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Post-Secularism

Tuesday, November 12, 2002  

An e-mail that I received today sent me off on a rabbit trail, searching for more information about Parker Palmer. Palmer is an educator, activist, public speaker, and Quaker whose work examines the oft-ignored relationships between spirituality, teaching, and political change. In my wanderings, I stumbled upon this interview that was originally published in 2000 by Yes!, a great little 'zine. It seemed like a natural follow-up to yesterday's spotlight on Granny D.

Sarah: One of the things that I found very striking about your work is the idea that the simple choice to live with integrity can have far-reaching effects. What experiences brought you to believe that this was such a central issue?

Parker: What I know about living a divided life starts with my training as an academic. I was taught to keep things in airtight compartments: to keep my ideas apart from my feelings, because ideas were reliable but feelings were not; to keep my theories apart from my actions, because the theory can be pure, but the action is always sullied. . . .

But the divided life is not just an academic dilemma, it’s a human dilemma. We work within institutions like schools, businesses, and civic society, because they provide us with opportunities that we value. But the claims those institutions make on us are sometimes at odds with our hearts – for example, the demand for loyalty to the corporation, right or wrong, can conflict with the inward imperative to speak truth. That tension can be creative, up to a point. But it becomes pathological when the heart becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the organization, when we internalize organizational logic and allow it to overwhelm the logic of our own lives.

At a certain juncture, some people find they must choose between allowing selfhood to die or claiming their identity and integrity. What I mean by divided-no-more is living on the outside the truth you know on the inside.

I'm glad to say that I've begun noticing some progress along these lines, at least in my particular wing of academia. Last week I spent more than an hour pitching my dissertation project to a new faculty member. It was an interesting experience. She was the first person to ask the big question: What's the point? I waffled for a moment, then fell back on an old trick: I told her the truth. "I'm not sure, but I hope to find a personal, practical politics in the process," I shrugged. She was interested.

We spent the next 45 minutes discussing the growing interest (academic interest no less) in post-secularism, one of the many -isms vying for a prominent position in our post-postmodern age (if such jargon is even worth using). I love imagining the political implications of these questions:

  • What is the relation between literature and theology, secular or sacred? How does a focus on theology, religious studies, and/or ethics open new territories for literary study, particularly in the contemporary period? What do we gain by returning to the sacred or secular sacred in literary study? What do we lose?
  • Is there a post-secular literature as well as a post-secular theory, and what would this literature look like? What do the writers say? Was postmodernism theological without our realizing it?
  • How is current theory about the post-secular being imported into literary studies?
  • How are assertions of value in current discussions about literature and ethics/spirituality similar to and different from pre-formalist critical notions of value (and the political implications of such) embedded in concepts such as artistic vision, the visionary sublime, the truth of beauty, or the artist as shaman/oracle/priest?
  • Why is theology surfacing in literary studies now, after more than fifty years of formalist, marxist, poststructuralist, and postmodern theory? What cultural moment is precipitating the theoretical turn?
  • Has the sacred already been caught in the secular theory machine? Will 9/11 poison the post-secular well, particularly in terms of literary studies?
  • How can a post-secular literary criticism accommodate a world literature radically diverse in terms of politics, cultural and social values, and understandings of the sacred? Will a post-secular theoretical view necessarily war with a historical study of literature? What are the problemmatics raised in the relation between multicultural/pluralist/ethnic/race criticism and post-secular perspectives? How might the post-secular be redefined in a global context?
  • How might gender theory intersect with post-secular philosophy in relation to literary studies?
  • What are the possibilities of relation in literary criticism between humanism and the post-secular? Marxist theory and the post-secular? ethics and the post-secular?
  • How theological is the literature classroom? How post-secular should it be?

I never thought I would be so excited to begin writing a dissertation. Bizarre.

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