Chapter 4, Secular Criticism and Secular Studies:

Non-religious Perspectives within the American Secular University, or Secular Attempts to Participate in a Discourse of the Secular

Chapter 3 of this dissertation presented the state of the discourse of the secular and/or secularism as it has existed in the American academy through the last half of the 20th century and as it continues to exist today. It described how religious voices hegemonically shape a too generally accepted understanding of the secular and/or secularism within the academy, and beyond that through the larger American cultural and political world. It introduced many of the figures who worked to shape this discourse in a significantly anti-secular way. In doing these things it demonstrated from a Foucauldian perspective the powers which most substantially shape discourses attached to the secular and/or secularism, and following from this described, as Wittgenstein might, how these terms have come to be used in shaping understandings of their meanings.[1]

This chapter will present the efforts made by two men, Edward Said and Phil Zuckerman, to detach the secular and/or secularism from anti-secular discourses as those presented by the men in the previous chapter. It will begin non-chronologically with a discussion of Zuckerman’s research and writing, and show how this work led to the partial development of a Secular Studies program at Pitzer College in Pitzer, California, today. It will then move back to examine Said’s work in his development of Secular Criticism as a method to be used as a part of literary theory and criticism. Zuckerman’s work, as a sociologist, accepts a definition of the secular which conforms most completely to that presented within a discourse of the secular as it has been shaped by religious voices, as those described in the previous chapter. He sees secular identity as being defined most completely, and exclusively, through a relationship and opposition to the religious. He accepts this portion of the anti-secular discourse, but does not at all accept that other part of the discourse which sees secularism as being morally, aesthetically, or significantly inferior to the religious. His research deconstructs each of these accusations as they function within anti-secular discourse, and works to portray secularists as living full, meaningful ethical lives equal to or perhaps significantly superior to their religious peers. Said, quite differently, works to reshape an understanding of the secular which in a manner quite completely apart from a discourse which limits it to being nothing more than an opposition to religion. His work emphasizes the etymological roots of the secular which describe it as being of the world. He sees criticism as necessarily needing to remain attached to and a part of the world, the human world, the physical world, and criticizes critical methodologies which see the text as existing apart from, or transcendent to, the world we all share. He uses the word “religion” to describe visions of the world which separate the reader from a sensible understanding of the real world, but does not limit the religious to being a thing necessarily attached to a belief in God, or the supernatural. This moves him completely away from a discourse of the secular as that described in the previous chapter, separating it from all limitations imposed upon it by the anti-secular religious voices which shape that discourse. Significantly, like Zuckerman, he portrays the secular in a connotatively positive way, and sees religion as functioning to promote conflict and disharmony in the world, embedding much of this in a vision of religion which sees it, in congruence with his orientalism, as promoting exclusion and destroying the possibility of creating larger, more peaceful, effective, communities.

This chapter will not examine New Atheism in tandem with Zuckerman and Said. It will not do this because the “new atheists” did not necessarily work to influence a discussion of the secular in the American, or European, university systems. Their work, their texts, have been largely excluded from classrooms in congruence with the anti-secular discourse which pejoratively presented them as being angry, militant, aggressive and such. They have been excluded from having much direct influence within the American university system; but largely that was not their goal. They participated substantially in work in other fields and presented their “militant atheism” as a part of public discourse, not through a motivated desire to influence or reshape pedagogy in the American academy.[2] Beyond this too, like Zuckerman, they largely participated in a discourse which conflates secularism with atheism, the secularist with the atheist, and while not accepting the anti-secular prejudice contained within that discourse, continued to participate in it.

In 2009 Zuckerman published “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions” working to battle the prejudiced assumptions contained within descriptions of the secular as presented by the academics in the previous chapter and as held by substantial portions of the general population. He challenges propositions which describe secularists as living lives that lack morality, meaning, value, and pleasure. His work academically fits wholly within the field of sociology and his research is built of quantifiable data. From this position he asserts that the claims made by the others mentioned above lack any real credibility or even that they are verifiably false. He goes so far as to not only defend the secular against such attacks, but instead suggests that, perhaps, religiosity, more accurately, works to create cultures and lives that lack effective moral, aesthetic, and affective groundings.

In the introduction to his text Zuckerman asks, “Is the widespread dislike, disapproval of, and general negativity towards atheists warranted, or is it a case of unsubstantiated prejudice?” (Zuckerman 949)? He goes beyond this to propose that, “maybe secular, non-believing men and women aren’t so unsavory, wicked, or despicable after all”, and that, “perhaps, there are some positive attributes correlated with secularity, such as lower levels of prejudice and ethnocentrism, or greater support for gender equality” (949). Beyond this he suggests that, perhaps “societies with higher percentages of secular people are actually more healthy, humane, and happy than those with higher percentages of religious people” (950) He closes his introduction with a description of the text’s methodology, framing his work as a sociologist to pursue answers to these questions. “To explore these matters, we need to consider what social science actually reveals about people who don’t believe in God or are irreligious, and examine just what empirically observable patterns emerge when considering the real lives, opinions, and overall state of well-being of atheists and secular people” (950).

His text cites sources which on the one hand examine the prejudices which members of the general population hold in regard to an understanding of secular people, and on the other hand examine the actual realities which shape the lives of secular people. His discussion of anti-secular bias refers to numerous studies which show that “a negative view of atheists… in the United States… is quite pervasive”, referring to one specific study, a “Religion and Public Life Survey”, which shows that “54 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of atheists” and another which states that “most Americans would not vote for non-religious presidential candidates” (949). Significantly, he referred to “One laboratory study,” which, “found that people gave lower priority to patients with atheist or agnostic views than to Christian patients when asked to rank them on a waiting list to receive a kidney” (949). This all harkens back to John Locke’s assertion, within his essay directed toward a discussion of tolerance, in which he states that, “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God”, and that, “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist” (56). Three sections contained within Zuckerman’s text work to challenge or deconstruct the validity or credibility of these anti-secular/anti-atheistic prejudices. The three sections include: 1) “Values, Beliefs, Opinions, and Worldviews”, 2) “Criminality and Moral Conduct”, and 3) “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being.” Two more sections, 1) “Family and Children”, and 2) “Sex and Sexuality”, work to develop a more complete understanding of the personal lives of secular people; and finally, before the conclusion, the penultimate section, “National and State Comparisons”, does just what its title suggests, comparing secular nations and states with more religious nations and states, showing how each function legally, economically, and politically.

Within “Values, Beliefs, Opinions, and Worldviews”, Zuckerman challenges the recurring Christian assertion that atheists, because they do not believe in God, believe in nothing. In opposition to this assertion he states that, “People can reject religion and still maintain strong beliefs” (953). He refers to, and cites, “numerous studies” which “reveal that atheists and secular people most certainly maintain strong values, beliefs, and opinions”, and that, “more significantly, when we actually compare the values and beliefs of atheists and secular people to those of religious people, the former are markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian” (953). Politically, his research suggests that, “atheist and secular people are much more likely to be registered Independent than the general American population”, that, “irreligiosity is strongly and consistently correlated with liberal, progressive, or left-wing political perspectives”, and that, “when compared to various religious groups, nonreligious Americans are the most politically tolerant, supporting the extension of civil liberties to dissident groups” (953) This section goes on to assert that, “As for gender equality and women’s rights, atheists and secular people are quite supportive”, citing “Recent studies”, which, “show that secular individuals are much more supportive of gender equality than religious people, less likely to endorse conservatively traditional views concerning women’s roles, and when compared with various religious denominations, ‘Nones’ possess the most egalitarian outlook of all concerning women’s rights” (953–954). The section goes on to cite studies which show that, “when compared with the religious, non-religious people are far more accepting of homosexuality and supportive of gay rights and gay marriage”, and that non-religious people “are far less likely to be homophobic or harbor negative attitudes towards homosexuals” than their religious peers (954). Beyond these, Zuckerman asserts, in this section, that 1) non-religious people showed less support, and more opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, 2) that they are “far less supportive” of the death penalty, 3) that, in general, in regard to the treatment of prisoners within the criminal justice system, “secular people are much less supportive of retribution and are less likely to favor harsh/draconian sentencing than religious people”, 4) that “secular, religiously unaffiliated Americans are the group least supportive of the governmental use of torture”, 5) that they more frequently supported doctor assisted suicide and stem cell research, and 6) “finally, secular people are much more likely to support the legalization of marijuana than religious people” (954). He closes the section by arguing that assertions which describe secularists, atheists, and non-believers of living lives empty of any significant values and beliefs not only fail to describe the reality of their world views, but, more than that, that he “would go farther”, and “argue that a strong case could be made that atheists and secular people actually possess a stronger or more ethical sense of social justice than their religious peers” (954–955).

In the next section, “Criminality and Moral Conduct”, which relies very much upon a methodology, similar to that in the later section, which compares secular and non-secular nations and states, Zuckerman challenges the Christian assertion, as noted above, in Chapter 3 of this dissertation, that the absence of a belief in God, provides no foundation for a moral life. He states that, “In many people’s minds … atheism is equated with lawlessness and wickedness, while religion is equated with morality and law-abiding behavior” (955). He follows this with the question, “Does social science support this position” (955)? He cites contradictory studies which on the one hand “have found that religion does inhibit criminal behavior” and on the other which “have actually found that religiosity does not have a significant effect on inhibiting criminal behavior” (955). He chooses to agree with Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, who decided that, “The claim that atheists are somehow more likely to be immoral has long been disproven by systematic studies” (955). (He makes the mistake here of, too much, conflating criminality with morality.) He, perhaps, corrects that mistake, somewhat, when he follows this conflation with a comparison of the situation in which secular youth are more likely to break the law in regards to alcohol and illegal drug use, but, in which “no evidence shows” that secular people are more likely to commit “serious or violent crimes, such as murder” (955). He doesn’t quite say that religious people are more likely to commit more serious and violent crimes, but he does inform the reader, in this context, that “only 0.2 percent of prisoners in the USA are atheists — a major under-representation” (955). He follows these claims by beginning to comparatively contrast the abundance of criminal misconduct present in secular nations and states with the abundance present in more religious nations and states. The studies he cites indicate that murder rates are higher in religious nations and states than they are in secular nations and states. “Furthermore”, he cites Census Bureau statistics, which demonstrate that “rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states” (955). He ends the comparative work in this section by citing work which demonstrates that, “finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country” (955). He ends this section with a discussion of statistics which describe religious people as being more generous in their willingness to donate portions of their income to charitable causes by asserting that the individual generosity attributed to religious folks contrasts with the promotion of collaborative social generosity present within secular nations and states. He supports his position by asserting that “it should be noted that it is the most secular democracies on earth — such as Scandinavia — that donate the most money and supportive aid, per capita, to poorer nations” (955) Finally, to close this section, he moves away from a discussion of differences between nations and states, and ends with reference to two studies “of heroic altruism during the Holocaust” which “found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews” (955).

The final section designed specifically to challenge anti-secular propositions, “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-being”, addresses a description of the lives of secular people that sees them as being overwrought with anxiety, depression, and other social and psychological hardships. In this section he does not present research which substantially counters the claims put forth by religious people in their descriptions of the non-religious. Instead he begins by listing numerous studies which achieve completely contradictory results. “Some studies suggest that religiosity is positively correlated with positive mental health outcomes … while others find no such correlation” (956). One researcher “has argued that non-religious people are more likely to have psychological problems”, while another “has argued that secular people are actually psychologically healthier than religious people” (956). “Many studies report that religiosity is correlated with reduced levels of depression, and yet others suggest that religiosity can have a negative or no influence on depression” (956). “Some studies indicate that secular people are less happy than religious people … yet international comparisons show that it is the most secular nations in the world that report the highest levels of happiness among their populations” (956). Zuckerman continues like this with numerous examples that demonstrate a lack of definitive authority in regards to determining the differences in psychological well-being between believers and non-believers. Following this list of contradictions, though, he does assert that, “While acknowledging the many disagreements and discrepancies above, the fact still remains that a preponderance of studies do indicate that secular people don’t seem to fare as well as their religious peers when it comes to selected aspects of psychological well-being” (956). He followed this statement with a list, like that above, citing sources and describing, the conclusions that followed from their research. One group of studies “found that religious beliefs correlate with a sense of life-satisfaction and well-being”, another study “found that religious faith is correlated with hope and optimism”, another reported “that religious people have a better time adjusting to and coping with sad or difficult life events than secular people”, another similar study reported “that religion is beneficial for people dealing with chronic illness or the death of a loved one” (956). This list continued, as the one above, citing numerous examples which conform to the other listed. Following this second list he does state some objection to the consistency of its validity, stating that “it should be pointed out that some have vigorously refuted such sweeping conclusions, arguing that the link between religiosity and positive health outcomes is grossly exaggerated” and adding, from a particularly American perspective, that “there is certainly the possibility that because being non-religious in the United States makes one a member of a widely un-liked, distrusted, and stigmatized minority, this could take a psychological toll on the mental health and sense of well-being of atheists and secular people, who may suffer from a sense of isolation, alienation, or rejection from family, colleagues, or peers” (956–957). He ends this section with a discussion of suicide, agreeing with his non-secular peers, that suicide rates in the US are higher for secular people than for their religious peers.

As for suicide … regular church-attending Americans clearly have lower rates than non-attenders, although this correlation has actually not been found in other nations. Of the current top-ten nations with the highest rates of suicide, most are relatively secular. But it is worth noting that eight of these top-ten are post-Soviet countries, suggesting that decades of totalitarianism, depressed economies, and a lack of basic human freedoms may be more significant in explaining the high rates of suicide than low levels of God-belief. (957)

The two sections which follow this, “Family and Children” and “Sex and Sexuality”, describe aspects of the lives of secular people and how these aspects differ from those who are religious. Unlike the three previous sections these two do not work, so much, to counter prejudices and stereotypes about secular people, but instead they present information which neither group would find, or wish to promote as, inaccurate. It discusses marriage, divorce, and aspects of child raising, presenting things most simply as statistical information. It does the same in regards to sexual practices and preferences. Most all of the information shows secular identity as being more liberal and progressive than religious identities, reinforcing accepted understandings instead of challenging or deconstructing assumptions or prejudices. The details contained within these sections certainly can be specifically informative, and some may fail to completely fit assumptions that the reader may have, but mostly they conform to generally accepted understandings as they function within American and Western culture.

He begins the final section designed to argue against anti-secular prejudice by claiming that, “One consistent assertion made by religious people is that if a society or country loses faith in God, or becomes secular, the results won’t be good” (959). This assertion matches, most completely, the proclamation made by Prager above, which declared that, “When society gets too secular it ends.” … “It is the end of civilization as we have known it. It is a catastrophe” (Prager). Zuckerman notes that this “is a theo-sociological claim” in which “societies characterized by significant levels of belief in God are expected to fare much better than those without” (959). To challenge this assertion Zuckerman states that “it is a claim that is easily testable” (959). Through the remainder of the section he cites studies which do just that. He claims that “when we compare more secular countries with more religious countries, we actually find that — with the exception of suicide — the more secular fare markedly better than the more religious on standard measures of societal well-being” (959). He refers to the previous section, “Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being”, which showed that, “the most secular democracies in the world score very high on international indexes of happiness and well-being”, and goes far beyond this to assert that in regards “to such things as life expectancy, infant mortality, economic equality, economic competitiveness, health care, standard of living, and education, it is the most secular democracies on earth that fare the best, doing much better than the most religious nations in the world” (959). Beyond this, he cites research which suggests that secular nations function more effectively in the promotion of 1) “women’s equality and women’s rights”, 2) “the care and well-being of children”, and 3) “the health and well-being of mothers” (959). After this, he shows that secular nations perform with “the lowest levels of corruption” and that religious nations show the highest levels of “intolerance of racial or ethnic minorities” (959). Secular nations do “the most to enact strong and progressive laws and green programs” (959). Secular nations “score the highest when it comes to the quality of political and civil liberties” (960). Citizens of secular nations show greater competence in “reading and math skills and scientific literacy.” He concludes this list by stating that the most secular nations on earth are the most “peaceful” and “prosperous” and provide a “quality of life” superior to their religious counterparts (960). After this extensive list which compares secular nations with religious nations he does the same work comparing secular states within the US to more religious states in the US. Of course, it should be no surprise that the comparisons generated very similar, or completely similar, results. To prevent too much redundancy then, this dissertation will move forward to the conclusion of his essay.

Zuckerman finishes his essay simply, and logically, by asserting that the research contained within the essay effectively worked to support the goals listed in its introduction. He sought to demonstrate that the prejudices commonly associated with secular/atheistic people lack credibility, and in the process worked to turn the tables, moving beyond a simple defense of the non-believer, allowing his argument to include a critique of the religious community describing it as containing the defects it sees in the other. This argument would ground his work as a professor at Pitzer College leading its Secular Studies program and his research and writing through to this day has been dominated by a continued effort to defend secularism/atheism that accepts a framing of the “secular” as being defined most exclusively through its opposition to religion.

Edward Said’s use of the “secular” within his texts does not do this at all. Said does not participate in a discourse of the “secular” that accepts such a limited vision. His use of the term, instead, ignores this limitation and sees the “secular” as necessarily present through all aspects of the human condition, attaching it significantly to his ethics, aesthetics, professional work, and personal identity. The remainder of this chapter will examine his use of the term guided by an understanding that his participation in a discourse of the secular has been largely excluded from contemporary academics because it fails to participate in that discourse as it has been framed by the religious other and will seek to demonstrate how his use of the term expands its significance beyond most of that contained within this dissertation to this point.

Said’s contribution to a secular discourse differs from Zuckerman’s significantly, following from his rather elite position within the academy. Zuckerman’s work can be seen as pursuing praxis, while Said’s can be seen as being driven by a desire to influence theory. As each participate in the construction of discourse neither can be seen as being either exclusively framed by praxis or theory, but the work that they did can certainly be seen as functioning from different positions within the praxis/theory continuum. Zuckerman worked at Pitzer College in central California struggling to create a Secular Studies program on its campus, publishing articles and working to be involved in public discourses attached to the secular. He was working with undergraduate students in a small school attempting to piece together a program with limited resources, and publishing texts intended more for the general public than for a more limited academic audience. Said on the other hand, a graduate of Harvard University, worked at Columbia University in its English and Comparative Literature department where he would work from 1963 to the year of his death in 2003. Prior to the publication of The World, the Text, and the Critic in 1983 his publication of Orientalism (1978) established him internationally as a leading figure in his field. He has been credited with contributing to the development and advancement of Post-colonial studies and his writings are substantially present within American classrooms and around the world. He would follow The World, the Text, and the Critic (1978) with Culture and Imperialism (1993). These three major texts, in addition to some seventeen other books, and a wealth of other publications, would keep him involved in the development of literary theory through the rest of his life. With this background then, the audience for Said’s text, The World, the Text, and the Critic, was built largely of professionals in the literary studies field, and was meant to contribute to and influence their work in the field. While Zuckerman worked to influence public opinion and to introduce secularism as a topic to undergraduates under his guidance, Said worked more to influence elite members of the academic community. He sought to use the “secular” to redirect methodology within literary theory and criticism, while Zuckerman worked more exclusively to introduce it as a topic of discussion within the academy and public discourse.[3]

Said would introduce “Secular Criticism” to the public in the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic and the complete contents of the book would serve to provide an example of this form of criticism. The title of the book itself begins with “the world” which etymologically functions as foundation for “the secular” as described in Chapter One of this dissertation and his text would focus most completely upon an understanding of the secular as rooted in a connection to the world, substantially avoiding that other discourse of the secular which limits it to being nothing but an opposition to religion. He would use the term “religion” within the text, but he would not use it to refer to a belief in God, or to specific participation in a church community. He would see religion as being substantially oppositional to the secular, but he would do so using the term “religion” more in line with that described by Durkheim (see Chapter One), seeing religion as being a social construct separate from a need to connect it to a belief in God, or gods, or any such “spiritual” practice. Said saw religion as functioning to promote alterity, creating systems of power that exclude others from participation in that power. He saw the church, of course, as using alterity to develop and maintain its power and influence, but so did nationalism, and a most complete chain of other cultural and discursive powers which promote alterity and exclusion. Included in a list of such cultural and discursive powers would be forms, trends and methods present within Literary Theory itself.

To see Said’s work as being primarily academic, immersed in theory and separate from praxis, as this dissertation has done to this point, commits the error, perhaps, of failing to understand at all what Said is working to do within the introduction and pages of The World, the Text, and the Critic. Said’s argument essentially can be seen as expecting criticism to participate in the world and critiqued methodologies which separate the text from a connection to the world. He sees Literary Theory at the time of the writing of his text as failing to participate in the politics and power present in the world, seeing theory as participating, too much, in the act of “noninterference”. He accuses “literary theorists and professional humanists” of participating in a “cult of expertise” in which “their expertise is based upon noninterference … in the world” (2). He includes himself in this community of “literary theorists and professional humanists” describing a situation in which:

We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all of these things take place.

He describes a period of time, “in the late 1960’s” in which he saw “the origins of literary theory in Europe” as being “insurrectionary” (3). He described “literary theorists and professional humanists”, at that time as working in opposition to “the traditional university”, to “the hegemony of determinism and positivism”, to “the reification of ideological bourgeois ‘humanism’”, and to “the rigid barriers between academic specialties” (3). He lists “Saussure, Lukas, Bataille, Levi-Strauss, Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx” as being responsible for influencing theory in such worldly political directions (3).

Following this time though Said describes literary theory of “retreating into the labyrinth of ‘textuality’”, seeing this textuality as being separated from the politics and power which shaped the human world (3). He claims that “as it is practiced in the American academy today, literary theory has for the most part isolated textuality from the circumstances, the events, the physical senses that made it possible and render it intelligible as the result of human work”(4). Through textuality, literary theory had been separated from the world in which it exists, and methodologically became attached to a pedagogy built of specialization and noninterference.

After beginning the introduction to his text with this brief criticism of academics at that time, and of literary theory and criticism more specifically, he follows this methodological critique with a discussion of what could be described as an ethics of exile, which foundationally can be seen as grounding much of his work. He begins this second section by referring to Erich Auerbach, who appears again and again throughout Said’s texts. Auerbach represents, for Said, the critic in exile, an exile which empowers the exiled to perform criticisms of that from which the exiled critic has been exiled. Said refers to Auerbach’s time in Turkey, in exile from his European home, and sees the quality of criticism contained within Auerbach’s Mimesis as arising from and/or dependent upon this exile. He sees immersion in and attachment to ideologies, to church, to state, to all, and various, forms of cultural identifiers as preventing the individual from enacting an effective criticism of that to which it is attached or immersed.

Importantly the critic in exile differs from the critic which judges the other but has never been a part of that which is critiqued. Auerbach’s skill depended not only upon his separation from the European world, but more importantly his immersion in and attachment to that world prior to his separation from it. Said saw himself as existing similarly, in exile from his place of birth and early life in Israel/Palestine, and Egypt, from his family, from his new home in New York, from Protestantism, and from his academic world.[4] His later works, Out of Place (1999) and Reflections on Exile (2002), explore this topic more personally and completely.

Significantly Saidian exile functions very much in congruence with exclusion, each existing both literally and figuratively, and each being imposed at times by the other, the self, or both. The term “religion” as Said uses it frequently works as a force which imposes exclusion upon the other. In his conclusion to The World, the Text, and the Critic, Said emphatically clarifies this distinction between the secular and the religious shaped by this context. In the introduction to the text, “Secular Criticism” and in the conclusion, “Religious Criticism” it is necessary for the reader to understand the grammar of the two terms. “Secular Criticism” is not a critique of the secular, and “Religious Criticism” is not a critique of religion, even as each can be seen as performing these functions. Instead, in each case the terms, “secular” and “religious” function as adjectives separating one form of criticism from another. “Secular Criticism” differs from “Religious Criticism” in its ability or desire to remain apart from the criticism of dominant structures of power present within the critic’s social/cultural/political world. This distinction may be present in Said’s introduction to the work, but it becomes all the more clear in the conclusion. “Secular Criticism” permits and empowers the critic to critique his or her own world. “Religious Criticism” does not permit such work.

Said begins the conclusion to The World, the Text, and the Critic by referring to his Orientalism. He describes Orientalism, the concept not the book, as functioning religiously, inhibiting a criticism of the West, by Westerners, through the creation of a structured other, the Oriental. He sees Orientalism as discouraging and/or preventing a critique of the West, a critique of the self, by Western critics.

The idea of the Orient, very much like the idea of the West that is its polar opposite, has functioned as an inhibition on what I have been calling secular criticism. Orientalism is the discourse derived from and dependent upon “the orient.” To say of such grand ideas and their discourse that they have something in common with religious discourse is to say that each serves as an agent of closure, shutting off human investigation, criticism, and effort in difference to the authority of the more-than-human, the supernatural, the other-worldly. Like culture, religion therefore furnishes us with systems of authority and with canons of order whose regular effect is either to organize collective passions whose social and intellectual results are often disastrous. The persistence of these and other religious-cultural effects testifies amply to what seem to be necessary features of human life, the need for certainty, group solidarity, and a sense of communal belonging. Sometimes of course these things are beneficial. Still it is also true that what a secular attitude enables — a sense of history and of human production, along with a healthy skepticism about the various official idols venerated by culture and system — is diminished, if not eliminated, by appeals to what cannot be thought and explained, except by consensus and appeals to authority. (299)

Orientalism critiques the other, but more importantly, inhibits or prohibits a critique of self. It serves as one example of religious discourse/religious criticism, protecting hegemonic power within the cultural world from which it is generated.

“Orientalism”, like exile and exclusion, though, does not function too completely or exclusively as a simple negative attack upon the other, or praise for the self. Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich study Orientalism in their text, Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, in which they study Orientalism, Segmentation, and Encompassment, seeing each as working to define and structure relationships between self and other within cultural contexts. They see Orientalism as being not only, specifically, a prejudice generated in the West, acting to diminish and marginalize the “Oriental” other. Instead they see Orientalism as functioning as a cultural form which structures the relationship between self and other in a particular manner. Importantly they see within Orientalism the presence of a desire within the self to be like the other. The Orientalized other does not exist exclusively as the inferior, immoral other, but also as the self freed from the limiting cultural structures which frame the world in which the self lives.

Through their analysis “it seems implicit in Said’s recognition that Westerners not only denigrated that which they called ‘oriental’, but also desired it” (20). They see within the Orientalized other mystery, freedom, spontaneity, traits which the Western world can fail to permit within its own domain. With this understanding they demonstrate “that the grammar of orientalism is not limited to: ‘we are good, so they are bad’”, complicating this relationship between self and other, as Said similarly complicates the relationship the exiled has with his or her home (20).

In the second section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic in which he develops an ethics of exile he also discusses the necessary position of the intellectual as representative voice speaking from exile. One can be tempted to read Said’s argument as speaking to the public as a whole, and perhaps can effectively serve that function as well, but more specifically, within this introduction his intention is guided more by a desire to emphasize the importance of a secular critical attitude within a more exceptional class of intellectuals/academics than within the general population of citizens or students. He does not specifically assert that members of the general population are incapable of forming and/or understanding criticisms of the nation/culture/state in which they exist, but he follows Gramsci in seeing the intellectual as being both responsible for change and being responsible for blame in the perpetuation of the status quo. He sees his position as being congruent with “Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual allied with an emerging class against a ruling-class hegemony” (15). He sees the individual who is capable of such criticism as “standing consciously against the prevailing orthodoxy and very much for a professedly universal or humane set of values”, while also recognizing that intellectuals are also useful (or to blame) in making hegemony work” (15). “Quasi-religious authority” (16) generates “a dialectic of self-fortification and self-conformation” (12) in which the public, as part of the cultural nation/state participates in a “system of exclusions … by which such things as anarchy, disorder, irrationality, inferiority, bad taste, and immorality are identified” (11). Said sees the intellectual, the critic, as being responsible for freeing the public from such hegemonic authority that is imposed upon it by dominant powers within cultural systems.

This description of the secular critic in exile heroically struggling, or leading the struggle, against hegemonic authority can easily be seen as present within much of Said’s work, and within this text particularly. He certainly romanticizes such an existence, but even as he romanticizes it he seeks to express an understanding of exile built more fundamentally of sorrow, displacement, helplessness, and solitude.[5] In “Reflections of Exile” Said states that “Exiles cross borders, (and) break barriers of thought and experience,” (190) and asserts that the “Modern Western culture is in large part the work of exiles, émigrés, refugees,” and that, “In the United States, academic, intellectual and aesthetic thought is what it is today because of refugees from fascism, communism, and other regimes given to the oppression and expulsion of dissidents” (180). In contrast, though, in Out of Place, he detaches exile from such a romantic vision and recognizes that in the modern world exile functions more commonly as the product of war, violence, poverty, and other such horrors which tear people from the safety and security of home, nation and family. Exile may function to promote the critical and artistic work of figures such as, Auerbach, Freud, Joyce, Nabokov, Adorno, … , but more commonly it can do the work of leaving millions homeless, helpless, and disconnected from a safety and security to which they wish to return.

In the third section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic Said becomes quite clearly focused again, as in the first section, more specifically on literary theory and discusses the relationship between filiation and affiliation as structural/cultural forces which effect the work of the critic in the world. Filiation functions naturally and essentially as that thing which ties one to the other. Filiation is essentially biological, and forms the relationship between child and parent. This relation Said sees as naturally promoting paternal authority and hierarchy. The relationship between self and other is determined not through the agency of the actors but instead through the inevitability of an essential physical reality. Within this section of the text Said sees affiliation, unlike filiation, as being culturally created, through the agency of the actors involved in the relationship, but sadly sees affiliation as mostly, or too frequently, reproducing systems of hierarchy and authority as they exist as a product of filiation.

Primarily the human condition is rooted in the filial, but as this system fails, biologically or culturally, the human seeks to recreate its feeling through the creation of non-biological relationships. Becoming a member of a church, or nation, or by joining a professional or ideological community can serve the purpose of recreating the feeling ideally attached to the filial. Such cultural constructs allow for the creation of relationships that do not contain or depend upon the perpetuation or recreation of hierarchy and/or authority as part of their existence. Said feels, though, that affiliation too frequently, or most frequently, fortifies dominant authority and hierarchies instead of challenging them or existing independent of them. Particularly, in this section, he sees literary theory, through non-interference, and participation in specialization, as functioning to produce a critical methodology which participates in and accepts the dominance of hegemonic authority.

Specifically, at the time of the writing of this text, “the humanities” existed in literature departments primarily as what could be called the works of dead white men. Said saw, then, that, “New cultures, new societies, and emerging visions of social, political, and aesthetic order now lay claim to the humanist’s attention, with an insistence that cannot long be denied” (21). He saw too, though, that, “for perfectly understandable reasons they are denied” (21). He goes on from this to state:

When our students are taught such things as ‘the humanities’ they are almost always taught that these classic texts embody, express, represent what is best in our, that is, the only, tradition. Moreover they are taught that such fields as the humanities and such subfields as ‘literature’ exist in a relatively neutral political element, that they are to be appreciated and venerated, that they define the limits of what is acceptable, appropriate, and legitimate so far as culture is concerned. (21)

This portion of Said’s argument can be seen as functioning in a moment before the rise of multiculturalism in the humanities and could be seen perhaps as being corrected by the development and growth of Feminism, Race Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, New-Historicism, Gender Studies and other disciplines that move away from and/or critique the literary canon which provided most hegemonically the context which shaped the study of literature for generations. This portion of his argument though does not shape it entirely, nor does a movement toward multiculturalism and other methods of criticism necessarily fix the problem he saw as being present within the academy at the time of the writing of this text. His conclusion to the text would refer specifically to “the religious aestheticism of New Criticism”, and would see “deconstruction and semiotics” as existing within “a number of fixed special languages, many of them impenetrable, deliberately obscure, willfully illogical” (292). He would see these methodologies as failing to participate in a properly secular version of criticism not only because of the texts that they examined, but more particularly because of their ability to see texts through narrowly textual lenses which promote and require noninterference in a political/cultural/social world.

In the final section of the introduction to The World, the Text, and the Critic Said moves away from an argument contained too exclusively within the field of literary theory and criticism and returned to a discussion of the function of criticism through most of the academic community. He asserts that “the intellectual’s social identity should involve something more than strengthening those aspects of the culture that require mere affirmation and compliancy from its members.” “Criticism in short,” he said, “is always situated; it is skeptical, secular, reflectively open to its own failings” (26). He saw the critic as being necessarily “critical” rather than merely participating as “good members of a school” (29).

Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom. (29)

The “secular”, as such, worked to critically promote human interests in the world, while the “religious” worked to promote and maintain hegemonic systems of power, either by participating in and supporting these systems explicitly, or by allowing their continuance through more implicit actions, like noninterference and an emphasis upon textuality, participating in systems of specialization that separate the critic, and the critic’s work from a necessary connection to the social/political/human world.

He would return to a discussion of the secular in Culture and Imperialism in its fifth chapter, “Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation.” In this chapter he would return to a description of cultural academics, as it was developed in Orientalism, describing a situation in which “the history of fields like comparative literature, English studies, cultural analysis, anthropology can be seen as affiliated with the empire and in a manner of speaking, even contributed to its methods for maintaining Western ascendancy over non-Western natives” and seeing this as connected to the ways “national British, French and American cultures maintained hegemony over the peripheries” (50). Alongside this criticism though he would additionally propose, or note, the possibility of criticisms which challenge the maintenance of such entrenched hegemonic authority and power. Perhaps he sees some progress, directed more toward the secular, present within the academy between the publication of the two texts, The World, the Text, and the Critic and Culture and Imperialism, even as he clearly calls for the presence of “a more committed engagement to what I would call secular and affiliated criticism” (60).

Said’s last major work, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, written and published in the years just following the violence of 9/11/2001, saw Said continuing to develop his critique of academic, political, social and cultural work, which emphasized the work of the critic in the promotion of criticisms which promote the development of a just and humane cultural world. Included in this last text was a critique of that version of religion which is rooted in a belief in God, which had been less present, or even absent from much of his earlier work. In it he claims that, “religious enthusiasm is perhaps the most dangerous of threats to the humanistic enterprise, since it is patently anti-secular and antidemocratic in nature, and, in its monotheistic forms as a kind of politics, is by definition about as intolerantly inhumane and downright unarguable as can be” (51). In so doing, he does not reduce the “religious” to nothing but a belief in God. He does mention specifically its “monotheistic forms” in a manner that markedly contrasts it from its absence in his previous writing. When he states early, in the introduction to the text, that “for my purposes here, the core of humanism is the secular notion that the historical world is made by men and women, and not by God,” he does contrast a secular world, historical and cultural, with a religious world, made by God, but it would be a mistake here to interpret this statement as one which sees Said to reducing the “religious” to nothing but the belief in God (11). He more completely includes a belief in God in his discourse, but he does not work in the text seek to frame it exclusively in that manner. His understanding of the “secular” remains rooted in the critique of power, prejudice, exile, and exclusion as it functions in the cultural world “made by men and women”, and includes God belief in that discussion noting it as only one of many cultural constructs which serve such hegemonic purposes.

His choice though to connect “humanism” with “democratic criticism” does attach this text more closely with an understanding of “secularism” as it is framed by the other, as discussed in chapter 3 of this dissertation. He does include a discussion of the “secular” in the text, as noted in the paragraph above, but moves away from a discussion of “secular criticism” rooted substantially in the deconstruction of existent cultural power, and moves instead toward a discussion of humanistic “democratic criticism” rooted more in the collaborative development of beneficial cultural constructs. The two terms “secularism” and “humanism” are jammed together frequently as “secular criticism” and united as such tend to be presented framed by an understanding that each term individually equates with atheism, and in which the two terms together function most entirely as atheism. Of course, a more complicated understanding of the terms, as that presented in this dissertation, challenges such a reduction, but colloquially the two together are generally accepted as stating reductively little more than an atheistic perspective.

Said’s use of the terms can be seen as participating, in this instance, in a discursive framing attached to such a reduction, but essentially, that is not all that he does. Instead the difference present within the distinction between the two terms, as he uses them, can be seen as following largely from attitude or mood. While in each case Said wishes to promote criticism(s) which work to promote healthy and humane cultural systems, in the one, “secularism”, he sees the critic as being responsible for the critique which challenges the authority of hegemonic cultural structures, while in the other “humanism” he sees the critique as being responsible for collaboratively participating in the creation and promotion of ethical and democratic social structures. His goals have not changed and the humanistic remains immersed completely in the secular world, but works to enact a criticism driven by a different attitude.

Zuckerman and Said each worked within the academy to promote a discourse of the “secular” which stood apart from, or challenged, that discourse of the “secular” which presently, and historically, dominates it use within the American academy. The works of both, because of this, are therefore excluded from that discourse by the authorities that shape its presentation. Their methods and styles differed substantially from one another but each worked to promote an understanding of the “secular” which contributes to an understanding of the term that coordinates with an understanding of the term as this dissertation wishes to discover, to use, and/or to promote.

Works Cited

Baumann, Gerd, and Andre Gingrich, editors. Grammars of Identity / Alterity: A Structural Approach. 1st ed., vol. 3, Berghahn Books, 2006.

Locke, John. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Prometheus Books. 1990.

Prager, D. (2023, January 26). Episode 1: Consequences of secularism, part I. The Daily Wire. https://www.dailywire.com/episode/episode-1-part-1-consequences-of-secularism

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. 1st ed. Knopf, 1993.

Said, Edward W. Humanism and Democratic Criticism. Columbia UP. 2004.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage, 2003.

Said, Edward W. Out of Place: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday. 2000.

Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Harvard UP. 2000

Said, Edward W. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Harvard UP, 1983

Zuckerman, Phil. “Atheism, Secularity and Well-being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions”. Sociology Compass. Vol. 3, Issue 6, 2009, pp. 949–971.

Zuckerman, Phil. Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society. NYU Press. 2023.

Zuckerman, Phil. Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion. Oxford UP. 2015.

Zuckerman, Phil. Living the Secular Life. Penguin. 2015.

Zuckerman, Phil. The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Secular Societies. Harvard UP. 2016.

Zuckerman, Phil. Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. NYU Press. 2010.

Zuckerman, Phil. What It Means to be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living a Moral Life. Catapult. 2019.

Zuckerman, Phil. “Why Nations are Becoming More Secular”. Skeptic. Vol. 27, Issue 4, 2022, pp. 9–13.

[1] An addendum to Chapter 3 is presented at the end of this dissertation, which moves away from a presentation of discourse and how it is shaped by power and use. The addendum, instead, examines how secularization grew within the American academy apart from any discursive influences, arising instead, coincidentally as a product of specialization within the American university system through the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century. As such this addendum challenges anti-secular positions which see secularization as following from a secular desire to limit and restrict religious freedom, and instead portrays secularization as occurring more as a product of other motivations in the academy. This alternative description of the secularization of the academy shows how incorrect present understandings of the secular distort understandings of the secular in history, as they work to coercively determine understandings of the secular in the present, modern, academy and world.

[2]Dennet’s research and publishing can be seen, more so than the others, as working within the academy to influence discourses and understandings of the secular, in ways that could accurately be interpreted as working within the academy in a manner quite similar to Zuckerman and/or Said.

[3] Prior and additional to the publication of “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being” Zuckerman would publish a series of books, Invitation to the Sociology of Religion (2003), Society without God (2008), Faith no More (2011), Living the Secular Life (2014), The Non-Religious (2016), What It Means to Be Moral (2019), Society without God (2020), and Beyond Doubt (2023), each of which prepares for and develops more completely the topics contained within “Atheism, Secularity, and Well-being”, while remaining consistently framed by a vision of the secular and secular identity as framed historically by the religious community.

[4] Said was born in Jerusalem, in Nov. 1, 1935, in Mandatory Palestine, prior to the second World War, and prior to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948/1949. He was raised as a Protestant Christian in Israel/Palestine, then Egypt, a Christian in an Arab world torn apart by conflict between Muslims and Jews.

[5] A study Bruce Springsteen’s work as artist and critic can help to shape an understanding of an ethics of exile examining how a romanticization of exile can function ambiguously within a culture. To see this at work one must separate the artist “Bruce Springsteen”, from the character “Bruce Springsteen.” The artist lives a life of wealth and fame that must be seen as being rather in contrast with the hard-working, blue collar, alienated man in blue jeans, leather boots, and ball cap. The characters that fill the narratives which build his lyrics connect with the “Bruce Springsteen” character, living lives of exile, born in the U.S.A., but alienated, living apart from the “Glory Days” which shape the imaginary world from which they have been torn. The details of this separation from the ideal seem on the one hand to speak of alienation, dissatisfaction, and loss; but buried in this sorrow the character in exile from his/her world functions, very much, as a hero. Working class heroes whose lives are filled with meaning and significance, exiled romantically from their lives, not too pitifully displaced. Tom Joad and his Ghost represent the tension between the hardship of exile and the romanticization of it. The man, Tom Joad, lived a life in poverty that led to his death, struggling in exile, homeless, in his world, while his ghost represents the life of a man motivated by a radical desire to battle injustice and abuse. Does the artist, “Bruce Sprinsteen” live in exile? Has he been excluded from his place in America? Does his work critically challenge the systems of power in his nation, encouraging the working poor of America to rise up against the system, or does it instead romanticize alienation, struggle, and hopelessness, serving more as an opiate for the masses than as a criticism of power which might unite the masses in a struggle against oppressive power?