Abeysekara - Thought Unthought of Asad Untranslatability

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© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157006811X608386

Method and Teory in the Study o Religion 23 (2011) 257-282 brill.nl/mtsr

METHOD

THEORY in the

STUDY OF

RELIGION

&

Te Un-translatability 1 of Religion,Te Un-translatability of Life: Tinking alal Asad’s

Tought Unthought in the Study of Religion

Ananda Abeysekara Department o Religion and Culture,

Virginia ech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA [email protected]

Abstract Every scholarly attempt to defne—and, by extension, theorize, interpret, and conceptualize—religion is based on the sovereign “orce o decision.” Such theory-decision translates religioninto a symbol or category, accounting or it, separating and releasing it rom what alal Asad callsthe “not so easily varied” disciplinary practices that constitute lie. In this separation o “reli-gion,” lie becomes a spectator (theoros ) to itsel. Asad’s argument about the impossibility o defning religion, connected to his contention that “lie is essentially itsel,” helps us think aboutthe un-translatability o lie. Closely paralleling Nietzsche and Heidegger’s reections on exis-tence and memory—but largely unthought by contemporary theorists o religion—Asad’s think-ing about religion is a reusal to historicize lie.

Keywordsalal Asad, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche

Lie is essentially itsel.—alal Asad , Genealogies o Religion

I will return . . . not to a new lie, or a better lie, or a similar lie: I will return tothis same, selsame lie.—Friedrich Nietzsche , Tus Spoke Zarathustra

One ultimately inherits [experiences] only onesel.—Friedrich Nietzsche , Tus Spoke Zarathustra

1 I hyphenate the word “un-translatability” here to note that it is not merely separate rom oropposed to translation and grants the (whatever) possibility o translation. For ease o reading,

I will not hyphenate the word in the rest o the text. Similarly I do also not hyphenate the word impossibility or unavailability.



258 A. Abeysekara / Method and Teory in the Study o Religion 23 (2011) 257-282

One always inherits rom a secret—which says “read me, i you will ever be ableto do so?”

—Jacques Derrida, Specters o Marx

I. Teorization of Religion and the Force of “Decision”

Te argument that I make in this article is simple and ar-reaching, one that isas yet unthought by academic scholars o religion who continue to defne , andin turn and by extension, theorize, interpret, and conceptualize what we havecome to know as religion in the humanities today. Tat (frst) point is this:

Any attempt—Nietzsche says that every attempt (Versuch) is a temptation (Versuchung )—to defne, theorize, interpret, conceptualize religion, is basedon a sovereign “decision” to do so. Te second (related) point: With all thesovereign “orce” and sense-deying logic o it, such decision to defne,theorize . . . religion, which hardly corresponds to any reality or truth, alwaysseeks (in ways perhaps scholars do not intend) to separate , “release,” or “set ree”religion rom what alal Asad calls the “disciplinary practices” or what Nietzscheand Heidegger call lie’s “center o gravity” or “attunement” (Bifndlichkeit )that constitute lie/living/existence itsel, respectively. Tird point: Te disci-

plinary practices that constitute religious lie, within which any and every understanding or intelligibility o what we call religion is possible, do not remainavailable (verügbar ) or any kind o defnition, theorization, interpretation,conceptualization. However, scholars, who seem to ignore or simply have notthought about the import o what Asad says (and perhaps are unaware o whatNietzsche and Heidegger taught us) can continue to theorize religion only by separating and releasing religion rom such attuned disciplinary practices o lie/living itsel. Te ourth point: this separation—note that decision (decidere ),related to Greek krino, kairo, and krisis, means to separate, to distinguish, etc.

(Abeysekara 2010; 2012a)—that goes into every decision to defne and theorizereligion is an attempt to translate religion/lie itsel into a symbol/metaphor,removed and separated rom lie, into some aspect or category o lie. It is suchsymbol/metaphor scholars theorize and interpret in the guise o theorizingreligion. My argument then is that the possibility to theorize religion is avail-able or scholars not because o any actual reality called religion/lie that awaitsout there, as a conceptual object or category , needing scholarly conceptualizationor, better yet, accounting or . Rather such theorization is an impossibility tobegin with, which can be turned—or should we say translated ?—into a possibility

only by the sovereignty o decision. Te sovereignty o decision turns an impos-sibility into a possibility. Such is the sovereignty o decision to theorize religion.



A. Abeysekara / Method and Teory in the Study o Religion 23 (2011) 257-282 259

My task here is to urge scholars to think this impossibility, the impossibility o theorizing and interpreting what we call religion. Tinking this impossibil-

ity, I argue, is no longer another (philosophical) attempt at theorizing andinterpreting religion/lie/existence, as some concept, idea, or category (Heidegger1996; Derrida). Tinking this impossibility arms the impossibility o theseparation and translation o religious disciplinary practice rom what consti-tutes it, that is, lie/living/existence itsel.

Tis, or me, is what Asad’s argument about the impossibility o defningreligion invites us to consider, by way o his contention that “lie is essentially itsel.” Asad’s argument, I contend, arms the impossibility o translating lie/existence into anything other than itsel, an argument shared by Nietzsche,

Heidegger, and Derrida. It is this point that scholars who consider it necessary to theorize religion—as i they were commanded or moved by some right or(Kantian or some other sovereign) sense o duty, responsibility, or call—havenot thought.

When I contend that any and every interpretation and theorization o reli-gion is based on a decision, I am not suggesting, as do some scholars (Lincoln2003; Strenski 2010; Schilbrack 2010) who misread Asad’s argument, thatreligion cannot be defned because it is not an essential thing. Rather, that thedecision to defne and theorize what is called religion turns religious practice/

lie into a symbol/metaphor, producing what Nietzsche and Heidegger call“distortion” or “covering up” or “burying alive” (Entstellung and Verstellung ,respectively) o such lie. Tis impossibility translated into a possibility by thisseemingly simple decision sometimes comes to us in the orm o making asimple choice to defne religion. Following Derrida, and by way o Hegel, I callthis translation (that goes into every attempt to defne and theorize religion)the orce o decision: Tere can be no theorization o religion without the orceo decision, with all the metaphorical and metaphysical implications andextensions that ollow rom such an exercise.

And, in this translation and theorization o religious practice, lie itsel becomes something that can be historicized , a task that remains central to thevery discipline that goes by that name: history o religions. Asad’s argumentthat lie is essentially itsel is a counterpoint to the presumption that lie canbe historicized, since historicization is a way o thinking o lie as somethingthat translates and changes within history. (Tis is how the idea [Muti 2000]o a historical “diversity o . . . lie” becomes possible.) I will discuss later Nietz-sche’s argument that the historicization and translation o lie constitute thevery legacy o the “history o Christianity,” a history within which lie itsel

(and whatever its legacy or inheritance) becomes qualifed and “redeemed” asa symbol/metaphor.




Tis translation and redemption o lie is what we fnd in the orce o deci-sion, which goes into the scholars’ attempt to defne, theorize, and interpret

religion. Despite Asad’s well-known argument, scholars continue to oer orendorse new defnitions o religion, which are always new “theories” o religion/religious practice.2 Tat is, scholars continue to regard religion as an object orcategory o theory, which, by being an accused or acustative in the Greek senseo the word (Heidegger 1996), will always require explaining, qualiying, oraccounting or. Here religion becomes something external to lie, or better yet,reminiscent o Hegel, an “expression” o lie.3 Despite sophisticated justifca-tions, these scholarly attempts to interpret and theorize religion are made pos-sible by a “decision;” in that to interpret and theorize religion is simply to

decide to do so, with all the sovereign logic and orce o decision. Tis decision,its sovereignty, and indeed its irresponsibility, is assumed to translate itsel intoan (academic theoretical and secular) responsibility and “obligation” o inher-iting the legacy o religion. (Here I cannot o course go into all the ways thatperhaps more than anyone Derrida has taught us about the complexity o thesovereignty o decision.)

A recent such sovereign decision to defne and theorize religion can beound in the work Crossing and Dwelling: A Teory o Religion by a distin-guished historian o religion, Tomas weed (2006). For weed, as or others,

to theorize religion is indeed to defne religion, and vice versa. weed is pre-pared to do so by discounting unaccountably all the “warnings about the

2 For instance, with no reerence to Asad, almost fve years ater the Asad’s Genealogies , in anarticle called “Religion, Religions, Religious,” Smith (1998: 281) asserted religion is a “term cre-ated by scholars or their intellectual purposes and thereore is theirs to defne.” More recently,postmodern theologian Caputo (2009: 62-65) quoted verbatim Mark C. aylor’s (2008a) defni-tion o religion, without noting a single problem with it: “Religion is an emergent, complexadaptive network o symbols , myths, and rituals that, on the one hand, fgure schemata o eeling,thinking, and acting in ways that lend lie meaning and purpose and, on the other, disrupt, dislo-cate, and disfgure every stabilizing structure.” Similarly, in a review essay, Roberts (2009:81-104), who quotes approvingly aylor’s above defnition o religion and argues religion is not just “locative” but it is “virtual,” fnds in that defnition a new and radical potential or religiousstudies theory. Other scholars (Strenski 2010) persist in making “usable and revisable defni-tions” abandoning only “parochial notions o religion.” Te list goes on.

3 Hegel’s Phenomenology is in many ways an attempt to both overcome and authorize thissense o “expression” ( Äußerung ) and “externalization” (Entäußerung ) by way o his notions o negation, mediation, and negation o negation involved in the dialectic. Te immediacy o athing is always mediated, by way o its own “orce (Krat ),” which is the “medium o matters,” which is also the “whole.” (Hegel 1977): Te orce, as the unconditioned universal condition o the whole, is the “expression” o itsel, which ultimately supersedes itsel and is the “actual.”“Force as the actual , exists solely and simply in its expression, which at the same time is nothing

else than a supersession o itsel (sichselbstauheben)” (Hegel 1977: 86). Tis is what Hegel callsthe “negative o the orce.”




utility o eorts to defne religion” (weed’s words). Te warnings about thispurported utility is discounted or the sake o a presumed utility, simply

because o a choice that (soon) translates itsel into an (academic ) obligation and accountability ! Te choice to discount such warnings is based on a sovereignmetaphor itsel. weed writes: “despite warnings about the utility o eorts todefne religion, many scholars choose to get up and start running.” Tis sup-posed choice to “get up and start running” is a choice or a particular kind o “obligation.” Here we are already led to believe in a relation between “choice”and “obligation” simply based on the maddening orce o this metaphor itsel.Maddening because the choice to “get up and start running” becomes merely possible by way o a metaphor itsel, a thing pulled out o the air, as i by a eat

o magic. Here metaphors multiply metaphors. It is this choice/obligation, theorce o the sovereign metaphor to get up and start running, that comes inthe orm o another, supposedly better, defnition o religion, which claimsto (implicitly?) controvert Asad’s argument about the impossibility o such adefnition.

Te orce o the sovereign choice to get up and start running is to run away rom the impossibility o defning religion, toward the possibility o metaphor.One can only suppose that the single reerence to Asad, in a single sentence inCrossing and Dwelling , renders weed’s choice to defne religion most sover-

eign, as it discounts all the “warnings,” as i with a single wave o the hand, ora magic wand, without any responsibility o pausing, only to start running,away rom all responsibility o thinking the impossibility o defning religion.Here, in the sovereignty o this (simple?) choice to get up and start running,the very orce o choice translates (or pretends to translate?) an impossibility into a possibility. Te mere choice becomes a sovereign decision. (I havedetailed elsewhere [2012] how this logic o decision is central to many his-toricist and empiricist works within other area studies o religion such as Bud-dhism.) So the choice to get up and start running becomes a sovereign choice

in that only a sovereign can perhaps run, away rom an impossibility, present-ing and pretending (i.e., stretching orth) such a sovereign choice as an obliga-tion, discounting all the warnings.

Te result o this sovereign choice/decision is the ollowing sovereign def-nition o religion: “Religions are conuences o organic-cultural ows thatintensiy joy and conront suering by drawing on human and superhumanorces to make homes and cross boundaries” (weed 2006: 54). weed claimsthat he is obligated—here choice translates itsel into obligation—to oer thisdefnition in part out o “role-specifc . ., proessional obligations” to the disci-

pline o religion. (We are told that in part the possibility o this choice andobligation supposedly has its origin in what weed witnessed at a Cuban




Catholic ritual among transnational migrants in Florida [weed 2006: 54].Te obligation nonetheless is not fnally to Cuban Catholics but to the proes-

sional academy o religion, or the sake o something else, as we will see.) Notethe particular relation between proessional obligation and the decision todefne and theorize religion. Given weed’s sense o obligation, anyone inreligious studies can ulfll her proessional “obligation” by defning religion!Needless to say, given the sovereignty o this decision, weed does not pauseto think how and why such an obligation is demanded, or why it constitutesan obligation at all. For him, simply “we are called” to defne religion by the“ussiness” o the term itsel. Tat is, we are simply called to be “clear” abouthow we defne the term! Here the unclarity is presented as the (tautological)

condition o the sovereign call itsel, as it comes rom its own condition, itsowness, i you will, o being unclear.

Te question o the “call” itsel remains hardly thought—how and when,by what/whom, a call is demanded. Rather the sovereign call to defne religionis based on a presumption that such defnition has to be repeated until (com-plete?) clarity o the term can be gained, something that is never certain andthus may remain an infnite task, since unclarity is the (tautological) conditiono the term that repetitively calls or clarity, in and all by itsel. What weedseeks to produce is ultimately a politics o clarity about religion pretended as

an “obligation.” o do so, he must water down religion and make it available or explanation in more sel-evident and less complicated metaphorical terms.Tis is why he says, astoundingly, that “religions unction as clock andcompass” (91).

For weed, the obligation to defne religion is simply synonymous with theproessional demand or clarity about our terms. Such proessionalism is thensupposed to translate itsel into a general sense o (political?) obligation/responsibility. However, a discerning reader may question: can this relationbetween the decision/choice to defne and theorize religion and “proessional”

obligation really hold? How does such proessional obligation dier rom thato any other “proessions,” or instance like proessionals in the State Depart-ment, the CIA, the Department o Deense, or in dentistry, ophthalmology,ultimate fghting, or proessional wrestling? Te dierence, weed may retort,is that those proessions do not study, defne, and theorize religion! Exactly my point! I this is so, then the relation between proessionalism in general andthe obligation to defne religion that weed assumes to ollow rom proes-sionalism cannot possibly hold up! Neither can the relation between attend-ing-witnessing a Cuban Catholic ritual and the so-called obligation to oer a

defnition o religion that supposedly represents and explains such a ritual. I it were so, everyone who attended such a ritual would fnd hersel obligated todefne religion and write a book on it!




Here, without being able to go into detail, I can only say that in the attemptto interpret and theorize religion by way o defning it, religion is substituted

or something else, which is a metaphor/symbol. Tat is, it is whatever thatdoes “intensiy joy and conront suering” or it unctions as “clock and com-pass.” But this substitution (and supplementing) by way o metaphor/symbol,as Nietzsche, Heidegger (1996), Derrida (1974; 1981), Nancy (2008) et al.have taught us so well, remains, rom Plato onwards, at the heart o the West-ern history o logocentrism, within which the questions o “truth,” “being,”“goodness,” and indeed “God” itsel are conceptualized as concepts, ideas, or“expressions.” weed’s decision to defne religion in the above way, whichmore or less verbatim replicates all the aspects o the Cliord Geertz’s defni-

tion o religion that Asad takes apart, is caught up in this logocentric history o metaphor, rendering weed a cosigner to the legacy o what Derrida (1982)calls “white mythology.”4

weed may claim that his defnition that religions unction as clock andcompass or religion is what intensifes joy or conront suering is not univer-sal, because his theory recognizes religion in time and place. However, as onereads on, or weed, both “time” and “place” themselves become universalmetaphors, as do the metaphors o “crossing and dwelling” in them. Tis is why weed claims, allaciously, that “metaphor . . . prompts new sightings and

crossings.” Tis can hardly be so. When metaphor “prompts . . . sightings andcrossings,” one must ask, do sightings and crossings themselves become meta-phors or metonyms? A careul reader may note the conusion here. Tat is, itis dicult to tell what is really prompting sightings, crossings, and dwellings—religion/religious practice or its metaphor or its metonymy that representsreligious practice. But weed’s idea that metaphor prompts sighting/seeing islogically and patently alse. One never sees through a metaphor . I it were so, one would never see. Tis is why Heidegger, as we discuss below, says that seeingis existential. But metaphor is not existential; neither is existence metaphori-

cal. Put dierently and more simply, one never does anything with a metaphor,as one does with something like a hammer (which is Heidegger’s avoriteexample). Needless to say, metaphor does not have the handiness ( Zuhanden-heit ) o a hammer, with which ones does hammering. (Need I remind that onenever does hammering with a metaphor?) Neither is metaphor something likea pair o eyeglasses, with which one sees; neither is a hammer or eyeglass someconcept, idea, or category.

4 In a decisive metaphorical touch, weed (2009) compares Jews, Christians, and other reli-gious persons to the metaphor o “crabs.” According to him, Jews and others can be a metaphor

like crabs because, like crabs, they can also be “crustaceans.” Tis way o representing religiousidentities constitutes or weed an “ethic o representation.” I this is so, we may not have muchhope or “ethics”!




Beore I get to Nietzsche, Asad, Heidegger, and back to Asad to show how some scholars like weed have not thought about attuned disciplined practices

o religious lie, I would like to emphasize that my point is not that this sub-stitution o religion to metaphor (e.g. the idea that religion is what does“intensiy joy or conront suering”) simply turns religion into anything andeverything like sex and drugs. Rather the substitution o religion or a meta-phor is possible by way o setting ree, separating, or releasing (Erlösung ) lierom itsel, rom the discipline or—to use Heidegger’s word—attunementthat constitutes such lie, or in Nietzsche’s terms, lie’s center o gravity, thehumilitas o lie. With the releasing o lie rom the humilitas o lie, lie under-goes a certain division or splitting o itsel, a certain “death,” i you will. In this

division and death, lie becomes a spectator or martyr to itsel, which is animpossibility. One can never become, as Heidegger and Nietzsche demon-strated, a spectator to onesel.

However, any and every theorization o religion ultimately seeks to makepossible the impossibility o turning lie into a spectator to itsel. In such theo-rization, true to that word, as it turns lie into a spectator to itsel, lie becomesdead to itsel. (In contrast, think about Baudelaire’s [cited in Foucault 1984]idea o âneur , the rolling idle spectator; unlike the âneur, the “modern”painter par excellence that Baudelaire admires is not busy searching himsel

but begins to work as the “whole world begins to all apart.” Tis ideal painterhas no “right” to judge or “despise the present” lie in which he lives.) In thisdeath, a redemption or erasure o a memory or legacy o lie takes place. Taterasure, as it leaves behind a remainder, memorializes the memory o lie, which is how then memory, and indeed any memory, becomes possible. Tisis how, as we will see soon, Nietzsche understands the historical possibility o the memory o Jesus’ lie, as his lie became released rom time, reduced to an“eternal act,” a symbol, becoming a historical fgure.

Tus, then I am suggesting any and every attempt and decision to theorize

religion is an attempt to memorialize lie, as it always already seeks to set reeor lit lie rom itsel, rom its own humilitas , as i by some orce, the “orce” o theorization. Te orce o such theorization may no longer even be the “orce”(Krat ) that even Hegel worked so hard to avoid, leaving it to the “medium” o matters itsel, the Dialectic (see note 3). In the modern theorization o reli-gion, the orce is merely the orce o decision. In saying so, I am also sayingthere can be no theorization o religion without the orce o decision, and thisorce o decision hardly corresponds to some objective reality. Also when I say that the orce o decision is sovereign, I am also saying that the sovereign is a

name that we assign to a scholarly theoretical exercise whose logic we do noteither know or understand. Tis is why Derrida says that madness—he doesnot mean this in any pejorative sense—belongs to this logic o decision.




It is the orce o decision, the madness o its sovereign attempt at releasinglie rom the humilitas , which, as Asad discusses, the medieval European

monks sought to cultivate, that we fnd in secular theologian Mark C. aylor’srecent magisterial defnition o religion. In a chapter entitled “TeorizingReligion,” aylor oers us the ollowing defnition o religion. “Religion is anemergent, complex adaptive network o symbols , myths, and rituals that, on theone hand, fgure schemata o eeling, thinking, and acting in ways that lend lie meaning and purpose and, on the other, disrupt, dislocate, and disfgure every stabilizing structure (emphasis added).”

Once again, religion is not really religion. It is a “network o symbols . . ., aschemata o eeling . . . that lend lie meaning . . .” Tis defnition, which is

essential to aylor’s symbolic view o religion as the “virtual,” ultimately ol-lows the logic o the structure o Cliord Geertz’s defnition o religion. Sur-prisingly, aylor makes no reerence to Geertz or, or that matter, to any otherrecent scholar who has tried to defne religion this way. aylor who claims thathe has been “consistently guided” by European thinkers asserts that his defni-tion o religion helps us grasp “the complex interrelation between religion andsecularism” that secularists have allegedly misunderstood. Now aylor claimselsewhere (2009) that “one o the reasons that I did not directly engage the[contemporary] theorists . . . [o religion] is that I did not want to remain

bound to the terms o past debates but wanted to introduce a new set o cat-egories to theoretical discussions o religion.” aylor o course “introduces anew set o categories” by repeating a discredited defnition o religion! Unor-tunately his European “guidance”—I weigh this word guidance—did not helphim understand the allacy o this defnition o religion. Rather, by virtue o such defnition, aylor goes on to make the equally alse distinction between“religion” and “religiosity.” And this is why, reminiscent o Geertz, aylor canclaim that “religious symbols and myths unction as schemata that lend lie mean-ing and purpose ” (15; emphasis added). Here in this schemata, where religion

lends lie meaning, lie is already separated rom religion, which “gives” liemeaning. In this division, lie is symbolic, as it receives meaning rom anothersymbol. In this schemata we know neither religion nor lie as they both aresymbols. It is to explain this symbolic lie that aylor has to come up withnumerous diagrams. Perhaps, in this symbolic translation o lie, what we seeis not even the “distortion” (Entstellung ) or “decay” (Verall ) or even the deatho lie and its memory that Nietzsche speaks o.

My point here is that a lie that receives its meaning rom symbols is a lie thatcannot possibly “exist,” because symbolic lie like religion becomes a “category”

in that the both can be objects and indeed accusatives , which, by defnition,need to be qualifed and accounted or. Teorization o religion always becomesa way o accounting or religion, as i it were an accusative. Tis is what happens




when one reduces religion to a category. Tis is why, I remind, Heidegger laborsin Being and ime to think o existence in existential, not categorical, terms.

Uprooted rom the center o gravity, rom its constitutive discipline, sym-bolic meaning-pursuing lie, once it is accounted or and qualifed , as a kind ,can give rise to the very possibility o the gradations and distinctions o lie—that is, the divisions o one lie that can be greater in meaning than some other lie out and over there, within or beyond some geographical or historical bor-der. All this is to say, aylor’s defnition o religion is an instance o inheritingreligion without religion, x without x. Te predicate “without,” as in x without x, that is, religion without all o its historical-political problems, is inseparablerom the Western history o inheriting religion, something I have detailed

elsewhere. It is in this secular inheritance o religion, where lie itsel thenbecomes qualifable, that the very labor to historicize lie becomes available.Lie that can be historicized is lie that can be accounted or, qualifed , dier-entiated, divided, and graded.

One last point I want to make about aylor’s inheritance o Christianity interms o the above logic o x without x is that it is a particular (modern or not )instance o how a legacy is received by way o a particular translation. And thisinheritance/translation becomes possible by the mere act o articulation thatpasses or theorizing, that is, becoming a spectator to, what one supposedly

inherits. Teorizing religion is impossible without translating it into some-thing that one can merely utter, to make it known in terms o something thatcan be articulated . Note or example that aylor, who claims to oer an “alter-native” to secularism, avers that he does not believe in God “in the traditionalsense o the term. God, or, in dierent terms, the divine, is the infnite creativeprocess that is embodied in lie itsel” (aylor 2008b).5 Now the point here isnot that aylor’s is just an instance o God’s being reduced to a “creative pro-cess” in which one can simply “believe,” but that this belie turns itsel into anact , something that one does , by way o merely articulating it. (We will come

to this question o what one does below.) o clariy my point, let me give acounter-example. Following aylor’s logic o belie, imagine or a moment aTeravada Buddhist saying that she does not accept nibbana, kamma, orrebirth “in the traditional sense o the term.” Surely an empirically mindedscholar may suspect that there may have been some Buddhists who have made

5 aylor (2009) oten speaks o the need to fnd “alternative visions o religion” which do not“remain stuck in the oppositions and contradictions o the past” and do not “pose a threat to theuture.” One may say that not to believe in God in the traditional sense and to take God as vir-tual lie is to take God as literature. Tis privileged position o not believing in God in the tradi-

tional sense now passes or a proper responsibility to the past and its memory. Te uture issimply liberated rom the threat o the past by way o not believing in God in the traditionalsense o the term, by a simple qualifcation.




such claims about themselves at some time. But my point is that this articula-tion, as a propositional truth about what one believes, as something now one

does , becomes possible when removed rom the disciplinary practices thatmake one Christian, Buddhist, Muslim. And simply qualiying it as a producto history (i.e., as an instance o historical “change”) in which some Buddhiststhemselves have understood Buddhism dierently over the course o time can-not and will not translate disciplined lie into something that remains avail-able or articulation.

Tis is why Asad argues that “it is a modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge (emphasis added).”6 I one ollows careully what Asad is arguing, one can sug-

gest that articulating such knowledge about onesel is impossible or someone who lives a lie o disciplined practices. ranslation o that lie into an articulat-able knowledge about onesel is possible only or someone who theorizes and inter- prets a lie in which one becomes a spectator to what one is/does . Following Asad’sargument, then, one may also argue that this possibility o translating liveddisciplined lie into an utterable knowledge about onesel, whether it is mod-ern or not, is at the heart o the possibility o propositional truth claims andarticulations about onesel in terms o “I am a Christian,” “I am a Hindu,” “Iam a Sikh,” or their other counterparts (“I am not a Sikh”) (c. Mandair 2009).

My point here is that trying to lessen or qualiy the supposed religiosity o these so-called identities, that is to turn them into some kind (i.e., I do notbelieve in God “in the traditional sense o the term”) can hardly constitute thekind o radical political “change” that aylor and other secular scholars o religion seek.

II. Releasing and ranslating Life from ime into an “Eternal Fact”

According to Nietzsche, the tradition o inheriting and translating or“misunderstanding”—which is understanding —religion by way o symbol(and “literature” which supposedly makes available lie as something that canbe read ) goes back to the very emergence o what is called Christianity. Nietz-sche traces the connection between inheritance (o religion) and symbol/lit-erature to the “history o Christianity” itsel, traceable to the “Gospels.”Indeed, or Nietzsche, “the very word ‘Christianity’ is a misunderstanding

6 Here Asad is remarkably close to Heidegger (1996: 147), who argues that, beore any theo-

retical statement or beore any words, interpretation and understanding belong to Da-sein.Interpretation and understanding are inseparable rom being in the world, rom taking care o the world, rom how Da-sein is involved and attuned in taking care o the world.




[ Missverständnis ]” (Nietzsche 2007: 71). With the death o Jesus, “the only one Christian . . . died on the Cross.” With Jesus, “the ‘Gospels’ died on the

cross. What, rom that moment onward, was called the ‘Gospels’ was the very reverse o what he had lived (der Gegensatz dessen, was er gelebt )” (Nietzsche2007: 71). Nietzsche sees the emergence o the Gospels—which he calls“corruption,” “decay” (Verall ), “distortion” (Entstellung )7 marking the emer-gence o Christianity—as annulling (Jesus’) lie/existence itsel. Te Gospelshave been inherited as “books” to be read, Nietzsche writes. “Te gospels havebeen read as a book o innocence ” because “or the majority, happily enough,books are mere literature” (Nietzsche 2007: 80). Such literature-books permitthe innocence o receiving/translating “a tradition” by way o “symbols,” man-

uacturing a “type [that] could take on reality only ater it has been recastin a amiliar mould” (Nietzsche 2007: 62). Tis is what we fnd, Nietzscheasserts, in the frst disciples’ understanding o the Christian lie in terms o “symbols,” the understanding that makes possible the “misunderstanding”named “Christianity”:

Te frst disciples, in particular, must have been orced to translate an existencevisible only in symbols and incomprehensibilities into their own crudity, in orderto understand it at all—in their sight the type could take on reality only ater it had been recast in a amiliar mould . . . . Te prophet, the messiah, the uture judge, the

teacher o morals, the worker o wonders, John the Baptist—all these merely presented chances to misunderstand it . . . (Nietzsche 2007: 61-62; emphasisadded).

For Nietzsche, to “translate” (übersetzen) “existence” into symbols is to renderit into “incomprehensibilities” (Unasslichkeiten). o translate (Jesus’) exis-tence into symbols is to place or carry it across or beyond itsel . Tat “beyond”or “across” is a name or incomprehensibility. Tis translation o (Jesus’) exis-tence/lie into a symbol constitutes the undamental inheritance o Christian-ity. Te Christian inheritance is only it. It “repudiate[s] every other mode o

thought.” Nietzsche writes: “Te underlying will” to translate everything into“symbols,” repudiating “every other mode o thought . . .—this is not only tra-dition, it is [its] inheritance [Erbschat ]” (Nietzsche 2007: 80; 1999b: 219).Nietzsche does not want to call such inheritances/histories even “traditions.”“What do I care,” he quips, “or the contradictions o ‘tradition’? How cananyone call pious legends ‘traditions’? Te histories o saints present the mostdubious variety o literature in existence” (Nietzsche 2007: 58).

7 It might be helpul to reect here on Nietzsche’s idea o “distortion” (Entstellung ), which can

also mean “misunderstanding” ( Missverständnis ), in contrast to Heidegger’s dicult idea o dis-tortion (Verstellung ), by which he means covering up or concealing (Verdecktheit ), and Freud’s(1967) idea o Entstellung.




How we think such an inheritance, a “tradition” translated and received via“symbols,” is ar rom an easy task, at least in terms o Nietzsche’s remarks

about the inheritance o religion. For Nietzsche the very idea o a tradition orinheritance becomes possible, we may say, rom the distortion or erasure o lie, which, is an attempt at the separation o lie rom lie, by way o redeeminglie and any legacy/memory o it. Tis erasure8 becomes possible when lie istranslated , “carried across,” into a symbol, which is that incomprehensibility ormisunderstanding. Put slightly dierently, the very “misunderstanding” called“Christianity,” when it assumes that name, as Derrida (and Nietzsche too)might say, itsel becomes a symbol that carries its own “death,” as it carriesitsel across, simultaneously in and ater its own “death.” Tis is why Nietzsche

says that with Christianity (that is, with the Gospels, the “glad tidings”) “aprocess o decay [Veralls-Prozess ] began with the death [tode ] o the Saviour.”“Decay” begins with and ater “death.” Decay is not mere death or expiration.Decay is another name or a lie to which death gives rise. ranslation pro-duces such a Veralls-Prozess . Tis sense o translation/decay is what inheresin the translation o religion (into a symbol), which, by extension, constitutesthe scholarly orce o decision to inherit religion by way o theorizing andinterpreting it.

Now one may say that the translation o lie into a symbol o which Nietz-

sche speaks is not the same thing as the translation o a text into some otherlanguage. But the notion o translation—be it cultural translation, translationthat involves “transition to capital,” colonial translation o “religion,” or trans-lation o onesel to onesel—carries the kinds o connotations Nietzscheascribes to it. (Can anyone today receive and inherit onesel, surely as a secularsubject, without the translation o onesel to onesel?” Didn’t Hegel already note this when he said that being is absolutely mediated? Perhaps Nietzsche inthe above epigraph claims to “return . . . to the same” and not to a “better lie”only to counter such a Hegelian notion.) So translation “kills” that which is

translated. But the translated does not amount to a death in itsel. Te translatedcarries beyond , transers itsel across and beyond (metapherein), in its death.Tat is to say, translation is marked by an impossible contradiction: the trans-lated must carry (i it can ever carry) “itsel” (its very possibility) in its owndeath. In this maddening logic, translation is irreducible to the binary o lieand death. (Again this is what Nietzsche calls “decay” or “distortion.”)

Tis is what Nietzsche (2007: 67) sees in the very concept o the “son o God.” “Te concept o ‘the Son o God’ does not connote a concrete person

8

I use the word “erase” deliberately. By defnition, what is erased is never erased. It alwaysleaves behind a remainder or a “trace.” Tere is then never really any erasing, but only sovereignattempts to do so.




in history, an isolated and defnite individual, but an ‘eternal’ act, a psycho-logical symbol set ree rom the concept o time ” (emphasis added). Tis is how

God, Nietzsche argues, became the God o the “great majority,” the God o the “weak,” no longer the God o the “Chosen People.” Rather it is a “symbolset ree [erlöstes , lit. released or redeemed ] rom the concept o time.” Apparently here Nietzsche is punning on the word erlöser , which means savior or redeemer.Te savior is the one who is also saved (salvare ) rom and redeemed by time,as it is set ree or released rom time, only to return. (Nietzsche may have inmind the biblical concept o [apo]lutrosis .)

Symbol, released rom time, then redeems itsel, and thereby redeems time,by returning to time, to itsel , by way o symbolizing “it,” being other than

itsel. Releasing carries this sense o “turn” and “return.” Tat which is reerom time, then, is outside, or better yet, extended beyond, time. It is romthis outside, rom the beyond, that it —again whatever this it may be—may return to itsel. Tat is, a symbol is separated (turned itsel away) rom the very thing that it is, by symbolizing it, by simultaneously turning away and return-ing to it. Something impossible and maddeningly incomprehensible happensin a symbol’s turning away rom and returning to itsel as it is released (erlöstes )rom time. In this logic, symbol becomes a spectator to itsel , to its own lie, which is time itsel, standing beyond time. It is as i one could look at onesel,

away rom onesel, as i one were a picture. (Have we taken or granted thatone is not a picture to which one can become a spectator, theoros ?) But to doso, symbol must kill itsel (or, as I noted earlier, erase ) and translate itsel intosomething that “it” symbolizes. Symbol can be so only because it is a symbol.Here, in this sense-deying logic, a certain reedom, a reedom o redemption (Erlösung; redemptio),9 which is madness, belongs to symbol, as it is releasedrom (turns rom and returns to) the very thing it is, which is itsel, its “time,”its memory, its legacy, or, shall we say, its camp or ock. Released and reedrom itsel, having returned to itsel, beyond itsel, it now becomes a symbol. In

this logic o madness, it remains ully redeemed, that is, having bought itsel back (re[d]emere ), regained possession o itsel, as i having been previously soldand now bought back “itsel,” perhaps with a certain value attached to it.

Redemption o and by symbol, then, involves this buying back o itsel, orhaving been released rom, or relieved o, itsel, as i it were a burden to itsel.By returning to itsel, as a symbol, then, it relieves itsel o itsel. Tis is how asymbol, once it is turned into a legacy, can redeem any legacy or memory.Inheritance o any legacy by way o a symbol constitutes a logic o redemptiono itsel, which constitutes the memorialization o its memory.

9 See http://www.perseus.tuts.edu/hopper/searchresults?q=redeem&page=1 or Latin andGreek reerences to redemption.




For Nietzsche, God became such a symbol because “they spun their websaround him or so long that fnally he was hypnotized, and began to spin

himsel, and became another metaphysician. Tereater he resumed once morehis old business o spinning the world out o his inmost being sub specie Spi-nozae ; thereater he became ever thinner and paler—became the “ideal,”became “pure spirit,” became “the absolute,” became “the thing-in-itsel.” . . .Te collapse o a god: he became a “thing-in-itsel” (Nietzsche 2007: 42). For Nietz-sche, this process creates the very excuse or redeeming one’s legacy, a redemp-tion rom an accusation, rom a call to account or itsel? It is a sel-excusing orsel-pardoning redemption o one’s own legacy or memory. Nietzsche (1996b:73) notes the relation between redemption and the release rom this call to

account when he says that “sel-pardon” (Selbstbegnadigung ), a sel-pardoningthat is giving onesel completely , back to onesel, is always a “sel-redemption”(Selbsterlösung ). Tis is what takes place in metaphorical translation o reli-gion/disciplinary practice. Tis is what Nietzsche (as we see later) calls Ein-ordnung , the orceul ordering or subsuming o lie into a system o purposes.

III. Religion and Disciplinary Practices: “Life is Essentially Itself”

Asad’s entire body o work, in one way o another, shows careully why onecannot understand religion/disciplinary practices in the historicist terms thatsubsume and translate lie into a metaphor/symbol, unless one resorts to thesovereign logic o decision. Metaphor translates and historicizes lie, as Nietz-sche showed long ago, creating the alse possibility o dividing lie. Asad’s work is a reusal to historicize lie. Tis is what Asad’s genealogy o disciplinary practices seeks to do, in ways that others—including mysel at one point oranother—have not noted; that is, even as this genealogy seeks to produce acertain “history,” it reuses to historicize lie —be it medieval monastic lie or

contemporary Muslim lie in our so-called secular modern time. It is because Asad reuses to historicize and translate lie that he says that lie is essentially itsel.

Te chapters in Asad’s Genealogies (and in Formations ) hang together largely as a demonstration o how such a translation and separation o lie rom lie orreligion rom power/discipline cannot hold true or “non-modern” or evenso-called “modern” religious (Muslim—and I would even add Buddhist,Hindu, or Sikh) lives. Tese lives are not available or theorization and inter-pretation by way o distinctions such as real vs. fgurative, metaphorical vs.

literal, inner vs. outer, public vs. private, religion vs. religiosity. Te lives that Asad discusses center around the practices o medieval monastic lie—involv-ing the disciplinary practices o liturgy (the Rule o St. Benedict), combat with




“the esh” (Cassian’s Institutes and Conerences ), penances (penitentials o theEarly Church), obedience, humility, ogging, and sel-punishment—or con-

temporary practices o religious “criticism” (nasiha) in the Middle East, or theeveryday lives o Muslim immigrants in post-Satanic Verses controversy Eng-land. For example, in medieval monasticism, the disciplined making o theChristian sel (according to the Rule o St. Benedict), “liturgy is not a specieso enacted symbolism to be classifed separately rom activities defned as tech-nical but is a practice among others essential to the acquisition o Christianvirtues” (63). In the disciplined programs o such virtuous lives, “there couldbe no radical disjunction between outer behavior and inner motive, betweensocial and individual sentiments, between activities that are expressive and

those that are technical” (64).Similarly, in the medieval monastic discipline o transcribing manuscripts,

which was an essential part o a disciplined lie involving “prayer and asting,a means o correcting one’s unruly passions,” there could be no dierentiatingbetween “outer behavior” and “inner motive,” “outward sign” and “inwardmeaning” (Clercq, Love o Learning and Desire or God: A Study o Monastic Culture , 153-154; cited in ibid.). Te same is true o penitential discipline:“Te concept o penance as medicine or soul [o the sinner] was no anciul metaphor , but a mode o organizing the practices o penance in which bodily

pain (or extreme discomort) was linked to the pursuit o truth—at once lit-eral and metaphysical.” Here again, one cannot discern between “sinul behav-ior” and “sinul thoughts.” Penance was not some quick remedy or a temporary sinul state but “a continuous process o curing symptoms.” Tey could neverbe ully cured, and thus required “an unending struggle” (104). It is the same with the Cistercians’ rejection o penance and adoption o monastic “work”(labor). Work/labor or them did not mean some “metaphor” removed romreligious lie. Work was a religious way to salvation.

Similarly, Asad tells us that we cannot regard the contemporary practices o

“religious criticism” (nasiha) directed at the government in Saudi Arabia— which is oten viewed as authoritarian and resistant to change—as mere oppo-sition to modernity. Kant saw (secular) criticism as an alternative to religiousauthority; nasiha, on the contrary, works within the “limits” o a religioustradition in order to be authoritative and persuasive. “Te limitations are parto the way a particular discursive tradition, and its associated disciplines, arearticulated . . . at a point in time” (232). Indeed, it is the limitations o a lielived that makes nasiha possible in the frst place. Contrary to Kantian cri-tique, nasiha is not super-imposed on Muslim lie. It is a mistake to see the

limitations—nasiha’s appeal, ironically, is to the very religious authority thatimposes limits on what it can choose to criticize—as “instances o local leaders




manipulating religious symbols to legitimize social power” (Asad 1993: 210; Asad 2003: 199). Hence, or Muslims, din, translated as “religion,” is not

about what they believe (in terms o Kantian “maxims”). It is what they do ina disciplined lie . (Note that Kant opposed the idea o “discipline.”) Neithercan we translate the everyday religious lives o Muslim immigrants in Englandinto a modern, privatized notion o religion (this was part o the demand onMuslims by English liberals during the Rushdie aair, which seems to con-tinue in Euro-America today). Everyday lie is not like a work o art because it“is not constructed out o preexisting matter as works o art are.” Ten Asad(1993: 290) writes memorably: “lie is essentially itsel. Only the part o it thatcan be narrativized may be said to be ‘made up’ like a story by an artist.”

For Asad, to think o such a disciplined lie is to think o “cultivation” andthe “development” o “disciplinary practices,” “virtues,” “dispositions,” “moralcapabilities,” “aptitudes,” “bodily attitudes,” and so on.10 Te cultivation o moral capabilities and dispositions is not induced by symbols. In the samevein, cultivating capabilities is not the same thing as just having “universalhuman capabilities.” Tus Asad fnds unsound Martha Nussbaum’s idea o universal human capabilities, which she claims anyone can “sign on to . . ., without accepting any metaphysical view o the world, any particular compre-hensive or ethical view, or even any particular view o the person or o human

nature.” According to Asad (2003: 79), “humans will have to be taught what good capabilities are and how to exercise them, and to be prevented rom exer-cising vices that harm others. Indeed there is scarcely anything that they arenot capable o.” Te important point here is that unlike metaphors/symbols, disciplinary practices are not just available or mere interpretation. “Symbols . . . callor interpretation, and even as interpretative criteria are extended, so interpre-tations can be multiplied. Disciplinary practices, on the other hand, cannot be soeasily varied, because learning to develop moral capabilities is not the same thing as learning to invent interpretations ” (Asad 2003: 79; emphasis added). Schol-

ars who theorize religion have not understood why disciplinary practices arenot so easily “varied” and do not simply call or interpretation.

I today any attempt to theorize and interpret religion is always to defnereligion, and i to defne religion is to engage in an impossibility, then we may begin to think the impossibility o theorizing religion. Tinking this impossibil-ity can be done only by way o a lie constituted by disciplinary practices that do

10 In principle, Heidegger might quarrel with Asad’s idea o cultivation as existence in itsel does not need cultivation. It is already existence, that is, as one inhabits the world o existence.

Ater all, to cultivate also means to “inhabit.” But Heidegger himsel uses the word “cultivation”at least twice in Being and ime.




not lend themselves to interpretation because such practices are simply unavail-able or theorization. So the word “thinking” here is only a way or thinking the

question o the impossible unavailability o such practices or interpretation,and not one more interpretation, theorization o disciplined lie.

IV. Te Limits of Religious Life: “One is What One Does”

Again what Asad’s work orces us to do is to think o lie in “terms” that con-stitute lie itsel. Lie is essentially itsel. Te terms o lie are its own condi-tions, the very conditions that constitute its own limits . I lie is possible, it can

only be within/at its own limits. No lie can ever cross its limits, that is to say,its own terms, which essentially are its “existence” or disciplinary practices in Asad’s terms. Tis point may appear orthodox. But it is precisely becauseit is orthodox that it is oten lost on scholars concerned with the task o theo-rizing and interpreting religion. Let me put it dierently. Tere can never be anon-locative, virtual lie, ever . Lie can become “virtual” only through thattask o defnition/translation o lie into something other than lie. Nor canthere be some ordinary lie as opposed to non-ordinary lie, as some scholars(Orsi 2010) assume. Such divisions are not possible with the limits o lie/

existence.It will be helpul to recall that this is what Heidegger irreutably demon-

strated in that inexhaustible text Being and ime .11 For Heidegger, as or Asad,the question o what being is remains inseparable rom the question o whatone does . I or Asad one is what one does in a disciplined lie , or Heidegger—inremarkably similar ways—“‘one is ’ what one does” (“‘ Man ist ’ das, was manbetriebt ”). In Heidegger’s argument, the relation between what one is and whatone does remains in constitutive tension, i not at war, with each other. Whatone is can be possible only with what one does .0 Tis constitutive tension

between is and does already presupposes an impassable limit in that it does not suppose that one can do anything and everything and be whatever one wants to be .Tat is to say, no one does ever live a lie beyond the limits o what one is anddoes . For Heidegger, it is in the limits o what one is and does that the questiono the availability o “Being”—or disciplined lie in Asad’s terms—or defni-tion, interpretation, and theorization has to be thought.

11 Heidegger (cited in Derrida 2009: 305-306) later says that “only or those who are stub-born in their head [or ool-headed] is lie is merely lie” (“denn Eigensennigen ist Leben nur

Leben” ). Heidegger says this in order to make space or the claim that lie is being toward death,that is, lie and death are inseparable. Lie that is being toward death is lie where there cannotbe any separation between past, present, and uture.




As we know, Heidegger begins Being and ime by taking up the very prob-lem o the “defnition” o being. Heidegger says that the assumption—rom

Plato and Aristotle onwards—that “the concept o ‘being’ is indefnable[undefnierbar ]” is a “prejudice.” He says so not to provide a defnition o being but to note that the claim (i.e., that being is indefnable) takes the “ques-tion o being” as something that is already settled, as something no longer a“problem.” So, although Heidegger argues that the “average comprehensibility [o being] only demonstrates its incomprehensibility,” he does not seek to grasp being through a renewed defnition o being. What Heidegger does do isto “retrieve” and “ormulate” “the question o being.” He wants to think abouthow being may become a “question,” i it ever can be. I you were to press

Heidegger, he would say that being could be defned—i it could be defned atall—only in terms o “existence.” Tis is why Heidegger [1996: 290] reversedthe Cartesian dictum when he said that “the substance o lie is existence .”12 (Recall also how Nietzsche [1968: 312, 582] too said: “Being—we have noother way o imaging it apart rom ‘living .’ ”) But one is surely mistaken to think that to say being is existence is to defne it in such a way as to (better) under-stand and interpret it. Existence is not given to defnition, surely not in thesense o representing it in terms o (Cartesian) “attributes” or metaphoric ea-tures prior to it .13 For Heidegger, the question o the meaning o being can

never be posed outside or prior to existence. o ask any such a question priorto existence is to assume that “the meaning o being must thereore already beavailable [verügbar ] to us in a certain way” (Heidegger 1996: 4; emphasisadded).

Rather, such a question can come, i it comes, only rom existence—to putit quite badly and imprecisely. Indeed what lie gives (es gibt ) is only existence.In existing, Da-sein, among other things, is attuned. Being attuned (or beingreligious in a disciplined lie) is not an “attribute” or metaphor or trope, orsome other eature that constitutes a mere part o Da-sein’s existence. Being

attuned, Da-sein is never “ree-oating” (Heidegger 1996: 312). So i pressed

12 Note that Heidegger would likely object to using the word “lie” as a cognate or existence because o the biological sense o it. Heidegger wanted to liberate existence rom any biologicalsense.

13 It is noteworthy that Derrida says that Heidegger was one o those rare thinkers never tohave used the word metaphor. But Heidegger himsel could not escape the problem o metapho-ricity, as he tried to think o the relation between “Da” and “Sein” (Da-sein) in terms o divisionslike “proximity” and “distance,” “near” and “ar,” the “ontic” and the “ontological.” As Derrida(1985: 131) contends, or Heidegger “proximity is not ontic proximity, and must take into

account the properly ontological repetition o his thinking o the near and ar. It remains thatBeing, which is nothing, is not a being, cannot be said, cannot say itsel, except in the onticmetaphor.”




again, Heidegger may grant that ultimately Da-sein defes defnition orinterpretation in that the questions o meaning o being is available only

within a lie in which “one is what one does.” Tis is why, I stress, Heideggerkeeps saying that interpretation o Da-sein is existential and not categorical .o think otherwise is to assume that lie, the question o its meaning, is avail-able a priori, beore, ahead o, lie/living itsel. It is to resist this presumptionthat Heidegger argues that interpretation already belongs to Da-sein and soDa-sein needs no interpretation.14 Tis does not mean that each one o usmay ancy our own interpretation/defnition o lie. Indeed i interpretationbelongs to Da-sein, Da-sein is not available or interpretation or reinterpretation.In other words, one does not have any (theoretical) access to the very lie one

lives. It is within the (limits o) attuned lie—again, note the remarkableconvergences between Heidegger’s attuned lie and Asad’s disciplined lie—that questions o Da-sein, its history, legacy, and memory—that is to say,the very questions o Da-sein’s sel-knowledge—may be asked. I this is so,Da-sein is history/time, in that Da-sein is already its past, present, and uture.(Tis is so or Asad as well, as we note below.) In a crude sense, we may notethat Da-sein is always and already a historical being. But one o the importantthings to note about Heidegger’s argument is that Da-sein cannot be merely historicized, in the way I have already described. Da-sein defes historicization

in that to historicize Da-sein—say, lie—is to ask questions o lie’s “meaning”prior to Da-sein’s constitution, its attuned lie. Paradoxically, the very historic-ity o Da-sein is not available or historicization. o historicize Da-sein isto always and already redeem and release Da-sein rom Da-sein, to releaselie rom lie, separating one lie in one time rom another lie in another time,to qualiy lie, to turn it into a kind o lie, in terms o supposed historicalchanges . For Nietzsche, the history o Christianity, which is its own “misun-derstanding,” is history o such interpretations and separations o lie romlie itsel.

Even though Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s understandings o history diverge,remarkably Nietzsche too sees the very history o something—in terms o interpretations and re interpretations o it by way o the utilization o it by “orces superior” to it—as ultimately deying defnition and meaning itsel.For Nietzsche, the history o a thing—so long as it “comes into existence” by way o interpretations—always marks a certain “death” or “loss.” He writes:

14 As a result, Heidegger (1996: 299) is also claiming the impossibility o such meaning, at

least the interpretation/representation o it. Da-sein as projected in its existence, in its care in the world, as it takes care o things that concern its existence, cannot ever be given to an a priorirepresentation o its ‘meaning,’ standing outside o it. (c. Heidegger 1996: 298-299).




Tere is a world o dierence between the reason or something coming into exis-tence and the ultimate use [ultimate useulness; schliessliche Nützlichkeit ] to which

it is put, its actual application [or actual use; thatsächlich Verwendung ] and itsintegration (Einordnung ) into a system o goals [purposes; Zwecken]. Tat any-thing which exists [etwas Vorhandenes ], once it has somehow come into being, can bereinterpreted in the service o new intentions, repossessed, repeatedly modifed toa new use (Nietzsche 1996: 57).

So the useulness o a thing (or a purpose) produces a death o its “actual use,” which, we may say, is a death that brings about a redemption by releasing andtranslating—Nietzsche’s word is subsuming or integrating or ordering(Einordnung )—the actual use o a thing into something useul. Tis happensby way o reinterpretation, defnition, manipulation, and adjustment (orgrooming or tidying up; Zurechtmachen). By arguing that the history o athing ultimately defes defnition, Nietzsche wants to deny this possibility o adeath o a thing made possible by the “orce” o Einordnung . Einordnung would be Nietzsche’s word or the orce o decision that constitutes the trans-lation o lie.

rue to what Nietzsche says about the Gospel’s subsuming and translating Jesus’ existence into a symbol, we may say that or him to deny the possibility o translation and death o lie is to preempt the very redemption o the deatho a thing, the death o the origin/emergence (Entstehung ) o it and its actualuse, rom its own redemption, as we discussed. Tis death is not just death inthat what death gives is the reinterpretation o a certain thing, which is its“orm,” the “extended chain o ‘meanings.’” As many may know now, in theGenealogy o Morals Nietzsche says this is what happens to the “use” o punish-ment in the history o reinterpretations o it that make possible “masteringand overpowering it.” Tis history o reinterpretation is “a manipulation, inthe course o which previous meaning and aim must necessarily be obscured(or eclipsed; verdunkelt ) or completely eaced ( ganz ausgelöscht )” (Nietzsche1996: 55-58). Te history o the reinterpretations o the use o a thing obscuresand eaces its “meaning.” Te obscurity o reinterpretation produces the “par-tial loss” or “death,” which, to Nietzsche, constitutes the “development” or“progress,” o a thing! As Nietzsche writes, “the partial loss o [its] use [theilweis Unnützlichwerden], withering [Verkümmern], degeneration [Entarten], loss[Verlustiggehn] o meaning and expediency—in short death—belongs to thecondition o true progressus ” (Nietzsche 1996a: 59; emphasis on death added).In such obscurity, partial loss, or even death, “the entire history o a ‘thing,’ . . .a custom may take the orm o an extended [ ortgesetzt ] chain o signs , o ever-new interpretations and manipulations” (Nietzsche 1996a: 58; emphasis

added). As the history o a thing assumes this orm, the extended chain o signs,that which “previously had another meaning and use” assumes “a synthesis o




‘meanings’” and “crystallizes in a sort o unity” (Nietzsche 1996a: 58-60). Herethe “orm is uid but the ‘meaning’ even more so” (Nietzsche 1996a: 58).

Now all this may sound amiliar enough to some o us today. However, what may not be so amiliar is what Nietzsche says next: the crystallized unity o the synthesis o meaning—which “is dicult to unravel, dicult to ana-lyze, a point which must be emphasized—is completely beyond defnition”(or entirely or altogether indefnable; ganz und gar undefnierbar ist ; Nietzsche’semphasis on undefnierbar ). Ten Nietzsche puts it arrestingly: “all concepts in which a whole process is summarized in signs escape defnition. Only that which is without history can be defned ” (Nietzsche 1996a: 60; emphasis added).Tis is what happens when lie (as in the case o Jesus’ lie) becomes a meta-

phor/eternal act removed rom time/history.Te challenge with Nietzsche is that one cannot think the question o the

undefnability o something historical by being more “historical,” by histori-cizing it more. Surely one cannot historicize lie, in that lie/existence is not a(historical) “thing” or a “concept.” Lie/existence cannot be such a conceptbecause living/existing cannot be a thing (o Einordnung ) that be integratedinto some “system” o useulness. Note careully that Nietzsche ultimately denies the possibility o historicizing even a concept. Ater all, have we already orgotten what Nietzsche (2002) says about concepts: concepts seek only to

“describe” and “communicate,” but they do not “explain”? Lie is not a con-cept that either describes or explains anything (c. Godlove 2010). o histori-cize lie, however, is to turn it into a concept that can be defned, which, by itsbeing defned and redefned over the course, becomes ultimately and ironi-cally undefnable or Nietzsche. However, it is because scholars have begun tothink lie (and now what we call religion) itsel as a concept or a category thatthey have ignored this point and have come to assume that lie can be histori-cized, interpreted, and ultimately explained, which would, according to Nietz-sche, be all those things that amount to a redemption o lie by its own “death.”

Tis is how today religious lie itsel comes to be seen as a concept waitingexplanation. Ultimately, in this historicization, lie itsel can eventually begraded, dierentiated, distinguished, and separated, that is, one lie in and atone time, separable rom lie in and at another time.

V. Concluding Remarks: Asad’s Refusal to Historicize Life

Asad’s argument about the indefnability o religion makes impossible such

divisions and separations o lie, leaving us to think the question o disciplinedlie itsel. I have argued that how we think such disciplined lie—i it ever




demands thinking—cannot be a theoretical exercise aimed at interpretationand theorization, without always producing the problem o translation, histo-

ricization, and qualifcation o lie. One may o course historicize and eveninterpret a word, concept, statement, paragraph, sentence, or whatnot. Butdisciplined lie constitutive o what Asad calls the cultivation and develop-ment o virtues, aptitudes, and bodily attitudes is not such a “thing” or“concept.” So any attempt to think such lie can only think the impossibility o its availability or such historicization and interpretation. Now i one rushesto adduce examples, contemporary or otherwise, to show that this argumentessentializes lie, one can only do so by believing in the allacious historicistpossibility o qualiying lie in terms o temporal divisions. o believe in such

a historicist possibility o lie is to understand lie as a historical thing. Tevery structure o Asad’s work Genealogies , in the way temporality/time itsel works in it, preempts the historicist possibility o qualiying lie.

By way o concluding the essay, let me ask the reader to consider the ollow-ing. Recall that in Genealogies , Asad is interested in the question o religiouslie in premodern and modern times in terms o the disciplinary practices thatconstituted those lives. Here, as we know now, Asad’s main ocus is on medi-eval Christian monastic lie in Europe and modern, contemporary Muslim lierom Saudi Arabia to England, seemingly two distinct temporal locations, ar

removed rom each other in many ways. Nonetheless, discussing the disciplin-ary practices o such religious lie, Asad makes almost no separation betweenEuropean medieval monastics and modern Muslims, as i he can easily moveback and orth between those supposedly distinct times, having to cross notemporal limit. ime between medieval monastics and modern Muslims is notbroken into separate rontiers (o past and present), needing some dicultand qualifed transition into or crossing over, authorized by some historicistsense o distance and dierence between two worlds, as i such a sense were anauthorized power granting prior ocial permission to cross such geographi-

cal-temporal barriers. (Tis is even as Asad o course acknowledges “changes”in Christian practice in pre-modern and modern times, including the separa-tion between religion and public lie/politics, made possible by the latinized—and known globalatinized—understanding o religious lie in terms o what we call religion.) In this Asadian thinking about the supposedly distinct worldso medieval monastic and modern Muslims, nothing here is crossed then, asthere is nothing to cross, a move that will take some time or us to think.15 Inother words, to put it quite inadequately, contemporary Muslims in Saudi

15 Asad’s thinking here points towards the utility o the idea o crossing, crossing borders orlimits that is advocated by liberal-minded scholars as a radical political practice (e.g., weed’s




Arabia and England are hardly separate rom each other, as i they occupy one ,i not the same, world/time, perhaps passing by, and even nodding to or wink-

ing at, each other, almost every or every other day or week or month. (AndI do not mean this as a metaphor!) In this disciplined lie o “one world” (c.Mas), there is no “integration” (Einordnung ), subsuming, or assimilation o any lie into some preexisting system o useulness or a whole, above lie, intoan integrated existence that would need be to ensured and made better by thepromises o equal rights, tolerance, reedom, justice, or some other political or“ethical” concept.

I this existence is true o present-day Muslim lie, such existence will be soin uture Muslim lie. In other words, the temporality o the world o disci-

plined lie in the Genealogies (and I think in Formations as well) is one in whichpast, present, and uture cannot be distinguished and dierentiated in termso historical changes, even as certain “changes” are acknowledged. (Tis may appear as a contradiction to careless readers who seek quick escape rom think-ing.) I these were distinguishable, Muslim lie, as Asad thinks o it, could behistorically qualifed. Tis is precisely what Asad reuses to do when he saysoten that, opposed to democratic demands or Muslims to be “modern,”Muslims fnd it hard to accept such modern Christian concepts as the separa-tion between religion and public lie. And this is not because, as some critics

(Muti 2000: 92) have misjudged, Asad wants to endorse some “auratic weighto return to tradition,” erasing “the diversity o the social and cultural lie inthe Muslim world.” Te question o disciplinary lie makes impossible “adiversity . . . o lie,” which I have argued belongs to the secularist presumptionthat lie itsel can be historicized.

Now what makes it hard, i not impossible, to disentangle (present-day)Muslim lie rom (past) European monastic lie is nothing but disciplined lie itsel that is not “so easily varied.” Tis is o course hardly to suggest that medi-eval European monastics and contemporary Muslims are the same. What

makes it impossible to disentangle each rom that one world/time is that thereligious lives that they live are only possible within such disciplined practices.Tey can be separated and translated rom that one world/time only by sepa-rating—or shall we say “releasing”?—them rom such practices, by way o some (shall we say oxymoronically orceul ?) integration or ordering (Einord-nung ) o their practices into a “system.” It is precisely the impossibility o sucha release, which easily translates itsel into a redemption, that Asad’s work prodsus to think, something that his uture readers (and thinkers o what we have

idea o “crossing and dwelling”). Te very idea o a crossing always and already authorizes thoselimits as they are to be crossed, as there can be no crossing without limits.




come to call religion) cannot ever exhaust. We may say that thinking theimpossibility o such release rom disciplined lie can be nothing but an ar-

mation o lie itsel, which can only be translated and theorized by way o its“death,” allowing one to become a spectator —better yet a witness, martyr —toone’s “lie,” whose memory can be memorialized.

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