Purity and Pollution: Resisting the Rehabilitation of a Virtue

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 57, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 509-524

  Mullin, Amy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0347792867     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3653952     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Santi Rozario, Purity and Communal Boundaries: Women and Social Change in a Bangladeshi Village (London, 1992).
2. See, for example, Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa (Binghamton, 1989). Female circumcision (or genital mutilation) is increasingly discussed in history, politics, and anthropology, as in Lillian Passmore Sanderson, Female Genital Mutilation: Excision and Infibulation. A Bibliography (London, 1986).
3. See, for example, Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa (Binghamton, 1989). Female circumcision (or genital mutilation) is increasingly discussed in history, politics, and anthropology, as in Lillian Passmore Sanderson, Female Genital Mutilation: Excision and Infibulation. A Bibliography (London, 1986).
4. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966).
5. Anthropologists have also documented the importance of purity beliefs and practices in India and China; e.g., Louise Edwards, "Women in Honglou Meng: Prescriptions of Purity in the Femininity of Qing Dynasty China" in Modern China, 16 (1990), 407-29; and Peter M. Gardner, "Ascribed Austerity: A Tribal Path to Purity," Man, 17 (1982), 462-69.
6. Anthropologists have also documented the importance of purity beliefs and practices in India and China; e.g., Louise Edwards, "Women in Honglou Meng: Prescriptions of Purity in the Femininity of Qing Dynasty China" in Modern China, 16 (1990), 407-29; and Peter M. Gardner, "Ascribed Austerity: A Tribal Path to Purity," Man, 17 (1982), 462-69.
7. Historical approaches to cultural interpretation often assume that one can only understand cultural practices by focussing on the meaning they were given in that culture, or at most by examining one culture and its neighbors, contiguous in space and time. In his chapter, "Beyond Parellel-anoia: Comparative Inquiry and Cultural Interpretation," Eilberg-Schwartz notes that these more contextualist approaches assume it is easier to determine the relative context of a system of beliefs and practices than it is to discover comparable beliefs and practices. They also assume an impossibly self-effacing interpreter. By contrast, the anthropological method requires that we recognize that as interpreters we bring with us assumptions about what counts as similar, both within one culture and across some cultures. Mistaken interpretations, whether contextualist or comparative, are possible in both cases and follow from mistaken assumptions about what counts as the "same kind of behavior," whether within one culture or across several. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Indianapolis, 1990).
8. I leave Sartre and French existentialism out of consideration because, at least in the later works, according to Joseph Catalane, "Authenticity: A Sartrean Perspective" in The Philosophical Forum, 22 (1990), 101, "Sartre would be opposed to a use of the term 'authenticity'" that suggested we were "united to a reality greater-than-ourselves."
9. The most common term for pollution was miasma; agos was more strictly connected with acts offensive to the gods; hagnos indicated religious purity; and katharos was used more broadly to indicate purity and cleanliness. The etymological connection once supposed to exist between hagnos or hagios (sacred) and agos (polluted) is now hotly contested.
10. See, for example, Robin May Schott, Cognition and Eros: A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm (University Park, 1988), 25; and Anne Carson, "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt and Desire" in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, eds. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990).
11. See, for example, Robin May Schott, Cognition and Eros: A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm (University Park, 1988), 25; and Anne Carson, "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt and Desire" in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, eds. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990).
12. Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford, 1983), 52.
13. Ibid., 63.
14. Ibid., 23.
15. See René Girard, The Scapegoat, tr. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore, 1986).
16. Douglas, 124.
17. Carson, 158-59.
18. Parker, 92.
19. Schott, 35.
20. Ibid., 37.
21. Ibid., ix.
22. Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity" in Women's History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, 1991), 291.
23. For further discussion of beliefs about menstruation and impurity see Blood Magic, ed. Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb (Berkeley, 1988), particularly the introduction.
24. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Indianapolis, 1990), 192.
25. Shaye D. Cohen, 291.
26. Eilberg-Schwartz, 218.
27. Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 1973).
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 198.
30. Michael Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul (New York, 1985), points to parallels between the Pauline and Qumran understandings of purity.
31. Peter Brown, "Person and Group in Judaism and Early Christianity," in A History of Private Life, I (Cambridge, 1987), 254.
32. Ibid., 257.
33. Peter Brown, "Bodies and Minds: Sexuality and Renunciation in Early Christianity," in Before Sexuality, ed. Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin, 481.
34. Brown, The Body and Society, 180.
35. Ibid., 171.
36. Ibid., 182.
37. Ibid., 309.
38. Brown, "Bodies and Minds," 490.
39. Ibid., 491.
40. Michel Foucault, "The Battle for Chastity," in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, tr. Alan Sheridan et al. (New York, 1988), 239.
41. Ibid., 240.
42. E.g., Carla Casagrande, "The Protected Woman," and Paulette L'Hermite-Leclerq, "The Feudal Order," in A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, 1992), 80, 240.
43. E.g., Carla Casagrande, "The Protected Woman," and Paulette L'Hermite-Leclerq, "The Feudal Order," in A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, 1992), 80, 240.
44. Eilberg-Schwartz, "The Status of Impurity," in The Savage in Judaism, esp. 216.
45. Walter E. A. Van Beek and Thoden Van Velzen, "Purity, A Greedy Ideology," in The Quest for Purity: Dynamics of Puritan Movements, ed. Walter E. A. Van Beek (Berlin, 1988), 9.
46. Frits G. M. Broeyer, "A Pure City: Calvin's Geneva," in The Quest for Purity.
47. Peter Staples, "Patterns of Purification: The New England Puritans," in The Quest for Purity, 66.
48. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, 1989), 229-30.
49. Ibid., 229.
50. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, 1965).
51. Erik Van Ree, "The Quest for Purity in Communism," in The Quest for Purity.
52. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Sex as Symbol in Victorian Purity," in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, eds. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (Cambridge, 1990), 161.
53. David J. Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 (Westport, 1973).
54. Margaret Hunt, "The De-eroticization of Women's Liberation: Social Purity Movements and the Revolutionary Feminism of Sheila Jeffreys," in Feminist Review, 34 (1990), 28.
55. Douglas, 104.
56. Marshall Berman, The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (New York, 1970).
57. A meditation on the Epistle of James, 4: 8: "Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts ye double-minded."
58. Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, tr. Douglas V. Steere (New York, 1948), 60.
59. Ibid., 56-57.
60. Ibid., 66, 206.
61. Ibid., 206.
62. Ibid., 206.
63. Ibid., 206-7.
64. Heidegger's later work continues to emphasize authenticity but sees it as involving man's openness to Being and as uniting us to something larger than ourselves. See Joseph Catalano, "Authenticity: A Sartrean Perspective," in The Philosophical Forum, 22 (1990), 99-119; and Johnson J. Puthenpurackal, Heidegger through Authentic Totality to Total Authenticity (Leuven, 1987).
65. Heidegger's later work continues to emphasize authenticity but sees it as involving man's openness to Being and as uniting us to something larger than ourselves. See Joseph Catalano, "Authenticity: A Sartrean Perspective," in The Philosophical Forum, 22 (1990), 99-119; and Johnson J. Puthenpurackal, Heidegger through Authentic Totality to Total Authenticity (Leuven, 1987).
66. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York, 1962), 370.
67. Ibid., 369.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., 293, 308.
70. Ibid., 308.
71. Ibid., 311.
72. Ibid., 342.
73. Ibid., 344.
74. Ibid.
75. Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (Evanston, 1973), 121.
76. Heidegger, 344.
77. Karsten Harries, "Heidegger as a Political Thinker" in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. Michael Murray (New Haven, 1978), 315.
78. See also Adorno, 75: "In the classic texts of existentialism ... existence becomes a relationship to itself ... this claim can turn into an elitist claim, or into a readiness to attach itself to elites."
79. Ibid., 71.
80. Ibid., 37.
81. Ibid., 128. Adorno quotes Martin Heidegger in "Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung," Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt, 1951).
82. Ibid., 128. Adorno quotes Martin Heidegger in "Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung," Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt, 1951).
83. John Kekes, "Constancy and Purity," in Mind, 92 (1983), 511.
84. Adorno, 59.
85. See Kekes above 499-518, and John Kekes, "Purity and Judgment in Morality," in Philosophy, 63 (1988), 453-69.
86. I do not in this paper discuss those that do, including religious cults.
87. In Kekes's ideal of reflective purity all commitments are integrated.
88. Maria Lugones, "Purity, Impurity, and Separation," in Signs, 19 (1994), 463.