Repetition and Identity: The Literary Agenda by Catherine Pickstock

The Literary Agenda

by Catherine Pickstock

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. Repetition and Identity offers a theory of the existing thing as such. A thing only has identity and consistency when it has already been repeated, but repetition summons difference and the shadow invocation of a connecting sign. In contrast to the perspectives of Post-structuralism, Catherine Pickstock proposes that signs are part of reality, and that they truthfully express the real. She also proposes that non-identical repetition involves analogy, rather than the Post-structuralist combination of univocity and equivocity, or of rationalism with scepticism. This proposal, which is happy for reality to make sense, involves, however, a subjective decision which is to be poetically performed. A wager is laid upon the possibility of a consistency which sustains the subject, in continuity with the elusive consistency of nature. This wager is played out in terms of a performative argument concerning the existential stances open to human beings. It is concluded that the individual sustains this quest within the context of an inter-subjective search for an historical consistency of culture. But can ethical consistency, and the harmonisation of this with an aesthetic surplus of an 'elsewhere', invoked by the sign, be achieved without a religious gesture? And can this gesture avoid a tragic tension between ethical commitment and religious renunciation? Pickstock suggests a Kierkegaardian re-reading of the Patristic categories of 'recapitulation' and 'reconstitution' can reconcile this tension. The quest for the identity and consistency of the thing leads us from the subject through fiction and history and to sacred history, to shape an ontology which is also a literary theory and a literary artefaction.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Academic

Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Ben Smitthimedhin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rainbows can glide from red to yellow to blue, but an infinite distance seems to exist between each color... when does red become orange? An infinite distance also exists between the first and second shade of red before it can become orange.

Houses consist of multiple rooms, but a house can also contain just one room... but doesn't that mean it's just a room rather than a house? How do we distinguish a house from a room? By whether or not it has a roof? But surely, something with multiple rooms without a roof could still be a house....

With examples like these, Pickstock argues that for a thing to "be," it must first be something else that's repeated differently. A room can only be a living room if the concept of "room" already exists. And thus, for Pickstock reology precedes ontology: "To be is to be repeated." But how can you repeat something differently if repetition implies sameness? So reology doesn't precede ontology after all?

Pickstock argues that for a thing to "emerge" as something different entirely, it must already exist in some metaphysical form (a la Plato), but due to this thing's (potentially) infinite variety, the only explanation for this possibility must be attributed to an infinite God.

At least it's what I drew from the book. It's one of the densest books I've read, right up there with Milbank's Theology and Social Theory which I couldn't finish. Although Pickstock is much more literary and playful, familiarity with continental philosophy, Platonic metaphysics, and Heideggerian phenomenology is a requirement. I almost gave up, and most of it went over my head.

[David Mosley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Pickstock sets out to form a reology alongside of, perhaps even preceding, an ontology. Using literature, Kierkegaard's understanding of non-identical repetition, the Church Fathers, and postmodern philosophers, she builds up her study by defining things and symbols. From there she focuses on repetition working her way to God himself. There are a few aspects of this text with which I don't fully agree, specifically her use of Originian universalism and the preexistence of souls. Nevertheless, this is an essential text to anyone interested in metaphysics, Radical Orthodoxy, Christianity, literature, Kierkegaard, etc. I cannot recommend this book enough.

[David Beadle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This essay reveals the brilliance of Catherine Pickstock and the reach of the implications of Radical Orthodoxy. In this book, Pickstock weaves together Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Plato, Irenaeus, and Origen, to unfold a compelling way of understanding the relationship between eternity and temporality which comprises created experience and, paradoxically, the Divine life. It is as creative as it is grounded in tradition, and as brilliant as it is provocative. A must-read for those interested in philosophical theology.