Podcast 10: Black Suffering with James Henry Harris: Paul Ricoeur's The Symbolism of Evil.
Reverend James Henry Harris is a Distinguished Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology and a research scholar in religion and humanities at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. He also serves as chair of the theology faculty and pastor of Second Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia. He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics and recipient of the Henry Luce Fellowship in Theology. He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Tyranny of the Text and Black Suffering: Silent Pain, Hidden Hope (Fortress Press, 2020). His latest book is N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic, a memoir that describes and critically wonders about a graduate English class he took on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and provides crucial insight into the CRT conundrum.
This week we discuss Paul Ricoeur's Th e Symbolism of Evil. Guilt, Shame, and defilement.
The following is a transcript of our Zoom meeting on November 01, 2022. It has been edited.
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John Hawkins  · Podcast 10: Black Suffering with James Henry Harris: Paul Ricoeur's The Symbolism of Evil.
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Hawkins: [00:04:12]
James, let's pick up where we left off last time with Paul RicÃ..."ur. Let's consider his book,
The Symbolism of Evil. It seems like it would feed right into your bailiwick -- you know, the stuff you do up in the podium, getting people to understand some of the deeper intricacies of faith and the master- slave conundrum.
He talks right from the start about the primary symbols: defilement, sin and guilt. And his conclusion is that these symbols are recapitulated in the Concept of the Servile Will.
And I'm trying to come up a concrete example of it. You can probably come up with the best concrete example. You've been working on it for a long time. But maybe we could start out by considering these symbols. Why would RicÃ..."ur regard them as the primary ones? Why those?
These are very important concepts. One thinks of the defilement of Christ on the way to Calvary. Taking away the sins of the world, living in a world that's full of sin. But then this whole idea of the concept of guilt. You know, lower animals don't feel guilt. It's only human beings who feel guilt or are capable of feeling guilt. And what is it? Is it a deeper sense of our own failed humanity? Or was it a failure to the other?
Harris: [00:07:04]
Ricoeur says guilt is not synonymous with fault. And I guess we all reflectively protect ourselves against fault. And, you know, it's an extraordinary point, because it's very difficult for those who may be guilty of certain atrocities. Who still don't find themselves at fault. And maybe it's a trait to cope with the continuous propagation of inhumanity. I haven't read The Symbolism of Evil in so long, but it's so compact. The abstract of The Symbolism of Evil [can be summed up] in one sentence: The symbol gives rise to thought. That one line is just so powerful. You begin to think the symbolism that you encounter, or that you see. For example, here in Virginia, for years there were just Confederate statues everywhere, all along Monument Avenue. Everywhere, schools are named after Confederate generals and soldiers, and so forth. And the statues, and other things, are symbols of oppression and injustice and slavery and all of that kind of thing. So these symbols have prompted me to think about their meaning, and how they are construed, and how they came to be. And what it continues to mean when you encounter that kind of thing on a daily basis. So Ricoeur's concept and notion and language about the symbol giving rise to thought is just something that has stuck with me over the years.
Ricoeur's symbolism of evil seen through the lens of the appropriate hitmen for the regime.
Hawkins: [00:19:27]
I want to look at plantations. Picking cotton is backbreaking work in the sun, and then learning a new language, a common language for people coming from different tribes on another continent. Being forced to learn a language. It's not necessarily for domination, but for commerce. You have to understand orders and stuff like that. Then coming together as a unit that, again, is disparate, coming from different tribes, different places in Africa. But now here they are in America and they work at these fields. And it's wonderful to have these Black creatures on the fields, because they come with them sickle cell anemia, which turns out to be a natural remedy to malaria back home. All of this stuff comes together in an olio, absorb it. And then the only salvation, in the sense of solving something, comes on Sunday with a preacher, perhaps someone like you, is the only one who knows how to read properly and is delivering lessons to these people who've been working their asses off all week now.
Hawkins: [00:20:58]
So they try looking for something that only vaguely assuages the misery of what they've gone through the past week, and preparing for the next week, and the minister must give them some kind of hope and some kind of understanding. Talking about the defilement, the constant defilement by the master, thrashing Black bodies, and taking the Black man down, especially in front of the women, -- the immiserating of a culture that has only one thing in common at that point: color. Obviously, everybody's Black. They're forced to use a rudimentary English language that they learn, at first, just enough to take orders. But also then there's the salvation language of the preacher who may or may not be hoping to free the minds of the constituency, but to actually just get them through another week of work. So I'm thinking of these primary symbols, defilement and sin and guilt. Why do they feel guilty? Why would a Black person feel guilty on a plantation for disobeying the master? It must have been new for them to feel this white man's idea of guilt.
Hawkins: [00:22:47]
Then they have this whole system built up. A church with preaching going on each Sunday. A systemization of their brains forcing a way of looking at the world, a worldview is being implanted. So I was hoping you'd address the symbols in terms of the servile world. This idea of the servile will has ramifications, not just for Black people, obviously, but for all of us in the capitalistic world where, where capitalism is exploitation, white or Black, we're all exploited.
Harris: [00:23:57]
Black religion has always been something more and something less than what traditional European religion has been. The Black preacher, in particular, has had to walk a thin line between suffering and hope. And also providing the adherents with a message that would not redound to their ultimate demise or death or something like that. Also, I think that the slave master was very much interested in propagating a gospel that fostered the material culture, as well a kind of quietude and placidity. And I think religion was used, to quote a phrase from Marx, as a kind of opiate for the people. That's what the plantation preacher was -- his role was to make sure that the slaves would not rise up in rebellion, and really felt if they did that that would be sinful, and they would feel some kind of guilt about it.
Harris: [00:26:42]
And I think that philosophy and that perspective was not only inculcated in the religion, but in some sense it was a kind of brainwashing of a people who were oppressed on every hand. So the religion itself and the practices were designed to uphold the sufferings of Blacks and to benefit the slave master and the plantation owners, because Black suffering has always, from slavery on, benefited whites and the oppressor. And so, it gets back to the whole notion of consciousness that I talk about in my book -- Black suffering is not considered suffering by whites and not something to be pitied, or something to be concerned about, but it is in many ways something to to rejoice in. We've seen it historically when Blacks were often hanged on the 4th of July, and so forth, and the white families would bring their to participate in the celebration of death, the celebration of the defilement of the Black body.
Hawkins: [00:51:29]
So we continue with the primary symbols, if you want. I mean, I think we've just started getting a little firecracker actually going with the defilement and the guilt, like guilt, for instance. It's a really interesting concept in itself, you know, Where does it come from? Is guilt the same for everybody? Is it a product of consciousness or a product of domination?
Harris: [00:52:06]
Well, Ricoeur expresses above all, the promotion of conscience as supreme. And he preaches of individual sin, of personal guilt that has the value of hope. For if sin is individual, salvation can be equally so. Even if the exodus from Egypt could not be repeated in an exodus from Babylon, even if the return was to be indefinitely postponed, there would still be hope for each man.
Harris: [00:53:15]
But I think that the question is so critical, because I'm just not sure that guilt is a universal concept. How can it be? I mean, if I look historically at the slave-master, and so forth, there seems to be no semblance of guilt about any of that. And, I'm going to push this a little further by saying that I often see the slave master as a little monarch. It's very difficult to feel any semblance of guilt when you see everybody as your subject - and, we could extend that to, say, human as object. So I think the notion of guilt is not for the architects of oppression and injustice. I'm loathe to believe that architects of the slave system felt any guilt about it at all, even after 300 years. There's been epiphany. See, I have a problem with some of Ricoeur's, concepts that he considers to be universal. Not universal. Not universal to me. Now, they may have some elements of universality in them, but it's a concept of those in power.
Hawkins: [00:56:25]
Exactly.
Harris: [00:56:27]
So I critique Ricoeur about that same thing in Oneself as Another. Because I say that even if Ricoeur perceives himself as another, his perception of himself as another is only as Hume or Descartes. I don't know whether his perception of himself as another would be [the equivalent] of Fannie Lou Hamer's or Dubois's.
Hawkins: [00:57:10]
Well, that's where it gets tricky, because I think that's why it's very deep and complicated, is because the Black experience is profoundly alienated. I try to understand it, you know? And I try to go through the different filters, whether it's religion or origin stories, the common ways of looking at the world and even in postmodern times. We're looking at a situation where just the color of your skin is that powerful. It's a kind of symbol, really, of evil, white evil. You could grow up white, you could be 'poor white trash,' but, with the right economic opportunity, maybe get up into the upper middle class at some point in your life. And it could end up that way, you know, by making the right decisions along the way, if that's what your goal is. But it's never really fully like that for a Black person. Even if all of these opportunities are equalized, they can't escape what they are born into the world with - colored skin.
Hawkins: [00:58:25]
A totally different proposition; a real test of humanity to think about it that way. I agree with what you've been saying over the weeks about European philosophers. Their philosophy is talking about themselves. And inasmuch as Oneself as Another is an exercise in empathy, it is not really talking about you, James, or the Black experience.
Harris: [00:59:14]
Absolutely. And maybe it is outside of their consciousness. I mean, I read a lot of these people and I'm not even sure that Ricoeur ever uses any language of race.
Harris: [01:02:26]
And, you know, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, says that we are only attracted to the self in the other.
Harris: [01:02:47]
No matter how off-putting or terrible that self is. If we can identify it in another, then that becomes a type of satiation of our own self. And so, from the Jungian perspective, we are never fully interested in another, we're only interested in the propagation of the self.
Hawkins: [01:03:48]
Well, once again, Hegel's Phenomenology versus Howard Zinn's People's History. Which is more valuable to me. The people's history is more valuable because it's stripped of all the bullshit ideologies that belong only to people who can afford an education of the sense that gets more and more elite as you go. And there are different ways of telling a story, and the story that belongs to people, everyday people that Howard Zinn talks about, can document through lots of snapshots of different activities in history. It's more valuable, you know, because it's stripped of any notion of Absolute Spirit. There's no unified worldview that's going to take place. No one's ever going to get to Hegel's End Game, because it doesn't actually exist. It's just kind of a fantasy. But when you get to the end of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, you know, you feel, refreshed. I've had my eyes opened in a pleasant way, and I feel like I'm educated. I feel like I know things I didn't know before, you know, genuine things. And, you know, I don't end up joining the union, or becoming a Marxist, and looking for Marxist women to make love to, or anything like that. I just feel like someone's told me the truth for a change. And it's a pleasant experience. You brought us back to Oneself as Another again. Since we're there, why don't we talk a little bit about Ricoeur's concept of bios versus logos? What is Ricoeur talking about? And how can you relate it to Black suffering?
Harris: [01:05:40]
Yeah, I understand. But tell me how you read that.
Hawkins: [01:05:48]
Body versus mind is a good start. So bios is just biology. What makes us special. We keep talking about how magical the human body is and human being is. Because, as far as we know, this hairball spit out in middle of space, with darkness all around us, you know, all this dark matter, dark energy and for light miles and miles around, there's nobody but us. We're the magic of biology. You know, we come out of chemistry. And out of chemistry comes biology. And here we are with consciousness. On top of that, we're aware that we're biology and chemistry. So that symbiosis, whole idea of the body and what it brings to the table. So it's biology versus logos, the mind. Maybe they go together rather than against each other, dialectical.
Harris: [01:06:57]
Yeah, well, I see dialectic everywhere. Clearly there is a nexus between body and mind. And the body is such that it cannot be it just cannot be excluded. In particular, we talk about mind in terms of brain and so forth, brain science and all of that. It's a part of the body. But at the same time, whenever we talk about the body, my mind just vectors again to how the Black body has been dehumanized and denigrated and defiled and everything else by an authoritarian regime that the slave-ocracy is representative of and, I guess, I'm just so enamored by what Sojourner Truth says, What evil has this slavery not done? And so even when I read Ricoeur and The Symbolism of Evil, slavery is the in-your-face symbol and embodiment of the concept and practice of evil.
And so the notion of mind and body cannot be disconnected from these same concepts in terms of the evil way that the body and mind of the Black person have been treated. It started with, as you mentioned earlier, the erasure of language upon landing on America's [colonial] shores. And then dismemberment of the Black body and treating of the Black body with absolute and almost total disregard, except for its use in the development of material culture.
Hawkins: [01:16:08]
I always come back to you being up on a podium on a Sunday somewhere, trying to fire up the choir, to get them to just give a sh*t. And I'm worried that we've gone into some realm, once post-modernism really kicked in and took over, and now we're at the cusp of artificial intelligence taking over. And we're playing God with that. And we're giving AIs all our information. And we're remaking the world in our image, but we're flawed. So that's not going to go down too well.
Harris: [01:17:09]
Right.
Hawkins: [01:17:10]
There's a world malaise. You know, we shouldn't be fighting in Ukraine. Any sensible person should know that. What are we retards. We just got through a 20 year in Afghanistan and threw $6 trillion away. And now here we are supporting something where every single day Joseph Biden should be coming out to say We have to stop the war. Instead of saying, if Putin does this, if he nukes em, then we'll nuke him. The language should be every freaking day. Let's give peace a chance. Every single day. That's what it should be. But here we are. We just don't learn. You know, there's something wrong with us.
Harris: [01:17:43]
Well, yeah, and the politicians are just deplorable. I mean, really, they are. They are in many ways the embodiment of the evil that we have been talking about. These people are evil. I think honestly and unfortunately, you know, I think it applies across parties. I mean, these folks only want to get elected. I mean, everything is about getting elected again. They have no interest or concern about any of this stuff that we're talking about. I'm not even sure they're concerned about the country itself. It's just a self-driven quest. Clearly, there is no interest in Ricoeur's concept about another. Now it's all about oneself. So it's just a mess.
Hawkins: [01:18:57]
It definitely is.
Where do we go from words to action?
Hawkins: [01:19:25]
We never do. The words never translate into to actions that are of any significant consequence.
It's just the same bullshit over and over again. But you have a special place in the world, because you have to find something in you, a fire in your belly to sort of pass on to maybe a hundred people on Sunday. And be honest and actually affect them somehow, affect them, make them care about something. That's magic, if you can move people's emotions these days.
Harris: [01:22:04]
I think you're right. I mean, that's what the preacher is called to do, in my view. That is to try to help create a new world. Yeah. And that's what seemonic discourse should be focused on or designed to do, such that when people do come to church or to hear that preacher, that their world can be transformed at least minimally. And I think that's where the hope lies in a very real sense. So let me read a little something of what I wrote.
Hawkins: [01:22:39]
That would be great.
Harris: [01:22:50]
Just something brief, I think. Where should I start? This is a kind of continuation of some of the things we have said.
While the slave master and the British monarchy are homological. There is no homology or homologous connection between the king and Queen of Great Britain and the notion of sovereignty inherent in the concept of God. The statement God is sovereign has no earthly complementarity. However, the slave master is homologous to the British monarchy. I suggested earlier that it's incontrovertible, an established fact in addition to skin pigmentation color. Blacks are discriminated against based on the way they sound, how they use certain words. For example, the verb to be, etc., and the immediacy of their skin color. This linguistic profiling, as discussed by John Baugh, it is as discriminatory, as racist and visual profiling, blatant and ubiquitous discrimination based on skin pigmentation. Whether on the phone or in person. Blacks are encouraged to not be themselves, but rather to be another, thereby exacerbating what Dubois termed double consciousness. And what Ralph Ellison aptly described as invisibility. And no one who is white or non-black and in her or his right mind is trying to become Black. Oneself is not another seems to be the philosophy and practice of whites, especially if another is defined as Blacks. There appear to be limitations on the otherness that one seeks to emulate. Another that is an extension of the self. I talked about that and talked about Carl Jung. While I have a longstanding interest and admiration for the philosopher RicÃ..."ur and his great work, I want to reverse his maxim of oneself as another to oneself as oneself. By expanding the notion of getting in front of the self as text to create a new understanding of self and world. And so, I'm concerned about one being oneself or a person being oneself. And I use an example of some of the things that we also may have talked about.
A few days ago, I was called by a young man in the church to tell me about his father's ailing health and sudden decline. I had noticed that his father had been missing from the worship services for the past few Sundays. This registered with me because he was ubiquitously present. I went reluctantly to visit him. It was a Saturday morning just before noon. When I arrived at his house, I noticed immediately that the yard was not as immaculate as I remembered, and there was something about the front door that was dim and dusty like a pile of ashes had been following it. This is a person who cherished details and cleaned and cared for his house and yard with alacrity. Weeds had no chance to grow and thus had no opportunity to linger in the air or to settle anywhere proximal to his presence. His step understanding of duty and responsibility for details manifested itself in his clean, personal spaces. But on this day, I wondered for a while about his state of being. He was physically very sick, but upon seeing him, he also appeared to be visibly agitated by all of the attention focused on him, attention often displayed toward infants and children.
Can I get you to take a bite of this? You need to eat this or that. He was coaxed by those attending him, but Brother Alfred was unmoved. He had worked around the church for years after he retired from the cigarette factory and so forth. After all of the coddled, condescending snippets that the nurses and nurse's aides were making. Sip this, eat this. You need your strength brother Alfred, the weakened one, yelled out. Where are my goddamn keys? You motherfuckers are driving me crazy. The ladies, two certified nursing assistants and one relative, startled and amazed, jumped back in sheer shock. They were not fully aware of the attributes and personality of brother Alfred, which could be acerbic and mendacious. The person I knew was often sarcastic and cantankerous. They knew someone else altogether. To them, he was another. But to me, he was being himself and not another. The quiet little old man, sick and emaciated from the lack of food and drink, had risen up against an attack on his personhood. His self-consciousness and self-understanding had been tested and violated by these strangers who in fact were his pretentious friends in some simple and uncaring way. They were his antagonists in search of a paycheck, and brother Alfred could spot a fake person a mile away. Indeed, this was the effort I knew. Always sarcastic, always signifying, consciously condescending, selfish. He was prone to deceptively confusing others with the unrivalled gamesmanship of cat and mouse. So to me, brother Alfred was just being himself and not another.
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