On Monday, I posted on Derrida's phenomenology of the gift, applying his method and some of his conclusions in creative fashion to the movie Stranger than Fiction. Today, I will attempt something similar, but through the theology of the gift of British theologian John Milbank. Keep in mind the prior exchange with Harold and Miss Pascal over the cookies, as I will also be introducing another scene of the movie into this discussion. Today's post may be slightly longer as there are some important theological sections that need to be set up before engaging the film. And again, there are quite a few *spoilers* below--more so than in Monday's post-- so if that is important to you to not have plot details revealed, please go watch this film.
In Milbank’s 1995 essay, “Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic,” he provides a critique of the different projects of Derrida and Marion on the gift, while simultaneously attempting to trace out a constructive history and theology of gift exchange which proclaims that indeed, a gift can be given. He establishes this not primarily with a focus on the pure gift itself, but on pure gift exchange, which will be considered below through the facets of delay and non-identical repetition and in his later works, Milbank establishes gift as overcoming the ‘mark’ of reaction as well as highlighting the very content of the gift itself.
Initially, in “Can a Gift Be Given?” Milbank points out that for modern gift exchange, the focus is placed upon the sharp distinction between a contract and a gift, which, to be a gift, must be given with the right intention, without expectation of any return (‘unilateralist’), and is thereby “in complete indifference to the content of the gift.” This distinction between contract and gift also betrays a sharp distinction between public and private, but this does not “so easily hold,” as the distinction begins to break down once one considers that for Christians, the command to love is both a gift and a commandment. According to the modern notion of the unilateralist gift, however, particular aspects of Christian dogmatics become foolish, such that, in the case of random acts of charity and especially that of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, “God’s original creative donation is a kind of throwing away, or pointless excess,” because it is not properly a gift ‘to’ anyone.
In his consideration of Derrida, Milbank argues that Derrida works within an ontological framework which presupposes an original contract (in Derrida’s words, economy, exchange). As “any notion of gift is self-refuting” for Derrida, Milbank states the following:
for there to be a pure free gift, there would have to be no donating subject, no receiving subject, and no gift-object transferred. A true gift would be from no-one, to no-one and of nothing. But this gift cannot be given, since subject and object exhaust the whole of ontological reality. Furthermore, the idea of a gift only arises at all as an intention of a subject, so that not only must a gift be without subject or object—which is impossible—but even the conceptual horizon of this impossibility is contradictory, since it rises out of a ground—the subject—which simultaneously negates it. A gift both requires, and seeks to escape from, a giver. Therefore there is no gift and not even a meaning for ‘gift’.
Written before Derrida clarified that he never said that there was ‘no gift’, Milbank rightly says, “But this does not at all mean, for Derrida, that it is pointless to talk about gifts and giving. On the contrary, he now talks of little else, since he contends that it is all there is to talk of. This is not precisely because gift operates as a regulative horizon for ontological statements … Rather, if the notion of gift is in some fashion regulative, it is as a kind of unmeaning which must guide all our (ontological) meaning.” Milbank correctly gauges that Derrida proceeds by an aporetics which is indebted to the Heideggerian es gibt such that “Giving becomes as real and unreal as being, since it is identical with the ‘passing away’ of time Heidegger).” Milbank sums up his analysis of Derrida thus:
for Derrida the pure gift must be only of time, since only time . . . fulfils the necessary conditions of purity. The true gift of time is a non-identical repetition which can never actually occur, since with its occurrence would arise a definable donor and donee, locked out of time in a ‘present’ exchange within the spatial agora. Here, in order ‘to be’, past and future are contractually traded off against each other.
Milbank, then asks, is it possible contra Derrida “to defend exchange, and so the reality of the gift?”
Milbank argues that gift exchange can be defended as delay and non-identical repetition only if it is exhumed of all of its original violence. Christian agape, then, is not a focus upon the ‘pure gift’, but on the contrary, a focus on purified gift-exchange which
remains within the bounds of the ontological, which is to say the metaphysical. Just as Christianity transforms but does not suppress our ‘given’ social nature which is exchangist, so also Christian theology transforms, utterly appropriates to itself the ontological task, but does not abandon it in suspension, by elevating itself about it . . . in the name of a purely unilateral (and univocal) gift prior to that circular reciprocity which is, indeed, consequent upon esse.
The ‘given’ social nature is not derived as much through any means of natural theology as much as it is properly located, for Milbank, in the imago Dei, which is given as “the divine created gift, which realizes an inexorable return, [which] is itself grounded in an intra-divine love which is relation and exchange as much as it is gift.”
While I do not consider Milbank’s specific critique of Jean-Luc Marion here, it must be noted that it is in his constructive response to Marion which we find that Milbank points to the explicit content of the gift, which is primarily theological. He says,
Most remarkably, Luke’s birth narrative insists that a free reception of Christ was a condition of this gift being given from the very outset. Hence, not only does Christ cancel sin in us, he arrives to us, and can only arrive at all by immediately cancelling sin in us. Mary’s praise already cancels sin since it is able to speak the logos into being. Of course this is all under grace, and Mary’s fiat is from that perspective inexorable, but nevertheless creation is restored, given back to us, in the same manner that it was first given to us in a gift that is (inexorably) our free reception and infinite return of the gift. . . . Without this reception, without this ‘reciprocity’, the gift would be so thwarted that it could not even begin to be this gift—the incarnate God. The gift could be offered (to Mary) but not given, and a gift offered is not yet a gift, just as ‘a place at a university’ only becomes a ‘something’ when this offer is taken up and exercised. And while a bicycle given might remain in a sense a gift if it lay around unused, one could only give ‘cycling’ if the gift was taken up. But ‘use’ is really intended by every giving of every gift. Hence reception and reciprocity is a condition of the gift as much as vice-versa.
In Milbank’s conclusion, he states that “To be a Christian . . . is to repeat differently, in order to repeat, exactly, the content of Christ’s life, and to wait, by a necessary delay, the answering repetition of the other that will fold temporal linearity back into the eternal [perichoretic] circle of the triune life.” Finally, he contrasts the philosophical story with his Christian ontology:
Paradoxically, where the end of giving is to be, even though it might not have been, and so is an absolute free, univocal gift, then, indeed, a self-enclosed, unyielding and impersonal Being lies at the conclusion of the philosophical story. By contrast, where Being is already assumed, where Being is what there is to give, even though it is now, for a Christian ontology, seen to be only in this giving, then gift is ‘further’ to Being, and Being itself, as bound in the reciprocal relation of give-and-take, is for-giving, a giving that is in turn, in the Holy Spirit, the gift of relation.
This is all predicated, as mentioned earlier, on “the one given condition of the gift, that we love because God first loved us. It being given that God is love.”
In Milbank’s final analysis, he locates this content of the gift as repeated non-identically in the Eucharist, where “we see the only possible paradigm for gift and forgiveness, and therefore for ethics, not as one-way sacrifice, but as total surrender for renewed reception.”
[The film engagement and further theological implications continue below the cut.]
Can the cookies in Stranger than Fiction, then, be reconfigured theologically?
Perhaps by turning to the preface in Milbank’s Being Reconciled, one can find further assistance for this task. For he says,
for theology there are no ‘givens’, only ‘gifts’. Normally, in our secular society, one can say ‘Oh, there’s a box’, an inert ‘given’, and then maybe in addition one can say, ‘yes, it was a gift’. But in Creation there are only givens in so far as they are also gifts: if one sees only objects, then one mis-apprehends and fails to recognize true natures. Here something can only be at all as a gift, and furthermore never ceases to be constantly given; in this case the act of giving is never something that reverts to the past tense.
Only then can a look at the cookies and flours (and music, and more) be properly seen, analogically, as a gift in Stranger than Fiction. All of these are, within the context of the film, properly gifts not because they are in any sense ‘pure’. We have already seen that based on phenomenological assumptions, the cookies and the flours are highly problematic in this film; however, if argued on a gift-exchange basis within the context of what I have outlined above, I will argue that the movie, even though not properly ‘theological’ in its subject matter, can be reconfigured in a more forgiving light. Furthermore, I think it can also be argued that Harold Crick, before the reception of the cookies, exists along the trajectory of Derrida’s problematic of the gift that I sketched out in the first section.
When Harold descends from the stairs and is offered a cookie by Miss Pascal, he initially rejects it. Yet, even though ‘forced’ to eat the submerged-in-milk cookie, his delight causes him to inquire about the origin of this gift. Miss Pascal obliges his inquiry by retelling her own enjoyment in baking pastries during study session at Harvard Law—so much so that she dropped out of her higher education to “make the world a better place” with cookies. Perhaps wondering if Harold—in her effort toward making a difference—had himself become a part of her intended change, she asks him if she likes the cookie.
“I do.”
“I’m glad.”
In the moment of acknowledging the gift in gift exchange with her classmates and in the interaction presently considered, Harold accepts the exchange, and Miss Pascal, in turn, takes joy in his delight at his reception of her offering. It is only when she offers to give him cookies to take home that Harold is reminded that he cannot accept that which “constitutes ‘a gift.’” When he offers to purchase them in order to make the gift reasonable and thus complete with a receipt of transaction, Miss Pascal shows Harold that he is not being hospitable himself by refusing his request. He even says, “It’s not a big deal” in regard to purchasing the cookies, but that is exactly what he has made out of the cookies themselves: a deal, and a big one at that.
It is in Harold’s crestfallenness that he finally realizes that her gift was not a general one that was just another product in her store, but was itself especially baked for him to be given to him as a gift. Unfortunately, Harold has spent the entirety of his day weighing the events in order to determine whether his life is being narrated within a tragedy or a comedy, finally remarking, “I think I’m in a tragedy.”
At this point, I would argue that it was this offering of the gift of the cookies to Harold which becomes the turning point for his life in the movie. Prior to this, he was operating purely within the existence of “auditor, auditee, protocol,” counting everything: brush strokes, steps, and accounting for people’s lives through their tax returns. It is only after Miss Pascal’s gift breaks into his world of pure exchange that he can be fully receptive to taking vacation time, learning to play the guitar, failing to wear a tie in a single Windsor knot, and forgetting to count brush strokes. Yet, as is obvious, despite even Harold’s inability to step outside of his own narration and do nothing, the story continues in time (Professor Hilbert quickly concludes, “You do not control your own fate”).
It is this in-breaking of the gift in Harold’s life which is also finally able to call him to give a gift back to Miss Pascal. She initially sees his offering of the flours as an inconsistency, but she is only correct according to the ‘world’ in which Harold was previously inhabiting; now, she is wrong to offer to purchase them (as this would annul his gift), but she soon realizes that Harold is serious, and does accept them. It is in the exchange of the give and the taking, which does not have to remain pure (Harold forgets one of the names of the flours he gives her), that Miss Pascal is in turn able to not only accept Harold’s gift, but the person of Harold in his own awkward initiation of a relationship (“I want you . . . in no uncertain terms”). It is here that one can see that the following statement by Milbank could quite appropriately and in analogical fashion be applied to the progression—in time—of the relationship between Harold and Miss Pascal: “Hence the divine answer to the original human refusal of his gift is not to demand sacrifice – of which he has no need – but to go on giving in and through our refusals of the gift, to the point where these refusals are overcome.” It is also of significance that the content of the cookies and the flours is important for each of the recipients: Harold, whose mother did not bake, and Miss Pascal, who uses flour on a daily basis to sell her pastries and make living “making the world a better place.” It is thus precisely the content of these gifts which has made them appropriate and made them a gift at all.
Harold and Miss Pascal, despite their awkwardness and clear disparity between his lumbering stature and her petite rebelliousness, have only begun to give each other gifts; amidst their prior refusals, their persistence has come has a surprise to one another. The giving and receiving of gifts, if I may take a chance that did not seem possible at the beginning of essay with all of the aporias of the gift, has now become transformative.
I could go on with further analysis on the remainder of the movie, but for the sake of space, I will end with the last lines of the movie, where we find Harold, so close to death, covered in casts and bandages. At this point, there has been sufficient gift-giving in exchange that the outlook of the film, including the narrator Karen Eiffel, has radically taken a new turn. Eiffel narrates not as a given, but as a gift:
As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine, and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies, and fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind a loving gesture, or a subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort,
not to mention --
hospital gurneys, and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, and soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe, and the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember, that all these things – the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.
The hospital gurneys, nose plugs, loving embraces and gestures of comfort do not remain as givens as they had prior to these moments in the movie. Through the mutual exchange of gifts over time, these reassurances and objects have been reconfigured by the movie’s end. These are strange, indeed, as Eiffel says, and they do not abide by protocol, and they may still not appease the Professor Hilberts of the world who remain aloof from a false objectivity, nor, I would add, is there a one-to-one allegorical signification between Stranger than Fiction and a distinct theology of forgiveness or the divine feast as seen in Les Misérables and Babette’s Feast; but, the gift that is given in love, perseverance, and hope—like the story of Harold, Miss Pascal, and yes, even his wristwatch—may just surprise us and wrest us from our "auditor, auditee, protocol" inclinations.
Further implications of gift giving and receiving
As I mentioned, it is not a neat and tidy picture, and I fully acknowledge that the screenwriter most likely did not intend his movie to be an explicit theological treatise. However, I think Stranger than Fiction has just enough bread crumbs (pun intended) of a theme of gift to make something workable out of it. We see the interplay of Harold and Ana Pascal as they both attempt to give each other gifts. Furthermore, there is also the gift of music in Harold's life that he later offers to Ana, as well as the gift of himself to his own narrator, which was not only not given blindly (as he literally knew his own life's script), but also not taken away from him in the end, and in fact returned to him, however broken.
"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created" (James 1:17-18).
Life itself is a gift. We know this only because of the gift of Christ on the cross, through which we are saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-9). We are gifts to one another, from God, called to bear one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2), using our gifts to serve one another in Christ (1 Pet. 4:10).
What do you think? Is my creative wrangling with this movie inappropriate? How else are gifts a part of our lives, or how else have we abused them? Some discussion about Maundy Thursday could very well be appropriate here. Can a gift truly be given?
Eric,
I enjoyed the posts. I would love to get the fuller version of the essay, if possible, as you mentioned (I think in pt. 1). You can email it to me if you want:
[email protected]
Thanks,
Jason
Posted by: Jason Hesiak | July 31, 2007 at 02:52 PM
Send me one too, Eric. Great analysis and key insights. I was especially struck by Milbank's "'Use' is really intended by every giving of every gift". I believe this to be extremely important. It's a major reason why I am so impressed with The Church of the Saviour, because this insight is so central to their concept of church; that a major role of the church is to be 'enablers' of the process of gift discernment AND usage.
Dale
Posted by: Dale | August 01, 2007 at 08:23 AM
Eric,
Sorry it took so long to respond to the paper. I started reading it back when you sent it to me, and just finished this morning.
It was a very enjoyable paper, and highlighted a good movie. As you know from my own previous posts, I am a newer reader of Derrida, but his idea of gift is something I like, if modified. If you think of the gift for him within the broader trajectory of his work (which I understand to be different from the Heideggerian one you place him in - but I should add that I have not read Heidegger), in which deferrall is the key to everything, than I see nothing wrong with saying a gift is never a given, but something always not-yet. This is how Craig Keen always talked of 'the gift' of God's Spirit, and he always referred to Derrida. But then again, this is modified, and ends up more like Milbank's endless recoprocity of Trinitarian perichoresis.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your paper.
Posted by: Thomas Bridges | August 06, 2007 at 01:27 PM
Thomas,
Thanks for reading. Yes, I think we are both right concerning Derrida. He still does this same kind of move in Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, but within a blatant Heideggerian trajectory, especially when it comes to the discussion of time.
As for the wider picture, yes, I do think you are right that the gift is that which never arrives, which is Derrida's "messianism without a Messiah" -kind-of-thing. It makes for interesting philosophy, but it tends to be rather contentless. There are all understandable reasons in history for such a move, but I would rather not jettison content but instead look for the right content (i.e. Christ).
That's an interesting move that Craig makes with Derrida, and I would probably agree with it, just, as you said, insofar is it helps us think (i.e. provides "shape") and direct Trinitarian thought.
Peace,
Eric
Posted by: Eric Lee | August 13, 2007 at 04:11 PM
Eric,
I thought your paper was excellent. I'm always excited to see something like this using such a contemporary movie, and a comedy to boot. Usually, we pick the really dark, intense films to analyze, so yours was a fresh, worthy contribution!
Thomas' thoughts are much like my own. I find Derridian language of gift to be quite interesting, but not all that helpful unless I do some very un-Derridian things with it. Rather, I find a good deal of hope in Milbank's dealings with gift, which is undoubtedly influenced by Derrida, yet decisively different.
As for Heiddeger, I'm always extremely uncomfortable. He was a genius and provided some very fascinating scholarly work, but he was also a terrible man and one whom I am incresingly less and less prone to spend much time with. I need to do some more reading though.
That being said, here's something different for you to respond to. What do you think about the language of violence in regard to gift? I completely understand the imagery that is being employed and why the various authors would utilize this image, but does the notion that a gift given with the understanding that the giver will get something back in return do violence, or at least injustice to those who suffer from real (I suppose I should say ontological) violence? How can our use of language faithfully represent our desires to work for justice for those who suffer from real/ontological violence?
Just something to chew on!
Keep up the good work Eric.
Peace,
Rusty
Posted by: Rusty Brian | August 13, 2007 at 09:41 PM
Rusty!
Hey bro, thanks for stopping by and for your encouragement. I have been thinking about your question where you ask, "does the notion that a gift given with the understanding that the giver will get something back in return do violence, or at least injustice to those who suffer from real (I suppose I should say ontological) violence? How can our use of language faithfully represent our desires to work for justice for those who suffer from real/ontological violence?"
That is indeed a very good question. At the very start, I would say we begin in humility: to begin to answer this question we must realize that for us to even answer this in the first place we are probably already in a situation of privilege. Chances are, we probably "have more" than others, whatever this might entail. This should humble us because this is a contingent situation (as it may have been otherwise), and we then need to realize that whatever we have, whether it be our possessions, or even our own selves -- we need to give of ourselves. All of our lives are gifts from, through, and to God, to be shared with one another.
So, as we daily give of ourselves to others who have suffered and who are suffering, we need to realize that the 'exchange' that takes place is not just one of "expectation of return," but one of faith, hope, and love of God and neighbor. Faith in Christ for defeating death; hope that what we are giving will be received and that despite all of our faults and ignorance, that it will amount to the good that God has for us; and most of all in love which orders all of the above and seeks to be a perfect image of God's own love for us and for creation.
Simultaneously, we must always affirm that "those who suffer from real/ontological violence" are always persons first, as opposed to a "problem" to solve. All human persons are created by God with the image of God and thus with an intrinsic dignity that always calls for our love and respect, regardless of any economic factors (or whatever). Otherwise, we immediately do violence to those persons if we do not treat them on the level that God intended.
This is only really a start, in thinking about language and action, and when we attempt such things, we find all sorts of surprises and messiness along the way, hopefully all for the good.
Peace,
Eric
Posted by: Eric Lee | August 17, 2007 at 05:16 PM