Durkheim and Postmodern Culture by Stjepan Mestrovic

Author:Stjepan Mestrovic [Mestrovic, Stjepan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social Science, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Sociology
ISBN: 9780202304403
Google: nIfBQgAACAAJ
Publisher: Aldine Transaction
Published: 1992-01-15T04:37:36+00:00

Chapter 6

Postmodernism and Religion

The postmodern discourse adopts an ambivalent stance toward religion. To the extent that postmodern means that humanity is today in a state that follows modernity, religion is perceived in the typically pejorative way, as something traditional, to be outgrown and abandoned. One does not find Baudrillard, Giddens, or most contemporary theorists seriously engaged with religion as a cultural phenomenon that might persist despite modernity. On the other hand, to the extent that postmodernism is interpreted as any sort of nostalgic revival of tradition, one encounters a limited treatment of religious fundamentalism, but again in pejorative terms.

In this chapter, we shall offer a new perspective that flows from Durkheim’s sociology: Religion is a kind of language, a cultural phenomenon that enables society to communicate its hidden state of being to itself and to its members. As such, it can never be outgrown or out of fashion. Moreover, throughout history, religion has had its male as well as female deities who correspond to the needs of the mind versus the heart, respectively. This is not meant to imply the traditional stereotypes of male versus female behavior. Rather, we are applying a Jungian sort of interpretation of male and female as two archetypes that exist in all persons regardless of gender, only we are applying this scheme to Durkheim’s sociology of culture. Nor is this unusual, given that Durkheim and Jung wrote in the same fin de siècle milieu. The gist of our critique of modernity shall be that it perpetuates a one-sided, masculine view of culture, and ought to seek a balance between cultural forces that, for the sake of convenience, may be termed masculine and feminine.1 For example, consider Jean Baudrillard’s reactionary and highly sexist claim in Seduction that “Freud was right: there is but one sexuality, one libido—and it is masculine” (1990:6).2 It is not even clear that this is what Freud really meant.

In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life especially (but in his other writings on religion as well), Durkheim presents religion as “a system of ideas with which the individuals represent to themselves the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations which they have with it” ([1912] 1965:257). Thus, religion is something to be interpreted and deconstructed, not taken as given. Far from treating religion as a manifestation of the status quo or conflict, he regards it as the product of “immense cooperation” (p. 29). “Social life, in all its aspects and in every period of its history, is made possible only by a vast symbolism,” Durkheim writes (p. 264), “but one must know how to go underneath the symbol to the reality which it represents and which gives it its meaning” (p. 14; my emphasis). Durkheim preceded the postmodernists in seeking to deconstruct society and religion, but his deconstructionism does not lead to nihilism or preservation of the status quo. Beneath the symbols one finds sentiments and the will, yet “without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence” (p.

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