Previous Writers

Besides the books of the traditional scholars of religious studies we will use the writings of authors from three fields: the study of critical religion, post-colonial theory and the narrative theory.

The 'critical religion' means all those academical methods that pursue new ways to describe the religious phenomena by questioning the fundamental categories and methodologies of the religious studies. This field is often connected with the thinkers of post-colonialism.

About the topic of critical religion the paper will often lean on the writings of Dr. Timothy Fitzgerald, professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland, especially his book The Ideology of Religious Studies. He is a member of a research group that propagates a critical approach toward the study of religion. The meaning of 'critical religion' with his own words: “My principal theoretical pursuit is ‘critical religion’, by which I mean the critical deconstruction of religion as a powerful discourse and its parasitic relation to ‘secular’ categories such as politics and economics.”²

Jonathan Z. Smith in his book Imagining Religion – From Babylon to Jonestown (1982) writes:

“That is to say, while there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religious – there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study. It is created for the scholar's analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization.

Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy.”³

An other important book is Wilfred Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion (1991).

In the Introduction he writes: “Neither religion in general nor any one of the religions, I will contend, is in itself an intelligible entity, a valid object of inquiry or of concern either for the scholar or for the man of faith.”⁴

This paper will follow the path of the former mentioned writers.

Gavin Flood in the 5^th chapter of his book Beyond Phenomenology – Rethinking the Study of Religion (1999) gives a description about the use of narrative theory in the religious studies, but it seems he does not really belong to the critical thinkers.

2 Critical Religion Research Group website; http://www.criticalreligion.stir.ac.uk/staff/dr-timothy-fitzgerald/

3 Smith, J.Z. (1982) p. xi 4 Smith, W.C. (1991) p.12

The first important writer on the topic of the effect of colonization and post-colonialism is Edward Said with his book Orientalism (1978). Edward Said was a well-known Palestinian-American literary theorist and critic. In his book he criticized the concept of orientalism, the artificial separation of the east and west. The root of this distinction came from the European colonization. When the Europeans met with the eastern civilizations they described it as an exotic, mystical world. The science of orientalism was established in order to study these 'exotic' cultures, and their descriptions never could get over this initial impression. The division of the world into two parts, the occident and the orient, had also other sides: they characterized the western world as civilized, superior and the holder of right understanding. The east at the same time became the uncivilized, inferior and barbaric world. These kind of descriptions justified the colonization and it became their duty to educate the uncivilized world. The attributes they associated with the orient were very subjective descriptions, but they became the standard descriptions of the orient not only in literary works but in scientific reports too. The duty of the post-colonialist writers is to get rid of these false, illusionary descriptions and show the real nature of their own cultures.

Other important writers on this topic are: Jean-Paul Sartre, Aimé Césaire (Discourse on Colonialism; 1950), Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks; 1952), Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth; 1961), Albert Memmi (The Colonizer and the Colonized; 1965), Kwame Nkrumah (Consciencism;1970), Ahmad, Aijaz (In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literaturess; 1994), Gandhi, Leela (Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction; 1988)

On the topic of ideology and narrative theory we follow two sources. For one, the writings of Paul Ricoeur, relying mainly on his books: From Text to Action (1991) and the Time and Narrative, (3 volumes; 1984, 1985, 1988). We will use some concepts form him that describes the nature of the narratives, like temporality, plot and emplotment, and productive imagination. The basic idea of the creative nature of the narratives is also comes from him:

“In one way or another, all symbol systems contribute to shaping reality. More particularly, the plots that we invent help us to shape our confused, formless, and in the last resort mute temporal experience.”⁵

The other important writer on this topic is Walter R. Fisher. His book the Human

5 Ricoeur (1991)

Communication As Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action describes most closely our approach toward the nature of human reconstruction of reality through storytelling.

“(1)Humans are... storytellers. (2) The paradigmatic mode of human decision making and communication is “good reasons,” which vary in form among situations, genres, and media of communication. (3) The production and practice of good reasons are ruled by matters of history, biography, culture, and character along with the kinds of forces identified in the Frentz and Farrell language-action paradigm. (4) Rationality is determined by the nature of persons as narrative beings - their inherent awareness of narrative probability, what constitutes a coherent story, and their constant habit of testing narrative fidelity, whether or not the stories they experience ring true with the stories they know to be true in their lives... (5) The world as we know it is a set of stories that must be chosen among in order for us to live life in a process of continual re-creation”⁶

6 Fisher (1987) p. 5