5 - Gifting Repentance

Summary

The lack of differentiation in the processes of criminal justice leads to a permanent crisis, and escalation to extremes as defined by acquisitive mimesis and exacerbated by utilitarian approaches to rehabilitation. The work of Merleau-Ponty (1968) provides us with an opportunity to understand the single fundamental phenomenon of flesh (Fr: la chair derived from Lat: cathedra; Gr: kathédra) and the embodiment of difference in the Christian tradition. For him life is la chair, of which we are all a part, where ‘the sentient being is embedded within an indivisible whole, an insurpassable specular being, a visibility and tangible in itself ‘ (Voss, 2013: 122). Merleau-Ponty (1968) extends the argument about flesh and touch to seeing and develops his thought in tandem with modern art. He argues that science is concerned with explaining rather than seeing (see Chapter 2) and likewise philosophy treats seeing as a mode or variant of thinking. Christianity as biblical hermeneutics reveals a radical alterity through the embodiment (la chair) of difference (the body of Christ). For us this leads to actual peace and social cohesion through breaking the link between ritual purity and sin. Jesus, in conversation with the Pharisees, inverts the creation myth of Judaism to place difference (alterity) at the beginning (arche) on the first day of creation (see Falque, 2015). The first chapter of the Book of Genesis says that on the first day God created the heavens and the earth, and then only on the sixth day did he create male and female; whereas Jesus says (Matthew 19:4) ‘[f] rom the beginning of creation, God made them male and female’. Thus, difference is ontologically a part of creation, intended to exist, and is the basis for forgiveness, repentance and redemption through an embodiment of that difference. This alterity focuses on the stranger and even the monstrous other, which resides in every person. As Richard Kearney (2010: 152) states:

If the sacred stranger were identical with the self, she would be neither sacred nor strange. The stranger is sacred in that she always embodies something else, something more, something other than what the self can grasp or contain … From … biblical and Greek inaugurations, the stranger is recognised as the one who can make the impossible possible, who brings sameness and alterity into fertile congress.