As soon as you hit the word "kuhn" in any of his papers you can pack up and go home.
I stopped here:
Kevin Christensen wrote:How does he go about deconstructing Mormonism? Not the way Jacques Derrida would. (Derrida is not listed in the bibliography, a fact that may matter only to those with enough background with the term to wonder about the significance of a title promising to “deconstruct” something.)
I’m sorry but Derrida didn’t coin a neologism, “deconstruction” was in use before Derrida and has a semantic domain that is larger than Derrida’s project. In fact, people use the word in academic titles all over the place and I’ve never seen any commentator perk up and say “I’m confused about why you don’t mention Derrida”
true, not only that, Derrida denied he did any one thing that you could repeat and label as something (even if he did). And certainly, for Derrida, "deconstructing" Mormonism would have nothing to do with refuting Mormonism. In his context "deconstruct" comes from Heidegger "unbuild" -- maybe "reverse engineering" isn't too far off the mark. At any rate, it's something like that verses destroy or refute, or show to be contradictory or grossly unfavorable, as I assume Riskas is doing.
Are you aware of the sheer number of conflicting theological ideologies? Do you know why Catholics aren't Mormons, who aren't Baptists, who aren't Jehovah's Witnesses...etc, etc? Are you aware of what they think of your faith? Do you think they simply haven't read the right book?
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Louis Midgley gemli • 2 hours ago • edited
I happen to have published many essays responding to c
I doubt that gemli has ever met a Latter-day Saint. Why? gemli has never once in thousands of comments ever once mentioned having done so.
You know. I don’t think he has, either. Not even after posting thousands of times on Sic et Non.
- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
true, not only that, Derrida denied he did any one thing that you could repeat and label as something (even if he did). And certainly, for Derrida, "deconstructing" Mormonism would have nothing to do with refuting Mormonism. In his context "deconstruct" comes from Heidegger "unbuild" -- maybe "reverse engineering" isn't too far off the mark. At any rate, it's something like that verses destroy or refute, or show to be contradictory or grossly unfavorable, as I assume Riskas is doing.
Of course you are in the right of it, Dean Robbers. The "literature major" seems to be unaware that using Derrida for Riskas' purposes would be a mistake of intent.
Midgley often seems to imply that if only people would read X,Y, and Z prestigious theologians they would see the errors of their ways and repent in dust and ashes. This attitude of his strikes me as an inadvertent confession of ignorance in itself, I'm afraid: if he imagines those authors having such an effect then he can't have understood them very well himself.
I've never heard any real expert on philosophy or theology strike this kind of "My Dad can beat up your Dad!" pose that Midgley often does.
Without being able to say all that much about Mormonism as it actually is, the "uncanny valley" is the term I was missing for my own impression of Mormonism.
I'm not saying that this perception of mine is necessarily accurate or objective or anything, or that anyone should care about my perception, but for what it's worth it is a fact of my perception that Mormonism seems particularly weird and, well, made up. And I don't just find all religions that way, or all unfamiliar religions. Some flavors of Christianity seem less weird to me because they're familiar, and plenty of other world religions seem foreign to me, because they are, but I have no trouble assuming that they're genuine and authentic and such. Mormonism is in an uncanny valley for me, where it's too close to the Christianity I know to just seem exotic and foreign, but also definitely off in a lot of ways that might well not seem major to a complete outsider but that seem huge to me.
I think it's really exactly the uncanny valley effect, where something is close enough to the familiar for its discrepancies to stand out sharply. And as with those nearly-realistic computer graphics people that look like ghouls, when less realistic cartoons just look cute, Mormonism keeps seeming not just different to me, but disturbingly wrong.
I try not to let that instinctive reaction affect my conscious judgements too much. Maybe this recognition of the uncanny valley effect will help me in compensating for it.
I thought of your 'uncanny valley' comment when I read this description of a recent Gina Colvin project:
Dr. Gina Colvin interviewed Lindsay Hansen Park and they discussed “Ordinary Mormon Trauma,” the lived experience of dealing with institutional contradiction in the church. (Edit: link to interview will be up later today.) She wrote:
Ordinary Mormon trauma is that everyday experience of being in a culture that has never resolved its formative pathologies or repented of its institutional sins. Mormon trauma is passed on from one generation to the next.
Mormon trauma is experienced as death by a thousand cuts, from the way that policy and doctrine is dropped to way we teach and lead, to the way we are with each other and in our families. …
Mormon trauma creates an environment where it is OK to be: