i SECULAR CRITICAL THEORY: METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY by Wayne Edward Moore A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY Bozeman, Montana January 2025 ©COPYRIGHT by Wayne Edward Moore 2025 All Rights Reserved ii DEDICATION To my family. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you Professors Bennett, Harmon, Flory, and Leubner for your help and support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. FORWARD ......................................................................................................................... 1 2. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 13 3. CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART I) ................................................... 13 4. CHAPTER TWO: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART II) ................................................. 33 5. CHAPTER THREE: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART I) ........................................................................................................................................ 58 6. CHAPTER FOUR: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART II)....................................................................................................................................... 74 7. CHAPTER FIVE: SECULAR CRITICAL THEORY/METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY ........................................................................................................... 99 Chapter Introduction ......................................................................................................... 99 Framing the Topic ........................................................................................................... 107 The Barred Subject .......................................................................................................... 111 The Death of God.............................................................................................................114 The Graph of Subjectivity and Desire .............................................................................117 Anxiety .............................................................................................................................118 The Imaginary ................................................................................................................. 120 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 127 A More Developed Methodology ................................................................................... 131 Pedagogy ......................................................................................................................... 133 8. ADDENDUM: CHAPTER THREE ............................................................................... 135 REFERENCES CITED ......................................................................................................... 141 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 103 Figure 2. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 104 Figure 3. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 104 Figure 4. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 107 Figure 5. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 108 Figure 6. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 108 Figure 7. Linguistic Chart ..................................................................................................... 109 Figure 8. Subject/Self Image..................................................................................................112 Figure 9. Image of Self ..........................................................................................................112 Figure 10. Lacanian Graph of Desire (LacanOnline) ............................................................117 Figure 11. Linguistic Chart ................................................................................................... 121 Figure 12. The Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real (LacanOnline) ................................ 122 Figure 13. Lacanian Graph of Desire (LacanOnline) ........................................................... 125 vi ABSTRACT The American academy substantially avoids any discussion of the secular and when it does it largely frames the secular in a fundamentally negative manner. This negativity arises from the fact that such discourse is framed most completely by anti-secular voices with secularists largely being excluded from participation in the construction of the secular. Historically some efforts have been made to change this situation, but the hegemonic power of religious influence within the American academy has largely prevented this. The “secular university” should, perhaps, understand what it means to be secular, and such an understanding might contribute effectively to the promotion of a more critical, socially effective academy. 1 FORWARD During the writing of this dissertation, 2022-2024, the influence of Christian Nationalism gathered substantial power in state and federal governments across the nation. This influence particularly can be seen following the appointment of three conservative Christian judges, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, by Pres. Donald Trump. These three judges joined Judges Roberts, Thomas and Alito, appointed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, to form a block of conservative judges motivated and prepared to counter precedent set by the court across the century that preceded them. This dissertation did not intend to frame an argument connected substantially to a discussion of religion in politics in the U.S., nor has the growth of Christian/religious influence in state and federal governments altered the intentions of this dissertation. The presence of such escalated pro-Christian and anti-secular influence in national politics in present days though does seem to require some comment and this forward to the dissertation is designed to serve that specific purpose. This dissertation attempts to persuade the reader of the value contained in the development of a more substantial, effective and ethical discussion of the secular and secularism in American academic settings. It attempts to do so while purposely failing to discuss how such a program could be developed in a nation filled with substantial anti-secular influences. It tried to discuss how a discourse of the secular in the academy could contribute effectively to a humanistic pedagogy that values the development of students’ critical thinking skills, but did not at all attempt to discover or show how such a program could be introduced politically into the 2 academy.1 This forward to the dissertation will continue to do the same thing. It will continue to not demonstrate how political change could lead to the inclusion of pro-secular discourse within the academy. It will, perhaps though, demonstrate the profound presence of this problem and show how this problem exists so powerfully in the nation today. The Scopes v. State of Tennessee, Monkey Trial, in 1925 can be seen as initiating a political understanding of the secular and religion in American politics in which discourses concerning such matters tended to see freedom from religion as a significantly essential part of the establishment clause in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Within that case itself the Tennessee Supreme Court’s legal decision supported the state’s continued enforcement of the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state’s classrooms. This decision could be seen as a victory for anti-secular forces except that the public’s response to the decision failed to enthusiastically support it at all. The trial had been performed rather substantially as a form of legal theatre with a public that was largely engrossed by it, and while the court decided in the end to support the Butler Act the American public failed to support the court’s decision. The church had won the case in the legal courtroom, but it had lost the case in the media and public discourse.2 This specific matter would not be brought before the US Supreme Court again for many years following the conclusion of the Monkey Trial in 1925. It would appear then in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) and in this case, forty years after Scopes, the US Supreme Court decided 1 The introduction of secular critical theory, or some such methodology, into the academy would be opposed with a ferocity equal to or greater than that which irrationally attacked critical race theory. 22 The charges against Scopes were dismissed because of an error in the legal proceedings, which had nothing to do with the Butler Act at all. This allowed the court to support the Butler Act but prevented the opposing party from appealing the decision. The court supported the Butler Act while also reaching a decision which prevented Scopes et al. from appealing it further. 3 unanimously (7-0) that a law which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the classroom violated both, the instructor’s free speech rights and the establishment clause of the US Constitution. The presence of a more secular discourse in court decisions and public attitudes can be seen, following Scopes and Prior to Epperson, in a variety of cases which demonstrate the courts vision following Scopes and would extend through the rest of the 20th century while maintaining some influence into the 21st. In McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), McCollum argued that the teaching of voluntary religious classes in public schools was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The US Supreme Court supported this argument with an (8-1) decision. In Engel v. Vitale (1962) the court ruled (6-1) that the reading of prayers in public schools was a violation of the establishment clause even following an argument which described the prayers as “voluntary” and “nondenominational”. In other words, the New York State Board of Regents did not require the reading of a particular prayer in its schools, it merely permitted the voluntary reading of prayers in state classrooms, but even this voluntary permission was too much for the court at the time to approve. In Abington v. Schempp (1963) the court ruled that laws requiring the public reading of prayers and parts of the Bible in Pennsylvania was, again, a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.3 In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) the court ruled in cases from Pennsylvania and Rhode Island that state statutes which provided for the funding of non-public, religious schools from government resources was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Separate rulings were submitted to the two states, Pennsylvania (8-0) and 3 This case was consolidated with a similar case in Maryland at the time which contained the same content ntained in in a different state’s laws. 4 Rhode Island (8-1). In Stone v. Graham (1980) the court ruled (5-4) that a Kentucky law which required a posting of the Ten Commandments in state classrooms was a violation of the establishment clause to the First Amendment. In Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) the court ruled (6-3) that an Alabama law which permitted teachers in Alabama classrooms to conduct a moment of silent prayer in the classroom was also a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. In addition to this series of cases, which focused primarily on interpretations of the First Amendment, emphasizing the freedom of speech, the freedom to worship, and the freedom from religious influence, Green v. Connally (1971) connected these issues with the struggle to desegregate schools later in the century. Randal Balmer in “The Real Origins of the Religious Right” (2014) argued that the development and growth of conservative Christian political power in the US had its origins in this case, which opposed the desire of Christian schools in the American south to remain segregated following Brown v. The Board of Education (1954). This assertion opposed the more commonly accepted belief that the origins of this movement followed in the wake of, and in response to, Roe v. Wade (1973). The Moral Majority and the Heritage foundation’s original Mandate for Leadership (1979) were products of this movement which predate and have become today’s Christian Nationalism, and Project 2025, which serve as ideological foundation for Donald Trump’s Christian Evangelicals and the conservative Christian dominance present in today’s US Supreme Court. Bob Jones University and Jerry Falwell’s Lynchburg Christian Academy, which would later become Liberty Christian Academy and would associate itself with Falwell’s Liberty University, were two of the segregation academies effected by this decision, and this group of schools would continue to defend their racist policies 5 through to Bob Jones University v. United States (1982), in which the court would reach a decision (8-1) reaffirming the precedent set in Green v. Connally.4 It could be argued that these segregation academy cases functioned as a turning point leading toward a more anti-secular court, despite their pro-secular decisions, in a manner similar to the way Scopes previously functioned to guide the court in a pro-secular direction despite the Tennessee Supreme Court’s anti-secular ruling. The series of decisions, following Scopes, demonstrated a rather consistent reading of the constitution that sought to limit the power and influence of religion in public schools. This interpretation of the First Amendment would, however, cease to shape the opinions of the court with the appointment of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett, by President Donald Trump in 2017 through 2020. This new court would reject most all such precedent and would permit conservative Christians and Christian Nationalists to pursue goals that could not have been pursued in most of the previous century. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) this most recent version of the court, built of judges recommended to their appointing presidents by the Heritage Foundation, the court decided (6-3) that prayers led by a high school football coach on the field following games was not a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution and that a prohibition of this act violated his first amendment rights.56 Included in this decision specifically was a rejection of the Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) Lemon Test, which had served as precedent in 4 The one dissenting vote in this case was that of William Rehnquiest, whose ties to the Heritage Foundation and conservative Christian ideology would lead to his appointment by Pres. Ronald Reagan as Chief Justice to the court. 5 These six Judges were exactly those six appointed by Bush, Bush, and Trump. 6 Ketanji Brown Jackson had been appointed to the court by Pres. Biden three days prior to the writing of this decision 6 cases similar to those contained within this forward.7 “A consideration of ‘historical practices and understandings’” was seen by this group of conservative judges as reason for their opposition to the Lemon Test’s validity, and their opinion can be seen, or should be seen, as opposing this validity not only within the case but through all legal action connected with interpretations of these portions of the First Amendment. Just prior to Kennedy v. Bremerton, in a case more completely similar to Lemon v. Kurtzman, this same court ruled (6-3) that the public funding of religious schooling did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. State law in Maine provided vouchers for students attending private school in rural areas where little access to public schooling was available, but prohibited the use of these vouchers to fund payments to private religious schools. Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, serving in the Trump administration, argued that this restriction violated the students parent’s rights to freedom of choice, and the court agreed, describing this state law as acting in violation of the Free Exercise portion of the First Amendment. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023) this court ruled again (6-3), with Jackson though replacing Breyer in the minority, that freedom of choice, as contained within the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, permitted a business owner to prevent certain customers from purchasing her products/services. The court in Green v. Connally (1971) had decided that religious belief did not permit acts of prejudice otherwise prohibited by the law. This new court reached the opposite conclusion, seeing a private business owner as entitled to acts of prejudice 7 The “Lemon Test”, Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), determined that government can assist religion only if (1) the primary purpose of the assistance is secular, (2) the assistance must neither promote nor inhibit religion, and (3) there is no excessive entanglement between church and state. 7 when these acts are seen as being connected to that person’s religious beliefs. The prejudice contained within the Green v. Connally case was racist in nature, while the prejudice contained within 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is sexist in nature, but each see the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment as permitting, or failing to permit, prejudice in wholly different manners. This compelling shift in legal understandings, present in the Roberts court, empowers and motivates Christian Nationalists and other conservative Christians in the nation today to pursue goals that could not have been effectively pursued in the decades just prior to this time. This shift within the court has shaped an environment in which on June 19, 2024, Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana signed a law which requires Louisiana public schools to display a copy of the ten commandments in all of its classrooms, and a week later, on June 27, 2024, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, posted a mandate informing the superintendents of the state’s school districts that “all Oklahoma schools” would be “required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specific grade levels, e.g., grades 5-12.” On June 18, 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbot signed into law legislation which would permit Texas schools to hire or recruit volunteer chaplains to serve as counselors in Texas public schools. Governor Ron DeSantis passed similar legislation into law in Florida on Apr. 18, 2024.8 During the same period of time a number of Christian organizations and groups have worked in tandem with local schools and districts to create religious programs, not performed on school property, which students can leave the school to attend during the school day. (The students can choose to 8 According to research performed by “the Interfaith Alliance, an organization advocating for religious freedom and democracy, 13 other state legislatures,” including Florida, listed above, “have considered similar proposals. These states include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah.” 8 participate in these religious activities, in some cases, as a substitute for courses like music, art, and physical education, in addition to non-academic activities like study hall and lunch.) Included in this group of organizations is LifeWise Academy with its base in Hilliard, Ohio, founded in 2018, with an original goal to be active in 25 schools by 2025. LifeWise surpassed this goal completely, with ties to 300 schools in a dozen states by March of 2024. Section 3313.6022 of the Ohio Revised Code permitted the development of the LifeWise Academy, with that ordinance itself being supported by the US Supreme Court’s decision (6-3) in Zorach v. Clauson (1952) that religious activities could be permitted alongside the school day when those activities were not funded by the state and were not performed on school property.9 The legislations, ordinances, and actions, listed in the paragraph above, were in some cases required, in other cases suggested, and in others only permitted. All are presently being opposed by school districts, teachers, parents, and students in the states where each has been initiated. Additionally, these cases have gathered the attention of the ACLU, The Freedom from Religion Foundation, the Interfaith Alliance, and other such legal, political, and social organizations. Much of this ignores or confronts legal precedent developed through the nation’s recent history, as described above, some of it works more subtly to challenge such precedent, while some of it merely acts, with significant political enthusiasm, to pursue goals already permitted within past precedent. Prior to the present Roberts court there was no absence of desire by Christians in the US to increase the influence and presence of Christianity in the nation’s public schools and public 9 The presence of Church of Latter Day Saints Seminary Buildings adjacent to public schools throughout Utah, and in parts of Idaho and Arizona predate the present growth of off-property religious education occurring alongside American public schools. That church’s first seminary building was “constructed across the street from the Granite High School, Salt Lake City, Utah, circa 1912.” (LDS) 9 spaces. The Red Scare (1947-1957) would see Christian Americans united in a war against godless communists. In 1954 “under God” was added to the nation’s Pledge of Allegiance, recited by students daily across the nation. In 1955 “In God we trust” would become lawfully required on all US currency, and in 1956 “In God we trust” would also replace “E Pluribus Unum” as the nation’s motto. These events would be followed by the organizational influence of the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, described above, and the movement from the Tea Party through MAGA, which saw the rise of conservative Christian influence in American politics tied specifically to the Christian Nationalist movement which holds such influence in the nation’s politics in general and in the Roberts Supreme Court specifically. An understanding of how the secular functions in American politics, and how the present Roberts court differs radically from those which preceded it, connects with an understanding of secular politics and anti-secular discourse foundationally rooted in “the separation of church and state” with its origins in Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists written in the first year of his presidency (1802), following the ratification of the US Constitution (1788), and addition of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution (1791). In that letter, Jefferson stated: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Erroneously many believe that the Constitution itself mentions “the separation of church and state” specifically, but in fact the constitution does not contain this wording at all. It’s presence in US law followed only from the Supreme Court’s use of the Danbury Letter in interpretations of the First Amendment’s to the Constitution. Reference to the letter was first included in the 10 court’s Reynolds v. United States (1879) ruling in which the court decided that the Free Exercise of Religion contained within the amendment protected the individual’s freedom to believe as that individual wished to believe, but it did not grant the individual freedom to act in violation of the law.10 The court next referenced the Danbury Letter in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), in a case more closely connected to the content of this forward to this dissertation. In this case the court ruled (5-4) that the use of public buses as transportation for students in religious schools was not a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Ironically, perhaps, although the court decided that such spending was not a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the majority opinion, written by Hugo Black, which referenced Jefferson’s letter, strongly emphasized the necessity of a well-established separation between church and state, such as that contained within Jefferson’s letter. The emphatic need for such separation, as written by Black, can be seen as inserting “the separation of church and state” into legal proceedings and public discourse from that date forward, and can be seen as foundationally effecting the court’s decisions in the cases described above from Scopes through to the present Roberts court. Black’s understanding of US law, following Jefferson’s guidance, required the presence of an effective “wall” that would serve to stand between matters of church and state. The Roberts court places less emphasis upon the need for such separation and sees the government’s use of a wall of separation as more impinging on a citizen’s religious freedom and freedom of speech, than requiring that citizen’s government to remain apart from connections to the church which promote and benefits that church’s interests. Free Exercise, the freedom of religion, connects in this court’s vision with a liberal freedom of speech. 10 Reynolds was a Mormon who argued that polygamy, which was illegal at the time, should be permitted to him in connection to his free exercise of religion included in the First Amendment. 11 This forward to this dissertation, with the exception of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2022), has focused mostly on matters in which the US legal system has become involved in cases regulating the separation of church and state in American academics. A focus on this matter could easily be expanded into a separate dissertation of its own, and additionally this forward has not researched and described similar cases originating in other public places, which would include government buildings, American businesses, public parks, and more. The purpose of this forward to this dissertation was to describe how uniquely the present American legal/political context must be seen as actively motivated to prevent the promotion of any type of secular discourse. The empowered desire of many in this country to see the US as a specifically Christian nation drives them to use its laws and education system to promote this vision. The description of the US as a secular nation, either historically or presently, opposes all that they wish to pursue politically, legally, academically, economically, culturally, socially, … . They promote religion/Christianity and see secularism as opposing their interests as McCarthey’s followers saw godless communism during the Second Red Scare as acting with hostility toward Christian Americans at the end of the second World War. Any effort to enact an effective and substantial teaching of secularism in American public schools and/or Universities would be opposed with the same energy which is presently asserted from a desire to insert Christianity forcefully into those same institutions. The contents of the dissertation which follows do not work to present an argument specifically opposing this insertion of Christianity, or any other religiosity, into American schools. It does though argue for the development of a methodology, secular critical theory, which could, or should, most certainly be used to make such an argument, 12 as part of a larger more informed, inclusive and ethical discourse of the secular and secularism in America today. 13 INTRODUCTION An understanding of the “secular” in the United States must begin with a recognition of the separation of church and state as it is expressed in the first line, of The First Amendment, to the US Constitution. “Congress shall enact no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof.” This understanding of the secular in its connection to the separation of church and state in the political world must recognize the historical context which led the writers to place it so importantly at the beginning of the Bill of Rights, and must recognize how substantially this context has changed in the centuries following its creation. The Bill of Rights (1791) followed soon after the ratification of the original Constitution (1787) and placed each of them very much in the wake of the Religious Wars which led to the death of millions in Europe across the centuries prior to its inception. These wars between nations led to and/or accompanied religious laws within these same nations requiring its citizens to identify and/or participate in religious traditions which were tied to the power of the state. Following from this context the requirement that “Congress shall enact no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof” should be seen as working to prevent any particular religion from gaining the power within the government to dictate the actions and beliefs of its citizens. It worked to prevent one religious group from oppressing other religious groups. It was designed to promote religious freedom, not to restrict it as it does so clearly express. A modern vision which sees the “secular state” as prohibiting the free exercise of one’s personal religious beliefs does not associate with the reason for the separation of church and state as it was expressed in the amendment. The fear of the loss of religious freedom at that time did not include a fear that a secular/nonreligious power would rob people of their freedom to believe 14 as they wished. Separation of church and state did nothing but prevent one religion from gaining the power to oppress another. This context foundationally shapes a substantial portion of what can be seen as “secular” within the American tradition, emphasizing the relationship between church and state as it functions within the US government. This dissertation though will seek to examine the secular in a context which resists a desire that some may have to limit the discussion in such a manner. It will describe the secular as functioning outside of the limits which religious authorities seek to impose upon it. It will see the secular as resisting not only religious authority, but also a full range of ideologies which seek to present themselves as being essentially positively true and apart from public critique. It will discuss how the creation of such “sacred” truths and symbols connects to a personal desire to create identity and to stabilize that identity in a world built more accurately of ambiguity, contingency and change. Particularly, this dissertation will work to examine the presence of the “secular” and of “secularism” within the American world, exploring the contexts which lead to a contemporary, 21st century, understanding of the terms. Because of this focus upon an American understanding of the terms this dissertation will focus largely upon understandings of the terms as they have been shaped by Christians thinkers in the American world, and will not explore other understandings of the secular as they would be shaped within other religious traditions within or apart from the specific American context. It will focus more on the pedagogical, than the political, and examine how the American university system avoids or ignores a study of the secular and/or secularism silencing voices or perspectives that might challenge or critique the sacred as it functions within American culture. It will demonstrate how this situation mirrors and 15 matches that which shapes the larger encompassing American cultural situation in which it is immersed, highlighting the influence of religious hegemony in its ability to influence a discussion of the secular within and beyond the university. The US can be described as a secular nation in which the constitutional separation of church and state works to prevent the undue influence of religion in city, state and federal governments. This separation, however, is marginal. The constitution demands that “no religious test shall ever be required” as qualification for holding public office in the US. Despite this prohibition though nonbelievers are excluded almost completely from holding any representative office within the federal government. A patriotic understanding of American nationalism commonly contains the union of “God and Country”, American currencies proclaim gloriously that “In God We Trust”, and the nation’s political figures repeatedly and consistently end public speech acts with the declaration, “God Bless America.” Certainly, the university system does not contain such superfluous excess. It does not recreate the performative celebration of the religious in a manner similar to that performed by members of public office. It does though avoid any substantial critique of it perpetuating the reproduction of ideology and acts whose critique should be part of an effective education system. American Studies could particularly be expected to participate in such critique. The interdisciplinary model which shapes it guides it to collaborate and interact with other academic fields: Marxism, Feminism, Race Studies, Gender Studies, Women’s Studies, Native American Studies, and more. Each of these fields works to deconstruct structural determinants which function to create and perpetuate imbalances of power, seeking to create understandings which can empower the oppressed to fight against oppressive power. American Studies does not 16 however have the opportunity to work alongside a Secular Studies field, or to reference a developed Secular Criticism. It cannot critique the sacred, or the religious, following precedents established through a history of similar, established, academic work. It cannot follow in the footsteps of another, because that other does not exist. But, can it, or should it, recognize the absence and work independently to fill it? This dissertation will seek to show the profound absence of any critical theory foundationally based upon an understanding of the secular within American academics. It will argue that the absence of such work functions significantly to silence discourse(s) that should effectively participate in social, cultural and academic work, and it will demonstrate how such work can be enacted as a critical tool effective as a part of American Studies. It will participate in constructing an understanding of the “secular”, and position the secular within an understanding of “secularization”, “secularity”, “secularism”, and it will describe what it may mean to be a “secularist.” It will shape an understanding of one thing, Secular Studies, and another thing, Secular Criticism, showing where they overlap and where they diverge. It will seek to fill, only partially, all the gaps left in the absence of any field devoted to a study of any of it. Chapter One: What is Secularism? (Part I):A Genealogical/Etymological Examination of the “Secular” in History, will historically demonstrate how the authority of the church in the Middle Ages shaped a meaning for the secular as a product of its use in social discourse at the time. It will show that this structural meaning, shaped by the church, would be reproduced for centuries, and it will prepare the reader to understand the continued influence of religiosity in a discourse of the secular even as accepted definitions of the secular transformed over time. This 17 genealogy will follow the “secular” from its first use in the 13th century, with its roots in Latin and Early French, through the Early Modern period, the Holy Wars, and up through the Enlightenment, showing the stable and consistent usage of the term throughout it all. It will end in the 19th century prior to George Holyoake’s first use of the term “secularism” in a period in which the “secular” would begin to be understood differently, even as the church would seek, perhaps successfully, to control the meaning and usage of the term. Chapter Two, What is Secularism? (Part 2):The Secular in a Changing World, will show how an understanding of the “secular” would be reshaped through the 19th and 20th centuries, constructing understandings of the secular as they work in the world today. It will begin, as the first chapter ended, expanding an understanding of Holyoake’s usage goals in his creation of “secularism”. It will show how his use of the secular worked to shape an understanding of the world separate from a transcendental, religious, understanding. It will notice how the politically secular, similarly, would function to reconstruct sovereignty as modern nation/states became more and more detached from religious influence. It will discuss Weber’s “secularization”, comparing it and contrasting it with other aspects of the secular and secularism. It will critique a conflation of secularism with atheism, secularist with atheist, and will trace parts of the history of atheism, agnosticism, and such, through modern American history. Its goal throughout will be to deconstruct the secular allowing for an understanding of the term shaped through a context permitting a greater understanding of the term(s) than that which could be enforced through a limiting definition of the term(s). Chapter Three, The American Secular University (Part One):The Continued Dominance of the Church in the Presentation of the Secular in 20th/21st Century American Academics, will 18 demonstrate the significant influence of religious voices in the creation of academic and cultural discourses which shape an understanding of the secular and secularism in the American academy today. It will present an understanding of the secular as it is shaped by anti-secular voices and show how this anti-secular discourse works to hegemonically shape and influence most of what is presented in the academic and cultural world. It will examine the work of Charles Taylor who is seen by many as representing, most completely, a contemporary understanding of the secular, looking particularly at his brick of a text, A Secular Age, while noting the influence of other authors and ideologies which associate closely with his perspective. Chapter Four, The American Secular University (Part 2): Secular Criticism and, Secular Studies, will study the small presence of particularly secular voices within American academics in the present and in recent history. It will look at Edward Said’s “Secular Criticism” seeing its methodology as connected most completely to the cultural text and will contrast it with Phil Zuckerman’s “Secular Studies” whose methodology examines the secular person, sociologically and/or anthropologically. Chapter Five, Secular Critical Theory/ Methodology and Pedagogy, will seek to create a methodology separate from, but connected to, each; a methodology like Said’s which sees the secular as functioning independently from the religious, but which moves critique beyond the text and into a more direct relation to a personal, cultural world, in a manner more directly political as performed by Zuckerman. The methodology will reject the limited constraints of the secular/religious binary, expanding an understanding of the secular by framing it in relation to the sacred instead of the religious, shaping a methodology connected to a secular/sacred binary. 19 This rejection of the secular/religious binary will empower the secular to function as a critical tool capable for use in the deconstruction of an array of protected things. The use of the “sacred” as foundational term within this methodology will see the “sacred” as working primarily to inhibit, or prohibit, critique. Too commonly, the sacred lives connotatively associated with the good. This methodology will see the sacred more expansively as containing a greater range of things. It will understand that Hell is a sacred place in a manner similar to the Biblical Heaven. Foundationally this sacred will arise not from a quality contained within the sacred thing, but will follow from a personal desire to protect an imaginary understanding of the world, an imagined understanding which portrays itself as being real, essential and necessary. This imaginary is that imaginary which Lacan described, and the fear of the real can be associated with Sartre’s description of the fear of freedom. The sacred must be defended. The imaginary depends upon it. Without the sacred, one would be forced to interact with the Other, with the world, alone, torn apart from the imaginary. “Secular Criticism” as such, to use Said’s terminology, or “Secular Critical Theory”, to speak that which cannot be spoken, following this reconstruction would be quite capable of critiquing religion, and the powers which arise from a connection to its influence. The more useful association though with the sacred will additionally allow a critique of nationalism, militarism, commercialism, family values, and on and on and on. It will seek to critique those things which have been entitled to protection from criticism. In doing so it will be performing acts similar to those enacted by Feminism, Race Studies, Gender Studies… It will seek to oppose the sacred, exposing the emperor to critique that has been forbidden, seeking a vision of the world unclouded by the imaginary. 20 CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART I) In his short essay “What is Fascism?” George Orwell failed to answer the question his title asks. Instead, he suggested that the use of the term at the time (1944, then, and perhaps equally so today) had become “almost entirely meaningless.” The misuse of the word, he proposed, led to a situation in which we cannot form “a clear and generally accepted definition of it.” “To say why” such a definition would be impossible, he decided, “would take too long.” A rudimentary understanding of language would suggest that “a clear and generally accepted definition”, would function as a most suitable response to the question, “What is secularism?” A more complete answer however may follow from a description of why a clear and generally accepted definition may be too difficult, even if such an analysis “would take too long.” The first part of this chapter will work towards answering the question, “What is secularism?”, by examining a history of its foundational development in a study of the “secular”. This is necessary as the “secular” appeared in print many centuries before its linguistic offspring, “secularism,” would become a part of the English language. This study will seek to follow the guidance of Michel Foucault and Ludwig Wittgenstein in shaping an exploration of the term. From Foucault the chapter will seek to demonstrate what authority worked to shape an understanding of the term, and from Wittgenstein it will present meaning as following from the use of the word within the context of the culture in which it is immersed. Each of the strategies will be formatted within the study of structural linguistics as developed by Ferdinand de Saussure and redeveloped/deconstructed by Jacques Derrida. The chapter will begin with the 21 first use of the “secular” in the English language in the late 13th century and will end just prior to the first use of “secularism” in the middle of the 19th century. A more complete understanding of Foucault’s contribution to this document can follow from an examination of the relationship between knowledge and power as he formatted it. Foucault saw knowledge as being constructed by power. The presence of meaning in the world from this perspective rejects an essentialist attachment to an imaginary world in which meaning, significance and knowledge exist prior to or independently from their creation in a human world. His analysis of culture and language therefore connected very much with a study of the powers which framed and shaped the discourses which he saw as being foundationally determinant to the construction of linguistic meaning. A more general understanding of structural linguistics sees meaning as being constructed culturally within the human community, while Foucault's methodology works more specifically to pinpoint the particular authorities which most significantly influence the construction of meaning within distinct social/cultural discourses. As such, discussion of gender would be shaped and determined by different authority groups than a discussion of labor practices in a particular field. Likewise, a discussion of mental health would be framed under the influence and guidance of members of a community which is quite different from that which influences the discussion of professional sports in an American consumer market. Following this guidance this dissertation will examine what different influences have contributed to an understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” from its origins through to its use in the present in American culture and academics. 22 Wittgenstein’s study of language overlaps and corresponds very much with that of Foucault.11 His use theory rejects an essentialist understanding of language, which sees language as working to determine meaning, in a manner similar to that formulated by Foucault. His work was different though as he focused more attention on how meaning was created than on what power influenced that creation. He was less concerned with who shaped a text’s meaning than he was with the use practice that developed meaning. Wittgenstein asks, “How was a word used?”, while Foucault asks, “Who determined how a word should be used?” In 20th century America the word “cool” acquired new meaning, additional meaning, as parts of the American public began to use it differently. It no longer functioned only as a description of temperature. It began to describe that which was good, positive, hip and/or trendy. The word acquired this new meaning simply because people began to use it that way. The “secular” similarly held a particular meaning connected with its use in one place, in one period of time, when it was first used, and saw that meaning change as its use changed across time. This chapter will begin with an examination of how use meaning shaped an understanding of the “secular” originally and will connect that use meaning with the authorizing power which constructed that meaning. From this beginning the dissertation will study how changes in use and the changes in the authorities which determined this use would lead to an understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” as they function in the world today. The Oxford English Dictionary records “secular” as first occurring in print in the English language in the year 1290. It records two quotations from The South English Legendaries, a 11 Wittgenstein’s use theory in language occurred in his later writings and diverged from earlier work he had done in connection with an understanding of language. His earlier analysis of language saw language as working more toward representing a variety of concrete ideas, than as functioning to show how people influenced and created meaning. 23 series of manuscripts which record the history of the lives of saints in the late 13th century and creates separate definitions in reference to each of the uses. The first quotation refers to a member of the clergy doing work in the world outside of the holy church.12 The second quotation describes ordinary work done by members of the general population in the common physical and social world. The definition which the OED connects to the first quote seems to describe this work being done as valuable and significant13, while the definition connected to the second quote describes activities that fail to enact a similar significant value.14 The oppositional binary that frames each of these definitions is the secular/religious binary in which an understanding of the two terms is shaped by an understanding of their difference.15 This difference at the time represented different parts of a united Christian church and was not used at all to represent anything in opposition to the church or to a belief in God or Gods. Etymologically the Middle English seculer16 followed from the Old French seculer and the Latin saeculāris which rooted the “secular” in an understanding of a physical world that existed as a limited inferior portion of a greater all-encompassing divine reality. This understanding of the physical, “secular”, world saw the “secular” as existing not in opposition to a Christian understanding of the world; it saw the “secular” instead as being dependently attached to the 12 I. Of or pertaining to the world.1. Ecclesiastical. a. Of members of the clergy: Living ‘in the world’ and not in monastic seclusion, as distinguished from ‘regular’ and ‘religious’. secular canon:see CANON n.2 1 13I. Of or pertaining to the world. a. Belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the church and religion; civil, lay, temporal. Chiefly used as a negative term, with the meaning non-ecclesiastical, non-religious, or non-sacred. 14 I. Of or pertaining to the world. a. Belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the church and religion; civil, lay, temporal. Chiefly used as a negative term, with the meaning non-ecclesiastical, non-religious, or non-sacred. 15 This secular/religious binary which framed an understanding of the first use of the “secular” would persist as significantly important to an understanding of the “secular” even as its meaning and use would change over the years. This persistence will be apparent through this and the following chapters and a deconstruction of this binary will be central to developing a more academically useful understanding of the term in the final chapters. 16 Middle English–1500s seculer, Middle English seculere (Middle English seculeer, secler, Middle English seclere, Middle English seculier), Middle English– secular. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27149#eid10098055 24 religious. Certainly this understanding of the “secular” as part of a secular/religious binary saw the secular as inferior to the religious, but it did not see the secular as being in conflict with the religious as it is commonly seen in the modern world. One version of the secular would bind it closely to the work of the church seeing it as serving the church in manners separate from those connected specifically with the spiritual and transcendent, while the other version of the secular would keep it separate from the functions of the church representing it as being common, vulgar, and of lesser value. In neither case though would the secular be seen as motivated by interests oppositional to the church. The respected secular described the activities of the church performed in the world outside of the walls of the church, while the vulgar secular described common aspects of the physical world that had no connection to the church or to the transcendent. “The bells of the horses, things simply secular, …” demonstrate that which has no connection to the church, and “a secular building” … “fitted up as a temporary house of prayer” shows some connection to the church but no connection to the holy, while descriptions of “secular priests” working in “secular canons” shows the holy church being active in the common, secular, world. (OED) These closely bound understandings of the secular would remain consistent from its first uses through to the later 19th century. Only then would the secular world begin to be seen as separate from and/or in opposition to a Christian, and religious, one. From its first use in 1290 up and through the Enlightenment the use and meaning of the “secular” would remain consistent even as the singular authority of the Catholic church would be lost in the Protestant Reformation and in the social transformations that would follow. The European world would be altered significantly during this period but the dominance of a Christian religious perspective would remain in place through it all. In 1290 the Catholic church 25 would control most of that which would be described as educational, social, and cultural. The Protestant Reformation in 1517 would then interrupt the hegemonic authority of the Catholic church but this shift would be one in which Catholic hegemony would be replaced only by a revised Christian hegemony that continued a vision of the world not completely dissimilar to a singularly Catholic understanding. The Enlightenment would begin as the absolute dominance of the Christian Church was diminishing in matters cultural, political, and educational. The printing press provided a method for the distribution of information separate from that provided by the church, a new understanding of political sovereignty dependent upon the consent of the people challenged versions of authority tied too completely to the church, and a growing population reduced the social isolation which empowered the church in its relationship to its followers. Charles Taylor would see this significant period of time as one in which it was “virtually impossible not to believe in God.” “Atheism” would not become a part of the English language until 1587 and its usage would not connect with the “secular” and/or “secularism” for many centuries. Sovereign consent and the printing press would disrupt the absolute hegemony of the Christian Church in the shaping of people’s understanding of the world, but Christian faith would continue to provide a foundational understanding for European people in a world that was becoming more aware of the social constructions which shape alternative understandings. The church as a cultural and political institution had lost much of its power, but Christianity remained completely dominant as a foundational ideology. The possibility for a different use and understanding of the “secular” was slowly being processed but the completion of this process would not occur for a very long time. 26 The posting of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, has been seen as the singular act which sparked the Protestant Reformation in a manner similar to the way the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand has been described as the particular event which started the First World War. Each event though happened within a context that was necessary to empower its influence, and the chain of events which flowed from their beginnings need not necessarily be seen as determined by them. Martin Luther was not the first religious leader in Western Europe to express frustration with the actions and organization of the Catholic church, and parts of the European population had feelings of dissatisfaction with the church for years prior to reading or hearing the content of Luther’s Theses. With this context in mind, a vision of the 95 Theses on the church’s door should perhaps be seen as only symbolically important. They were, after all, written in Latin and would have been read by only a group of Christian academics and leaders present in Wittenberg at the time. The more significant influential power generated from the Theses arose from the fact that they were translated into German and printed and distributed, making them available to the public as a market commodity.17 Their content, then, was not key to their influence, instead it was the method by which they were reproduced and shared which worked most effectively to disrupt the dominant influence of the Catholic church in the European world. The European public for the first time had access to information and knowledge separate from that distributed and promoted by the Church. This technology would do more to radicalize change in Europe than the specific content of Luther’s writing. 17 Through the 16th and 17th century the printing press would revolutionize the sharing and spreading of information throughout Western Europe. The publication of the 95 Theses would only coincidentally occur during the beginnings of growth of this technology. 27 The path from the disrupted unity of the Catholic church toward a Europe shaped by an idealized desire for liberty, equality and freedom would not see the power of religion as a primary determinant in the cultural world shrink away peacefully, if at all. Instead the century and a half which followed the spread of Luther’s Theses was filled with the violence of the European Religious Wars which caused the death of millions. The disrupted unity of the one church allowed for a reorganization of the relationship between the church and politics which had also been substantially more united prior to the 16th century. Political sovereignty became detached from the blessings of the one church and a new style of nation/state interacted with and evolved from the militarized empires which had structured the relationship between military and political power through the Middle Ages. It all would push Europe toward the establishment of political and cultural understandings which required less dependence upon or connection to the church. Through it all though Christianity foundationally structured public understandings of the world. The institutional power of the church suffered but the foundational influence of Christian identity and ideology continued to shape an understanding of the world as it was understood through the visions of the European public. The European world would be altered radically in the flow of time from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, through the Religious Wars, into the Enlightenment, and up through the French and American revolutions. From a Foucauldian perspective, the Reformation would substantially impact the authority which determined the use and meaning of the “secular” and the number of voices which contributed to this happening would grow through all the years. This pattern of events would reshape an understanding of the European cultural and political world in a way that would create the possibility of new uses, meanings and understandings of the 28 “secular.” Viewed through a lens congruent with Wittgenstein’s language use analysis, however, the use of the word would not change or diversify until well into the 19th century. The following paragraphs will highlight the texts and events which would lead toward this change. John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, each published in 1689, in the wake of the 30 Years Wars, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, communicate for a modern reader a perspective on the reality of the Western European world at the time. In them he discusses (a) the continued political grief present within a culture filled with tension between conflicting religious systems, (b) an altered understanding of sovereignty present within a more populated and politically active world, and (c) the influence of empiricism, rationalism, reason and science upon human understandings of the world. In the combined pages of these three texts Locke uses the word “secular” only once. He uses the term in his Letter Concerning Toleration in which he argues against situations where government officials use their civil/legislative authority in an effort to require citizens to be members of a particular church and/or to participate in its customs and practices. Within this argument he notes that magistrates fail to agree with one another in religious matters, making them unreliable sources for authority in such matters. He sees them as no more capable of determining the truth about religion than in determining, and agreeing, about other more common, “secular” matters. “The Princes of the world” he wrote, were divided “as much” in regards to religious matters as they were “divided in their secular interests.” This “secular”, as such, described certain nonreligious aspects in the lives of Christian men which were separate from their religious lives. An argument for freedom of religion shaped 29 within this context, then, must be seen as, perhaps, more precisely desiring a freedom from religion. The problem was not one in which nonbelievers were seeking to restrict the abilities of religious people to participate in their religious practices. The problem was one in which rulers within the state wished to impose their particular religious requirements upon others, upon those under their legislative control. From this understanding it should be seen that Locke’s use of the term connected in no way to a future use of the term which would see the “secular” as being responsible for restricting religious freedom or shaping the role of religion within nation/states. He understood the “secular” to denote nothing apart from that which is common in the world juxtaposed against a holy, transcendent, divine, other. The fact that Locke in no way associated the “secular” with the “atheistic”, the “secularist” with the “atheist”, or “secularism” with “atheism”, no longer followed from the absence of a foundation for such terminologies. That long stretch of historical time in which it was “virtually impossible not to believe in God” had passed. (Taylor) As noted above, “Atheism” would first appear in print as part of the English language in 1587, but more than a century later Locke, in connection with the discourse which framed such issues at the time, would not associate one with the other in any manner at all. The Enlightenment had introduced, or expanded, the possibility of nonbelief to the European world. “Atheism” and the “secular” though would remain separate from one another for quite some time. Locke did not see or connect the “secular” with “atheism” in any manner. The “secular” functioned for him as a mere common term requiring little, or no, comment or examination. It was a rather insignificant term within his writing. “Atheism”, however, and more importantly “atheists”, existed as things which required some specific attention. In his Letter Concerning 30 Toleration he takes the time to argue that atheists should be excluded from the toleration he argues should shape a fair and just government. Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. (Locke, LCT, 246) This vilification of atheists, which described them as incapable of living ethical lives, overlaps judgements which would function as a portion of the anti-secular discourse which would follow from a unification of “secularism” and “atheism” in the 19th and 20th centuries. Locke’s separation of the “secular” from the “atheistic” demonstrates one example of a situation in which a future denotation of the term existed separate from the term prior to the association of one with the other. Wittgenstein would describe this situation as one in which the “secular” in Locke’s time was not used to refer to the “atheistic”, and that its meaning would change as its use would change to eventually connect significantly with the “atheistic.” Another example of this situation can be seen in the shifting understanding of “sovereignty” as it moved from the Reformation through the Enlightenment. Locke’s Second Treatise of Government would see consent as being of central importance in authorizing the establishment of power within governmental institutions. Prior to the Reformation sovereignty was seen as being determined by God, through the one united Christian church. Within the Reformation the divine continued to be seen as that which authorized sovereign power within the state, but the rulers of different nations chose different churches as representative of God’s will. Popular consent would eventually come to replace religion, significantly, as the essential foundational basis underpinning sovereignty during the enlightenment and in Locke’s writing. This redetermined 31 methodology for structuring sovereign power would eventually be seen as a “secular” thing, as “atheism” would become seen as a secular thing. In Locke’s time though the “secular” was used in no such way. Similarly, the Enlightenment contained a path toward redetermined understandings of human relations to the world that would eventually come to be seen as being “secular” in nature. Rene Descartes’ work can be seen as preparing for the Age of Enlightenment in which much of this change would occur. His work would emphasize the value of reason as a source or tool necessary for the development of sound scientific and philosophical understandings. Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637) would precede Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by more than fifty years, and each would participate in the development of and growth of Enlightenment ideals which eventually became attached to reconstructed understandings of the “secular” through the 19th and 20th centuries. Empiricism and rationalism worked along with changes in the social and political to expand understandings of the world that were profoundly different from those present through the Middle Ages and into the Reformation. Neither man would refer to any of this change as being “secular”, nor would their peers in the century to follow. They participated though in the development of much that would become the “secular” in the future. In summary, the use and derived meaning of the “secular” from its first use in 1290 through to the 19th century remained consistent with that originally recorded in The South English Legendaries by members of the one Christian church which unified the European population at the time. The one Christian church would lose its dominant influence in matters cultural, educational, political, and more during the Protestant Reformation, but the use meaning 32 of the “secular” would not change at all following this segregation of church authority. Finally, the Protestant Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment that followed it, would see the singular authority of the Christian church(es) in regards to matters cultural and social diminished. Significantly though, during this period of radical change the use meaning of the “secular” would remain unchanged. The Enlightenment finally would lead toward new understandings of the world and would be filled with new authorities which would influence the construction of meaning through different uses of the term(s). 33 CHAPTER TWO: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART II) In this document, to this point, a sense of moving forward through history, through time, could create the illusion that some progress is being made in the pursuit of an answer to the question, “What is secularism?”, that could lead toward a “clear and generally accepted definition” of the term. Returning to Orwell’s text though might help to dispel this notion. To read closely one can become aware of an error which could be made during a more casual first reading of his text. In the essay, Orwell makes reference to time, referring to a situation in which a certain act might “take too long.” The context of the article creates a situation in which one might interpret Orwell’s statement as describing a situation in which it would “take too long” to discover and communicate a singular correct definition of the term, “fascism”. But this is not what he said. He did not say it would “take too long” to define “fascism”. He may have suggested it or implied it indirectly. His more specific statement though was that it would take too long to describe why such a definition was impossible. The difficulty in finding an answer to the question, “why is a clear and generally accepted definition so difficult, or impossible to form”, of course, moves away from Orwell’s specific quandary, into the analysis of more universal linguistic questions, and through this it becomes useful in the pursuit of an understanding of the “secular” and/or “secularism”. The problem as it functions within structural linguistics, following the guidance of Saussure, arises from the situation in which the text/the term/the word/ the signifier fails to connect concretely with anything because that attachment contains no real significance. A word, the signifier, connects to meaning, the signified, only as a product of constructed human choice. The relation of the signifier to the signified can be represented as such: 𝑆𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 . Saussure’s theory asserted that 34 the bar which separated the signifier from the signified functioned to keep them apart from one another and saw any connection that the one had with the other as imaginary, as the product of constructed imagination. Orwell’s “fascism” as signifier sits atop the bar, 𝐹𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚 ???????? , and under the bar the public fails to agree about just what should be there. Saussure’s linguistics described this problem as inherently present within all of language, not only attached to difficult terms like “secularism” and “fascism” and other uncertain words, like “freedom” and “art” which can easily be seen as containing contradiction, ambiguity and difference. He recognized that terms that may seem more concrete, like “chair” or “leaf or “cat”, 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 ????? , 𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑓 ????? , 𝐶𝑎𝑡 ????? , also gather their meanings from an attachment to the signified that is wholly constructed by the human and functions within contingent, historical and cultural worlds. All of language, then, through this interpretative methodology leads back to a version of Orwell’s question and forms a course toward its impossible answer. This chapter, and this dissertation, work to answer the question, “What is secularism?”, through the development of an understanding of the term, which recognizes, and even becomes clearly aware of contradiction, ambiguity, conflict, and contingency as they act to prevent the possibility of discovering a “clear and generally accepted definition” of the term. It could be said that this dissertation sees the desire to concretely attach the signifier to the signified as being more of a barrier toward understanding than as a preferred method.18 Across the history contained within the preceding first chapter the “secular” could be seen as functioning as a term that could be seen as possessing a definition that might be understood as almost being “clear and 18 This statement can be interpreted as moving toward continental methodology within philosophy and away from the more strictly analytic. 35 generally accepted”.19 This second chapter will move the “secular” and “secularism” through time and histories which will place them within a context more similar to that which motivated Orwell’s text. An understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” will be achieved not through the creation of a clear definition, but instead, through an understanding of the abundant meanings and uses (Wittgenstein) attached to the term, and the growing number of authorities and voices (Foucault) who constructed and promoted them. One understanding of the “secular” as it was constructed prior to the Enlightenment can be seen as primarily developed not so much from an understanding of what it is, but instead from an understanding of what it is not. An understanding of linguistic meaning as rooted in difference follows from Saussure’s original structural linguistics, through Claude Levi-Strauss’ work, and up through the post-structural linguistic analysis performed by Jacques Derrida. A child can be seen as beginning to learn language through a methodology which rejects Saussure’s position that the bar separates the signifier from the signified preventing them from forming a concrete relationship with one another. A child may have a flashcard with the word “Dog” on one side, and a picture of a “dog” on the other. Of course, a child does not need to understand that an impossible abundance of images and/or definitions of “Dog” could appear on the opposite side of the card. From Saussure through Strauss and Derrida though the awareness of this problem led to the development of an understanding of meaning in linguistics which follows more accurately from an understanding of how words differ from one another and rejects an understanding of linguistics which wishes to pin the signifier authoritatively to a specific definition or image. 19 Structural linguistics argues, as Orwell would agree, that at no time would the signifier ever attach concretely and authoritatively to the signified, the definition, except as the product of constructed, cultural consent. Meaning only follows as a product of imagination. Therefore the “almost” in the above sentence must be seen as containing substantial importance. 36 Within this methodology the association which a word will have with other words can be described through the use of the term “trace”, in which the term “trace” refers to a word’s connection to and difference from other terms. To understand the signifier “orange” one would perhaps need to understand its relationship to “color”, “red”, “yellow”, “fruit”, “light”, “vision”, “sun”, “sunset”, “rainbow”, “primary”, “secondary”, and the trace that each of these signifiers has with other related signifiers. Trace for “orange” could be plotted as: color/red/yellow/orange/fruit/light/sun/sunset. An understanding of the presence of difference in the shaping of one understanding comes most simply in the presence of terms which are understood through their clear opposition to other words. “Good” and “bad”, “hot” and “cold”, “shallow” and “deep”, are primary examples of this, and much of our understanding of the ‘secular” in the modern world can be seen as being shaped by its oppositional difference from the “religious”. The secular/religious binary functions very much within contemporary discourse in a manner similar to good/bad, hot/cold, and shallow/deep. Prior to the Reformation a more suitable pairing may have been shaped by the secular/holy binary, as the secular functioned then more as a part of the religious community than a thing apart from it. Nonetheless, an understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” which follows from an understanding of difference and trace can shape an understanding of the terms in a manner more complete than that which follows from a desire to construct a definition which will be “clear” and “generally accepted” across the contingency of time and space. The pages which fill the remainder of this chapter will describe a history of developments and events which lead toward a more complete genealogical representation of that which shapes an understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” as they are used in contemporary academic 37 and cultural contexts. The contingent ambiguity of language will prevent this display from forming a simple chronological trajectory as present understandings of terms and their relations to their contexts fail to match the uses and understandings present within the cultural past. Retrospectively the movement of history will contain events which will be described today as being “secular” in nature but which at the time held no connection to the term.20 An understanding of the past is shaped by the present. An understanding of the present is shaped by the past. As such, within this genealogy an understanding of the beginning will depend on an understanding of what will come, and an understanding of the whole will depend upon an understanding of the pieces as they interact throughout the process. This chapter will move forward from a place in which the totality of the “secular” could be understood from nothing more than an understanding of its relationship to the “holy” as the term was used within the Christian community. It will recognize that the primacy of the secular/holy binary transformed through the Religious Wars and the Enlightenment into a secular/religious binary which functioned similarly to its predecessor, but accepted the decreased influence of the church in things cultural and political through the years. It will describe the historical moment in which this binary began to be deconstructed as nonreligious voices worked to remove the “secular” from a codependent relationship with the religious, and will immerse the “secular” within a history of events which allow it to interact with other terms. This interaction will expand possible understandings of the term as its difference from, and relationship to, other signifiers act upon its position in the social/cultural/political world. In the end it will claim that the continued hegemonic influence of church and/or believers has worked to effectively limit 20 The different forms of separation of church and state developed within the American and French revolutions can be described today as “secular” things. The “secular” at the time though was not used to describe such a thing. 38 efforts to construct understandings of the “secular” which separate it from that imposed upon it from an authoritative religious perspective. An examination of the performative aspects of language as it has been shaped by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler can add to an understanding of Wittgenstein’s use theory as the determinant factor underlying the construction of meaning through language in the human world.21 In “Derrida’s Performance” Yonathon Listik describes the performative use of language as shaped by Derrida in reference to the development of the term by J. L. Austin. Language is never uttered in a singular, neutral, sterilized moment. Every word uttered has already been uttered and gains meaning from these past uses, and in this sense every word is parasitic on its previous usages to gain its present meaning. Language carries its past and the possibility of its future (This is the meaning of iterability for Derrida). The possibility of full understanding comes exactly from capturing all the references parasitized. Meeting this demand is evidently impossible. Given that knowing a total context is impossible, an utterance is always on the edge of being misunderstood. Performance as such is built upon the history of performance which preceded it. The use of a word follows from the way the word has been used in the past. Also, though, the use of a word redetermines its use in the future. Butler’s description of “performativity” emphasizes this completely. The individual as cultural subject enacts performances which are determined by the surroundings in which it is immersed. The significance of the fact that the performance is determined by its past though does not prohibit completely its effective agency in shaping future cultural understandings. In each of these cases meaning is shaped most substantially from interaction with the past and sees language use as being shaped by a desire to recreate and conform to past usages. Also, though, in each of these cases language use, and other forms of 21 Derrida’s Performance | Issue 107 | Philosophy Now https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/Derridas_Performance 39 cultural performativity, are seen as having the capability of changing, transforming or redetermining future uses and understandings. Within the process of performativity, within the process of using the constructions of the past to shape the future, most performance, most usage, participates in the recreation of the past, in the refortification of that which preceded it. A student writer will typically be more concerned to find the “right word” in a manner similar to the way the cultural subject would seek to make the proper fashion choice in selection of the next season’s wardrobe. Words can be seen as having proper meanings and the ability to use words “correctly” can demonstrate an individual’s intellectual and social capabilities. Butler’s “performativity” recognizes the power of performance which acts out of accordance with that which is fashionable, proper, or correct. A word’s meaning will be determined most substantially through the repetitious usage of the term in a repeated similar manner, and most usage will seek to reproduce this meaning. Some events though, some occurrences, some performances will reconstruct an understanding of the term. Substantially this performance will be enacted unconsciously and only occasionally will the cultural subject choose to purposefully work to reshape the understanding of a term or to transform the understanding of a cultural situation. Most of the content which will follow through the rest of this chapter, through this abbreviated genealogy of the “secular” and “secularism” from the 18th through the 21st century, will be built of actions and events which unconsciously contributed to a contemporary understanding of the terms in recent cultural and academic settings. It will begin though with George Holyoake’s quite deliberate and intentional desire to reshape an understanding of the 40 “secular” through the creation and first use of the term “secularism” in connection to his work as editor of The Reasoner, a freethought journal published in the middle of the 19th century. George Jacob Holyoake was born in the midst of the industrial revolution on April 13, 1817 in Birmingham, England, son of working class parents, Catherine Groves and George Holyoake. He began to work at the age of 9 alongside his father, a whitesmith, at the Eagle Foundry as part of the substantial child labor workforce present throughout the nation at the time. He would attend academic classes locally through his youth in addition to his work at the foundry and at the age of 18 he began attending classes at the Birmingham Mechanics Institute. He was a strong student and curious reader and during his time at the institute he was introduced by one instructor to the writings and work of socialist/atheist Robert Owen. Robert Owen was born in 1771, one generation prior to Holyoake, into a poverty more substantial than that which would frame the life of George Holyoake in his childhood. He received no real organized education, but like Mr. Holyoake, was a curious reader and educated himself substantially enough to lead him into an active and effective business and political life. He left his home in Wales as a child at the age of 10 to apprentice at a drapery in England and spent the rest of his youth and teens learning and working in that industry until the age of 18. With this experience Owen would move to Manchester, England and through the next decade he would become completely immersed in the textile industry moving from labor to management, and from there to the manufacture and ownership of spinning mules, a new technology, part of the growth which was the industrial revolution. His knowledge and skills would lead him to advance upward within the industry to a place in which he would participate in management and ownership in some of these large businesses. 41 Owen had moved from poverty in his youth to become a successful businessman and property owner while still in his twenties. He was part of the bourgeois ownership class which ran the mills and perpetuated the working conditions which he had suffered as a youth and which would later shape the young life of Mr. Holyoake. Owen was part of the upper class, but his reading and personal education led him away from a willingness to remain impartial to the bleakness of its conditions. He became a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society which engaged him in the pursuit of academic and cultural understandings beyond that which was contained within his life as a business owner and manager. He became interested in movements that sought to eliminate or reduce the hardships of poverty. Through his marriage to Anne Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, owner of the New Lanark cotton mills, he gained the opportunity, with other investors, to take over ownership of the mill. As manager he worked to implement strategies designed to change the quality of life for workers in the mill, reducing or eliminating the hardships which structured the lives of those bound to labor in the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Robert Owen and his investment partners took over ownership of the cotton mill in July of 1799 and Mr. Owen took over full management in 1800. Under his leadership, work hours were reduced to permit employees to have lives beyond the work place. Child workers and adults were provided with radically improved educational opportunities. Health and living conditions were altered seeking to provide employees with a higher quality of life. Importantly, as well, payment for labor provided employees with the ability to purchase a quality of life unavailable to others in competing similar workplaces.22 The New Lanark Mill continued to succeed profitably 22 Payment for labor at the time frequently was built of credits usable only at the company store and most companies had the reputation of inflating prices to the point of creating debt for its employees and profit for the company. 42 under Owen’s new management style and was recognized as a strong model of social reform. His idealism was not supported fully though by the totality of his partner investors and in 1813, after 13 years of management of the company, he stepped down from management selling his shares to his partners and moving forward in pursuit of individual personal goals. In the years and decades following his time at New Lanark Robert Owen would become active as a social revolutionary participating politically in the promotion of legislation and actions designed to promote substantial social change similar to that which he had initiated at New Lanark. In pursuit of this he became a public speaker and writer and publisher of documents promoting social and socialist change. Beyond this he invested the wealth he had earned through factory ownership and management into the development of cooperative social business communities which were ultimately the epitome of his dreams. His writings during this time, and the organized efforts to create change and form communities associated with his ideals, were the content which George Holyoake would experience during his time as a student at the Birmingham Mechanics Institute. Like Owen, Holyoake would become motivated to influence change and improve the quality of lives for people too burdened by the conditions imposed upon them in the growing industrial workplace. Owen’s socialism functioned as the primary aspect of his writing and teachings which influenced Holyoake’s eventual interest. The two men shared similar experiences in their young lives and saw the conditions present within their worlds from similar perspectives. Their values Owen’s Lanark Mill continued to make payments with company notes/credits, but the Lanark Stores sold products and commodities at prices just beyond cost creating a situation entirely different from that developed by its competitors. 43 coincided as Holyoake saw Owen’s work as functioning to lead him toward a better future for the people in their shared worlds. Socialism was the element that drew Holyoake’s interests toward Owen, but it was Owen’s religious skepticism which would come to shape much of the trajectory of Holyoake’s future. The early 19th century saw atheism as gaining some voice in the cultural world that Owen and Holyoake shared. The past days, described in the previous chapter, in which it was impossible to imagine a world without God, had passed. The dominant authority of the church was not so completely accepted as it had been, and voices which sought to challenge this authority were noticed, and often oppressed. Robert Owen’s religious skepticism functioned as a barrier inhibiting the successful development of the cooperative socialist communities he sought to develop in his years after New Lanark. He was able to show the merit and effectiveness of the business and economic strategies which shaped his plans. People supported these things. But they failed to accept his insistence that religion should be kept apart from the development of his plans. The public yearned for a socialism that was tied to a Christian world view. Owen believed that religion interfered with the development of functional ethical communities, the general population though continued to see ethics and morality as being dependent upon ties to the church. Holyoake had been drawn to Owen because of the socialist aspects of his teachings but somewhere along the course of his pursuit of Owen’s politics George Holyoake found himself immersed as well within the atheism that was attached to it. This would lead to the place in which Holyoake would be arrested for blasphemy and would serve a six month sentence in a British jail as consequence for his crime. 44 Owen’s early life spent immersed in labor as a child and as a teen led him to acquire skills and achieve financial success in the textile industry in which he worked. He sought eventually to work to reform that industry and labor in general as a participant within the industry. He would become a speaker and a writer, but through most of his life his work in theory, education and politics would be grounded in a praxis built from ownership, management, and organization. Holyoake’s life trajectory was not exactly similar to Owen’s. Holyoake would spend his adult life working to reform the economy of the industrial world which had shaped his childhood, but following from his education at the Birmingham Mechanics Institute he would no longer be a part of the active industrial labor force. Instead he would commit himself to work as an educator, editor, writer, and speaker. Initially he would seek employment as a teacher working in academic institutions connected with the Mechanics Institute where he had studied, but found his pathway to success in this community blocked because of his commitment to the socialism he had learned through his study of Owen’s work. These difficulties led him, not coincidentally, toward greater involvement in Owen’s work as a reformer in the wake of Owen’s activities at New Lanark. Holyoake found work as an Owenite Social Missionary, travelling, lecturing, and promoting Owen’s efforts to establish cooperative economic social communities. His commitment to this work was shaped most significantly by Owen’s socialism, but through his work as a social missionary he became exposed additionally to other aspects of Owen’s political ideology. Holyoake’s interest in Owen’s religious skepticism was particularly heightened through his association with fellow missionary, Charles Southwell, who was the first editor of the Oracle of Reason, an atheistic periodical, whose publication history began on Nov. 6, 1841. Charles Southwell would continue as editor of the Oracle until he was arrested and jailed for 45 blasphemy at the end of that year. Holyoake would then take over as editor, and serve as editor, until he too was arrested and jailed for blasphemy in the middle of the next year. He was arrested in June, and tried and jailed in August of 1842. Thomas Paterson would follow Holyoake as editor of the Oracle until he too was arrested and jailed for blasphemy in 1843. This year would see Southwell’s release from prison but multiple legal and financial hardships would lead to the Oracle’s last publication in November of that year. The remainder of Holyoake’s life would be committed to participating in or leading movements for reform. The Oracle of Reason would function as a starting point that would lead towards continued future work as writer and editor which would lead to a fifteen year commitment to The Reasoner: Journal of Freethought and Positive Philosophy. He would serve there as its editor and frequent contributor. Through this time and beyond it he would publish multiple books and histories advancing the promotion of the British cooperative movement, socialism, and secularism. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first published use of the term “secularism” as occurring in the pages of the Dec. 10, 1851 publication of The Reasoner. Holyoake intended through the introduction of this new word to organize a political movement grounded in an ideology distinct from that contained within the compartmentalized reaction to religion which was “atheism” at the time. He saw “atheism” as representing a narrow, conflictive response to belief. It was then, as it is today, a negative term defined primarily by what it is not. It is not the belief in god. Holyoake sought to present “secularism” differently, as representing a positive relationship to the physical and material world instead of emphasizing a negative relationship to a religious/holy/transcendent world. 46 In 1854, in Secularism the Practical Philosophy of the People, he would state that, “the term Secularism has been chosen as expressing a certain positive and ethical element, which the terms ‘Infidel’, ‘Sceptic’, ‘Atheist’ do not express”, and he would go on to further develop this vision in his Principles of Secularism in 1871: Secularism is that which seeks the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man to the highest possible point, as the immediate duty of life — which inculcates the practical sufficiency of natural morality apart from Atheism, Theism or the Bible — which selects as its methods of procedure the promotion of human improvement by material means, and proposes these positive agreements as the common bond of union, to all who would regulate life by reason and ennoble it by service. Contained within his development of the idea was the inclusion of a moral duty to participate in the improvement of other people’s lives. This addition to a framing of an understanding of the “secular” had no roots in the term’s early history shaped through the hegemonic influence of the church. It was clear that his path toward “secularism” had grown from his work as a socialist missionary promoting the political, economic, and business goals of Owen. Holyoake had been drawn toward Owen because of these social and economic factors, not because of Owen’s atheism. Eventually though Holyoake’s “secularism” would contain both Owen’s socialism and atheism. (The relationship between the two will come to shape one version of an understanding of the “secular” in the years that will follow and will be discussed further in the chapter, in discussions of The Red Scare and of “Godless Communism”.) Holyoake challenged the church’s desire to limit an understanding of the secular which saw it only in contrast to the religious other, and additionally rejected the church’s perspective which saw the secular as being inferior to, or lesser than, the religious. From the church’s perspective the “secular” was, for centuries, common and vulgar in contrast to the transcendent superiority of the 47 divine as it was articulated through the church. He saw the “secular” as being free to define itself separate from any relationship to the church and saw its historical relationship to the church as one that needed transformation. From Holyoake’s perspective the secular, material, physical, human world represented the positive significant functional part of that contained within the secular/religious binary, while the holy and religious did little but interfere with the pursuit and development of a better world. Holyoake’s significance in this chapter, within this text, follows from his deliberate and conscious desire to reshape the term, and use it specifically to effect change in the world. It would be improper to note his influence as being individually revolutionary because, as already noted, his personal history was rooted in an Owenism which shaped much of what “secularism” would become for him, and because his development and first use of the term “secularism” grew within a culture in which the “secular” was already being transformed into something different than what it had been through the previous many centuries. In addition to Owen’s socialism, Holyoake’s “secularism” would follow from rationalism, empiricism, humanism and other philosophical aspects developed within the Enlightenment. It would precede Darwin’s Origin of Species by only a few years, and function within a cultural world which would soon be influenced by theorists and academics like Marx, Durkheim and Weber. As already noted, Charles Southwell edited the Oracle of Reason before him and was arrested for blasphemy before him; and Charles Bradlaugh who was founder and president of Britain’s National Secular Society in 1866 would come to be seen historically as doing more to shape and influence the direction of the secular in Britain during the years he shared with Holyoake. 48 Bradlaugh had a voice and a presence beyond that which Holyoake was able to present, and Bradlaugh worked to frame an understanding of the “secular” which contrasted with that presented by Holyoake. Holyoake wished to move away from conflict with the church. He wanted to activate something different from “atheism”. Bradlaugh though wished to fight against the church aggressively from a very atheistic position. Holyoake was immersed in it all through his writing and teaching and his desire to shape one understanding of the secular which contrasted with most of its history and with much of what it would become in the future. The actors and events which would shape that future through the rest of that century and into the next will fill the rest of this chapter. Holyoake stands most significantly as that individual who sought with intention to shape and use the “secular” and “secularism” as tools of influence in the world. He sought with intent to shape a meaning for the “secular”. The remainder of this chapter will contain much less intentional focus upon language, but nonetheless will present influences greater than that which Holyoake achieved. Holyoake would reimagine the “secular” seeking to separate it from a codependent relationship with the “religious”. “Secularism” was not religion, but more importantly, for Holyoake, “secularism” was a positive human connection to the world. Holyoake’s “secularism” would contain connections to socialism, humanism, rationalism, and empiricism. The remainder of the 19th and 20th centuries would develop understandings of the “secular” and “secularism” which would agree with these and other connections, while also, at times, opposing these and other connections. A well developed understanding of the terms will contain a knowledge of the many associations and relationships that the “secular” and “secularism” have with other terms and ideas. Holyoake’s substantial contribution to the discourse followed primarily though not 49 from the ways he shaped an understanding of the “secular” through a development of its relationship to a variety of other terms and ideas, but most importantly from his effort to see it as functioning as something more than a negation of the religious. Across time, in the US particularly, Holyoake’s effort to break the “secular” and “secularism” apart from a negative binary which associated them most completely in opposition to religion would fail. The power of religion, of Christianity in particular, would hegemonically determine the shaping of cultural, political, and academic discourses associated with significant portions of the American world. The separation of church and state would successfully prevent any one religion from exclusively controlling politics and education in a manner similar to that exercised by the Christian church prior to the Reformation. The separation of church and state would not though prevent the church, and/or religious community, from effectively manipulating cultural and academic understanding throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. “Secularism” would be conflated with “atheism” most completely by Christians and atheists, and its association with other ideas or beliefs would frequently be executed with a desire to critique those other beliefs.23 A vision of the “secular” as being nothing more than a negative oppositional force acting purely in conflict with religion would ultimately determine much of an understanding of the “secular” and “secularism” in American culture and academics through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st. Other influences and associations determine a more full and complete understanding of the term(s), but in the end Holyoake’s efforts failed to initiate and develop effective change as the power of the religious/Christian community would dominate most discourse associated with the matter. 23 Communism was associated with atheism as a method for attacking communism. Capitalism was associated with Christianity as a means for promoting capitalism. 50 Marx’s communism contrasted quite deliberately with Owen’s socialism. Zizek would, perhaps, describe Owen’s socialism as being nothing more than “capitalism with a human face”. (Zizek, 31) Marx’s communism contained no desire to work to slowly improve the thing that was industrial capitalism in the 19th century. His intentions were revolutionary and included little patience for ameliorative reform. Owen’s goals worked more within the system, functioning as part of the system, designed with little intent to revolt against authority. He did, after all, sit in the chair of authority, as owner, manager, and investor in the businesses he sought to change. His “atheism” too may have been different from Marx’s, but each would see a war with religion as being less important than whichever form of economic change they sought to pursue. Owen would prohibit the inclusion of Christian churches within the cooperative communities he sought to develop in his post-New Lanark years. He was not filled with a desire though to argue for or against the presence of god as part of a metaphysical world. He was concerned only with the power and influence the church held in the social and political world. Similarly, Marx was concerned specifically with the opiate effects of religion upon the working class which allowed them to remain passively acceptant of their condition as laborers under the thumb of a ruling class. The association between things, between atheism and communism, and between secularism and socialism, would be rooted in Owen, and Holyoake, and Marx, and would shape much of a hegemonic understanding of it all as it moved into and through the 20th century. In the US, Marx’s rhetoric would be associated with Stalin and Mao’s praxis and socialism would be conflated most completely with communism. The influence of Owen and Holyoake would hold little influence in the shaping of either, and Marxist theory would be silenced amidst the roar of 51 patriotic nationalism built through two world wars. Good Christian Americans would learn to hate and fear a “godless communism” which was centered imaginarily within the borders of the Soviet Union. “Secularism” would not function as a primary term within much of this rhetoric becoming absorbed into the godlessness of atheism, as socialism was absorbed into the violence of communism. All of it would be tangled together and the meaning of each would effect the meaning of the other, even if, perhaps there was no logic determining any of it. The godlessness of communism functions, of course, in clear opposition to the influence of God in a patriotic American world. In One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Kevin M. Kruse studied the history of an American century in which “God and Country” became a defining principle shaping the population’s vision of the country. In 1956 the US congress would vote to adopt “In God We Trust” as the country’s national motto. This action followed just a year after the congress had passed a law requiring that the same words, “In God We Trust”, appear on all US currency.24 Each of these laws followed just in the wake of Congress’ decision to insert the phrase “under God” into the country’s pledge of allegiance which happened in 1954. Kruse’s work provides an understanding of the powers which shaped a significant part of a vision of the nation, its economy, its military in the years following their influence. He performs the act, as Foucault before him, of connecting power to knowledge, connecting propaganda and text to the functioning of the world in which they are immersed. The hegemonic influence of the church through the Middle ages shaped an understanding of the “secular” through that time. Through the 20th century the influence of the 24 Ironically, legal actions which sought to prevent the phrase, “In God We Trust” from appearing on US currency, referencing a constitutional separation of church and state, would be defeated by a court decision which determined the phrase, “In God We Trust” to be “secular” in nature. 52 church would not hold such absolute power amidst an array of other social, political and cultural influences, but would work instead in collaboration with them. Jean-Paul Sartre would publish his Existentialism is a Humanism in 1946 in the wake of the second world war. Can it be argued similarly that secularism is a humanism? Sartre wished to argue against a vision of existentialism which interpreted it as being nothing more than fatalistic in its description of the human condition. Sartre’s response was to describe existentialism as containing a burden of responsibility within the social world. The individual was burdened with the responsibility of creating and determining his/her personal life significance and was alone in performing this act. The effects though of this action, this agency, do not impact only the actor which lives the act. Instead the performance of the one potentially effects and influences the universal human condition. The one is alone, but the one has responsibility to the other. Sartre attached this responsibility to his understanding of “existentialism” just as Holyoake had attached a similar humanistic responsibility to his understanding of the secular, of “secularism”. Some may argue that “secularism” and “humanism” are the same, as others may argue that “secularism” and “atheism” are the same. Following the transitive method some would additionally argue that “atheism” and “humanism” are the same, or does “atheism” remain apart from the need for social responsibility which Holyoake included in his “secularism”? Does capitalism recognize a responsibility for the other? Does socialism? Saussure would connect them all seeing the meaning of each as dependent upon the other and seeing none as containing its own authorized essence. Sartre would likely agree. Between the wars, between the two Red Scares, in the Scopes Monkey Trial, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant represented for America two visions of its academic future. 53 They performed the roles of lawyers in a performance of law presented to the public very much as theatre. The case was initiated specifically with the intent of creating a public event. Clarence Darrow represented a modern vision of academics rooted in Enlightenment rationalism. William Jennings Bryant represented a vision of academics which saw the Bible as exclusively containing the truth of the world. Tennessee’s Butler Act prohibited the teaching of evolution in its state funded public schools. The Scopes Monkey Trial would come into being following from the desire of some to see the performance of an argument about its merits. Mr. Scopes did not work as an instructor who had a history of teaching evolution in his classroom. His choice to perform that action in class one day was done specifically with the intent to have charges brought against him motivated by a desire to make the debate over the Butler Act a public event. Scientific rationalism was on trial. The public would be judging the influence of Christian fundamentalism as well. Mr. Scopes was found guilty. The tension between science and religion was not resolved. Science had taken the spot of “atheism” in its battle against religion and the association between the two would continue to shape an understanding of “atheism” through the rest of the century, and into the next. Science was tied to atheism. Atheism was tied to science. Was “secularism” connected to it all? Or was it something more humanistic and philosophical? Built for social change in a human world, not for the shaping of rational understandings in the physical world? Emile Durkheim would publish The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life in 1912. In his work he presented religion as being a culturally created artifact owing its existence to the community of people functioning within its domain. As such, this work separated “religion” from “theism”, seeing the cultural institution as being in no way dependent upon the sacred 54 object which functioned as its center. His understanding of the “sacred” coincided completely with his perspective on “religion”. The value of each followed only from the creative imaginations of the people active within their religious communities. His vision, as such, challenges the authority which can be seen as the necessary essential foundation for theistic religiosity, and can be seen as emptying religion of most of its validity. Durkheim’s analysis pursued no such trajectory. Instead of invalidating religion because of its failure to be grounded in the essential truth of a divine reality, he chose to sanction its validity following from its performative functionality as representative of a public consciousness. He did not see religion like Owen, Holyoake, and Marx, as an institution or ideology guilty of prohibiting the pursuit of positive social change. Instead he saw religion as functioning effectively to promote the development and maintenance of shared community values. All of this can be complicated through the addition of the concept of “alienation” as developed by Hegel in his phenomenologies. Max Weber has been credited with participating in the advancement of the “secularization” of the modern western world. He did not use this term specifically, nor did he use the term, “demystification”, which can be seen as synonymous with it. This is all complicated by the fact that none of Weber’s writings were in English and all efforts at translation which precede acts of interpretation create a range of possible associations in the relationships between associatively related signifiers. Nietzsche’s “death of God”, before Hegel, would warn of the alienation following from the loss of a faith in the sacred, which would leave the community of people responsible for itself. Secularization, or demystification, can be seen simply as the reduction in the presence of myth within an understanding of the world which follows from practical, most notably scientific, 55 explanations of the world. Simply put, Copernicus et al. interfered with the myth which saw Apollo pulling the sun around the world behind his chariot. On the surface, as such, then, secularization, or demystification, can be seen as associating with or being equal to progress. Weber though, and Durkheim, were not completely on board with such a vision. Each of them saw religion as lacking a rational, scientific, authoritative foundation, but each of them also saw religion as participating in necessary and valuable parts of the human social world. Weber saw scientific progress within the academy as creating alienation within the community even as it developed potential material progress in the world. His romanticization of religion coincided with the vision of religion held by Durkheim. Each of them saw religion as lacking any valid essential authority, but both saw religion as generating social unity. Marx would not agree, nor would most of the cultural world in which they were all immersed. Marx saw alienation as the force responsible for the generation of a will toward social progress, Durkheim and Weber saw social progress, away from a mystification of the world, as responsible for alienation. The secularism of Holyoake, the atheism of Bradlaugh, and the socialism of Owen, would all connect more closely with the Marxian dialectic, but much of the rest of the world would be drawn in the other direction. Durkheim had, perhaps ineffectively, severed the connection between religion and theism. A half century later Ayn Rand would attempt to sever the connection between godlessness and communism. Ayn Rand, atheist, would generate great enthusiasm promoting a competitive individualism tied substantially to free market capitalism. Her atheism refused to connect with any secular socialism like that associated with Holyoake and Bradlaugh, while being equally critical of a Marxist revolutionary communism. Rand’s work would contradict a 56 vision of the secular, as developed by Holyoake, which saw atheism, or secularism, as needing to be connected to any form of moral obligation. Rooted in personal responsibility her vision would prepare more for a neoliberalism that would follow in its wake, and connect more closely with the corporate Christianity, described above, through Kruse, and what would become Christian Evangelism in the next century. In 1967, in the year before his death, Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., published his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, presenting a Christian vision of America which contrasted completely with that which was framed by the Atheist, Rand. King’s work spoke against the war in Vietnam and sought to bring an end to the universal injustice of poverty present throughout the nation at the time. He tied Christianity to the radical left, as Billy Graham had been tying Christianity to the conservative right. Black liberation theology would see its foundations within the text of the Bible, developing a black Christianity devoted to its community with a zeal similar to the white evangelical. The social gospel contradicted prosperity theology completely, but each shared the same symbols and same authorizing text. King seemed more close to Holyoake though, and Graham more close to Rand. Richard Dawkins would be awarded The Humanist of the Year Award in 1996 by the American Humanist Association. He would publish The God Delusion in 2006 and be labelled alongside Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett as originating members, the four horsemen, of the New Atheist movement. The American Humanists would strip Dawkins of his Humanist of the Year Award in 2016 accusing him of acting in opposition to “humanist values”. Dawkins’ atheism was grounded very much in his work as a scientist and his view on religion 57 can be seen as describing it as acting in opposition to science. He ties atheism to science and his receipt of the Humanist of the Year Award followed from his work as a scientist, which saw the promotion of scientific research as being humanistic. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett did not start and organize a thing called the New Atheist movement. The pejorative term “new atheism” was coined by journalist Gary Wolf, who had no connection to any movement of atheists, humanists, or secularists, neither old, nor new. These four men did share a willingness or desire to be critical of religion rejecting a social value which sees religion as a thing that must be respected, but they did not come together to organize any movement, and their willingness to speak critically of religion cannot be seen as anything “new”, as a history of criticism from Holyoake’s moderate secularism, through Bradlaugh’s more conflictive secular atheism, through to the present, can demonstrate. 58 CHAPTER THREE: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART I) One understanding of the secular university as it exists in the American cultural world can be discovered through the teachings of Dennis Prager in his Prager University Master’s Program: “The Consequences of Secularism”. In this series of lectures Prager claims that “there is no objective moral truth if there is no God” and connects this lack of objective moral truth to his claim that “the greatest genocides of the 20th century, and indeed, basically of history, occurred in the 20th century, and virtually every one was caused by a secular regime.” Broadly he states that “When society gets too secular it ends.” … “It is the end of civilization as we have known it. It is a catastrophe.” This understanding of the secular provides a foundation for his description of the American secular university, which declares that: Secular schools are the repositories of non-wisdom. The least wise places in America are the most secular places. They are called universities. That is where all the ridiculous ideas come from because these are thoroughly secularized people who make up their own ideas about life. It should be noted, of course, that Dennis’ critique of the American university system does not come from within the university system itself. Prager University does not function as an accredited university with any proper standing at all. No real course work is available at the “university” and it offers no undergraduate, master’s, or doctorate degrees in any field. Prager has completed no graduate coursework himself. “The Masters Program” does not lead toward any kind of degree or certification. It is nothing other than right wing propaganda presented by the Daily Wire, collaborating with and supporting the work of other likeminded individuals such as Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. 59 Is Prager’s position, then, in regards to a discussion of the secular and secularism, substantially different from that presented by less radical, more informed, accredited voices in American culture and academics? Do American secular universities provide a less hostile understanding of the secular than that demonstrated by Prager in his “Masters Program”? To answer these questions might require some clarification of just what it means to be a secular school and/or a secular university. Prager, and those like him, who feel such animosity for all things secular provide no specific description of secular academics. It might seem that all universities, and schools, which are not specifically religious are therefore secular. The secular, as such, is nothing but the absence of religion. More than that, though, it is not even the absence of religion, because American secular universities are filled with Christian students, and students of other religions. Secular campuses are filled with Christian student groups, and university properties consistently draw evangelical speakers and groups to their grounds. The only defining characteristic of a secular school would be its failure to require student participation in religious activities including requirements to do specifically religious course work. It might be said that the secular university fails to teach secularism at all. It only fails to teach religion. Religious schools promote religion. Secular schools fail to promote religion, or maybe only, fail to promote it adequately. It would be inaccurate, though, to assert that discussions of secularism are completely absent from the university curriculum. Ironically, and perhaps sadly, it might be asserted a study of the “secular” flourishes more substantially in the classrooms of religious universities than in secular institutions. Charles Taylor’s large book, A Secular Age, considered the most complete textual resource for a study of the secular, was written by a deeply religious, Catholic, Christian 60 man. (Imagine a situation in which the most complete understanding of Christianity was written by an atheist.) The secular university does not commonly teach anything that is particularly secular, and when it does such course work will frequently be guided from the perspective of religious voices. A discussion of the secular within secular universities will be shaped too dominantly by religious voices, and those voices do, too frequently, correspond with the positions put forth by Prager, and his like. Montana State University offered a course focused on the study of secularism in the Spring of 2014. The course title “Rethinking Secularism” demonstrated the vision the course sought to pursue. The need to “rethink” secularism did not come from within the secular community, but was seen as necessary according to the nonsecular other. The title for the course followed from the first, and primary, text for the class, Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathon Van Antwerpen. The problem of secularism which the text, and the class, sought to address can be seen in Calhoun’s essay within the book, “Secularism, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere.” In the text Calhoun states that, “secularists propose a limit on religion in the public sphere, which they take to be a basis for equal inclusion, but at the same time insulate themselves from understanding religious discourse, practicing an ironic exclusion.” The readings for the course addressed primarily this desire within the secular to exclude religion from the public sphere by restricting religious freedom and silencing religious voices. Shockingly, though, in addition to this general theme, the course instructor did repeat Prager’s hypothesis, seeing Nazism as the inevitable conclusion generated by a society’s acceptance of the secular.25 Carl Schmitt’s book, Political Theology, was presented as required 25 The course, RLST 494, a religious studies course, identified “secularism” as a religion, and its syllabus stated a requirement to not “tout our own beliefs, or disparage those of others’, adding that it was “imperative that everyone 61 reading demonstrating the connection between atheism and Nazism to support this hypothesis.2627 Another text presented in the course, Bruno Latour’s On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, represents a vision of the secular, in relation to the religious, as it was demonstrated in the course. Chapter One of that text opens with a fable of sorts. In the fable “light-skinned peoples” from “the northern reaches of the Atlantic” travel around the globe and seize the statues of other cultures’ gods and destroy them, screaming “Fetish! Fetish!” as part of their act. () This disrespect for others’ gods, for other’s culture and tradition and beliefs, within the text, is meant to analogize the disrespect the secular enacts upon the religious in the modern world. This understanding of the secular, as intolerant, aggressive, and unethical, demonstrates one vision of the secular as it too easily can be taught within the secular university. It does not present itself as an alternative to pro-secular discourses, but functions most exclusively as the only mode for discussions about the secular on the fringes of the American academy and within the academy itself. Hypocritically, much of this discourse is presented following from and/or alongside pronouncements by apologists who insist that the problem is not with secular people, but only with secularism, secular thought, and secular ideology. Anti-secular Christian thinkers, frequently, will describe the positive relationships and personal respect they have for their secular peers, in a manner quite similar to statements made by “non-racist” white males approach religious texts and traditions with appropriate respect.” Early in the course the instructor clarified how this would occur. He stated that it would not be okay to attack, judge, and critique secularists as people. It was not okay to judge the believer not the belief. Secularists, as such, are not bad people. The problem is only that their beliefs lead to Nazism/fascism. 26 Carl Schmitt joined the Nazi party in 1933 and served actively as a leader in the party throughout the course of the war. 27 Schmitt was one of two author within the course whose atheism was highlighted in course discussion. Sadly the other was John Locke. This is sad because John Locke was not at all an atheist. He was very far from it. He was presented to the class as an atheist only as a result of the instructor’s poor research and performance. 62 describing their friendships with black men. Professor John Lennox has participated in a series of debates and discussions with noted scholars which include, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer and others. In a debate/discussion, entitled “Christianity and the Tooth Fairy”, with Don Demetriades at Montana State University on May 12, 2015, Lennox tells the audience that “some of my atheist friends can put me to shame morally”, but attaches this statement to his assertion that he “thinks that Dostoevsky was right when he said, ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permissible.’” He hypothesizes “that Dostoevsky did not believe that atheists could not behave morally”, but only, “that what Dostoevsky meant is that there is no rational justification for calling something good or evil if there is no God.” He seems to be saying that theists and atheists each act morally in the world, or even that atheists can act with greater moral intent. He returns, soon after this though, to Russian literature and the Russian political world. In this instance he refers to a speech given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to an American university audience. In the speech Solzhenitsyn refers to his life in Soviet Russia and states that, “when I am asked why we lost a hundred million of our best people, I think the answer is inevitably we have forgotten God.” Remaining immersed within this context, Lennox, connects Solzhenitsyn’s story to his own experience in the Soviet world. Lennox lets the audience know that he has “been to Russia many times”, because he is “interested in what atheism does to societies.” He describes a lecture that he gave “in Siberia after the fall of communism” where “there was a whole army of KGB people present” amongst “the rest of a huge crowd.” In his speech he referred to “one statement at the beginning of the Bible” which stated that “humans were made in the image of God”, and he informed them that because of this he “wouldn’t murder one of (them) let alone the hundred million that Stalin did.” To finish his 63 story, and clarify his hypothesis, he describes a situation after his speech, in which one member of the “academy of sciences” present at the event confessed to him that “we thought that we could get rid of God and we could retain a value for human beings and we realized far too late that was impossible.” These religious voices which denounce the secular and who see themselves as victim to exclusion in public spaces make their case in a setting that contains no reciprocal other. Certainly there is an other which defends itself against the attacks made by religious interests, but there is no other which attacks religion in a manner similar to the way the religious attacks the secular.28 Religion seeks greater influence upon and within secular schools, but secular interests do not seek so aggressively to alter the nature of religious education. “Respect for others’ beliefs” keeps the public, the secular, quietly excluded from any influence in religious classrooms and institutions, while the religious feel no compulsion to participate in a similar respect for others’ beliefs. No secular interests seek to prohibit prayer within religious schools, though Christians work zealously to intrude their interests in public schools and public spaces. Religion sees itself as being excluded from secular academies, even as it clearly and completely excludes the nonreligious from its own institutions. The debate remains most entirely focused on how public schools should function, with religious interests seeking to demand that public/secular schools 28 The exclusion of the non-religious other which would seek to voice a criticism of the religious can be seen in the pejorative framing of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, as militant, angry, hypercritical men. These men were able to publish books that criticized religion, and following their publications they have been able to act as public intellectuals. Their work though does not function as part of a substantial, influential, or significant part of the instruction within the secular university. They are excluded largely from such academic discussions, which continue to promote a discourse of the secular as it has been framed by religion through all of the time described within this text. (Phil Zuckerman and Edward Said are similarly excluded. Their work to present alternative visions of the secular into the academy will be the topic of the following chapter of this dissertation, Chapter 4.) 64 become more religious, but with no secular interests demanding that religious schools become less religious. All of the above, within this chapter, can be seen as representing a more radical part of anti-secular discourse. Such discourse finds itself presented alongside more moderate anti- secular presentations. Central to this is Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. Taylor’s discussion of the secular, unlike much of that noted above, does not represent the secular as being actively responsible for acts of evil in a motivated desire to bring harm to the world. He presents the secularist, in a manner similar to Lennox, as being capable, as a Christian in his vision is capable, of leading a good, ethical life in the modern world. Unlike Lennox though he does not so specifically, place this individually ethical secularist within a context primarily framed by Nazism, Stalinism, and the like. Instead, Taylor describes the atheist/secularist as suffering from the problem of secularism in a manner very similar to the way Christians and all believers suffer their immersions in a secular world. Taylor’s empathy for the secularist, who must suffer through the secular age, extends so far as to perhaps present greater sympathy for the secularist in the secular world, than for the theist/believer in the secular world. The Christian does, after all, have access to the love of God. The secularization of the modern world, responsible for generation of the secular age affect theist and non-theist alike. The theist, however, can hope to discover, through faith, an escape from the situation. In the Introduction to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor establishes a foundation for his argument against the “secular” through a description of “fullness” which exists, from his perspective, as a common goal shared universally by all people as a part of the human condition. Believers and nonbelievers each strive to find fullness in their lives. These common pursuits, of 65 course, are different from each other simply because the believer sees the path to fullness and achievement of it as connected with a belief in God, while the nonbeliever does not. Importantly, the experience of “fullness” which buttresses Taylor’s argument, exists, according to his description as a significantly personal experience, as part of a modern, subjective, liberal ideology.29 This vision, separates it from an ethics grounded in a social and cultural world. His pursuit of “fullness” matches the pursuit of the “good” contained within the idealistic vision of early Greek thinkers, like Plato and Aristotle, which saw ethics as grounded in the pursuit of the ideal as opposed to the achievement of material flourishing in the natural world.30 Taylor’s “fullness”, as such, is rooted in the pursuit of the achievement of personal affective desire. “Fullness” is felt. It is not associated with a concrete personal connection to a social, cultural, and material world. This desire to see the good as functioning apart from the natural, material world leads him to ground his ethics in an association between the moral and the spiritual. On numerous occasions within the introduction he conflates the two terms creating a situation in which the “moral/spiritual” appear to act as a singular united foundational term. His desire to see ethics as containing no necessary attachment to culturally constructed understandings can be seen in his declaration that “morality must be autonomous not heteronomous”. (8) His use of the moral/spiritual binary opposes other associations with which the moral may interact. The moral should not be associated, primarily, with the cultural, with the natural or material, with the world. 29 (Sam Harris, Lecture Note, on Fullness in Spirituality) 30 Taylor similarly connects his idea of “fullness” to the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics in a paragraph in Chapter One in which he states that their philosophies emphasized “the important role for contemplation of a larger order as something divine within us.” (Durkheim might suggest that this “larger order” could be cultural, while Taylor sees it as being specifically transcendent/spiritual.) 66 The moral/spiritual binary acts to forbid the use of moral/cultural, moral/material, moral/secular binaries.31 Taylor’s profound attachment to things spiritual and transcendent can be further seen in his choice of definition for the term “religion”, which “for our purposes can be defined in terms of ‘transcendence’”. (20) This definition of “religion”, selected by Taylor, contrasts with an understanding of religion as that formulated by Durkheim in his text, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Taylor sees religion as being quite specifically attached to a belief in God, while Durkheim describes religion as being a human social construct. Each sees morality as following from a person’s involvement in religious communities. Taylor’s morality though is grounded in the transcendent, in the moral/spiritual, while Durkheim’s is grounded in the cultural, in the moral/secular. An understanding of the secular influenced by its relationship to religion as expressed through the secular/religion binary works quite differently when “religion” can be seen on the one hand as being exclusively associated with a belief in God as expressed through the religion/spiritual binary, than when “religion” is seen on the other hand as functioning most specifically as a cultural institution as expressed through the religion/cultural binary. In one case the secular opposes a belief in God. This seems somewhat apparent. In the other case though how does the secular associate with the vision of “religion” as a cultural community? It could perhaps be said that this understanding of religion could be categorized as a secular definition of 31 It should be noted that Taylor does not see human flourishing in a material, social, cultural world as oppositional to the will of God, which grounds his autonomous, transcendent ethics. In fact he sees human flourishing as a positive aspect within the human life experience. This flourishing though is not the the determining factor which distinguishes the moral from the immoral, the good from the bad. Instead Taylor states that, “loving, worshipping God is the ultimate end”. (17) “The injunction ‘Thy will be done’, isn’t equivalent to ‘let human’s flourish’, even though we know that God wills human flourishing”. (17) 67 “religion”. Theists see “religion” as associating most strongly with a belief in God, while secularists see “religion” as being constructed socially by members of a community? This whole range of perspectives upon the secular, as envisioned and described by religious thinkers, from the right-wing alterity of Prager to the moderate, more liberal, Taylor, all see morality as dependent upon and connected to the spiritual/transcendent presence of a theistic God. While they may admit, to varying degrees that non-theists can be capable of leading actively ethical lives, they see these judgments as following only from an authoritative presence separate from the physical, material, cultural world. Any human may be capable of leading an actively ethical life, but humans are not capable of establishing, creating and determining what is ethical. Right and wrong ultimately, from the apologists’ perspective, is shaped by the will of God, not by the rational, thoughtful, interactive understandings which come to be contained within aspects of a human social world. We cannot decide and determine what is right and wrong, only God can make this judgment. Meaning, ultimately, is imposed upon the world by the transcendent other. It is not contained within the world itself, or created imaginatively, by the human participants active in the world. Taylor’s empathy for secular people, equally burdened by the propositions and ideology which follow from the secularization of the modern world, can lead one to understand his arguments as being less anti-secular than those put forth by members of a more conflictive and hostile Christian community. However, while it certainly should be understood that his discussion of the topic, lacks the same hostility to secular people, to secularists and atheists, as displayed by his more conservative, reactionary, peers, it does nonetheless see the influence of the secular, of secularism, upon the modern world as being entirely problematic. He doesn’t 68 express a hatred for the secular other, which others may, but his argument similarly sees the imposition of the secular upon a previously sacred, religious world as being entirely negative and harmful. Ruth Abbey in her essay “Siblings Under the Skin”, a critique of Taylor’s A Secular Age, attempts to assert that his text “can enhance the debate between those who are and those who are not religious”, and asserts that the intention of his work can be “to reduce the distance between those who are and those who are not religious.” (228) She goes on to propose that “he strives to reveal that the supposed antagonists in the debate have more in common than either side realises, and to propose a more fertile, complex, middle ground” which can be shared commonly by believer and nonbeliever alike. (228) She recognizes though that “some countervailing considerations… raise complications for and qualifications of” such a positive analysis. Significantly she recognizes that within A Secular Age Taylor “deems exclusive humanism to be poorly equipped to make sense of ‘the specific force of creative agency: or ethical demands, or … the power of artistic experience.” (229) From this, she goes on to assert that: A view of human experience that is open to transcendence, is in his estimation, better placed to describe or give some account of such aesthetic and ethical experiences. Taylor also claims that theism provides a more robust moral source for the demanding modern ethic of universal solidarity and assistance. (677-8, 695) He concludes that ‘this kind of response to the image of God in others … can be real for us, but only to the extent that we open ourselves to God …‘ This sort of opening provides ‘a path towards a much more powerful and effective healing action in history.’ (703) She concludes this portion of her critique with the statement that he “is overtly arguing in favour of inhabiting the immanent frame in an open, and indeed specifically Christian, way.” (230) In the end her text ultimately recognizes the error of its attempted earlier propositions which try to portray Taylor’s A Secular Age as working in a positive way to present the secular 69 in a fair and ethical way motivated by a desire to deconstruct tension between those who believe in God and those who don’t. She pulls a quote from A Secular Age in which Taylor states that, “A race of humans has arisen which has managed to experience the world as entirely immanent. In some respects, we may judge this achievement as a victory for darkness, but it is a remarkable achievement nonetheless.” (376) She sees how this statement separates the “we” who “may judge” from a separate “race of humans” which he sees as being in pursuit of a “victory for darkness.” (230) Significantly, it should be noted that Taylor, above, connects the ability to see others as representing the image of God as a requirement for the full development of an ethical, or moral, life. This statement stands alongside Lennox’s claim that his ability to see others as being made in the image of God prevented him from being capable of participating in mass murder as the atheistic Soviet Stalinists had. Taylor’s critique of the secular contains far more subtlety than the overt hostility displayed by Prager, but it nonetheless sees the secular as lacking significantly important parts of that which is required for the development of an ethical, aesthetic, meaningful life. Taylor does not rant, so specifically, about secular connections to Nazism and Stalinism in a manner equal to that presented by Prager, Peterson, Lennox, and a range of others committed to such attacks upon the secular. Instead he merely suggests that a pursuit of the secular leads to a desire for power without “moral boundaries”. (51, 52 and 53) He sees this as essentially shaping the politics and violence of the French Revolution and connects this at first to communistic regimes in the early twentieth century, then eventually to the revolutionary desires present in France in the May of ‘68. The problem, as he sees it, is one in which the human unregulated by the transcendent, the divine, God, act without restraint, without moral boundaries. The 70 anthropocentric human, governed by nothing but the self, acts without restriction, without responsibility. The Christian is governed by God, the secularist pursues only unbridled desire for positive freedom, the power to act upon the world. Taylor argues that religion, within the Christian tradition, contained forces which acted to regulate power, Carnival functions as his primary example of this, and that secularism fails to permit similar acts which hold its power in check. He sees secularism as establishing a “code” for human behavior, and sees this secularized “human code” as acting without restraint in pursuit of its wishes. He hypothesizes that the “secularization of the public sphere” creates a situation in which, “the idea that a code need leave no space for the principle that contradicts it, that there need to be no limit to its enforcement” and that this secularized human code functions as the “spirit of totalitarianism”. He repeats most of this in another paragraph, lower on the page, and adds to it a conservative criticism of political correctness on American campuses. Certainly one consequence of the eclipse of anti-structure was this propensity to believe that the perfect code wouldn’t need to be limited, that one could and should enforce it without restriction. This has been one of the driving ideas behind the various totalitarian movements and regimes of our time. Society had to be totally made over, and none of the traditional restraints on action should be allowed to hamper this enterprise. In a less dramatic way, it encourages the tunnel vision with which the various “speech codes” of political correctness are applied on certain campuses, and lends the positive ring to such slogans as “zero tolerance”. (51) The fact that Taylor’s work in A Secular Age, and through an abundance of his similarly motivated lectures, essays, and books, shapes substantially so much of the discourse present in American universities and through much of the Euro/American world demonstrates the profound hegemonic dominance which religion and/or the church holds over most pedagogy which discuss and/or critique the secular. The “New Atheists” were portrayed as being militant, aggressive and 71 overly critical of religion, but when Taylor presents arguments which describe the secular as failing to provide the necessary requirements for a full understanding of things ethical, aesthetic, and meaningful, while contributing to a general decline in the quality of life for all participants in modern culture, believer and non-believer alike, he is most commonly praised for his work. The preponderant dearth of research, historical, anthropological, and philosophical, which fills his books, certainly contributes to the praise that he receives. But does his great volume of work contribute substantially to a discourse of the secular which holds an appeal to any but those shaped by religious prejudice? Abbey, in her critique of A Secular Age cites a few examples from within his book that display his pro-Christian/Anti-secular bias. These few examples are not, though, at all rare. The 851 pages of his large book are filled with it. A Secular Age describes Taylor’s vision of a world that has been harmed significantly by the loss of religion. The secularization of the modern world, as he sees it, has produced isolation, emptiness, and a lack of meaning. Within one paragraph, in the center of his book, he states this quite clearly. Although we respond to it very differently, everyone understands the complaint that our disenchanted world lacks meaning, that in this world, particularly youth suffer from a lack of strong purposes in their lives, and so on. This is, after all, a remarkable fact. You couldn’t even have explained this problem to people in Luther’s age. What worried them was, if anything, an excess of “meaning”, the sense of one over-bearing issue – am I saved or damned? – which wouldn’t leave them alone. One can hear all sorts of complaints about the “present age” throughout history: that it is fickle, full of vice and disorder, lacking in greatness or high deeds, full of blasphemy and viciousness. But what you won’t hear at other times and places is one of the commonplaces of our day (right or wrong, that is beside the point), that our age suffers from a threatened loss of meaning. This malaise is specific to a buffered identity, whose very invulnerability opens it to the danger that not just evil spirits, cosmic forces or gods won’t “get to” it, but that nothing significant will stand out for it. 72 Taylor builds much of his argument upon the difference between the “buffered” and the “porous”, framing has discussion in a way that permits the reader to interpret the difference between the two as being one in which those who experience life as individuals whose identities are buffered are excluded from access to a more open understanding of the world as that available to those with more porous identities. Those with a buffered understanding of the world have no access to the transcendent, divine, and wholly, while those who achieve and maintain a porous understanding of the world are not limited by this exclusion. The porous identity has access to all. The distinction between these two types of identity positions sees the one, the porous, as being more open to the world, while seeing the other, the buffered, as being close minded in regards to this substantial, significant portion of a human relationship to the world. The buffered identity functions as a necessary consequence of the influence of the secular in the modern world. Discourse shaped in this manner fails to recognize the significance of a vision of human identity in which the secular might be seen as being more porously involved in a relationship to the world. It ignores an argument which sees attachment to the transcendent as buffering the individual’s capacity to participate effectively, significantly and meaningfully in a complex, ambiguous, contingent human world. It fails to recognize the possibility that a vision of the ethical, shaped by some version of objective moral truth, prevents that identity from participating collaboratively in a construction of the human world in a manner similar to those not buffered by a belief in God. The content contained within this chapter demonstrates a range of discourse which dominates the discussion of the secular within American academics, in both secular and religious schools. It looks only at arguments which connect specifically to that topic. It does not discuss 73 the fact that other topics, as they are taught and discussed within the university, can be seen as secular by those with religious visions of the American world. “Critical Race Theory” would function as one example of a pedagogy that the religious might see as being influenced by and promoting the secular. An entire range of topics, and pedagogies, present within the humanities, could be seen as challenging a “porous” religious understanding of the world, as such course work fails to recognize the authority of sacred, essentialized, “morally objective” understandings of the world. This chapter has shown the continued hegemonic religious influence, present within the academy, which continues to determine an understanding of the secular. The following chapter will discuss how a discussion of the secular, shaped by secular people, has been presented within the American academy. The sum of this all should then prepare the reader for a discussion of how the secular could be presented and taught, within the academy, in a manner completely dissimilar to how it is presented, and used, at the moment. 74 CHAPTER FOUR: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART II) Chapter 3 of this dissertation presented the state of the discourse of the secular and/or secularism as it has existed in the American academy through the last half of the 20th century and as it continues to exist today. It described how religious voices hegemonically shape a too generally accepted understanding of the secular and/or secularism within the academy, and beyond that through the larger American cultural and political world. It introduced many of the figures who worked to shape this discourse in a significantly anti-secular way. In doing these things it demonstrated from a Foucauldian perspective the powers which most substantially shape discourses attached to the secular and/or secularism, and following from this described, as Wittgenstein might, how these terms have come to be used in shaping understandings of their meanings.32 This chapter will present the efforts made by two men, Edward Said and Phil Zuckerman, to detach the secular and/or secularism from anti-secular discourses as those presented by the men in the previous chapter. It will begin non-chronologically with a discussion of Zuckerman’s research and writing, and show how this work led to the partial development of a Secular Studies program at Pitzer College in Pitzer, California.33 It will then move back to examine Said’s work 32 An addendum to Chapter 3 is presented at the end of this dissertation, which moves away from a presentation of discourse and how it is shaped by power and use. The addendum, instead, examines how secularization grew within the American academy apart from any discursive influences, arising instead, coincidentally as a product of specialization within the American university system through the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century. As such this addendum challenges anti-secular positions which see secularization as following from a secular desire to limit and restrict religious freedom, and instead portrays secularization as occurring more as a product of other motivations in the academy. This alternative description of the secularization of the academy shows how incorrect present understandings of the secular distort understandings of the secular in history, as they work to coercively determine understandings of the secular in the present, modern, academy and world. 33 (Update here contemporary work in the academy being done by Zuckerman.) 75 in his development of Secular Criticism as a method to be used as a part of literary theory and criticism. Zuckerman’s work, as a sociologist, accepts a definition of the secular which conforms most completely to that presented within a discourse of the secular as it has been shaped by religious voices, as those described in the previous chapter. He sees secular identity as being defined most completely, and exclusively, through a relationship and opposition to the religious. He accepts this portion of the anti-secular discourse, but does not at all accept that other part of the discourse which sees secularism as being morally, aesthetically, or significantly inferior to the religious. His research deconstructs each of these accusations as they function within anti- secular discourse, and works to portray secularists as living full, meaningful ethical lives equal to or perhaps significantly superior to their religious peers. Said, quite differently, works to reshape an understanding of the secular which in a manner quite completely apart from a discourse which limits it to being nothing more than an opposition to religion. His work emphasizes the etymological roots of the secular which describe it as being of the world. He sees criticism as necessarily needing to remain attached to and a part of the world, the human world, the physical world, and criticizes critical methodologies which see the text as existing apart from, or transcendent to, the world we all share. He uses the word “religion” to describe visions of the world which separate the reader from a sensible understanding of the real world, but does not limit the religious to being a thing necessarily attached to a belief in God, or the supernatural. This moves him completely away from a discourse of the secular as that described in the previous chapter, separating it from all limitations imposed upon it by the anti-secular religious voices which shape that discourse. Significantly, like Zuckerman, he portrays the secular in a connotatively positive way, and sees religion as functioning to promote conflict and disharmony 76 in the world, embedding much of this in a vision of religion which sees it, in congruence with his orientalism, as promoting exclusion and destroying the possibility of creating larger, more peaceful, effective, communities. This chapter will not examine New Atheism in tandem with Zuckerman and Said. It will not do this because the “new atheists” did not necessarily work to influence a discussion of the secular in the American, or European, university systems. Their work, their texts, have been largely excluded from classrooms in congruence with the anti-secular discourse which pejoratively presented them as being angry, militant, aggressive and such. They have been excluded from having much direct influence within the American university system; but largely that was not their goal. They participated substantially in work in other fields and presented their “militant atheism” as a part of public discourse, not through a motivated desire to influence or reshape pedagogy in the American academy.34 Beyond this too, like Zuckerman, they largely participated in a discourse which conflates secularism with atheism, the secularist with the atheist, and while not accepting the anti-secular prejudice contained within that discourse, continued to participate in it. In 2009 Zuckerman published “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions” working to battle the prejudiced assumptions contained within descriptions of the secular as presented by the academics in the previous chapter and as held by substantial portions of the general population. He challenges propositions which describe secularists as living lives that lack morality, meaning, 34Dennet’s research and publishing can be seen, more so than the others, as working within the academy to influence discourses and understandings of the secular, in ways that could accurately be interpreted as working within the academy in a manner quite similar to Zuckerman and/or Said. 77 value, and pleasure. His work academically fits wholly within the field of sociology and his research is built of quantifiable data. From this position he asserts that the claims made by the others mentioned above lack any real credibility or even that they are verifiably false. He goes so far as to not only defend the secular against such attacks, but instead suggests that, perhaps, religiosity, more accurately, works to create cultures and lives that lack effective moral, aesthetic, and affective groundings. In the introduction to his text Zuckerman asks, “Is the widespread dislike, disapproval of, and general negativity towards atheists warranted, or is it a case of unsubstantiated prejudice?” He goes beyond this to propose that, “maybe secular, non-believing men and women aren’t so unsavory, wicked, or despicable after all”, and that, “perhaps, there are some positive attributes correlated with secularity, such as lower levels of prejudice and ethnocentrism, or greater support for gender equality.” Beyond this he suggests that, perhaps “societies with higher percentages of secular people are actually more healthy, humane, and happy than those with higher percentages of religious people.” He closes his introduction with a description of the text’s methodology, framing his work as a sociologist to pursue answers to these questions. “To explore these matters, we need to consider what social science actually reveals about people who don’t believe in God or are irreligious, and examine just what empirically observable patterns emerge when considering the real lives, opinions, and overall state of well-being of atheists and secular people.” His text cites sources which on the one hand examine the prejudices which members of the general population hold in regard to an understanding of secular people, and on the other hand examine the actual realities which shape the lives of secular people. His discussion of anti- 78 secular bias refers to numerous studies which show that “a negative view of atheists… in the United States… is quite pervasive”, referring to one specific study, a “Religion and Public Life Survey”, which shows that “54 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of atheists” and another which states that “most Americans would not vote for non-religious presidential candidates.” Significantly, he referred to “One laboratory study,” which, “found that people gave lower priority to patients with atheist or agnostic views than to Christian patients when asked to rank them on a waiting list to receive a kidney.” This all harkens back to John Locke’s assertion, within his essay directed toward a discussion of tolerance, in which he states that, “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God”, and that, “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.” Three sections contained within Zuckerman’s text work to challenge or deconstruct the validity or credibility of these anti-secular/anti-atheistic prejudices. The three sections include: 1) “Values, Beliefs, Opinions, and Worldviews”, 2) “Criminality and Moral Conduct”, and 3) “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being.” Two more sections, 1) “Family and Children”, and 2) “Sex and Sexuality”, work to develop a more complete understanding of the personal lives of secular people; and finally, before the conclusion the penultimate section, “National and State Comparisons”, does just what its title suggests, comparing secular nations and states with more religious nations and states, showing how each function legally, economically, and politically. Within “Values, Beliefs, Opinions, and Worldviews”, Zuckerman challenges the recurring Christian assertion that atheists, because they do not believe in God, believe in “nothing”. In opposition to this assertion he states that, “People can reject religion and still maintain strong beliefs. He refers to, and cites, “numerous studies” which, reveal that atheists 79 and secular people most certainly maintain strong values, beliefs, and opinions”, and that, more significantly, when we actually compare the values and beliefs of atheists and secular people to those of religious people, the former are markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti- Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian.” Politically, his research suggests that, “atheist and secular people are much more likely to be registered Independent than the general American population”, that, “irreligiosity is strongly and consistently correlated with liberal, progressive, or left-wing political perspectives”, and that, “when compared to various religious groups, nonreligious Americans are the most politically tolerant, supporting the extension of civil liberties to dissident groups.” This section goes on to assert that, “As for gender equality and women’s rights, atheists and secular people are quite supportive”, citing “Recent studies”, which, “show that secular individuals are much more supportive of gender equality than religious people, less likely to endorse conservatively traditional views concerning women’s roles, and when compared with various religious denominations, ‘Nones’ possess the most egalitarian outlook of all concerning women’s rights.” The section goes on to cite studies which show that, “when compared with the religious, non- religious people are far more accepting of homosexuality and supportive of gay rights and gay marriage”, and that non-religious people “are far less likely to be homophobic or harbor negative attitudes towards homosexuals” than their religious peers. Beyond these, Zuckerman asserts, in this section, that 1) non-religious people showed less support, and more opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, 2) that they are “far less supportive” of the death penalty, 3) that, in general, in regard to the treatment of prisoners within the criminal justice system, “secular people are much less supportive of retribution and are less likely to favor harsh/draconian sentencing than 80 religious people”, 4) that “secular, religiously unaffiliated Americans are the group least supportive of the governmental use of torture”, 5) that they more frequently supported doctor assisted suicide and stem cell research, and 6) “finally, secular people are much more likely to support the legalization of marijuana than religious people.” He closes the section by arguing that assertions which describe secularists, atheists, and non-believers of living lives empty of any significant values and beliefs not only fail to describe the reality of their world views, but, more than that, that he “would go farther”, and “argue that a strong case could be made that atheists and secular people actually possess a stronger or more ethical sense of social justice than their religious peers.” In the next section, “Criminality and Moral Conduct”, which relies very much upon a methodology, similar to that in the later section, which compares secular and non-secular nations and states, Zuckerman challenges the Christian assertion, as noted above, in Chapter 3 of this dissertation, that the absence of a belief in God, provides no foundation for a moral life. He states that, “In many people’s minds … atheism is equated with lawlessness and wickedness, while religion is equated with morality and law-abiding behavior.” He follows this with the question, “Does social science support this position?” He cites contradictory studies which on the one hand “have found that religion does inhibit criminal behavior” and on the other which “have actually found that religiosity does not have a significant effect on inhibiting criminal behavior.” He chooses to agree with Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, who decided that, “The claim that atheists are somehow more likely to be immoral has long been disproven by systematic studies.” (He makes the mistake here of, too much, conflating criminality with morality.) He, perhaps, corrects that mistake, somewhat, when he follows this conflation with a comparison of the situation in which https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x#b30 81 secular youth are more likely to break the law in regards to alcohol and illegal drug use, but, in which “no evidence shows” that secular people are more likely to commit “serious or violent crimes, such as murder.” He doesn’t quite say that religious people are more likely to commit more serious and violent crimes, but he does inform the reader, in this context, that “only 0.2 percent of prisoners in the USA are atheists – a major under-representation.” He follows these claims by beginning to comparatively contrast the abundance of criminal misconduct present in secular nations and states with the abundance present in more religious nations and states. The studies he cites indicate that murder rates are higher in religious nations and states than they are in secular nations and states. “Furthermore”, he cites Census Bureau statistics, which demonstrate that “rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states.” He ends the comparative work in this section by citing work which demonstrates that, “finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country.” He ends this section with a discussion of statistics which describe religious people as being more generous in their willingness to donate portions of their income to charitable causes by asserting that the individual generosity attributed to religious folks contrasts with the promotion of collaborative social generosity present within secular nations and states. He supports his position by asserting that “it should be noted that it is the most secular democracies on earth – such as Scandinavia – that donate the most money and supportive aid, per capita, to poorer nations.” Finally, to close this section, he moves away from a discussion of differences between nations and states, and 82 ends with reference to two studies “of heroic altruism during the Holocaust” which “found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.” The final section designed specifically to challenge anti-secular propositions, “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-being”, addresses a description of the lives of secular people that sees them as being overwrought with anxiety, depression, and other social and psychological hardships. In this section he does not present research which substantially counters the claims put forth by religious people in their descriptions of the non-religious. Instead he begins by listing numerous studies which achieve completely contradictory results. “Some studies suggest that religiosity is positively correlated with positive mental health outcomes … while others find no such correlation.” One researcher “has argued that non-religious people are more likely to have psychological problems”, while another “has argued that secular people are actually psychologically healthier than religious people.” “Many studies report that religiosity is correlated with reduced levels of depression, and yet others suggest that religiosity can have a negative or no influence on depression.” “Some studies indicate that secular people are less happy than religious people … yet international comparisons show that it is the most secular nations in the world that report the highest levels of happiness among their populations.” Zuckerman continues like this with numerous examples that demonstrate a lack of definitive authority in regards to determining the differences in psychological well-being between believers and non-believers. Following this list of contradictions, though, he does assert that, “While acknowledging the many disagreements and discrepancies above, the fact still remains that a preponderance of studies do indicate that secular people don’t seem to fare as well as their religious peers when it comes to selected aspects of psychological well-being.” He followed this 83 statement with a list, like that above, citing sources and describing, the conclusions that followed from their research. One group of studies “found that religious beliefs correlate with a sense of life-satisfaction and well-being”, another study “found that religious faith is correlated with hope and optimism”, another reported “that religious people have a better time adjusting to and coping with sad or difficult life events than secular people”, another similar study reported “that religion is beneficial for people dealing with chronic illness or the death of a loved one.” This list continued, as the one above, citing numerous examples which conform to the other listed. Following this second list he does state some objection to the consistency of its validity, stating that “it should be pointed out that some have vigorously refuted such sweeping conclusions, arguing that the link between religiosity and positive health outcomes is grossly exaggerated” and adding, from a particularly American perspective, that “there is certainly the possibility that because being non-religious in the United States makes one a member of a widely un-liked, distrusted, and stigmatized minority, this could take a psychological toll on the mental health and sense of well-being of atheists and secular people, who may suffer from a sense of isolation, alienation, or rejection from family, colleagues, or peers.” He ends this section with a discussion of suicide, agreeing with his non-secular peers, that suicide rates in the US are higher for secular people than for their religious peers. As for suicide … regular church-attending Americans clearly have lower rates than non- attenders, although this correlation has actually not been found in other nations. Of the current top-ten nations with the highest rates of suicide, most are relatively secular. But it is worth noting that eight of these top-ten are post-Soviet countries, suggesting that decades of totalitarianism, depressed economies, and a lack of basic human freedoms may be more significant in explaining the high rates of suicide than low levels of God- belief. 84 The two sections which follow this, “Family and Children” and “Sex and Sexuality”, describe aspects of the lives of secular people and how these aspects differ from those who are religious. Unlike the three previous sections these two do not work, so much, to counter prejudices and stereotypes about secular people, but instead they present information which neither group would find, or wish to promote as, inaccurate. It discusses marriage, divorce, and aspects of child raising, presenting things most simply as statistical information. It does the same in regards to sexual practices and preferences. Most all of the information shows secular identity as being more liberal and progressive than religious identities, reinforcing accepted understandings instead of challenging or deconstructing assumptions or prejudices. The details contained within these sections certainly can be specifically informative, and some may fail to completely fit assumptions that the reader may have, but mostly they conform to generally accepted understandings as they function within American and Western culture. He begins the final section designed to argue against anti-secular prejudice by claiming that, “One consistent assertion made by religious people is that if a society or country loses faith in God, or becomes secular, the results won’t be good.” This assertion matches, most completely the proclamation made by Prager above, which declared that, “When society gets too secular it ends.” … “It is the end of civilization as we have known it. It is a catastrophe.” Zuckerman notes that this “is a theo-sociological claim” in which “societies characterized by significant levels of belief in God are expected to fare much better than those without.” To challenge this assertion Zuckerman states that “it is a claim that is easily testable.” Through the remainder of the section he cites studies which do just that. He claims that “when we compare more secular countries with more religious countries, we actually find that – with the exception of suicide – the more 85 secular fare markedly better than the more religious on standard measures of societal well- being.” He refers to the previous section, “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being”, which showed that, “the most secular democracies in the world score very high on international indexes of happiness and well-being”, and goes far beyond this to assert that in regards “to such things as life expectancy, infant mortality, economic equality, economic competitiveness, health care, standard of living, and education, it is the most secular democracies on earth that fare the best, doing much better than the most religious nations in the world.” Beyond this, he cites research which suggests that secular nations function more effectively in the promotion of 1) “women’s equality and women’s rights”, 2) “the care and well-being of children”, and 3) the health and well-being of mothers. After this, he shows that secular nations perform with “the lowest levels of corruption” and that religious nations show the highest levels of “intolerance of racial or ethnic minorities.” Secular nations do “the most to enact strong and progressive laws and green programs.” Secular nations “score the highest when it comes to the quality of political and civil liberties.” Citizens of secular nations show greater competence in “reading and math skills and scientific literacy.” He concludes this list by stating that the most secular nations on earth are the most “peaceful” and “prosperous” and provide a “quality of life” superior to their religious counterparts. After this extensive list which compares secular nations with religious nations he does the same work comparing secular states within the US to more religious states in the US. Of course, it should be no surprise that the comparisons generated very similar, or completely similar, results. To prevent too much redundancy then, this dissertation will move forward to the conclusion of his essay. 86 Zuckerman finishes his essay simply, and logically, by asserting that the research contained within the essay effectively worked to support the goals listed in its introduction. He sought to demonstrate that the prejudices commonly associated with secular/atheistic people lack credibility, and in the process worked to turn the tables, moving beyond a simple defense of the non-believer, allowing his argument to include a critique of the religious community describing it as containing the defects it sees in the other. This argument would ground his work as a professor at Pitzer College leading its Secular Studies program and his research and writing through to this day has been dominated by a continued effort to defend secularism/atheism that accepts a framing of the “secular” as being defined most exclusively through its opposition to religion. Edward Said’s use of the “secular” within his texts does not do this at all. Said does not participate in a discourse of the “secular” that accepts such a limited vision. His use of the term, instead, ignores this limitation and sees the “secular” as necessarily present through all aspects of the human condition, attaching it significantly to his ethics, aesthetics, professional work, and personal identity. The remainder of this chapter will examine his use of the term guided by an understanding that his participation in a discourse of the secular has been largely excluded from contemporary academics because it fails to participate in that discourse as it has been framed by the religious other and will seek to demonstrate how his use of the term expands its significance beyond most of that contained within this dissertation to this point. Said’s contribution to a secular discourse differs from Zuckerman’s significantly, following from his rather elite position within the academy. Zuckerman’s work can be seen as pursuing praxis, while Said’s can be seen as being driven by a desire to influence theory. As each 87 participate in the construction of discourse neither can be seen as being either exclusively framed by praxis or theory, but the work that they did can certainly be seen as functioning from different positions within the praxis/theory continuum. Zuckerman worked at Pitzer College in central California struggling to create a Secular Studies program on its campus, publishing articles and working to be involved in public discourses attached to the secular. He was working with undergraduate students in a small school attempting to piece together a program with limited resources, and publishing texts intended more for the general public than for a more limited academic audience. Said on the other hand, a graduate of Harvard University, worked at Columbia University in its English and Comparative Literature department where he would work from 1963 to the year of his death in 2003. Prior to the publication of The World, the Text, and the Critic in 1983 his publication of Orientalism (1978) established him internationally as a leading figure in his field. He has been credited with contributing to the development and advancement of Post-colonial studies and his writings are substantially present within American classrooms and around the world. He would follow The World, the Text, and the Critic (1978) with Culture and Imperialism (1993). These three major texts, in addition to some seventeen other books, and a wealth of other publications, would keep him involved in the development of literary theory through the rest of his life. With this background then, the audience for Said’s text, The World, the Text, and the Critic, was built largely of professionals in the literary studies field, and was meant to contribute to and influence their work in the field. While Zuckerman worked to influence public opinion and to introduce secularism as a topic to undergraduates under his guidance, Said worked more to influence elite members of the academic community. He sought to use the “secular” to redirect methodology within literary theory and criticism, while 88 Zuckerman worked more exclusively to introduce it as a topic of discussion within the academy and public discourse.35 Said would introduce “Secular Criticism” to the public in the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic and the complete contents of the book would serve to provide an example of this form of criticism. The title of the book itself begins with “the world” which etymologically functions as foundation for “the secular” as described in Chapter One of this dissertation and his text would focus most completely upon an understanding of the secular as rooted in a connection to the world, substantially avoiding that other discourse of the secular which limits it to being nothing but an opposition to religion. He would use the term “religion” within the text, but he would not use it to refer to a belief in God, or to specific participation in a church community. He would see religion as being substantially oppositional to the secular, but he would do so using the term “religion” more in line with that described by Durkheim, seeing religion as being a social construct separate from a need to connect it to a belief in God, or gods, or any such “spiritual” practice. Said saw religion as functioning to promote alterity, creating systems of power that exclude others from participation in that power. He saw the church, of course, as using alterity to develop and maintain its power and influence, but so did nationalism, and a most complete chain of other cultural and discursive powers which promote alterity and exclusion. Included in a list of such cultural and discursive powers would be forms, trends and methods present within Literary Theory itself. 35 Prior and additional to the publication of “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being” Zuckerman would publish a series of books, Invitation to the Sociology of Religion (2003), Society without God (2008), Faith no More (2011), Living the Secular Life (2014), The Non-Religious (2016), Society without God (2020), and Beyond Doubt (2023), each of which prepares for and develops more completely the topics contained within “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-being”, while remaining consistently framed by a vision of the secular and secular identity as framed historically by the religious community. 89 To see Said’s work as being primarily academic, immersed in theory and separate from praxis, as this dissertation has done to this point, commits the error, perhaps, of failing to understand at all what Said is working to do within the introduction and pages of The World, the Text, and the Critic. Said’s argument essentially can be seen as expecting criticism to participate in the world and critiqued methodologies which separate the text from a connection to the world. He sees Literary Theory at the time of the writing of his text as failing to participate in the politics and power present in the world, seeing theory as participating, too much, in the act of “noninterference”. He accuses “literary theorists and professional humanists” of participating in a “cult of expertise” in which “their expertise is based upon noninterference … in the world.” He includes himself in this community of “literary theorists and professional humanists” describing a situation in which: We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all of these things take place. He describes a period of time, “in the late 1960’s” in which he saw “the origins of literary theory in Europe” as being “insurrectionary”. He described “literary theorists and professional humanists”, at that time as working in opposition to “the traditional university”, to “the hegemony of determinism and positivism”, to “the reification of ideological bourgeois ‘humanism’”, and to “the rigid barriers between academic specialties.” He lists “Saussure, Lukas, Bataille, Levi-Strauss, Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx” as being responsible for influencing theory in such worldly political directions. Following this time though Said describes literary theory of “retreating into the labyrinth of ‘textuality’”, seeing this textuality as being separated from the politics and power which 90 shaped the human world. He claims that “as it is practiced in the American academy today, literary theory has for the most part isolated textuality from the circumstances, the events, the physical senses that made it possible and render it intelligible as the result of human work.” Through textuality, literary theory had been separated from the world in which it exists, and methodologically became attached to a pedagogy built of specialization and noninterference. After beginning the introduction to his text with this brief criticism of academics at that time, and of literary theory and criticism more specifically, he follows this methodological critique with a discussion of what could be described as an ethics of exile, which foundationally can be seen as grounding much of his work. He begins this second section by referring to Erich Auerbach, who appears again and again throughout Said’s texts. Auerbach represents, for Said, the critic in exile, an exile which empowers the exiled to perform criticisms of that from which the exiled critic has been exiled. Said refers to Auerbach’s time in Turkey, in exile from his European home, and sees the quality of criticism contained within Auerbach’s Mimesis as arising from and/or dependent upon this exile. He sees immersion in and attachment to ideologies, to church, to state, to all, and various, forms of cultural identifiers as preventing the individual from enacting an effective criticism of that to which it is attached or immersed. Importantly the critic in exile differs from the critic which judges the other but has never been a part of that which is critiqued. Auerbach’s skill depended not only upon his separation from the European world, but more importantly his immersion in and attachment to that world prior to his separation from it. Said saw himself as existing similarly, in exile from his place of birth and early life in Israel/Palestine, and Egypt, from his family, from his new home in New 91 York, from Protestantism, and from his academic world.36 His later works, Out of Place (1999) and Reflections on Exile (2002), explore this topic more personally and completely. Significantly Saidian exile functions very much in congruence with exclusion, each existing both literally and figuratively, and each being imposed at times by the other, the self, or both. The term “religion” as Said uses it frequently works as a force which imposes exclusion upon the other. In his conclusion to The World, the Text, and the Critic, Said emphatically clarifies this distinction between the secular and the religious shaped by this context. In the introduction to the text, “Secular Criticism” and in the conclusion, “Religious Criticism” it is necessary for the reader to understand the grammar of the two terms. “Secular Criticism” is not a critique of the secular, and “Religious Criticism” is not a critique of religion, even as each can be seen as performing these functions. Instead, in each case the terms, “secular” and “religious” function as adjectives separating one form of criticism from another. “Secular Criticism” differs from “Religious Criticism” in its ability or desire to remain apart from the criticism of dominant structures of power present within the critic’s social/cultural/political world. This distinction may be present in Said’s introduction to the work, but it becomes all the more clear in the conclusion. “Secular Criticism” permits and empowers the critic to critique his or her own world. “Religious Criticism” does not permit such work. Said begins the conclusion to The World, the Text, and the Critic by referring to his Orientalism. He describes Orientalism, the concept not the book, as functioning religiously, inhibiting a criticism of the West, by Westerners, through the creation of a structured other, the 36 Said was born in Jerusalem, in Nov. 1, 1935, in Mandatory Palestine, prior to the second World War, and prior to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948/1949. He was raised as a Protestant Christian in Israel/Palestine, then Egypt, a Christian in an Arab world torn apart by conflict between Muslims and Jews. 92 Oriental. He sees Orientalism as discouraging and/or preventing a critique of the West, a critique of the self, by Western critics. The idea of the Orient, very much like the idea of the West that is its polar opposite, has functioned as an inhibition on what I have been calling secular criticism. Orientalism is the discourse derived from and dependent upon “the orient.” To say of such grand ideas and their discourse that they have something in common with religious discourse is to say that each serves as an agent of closure, shutting off human investigation, criticism, and effort in difference to the authority of the more-than-human, the supernatural, the other- worldly. Like culture, religion therefore furnishes us with systems of authority and with canons of order whose regular effect is either to organize collective passions whose social and intellectual results are often disastrous. The persistence of these and other religious- cultural effects testifies amply to what seem to be necessary features of human life, the need for certainty, group solidarity, and a sense of communal belonging. Sometimes of course these things are beneficial. Still it is also true that what a secular attitude enables – a sense of history and of human production, along with a healthy skepticism about the various official idols venerated by culture and system – is diminished, if not eliminated, by appeals to what cannot be thought and explained, except by consensus and appeals to authority. Orientalism critiques the other, but more importantly, inhibits or prohibits a critique of self. It serves as one example of religious discourse/religious criticism, protecting hegemonic power within the cultural world from which it is generated. “Orientalism”, like exile and exclusion, though, does not function too completely or exclusively as a simple negative attack upon the other, or praise for the self. Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich study Orientalism in their text, Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, in which they study Orientalism, Segmentation, and Encompassment, seeing each as working to define and structure relationships between self and other within cultural contexts. They see Orientalism as being not only, specifically, a prejudice generated in the West, acting to diminish and marginalize the “Oriental” other. Instead they see Orientalism as functioning as a cultural form which structures the relationship between self and other in a particular manner. 93 Importantly they see within Orientalism the presence of a desire within the self to be like the other. The Orientalized other does not exist exclusively as the inferior, immoral other, but also as the self freed from the limiting cultural structures which frame the world in which the self lives. Through their analysis “it seems implicit in Said’s recognition that Westerners not only denigrated that which they called ‘oriental’, but also desired it.” (20) They see within the Orientalized other mystery, freedom, spontaneity, traits which the Western world can fail to permit within its own domain. With this understanding they demonstrate “that the grammar of orientalism is not limited to: ‘we are good, so they are bad’”, complicating this relationship between self and other, as Said similarly complicates the relationship the exiled has with his or her home. In the second section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic in which he develops an ethics of exile he also discusses the necessary position of the intellectual as representative voice speaking from exile. One can be tempted to read Said’s argument as speaking to the public as a whole, and perhaps can effectively serve that function as well, but more specifically, within this introduction his intention is guided more by a desire to emphasize the importance of a secular critical attitude within a more exceptional class of intellectuals/academics than within the general population of citizens or students. He does not specifically assert that members of the general population are incapable of forming and/or understanding criticisms of the nation/culture/state in which they exist, but he follows Gramsci in seeing the intellectual as being both responsible for change and being responsible for blame in the perpetuation of the status quo. He sees his position as being congruent with “Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual allied with an emerging class against a ruling-class hegemony.” 94 (15) He sees the individual who is capable of such criticism as “standing consciously against the prevailing orthodoxy and very much for a professedly universal or humane set of values”, while also recognizing that intellectuals are also useful (or to blame) in making hegemony work.” (15) “Quasi-religious authority” (16) generates “a dialectic of self-fortification and self- conformation” (12) in which the public, as part of the cultural nation/state participates in a “system of exclusions … by which such things as anarchy, disorder, irrationality, inferiority, bad taste, and immorality are identified.” (11) Said sees the intellectual, the critic, as being responsible for freeing the public from such hegemonic authority that is imposed upon it by dominant powers within cultural systems. This description of the secular critic in exile heroically struggling, or leading the struggle, against hegemonic authority can easily be seen as present within much of Said’s work, and within this text particularly. He certainly romanticizes such an existence, but even as he romanticizes it he seeks to express an understanding of exile built more fundamentally of sorrow, displacement, helplessness, and solitude.37 Here, in “Reflections of Exile” Said states that 37 A study of Bruce Springsteen’s work as artist and critic can help to shape an understanding of an ethics of exile examining how a romanticization of exile can function ambiguously within a culture. To see this at work one must separate the artist “Bruce Springsteen”, from the character “Bruce Springsteen.” The artist lives a life of wealth and fame that must be seen as being rather in contrast with the hard-working, blue collar, alienated man in blue jeans, leather boots, and ball cap. The characters that fill the narratives which build his lyrics connect with the “Bruce Springsteen” character, living lives of exile, born in the U.S.A., but alienated, living apart from the “Glory Days” which shape the imaginary world from which they have been torn. The details of this separation from the ideal seem on the one hand to speak of alienation, dissatisfaction, and loss; but buried in this sorrow the character in exile from his/her world functions, very much, as a hero. Working class heroes whose lives are filled with meaning and significance, exiled romantically from their lives, not too pitifully displaced. Tom Joad and his Ghost represent the tension between the hardship of exile and the romanticization of it. The man, Tom Joad, lived a life in poverty that led to his death, struggling in exile, homeless, in his world, while his ghost represents the life of a man motivated by a radical desire to battle injustice and abuse. Does the artist, “Bruce Sprinsteen” live in exile? Has he been excluded from his place in America? Does his work critically challenge the systems of power in his nation, encouraging the working poor of America to rise up against the system, or does it instead romanticize alienation, struggle, and hopelessness, serving more as an opiate for the masses than as a criticism of power which might unite the masses in a struggle against oppressive power? 95 “Exiles cross borders, (and) break barriers of thought and experience,” (00) and asserts that the “Modern Western culture is in large part the work of exiles, émigrés, refugees,” and that, “In the United States, academic, intellectual and aesthetic thought is what it is today because of refugees from fascism, communism, and other regimes given to the oppression and expulsion of dissidents.” (180) In contrast, though, in Out of Place, he detaches exile from such a romantic vision and recognizes that in the modern world exile functions more commonly as the product of war, violence, poverty, and other such horrors which tear people from the safety and security of home, nation and family. Exile may function to promote the critical and artistic work of figures such as, Auerbach, Freud, Joyce, Nabokov, Adorno, … , but more commonly it can do the work of leaving millions homeless, helpless, and disconnected from a safety and security to which they wish to return. In the third section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic Said becomes quite clearly focused again, as in the first section, more specifically on literary theory and discusses the relationship between filiation and affiliation as structural/cultural forces which effect the work of the critic in the world. Filiation functions naturally and essentially as that thing which ties one to the other. Filiation is essentially biological, and forms the relationship between child and parent. This relation Said sees as naturally promoting paternal authority and hierarchy. The relationship between self and other is determined not through the agency of the actors but instead through the inevitability of an essential physical reality. Within this section of the text Said sees affiliation, unlike filiation, as being culturally created, through the agency of the actors involved in the relationship, but sadly sees affiliation as mostly, or too frequently, reproducing systems of hierarchy and authority as they exist as a product of filiation. 96 Primarily the human condition is rooted in the filial, but as this system fails, biologically or culturally, the human seeks to recreate its feeling through the creation of non-biological relationships. Becoming a member of a church, or nation, or by joining a professional or ideological community can serve the purpose of recreating the feeling ideally attached to the filial. Such cultural constructs allow for the creation of relationships that do not contain or depend upon the perpetuation or recreation of hierarchy and/or authority as part of their existence. Said feels, though, that affiliation too frequently, or most frequently, fortifies dominant authority and hierarchies instead of challenging them or existing independent of them. Particularly, in this section, he sees literary theory, through non-interference, and participation in specialization, as functioning to produce a critical methodology which participates in and accepts the dominance of hegemonic authority. Specifically, at the time of the writing of this text, “the humanities” existed in literature departments primarily as what could be called the works of dead white men. Said saw, then, that, “New cultures, new societies, and emerging visions of social, political, and aesthetic order now lay claim to the humanist’s attention, with an insistence that cannot long be denied.” (21) He saw too, though, that, “for perfectly understandable reasons they are denied.” (21) He goes on from this to state: When our students are taught such things as ‘the humanities’ they are almost always taught that these classic texts embody, express, represent what is best in our, that is, the only, tradition. Moreover they are taught that such fields as the humanities and such subfields as ‘literature’ exist in a relatively neutral political element, that they are to be appreciated and venerated, that they define the limits of what is acceptable, appropriate, and legitimate so far as culture is concerned. (21) 97 This portion of Said’s argument can be seen as functioning in a moment before the rise of multiculturalism in the humanities and could be seen perhaps as being corrected by the development and growth of Feminism, Race Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, New-Historicism, Gender Studies and other disciplines that move away from and/or critique the literary canon which provided most hegemonically the context which shaped the study of literature for generations. This portion of his argument though does not shape it entirely, nor does a movement toward multiculturalism and other methods of criticism necessarily fix the problem he saw as being present within the academy at the time of the writing of this text. His conclusion to the text would refer specifically to “the religious aestheticism of New Criticism”, and would see “deconstruction and semiotics” as existing within “a number of fixed special languages, many of them impenetrable, deliberately obscure, willfully illogical.” He would see these methodologies as failing to participate in a properly secular version of criticism not only because of the texts that they examined, but more particularly because of their ability to see texts through narrowly textual lenses which promote and require noninterference in a political/cultural/social world. In the final section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic Said moves away from an argument contained too exclusively within the field of literary theory and criticism and returned to a discussion of the function of criticism through most of the academic community. He asserts that “the intellectual’s social identity should involve something more than strengthening those aspects of the culture that require mere affirmation and compliancy from its members.” “Criticism in short,” he said, “is always situated; it is skeptical, secular, reflectively open to its own failings.” He saw the critic as being necessarily “critical” rather than merely participating as “good members of a school.” 98 Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom. The “secular”, as such, worked to critically promote human interests in the world, while the “religious” worked to promote and maintain hegemonic systems of power, either by participating in and supporting these systems explicitly, or by allowing their continuance through more implicit actions, like noninterference and an emphasis upon textuality, participating is systems of specialization that separate the critic, and the critic’s work from a necessary connection to the social/political/human world. 99 CHAPTER FIVE: SECULAR CRITICAL THEORY/METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY Chapter Introduction The first two chapters of this dissertation worked to shape an understanding of the secular that examined its use beginning with its introduction to the English language in the 13th century and leading toward its presence within contemporary modern discourses today. Importantly these chapters demonstrated how the secular has been associated with the negative and nonpositive throughout most or all of this history. A “negative” understanding of the secular arises from its placement connotatively in relation to the other. Originally in its relation to the holy it worked to describe that which was vulgar, common, or mundane, in this world, in contrast to that which was transcendent or divine. The secular was not seen as being “bad” or “evil”. It merely functioned to describe that which lacked the greater significance attached to the holy and/or divine. It was not hostile to the holy other, it was merely inferior to it. From this origin as the inferior other which shaped its first usage, it would evolve and become eventually more associated with the “bad” or “evil” as it ceased being merely inferior to the holy, and became instead hostile to the holy. The secular stopped being a necessary part of the good Christian life and became instead a barrier to it. Alongside this connotative evolution from the common and vulgar to the evil and the bad the secular denotatively became more completely a “nonpositive” term in the language as it more and more became defined by what it is not, than by a description of what it is. Etymologically rooted in a connection to the world it originally, positively, could be defined as that which is connected to the world, either common or physical, as the holy could be defined as that which is connected to the transcendent or divine. The secular could be 100 denotatively understood through a positive description of what it is, or was, just as the holy could be positively construed. Eventually though this positive understanding of the secular would become most completely lost and would be replaced by a purely negative understanding of the term. The secular would become that which was not holy, not transcendent, not religious. These other terms, the “holy”, “transcendent”, and “religious” continued to be defined positively, by what they are, but the “secular” more and more became defined most exclusively by what it is not. George Holyoake would be seen, within much of the second chapter, as working to oppose these negative understandings, both denotatively and connotatively, of the secular in its use in the 19th century, but his efforts would be seen as being unsuccessful, even futile. Chapters three and four, following this developed understanding of the term, “secular”, along with Holyoake’s addition of “secularism” to the language, worked to demonstrate how the secular and secularism function within contemporary discourses, especially within the American academic world. Chapter Three demonstrates the hegemonic influence of those tied to the religious community who work to maintain an understanding of the secular, as described in the paragraph above, which sees it as connotatively negative and denotatively nonpositive. They see the secular as being responsible for evil, violence, and chaos in the human world, while seeing it as also destroying the hope for development of meaning within personal lives. In Chapter Four Phil Zuckerman does nothing to challenge this understanding of the secular which defines it only in opposition to, in difference/differance from, religion. He destroys arguments which see the secular as being responsible for immorality in the world, and goes so far as to turn the tables suggesting in fact that theism, not atheism, functions more effectively to promote immoral drives in individuals and communities. He deconstructs secularism’s negative connotative framing, but 101 accepts completely an understanding which defines it in an absolutely nonpositive manner. Edward Said does no such thing. Said reconnects the secular, with the world, etymologically unifying those two things, the secular and the world, as they had been united originally in the term’s first usage in the 13th century. While Zuckerman’s argument participates completely in identity politics, Said’s argument attempts to move most completely away from it. Said’s secularism functions positively, but critically, in a complex material/human world, it is not stuck narrowly in an oppositional relationship to religion, or theism. Together, Zuckerman and Said work to deconstruct the secular and secularism connotatively and denotatively. They attempt to perform the task that Holyoake failed to achieve a century earlier. Their arguments do not fail, intellectually or reasonably, but they do fail, as did Holyoake’s, to gain traction culturally or academically, permitting the hegemonic dominance of the anti-secular, as displayed in Chapter Three, to continue with great power and influence. Moving forward this dissertation will work to separate discourses about the secular from discourses performed by the secular. Zuckerman’s work focused mostly upon how the other/self forms an understanding of the secular, while Said’s moved more completely in the opposite direction discussing how the secular works to understand the other/Other. The term “secular discourse” could seem to apply to each and because of this ambiguity this dissertation will avoid usage of that term moving forward. The dissertation will be built upon an understanding of discourse, but will separate discourses about the secular, “secular studies” as Zuckerman calls it, from discourses by the secular, “secular criticism” as Said described it. The dissertation will move forward pursuing goals more similar to those developed by Said. It will not ignore, or devalue, the importance of participation in the shaping of discourses 102 about the secular, but will participate in the shaping of secular identity politics apart from the defensive/conflictive position Zuckerman has sought to achieve.38 It will not accept a compartmentalized, limited definition of the secular which sees secularism as equal to atheism, and the secularist as equal to the atheist. Following the rejection of this limitation it will work to reinforce an understanding of the secular through its connection to the world, performing work similar to that done by Holyoake and Said. It will reject an understanding of the secular which sees it as nothing but an opposition to the religious. It will refer to this new methodology as Secular Critical Theory and will work through the remainder of this chapter to develop an effective understanding of it, both methodologically and pedagogically. To promote a separation from a codependent relationship with the religious, Secular Critical Theory will perform the work of seeing the secular as denotatively opposite from the sacred, seeing religion as only one of many sacred things present within a human understanding of the world. This act will be similar to the work performed by Said in The World, the Text, and the Critic, but will go a significant step beyond it. Said sought to expand an understanding of the secular by expanding an understanding of the religious. His strategy worked to reassign portions of the human world which have not been defined as religious, seeking to transform them into religious constructs. He continued to accept the secular/religious binary as denotatively framing an oppositional understanding of the secular, but he sought to connect religion to something, or some things, different from a belief in God or connection to a church community. Secular Critical Theory will not continue to participate in the acceptance of that binary, but will instead 38 Zuckerman’s efforts and methods can be seen as matching those of Charles Bradlaugh, in contrast to those pursued by Holyoake, as they worked side by side, but with different, contradictory tactics to shape an understanding of the secular, or secularism, and of what it meant to be a secularist/atheist in the 19th century. 103 seek to frame an understanding of the secular which can function quite independently from a particular opposition to the religious. In his effort to free the secular from the limitations imposed upon it as a product of its confining relationship to the religious, Said worked to create an understanding of the religious which defined it as being significantly different from a belief in God(s) or participation in a church community. His use of the term connected more with an understanding of religion similar to that of Durkheim, which saw it more as a human generated social construct than as something needing any connection to the spiritual, transcendent, or divine. Framed as such, substantial portions of the human world could be seen as religious and as such would fall under the umbrella of that which could be critiqued through his “secular criticism”. He saw religiosity as primarily working to create affiliated identities which divided the human community, promoting conflict and violence, and inhibiting or preventing collaborative democratic unity. Secular Critical Theory agrees with his description of that which is religious but refuses to continue seeing religion as functioning alongside the secular in cultural and academic communities. A vision of this portion of Said’s methodology can be seen in the diagram below. Figure 1. Linguistic Chart 104 Secular Critical Theory as it is developed in this chapter can be seen differently, as such: Figure 2. Linguistic Chart One could, perhaps, see the difference between these two constructs as being merely semantic if an understanding of the “religious” were too easily conflated with an understanding of the “sacred”. Secular Critical Theory does no such thing. Instead it defines the “sacred” as being that which resists criticism, and it places “religion” in a different category from the secular and the sacred. Religion and the sacred within this framing are not apples and oranges, but exist separately from one another on different levels of classification. Figure 3. Linguistic Chart 105 Structured as such the secular becomes able to function in a manner separate from any close association to the religious. Positively the secular can be defined as that which can be critiqued as part of the human world, and the sacred can be defined as that which stands apart from such criticism. This distinction becomes particularly significant when contrasted with a framing of the secular which conflates it with the atheistic. The tension between theism and atheism can be seen as rising from a struggle between the two in a pursuit of objective, essential truth/Truth. This tension, often connected with the New Atheist “movement”, can associate the secular with science, and religion with faith. Each side can be seen as pursuing a truth, or truths, which are not dependent upon or connected to any form of human social or cultural construction. Much of that which is presented in Chapter Three of this dissertation is built within that framing. The apologist sees religion as defining objective moralities, while the atheist must insist that her values are built of something other than an inadequate moral relativism. Secular Critical Theory rejects this debate most completely, refusing to see the construction of human values and meaning as being dependent upon any essential or objective, authorized truth/Truth. Removed from this debate Secular Critical Theory can shape an understanding of the secular that can empower it to more effectively participate in the humanities, in a critique of the social and cultural. The atheist can continue to participate in arguments with the theist concerning proofs of the existence of God, but the secularist can move away from that debate. Secular Critical Theory defines the secular as that which participates collaboratively in the construction of human, social and cultural, understandings, and defines the sacred as that which refuses to participate collaboratively in such development. The secular sees value, significance, 106 and meaning as being constructed in the world, while the sacred sees value, significance, and meaning as essentially determined prior to or apart from human creation or performance. The Christian apologist wishes to be excused from participation in the construction of social/cultural values and understanding, and wishes instead to impose an essential truth upon the world. This desire leads the theist/apologist to promote the continuance of a discourse which sees the secular as being nothing more than an opposition to religion. In that debate God and religion are important. Secular Critical Theory discontinues this framing and sees religion as one of a multitude of social constructs which work to satisfy a similar human desire with similar negative consequences. In this debate God and religion lose that importance. The remainder of this chapter will develop an understanding of Secular Critical Theory which will work toward describing a relationship between the personal and the sacred which sees attachment to the sacred as being built from a desire to shape a personal understanding and relationship to the world that reduces anxiety as it presents itself constantly as a part of the human condition. This understanding will be developed through an exploration of Lacan’s use of post-structural semiotics in his description of a personal human connection to the world. It will describe the relationship between the barred subject, $, and the barred Other, A, and from this will show how this relationship leads toward a desire for the sacred which is filled by religion, and nationalism, and a vast array of significations within the symbolic register. From this it will show how the sacred works to prohibit or inhibit critical thinking in public and academic contexts. With all of this in mind it will argue that the development of effective critical thinking skills within the academy depends upon the inclusion of Secular Critical Theory, or some similar methodology, in the modern academic world. 107 Framing the Topic A greater understanding of Secular Critical Theory can be determined through a more developed analysis of the relationship between the secular and the sacred as they function as signifiers working to generate meaning within the methodology. A reexamination of the diagram above, used to describe the relationship between the terms, places the “secular” and the “sacred” together on one level of categorization and organizes “nationalism”, “race”, “religion”, “gender”, and “political party” on another level. Figure 4. Linguistic Chart The “secular” and the “sacred” have a relationship to one another, just as “nationalism”, “race”, “religion”, “gender”, and “political party” have a relationship to one another, but in the diagram the space above the two terms remains blank. Within Secular Critical Theory this place would hold the term “imaginary” and would radically change the nature of the debate moving it more 108 completely into the humanities while removing it from a struggle with religion in pursuit of some version of authoritative truth. Simply, this segment of the larger diagram would look like this: Figure 5. Linguistic Chart Which compares to the placement of the “secular” within the alternative discourse, described above, which ties the “secular” instead to the “religious”. Figure 6. Linguistic Chart 109 The completed diagram, as developed with Secular Critical Theory, would appear as such: Figure 7. Linguistic Chart With the signifiers attached to the “secular” and “sacred” interacting with each in a wholly different manner. Filling the blank spot above the “secular” and “sacred” with the “imaginary” functions selectively to direct discourse in a particular manner. The imaginary finds itself there not because it necessarily needs to occupy that space. Secular Critical Theory merely chooses to organize its particular discourse in such a manner, just as religious voices have chosen consistently to organize a discourse about the secular in a different manner. The “imaginary” functions within this structure as that which could be described as a “master signifier”.39 The master signifier works in relation to the other terms by providing them with direction, guiding them towards a particular meaning. The terms work together providing meaning to one another, a meaning that is structured within the discourse. Meaning is built 39 The “master signifier”, and sometimes “Master Signifier”, perform within Lacanian discourse within a range of different interpretations of the term(s). Placed within the context of this paragraph the “master signifier” works structurally to determine the meaning of those other signifiers within the structure whose meaning depends upon the master signifier’s influence. In another context, the human subject can be seen as pursuing connection to the other/Other in the world through connection to a “master signifier” which, in a similar manner to that above, provides meaning and significance to the individual. In a third context, the “Master Signifier” functions more dictatorially, as “the name of the father” to impose meaning upon the entire field of signifiers, upon language itself. 110 collaboratively within participatory discourse. This semiotics counters less collaborative, more authoritative, versions in which meaning exists separate from its development in language, as Plato’s ideal forms would represent. Within the religiously dominant discourse, that Secular Critical Theory works to challenge, the “truth/Truth” functions to provide an understanding of the “secular” in one very limited, constrictive manner. Secular Critical Theory works only to interrupt that discourse by placing the “imaginary” within the chain of signifiers that connect most closely with the “secular”. Neither choice is necessarily correct, but the difference radically effects the impact and usefulness of the term within culture and academics. Secular Critical Theory works to move the secular away from that struggle for the truth, in conflict with religion, and seeks to immerse it more completely in the humanities, into discussions of ethics, aesthetics, economics, and more, and more, from which it has been largely excluded. The following sections will develop an understanding of the relationship between subject/self and other/Other from a Lacanian perspective before returning to more developed discussion of the imaginary. The first two sections will discuss the Barred Subject and The Death of God, each of which relate significantly to the other. Tying them together will be a reference to Lacan’s Graphs of Desire which contain those other two subjects interactively together. Eventually these things will be tied together with Anxiety and the Imaginary and a description of how they all work together to shape Secular Critical Theory into that which can, or should, be used effectively in modern academics. The chapter will close with a discussion of how Secular Critical Theory can be applied methodologically and pedagogically in the academy. 111 The Barred Subject Foundationally grounding Secular Critical Theory is the relationship between the subject and the signifier as structured by Lacan in “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious”. Within this text Lacan sees the subject, acting within the symbolic register, as being incapable of connecting the self concretely to the world as it exists within this understanding of the world shaped primarily by attachment to language.40 Organized as such the relationship between the subject and the self can be described, analogically, as the relationship between an iceberg and the tip of the iceberg. The “self”, the tip of the iceberg, exists as but a portion of that larger thing which is the “subject” and that open space above the water functions as the symbolic register in which the self acts consciously and interactively in a social/linguistic relation to the world. The self in this world, in this register, commonly fails to see itself as but a part of a more substantial human thing, the subject. Psychoanalysis describes the self as a mere portion of the subject, but the self tends to see itself as complete, with the unconscious functioning only as part of that self. 40 Within psychoanalysis Lacan sees the human relationship to the world as being built within three registers/orders, the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic. The three registers/orders describe different, coinciding, relationships that the human has in its interaction with the world. The world does not change in the three orders, only the way in which the human understands and interacts with the world. The symbolic order follows from an understanding of the world filtered through a language lens which comes to dominate the subject’s understanding of the world through the creation of an nonstable self identity. 112 Lacan might see the relationship in this manner: Figure 8. Subject/Self Image The “self”, on the other hand, acting within the symbolic order, sees the relationship as such: Figure 9. Image of Self Modern psychology, within the contemporary market economy, functions largely from a drive to satisfy the desires of the self, seeing that part of the subject hidden below the surface as built of only latent aspects of that self. Modern psychology works to help the self in its struggles in the world. Lacanian psychoanalysis, differently, works through the self only through a desire to interact with the subject. In “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” the subject/self, the “I”, immersed in the symbolic register, in an understanding of the world built from language, finds itself unable to effectively use the symbolic to fulfill a desired relationship to the other/Other. The problem, as 113 Lacan frames it through reference to Saussure, sees the symbolic register as containing the same deficiencies that exist within all of language as described by Saussure. The problem, as it was developed in post-structural linguistics, arises from the failure of the signifier to unite with the signified in Saussure’s equation. This equation sees the creation of a sign, of meaning, as being constructed from the relationship between the signifier and the signified, which can be demonstrated in this manner: sign = 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 . In this equation, the bar, the line that separates the signifier from the signified works to do just that. It separates them. In literary theory, post- structuralism and deconstruction, the bar, the separation between signifier and signified, either nihilistically blocks the creation of meaning within the text, optimistically creates greater potential for the development of meaning in the text, or both. Either way, the bar prevents the signifier from concretely establishing a true, indisputable, authoritative connection to the signified. In this problem the subject/self exists apart from the text, with the problem creating difficulties, or possibilities, for the reader in his/her desire to find or create meaning within the text. In this situation the problem exists in the text, in the other, it is a problem that the subject/self must deal with outside of subject/self. In “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” Lacan immerses the subject/self into that equation, framing a situation in which the subject/self, the “I”, desires to understand itself, as opposed to the other situation in which the subject/self desires to understand the other, the text. In this different equation the subject/self, the “I”, becomes the signified, and the bar separates the subject/self from a desired connection or unity with the signifier. To turn the equation on its head the subject/self, the signified, is separated, from the signifier, with the bar, preventing the subject/self from establishing and maintaining a concrete, stable understanding in its relationship to the other/Other, to the world. 114 This other equation would appear as such: meaning = "𝐼" 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑟 . The desire contained within this equation can be understood as being similar to the desire contained within a response to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up”, or the more vague adult question, “Who are you?” Lacan suggests that the subject cannot answer these questions in a manner that is anything but temporary, contingent and limited. The subject, as such, is barred from creating that which it desires to create through language, through the symbolic, a stable relationship to the other/Other, and Lacan represents this restriction through what he calls the barred subject, represented as such, $. The barred subject’s unfulfilled desire to fulfill the desire of the Other functions as the source of anxiety within the human condition, with the imaginary being the creative result of the subject’s efforts to define the self in relation to the Other. The two things together generate attachment to the sacred and work within Secular Critical Theory to shape that which the methodology seeks to deconstruct. All of this will be analyzed more completely within the sections below in connection specifically with those two topics, “Anxiety” and “The Imaginary”. The Death of God When Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science announces the death of God his proclamation can be interpreted as signaling that something has changed in his world. It could seem that a God once lived and that, according to the madman, someone had killed him. Contained within this madman’s proclamations, the death had led to the loss of much, to the loss of that which centered and anchored all of human existence. Humanity, without God, was lost. After much ranting though about the horrors that will follow the death of God, the madman’s 115 rhetoric glitches. The horror in that moment transforms into something substantial and different for the future. God had been killed, but his death had been a great event and “on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!” The switch in tone demonstrates Nietzsche’s recognition of the overwhelming influence of religion in the western world. It sees how religion functions to center and determine so much of that contained within the human cultural experience at the time. The madman declares that with this loss of center, humanity is lost. After pointing to this reality though Nietzsche describes that which could possibly be created in the future, a world in which humanity might become, with the shedding of religion, greater than it had ever been before. Lacan, nearly a century later, repeated the madman’s proclamation that God is dead. Lacan’s assertion though, unlike the madman’s, announced not a bit of change in the world at all. The madman declared that God had been murdered. Lacan merely states that God has never been alive. God was dead. God has always been dead. His existence functions only within the human imagination, an imagination that requires that he be dead. The God metaphor, in Lacanian speak, functions as that which he otherwise describes as being the Other, or in his own language Autre, represented by the capital “A”, (A)utre, which functions differently than the other “a”, “the petit objet a”, “the petit autre”. The Other, the big Other, God, represents for Lacan the totality of all of that contained within the symbolic order that impacts and shapes the subject’s understanding and pronouncement of the self. In the human world, the subject/self interacts with the other, with others. Included in a list of others would be the subject/self’s parent’s, family, peers, strangers, media, ideology, texts… . Contained within the list of others would be all of that which fits within the subjects 116 phenomenological understanding of the world. Each of these, the others, affects the subject/self’s personal understanding of, and connection to the world. Separately each “other” affects the individual, and together as the totalized “Other” they shape the subject/self’s understanding of its personal relationship to the world. The totalized Other exists within this discourse entirely as the product of the self/subject’s imaginary. The individual struggles, desires, to fulfill the desire of the Other. That Other though does not exist, except as the product to the imagination. That Other is dead. The Other does not desire. The Other does not judge. The power that the Other has within the subject/self’s life is the product merely of the subject/self’s creation. The Other in this relationship, within the symbolic order which shapes the subject’s understanding of self, is represented by Lacan as the barred Other, as this Other, like the subject, cannot attain a stable, concrete, consistent, presence in the world. The problem, in each case, follows from the subject’ s separation from the signifier. The subject, over the bar, 𝑠 ???, cannot attach itself to anything which particularly defines it, just as the Other, over the bar, 𝐴 ??? , cannot be attached to anything that particularly describes it. Language, within the symbolic order, prevents these things from happening. (Particularly notice a substantial difference between the barred subject, $, and the barred Other, A.41 The barred subject, $, exists as a failure to create its own connection to the signifier, while the barred Other, exists not as a failure of the Other to create this connection, but as a failure of the subject to create that connection for it.) 41 Within this text the italicized A is substituted for that A with a bar through it. 117 The Graph of Subjectivity and Desire In his Ecrits (1966) and prior to that in his seminars Lacan created a series of graphs designed to help explain the theory that he was proposing. There were four graphs designed to function together toward a completed goal. Graphs 1 through 4 become more complex as they move forward, with the first creating a foundational understanding for those that follow with each progressing as such toward the final graph, Graph 4. This chapter will visit only the first graph which contains most of what is necessarily attached to the content of this dissertation describing the relation of the barred subject to the Other as each function within the symbolic order. Figure 10. Lacanian Graph of Desire (LacanOnline) The subjectification of the self begins in this graph at the lower right corner with Delta, which represents the precognitive unconscious being and sees that being following a path which leads to an interaction with the Other, language, which is represented by the arc which connects the signifier, S, with the signified, S’. The creation of self occurs at this point, where the unconscious interacts with the symbolic and the desire to represent the self, to self, and to 118 other/Other, emerges. Language creates this desire for self-representation, but language fails at the same time to satisfy this desire. The realization of this failure occurs across the top of the graph. The point of intersection which begins that arc functions as the subject’s original interaction with the Other, A, and the second point of intersection, following the realization of the failure of language would be represented by the barred Other, A. The failure of language which this graph represents leads toward the creation of the imaginary and functions as the cause of that anxiety which functions perpetually in the subject’s life. The flow of the completed arc ends with the barred subject, $, in the lower left corner of the graph. Anxiety The persistent presence of anxiety contained within the subject’s relationship to the world was not a concept that originated in Lacan’s work. Prior to Lacan, anxiety functioned importantly in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Freud, and more. Anxiety as a philosophical concept, as opposed to a psychological symptom, presented itself within much of the writing performed within the works of these men, and others close to them, existed as a thing quite different from the “anxiety” as it is colloquially defined in a more modern context. A modern understanding of anxiety sees it as occurring within moments of time, and often in response to specific situations. This anxiety corresponds to fear, and dread, and is seen most exclusively as an emotion that one would wish to avoid. Anxiety’s presence prior to its immersion in contemporary psychological discourse, functioned quite differently in the more philosophical works published near the beginning of the 20th century. Anxiety in this context could be seen as a driver responsible for guiding the individual toward significance and meaning in life. It properly motivated the individual, unlike a more modern anxiety that negatively affects 119 a person’s life. Kierkegaard’s anxiety functioned differently than Sartre’s but each shared some tendencies similar to those contained within Lacan’s work, and unlike the effects associated with a modern anxiety. Separating Lacanian anxiety from the other more philosophical versions noted above was its particular ties to language, Saussurean linguistics, and post-structural semiotics. Certainly the others could be seen as suggesting that anxiety could be associated with a desire for significant meaningfulness in life, Lacan however connected the pursuit of significance, meaning, most clearly to language itself. This connection with language, a language which Lacan saw as failing to fulfill the desires of self and Other, could be seen as placing this anxiety within a most decidedly negative place. It might suggest that language fails to alleviate anxiety. A more nuanced understanding of post-structural linguistics though, as they function within a postmodern context, might lead one to a different conclusion, a conclusion that comes closer to Sartre’s relationship with freedom, or Kierkegaard’s pursuit of the authentic.42 Secular Critical Theory sees anxiety as driving the individual, the subject/self, in a different direction than that described above. It certainly sees anxiety as functioning as a substantial part of the human condition in a manner similar to that described philosophically above, and chooses to allow a more symptomatic, temporal understanding of anxiety to remain within the field of psychology, keeping it separate from this discourse. Apart from other interpretations of anxiety proposed philosophically above Secular Critical Theory sees anxiety 42 Sartre saw anxiety as present constantly within the human condition and saw anxiety as a driver leading the individual toward a higher quality of life. Kierkegaard, similar to Sartre, saw anxiety as motivating the individual, leading the individual toward the possibility of a greater life. Kierkegaard though, unlike Sartre, saw anxiety as a thing which could be cured through the achievement of an authentic life. Kierkegaard sought to rid himself of anxiety, while Sartre chose to live with it positively. 120 not so much as motivating or driving the subject/self toward a better life, it finds anxiety to be responsible for the personal attachment to the sacred. The subject/self attempts to use the sacred to correct the failure of language. Language fails, within the Lacanian symbolic, to satisfy the subject/self’s desire to fulfill the desire of the Other. The sacred fails to correct this failure, but the subject/self, desperate to be rid of anxiety clings to the sacred wishing to escape an anxiety that is felt as an unpleasant sensation. Lacan sees the barred subject as being incapable, immersed in the symbolic, of representing the self, in relation to the Other, in a manner that will fulfill the desire of the Other. Attachment to the sacred leads the subject/self to challenge that assertion, claiming that the sacred shapes a personal relationship to the Other which fulfills the wishes of the self and Other. Without the sacred the individual is overwhelmed with anxiety, and this feeling drives the individual to defend the sacred, as it would defend the self, because essentially the sacred is nothing but an extension of the self. The Imaginary A discussion of the imaginary, in a context attached to the development of an understanding of Secular Critical Theory must begin, perhaps, with a discussion of the imaginary as it functions within Lacan’s formation of the three registers, three orders, which frame a human relationship to the world. To begin this discussion it must be understood that the Lacanian Real does not equal or match the real as it is commonly understood in modern discourse, with the Lacanian Imaginary failing similarly to match a contemporary, colloquial understanding of the imaginary as it is most commonly used. Of the three, the Lacanian Symbolic most closely corresponds to an understanding of the symbolic as it is commonly used in language today. To facilitate the development of Secular Critical Theory within this text, within this chapter, and 121 dissertation the “Lacanian Real” will be distinguished from the “real” as it is commonly spoken, simply by purposefully listing them exactly as such, the Lacanian Real, or the real. The imaginary and the symbolic will not be treated in the same manner as the tension between the Lacanian Symbolic and the colloquial symbolic does not present difficulties similar to those present with interactions between the “real” and the “Lacanian Real; and because this dissertation seeks to expand or complicate an understanding of the imaginary in a manner that would be reduced by their separation. The importance of the imaginary within an understanding of Secular Critical Theory can be highlighted with a return to an understanding of the imaginary in its placement as master signifier in the diagram above, and here, which sees the imaginary, within this discourse, as shaping and framing the meaning and difference present within the relationship between the secular and the sacred. Figure 11. Linguistic Chart The imaginary as it functions in this diagram and within the development of Secular Critical Theory can best be understood following from a description of its relationship to the real, the colloquial real, as opposed to its relationship to the Lacanian Real. A contemporary understanding of the difference between the imaginary and the real is one that is typically framed 122 in relation to that which is accurate, objective, true. The real is exactly that. The real is accurate, objective and true. Tautologically the “real” is real. The imaginary, on the other hand, is not that. The imaginary is not accurate, objective, true. The imaginary acts in opposition to the real. The imaginary exists only in the mind, it is the product of fantasy, of nonattachment to the physical world, to reality, to the real. The imaginary, however, as it functions together with the Lacanian Real, and the symbolic, does not find itself separated so clearly and distinctly from the real. Figure 12. The Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real (LacanOnline) The subject/self does not exist within one of the three registers, instead it functions as a product of the three combined. The subject/self understands its relationship to the world through attachment to a combination of the three, which differs from an understanding of the real which places the self properly only in the real world, with the imaginary being only the product of fantasy. The Lacanian Imaginary, and the imaginary as it is represented and described within this dissertation, does not function as a thing separate from, detached from, the real. The imaginary within these contexts can better be understood as a phenomenological understanding of the real. 123 The self does not see the imaginary as unreal. In fact the imaginary is exactly what is real to the individual. Subject A may understand the world and his/her relationship to the world differently than Subject B perceives and performs such understandings. Neither though will likely perceive their understanding of the world as being detached from reality, instead they will see their “imaginary” as being wholly real. Understood as such the “imaginary” as master signifier functions to frame an understanding of the relationship between the “secular” and the “sacred” that can lead toward the pursuit of a discussion of the relationship between the “secular imaginary” and the “sacred imaginary”. Framed as they are by Secular Critical Theory, neither term exists as being either necessarily true or false. The distinction between them, a distinction which most notably contrasts Secular Critical Theory from much that is present in contemporary academics, sees one, the “secular imaginary”, as consciously participating in the construction of meaning in the world, and sees the other, the “sacred imaginary” as refusing to participate collaboratively in the construction of meaning in the world. Importantly, Secular Critical Theory, sees quality of life as it exists in the modern world as being largely determined through the collaborative construction of meaning and values, with such understandings shaping the social, cultural, political world in which we are each immersed. The sacred imaginary resists such a perspective, choosing to see its imaginary, its phenomenological understanding of the world, as being essentially, naturally, and authoritatively true, while seeing the imaginary as it is understood, or created, by the other as being invalid, inaccurate, untrue, or unethical and evil in many cases. The subject/self, immersed in the sacred, attached to the sacred, becomes unable to participate in the collaborative development of the 124 human world. The sacred inhibits, or prohibits criticism, being unable to perform the act of self- criticism and responding aggressively to criticism performed by the other. If one were to reduce this difference to the merely personal level, as can too easily and frequently occur within the neoliberal self-help context which shapes a substantial portion of modern understandings of the contemporary world, then the difference between the secular imaginary and the sacred imaginary could be seen as affecting only personal subjective understandings and relationships to the world. The error of such a reduction results from a failure to see that the construction of the real, the shared social and physical world in which all are immersed, as a product of the collaborative imaginary. The relationship between a personal imaginary and the collective imaginary functions very much like the relationship between the chicken and the egg. Which came first? Directionally the subject/self is born into a world which contains the sacred in the form of the signifier within the symbolic order. Religion, and nation, and race, and gender, and political party, and more, and more, exist prior to the birth of the subject/self. Directionally, as such, it would appear that the collective imaginary, the sacred signifier within the symbolic order, exists prior to the subject/self. Language predates the human. But does language predate the human? Or does language even exist apart from the human, apart from conscious cognition? Secular Critical Theory sees the Lacanian “desire to fulfill the desire of the Other” as emphasizing a directionality which places the desire for the sacred prior to the presence of the sacred. Christian theology sees “man” as following from God, while a different perspective upon that relationship, such as that proposed by Feuerbach, sees God as being the product of human creation. Secular Critical Theory sees “God”, and “religion”, and “nationalism”… as products of 125 the human imagination, the imaginary, and sees the desire to sanctify them as resulting from a drive to ameliorate the anxiety of the subject/self as it is experienced within the symbolic order. A desire for the sacred, a desire to attach the self, concretely and meaningfully, to a signifier, drives the subject/self toward the creation of the sacred in its life. Religion and nationalism function within the collaborative imaginary, within the symbolic order, as does race, gender, and political party, but the desire exists separately from these specific significations, and the desire apart from these signifiers will seek the sacred elsewhere in the symbolic order, in language. A more developed understanding of the relationship between the self and the sacred can clarify perhaps the value contained within a deconstruction of the sacred as it is pursued within Secular Critical Theory. The sacred commonly can be seen as being the other, as being a thing in the world, apart from self. Returning to Lacan’s graph of desire can perhaps prevent the two from being seen as so entirely separate. Figure 13. Lacanian Graph of Desire (LacanOnline) 126 Across the top of the graph as the subject moves from immersion in the symbolic, the first intersection point with language, the self begins the pursuit of the desire to fulfill the desire of the Other. This Other, “A”, which is not the other, “a”, contains the self. The subject seeks to create an identity for the self that will please the Other, and this identity will be that which the self displays to both the other/Other, and to the self. The barring of the signifier to the signified prevents the subject from concretely identifying both the self and the other/Other. They remain products of the secular imaginary, constructed in the world, contingently and subjectively, and as such they fail to remove the subject from the anxiety which is part of the human world. Moving from the abstract to the particular can help to bring this more clearly into view. The relationship between believer and God, within Christian theology, can easily see God as that which is sacred within that context. The believer seeks to value and defend “God” as that which is sacred. (And by extension, the cross, the Bible, and other symbolic, fetishized, attachments to God.) The believer can emphasize his/her love of God, and describe the self within this relationship as insignificant. Substantially, though, in reference to the paragraph above, the believer becomes identified to not only God(Other), and the public(other), as Christian, but also to the self as Christian. The signifier, “Christian”, ties the subject/self intimately to the sacred Other, Christianity, so completely that defense of the sacred Other, works equally to protect the self, or as Secular Critical Theory would suggest, works more exclusively to protect the self. Blasphemy laws can be seen as designed to protect the sacred other/Other, while in reality they more completely work to protect the subject/self. To protect the subject/self not only from critique voiced by the other, but to protect the self from reflexive self-criticism. To protect God, to protect Christianity, effectively works to protect what it means to be a Christian. (Obviously a 127 defense of the American sacred works similarly to protect what it means to be American, as would the defense of a vast chain of signifiers work to protect the significance of personal identities attached to these signifiers.) Methodology Methodologically, Secular Critical Theory as it is developed above, sees attachment to the sacred as functioning to block or inhibit critical thinking within the academy, and in culture more completely, and sees the deconstruction of the sacred, and of sacred things, as necessarily part of effective critical work throughout the academy. It rejects prevailing discourses, present within the academy today, which see the secular as nothing but a rejection of a belief in God, or opposition to religion, excluding the secular from involvement in academics outside of this narrow framing. Following this rejection it works to define the sacred in a manner which separates it from a compartmentalized attachment to religion as it is commonly seen today. (Secular Critical Theory would suggest that in a world without religion the human would nonetheless be driven toward the creation of the sacred, and would be similarly affected by it.) Following from the recognition of the sacred as that which blocks and/or inhibits critical thinking, Secular Critical Theory seeks to identify that which is sacred, in the world, and seeks to reimagine it as the product of the secular imaginary functioning in the symbolic order as the product of human creation. Applied specifically within the American context Secular Critical Theory would see “America” as functioning as that thing, that signifier, most wholly and completely recognized as sacred within the American nation/state. Charles Taylor, as noted above, described a time in the past in which it was “virtually impossible not to believe in God”, Secular Critical Theory might 128 comparatively assert that within the contemporary modern context it is virtually impossible not to identify oneself significantly in relation to the nation-state. This analysis would match Benedict Anderson’s vision of the eighteenth century marking both the “dawn of nationalism” in the “dusk of religious modes of thought.” (11) While religion still functions to meet the desire of many to create a stable, concrete relationship to the Other, it functions only selectively to do that in lesser parts of the national population, while nationalism, does this same work most completely through the entire population.43 Christian Nationalism can be seen as bringing the two together, and helps to demonstrate how religion and nationalism each are used similarly by the subject/self in response to the same desire for the sacred. The significance of the relationship between the two terms, America and American, can be seen clearly and apparently abundantly within the American cultural world. While descriptions of love for country and service to country may point toward the signifier for the country “America”, more significantly much of this discourse works to shape an understanding of what it means to be “American”. The sacred signifier, “America” works to create and understanding of what it means to be a good “American”. The statement of love for country works perhaps more to show the virtue of the lover, than of the country. Just as a good Christian loves his God, and good American loves her country, and not virtue in American media and discourse today, may match the virtue of providing service to the country. Within a Lacanisn framing the subject/self participates in the construction of the imaginary Other, and from that creation generates the ability to define the self. This relationship manifests itself especially in 43 A small number of expatriates, sovereign individualists, anarchists, and others may separate themselves, or attempt to separate themselves from this discourse, but they function as a small minority within the general population. 129 marketing associated with service in the US military. Significantly this media functions more to show what it means to be a good citizen, and good “American”, who respects service to the country, than it does to actually show the value of that service. It functions more to persuade the public to support the military, than it does to advance recruitment into the military. The NFL’s relationship to the military can be seen as performing this relationship significantly. By associating itself with the military it does promote the military, but just as much, or more significantly, it promotes itself, describing itself within that discourse which sees respect for service as being particularly ethical, valuable and good within the nation’s cultural understandings. The final product of it all is on the one hand respect for the military, but on the other, perhaps more significantly, a respect for those who support the military, which becomes in unison a condemnation or hatred for those who fail to participate in such support. Colin Kaepernick’s displacement from the NFL can be seen as working within a discourse which functions to empower the sacred in its relationship to personal and cultural ethics. His protest can be seen as showing disrespect for the nation, or differently it can be seen as showing disrespect for the flag. Beyond this, that flag can be seen as connected significantly to and representing the military in particular, an association which occurs throughout the NFL’s ties to the US military. Kaepernick described his protest as not representing any hostility or disrespect for the country as a whole, for the flag, or to the military, but was instead particularly enacted to communicate his dissatisfaction with violent racism as it is performed to frequently in the American law enforcement community. A particular understanding of his intent though did not matter. The reason for his protest was unimportant. The only thing that mattered was his failure to respect the sacred. He failed to be a “good American”, and the fact that he was black 130 surely amplified the expected requirement to perform ritualistic respect for the sacred. The “good American” could not allow his country, flag, military, and/or police to be disrespected, especially by a black man, because the “good American’s” identification to self and Other is tied to that sacred, and to disrespect the sacred, is to disrespect the self attached to that sacred. Durkheim understood religion to be tied significantly to ritual. The tribal member, the individual within a community, performs the socially constructed act, and this act in unison with the other, works to bring the separate subject/selves together, establishing shared values and understandings. This required participation in ritual shapes very much understandings of self and its relationship to Other within the symbolic order. The Pledge of Allegiance performed in American schools, and the performance of the Star Spangled Banner at sporting and other public events shapes an understanding of the self and its relation to the other, in the same manner that prayer and other religious rituals functioned, and continue to function, to hegemonically determine personal understandings of the self in relation to other. Particularly significant in the two examples above, The Pledge of Allegiance and The Star Spangled Banner, and connected with the Kaepernick situation, is the required participation in rituals connected specifically to the fetish object, the flag, as opposed to direct reverence for American itself. (This similarly matches Christian attachment to and respect for the cross.) Contained within it all is the development of the sacred as that which cannot be critiqued, either specifically through a prohibition of that critique, or through a belief that the sacred essentially contains a truth or presence that separates it from the possibility of critique. 131 A More Developed Methodology A description of methodology as it appears above leaves Secular Critical Theory in a situation in which it remains tied rather significantly to identity markers associated with substantial social constructs, and while Secular Critical Theory should do such work, it should not be tied only to such work. Moving beyond, “religion”, “nature”, “race”, “gender”, and “political party” an understanding of the sacred as it functions within to shape understandings of relationships between subject/self and Other within the symbolic order, sees the sacred as more completely present within language, and should not be connected only with particular identity markers as those listed above. The Other as it is presented by Lacan is language. The subject/self constructs desire from language, and within this develops the further desire to identify the self, to the self and to Other. Certainly identification of self can be most easily associated with identity markers like those above, but the remainder of the symbolic order should not be separated from the subject’s desire to form a relationship with the world, with the Other. “I am _____” , mostly easily works to perform the creation of personal identity, but a personal understanding of the self is built of much more than that. Within this context “water” functions within the sacred to drive the self toward the desire for self-identification. The self may see itself in relation to water as fearful of it, as overwhelmed by a fear of drowning, or may see itself attached to water as that self may carry water from the well or spring to provide life to family and community. “Water” may be part of that which is ritualistic in some communities, or it may merely be present within the totality of the person’s symbolic order. The self has a relationship to it and this relationship shapes the self 132 understanding of itself, and its relation to the Other. It may be viewed as “sacred” as that which is sanctified within a cultural or religious context, or it may be “sacred” only subject/self’s desire to construct an imaginary that is stable and concrete, preventing the self’s unpleasant immersion in anxiety. Returning to the specifically American context “poverty” functions within the American cultural experience as a signifier which shapes personal and social understandings of the self. It can participate in the simple construction of identity allowing the individual to announce, “I am rich”, or “I am poor”, or beyond that it can exist like water as a part of language, or the symbolic order, a portion of the Other, which shapes desire and personal understanding and identification. Secular Critical Theory can see poverty as a product of the secular imagination, seeing it as being constructed socially in an interactive collaborative world, as opposed to seeing it as being essentially necessary, or naturally present. It can ask how understandings of poverty shape the social and cultural worlds in which we exist. It may wonder how much an American understanding of poverty sees it as valuably necessary, and wonder to what degree it purposefully imposed upon the poor; or to what degree it could be eliminated. Mark Fisher’s assertion, in Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative? that, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, perhaps participates in a framing of capitalism methodologically in a manner similar to that described as the work of Secular Critical Theory. Contained within the question is a framing of “capitalism” as a product of the social imaginary, a framing which suggests that an end to capitalism depends upon an ability to deconstruct its presence within the symbolic order as a sacred thing, moving toward the possibility for the construction of a different social understanding. 133 A representation of the sacred in Secular Critical Theory sees the imaginary as acting in opposition to the imagination. The sacred imaginary particularly requires the use of intellectual and creative resources that could otherwise be used by the creative imagination to construct alternatives to the sacred imaginary. The desire to maintain a stable concrete understanding of a personal relationship to the Other within the symbolic order, uses the same resources that could otherwise be used for the creation of an alternative. It may be true that poverty is seen as a negative thing that ideally would be eliminated, but as long as the subject/self remains incapable of freeing itself from an attachment to poverty within its understanding of the world the subject will remain incapable of imaging an alternative. Pedagogy Chapter 3 of this dissertation presented a vision of the secular university as it exists within an understanding of academics today. The discourse which shapes this understanding connects completely with that discourse which see the secular as being nothing but the absence of religion. As such the “secular university” teaches nothing that is particularly “secular”, instead it only fails to teach anything that is particularly religious. Secular Critical Theory would propose that the secular university should reimagine an understanding of itself which moves toward the framing of a pedagogy which sees the human world as being more completely the product of the collaborative social imagination and less connected with an understanding of a human world attached to completely to essential truths which shape the human world apart from the society’s potential to imagine it differently. At the heart of this is a pedagogy built from a neoliberal understanding of the self which sees the academic world as responsible for promoting the development of individual selves who 134 can function most effectively in the world as it exists today, in the present. This vision fails to imagine a world without capitalism, without poverty, without anything substantially different from that which shapes the world today. This vision does not only fail to substantially promote or create effective and beneficial social change, it works to prevent it. It works to reinforce an understanding of the world as it is shaped imaginatively today. It inhibits the pursuit of alternative imaginaries. It works to promote the sacred. Particularly, Secular Critical Theory sees quality of life as existent primarily as a product of the world in which the individual is immersed. Instead of working to make the individual most capable of functioning effectively in the existent world, Secular Critical Theory would work to promote healthy, productive, effective change in the world. Secular Critical Theory does not at the moment propose how to enact such change within the academy, but it does see the university as needing to reorganize its motivations. It needs to change its goals first, then it can work toward the achievement of those goals. 135 ADDENDUM: CHAPTER THREE An alternative understanding of the secularization of the American university is presented by Jon H. Roberts and James Turner in The Sacred and the Secular University published in 2000 by Princeton University Press. Their work connects to, or follows from, an understanding of the academy and the influence of alienation, secularization, and demystification within its halls. (This topic is introduced and examined briefly, above, in Chapter Two of this text, through two paragraphs on pages 38-39.) Max Weber’s Science as a Vocation (1918) preceded their work and discussed how specialization within academics had altered, substantially, the foundational unity of the university curriculum. Weber’s argument, primarily, was one which saw specialization as creating isolation within the university, which led to feelings of alienation that had not existed prior to movements toward specialization. His text stands as a significant foundation for an understanding of the term, “secularization”, as the term is used today. Problematically, though, as the case was with Locke, Weber does not use the word, “secularization”, nor does he use the word, “secular”, within his text. His text functions as a bedrock, then, for an understanding of the term, not because of his use of the term within the text, but instead from the use of the term by others in critique and analysis of it. Roberts and Turner, however, in their discussion of the same situation, do very much use the “secular” and “secularization” within their text, seeing “specialization” as unintentionally performing the act of “secularization”.44 They describe specialization as being rooted very much 44 Despite the most complete overlap between the two works, The Secular and the Sacred University, and despite the extensive research present throughout the pages of Robert’s and Turner’s work, they rather entirely avoid mentioning either Weber, or Science as a Vocation, anywhere in their text. (It is present only in the book’s notes, 136 in the sciences, and see the movement toward specialization in the university as being promoted entirely by the protestant church which owned and controlled the majority of universities in the US at the time. As such, the term “secularization”, as they use it, describes only the results of “specialization”, while clearly indicating that “secularization” did not act as an intentional influence working to alter the nature of academics at the time. The separation of the sciences from the humanities allowed Roberts and Turner to describe how secularization could have occurred within a pedagogical setting led by and built of Christian men. It promoted a vision of American academics in which specialization was not motivated by a desire to move away from religion, but merely worked to focus research and work, exclusively upon that which was being studied. Specialized courses, departments, and fields did not act in opposition to religion then, nor do they necessarily do so today. Concentrated focus on a topic separated itself from a discussion of God, merely because God was not the topic. The majority of scientists at the time did not reject religion. They merely failed to include it as part of the scientific and academic portions of their lives. God was not driven intentionally from the academy. He became absent only because he was not a part of the specific topic(s) at hand. Weber’s Science as a Vocation differs in this aspect by not so distinctly separating the sciences from other parts of the academic world. His discussion of “science” included all pursuits of knowledge enacted within the university environment. It did not divide the academy into two camps, one empirical and the other linguistic (or philological). Instead his use of the word, “science”, matched a similar understanding of the word, “philosophy”, which previously where it is not referenced itself, but is contained within a description of a different noted text.) (Weber’s absence from the Roberts/Turner text may follow from that text directed attention to the secular within American universities.) 137 had included a more complete pursuit of knowledge, as opposed to the more specialized pursuit of what is now seen as being “philosophic”. He saw the movement away from a general universal pedagogy to a pedagogy focused on the development of specialized skills in compartmentalized fields as developing a pedagogy lacking in its capability to provide its students, and faculty, with a connection to meaning and values. Roberts and Turner see the humanities within the American university system as working to fill this void. They describe specialization as occurring prior to and more significantly in sciences committed to a study of a physical, empirically representable, world, and see the development and growth of the humanities, and specialization within its fields, as following only in the wake of specialization in the physical sciences. The narrative flow of events, as they describe it, sees the university system in the US, prior to the specialization of the sciences, as originally accepting a Protestant vision of the world, universe, and cosmos which started from “the axiom that one God had created a single universe and had given his rational creatures the means to grasp it” (102), and evolved toward a distinctly different pedagogy which claimed that “knowledge does not form a whole but, on the contrary, properly divides itself into distinct compartments, and that unique methodological principles and scholarly traditions govern life within each of these boxes.” (87) They go so far as to cite one University of Michigan professor who claimed that “general education” was “not the proper function of a university professor”, and suggest that this movement toward specialization led leaders within the academy to be concerned that such a position led toward a pedagogy that lacked proper moral foundation, echoing the concerns expressed by Weber. (88) 138 Prior to the rise of specialization in the academy, Roberts and Turner describe “American colleges between the Revolutionary and Civil War” of expressing the “conviction” that “the map of knowledge was a seamless whole” and expressed this belief “most explicitly in a course called ‘moral philosophy’ or ‘moral science’.” (85) They describe Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as originating from a “moral philosophy course he had taught at Glasgow” and see that text as arising from a pedagogy which allows knowledge to be built from a range of subjects, not limited to compartmentalization within a particular specialized field. (85) The situation was one in which, prior to specialization, a course in moral philosophy, or moral science, was taken by all students within the academy, and this one course was the same course for students across all disciplines. All students participated in the acquisition of a total unified knowledge, as opposed to liberally developing their own personal pursuits. Specialization led universities to offer elective courses to students, and as specialization spread from the scientific into the philological “the humanities helped to fill the vacuum in the curriculum left by the disintegration of the old moral philosophy.” (104) “Moral philosophy (had) emphasized the (vertical) ties between God and creature; ‘civilization’ replaced these with (horizontal) bonds between people.” (104) Weber’s text describes specialization as leading toward feelings of alienation within the university and makes the individual responsible for personally moving away from those feelings. Roberts and Turner, though, see the humanities as functioning to create social and cultural meaning in an academy built from a variety of specialized fields, scientific and humanistic. Weber promoted specialization seeing it as being capable of producing unmatched scientific and technological progress. He failed though to see specialization as creating greater feelings of connection, collaboration and meaning within the academy and through it, to the world. 139 Wendy Brown, in the completion of her lecture series, Modern Political Theory: from Tocqueville to Weber, describes Weber’s vision within Science as a Vocation as being filled with a “deep, deep nihilism”, which she contrasts with a Nietzschean nihilism which sees the human as being capable of generating meaning in the wake of the death of God. She sees Weber’s vision of a world “disenchanted by science” as one which robs the classroom of its “potential for meaning making.” Her summary of Weber’s understanding of “disenchantment” sees Weber’s modern world as being “one in which everything in the world has been reduced potentially to scientific understanding.” One understanding of “disenchantment”, “descacrilization”, or “demystification” can be one which reduces the process to one in which science moves from a vision of a world filled with error toward one built more completely upon a rational, empirical foundation.45 She, however, sees the emphasis of the value theory contained within his text as emphasizing not this movement from the mystical to the rational, but instead the loss of meaning contained within the loss of the mystical. Weber’s description of “disenchantment”, as she presents it in her lecture, “not only means that everything in the world loses its magical and mysterious characteristics … its sacred characteristics …losing a certain aesthetic or religious/moral dimension ... It also means that science is systematically draining the world of meaning … it is draining the world of value and wonder.” Brown is critical of this understanding of the modern situation as shaped by Weber, and rejects the hypothesis that she interprets it as forming. 45 “Disenchantment”, “desecularization”, and “demysticfication” are interpreted today as being equivalent to “secularization”. Weber did not use the word, “secularization”. It has become connected to him through interpretations of this part of his text, which discusses the disenchantment of the world. 140 Within these discussions of the secularization of the university those scholars contained within this chapter rather substantially agree that the outcome which presently is described as secularization resulted primarily as the result of a drive within the academy to pursue more specific focused work in the sciences, not instead as the result of an intentional organized effort to separate God from the academy. The “secular university” today may more consciously seek to keep religion out of the classroom, but the forces which separate the academic from the religious contained none of that political intent. 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Vol. 27, Issue 4, 2022, pp. 9-13. https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc SECULAR CRITICAL THEORY: METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY ©COPYRIGHT DEDICATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ABSTRACT FORWARD INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART I) CHAPTER TWO: WHAT IS SECULARISM (PART II) CHAPTER THREE: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART I) CHAPTER FOUR: THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNIVERSITY (PART II) CHAPTER FIVE: SECULAR CRITICAL THEORY/METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY Chapter Introduction Framing the Topic The Barred Subject The Death of God The Graph of Subjectivity and Desire Anxiety The Imaginary Methodology A More Developed Methodology Pedagogy ADDENDUM: CHAPTER THREE REFERENCES CITED