Prof. Judith Gruber's Lecture on Trauma and Hope - My Notes and Reflections

At one of the plenary sessions at the recently concluded Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST XII) conference, Dr. Judith Gruber (JG) of KU Leuven gave what for me was a really high-level, intellectually and even emotionally stimulating lecture entitled "Where the Currency of Life is Death: Re/membering Hope in the Wake of Historical Trauma."

 

JG works particularly at the intersections of theology and critical theories and I've noticed for years now (from what I know of her work) that our interests intersect in many different ways. (Even Bradford Hinze told me that after I submitted a proposal for CTSA years ago!) This is probably why I was really deeply affected and provoked by her lecture. Here are my notes and reflections on that lecture. Note well that everything here comes through the prism of my own understanding (and probably misunderstandings!) and interpretations of JG's lecture. I claim full responsibility for them. (I hope JG [who’s a friend of mine] will tell me her thoughts about my thoughts sometime later!)

***

How Do We Think of the so-called “History of Salvation”?

I strongly felt that JG was prodding us to look hard again at what the traditional Christian tradition has called "the history of salvation." Doing so might make us realize that we have posited "salvation" all too easily, too facilely, maybe even too soon … without really appreciating the real and pervasive experience of trauma that characterizes, first, the human condition itself, and hence, also the whole of human history which is precisely what the Christian tradition claims as "salvation history."

Critical Theories & Popular Culture

To help us in this necessary task, JG suggested several useful critical theories as well as elements from popular culture. For example, Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin's categories of the "grotesque" and "carnival" disrupt what is perceived as "normal" and even "noble" and brings us down to the level of (brutal) reality.

Also mentioned were the following thinkers: Walter Benjamin pointed out that history is "a monstrous abbreviation" and "one single catastrophe." One could understand these as descriptions of trauma. Shelly Rambo suggested that trauma is something that "resists closure." Cathy Caruth made reference to the widespread and bewildering history of trauma and its being "an unclaimed experience." Achille Mbembe observes that after trauma, "the currency of life is death." This is where JG takes the title of the lecture.

Particularly significant was JG’s presentation of a video clip of the German hard rock band Rammstein's song, "Deutschland" (Germany) in order to illustrate her points about trauma and its relation to (or perhaps 'disjunction' with?) hope. 

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc

The song-with-video clip of Rammstein is quite provocative yet, at the same time, profoundly thought-provoking, especially for a Germanophile like me (After all, I did spend cumulatively one whole year of my life in Germany and Austria trying to learn German!). It presents a difficult-to-reconcile expression of the ‘highs and lows’ of German history. Black German actress Ruby Commey portrays the character "Germania" (personified!). JG commented that in the video, "messiah-Germania" is portrayed both as perpetrator as well as victim of violence and trauma. From a first, superficial viewing of Deutschland, it seems to me to be portraying a dark message – that German history is full of the "difficult-to-make-sense" themes of trauma and violence, which themselves form the very basic character of all human life, existence, and history.

Messianic Time – a History of Trauma

The point here is that the experience of trauma in human history is actually so pervasive that (JG suggested a few times, drawing on a number of critical thinkers) the concept of "messianic time" referred to by the Christian tradition could and maybe should actually be understood instead as “a history of trauma.” I repeat: the messianic time is a history of trauma! (Whoa! Stop! ... Savor that. Isn't that quite dark? I hear the Joker's chilling and sarcastic laugh after that declaration!) 

In this scheme, "salvation" (if and/or when it happens!) can be seen (very modestly!) as an interruption in the (dominant) history of trauma. That's a more sober, sobering, disconcerting, yet humble view of salvation. For the seriously traumatized though, that might make more sense and might be more faithful to their experience.

Catholic Christian Soteriology - Too Quick, Too Facile?

A part of JG's lecture which fascinated me in particular (also because I largely agree with it) was her (implicit?) message that Catholic-Christian conventional and traditional soteriology might be too facile because it flies in the face of the pervasiveness of unresolved trauma in human history. She takes Johann Baptist Metz's (JBM) famous political theology as a case in point. According to her, JBM indeed deals with human suffering but (and this is only my interpretation!) JG seems to think that JBM posits too facilely that there is a Christian salvific continuum under-girding the history of suffering in such a way that this claim of salvation, in effect, immunizes salvation from the real effects of trauma. I sensed that a number of people in the audience were not too happy with that. After all, JBM is one of the premier figures in Catholic political theology. 

However, when we allow the starkness of trauma to really ... (I repeat for emphasis) truly, and more existentially affect and impact our idea of "salvation," it becomes difficult to imagine and think of salvation primarily as an eschatological event (e.g., "in the end, we will be saved...") or even as a proviso (a condition - you'll be saved if you can do [so-and-so]...). 

The notion of ‘history as a-continuum-of-trauma’ instead makes us understand "salvation" as a kind of "rupture" in what is dominantly a history of repeated traumatic events. In other words, that means: the "normal" condition of human history is trauma; when some kind of "salvation" does occur, it's a rupture in the chain of traumatic events and experiences. (Hold it there ... stop and take time to savor that ... What is its taste?) This is not your usual "glorious", “triumphalistic,” and "optimistic" talk of salvation, is it? It is that kind of disconcerting, troubling talk that "resists a straightforward line from death to life," as traditional Christianity seems to claim too facilely. 

"Consumption" of the Victims?

What is more troubling is what JG referred to as "the consumption of victims." I'm not sure I got what she wanted to say here. What I understood is that, sometimes, in its efforts to imagine what Christian salvation is all about, theology treats the "victims" of trauma as if they were "items for consumption." What is problematic about that is that theology has never really grasped the true nature of trauma. It just utilizes some people's trauma in order to proclaim its idea of salvation which, for all practical purposes, ironically doesn't really touch the trauma itself! Thus, theology needs to reformulate and revise its soteriology in such a way that it would really respond to the trauma of people. 

Some Personal Reflections and Reactions

Who is not in the Room?

As I continue to ponder on this lecture, the questions that Bishop Rowan Williams posed (in another plenary lecture at this conference) kept coming back to me. He poignantly asked: In our efforts to theologize, who is not in the room? In other words, (applied to JG's theme here) who needs to be here so that we could (more realistically) theologize about trauma and hope in a better way? These questions of course echo Gayatri Spivak's famously haunting question: Can the subaltern really speak? 

One could simply say that those who are truly traumatized (tantamount to Spivak’s “subalterns”) are unfortunately NOT really “in the room”! Those who are theologizing for the traumatized are just trying their best to “manufacture” a theory of salvation and hope but it is not truly reflective of and responsive to the terrible history and experience of trauma that many people have in this world.

Where then are Hope and Salvation to be Found?

Still there was a palpable sense in the audience that the theme of hope was not addressed adequately. (Yes, we theologians just have to have some easy hopeful solutions here!)

One participant, reacting to the lecture, poignantly asked: What salvation? Whose salvation? Another participant remarked that it is hard to say where hope is present in the content of the lecture. 

To which JG deftly answered, "At this time, I have no answers to those questions as yet..." or words to that effect.

Hope Put on Hold

My conclusion then is …  It was not really JG's intention to give easy and readily available answers to the question of trauma and how hope is still possible in the midst of it. That would be defeating the point of her lecture. Her primary intention in this lecture was to urge us to look at the phenomenon of trauma itself straight in the eye, try to understand it really well, and not be impatient to answer with "quick" soteriological “fixes.” Trauma has to be really understood first and (yes!) appreciated more fully before any realistic "solution" or "hope" could be prescribed.

If that was truly your intention, Judith, at least this listener heard that message loud and clear.

“God” Might Be the Problem

Of course, I have a few points to make about where hope could be found, but … in keeping with the spirit of JG’s lecture, let me reflect on that on another occasion.

Just some last thoughts though …

For some time now, I’ve been working in the area of Buddhist-Christian Studies. A concrete fruit of that in me is that I’ve come to feel and realize more keenly that the concept of “God” in Christianity is often too facile and therefore problematic. I’m even thinking of writing in the future a book to be called God is Secondary …  What I mean is that many dominant ideas of “God” in conventional Catholic (and Christian) theologies are still too rooted in a childish, mythological level of growth-development (cf. the Integral Theory - what I presented at Leuven!) that could not really respond to more mature and sophisticated levels of developmental awareness that are more “battle-hardened” and “experienced” in the many sufferings and traumas of human life. This is the reason for the demise of conventional religion (read: Christianity) in the West today. Sadly, it (many forms of Christianity) just doesn’t respond to real and existential problems faced by a lot of people who, in their developmental consciousness, have already moved far beyond naïve, mythological levels of consciousness.

This may be the reason why Buddhism has become so popular and so “in” here in the West today. The historical Buddha (arguably) rejected the effort to speculate on “ultimate” and “ontological” issues (such as “god”) because, for him, what was more urgent was the ‘very real’ reality and problem of suffering (and trauma). The famous Parable of the Poisoned Arrow is very illustrative of this.  Thus, he proposed a more concrete way to solve the problem of suffering (e.g., the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Way, etc.).

Perhaps a way forward could be forged by putting Christianity and Buddhism in a more intense dialogue regarding the themes of Trauma and Hope. Christianity has a very robust ethical teaching. However, this ethics might be founded on too naïve and childish notions of God (at least that’s how I see it). Christianity might take some cues and hints from Buddhism as it seeks to forge a theological soteriology that more realistically responds to the experience of trauma in human history and make its theological foundations more mature and more robust.

***
Further Comments from Dr. Gruber herself (in a message to me 2019-11-10). Thanks for these insightful remarks, Judith!

For me, this paper has been quite an intense project, and indeed, raised a lot of questions that are as of yet unanswered. Perhaps, two trajectories have emerged for me towards the end of preparing the draft and during the conference :

1. there is a focus on reparation that both Walter Benjamin and Achille Mbembe share - reparation, however, not as a totalitarian restauration of an original whole, but as a "working in the ruins", a restitution through the debris of death and suffering, in ways that allow to imagine "new beginnings, [yet] without innocence" (H. Arendt). 

2. Indeed, during the LEST conference, the question of salvation was raised in response to my paper - in quite specific ways, as one participant highlighted. "WHAT salvation?" "WHOSE salvation?" Through these questions, we still seem to be able to imagine salvation as something we can grasp abstractely, in a once-and-for-all way to be then applied to (suffering) individuals and groups. But perhaps, once we think of salvation as reparation from and in the ruins, out of debris of death, we have to begin to look more carefully, nuancedly, contextually - not looking for total salvation, but for seeds and signs of living-on in the midst of suffering: "Salvation - where?" "Salvation - when?" "Salvation - how? in which modes?"