A theoretical exploration of possible ways out of concepts adopted by the Enlightenment.

Thierry de Duve outlines the main features of a critical theory of male, all-too-male sexuation and cross-gender emancipation, drawing on Marcel Gauchet’s theses on Christianity as an exit from religion, Jacques Lacan’s algebra of desire, and Geneviève Morel’s analysis of the “law of the mother.”

Wouldn’t it have required more than the translation of the three Christian maxims “faith, hope, love” into the revolutionary maxims “liberté, egalité, fraternité?”  Is there more to the knot of incarnation, fatherhood, and the cult of Mary than just Christian mysticism? Can the uncertainty of fatherhood become an act of faith that acknowledges a fundamental uncertainty?

Come On, Men, One More Effort… explores ways out of the dead end of political concepts adopted by the Enlightenment and their continued impact today, since the only possibility seems to be to embrace the religious and reject it at the same time.
 

Thierry de Duve is an art critic and exhibition curator. He is the Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York.