Rejoicing

Tracing My Steps 

After reading “Thou Shalt Not Freeze-Frame”, the final chapter from Factish Gods, I decided to read Rejoicing, Latour’s book on religious speech, because I was curious to see how he would elaborate on his arguments from “Freeze-Frame” in a longer, book-length treatment on the topic of religious discourse. Yet I also read Rejoicing alongside the first few chapters of AIME because I wanted the latter work to give me more insight into another topic that I took away from “Freeze-Frame”: the topic of differing modes of existence. I would be interested to see someone try to read Rejoicing as his/her first encounter with Latour. I felt like I understood most of what he was saying in this text because of the other texts of his that I have read previously, and I also think that reading these other texts allowed me to appreciate the stylistic choices Latour made for this book. However, I suspect that another reader, following a different network of associations through Latour, would have unique perspectives on Rejoicing that I could never have. I eagerly await comments on such an experiment.

A Note on the Text Itself

It seems to me that the first crucial features of Rejoicing that deserve comment are the essay’s structural and stylistic elements. In other words, it is important to talk about what the text is before we dive into what the text says. Unlike all of the other works by Latour I have read this semester (or in previous semesters), Rejoicing is not divided into chapters, nor is it subdivided in any way by headings or any other marks of division or categorization. Every now and then, the reader will find headers at the top of the page that will refer in some way to what is being discussed, but most of the time, even these headers are absent from the pages. To be honest I can’t be sure what Latour is going for with this strategy, but I have some theories. It seems that this lack of division and categorization gives the impression that the whole essay should be seen as “of a piece”, so to speak, that it is all one utterance. I will turn back to this theory later in this summary, because I think this strategy makes sense when considered side-by-side with certain arguments in the essay about what characterizes religious speech. The style of writing is also unusual for Latour, who, though never one to cling too tightly to typical academic discourse, nevertheless retains in his books most of the stylistic elements of professional, academic speech (with the exception of Aramis, of course). The writing in Rejoicing is much more informal, casual, natural (though something tells me Latour would detest all of those words). In any case, the writing style in Rejoicing differs greatly from any of Latour’s other work, at least that I have read, and in my experience it was much more “accessible” than his other books. My theory, based on the points from the book I will discuss later, is that Latour was aiming for a more “confessional” style of writing, one that he thought more appropriate to the nature of his subject matter (we will return to this point as well).

Description of the Text 

Latour begins his treatment of religious speech with a third-person vignette of sorts, in which a nondescript churchgoer finds himself having trouble saying the words of the Creed. He has trouble because he knows he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, he doesn’t really believe in the reality of this “God” figure, and he can’t find in these words any power to move or transform him. Essentially, this brief episode sets up the problem with religious speech as it is typically approached and experienced by churchgoers and clergy alike. Latour is arguing that religious speech no longer has any power within the community of the religious. It is this power, along with a certain legitimacy, that Latour seeks to reclaim in this book.

He moves on, now in the first person, to clear the air of any misconceptions about the starting point of his project, and he does this by discussing two issues pertaining to religion that this essay is definitely not about. First, Latour insists that his inquiry is not about belief. For him, starting an essay of this kind by establishing from the outset whether one is a believer or a non-believer misses the point of his inquiry entirely. Since belief by definition refers to the affirmation of something distant and transcendent, and since that kind of affirmation, argues Latour, is precisely what religious speech is not about, it makes no sense to establish whether one believes or does not believe. And thus, positioning himself along the agnostic line, Latour expects throughout the essay to shock and scandalize both insiders (believers) and outsiders (non-believers, atheists) alike. His expectation to shock and scandalize becomes even clearer as he moves into his second issue: that of the existence of God. Latour insists that this essay/book/confession, whatever one wants to call it, is not about establishing a foundation for belief in God; thus, any reader looking for this kind of discourse, either in the beginning or the end, will not find it. There’s a sense in which one starts to understand throughout the essay that Latour is arguing that such a God, one who is distant, removed, transcendent, cannot exist, at least in the minds of his modern-day followers, and if he does, we certainly don’t know anything about him. In any case, Latour is arguing that establishing his existence or non-existence has nothing to do with what religious speech is supposed to do/ be about.

Latour’s projects for this book, it seems, are two: to discuss what characteristics uniquely define effective and ineffective religious speech (what are its felicity and infelicity conditions?), and to set us back on track so that religious discourse can reclaim a legitimate place in the Modern world.

I think the first crucial point that one must understand in order to grasp Latour’s argument is one that he advances elsewhere in his previous writings (Factish Gods, AIME) about religious speech and what he often calls “the distant”. He argues that counter to popular perception, and counter to the much of the religious discourse out there in the world, religious speech actual is not supposed to give us access to anything far away, distant, transcendent, etc.—precisely the opposite. Religious speech is supposed to have an effect on the present, on the here and now, on the down-to-earth, real life experiences of particular people at a particular time and place. As a point of comparison, he argues that it is actually Science that gives people access to the distant, to the universal, to the unseen, with all of its theories and visual representations of atoms, electron, DNA, black holes, etc. (For a more complete articulation of this argument on the difference between Science and Religion, see “Thou Shalt Not Freeze-Frame” in Factish Gods). Essentially, Science and Religion operate according to completely different methods of veridiction (paths to establishing their truth value). The operative thrust that establishes a scientific statement as truthful is reference, meaning that whatever is said must refer back to an almost endless chain of other, verifiable statements. Religion, on the other hand, does not operate according to reference, which means that religious speech refers back to nothing, establishes nothing, proves nothing. The operative function of religious speech is to establish closeness, unity—not reference. It’s about transformation, not information.

To demonstrate his point, Latour refers back to his time-honored and often-used analogy of love speech. When a lover is asked, “Do you love me?” it makes no sense for the other partner to reply “Well, of course. You know I do. I told you last year.” Latour argues that such a response is an example of a “category mistake”, meaning that the second lover completely misunderstood the question in terms of establishing its veridiction. What he thought was that his beloved sought a truth that could be established by reference (in Latour’s example, he even plays her a tape recording of him saying “I love you” in order to “prove” it), when all along, all she wanted was for him to create an experience of closeness, of unity. Latour summarizes the point best when he says that the second lover thinks she seeks in-formation, when in fact she seeks trans-formation. He has to say something that transforms her into a person who feels loved, and transform himself into someone whose love is understood. Thus, love speech is supposed to establish a certain closeness, a sense of unity. But it must be realized, Latour urges, that since this sort of veridiction has nothing to do with reference, this closeness has to be perpetually re-established, again and again, and it is always in jeopardy of slipping away, of giving way to distance. Latour argues that religious speech is the same way. Real religious speech, for Latour, is not informative, but transformative. It does not seek to prove, to establish reference, or to grant access to the distant. Rather, it must effect a change in those who hear it and in those who speak it. It must establish a sense of closeness, of unity, and it must do this in the here and now, in the hearts of particular people in a particular time and place. It does not prove God’s existence, nor does it prescribe a certain set of noble behaviors. It creates community, but like love speech, it is perpetually in danger of slipping away.

So, religious speech, with its goal of establishing closeness, community, in the present time and place, is always fragile, and always in need to being remade, and carries with it enormous risks whenever uttered, risks that the transformation will not take effect, risks that it will be mistakenly uttered or received in accordance with some category mistake, risks that it will not be reiterated in a different way the next time for a new audience. But Latour makes it a point to mention that there’s a reason why, so often, religious speech is not conceptualized in this way. The reason is that everyone in the Modern era wants their information to take the form of what Latour calls “double-click communication”. Double-click (think of double-clicking on a computer) gives the illusion of instant access to knowledge or experience in a manner that hides all the risks, the fragility, the necessary reiterations, the chains of reference (for scientific discourse). Double-click would have us believe that there are such things as “facts that speak for themselves”, facts that are isolated, independent of the chains of reference that are necessary to establish these claims as true. In religious speech, double-click makes it seem as though religious discourse is not fragile, is not in need of constant reiteration, entails no risks, and gives direct access to knowledge of things like God, with no “price to pay” for its translation. Latour insists that as long as Religion (or Science, for that matter) is misconstrued as a discourse of double-click communication, it will never be revived because it can never effect the transformations necessary to its revival.

The next important section of Rejoicing comes when Latour attempts to establish the felicity and infelicity conditions for religious speech. As the term suggests, “felicity conditions” are the prerequisite set of communicative circumstances that must be in place in order for any mode of existence (of which religion is only one) to succeed in its path toward veridiction. The easiest way to represent Latour’s discussion of felicity and infelicity conditions is with the following chart.

Felicity Conditions: In order to be authentic religious speech, the words must…	Infelicity Conditions: In order to be authentic religious speech, the words must NOT…
“be said in the language of the person they are addressed to”	“be said in a foreign language, from another place and time”
“directed to the present situation”	refer back to another place and time for their meaning
be words of conversion, not words of information. No reference allowed!	engage in the language of scientific reference
“have an effect…the recapturing…of that lost love”	be ineffective (in that they must have an real effect)
“a union or a people…finds itself reformed”	create disunity

After establishing these felicity and infelicity conditions, Latour moves on to try to answer the questions, "How shall we proceed from here? How should the 'faithful' churchgoer proceed with uttering those ancient words that no longer have an effect? How can he restore life to dead words?" Latour considers two equally unsatisfying options. Either he rationalizes, translating the old words into new ones, replacing the old "G" (the eternal, distant notion of a deity) in the privacy of his own mind, with phrases like "the indisputable framework of ordinary existence" so that he can at least utter things that he actually believes; or, he attempts to purify the whole institution, removing from it any words, rituals, and icons that no longer have their effect. The first option is too impossibly long, and removes the churchgoer from any possibility that the words he actually utters might have their effect. The second option leaves is equally untenable since it leaves the churchgoer from the immediacy of the concrete network of objects and words that tie him to any real religious experience. The only option is to keep everything! Keep every last icon, every ritual, every word, for these are the only things he has that can possibly effect any sort of renewal.

The solution, if it can be called that, the only solution, is that the words be kept and repeated, but not repeated in the same sense with the same meaning, as if to the same people at different times. Somehow, the words must be repeated "with renewal", though not "adapted" or changed for the modern ear. It is, indeed, a difficult, risky, and paradoxical task. Here it might be useful to return to the analogy of love speech, as Latour so often does. The lover, in order to transform his beloved into one who experiences love, must say the same old words, "I love you", but not in such a way as to "prove" his love by repeating it, but by repeating it to renew it, perhaps with a different tone, with different inflection, with a different look in his eye, any way he can in order to represent (re-present) his love. Such is the case with religious speech. The experience, the words, must be re-presented, presented anew, but they are the same old words. But Latour argues that something else happens in conjunction with the transformation of the lovers in moments when love speech is successfully uttered. The very nature and flow of time is altered, at least in the context of the lovers’ relationship. If a couple has been emotionally estranged from another, let’s say they’ve even been fighting (this is a rough paraphrase of an example to which Latour refers several times), the moment one of them hits the right way of speaking that brings them back into relationship, into closeness with one another, then that moment redefines all the other moments that came before. Now, all these events are those that led up to the moment of renewal. They are all a part of the present, and everything feels like the first time all over again. Here, I think it’s best to just let Latour speak for himself: “ The start depends on the sequel. The father depends on the son. This reversal of the usual figures of time is something the lovers fully feel, since they can say without lying that the love that moves them now as though it had always existed is infinitely stronger, deeper and more solid, and that it brings them closer together than when they started out. To such a point that it gives them the amazing feeling that it is finally only now, for the first time, that they understand what has happened to them always. Yes, as you know very well, ‘it’s always the first time’—otherwise you don’t love each other anymore.”

Latour argues that the same thing happens in religious speech. The listener and the speaker should both be transformed, in the present moment, and everything that would usually be considered past, becomes part of the present. What this means in actual practice is that it does no good for religious speech to “explain” the way past believers interpreted or experienced the words, or for that matter, the Word. What matters first and foremost is that the persons involved in the religious speech (whether speaking or listening) are transformed and brought into the closeness in the present moment. Only then can they feel a sense of communion with those from the past, because those from the past have been brought into the present.

I can’t help but embark on a small digression here, so that I can reflect upon why Latour does not give any specific examples of ideal religious speech. If anything is conspicuously absent from this book, it is examples of this kind. But I would venture to argue that that is precisely part of the point that Latour wants to make. If he is right about what he argues in this book, how could he possibly extract from some text, the perfect passage that contains the essence of what he’s getting at? Divorced from its original audience, and from its original moment in time, how could such a passage reach Latour’s present-day readers in the same way as it did different readers from a different time? Such inclusions would run counter to what Latour is trying to show us. The only examples from a text that he uses in this book are from the Bible, but he only uses them in such a way as to demonstrate that religious speech has no content, no information to transfer. Essentially, Latour, if he wants his argument to remain consistent, has to stick to describing what religious speech must do, not what it must be. Not only would that be impossible given his argument, but something tells me that he thinks it would also be too easy, even if it were possible. Part of the point he wants to make in this book is that there is nothing, no magic fix, no easy formula, that can get us out of the fragile and difficult struggle of finding just the right manner of speaking, just the right tone, to effect transformation. We have to accept the challenge of renewal anew, each time we utter religious speech, just like we do when we utter love speech. There is no example he could give that would work for all time in the same way for all audiences. Let’s not criticize Latour for refusing to take the impossible easy way out.

Latour mentions in the very beginning of this book that he expects that his words will shock both the believers and the non-believers, the insiders and the outsiders, alike. Give some of the arguments he makes throughout this book, I suspect this expectation will be fulfilled. As I mentioned earlier, Latour does not believe that the traditional religious definition of God can reach modern day audiences. Such a God, or simply ‘G’ as Latour most often refers to Him/It, is based on the idea of unchanging and eternal essence. In Latour’s words, the traditional notion of God puts “the substance before the attributes, the essence before existence, the name before the thing, the cart before the horse” (128). Latour wants to reverse these relationships. He wants his notion of God to stem from experiences in the present. One way I would put it, although I eagerly await anyone’s feedback on why this may not be a faithful description, is that the traditional approach takes a sort of deductive approach to God, starting with the Idea of Him then moving on to his attributes and effects, whereas Latour wants to take a more inductive, or maybe empirical, approach that characterizes substance as the result of effects. He wants to “start with existence, from its fragile dependence on the right word, and I recapitulate it after that into an essence” (128). In this inductive reversal, God is defined by effects. Latour offers his new definition of God as “the thing that begets neighbors” (135). Latour goes on to offer other redefinitions of terms like “Holy Spirit”, “Son of Man”, Incarnation,”, and each time, his definition follows the same pattern (what I’m calling the inductive), and each time there is an emphasis on transformation, on the present moment, and on the creation of closeness. He mentions that the first approach to defining these terms carries with it no risks of failure because there is no possibility of change; everything is immutable and eternal. But there is also no chance for transformation in such definition because nothing takes place in the present. The second approach toward definition carries with it innumerable risks of failure at every turn, but he argues that it is the only manner of speaking that carries with it the possibility of transformation.

Perhaps I should hide this feeling with a false sense of completion and confidence in the way I write my summary, but Latour has inspired me to be honest and accept risks, so I should confess that at this point I really don’t know what else to say about this book from here. To me, the rest of his reflections follow the same pattern of thought that I have already described. This book struck me as very repetitive, but I would like to take a risk here, and instead of convince myself that I didn’t get it, I will venture an argument that depends on the assumption that I actually read this book right in sensing its repetitiveness. If I’m right, and this book is supposed to be rather repetitive, then it seems that this would be consistent with what Latour is trying to argue about religious speech. It is often repetitive. It is often the same old words, uttered in a slightly different way, for a different moment, for a different audience. Maybe the words of this book are supposed to effect some sort of transformation in me, and once they have achieved that, the subsequent iterations of the same basic ideas strike me as repetitive. But, of course, to say that the book is repetitive is in no way a negative criticism. I think it’s perfectly fitting. Like a lover, Latour has to keep trying to say the same words differently. How does he know whether he has failed or not? He has to keep saying it over and over, a little different each time, because he can’t possibly know if his words have transformed his readers. Maybe this is a far-fetched theory, but I’d be curious to read what you think when you read it. Let me just close this description of Rejoicing with my favorite quote from the book. I love this quote, not only because I think it best captures the essence of what this book is about, but I also just think it’s well-written, and I enjoy reading it on an aesthetic level: But what are you waiting for, then? If it’s a message, upload it! Religion—how many bits? Not a single one. Not even a single pair of nought and one. This is because it offers something better than information transfers: it transforms the absent into the present, the dead into the risen.