Critical
Pagan Postmodernism:
An Overview
Brighn al-Ya'alina
At present, two main frameworks dominate the theophilosophical rhetoric of the Western Industrialized world: JudeoChristian transcendent monotheism, the most common spirituality throughout all the populated continents except Asia, and secular humanist atheism/scientism, which enjoyed a near-monopoly on mainstream academic circles until the middle of the Twentieth Century, and still controls most of the debates in those arenas. Increasingly, though, voices are being heard that neither of these choices is satisfactory for everyone in the Western world.
Transcendent monotheism is characterized by a belief in a single Deity, usually perceived of as male or masculine, which exists to a large degree independent of the everyday world. For many, this is a hollow spirituality; less generous attitudes blame it for most if not all of the ills of the modern world. The evolution of Western thought involves an increasingly transcendent godform, until Deity is no longer relevant. The bulk of the thinkers who established the so-called Enlightenment were Christian; from Judaism's partially transcendent YHWH to Christianity's fully transcendent God, the natural progression is to the American Founding Fathers' Deism (God is not only transcendent, He doesn't even come around anymore), and then to atheism. Nietzsche's proclamation that "God is dead" was not a eulogy, but an announcement that God had lost all relevance: He had been pushed so far to the periphery that it no longer mattered if He existed at all.
Meanwhile, Scientism (the view that the Scientific Method will answer everything there is to know about the universe), with its objectivist approach and its inherent nihilism, starves the soul. If there is indeed nothing beyond what is scientifically measurable, then what's the point? While it may indeed be the case that there is no point, and that all religions are but palliatives, this darkness is difficult for most people to accept. Besides, there continue to be phenomena for which science cannot, in fact, provide full answers. The Scientist typically insists that this is a human or research shortcoming, not a theoretical one, and that all of the answers that are worth knowing will eventually be found through diligent science.
Regardless, human spiritual needs remain, and neither of the two main options satisfies everyone's needs. Even many Christians, still happy with the bulk of their faith, have maintained an interest in the mystical, an interest that is dissonant with underlying Christian themes; this is reflected in the persistent popularity of the New Age, whose writers frequently identify as Christian. So what's to be done? One approach is to throw out Transcendent Monotheism (JCI, for Judaism/Christianity/Islam) and Modernism (the combination of Scientism with some vague version of Natural Law) entirely and revive a former spirituality. This sort of approach pervades modern (Neo)Paganism, and the main split between spiritual paths is the method used in reclaiming pre-Christian ways. On the one hand, Reconstructionists use Modernist historical and scientific approaches to rebuild pre-Modernist ways of worship, while distancing themselves from concepts of Modernity (or, at least, from Scientism) (see, for instance, Campbell 2000). Meanwhile, On the other, Wiccans and related spiritualities (especially in America) generally deny not only Modernist philosophy, but also Modernist historical techniques, preferring to rely on common sense, gut instinct, and revelation to rebuild pre-Christian (actually, "pre-Patriarchal") ways of thinking (for instance, Sjoo and Mor 1991; for a critique, see Eller 2000). A related approach, more aligned with the New Age than with (Neo)Paganism, is to incorporate, either wholecloth or somehow "Westernized," a non-JCI tradition from Asia, Africa, Australia, or America.
Another approach is to assume that everything we know is potentially wrong, tear down the whole literature (both Modernist and Pre-Modernist), and start over. This is the most recognized form of Postmodernism, Deconstructionism. Deconstructionism is in direct contrast to Objectivism: while the latter seeks to learn all of the details of objective reality, the former denies the very existence of objective reality, and places all ideas on an even par, so long as they satisfy subjective needs: "Postmodernists, skeptical of both the Enlightenment and modernization, champion new cultural movements and new models of social and political life" (Gabardi 2001: 3). This is really a hyperextension of the (objectivist) anthropological theory of cultural relativism, and of Structuralism . In cultural relativism, the morality of an act is determined by the expectations of the society in which it occurs: "Following the early days when many anthropologists made value judgments, the pendulum swung in the other extreme, as some argued that it is not only desirable but possible for anthropologists to suspend all of their own values, and only evaluate a given cultural pattern within the context of a particular culture itself (Cole 1982: 10). In Structuralism, as framed by Saussure, acts and tokens have meaning only within the parameters of other acts and tokens (Saussure 1966; Holdcroft 1991; cf. Griffin 1988: 14). In Deconstructionism, nothing can be evaluated - even what is globally agreed upon - except within a subjective context. This, and other aspects of Deconstructionism, act as a form of hypernihilism, in which it doesn't even matter to anyone that nothing matters. (Virtual Reality and the Internet have been a particularly fertile ground for this nihilism, since avatars - online personas - don't really exist anywhere because they exist everywhere: while God has become transcendent, individuals have become immanent [see, for instance, Coyne 1999]).
However, the most proactive approach to deciding that Scientism and Transcendent Monotheism don't provide all of the answers is what has been termed "Process Theology" or "Critical Postmodernism" (Gabardi 2001): Combine the valid points of Modernity with those of Christian morality, combine aspects of pre-Modern non-JCI theophilosophy, and mix well. "It seeks to overcome the modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such, but by constructing a post-modern worldview through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts. This constructive or revisionary postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious institutions" (Griffin 1988: x). In other words, rather than throwing the babies out with the bathwater, this approach acknowledges the intellectual contributions of the main frameworks while allowing further exploration outside the boundaries set by them. Philosophically and psychologically, this is a very sound approach, but it's also more difficult, because it involves balancing competing subjective opinions on validity, in those arenas where Postmodernist, Modernist, JCI, Pre-JCI, and non-JCI worldviews differ.
Historically, work in Critical Postmodernism has mostly restricted its ventures outside the bounds of Modernity to non-theological realms, focusing instead on how humans interact with each other and their environment, often with a PostStructuralist eye on Systems Theory. However, I am exploring theophilosophical applications of Postmodernism, especially as it applies to (Neo)Pagan spiritual perspectives.
The specific line between a Critical Postmodernist approach to Neopaganism and a Reconstructionist one is hard to draw precisely. We could easily speak of extremes or ideals, but these tend to be poorly applicable. Few Reconstructionists would entire dispose of all post-Enlightenment thought, especially on the topics such as women's rights and racial equality, in favor of archaic but more accurate worldviews (Campbell 2000: 23).
Two common approaches are those provided by Drew Campbell (2000) and Edred Thorsson (1989). Campbell's Reconstructionism places the highest value on authentic worldviews, but accepts that ancient opinions that are overtly objectionable to the modern sensibility need not be embraced (21-23). Thorsson is more Postmodern than this; he suggests that opinions of correct behavior should be made after considering three sources fairly equally: The ancient way, the modern way, and individual intuition (5-8). Indeed, Thorsson argues that this tripartite method is truly Reconstructionist, because the ancients weighed tradition against contemporary opinion as well.
Both of these approaches share the belief that modern ways of thinking aren't entirely disposable. On that point, they agree with Critical Postmodernism.
One obvious way in which Postmodernism theology differs from Reconstructionism, though, is in the status of syncretism. Reconstructionism, in general, only allows for syncretism permitted in the reconstructed faith (Campbell, p.c.). For instance, Roman religion recognized a wide variety of faiths as "valid" for the sake of worship, so long as there was also some observance of the Roman gods. Blatant eclecticism (aka, "Chinese takeaway Paganism"), of the sort generally practiced in Wicca, is consistently eschewed.
Critical Postmodernism, in contrast, is by its nature syncretic. Building an idealized worldview from combining the strengths of Modern and Premodern worldviews involves not picking one specific tradition and modifying it to modern sensibilities (as one might do following Thorsson), but rather finding the strengths and universals from as broad a variety of cultures and traditions as possible.
Furthermore, the focus of Postmodernism is on replacing the weaknesses of Modernity, not on replacing the weaknesses of Premodern thought (such as slavary) with Modern substitutes (as in Campbell's approach). American Critical Postmodern Pagans are first and foremost products of post-industrial technocratic society, and willingly (not grudgingly) accept this. They may see this as a glory worth praising, or an obstacle worth overcoming, but it is an integral part of their psyches nonetheless. (Reconstructionists may also agree that modern thoughts are integral to the psyche, but tend to accept this only grudgingly.)
As a result, Postmodern Pagans are not beholden to a particular pantheon or Premodern cultural milieu. Unlike the predominance of Wicca, they are also not beholden to creating an implausible account of pre-history in order to justify the validity of their spirituality, because age (either newness or oldness) is not a factor in the development of an idea: Ideas are weighed on their own merits, and on their ability to strengthen the entire theophilosophical system, not on their age or their presence in a specific cultural milieu. Postmodernism is about creating new, cohesive and consistent paradigms out of the ashes of older ones.
It should be stressed that Postmodern syncretism does not equate to Chinese takeaway theology ("Pick a God from column A and a Goddess from column B. Don't forget your eggroll!"). Structuralism remains relevant: Taking a Deity out of a cultural tradition in isolation may damage some of that Deity's meaning, inasmuch as contemporary perspectives on that Deity were dependent on the context. However, relying too much on Structuralist views of Deity lead us astray of the original purpose in worshipping Them: They are real.
Another important aspect of Structuralism, as presented by Saussure (1959), is that, while tokens only have meaning in relation to other tokens, tokens in any event only represent ideas, they are not the ideas in and of themselves. I have a thought in my mind that I wish to communicate; I use linguistic tokens that represent that thought to me; hopefully, the people to whom I'm speaking hold similar token-concept relations in their mind, and create a thought not dissimilar from mine. "What is of primary interest to the linguist, by contrast, are not physical entities at all, but psychological entities" (Holdcroft 36).
The same approach can be taken with Deity. The Godforms that were worshipped by the ancients were tokens, ways in which Deities could communicate with people. If we could recreate the entire pantheon of a specific culture, and its ritual practice, we could use those tokens to communicate with those Deities; this is (roughly said) the strategy of Reconstructionism.
Furthermore,
if we use individual tokens without consideration of the context, we risk not
communicating effectively. These sentences make sense, in their own languages:
I have a cat.
J'ai un chat.
Ich habe ein Katz.
They are also equally effective at communicating roughly the same thought between people who know the word-concept "code." However, this is nonsensical in any language:
I habe un chat.
Picking and choosing Deities with no consideration of context and no modification of style creates more complex nonsense. Instead, the Postmodernist NeoPagan strives to communicate with the underlying Deity, perhaps in new ways, but also incorporating aspects of the old ways. In Campbell's Reconstructionism, this approach relies on the concept of UPG, Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis (2000: 22). In other words, while the Reconstructionist strives to learn an old language of the Gods, the Postmodernist strives to build a new one from a respectful review of the old ones.
Overall, then, Critical Postmodernism involves creating new worldviews from the strengths of existing ones, both Modernist and Premodernist, using paradigms that are respectful to the concept of Deity as individual entities, and accepting Reconstructionist ritual styles as a Structuralist codeset for communicating with Deity. This allows for a more broadly syncretic approach to Deity, but also creates a significantly higher risk of creating ineffectual or even counterproductive human-Deity discourse.
References
Campbell,
Drew. 2000. Old Stones, New Temples. Xlibris.
Cole, Johnetta B. 1982. Anthropology for the Eighties: Introductory Readings.
The Free Press, New York.
Coyne, Richard. 1999. Technoromanticism. MIT Press, Cambridge.
Eller, Cynthia. 2000. The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented
Past Won't Give Women a Future. Beacon, Boston.
Gabardi, Wayne. 2001. Negotiating Postmodernism. University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis.
Griffin, David Ray, editor. 1988. Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions.
State University of New York Press, Albany.
Holdcroft, David. 1991. Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. McGraw-Hill,
New York.
Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor. 1991. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering
the Religion of the Earth. HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
Thorsson, Edred. 1992. A Book of Troth. Llewellyn, St. Paul.
I'd also like to thank Drew Campbell, Selv Stigard, Ben Vos, Rane Curl, eclipse, and Valerie Hartzer, among others, for conversations on this and related topics which shaped this article. This article also appears in Cup of Wonder 5 (2001).