What would post-modernists make of Samuel?
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How would they psychologically profile him?
Would his message be denounced by them?
--
"What are you, the Internet lawyer for Jesus and the Bible?"
Albans 3/10/2002
Mark T
> Would a post-modernist believe Samuel?
Do you have any idea what post-modernism is?????
Probably not!!!!
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POSTMODERNISM AND RELIGION
Peter Beyer, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ca K1N 6N5
At its 1996 meeting, the Association for the Sociology of Religion featured
one session on "Postmodernism and the Sociology of Religion" with three
papers: by Don Hufford (1996) [the need for postmodern approaches to
religion in the educational system], Mary Ann Kanieski (1996) [a postmodern
critique of our sociological concept of religious identity] and Michael York
(1996) [whether a postmodern sociology of religion was even possible]. I was
the discussant.
Two related conceptions of the postmodern brought the papers together. One
was the "classic" conception of Lyotard (1984) that the postmodern is
essentially the end of authoritative narrative; the other focused on the
postmodern as the plurality of voices. The two are, of course, connected in
that the first should inevitably lead to the second. Hufford suggested that
religion provide a necessary alternative voice in an educational system that
should stress the legitimacy and even the value of pluralism. Kanieski
defended a flexible concept of self that is constituted and reconstituted
through discourse and is not simply there to be observed. She recommended
qualitative methodologies as more appropriate for researching religious
identities. York answered his own question (whether a postmodern sociology
of religion was even possible) in the negative, but felt that the elements
of a postmodern sociology of religion were available in the field. All three
positions exhibit what one might call delicious postmodern ironies.
I will not be the first to remark that postmodern critique and analysis
usually has a Phoenix-like quality in that it tends to suggest a new
authoritative narrative after having deconstructed the old ones. All three
papers valued plurality of discourse, identity, and position, they did not
just point to it. The result of postmodern critique is here, and I would
suggest in general, not principled relativism or nihilism, but a new
authoritative narrative. In all three cases, the "modern" stance is not just
pass it is in one sense or another inadequate.
A further irony brings to mind another classic myth, that of Minerva's owl.
While few will doubt that there are still plenty of people with "modern"
mono-perspectival views, it may be going too far to suggest that only with
recent postmodern critiques have the hegemonic metanarratives been seriously
challenged. Asking about a postmodern sociology of religion may be
indicative of a situation in which substantial portions of the field have
already absorbed postmodern attitudes; and recommending postmodern teaching
in the school system begs the question of whether the modernists haven't
been an outside voice for some time now.
This latter consideration, of course, begs another of the constant questions
posed in the postmodern debate, and that is whether what we call
postmodernism isn't either an unjustified betrayal of the modernist project
of building an ever better world; or simply an extension of it. Jªrgen
Habermas (1981; see Ashley, 1990) is probably the most well-known
representative of this first option, while Anthony Giddens (1990) and Ulrich
Beck (1992) are equally strong in their insistence that current developments
are much more in continuity with modernity than they are a break from it
(see also Featherstone, et al., 1995). We may speak of modernity as an
unfinished product, of late capitalism, or of the consequences of modernity,
but there is, according to these thinkers, no real break or, to misuse an
overworked phrase, "paradigm shift". The defenders of postmodernism (e.g.
Lyotard, 1984; Baudrillard, 1995; Bauman, 1992) as a genuine change or
discontinuity naturally dispute this, again indicating the degree to which
the debate tends not toward the end of metanarratives, but rather to their
further production. The voices still contest for superiority.
A question that the papers raise and that has occasionally been raised
elsewhere is the degree to which religion figures or does not figure in
postmodern debates. Of the three papers in the session, Hufford's was
clearest on the notion that the postmodern condition (or whatever one wants
to call our present circumstance) creates possibilities for religion that
modernity denied it. More specifically, Hufford defends the notion that
religion offers a way of perceiving the world that the positivistic and
empirical emphases of modernist attitudes did not. Where typically modern
thinkers regularly looked for religion to decline because it was
fundamentally "irrational", the postmodern critique, one might say, again
allows religion a clear voice, if only because the insufficiencies of
technically rational dominance. Here the postmodern debate would resonate
with the current fashion in at least North American sociology of religion to
consider the secularization thesis similarly pass or disproved. Here again,
however, we encounter another significant irony.
The place of religion in the works of postmodernist thinkers and their
critics is actually quite minimal. Most often, when religion appears, it
does so on a Durkheimian basis as the potential purveyor of moral bond and
integrative force (cf. O'Neill, 1988; Beckford, 1993). What one might call
"pure" religion, the actual communication with sacred realities, rarely
enters the debate. The irony to which I point is not here, however. Rather
it is in the implicit assumption that the religious, if it is to be
significant at all, can only enter as an authoritative, overarching, and
perhaps even hegemonic discourse. Religion, to be worthy of the name, is
holistic; it is not simply another of the plural techniques or multiple
voices which allow us to construct contingent world for ourselves. Following
Hufford's recommendation, however, the postmodern openness and even
celebration of diversity and difference would allow religions -- and not
just facts about religions -- to be taught in schools, but under the
assumption that they cannot claim the privileged access to "ultimate
reality" that typically informs them. Such a postmodern position, therefore,
would relegate religion to one sort of voice among others, one sort of
technique among others. But this is precisely what the "modernist"
secularization and privatization theses have always had in store for
religion. A postmodern openness to religion would therefore have the effect
of assigning religion a modern fate: the discourse of the whole becomes just
another partial discourse. One might then rephrase Michael York's question
to ask not whether a postmodern sociology of religion is possible, but
rather whether a postmodern religion is possible; and if it is, would it
still count as religion? And would that religion still count? At root, the
postmodern debate centers on the question of authority. To the degree that
religious instances in our world claim or wish to claim authority, to that
degree the postmodern debate may present as much of a challenge as previous
modern debates have.
REFERENCES
Baudrillard, Jean. 1995. "The Virtual Illusion: Or the Automatic Writing of
the World," Theory, Culture & Society 12,4: 97-107.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. The Risk Society: Towards another Modernity. London:
Sage.
Beckford, James. 1993. "Religion, Risk, and Postmodernity." Paper presented
to a conference on Postmodernism and Religion, Bristol, England, March.
Featherstone, Mike, Scott Lash, and Roland Roberston, eds. 1995. Global
Modernities. London: Sage.
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University.
Hufford, Don. 1996. "A Postmodern Understanding of the Ideological
Implications and Foundational Principles Relating to Religion and Public
School Curriculum Issues," Paper presented at to the Association for the
Sociology of Religion, New York City, 15 August.
Kanieski, Mary Ann. 1996. "Religious Identity and Postmodernism:
Implications for Sociological Research," Paper presented at to the
Association for the Sociology of Religion, New York City, 15 August.
Lyotard, Jean-Francis. 1984. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester:
Manchester University.
O'Neill, John. 1988. "Religion and Postmodernism: The Durkheimian Bond in
Bell and Jameson," Theory, Culture & Society 5:493-508.
York, Michael. 1996. "Is a Postmodern Sociology of Religion an Oxymoron?"
Paper presented at to the Association for the Sociology of Religion, New
York City, 15 August.