The evangelical-capitalist resonance machine

Political Theory

Volumn 33, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 869-886

  Connolly, William E ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Assentiment; Capitalism; Causality; Evangelism; Media; Open Theism; Resonance; Sensibility

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144496110     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591705280376     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. An earlier presentation of the evangelical element in contemporary political economy was given in the spring of 2005, at the WPSA panel in Oakland, CA organized around the new edition of Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). That edition adds a Part II to the classic 1960 text. While I disagreed with his account of Nietzsche, I drew upon Wolin's account of America as "Superpower" in Part II, This essay is dedicated to Sheldon Wolin, in appreciation of his groundbreaking work and the inspiration he provides to many who practice the vocation of theory.
2. For the idea of emergent causality drawn upon here see William E. Connolly, "Method, Problem, Faith," in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek E. Masoud, Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 332-339.
3. That essay, as well as this one, is indebted in turn to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "Micropolitics and Segmentarity" in Brian Massumi trans., A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 208-231.
4. Here are some pieces that focus on the role that greed plays in this alliance. They do not, however, anchor that greed in anything over and above the normal processes of underregulated capitalism. "Enron's Smoking Gun," The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, http://www.consumerwatchdog. org/utilities/nw/nw002172.php3;
5. "Unveiling the Corporate GreedMarket," http://www. consciouschoice.com/cc1709/hightower1709.html;
6. "Enron Flew Under the Radar," Common Dreams New Center, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0212-03.htm
7. Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 267.
8. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days, by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Publishers, 1995), 468.
9. This quotation comes from a column by Nicholas Kristof, "Apocalypse (Almost) Now" New York Times, 11/24/04, 27. It is from the last volume in the series. I have not read that one yet.
10. There are now large, fuel-eating, dangerous, and destructive SUVs and others of smaller, more efficient design. The differences are reviewed in the April 1, 2005 New York Times report on the vehicles Republicans and Democrats respectively buy. Correlations between party and vehicle are fine, but what is needed are refined correlations between existential disposition and vehicle use. These, too, could be pursued, particularly in light of new brain-imaging techniques which, advancing beyond those available for a few decades, can discern specific brain states that join communicants together in a relation of trust.
11. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. by Talcott Parson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958). "Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care .... The emphasis on the ascetic importance of a fixed calling provided an ethical justification of the modern specialized division of labor. In a similar way the providential interpretation of profit making justified the activities of the business man" (163). These two statements measure both the contact and difference between Weber's analysis of the spiritual element in the formation of capitalism and my more modest attempt to decipher the spirituality of a particular constellation in one country today.
12. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 99, 140.
13. To read Zarathustra as 1 do is to discern that the drive to "be equal"-which he connects to the will to revenge - is mostly the demand that everyone either become the same (e.g., have the same faith, the same sexuality, the same ethnicity, the same belief in the market) or be punished for not being so. The "overman" is not a separate kind of human for Zarathustra by the end of the text; it eventually becomes a noble voice in many selves on behalf of affirmation. More than Zarathustra, I separate revenge against difference from the drive to reduce economic inequality. The first is a measure of my debt to him; the second of my agonistic response to his unconcern about economic inequality.
14. See Timothy P. Weber, Waiting for the Second Coming, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Weber charts the movement from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1980s. His view that "relative deprivation" only helps to explain its attractions is pertinent to the account here. His attention to millenialists, such as former Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, who hold the key creedal beliefs but do not embrace the ugly politics, is also pertinent. Once again, it is the formal belief in conjunction with susceptibility or resistance to existential resentment that is important. That is why it may be possible to pluralize further the political orientations of evangelists.
15. Frank Ankersmit, "Democracy's Inner Voice: Political Style as Unintended Consequence of Political Action," in John Corner and Dick Pels eds., Media and the Restyling of Politics, (London; Sage, 2003), 19. Ankersmit's objective is to show how political reality is not exhausted by the articulations of its contestants.
16. Perhaps this is the point at which to note that existential resentment can be expressed without being articulated because such an affective disposition is filled with ideas. So to say that people can share the same formal creed while differing in the sensibility infused into it is not to say that a sensibility consists of pure affect. Rather, an idea-imbued sensibility inflects the meaning of a publicly defined creed in this way or that. The explicit creed may say "Only Jesus can save you." The implicit, affectively charged idea might be either "and you will burn in hell if you are not baptized" or "if you are a decent person he will save you." Moreover, two people could share the first disposition but differ significantly in the intensity with which it is felt.
17. Robert Heath, The Hidden Power of Advertising: How Low Involvement Processing Influences the Ways We Choose Brands (Oxford: Admap Publications, 2001).
18. The Heath book noted above can profitably be read in conjunction with Mark B. N. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge; MIT Press, 2004), especially chapter 6. Hansen explores experimental art, which draws to the foreground affective dimensions usually left in the background of perception. An effective counterpoises of perception must draw upon such experiments to fashion ways to challenge the image-sound media campaigns with which we are bombarded.
19. For an essay that explores the imbrications between media, show business, and electoral politics in England and the Netherlands see John Street, "The Celebrity Politician: Political Style and Popular Culture," in John Corner and Dick Pels, eds., Media and the Restyling of Politics, 85-98.
20. An insightful book that examines the role of entertainment in politics in the United States is Jeffrey Jones, Entertaining Politics (New York; Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
21. I pursue this question on the registers of identity and economics in The Ethos of Pluralization, chapter 4, "Fundamentalism in America" (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1994). I am indebted to Patchen Markell, who after making thoughtful comments on a first draft of this essay, also encouraged me to recall this earlier moment in my thinking.
22. John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1998), 108.
23. "Can God See the Future?" The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 26, 2004), 12.
24. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 99.