8 - Conclusion

Summary

You know how it is. You go to write something, a letter, an essay, an article, a book, or you start working with a new and challenging service user. In your mind, you are clear what you are doing, you are excited having glimpsed the possibilities to do good work. Waking up of a morning your crepuscular semi-conscious state has made wonderful connections, you glimpse ‘the thing in itself ‘ its haecceity, you are up for the challenge. You go to work, make that cup of coffee, sit down with a blank piece of paper or computer screen, talk to colleagues, meet the service users, but then it’s gone! You seem to be dragged in by the complexity of the challenges, with the connections not quite so vivid or obvious – the enargeia is dissipated. Why is this? In part because the reductionist and calculating mind, in needing to try to make sense of the intuition, its content, presentation and acceptability to others, loses the whole picture. This is not helped by working in bureaucratized neoliberal institutions (including universities), where your work is shaped and performance managed, subjected to endless reviews, the demands of file keeping, and supervision. The risk is that despite the importance of the work and our own motivation, as with Brideshead Revisited and Charles Ryder’s sojourn with the army, we are stripped of all enchantment (Waugh, 1964).

In the work of enchantment there is no conclusion, only the ongoing work of self to be more open to the other through apprehending what is real, discerning the traces of metaphysical violence and responding with the gift of love. Central to our argument is that modern theological and philosophical resources allow both a rereading of the Judaeo-Christian contribution to the development of ideas of justice, punishment and their consequences, and also what it means to be an authentic practitioner through learning to see. Within these resources we find rich seams of dialogue between different perspectives that allow us to develop a peacemaking perspective in criminal justice based on being-for-others. We are not evangelical about our criminological position but are simply providing a point of orientation and departure.