final

Enfleshing Freedom

M. SHawx CoppLAND

Fortress Press Minneapolis

I n3.5 c7go6e 2010 Copeland, M. Shawn' Enfleshing freedom.6p l Z ,lz

ENFLESHING FREE,DOM Body, Race, and Being

Copyright @ 2010 Fortress Press, zr imprint of Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights I or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright @ 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America and are used by permission.

Cover image: Snake woman Dreaming by Uta Uta Tjangala Cover design: Kevin van der Leek Book design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN Author photo: Kris Brewer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Copeland, M. Shawn (Mary Shawn) Enfleshing freedom : body, race, and human being I by M. Shawn Copeland.

p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8006-627 4-5 (alk. paper) 1. Theological anthropology-Christianity. 2. Human body-Religious

aspects-Christianity. 3. African American women-Religious life. I. Title. 8T702.C67 2009 233.089'96073-d c22

2009028920

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements for American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 2329.48-1984.

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Turning the Subject

"Lord, when was it that we sawt you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison

and did not take cnre of you?"

Then he will answer them, "kuly I tell yoLL, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, yolt did not do

it to me."t

Humanity is becoming tangible . . . in its inhumanity.2

I n the context of the European Enlightenment, the "turn to theI I subj ect" was intended to be emancipatory.' It aimed to release humanity to dare to rely upon reason, rather than revealed truth, as the authority by which to judge, decide, and act. But human- ity's "exit"A from what Immanuel Kant named its "self-incurred immaturity"S was no progress, and certainly not for many of God's human creatures. From the middle of the fifteenth century for- ward, a totahzing dynamics of domination, already obvious in anti-Semitism and misogyny, impressed itself upon the so-called new worlds. Charles Long, Cornel West, David Theo Goldberg, and

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Enfleshing Freedom

Emmanuel Eze, among others, have traced the relation between

these oppressive dynamics and the Enlightenment's enelvating

failure of criticality.6 These scholars have exposed hov,' key catego-

ries in epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics were pressed

to legitimate racism and genocide, expropriation and exploitation,

cultural imperialism and colonialism. IJnder the irnpact of these

dynamics, Christianity buckled. At times willingly, an-rbivalently, silently, Christianity partnered with domination; no\v, "hLlman

authenticity [could] no longer be taken for grante d.."7 This com- plicity, as chapter two has shown, compromised Christian think-

ing about the meaning of human beittg.

A New Anthropological Question

The involvement of Christianity in the dynamics of domination set the stage for the performance of tragic narratives, which have

eaten the heart out of Western civili zation These master narra-

tives originated in quest, but ended in conquest, in "cynicism, ;rncl viglence."S They boasted of the means thr^or-rgh which cer- tain human beings were made masters and possessors and other

humarn beings were made slaves and objects of property.e Few theolggies responded to this tragedy or probed the effect of the dynamics of don-rination on God's human creatures. Rather. as Johann Baptist Metz contends, they preferred to speak in general

terms about "the person" or "the human subject" or "the modern

subject." Howeve6 it has become clear that such speech served "as camouflage for a specific subject"to-1hs white, male, bour- geois E,uropean subject. Such speech {ailed theology's vital task of

abstraction: grappling with concrete data to discern, understand, zrnd evaluate their^ emerging patterns in order to interpret their meanings.

Since the early 1960s, various pcllitical and liberation the- ologies have intensified the effort to unmask and decenter this

B6

Turning the Subject

subject-to rethink and to transform, from the bottom uP, the world that God created.l l These theologies turned the spotlight on Go,C's invisible human creatures: the exploited, despised, marginalized, poor masses whom Fanon so lovingly called "les

damnds de la terre," the wretched of the earth. These childreh, women, and men constitute the majority of humanity. Thert com-

prise the 1.3 billion people who live in absolute poverty, the 600

million who endure chronic malnutrition, the millions sick and

dying with HIV/AIDS. These childreil, women, and men are the

millions sold, or forced into prostitution, or murdered-simply because their embodiment, their difference, is rejected as gift and

offends.12 These childrer, women, and men, too, So beloved by God , are human subjects.

From the outset these liberation theologies looked for God in

history; this meant a"rediscovery of the indissoluble unity of [the human] and God."13 The incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth

set the parameters. Chapter three layed out how Jesus understood

and. revealed himself to be sent to those who were sick, outcast,

downtrodder, and poor. These were childrer, women, and men

without choice, without hope, without a future. To them, Jesus

announced the coming of the reign of God and promised that beatitude that is God's intention for us all.

For these exploited and suffering poor, the prophet from Naz-

areth was the incarnation of divine compassion. His life and min-

istry exemplify what it means to take sides with the oppressed and poor in the struggle for life-no matter the cost. In Jesus of Nazareth, the messianic Son of God endures the shameful spec-

tacle of death by crucifixion. He himself is to be counted among

the multitude of history's victims. But as the messianic prophet,

the sufferings of the crucified Christ are not rnerely or only his alone. In his own body, Jesus, in solidarity, shares in the suffering

of the poor and weak.la Because God was in Christ, "through his passion Christ brings into the passion history of this world the eternal [compassion] of God, and the divine justice that creates

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Enfleshing Freedom

life ."15 Through his death on the cross, Christ "identifies God with the victims of violen ce" and identifies "the victims of violence with God, so that they are put under God's protection and given the rights of which they have been deprived by human beings."to

With this critical reading of Scripture, these theologies could not but be directed toward the broken condition of the masses of marginaltzed poor. Yet it soon became evident that, in their demand for a new relationship to history and society, and in spite of a christologically directed solidarity and careful social analysis, these theologies had covered over the angular condition of women.l7 Polit- ical and liberation theologies had exposed those master narratives that had deformed not only our basic human living but our religious, moral, and intellectual praxis as well. But, in order to make good on their claim to be critical, to face head-on their own contradictions, they had to place self-criticism in the forefront, alongside collabora- tive praxis. These theologies had to take into account the humanity and realities of poor red, brown, yellow, white, and black women. Moreover, they had to grapple with the deep psychic wounds of despised, marginalized poor human beings-internali zed oppres- sion, self-abuse, violence, nihilism, and self-contempt.18

Once the humanity and realities of poor womeil, particularly poor women of colol are moved to the foreground, a new ques- tion orients Christian reflection on anthropology: What might it mean for poor women of color to grasp themselves as human sub- jects, to grapple with the meaning of liberation and freedom? This new anthropological question seeks to understand and articulate authentic meanings of human flourishing and liberation, progress and salvation. Moreover, this question holds foundational, even universal, relevance for the faith of a global church seeking to mediate the gospel in what, quickly and ambiguously, has become a global culture.

My thesis here is quite basic: The Enlightenment era's "turn to the subject" coincided with the dynamics of domination. From that period forward, human being-in-the-world literallv has been

8B

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Turning the Subjeci

identical with white male bourgeois European being-in-the-

world. His embodied presence "usurped the position of God" in

an anthropological no to life for all others.te This rampant pres-

ence is met only by the churcht praxial affirmation of the anthro-

pological yes begun in the ministry and sacrificial love of Jesus

of Nazareth, whose solidarity with the outcast and poor revealed

God's preferential love. That revelation directs us to a new anthro-

pological subject of christian theological reflection-exploited,

despised, poor women of color.2o

Three sections elaborate the thesis of this chapter. The first

assumes the new subject of theological anthropology, drawing on

the work done in critical theologies for human liberation' Since

Valerie Saiving first interrogated the position of women nearly

half a century v}o,zt feminist, womanist, muierista, mestiza, min-

iung theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars have challenged

the anthropological displacement of human being with bourgeois

European white male being. The work of these scholars made

analysis of human and social experience; embodiment, sexuality,

and eros; identity, otherness, and difference; self-criticism; ecology

and peace to be thematic in christian theology. In this process'

they retrieved, analyzed, and reinterpreted key insights in biblical

studies, Christian doctrine (the Trinity, Christology, ecclesiology),

and ethics.22 Their project stands as another phase in which Chris-

tian theology reaffirms the need for authentic solidarity in word

and in deed. To presume this project is to presume a new anthro-

pological subject for the whole of Christian theology'

The second section probes the implications of soiidarity in

light of this new subject, whose presence reorients notions of per-

sonhood and praxis. Ifpersonhood is now understood to flow from

formative living in community rather than individualism, from

the embrace of difference and interdependence rather than their

exclusion, then we can realize our personhood only in solidarity

with the exploited, despised, poor "other." In this praxis of solidar-

itv, the "other" retains all her (and his) "otherness"-fis1 (and his)

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Enfleshing Freedom

particularity, her (and his) self; she (and he) is neither reduced to some projection, nor forced to reproduce a mirror image. Like- wise, we retain particularity and self; we are not reduced by res- sentirnent23 to projection or caricature. Rather, perhaps, a new an,C authentic human "'we" emerges in this encounter; yet, that new "we" can only be realtzed in the gift of grace.

The realtzation of that gift is the healing of a "body of broken bones"Z4 Lrnto the mystical body of Christ. This third section makes explicit the eschatological meanirg of Christian solidarity on the side of exploited, despised, poor women of color. The doctrine of the mystical body of Christ focuses attention on the metaph),ri- cal and historical relations of our communion with one another and the concrete and mystical relations of our union with the Tri- une God- It accentuates the meaning of hope, which includes an acceptance of uncertainty and of suffering love.

Finally, this thesis involves not only a critique, but also a judg- ment. This judgment discloses something not only or exclusively about the white male bourgeois European subject, but about aII of us-white and nonwhite, men and women. This judgment exposes the way in which we all have betrayed the very meaning of humanity-our own, the humanity of exploited, despised poor women of colo4 and the humanity of our God.

A New Anthropological Subject

What does it mean to recogrttze a new anthropological subject of Christian theological reflection-to identify exploited, despised, poor women of color as that subject? This recognition neither satisfies the demands of a numerical majority, nor enacts a kind of turnaround, as if now an anthropological "baton" is passed to poor women of color. If this were the case, then the subject of Christian anthropology would be subordinate to so-called liberal political correctness, on the one side, or to a classicist reaction,

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Turning the Subject

on the other. Identity politics can never determine the content of

theological anthropology. Second, recognizing a new anthropolog-

icalsubject is no mere calculation, ?S if the previously overlooked

experience of poor women of color now simply could be added

on. If these women's stories and social suffering were retrieved in

this way, theology would resume an alignment with those mas-

ter narratives that have run roughshod over the subjectivity and

agency of the oppressed. Third, thinking about the subject in this

way implies critique and involves judgment; but that critique and

judgment neither intend to nor need alienate those who are white

(Er,rropean) or powerful or privileged or male. If this were the case,

then theology's very articulation would be little more than ideol-

ogy or crude justification or a new desecration of the humal'Lun"L

(to borrow a term developed by Edward Schillebeeckx)-2s Fourth,

taking poor women of ccllor as an anthropological subject admits

the risk of self-righteousness, of manipulating (white and male)

guilt, and, more importantly, of romantici zlng or ide altztng, thus,

depersonali zlng human persons. Finitude and sin are not alien

to poor women of color. But this risk may place us in the path

of grace: to take oppression as a point of departure for theologi-

cal reflection brings about encounter with the purifying powers of

God in history "even before we are completely liberated."26 Finally,

taking poor women of color as the subiect ensures that we are in

no way attempting to reinst ate any of the earlier and contested

anthropological models (androgyny, unisex, and complementar'

ity).27 Mary Aquin o'Neill's caution is worth repeating:

And.rogyny advocates a development of the individual such that

she or he includes within the self all that has been traditionallv

divided between male and female; the unisex approach takes one

or the other sex as the ideal and sets about to accommodate the

self to it, no matter what is given in nature; and the theology of

complementarity has been based on the image of an individual

body in which the male is the head and the female the lower part

to be ruled over tby] the head, seat of reason and intelligence.28

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Enfleshing Freedom

The first and second of these models remain bound to the Euro- pean Enlightenment notion of human being as autonomous, isolated, individualistic, and acquisitive; the third is tied to con- fusions in understanding that are related to the absence of what Bernard Lonergan called "differentiation of consciousness ."2s

Our search for the humanum is oriented by the radi- cal demands of the incarnation of God; it reaches its term in the dynamic reali zatron of human personhood. Thus, to be a human person is to be ( 1) a creature made by God; (2) person-in- community, living in flexible, resilient, just relationships with oth- ers; (3) an incarnate spirit, i.e., embodied in race, gender, sex and sexuality, culture; (4) capable of working out essential freedom through personal responsibility in time and space; (5) a social being; (6) unafraid of difference and interdependence; and (7) willing daily to struggle against "bad faith" and ressentiment for the survival, creatior, and future of all life.3O The realization of humanity in this notion of personhood is a dynamic deed rooted in religious, intellectual, and moral conversion. Taken together, the various theologies for human liberation push us in self-giving love to work for this reahzation and its flourishing in disregarded subjects-exploited, despised poor women of color. Only in and through solidarity with them, the very least of this world, shall humanity come to fruition.

Solidarity

Love of neighbor was the hallmark of early Christianity. ("See how they love one another.") This apprehension of the 'other' as neigh- bor startled and provoked admiration, for that love was expressed through spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Almsgiving, in pan ticular, was the work and duty of charity, the remedy for injustice and inequity in the human community. However, there was little attempt to probe the social or cultural reasoni.tg for the tenacious

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Turning the Subject

and cruel poverty of the majority of human persons. This was

the state of affairs up until the late nineteenth century, when the

papal encyclical Rerum Novarum responded to the moral break-

down caused by the abuses of the industrial revolution. But the

notion of charity could not meet the level of demand by the new

structures and problems in society. In the effort to redefine the meaning of the common good, Leo XIII drew on the newer notion

of social justice.3r

The nineteenth-century notion of linear progress not only has

collapsed but decayed. The c5mical retreat of the nation-state, regressive programs of structural adjustment, repressive taxation,

rising oil prices, gross inflation, market manipulation, food short-

ages, pandemics, drought, and wars have trapped not only the peo-

ples of the two-thirds world but most of the rest of us in "a vicious

cycle of increasing immigration, decreasing formal employment,

falling wages, and collapsing revenues."32 We need thoroughgoing,

practical, genuine systemic change in the present global order' At

the same time, we sense a need for something deeper and beyond

the moral attention that social justice accords to the distribution

of the material and cultural conditions for human living. That

something deeper and beyond, I suggest, is solidarity'33 Solidarity has secular roots in the European labor-union move-

ments of the mid-nineteenth century and entered only recently

into Christian vocabulary. In his 1917 Taylor Lectures at Yale, Walter Rauschenbusch ciarified his notion of the social gospel,

orienting it around solidarity as relationship with God and human

persons, as serwice to and for others for the kingdom of God.3a

Ren6 Coste has located papal use of the term in the encyclicals,

texts, and allocutions of Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and

John Paul II.3s Although Benedict XVI has not addressed the topic

directly, compassionate love of neighbor forms a leitmotiv in his

early papal writing.36 Increasingly, solidarity has become a caI-

egory in christian theology and, as such, denotes the empathetic

incarnation of Christian love.37

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Enfleshing Freedom

As a category in theological anthropology, solidarity stands as a crucial test in theology s analysis of personal, social, and histori- cal action-intelligent, actiVe, compassionate love for the other in "a situation in which authenticity cannot be taken for granted."38 The criterion for theology s judgment is located in that most res- onant, inexhaustible, gratuitous act of love-the Father's dona- tion of the Son for the world and the Son's embrace of the Father and the world. The soladaristic life praxis of Jesus of Nazareth grounds theological anthropology s application of both a herrne- neutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of recovery its understand- ing and judgment, decision and evaluation of acts as authentic or inauthentic.3e

Solidarity presents a discernable structure with cognitive, affective, effective, constitutive, and communicative dimensions. Through a praxis of solidarity, we not only apprehend and are moved by the suffering of the other, we confront and address its oppressive cause and shoulder the other's sufferir,.g. Orient- ittg ourselves before the cross of the crucified Christ, we not only attempt to reahze ourselves as the mystical body, but intersubjec- tively, linguistically, practically, prayerfully to communicate who we are, and for what and for whom we struggle.a0 Solidarity sets the dynamics of love against the dynamics of domination.

From the perspective of the new anthropological subject- exploited, despised, poor women of color-solidarity is basic to the realtzation of humanum.Inasmuch as solidarity involves an attitude or disposition, it entails recognition of the humanity of the "other" as human, along with regard for the "other" in her (and his) own otherness. The principle of openness flows from this recognition and regard. Openness implies receptivitrz, that is, a willingness to receive the other and to be received by the other in mutual relationship, to take on obligation with and to the other.

Although recognition and regard, mutual openness and obli- gation form crucial constitutive elements, solidarity is more than a sum total of these basic gestures. Solidarity is a task, a praxis

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Turning the Subject

through which responsible relationships between and among per-

sons (between and among groups) may be created and expressed,

mended and renewed. As we shall see, in the discussion below, the

fundamental obligations that arise in the context of these relation-

ships stem not from identity politics or ft om the erasure of differ-

ence, but rather from basic human creatureliness and love'

The Transgression of 1''lumanum

on Febru ary L2, 1992, the Times of London reported the following

story:

The plight of a Somali woman who gave birth unassisted beside a

road in Southern Italy as a crowd stood by and ieered prompted

telephone calls yesterdoy of solidarity and iob offers'

The indifference shown by Italians to Fatima Yusif, aged 28,

when she went into labor on the outskirts of Castel-volturrlo, near

Naples . . . provoked conclemnation across the political spectrum

and calls for the authorities to introduce legislation to curb the

burgeoning racism against immigrants.

"I will remember those faces as long as I live," Ms. Yusif, who

was born in Mogadishu, told Corriere della Sera as she recovered in

hospital. "They were passing by, they would stop and linger as if

they were at the cinema careful not to miss any of the show' There

was a boy who snigger ing, said, 'Look what the negress is doing-"'

[Help came] to the immigrant mother when a passing police

car stopped half an hour after her baby boy Davide, weighing

5 lb, was born. Television reports of the incident brought tele-

phone calls to the hospital to which mother and child were taken,

expressing solidarity with Ms. Yusif and offering her work' The

vatican newspaper, r'osservatore Romano, said the bystanders

were not "worthy of the word man'"

Livia Turco, for the Democratic party of the Left, the former

communist party, said that the episode "throws an obscure and

:::::t#:j:tit on the real level of humanitv and civilisation of

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Enfleshing Freedom

This report embarrasses. Of course, there is much we do not know about Fatima Yusif or about the crowd of Italians who gathered to watch and mock: Was Ms. Yusif abandoned by a husband or lover? Had she been raped or seduced, then left to carry the child to term, alone? Was the father of the child dead or alive? What are her moral values and what is her character like? How long had she been in Italy? Why was she in this rural town? Was she a resident or working there or merely passing through? Was she looking for the father of her child? Was he too Somali or was he ltalian? Why was the crowd so cruel? Were women standing in the crowd, and if so, did one of them come forward to help? What we do know is that this story points up transgression of humanum; as such, it is a dramatic "anthropological signufier." a2

The story of Fatima Yusif enfleshes the interlocking and con- ditioning oppressions of racism and sexism, social and human exploitation, ?S well as the impact of border crossings, immigra- tion, ressentiment, and bad faith. It captures graphically in our contemporary world what it means to be an exploited, despised, poor woman of color: to be vulnerable and visible, to suffer and endure shame, to live with little or no regard and consolation, to be a spectacle.

On the side of a road, in childbirth, lies the body of one of the human fragments of the colonial leg acy of Italy in Africa and the neocolonial ruin of Somalia.a3 Fatima Yusif is an immigrant because social oppression in Somalia so limited her exercise of human freedom that she could no longer meet her most basic human needs-adequate food, clean water, sheltec medicine, work. Longstanding patriarchal rights left her culturally unde- fended against wife-beating and marital rape. Had Davide been born in Somalia, it is likely he would die of malnutrition and dis- ease before his first birthday; should he live, illiterac!, poverty, and war would be his lot.aa

Fatima Yusif is an immigrant. Once she crossed the border into Italy, she stepped out of a web of cultural, linguistic, personal,

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Turning the Subject

and moral support' Once again social oppression (racism' sexism'

and exploitation of the guest-worker) circumscribes the exercise

of her human freedom and personal responsibility. On this side

of the bordel her struggle to survive is met with suspicion and

ressentiment. As a black, female human being, Fatima Yusif is thrown into a

white world. This white world makes her race and herbodyvisible,

but it does so to despise and render her humanity invisible in order

to peeq to gaze ("Look at what the negress is doing!"). In this white

world, Fatima Yusif's iclentity is defined for her. In this white world,

her identity comes not from membership in an ethnicJinguistic

group or from relationship to family and clan, but from race' On

the grounds of naive racist empiricism, she is, can only be' the

black, ,.the negress." Racial representation so overdetermines her

being that she is anonymogs-"1fis negress," and thus, every black

female human being. She is not a person, she is not even herself,

she is "the negress." Fatima Yusif's personhood is trampled. Her

defiant cry to "remember those faces" both discloses her shame

and risks the spoiiing of her spirit throughressentiment'

The story of Fatima Yusif throws light on the way in which

exploited, despised, poor women of color are forced to meet the

ordinary ,,everyday," lo cotidiano.as These women bear and face the

burden of history (her-stories); for the ordinary everyday brings

with it the choice of how to live in relation to oppression, whether

to be consumed bY it or to resist it. On the side of a road, (white) Italian men' women, and chil-

dren watch Fatima Yusif (a poor black woman) in chiidbirth' A

pornographic gaze forms what they see: there is no human being'

no human person, no mother-only an exotic body, an object to be

watched. A most private human moment now constitutes a spec-

tacle for public consumption. Men, women, and children "linger

as if at the cinema," looking at "what the negress is doing!"

Is this Schadenfreude, smug self-satisfaction at Fatima Yusif's

plight? Is it fear? Perhaps the coarse remarks of members of the

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Enfleshing Freedom

crowd are fueled by anxiety, insecurity, and loss. In the global economy, "first-world" rural towns also find it difficult to make ends meet. These women and men sometimes are enflamed by leaders to fear the difference that poor people of color and immi- grants represent. They do So, in part, because the humiliation and material poverty that Fatima Yusif suffers could so easily circumscribe their own lives. The fr^ustration and anger that they cannot express directly to venture capitalists, oil barons, and the affluent is spewed out on a poor immigrant black woman. In the global economy, corporate downsizing and disemployment leave a remainder-dirty jobs and scapegoats. Immigrants-especially women (and men) of color-serve these purposes. After all, who will collect garbage, sweep streets, scrub floors, scour toilets, pick grapes, clean fish for canning? And who is said to threaten job security, dilute culture, spoil government, tempt sexual appetites, and "breed like rabbits"? Fatima Yusif enfleshes the contradictorv inflections of immigration-need and antipathy.

The headline of the Times' article roars: "Racists jeer at road- side birth." No human being is born a racist or a sexist, but every human being is born into the "pathological distortion of human existence," which Bernard Lonergan terms bias.a6 Racist and sex- ist behaviors are rooted in bias-the more or less conscious choice to suppress the directives of intelligence, to repress conscience, to act in bad faith, that is, to lie to ourselves "in an effort to escape freedom, responsibility, and human bein g."o' The racism and sex- ism displayed by the crowd not only derive from each one's biased behavior but are promoted by societal legitimation.as

It is not surprising that the bystanders are condemned as "unworthy" of being called human or are accused of having betrayed the self-image of their nation. To some degree, these responses approximate basic gestures of solidarity. However, at least by what is reported, these rebukes appear blind to the l"g- acy of European colonialism and fail to grapple with the depth of psychic sufferit.g caused by social exploitation. These comments

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Turning the Subject

denounce the inhumanity of the crowd but overlook the (possi-

bly) bleak social situatedness of the crowd. Moreover, legislation

agarnst racism stands little chance in effecting a change of mind

and hear^t. These remarks witness to the assault against huntanlL-t'r\,

but they cannot account for it; and while necessary in the repair

of social justice, offers of employment can never (re)constitute

it. Only an authentic solidarity that neither apathetically resigns

itself to the plight of Fatima Yusif nor self-righteously reproaches

the crowd can address the injury done that doy in 1992 to the human whole.

The Praxis of Solidarity

Between Fatima Yusif and the crowd lies the potential for an authentic praxis of solidarity-the cross of the crucified Jesus of

Nazareth. Through incarnate love and self-sacrifice, Christ makes

Fatima Yusif's despised body his own. In solidarity, he shares her

suffering and anguish. In his body, in his flesh, Christ, too, has known d.erision and shame; his broken and exposed body is the

consolation of her being. At the same time, his love is available

for the women, men, and children in the crowd; his body absorbs

their anxiety and sin, their failure to honor humanluwl ("Father

forgive them.") The cross of Christ exposes our pretense to historical and per-

sonal innocence, to social and personal neutrality. It uncovers the

limitation of all human efforts and solutions to meet the problem

of evil. Thus, the praxis of solidarity is made possible by the lov-

ing self-donation of the crucified Christ, whose cross is its origin,

standard., and judge. Solidarity can never be severed from this

self-giving love. Only those who follow the example of the Cruci-

fied and struggle on the side of the exploited, despised, and poor

"will discover him at their side."4e Clearly, then, solidarity is no mere commonsense identification

among members of the same group (for example, nation, class,

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Enfleshing Freedom

gende4 race), although that identification may be beneficial sorne- times, even necessary. Nor is solidarity to be confused with iden- tity politics, although it does involve recognition of identity and of difference. As a category in theological anthropology's appeal to social praxis, solidarity is an intentional moral and ethical task.

Solidarity begins in anamnesis-the intentional remembering of the dead, exploited, despised victims of history. This memory cannot be a pietistic or romantic memorial, for always inten- tional recovery and engagement of the histories of suffering are fraught with ambiguity and paradox. The victims of history are lost, but we are alive. We owe all that we have to our exploitation and enslavement, removal and extermination of despised others. Helmut Peukert recognizes our anxiety when he writes, our "own existence becomes a self-contradiction by means of the solidarity to which it is indebted."So Our recognition and regard for the vic- tims of history and our shouldering responsibility for that history form the moral basis of Christian solidarity.

Solidarity calls for the recognition and regard for exploited, despised poor women of color as who they are-God s own cre- ation. Solidarity preserves the universality of love, without renouncing preference for these women of color.sl In solidarity, the Creator is worshipped , huma-num honored, particularity engaged, difference appreciated. Solidarity affrrms the interconnectedness of human beings in common creatureliness. Humanity is no mere aggregate of autonomous, isolated individuals. Humanity is one intelligible reality-multiple, diverse, varied, and concrete, yet one.s2 Whether white or red or yellow or brown or black; whether male or female; whether Iranian or Mexic&r, Australian or Chi- nese, Irish or Kenyan, human beings are intrinsically, metaphysi- cally, ineluctably connected.

Oppression assaults (materially rather than formally) our con- nectedness to one another by setting up dominative structural relations between social and cultural groups as well as between persons.s3 Oppression is both a reality of the present and a fact

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of history. Solidarity mandates us to shoulder our responsibility

to the past in the here-and-now in memory of the crucified christ

and all the victims of history' Thisshoulderingofresponsibilityobligesusinthehere.and-

now to stand between poor women of color and the powers of

oppression in society, to do all that we can to end their marginal-

ization,exploitation, abuse, and murder' In memory of the cross of

Jesus, we accept this obligation, even if it means we must endure

rejection or loss. Moreovel this "shouldering" summons us to

take intentional, intelligent, practical steps against "the socially

or technically avoidable sufferings of others."s4 For] Christian soli-

darity repudiates every form of masochism and any assent to suf-

fering for its own sake. Soiidarity affirms life-even in the face of

sin and death.ss

Thisshoulderingofresponsibilitystrugglesforjusticeinthe concrete and admits of particular tasks for each us by virtue of

our differing social locations. It always requires us to be on guard

against any form of self-deceit or self-delusion' any attempt to

deny freedom and obligation or to act as if the world were devoid

of the bodies of despised poor women of color'

Such shouldering cannot be done by a man or a woman alone;

agapic praxis characterizes Christian community' In remembrance

of the Body of Christ broken for the world, the followers of Jesus, in

solidarity with one another, stand shoulder-to-shouldel beside and

on the side of exploited, despised, poor women of color' This praxis

of christian solidarity in the here-and-now anticipates the eschato-

Iogical healing and building up of "the body of broken bones."

If the cries of the victims are victims are the face of God,

the voice of God, then the faces of the

the bodies of the victims are the body

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Eschatoloeical Healing of "the Body oT Broken Bones"

Enfleshing Freedom

of God. The anguish of the victims of history and the demands of authentic solidarity plead for the presence of the supernatural in the concrete. The history of human sufferit,.g and oppression, of failure and progress , are transformed only in light of the supernat- ural. If humanity is not an abstraction but a concrete reality that embraces the billions of human beings who ever have lived, are living, or will live, and if each and every human person is a part of the whole of interpersonal relationships that constitute human history, then we, too-each one of us-shall be transformed.

In a meditation on the mystical body of Christ, Bernard Lon- ergan brings its trinitarian character forward.s6 Formally, the "mystical body of Christ refers to a concrete [perichoretic] union of the divine Persons with one another and with [humanity] and, [humanity's] union with one another and with the divine Per- sons ."s7 Metaphorically, the mystical body of Christ is a compact way of speaking about the role of the supernatural in healing, uni- fying, and transforming our body of broken bones. The mystical body is a rich and multivalent way of signifying the concrete one- ness of humanity, Christ's identification with the one human race in his own body, New Testament language about the body, and the sacrament of the Eucharist.ss

For some readers, the phrase "mystical body of Christ" may insinuate a backward, even regressive, step. For others, the phrase may arouse suspicion; for others, still, it may edge furtively toward nostalgia. Certainly, the phrase calls to mind Pius XII's encrrcli- cal, "Mystici Corporis Christi ."se For nearly twenty years, the topic commanded theological interest, only to decline in the 1960s.60 Since that time scarcely t half-d ozen monographs or dissertations have been written on the topic.

With the expression mystical body of Christ, I want to reaffirm salvation in human liberation as an opaque work, that is, a work that resists both the reduction of human praxis to social trans- formation and the identification of the gospel with even the most just ordering of society. I am looking for a point of vantage that

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is pertinent to human development, relevant to human change in

society, refuses to foreclose human history, and is concrete and comprehensive enough to be compatible with the human telos in

the divine economy. Further, as I noted earlier, my thesis contains

not only a critique but also a judgment-and the judgment indicts

us all. To think of our human being in the world as the mysti- cal body of Christ retunes our being to the eschatological at the

core of the concrete, reminds us of our inalienable relation to one

another in God, and steadies our efforts on that absolute future that only God can give.

To bring to light the complexity of the mystical body of Christ, "its manifold differentiations, its comprehensive network of rela-

tions," Lonergan traces a fivefold dynamics of love.61 Love origi-

nates in the mutual love of the Three Divine PersoilS, one for another: "the love of the eternal Father for the Eternal Son, the

love of God for God, love [which] is God the Holy Ghost, who is the

infinite love proceeding from the infinite loveableness of God.

Because love is for a persoil, when the Word became flesh, divine

love broke the confines of divinity to love a created humanity in

the manner that God the Father loves God the Son." Third, ?S a

human, Christ loves other human beings with a human 1ove.62 The

love with which Christ loves uS, Lonergan stresses,

is the love of a human will, motivated by . human mind, operat- ing through human senses, resonating through human emotions

and feelings and sentiment, implemented by u human body with

its structure of bones and muscles, flesh, its mobile features, its

terrible capacities fclr pleasure and pain, for joy and sorTow, for

rapture and agony.63

The human love of Christ is for us irrevocable and fulfills our innermost longing.

Fourth, "there is the love of the Eternal Father for us."6a This

love is as deep, generative, intimate, and encompassing as the love

with which the Eternal Father loves the Eternal Son. To capture

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Enfleshing Freedom

the dazzltng beauty, joy, and humility of this truth, Lonergan quotes the prayer of the Johannine Jesus: "May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me and you have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17: 20-23).

The Father embraces us human creatures as daughters and sons. This deepens the already real relations between us as crea- tures and the God of JesuS, whom we may now call Father. We are daughters and sons of the God and Father of Jesus, therefore we share real relations with one another not only through our crea- tureliness but through our new relatedness as sisters and brothers in Christ. And, because of God's love for God, because we are the children and friends of God, the Spirit is sent to us.6s

Humanity in its diversity is a reflection of the commr-rnity of the Three Divine Persons. Their divine love constitutes our unity in and reahzation of the mystical body of Christ. In this body, each member has her or his own distinct existence; each remains herself or himself. But, even as "\ /e remain ourselves, we do not remain on our own ."66 In the mystical body, we belong to God and we are for one another. Through the animation of the Spirit we are knitted and joined together; we find authentic identity in union with the Three Divine Persons and with one another.

The mystical body of Christ is a "*.y of being in the world with one another [through the Spirit] and with Christ because of who God is."67 It is an eschatological reality, anticipated concretely in the here-and-now through our response to the gift of grace, our engagement in a praxis of solidarity. The mystical body of Christ is a "divine solidarity in grace"68 and, ?S such, makes a clairn not only on theological anthropology but also on each of us as believ- ers. Solidarity obliges theological anthropology to acknowledge and repent of its complicity in the transgression of humanuftL in exploited, despised, poor women of color. Further, solidarity sum- mons each of us to a social praxis in the here-and-now which

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Turning the Subject

contests sin's destructive deformation of ourselves and thus of the

society we constitute. This chapter directed theological anthropology away from a

camouflaged subject, toward a "new" subject-exploited, despised,

poor women of color. When theological anthropology recognizes a

"new" subject, it refocuses theology s praxis in a situation in which "human authenticity can no longer be taken for granted."6e To reit-

erate: This post-E,nlightenment "turning" is in no way identical with erasure or replacement, nor does it demean or dismiss con- crete (white) human (male) persons. Rather, "turning the subject"

responds concretely to the dangerous memory of the body broken

and poured out for us all. By attending to a "new" subiect, we commit ourselves to a praxis of solidarity for human liberation and make the mystical body of Christ publicly visible in our situa-

tion. This visibility, to borrow a notion from William Cavanaugh, must be "ordered by the Eucharist."To

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