tagged with fundamentalism
Furthermore –
…fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. Berman, Dark Ages America (5)
If fundamentalism is a textual affair, then it relies on revealed truths, not discovered ones. Revealed “truths” refuse to be interrogated and resist all but the most myopic of interpretations. Democracy hinges on an educated and capable citizenship to engage in a discourse about the nature of their government; it needs reason, not revelation.
On fundamentalism and texts:
Jehovah’s Witnesses are fundamentalists because they believe that every word of the Bible is literally true; and this, surely, is the only definition of fundamentalism that will really stick. Fundamentalism is a textual affair. Eagleton, After Theory (202)
I’ve always suspected that fundamentalism afflicts those unfamiliar with reading; spend enough time with a book in your hand (and more than one of them), and you’ll develop a healthy cynicism about the meanings of words:
Writing just means meaning which can be handled by anyone, anywhere. Meaning which has been written down is unhygienic. It is also promiscuous, ready to lend itself to whoever happens along. Ibid. (202)
The concept of promiscuity is particularly interesting: meaning as a whore – downtrodden, easily manipulated, too simple to care what people say about her. (The word promiscuous is almost never applied to men, because men are expected to couple loosely; there’s no need to describe that which is normal. It’s when a woman behaves like a man that terms like promiscuous are thrown about.) Why would you rest the foundations of your faith - or your law - on her?
As for law, nothing illustrates its slipperiness more than Portia’s legalistic sophistry in The Merchant of Venice.…Portia gets the doomed Antonio off by pointing out to the court that Shylock’s bond for securing a pound of his flesh makes no mention of taking any of his blood along with it.…Portia’s reading of the bond is false because too faithful; it is a fundamentalist reading, sticking pedantically to the letter of the text and thus flagrantly falsifying its meaning. To be exact, interpretation must be creative.1 Ibid. (206)
Underneath this statement is a useful corrective to the way we often think of the word “creative.” Creativity does not require invention. At it’s best, creativity is an effort to reveal the truth, no matter how elusive or complex it may seem. It’s 12 Angry Men, not Athena emerging from Zeus’ head.
- Emphasis mine. ↩
