Comparative Scholarship and Politics

“In myth, as in life, knowledge of difference is the key to… politics.”
Doniger, p. 32

There are two topics that stood out in Doniger’s book, which I want to discuss, namely, comparative scholarship and academia as a political playground. These points intersect so the overall view is that comparative scholarship is a type of political activism.

Although Doniger is constructing her comparative method in the context of myth, any good liberal studies student will find her method familiar territory. She explains in defense of the comparative endeavor that:

“Indeed, one of the arguments in favor of the comparative method is that even methods that pretend to be culturally specific are in fact comparative, when you take into account the fact that the scholar studying the one Other culture will always be making implicit judgments based upon implicit comparisons between the Other culture and the scholar’s own.” (Doniger, p. 35)

I take culture to mean not merely different geographical groups, but also different historical periods and situations, as well as different genders. Interpreted in this way (which seems to be in line with the attitudes in Doniger’s book) the individual is, although not necessarily explicitly or even consciously, always interpreting his/her field of inquiry in comparison to his/her own experiences/beliefs. This should be qualified by Doniger’s position that knowledge is acquired through the experience of difference. Sameness is equivalent to identity, and therefore does not produce any new knowledge outside of the premise of equivalence. It is by exploring, again either consciously or unconsciously, how the subject is different (from us) that we gain scholarly knowledge. Doniger goes on (p. 36) construct the comparative enterprise as a triangle, and I want to go on to say that any academic enterprise is a rotating coin, one side the subject of study and the other the individual’s own subjectivity.

This position shapes how the comparative approach is defined. Doniger cautions against falling into the traps of universalism or similitude, where inevitably one voice is engulfed by the other, the familiar silences the distinctness of the unfamiliar. She explains that: “The key to the game of cross-cultural comparison lies in selecting the sorts of questions that might transcend any particular culture. (Doniger, p. 40) These questions must engage difference; they must look through the microscope and the telescope. The microscope looks at how it is a human experience, and how these compared experiences, are unique. The telescope explores how this uniqueness is an interpretation of a larger worldview. Asking the questions, shaped along these lines, of both units of comparison emphasize that while both are concerned with similar questions surrounding human existence, each has a different, yet equally valid, answer.

I now want to briefly shift gears to the political, although as the idea of the implied spider will show, this is not so much a shift in thought as a change in angle. Doniger’s implied spider may or may not be (is and is not?) the creation of the scholar. The set of questions that guide the comparative enterprise create a web, this is not just a web for myth, for any comparison unearths a web. The web is the mysterious connectedness between the units of comparison that exists outside of history. Doniger explains that: “Indeed, if we think there is no spider, there is no spider; only our belief makes it (like Tinker Bell) real… And if we think there is a spider, there is a spider.” (Doniger, p. 61) A belief in a spider, a design behind the web, is contingent upon the scholar’s acceptance of the web. The web and spider exist only if the scholar allows them to. This means that new webs can be constructed and deconstructed. How does this relate to politics? On pp. 101-107 Doniger discusses political readings and reinterpretations of myths, for example, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as interpreted by the Nazis and then by Coppola in “Apocalypse Now” shows how different interpretations give the myth different connotations for a modern audience. And an examination of the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day shows that participants could equally be celebrating Guy as heroic, or celebrating his capture and death. Are the webs of the comparative enterprise equally politically malleable? Masuzawa’s book showed us that the Religious Studies discipline began with a Christian centric agenda. It created a specific web, but slowly scholars deconstructed it and created new webs and spiders. If the comparative method holds the power to create these webs does it then hold the power to shape how its subjects are viewed? If the scholar who uses the coin rather than the triangle is also creating webs, then does he/she also hold the power to shape how his/her subject is viewed? If the answer is yes, then can scholars shape and re-shape political attitudes?

phenolomenology and gender

“Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.”( Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Preface p. xx.)

Is there an inherent distinction between the sexes that makes male and female perceptions of the world definitively different/separate to the extent that there are two “worlds”? Kinsley, p 7-9, seems to suggest this in his discussion of the different sets of religious interpretation/meaning given to symbols by men and women. Can the study of religion, or the study of anything for that matter, be done outside of gender perspective? I think a brief digression into phenomenology will show that these separate “worlds” of Kingsley are not inherent within the world, but due to human constructions imposed upon the world, therefore there might be a pre-sexualized/genderized realm of shared experience.

I began with the quote by Merleau-Ponty, because it reveals a side to phenomenology that I found obscured in Young’s article. Philosophy “paints” a picture of the world, that is, it shows the world, as the individual perceives it. This perceiving that Merleau-Ponty is talking about is pre-sexualized perception, He is largely concerned with what he terms a pre-reflective perception, perception before it is categorized and objectified. This is the world before it is appraised. It is from this perspective of experience before categorization that phenomenology stems. Young, then is missing the point of phenomenology so to speak when she says:

“The early phenomenologists now seem hopelessly androcentric with their use of the generic ‘he’ and their universalizing language that never asks whether the experiences of men might differ significantly from those of women, and so on. Moreover, because ‘essences’ have been determined by male phenomenologists on the basis of male experiences alone (whether intentionally or not), women have had good reason for criticizing this kind of scholarship.” (Young, p 31)

Before addressing this quote it is important to mention the problems with Young’s classification of phenomenologist. To begin with, she lumps all philosophical phenomenologists into one vague group, only offhandedly mentioning the differentiation among them. This is problematic, for her proceeding discussion of the phenomenologist terminology suffers, being overly general and lacking substance. Finally, she begins by separating philosophical phenomenologists from phenomenologists of religion, but in the body of her article it becomes hard to distinguish which group she is making claims about. Thus, in the quote above I am unclear if she is talking about one group specifically or both in general. This being the case, I will discuss the passage in relation to the phenomenologist philosophers.

Young’s picture, I would argue, is outright wrong. First, I think the accusation of using “he” for the generic human is rather petty. Secondly, to say that these philosophers never questioned whether female experience might differ from male is insulting and untrue. (It is interesting to note that she only mentions Simone De Beauvoir in a footnote. I hardly think Beauvoir would have been silent about this topic in her conversations with Merleau-Ponty and Sartre!) For example, Sartre in “Being And Nothingness” directly addresses the question of sex/gender and sexuality. He says:

“Man, it is said, is a sexual being because he possesses a sex. And if the reverse were true? If sex were only the instrument and, so to speak, the image of a fundamental sexuality? If man possessed a sex only because he is originally and fundamentally a sexual being as a being who exists in the world in relation with other men?” (Sartre “Being And Nothingness,” p. 499)

Sartre is asking whether an individual’s sexuality is based on his/her gender, or if the individual possesses a gender due to his/her being a sexual being, that sexuality is more encompassing than specific gender. An individual’s gender is a contingent part of his/her facticity. This means that there will be different experiences based on gender, but sexuality is not an accident based on gender. Thus, phenomenologists such as Sartre, contra Young, do acknowledge this difference, but may not explicitly explore it in detail because they are dealing with experience in a more abstract context. Can this abstract discussion of experience be gender neutral? Boyarin, when discussing Irigaray, affirms this perspective:

“Different attitudes of the body in sexual intercourse (on enclosing, the other being enclosed), the capacity to menstruate, gestate, and lactate, all of these form a sort of material base for a subjectivity that is different from that of men but do not prescript what that subjectivity will consist of or how it will be lived.” (Boyarin, p 130)

There are different experiences based on biological difference, however this does not imply that these different subjectivities are inherently determined by biology. Thus it is valid to study how this (female) subjectivity has been constructed and lived within a specific historical period, but it is invalid to suggest that this (female) subjectivity is a completely separate entity. Are scholars continuing this oppression as “other” by creating Women’s Studies?

philosophical frustrations

These chapters by Clark, if anything, left me incessantly cursing postmodernism. As a student of philosophy I enjoy the intellectual games that postmodernism provides, but not being a postmodernist myself I cringe at all mention of postmodernist theory. The problem I have with postmodern theory, as presented by Clark, is the emphasis on literary theory. (Not that I have anything against literary theory, but I have been taught to make a clear distinction between the work I do and literary theory and history.) This literary perspective culminates in the discussion of text and context. What is a text? Does it need to be read within a historical context? Is there a transcendent means to the text? Can we discover the author’s intention and true meaning? They are important ideas to discuss, but not necessarily explicitly relevant to philosophical discussion; it is interesting look at how philosophical theory is applied, but would be anachronistic to apply it to earlier philosophy. This is not to say that philosophers do not interpret their predecessors, for example, Kant’s critique of empiricism, and Deleuze’s critiques of Hume, Spinoza and Kant, but one could not apply Deleuze’s philosophical method to Hegel’s concepts in an attempt to understand Hegel.

Postmodern philosophy seeks to understand the way the world is, that is, it seeks to be prescriptive rather than proscriptive. Therefore, it rejects the transcendent and finds meaning only in the immanent. Looking at critiques of contextualism Clark summarizes Derrida, “To believe that the reader must locate one particular and exclusive context in order to understand a text, Derrida concludes, is itself a ‘metaphysical assumption.’” (p. 142) There is no transcendent being to a text, or anything for that matter. Assuming that there is a true context within which to understand a text, is to assume that transcendent being. There is no Truth with a capital T. Put another way; there is no meaning only meaningfulness. In a way philosophers such as Derrida and Deleuze are merely describing what they saw occurring in philosophical scholarship. Scholars of philosophy constantly battle with each other about interpretations. In this battle, where concepts are constantly re-defined and re-interpreted, no Truth emerges. The lasting value of this enterprise is the meanings that are formed. How could a scholar apply this literary theory that Clark espouses, which is derived from a particular school of philosophy, to a different philosophical school? Or does this only apply to historians of ancient Christian studies?

I think the best way to sum up my frustration with postmodern theory is to look at the infamous postmodern generator. Here we have a program that randomly generates essays using the recursive grammar of postmodern dialogue. Some critics of postmodernism take this as a proof of its falsity. Can you find “meaning” in the essay generated? If language is an arbitrary system of essentially meaningless signs then are all texts no better than one of these essays? This is a fun rebuttal to make against postmodernism, but I think it misses the point of the original philosophy. Postmodernism does not declare that there is no meaning. We can have meaning without transcendence. But this meaning is multifarious. It is not a theory of the proper way to read or analyze a text, but a theory of what occurs when reading a text. There are as many texts as readers; there are as many Platos or Derridas as there are readers of Plato and Derrida. That is why we continue to have scholarly debates about these things.

I think reading the chapters for this week highlighted the difficulty I am having in understanding this concept of methodology and its application to my work. Clark was addressing history and literary theory in relation to ancient Christian Studies. She was using as methodology philosophers in the discipline I am working within. That does not work for me. I can understand the relation of reader, author and text in terms of postmodern theory, in terms of structuralism, conceptualism, etc., but this is a dialogue for literary theory.