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Cartographies of Experience: Rethinking the Method of Liberation Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2015

Kristien Justaert
Kristien Justaert*
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Abstract

The core of this article consists of a critical rethinking of the classical “see-judge-act” methodology of liberation theology. The article contends that this method threatens to install a dualism between a universal, secular experience of oppression and a Christian interpretation of it, thereby creating a hierarchical relation that reduces the complexity of the experience of poverty. The author investigates this issue by focusing on liberation theology's understanding of the “preferential option for the poor” (part 1) and the way in which the see-judge-act methodology affects this understanding (part 2). The article gradually moves on to alternative epistemologies, starting with a discussion of a hermeneutical approach (C. Boff and Schillebeeckx) and the method of “historicization” (Ellacuría), and eventually proposing a new phenomenologically and materially informed methodology for liberation theology that is called “cartography” and is grounded in a “new materialist” metaphysics as articulated by Deleuze, Braidotti, and Barad (part 3).

Keywords

liberation theologysee-judge-actexperiencecartographyoption for the poornew materialism
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 237 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2015 

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References

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Der Antichrist,” in Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, pt. 6, vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969), 177 (§§12–13).

2 See Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Social Classification,” in Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, ed. Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 181–224. See also Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 2: “Coloniality names the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today of which historical colonialisms have been a constitutive, although downplayed, dimension. The concept as used herein, and by the collective modernity/coloniality, is not intended to be a totalitarian concept, but rather one that specifies a particular project: that of the idea of modernity and its constitutive and darker side, coloniality, that emerged with the history of European invasions of Anya Yala, Tawantinsuyu, and Anahuac; the formation of the Americas and the Caribbean; and the massive trade of enslaved Africans. ‘Coloniality’ is already a decolonial concept, and decolonial projects can be traced back to the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. And, last but not least, ‘coloniality’… is unapologetically the specific response to globalization and global linear thinking that emerged within the histories and sensibilities of South American and the Caribbean.”

3 See Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Option for the Poor,” trans. Robert R. Barr, in Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology, ed. Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 235–50; Vigil, Jose Maria, “The Option for the Poor Is the Option for Justice, and Not Preferential: A New Theological-Systematic Framework for the Preferential Option,” Voices from the Third World 27, no. 1 (2004): 7–21Google Scholar.

4 What happened this year in response to the crisis in Greece is very telling in this way. The European Union and forces of international finance now control and discipline not only the Global South, but also a European country such as Greece. Neocolonial strategies are now applied within the Continent itself, even in the country that is considered the philosophical birthplace of European culture. See, for example, http://thecolumn.net/2015/07/09/greece-and-the-underdevelopment-of-europe/.

5 Ignacio Ellacuría, “Laying the Philosophical Foundations of Latin American Theological Method,” in Ignacio Ellacuría: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation, ed. Michael E. Lee (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 63–92, at 64.

6 Ibid., 74.

7 Mary Daly ended up rejecting the Christian tradition (e.g., Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation [Boston: Beacon Press, 1974]), whereas Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza works from inside the Christian tradition, attempting to discern possibilities for a Christian feminist theology (e.g., Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [London: SCM Press, 1983]).

8 Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987). Ivan Petrella calls Boff's articulation of this method the “canonical method” of liberation theology (Petrella, The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto [Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004], 26).

9 Clodovis Boff, “Epistemology and Method of the Theology of Liberation,” trans. Robert R. Barr, in Ellacuría and Sobrino, Mysterium Liberationis, 57–85, at 79.

10 Gutiérrez, “Option for the Poor,” 235.

11 Ibid., 236–37.

12 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, December 30, 1987, §42, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.htm (emphasis mine).

13 See Vigil, “The Option for the Poor.”

14 Ibid., 7.

15 Ibid., 8: “My thesis is that this rewording and shifting of the focus from God's Justice to God's Gratuitousness as basis for the option for the poor weakens and ultimately misappropriates the option (consciously or unconsciously), converting it into a simple ‘preference,’ a ‘preferential love,’ a priority in the order of charity, and thus it is no longer a true ‘option,’ no longer a selective and an exclusive taking of sides, and no longer a fundamental option rooted in the very nature of God.”

16 See Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, trans. David Molineaux (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), esp. 19–100.

17 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930).

18 See Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Paul Burns and Francis McDonagh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), esp. 79–86.

19 Gebara, Longing for Running Water, 40. See also Joseph Drexler-Dreis, “Toward a Decolonial Theology: Baldwin's and Fanon's Orientations of Decolonial Love as Transmodern Theological Loci” (PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2015), esp. chap. 4.

20 See Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), 42 ff.

21 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1987), 170.

22 Ibid., 188.

23 See Emanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1961); and Levinas, De Dieu qui vient à l'idée (Paris: Vrin, 1982).

24 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. D. W. Smith (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 20.

25 See, e.g., Jacques Derrida, Apories: Mourir, ou s'attendre aux “limites de la vérité” (Paris: Galilée, 1996).

26 Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” (Libertatis Nuntius), August 6, 1984, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theolog-liberation_en.html.

27 The reactions to this move have been multiple: some still reproach liberation theology for incorporating “the secular” in theology. For example, John Milbank (Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason [Oxford: Blackwell, 1994]) and others claim that liberation theology either was never Marxist enough (e.g., Alistair Kee, Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology [London: SCM Press, 1990]) or should have read Marx differently (see Denys Turner, “Marxism, Liberation Theology, and the Way of Negation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, ed. Christopher Rowland [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 229–47).

28 For a more elaborate discussion of the context and content of Boff's and Ellacuría's method, see Drexler-Dreis, “Toward a Decolonial Theology.”

29 Boff, “Epistemology and Method of the Theology of Liberation,” 59 (emphasis mine).

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 62.

32 Ibid., 77: “We cannot attend exclusively to the purely socioeconomic aspect of oppression—the aspect of poverty itself—however basic and determining it might be. We must also look at the other levels of social oppression: racial (blacks), ethnic (Indians), and sexual (women).”

33 Boff's article in Mysterium Liberationis is based on his doctoral dissertation, later published as Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (see note 8).

34 Petrella, The Future of Liberation Theology, 29.

35 Gebara, Longing for Running Water, 43.

36 For a complete overview of the place of “praxis” within theology, see Daniel Franklin Pilario, Back to the Rough Ground of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004).

37 Lieven Boeve, “Experience According to Edward Schillebeeckx: The Driving Force of Faith and Theology,” in Divinising Experience: Essays in the History of Religious Experience from Origin to Ricoeur, ed. Lieven Boeve and Laurence Paul Hemming, Studies in Philosophical Theology 23 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 199–225, at 200.

38 Edward Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1974), 14.

39 Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 5–6.

40 Boeve, “Experience According to Edward Schillebeeckx,” 204.

41 Ibid., 211.

42 Edward Schillebeeckx, Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 59–60.

43 Boeve, “Experience According to Edward Schillebeeckx,” 215.

44 Ignacio Ellacuría, Freedom Made Flesh: The Mission of Christ and His Church, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976), 4–5.

45 See Xavier Zubiri, On Essence, trans. A. R. Caponigri (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980).

46 Ignacio Ellacuría, “The Christian Challenge of Liberation Theology,” in Lee, Ignacio Ellacuría, 123–36, at 125.

47 Ibid., 125–26.

48 Ibid., 126.

49 See Michael Lee, Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría (New York: Herder & Herder, 2009).

50 Ignacio Ellacuría, “Laying the Philosophical Foundations of Latin American Theological Method,” in Lee, Ignacio Ellacuría, 63–92, at 79.

51 Ignacio Ellacuría, “Hacia una fundamentación filosófica del método teológico Latinoamericano,” in Liberación y cautiverio: Debates en torno al método de la teología en America Latina, ed. Enrique Ruiz Maldonado (Mexico City: Encuentro Latinoamericano de Teología, 1975), 627, quoted in Kevin Burke, The Ground beneath the Cross: The Theology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 103.

52 Ellacuría, “Laying the Philosophical Foundations of Latin American Theological Method,” 70 (on Leonardo Boff): “This is the person who finds himself or herself having not to opt for one or another system of interpreting the universe, but rather for one or another system of transforming his or her historical reality. Consequently, history and hermeneutics take on a different meaning.”

53 Ellacuría, “Laying the Philosophical Foundations of Latin American Theological Method,” 87.

54 Ibid., 72.

55 Burke, The Ground beneath the Cross, 104.

56 Ellacuría, Ignacio, “Los pobres, ‘lugar teológico’ en América Latina,” Misión Abierta 4–5 (1981): 225–40Google Scholar, quoted in Burke, The Ground beneath the Cross, 105.

57 Burke, The Ground beneath the Cross, 7.

58 See Lee, Bearing the Weight of Salvation.

59 See Sedmak, Clemens, “Human Dignity, Interiority, and Poverty,” Proceedings of the British Academy 192 (2013): 563–75Google Scholar.

60 Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 164.

61 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 2.

62 Ibid., 7.

63 See Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals and Power,” in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 205–17.

64 Ibid., 209.

65 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 152.

66 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 271.

67 Braidotti, The Posthuman, 164: “Critiques of power locations, however, are not enough. They work in tandem with the quest for alternative figurations … in terms of power as restrictive (potestas) but also as empowering or affirmative (potentia).”

68 Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 396.

69 Ibid., 133.

70 Ibid., 71.

71 “Interview with Karen Barad,” in New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies, ed. I. van der Tuin and R. Dolphijn (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2012), 48–70, at 52; Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 247.

72 See Van der Tuin and Dolphijn, New Materialism.

73 Van der Tuin and Dolphijn, New Materialism, 85.

74 “Interview with Karen Barad,” 69.

75 Ibid., 49.

76 Ibid., 50.

77 D. Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©MeetsOncoMouse™ (New York: Routledge, 1997), 173.

78 “Interview with Karen Barad,” 69.

79 Braidotti, Nomadic Theory, 27.