RELIGION,VIOLENCE AND LANGUAGE

Seminar on 'Religion, Violence and Language’

While manifestations of violence are quickly dismissed as exceptional, the difficulty of understanding the character of violence and thus the task of a critique of violence persists, for violence assumes a mode of existence that is not merely manifested and actualized (having the character of “figure” or “form”) but also carries the sign of its potentia, of a ‘not yet’. Therefore a possible critique of violence can only be an infinite interrogation of the historical world at any given moment where violence is seen not as one particular question amongst others but in a more fundamental and in a more originary manner, an interrogating which seeks to disclose the grounds of its appeal to legitimacy and ultimately its justification. Hence the problem of violence is not only sociological or historical in any particular, localizable events or sites of violence, but is also a metaphysical question, or rather, the very question of metaphysics. The task of the critique of violence is not to see it as ‘religious’ violence in one instance or as ‘linguistic’ violence in another (where ‘religious’ or ‘linguistic’ may appear merely as qualifying, or adjectival terms) as two particular questions, but to interrogate the very place of religion and language in relation to existence itself. Its aim is to render apparent the immanent claims of violence, to demonstrate its regulating principle, its legitimacy and hegemonic standing. This would demand the deconstruction of the violence of the dominant metaphysics itself: its claim to totality whether in the name of a transcendental principle, or without any such transcendental principle but rather in the name of an immanence constitutive of historical reason.

  Such a critique of violence may assume a certain political theology that seeks to challenge the violence of historical reason, a political theology that takes as its task the delegitimization of any violence that justifies its action under the guise of divine sovereignty or a task that assumes the critical-immanent demand of reason, the infinite questioning of any justification in the name of an exceptionality contained within the power or force from which every “law-positing” and “law preserving” violence can be said to emerge. Religion and language may appear redemptive or suspect, both dangerous and promising, and for this reason, one is justified in asking whether the primacy upon which philosophy stands, the discursive grounds of reason, can offer an alternative to the manifestation of violence. Or is it necessary to open up a far more radical critique that would demand the old notions of religion and language to be thought anew? If the justification of violence on religious/linguistic grounds is to be understood not merely in an accidental manner, we require an explanation of religion and language as inherent and originary locations from where the question of the power of violence positing itself is inseparable. Religion and language would be revealed in their originality as promises in the name of which a negative gesture, a critique of violence, can be carried out.

What remains of religion and language without the force of violence? Can religion and language be thematized as self-enclosed entities governed by their pure essences, or without attributing to them essential and inherently governing principles? Should they be seen as that which wounds us because their promises are negated, erased, forgotten by an “originary violence”? Where does this “originary violence” stem from? The urgency of these questions cannot be denied, and for this very reason, demands a more rigorous examination of the metaphysics of potentia that underlie the empirical-historical investigations of violence once it has taken place. We wish to question the apriori status of violence, not merely its manifestation. What may be at stake are commonly held notions of the secular and the theological, the end of metaphysics and ethical self-certainty, eschatological politics and the irremissible claims of historical reason.

  This conference hopes to address the Aporias that the phenomenon of violence presents to us in the hope of working toward a new critique. From the very etymological meanings of religion (religio, re-ligare), we reference at once its binding and communal, de-linking and fractural characteristics, a generosity of being and a violence of existing. Its absolute homogeneity and absolute heterogeneity may disrupt any possibility of what Jean Luc Nancy calls ‘being-in-common’. How to address, without minimizing them, such Aporias that the phenomenon of violence on religious and linguistic grounds presents to us today? How to make sense of the logic of exceptionality when such logic appears to govern most ethico-political decisions and determines the very sense, or senselessness of existence for us? What remains of the ethical or political in the face of such unspeakable violence that presents itself to us every day?       

Taking the topics of religion and language as the guiding gestures, this conference seeks to address the social, political, philosophical and historical significance of violence. The conference invites scholars from various disciplines to ponder this fundamental question of our time.  Some topics that we wish to address are:

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