From Deconstruction to New Realism

The manifesto of postmodern HoR is to be found in Jonathan Z. Smith's 1982 statement that ‘religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study' (Smith 1982: xi). I have already remarked that this is one of the most important statements in the history of the recent HoR.

Eliade insists that there is something suprahistorical and unique about religion and homo religiosus, while the closest Smith gets to a definition of religion is that it ‘is the relentlessly human activity of thinking through a “situation”', and as such inseparable from all human culture. Smith prefers the ‘general' to the ‘universal', the ‘individual' to the ‘unique' precisely because they are provisional, are not all­encompassing, and admit of exceptions.

Landy 2008: 210; Smith's cit. from Smith 2004: 32

Comparison is allowed when performed between different (religious) cultures if the very act of comparing is strictly and rigorously delimited by the aforementioned ‘self­consciousness' (Landy 2008). While Derrida did share the same attention towards differential comparison (cf. Ambasciano 2014: 27), he also asked pessimistically ‘what if religio [i.e. the Latin term] remains untranslatable?' (Derrida 2002: 67). Even though Smith would not adhere to such a view, many current scholars involved in cultural studies, RS and HoR, have aligned themselves, whether or not consciously, with Derrida's view in that they have problematized the usefulness and applicability of the term ‘religion' by differentiating local forms of devotion and beliefs from the Eurocentric concept of ‘religion' (cf.

Even though such scholarly attempts have clarified in unprecedented detail many critical points, highlighting that some terms have a precise cultural history and, therefore, a potentially limited applicability, the loss has sometimes outweighed the possible heuristic benefits. For instance, the idea that the rational values of the Enlightenment and modern scientific approaches are merely Western inventions at the service of imperialism is a historiographical blunder: given the set of panhuman cognitive universals, we can expect them to arise everywhere and whenever free thinking is sufficiently valued and defended (cf. Chapter 2, The Deep History of Comparison). Our knowledge of such instances, instead, is limited by the top-down control exerted on ‘cultural technologies of external download' such as literacy, art and writing (cf. Ambasciano 2016a: 188-9). Moreover, as I have written elsewhere,

in the light of population thinking, and taking into account psychological biases, computational deficits, ontogenetic changes and cognitive mechanisms of relative diffusion and stability of ideas (Sperber 1996; Sorensen 2004), human cultural differences and lack of homogeneity of thought are always to be expected (Richerson and Boyd 2005: 76), even in the context of low within-group variation (Foley and Mirazon Lahr 2012). As to religion(s), openly critical dissent, social protest or merely silent (or repressed) acknowledgement of doubts ultimately depend on whether coercive social control is exercised and to what extent,

in which case, ‘alternative or contested narratives, scepticism, agnosticism and atheism [might] have coexisted with religious and cultural options since forever, as a concealed possibility for individuals or, given the right socio-historical conditions as frank expression of critical thinking, doubts, rationalization or mockery' (cf.

Unconvinced by similar explanations, postmodernists have implemented an us vs. them distinction in the field which, in turn, favoured the outright criticism, and ultimately rejection, of scientific tools (e.g. Day 2010; Arnal and McCutcheon 2013: 91-101). Sometimes, postmodern religious scholars have forgotten the necessary reconstruction after the deconstructive enterprise, leaving a wasteland of conceptual ruins behind them (cf. Strenski 2004; Ferraris 2008: 55). The consequence of denouncing and criticizing the past historiography of the discipline as a whole, even those theoretical assumptions and empirical studies which were mostly untouched by ideology, ‘is that issues already analysed decades earlier are re-discussed as if they were new, in complete ignorance of the existing literature on the topic' (Spineto 2009: 43; cf. Spineto 2010: 1201 on Brelich's differential comparison).

In particular, when judged on its own terms, there is a serious epistemological flaw that stains the postmodern HoR. Derrida's deconstruction was primarily aimed at enlightening the ideological tenets that underpin half-concealed, philosophical and political thought. When employed in textual analysis, ‘a deconstructionist reading of a text subverts its apparent significance by uncovering contradictions and conflict within it' (Blackburn 2016: 121). As such, this approach was meant to identify the regressive ideological value judgements embedded in those discourses and to perform a reverse-engineering of someone's ideas, that is, the conceptual ‘reproduction of another manufacturer's product following detailed examination of its construction or composition' (Pearsall 1999: 1225). Most of all, notwithstanding its abstruse complexity, Derrida's deconstructionism was also meant to provide a bulwark for democracy and justice in order to create the preconditions for a durable reconstruction (Derrida 1994: 35; Derrida 1997: 105; Derrida and Ferraris 2001: 56-7; cf.

Unfortunately, this reality turn has failed to appeal to the HoR, and the disciplinary adoption of postmodernist deconstruction has turned out to boost a renewed fideism, strengthening emic approaches, and providing the much needed lifesaver that theological and phenomenological approaches were looking for. Postmodernism has thus become postmodernity, in which the sacred has returned and multiple forms of religiosity - finally unshackled from Western imperialism and theological control - have made a successful comeback (Spineto 2010: 1298). Because of the power dynamics involved, those that are now reputed ‘delegitimized strands of knowledge', like magic or mysticism, are considered as worthy of sympathetic, emic attention by academics (cf. Ambasciano 2016b). Scientific academic approaches are to be understood at best as equivalent to magic, esotericism, Intelligent Design, paranormal beliefs, conspiracy theories, etc., and, at worst, as the illegitimate, invalid, unjustified imposition of dogmas not much different from any other kind of dogmas (e.g.

The impact of postmodernism on the Humanities and the social sciences has baffled many scholars and, most of all, many readers. Is there really no universal basis at all underlying human behaviours and beliefs? Is science, as a collective activity, inherently flawed? Is there always something left unexplained by science, which may open the door for transcendence and, consequently, for the old phenomenology of religion? Is knowledge exclusively dominated by power relationships? Should we accept that there is no discernible, ontological truth? The long answers to these ill-posed questions range from the unexceptionally trivial to the disappointingly bothersome and, to cut a long story short, they are all best resolved by a resounding ‘no': despite its many flaws, science remains the best set of practical tools, accumulated knowledge, problem­solving techniques, social networking, rigorous reviewing practices, and critical thinking available to human beings to understand ourselves, the planet, the universe and everything in between.