Resolving Oppositional Analysis and Arguments: using the McCutcheon—Omer Debate to Explore the...

Resolving Oppositional Dilemmas1

Resolving Oppositional Analysis and Arguments: using the

McCutcheon—Omer Debate to Explore the Confusion that the Misuse of

Words Can Create

By Gary M. Jaron (December 31, 2013 revised in November 27, 2014)

The fact that someone, somewhere has decided to use a word in a

new way, taking it from one context and meaning and dropping it off

into a new context and by doing so altering to some degree the words

meaning, should be as much a surprise as finding a big bright yellow

circular object in the sky. We should upon reading about someone using

a word in an unfamiliar manner with a feeling of inevitability. Yet,

what should happen often does not. I should not be writing this essay.

I should not need to, but sadly, there are many people who

misunderstand how the tools they use work. For Academic scholars words

are our conceptual tools.

Russell T. McCutcheon submitted an essay arguing about how Atalia

Omer dared to use two words in some new way different from what he,

McCutcheon, had used those words. I would characterize this argument

as being similar to getting upset that the sun came up five minutes

earlier or later than you had expected. However, McCutcheon did get

upset and created an oppositional debate between how he used two terms


and how Omer used those terms. McCutcheon claim the two terms word

oppositional whereas Omer consider them to be complementary.

Jonte-Pace in “The Swami and the Rorschach: Spiritual Practice, Religious

Experience, and Perception” laid out the problem typically created between

two theoretical maps accurately.

We scholars seem inevitably to frame our debates in termsthat require an oppositional other: culture versus nature;universality versus plurality; theology versus religiousstudies; constructivism versus decontextualism. …westructure our ideas, experiences, and theoriesoppositionally in debates that ‘set up their terms infundamentally reciprocal or oppositional relationships inwhich they are foils for defining each other. (Forman, 1998,156)

In the December 2012 issue of the JAAR, McCutcheon set himself

and Omer in opposition over the meaning of the words critic and caretaker.

As he explains in his 2012 article:

In May of 2012, I was asked by David Robertson—one of thefounders and hosts of the web-based The Religious StudiesProject—to provide a concluding commentary to a series ofshort interviews concerning whether scholars of religionshould be critics or caretakers. While I certainly do nothave any special ownership of either of these two nouns—infact, I got them from Burton Mack—two of the intervieweesclearly understood the question as having something to dowith the title of my 2001 collection of essays, where thesetwo words figured prominently in a title that rivals Omer'sown for directness (though mine was a declarativestatement). (McCutcheon, 2012, pp. 1077-1078)


McCutcheon did not claim to own the words and the ideas

associated with the words critic and caretaker. It is important to note

that McCutcheon has every right to voice his opinion on whether a

critic, as in a Religious Studies scholar, should get involved in

trying to assist in settling conflicts between two differing religious

communities. That is what Omer was suggesting. She presented in her

article the reasons why such scholars should get involved. McCutcheon,

and anyone else, can voice disagreement with Omer’s intentions,

actions, and goals. That is not what is at issue in this analysis that

I am presenting.

I am focusing on the tone and the underlying context of the

argument from McCutcheon in his disagreement with Omer concerns the

usage of those words critic and caretaker. McCutcheon in his response to

Omer has indeed framed it as if he believes he does have ownership of

those words.

This is a classic disagreement about words and one that is framed

in an oppositional logic debate of either/or. On the topic of

oppositional debates, I can offer some insight into this exchange.

McCutcheon seems to have a habit of framing things in binary

oppositions as noted by Benjamin Fong:

But are these the only two avenues available to us? …Therecurrent dichotomies around which McCutcheon structures his


work (caretaker vs. critics, the “dominant” vs. the“oppositional” discourse) indeed suggest that this is thechoice before us. (Fong, 2014, pp. 1132-1133) This is a criticism of McCutcheon, of course, but I amtrying less to analyze one man’s (public) fantasies than tohighlight something about the context in which the criticaldiscourse operates. It is common to think that the“caretaker” model of the study of religion has largely beenreplaced by the “critical” one, or at least that these twodiscourses are competing and thus in opposition. (Fong,2014, p. 1143)

The source of these oppositional dichotomies, analysis, and

arguments resides in the meaning and usage of words. I propose an

orienting philosophic system that explains how to use and analyze

words as tools and therefore avoid this analytic tool trap. I will

start with Professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the pen

name Lewis Carroll. He put into the mouth of his character Humpty

Dumpty a profound insight concerning words.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornfultone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither morenor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you canmake words mean so many different things." "The questionis," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that’sall.” (Carroll, 1971, p. 190)

Many scholars have been making a common metaphysical mistake,

such as the one Alice made in Carroll’s quotation. They were treating

those words as fixed and external objects, and they are not. Words are

defined by the context of the speaker using the word and the community


that accepts the usage and meaning given by the speaker. Humpty Dumpty

got it right.

Alice was following the tradition of words as first stated by

Aristotle.

“A definition,” says Aristotle, “is a phrase signifying athing’s essence.’ (Topics 102a).In short, it is a collectionof necessary and sufficient conditions for an object to be aparticular kind of thing, what we would call today a memberof a conceptual category. This definition of definition isstill commonplace in logic and philosophy. ...Definitionsfor Aristotle are anything but trivial matters. They are notmere stipulations of how to use words…definitions forAristotle characterize essential aspects of things in theworld that explain why those things behave naturally the waythey do. In short, for Aristotle, correct definition iscentral to the scientific enterprise, because it gives usreal casual knowledge of why things behave as they do.(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 379)

For Alice, Aristotle, and in my reading of McCutcheon, to define

a thing is to assert it’s ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’ of

what it is and that thing is assumed to be unchanging; no

consideration is given for context and circumstance in the description

of the words definition.

However to truly understand definitions we must realize that they

the words we use are conceptual tools and therefore are subject to the

same limits of any tool. Let me explain the limits of all finite tools

whether physical or conceptual. Physical tools are like hammers,


scalpels, telescopes, pens, papers, and computers. Conceptual tools

include words, ideas, models, and theories.1

Robert Ornstein in Psychology of Consciousness presented a saying he

attributed to Abraham Maslow. Ornstein tells of how Maslow summed up

the failure of Skinnerian Behaviorism with this phrase: ‘If the only

thing you happen to have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as

if it were a nail.’ (Ornstien, 1975, p. 60)Maslow was challenging the

singular map that guided Skinnerian Behaviorism. According to that

map, all human thought and action could be reduced to the measurable

behavior that was solely a direct response to stimulus. However, just

as you would not want a brain surgeon to remove a cancerous growth

wielding only a hammer, so would you expect a competent scientist and

philosopher to have more than one cognitive tool as well. Different

circumstances require a variety of tools. Just as physical tools like

the hammer have their contexts of usefulness—the same is true with

conceptual tools, hence Maslow’s remark.

I believe that a tool trap occurs when the very tool the person

is using causes a distortion in the user’s perception, examination,

and conclusions concerning the material she is working with. A tool

1 I will be repeating here a description of a system of analysis that I offered in my 2014 article. (Jaron, Thinking Outside the Box ofCommon Sense Logic: Considering the Limitations of Conceptual Tools, 2014)


trap occurs as a direct result of the seductive nature of the tool’s

effectiveness. The tool’s success within its area of competency

stimulates a desire in the tool user to use it in some other

situation. When the tool is taken outside of its proper context, there

is the strong probability that it will be found to be useless. A tool

trap also arises when the tool user is seduced into thinking that the

tool she has is the only one she needs. She needs to remember that she

can always find another tool to give a different and useful insight.

There is no end to tool making and tool using.

In almost all oppositional dilemmas, like the one in this

article, the problem arose because only one analytic tool of logic was

used. Therefore, it was Maslow’s hammer that was wielding the tool

user and she fell into a tool trap. Most people do not realize that

there are actually two sets of analytic tools of logic available, each

suited to working with different types of words. These are the

familiar common sense logic derived from Aristotle’s first three laws

of logic, which I will refer to as Aristotelian logic, or A-Logic.

Aristotle formulated his logic to deal with and classify the objects

that we can perceive, such as animals, minerals, and vegetables. There

is also the Non-Aristotelian Logic system; I will refer to as Non-A

Logic, derived from the work of Alfred Korzybski. This logic is suited


to analyzing non-sensory objects of internal reality of the mental

realm.2

Now, the first thing we need to do is ask what kind of words are

critic and caretaker? When I ask such a question, I am asking what the

words point toward. What quite of thing is it that the words referring

to? Do those words, critic and caretaker, point toward some external,

concrete physical object? No, they do not. Those words are not

concrete terms but rather are abstract terms.

Abstract terms or Abstract words are words that point toward a

conceptual object, an idea in the mind of the user of those terms.

Being an abstract term then Non-A Logic is our guide with its shifting

contextual emphasis and middle ground of varying meanings depending on

the context. The words are containers that are empty and need to be

filled by the user with meaning. Abstract words have no permanent

fixed meaning other than communal usage at some give time and in some

varying contexts. The recognition of the changing nature of the

meaning of words is the reasoning behind the creation of the Oxford

English Dictionary.

The OED is not just a very large dictionary: it is also ahistorical dictionary, the most complete record of theEnglish language ever assembled. It traces a word from itsbeginnings (which may be in Old or Middle English) to the2 (Jaron, What is True, and What is Real, Providing the Non-

Aristotelian Tools to Orient You, 2012)


present, showing the varied and changing ways in which ithas been used and illustrating the changes with quotationswhich add to the historical and linguistic record. This canmean that the first sense shown is long obsolete, and thatthe modern use falls much later in the entry. (OxfordUniversity Press, 2014)The mission of the OED is to illustrate the changing nature of

words in the English language. Therefore, we should prepare ourselves

for different meanings for any abstract words we use depending on the

different authors who use the terms.

For instance, the OED listing for the word critic:

a. One who pronounces judgement on any thing or person; esp.one who passes severe or unfavourable judgement; a censurer,fault-finder, caviller. (This usage has progressed andchanged from its first appearance in 1598 to 1766)b. One skillful in judging of the qualities and merits ofliterary or artistic works; one who writes upon thequalities of such works; a professional reviewer of books,pictures, plays, and the like; also one skilled in textualor biblical criticism.( The variants for this usage coverthe time frame of 1605 through 1870.) (Oxford UniversityPress, 2014)

The second definition is the usage that McCutcheon seems to be

referring to by his usage.

The OED’s listing for the word caretaker:

a. One who takes care of a thing, place, or person; one putin charge of anything. (1858 – 1869)b. a person put in charge of a farm from which the tenanthas been evicted. (1868-1887)c. designating a government, administration, etc., in officetemporarily. (1885-1963). (Oxford University Press, 2014)


McCutcheon’s usage seems to metaphorically referring to the first

definition.

McCutcheon established in the context of his analysis that

religious scholars should act as critics and not caretakers of a specific

religion. By this, he meant that they should use critical analysis to

examine the religion from the outside and not work to support the

values or defend the theological constructs of that religious faith. A

caretaker of that religion supports its believers to maintain their

beliefs, opinions, and theology. For McCutcheon the goals of a critic

and caretaker are mutually exclusive.

Our role is not to act as caretakers for religion…but ratherour role is unfailing to probe beneath the rhetorical windowdressings that authorize conceptual and social constructionsof our own making. (McCutcheon, 2001, p. 141)

Omer, noting the significance and prominence of McCutcheon’s

clever and thoughtful use of the terms critic and caretaker, decided to

play with those words and she published an article in 2011 titled “Can

a Critic Be a Caretaker too?” (Omer, 2011). Omer noted that she was moving

beyond the focus on McCutcheon’s analysis in her essay.

The problem with McCutcheon’s approach is that it blocks thepossibility of thinking constructively about alternativemodes of socializing that both redress past injustices andask how religion and theology as well as other culturalresources may fit into refashioning of national boundaries


(especially where “religion”-qua-“ethnicity” or “culture”explicitly delimits the threshold of inclusiveness).Hence, McCutcheon’s critical approach is insufficient forthinking about transforming conflicts and underlyingstructures of injustice. (Omer, 2011, p. 460)

Whereas he was centered on scholars, and debates between

scholars, she wished to focus on a scholars work in helping believers

in different religious communities who are caught in religious

quandaries. Omer creates the term critical caretaker to describe such

a person taking on this role.

The approach I propose underscores both the denaturalizingof religion vis-à-vis other dimensions of one’s identity anda serious critique of the dominant discourses, as well as aconstructive engagement with the histories, and counter-histories, memories, symbols, traditions, and theologiesoperative in a given context, and how they may relate to thealleviation of suffering and the reframing of unjuststructures of control and domination. …It is precisely thistask of thinking constructively about reframing dominantstructures and narratives that builds on and develops Hurd’sanalysis by underscoring the potential role of the religionscholar as at once critic and caretaker. (Omer, 2011, pp.483-484)

Omer begins with McCutcheon’s usage and goes beyond his goals and

context to suggest a new role for the scholar of religion as a

critical caretaker, a person who cares for the lives and interactions

of the members of cultures who are in a religious conflict. Omer

disagrees with McCutcheon’s view that the scholar must remain in the


Ivory Tower and not interact with participants of religions in the

land beyond the Tower. She offers the term critical caretaker as her play on

McCutcheon’s ideas to move toward a new and differing agenda.

What happened next should not have happened but it did.

Hopefully, this essay will prevent this occurrence in the future.

McCutcheon responded ‘The refreshingly straightforward question

contained in the title of Atalia Omer’s article affords me the

opportunity for an equally direct answer: No.’ (McCutcheon, 2012, p.

1077)

What is instructive about this episode, at least to me, isthat it makes plain that, even though we all have opinionsof other people's work, we do not always read each othervery carefully. What is more, claiming that we all haveinterests and values or vocally disagreeing with the role ofcritic qua disparager are both a bit of a tabloid move,inasmuch as it implies that anyone who is a critic is eithera luddite positivist or somehow out to belittle the peoplewhom they study. Neither, however, have anything to do withhow I have used the word critic or critique. (McCutcheon,2012, p. 1078)

Note that it is here that McCutcheon takes up the view that

anyone using those terms must be doing so in the context of how he

used those words in his work. He fails to acknowledge, or recognize,

that the words can be used in some other context outside of his own

parameters.

I therefore find this sort of scholarship rather lamentable,since the lesson that I learned early on in my own career


was that if you were intent on disagreeing in print withanother scholar, then you had better do your homeworkbeforehand and have a pretty good descriptive understandingof his or her argument before offering your own. At leastthat is incumbent upon those who disagree with the way thatour field is usually practiced. For doing anything lessmakes it all the easier for your interlocutors to dismissyour work. (McCutcheon, 2012, p. 1078)

McCutcheon rightly notes how important it is to read the work of

the person you are about to disagreement, he however does not merely

disagree with Omer he in fact claims to own the words critic and caretaker,

even though he started out saying he did not. He fails to acknowledge

that Omer specifically stated that she is going to use those words in

a manner different from the way McCutcheon did. He ignores what she

wrote and keeps asserting that she cannot do this. He said in

referring to Omer’s usage of the terms, ‘Neither, however, have

anything to do with how I have used the word critic or critique.’

(McCutcheon, 2012, p. 1078)

That is the precise point of Omer’s paper she did not treat those

words as if he owned them, she acknowledged his usage and then

disagreed with his idea and assert her own ideas. McCutcheon however

treats her usage as not acceptable, since this violates ‘how I have

used the word critic or critique.’

I see the two roles as mutually exclusive. Yet, in apuzzling manner, Omer thinks them complementary, claimingthat my work is both crucial to her own yet insufficient (462). I


am unsure how it is crucial (apart from providing her withthe terms around which she organizes her article). As forthe latter judgment, my work is, admittedly, insufficientfor all sorts of uses that I can imagine; in her case, it isjudged “insufficient for thinking about transformingconflicts and underlying structures of injustice” (460).This, however, is an understandable lack, making Omer'scriticism of me less than compelling; for my work activelyargues against scholars of religion ever seeing this as acredible role to play. That I should then be critiqued fornot enabling it is, to put it mildly, somewhat odd. Ofcourse, Omer is free to argue for such a goal and to developtools that she believes will help her to accomplish it(though I am unsure why the pages of the JAAR are the placeto publicize this type of research), but why even use mywork to help her do that? (McCutcheon, 2012, p. 1079)

McCutcheon is arguing that because Omer used HIS terms and

referred to HIS scholarly work, she must be confined to stay within

his context and analysis. Why? Omer was inspired by McCutcheon but why

should that obligated her in any way to the confines of his work? She

clearly can create her own context and she did just that. McCutcheon

refuses to acknowledge that possibility. He wants to claim he owns

forever the context and usage of the terms.

For, at least as I understand it, the implication of mywritings is that we must so dilute the notion of critic ifwe are to invent a critical caretaker (her preferred,synthetic term), that we might as well just get rid of thewords of critic and critique altogether. That is, in Omer'sarticle, I find my work being put to use to argue for thevery thing that I explicitly argue against, suggesting to methat she should just take these two technical terms and putthem to new use (as Arnal and I have done with a title ofMircea Eliade's in our own co-authored book); for I read herarticle—which argues that scholars of religion are


particularly well suited to (though sadly absent fromefforts to) bring about conflict resolution on the geo-political scene—as but one more example of the type ofposition against which my work argues. (McCutcheon, 2012, p.1079)

McCutcheon does not simply disagree with Omer, which he has every

right to do, he insists that Omer cannot use these two terms since

they are ‘technical’ terms that he claims to own by the right of his

using them technically in his work. This is the point of my essay and

my disagreement with McCutcheon. In my reading of his article, he is

laying claim to the exclusive meaning of the terms and treating words

as if they exist in an external Platonic realm of fixed meaning.

However, that idea of words is incorrect. Words are tools that in

their usage will always change overtime. That is the nature of the

cultural creation of the tool of language. A word’s definition is not

fixed and eternal. A word is not owned by anyone, it belongs to the

community of users of that language.

We can disagree and debate about ideas. We can disagree about

whether certain ideas are useful or valid. We can disagree about what

a person should or should not do. However, I read McCutcheon not

merely disagreeing but insisting that Omer has no right to use the

terms that he has claimed by writing his article. McCutcheon has

created an oppositional conflict between himself and Omer.


I believe that McCutcheon’s oppositional conflict with Omer boils

down to misusing and misunderstanding the nature of words. McCutcheon

complained about Omer’s article and her use of the term critical caretaker

when he wrote, ‘Neither, however, have anything to do with how I have

used the word critic or critique.’ (McCutcheon, 2012, p. 1078).

McCutcheon seems to be tool trapped by using A-logic and assuming that

there is only a single definition and use for those terms. McCutcheon

seems to be acting like Alice; he was treating those abstract words as

if they were concrete things. McCutcheon was unable to comprehend that

Omer was not addressing the context and issues that he was. He does

not seem to understand that someone could use words outside of his

view of the situation and context.

Omer explained in her rejoinder to McCutcheon

My JAAR article was neither about carrying forward histradition nor his authorial intent. Prof. McCutcheon’scaricature of my argument begins with the suggestion that Ifail to recognize his positing of the critic and thecaretaker as mutually exclusive. Yet I offer an account ofthis bifurcation, highlighting its (limited) deconstructiveutility as well as its reductionist tendency.’ (Omer, 2012,p. 1083)

She was being Humpty Dumpty and offering her own definitions of

the word in an entirely new context. New contexts often require new

definitions.


Whenever someone compares and contrasts two abstract words,

immediately take the words, and create a continuum; where you can

acknowledge the Non-A logic middle ground lying hidden between the

abstract 100% meaning and usage at both ends of the continuum. Now all

you need to do is figure out what is the context where those two

abstract words make the most sense. In this situation, McCutcheon

could have created a continuum where critic is at one end and caretaker is

at the other. Once you do so, you can recognize the continuum and use

it as a visual cue that there is a middle ground; where someone is

operating both in some fashion as a blend of the two terms. With this

orienting tool, you can use that map to go find facts in the external

world to discover where such a phenomenon does occur. Now we can

notice when someone is acting as a critic and when is acting as a

caretaker. Obviously, a person can decide to be both or not take up

either of those roles. Just as a person can be both a critic and a

dancer, or a critic and a father, and so on. Each of those words is

pointing toward a role/persona that can be chosen and put on or off

like an item of clothing, as the mood or circumstance require.

If your field of study overlaps the underlying issues that

McCutcheon and Omer are discussing, you can delve further into their

respective writings on this topic. In doing so my tool of the


continuum of a critic—caretaker would serve as a guide to escaping

from an oppositional dilemma. However, if this is not your area of

expertize then you can walk away content that just as there is a high

probability that the sun will rise tomorrow, you can be reasonably

certain that someone will publish an article explaining this

misunderstanding about words.

Our common sense assumption is that one is right and the other

wrong. However, our common sense logic has its origin and foundation

in the initial rules of logic explicated by Aristotle. According to

Aristotelian logic A cannot be non-A, and there can be no middle

ground. Therefore, it seemed that according to A-logic it is

impossible for both Omer and McCutcheon to be valid. How are we to

deal with this seeming contradiction? The answer is to realize that we

are not limited to the restrictions of A-logic alone. There is another

set of logical tools.

Oppositional dilemmas, arguments, and debates should alert you to

a faulty use of A-logic when Non-A logic is needed. Immediately upon

hearing/reading of such a thing, ask: what is the focus, what are the

words that are being argued about? Do the words at issue point toward

a concrete thing or an abstract thing?


Concrete things usually require A-logic analysis and there is no

middle ground between differentiating amongst Granny Smith apples and

Pippin Apples, for example. However, if the words at the center of the

debate point toward abstract ideas, then Non-A logic should be your

orienting tool to dissolve the seeming paradox and debate. You will

need the middle ground of Non-A Logic. Often the answer is not either

one or the other, but both.

This article was not about whether a scholarly critic should or

should not get involved in cultural and political conflicts and

disagreements, which is what Omer contends they can and should do,

whereas McCutcheon believes this is not a task for a scholarly critic.

This article is about the problem that McCutcheon created when he

asserted control over the meaning of the terms critic and caretaker.

McCutcheon created what to him was an oppositional debate based on his

unacknowledged usage of ownership to his technical terms that he made

out of the words critic and caretaker. However, the meaning of the words

are not in fact so limited and prescribed.

We can assert a different meaning from the one McCutcheon uses

and this is what Omer did in her article. Omer went beyond and outside

of McCutcheon’s context and created her own context and usage for

those words. Her action was appropriate given the nature of the


abstract words critic and caretaker. I would hope that we could avoid

another such oppositional conflict. We need to recognize that most of

our work utilizes and explores the meaning of abstract terms. Abstract

terms are by the nature and usage not fixed and under any one person’s

control. To avoid getting tool trapped when we use abstract tools we

must recognize that the meaning of the words will shift with differing

contexts and resulting from many people utilizing those terms.

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