Third Sunday in ordinary time. Today’s readings: Nehemiah 8:2-10; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Organs without Bodies, by Slavoj ŽižekIn Organs without Bodies (2004), philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek examines the ways in which political and social structures operate apart from the entities that mould them and give them meaning. By exploring subjectivity in today’s cultural contexts, Žižek discusses how meaning, identity and power in contemporary “organs” are constructed in relation to their “bodies”.
Using the “organ” concept, Žižek delves into the how and why “bodies” have been constantly and gradually disconnected from their “organs”, leaving us with the crisis of a fragmented and decentred self. Contemporary “bodies” are no longer organic!
Drawing from the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, Žižek contests the earlier post-structuralist notion of “bodies without organs” put forward in particular by the French philosopher Gille Louis René Deleuze and the psychoanalyst and political philosopher Félix Guattari. Earlier on in the 20th century both argued for the idea of rejecting a structured and fixed identity, emphasising that our purely raw and unformed potentiality resists social constructs and the imposition of social norms. This perspective promotes fluidity, underlines experimentation in search for new ways of being, and promotes a life outside the imposed social structures and constructs which are perceived as repressive.
Contesting the consequences of this framework, and hinging on the value given by Lacan to symbolic, linguistic and social structures in the formation of identity, Žižek shows that the constant fluidity ideal is untenable. Moreover, Žižek supports his critique through his Hegelian and Marxist formation, showing also the political individualistic implications of such fluidity: “bodies without organs” transformed into “organs without bodies”.
While Žižek’s analysis of the relations between unity (body) and diversity (organs) emerges from philosophical exploration, St Paul’s reflection, in today’s reading, on the Church as a body with different organs, emerges from theological contemplation. Nonetheless perhaps, parallelisms between the two perspectives might be evoked. Žižek laments that individual parts are now disconnected from the larger, coherent whole, through the commodification of human functions disengaged from any deeper sense of community or shared purpose.
“Organs” perform tasks in alienation from a meaningful or coherent “body”, politically understood as the collective subject. For example, the recent local debate on extending school hours for children to align with work schedules can be envisaged as but one symptom of this Deleuzian fluid worldview, which contemporary capitalism adheres to (Cfr.: Frédéric Vandenberghe, 2008), reducing “organs” or members to market-driven parts.
On the other hand, the Apostle presents the Church as a unified body where its parts are integral to the healthy functioning of the whole, where each is interconnected to the other, coherently kept in unity through, with and in the head, who is Christ. In this organic body, not only every “organ” or “member” is necessary for a well functioning body, but the most vulnerable and seemingly insignificant are the most cherished, and protected.
In the first reading from Nehemiah, it is the Word of God, preserved in the sacred texts and proclaimed by the prophets that acts as a unifying and meaning providing factor to a people scattered and fragmented after the traumatic exploitation of the Babylonian exile.
In the Gospel too, Jesus proclaims his mission as that of bringing the good news of integral freedom and recovery from the captivity and oppression of fragmentation and dispersion. The Gospel tells us that this unifying power of the Spirit, through Jesus Christ, “spread throughout the whole region”. The Evangelist himself, literally the one who proclaims the Good News, attests that his task was that of compiling and bringing together fragmented notices about Jesus the Christ, “in an orderly sequence”. The ordered compilation of the text therefore becomes a metaphor of the unifying power of the Spirit who breathes life in all members of the same body bringing them to sustainable organic unity.