Crowley, Vomit, etc.

I visited the Univ of Louisville this weekend, and a graduate student there who was working with the brilliant Min-Zhan Lu told me that after reading one of his papers, Lu made him write out all his politics so that they wouldn't seep into his writing. She called this a “vomitory.” I felt as thought I wanted to see the vomitory of Sharon Crowley. I've read the second half of this book,because I spent much of the weekend trapped in an airport, and reflecting on the first half makes me wish that Crowley had spent more of the first half just being honest about her liberal politics and the fact that, as the second half of this book makes clear, she knows little to nothing about real Christians, outside of what she's read in a few books. Crowley takes a diverse and dynamic community and turns them into a cavalcade of the bizarre, extrapolating their beliefs from those of extremists (like LaHaye) whom she then uses to vilify. This is akin to making judgments about homosexuals from the beliefs of child molesters. All of this without ever actually conducting any interviews or empirical research on what Christians actually believe. I'm not convinced that Crowley has ever actually spoken to a Christian – rather, she sets up a Fundamentalist Bogeyman, about whom she must warn the Heroic Liberals to Save the Discourse (I'm thinking particularly of her alarmist discourse on 11). Crowley justifies these sweeping generalizations by saying that they are the “hegemonic discourse” -- I guess this gives her the right to characterize Christians however she chooses. I'll save specific criticisms for next week, but I mention this now because I'm interested in how other folks see Crowley as positioning herself in this half of the book.