Abstract
Bruno Latour’s Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech is a meditation on the following impasse. The author wants to make sense of religion but cannot. He is ashamed of what he hears in church but equally ashamed of those who are ‘outside’ – i.e. those who treat with contempt anyone who dares to go to church in the first place. The ‘horrors and misconceptions’ are manifest on both sides of the divide, so what is to be done? How might it be possible to revive or reactivate a genuine and fruitful religious utterance?
Before pursuing these questions further it is important to note that Rejoicing is a recent translation of a book that was published in French more than a decade ago. It is moreover a very French book. I say this for the following reasons.
The first concerns Latour’s view of religion. Despite his genuine attempts to locate the argument ‘well away from what is called religion, the Christian religion, the Catholic religion’ (p. 167), the subtext is powerfully Catholic. Take for example the author’s struggles with what he considered to be religion and the escape routes envisaged. The first possibility is a series of ‘mental reservations’ applied to the creed – meaning by this a bracketing out of the clauses that he cannot stomach (p. 58). Not only is the attempt doomed to failure, it reveals a struggle with a specific rather than general statement of faith. The same is true in terms of ‘purification’ (the second escape route) – meaning a stripping down of the Catholic edifice to something more ‘restrained’ (p. 61). But this too is deemed impossible, despite the fact that a whole section of the Christian church went in precisely this direction at the time of the Reformation.
The only solution that remains is equally French: the open embrace of reason – implying the self-conscious breaking of a thread that has remained intact for centuries. It is, moreover, Latour’s own generation who are the most culpable in this respect. Indeed at this point his anger knows no bounds: ‘One day it will have to be held accountable, this spoiled, rotten, rotting, spoiling generation of ours’ (p. 66), who deliberately broke the link with the past and denied to their children the possibility of belonging to the chosen people (p. 64).
It is easier to understand these responses if they are seen in context. To my mind, they derive from a specific culture – one in which religious minorities, including Protestants, were systematically crushed by an historically dominant Catholic Church. Suppression rather than reform led in turn to a violent, politically motivated reaction and to the establishment of a markedly secular state. The uncompromising nature of French secularism derives from this past.
My final point about Frenchness relates to style rather than content. For the most part, I am impressed by the English translation of this text, but the prose is unmistakably that of a French intellectual, schooled in a particular tradition. What emerges is a mixture of acute insights and fine observation interspersed with elaborate metaphor and rhetorical flourishes. This is not an easy read.
I persevered nonetheless and found much that was rewarding. Most of all I warmed to the underlying question and to the author’s frustration with the advocates of both ‘science’ and ‘religion’. I agree that the dichotomies are false: why should we have to decide between ‘the rationality of Science with a capital S, and the irrationality of Religion with a capital R’? (p. 68). This question moreover leads to another. Why is it that the protagonists on each side have chosen to fight to the death rather than to seek common ground? Latour’s response draws from his extensive knowledge of the scientific world: he knows that ‘reason’ seen in these terms does as little justice to the sciences as ‘faith’ does to religion.
Rather later in the argument, the questions are re-posed as follows: ‘Can you be a constructivist, meaning a realist, when it comes to religion the way you can be (as I learned) in the sciences?’ (p. 150); and secondly: ‘Can I now forget about the comminatory question: “Is it real or is it made?” and here too, substitute the question: “How do you tell the difference between what is well and what is badly made?”’. If I have understood Latour correctly at this point, the implication is clear: namely that there are good and less good arguments on both sides of the divide and that we need to be more discerning regarding the quality of the intervention. Specifically, we need to appreciate a particular tonality in religion which has more to do with its capacity to draw people together than with precept or requirement, be it political, moral, sexual, ethnic, legal or whatever. Such ‘drawing together’ is developed in terms of an analogy with the language of lovers – a persistent theme in this book.
Rejoicing, it is clear, is a meditation on a series of complex questions. In terms of presentation, it takes the form of a reflexive conversation, which starts, continues and finishes without so much as a contents list, chapter heading or index to guide or encourage the reader. The only signposts come in the form of an occasional running (or rather not running) header which can be found at the top of some pages. I found this lack of structure frustrating. Indeed, if your bookmark fell out, it would be very hard to find the point at which you had stopped reading in a text which is as much circular as linear.
A possible comparison closes this review. Given the quintessential Frenchness of Latour’s writing, it is hardly appropriate to talk in terms of a British equivalent. That said, I found myself thinking continually of Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic (2013) which deals with very similar issues. It too has an explanatory subtitle: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense, and it too is told from the inside – as a meditation on belief and the possibilities that flow from this. The atmosphere, however, is decidedly different: it is pragmatic, positive, punchy in style and very British. I am not at all sure how a French reader might respond.