Demon Nietzsche
There are changes occurring in our world today that have left some people in confusion. Concepts such as gender and sexuality which have, in the past, been understood as objective and factual are today being transversed and questioned. Changes to our norms and traditions can often be frustrating and this frustration can lead to anger and violence. One only needs to glance at the current United States political climate to see that there is a battle waging against changes to the ways that the world has always been understood. It is my hope in this essay to, first, examine how normative frameworks function and, second, explain why we, as Christians, ought to be at the forefront questioning these normative frameworks. By doing this, I hope present a Christianity that is open to new frameworks that are more inclusive and loving.
The first thing that needs to be addressed is how normative frameworks come into being. I'd like to present an analogy from my everyday life. When I go out I tend to put my wallet in my back pocket. Throughout the day I have a habit of checking that pocket, periodically, to make sure that my wallet is still there. Sometimes the action of checking my wallet is conscious, but often this action is subconscious. Every once in a while I will put my wallet in some other location (such as a front pocket or bag) because I had been sitting on it for too long and it has become uncomfortable. After I have done this I still check my back pocket for my wallet. The moment I touch my back pocket, and my wallet is not there I have a brief moment where rationality ceases and is replaced with panic. The sudden realization that my wallet isn't where it is supposed to be brings fear. This is not a rational fear, but it is the fear that something is not as it should be.
In a sense, the placement of my wallet has become normative for me. Perhaps there are societal influences that have led me to adopt this norm, but there is nothing that is primordially right or true about this placement. There is nothing primordial or natural about the placement of my wallet in the back pocket. Despite this, the fact that I've consistently placed my wallet in that place has led me to hold this placement as true. When that real truth isn't followed, when my wallet is out of place, something is wrong. This wrongness causes fear, panic and sometimes irrational anger. I lash out at the people I passed on the street that day, and I think that, perhaps, they stole my wallet. I get angry at myself, thinking that I forgot my wallet somewhere. None of this is rational, but it is all too real.
In a similar vein, we as a society, community or group of people tend to establish norms and normative frameworks which shape the ways that we interact with the world. A normative framework is a framework that shapes the way we understand how the world is supposed to function. Social norms help to constitute what we, as a society, consider normal. There is nothing primordial about these norms, and yet they are able to have a profound impact on the ways in which we live our lives. This is not to say that norms are arbitrarily defined. Norms develop out of real differences in phenomena that we see in the world. Now, just because they are not arbitrary does not mean that they should not be questioned. This is a thread I will examine below.
Suppose the garbage truck is supposed to come every Friday at 9am. Everyone puts out their garbage believing that it will be picked up at the right time. When this norm isn't followed people become angry. It is true that the garbage is picked up at a certain time, and in a certain place. Through our actions as a society we have created a norm that is true to our lives. The idea that the garbage is picked up on Friday is true, but it is a truth that we have built up as a society based on societal actions. The time and date might initially be arbitrarily defined, but as a norm develops it develops because of societal interaction with that norm.
Having a normative framework that builds an understanding about when the trash is picked up isn't a very problematic one. It is at best a good norm and at worst a neutral one. There are many damaging norms, which hurt people – these are the norms which we need to be concerned about. One normative framework that has been in the news a lot lately is the gender binary. As strange as it might seem at first, gender, and our conception of gender, are social norms that have been socially constructed. These are a norms that runs deep in Western culture. Gender has been constructed through representation and repetition. The more we think about gender as a binary between male and female, the more that this understanding of gender becomes true. As Deleuze states, “What everybody knows, no one can deny” (1995, p. 130). What this means is that if everyone agrees about something, no one can claim that it is false. In this sense, what is agreed upon by society becomes true.
The problem with the Western heteronormative framework is that it is dangerous and damaging to those who do not fit into it's framework. In the United States more than 30% of LGBTQ+ youth reported at least one suicide attempt with the last year, and 50% of transgender youth will attempt suicide at least once before they turn twenty (Youth Suicide Prevention Program, 2015). Our normative framework suggests that these individuals shouldn't exist, because they do not fit into a standard notion of what is normal.
In addition to erasing these groups there are substantial rates of violence against LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly transgender women of colour. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) there was an 11% increase in anti-LGBTQ+ homicides in 2014 over 2013. Over 50% of these crimes were against transgender women of colour. Transgender women of colour have an especially difficult time with the police. Approximately 27% of survivors who reported violence against them to the police faced hostility from the police who were supposed to be helping them (NCAVP, 2015). By systematically establishing this group as normatively wrong, and being outside of the parameters of normal, we, as a society fail them. Our normative framework suggests that these individuals shouldn't exist because they do not fit into a standard notion of what is normal.
It is quite easy to dismiss those who we see as bigoted for being out of touch. However, I want to examine why people get angry about those who are outside the heteronormative ideal. Let us return, for a moment, to the analogy of my wallet. When my wallet is not where it is supposed to be I get frustrated and angry. As mentioned, I get angry at people I saw on the street that day thinking that they stole it. I'm frustrated with myself thinking maybe that I dropped it. In a similar vein, people get angry when the garbage is not picked up on Friday like it is supposed to be. Our society is conditioned to think that the things we believe to be true will function “properly”. So, when someone doesn't fit into our normative framework when it comes to sexuality or gender, people become prone to anger. People get angry at these individuals because they have subverted something that was understood as true. It is easy to get angry when someone appears to be different. In summary, people get angry when their framework of heteronormativity, which they have been accustomed to their entire life, is questioned.
One of my favourite quotations comes from an interview that Michel Foucault did with Michael Bess (1988). In the interview Foucault states,
In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us. We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power. Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good.
Societal norms are powerful. They make things real, true and good. We need to question these norms in order to rob them of their power. When we question “What everybody know” it loses its power and can be denied. Norms constitute hierarchies and binaries that are able to immobilize individuals. It should be noted that Foucault does not consider all power bad. Later in the interview he states “Power is not always repressive. It can take a certain number of forms. And it is possible to have relations of power that are open”. The garbage being picked up at the same time every week is an example of a norm that is not damaging, that is not repressive. That's not the framework that I'm interested in questioning. The frameworks we ought to question are those that damage and repress.
Christianity holds an interesting place in all of this. In one sense, Christianity is the religion of the state and the powerful. It is a rigid institution that is full of rules that have been put in place to govern and control the people. Yet, in its conception, Christianity worked against the state. Historians who study the historicity of Jesus suggest that he was likely a zealot who worked against the Roman government (Aslan, 2014; Brandon, 1967; Martin, 2013).The fight against Roman authority might explain Christ's death, and the persecution of the early church by the Roman empire. Additionally, in scripture we can see that the ministry of Jesus and his apostles fought against the powers that existed (whether Jewish or Roman). They fought back against the normative power structures in their region.
Now, some might argue that Jesus was not a Zealot, but we can turn to scripture for further evidence of Christ being anti-empire. At the very least, Christ stands with the oppressed in their struggle against their oppressor. Many passages in scripture argue that the Kingdom of God will bring about the ultimate inversion of hierarchical power structures. Christ spends his time with the poor and downtrodden and centres his message upon them. This signals that these are the people that Christ wishes to empower in his ministry. Finally, Christ states that each of us is to “love [our] neighbour as [ourself]” (Matthew 19:19, NIV). Followers of Christ are called to love everyone with the same love with which they love our family and friends. This is the ultimate call to equality. We cannot love those who are oppressed if we do not fight against the power dynamics, the hierarchies and the striated space that exist which cause their oppression
It is my contention that the goal of Christianity is to be a force that questions and tears down the hierarchies that have been put in place by the powerful over the oppressed. This is the radical message of Christianity. Christians are called to question the norms and traditions that have been put in place: the norms that systematically oppress certain groups of people in order to benefit other groups; the norms that systematically oppress certain species in order to benefit other species; the norms that say that it is ok to destroy the world as long as it benefits capital interest. Christians, in the call to love our neighbours, are compelled to be complicit in the ultimate inversion of hierarchy. We are called to constantly question those oppressive structures that exist so that we might be able to care for our neighbours, and to be good stewards of the world. This might mean questioning those things that are dearest to us including the church, faith, and Christianity itself.
Christians are ordered to bring forth the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is, fundamentally, the end of the State, the end of Empire, in favor of the Kingdom. Christians believe that when the Kingdom comes there will be no further need for this questioning. Power will be abolished and “The wolf will live with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6a, NIV). This kingdom is an ideal, and perhaps utopian. The hierarchy will be destroyed, and we will live in harmony with one another. This ideal may never come, but we must keep striving towards it. We must continue to fight back against dominant interests that oppress others. We must fight to bring this Kingdom to earth.
Works Cited:
Aslan, R. (2014). Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Reprint edition). New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Bess, M. (1988). Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual: An Interview with Michel Foucault. History of the Present, 4, 1–2, 11–13.
Brandon, S. G. F. (1967). Jesus and the Zealots : A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (First Edition edition). Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Heteronormativity - Oxford Reference. (n.d.). Retrieved August 7, 2015, from http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001/acref-9780199599868-e-811
Martin, D. B. (2013, August 5). “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/books/reza-aslans-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth.html
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. (2015). 2014 Report on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and HIV-Affected Hate Violence - AVP: The Anti-Violence Project (Media Release) (p. 5). Retrieved from http://www.avp.org/resources/avp-resources/405
Statistics about Youth Suicide. (n.d.). Youth Suicide Prevention Program. Retrieved July 21, 2015, from http://www.yspp.org/about_suicide/statistics.htm
There are changes occurring in our world today that have left some people in confusion. Concepts such as gender and sexuality which have, in the past, been understood as objective and factual are today being transversed and questioned. Changes to our norms and traditions can often be frustrating and this frustration can lead to anger and violence. One only needs to glance at the current United States political climate to see that there is a battle waging against changes to the ways that the world has always been understood. It is my hope in this essay to, first, examine how normative frameworks function and, second, explain why we, as Christians, ought to be at the forefront questioning these normative frameworks. By doing this, I hope present a Christianity that is open to new frameworks that are more inclusive and loving.
The first thing that needs to be addressed is how normative frameworks come into being. I'd like to present an analogy from my everyday life. When I go out I tend to put my wallet in my back pocket. Throughout the day I have a habit of checking that pocket, periodically, to make sure that my wallet is still there. Sometimes the action of checking my wallet is conscious, but often this action is subconscious. Every once in a while I will put my wallet in some other location (such as a front pocket or bag) because I had been sitting on it for too long and it has become uncomfortable. After I have done this I still check my back pocket for my wallet. The moment I touch my back pocket, and my wallet is not there I have a brief moment where rationality ceases and is replaced with panic. The sudden realization that my wallet isn't where it is supposed to be brings fear. This is not a rational fear, but it is the fear that something is not as it should be.
In a sense, the placement of my wallet has become normative for me. Perhaps there are societal influences that have led me to adopt this norm, but there is nothing that is primordially right or true about this placement. There is nothing primordial or natural about the placement of my wallet in the back pocket. Despite this, the fact that I've consistently placed my wallet in that place has led me to hold this placement as true. When that real truth isn't followed, when my wallet is out of place, something is wrong. This wrongness causes fear, panic and sometimes irrational anger. I lash out at the people I passed on the street that day, and I think that, perhaps, they stole my wallet. I get angry at myself, thinking that I forgot my wallet somewhere. None of this is rational, but it is all too real.
In a similar vein, we as a society, community or group of people tend to establish norms and normative frameworks which shape the ways that we interact with the world. A normative framework is a framework that shapes the way we understand how the world is supposed to function. Social norms help to constitute what we, as a society, consider normal. There is nothing primordial about these norms, and yet they are able to have a profound impact on the ways in which we live our lives. This is not to say that norms are arbitrarily defined. Norms develop out of real differences in phenomena that we see in the world. Now, just because they are not arbitrary does not mean that they should not be questioned. This is a thread I will examine below.
Suppose the garbage truck is supposed to come every Friday at 9am. Everyone puts out their garbage believing that it will be picked up at the right time. When this norm isn't followed people become angry. It is true that the garbage is picked up at a certain time, and in a certain place. Through our actions as a society we have created a norm that is true to our lives. The idea that the garbage is picked up on Friday is true, but it is a truth that we have built up as a society based on societal actions. The time and date might initially be arbitrarily defined, but as a norm develops it develops because of societal interaction with that norm.
Having a normative framework that builds an understanding about when the trash is picked up isn't a very problematic one. It is at best a good norm and at worst a neutral one. There are many damaging norms, which hurt people – these are the norms which we need to be concerned about. One normative framework that has been in the news a lot lately is the gender binary. As strange as it might seem at first, gender, and our conception of gender, are social norms that have been socially constructed. These are a norms that runs deep in Western culture. Gender has been constructed through representation and repetition. The more we think about gender as a binary between male and female, the more that this understanding of gender becomes true. As Deleuze states, “What everybody knows, no one can deny” (1995, p. 130). What this means is that if everyone agrees about something, no one can claim that it is false. In this sense, what is agreed upon by society becomes true.
The problem with the Western heteronormative framework is that it is dangerous and damaging to those who do not fit into it's framework. In the United States more than 30% of LGBTQ+ youth reported at least one suicide attempt with the last year, and 50% of transgender youth will attempt suicide at least once before they turn twenty (Youth Suicide Prevention Program, 2015). Our normative framework suggests that these individuals shouldn't exist, because they do not fit into a standard notion of what is normal.
In addition to erasing these groups there are substantial rates of violence against LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly transgender women of colour. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) there was an 11% increase in anti-LGBTQ+ homicides in 2014 over 2013. Over 50% of these crimes were against transgender women of colour. Transgender women of colour have an especially difficult time with the police. Approximately 27% of survivors who reported violence against them to the police faced hostility from the police who were supposed to be helping them (NCAVP, 2015). By systematically establishing this group as normatively wrong, and being outside of the parameters of normal, we, as a society fail them. Our normative framework suggests that these individuals shouldn't exist because they do not fit into a standard notion of what is normal.
It is quite easy to dismiss those who we see as bigoted for being out of touch. However, I want to examine why people get angry about those who are outside the heteronormative ideal. Let us return, for a moment, to the analogy of my wallet. When my wallet is not where it is supposed to be I get frustrated and angry. As mentioned, I get angry at people I saw on the street that day thinking that they stole it. I'm frustrated with myself thinking maybe that I dropped it. In a similar vein, people get angry when the garbage is not picked up on Friday like it is supposed to be. Our society is conditioned to think that the things we believe to be true will function “properly”. So, when someone doesn't fit into our normative framework when it comes to sexuality or gender, people become prone to anger. People get angry at these individuals because they have subverted something that was understood as true. It is easy to get angry when someone appears to be different. In summary, people get angry when their framework of heteronormativity, which they have been accustomed to their entire life, is questioned.
One of my favourite quotations comes from an interview that Michel Foucault did with Michael Bess (1988). In the interview Foucault states,
In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us. We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power. Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good.
Societal norms are powerful. They make things real, true and good. We need to question these norms in order to rob them of their power. When we question “What everybody know” it loses its power and can be denied. Norms constitute hierarchies and binaries that are able to immobilize individuals. It should be noted that Foucault does not consider all power bad. Later in the interview he states “Power is not always repressive. It can take a certain number of forms. And it is possible to have relations of power that are open”. The garbage being picked up at the same time every week is an example of a norm that is not damaging, that is not repressive. That's not the framework that I'm interested in questioning. The frameworks we ought to question are those that damage and repress.
Christianity holds an interesting place in all of this. In one sense, Christianity is the religion of the state and the powerful. It is a rigid institution that is full of rules that have been put in place to govern and control the people. Yet, in its conception, Christianity worked against the state. Historians who study the historicity of Jesus suggest that he was likely a zealot who worked against the Roman government (Aslan, 2014; Brandon, 1967; Martin, 2013).The fight against Roman authority might explain Christ's death, and the persecution of the early church by the Roman empire. Additionally, in scripture we can see that the ministry of Jesus and his apostles fought against the powers that existed (whether Jewish or Roman). They fought back against the normative power structures in their region.
Now, some might argue that Jesus was not a Zealot, but we can turn to scripture for further evidence of Christ being anti-empire. At the very least, Christ stands with the oppressed in their struggle against their oppressor. Many passages in scripture argue that the Kingdom of God will bring about the ultimate inversion of hierarchical power structures. Christ spends his time with the poor and downtrodden and centres his message upon them. This signals that these are the people that Christ wishes to empower in his ministry. Finally, Christ states that each of us is to “love [our] neighbour as [ourself]” (Matthew 19:19, NIV). Followers of Christ are called to love everyone with the same love with which they love our family and friends. This is the ultimate call to equality. We cannot love those who are oppressed if we do not fight against the power dynamics, the hierarchies and the striated space that exist which cause their oppression
It is my contention that the goal of Christianity is to be a force that questions and tears down the hierarchies that have been put in place by the powerful over the oppressed. This is the radical message of Christianity. Christians are called to question the norms and traditions that have been put in place: the norms that systematically oppress certain groups of people in order to benefit other groups; the norms that systematically oppress certain species in order to benefit other species; the norms that say that it is ok to destroy the world as long as it benefits capital interest. Christians, in the call to love our neighbours, are compelled to be complicit in the ultimate inversion of hierarchy. We are called to constantly question those oppressive structures that exist so that we might be able to care for our neighbours, and to be good stewards of the world. This might mean questioning those things that are dearest to us including the church, faith, and Christianity itself.
Christians are ordered to bring forth the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is, fundamentally, the end of the State, the end of Empire, in favor of the Kingdom. Christians believe that when the Kingdom comes there will be no further need for this questioning. Power will be abolished and “The wolf will live with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6a, NIV). This kingdom is an ideal, and perhaps utopian. The hierarchy will be destroyed, and we will live in harmony with one another. This ideal may never come, but we must keep striving towards it. We must continue to fight back against dominant interests that oppress others. We must fight to bring this Kingdom to earth.
Works Cited:
Aslan, R. (2014). Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Reprint edition). New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Bess, M. (1988). Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual: An Interview with Michel Foucault. History of the Present, 4, 1–2, 11–13.
Brandon, S. G. F. (1967). Jesus and the Zealots : A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (First Edition edition). Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Heteronormativity - Oxford Reference. (n.d.). Retrieved August 7, 2015, from http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001/acref-9780199599868-e-811
Martin, D. B. (2013, August 5). “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/books/reza-aslans-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth.html
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. (2015). 2014 Report on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and HIV-Affected Hate Violence - AVP: The Anti-Violence Project (Media Release) (p. 5). Retrieved from http://www.avp.org/resources/avp-resources/405
Statistics about Youth Suicide. (n.d.). Youth Suicide Prevention Program. Retrieved July 21, 2015, from http://www.yspp.org/about_suicide/statistics.htm