[The above video is mostly a reading of the
text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike
me as relevant. I welcome questions,
comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]
In this book, Moore’s stated purpose is to delineate some historical connections between ideas of moral purity and persecution or ostracization. After a few moments of reflection, however, it strikes me as difficult to think of many instances in which persecution that didn’t have their roots in some notion of purity, moral or otherwise. It especially won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the wide swath of anthropological literature on the subject, like Mary Douglas’ “Purity and Danger.” I thought this book might have something new or interesting to say about it, but I was wrong.
This book has at least two problems that should be considered egregious shortcomings in a book of such sweeping history. Firstly, the paucity of examples from which he chooses to draw is problematic. He considers only, in chronological order: the literature of the Old Testament, the religion wars of sixteenth-century France, the French Revolution, and “Asiatic civilizations.” Secondly, one walks away from the book with the idea that the topologies of persecution – how they shame, in what circumstances they occur, their sociological functions, et cetera – are never explored. There is nothing for the almost two millennia between the Old Testament and the France of the 1500s. And then there’s the fact that “Asiatic civilizations” is so anachronistic as to be risible. But then again, so is the picture in the back of the book, showing him with a gigantic corncob pipe hanging out of his mouth.
The thesis of the book is that, in the first three historical instances, persecution and concepts of moral purity were closely tied together, while in “Asiatic civilizations” (he considers Confucian and Buddhist religious thought here mostly), the connection is much more tenuous, and perhaps even nonexistent. We are simply told, in instance after instance, that people were persecuted or driven out of different movements or societies (the radicals in the Revolution, Jewish society of the Old Testament, et cetera) because they broke some sort of ethical-moral stricture. This almost reduces the entire book to a set of linear, historical treatments whereas I thought that it would bring in something more integrative and interdisciplinary.
This book has at least two problems that should be considered egregious shortcomings in a book of such sweeping history. Firstly, the paucity of examples from which he chooses to draw is problematic. He considers only, in chronological order: the literature of the Old Testament, the religion wars of sixteenth-century France, the French Revolution, and “Asiatic civilizations.” Secondly, one walks away from the book with the idea that the topologies of persecution – how they shame, in what circumstances they occur, their sociological functions, et cetera – are never explored. There is nothing for the almost two millennia between the Old Testament and the France of the 1500s. And then there’s the fact that “Asiatic civilizations” is so anachronistic as to be risible. But then again, so is the picture in the back of the book, showing him with a gigantic corncob pipe hanging out of his mouth.
The thesis of the book is that, in the first three historical instances, persecution and concepts of moral purity were closely tied together, while in “Asiatic civilizations” (he considers Confucian and Buddhist religious thought here mostly), the connection is much more tenuous, and perhaps even nonexistent. We are simply told, in instance after instance, that people were persecuted or driven out of different movements or societies (the radicals in the Revolution, Jewish society of the Old Testament, et cetera) because they broke some sort of ethical-moral stricture. This almost reduces the entire book to a set of linear, historical treatments whereas I thought that it would bring in something more integrative and interdisciplinary.
No comments:
Post a Comment