Theological Genealogy and the Undoing of Knots
Luke, beginning the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And so also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was undone by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had knotted up through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary untie through faith. (Irenaeus of Lyons)
One recurrent tension in the recent Theological Genealogies of Modernity conference was between narrative and diagnostic approaches to understanding the problems of modernity. The narrative approach focuses on historical causes of problems, while theological diagnosis emphasizes the root cause of problems: sin.
The primary mode of genealogical inquiry on display at the conference was critical or subversive. (Not without reason, since the focus of the conference was genealogies of decline.) However, there was consensus that genealogical inquiry could and should do something more than subversion. The notion of problematization would have been helpful in many of the conversations. In this response to the conference, I will introduce problematization and develop its relevance to specifically theological narrative. In so doing, I will show—by analogy and allegory—one way in which the diachronic approach of narrative and the synchronic approach of diagnosis can work in tandem, so that the cumulative weight of sin in history can be appreciated at the same time as grace can work through conversion and restoration toward providential ends. And I will specify how theological problematization can participate in that work.
Colin Koopman is the first philosopher to appreciate fully the centrality of problematization to Foucault’s work. This is partly because Foucault used a number of terms interchangeably with problematization; some of them, such as “eventalizaton,” are notoriously slippery. But at least in the humanities outside philosophy, the main reason for the eclipse of problematization is probably the anthologized authority that Foucault’s 1971 essay, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” has attained—an essay that simply does not mention problematization.
Koopman contrasts problematization to Bernard Williams’s subversive and vindicatory kinds of genealogy. Problematization “is neither for nor against the practices it inquires into, but is rather an attempt to clarify and intensify the difficulties that enable and disable those practices.” This formulation might be shocking if we have only Foucault’s Nietzsche essay to go on for our understanding of genealogy. Clearly Foucault stands adamantly against the structures of domination he identifies. However, Foucault was not so naive as to imagine that abolishing hospitals or prisons or the entire apparatus of the nation-state would eliminate structures of domination. We can oppose the medical gaze that reduces the human body to its mechanistic utility for the liberal-capitalist order while still recognizing the goods of hospitals. To problematize the health care system is to separate out practices such as medical school grand rounds—which can reduce patients to lab rats—so as to recognize that the goods of medical education do not necessarily depend on this practice. And perhaps grand rounds perpetuate the medical gaze partly because of some underlying or adjacent practices along with which grand rounds emerged. We can’t know until we pull out some separate threads from the tangle of practices and systems involved in health care (archaeology) and track their emergence in relation to each other (genealogy).
Koopman elaborates this analogy of tangled threads to illustrate problematization. He imagines a horizontal “hourglass” containing threads. In the left bulb is a tangle of threads. The bottleneck allows us to reach through, grab a single thread, and pull it into the righthand bulb. Now it is straight and distinguishable from the other threads. Next we can grab a different thread, pull it through, and see it in distinction from the other. “The key to the image,” he says, “is this: the threads on the left are all tied together in a fashion that is difficult to discern, whereas the threads on the right are not unrelated or isolated, but rather coordinate with one another in some more coherent fashion, though certainly not a neat and tidy pattern.” In this analogy, the lefthand bulb is the world of practices as we encounter them in all their complexity. The long bottleneck is archaeology, the method by which we can distinguish individual strands of practices. According to Koopman, “Archaeology narrows our focus of vision such that we can get an intellectual grip on practical experience, and it does so by neutralizing part of that practical experience and allowing us to view it on its own in terms of the unity of a discursive formation.” In the righthand bulb, “These singularized threads are then coordinated and related by a genealogy into a larger multi-threaded singularity. A genealogy lays hold of a multiplicity of disentangled threads and weaves them together in a coherent fashion such that we can discern their relations, complex and contingent as they are, between one another.” The entire process is problematization.
One benefit of this analogy is that it conveys the value-neutral, analytic nature of problematization that Koopman wants to emphasize. Its limitation is that it does not include the motivation and intended use of the analytic hourglass-machine. A real-world analogy is more helpful in this regard. In elaborating this alternative analogy of tangled strands, I have in mind particularly the theological motivations and intended uses of problematization.
Let’s begin with an approach that is not problematization. Let’s call it problem-fixing. Truckers frequently work with long lengths of cord to tie off loads. When not in use, these cords tend to tangle. A 100-foot length of cord might take 15 minutes to untangle completely, feeding an end back through knot after knot after knot. Alternatively, you can just find the two ends, pull out the big clumps, and pull the cord taught, embedding countless knots into its length. The cord will be a bit shorter, but it still does its job. But if two or more cords are tangled with each other, that is not a solution, and it could take 30 minutes or more to sort it out; it might be more cost-effective to trash the mess and start with a fresh pack of cord, or cut the ropes apart. Each of these fixes restores the rope to practical use without attempting to analyze, much less to solve, the underlying problem.
Now for problematization: big-wall rock climbers (think The Dawn Wall, living on the face of El Capitan for days on end) deal with similar challenges, but their systems prevent them from leaving knots in the rope, and they certainly can’t toss the ropes they rely on for their safety (cutting is a last resort). Looking at a heinously tangled pile of ropes, the trucker sees a big problem that can be fixed by working around the small problems. The climber, by contrast, has to commit to patient disentangling. Every mess of ropes is different; every mess will require a hundred unique solutions. Even so, climbers learn to see patterns in piles of rope, places to begin, complexities to ignore for now, when to pull hard and when to leave loose. You can’t begin to solve the big problem without first seeing the little problems, and you can’t see those without patiently following through certain strands and allowing your mind to distinguish them from each other. That process constitutes, in fact, the large majority of the work. Once you see where a knot is happening, it doesn’t take that long to unknot it.
In this analogy, the trucker is the technocrat, working with the mess of the systems we have to keep them working, and to do so as efficiently as possible. The climber is the Koopmanian problematizer, patiently and meticulously working to recognize and distinguish the formations and practices and persons that interact to generate problems. The advantage of this analogy is that the agents have pragmatic motivations to disentangle the mess. In the case of the climbers, their very life depends on it (pace Alex Honnold). The intended use of problematization is to recognize knots in order to be able to undo them. The undoing of the knots is beyond the scope of problematization, beyond the scope of scholarship.
This analogy has limits. The world is such that we live on the big wall and never leave it, so we can never throw away the ropes and start over with new ones. The world is not a rope, such that when you finally see the knot, the easy part is untying it. Or the world is not a loose mess of ropes, but a mess that has been used to haul loads and catch falls without ever being worked out. So the knots have been pulled tight, very tight, and so even when you recognize them, they might be impossible to get out by hand. They might be fused together so that only the freeze-thaw cycle and general decay will bring them to the point of untying.
Now to put this analogy in theological perspective, here is an allegory: In the beginning, God wove the universe out of rope with no beginning or end, in knots of ordered complexity, such as we see in these two images:
Detail of the Chi-Ro incipit of the Gospel of John in the Book of Kells. “In the beginning was the Word,” and each stroke of each letter is composed of interlaced knots without beginning or end.
A celtic knot in a classic interlace pattern, with no beginning or end, and equally loose at every point, made from a climbing rope.
With the first sin, Adam and Eve fell with the weight of all humanity. As they fell, the rope ran over the sharp edge of the abyss, severing it at places and revealing ends. When the rope caught them, the impact force distorted the ordered knots, pulling them taught, fusing some, kinking others. They dangle over the abyss from a mess of rope. They find themselves in the middle of a big wall, with the rope fortunately caught in some cracks above them. Their ample garden has been reduced to a barren portaledge, which they can see above them near the crack where the rope is caught.
Climbers on El Capitan. Photo by Tom Evans, El Cap Report.
Climbers on big walls work their way from bottom to top, bringing their ropes along with them. At the end of every rope length, or “pitch,” they have to build an anchor using cracks or drilled bolts. Often they climb their own ropes up to an anchor point that they had reached previously, in order to haul all the gear they need to live on the wall for days. In the middle of the wall, the ropes don’t touch the ground, nor do they extend to the top; they are never more than a rope length above the highest anchor point.
Because of Jonathan Edwards, Adam and Eve are also spiders, and fortunately can climb the rope back up to the tangle that prevents them from ascending to their original goal, the top of the wall. They get to the portaledge and work at the tangle for ages, but cannot find a single place to begin, a single loose loop that might get them started. Instead, they only make it worse, complicating the tangle and tightening the knots. It’s a “clusterfuck,” in the technical climbing jargon . . .
Climbers on El Capitan. Photo by Tom Evans, El Cap Report.
Until: “the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary” (Irenaeus of Lyons). As Pope Francis prays in his devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots, “Holy Mary, full of God’s presence during the day of your life, you accepted with full humility the Father’s will, and the devil was never capable of tying you up with his confusion.” At last—a loose starting point! And from this new beginning is born a climber who will not fall, who does not need the ropes. They watch Him and He shows the way to the top. They realize that even if they cannot solve the clusterfuck completely, they have enough rope untangled to follow slowly the route Christ showed them, pitch by pitch, age to age. “By remaining forever Our Mother, you put in order and make more clear the ties that link us to the Lord.”
A climber leads the next pitch from the belay stance. Photo by Tom Evans, El Cap Report.
Because they are tied to the rope that contains the clusterfuck, they must always carry the clusterfuck with them, generation by generation. Old knots are loosed, new knots form, but miraculously there is always enough rope to reach the next belay stance. They know that the whole clusterfuck will only be completely untangled at the top, which they can only faintly and occasionally see through the clouds. Once at the top, they will step over the edge onto flat land. There, they are finally safe to untie from the rope. They will ring out, “Peter! Off belay!!!!” Now they will have the two loose ends that will allow the entire clusterfuck to be undone. Meanwhile, on this route, which they learn is named Saeculum (5.11+ R, A6, VI), they must always be looking for and finding the places full of grace where they can unravel the length of rope needed for each generation.
In the mode of problematization, “theological genealogies of modernity” can participate in this work.
Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner, “Wallfahrtsbild,” c. 1700.
This painting that inspired Pope Francis’s devotion plays on an earlier tradition of Mary depicted as spinner, weaver, or embroiderer. Here she is seen in her Assumption, fittingly ascending into Heaven, such that we could imagine Mary also showing Adam and Eve the route to the top of the wall. In the earlier tradition, though, the weaving Mary is usually depicted in the scene of the Annunciation:
Francisco de Zurbarán, “The Young Virgin,” c. 1632-33
“She remained in the Temple until she was fourteen. . .There Mary was employed in spinning; working in wool and linen, silk and white cloth, she sewed and wove the priestly vestments and all the rest that was necessary for the cult of the Temple. After, she attended to her precious Son, and then she made for Him the seamless tunic.” —Francisco Pancheco
This elaboration of an iconographic tradition suggests a twist in our allegory, which assumed that the problematizer does not solve the clusterfuck, but only brings the individual knots into focus. Suppose, though, that the goal is restoration of the original harmony of creation represented by the celtic knot. Then the problematizer is like Mary in the “Undoer of Knots” iconography, and the next step is to weave the individual strand into a new order, a new pattern that surpasses even the original pattern in beauty and complexity, a movement of Irenaean recapitulation. Could this be where the technocrat comes in? The democrat? The Anglo-Saxon peaceweaver, fríÞwebbe, the woman who alone can reconcile the men’s bloodfeud through a new union? We are now far from the original analogical frame, but rightly so. (Thanks to Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft and Chris Nygren for encouraging me to trace out this textiles thread.)