I. On Different Types of Oneness – and Their Danger
Christian universalism is epitomised in these two passages extracted from two of Paul’s letters:
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
“But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed […] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” (Rom 3:21-22).
With this, Paul aims at countering the exclusivist logic of the Roman Empire, which reads as follows: “You are either with Rome or against Rome, to which you will sooner or later submit anyway.”
Therefore, Roman logic begins with TWO (Rome and its potential enemies) but ends up in ONE (Rome alone, to which everyone else will submit). We ask the reader to bear this basic mathematical formula in mind: 2 → 1.
(Aside: Roman military tactics incarnated this logic in a perfect way. The Romans approach your village. You fight them. You defeat them. They return with a bigger army. And so on and so forth until they win.)
In its own way, then, Rome is universalist too. Its universalism results from privileging, of Two terms, One over the Other, to the extent of declaring that Other inexistent in the long run. That is to say, Roman universalism results from corrupting an originally Binary structure (“we, Romans, and those who are not like us”) and making it Univocal instead (“we, Romans – to whom everyone will sooner or later resemble”). Again, 2 → 1. In short, Roman universalism is a posteriori.
In contrast, Paul’s universalism is a priori: it results from declaring that everything is One to begin with (“we are all one before God, through Jesus”). Its formula is simply: 1.
Yet, seen from a different angle, Paul’s formula can also be said to be 2 → 1, or even n → 1, in the sense that what Paul affirms is that differences are no longer valid (“there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female,” etc.). In short, for Paul it all begins with MANY (ethnicities, social classes, gender roles, etc.) but ends up in ONE.
Nevertheless, we prefer to view Paul’s formula as: 1, given that, for him, those “many” are ultimately illusory (“for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”).
Hence for Rome and Paul, if in different ways, it is all about Oneness. Rome’s is an exclusivist Oneness. Paul’s, an all-inclusive Oneness. But in both cases, the conceptual axis around which everything turns is: ONE.
Everything? Western history, for instance, with its endless oscillations between both types of Oneness, as over time numberless permutations of Paul’s u-topia have been essayedonly to be betrayed by the dys-topian resurgence of new Roman-like forms of “imperial” power.
We have twice lost our ground many times. And, ultimately too, the possibility of forming worlds. For worlds cannot be mere collections of multiplicities. Nor can they gravitate around an a priori idea of Oneness that takes all things to be one and the same. Nor can they be based on an a posteriori idea of Oneness that forces them to become the same thing.
II. Twoness as a War Machine against any One – or, Crossing the Savage Frontier
Suppose, however, that we could move out of the Roman imperial frontier into the forest (silva) inhabited by those “savages” (silvatici) whom the Romans thought deprived of any social organisation. (Notice we are not referring to those whom the Romans called “barbarians,” like the Punics or the Persians.) What would we find there? Infinite permutations of a binary logic instead. Put otherwise, the conceptual axis around which everything turns would be: TWO.
Or, one-self (such or such tribe) and one’s always-many enemies, i.e. the Others.
Yet here (there, on the other side of the Roman frontier) the initial TWO does not become “One” but remains TWO: 2 = 2. For, unlike Rome, the “savages” do not dream about conquering and submitting the Other. That would put an end to war, which is something no one wants. War – a low-intensity war made of skirmishes to capture or kill a few enemies – must always be there to avoid assimilations.
The Wari’ say: “As far as we remember, we’ve always been warriors.”
Against the ONE, the “war machine” (as Clastres called it).
III. Why Binary Logics?
We would also come across binary logics (i.e. around TWOs) if we were to move backwards along the history of human evolution. Leroi-Gourhan underlines that all “reference systems” of Paleolithic thought, as we find them displayed in what is often, if improperly, called Paleolithic “art,” were based on the alternation of opposites – day/night, heat/cold, fire/water, man/woman, and so on. Leroi-Gourhan calls it “binary complementarity.” Randall White speaks in turn of the “basic binary oppositions” implicit in the “operational sequences” – which are always more-or-less subconscious, unverbalised, and unrecognised – that guided the creation of the earliest human material culture, social organisation, and cosmology.
It is easy to figure out why: bipedalism entailed the liberation of the forearms, and this brought about un-focusness and multi-tasking. In other words, the possibilities of what to do became (too) many. So there was only one chance to make it through: to turn the Multiplicity of what can be sensed (which is practically infinite) into a “world,” i.e. into a de-limited Multiplicity. How? By structuring it. Language served no other purpose, as naming permits us to identify this and that. But everything named must be distributed somehow. And the most immediate and effective way of doing it is in complementary pairs: day/night, heat/cold, fire/water, man/woman, and so on.
Why? First, because our own body is organised (often enough) in dual terms: we have two eyes, two arms, two legs, etc. Secondly, because our experience reports to us the recurrence of dual phenomena – or, in any event, we tend to map them thus: above and below, in and out, in front of and behind, right and left, concave and convex, striated and smooth, dark and bright, absent and present, etc.
This explains, among other things, the system of synonyms and antonyms on which the vocabulary of any language is based.
And more…
IV. A Little Anthropological Lesson
We can learn many things from Lévi-Strauss. But we must learn at least two: a) kinship turns around the difference between consanguinity and affinity; b) social organisation is based on it.
Not only are extra-modern social groups often divided into two exogamous moieties (or halves) between which rivalry and competition are generally acknowledged: opposite symbolic qualities and roles are attributed to them, so that, for example, the shaman of the group belongs in one moiety, whereas the chief belongs in the other moiety.
Furthermore, as Viveiros de Castro remarks, this means that an extra-modern “living person is not an individual but dividual, a [composite] singularity […] constituted by the self/other, consanguine/affine polarity” – a singularity that is “decomposed at death, […] [thus] releas[ing] the tension […] between affinity and consanguinity that impels the kinship process.”
To make it simple: I am related in terms of blood to my parents, grandparents, sons, brothers and sisters, and cousins, whom I do not marry; I marry those whom I do not relate to in terms of blood, and through marriage I get sisters-in-law and/or brothers-in-law, etc. Affinity is the opposite to consanguinity, and vice versa.
Not infrequently, exogamy goes as far as to take place not between the members of a group’s two moieties, but between members of two groups that regard the members of the other group as their “enemies.”
Again, then: TWO.
V. On Savage Thought and Christian Non-Sense
The arrival of missionaries and their spread of Christian beliefs in indigenous Amazonia (and elsewhere) has encountered many obstacles, not the least important of which is the resistance of “savage thought” (to use Lévi-Strauss beautiful expression) to the conceptual non-sense of Christian universalism.
Example no. 1:
“We’re all brothers, we’re all God sons,” teach the missionaries. This, however, puts at risk the very structure on which kinship stands, as it turns irrelevant the difference between, say, sisters and sisters-in-law or brothers and brothers-in-law – a difference that is all the more relevant to the preservation of any dual organisation and to the reinforcement of its constitutive principles: exogamy and alliance, which is anyway the basis of any socialisation, even if we have forgotten it to the point of believing that we are socialised (it would be better to say numbered, constrained, and taxed) by the State.
What is a sister-in-law or a brother-in-law? An affine.Who can become an affine?A rival or an enemy – for, once more, you do not marry your own kin, that is to say, you do not mix consanguinity and affinity.
Claiming, therefore, that we all are, indistinctly, God’s children, erases the difference. Most dangerously indeed. For it amounts to naively presuppose that we are all One, that it is afterwards that we divide, and that we must try to overcome all divisions by avoiding animadversion, accepting whatever offences, etc. And we all know how this ends: bad feelings grow poisonously inside until they explode all the more violently. Conversely, extra-modern peoples assume not only that conflict is possible, but that division is there at the outset, and they consequently try to solve this problemby establishing relations of affinity. (Which can be transposed into the following mathematical paradox: “Let’s try to be MORE THAN ONE AND LESS THAN TWO.”)
This is the reason why Christianity’s universal ideal of brotherhood (with its primordial ONENESS) sounds literally like non-sense to them.
Example no. 2:
“God punishes those who sin,” teach the missionaries.
“Does he punish them straight away?,” someone asks.
“Not always. But he will surely punish them in the afterlife.”
“So God punishes their doubles”?
(In most Amazonian languages there is a term to express someone’s double, e.g. the “prey” the jaguar sees in me, the “other” I become when I am ill or the “other” I become when, under the effect of a psychotropic substance, I happen to substitute the perspective from which I see all things for the perspective of the anaconda, etc. Yet there is no exact notion of “soul” in them, since nothing lacks a body, even the wind has one, since it has its own way of being.)
“Yes!,” continues the missionary.
“Then he must be our enemy, because that is what our enemies do: their shamans use their sorcery to attack our “doubles.”
“But no!, God loves you.”
“You mean he doesn’t dislike us?”
(In spite of their oft-moving tenderness, many indigenous peoples lack the verb “to love,” as you do not exactly love your kin: you are part of it, substantially. It is your affines, therefore, you may eventually get to like. Yet, as we have seen, in principle they are your enemies, or at least your rivals. Hence loving them means not to dislike themanymore.)
“Right, he doesn’t dislike you! How could he? God loves all his children!”
“Oh, but then again he must be our enemy. For only enemies actually say: ‘We don’t dislike you anymore.’”
Here too, Christian universalism falls into the category of non-sense against the backdrop of extra-modern binary logics.
And this not to mention that Jesus is presented by the missionaries as being both “white” and an “elder and true brother.” How can one be a “true brother” and be “white,” i.e. Other, at the same time?
“This white people know nothing of kinship,” extra-modern peoples surely think.
In strict technical terms: we no longer have a “savage” cogito, the formula of which is not so much: “I think, therefore I am,” as: “I AM WHAT I-AM-NOT IS NOT.”
VI. Tupi or Not Tupi – That Is the Question
Our thought has been domesticated. We are all happy to be children of God, or more recently of the human genome (if there is any real difference between the two, God and the human genome, in terms of their role as all-encompassing efficient causes). Just like we are happy to be citizens of the State (no matter which) and capitalist consumerists with the same abstract opportunities to buy commodities and the same legal rights to assist us.
Definitely, we are no longer able to think properly.
We can only see ONE where there were always MANY.
We can only see ONE where the MANY knew there could be MORE THAN ONE AND LESS THAN TWO.
We can only see ONE and its innumerable reflections: you and me.
Hence not only are we no longer able to think properly, we are no longer able to see either.
Note. In a future post we will see how the fascination with “contingency” in contemporary philosophy (from Lyotard to Vattimo, Badiou, Agamben, Laruelle, Meillassoux, and a long etcetera) has its roots in Paul’s anything goes. It will suffice to notice for now that Vattimo, Badiou, and Agamben all variously vindicate Paul; and Laruelle, Christ (i.e., Paul’s invention.) We take this as a proof that Christianity remains our ghost, and of the extent to which we remain its prisoners. Will we be ever able to re-become indigenous – the indigenous peoples we once were and then un-became? “Tupi or not Tupi – that is the question!”
Further reading: Aparecida Vilaça, Praying and Preying: Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia – and, of course, Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagic Manifesto, Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind, and Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics
The question is not so much what it is, but what you are to its eyes…