Floating Spectators

Back in June Camille Paglia commented here on Western ambivalence toward the atmospheric religiosity of other cultures: our indifferent superficial grasp of their histories, our bordering-on-condescension inclusivity in the absence of any deep spirituality of our own from which to encounter theirs, and (though Paglia is never guilty of this) the easy default to economics as a final arbiter of how successful any culture is. Obama in Cairo was her case study. Here's an excerpt:

I wish that the Cairo speech had been more specific and instructional about Muslim beliefs and culture. Obama's quick and late citations of Andalusia and Córdoba, for instance, could only prove baffling to the majority of Americans, who know virtually nothing about Moorish Spain. Obama's cursory two-sentence summary of the past relationship between Islam and the West -- jumping from "conflict and religious wars" to "colonialism" -- seemed vague and timid....It was also puzzling how a major statement about religion could seem so detached from religion. Obama projected himself as a floating spectator of other people's beliefs (as in his memory of hearing the call to prayer in Indonesia). Though he identified himself as a Christian, there was no sign that it goes very deep. Christianity seemed like a badge or school scarf, a testament of affiliation without spiritual convictions or constraints....Obama's lack of fervor may be one reason he rejects and perhaps cannot comprehend the religious passions that perennially erupt around the globe and that will never be waved away by mere words. By approaching religion with the cool, neutral voice of the American professional elite, Obama was sometimes simplistic and even inadvertently condescending, as in his gift bag of educational perks like "scholarships," "internships," and "online learning" -- as if any of these could checkmate the seething, hallucinatory obsessions of jihadism.

That cool, neutral voice swallows us. Hard to work around, impossible to jettison, not only because it serves us well for a great many purposes, but because even the most self-reflexive reform-ations of that voice, for all their usefulness and validity as an approach to cultural difference, can be just one more way of cultivating a posture of unassailability.

Words against passions, texts against bodies, scholarship against rituals. Different ways of understanding--not only in the East-West encounter but within any contemporary culture, most especially the United States.