Thoughts, ideas, frustrations...
Feb. 7th, 2006 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusSo my writing progresses at the pace of a weed-smoking snail. Only 3-5 pages are being edited a day. Still, there's a feeling of completeness to it all.
On a different note, I've begun wearing my pentacle to classes, something I've never really done very often, unless class falls on a Sabbat.
I've been Wiccan for almost 11 years ago, but don't make a big deal of it, especially not in mixed company. I rarely bring it up here, as well. After last week's discussion about materialism in our sonnet course, I realized that how coercive that environment was, though, for people who are religious.
Not knocking athieism. But I feel uncomfortable with atheism and materialism becoming a requirement, which it is in a postmodern environment. Most branches of PoMo are extreme materialist.
It's no different, in my mind, than Christianity becoming a requirement in other areas of life, which it so often is.
I shouldn't have to be a materialist to participate as an equal in a literature class. I shouldn't have to mould my assumptions about mind and existence to a perspective of metaphysics I don't agree with. I feel like if I admit to a belief in individuality, or essences, or souls, I've commited a cardinal sin in that environment. Individualism and souls are contrary to postmodern assumptions about the universe.
I feel like being religious is now equated with stupidity.
On a different note, I've begun wearing my pentacle to classes, something I've never really done very often, unless class falls on a Sabbat.
I've been Wiccan for almost 11 years ago, but don't make a big deal of it, especially not in mixed company. I rarely bring it up here, as well. After last week's discussion about materialism in our sonnet course, I realized that how coercive that environment was, though, for people who are religious.
Not knocking athieism. But I feel uncomfortable with atheism and materialism becoming a requirement, which it is in a postmodern environment. Most branches of PoMo are extreme materialist.
It's no different, in my mind, than Christianity becoming a requirement in other areas of life, which it so often is.
I shouldn't have to be a materialist to participate as an equal in a literature class. I shouldn't have to mould my assumptions about mind and existence to a perspective of metaphysics I don't agree with. I feel like if I admit to a belief in individuality, or essences, or souls, I've commited a cardinal sin in that environment. Individualism and souls are contrary to postmodern assumptions about the universe.
I feel like being religious is now equated with stupidity.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-07 07:53 pm (UTC)I've worn my pentacle every day, openly for the past 7 years (except this past week and a half because my chain snapped). Everyone knows I'm pagan. In fact, I did a presentation on the topic in Japanese class. ^_^ I've never had any trouble with it. I agree PoMo and atheism seem to have taken over acadamia but, maybe I was lucky, except for one teacher, I was never shot down or made to feel stupid for disagreeing or for my religious beliefs. Which is how it should be but I know it isn't always that way, unfortunately.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-08 07:45 am (UTC)I do talk about it when it comes up. But this is the first time in a long time I've been made to feel uncomfortable for being religious, so I think a gentle reminder we're not all atheists is in order.
hmmm
Date: 2006-02-08 12:23 am (UTC):-(
However, it does make you think how individual that PoMo individualism is(n't).
Re: hmmm
Date: 2006-02-08 07:56 am (UTC)Actual postmodernism doesn't declare itself openly materialist, but many of the basic assumptions of postmodernism assume materialism a priori. Foucault's understanding of "self" as socially constructed, for example, with no recourse to experience (outside of language).
Most postmodernists believe we're mere products of language with no essence underlying it. I've heard quite a few talk about mind as an illusion produced by consciousness. It has to be an illusion because -- for them -- the brain cannot be more than the sum of its parts, and nothing can self-generate.
For the same reason, originality and creativity are denied -- if they existed, that would mean that something had come from nothing. It also means that intuition is written off a priori as well. Nothing beyond language exists.
(Of course, even modern physics admits the existence of self-generation. How else did the universe come into being? So postmodernism is at odds even with 21st-century materialism. It's basically Newtonian.)
These 19th-century materialist ideas are taken as givens. They are assumed, never defended. There is intense social pressure at university to adopt these ideas. People who do not get mocked behind their back.
So far, my refusal of them hasn't affected my grades, but the current crop of students is so fanatical that I suspect that future generations will not be allowed to resist them -- not if they want an academic career.
Toeing the Q-line...
Date: 2006-02-08 12:19 pm (UTC)Sucks for all those in Anth, Soc, Lx, etc. who'd been working in the queer community field for decades but had been eclipsed by a near-sighted view. I particularly mean people like Ross Higgins...
SAD: having to toe the queer line when the modern queer movement took its roots in liberating thought and personal politics. What was that about destroying the closet everyday...