by Werner Bohleber | Vol 42 (1) 2024
Abstract: Fundamentalist movements can be called ‘strong religions’ because they are militant and highly focused opponents of secularism. Fundamentalist thinking is characterized by ideal states. On the one hand, there is absolute submission to the idealized object of God; on the other hand, there are idealized ideas of an imaginary community of believers. In particular, the deep structure of the mental world of Islamic fundamentalism will be examined. Religion, purity, and violence are inextricably linked. The connection between narcissistic notions of purity, unity, and equality stirs up massive violence in order to invoke the fantasy of a pre-ambivalent narcissistic ideal state. The Other or the outsider thus becomes the infidel, the intruder, and the troublemaker necessary for both projection and persecution in order to phantasmatically maintain the ideal state. Such ideological notions and fantasies activate a capacity for aggression of enormously destructive potential.
by Arnold Labrie | Vol 20 (2) 2002
According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the quest for purity is usually accompanied by fears of change, ambiguity and transgression. Translating Douglas’ insights into historical terms, one may assume that sensibilities about what is pure and what is impure will grow stronger during times of intense social and political change, for instance, during the stormy decades around 1900. This period was characterized by a profound identity-crisis and at the same time was marked by a quest for purity. One may think of a deepened concern for hygiene, of the rise of racist movements, but also of an intense longing for cultural reform and regeneration. Notwithstanding their many differences, these phenomena are linked through their concern for the formal distinction between what is pure and what is impure. A study of the work of Wagner, Bram Stoker and Zola gives some insight into the language of purity, serves to show the religious meaning of formal categories of purity and impurity, and makes it clear that the quest for purity in one area is related to the quest for purity in another area.
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