[A continuation of Part 1 from last week]
A Deleuzian Reading of the Book of Mormon
In the first part I provided preliminaries to a Deleuzian reading of the Book of Mormon text. Here I turn to the text itself.
Spiritual Ecology Jeremiah’s Jerusalem 600 BCE—The theater of my fabulation
As the scene opens in the Book of Mormon, the spiritual ecology of Jerusalem is a mess. Ecological Hebraist Ellen Davis’ (Davis, 2008) work on the pre-exilic writings of Jeremiah elaborate the plotlines for the ecological and societal conditions implicated in the collapse of Lehi’s Jerusalem. She says, speaking of better days in the region, “Rarely does one read through two or three successive chapters without seeing some reference to the land or to Zion, the city that is ideologically speaking the source of its fertility. Beginning with the first chapter of Genesis, there is no extensive exploration of the relationship between God and humanity that does not factor the land and its fertility into that relationship.” (Davis, 2008, 8)
Davis notes that the primary covenant between God and Israel was a covenant about and with the land. Its importance appears again and again in the Hebrew Bible. Judea was set in a dry, hilly country that did not enjoy the rich river valleys of the empires that surrounded them like the Tigris and Euphrates of Babylon or the Nile of Egypt. Like Greece, with its poor soil and lack of arable land, structures of governance and thought had to be in place in order for its people to prosper and thrive. The land was ecologically diverse and local conditions dominated. As environmental scientist Daniel Hillel writes, “The environment of this region is extremely varied. Factors that contribute to its ecological heterogeneity are climatic zonation, latitude, proximity to the seas, topography, geology, soil types, as well as past and present modes and intensities of land use. The great variability makes it difficult to delineate the region’s ecological domains in precise detail.” (Hillel, 2006, 27) Athens answered with democracy. Israel responded with a covenant between their God and the people that the land would be respected and cared for. This had the practical effect of a set of agricultural practices based on inherence of land among families that partakes of long familial knowledge of the particular needs of caring for that parcel of land established in family traditions, festivals, and farming and husbandry practices that worked to maintain stewardship practices that reflected local ecological knowledge of agricultural needs and national religious practices and rituals.
Davis details how the story of King Ahab is the first attempt by a king who tries to subvert the land inheritance system that provided some measure of ecological stability. He exchanges land for gold and silver and other precious or useful metals like copper, tin, and lead. This leads to poverty and unequal distribution of wealth. The poor are no longer cared for. Women become objects, and like the land, a commodity as wealthy men take on wives and concubines using the Israelite kings as models. The covenant that the Lord made with Israel was broken.
Davis writes, “So when now Isaiah says, ‘They have violated an everlasting covenant,’ he is making the stunning claim that humans from their side have broken God’s unilateral treaty that dates back almost to the beginning of the world. Against all logic and self-interest, they – the most powerful of us, “the rulers of the fertile soil on the soil” – have thrown back into God’s face the postdiluvian promise never again to bring destruction upon the earth . . .”
The people worsen turning to idolatry. Bad to the point that in Lehi’s Jerusalem the Lord is threatening the destruction its inhabitants, “in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city of Jerusalem must be destroyed.” 1 Nephi 1:4. Jerusalem becomes a machine assemblage defined by wealth and power that seems unstoppable in its quest for more of the same. Neither the Lord’s words nor other prophets seem to be able to stop the allure and movement of wealth and riches from the land to precious metals.
Not even the prophet Jeremiah can stop them. In God’s name, he skewers the population of Jerusalem for their treatment of the poor and women.
In your skirts, as well, is found
the lifeblood of the innocent poor. (Jer. 2:34)
Jeremiah offers a stunning condemnation of the people of Jerusalem.
For My people are fools,
Me they did not know.
Ignorant children are they,
and they are not discerning,
they are wise to do evil,
but they know not how to do good. (Jer. 4:22)
Jeremiah continues his jeremiad in a stunning reversal of the Genesis creation sequence,
Chapter 4:23-26
I saw the earth, and, look, welter and waste,
the heavens, and their light was gone,
I saw mountains and , look, they quaked,
and all the hills broke apart.
I saw, and look, there was no human there,
and all the fowl of the heavens had gone away.
I saw, and , look, the farmland was desert,
and all its towns were ruined
before the Lord and before His blazing wrath.
For thus said the Lord:
A desolation shall all the earth be
but I will not wreak utter destruction.
For this all the earth shall mourn,
and the havens above shall darken,
for I have spoken, I have laid plans,
and I did not repent nor turn back from it.
And then in Chapter 5: 26-31
For among My people wicked men, are found,
they watch as in a fowler’s blind.
they set out an ambush,
they capture men.
Like a cage full of fowl,
so their homes are filled with deceit,
therefore have they prospered, become rich.
They have fattened, have thickened,
even passed beyond words of evil.
They did not judge a just case—
the orphan’s case, that he should do well,
and the needy’s judgement they did not judge.
For these shall I not exact judgement, said the Lord,
against a nation such as this not wreak vengeance?
A frightful and fearsome thing
has come about in the land:
The prophets have prophesied falsely,
and the priests held sway alongside them,
and My people loved it so.
But what will you do for its end?
God wants to deterritorialize the Jerusalem-machine. For Deleuze, this means more than moving people. He wants to rid them of the influences, the cultural coding of the Jerusalem.-machine. The Lord wants to create a new world, a new place where his hopes and dreams for his people can flourish. A new island of beginnings. He knows just the woman and man to do it, Sariah and Lehi. He is going to take them into the desert to wash the influencing Jerusalem-machine and its treatment of the poor and women out of them. A place where the people have yet to discover the mechanics that drive iniquity in Jeramiah’s and Sarah’s Jerusalem. Deserts deterritorialize. Deleuze writes about deserted islands, which apply to desert-ed islands of isolated landscape features as well. Worlds enclosed and separated from the oceanic influences of culture and influence.
“First, it is time that from the deserted island it is not creation but re-creation, not the beginning but a re-beginning that takes place. The deserted island is the origin, but a second origin. From it everything begins anew. The island is the necessary minimum for this re-beginning, the material that survives the first origin, the reradiating seed or egg that must be sufficient to reproduce everything. Clearly, this presupposes that the formation of the world happens in two stages, in two periods of time, birth and re-birth, and that the second is just as necessary and essential as the first, and thus the first is necessarily compromised, born for renewal and already renounced in a catastrophe.”
It is easy to imagine in my Sci-Phi fabulation, the Lord doing the work to enact renewal of a new beginning in a new world for his covenant people. A world reborn for the Lehites as the renunciation of the catastrophe is unfolding in the old. However, the troop has to be reterritorialized first to be made ready for the sacred land that the Lord has prepared.
Deleuze continues
“But this theme, even more than in our fantasies, finds expression in every mythology. It is well known as the myth of the flood. The ark sets down on the one place on earth that remains uncovered by water, a circular and sacred place, from which the world begins anew. It is an island or mountain or both at once: the island is a mountain underwater, and the mountain, an island that is still dry. Here we see original creation caught in a re-creation, which is concentrated in a hold land in the middle of the ocean. This second origin of the world is more important than the first: it is a sacred island. Many myths recount that what we find there is an egg, as cosmic egg. Since the island is a second origin, it is entrusted to man and not to the gods. It is separate, separated by the massive expanse of the flood. . . In the ideal of beginning anew there is something that precedes the beginning itself, that takes it up to deepen it and delay it in the passage of time. The desert island is the material of this something immemorial, this something is most profound.” (Deleuze, 2004)
Theese quotes from the above capture something of “Lehi in the Desert.”
“From it everything begins anew.”
“The ark sets down on the one place on earth that remains uncovered by water, a circular and sacred place, from which the world begins anew.” Like Noah, how appropriate that Lehi’s troop (who follow the previous attempt at deterritorialization of the Jaredites) had to sail over many waters.
“In the ideal of beginning anew there is something that precedes the beginning itself, that takes it up to deepen it and delay it in the passage of time. The desert island is the material of this something immemorial, this something is most profound.”
A world beginning anew seems to be God’s aim in the Book of Mormon. The desert will provide isolation and cleansing. Or so it is hoped. However, God is not a puppeteer and often his aims go astray, What more could I have done for my vineyard?
Sariah and family leave with their tents, but they remember that they might want to take scripture with them. The patriarch Lehi, having forgotten this important requisite, sends his sons back to Jerusalem to get the plates of brass plates. Things go poorly in their first meeting with the owner of the plates. They remember that they have some valuable things kept somewhere with which they might strike a bargain to trade.
Nephi writes (1 Nephi 3:16, 22) “Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And all this he hath done because of the commandments of the Lord.
—
And it came to pass that we went down to the land of our inheritance, and we did gather together our gold, and our silver, and our precious things.”
Care needs taken in embracing the notion that following the commandments creates the conditions we want. Commandments are not keys to magical objects as in a video game that grants our heart’s desire (has Job has taught us nothing?). And the inference that Nephi offers that the treasures were left at the command of the Lord, so will result succeed in securing the treasures ends in failure. It is tempting to try to read this in ways that preserve god commanding the treasures be left for this purpose but that requires reading the text as a theological movie plot. That ‘all’ in verse, 16, I don’t read as God setting up a magical theater production in which everything that happens has been orchestrated for future Sunday School lessons. Life is too complex, and I don’t see it working that way, in my life, or in church history, or in the scriptures. Contingency rules all. Deleuze often writes of the dice throw that opens and closes new worlds open and close (Deleuze, 1983, 17-19). This element of randomness and chance is more consistent with my life’s experience, so I resist such cheap theo-theatrical interpretations of the Book of Mormon. Such readings do not seem to be at work here in Nephi’s claim to be being led by the Lord to grab old family treasures, unless you see Him engaging in a plot device to move the action forward. Rather I think things unfolded as they often do with trial and error, which sometimes works. Sometimes does not. We don’t need God orchestrating everything to see that kind of experimental actions and failures at work. Treasures were left. They try a gambit that fails. They have to do something else. Seems like life.
It is also interesting that these treasures were still available. Were they hidden in caves? Left with trusted relatives? Given to local bankers? Left in a running household? But there seems to be a just-in-case moment going on for our would-be nomads. They had a lot of disposable income (circa 600 BC), to try and barter for the plates. A final decision to really leave the Jerusalem-machine is apparent. Of course, Laban just takes it (odd they didn’t try to just negotiate first then deliver the goods, but then their reluctant leader is only 16 years old). Others have hinted that Lehi was commanded somehow to leave them somewhere in the land of his inheritance where it was accessible. Again, I resist the God-is-writing-theater interpretation. God is immanent to the situation at hand, which is ever contingent. Exclusively. The riches they had sequestered, hidden, or left on the dining room table turned out to be handy—but not really. It was a nice maneuver for the lads, but it did not really play out. God never seems to care much for riches anyway.
Then things go really bad. A thousand years of bad.
Nephi finds Laban alone, drunk and unconscious. Nephi disarms him. And notices Laban’s sword. It is beautiful. Let’s watch Nephi almost a lifetime after these events describe the events as he remembers them. 1 Nephi 4:9 “And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.” Notice how impressed he was with the hilt being of pure gold. The blade of fine steel. The gold hilt is more interesting, but only a little. If we take Nephi at his word in the description of the weapon, the sword is useless as a weapon. Gold is one of the softest metals worked by humans, and in battle it would not withstand the force of a blow before it separates from the tang portion of the blade that connects it to the hilt. Therefore, what Nephi admires is not the things that make it a good sword qua sword. Its construction defies the teleological function of a sword as a weapon. The sword was ornamental. A symbol of power, prestige, and wealth. And note, a symbol of male power prestige and wealth. I’ll let you draw the obvious inference. However, what Nephi expresses about the sword is a description of what makes it a precious ornament of wealth and desire. His wearing it in his disguise as Laban is mentioned specifically as something that impresses Laban’s servant Zorem and taken as evidence that Nephi is his master. It is what places it firmly in Jerimiah’s Jerusalem. His desire for the gold hilt fills the air around him even writing late in his life. In this passage, his eyes are wide. Still are, after reaching an age well past these events as a young man, he remembers the yearning that attracted him to it. A hilt of pure gold. This he would keep. This he would carry into the promised land. Notice further this attitude toward gold and precious metals is offered as one of the justifications for his killing Laban, “and he also had taken away our property.” Which is odd because it was property they had abandoned. Why justify his killing Laban for taking something the Lehites did not want? He had taken away the treasure they had offered in exchange for the brass plates, recall, “therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches.” Laben took their abandoned treasures. Nephi was keeping this.
Here we see the Deleuzian concept of the fold do its work. The sword condenses and folds the Jerusalem-machine within itself. It curls up and hides there waiting, and when later combined with the right social milieu of human nature it unfolds; like a corrupted image of DNA, which in the right cellular environment builds an organism, through the process of embryogenesis, a living organism, so the unfolding of the Sword of Laban likewise gives birth to the conditions of Lehi’s Jerusalem among Nephites.
After Lehi’s progeny return to the tent of their father, the sword is not mentioned again until they get to the promised land. It is carried for the 8+ years I the wilderness (hold the number of years they spend in the wilderness in your mind, we will revisit it again). The sword appears again after the Lehites arrive in the promised land. II Nephi 5
14 And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. 15 And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance. 16 And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine. 17 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did cause my people to be industrious, and to labor with their hands. 18 And it came to pass that they would that I should be their king. But I, Nephi, was desirous that they should have no king; nevertheless, I did for them according to that which was in my power.
Notice that repetitions of the Sword of Laban are produced en masse, “lest by any means” the Lamanites would come upon them. Repetition, a theme Deleuze borrows from Kierkegaard, is the fundamental form of becoming, in both good and evil events, in the production of ideas, goods, and services, and even life itself. The sword becomes the DNA of replicating the Jerusalem-machine in the promised land. The Lord’s lament, which will become a refrain, “What could I have done more for my vineyard?” begins the replication of the sword. These swords were made just in case. Not because they had been attacked per se. It was a defensive move—just in case. Or it started that way, Jacob 1:10 “he having been a great protector for them, having wielded the sword of Laban in their defense, and having labored in all his days for their welfare— 11 wherefore, the people were desirous to retain in remembrance his name.” One wonders what sense the word “‘defense” is being used when the imbalance in weaponry is so pronounced.
“and to labor with their hands.” What a strange thing to add? Why would that need to be mentioned when the assumption is, what else could they do? They are there in the New World as a small band of friends, cousins, and family members? How else would they labor? This seems an admonition to do something that is not necessary as such. A reminder not to be idle while watching others do the real work. Similar to mid-20th century Latter-day Saint injunctions to plant a garden, not for agriculture purposes, really, but to stay attuned to the land. Labor with your own hands, even if you don’t have to. It’s a good practice to remember, folks, as you strut around in your fine twinned linens (Jacob’s condemnation of such Nephi privilege will be discussed momentarily).
Then continuing in II Nephi 5,
21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, 49 because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. 22 And thus saith the Lord God, “I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities. 23 And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing.” And the Lord spake it, and it was done. 24 And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.
So let me recap the last three paragraphs
- Nephi makes swords from ore extracted from the earth (verse 14) because there are abundant ores (verse 15)
- Nephi complains that should have been the leader, but the Lamanites will not follow him (verse 19-20)
- The Lamanites take on a skin of blackness (because they would not follow Nephi in something he wanted them to do). Something about the blackness makes them unenticing to the Nephi’s followers.
- Lamanites revert to hunting and gathering.
The chapter ends with this:
34 And it sufficeth me to say that forty years had passed away, and we had already had wars and contentions with our brethren.
Let’s tunnel forward a bit to Jacob’s temple sermon. By this time, the Jerusalem-machine was in full swing. Jacob condemns them for a few things, and Diedre Green dissects this nicely. We see riches, class distinctions, and sexual exploitation. She writes articulating the principal reinfestation of the Jerusalem-machine (Green, 2020, 81):
“This is, the very reason God led Lehi and his family to a new land of promise was to separate them from the wickedness transpiring among the Jews in Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah. What would demarcate this branch as righteous from those at Jerusalem, according to Jacob, is sexual fidelity within monogamous marriage.”
Jacob further articulates the pistons driving the machine among the Nephites,
Jacob 2:12 “And now behold, my brethren, this is the word which I declare unto you, that many of you have begun to search for gold, and for silver, and for all manner of precious ores, in the which this land, which is a land of promise unto you and to your seed, doth abound most plentifully.11 13 And the hand of providence hath smiled upon you most pleasingly, that you have obtained many riches; and because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they.”
Jacob then quotes Isiah,
2:31 “ ‘For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.’ 32 ‘And I will not suffer,’ saith the Lord of Hosts, ‘that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people,’ saith the Lord of Hosts.
and continues,
2:35 Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.”
Jerusalem-machine has completely unfolded among the Nephites in all the ways Jeramiah warned the inhabitants of Jerusalem about. But why?
Let’s tunnel forward one more time, then back,
From Omni 10 Behold, I, Abinadom, am the son of Chemish. Behold, it came to pass that I saw much war and contention between my people, the Nephites, and the Lamanites; and I, with my own sword, have taken the lives of many of the Lamanites in the defence of my brethren. 11 And behold, the record of this people is engraven upon plates which is had by the kings, according to the generations;”
Swords. The first time a Lamanite is mentioned with a sword will not be until 350 years after arriving in the promised land. Something strange is going on.
Enos’ description:
20 And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle 10 about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us. 21 And it came to pass that the people of Nephi did till the land, and raise all manner of grain, and of fruit, and flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses.
We learn that the Lamanites were living off the land as hunters. The Nephites are agriculturalists, so they perceive them as lesser beings. Nevertheless, they did not see these bow-totting cousins as irredeemable. What aspects does Enos feel would bring them around to properly searing their meat and join the Nephite embrace of higher culinary ways (Even though raw meat was extolled while traveling in the wilderness before arrival, but is now seen as crude and uncult)? Despite the Nephite desire to civilize the Lamanites, the explicit and unambiguous use of swords does not appear for 350 years among the Lamanites. A period roughly equivalent between now and 1671—a time when Isaac Newton was beginning his 30s. A long time for the Nephites to command superior weapons, especially when the advantages of their use must have been apparent to the Lamanites for nearly the entire period.
One more journey back in time that might explain this. The first use of the ore in the Book of Mormon:
1 Nephi 9 And I said, “Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me?” 10 And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools.
Ore Extraction
Ore. Three letters so much of the world rests on it. I rephrase so much of the western world rests on it. Yet it is the source of so much poverty. So much exploitation. Ore is all over the Book of Mormon, it appears and reappears in a refrain from beginning to end. There is something odd about its use that we want to pay attention to. Notice all the good stories in the Book of Mormon are recorded from the early part of their wilderness journey. Return journeys, broken bows, and naming of river valleys, etc. Then a comment, “ And we did sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness.” 1 Nephi 17:4. Eight years and not a word to say about it. We picture them in the Arabian desert alone, hiding from nomads, grabbing an Ibex with Nephi’s straight stick and his wooden bow. During the eight years, there were no happy stories. No hand of the Lord to extol. Nothing that seems worthy of mention. Where is the hand of the Lord? Did something shameful happen? After, however, Nephi can ask the Lord about the location of ore. The rich kid from Jerusalem suddenly takes an interest in one of the most complex geological activities of the ancient world. Extracting metals from rock strata is highly labor-intensive. Strange knowledge: strange and obscure with the different metals gold, copper, and silver extraction all take different expertise. And it also so happens, according to the text that they were wandering through some of the ancient world’s most important mining districts. But don’t get distracted. Remember that this is a Deleuzian fabulation. I am not making any arguments about what could or could not have happened in the ancient world to the Lehites. I am not fishing for proofing. It’s just me doing sci-phi. However, it allows the Book of Mormon to be written for our day in interesting ways. Let’s dissect this bit. It’s about an aspect of the Jerusalem-machine that stretches from the ancient world to ours. As Job noted in my opening epigraph.
The Exploitation of Black Bodies in the Nephite Colonization
Black Bodies
In what follows, I must acknowledge something. I am a white American man, writing on traditional Ute, Numic-speaking lands. I presume to write about black and brown bodies not because I can claim personal knowledge of what that means or have any right to appropriate stories or perspectives that I do not, or even cannot, understand, I write about them because I think the Book of Mormon elides such bodies. I feel obligated to point that out. In her book, A Map to the Door of No Return, about black colonial experience Donnie Brand, writes, “That is, the image which emerges from the Door of No Return is public property belonging to a public exclusive of the Black bodies which signify it. One is aware of this ownership. One is constantly refuting it, or ignoring it, or troubling it, or parodying it, or tragically reaffirming it.” I feel some condemnation in what follows. I, therefore, acknowledge I have no authority to convey what follows. It may be useful, but given who I am, my representations may all go astray. I acknowledge that. And apologize in advance.
In Kathyrn Yosoff book, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, she examines the effect of extraction technologies on black bodies. Her title acknowledges that certain marginalized populations have been experiencing private apocalypses for years. The part of her work that I think provides insight into the Jerusalem-machine and the rise of the archons of our day is how black bodies disappear. How they are essential to the economies of production in extraction systems and yet because they are underground both metaphorically and often physically. They are unseen. They disappear from the story. Does the Book of Mormon show a deterritorialization of the black body? Did Nephite colonization build itself on black bodies that it refused to acknowledge, marry, hold as worthy of recognition?
Yosoff suggests that black bodies used in extraction and agriculture never show up as part of the people of concern in white’s records, suggesting it is unlikely that the Nephite colonizers would recognize them as part of their history. As the Jerusalem-machine unfolded in the new territory, it feeds on the same fodder on which it feasted in the old world. She outlines a project to reveal the role that extraction of metals have had on colonized or enslaved populations (Yusoff, 2018):
“This means that the idea of Blackness and the displacement and eradication of indigenous peoples get caught and defined in the ontological wake of geology. The human and its subcategory, the inhuman, are historically relational to a discourse of settler-colonial rights and the material practices of extraction, which is to say that the categorization of matter is a spatial execution, of place, land, and person cut from relation through geographic displacement (and relocation through forced settlement and transatlantic slavery). That is, racialization belongs to a material categorization of the division of matter (corporeal and mineralogical) into active and inert. Extractable matter must be both passive (awaiting extraction and possessing of properties) and able to be activated through the mastery of white men. Historically, both slaves and gold have to be material and epistemically made through the recognition and extraction of their inhuman properties. These historic geologic relations and geo-logics span Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia through the movement of people, objects, and racial and material categories.”
Her take on how black bodies show up is written not in recognition of the colonizers’ bodies but by the appearance of their work in the form of those things extracted. One thinks of the gold, silver, and copper that Nephi mentions explicitly. She writes (Yusoff, 2018, 5),
“The rendering of nonbeings in colonial extractive practices through the designation of inhuman or geologic life, its exchange and circulation, demonstrates what Christina Sharp (2009) calls the “monstrous intimacy” of the subjective powers of geology, where gold shows up as bodies and bodies are the surplus of mineralogical extraction. The inhuman is a call across categories, material and symbolic, corporeal and incorporeal, intimacies cut across life and nonlife in the indifferent register of matter.”
she adds,
“The slave in this formulation is rendered as matter, recognized through an inhuman property relation—what Saidiya Hartman calls fungibility—as a commodity with properties, but without subjective will or agency (or ‘flesh,’ as Hortense Spiller has it). Rendering subjects as inhuman matter, not as persons, thereby facilitated and incorporated the historical fact of extraction of personhood as a quality of geology at its inception.”
Black and brown bodies turned to gold, silver, and copper. They are folded up into the stratigraphical extraction from the layers of the earth. This continues today. The poor, the black and the brown bodies, bear the cost of worldwide mineral and fossil fuel extraction. In Nephi’s time, as in all times, this was true as well. The Lamanites turn black, at the very appearance in the record where metal extraction and processing also materialize. In my sci-phi it is an odd coincidence that draws out several questions. The para-text of my sci-phi suggests certain questions. During the eight years in the wilderness, did something so shameful happen that all Nephite records pass it by in silence? How did Nephi keep his sword on which so much will depend on the subsequent history? (Did he keep Laban’s clothes so he could pretend to something—the flows of sci-phi are coursing through me). In my sci-pi, black bodies travel with them to the Americas (As part of a slave revolt that allowed the Lehites to escape from their years of slavery in the abundant mines dotting the Arabian peninsula, perhaps?), who are all the wives and concubines with which the small band of Lehites are taking as wives which Jacob castigates? Why do Nephites alone have a labor force that allows metal extraction from ore and cropping systems? Were indigenous persons harnessed (literally) to be the labor force of the Nephite elite? The para-text of the Book of Mormon requires many more bodies at work than appears in the text. Like feeding the vast armies of Orcs in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, conscripted to labor in Mordor requires, at some point, the question of who baked their bread? In my Deleuzian Sci-Phi, reading the answer seems yes, there are vast missing populations in the para-text of The Book of Mormon, whether you hold it as a historical document or not.
Again, Yusoff,
“The resolution of this interchangeability happens in the geologic language of the inhuman and the lexicons of inert and nonagentic matter. My intention is not to reclaim the inhuman as a dialectical position from which to reframe humanist exclusions in relation to their others (because, as Wynter reminds us, the Human is an occupied category); rather, I want to think with the inhuman as an analytic with which to scrutinize the traffic between relations of race and material economy and to think race as a material economy that itself emerges through the libidinal economy of geology (as the desire for gold, mineralogy, and metallurgy). But what are the relays involved between the classifications of geology and the classifications of race?”
As noted it is hundreds of years before the Lamanites use what is identified as a sword. As the Laminates increase in “righteousness” they too begin to enjoy the benefits of ore extraction,
Helaman 6:9 And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north. 10 Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek 69 into the land north, 70 and Lehi into the land south. 11 And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich.
Yet, there is some difference between the Lamanites and the Nephites. As scholar Kimberly Matheson Berkey writes, the Laminates do not seem to embody the lust for power and riches that the Nephites embrace. Examining the Lamanite Book of Mormon Prophet’s prophecies about the Nephite’s excesses, she writes (Berkey & Kershisnik, 2020, 100), “In sharp contrast to the people’s prejudice against their dark-skinned brothers, Samuel hastens to point out: “the more part of them [The Lamanites] . . . do walk circumspectly before God.” (From Helaman 15: 5)
And the Jaredites also provide a provocative view of what metal extraction really means,
Ether 10:21 And the whole face of the land northward was covered with inhabitants. 22 And they were exceedingly industrious, and they did buy and sell and traffic one with another, that they might get gain. 23 And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore, they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work.
Of course, the Sword of Laban has little to do with the Jaredites, but we see the same machinic forces at work making the Land of Desolation. Nothing produces desolation like extraction industries.
And so the Jerusalem-machine/archonic churns on in our day. The great extractions from the earth of gold, silver, and copper the Nephite triad, are combined with the removal of coal and oil, which we throw up into the air, throw up literally and metaphorically as we puke our carbon-intensive technologies into the air. Those who bear the brunt of these extractions remain the dispossessed, those kept poor and limited in what they are allowed to see and know by the media companies owned by the extraction-machinic assemblages. It is in the African metal mines (Antwi, 2020; Conradie, 2018; Larmer, 2017; Manamela, 2019; Mentan, 2017; Postar, 2017), the people brought to the oil processing plants near Dubai (Vollmann, 2018, 499-552) or the coal miners of Appalachia (Vollmann, 2018, 205-222) or Wales (Mackay, 2020), the Chinese labors I observed who were brought to Senegal to build paved roads to mineral resources (Shen & Jiang, 2020). What is to be done? Not even the Lord could deterritorialize the passion for gold, silver and copper out from among the Nephites. The machines churn on in our day with greater force and evolutionary advances. The Sword of Laban unfolded among the Nephites and Jaredites until they were not even a legend among the remaining inhabitants so thoroughly lost to history that no trace of their biological DNA remains. In my fabulation, anyway. In the sci-phi, I am imagining. It is a tragedy to the Nephites and perhaps us. Ask a blessing on God that he can find a way can be found to stop these monstrous machines from eating the world. Before we are replaced by those whose destinies can look upon a gold hilt and not be moved toward its possession with a grip as strong as fine steel?
The Sword of Laban makes one more appearance. To Joseph Smith as he goes to pick up the plates for the first time. Moroni warns him not to be tempted. The records are not for gain. He knows they are made of gold. the Jerusalem-machine begins to tempt him. How much that gold would mean to his family. Katharine Smith Salisbury, recalls:
“The earth was rounding on top and he got a stick and pried the dirt away from the edges and got a lever and raised the lid and there beheld the records that were to be translated and the Urim and Thummin and the sword and the breast plate of Laban and the brass plates Lehi brought from Jerusalem.”
A final question. Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming make an intriguing point about Nephi’s replication of the Sword of Laban (Salleh & Hemming, 2020, 64),
“Very understandably, Nephi fears for his life and the safety of his people. He has been given every reason to fear harm from his brothers. But his reaction is to increase the potential for violence by creating weapons. The symbolism of this set of swords being made in the model of Laban’s sword—a weapon that already has a bloody and problematic history—is clear. While we cannot know the road not taken, this moment feels like a turning point in the history that will unfold between the Nephites and the Lamanites. In fact, before the end of the chapter, we learn that “wars and contentions” have already begun. If weapons are created, it becomes likely that weapons will be used. Again, this is not to say that mobilization was not necessary given the violent relationships of the brothers. Yet the preparation for war creates a certain kind of cultural climate among the people, and this should be noted.”
What would the Book of Mormon story have been if Nephi had not brought the Sword of Laban with him? What if he had left it in Jerusalem with the family treasures? What if the sword had not been replicated in the promised land? Not kept as a model to simulate the ground of war, and used as a tool of the Nephite elite for 300+ years. What if there had not been any Nephites and Lamanites, the division of which seems so enforced by the presence of superior weapons, instead had to rely on their negotiating skills to navigate the new world. I wonder what the face of the Book of Mormon Americas would look like in such a sci-phi story. What if ore had never been extracted from soils of the Americas? In a strange unnoted part of the Book of Mormon, one of the last occurrences of the word ore (save in the Book of Ether where the use of ore is again mentioned as a means to wealth) is in Helaman 6:11 as the Laminates and Nephites begin to be one people, “And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich.” The language is strange, one does not usually, “work ore.” Workmen connote laborers that work for another. In my Sci-Phi version, as the Nephites and Lamanites become one, did exploitation move to a more cooperative venture?
After the appearance of the Savior in the new world, the references to ore cease, save one in Mormon 8:4 in which Mormon laments he doesn’t have ore to make new plates. It is almost a naive comment as if Mormon does not understand what creating gold plates from ore would entail. As if how to refine precious metals has not been enacted in a long time.
In any case, in my Sci-Phi here, would have the exploitive practices around black∂ bodies would cease after the Savior’s visit. Of course, they would.
So to “Whisper from the dust” might mean the still, small, and quiet voice of invisible people whispering from the dust emerging into the atmosphere from earth-extraction. This means that our relationship to blackness, to black bodies, to brown bodies, to the poor and disenfranchised is not just in our historical past as if from a previous time that no longer exists in the present. It is in the air that we breathe. It infuses the houses we live in and is found in the structures of economic benefit that privilege enjoys. It reaches in my life in the post-Korean war family I was born into and the structures of economics I grew up in, it is in the structure of the black bodies that have so disproportionally inhabited our prisons and military. It’s in the diamonds we wear on our fingers in the rare earth metals in our cell phones. Black bodies form the matrix of our lives in North America; it is not a linear story starting with Brigham Young’s prejudice and ending in that long-awaited day; it is in BYU with hardly a black body in sight (Race, equality & Belonging) yet resting upon it in the thousand particles of matter that have interacted with black bodies on its way to the white bodies that so infuse our church and place around it. It is not just that the Lamanites were invisible then–it is that they are invisible now. Any time we enact invisibility, anytime I enact, invisibility by not paying attention to the physics of black bodies shoring up our universe, we have ignored the Book of Mormon’s central message, “Nephites you are destroying the world through who you hide, and in the end, you will be destroyed. And they will remain.”
Toni Morrison nicely captures the concept of these invisible influences in her book, Playing in the Dark. She dissects how American literature, the typical cannon mainly written by white males, is infused with African-American presences. It is worth quoting at length.
“There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States. This agreement is made about a population that preceded every American writer of renown and was, I have come to believe, one of the most furtively radical impinging forces on the country’s literature. The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination.”
These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national literature—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence. It has occurred to me that the very manner by which American literature distinguishes itself as a coherent entity exists because of this unsettled and unsettling population. Just as the formation of the nation necessitated coded language and purposeful restriction to deal with the racial disingenuousness and moral frailty at its heart, so too did the literature, whose founding characteristics extend into the twentieth century, reproduce the necessity for codes and restriction. Through significant and underscored omissions, startling contradictions, heavily nuanced conflicts, through the way writers peopled their work with the signs and bodies of this presence—one can see that a real or fabricated Africanist presence was crucial to their sense of Americanness. And it shows.
This is true of the Book of Mormon, whether we imagine it written by Nephi responding to the invisible Lamanite populations laboring for their productive metal-rich white society, or see it written by the early 19th Century Joseph Smith whose world was infused with African American populations present in the sense that Morrison writes about, invisible, but a presence that infuses the Book of Mormon.
So how can I, as a white male, speak about black bodies? How dare I talk about black bodies? I’m not black I recognize I have no authority to speak from experience. I do know climate change and need to talk about the role black bodies have been used in extraction industries. I know too that I am brim-full of black bodies. I don’t mean my African ancestors, with that arrogant white attempt to claim blackness because “We are all African.” I mean, I am full of black bodies because they have been chopped up into a billion little pieces, and I’ve been fed them all my life. I’ve breathed the air of their burning flesh. They have extracted my metal. They have endured the cost of my privilege. My body and life have been satiated in privilege by the ransacking of their lives. How dare I speak of those bodies? How dare I not? Like a god they have redeemed me at the cost of their crucifixion. Or rather their lynching. As the Book of Mormon warns, the fire next time will devour us. Because not only have we burned down our planet but our lives. The Nephites stand as a witness and warning that our privilege or lack of attention to the bodies destroyed to maintain our privilege in the Anthropocene will end in our apocalypse. As those under the sway of the Jerusalem-machine like the Nephites, we have broken the covenant with the land. We stand on the brink of endings unless we recognize what the Book of Mormon is trying to tell us how white bodies, blended with have ignored the earth and its black and brown bodies.
Bibliography
Alter, R. (2019). The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. The writings: Ketuvim (Issue v. 3). W. W. Norton. https://books.google.com/books?id=q7rPxQEACAAJ
Antwi, S. H. (2020). The trade-off between gender, energy and climate change in Africa: The case of Niger Republic. GeoJournal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10246-9
Austin, M. (2017). Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time. BCC Press.
Berkey, K. M., & Kershisnik, B. T. (2020). Helaman. Brigham Young University. https://books.google.com/books?id=9cw_zQEACAAJ
Blythe, C. J. (2020). Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse. Oxford University Press.
Conradie, C. D. (2018). Investigating the values and fears of mechanisation in the South African gold and platinum industry [Thesis, North-West University (South Africa), Potchefstroom Campus]. https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/30701
Davis, E. F. (2008). Scripture, culture, and agriculture: An agrarian reading of the Bible. Cambridge University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. University of Minnesota Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=H4XWdN4u4OgC
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=C948Tsr72woC
Deleuze, G., & Hand, S. (1988). Foucault. University of Minnesota Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=BpDgCBgfnwUC
Deleuze, Gilles. (1983). Neitzsche & Philosophy. (pp. 17-19). Columbia U Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature (Vol. 30). U of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (1993). The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. U of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (2004). Desert Islands. In S. Lotringer (Ed.), & M. Taormina (Trans.), Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974 (pp. 9–14). Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, Gilles, & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? Columbia University Press.
Faulconer, J. E. (2020). Thinking Otherwise: Theological Explorations of Joseph Smith’s Revelations. Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZK6VzQEACAAJ
Flaxman, G. (2012). Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosophy. University of Minnesota Press.
Green, D. (2020). Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction. Brigham Young University. https://books.google.com/books?id=OIw8zQEACAAJ
Hillel, D. (2006). The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures. Columbia University Press.
Race, Equity & Belonging. Retrieved April 17, 2021, from https://race.byu.edu/
Humphreys, P. (2016). Emergence. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=TTNADQAAQBAJ
Kauffman, S. A., & Kauffman, M. S. F. I. P. B. S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order: Self-organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=lZcSpRJz0dgC
Larmer, M. (2017). Permanent precarity: Capital and labour in the Central African copperbelt. Labor History, 58(2), 170–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2017.1298712
Luhmann, N., & Gilgen, P. (2012). Introduction to Systems Theory. Wiley. https://books.google.com/books?id=3mnUSAAACAAJ
Mackay, R. (Ed.). (2020). Hydroplutonic Kernow. MIT Press.
Manamela, D. M. S. (2019). The impact of mining on indigenous African communities in Limpopo (South Africa) [Thesis, North-West University (South Africa)]. https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/35463
May, T. (2005). Gilles Deleuze: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.
McDonnell, N. (2010). Leibniz’s Combinatorial Art of Synthesis and the Temporal Interval of the Fold. In Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader (pp. 65–88). Springer.
Mentan, T. (2017). Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire: Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization, Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond. Langaa RPCIG.
Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. U of Minnesota Press.
Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://books.google.com/books?id=fpMh3nh3JI0C
Peck, S. L. (2019). The Tragedy of King Leere: Goatherd of the La Sals. By Common Consent Press.
Persky, J. (1995). The ethology of homo economicus. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2), 221–231.
Postar, S. (2017). The half-lives of African uranium: A historical review. The Extractive Industries and Society, 4(2), 398–409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2017.03.002
Saldanha, A., & Stark, H. (2016). A New Earth: Deleuze and Guattari in the Anthropocene. Deleuze Studies, 10(4), 427–439. https://doi.org/10.3366/dls.2016.0237
Salleh, F., & Hemming, M. O. (2020). The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, Volume 1 (Issue v. 1). By Common Consent Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=fruTzAEACAAJ
Shen, W., & Jiang, D. (2020). Making Authoritarian Environmentalism Accountable? Understanding China’s New Reforms on Environmental Governance. The Journal of Environment & Development, 1070496520961136. https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496520961136
Vollman, William T. (2018). Carbon Ideologies, Volume II: No Good Alternatives. Penguin books.
Williams, R. J. (2020). The Ghost and the Machine: Plates and Paratext in The Book of Mormon. In Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon (pp. 45–82). Oxford University Press.
Yusoff, K. (2018). A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. U of Minnesota Press.