Critical Theory and Early Christianity - Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler - Matthew G. Whitlock
7. The Many Acts of the Apostles: Simulacra and Simulation
Critical Theory and Early Christianity - Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler - Matthew G. Whitlock
Matthew G. Whitlock [+]
Seattle University
Philip L. Tite [+]
University of Virginia
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Description
What does Critical Theory’s discussion of simulacra reveal about the quest for Christian origins? Whitlock and Tite explore Deleuze’s theories about simulacra, contrasting them to those of Jean Baudrillard, and then applying them to the Acts tradition. On the one hand, Baudrillard views simulacra negatively, claiming that we have been so overcome by copies of copies that we have lost sight of the real. His theories affirm the dichotomy between the real and the virtual, and the original and the copy. Applying Baudrillard’s theories to the quest for Christian origins, Whitlock and Tite demonstrate how we are left only with copies of copies of early Christian “origins.” And if we seek the “authentic” or “authoritative” essence of Christianity behind these copies, we find, in Baudrillard’s terms, “the desert of the real.” On the other hand, Deleuze views simulacra positively, claiming that life is a simulacrum of becoming, an infinite and evolving series of real images and real differences. Deleuze’s theories challenge the dichotomies between the real and the virtual, authentic and inauthentic, authoritative and apocryphal—dichotomies too often undergirding modern quests for Christian origins. Using Deleuzian theories, Whitlock and Tite examine early Christian texts not as authentic and authoritative representations of an original source or essence, but as a continuous and evolving series of real images and real differences, a simulacrum of becoming. Applying these theories to the Acts tradition, Whitlock and Tite examine how stories of Cornelius repeat and differ from Luke to Acts, and from Acts to the so-called apocryphal Acts, and how this series of forms, in Deleuze’s words, leads to “the abandonment of representation.”