Fish and Rice

Like many others, it seems, I was disappointed that Crowley didn't turn to more practical matters of how to implement her recommendations (something like how to do it in a writing classroom, for example) and I was left puzzled as to how I would do so--as were others. Apparently, we had better figure it out. So says Stanley Fish in "One University Under God?" which appeared in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, back on January 5, 2005. Has any one blogged about this before or is any one else familiar with it? I know Fish has come up several times--but this piece really dovetails with what we're talking about now. Here's a link to it: http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/01/2005010701c.htm

I titled my last post "Stanley Fish predicted this..." because he did, in fact, seemingly predict the terms we've been engaging the past couple of weeks. Fish sees things very much in the same way that Crowley does--religion is challenging liberalism as a dominant hegemony in the U.S.--this is "where the action is"--and academics are going to be front and center, so we need to formulate how we're going to engage the issue. For Fish, 9/11 foregrouned and intensified the matter, as "there often seems to be nothing else in the news, as we continue to debate the questions that were being asked within hours of the attack on the World Trade Center..." and we ask ourselves if these questions can "...be solved by rational analysis? Is rationality the right standard to invoke in the context of matters of faith? Can faith and reason be reconciled? Should they be?"

Fish foregrounds the hegemonies of faith and reason, just as Crowley does, and Fish follows in asserting that "even before the events of September 2001, there was a growing recognition in many sectors that religion as a force motivating action could not long be sequestered in the private sphere, where the First Amedment, as read in the light of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, had seemed to place it." Locke and Jefferson both called for a separation between church and state, and according to Fish, "As we entered the last decade of the century, it could still be said that the wall of separation was pretty much in place. But in the last 15 years a lot has changed, and by 2000, observers were alert to the change and commenting on it. Peter Beinert, in the midst of the Bush-Gore election campaign, predicted that 'religion will increasingly replace electoral politics as the realm where battles for the national soul are fought.'"

Fish cites "a number of developments" as key to why we've arrived at the present moment:

"a growing lack of confidence in the capacity of the political process to do (or even recognize) the right thing; a feeling, sometimes vague and sometimes sharply articulated, that there is something missing at the heart of American life; the increasing political activism of fundamentalist faiths; the rise of 'New Age' spirituality and the proliferation of 'spiritual paths'; the emergence of 'identity politics,' politics that eschews universal standards of judgment in favor of judgments tied to group interests; the related emergence of multiculturalism, which honors the values of particular cultures and calls into question the availability or even the existence of an independent set of values recognized by all rational persons; the appearance in the law of the 'cultural defense,' the defense that says 'because it's not a crime in the country I came from, I shouldn't be charged with a crime if I do it here.'"

Fish echoes Crowley in citing "increasing political activism of fundamentalist faiths" as one of the factors, but I thought it interesting that he also included "identity politics" and "the related emergence of multiculturalism." Jeff Rice touched on this in his blog, too:

"As I read through [_Towards a Civil Discourse_], I also wanted to hear more about how fundamentalism has learned how to turn 'liberalism' and multiculturalism back on itself. If multiculturalism’s argument is to allow divergent views and beliefs, then it has to allow for fundamentalism. Oops! Inclusivity is dangerous. This is what intelligent design has done so well. Advocates for intelligent design are using the language of multiculturalism to justify the idea’s teaching.

The same for democracy, right? Aren’t the fundamentalists merely taking advantage of the democratic opportunities afforded them? That they will undermine this system later on shouldn’t matter; they are enjoying the rights to run for office like any other group. They get elected. They can change the laws. Isn’t that what we allow? The principle of democracy as opposed to its specifics?"

Rice's answer to his own question is:

"Well, no. Neither case is that simple.... In Crowley’s disgust with the rise of fundamentalism in American politics, I think she doesn’t spend time complicating this issue in terms of the larger arguments at stake regarding the rhetoric of democracy or equality. Winning an election to then undermine democracy cannot be valued as is. Ethics are not generalized situations. They must be put into context (and by context, I think I mean what Latour calls the social more than what cultural studies might call context). To do that for only one group (Christian fundamentalists) and to not note the phenomenon and problem overall does weaken the text. I say that because I want to think more about fundamentalism within an overall network of relationships."

I think a couple of things are missing from Rice's critique (he resists calling it that--prefering the term "respons," but I tend to think of "criticism" in the neutral sense and, in any event, what Rice does *is* certainly criticism, whether he wants to call it that or not). One thing that is missing is present in Fish's analysis; another is something that's inchoate within my own psyche but I'll try my best to explain it. First, Fish: while Rice answers his own charges about democracy and (related) multiculturalism (a principle of liberal democracy is tolerance, as Crowley explains well) containing within themselves their own undoing, Fish does a better job, I think, of explaining why the challenges of fundamentalism outlined by Rice are not dead-end fatalisms of liberalism and democracy (and universities that value their tenets). Fish puts it well, so I'll quote him at length:

"...it is one thing to take religion as an object of study and another to take religion seriously. To take religion seriously would be to regard it not as a phenomenon to be analyzed at arm's length, but as a candidate for the truth. In liberal theory, however, the category of truth has been reserved for hypotheses that take their chances in the 'marketplace of ideas.'

Religious establishments will typically resist the demand that basic tenets of doctrine be submitted to the test of deliberative reason. (The assertion that Christ is risen is not one for which evidence pro and con is adduced in a juridical setting.) That is why in 1915 the American Association of University Professors denied to church-affiliated institutions of higher learning the name of 'university'; such institutions, it was stated, 'do not, at least as regards one particular subject, accept the principles of freedom and inquiry.' That is, in such institutions the truths of a particular religion are presupposed and are not subjected to the rigorous and skeptical operations of rational deliberation.

What that meant, in effect, was that in the name of the tolerant inclusion of all views in the academic mix, it was necessary to exclude views that did not honor tolerance as a first and guiding principle.

Walter Lippmann laid down the rule: 'Reason and free inquiry can be neutral and tolerant only of those opinions which submit to the test of reason and inquiry.' And what do you do with 'opinions' (a word that tells its own story) that do not submit? Well, you treat them as data and not as candidates for the truth. You teach the Bible as literature -- that is, as a body of work whose value resides in its responsiveness to the techniques of (secular) literary analysis.

Or you teach American Puritanism as a fascinating instance of a way of thinking we have moved beyond: There used to be these zealots and they wanted to run things, but we've gotten over that and now we can study them without being drawn into the disputes about which they were so passionate."

Fish is, of course, almost as heavy-handed as Crowley here, and it's because he sees "a growing awareness of the difficulty, if not impossibility," of keeping the old boundaries in place and of quarantinong the religious impulse in the safe houses of the church, the synagogue, and the mosque." In other words, the spheres of the public (democracy) and private (religion) are intersecting, and this pheonomenon is spilling over into academia. In fact, the academy is a central site for it--Fish concludes his piece by striking the same tone that Crowley and Berlin have:

"To the extent that liberalism's structures have been undermined or at least shaken by these analyses ["religion, or communitarianism, or multiculturalism"] the perspicuousness and usefulness of distinctions long assumed -- reason as opposed to faith, evidence as opposed to revelation, inquiry as opposed to obedience, truth as opposed to belief -- have been called into question. And finally (and to return to where we began), the geopolitical events of the past decade and of the past three years especially have re-alerted us to the fact (we always knew it, but as academics we were able to cabin it) that hundreds of millions of people in the world do not observe the distinction between the private and the public or between belief and knowledge, and that it is no longer possible for us to regard such persons as quaintly pre-modern or as the needy recipients of our saving (an ironic word) wisdom.

Some of these are our sworn enemies. Some of them are our colleagues. Many of them are our students. (There are 27 religious organizations for students on my campus.) Announce a course with "religion" in the title, and you will have an overflow population. Announce a lecture or panel on "religion in our time" and you will have to hire a larger hall.

And those who come will not only be seeking knowledge; they will be seeking guidance and inspiration, and many of them will believe that religion -- one religion, many religions, religion in general -- will provide them.

Are we ready?

We had better be, because that is now where the action is. When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."