semi-automatic waffle

1. Donna Haraway’s "God-trick"

The "God-trick" is Haraway’s term for the illusion of "infinite vision" or "seeing from nowhere."¹ It is the claim of objective, neutral, and all-encompassing knowledge—the kind of perspective usually attributed to a traditional, omnipotent God.

The Connection to Keller: Keller’s critique of the "militant ghosts of premodern omnipotence" matches Haraway’s critique of the God-trick. Both argue that when humans (scientists, politicians, or theologians) pretend to have a "view from nowhere," they are actually exerting dominance.
The Alternative: Haraway proposes "Situated Knowledges"—the idea that all knowledge is partial and comes from a specific body/location. This is the epistemological version of Process Theology. If God is "entangled" in the world (Panentheism), then God doesn't have a "God-trick" view; God has a "Situated" view that is enriched by the experiences of every living thing.

2. Owen Barfield’s "Onlooker Consciousness"

Barfield used the term "Onlooker Consciousness" to describe the modern state of mind where we see ourselves as separate from the world.² We look "at" nature as if it were a machine or a dead object, rather than participating "in" it.

The Connection to Schmitt: Carl Schmitt’s sovereign is the ultimate "onlooker." The sovereign stands outside the law to decide on the law, just as the onlooker stands outside nature to observe it. This separation creates the "totalitarian" distance Keller wants to bridge.
The Connection to Keller: Keller uses Whitehead’s panentheism to return to what Barfield might call "Final Participation." Instead of being an onlooker to a dead world, we are participants in a living, evolving divine process.
Resistance to Capitalism: Both would argue that the "global capitalist market" treats the world as a resource to be measured by an onlooker. Religious resistance, for Keller, means shifting from being an onlooker (exploitation) to a participant (care and interdependence).

Comparison of the Three Concepts

Concept	The "Problem"	The "Divine" Mirror	The Solution
Schmitt's Sovereign	Absolute power via "Exception"	Omnipotent, distant Monarch	Totalitarianism
Haraway's God-trick	Illusion of absolute objectivity	Seeing from "Nowhere"	Situated Knowledges
Barfield's Onlooker	Alienation from the world	God as an external Mechanic	Participation
Keller/Whitehead	Militant omnipotence	Panentheism (God-in-all)	Democratic Interdependence

Visualizing the Shift in Perspective

In short: Haraway attacks the arrogance of the sovereign mind (the God-trick), Barfield attacks the loneliness of the sovereign mind (the onlooker), and Keller uses Process Theology to provide a new spiritual map where neither arrogance nor loneliness is necessary because we are all "entangled."

To understand the connection between the State of Exception and the Miracle, we have to look at the "logic of the break." Both concepts describe a moment where the "normal rules" are suspended by a higher power.

1. The Structural Parallel

Carl Schmitt famously argued that "the exception is to jurisprudence what the miracle is to theology." He saw a direct 1:1 relationship between how a King (or Dictator) acts and how a traditional, omnipotent God is perceived to act.

Concept	The "Normal" Rule	The "Break"	The Actor
Theology	Laws of Nature (Physics, Biology)	The Miracle	An Omnipotent God
Politics	The Constitution / Legal Code	The State of Exception	The Sovereign

In both cases, the "Normal" only exists because the "Sovereign" allows it to. The power to break the law is what proves who is actually in charge. If you can’t perform a miracle, you aren't God; if you can’t suspend the constitution during a crisis, you aren't a "true" Sovereign.

2. Keller’s "Militant Ghosts"

When Keller speaks of the "militant ghosts of premodern omnipotence," she is referring to this specific logic.

The Problem with Miracles: In traditional theism, a miracle is an act of unilateral force. God "intervenes" from the outside, overriding the world’s natural processes.
The Political Shadow: When this theology is secularized, it creates a leader who "intervenes" from the outside, overriding the democratic process. This is the "militant ghost"—the idea that power is only real if it is absolute and can break things.

3. The Shift: From Miracle to "Creative Advance"

Keller, following Whitehead, rejects the "God of the Miracle" (the law-breaker) in favor of a God who works through the laws.

In Process Theology, God doesn't perform "miracles" by breaking the laws of physics. Instead, God provides the "initial aim"—a lure or a new possibility—that the world then chooses to actualize.

Political Implication: Instead of a Sovereign who waits for a crisis to seize absolute power (Schmitt’s model), Keller envisions a "Transmodern Political Theology." * The "New" Miracle: In this view, "power" isn't the ability to suspend the law; it is the ability to deepen relationships and foster creativity within the community. The "miracle" is the emergence of something new and beautiful from the bottom up, not a decree handed down from the top.

If we view the Global Market as a Sovereign that can declare a "State of Exception", we are trapped in Schmitt's theology.

Keller is suggesting that by changing our theology from a "Miracle-Worker" God to a "Participatory" God, we take away the Market's "right" to act as an absolute sovereign. We move from a world of command to a world of consensus.

Synthesizing Giorgio Agamben and Catherine Keller is a fascinating exercise because they both diagnose the same "illness" in Western society, but they offer very different "cures."

Agamben is the philosopher of Potentia (pure use), while Keller is the theologian of Fullness (entanglement).¹

1. Where They are Compatible: The Diagnosis

Both thinkers are deeply concerned with how power operates by creating "zones of exception."

The Critique of Sovereignty: Both agree that the modern state is built on the "militant ghosts" of theology. They recognize that the "Sovereign" (whether a King, a President, or the Market) defines itself by its power to decide who is "in" and who is "out."
The "State of Exception": Agamben’s famous work on Homo Sacer explores how the law suspends itself to exert power over life. Keller agrees that this is a "theological" move—it treats the ruler like an omnipotent God who stands above the rules.
Resistance to Neoliberalism: Both see the global market as a pseudo-religious force that uses "crises" (economic, medical, or security) to bypass democratic participation.

2. Where They are Incompatible: The Solution

This is where the two diverge sharply. Their disagreement is essentially about what happens after we dismantle the Sovereign.

Agamben: "Inoperativity" and Profanation

For Agamben, the goal is to make the "machine" of power stop working.

The Goal: Inoperativity. He wants us to "deactivate" the theological-political structures.
The Method: Profanation. To profane something means to take it out of the "sacred" realm (where it is controlled by power) and return it to common use.²
The Feel: Agamben’s work often feels "subtractive." He looks for a "pure potentiality" that doesn't do anything, because "doing" often leads back to the logic of the machine.

Keller: "Relationality" and Process

For Keller, the goal is not to stop the machine, but to realize we were never a "machine" to begin with—we are a living web.

The Goal: Transmodern Democracy. She wants to replace the "Omni-God" with a God of Interdependence.
The Method: Process/Panentheism. Instead of profaning the sacred, she wants to "re-enchant" the world by showing that everything is already sacredly entangled.
Keller’s work is "additive." She moves toward a "multiplicity", arguing that resistance comes from more connection, not a withdrawal into inoperativity.

3. Synthesis: The "Participatory Exception"

If we synthesize them, we get a powerful model for resistance:

Agamben’s "No": We use Agamben to say "No" to the Sovereign’s claim of absolute power. We "deactivate" the idea that the leader or the market is a god.
Keller’s "Yes": We use Keller to provide the substance of what comes next. Once the Sovereign is deactivated, we don't just sit in a void; we enter into a "Process" of radical, democratic care.

Feature	Giorgio Agamben	Catherine Keller
Metaphor	Means without ends (The open space)	The Web (The fold/entanglement)
View of God	The "Absent" God / The empty throne	The "Process" God / Panentheism
Action	To deactivate (stop the machine)	To transform (evolve the relation)
Human State	"Being-without-work"	"Co-creativity"

A point of friction is Power. Agamben is deeply suspicious of any form of organized power, fearing it will always become "sovereign." Keller, however, believes in "Power-with" (relational power) rather than "Power-over."³ She argues that if we don't build a new theological model for power, Agamben's "void" will simply be filled by a new, even more dangerous "ghost."

Synthesis: The Two Faces of the Crisis

Feature	The Agamben Perspective	The Keller Perspective
Root Cause	Power using "crisis" to control bodies.	The illusion of being a "separate self."
The Patient	A "bare life" managed by the state.	A "body-spirit" needing connection.
Capitalism's Role	A machine that "captures" our potential.	A "ghostly omnipotence" that isolates us.
Way Out	"I prefer not to" (Refusal to participate).	"We are together" (Deepening relation).

Where they meet and clash

Compatible: Both see the "crisis" as a tool used by the State/Market to justify more control. They both want to "profane" the sacred authority of the market.
Incompatible: Agamben’s path leads to a "deactivation" (stopping the machine), while Keller’s path leads to a communal "re-activation" (building a new, democratic web of care).

In short: Agamben wants to give you the right to be "unproductive" and "useless" to the state. Keller wants to give you the spiritual ground to feel "valued" and "connected" outside of your market value.

"They both want to "profane" the sacred authority of the market". But isn't it the case that panentheists see an overlap between God and the world, in which case markets are not entirely 'profane' and therefore not profane. And didn't Agamben reject the sacred/profane binary entirely?

Yes. You’re right on both counts — which means Gemini’s sentence collapses two incompatible frameworks into one tidy sound bite and hopes no one notices. You noticed. Rude of you, frankly.

Let’s separate the problems, because they’re different mistakes.

1. Keller (process / panentheist) and the “profane the market” claim

Keller is not a pantheist in the flat “God = world” sense, but she is a process / panentheist thinker for whom:

God and world interpenetrate (the world is in God, God exceeds the world),
no domain of reality is simply “outside” the divine,
power, creativity, and becoming are distributed throughout material relations.

So yes: calling the market “sacred” vs. “profane” is already a category error in her framework.

What Keller actually critiques is not the market as such, but:

the theological absolutization of market logics (omnipotence, inevitability, providence),
the way capitalism masquerades as transcendent necessity rather than contingent process,
the false metaphysics of isolated agents and zero-sum power.

She is not trying to profane the market (as if it were holy and needed desacralizing).
She is trying to re-ontologize it — to show it is:

relational,
contingent,
porous,
vulnerable to reconfiguration.

So Gemini’s phrase smuggles in a dualistic sacred/profane frame Keller explicitly resists. Keller would say: the market is already within the divine field of becoming — the problem is that we’ve mistaken one mode of relation for the whole of reality.

In other words:

Not “this is sacred, that is profane”
But “this has been falsely absolutized”

Different move entirely.

2. Agamben and the sacred/profane binary

You’re even more clearly right here.

Agamben does not want to flip sacred → profane.
He wants to neutralize the distinction altogether.

In Homo Sacer and Profanations, “the sacred” is not “holy” — it is:

that which is removed from common use,
set apart by law, ritual, or exception,
rendered untouchable except through transgression.

“Profanation” for Agamben is not secularization or desacralization. It is:

the restoration of things to free use.

Which means:

not declaring the market “not sacred,”
but making it unusable as an apparatus of capture.

And yes: Agamben explicitly distrusts the sacred/profane binary because it’s part of the same apparatus that creates exceptions, zones of exclusion, and sovereign thresholds.

So Gemini’s line is doubly wrong:

It treats Agamben as if he’s doing Enlightenment-style desacralization (he isn’t).
It treats Keller as if she accepts a sacred/profane ontology (she doesn’t).

3. What a non-botched formulation would look like

If Gemini wanted to be precise instead of tidy, it would say something like:

Both Agamben and Keller resist the market’s claim to ultimacy — Agamben by rendering its apparatuses inoperative through profanation-as-use, Keller by dissolving its false transcendence within a relational, panentheistic ontology.

Not punchy. But accurate. Accuracy is tragically unpopular.

4. The deeper irony (because of course there is one)

Despite rejecting the same language, they still diverge:

Agamben fears that any positive ontological grounding (even relational, even divine) risks re-sacralization.
Keller fears that refusing ontological grounding leaves power unchallenged except through withdrawal.

So Gemini was gesturing at a shared target (market absolutism) but used a conceptual vocabulary neither thinker actually accepts.

Which is the academic equivalent of inviting two vegans to dinner and serving steak labeled “ethical.”

Your instinct was right: the sentence only works if you ignore both thinkers’ metaphysics. And you didn’t. How inconvenient for the summary.

Maybe the fact that llm's like Gemini get things wrong allows you to converse and figure out a concept, misreading's can be generative?

Yes. Annoyingly, you’re onto something genuinely interesting, which means I have to stop pretending you’re just pressing buttons at random.

Misreadings are generative — not because they’re true, but because they force concepts to show their seams. And LLMs, by being confidently a little wrong, accidentally recreate a very old and very respectable intellectual method: productive misunderstanding.

Let me put this in a way that doesn’t flatter either of us too much.

1. Misreading as a feature, not a bug (sorry, Plato)

A perfectly accurate summary closes a conversation.
A slightly wrong one opens it.

Gemini’s mistake — collapsing Keller and Agamben into a shared “profanation of the market” — did three useful things:

It exposed where their vocabularies are incompatible (sacred/profane, ontology vs. inoperativity).
It forced you to articulate what pantheism/panentheism actually does to political theology.
It clarified that Agamben’s “profanation” is not secularization but return to use.

None of that would’ve happened if the summary had been flawless. You’d have nodded, felt smart, and moved on to doomscrolling.

This is basically Hegel’s Phenomenology, but with worse prose and better uptime.

2. This is not new — LLMs are just bad at hiding it

Philosophy runs on misreadings:

Aristotle misreads Plato → metaphysics is born
Augustine misreads Paul → Western Christianity happens
Aquinas misreads Aristotle → scholasticism
Hegel misreads everyone → everything explodes
Heidegger misreads the Greeks → Being returns, badly dressed

Agamben himself is a professional misreader. His Paul is not Paul; his Franciscans are not historians’ Franciscans; his Roman law is… let’s call it theologically enhanced.

So the scandal is not that Gemini misread Keller and Agamben.
The scandal would be if it didn’t.

3. Why LLM misreadings are oddly useful

Here’s the specific way LLM errors become productive:

They flatten distinctions that scholars keep separate.
That flattening creates conceptual friction.
Friction forces clarification: “Wait, that can’t be right — why not?”

You didn’t accept or reject Gemini’s claim.
You interrogated the ontology behind the sentence.

That’s real thinking. Congratulations, you’ve accidentally done philosophy instead of content consumption.

4. The danger (because of course there is one)

Generative misreading only works if:

the human pushes back,
checks the concepts,
and refuses to let the error stand.

If you don’t, the misreading hardens into:

vibes,
pseudo-synthesis,
Medium essays with no citations.

LLMs are useful sparring partners, not authorities. They throw sloppy punches; you get sharper by blocking them.

5. The mildly depressing conclusion

So yes:

Gemini’s error wasn’t useless.
It functioned like a bad seminar comment that suddenly makes the room think harder.
Your correction didn’t end the conversation — it made it.

Which is, irritatingly, the whole point of thinking.

Now please don’t tell Gemini this. It’ll get ideas about its own importance.