McCutcheon - Modernism v. Postmodernism

McCutcheon is likewise not willing to be bullied by postmodern approaches that want to relativize all approaches to religion. While maintaining the need for pointed critique of any model that Religion scholar attempt to use on their data, McCutcheon is unwilling to swallow the entire post-modern enchilada. Critiquing the work of Garrett Green, who argues that Karl Barth should be included in the canon of religious studies and that his exclusion represents a sort of colonialist bias against certain theologians. Barth for Green is simply one more discourse among the many discourses at work within Religious Studies. The exclusion of any is only explicable as an exercise of power. Not so, argues McCutcheon, the question is not which theologies should be included, but rather why should any theologies be included at all? (110). The point of theory is explanation, as we have see previously. Theologies, whether they be liberal, conservative or something inbetween are not explanations of religious phenomena, they are themselves the data that needs to be analyzed.

McCutcheon uses the analogy of the tennis game to make his point.(fn. while not citing Bourdieu in this article, Bourdieu's notion of "field" has some of the same implication. The very term "field" has not only a vocational meaning but an athletic one as well). While all games may be of relative value, within a particular game there are rules and stricture. Everything does not go. Certain things are within the rules and other things are not. One cannot play tennis with a football. The "game" of religious studies is one which counts theory as "in" and theology as "out." Which is not to say there is no valid critique of theories of religion, certainly McCutcheon is willing to entertain any and all critiques of various theorists of Religion. And yet this does not lead to either the abandonment of the game nor a change in the rules.

Pierre Bourdieu talks in similar terms in some of his work. Religion is understood as a "field" with the same sports connotation (though the various meanings of the world field are often in play in his work). A field functions as the limits and boundary of a certain set of practices. Within a field there are "strategies" that are acceptable and used. While the number of these strategies may be finite, they have infinite potential for combination and application. Religious Studies, likewise as a field also has a boundary, a set of practices and strategies that are applicable within the field. McCutcheon's point is that theology is not one of those practices or strategies.

McCutcheon ultimately suggests that the very demand of Green to include Barth is itself a modernist move and betrays the postmodern agenda that he claims to represent. The problem is of course one of content as opposed to form. The argument of form is that all theories are equal discourses. The contrasting argument which McCutcheon makes is that the content of various "theories" are themselves subject to the postmodern critique and those "theories" which portray religion "as manifestations of an an ahistorical essence of mysterious derivation and meaning (i.e. sui generis religion)" are utterly decimated and rendered inoperative by the postmodern critque. Whereas theories based on historical and social explanation may still survive to be of use. This is because the historical and social analysis of human data is exactly the method employed by post-modernists themselves, most notably Foucault in doing their analyses of historical events. Based on this, McCutcheon claims the mantle of postmodernism for himself. Thus McCutcheon can accept the critique of postmodernism concluding "In our postmodern world there are indeed multiple, decentered explanations and assorted scales of analysis, but only some of these can be considered to be part of the work of the public study of religion; after all, not all athletes play hockey."(120)

Now the question is whether the label postmodernist actually is helpful. Here I am somewhat divided. I, like McCutcheon do think that the postmodern study of history, particularly as we have seen it in Foucault, has generated a number of fascinating insights. Likewise, I understand the Derridian unveiling of the metaphysic of presence as the dominant undercurrent of much of Western philosophy as having particular applicability to Religious Studies. The attempt of conservatives to co-op postmodernism is a dangerous misunderstanding of the postmodern endeavor. McCutcheon makes this clear. And yet I am not sure that the claim to segregate religious studies as a discipline which is ultimately concerned with theory and explanation actually works in the larger view. For the peril of postmodernism is that social and historical explanation becomes one more "story" that we tell ourselves. But why is this "story" better than others? I'm not sure that postmodernism can hold to the primacy of one story over others. And herein lies the danger. While we may be able to exclude theology from our particular sandbox, the question is really why is the theory sandbox better than the theology sandbox. Here I believe postmodernism can not give a satisfactory answer. William Arnal in his critique of McCutcheon's article mentions this problem without giving it full voice. He states, "What McCutcheon has done here…is to use the canons of postmodernism to de-authorize theological discourse while failing to apply those same canons to his own discourse."(Studies in Religion 27, 66) Arnal then goes on to suggest that such ignores the historical origin of postmodernism itself and a selective application to theology. Arnal's attack on postmodernism, while surely correct, confuses what is the stronger argument which is that what is good for the theological goose is likewise postmodern sauce for the religious studies gander.

In a brief response to Arnal, McCutcheon picks up on the more important of Arnal's argument which I have noted and rightly elucidates the problem

...my suggestion on how to distinguish and separate them rightly drew from Arnal a meta-theoretical response concerning why we should do so at all. If all discourses are equally embeded in dynamic social worlds, if all data counts as data only in light pre-existent theories, and if all theories are bold claims about how the natural world works, then what makes any one discourse more suited than any other for holding pride of place in a particular institutional setting.(67-68)

The problem is clear, though even here McCutcheon qualifies it slightly to his advantage by talking about an "institutional setting." One perceives the walk back to an argument about the appropriate discourse for the public-funded university on the horizon. But while this is in the offing, on the larger question McCutcheon decides to "punt." He speaks about the hope that individuals like Arnal and he can "investigate new ways of conceptualizing and arguing for why this tactical separation is still warranted."(68)

And this is why I prefer the label "nervous modernist" to "postmodernist." Because I am unwilling to say that theoretical, sociological, psychological, historical analyses do not have greater access to truth (fn. here I'm employing a minimal definition of truth as that which is a more accurate description and analysis of religious phenomena) even given the valid criticism that postmodernism may launch. Nonetheless, I recognize, like McCutcheon, that postmodernism has made a crucial critique and required that we be constantly mindful of our presuppositions. But it seems to me that that sort of introspection and reflexivity actually fits well within the modernist project.

Critics not Caretakers

Russell McCutcheon's book Critics Not Caretakers is powerful defense of a secularist approach to doing Religious Studies. McCutcheon's agenda is without pretense, it is the attempt to clearly identify the discipline of Religious Studies with an series of methods which take a critical stance towards religion. McCutcheon, then, follows the work of J.Z. Smith and Burton Mack as well as others of similar inclination. The result of this is an new emphasis on a couple of pivotal terms that function to re-orient the discipline. The first of these is without doubt "explanation." The notion of explanation is one which is somewhat out of fashion in certain quarters of the academy. Such a notion bespeaks a reductionistic colonialism, "we" tell "them" what they are really doing. Yet while recognizing such a critique, McCutcheon does not shy away from invoking the notion of explanation anyway, "our goal should not be for experiences to overlap with those of the other, but rather, to explain from our admittedly entrenched point of view, what we perceive to be going on out there and, given our own theoretical interests, why it is going on."(82) The call to explanation then involves an understanding and acknowledgment of our own positionality and the concomitant power, privileged and implicit oppression that goes along with it. It requires what Pierre Bourdieu will term reflexsivity. Yet it does not mean that the territory of explanation is thereby surrendered. Rather explanation must be grounded in what McCutcheon labels as "clearly articulated and defensible theories of human culture and belief systems."(82)

These systems that McCutcheon refers to leads us to the next key term that populate McCutcheon's thinking in this work and that is "social formation." This term reached the religious studies academy through the work of Burton Mack. Mack has a particular interest in the idea of social formation as a way of understanding the development of Christianity. Yet the term did not originate with Mack either, but found its way from the Marxist tradition and the work of Althusser. In his essay on Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Althusser invokes the idea of social formation as a key component of social reproduction and more importantly ideological reproduction of the economic system. As a Marxist Althusser is still interested in examining the reproduction of capitalism through the variety of means at the disposal of capitalism. The notion is somewhat static in Althusser. In Mack however the idea of social formation has a more dynamic and intellectual implication. When Mack speaks of social formation he is talking about the construction of intellectual and mythic structures over time that are produced by the needs of a community often in the face of a challenge from outsiders. Mack then puts the emphasis on the first word "social" whereas Althusser is more interested in the second word "formation."

Yet where Althusser and Mack come together is precisely the entirely earthly origin of such social formations. Both see the creation of social formations as a response to particular situations which have their origin in a set of social and economic pheneomna that occur in the life of the society in question. Mack tends less to focus on the economic base as the origin of the social formations yet both Mack and Althusser would agree that the point of the social formation is the advancement of social reproduction. The continuance of the community is dependent on these social formations.

For McCutcheon, then, social formation is also an important concept precisely because it mandates explanation. Regardless of which word the emphasis is put the examination and explanation of a social formation demands the use of methods from the social sciences (and increasingly the biological sciences). This is given in McCutcheon's now familiar call for "analysis" over "description."(22) (fn. I might also mention that this too reflects Althusser call for "a development of the theory which goes beyond the form of ‘description’. "[isa's p. #]). McCutcheon (once more following J.Z. Smith) calls this "redescription" which he ultimately glosses into a "social definition and social theory of religion" (24). Thus for McCutcheon the usefulness of the idea of social formation is precisely that it invites social explanation.

But as important for McCutcheon is the dynamic that social formation brings . While Althusser's use of social formation seems more static than McCutcheon's and Mack's, Althusser points to a central fact that McCutcheon also discovers, the contradiction at the core of social formations. For Althusser this is self evident as the purpose of social formation is the reproduction of a capitalist system which is founded upon the central contradiction of labor and capital. McCutcheon spins this in another way though with clear echoes of Althusser

Because the social values, truths and ideals [of a given social formation] are hardly universal, because as Durkheim noted, the 'mystery that appears to surround them is entirely superficial and fades upon closer scrutiny. . . , [when one pulls] aside the veil with which the mythological imagination covered them" (1995:431) There is an inherent contradiction embedded at the core of social formations.(32)

Thus though as always there is far more emphasis on the economic base in Althusser than in McCutcheon, still we see that for both thinkers there is a form obfuscation implicit in the social formation, the attempt to conceal the "man behind the curtain." For McCutcheon that man is not the economic base, but rather the universalization of localized values. Althusser would not disagree with this analysis and yet would claim McCutcheon remained in the superstructure and needed one more step to see what this is ultimately about.

Nevertheless the point that both McCutcheon and Althusser agree completely on is the process of method. Ideological State Apparatuses or Social Formations cannot be taken at face value. A process of mere description which merely replicates a social formation's own logic does not provide us any new analysis. The process of explanation must step outside the internal logic of the system and look for points of origin. These points of origin are human in origin and accessible to social scientific methods. But any such analysis has as its basic presupposition that the religious social formation did not fall from heaven or was established by miraculous or supernatural means but rather is one more example of the kinds of cultural/social groups and belief systems that humans form. In fact McCutcheon prefers "social formation" over "religious formation" precisely because it makes this point emphatic. (26)