Introduction to Michel de Certeau
I have heavily relied on Michel de Certeau in what pertains to theory. I will invite the readers to acquaint themselves with what I consider the most enlightening pages of his work. The question I will ask is, “How does Certeau, the historian, use his keen knowledge of psychoanalysis in his discussion of the mystical or spiritual experience?”
The disciples of Jesus understood him in the light of the Scriptures. They discovered, after his death, that the Scriptures were fulfilled in him. I will do here something similar, but in the light of what we know about the mystical experience, as Michel de Certeau understood it, and as he discussed it in The Mystic Fable. In some cases, the past can be used to understand the present. But the reverse can also be true; what we know today can shed some new light on the past.
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Here is how I reconstruct the story of Jesus
The Christian religion was formed in two stages. In the first stage, Jesus was the main actor. After his death, his disciples became the main actors. Jesus was a prophet and a great mystic. He received revelations from the other world concerning God’s plans for Israel. After his death, his disciples became the standard-bearers of the Christian religion. Their resurrection experience affected them deeply, but did not affect the dead body of Jesus. In order to overcome this problem, they invented the burial story by Joseph of Arimathea. This story made it possible for Mary Magdalene to discover the empty tomb, which shows that the resurrection affected the dead body of Jesus.
During his life, Jesus rejected the Messianic crown and rebuked Peter very harshly, when Peter pressured him to accept the crown. After his death, he was no longer there to control the disciples. They made him Messiah and Son of God. What they did in total disregard for his express orders became the incontrovertible truth of the Christian religion.
The alleged reason why his followers wanted to make him king is that he had fed five thousand people out of a few loaves of bread and some fish. This is incorrect. The two collective meals did take place, but there was nothing miraculous about them. Jesus had organized those big rallies with the help of his disciples. He sent them all over Galilee. Their mission was to invite the people to a big meeting. Jesus had something new to introduce. So, on the appointed day five thousand people came to listen to Jesus. First, he gave a very long speech, in which he must have explained what was revealed to him concerning God’s plans for Israel. But the Gospel of Mark does not quote a word of what he said then. The entire speech was repressed. Jesus must have introduced a new meal ritual that was meant to replace the Passover meal. He must have proclaimed that the Temple sacrifices were about to become obsolete. When the new meal ritual was repeated in the presence of four thousand people, the disciples recognized in Jesus another Moses and wanted to make him king. This is when Jesus rejected the idea and lost his popularity. From then on, he had to act alone. He was going to go up to Jerusalem and proclaim in the Temple what was revealed to him. He was arrested, tried and handed over to the Roman authorities for crucifixion.
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I have reached those extraordinary conclusions thanks to Michel de Certeau. He was not a gospel scholar. He was a historian who understood the importance of psychoanalysis for the reconstruction of the past when extraordinary experiences were concerned. Gospel scholars and theologians can learn a lot from his study of the spiritual experience that manifests itself in prophets and mystics, and in the texts that they produce.
I have discovered that the Gospel of Mark consists of two discourses. One is overt; the other one is covert. The overt discourse is what any reader of the text sees. The covert discourse has remained unrecognized to this day. What is unique about it is that it “does not mention what it knows; it hides what organizes it; it unveils solely by its form what it erases from its content.”[1] The covert discourse reveals that Peter, the source of Mark, had to serve two masters, the memory of what happened during the life of Jesus, and the faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God. In order to remain true to his Easter faith, he had to betray the historical Jesus. This produced in him severe psychopathological problems that can be spotted in Mark’s narrative. What happened is that the memories that Peter had repressed returned under a disguise. Freud had discovered that repressed memories return, not overtly but covertly. Once they are recognized, they can help us reconstruct what was repressed.
I will introduce here some selected passages from his writings.
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Psychoanalysis and historiography
| Psychoanalysis and historiography have two different ways of distributing the space of memory. They think differently about the relation between past and present. The first one recognizes the one in the other, the second one poses the one next to the other. Psychoanalysis deals with this relation under the modality of ‘imbrication’ (the one in the place of the other), of repetition (the one produces the other one in a different form), of equivocation or quid-pro-quo (what is “in the place” of what? There are everywhere masks being exchanged, reversals and ambiguity). Historiography sees this relation under the modality of successive events (the one after the other), of correlation (more or less distant proximity), of effect (the one follows the other) and of disjunction (either this one or the other, but not both of them at the same time.)
Thus, two strategies of time confront each other, in spite of the fact that their field of operation deals with analogous questions: look for principles and criteria in the name of which one can understand the differences or maintain continuities between the organization of the present and old configurations; give the past the ability to explain the present and/or render the present capable of explaining the past; connect the representations of yesterday or today to the conditions of their production; elaborate (from where? how?) the ways of thinking and therefore of overcoming violence (conflicts and the imponderables of history), including the violence that takes place in the thought itself; define and construct the narrative which is, in the two disciplines, the privileged form given to the discourse of elucidation. The agreements and disagreements between those two strategies since Freud (1856-1939) pinpoint the possibilities and the limitations of renewal that their encounter offers historiography.[2] |
Although we are dealing here with two different approaches to the relation between past and present, they do not have to be exclusive to one another. Freud relied on the historical research of his time in his study of Moses and monotheism. He relied on the anthropological and ethnological knowledge of his time for the elaboration of his book, Totem and Taboo. He found in ancient mythology as well as in art, poetry and literature interesting forms in which the human psyche reveals itself and the way it operates. Thus, psychoanalysis cannot be disconnected from the various fields of human sciences.
Historical research, on the other hand, especially the kind that is associated with gospel scholarship, seems to be highly traditional and extremely influenced by fetishism: follow the rules and you will automatically be a good scholar. This prescription produces a lot of good scholars but fails to resolve difficult problems such as the historicity question. This failure encourages many theologians to brush aside the historicity problem as false. “So, there is fiction in the gospel,” they say, “but modern research has shown that there is fiction in all narratives.”[3]
Certeau seems to confirm this point when he writes: “Take away from the author of an historical study his title of Professor, he is nothing but a novelist.”[4]
If we now turn our attention to the disciples and eyewitnesses of what happened during the life of Jesus, one thing becomes obvious. Their faith in the resurrection had a formidable influence on the way they recalled the past many years after the death of Jesus. The resurrected Jesus was transfigured in their eyes into someone who is no longer of this world. With the resurrection of Jesus, we enter the world of the mystics. They have dreams and visions through which they connect with the other world. The resurrection experience of the disciples falls in that category. It had retroactive effects on the way they remembered the past (what happened during the life of Jesus.) In their dream world, the past and the present were interactive. The present transformed the past. It produced the past in a different form. Thus, we find in the Gospel of Mark equivocation and quid-pro-quo – (things “at the place” of other things). I called those things ‘theological events’ to distinguish them from historical events. Those events appear in the Gospel of Mark in a systematic way and transform it into fiction. There are, on the other hand, masks that hide what can no longer be revealed, said, recognized. The story is full of contradictions, because it does not follow the rules of normal speech. This is why it is so important, in the eyes of Certeau, to connect those representations of the past to the conditions of their production, that is to say, to what went on in the mind of the disciples as they were recalling the past. What caused them to systematically transform the memory they had of the past?
I think that what we need most of all today is an approach to gospel scholarship that can emulate Certeau’s study of Christian mysticism. There must be a way of explaining why gospel research has failed to deal with any degree of success with the historicity question. The birth of a new religion such as Christianity is likely to be not only a complex matter but also something that is rooted in the human psyche. The historical critical method is inadequate to deal with questions of this kind. Another passage from Histoire et Psychanalyse can be a good way of explaining what I mean.
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This individualistic ethic of Kant is traced back by Certeau to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when individualism was used as ‘a social base and an epistemological foundation for a capitalist economy and a democratic conception of politics. ‘[8]
| The dream, the fable, the myth: those discourses that are excluded by the enlightened reason become the very space where the critique of the bourgeois and technically oriented society is elaborated.[9] |
This is how the mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reacted against the first manifestation of modernity. They took refuge in the dream, the fable, the myth. Historians who know nothing, or next to nothing, about the mystical experience cannot begin to understand how a new religion is born. Enlightened reason shuts itself off from the world of dreams, fables, and myths.
The enlightened reason, which Kant has elevated to the rank of supreme judge, stumbles upon two points that are worth mentioning here.
1 – “little bits of truth.”
One is bound to find, in every discourse, “little bits of truth” (des petits bouts de vérité, Stückchen Warheit[10]), splinters and broken pieces related to those decisive moments, that had to be transformed by amnesia, and where the return of the repressed introduces the possibilities of change in the present situation.[11]
Those tiny bits of truth can be found, as we have seen, in many places in the Markan narrative. They are so insignificant that they escape notice. Even when a man like Wrede discusses them, he fails to understand the function they fulfill.
2 – A counterpoint to scientific objectivity.
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Perhaps the first point is more important for my study. I have built my reading of the Markan narrative around tiny bits of evidence. I made a big deal of little details. They are, to be sure, in the text, but am I not giving them a significance they do not have? On the basis of silence and failure to recognize something, as in the case of the two-level stories, I have decided that the silence was significant and cannot be attributed to mere chance. I then went on to conclude that the first level of those stories is based on what happened during the life of Jesus, but that the second level is based on the Easter revelation. I even took one more giant step and said that the entire Gospel of Mark is a two-level story, where facts and fiction coexist.
The second point opposes ‘scientific objectivity’ to ‘analytic lucidity.’ Here again we seem to be dealing with minute differences. But analytic lucidity is important because it is based on the discovery that even the most objective historians are likely to have serious prejudices of which they are not conscious, and which can influence their research. According to Freud, all men are highly prejudiced, even — perhaps I should say, ‘especially’ — when they are convinced that they are objective. There is naïveté and fiction when we do not know how deeply our unrecognized and collective prejudices affect us. No scientific community is exempt from that. But aside from all that, the fact remains that when historians reconstruct the past, they do so from a specific point of view, which is their fiction.
Return of the repressed
Here is what Michel de Certeau says about the return of the repressed.
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He goes on with his explanation:
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This is how Certeau explains Freud. I find particularly interesting what he says about forgetfulness. He sees in it ‘an act against the past.’ I am tempted to specify that this is a violent act against the past — an act that transforms and even distorts it.
If we now turn our attention to the disciples’ case, we notice that what has been excluded, rejected, forgotten, disappears from their conscious discourse. It is repressed. The cause of the repression can be traced back to the crisis they went through in the aftermath of Jesus’ death – terrible event which left them ‘orphaned’. But that event was finally denied and overcome by their faith in the resurrection. Thus, the Easter faith became their new salvation and their new Master. This new Super-master (the resurrected Christ) replaced the master who was no longer there: the historical Jesus. Everything had to be subordinated to the new Master including the historical Jesus. The ironic consequence was that their Easter experience, which saved them from despair, put them in a very tight spot. The memory they had of the past and most particularly of Jesus himself underwent a systematic transformation. The reason is simple: the Jesus they had known did not express any knowledge of what was going to be revealed about him after his death. This is the memory they could not tolerate and had to repress. But what had been repressed in this fashion returned in their unconscious discourse. It returned under a disguise, a mask, so that it would not be recognized. Out of sight but returning with a vengeance, the repressed caused havoc in the dwelling, while the Ego, the owner of the dwelling, remained unaware of what was happening.
I have used Certeau’s texts in order to explain how a disciple of Jesus can be forced to forget important events for theological reasons, and yet admit, without being conscious of what he is doing, that his story is in many ways incorrect. The disciple who is behind the Gospel of Mark is an honest liar. When he says, in his overt discourse, something that is not historical, his covert discourse finds ways of signifying that. The overt discourse is what he says consciously. The covert discourse is what he says unconsciously. The discourse that I have qualified as abnormal and pathological belongs in this last category.
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It is difficult, and to some extent impossible, to identify what has been forgotten by the disciples and excluded from their story concerning Jesus. Amnesia can be a radical way of eliminating the memory of what has become, at a given point in time, disturbing, unacceptable, unbearable. The only way we can learn about it is through what Certeau calls ‘mnesic traces.’ Those traces appear in the Markan narrative in what I have identified as the covert discourse.
In the Gospel of Mark, the action against the past takes two forms that are equally violent. There is first a negative action: amnesia. It can be compared to a partial and selective destruction of a city. There is also a positive action, which can be compared to the erection of new buildings over the ruins of the old ones. Thus, the new city consists of two elements: the old and the new.
Because of this, what Certeau says about violence against the past must be corrected. Forgetfulness is not the only form violence can take. The elaboration of fiction that is intended to replace what has been evicted is another form. In this case the return of the repressed takes two forms. This is precisely what we have in Mark 8:14-21. The ghost of Jesus haunts the disciples years after his death and accuses them of having betrayed the past by omission and by addition. They have failed to mention important things, and they have elaborated a fictional portrayal of him. Under certain circumstances the dead can come back and haunt the living. The disciple who is behind the Gospel of Mark could not escape the reproaches of the dead master, the memory of whom he had betrayed.
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[1] Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, translated by Tom Conley, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988, 332.
[2] Michel de Certeau, Histoire et Psychanalyse, entre science et fiction. Gallimard (folio histoire), Paris, 1987.87-88
[3] This is how I would characterize Adolphe Gesché’s position, as it is stated in his article, “Pour une identité narrative de Jésus,” Revue Théologique de Louvain, 30, 1999, 153-179 and 336-356. Camille Focant, a gospel scholar, adopts Gesché’s views in an article entitled, “Une Christologie de type ‘mystique’ (Marc 1.1-16.8)” New Testament Studies, 55, January 2009. pp 1-21. Oddly enough, Focant knows Michel de Certeau and acknowledges that he borrowed the word ‘mystique’ from his book, La Fable mystique. Unfortunately, the connection between him and Certeau remains purely nominal. He finds traces of mysticism in the Gospel of Mark but fails to identify and analyze the mystical experience that is behind it. This is like saying there is poetry without poets, mysticism without mystics, art without artists.
[4] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 133.
[5] Emmanuel Kant, “Qu’est-ce que ‘Les Lumiéres’?” – “Was ist Aufklärung?” (décembre 1784). Trad. in la philosophie de l ‘histoire, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1947. p. 83-92.
[6] Michel Foucault explained what Kant meant by ‘minority’ in the following way: “Par ‘minorité’, il [Kant] entend un certain état de notre volonté qui nous fait accepter l’autorité de quelqu’un d’autre pour nous conduire dans les domaines où il convient de faire usage de la raison.” By ‘minority’ he [Kant] means a state of our will which makes us accept someone else’s authority, so that we would behave accordingly instead of making use of reason.” (Michel Foucault, Qu’est-ce que ‘Les Lumiéres’?)
[7] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 119.
[8] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 119.
[9] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 105.
[10] Freud, Der Mann Moses, in Gesammelte Werke, v. XVI, p. 239.
[11] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 89. (I am paraphrasing the French text).
[12] Histoire et Psychanalyse, 89.