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Howie’s Between Feminism and Materialism and the Critical History of Religions

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Abstract

This essay traces the notion of abstraction through the works of Gillian Howie as a means of thinking through the nature of critique within philosophy of religion. In particular, it argues that Howie’s recovery of a more productive conception of abstraction in her late Between Feminism and Materialism is closely linked to the resurgence of real abstraction in recent Marxist theory. From these shifts, one can derive both an enriched conception of religion as real abstraction and a method of critical history that offers a genuine alternative within the contemporary study of philosophy of religion.

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Notes

  1. On the genesis of philosophy of religion in the Enlightenment, see Goodchild (2002).

  2. On the above, see Vroom (2006).

  3. This is, of course, to occupy myself only with a small fragment of Howie’s output and to neglect much that is significant, such as her final articles on non-identity and philosophical therapy (e.g. Howie 2012).

  4. Howie’s critique of Deleuze is further developed in her first monograph, Deleuze and Spinoza: An Aura of Expressionism (Howie 2002).

  5. Howie is here flirting with the sorts of feminist discussions of standpoint theory well documented in philosophy of religion (see Anderson 2012).

  6. See Howie (2010) pp. 11–13, 16–26.

  7. Quoted in Toscano (2008a) p. 273. Or, in Žižek’s words, ‘Before thought could arrive at pure abstraction, the abstraction was already at work in the social effectivity of the market.’ (1989 p. 10) Money provides the classic example of efficacious abstractions in a capitalist system.

  8. Toscano is here drawing on Sohn-Rethel (1978) p. 21. Žižek develops this tension as follows, ‘We are now able to formulate the “scandalous” nature of Sohn-Rethel’s undertaking for philosophical reflection: he has confronted philosophical reflection with an external place where its form is already “staged”. Philosophical reflection is thus subjected to an uncanny experience similar to the one summarized in the old oriental formula “thou art there”… There is the theatre in which your truth was performed before you took cognizance of it.’ (1989 p. 14).

  9. See the discussion of this passage in Toscano (2008a) p. 279.

  10. Roland Boer’s Marxism and Theology series (Boer 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012), provides a crucial background to such claims. Indeed, this conclusion should serve as a call to finally take up Boer’s work substantially within philosophy of religion.

  11. On a productive comparison of Marx with Spinoza on these points see Bertrand (1979).

  12. See further Žižek 1989 31-3.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, 7 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7WY, UK

    Daniel Whistler

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  1. Daniel Whistler
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Whistler, D. Howie’s Between Feminism and Materialism and the Critical History of Religions. SOPHIA 53, 183–192 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0411-7

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