Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 22:10:57 -0500 From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: The Goths All In order that Steve and I don't continue at loggerheads on this subject of postmodern religion, I want to acknowledge a few of the positions we share in common. 1. We are both atheists. 2. We both think that theology has no epistemological function regarding matters of fact. 3. We both share a similar political perspective and have concerns about religion as ideology. 4. Neither one of us wants to "justify God's ways to man" in the sense of being apologists for religion. So what is our dispute really about then? I have been pondering this question and here is my take on it. (Steve may well disagree.) If we take Lyotard's thesis of the post-modern condition as the end of metanarratives in a quasi-sociological way, then the empirical question presents itself - With the decline of the Grand Narrative, would one expect to see the decline of religion or its proliferation? Steve has made it clear that his position is that religion will decline. My position is that religions will proliferate, although I need to qualify what I mean by this. I am not talking about the Faith of our Fathers, despite the undeniable resurgence of fundamentalism throughout the world as a reactive response to globalism. The kind of religion I am talking about as post-modern religion is closer perhaps to what the media would label cultist in a pejorative way. It is religion that tends to be marginal rather than conventional, not so much theistic as exotic, not so much moralistic as therapeutic and one that allows its participants to playfully explore new possibilities of self outside the confines of the mainstream worldview. (By self here, I do not mean the self as an ontological or metaphysical principle, but the self as a kind of style, a rewriting of one's inscribed identity, the self as a signature. - "signed, moi!") On the whole, I think this constitutes a healthy sign because it indicates a greater differentiation and complexity in contemporary culture - more singularities - sure signs of the postmodern. However, many of these sects are clearly dysfunctional and politically reactionary. I don't want to come across here as an advocate for Heaven's Gate. While thinking about these questions after reading Reg's post, the thought occurred to me, can the Goth movement be described as a kind of postmodern religion in the sense I am attempting to describe? I think it is, but I want to throw the question out there to stimulate further discussion. Goths also have a particular interest for me because they are linked, however tangentially, with the earlier Gothic movement that historically had a major role in the manifestation of the sublime within Romantic culture. Here is what Reg said: "While the comments below are fair enough they can be expanded at least far enough to include a contrasting element, thus adding a dynamic effect. There is, after all, an equally strong movement esp among young people to appropriate tribal personae, which works against the heirarchy of capital. They are, nevertheless, stakeholders in a pop industry (music, fashion) which favours working class "authenticity" and "integrity" while being sublimely unsentimental about what these terms really mean. I experience the aesthetics of terror every weekend when my glam-Goth daughter goes out with her neo-Punk pals, ready to lord it over those 'stupid, fawning rich kids who try to suck up for some street cred'. It's not just social cache though, because that street cred translates into a powerful and burgeoning segment of the West's economy ... and the kids all know it. " So, how about it, is this a case of a postmodern religion? And, if not, why not? I am not asking this question sociologically as much as philosophically, I am attempting to see this as enthusiasm in the Kantian sense as a possible sign of history. (keeping in mind that enthusiasm literally means "infused with God".) Eric
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