The Taste to Come
The Lick of Faith & the Other-Mouths of Messianism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i2/3.3.238Keywords:
taste, orality, Luther, eucharist, erotic phenomenon, erotic reductionAbstract
This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.
References
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———. 2006. Hyperrêve. Paris: Galilée.
———. 2007. Insister of Jacques Derrida, trans. Peggy Kamuf. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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———. 2000. Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Éditions Galilée.
———. 2004. For What Tomorrow… A Dialogue, trans. Jeff Fort. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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———. 2005b. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2005c. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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———. 2006. The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen E. Lewis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Milbank, John. 1997. The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common. New York: Dover.
———. 1987. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Leipzig: Goldmann Verlag.
Pynchon, Thomas. 2009. Inherent Vice. New York: Penguin.
Smith, Adam. 2003. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam Classic.
Taylor, Mark C. 2007. After God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Samuel. 2002. The Legend of Freud. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Augustine. 1912. Confessions, vol. 2, trans. W. Watts, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1966. Briefe, Band 2, Herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Gershom Scholem und Theodor W. Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkampf Verlag.
———. 2003. Selected Writings. Vol. 4. 1938–1940, trans. Edmund Jephcott et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cixous, Hélène. 2005. L’amour Même dans la Boîte aux Lettres. Paris: Galilée.
———. 2006. Hyperrêve. Paris: Galilée.
———. 2007. Insister of Jacques Derrida, trans. Peggy Kamuf. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2008. Love Itself in the Letterbox, trans. Peggy Kamuf. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
———.2009. Hyperdream, trans. Beverley Bie Brahic. Malden, MA: Polity.
Clarke, David L. 2004. “Hegel, Eating: Schelling and the Carnivorous Virility of Philosophy.” In Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism, ed. Timothy Morton, 115-37. New York: Palgrave.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1969. Logique du Sens. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
———. 1990. The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2003. Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953–1974). Cambridge: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Glas, vol. 1. Paris: Éditions Denoël/Gonthier.
———. 1982. L’oreille de l’autre. Montreal: VLB Éditeur.
———. 1985. “Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name.” In The Ear of the Other, trans. Avital Ronell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
———. 1986. Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
———. 1993. Spectres de Marx. Paris: Éditions Galilée.
———. 1994. Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge Classics.
———. 1996a. Marx’ Gespenster, trans. Susanne Lüdemann. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Tauschebuch Verlag.
———. 1996b. Résistances de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Éditions Galilée.
———. 1998. Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2000. Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Éditions Galilée.
———. 2004. For What Tomorrow… A Dialogue, trans. Jeff Fort. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2005a. “Justices.” Critical Inquiry 31/3 (Spring): 689-721. doi:10.1086/430991.
———. 2005b. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2005c. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2009. The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1953. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 8, 1901–1905. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis.
———. 1958. “Psycho-analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides).” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 12, 1911–1913. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis.
———. 1991. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. Franfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.
Heidegger, Martin. 1963. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
———. 1996. Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. 1969. Hölderlin Werke und Briefe. Erster Band. Gedichte/Hyperion. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag.
———. 2008. Hyperion, trans. Ross Benjamin. Brooklyn: Archepelago. Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Cartesianische Meditationen. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
———. 1999. Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorian Cairns. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Joyce, James. 1940. Ulysses. New York: The Modern Library.
Lucretius. 1924. De Rerum Natura, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Luther, Martin. 1907. Luthers Werke. Band 33. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar: Herman Böhlaus.
———. 1959. Luther’s Works. Vol. 23. Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, Chapters 6–8, trans. Martin H. Bertram. St. Louis: Concordia.
———. 1974. Die Gantze Heilige Schrifft. Band 3. Deudsch auffs New Zugericht. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
Marion, Jean-Luc. 2003. Le Phénomène Érotique. Paris: Éditions Grassett & Fasquelle.
———. 2006. The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen E. Lewis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Milbank, John. 1997. The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1999. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common. New York: Dover.
———. 1987. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Leipzig: Goldmann Verlag.
Pynchon, Thomas. 2009. Inherent Vice. New York: Penguin.
Smith, Adam. 2003. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam Classic.
Taylor, Mark C. 2007. After God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Samuel. 2002. The Legend of Freud. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Published
2010-02-26
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Brower, V. W. (2010). The Taste to Come: The Lick of Faith & the Other-Mouths of Messianism. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 3(2-3), 238-262. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i2/3.3.238
