threw the golden rings in the fire and out popped an idol, out popped the golden calf. I didn’t have anything to do with its creation. It just is what it is, Aaron says; I was just reading what the text says. It’s just the Word of God (but the story tells us that Aaron formed it, and it ends by explicitly telling us Aaron made it).

Maybe if Moses had just given Aaron more theological training, then he would have made a different choice. But that is the least important thing about a good theological education. The best theological education, whether you have a degree of some kind or not, the best theological education teaches you to do at least one thing well: to take responsibility for your all your choices, especially your bad choices.

Theology, preaching, pastoral leadership: all of that is an entirely human enterprise. Congregations and pastors all make choices, the best choices they can make, especially in the face of uncertainty.

We pray about them.

We read Scripture.

We talk together, and at the end of the day, we make a choice to act in one way and not in another, to be a home for some things and not for other things.

And if we are honest, and if we are faithful—if are loyal to the God of grace—we take responsibility for our choices, especially for our bad choices.

Because we know grace is not cheap.

God’s grace is actually supposed to change us, to remind us that our choices cannot save or damn us because our choices are not God or God’s choices.

God’s grace is actually supposed to change our lives; that is why Paul, for example, teaches us to hold each other accountable for our choices, especially our bad choices. “Is it not those who are inside [the community of faith],” Paul writes, “that you should judge? God will judge those outside” (1 Cor 5:11-12)

Consider Paul’s judgments in First Corinthians 6:9.

Here is how it reads:

“Do you not know that wrongdoers [in the church] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Those who are sexually immoral, like idolaters and adulterers and the self-indulgent [malakoi], like males who sexually exploit other males for the purpose of personal gain [arsenokitai], and thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers. None of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now, I’ll be clear about my choices.

What I translate as “males who sexually exploit other males for the purpose of personal gain,” the underlying Greek word there is arsenokoitai. Fun fact: no one living today knows what that word really means.

No one.

And if someone tells you that they do know what that word really means, and if they say it is just so obvious, that is just what the text says—well, what that tells you is that person is making a bad choice, that person is giving into the clamor for certainty, that person is under the spell of an idol.

In the late 1940s, and for the first time ever in the history of the world, the RSV made the choice to translate the words arsenokoitai and malakos (which I get to in a moment) as homosexual, itself a word made up in the late 1800s. The RSV has since changed that translation, collapsing the meaning of those two words into one, charming noun: “sexual perverts.”

The NRSV makes a different choice, choosing to translate arsenokoitai as “sodomites,” an 11^th-century Christian invention.

Again, no one knows what the word arsenokoitai means, really—but we do know that words like “homosexual” and “sodomite” are choices, and, as I my translation makes clear, they are not the only choices available to a reasonable translator of ancient Greek terminology.

I have made a second choice, too.

What I translated as “self-indulgent,” behold!, we know what the underlying Greek word actually means, the word malakos literally means “soft.”

Second fun fact: the idea that a man should actually love his wife is a modern invention. That, actually loving your wife, would have made you soft in the ancient world.

You would be soft for wearing deodorant.

Ok, so what is Paul’s message for us, living all these thousands of years later? I think Paul is referring broadly to a way of life we have already talked about, the kind of life that Paul really gets cranky about, the kind of lifestyle that is about doing whatever you want, to whomever you want, for the purpose of getting what you want and without any consequences. Paul really doesn’t think that kind of life meets the demands and imperatives of grace because it is a lifestyle that refuses taking responsibility for our choices.

Now, that’s my interpretation; it’s a choice. It is an educated, informed choice—and a choice that meets the demands and imperatives of grace: it does not give into the clamor for certainty, the demands for an idol, for something that distracts us from the hard work of spiritual discernment.

As Aaron learned, our spiritual choices matter. And we should be clear about the choices we make, and we should take responsibility for all of our choices, even our very bad ones.

Why? Because we are loyal to grace. We heard both Jesus and Paul define the alternative, right?

When we are invited to the feast of grace and are not changed by it, are not compelled to be honest with ourselves and with God, and especially about the difference between our ways and God’s ways, well, we are refusing grace for an idol; we are asserting that our will is the divine will; we are testifying that whatever we think or do is justified, is of ultimate significance.

It is an all too common thing, especially these days, to reject divine grace for human merit or wisdom. As Jesus teaches us, “many are called, few are chosen.” It is a warning to us all.

But what are we to do with that . . . ? That doesn’t sit well with us, right? So let’s ask, What would Moses do?

When he is close to God, when he is in the presence of God, when he is in God’s rest, Moses makes the choice to be an advocate of grace.

When God is ready to annihilate the people for creating an idol, for confusing their thoughts with God’s thoughts, for refusing to take responsibility for their choices, when God is mad as a hornet at the people for making a bad choice, Moses chooses to speak up: “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.”

Moses reminds God of who God is, of what God promised: blessing and freedom and goodness and a future for God’s people.

And Moses wins the argument; Moses changes God’s mind: “And the Lord changed [their] mind about the disaster [they] planned to bring on [their] people.”

When Moses is close to God, in the presence of God, he makes the choices to do one thing: he argues for grace.

When Moses is close to God, he is an advocate of grace.

And how can we not be the same?

When I put on this robe on Sunday mornings, I am reminded of God’s grace and mercy. I am reminded to make the choice of grace.

I am reminded of Paul’s teaching in Romans, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

While we were still making bad choices and refusing to take responsibility for them, while we were refusing to apologize, when confession and repentance were the farthest from our minds, Christ still chose us; Christ argued for us.

When we put on God’s grace, when we put on the robes of Christ, we acknowledge that grace is not cheap.

We acknowledge that grace requires our total loyalty.

We acknowledge that grace demands that we take responsibility for our lives because we know our choices are not God; they can’t save or damn us.

Yes, we so often fail to live up to the demands and imperatives of grace. We fail to take responsibility for our choices, choosing instead to confuse our judgements with God’s judgments.

But Christ does not fail to argue for us. And so God does not fail to choose us, again and again and again. . .and again, God invites us to come to the banquet of grace.

Don’t forget your robes y’all.

Amen.

Kent Brintnall & Queer Narrative

*

“Once upon a queer theory” is Brintnall’s contribution to the turbulent tradition of queer narration. In this essay, he highlights a pervasive fantasy underlying that tradition, the fantasy that queer narration is merely narration. Brintnall performs his argument both by 1) telling a story that centers the work of Teresa de Lauretis (she coined the term “queer theory” in the 1990s), and by 2) consistently and explicitly problematizing his narrative. In “Once upon a queer theory,” Brintnall, faithful to his subject, offers a queer narrative of queer theory.

In what follows, I summarize Brintnall’s queer narrative. I conclude by describing what I think is queer about it. Troubling the easy pathway leading from the beginning to the end of my reading of Brintnall’s essay is a question, What are we to make of the absence of any serious engagement with Halperin’s work on gay subjectivity in Brintall’s queer story? After outlining what I think is Brintnall’s reasoning for such an exclusion, I contend that Halperin’s approach to gay subjectivity, one that is manifestly linked to de Lauretis’ project, serves both 1) to clarify the main character of Brintnall’s queer narrative (what is, for Brintnall, the “somewhat” clear meaning of de Lauretis’ invention of/ intervention in queer lesbian and gay studies), and, relatedly; 2) to clarify what is queer about Brintnall’s queer narrative.

**

Brintnall notes that, for de Lauretis, queer theory signifies the ways in which “gay and lesbian sexualities could be seen [now citing de Lauretis] ‘as social and cultural forms in their own right . . .interactive and yet resistant, both participatory and yet distinct’” (emphasis added). At this nascent stage of queer theorization the goal is, in de Lauretis’ words, to “articulate the terms in which lesbian and gay sexualities may be understood and imaged as forms of resistance to cultural homogenization, counteracting dominant discourses with other constructions of the subject in culture” (emphasis added). In other words, the queer goal is the construction of, again, in the words of de Lauretis, “another discursive horizon, another way of thinking sexuality,” one that makes “other constructions of the subject in culture” possible.

Brintnall observes that de Lauretis’ understanding of queer theory anticipates what are by now well-known definitions of queer method/praxis. Take, for example, David M. Halperin’s contention that “queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” (emphasis original). Yet, de Lauretis’ initial understanding of queer theory takes her some “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies. Sexuality, even homosexuality, is not, not necessarily, the same thing as “at odds with the normal. . . the dominant.” As Brintnall points out, the work of scholars like Duggan and Puar demonstrate that lesbian and gay sexualities can “conform quite comfortably to dominant relational, kinship, economic, political, and citizenship norms, thus highlighting their participatory interaction with the reigning system of power rather than resistant queerness.” In that case, Brintnall asserts, “the heterosexual single black mother may have, in many contexts, a much stronger claim to queerness than does the white gay urban professional. . . .”

While de Lauretis takes “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies, her “assumption that sexuality should be approached as a discursive construction” links her work to what are now the canonical sources of queer theory (even though, Brintnall observes, none of the authors of those sources thought they were doing “queer theory”). What follows is Brintnall’s remarkably concise and mercifully clear unfolding of the central terms/ideas in Foucault (power), Butler (performativity), and Sedgwick (unbearable secret/closet).

Significantly, in drawing close to the canonical sources of queer theory, de Lauretis ends up taking “distance” from her earlier commitment to “another discursive horizon, another way of thinking sexuality,” one that makes “other constructions of the subject in culture” possible. For de Lauretis, that commitment is explicitly related to a concern for “the ways gender and race are (not) incorporated” in the “discursive construction of lesbian and gay sexualities.” To draw out the distance between her early commitment and her actual work, Brintnall highlights ethnic studies professor Hames-Garcia’s critique of de Lauretis and of queer theory.

Hames-Garcia points out the “the whiteness of most narratives of queer theory’s development.” For example, Foucault, Butler, and Sedgwick “do not make race central to their analysis.” Summarizing Hames-Garcia, Brintnall writes, “If we consider instead, as the forebears of queer theory, lesbians and gay men of color, ‘we’ find sophisticated resources for thinking intersectionally.” And really considering people of color would mean doing more than scholars like de Lauretis, presenting scholars of color “later in the exposition, fold[ing] them in as additional and secondary, includ[ing] them as supplements to theory that does not foreground race or discuss it explicitly—as if silence about race does not broadcast an unnamed whiteness.”

Brintnall goes on to really consider scholars of color. Again, he offers a miraculously concise and clear summary of the central ideas of, citing Ferguson, “queer of color critique.” Brintnall’s overview includes Ferguson (critique of classical sociology); Muñoz (disidentification), and Eng, Halberstam, and Muñoz, in a special issue of Social Text, (subjectless critique). Both Ferguson and Muñoz, Brintnall observes, center women of color feminists in their respective texts.

We learned earlier that de Lauretis took “critical distance” from normative gay and lesbian studies, and now Brintnall reminds us that she also took some “distance” from emerging queer theory, and “just a few years after she coined the term.” “In The Practice of Love,” Brintnall writes, “de Lauretis dismissed what queer theory had become, characterizing it as [citing de Lauretis] ‘a conceptually vacuous creature of the publishing industry.’” Taking distance from emerging (i.e., subjectless) queer theory, de Lauretis aligns herself with Bersani’s project, especially Homos, a “psychoanalytically inspired” exploration “of the political potential of gay male desire in its specificity” (emphasis original).

In aligning herself with Bersani, particularly Homos, “de Lauretis clarified, somewhat, the nature of the (unfulfilled) promise of her initial in(ter)vention,” one that defined the exploration of lesbian and gay specificity as queer theory. Brintnall now introduces trans theory critique, focused on the work of Stone (posttranssexual movement) and Stryker (transgender rage), of efforts to articulate lesbian and gay specificity. Such efforts “can be seen,” according to Brintnall, “as containing an unexamined commitment to fairly stable conceptions of sex (male, female) and gender (masculine, feminine).”

The final development in de Lauretis’ thought that Brintnall explores is “a turning away . . . from commitments to [now citing de Lauretis] ‘feminist theory, gender theory, and queer theory.’” This turning away is related to her turning to “the importance of the drive [as understood by Laplanche] in queer theory.” This turn is also related to de Lauretis’ “skepticism about the compatibility of theory and politics.”

For de Lauretis, a “bearable life” is the goal of politics. Drawing close to Lee Edelman (“queerness [as] that which must be excluded, overcome, or annihilated so that the subject or the social order can experience peace, healing or completion”), she nonetheless argues that Edelman’s “demand is unbearable.” De Lauretis’ “rejection of Edelman’s queer critique of politics tout court” reveals the character of her suspicion of the compatibility of theory and politics. Theory cannot, perhaps, citing de Lauretis, “map out a program of political action,” but it must be translatable; it must be able to inform political action.

Brintnall now makes explicit connections between the various distances and turns manifested in de Lauretis’ work and the texts of queer scholars of religion. He introduces the reader to the texts of Melissa Wilcox, Linn Marie Tonstad, and Joseph A. Marchal. The reader may consult Brintnall’s essay for those connections. At this point, what I am most interested in is 1) the character of Brintnall’s narrative as queer narrative, and; 2) the exclusion of David M. Halperin’s work on gay specificity from Brintnall’s queer narrative (Halperin’s most recent work on gay specificity, How To Be Gay, is at least alluded to, in the final footnote, of Brintnall’s story).

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Brintnall anticipates objections to his queer story, and he address them by straightforwardly acknowledging the inherent limitations of (his) storytelling:

[E]mphases and exclusions are necessary to an essay like this one: they are what make a collection of details and an agglomeration of information a story. In the final analysis, queer theory is a long tutorial in learning to find traces of what has been hidden, marginalized, and distorted in service of fabricating a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good, as well as assessing the damage wrought by telling certain stories rather than others (emphasis original).

More specifically, Brintnall anticipates objections/reservations like my own, questioning the lack of any serious engagement with Halperin’s work on gay specificity in his narrative. He explicitly states that he did not feel it “appropriate” to explore various strands within queer theory in this essay, an essay exploring the introductory features of the encounter between queer theory and religion. In addition, Brintnall may respond to my reservation by pointing out that it is de Lauretis who associates herself with the psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity. Thus, it makes perfect narrative sense to focus on that perspective—even at the expense of excluding the non-psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity represented by Halperin.

Yet, it is Brintnall who makes connections between scholars of queer theory, religion, and de Lauretis’ work that are extra-textual, that are not, in Brintnall’s telling of it, made by de Lauretis. Moreover, including the non-psychoanalytic strand of queer specificity represented by Halperin would allow Brintnall to highlight, as he has consistently done before, both a significant strand of queer theory that is directly related to various developments in de Lauretis project and queer voices of color that, in this case, take issue with “abstract notions of queerness” (and are otherwise given a relatively brief mention as critiques of Edelman, only to be dispatched as unwilling to “succumb to the intractable violence to which queer negativity points”). But the main reason to engage Halperin on gay difference is that doing so would only help Brintnall better define the main character of his queer story, namely de Lauretis’ “in(ter)vention” of /in queer lesbian and gay studies, and the queerness of his narrative. Or so I think.

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Halperin connects his work on gay male specificity to de Lauretis’ project in his essay, “Small Town Boy Neil Bartlett Learns How To Be Gay.” In this essay, Halperin explores what history has to do with gay subjectivity/difference. In the context of unfolding the potential new meaning(s) we may attach to the social practice of an older man buying his younger boyfriend a drink, Halperin, in a footnote, tells us that a “similar argument” has been made “along feminist lines”—namely by de Lauretis in “The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain.” The practice of an older man buying his younger boyfriend a drink, specifically its potential to re-negotiate the terms of social inequality among gay men, is similar in kind to the social practice of “entrustment” (affidamento), a practice de Lauretis describes in her essay.

Entrustment, according to de Lauretis, is a way feminist women in Italy began to address “the power and disparity—the social and personal inequality—inherent in [female relationships], as well as . . . the erotic dimension of all relationships between women and its relation to power . . . ” (emphasis original). Entrustment, as de Lauretis understands it, is “a term proposed to designate a relationship between two women which . . . had not yet been named or formally addressed in feminist theory. [T]he relationship . . . is one in which one woman gives her trust or entrusts herself symbolically to another woman, who thus becomes her guide, mentor, or point of reference . . . both women engage in the relationship—and here is the novelty . . .—not in spite, but rather because and in full recognition of the disparity that may exist between them in class or social position, age, level of education, professional status, income, etc. . . . .”

In “Small Town Boy,” Halperin highlights similar power inequalities, but this time between men, specifically between gay men. As noted above, the social practice proposed as a means of negotiating power disparities between gay men is, now citing Bartlett, “that man buying his younger boyfriend (slightly embarrassed, but happily drunk) another drink.” Halperin observes that Bartlett cannot think this practice without remembering “that man,” Oscar Wilde: “I remember the bizarre twisting of mythologies Wilde used to justify his adoration of young men” Bartlett writes, “the mixing of a pastiche of Classical pederasty with a missionary zeal for the ‘criminal classes,’ the sense that they, not the boys he left sleeping in [his home in] Chelsea, were his true sons . . . .” What the social practice of an older man buying a younger man a drink figures is, perhaps, gay difference or gay history.

“Historically,” Halperin argues, “the problem of gay male self-constitution has been posed by history. We have looked to history to answer some of our most pressing questions about gay male identity.” Far from being static, history is, to cite Bartlett, a “source of doubt and hopes,” a source that allows us to determine who “we” were then and who “we” are now, to determine how we are both the same as and different from gay men/gay culture of the past. Significantly, “by looking to history for a definition of gay male existence, Bartlett was relying not on theoretical propositions but on social processes.” As Bartlett’s reflections on the significance of an older man buying a younger man a drink suggests, “it is possible to write a gay history [citing Bartlett] ‘in our own language,’ . . . ” History, “[o]ur history,” according to Bartlett, “now becomes a way of understanding and exploring the change in our culture [of writing a history of the present], not simply of reading it as an ‘end.’”

From this perspective, an older man buying a younger man a drink “is not necessarily a mere recapitulation of archaic and unchanging forms of social hierarchy, upper-class sexual privilege and working-class sexual prostitution.” It is, at least potentially, citing Bartlett, “a new kind of relationship, an affair of the heart somehow appropriate to the meeting of two different men[.]” As Halperin observes, “[d]ifferences in age and wealth may actually be serving new, dynamic social functions, creating possibilities . . . among men who are asymmetrically situated according to conventional class hierarchies but are brought into approximate equality by the reciprocal exchanges of contemporary gay male life.”

Halperin’s emphasis on gay history and the ever changing meaning of social processes is consistent with de Lauretis’ method of challenging anti-essentialist tendencies (“theoretical propositions”) in feminist theory. Like Halperin, de Lauretis does not propose some kind of natural or “real essence” that, in her work, all women across every time and place share, but rather she tells a story, offers a history, of the Italian women’s feminist movement. It is in and through engaging the history of feminist social practices, like entrustment, that, now citing Locke’s definition of “nominal essence” deployed by de Lauretis, “the indispensable and necessary attributes of a thing,” in this case, women’s difference, is constructed or discerned or invented.

Entrustment, a social practice with an extensive history (e.g., the relationship between the biblical figures of Ruth and Namoi is cited as an example of “entrustment”), may also be read as a figure of women’s history or of women’s difference in “The Essence of the Triangle.” Its meaning is not fixed. It, too, is likely a “source of doubts and hopes.” Entrustment, that is, is not, not necessarily, mere recapitulation of patriarchal power. According to de Lauretis, entrustment “brings to light the hidden or unconscious conflicts and emotions of the ancient (patriarchal) relationship with the mother[;] it opens up the possibility and the critical elaboration of new symbolic forms of female authority that can effectively legitimate a woman’s subjecthood and thus render unto her not emancipation (under the law of the Father) but full social agency and responsibly as a woman.”

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In “The Essence of the Triangle,” an essence de Lauretis defines in terms of Locke’s “nominal essence” as, citing Locke, “three Lines meeting at Three Angles,” there is some awareness of the role race and racism play relative to discerning women’s difference in and through specific feminist social practices, but de Lauretis does not make race or racism central to her analysis. And when Halperin encourages us to “examine our actual practices” so that “we will see that we keep adapting our traditions so as to make them do a different kind of social and cultural work from the work they did in the past,” we are not wrong to wonder about who and what is included (and not) in the “we,” “our,” “our traditions” in Halperin’s writing. To whose history and traditions is Halperin referring? By taking race and racism seriously, “our” attention will likely shift to a broader array of (interrelated) power disparities and to a more extensive history of (perhaps subtle) queer lesbian and gay social practices that may be performing new social functions in the present.

Significantly, in turning now to that broader array of power disparities, I do not mean to segregate what are, in fact, queerly related issues. That is, by turning to C. Winter Han, his most recent book, Racial Erotics: Gay Men of Color, Sexual Racism, and the Politics of Desire, in order focus on a gay male of color social practice that resists racialized power disparities, I do not mean to imply that class, race, and racism are not interrelated social logics, as if classism is a white issue, while race and racism are, for example, Black issues.

In Racial Erotics, Han defines sexual racism as the erotic “exclusion or fetishization” of gay men of color. Sexual racism, Han points out, is connected to (and, in fact, fuels) the broader racial hierarchy that values whiteness at the expense of everything else. Sexual racism de-forms gay male social life, and that is why Han argues that it requires a social response.

Han identifies the redeployment of racial stereotypes in the intimate lives of some gay males of color as one social response to sexual racism. This practice is meant to “de-center whiteness as the target of sexual desires while simultaneously marking the love of ‘sameness’ legitimate.” In and through the strategic use of racialized stereotypes, gay men of color invent “racialized ways of being [that] have value outside of . . . the service of whiteness.” Han explores this practice in the broader context of taking intraracial relationships seriously, but its history extends beyond intraracial contexts.

Han, Halperin, and de Lauretis, each in their own way, alert us to a collective social identity, one that is not found in “nature,” but rather in history, in the history of specific social practices, that, to re-turn to de Lauretis’ definition of queer theory, “articulate the terms in which lesbian and gay sexualities may be understood and imaged as forms of resistance to cultural homogenization, counteracting dominant discourses with other constructions of the subject in culture” (emphasis added). And these various, to use Han’s term, “strategic essentialism[s]” are not just academic exercises. Han, Halperin and de Lauretis are all contesting a certain strand of queer theory, an “abstract queerness”—and for a good reason.

Han asserts that “queer theory has not only ignored race but has actively attempted to erase race analysis in an effort to present a universalized queer experience focused on the experiences of white, Western, upper-class gay men.” Halperin asserts that “[m]ost gay men nowadays, especially younger gay men, along with women and members of other minority groups, are forced to live in a state of denial about the social meaning of their difference . . . . When it comes to sexuality in particular, [anyone] can claim a queer identity, so long as such a claim does not challenge the protocols of American social life, disrupt heterosexual privilege, or lead to a rejection of the norms of mainstream culture (love, family, social belonging).” De Lauretis contends that feminist post-structuralism’s obsession with essentialism is not innocent. De Lauretis suggests “that what motivates the suspicion or the outright construction, on the part of Anglo-American feminists, of a fantom feminist essentialism, may be less the risk of essentialism itself than the further risk of which that entails: the risk of challenging directly the social-symbolic institution of heterosexuality.” In other words, what gets left out, hidden, etc. by this poststructuralist obsession with essentialism is the specific form of desire that challenges heterosexuality and that is made manifest in and through specific feminist practices—namely, a specific form of love, love between women, what we may call lesbianism. The erasure of specificity is also the erasure of certain (queer) desires.

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Brintnall’s contention that “emphases and exclusions are necessary to an essay like this one: they are what make a collection of details and an agglomeration of information a story” indicates that narration, any narration, requires making choices that make it a specific narration, a story. However, Brintnall’s second contention, that “queer theory is a long tutorial in learning to find traces of what has been hidden, marginalized, and distorted in service of fabricating a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good, as well as assessing the damage wrought by telling certain stories rather than others,” indicates that it is precisely specificity that must be queered.

What is difficult to discern on the surface of Brintall’s narrative is the exact relationship he intends between specificity and queerness. As it is framed above, there is, on one the hand, specificity, and then, on the other hand, there is queerness. This way of framing the relationship between specificity and queerness is supported by other moments of his storytelling. For example, in his summary of the work of Duggan and Puar, Brintnall suggests that “participatory interaction with the reigning system of power” is at odds with “resistant queerness.”

Reading de Lauretis with Halperin on queer specificity clarifies, what is to Brintnall, the “somewhat” clear character of de Lauretis’ in(ter)vention.” It points to a form of queerness that is more subtle and supple and compromised than Brintnall may desire. In their textual relationship, in the relationship between unequals, de Lauretis (founder?) and Halperin (inheritor?) create/discern the possibility of a queerness that is at once participatory and resistant, a queerness made manifest in and through lesbian and gay social histories.

While the exact character of queerness in “Once upon a queer theory” is, at least to me, not entirely clear, it seems likely that Brintnall understands queerness as resistant queerness, queerness in opposition to “participatory interaction.” Even if Brintnall intends to define queerness in strictly oppositional terms, his narrative may be read otherwise, and in a way that makes more sense of his story’s main character:

As a story, Brintnall’s narrative is participatory—and no more than its “emphases and exclusions.” Yet, his story is also, and at the same time, resistant. Brintnall resists normalizing what is a queer story by consistently disrupting his narrative, by refusing to, and in the same moment he is also not refusing to, “[fabricate] a unified, seamless narrative of the normal, the natural, and the good.” In “Once upon a queer theory,” the practice of queer storytelling “may actually be serving new, dynamic social functions, creating possibilities” (emphasis added).

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