Deleuze and Early Christianity

Adolf von Harnack imagined the origin of Christianity as a "timeless kernel" which, over the centuries, grew into a mighty tree. But Gilles Deleuze would argue that Christianity resembles a rhizome more than it does a tree. A rhizome possesses no pure beginnings and it resists all tree-like structures, favoring instead a nomadic system of growth. This course will explore the growth of early Christianity from a rhizomatic perspective, based on the theoretical tools of Deleuze and Felix Guattari, with whom he co-authored Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Topics for discussion will include Christ groups as 'desiring-machines,' the 'body of Christ without organs,' apparatuses of capture, destratifying early Christianity, resisting forms of Capitalist social production through nomadism, the New Testament as several regimes of signs, becoming-woman, and how to start your own molecular revolution. If Christianity's claim that that it is derived from a "timeless kernel" impedes interfaith dialogue and global cooperation, then perhaps a Deleuzian rhizomatic theoretic will facilitate interfaith dialogue and new forms of planetary thinking.