In contrast to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s classic warning, postmodern society in the United States seems increasingly influenced by metanarratives—religious metanarratives. This article examines the implications of this religious resurgence for educational researchers. It offers a competing analysis of the postmodern that draws on Harold Bloom, Slavoj ŽiŽek and others to identify the gnostic elements in contemporary religiosity, both in Europe and the United States. This competing reading of postmodern religiosity suggests a reframing of Lyotard’s paralogy—research that searches for instabilities in the (...) framework of knowledge. Drawing examples from recent educational research, I will argue for ways in which researchers can better engage religion in their work. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of `exile' — as an individual or collective experience — on how human experience is theorized. The relationship between `exile' and thought is initially approached historically by looking at the period that Eric Dodds famously called the `age of anxiety' in late antiquity, i.e. the period between the emperors Aurelius and Constantine. A particular interest is in the dynamics of `empire' and the concomitant religious ferment as a context in which `exile', both experientially and symbolically, (...) appears to assume an overbearing significance. Plotinus' narrative of emanation and epistrophe as well as a group of narratives often classified as `Gnosticism' are juxtaposed as two radical examples of a wider spiritual trend at the time according to which `exile' could be considered constitutive of human experience. By way of an historical analogy, the insights gained from this study of late antiquity are then used to guide an analysis of the current, `restless' epoch, in which experiences of displacement and exile on a mass scale undermine traditional notions of belonging, thus reviving the gnostic vision of cosmic reality as an alien, exilic environment. The article concludes with a discussion of Jacques Derrida's work as an example of contemporary gnosticism, in which a `metaphysics of exile' is presented in the disguise of an `exile from metaphysics'. (shrink)

Nowadays, the category of „Gnosticism” has become very ambiguous and problematic. There are different paradigms in defining the concept of „Gnosticism” and because of this, there still are controversies between the most prominent scholars. In recent decades were made valuable research on this topic, but a consensus is far to achieve. In this paper my aim is to show how this concept changed from ancient heresiologists to modern scholars as Hans Jonas, Ioan Petru Culianu or Michael Allen Williams. In one (...) of the late papers of Ioan Petru Culianu, „Gnosticism” was seen as a „sick sign”. From this observation, Michael A. Williams came to dismantle the concept of „Gnosticism” and to replace this concept with the one of „biblical demiurgical traditions”. Nevertheless, criticism cannot be applied only to the modern concept of,,Gnosticism”, but also to Williams’ suggestions. Indeed, the category in debate is hard to define, but we also will propose in this paper an answer to this question. (shrink)