“Manufactured Ethnography: Reading Fictional Texts for Literary Evidence of Historical Concepts of...

MANUFACTURED ETHNOGRAPHY: READING FICTIONAL TEXTS FOR LITERARY EVIDENCE OF HISTORICAL CONCEPTS OF ATHEISM

ETHAN GJERSET QUILLEN

CAN WE READ AESTHETIC FICTIONS, TEXTS MANUFACTURED SOLELY FOR PLEASURE OR

ENTERTAINMENT, AS ETHNOGRAPHY, AS SOURCES FROM WHICH WE MIGHT FIND EXPRESSIONS OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL, OR CULTURAL CONCEPTS?


ENTERTAINMENT, AS ETHNOGRAPHY, AS SOURCES FROM WHICH WE MIGHT FIND EXPRESSIONS OF

SOCIAL, POLITICAL, OR CULTURAL CONCEPTS?

CONCEPT TEXT

CONCEPT TEXT

Christian TheismThe Body of Work of One

Single Author

CONCEPT TEXTA Dialectical Convergence of Esoteric and

Christian Themes in the Contemporary

World

The Harry Potter Series

CONCEPTA Dialectical Convergence of Esoteric and


World


Expressions of American Calvinist

ProtestantismThe Novels of

Marilynn Robinson

TEXT

CONCEPT TEXTA Dialectical Convergence of Esoteric and


World


Expressions of American Calvinist

ProtestantismThe Novels of

Marilynn Robinson

Expressions of Post-Second World War Christian

Ethics in Britain

The “Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.

Lewis

CONCEPT TEXT

Types of AtheismThe Body of Work of One

Single Author

CONCEPT TEXTExpressions of

Existentialism and the Development of

‘Absurdity’

The Novels of Albert Camus



‘Absurdity’


Expressions of Atheism and Communism in

Political Satire

The Novels of Jose Saramago



‘Absurdity’


Expressions of Atheism and Communism in

Political Satire

The Novels of Jose Saramago

Expressions of Atheism in

Children’s Fantasy Fiction

The “His Dark Materials” Trilogy of Phillip Pullman

CONCEPT TEXT

Historical Expressions of Developing

Atheism in Late 20th Century Britain

Ian McEwan’s ‘Atheist Trilogy’

Black Dogs (1992), Enduring Love

(1997), Saturday (2005)

CAN WE READ THREE TEXTS BY THE ENGLISH NOVELIST IAN MCEAN, TEXTS MANUFACTURED SOLELY FOR PLEASURE OR ENTERTAINMENT, AS ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCES, FROM WHICH WE MIGHT FIND HISTORICAL EXPRESSIONS OF DEVELOPING ATHEISM IN LATE 20TH CENTURY BRITAIN?

Before testing this hypothesis, it is necessary to clarify what we mean by

both CONCEPT and TEXT

CONCEPT

In order to clarify what concept we are looking for in the texts chosen for our case study we need to

make sense of that concept.

In other words, we need to define our term.

In order to do this, we need to see how that term has been defined prior to this research project.

Definitions of Atheism

Aveling, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2, 1907. “Atheism is that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism.” Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, 2003, 3.“Atheism is in fact extremely simple to define: it is the belief that there is no God or gods.” Bainbridge, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 2005, 7.“Someone on whom no one else is dependent, someone who lacks strong social bonds of a kind to incur such obligations, is more free to espouse Atheism.” Barb, European Journal of American Studies, 2011, 12.“Demographically insignificant, atheists have been for a long time a convenient ‘other’—if not the only one of course—against which Americans could heighten and reinforce their sense of belonging and their collective identity, thus revealing the central role played by religion as a strong ‘symbolic code’ and ‘moral frontier’ in American society.” Barrett, Religion, 2010, 3.“Commonly CSR theorists have advanced the idea that atheism is relatively unnatural and theism is relatively natural from a cognitive perspective.” Bremmer, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 2009, 11.“If we find atheism as all, it is usually a ‘soft’ atheism or the imputation of atheism to others as a means to discredit them.” Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 1990, 338.“…the central meaning of atheism is to be found, not in atheism, but in the theism of which it is the denial. The name, the definition, and the referent for atheism are set by the going theism. The meaning of atheism, then, is always dialectical, that is, it emerges from its contradiction.” Bullivant, NSRN Glossary, 2011, 1.“I believe a far better and usable definition of ‘atheism’—one already in scholarly use—can be located in the category not of ‘commitment,’ but of ‘belief.’ What I want to do in this short paper, then, is simply to outline what I believe to be a fairly uncontroversial definition of atheism already in scholarly use: ‘a lack of belief in the existence of a god or gods.’” Bullivant, The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology, 2012, 16. “For the purposes of this study, then, the word ‘atheist’ will signify the following: a person who is without a belief in God (or gods).”

Cliteur, Journal of Religion and Society, 2009, 9-12.“The atheist’s position may be summarized as follows: atheism is a negative doctrine. The atheist is not convinced by the proofs of theism … we should take atheism as the default position. The theist has to prove his case … an Atheist, so it may be safely contended, is primarily concerned with one specific religious tradition. He is concerned with the idea of a personal, almighty, omniscient, and perfectly benevolent god … atheism’ is nothing more than the denial of the claims of theism.” Cliteur, Philosophy Now, 2010, 6.“A-theism: ‘Narrow’ atheism, involving only the rejection of monotheism. Atheism: ‘broad’ rejection of the possible existence of any and all divine (supernaturally powerful) beings.” Cohen, Theism or Atheism: The Great Alternative, 1921, 140.“As we shall see, Atheism, from the point of view both of history and etymology, stands for the negation of theism, and its final justification must be found in the untenability of the theistic position.” Converse, Atheism as a Positive Social Force, 2003, 149.“…the definition of atheism would be one who denies the existence of the supernatural in all forms whether this belief is in the form of religion or absolute truth of any form; one who believes that first causes can, and will someday, be known.” Cragun and Hammer, Humanity and Society, 2011, 170.“Given the discussion of terminology above, there is some reason to think that being religious is a non-normative state; all children are born non-religious and have to be taught to be religious. Thus, in a sense, being religious is deviant.” Drachmann, Atheism in Pagan Antiquity, 1922, 1-2.“Hence I came to define atheism in Pagan antiquity as the point of view which denies the existence of the ancient gods. … In the sense in which the word is used here we are nowadays all of us atheists. We do not believe that the gods whom the Greeks and the Romans worshipped and believed in exist or have ever existed; we hold them to be productions of the human imagination to which nothing real corresponds.” Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann, American Sociological Review, 2006, 228.“We found that the figure of the atheist is invoked rhetorically to discuss the links—or tensions—among religion, morality, civic responsibility, and patriotism. In particular, the association of the atheist with a kind of unaccountable elitism has surfaced in recent public debates.” Edwards, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume One, 1967, 175.“On our definition, an ‘atheist’ is a person who rejects belief in God, regardless of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that ‘God exists’ expresses a false position.”

Eller, Natural Atheism, 2004, 12.“…born-again Atheism must be different from natural Atheism because of the experiences that have transpired in the life of the recovered Atheist. Above all, the recovered Atheist is a former Theist, so he or she has lived that life, believed those beliefs, been part of that community and that world.” Eller, Atheism and Secularity, 2010, 1-4.“At its core, Atheism is a profoundly simple idea: derived from the Greek a- for ‘no/without’ and theos for ‘god,’ it merely designates a position (not a ‘belief’; see below) that includes or asserts no god(s). … Humans are natural atheists—not in the sense of attacking god(s) but in the sense of lacking god(s).” Fabro, God in Exile: Modern Atheism, 1968, 7.“…it implies the negation of God, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end and, as it were, as a repercussion. Modern atheism is fighting for man and asserts that God must be eliminated in order to save man, that eternity must be set aside in the best interests of a full life in the temporal dimension. This is the most radical atheism; it sees in the denial of God the foundational condition of the salvation of man (Marxist, existentialist, sociological, historical, and kindred brands of atheism).” Ferguson, Faith and Its Critics, 2009, 15.“Atheism is a term of contested meanings. As the Greek alpha privative suggests, ‘a-theism’ is essentially the negation of a position. It is not surprising, therefore, that it signifies the rejection of quite different views across space and time. A passing acquaintance with the competing philosophies of the ancient world reveals that atheism is not a new phenomenon that has emerged with the rise of modern science or the European Enlightenment.” Flew, The Presumption of Atheism, 1976, 13-14.“What I want to examine is the contention that the debate about the existence of God should properly begin from the presumption of atheism, that the onus of proof must lie upon the theist. … In this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter.” Flint, Anti-Theistic Theories: Being the Baird Lecture for 1877, 1877, 4.“Atheism is the rejection of belief in God. It teaches either that there is no God, or that it is impossible for man to know that there is a God, or that there is no sufficient reason for believing that there is a God. In other words, it either absolutely denies that there is a Divine Being, or it denies that the human mind is capable of discovering whether or not there is a Divine Being, or it simply maintains that no valid proof of the existence of a Divine Being has been produced.”

Geertz and Markusson, Religion, 2010, 156.“Ultimately, the implication of the naturalness hypothesis is one of probability: religiosity is likely but not necessary (and certainly not an existential necessity as the mechanisms involved were not selected by nature for religiosity but for mundane navigation) and, as we will come to in a moment, atheism is less likely but certainly possible, given the right environmental and cultural niche.”

Gordon, Literary Atheism, 2002, 6.“In this study I regularly call the sophisticated modern atheist a literary atheist because contending with an idea inside oneself seems to me a characteristic activity of the literary imagination. This is where the poet lives and moves and has his being.” Hartley, Trinity Journal, 2006, 294.“The ideal solution in affirming God's "existence" is to avoid an act-potency implication and to embrace a Christian in distinction to a Jewish or Islamic theism. This article distinguishes then between atheism (positive), a-theism (negative), agnostic atheism (positive/ negative), and practical atheism (ethically like positive/negative atheism).”

Herrick, Against the Faith: Some Deists, Sceptics, and Atheists, 1985, 17.“‘Atheist’ is quite clear in its meaning of ‘somebody without a belief in God’. It is more complex in its usage since it has often been used to blacken anyone with the slightest doubt about the teachings of religion.” Hiorth, Introduction to Atheism, 1995, 34-35.“In addition to the five main concepts of atheism [Theoretical, Non-Theism, General, Positive, Practical], the term ‘atheism’ may also be used in a more general way, referring to any of the five main concepts or to some other, not necessarily specified, concept. The term ‘atheist’ is often used in such an unspecified way, and this may be called indefinite or unspecified atheism.” Hiorth, Atheism in the World, 2003, 9. “‘Atheism’ can be defined as ‘lack of belief in a god’. An atheist is does not have any belief in a god. An atheist may be strongly convinced that there is no god. Or an atheist may simply be convinced that it is more likely than not that there is no god. An atheist may admit the possibility that there is a god somewhere, but may also say that the evidence for the existence of a god is hardly worth speaking of.” Hyman, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 2009, 28.“The meaning of ‘atheism’ is only slightly less contentious. At first sight, it would appear to be more straightforward, for the term can (with fewer qualifications than were necessary with the term ‘modern’) be defined as ‘the belief that God does not exist.’ But immediately, we see that, like the term ‘postmodernism,’ the term ‘atheism’ itself ‘positions the phenomenon as relational. [Theism] as that from which [atheism] is breaking away remains inscribed into the very word with which [atheists] describe [their] distance from [theism].’”

Hyman, A Short History of Atheism, 2010, xviii.“Atheism is an accomplice of modernity in that it shares its fundamental conviction that the truth of the world is, in principle, accessible to human beings through the exercise of their rational, experiential and experimental capacities. … Atheism is inseparably connected not only to modernity, but also to the theism against which it reacts and defines itself.”

Jeffner, The World’s Religions, 1988, 52.“Atheism will then mean a deliberate rejection of all the religious alternatives available at the time.” Lane, The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia, 1994, 57. “Atheism may be described as the formal rejection and denial of the existence of God. There are nearly as many shades of atheism as there are theologies. Broadly speaking one can point to at least three different expressions of atheism: theoretical, practical and theological.” Lanman, Religion, Brain, and Behavior, 2012, 1-2.By defining atheism as a lack of all of these beliefs, one is utilizing the constructed category of religion to define atheism, which overlooks the possibility that a lack of belief in supernatural agents and a lack of belief in supernatural healing depend on different cognitive mechanisms. Limiting the definition of atheism to a lack of belief in supernatural agents, however, focuses on a particular cognitive phenomenon.” Lanman, New Scientist, 2011, 38.“I have my own terms for these distinct phenomena: I call the lack of belief in the existence of supernatural agents ‘non-theism’ and the moral opposition to religious beliefs and values ‘strong atheism’.” LeDrew, History of the Human Sciences, 2012, 71.“The distinction between scientific atheism and humanistic atheism is thus necessary because the term ‘atheism’ does not precisely identify the nature of the epistemological and political orientations that characterize various formations of non-belief, as ‘atheism’ is ordinarily defined in terms of a position on nature—for example, Ruse, (2010) claims that it is equivalent to metaphysical naturalism—rather than in terms of humanist philosophy or a sociological position.” Maritain, The Review of Politics, 1949, 267-268.“…there are practical atheists, who believe that they believe in God but who in reality deny His existence by each one of their deeds—they worship the world, and power, and money. … Then there are pseudo-atheists, who believe that they do not believe in God but who in reality unconsciously believe in Him, because the god whose existence they deny is not God but something else. … There are absolute atheists, who actually deny the existence of the very God in whom the believers believe—God the Creator, Savior and Father, whose name is infinitely over and above any name we can utter. … By negative atheism I mean a merely negative or destructive process of casting aside the idea of God, which is replaced only by a void. … By positive atheism I mean an active struggle against everything that reminds us of God—that is to say, anti-theism rather than atheism—and at the same time a desperate, I would say heroic, effort to recast and reconstruct the whole human universe of thought and the whole human scale of values according to that state of war against God.”

Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 1990, 464.“In my usage, positive atheism is positive in the sense that it refers to a positive belief—the belief that there is no god or gods. It is positive in contrast to negative atheism, which has no such positive belief. Of course, in another sense that is not relevant here, what I have called positive atheism is more negative than what I have called negative atheism. Positive atheism denies that one or more gods exist; negative atheism does not.”

Martin, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 2007, 2.“Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or Gods, not just the absence of a belief in a personal theistic god and negative atheism in the narrow sense is the absence of belief in a theistic God. Positive atheism in the broad sense is, in turn, disbelief in all gods with positive atheism in the narrow sense being the disbelief in a theistic God.” Martin, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, 2007, 88.“In its broadest sense atheism, from the Greek a (‘without) and theos (‘deity’), standardly refers to the denial of the existence of any god or gods. … In contrast to this strong or positive sense of atheism there is a weak or negative sense that is also compatible with its Greek roots. To be ‘without’ god is not necessarily to deny the existence of any deity; it can simply mean not having a belief in any.” Masterson, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 1965, 136.“Atheism thus presents itself as a negation of theology in favour of anthropology. In other words, contemporary atheism presents itself as a negation of a mythical infinite domination in favour of a finite loving enthusiasm.” Moser, Religious Studies, 2012, 83.“Atheism comes in many flavours. The most common is simple atheism: SA: God does not exist. A more complex flavour is evidential atheism: EA: Owing to the direction of our overall available evidence, we should believe that God does not exist. Doxatic atheism, in contrast, states the following: DA: Some people believe that God does not exist.” Muller, “Gifford Lectures: Lecture 9—The Historical Treatment of Religious Questions,” 1888-1892. “The early Christians were called αθεοι, because they did not believe as the Greeks believed nor as the Jews believed. Spinoza was called an atheist, because his concept of God was wider than that of Jehovah; the Reformers were called atheists, because they would not deify the mother of Christ nor worship the Saints. This is not Atheism in the true sense of the word, and if an historical study of religion had taught us that one lesson only, that those who do not believe in our God are not therefore to be called Atheists, it would have done some real good, and extinguished the fires of many an auto da fe.” Nagel, Basic Beliefs: the Religious Philosophies of Mankind, 1959, 20.“I shall understand by ‘atheism’ a critique and a denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism.”

O’Hair, Why I am Atheist: Including a History of Materialism, 1991, 21.“Although many American Atheists do not like certain recent associations with the idea—the life-style of all Atheists is basically materialist.”

Palmer, The Atheist’s Creed, 2010, 15. “The word ‘atheism’ is a translation of the Greek atheos, which combines the prefix ‘a’ (meaning ‘not’ or ‘without’) with ‘theos’ (meaning ‘god’). Accordingly the term is most commonly employed as ‘disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God’”

Pasquini, Atheism and Salvation: Atheism from the Perspective of Anonymous Christianity in the Thought of the Revolutionary Mystic and Theologian Karl Rahner, 2000, 27-28.“There are in the modern era, the era which Rahner is primarily concerned with, essentially four expressions of atheism. The first deals with the assertion that God is not needed to understand nature or the secular world. The second deals with the affirmation that one is only free and fully human when one is divorced from God. The third form of atheism is a consequence of the evil and suffering in the world: How can a loving God allow for suffering? In addition, there is a type of atheism which finds no interest in questions of life. This is an atheism of indifference.” (27-28) Rahner, Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, 1975, 47.“Philosophically speaking, atheism means denial of the existence of God or of any (and not merely of a rational) possibility of knowing God (theoretical atheism).” Reid and Mondin, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2003, 822.“An atheist is a man who lives without God. If he persists in this state, atheism truly becomes a way of life.” Robertson, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion, 1970, 238.“By positive atheism we mean a cultural circumstance in which the constructive virtues for the human and socio-cultural condition of an anti-religious stance are upheld. The adjective ‘positive’ is appropriate here also because it highlights the secularization theme. Positive atheism shares many of the concrete concerns of orthodox religious belief systems. Its major manifestations are in humanist movements and organizations and the academic intelligentsia.” Ruse, The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, 2010, 229. “I distinguish methodological naturalism, meaning that in doing science one assumes that there are no God-directed supernatural causes like miracles, and metaphysical naturalism which is equivalent to atheism, meaning that there are no supernatural factors or entities, full stop.”

Saler and Ziegler, Temenos, 2006, 7.“We suggest that there are biological factors that relate to the distributions of theism, atheism, and an indifference to one or both. This is not to say that genes directly cause atheism, theism, or indifference. Rather, we argue that genetic variability in human populations may dispose analog differences in sensitivity or insensitivity to various features of behaviorally relevant environments, and that such differences tend to be reflected in attitudinal differences.”

Smart, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012 (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/).“‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God. I shall here assume that the God in question is that of a sophisticated monotheism. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, 1989, 7.“The prefix ‘a’ means ‘without,’ so the term ‘a-theism’ literally means ‘without theism,’ or without belief in a god or gods. Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief. One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist.” Smith, Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies, 1991, 58.“Atheism as outright denial can be achieved only if the negative ‘a’ is used, not to qualify the entire meaning of ‘theism,’ but only part of it—i.e., ‘a-theism’ means ‘belief in no god or gods.’ In this interpretation, atheism is construed, not as the absence of belief, but as a particular kind of belief.” Stein, An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 1980, 3.“When we examine the components of the word ‘atheism,’ we can see this distinction more clearly. The word is made up of ‘a-’ and ‘-theism.’ Theism, we will all agree, is a belief in a God or gods. The prefix ‘a-’ can mean ‘not’ (or ‘no’) or ‘without.’ If it means ‘not,’ then we have as an atheist someone who is not a theist (i.e., someone who does not have a belief in a God or gods). If it means ‘without,’ then an atheist is someone without theism, or without a belief in God.” Walters, Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2010, 9.“Most people just naturally assume that an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God. This is a decent enough common sense definition, but it’s not very helpful if the point is to analyze philosophical arguments for and against atheism. The trouble with the common sense definition is that it’s too broad. It doesn’t help us distinguish between different levels of nonbelief in God. It doesn’t give us any idea of whether there’s more than one variety of atheism. And it doesn’t tell us anything about the sort of God the atheist doesn’t believe in.”

What these many definitions provide is an ambiguous, equivocal, and implicitly normative array of

scholarly definitions of Atheism, making research such as this difficult in that we are not

entirely sure—from study to study—what we mean by our concept of the

term.

For example…

“A conscious or unconscious lack of commitment to god(s).”

NSRN Glossary, via: http://nonreligionandsecularity.file

s.wordpress.com/2011/11/nsrn-glossary-28-aprl-2011-lois-lee1.pdf

(accessed 1 September 2013)

First: ‘Conscious’ and ‘Unconscious.’

‘Conscious’ or ‘unconscious’ seems to imply a sense of implicit or explicit, as if someone might be capable of Atheism against their will (Smith 1989).

Is ‘unconscious’ Atheism something someone takes on, or is it something bestowed upon them, and by whom?

Is the ‘unconscious Atheist’ merely ignorant, or do they merely not ‘know’ what the Theist ‘knows’ in his ‘knowledge’ of God?

Are children ‘unconscious Atheists?’ Is it fair to label them this way?

Are people born ‘Atheists?’ (Eller 2004, Baggini 2003)

Does ‘lacking’ the Theist’s belief in the existence of God mean the Atheist is missing something?

Does believing the Atheist is ‘lacking’ the Theist’s belief place our position in the realm of the Theological?

Is our imputation of ‘lack’ a western (Christian) centric perspective?

Is this merely a re-translation of the alpha privative ‘a’ from the Greek’ ἄθεος,’ ‘without ‘god?’

If by ‘lack’ we mean ‘without’ how does this relate to our conception of ‘conscious’ or ‘unconscious?’

Second: ‘Lack.’

By ‘commitment’ do we also mean ‘covenant?’

Is a commitment a promise made, that is then broken?

How does our use of ‘commitment’ change our conception of ‘lack?’ Does the ‘uncommitted’ Atheist ‘lack’ a commitment, and if so, is this implicit or explicit?

Is this a ‘betrayal?’

Is this ‘lack of commitment’ an intellectual (not believing in the Theist’s God) , or existential one (lack of devotion)? (Bullivant 2012)

Third: ‘Commitment.’

Is our Atheist rejecting monotheism or polytheism, or a different category of Theism?

In clarifying this, does it change the context? (Quack 2012)

Does our Atheist reject all supernatural beliefs in something transcendent?

If our Atheist is directly rejecting the Theist’s belief in the existence of a monotheistic deity, does this also mean they reject the non-Theist’s religious beliefs and practices under the category of ‘non-religion?’ (Converse 2003, et al.)

If our Atheist is ‘non-religious’ in his rejection of both types of Theism, as well as non-Theistic religion, how do we define ‘religion’ in this context?

Fourth: ‘God(s).’

Alongside this sense of ambiguity there has been a rise in ‘typing’ Atheism, distinguishing between

different levels of Atheist belief and categorizing them into

different levels of identification.

For example…

From reading all these ‘definitions’ we might be led to believe that there are as many ‘types’ of

ATHEISM, as there are ‘types’ of ‘RELIGION.’

SIX TYPES OF ATHEIST*

1. Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic (IAA)2. Activist (AAA)

3. Seeker-Agnostic (SA)4. Anti-Theist5. Non-Theist

6. Ritual Atheist/Agnostic (RAA)

*Christopher F. Silver, “Non-Belief in America Research, http://www.atheismresearch.com (accessed 27 September 2013)

As well, we have seen the creation and promotion of ‘new terminology,’ manufactured in order to address the equivocal

nature of what ‘Atheism’ has come to mean in our scholarly

discourse.

For example…

Defined as umbrella terms that act to find the ‘essence’ of religious rejection on a broader—and seemingly ‘relative’—‘religious-based’

scale.‘Ir-religion:’

“Where a person defines his own behaviour, and it is defined by others, as constituting the rejection of religion, then he is clearly

irreligious.” (Campbell, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion, 32) ‘Unbelief:’

“Both religious belief and its obverse unbelief are part of culture: they do not exist in a vacuum. In the European case, both have been formed by the Judaeo Christian tradition which has been part of our heritage for two millennia and – whether we like it or not – has defined the categories in which we

think.” (Davie, “Belief and Unbelief: Two Side of a Coin,” Approaching Religion, 3) ‘Non-Religion:’

“Something which is defined primarily by the way it differs from religion. E.g.s might then include atheism, ‘indifference’ to religion and agnosticism would all be examples. Humanism would not be an example (although empirical cases of humanism may well be considered profoundly

nonreligious in practice). Alternative spirituality would not be included where this spirituality is defined fundamentally by its autonomous principles and practices.” (NSRN Glossary, April 2011, via

http://nonreligionandsecularity.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/nsrn-glossary-28-aprl-2011-lois-lee1.pdf)

How did these definitions come about?

What shaped the formation of these definitions, in these ways?

How did defining this term become so ambiguous?

How does this discourse shape the concept of Atheism?

What does this discourse, defining the term in these different ways, look like?

Rather than merely ‘picking’ one of these definitions, or manufacturing a ‘new one,’ we

might better proceed by asking:

HOW DOES INTERPRETING THE DISCOURSE ON DEFINING ‘ATHEISM’ RELATE TO DEFINING

‘RELIGION?’

Discourse Analysis and the Definition of ‘Religions’Defining Religion:

“From its beginnings the academic study of religion has been concerned with the question of defining religion or,

as the singular already denotes a program, religions. Definitions of religions established branches of scholarly tradition and various approaches to the subject, so that James H. Leuba could mention no less than fifty (more or less) different definitions in his list (Leuba 1912:

appendix).” (von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003, 262.)

A Cornucopia of Methodological Approaches:

“Put differently, the problem is that while we have a cornucopia of methodological approaches in our discipline, each one dependent on a concept of ‘religion’, there has been a considerable lack of systematic reflection about how those concepts came into being, what rationalities

they comprise, what effect they have, and which interests they serve.”

(von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003, 262.)

“Definitions of religion are statements and utterances that attribute meaning to things and

that provide orders of knowledge. As contributions to a discourse on religion, these definitions are

objects of discursive analysis, rather than its tools.”

(von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religions, 2013, 11-12)

“Our object of study is the way religion is organized, discussed, and discursively materialized in cultural and social contexts. ‘Religion,’ in this approach, is an EMPTY SIGNIFIER that can be filled with many different meanings, depending on the use of the word in a given society and

context. It is this use of ‘religion’—including the generic definitions of academics—that is the

responsibility of scholars to explain. Making the discourse on religion the main focus of our work also acknowledges the fact that we as scholars are ourselves

actors on the fields of discourse.” (Kocku von Stuckrad, “Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2010, 166.)

‘Religion,’ an ‘Empty Signifier’

Religion vs. RELIGION

“Regarding the term ‘religion’ as an empty signifier that can be activated with definitions, meanings, and

communicational practices does not compromise the clarity of the object nor the scholarly rigor of the study of religion. It only moves the obligation to define our

objects from the level of communicational practices to the level of discursive reflection. I make this distinction visible in a change of typeface: ‘religion’ refers to

contributions to a discourse on religion, while ‘RELIGION’ refers to the discourse itself. After this clarification, we can go a step further and define RELIGION simply as

follows:

RELIGION is the societal organization of knowledge about religion.” (von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religions, 2013, 12)

“Consequently, ‘discourse analysis’ addresses the relationship among communicational practices and the (re)production of systems of meaning, or orders of

knowledge, the social agents that are involved, the rules, resources, and material conditions that are underlying these processes, as well as their impact on social

collectives (similarly Keller 2011b: 8).” (von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religions, 2013, 10)

“‘HISTORICAL DISCOURSE analysis’ explores the development of discourses in changing sociopolitical and historical

settings, thus providing means to reconstruct the genealogy of a discourse.”

(von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religions, 2013, 10)

Discourse Analysis

*See also: Norman Fairclough, “Texts, Social Events, and Social Practices” in Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2004); Marcus Moberg, “First-, Second-, and Third-Level Discourse Analytic Approaches in the Study of Religion: Moving from Meta-Theoretical Reflection to Implementation in Practice” (Religion, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2013); Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, “The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)” in Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, eds., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (London: Sage Publications, 2001); Kocku von Stuckrad, “Secular Religion: A Discourse-Historical Approach to Religion in Contemporary Western Europe” (Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2013); and Teemu Taira, “Making Space for Discursive Study in Religious Studies” (Religion, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2013).

________________________________

VON STUCRKAD’S THREE IMPORTANT STEPS IN FORMING A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS:

1. Determining the Research Question(s)* “…general questions that have to be broken down to more concrete sets of

subquestions.” • E.g. “Why is shamanism so attractive to many people in modern Western

societies?” • “We can translate these questions into discursive language and design a

project that reconstructs the discursive entanglements of RELIGION on the one hand, and … SHAMANISM … on the other.”

• “All these discourses lead to further discursive strands that characterize the respective discourse.”

• “In the case of SHAMANISM, this may be HEALING, SOUL, NATURE, THERAPY, or CONSCIOUSNESS. It depends on our research focus whether we will need to include all of these discursive strands or only a selection of them.” (2013, 14)

2. Selecting Data and Building a Corpus* “Since discursive approaches are not limited to textual sources, data can

be found in all forms of communication that are operative in the attribution of meaning. With regard to the research questions formulated above, possible data sets would include but are not limited to

(a) media and newspaper coverage, Internet discussions, political debates;

(b) books on shamanism (often popularizing academic theories), workshop programs,

Internet forums, interviews with shamanic practitioners; (c) lawsuits, juridical decisions, laws, media coverage, political

statements; (d) books on contemporary science, presentation of research results

in the media and on the Internet, museum exhibitions.” (2013, 14)

3. Choosing Methods and Providing Analysis* “The generation and interpretation of data is not a goal in itself. It

serves the overall question that is formulated within a discursive referential framework.”

* “It is fully acknowledged that the research results are themselves elements of the discourse under scrutiny; hence, they do not represent the ‘truth’ about the issue at stake but provide insight into the mechanisms, historical dimensions, and implications of the construction of meaning in a discourse community.” (2013, 15)

Religion vs. RELIGION‘religion’ refers to contributions to a discourse on religion, while ‘RELIGION’ refers to the discourse itself. After this clarification, we can go a step further and define RELIGION

simply as follows:

RELIGION is the societal organization of knowledge about religion.”

Atheism vs. ATHEISM‘Atheism’ refers to contributions to a discourse on Atheism, while ‘ATHEISM’ refers to the discourse itself. After this clarification, we can go a step further and define ATHEISM

simply as follows:

ATHEISM is the societal organization of knowledge about Atheism.”

Atheism vs. ATHEISM‘Atheism’ refers to contributions to a discourse on religion, while ‘ATHEISM’ refers to the discourse itself. After this clarification, we can go a step further and define ATHEISM

simply as follows:

ATHEISM is the societal organization of knowledge about Atheism.”

‘Atheism,’ as an EMPTY SIGNIFIER, can “be activated with definitions, meanings, and communicational practices.”

Analyzed within the context of HISTORICAL DISCOURSE, Atheism appears to develop within “changing sociopolitical and

historical settings,” providing us with a means by which to “reconstruct” a

genealogical meaning of the term, and thus giving us a more clarified perspective, rather than merely contributing to the equivocal and

ambiguous field itself.

1.To begin, we might ask how the scholarly discourse has arranged, defined, affected, and been effected by the

definitions of Atheism thus far presented in the scholarly discourse.

In other words, how has ATHEISM changed the way in which we define Atheism?

2. By reading through the genealogy of defining the term, across historical boundaries and within methodological paradigms produced within certain modern scholarly

discourses—‘classical vs. modern,’ ‘positive vs. negative,’ ‘explicit vs. implicit’—we should be able to reconstruct the sociopolitical and historical influences on how this term has come to mean what it means in relation to the broader

field of RELIGION.

3.The analysis of which, rather than merely providing another

definition to the discourse, should serve the overall question, thus providing insight into the mechanisms,

historical dimensions, and implications of the construction of meaning in the discursive community pertaining to the

definition of Atheism.

Therefore, what follows is a unique DISCURSIVE SURVEY, plotting out and reconstructing a genealogy from etymological—Classical—origin to

Modern application and the paradigmatic classification of Atheism as being either Positive or Negative.

Two Geneses of Atheism—Points of Emergence

Classical Atheism Modern Atheism

These Two Geneses Become the Foundation for our Discursive Survey of How Modern Atheism Came to Be Defined Within the

Context of Positive or Negative

Classical Atheism

Here, Atheism is a generally—and purposefully—ambiguous term of imputation, censure, and/or accusation toward a

sense of ‘impiety’ (ἀσέβεια).*

One was ‘ἄθεος’ for believing or acting ‘religiously’ in a manner that might cause dissent, sedition, or chaos on a

socio-political level (e.g. Pre-Soratic Milesian Philosophy, Socrates, Early Christian Martyrs)

CLASSIC ATHEISM

“In exactly the same way as ungodly, atheos was used as an expression of severe censure and moral condemnation; this use is an old one, and the oldest that can be traced.” (Drachmann, Atheism in Pagan Antiquity, 5)

_____________________________________

“It was because their bold questioning seemed to undermine the official gods of the state and thus endanger public order that Anaxagoras and Protagoras were forced to flee Athens, and a similar suspicion at the trial of Socrates contributed to his condemnation.” (Gordon, Literary Atheism, 1)

“The word atheist presents unique problems. It occurs almost exclusively in a polemic context; it is the designation of another person; it is invective and accusation. It rides into the quarrels of human beings as the term heretic functions in Europe’s Middle Ages or as the word fellow traveler terrified the United States in the middle of the twentieth century.” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 9)“Atheism is that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism. Since its first coming into

use the term atheism has been very vaguely employed, generally as an epithet of accusation against any system that called in question the popular gods of the day.” (Aveling, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2)

CLASSIC ATHEISM

“The scandal of such a refusal is hard to recapture, but it led the early Christians to the same indictment as that of Socrates. They were obviously atheists, despite the appeal that Justin, as so many of the apologists before and after him, lodged: ‘What sensible person will not admit that we are not atheists, since we worship the Creator of this world and assert, as we have been taught, that He has no need of bloody sacrifices, libations, and incense.’” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 4)

“If we find atheism at all, it is usually a ‘soft’ atheism or the imputation of atheism to others as a means to discredit them.” (Bremmer, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 11)

As well, this early, etymological Atheism, was not ‘solidly’ defined.

It encompassed a ‘general’ quality, used as an umbrella form of accusation to denote a general statement of ‘otherness’ or difference, and thus was aimed at many different—seemingly

ambiguous—targets.

*See also, Muller 1888, Aveling 1907 (1913), Drachmann 1922, Buckley 1987 (1990), Smith 1991, Kahn 1997, Gordon 2002, Baggini 2003, Reid and Mondin 2003, Hartley 2006, McGrath 2006, Bremmer 2007, Ferguson 2009, Palmer 2010

_____________________________________

“Those who were called heretics insisted almost universally that they represented genuine and purified belief; few of those branded as fellow travelers characterized themselves as such. So also αθεος. It is a brand imprinted by one’s enemies. Its definition is parasitic; like any denial, it lives off the meaning denied. The amphibologies it gathers to its history are a product of the hostile interpretation of unsympathetic critics.” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 9)

“If there were expressions of atheism in Greco-Roman antiquity, these were for the most part directed against the prevailing civic religions or the popular polytheistic superstitions of the masses.” (Reid and Mondin, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 822)

Modern Atheism

MODERN ATHEISM is, as the name implies, very much a

Modern Disposition

“The term ‘modernity’ derives from the Latin word modo, meaning ‘just now.’ It thus denoted the ‘present’, the ‘contemporary’ as opposed to the ‘past’ or ‘historical’. More specifically, the modern defined itself in opposition to the ‘ancient’, the age of antiquity.” (Hyman, A Short History of Atheism, xv)

“If ‘atheism’ without parameters is not a problem, ‘modern’ without qualifications is not a period. Cassiodorus’ Vararium Libri refers to institutions or things of the present as the moderna, and one current usage has repeated this by identifying modern and contemporary. The word is postclassical in its Latin origins, derived from modo, ‘just now,’ as hodiernus was derived from hodie, ‘today.’ Cassiodorus employed it to segregate a later civilization from that of the antiqui, ‘ancient.’” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 25)“If, as I have suggested and is commonly

held, there is more than a coincidental relationship between atheism and modernity, one would perhaps expect atheism to have manifested itself somewhat earlier than it did. In fact, it emerges in an explicit and undisguised from relatively late. Certainly, the term itself appears at the precise moment at which philosophers and cultural historians locate the birth of modernity.” (Hyman, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 29)

“What is central here is the conviction that the world—and time and change—is something to be mastered and controlled. Furthermore, the world is to be mastered and controlled not for its own sake, but in order that we may progress. Again, this progress is to be pursued not for its own sake, but so that human beings may produce ‘a more hospitable world for themselves’. In other words, the world is to be mastered and controlled so that it may serve the needs of human beings.” (Hyman, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, xvi)

MODERN ATHEISMModern Atheism is distinguished

by THREE things: 1. A parasitic dependency on

modern Theism

“Atheism is inseparably connected not only to modernity, but also to the theism against which it reacts and defines itself.” (Hyman, A Short History of Atheism, xviii)

“My conclusion will be that ‘modernity’, ‘modern theism’ and ‘modern atheism’ are mutually defining and sustaining. The demise of one cannot but have implications for the other two.” (Hyman, A Short History of Atheism, xix)

“Theism and atheism are not simply an accidental conjunction, a successive accumulation of contradictory opinions. A bond of necessity stretches between them: atheism depends upon theism for its vocabulary, for its meaning, and for the hypotheses it rejects.” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 15)

“…the central meaning of atheism is to be found, not in atheism, but in the theism of which it is the denial. The name, the definition, and the referent for atheism are set by the going theism. The meaning of atheism, then, is always dialectical, that is, it emerges from its contradiction.” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 338)

“Because atheism is parasitic on theism for its name, its meanings, and its adversary, it is imperative to investigate theism, its use of god, those who constitute the ‘theists,’ and so on. Because atheism suggests a dependence upon theism even for its generation and existence, it is imperative to investigate the transition in which theism gives way to atheism.” (Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 24)

“In the west, atheism has come to be associated with the rejection of the God of the Christian faith, or the God of Judaeo-Chrsitian theism, or perhaps still more broadly the God of the three Abrahamic faiths. Again it is essentially reactive, taking as its starting point the basic beliefs or a religion or society and offering a revisionist or skeptical judgment upon these.” (Ferguson, Faith and Its Critics, 17)

“…an Atheist, so it may be safely contended, is primarily concerned with one specific religious tradition. He is concerned with the idea of a personal, almighty, omniscient, and perfectly benevolent god … atheism’ is nothing more than the denial of the claims of theism.” (Cliteur, Journal of Religion and Society, 12)


by THREE things: 2. The ‘subject to object turn’ by means of ‘rational-naturalism’

“That is, a theism grounded upon a conception of God as a natural entity amenable to scientific investigation would

inevitably fail when the evidence failed to demonstrate his role in nature, but rather seemed to demonstrate more and more that the concept of God was not required to explain

nature.” (LeDrew, History of the Human Sciences, 74)

“So I have settled on the phrase ‘literary atheism.’ The phrase is meant to indicate that, in adopting an objective point of view, one is distanced from this cultural myth (hence many scientists find it easy to describe themselves as agnostics or atheists) while from the subjective

point of view necessarily adopted in imaginative writing one cannot be so

distanced.” (Gordon, Literary Atheism, 6)

“The human subject thus becomes the

‘master’ and the world itself becomes the ‘slave’, and the human subject exercises this mastery

through the discipline of the application of reason

and science. Through reason and science, the

world may be manipulated,

understood and thereby controlled.” (Hyman,

A Short History of Atheism, xvi-xvii)

“When the human subject masters reality

by means of reason and/or science, the self comes to understand itself as existing in a

fundamentally nominative mode. That is to say, the self

becomes the subject that applies the

disciplines of reason and science to the

world, which is thereby conceived to be the object of that

activity.” (Hyman, A Short History of

Atheism, xvii)

“The advent of modernity brought with it a transformed conception of God, a distinctively ‘modern’ theism. When God is understood to be an object of thought, then God is

created in the image of humanity. God comes to be conceived in human terms, his transcendence is

domesticated and, in some instances at least, God increasingly takes on the characteristics of a ‘big

person’. (Hyman, A Short History of Atheism, xvii)

“The emergence of atheism at this time fits in with the progressive story of atheism that sees its roots in the birth of Western rationality in Ancient Greece. Just as naturalism and rationalism, atheism’s forebears, were

the fruits of the progression from myth to reason, so atheism as an avowed doctrine is the fruit of the progression to Enlightenment values.” (Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, 79)


by THREE things: 3. The adoption of the term as a self-avowed identity, rather

than mere imputation

“The conclusion was that there were men who judged themselves atheists, who called themselves atheists. In the ancient world, and even more in the medieval world, this was unheard of. ‘Atheist’ had been vituperative and polemic; now it became a signature and a boast.” (Buckley, At the

Origins of Modern Atheism, 27)

“As a term of self-identification, a declaration of one’s own belief (or lack thereof), it does not really appear until the mid-eighteenth century when it is found among Parisian intellectuals, particularly Denis Diderot, who is widely recognized as being the first explicit and self-confessedly atheist philosopher.” (Hyman, Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 30)

“The emergence of atheism at this time fits in with the progressive story of atheism that sees its roots in the birth of Western rationality in Ancient Greece. Just as naturalism and rationalism, atheism’s forebears, were the fruits of the progression from myth to reason, so atheism as an avowed doctrine is the fruit of the progression to Enlightenment values.” (Baggini, Atheism: a Very Short Introduction, 79)

Positive vs. Negative

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMThe ‘Positive vs. Negative’ paradigm is

delineated between two stages: a Pre- and Post- Anthony Flew construction.

The first use of the paradigm comes from Aveling (1907), who cites ‘positive Atheism’ as a “dogmatic denial,” and

‘negative Atheism’ as a “lack of physical data” for Theism, both of which under the category or the

‘theoretic.’ Positive Theoretic Atheism“The most trenchant form which atheism could take would be the positive and

dogmatic denial existence of any spiritual and extra-mundane First Cause. This is sometimes known as dogmatic, or positive theoretic, atheism.”

Negative Theoretic Atheism“A second form in which atheism may be held and taught, as indeed it has been, is based either upon the lack of physical data for theism or upon the limited nature of the intelligence of man. This second form may be described as a negative theoretic

atheism.”

*Aveling, “Atheism” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907)

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMThe Post-Aveling, Pre-Flew use of the ‘Positive vs. Negative’ paradigm

is defined by philosophical justifications, such as, “an active struggle” against God, or as beliefs that are “destructive” or

“constructive” in nature. Positive: “By positive atheism I mean an active struggle against everything that reminds us of God—that is to say, anti-theism rather than atheism—and at the same time a desperate, I would say heroic, effort to recast and reconstruct the whole human universe of thought and the whole human scale of values according to that state of war against God.”

Negative: “By negative atheism I mean a merely negative or destructive process of casting aside the idea of God, which is replaced only by a void. Such a negative atheism can be only shallow and empirical, like the atheism of the libertins of the seventeenth century: it hollows out a vacuum at the center of the universe of thought which has taken shape for centuries around the idea of God, but it does not bother about altering that universe; it is concerned merely with making us live comfortably in the empirical freedom of doing whatever we want.” (Maritain, The Review of Politics, 268)

Positive: “We can thus speak of a positive atheism. We shall directly see the most salient features of those forms of atheism that could be called constructive atheism, as opposed to the destructive atheism of the materialism of antiquity and of the illuministic currents. Whereas this older materialism was entirely directed to demolishing the Absolute by unhinging the metaphysical presuppositions on which it was based, present-day atheism in contrast claims to be dedicated to the edification of man or declares that it is man who must be understood by man, taking man as starting point, that man must be edified and saved via man.” (Fabro, God in Exile, 7)

Positive: “(e) Positive atheism: By positive atheism we mean a cultural circumstance in which the constructive virtues for the human and socio-cultural condition of an anti-religious stance are upheld. The adjective ‘positive’ is appropriate here also because it highlights the secularization theme. Positive atheism shares many of the concrete concerns of orthodox religious belief systems. Its major manifestations are in humanist movements and organizations and the academic intelligentsia.” (Robertson, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion, 238)

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMFlew’s (1976) conception of ‘Positive vs. Negative’ Atheism

Defined by the theory that all people are ‘born Atheist,’ and that Atheism, as an ‘implicit’ condition, places the “onus of proof” upon the Theist, requiring him to justify his belief to

the Atheists of the world.“The word 'atheism', however, has in this contention to be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of 'atheist' in English is 'someone who asserts that there is no such being as God’. I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively. I want the originally Greek prefix 'a' to be read in the same way in 'atheist' as it customarily is read in such other Greco-English words as 'amoral', 'atypical', and 'asymmetrical'. In

this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for

the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter.” (Flew, The Presumption of Atheism, 14)

“My presumption of atheism is closely analogous to the presumption of innocence in the

English law; a comparison which I shall develop in Section 2. What I want to examine is the contention that the debate about the existence of God should properly begin from the presumption of atheism, that the onus of proof must lie upon the theist.” (Flew, The

Presumption of Atheism, 13-14)

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMAfter Flew, the ‘positive vs. negative’ paradigm is defined by a dichotomous ‘explicitness’ and ‘implicitness.’

Stein (1980)“When we examine the components of the word ‘atheism,’ we can see this distinction more clearly. The word is made up of ‘a-’ and ‘-theism.’ Theism, we will all agree, is a belief in a God or gods. The prefix ‘a-’ can mean ‘not’ (or ‘no’) or ‘without.’ If it means ‘not,’ then we have as an atheist someone who is not a theist (i.e., someone who does not have a belief in a God or gods). If it means ‘without,’ then an atheist is someone without theism, or without a belief in God.” (Stein, An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 3)

Smith (1989)“An explicit atheist is one who rejects belief in a god. This deliberate rejection of theism presupposes familiarity with theistic beliefs and is sometimes characterized as anti-theism.” (17)

“An implicit atheist is a person who does not believe in a god, but who has not explicitly rejected or denied the truth of theism. Implicit atheism does not require familiarity with the idea of god.” (Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, 14)

____________________________

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMBoth marked by an ‘absence of belief,’ the ‘positive’

and ‘negative’ Atheist are defined by their ‘knowledge’ of God’s existence, not just their

‘rejection or denial of it.Martin (1990)“In my usage, positive atheism is positive in the sense that it refers to a positive belief—the belief that there is no god or gods. It is positive in contrast to negative atheism, which has no such positive belief. Of course, in another sense that is not relevant here, what I have called positive atheism is more negative than what I have called negative atheism. Positive atheism denies that one or more gods exist; negative atheism does not.” (464)“Consequently, I use ‘negative atheism’ in its most fundamental sense to mean an absence of belief in any god or gods, not just the absence of belief in a personal god. Let us call this the broad sense of negative atheism.” (Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 464-465)

Palmer (2010)“Positive or explicit atheism, in other words, by consciously denying God’s existence, knows full well what it is about, and provides within the history of ideas those full-scale frontal assaults upon the claims of religion by which atheism is more generally characterized. Viewed in this light, the suggestion that all children are atheists becomes inappropriate. For uninstructed children, not knowing god, can say nothing about God one way or the other, and are therefore in no position to reject (or indeed support) any theistic claims.” (17-18)“In other words, perhaps we should agree that an atheist is not someone who, having tested the appropriate theological argument, concludes that these arguments are spurious and that no such being exists; but rather, that an atheist is someone marked by the absence of belief: he or she simply has no belief in God. On these terms, the atheist is, properly speaking, not concerned with the matter of God at all. For how can one repudiate something when one has no conception of what one is denying?” (Palmer, The Atheist’s Creed, 16)

____________________________

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISM

What this paradigm eventually produces is a broad conception of ‘Negative’ Atheism that removes the Atheist from the context of his relationship with the Theistic belief in the existence of a specific modern monotheistic Abrahamic Deity, and places him in the context of

any sort of doubt, skepticism, denial, rejection, including agnosticism.

“For the purposes of this study, then, the word ‘atheist’ will signify the following: a person who is without a belief in God (or gods). This encompasses both those who believe that God does not

exist, and those who, while not necessarily disbelieving, do not possess a belief in God’s existence either. Among others who follow those broad, neutral definition of ‘atheist,’ these two categories are often designated

‘positive atheism’ (believing-not) and ‘negative atheism’ (not-believing) respectively.” (Bullivant, The Salvation of Atheists, 16)

“The nontheist does not necessarily deny the existence of god, but he may do so. This is also sometimes called ‘agnosticism’ or ‘negative atheism’. The nontheist is not necessarily a theoretical atheist, but he may be so.” (Hiorth, Introduction to Atheism, 34)

“Overt disbelief or atheism, which can be further subdivided into (a) positive atheism, an active disbelief in God and (b) negative atheism, the absence of belief in God.” (Walters, Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 12)

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE ATHEISMExtending the limits of Atheism within this

paradigm causes the inevitable imputation of the term upon non-Theistic ‘religions,’ such as Jainism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, a very

‘Western-centric’ perspective.

“In the general introduction to this volume I introduced a distinction between a broad sense of atheism that rejects all gods and a narrow sense of atheism that only rejects the theistic creator God. Using this distinction

one can say that Jainism is an atheistic religion in the narrow sense in that it rejects the theistic creator God but not in the broad sense since it accepts lesser gods who have no spiritual significance.” (Martin, The

Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 223)

“To be sure, it is not disputed that belief in a god or gods is a part of Mahayana Buddhism. The numerous bodhisattvas, the Buddha Amitabha, and the cosmic Buddha nature seem to be like the gods or god of Western

religion.” (Martin, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 224)

“Thus, it is not implausible to suppose that Confucius was a negative atheist in the narrow sense; that is, that he did not hold the view that an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God exists. There is not enough evidence, however, to speculate intelligently about whether he was a positive atheist in the narrow sense—that is, whether he disbelieved that such a God exists or whether he gave rational arguments for his atheism.” (Martin, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, 229)

“By the more limited definition of atheism as the denial of the God of the monotheists, polytheists are atheists. From the perspective of atheism as a-theism, Greek and Roman polytheism has to be called ‘atheist,’ for instance. The depiction of ultimate reality as impersonal (as we find in the earlier Hindu Upanishads) would also be classified as atheist. Theravada Buddhism and Jainism, which also reject a creator God, have to be classed as atheist on this account too. So does pantheism, being a rejection of a personal God.” (Cliteur, Philosophy Now, 7)





(explicit)(implicit)





(explicit)(implicit)(‘negative’ or ‘without’)





(explicit)(implicit)(‘negative’ or ‘without’)

(the ‘denial’ or ‘rejection’ of any type of ‘deity’)

Real vs. Lexical vs. Stipulation

“A lexical definition, since it asserts that a certain word has had a certain meaning to someone sometime, is, unlike the functional definition, either true or false. Lexical definitions, then, are true or false because they are historical statements. … History cannot give us more than lexical definitions, that is, evidence that the term has been used in such and such a way at such a time by such a person or group.” (10-11)*

*Robert D. Baird, Category Formation and the History of Religion (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991).

“The ‘real definition’ of a thing is nothing more than an analysis of that thing and therefore involves statements about it which can be verified with various forms of data. But such ‘real definitions’ or truth assertions, fail unless the words therein have been rendered unambiguous by functional definitions. … The search for an ‘essence’ is frequently an attempt to find an identity in the numerous applications of an ambiguous word.” (11-12)*

“A functional definition makes a word unambiguous by stipulating that for a given work it means a single thing. The precision of the

functional definition is dependent on the clarity of our language and not on the data. Hence one cannot say a certain functional definition of ‘religion’ or ‘magic’ lacks precision because of what it includes

or excludes, though one might judge it because it is not useful.” (8)*

A Conceptual Stipulation for this Context

• This study’s stipulation of Atheism consists of—generally speaking—only one type.

• This type is not unlike Buckley’s ‘parasitic’ type of ‘modern’ Atheism: “its definition is parasitic; like any denial, it lives off the meaning denied.”

• As such, this stipulation defines Atheism without the ‘positive vs. negative’ paradigm, removing the idea of ‘negative’ or ‘implicit’ Atheism from the definition and restricting its usage to the Theism against which it has been modernly defined.

• In applying the term ‘Atheist’ to define a person in a western, monotheistic context, and only in this context, the concept of Atheism is distinctly ‘Theistic.’

• We saw this, for example in Hyman’s conception of the “inexplicable link” between modernity and Atheism, wherein Atheism, “as befitting a negative and parasitic term,” did not arise “autonomously as an independent mode of thought,” but instead emerged as “a result of certain intellectual moves within theology and resulting changes in the prevailing concept of theism.”

• As well, by removing the concept of ‘negative’ Atheism, this stipulation also removes the idea that one might be ‘unconsciously’ Atheist, such as is suggested by the NSRN glossary definition.

• Rather, the Atheism stipulated here is of the type that can only come from a dialectically conscious and direct rejection and/or denial of the Theist’s—Western monotheistic Christianity and Islam—belief in the existence of God, based upon the rational-naturalism formed in Classical Atheism that re-emerged in its modern equivalent.


ENTERTAINMENT, AS ETHNOGRAPHY, AS SOURCES FROM WHICH WE MIGHT FIND EXPRESSIONS OF

SOCIAL, POLITICAL, OR CULTURAL CONCEPTS?

What is ‘Ethnography,’ what is ‘Fiction?’

What is the context in which these two concepts need to be delineated?

How do these two separate concepts fit into the discourse of the Anthropology’s ‘Literary Turn?’

How does conflating Ethnography and Fiction change our concepts of ‘Author’ and ‘Text?’

What is ‘Ethnographic Fiction’ and how does it differ from Fiction as Ethnography?

ETHNOGRAPHY vs. FICTION

“…we define an ethnography simply

as an account resulting from having done fieldwork, a relatively

undisciplined activity, the

folklore of which has given identity

to an academic discipline.” (Marcus

and Cushman, “Ethnographies as

Texts,” 27)

“Ethnography is actively situated between powerful

systems of meaning. It poses its questions at

the boundaries of civilizations,

cultures, classes, races, and genders.

Ethnography decodes and recodes, telling the grounds of collective order and diversity,

inclusion and exclusion. It

describes processes of innovation and

structuration, and is itself part of these processes.” (Clifford,

Writing Culture, 2-3)

“When I use the term ethnography I refer to a practice of writing about people that is explicitly rooted in fieldwork and which originated in the disciplines of anthropology even if it has now been co-opted by a range of other fields, whether sociology, education, or cultural studies. By fiction I mean a practice of writing that is not linked to any particular discipline and leaves the author free to invent.” (Narayan, “Ethnography

and Fiction: Where is the Border?”, 135)

“As finished texts, gracefully written ethnographies and socially observant novels may seem to overlap along a

continuum of narrative forms. I would

maintain, though, that the difference between

ethnography and fiction becomes most clearly apparent when one shifts attention from reading texts to the micro- practices of writing them.”

(Narayan, “Ethnography and Fiction,” 3)

von Stuckrad’s Three Stages of Crisis Facing Religious Studies

1. “First, the linguistic turn moved the issue of religion from its place in the transcendence and numinous into the realm of language and text.” (255)*

2. “Next, the pragmatic turn questioned the focus on mere semantic

approaches to religion. That is, through analyses of written sources, scholars emphasized the contexts and pragmatic options that are necessary to really

understand what a text is all about.” (255)*

3. “Finally, the writing culture debate demolished academic confidence in the scientists’ neutral role as an objective observer and placed their work in a

cultural process of constructing meaning or just producing narratives.” (255)*

“For several years now, the study of religion has faced a process of profound transformation. Debates, which were launched in neighboring disciplines, have now entered the precincts of Religionswissenschaft and have shaken fundamentally the discipline’s very self-confidence.” (255)*__________________________________________________

*(von Stuckrad, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003.)

‘Ethnographies as Texts’ Writing Culture,’ and ‘Works and Lives’

“The major characteristic shared by experimental

ethnographies is that they integrate, within their interpretations, an

explicit epistemological concern for how they have

constructed such interpretations and how

they are representing them textually as objective discourse about suspects among whom research was conducted. In a sense,

contemporary ethnographic writing attempts to

synthesize the classic debate on hermeneutics between philosophical

reflection about the nature of interpretation, which emphasizes the open-

endedness of interpretive activity, and the

methodological attempt to create a science of interpretation, which

emphasizes the possibility of systematic, self-

contained interpretations. … “Thus, the current trend is characterized by texts that are very personally

written, and are nonetheless emulative in

search of new conventions, quite like the classic

pattern of development in literary genres.” (26-27)

“It has long been asserted that scientific

anthropology is also an ‘art,’ that ethnographies have literary qualities.

We often hear that an author writes with style, that certain descriptions are vivid or convincing

(should not every accurate description be

convincing?). A work is deemed evocative or artfully composed in

addition to being factual; expressive, rhetorical

functions are conceived as decorative or merely as

ways to present an objective analysis or

description more effectively. Thus the

facts of the matter may be kept separate, at least in principle, from their means of communication. But the literary or rhetorical

dimensions of ethnography can no longer be so easily compartmentalized. They are active at every level

of cultural science. Indeed, the very notion of a ‘literary’ approach to

discipline, ‘anthropology,’ is seriously misleading.”

(4)

“The question of signature, the

establishment of an authorial presence within

a text, has haunted ethnography from early on, though for the most part

it has done so in a disguised form.

Disguised, because it has been generally cast not as a narratological issue, a mater of how best to get an honest story honestly

told, but as an epistemological one, a matter of how to prevent subjective views from

coloring objective facts. The clash between the

expository conventions of author-saturated texts and those of author-evacuated ones that grows out of the particular nature of the ethnographic enterprise is imagined to be a clash between seeing things as one would have them and

seeing them as they really are.” (9)

Marcus and Cushman, 1982 Clifford, 1986 Geertz, 1988

The LITERARY TURN“The literary turn,” most broadly, can be understood as anthropology turning its attention to its own processes of inscription.” (Rapport, Literary Anthropology,

2012)

“…all constructed truths are made possible by powerful ‘lies’ of exclusion and rhetoric. Even the best ethnographic texts—serious true fictions—are systems, or economies, of truth. Power and history work through them, in ways their authors cannot fully control.” (Clifford, Writing Culture, 7)

“It is not clear just what ‘faction,’

imaginative writing about real people in real places at real times, exactly comes to beyond a clever

coinage; but anthropology is going to have to find out if it is to continue as an intellectual

force in contemporary culture—if its mule condition (trumpeted scientific mother’s brother, disowned literary father) is not to lead to mule sterility.” (Geertz,

Works and Lives, 141)

“We started by attempting to apply the standard

literary discriminations of plot, point of view,

characterization, content, and style. However, as our

analysis proceeded, we found that the fourth and fifth factors needed to be broken down into smaller, more manageable analytic categories (content into three categories, style

into three), and hence our total of nine conventions to delineate the genre of ethnographic realism.”

(Marcus and Cushman, Ethnographies as Texts, 30)

“Literary processes—metaphor, figuration, narrative—affect the ways cultural phenomena are registered, from the first jotted ‘observations,’ to the completed book, to the ways these configurations ‘make sense’ in

determined acts of reading.” (Clifford, Writing Culture, 4)…I treat ethnography itself as a performance

emplotted by powerful stories. Embodied in written

reports, these stories

simultaneously describe real

cultural events and make additional,

moral, ideological, and even

cosmological statements. Ethnographic writing is

allegorical at the level of both of its content (what

it says about cultures and their histories) and of its form (what is implied by its mode

of textualization).” (Clifford, Writing

Culture, 98)

Two Conceptions Challenged by the Literary Turn

AUTHOR TEXT

Author-Function“(I) how is the ‘author-function’… made manifest in the text? (2) Just what is it—beyond the obvious tautology, ‘a work’—that the

author authors?” (Geertz, Works and Lives, 8-9)

“The question of signature, the establishment of an authorial presence within a text, has haunted ethnography from early on, though for the most part it has done so in a disguised form. … The clash between the expository conventions of author-saturated texts and those of author-

evacuated ones that grows out of the particular nature of the ethnographic enterprise is imagined to be a clash between seeing things as one would have them and seeing them as they really are.” (Geertz, Works

and Lives, 9) “In classical ethnographies the voice of the author was always manifest, but

the conventions of textual presentation and reading forbade too close a connection between authorial style and the reality presented. … In the sixties this set of expository conventions cracked. Ethnographers began to write about their field

experience in ways that disturbed the prevailing subjective/objective balance.” (Clifford, Writing Culture, 13)

“Ethnographic truths are thus inherently partial—committed and

incomplete. This point is now widely asserted—and resisted at strategic

points by those who fear the collapse of clear standards of verification.

But once accepted and built into ethnographic art, a rigorous sense of

partiality can be a source of representational tact.” (Clifford,

Writing Culture, 7)

The AUTHOR, coming to terms with his role in manufacturing the TEXT, challenges the “prevailing subjective/objective”

dichotomy. This is especially prevalent after the publication of Malinowski’s field diaries, and thus his personal opinions, in

1967.

Ethnography as Fiction

[The Ethnographic novel]Ethnographies written with aesthetic intent, influenced by the literary self-reflexivity of the ‘Writing Culture’ debate and the ‘Literary

Turn’

Ethnography as Fiction[The Ethnographic Novel]

“Experimentation with point of view has long been one of the key elements distinguishing fictional from nonfictional modes of writing.

In addition, early anthropologists were highly sensitive to the existence of a close predecessor and contemporary parallel to the professional ethnography—the travel account.” (Marcus and Cushman,

“Ethnographies as Texts,” 31) “Traditional ethnography required a sharp separation between subject and object if it was to retain its authoritative voice.” (Bruner, Anthropology

and Literature, 5-6)

“There is no doubt that the basic

difference between ethnography and

fiction is that the former intends, and is taken to intend, truth. Realistic fiction, on the

other hand, encourages a

suspension of doubt or signals its

status in some even more subtle way.

But this distinction, far

from being obvious, instead seems to be the focus of the

thickest description of all, a broad semantic no-man’s land.”

(Webster, Dialogue and Fiction in Ethnography,102

“No longer does the anthropologist and the

informant have to inhabit the separate worlds of science and religion. … Today, it

is possible to be evocative, to express feelings, ours and

theirs, and to capture the drama of social

life. That ethnography contains narratives or stories means that it is constructed, not

that it is fictional in the sense of being

false or nor real, or that it avoids

accountability.” (Bruner, Anthropology and

Literature, 6)

“The previously segmented self may come

together, as the personal and the

professional aligned. There is no need to separate the memoir from the ethnography, no need to falsify, repress, and distort

part of the ethnographic self, to

be a hero or a mechanical recording

machine. We can discard disguises and falsifications, and in

so doing regain a unified self and a

freedom to be oneself, one self.” (Bruner,

Anthropology and Literature, 7


Examples

Michael Jackson’s Barawa and the Ways the

Birds Fly in the Sky

CONCEPT TEXTAn early ‘post-

modernist’ examination of the Barawa people of south-west Somalia


Examples





A first-person mystery that borders upon the supernatural, in which the ethnographer, as the central character, becomes a sort of ‘detective’ as he

deciphers the culture he means to examine

Timothy Knab’s A War of Witches,


Examples





A first-person mystery that borders upon the supernatural, in which the ethnographer, as the central character, becomes a sort of ‘detective’ as he

deciphers the culture he means to examine

Timothy Knab’s A War of Witches,

A mystery narrative whose two anthropologists are thrust

into a foreign world in which they must decipher the

cultural meaning of certain artifacts in order to solve a mystery involving a ‘staged’

funeral

Richard and Sally Price’s Enigma

Variations

Fiction as Ethnography

[The Novel as Ethnography]The ‘inevitable’ next step that sees aesthetically manufactured fictions

read as ethnographies, based upon the shift toward writing and reading

ethnographies in aesthetic ways via the ethnographic novel.

Fiction as Ethnography[The Novel as Ethnography]

Eriksen: Ethnographic Sources, Descriptions, and Different

Approaches, Rather than Questions

Fernea: Emergence of the Ethnographic Novel, its Meaning and Benefits

“Ethnographies are beginning to be treated as literary texts, and the boundaries between the humanities and social science disciplines are blurring. In such an intellectual climate, the novel as cultural text has aroused a new interest. Social scientists and humanist, in studying other cultures, have begun to see imaginative forms of writing as cultural products as well as individual texts. From such a perspective, the term ethnographic novel has emerged.” (154)

“It is a text, like other literary texts, that in the course of presenting a fictional story creates a setting (or physical and social context), characters (or people), plot and action that the reader judges to be authentic in terms of the particular cultural, social, or political situation portrayed.” (154)“The ethnographic novel has some advantages

over the standard ethnography. The novelist need not shun conflict, anger, hatred, or passion, and may often become a participant in the drama of the novel in a way denied the ethnographer, who has in the past been at pains to observe carefully and not to become too involved. Such involvement, existentially or textually, has been seen to mar the scholarly value of the work and violate the code of objectivity by which the ethnographer/researcher has been expected to abide.” (154)

“First, novels may serve as ethnographic sources and may to this effect rank with informant’s statements. (191) Second, novels may be read as ethnographic descriptions; that is, the formation conveyed may be taken more or less at its face value, as a kind of ethnographic documentation.” (191)“Works of fiction are not anthropological writings—and vice versa, although both genres can be read as though they represented the other genre.” (193)“Fiction and anthropology, as modes of enquiry, therefore differ perhaps not so much in posing different questions, but in their approaches. … What fiction gains from its vividness, freedom to experiment and evocative techniques, it loses in its lack of accuracy, empirical comprehensiveness and attempt to establish interesting comparative dimensions.” (193)


Laterza: Specific Types of Fiction, Fiction as

Ethnography, Fictionalization

Tallman: Ethnographers Generalize, Novelists Particularize, the Novel as

Entry Point“Both attempt to put into words the results of their observations and their ruminations on what they have observed. Both draw on conventions and traditions of writers before them, ethnographers usually more explicitly than novelists.” (11-12 “…novelists strive for a fresh, unique, original description of life and of individuals. Ethnographers want to generalize and novelists particularize a time, place or people.” (12) “The relationship between the ethnographer and the novelist becomes blurred in the ethnographic novel.” (12)“The novel serves as an entry point to certain cultures in two ways. First, it is based on and parallel to historical and cultural studies of the people in the book. Second, it serves as an imaginative field of study itself for someone doing sociolinguistic analysis. In addition, it brings to the reader’s awareness characters who, in their life stories, reveal possibilities open to people of those times and places.” (13)

“The main contentions of the authors should not be taken lightly: ethnographies are texts and as texts they are crafted in a particular style; style determines content as much as the experience of fieldwork does. It affects the reception of ethnographic data and theoretical conclusions. Ethnographies, therefore, should be read as specific forms of fiction.” (124)“More recently anthropologists acknowledged that the reverse is also possible: popular fiction could be studied as a form of ethnography (e.g. Banks 1990; Ortner 1991; Tallman 2002). Novels often contain detailed ethnographic descriptions and analytical statements about social realties.” (124-125)“It is true that common definitions imply that the novel is a work of the imagination of the author, or, in any case, contains fictional elements—where fictional means ‘made up’ or ‘imagined.’ Yet the distinction between fact and fiction is not unproblematic. In practice fact and fiction blur into one another and there is no clear-cut divide between the two (Crittenden 1991; Hempfer 2004; Thomasson 1999). Any written representation of reality will involve some degree fictionalization.” (125)


Examples

CONCEPT TEXT

Ethnographic fictions which consist of

providing an illuminating interpretation of social environments in late 20th

century Trinidad

Mittelholzer’s A Morning at the Office,

Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, and Lovelace’s

The Dragon Can’t Dance(Eriksen 1994)


Examples

CONCEPT TEXT



century Trinidad




An anti-war, anti-religious feminist social

history about the ‘Mediterranean code of honor’ in late 20th century Lebanon.

Sitt Marie Rose, by Etel Adnan

(Fernea 1989)


Examples

CONCEPT TEXT



century Trinidad




An anti-war, anti-religious feminist social

history about the ‘Mediterranean code of honor’ in late 20th century Lebanon.

Sitt Marie Rose, by Etel Adnan

(Fernea 1989)

A culturally rich ethnographic life history that traces the themes of slavery, emancipation, multiculturalism, and post-colonial awakening

in both Brazil and Lagos/Nigeria

The Water House, by Antonio Olinto(Tallman 2002)

This method, reasonably established, brings us back to our original hypothesis…

CAN WE READ THREE TEXTS BY THE ENGLISH NOVELIST IAN MCEAN, TEXTS MANUFACTURED SOLELY FOR PLEASURE OR ENTERTAINMENT, AS ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCES, FROM WHICH WE MIGHT FIND HISTORICAL EXPRESSIONS OF DEVELOPING ATHEISM IN LATE 20TH CENTURY BRITAIN?

CONCEPT and TEXT, now defined, we can address our hypothesis with a less ambiguity.

Historical Expressions of Developing

Atheism in Late 20th Century Britain

Ian McEwan’s ‘Atheist Trilogy’

Black Dogs (1992), Enduring Love (1997),

Saturday (2005)

Black Dogs (1992)

A ‘life history’ that records the dialectical relationship between

Communist-based Scientific Atheism and Christian-heavy New Age beliefs in Britain against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in

1989

Enduring Love (1997)

A dialectical and ethical analysis of coping with

tragedy and the early stages of modern Atheism’s

transmutation into the Scientific Worldview against

the backdrop of waning interest in Christianity in Britain on the eve of the new

millennium. Saturday (2005)

The defense and promotion of the Scientific Worldview established in Enduring Love and defended against the encroaching fear of fundamentalist theism against the backdrop of the anti-war

protest in London on 15 February 2003

McEwan as ethnographer, as an insider, provides ethnographic sources—culturally rich texts—authentic in terms of the particular cultural, social, or political

situation portrayed, wherein we can decipher expressions of our dialectically-bound and specifically dependent

conception of Atheism

In answer to our hypothesis we might, at this stage, answer ‘yes’ concerning the possibility of reading aesthetic

fictions as ethnographies considering the sources discussed previously (Eriksen, Fernea, Laterza, and Tallman).

However, much more detail is needed before we can simply respond in the affirmative, particularly concerning our

concept of developing Atheism.

Thus, to further test the general hypothesis—contributing this research to the established literature—as well as make a more direct assessment of our concept as ‘other’ within the context of both McEwan’s texts and how those texts are historically realistic—providing a perspective yet to be addressed in the current scholarship—we can proceed with a solid foundation on which to build our own unique analysis.

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