Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 00:41:25 -0400
Subject: M-G: Re: M-TH: A time to Di -- the Di-ification
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)


Given the massive coverage by the US media of the
deaths of Di and Dodi it is a relief to read Hugh's
 cheeky posts on the cult of Saint Di.  I do think that
Chris is onto something with his suggestion that the British
public's reaction to Di's death can be understood in terms
of Marx's analysis of religion.  Chris' point is important because
the responses of many people on this list to the public reaction
remind me of the way that many of the Enlightenment philosophes
treated religion.  The philosophes quite correctly exposed religion
as irrational superstition and were therefore contemptuous of it.
In many cases this contempt for religion was extended not only for
the phenomena itself but also to the 'unenlightened' masses who
accepted it. I detect something similar in some of the responses
on this list to the public grieving for Diana.  Marx in analyzing
 religion while accepting wholeheartedly
the Enlightenment critique of religion deepened it by tracing out the
social causes of the religious impulse in terms of alienation.
When Marx described the religious impulse as the "sigh of the oppressed
creature" he showed a certain empathy for the religious  impulse 
without ever granting its claims.  I think that Chris was striving to
show a similar empathy with the impulses behind the public reaction
to Di's death but he went over the top in describing these impulses
as "democratic."  IMO Marxists must in the end must take an Enlightenment
stance to the cult of Diana while remaining cognizant of its social roots
and
its social meaning.  What is interesting is how the public affection for
Di seems to be translating into hostility to the royal family.  It will
be intersting to see whether public hostility to the royals leads
to the development of a republican movement in Britain. 


		James F.


     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---