Religious analysis was Pynchon and fascism

[Michael Joseph]

On 31 May 2003, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> Is there such a thing as religious analysis?

There are several kinds of religous analysis, Paul Mackin, though I am
understanding analysis more broadly than Paul Nightingale. The simplest I
think is a basic kind of anthropology, the preliminary analysis of the
texts of a culture for recognizable religious content. A more complex kind
of religious analysis practiced in religious studies (not theology)
involves an examination of texts, even those of one's own culture, even
texts central to the Western Rationalist Tradition, for religious content,
for markers of the sacred, of a belief or beliefs or structure of belief
whose value is reinforced by mythical rather than by rational means. Since
we cannot be content to know a work of literature only in terms of its
mechanics or the historical conditions that made it possible, our
commitment to exegesis obligates us to see what in a text is "revelatory
of the real mode of human being in the world," what matters, what are the
underlying ideals, what is the authoritative vision operating within the
text, what moves and stirs us as readers, as human beings--regardless of
whether we locate this text in the place of the author, in the sensations
and ideas we form reading the text or in our own creative/critical
responses to those sensations and ideas. To this degree, I think religious
analysis forms a part of if indeed it does not underwrite nearly every
kind of critical investigation. The most fascinating aspect of it, or
perhaps one of . . . is its invisibility.



Michael