The Weighty Topic of postmodern critique in Biblical Studies dealt with in one cheap example
(not a study in Scripture)
I'm reading an interesting book called The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.
The Tower of Babel, historically seen as a negative for human relations and relations with God, is one of my favorite myths of the OT. According to Dr. Collins, two effects were negative: the attempts at bridging heaven and earth and the scattering of the people and diversification of tongues--the confusing of languages. What could be more disheartening for the human race--post-Edenic exile--than the destruction of community, the dissolution of linguistic commonality? It is language that binds us to all those who share that language, in case you haven't noticed, but it is also language that binds us as a human race as well. So is the point of the story the dissolve of community? Only partly, for anthropology and linguistics still point to our essential unity as a species, our cross-cultural alikeness. One linguist even has a theory that says all languages were birthed from one family; his examples are to examine the root words of several disparate languages and show how similar they really are. Like all of us, no?
But in postmodern critique of biblical criticism something changes--among many things: the second ill effect is turned on its head. No longer is the confusing of languages seen as a bad thing. It's supremely good! It's liberation from oppression and univocality. Collins says that some critics see the tower as symbols of domination and oppression, and for that effort to be confounded is to be the greatest liberation. But what of oppression and domination, did it end with the tower? Derrida says the tower represents "incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalizing, of saturating, of completing something of the order of edification, architectural construction . . ." There you have it. The ultimate obfuscation of human community is a good thing. I may not completely disagree, but it's a very interesting example of the postmodern turn. Notice how cultural, historic, and linguistic context is unimportant here. Why would it be?
(By the way, a new movie comes out in the next week or two called Babel, with Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett, and it looks terrific! I can't wait! It's the not-so-postmodern interpretation of the effects of the story.)
I'm reading an interesting book called The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.
The Tower of Babel, historically seen as a negative for human relations and relations with God, is one of my favorite myths of the OT. According to Dr. Collins, two effects were negative: the attempts at bridging heaven and earth and the scattering of the people and diversification of tongues--the confusing of languages. What could be more disheartening for the human race--post-Edenic exile--than the destruction of community, the dissolution of linguistic commonality? It is language that binds us to all those who share that language, in case you haven't noticed, but it is also language that binds us as a human race as well. So is the point of the story the dissolve of community? Only partly, for anthropology and linguistics still point to our essential unity as a species, our cross-cultural alikeness. One linguist even has a theory that says all languages were birthed from one family; his examples are to examine the root words of several disparate languages and show how similar they really are. Like all of us, no?
But in postmodern critique of biblical criticism something changes--among many things: the second ill effect is turned on its head. No longer is the confusing of languages seen as a bad thing. It's supremely good! It's liberation from oppression and univocality. Collins says that some critics see the tower as symbols of domination and oppression, and for that effort to be confounded is to be the greatest liberation. But what of oppression and domination, did it end with the tower? Derrida says the tower represents "incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalizing, of saturating, of completing something of the order of edification, architectural construction . . ." There you have it. The ultimate obfuscation of human community is a good thing. I may not completely disagree, but it's a very interesting example of the postmodern turn. Notice how cultural, historic, and linguistic context is unimportant here. Why would it be?
(By the way, a new movie comes out in the next week or two called Babel, with Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett, and it looks terrific! I can't wait! It's the not-so-postmodern interpretation of the effects of the story.)
