Postmodernism and Christianity - Essay Example

14 June 2008 Religion Essay Postmodernism is one of the artistic movements emerged in the late 20th century. It was a reaction to modernism and its cultural heritage. The uniqueness of this movement was that postmodernist thinkers and critics have often wished to join the artistic avant-garde as exemplars of the importance and influence of their ideas. They have a distinct way of seeing the world as a whole, and use a set of philosophical ideas that not only support an aesthetic but also analyze a 'late capitalist' cultural condition of 'postmodernity'. Postmodernist theory has brought into existence a plethora of works of art whose makers and critics are deeply self-conscious about their relationship to language in general and to the previously accepted languages of art in particular. Thesis Postmodernism odds with religion as it unveils realities of life, it is ironic and playful in contrast to dogmatic and strict religious rules. Postmodernism is defined as an artistic style emerged in opposition to "modern" traditions: it is more ornamental and ironic. With the rise of academic postmodernism and the growing influence of the political attitudes of the 1960s (both of which actually come after the post-war experimental avant-garde had established many new techniques in the arts), many artists became extraordinarily sensitive about their theoretical, and their political, position. Postmodernism odds with religion because religion rejects its main principles and rules. In this case, an idea of God which gives each of these two alternatives its due, while not succumbing to their temptations (Connor 92). Since the Bible speaks of God in symbols, part of biblical theology's contribution might be to elucidate the meaning of these symbols in our current cultural context. This is the hermeneutical task; to show what the Bible now means by what once it meant. Believers wish to share in the task of thinking towards an adequate idea of God by undertaking an examination of the symbol "Father" as applied to God in the teaching of Jesus (Bataille and Hurley 43). The term 'weak' culture means that people differ in geographical location and in statistical terms. "Strong" culture means a desire of postmodern artists to make the world realistic. There is no such notion as truth. Postmodernist thought, in attacking the idea of a notional centre or dominant ideology, facilitated the promotion of a politics of difference. Under postmodern conditions, the ordered class politics preferred by socialists has given way to a far more diffuse and pluralistic identity politics, which often involves the self-conscious assertion of a marginalized identity against the dominant discourse (Connor 40). Much feminist thought therefore has in common with postmodernism that it attacks the legitimating metadiscourse used by males, designed to keep them in power, and it seeks an individual empowerment against this. This is the key to creativity in the individual. This evidence for the growth of an individual through the socialization process is neglected by 'social construction' theorists of the self (Bataille and Hurley 88). The cultural context of the father figure is lively and confused. The father and Jesus is the source of all morals and religion; every human being must work through his or her relationship to the father on the way to maturity. Religion and morals are merely ways in which the repressed memory of this deed finds expression. Thus the dead and repressed father, whose figure each one of us internalizes and thereby makes into a source of authority, is more powerful than the living one. However, the father may not be as central to our psychic life. He regards the vanishing of the father as the outcome of a long process, which can be traced in art and literature (Connor 39). Postmodernists critique foundational approaches to language and often attempt to reconceptualize objectivity rather than to reject it entirely or to replace it with subjectivity. Such reconceptualization necessitates calling into question the possibility of impartiality, of detachment of the observer from that which is observed, or of identifying a principle or principles that will provide a firm foundation, ground, or cause upon which to base an analysis. Focusing on postmodern feminism as a critique of modern feminism rather than its opposite invites explorations of relationships between AngloAmerican feminism and continental feminism. feminisms are forms of resistance to modernist projects, though antimodern feminism opposes modernism directly and attempts to subvert its aims and goals whereas postmodern feminism resists modernism without attempting to negate it. Resistance to postmodern feminism within feminist studies as well as beyond it has existed as long as postmodern feminism has been named as such. Philosopher Linda J. Nicholson's edited collection, Feminism/Postmodernism, for instance, though containing contributions by individuals such as Jane Flax, Butler, and Haraway who have subsequently published books that have a postmodern perspective, also contains a number of essays by skeptics such as Susan Bordo, Nancy Harstock, and Christine Di Stefano (Connor 22). The most serious challenge comes from the women's movement, which in its moderate form is seeking a reform of the church's language about God in theology and liturgy, and equal opportunity for women in the ministry. There is an ironic convergence between Daly and Freud, whose theory she execrates as the "hideous blossom" of the religions of patriarchy (Bataille and Hurley 87). Both see the notion of God as Father to be the Achilles' heel of the Judeo-Christian religions. Freud picked this image as the loose thread which when tugged would unravel the neurotic cover that religion provides for atavistic sexual fears and guilts. The fatherhood of God was the badge of religion as a communal neurosis (Connor 48). Postmodern feminists have diverse orientations, work in diverse fields, have diverse emphases, and configure the relationship between modern and postmodern feminism in diverse ways. Regardless of orientation, however, their work usually makes evident that postmodern feminism moves beyond modernism by critiquing it rather than opposing it. The liberal would join with the postmodernist in seeing the need for an ability to question the boundaries of our social roles, and the validity and dominance of the conceptual frameworks they presuppose; and the postmodernist deconstructive attitude has been extraordinarily effective in combating restrictive ideologies in this way. They often attempt a transgressive-deconstructive loosening of the conceptual boundaries of our thoughts about gender, race, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, and make an essentially liberal demand for the recognition of difference, an acceptance of the 'other' within the community. In such a pluralistic universe (of discourse) no one framework is likely to gain assent. Where epistemological domination is deemed to be impossible, the competition between these conceptual frameworks becomes a political matter, part of a contest for power (Connor 42). The result is that although much postmodernist thinking and writing and visual art can be seen as attacking stereotypical categories, defending difference, and so on, it left all these separate groupings to demand recognition as 'authentic' but isolated communities, once they were freed, in and by theory, from the dominant categories of the majority. For the postmodernist, to create is to be critically self-aware to an extent that goes far beyond modernism (which is nevertheless responsible for the beginnings of this dire marriage between art and academic elitism). Artist and critic both conspire to demand the 'right' relationship between work and idea, as implied by the creator, and as responded to by the audience (Jameson 73). The gap between postmodernism and religion is that postmodernism represents "the end of history" and the "end of man'. This work has affinities to, and indeed helped to inspire, postmodernist thinking because it arises from a self-consciousness about the theory of art. It was not the object itself but the conceptual processes behind it that counted. In the process (Jameson 37). The Bible believes that God acts in history. This means that there is a hidden dimension to historical experience that is aptly described in terms of creation and redemption. Yahweh is the proper name for this dimension, but its nature can only be understood by means of symbols. Ricoeur, interpreting von Rad, talks about "a network of signifying events" which generates a "surplus of meaning" (Bataille and Hurley 69). The significance or meaning of these events is precisely what the symbol makes available to thought. With reference to the father symbol, the Bible envisages two modes of relationship between it and this "surplus meaning," an indirect and a direct one. The earliest traces of theology in the Bible, therefore, outline a god who is known through a personal relationship which, in turn, is re-presented by remembering the ancestors; and who also has vague elements of universality in his nature. He is the begetter of gods and humanity in his Canaanite form, although this is never expressed in the biblical traditions. He is the high god and he is the near god, involved in the lives of the families and tribes. He is the transcendent originator who determines all things, and the immanent companion who arranges everything. The symbol of his being and presence is the father of the family, who, in turn, is responsible for that family's worship and obedience to God. To share in God's blessing one had to belong to a family. Thus the status of the father was divinely sanctioned and the divine was involved in the history of the individual and society at the most intimate level, the level of the family. Beyond all doubt, the story of Jesus the man and leader came into circulation in the years immediately following the time of his alleged career. If the historicity of Jesus fades away, the whole content of the gospel vanishes with it. In this gospel God is the one God, the Lord of history, who acts in history and through his chosen agents. Jesus is his central and unique agent, whose historical career is the instrument of achieving the eternal purposes of God. The historicity of Jesus is therefore essential to the truth of the entire gospel message. This necessity need not alarm us (Bataille and Hurley 64). The historical existence and career of Jesus is attested by Paul, whose conversion cannot be dated more than half a dozen years after the death of Jesus. It has strong attestation in hostile Jewish tradition, which would instantly have denied the existence of Jesus if the Christian movement could thus have been dealt a deathblow. It receives minor confirmation from Roman historians whose witness is early enough to be important (Jameson 101). In sum, postmodernism odds religion and Christianity in particular because it violates the main values of religion: human existence and life, goodness and happiness. The postmodernist theory that many in the avant-garde went for is a version of the philosophy, along with its politics and history. Privilege and its hierarchically organized terms, including the formalism associated with modernism, are to be attacked and subverted. Postmodernist critics are more important than art or artists, since they operated on what is for them an acceptable institutional or political level, even though it should have been obvious to anyone with any sense that the primarily academic techniques they are using were really quite basic, and easy to come by, given a decent education and a certain rhetorical persuasiveness Works Cited 1. Bataille, G. Hurley, R. Theory of Religion. Zone Books, 1992. 2. Connor, S. Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary. Wiley-Blackwell; 2 edition, 1997. 3. Jameson, F. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions). Duke University Press, 1991. Read More