Hell

Timothy Morton certainly knows how to provoke a reader’s curiosity. From the title of the book, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology (Why is it called Hell? Why, of all people, is Timothy Morton writing about Christianity?) through the intriguing closing cliffhanger of its opening narrative (What kind of conversion experience did Morton go through? Are they really now a Christian?)—this is a book that had me eagerly leafing through its pages, wondering what might be coming next, and where any of this might ultimately be leading.

The opening to this volume is both intensely personal and intensely political. Using William Blake to guide us through their narrative, Morton describes the dysfunctions, abuses of power, and general chaos that form a thread through both their life with their parents and their experiences of school. Religion weaves its way through these experiences in its alliances with wealth, nationalism, and fascist ideology on the one hand and through the possibilities of meditation and the enthralling nature of the taboo on the other. Morton leads us quickly into a reflection on the uses and misuses of religion and theology, presenting us with alternative visions and showing us a messy entangled world where religion, power, bodily experience, and the sacred intersect and intertwine.

All of these themes are ultimately bound up with issues of ecology, and in the search for a different way of approaching the dysfunctions of the current world, Morton leads invites us on a search for something sexy, life-giving, sacred, and psychedelic. They are on the hunt for love, grace, and forgiveness and Morton makes clear that this is something that environmentalism has often failed to offer. Importantly, they are not simply guiding us on an abstract quest for ideas; instead, the text is rooted in the experience of life itself. Morton points to their own “graceful experience of being loved by [their] own subtle body” (xxxv) as a more compelling reason for caring about other life-forms than academic forms of reasoning often present. This is a book that is all about feeling, and which draws us into a feeling of the sacredness of life. As Morton themself writes early in the volume, “the sacred is the feel of biology,” (1) and the text will make much more sense if read with a sensitivity to matters of feeling, process, and attitude than if the reader searches for a set of propositions, logical analysis, or answers.

As with a great deal of ecocriticism, Morton’s work is keen to dismantle harmful binaries and dualisms, and from this perspective many of its ideas feel in some sense familiar. Morton is eager to (re-)locate the sacred into the realm of biology, evolution, and bodies, situating traces of this sacredness in life, in viruses, in the other, in potential threats, and in symbiosis. Some of this is well-worn territory; some pushes the boundaries a little further. But Morton isn’t just about moving the location of the sacred—they are focused on changing how we believe and how we feel, as much if not more than on the content of these beliefs and feelings. Hell is constantly evoking a world in which sacred vibration is part of the way we are and what we do, and it conveys this through poetic descriptions, chaotic but beautiful patterns of thought, and the use of words and images that take us by surprise. Morton wants us to come along with them and start approaching the world with a different how, and with a different feel. Through their prose Morton tries to show readers a particular way of finding the sacred in the biosphere, hoping that we might find it compelling and beautiful enough to come along for the ride.

Morton’s conversion story, when it finally comes, is as intriguing as it is unexpected; It presents us with all the power of a charismatic God-encounter alongside a slightly surreal series of occurrences that feel like they open out onto a postmodern, poetic way of being in the world. This narrative embraces the forgiveness, grace, and renewal present in all the best conversion narratives. But rather than bring us to a faith of conviction and certainty, it leads us to a playful and dreamlike form of sacredness that feels like a remarkably refreshing alternative to the insistent forms of Christian nationalism that charismatic faith has allied itself with increasingly over the course of recent elections.

Morton’s writing isn’t always the easiest to read. While reading the book, I often went through a series of mental gymnastics as I tried to figure out what they were trying to say, or whether they were really trying to say anything at all. Among the rich imagery and evocation that the book has to offer, it is often hard to search out a clarity of argument or a single train of thought to latch securely onto. Having read the book more than once, however, I begin to suspect that this is part of the point. In refracting some of the vibrancy, multiplicity, and complexity of life, where drilling down into anything only ever leads to the discovery of more and hidden depths, Morton’s offer of a different feel invites us to come along with them as we are led into thinking not just different thoughts, but a different way of thinking them.

Mark Porter is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Erfurt in Germany.

Mark-James Porter

Date Of Review:

June 30, 2024