Friday Florilegium: Money, Secularism, Religion, Anonymity

So, in my ever-renewed efforts to update this blog more frequently, here are few new interesting links I've come across.

• Day 3 of the ongoing discussion of Goodchild's Theology of Money

• The Immanent Frame, a collective blog offering a forum for interdisciplinary exchanges among leading humanities and social sciences scholars around the issues of secularism, religion, and the public sphere, previously posted the audio files from its October symposium at SUNY Stony Brook on "Rethinking Secularism." The event featured talks by notables Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, and Cornell West, with closing remarks by Craig Calhoun. See here for an open thread on the event. As a supplement to these aforementioned links, which were all posted in early November, now see here for the full text of the ensuing exchange between Butler and West as moderated by Eduardo Mendieta.

• Kvond offers an especially elegant rejoinder to the most recent in a series of attacks on anonymous blogging. I won't enter the fray of such "prejudicial hilarity" here, except to note that what I find so elegant about this rejoinder is Kvond's Spinozistico-Deleuzian meditation on the benefits and possibilities of "anto-nymy" as continuing the "long history of pseudonymous writings" within the "virtual world’s new potentiality for micro-climates of interpersonal subjectivity." Offered there is a truly graceful reminder about the powers and effectivities of blogging as an activity of pure immanence as contained/enacted in the "name." Kvond's rejoinder here to the equally always thought-provoking Larval Subjects continues earlier conversations, on which see here and here.

Also, I'll be posting more original content over the next few days, including (with permission) an interesting email exchange I've had with a friend and colleague regarding President Obama's speech this week and his "decision" to surge the troop levels in Afghanistan. Two other forthcoming posts will concern the observance of earlier this week of "World AIDS Day," and another on my now less than recent thoughts about the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal at the beginning of November, including the very positive reception of my paper on Jean Gerson, the discernment of spirits, and masturbation. But more on that shortly.

AAR, Montreal -- Paper Accepted

Although I still have work to do in preparation for next week's glossing conference at CUNY, I did receive the good news a few days ago that my paper proposal for the next meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal next fall was accepted. I submitted to a consultation that was new last year, "Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Premodern Christianity." This year they were particularly interested in projects that explored its key terms at the nexus of scriptural interpretation. For those not familiar with the AAR process, individuals must submit a 1000-word proposal along with a 150-word abstract. I've included below only the abstract, and will provide more details about my paper later. I have to have it completed by mid-September, since the consultation chairs have secured Harvard's Amy Hollywood as our respondent.

The Solitary Vices of Medieval Discernment

The biblical injunction to “test the Spirits” (1 John 4:1) gave hermeneutical warrant for church officials to codify affects of vigilance and skepticism into forms of institutional mistrust called the “discernment of spirits.” This paper offers a reconsideration of medieval discernment literature by arguing that it is isomorphic with those moral rhetorics surrounding masturbation. Operative in both discursive registers is a fear of unregulated solitude. Examining scholarship on discernment literature alongside the cultural history and analysis of masturbation, I re-read selected passages from the writings of Jean Gerson and Middle English Chastising of God’s Children. The regulatory aims of these texts index the erotic power of thought to captivate and redirect a believer’s (sometimes unwilling) consciousness. Compelling both the solitary visions of the aspiring mystic and the “solitary vice” of masturbation are forms and languages of erotic pleasure that official theology fears are actually forms of selfishness.