ABSTRACT
We cannot conflate these three contemporary angelologies. They are far from being identical as my headings – ‘The speech of angels’, ‘The knowledge of angels’ and ‘The flesh of angels’ – suggest. Serres (whose father was a converted Catholic, though he associates himself with the Cathars) and Irigaray think angels within a broadly Christian schema – downplaying the historical particularity of Christ while insisting upon the incarnation of the more nebulous Word made flesh. Confusingly, Irigaray also seems to espouse the immanent logic of Feuerbachian projectionism. Wenders has his film Far Away, So Close open with the passage from Matthew’s Gospel about true seeing: ‘If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’ (Matt. 7.22). Nevertheless, he detaches himself from any biblical framework. Theologically, though, there are close correspondences between his depiction of angels and the descriptions of them deduced by Aquinas. For Aquinas will insist also that the bodies of angels are non-corporeal, that their substance is spiritual, and that they can only, then assume human bodies to communicate, not become them. Serres and Irigaray pass from human bodies to angelic ones easily, with Irigaray quite emphatically stating that the angelic body is the perfection of human corporeality. Angels announce, for both of them, the incarnation of the spiritual that we must give birth to. Although, what Irigaray would observe, despite Serres’ account of relationality, participation and reciprocity – which she would embrace – he still hierarchises the angelic realm. What Serres would observe in return is Irigaray’s lack of concern with technology (she is more forthcoming on all the four natural elements (Irigaray: 1992)). For Serres, our ability to become angelic is linked to our increasing capacity to evolve technically, particularly with telecommunications. Wenders, like Aquinas on angelic materiality, is more dualistic – as his employment of technicolour for the human world and black and white for the angelic world, makes visible. Neither Irigaray, Serres nor Wender espouse an institutional commitment to religion, for all the emphasis upon communication (or, in Wenders’ the lack of communication) there is only the eschatological hope of communion (although Wenders again presents loving communities at the end of both Wings of Desire and Far Away, So Close).
