I wanted to pick up on what I was saying in the last posting
and develop this a little further. I am thinking here particularly about the
very narrow boundary between academic theory and fiction. I read a blog yesterday
commenting on the plagiarism accusations levelled at Žižec. It was not the
accusations that struck me (they appear to be becoming ever more frequent with
reference to well-known academics and I may come back to that at a later date).
The issue that resonated with me was the way in which the author reflecting on their
own experience as a student held an undimmed admiration for those who were capable
of producing theory, a sense of awe and wonder at the intellectual weight, and
a feeling of utter inadequacy at never being able to achieve this level of
academic mastery. I can sympathise with that, in spades, and I always tended to
blame it on the dyslexia…
Things have moved on. I have read much more theory. I feel
comfortable with Foucault, Derrida, Levi-Strauss, whoever it might be. More
importantly I have learnt, for myself, how to engage with them; how, I might
say, to ‘play the game’. But that is the nub of the issue, I cannot convince
myself that this is not a game. To that end Terry Pratchett is as significant
in terms of theory and religion as any of the major French authors that I have
just mentioned. His insights are equally as profound and worth playing with. I
just find the way he presents them, within the context of a comic novel, so
much more conducive and convincing.
Last summer we decided to take our holidays touring round
Macedonia and neighbouring countries (beginning and ending in Sofia and heading
down to Greece for the last few days of the tour). We tend to take these guided
tour holidays because you can see so many places that might otherwise be off
the beaten track, but more importantly all the thinking and planning is done for
you and so long as you are at the bus at a particular time it will take you
where you need to go. This leaves many long hours of bus travel, between the
various sights on the tour, to think and reflect on life, the universe and
everything (to quote another inspirational theorist on religion and much else
besides). During this last trip I found myself devising a whole new ‘theory’ of
religion, entirely tongue in cheek, potentially believable, but entirely suited
to the many different contexts that confronted us in Macedonia. I called this
theory ‘metaphorics’ (only to find on my return that there is a sub-discipline
with that name already established in literary theory, and I hasten to add
there is no connection with my own ‘theory’).
Let me take you to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. The
current regime has decided to rip the centre out of the town and to rebuild it
in a distinctly post-modern style. They also have something of an obsession
with statues. They are everywhere, from the two enormous statues of Alexander
and Phillip of Macedon at each end of the main thoroughfare to hundreds of
smaller statues lining bridges, buildings and fountains and filling up any kind
of public space. Surely there is a way of interpreting all this by looking at
the interrelations between the statues, their subject matter, and the various
meanings they hold. You can then look, perhaps using a quasi-structuralist
methodology, at the patterns that are created and, behind that, at the power
play that is implicit in the choices and placing of the different images. Such
an analysis is at least plausible.
Now move to any one of the many Orthodox churches we visited, perhaps in Ohrid, or the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria. Each of these is also covered in images and there is a long history of the analysis and careful placing of these images within the liturgical space of the church.
In Ohrid there was one church, however, where the guide told us that the images were deliberately different, they tended to subvert, in interesting ways, the traditional structures and presented elements that we are much more used to seeing in renaissance painting (although some hundred years or so earlier). The same analysis could be undertaken in this context as with the statues of central Skopje, with the same attention to space, intertextuality and even to power, to read off the religious message of the building. Couldn’t we begin to develop a ‘theory’ of religion out of this kind of methodology, use a few long words, wrap the spatial and power related elements up in some kind of obscurantist jargon, add an element of time and then generalise outrageously to claim some ultimate (albeit essentially subjective) truth underpinning not just these examples, but any kind of example you care to choose, and finally to give it a grand name ‘metaphorics’ just so that people remember it. Isn’t this the way all theory works? And if it is, then what is it that such theory adds, apart from recognition in academic circles for the one who dreams it up?
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