Michael Thate - RESISTANCE AND THE IDOLATRY OF PARTICULARITY: MICHEL FOUCAULT AS A RESOURCE FOR READING CLEMENT

This paper examines Clement’s trilogy—Protrepticus, Paedagogus, and Stromata—through the rubric of resistance and figuration within the Roman Empire, aided by the resources of social theory and Michel Foucault. Texts are meant to be read within the spaces of their composition. The textuality of Clement’s trilogy, then, will be read within the cluttered imagery of imperial propaganda during the second sophistic. The paper will proceed in three movements. First, “Theorizing Resistance” will work through forms, definitions, and the corollaries of resistance (e.g. hegemony, domination, power) through the resourcement of social theory. Second, Foucault’s notion of problematization and the idolatry of imperial particularity will be appropriated as a way of making sense of, third, reading Clement as a form of resistance literature. It will be argued that Clement is no mere “apologetic,” but strong rhetoric of reformation (and re-formation) of the optical regime of empire. For Clement, the eye itself should become Christianized, thus interrupting imperial propaganda of power, sex, and ethical imagery with what Walter Benjamin calls the “aura” of the original, which, of course, for Clement is found within the shared spaces of the Christian community.