The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth(American Lectures on the History of Religions)

At this time of heightened political sensitivities, it may seem impossible to make serious comparisons among different cultures. And at a time when human difference is so relentlessly celebrated, it may even seem impossible to talk about the traditions and experiences that join us across race, religion, and nation. Wendy Doniger offers a powerful antidote to the paralysis of postcolonial intellectual life. In this spirited, enlightening book, she shows just how to make sense of, and learn from, the extraordinary diversity of cultures past and present. Tapping a wealth of traditions, from the Hebrew Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, Doniger crafts a new lens for examining other cultures, and finding in the world's myths--its sacred stories--a way to talk about experiences shared across time and space. "Of all things made with words," Doniger writes, "myths span the widest of human concerns, human paradoxes." Myths, she shows, bridge the cosmic and the familiar, the personal and the abstract, the theological and the political. They encourage us to draw various, even opposed, political meanings from a single text as it travels through different historical contexts. And she demonstrates how studying myths from cultures other than our own can be exhilarating and illuminating. Myth, Doniger shows, provides a near-perfect entree to another culture. Even if scholars such as Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell typically overstated the universality of major myths and suppressed the distinctive natures of other cultures, postcolonial critics are wrong to argue that nothing good can come from a systematic comparative study of human cultures. Doniger offers an engaged, expansive critical tool kit for doing just that. She suggests critical and responsible ways in which to compare stories--or texts or myths or traditions--from different cultures by revealing patterns of truth from themes that recur time and again. In this book, Doniger helps expand the arena of meaning we live in, leaping, in her words, "from myth to myth as if they were stepping stones over the gulf that seems to separate cultures." She enables us to see, at last, the "implied spider" that weaves the web of meaning that sustains all human cultures-the fabric of our shared humanity.

Table of Contents:
1: Knives 2: The Parts 3: Spider and the Politics of: Universal Problems Cross-Cultural Problems The Implied Spider The Postcolonial and Postmodern Critique of Comparison The Problem of Individualism The Art and Science of Mythology 4: MicroMyths, Macromyths, and Multivocality The Myth with No Point of View Many Voices Micromyths and Macromyths The Myth with Points of View Inverted Political Versions Inverted Political Readings of Contemporary Mythic Texts 5: Mother Goose and the Voices of Women Old Wives' Tales Women's Point of View Men's Voices in Women's Texts Women's Voices in Men's Texts Androgynous Language Salvaging Women's Voices 6: Textual Pluralism and Academic Pluralism The Archetype Diffusion and Survival The Foul Rag and Bones Shop of the Heart Jumping off the Bricolage Bus The Greening of Claude Levi-Strauss Seventy Different Interpretations The Multiversity Walking the Tightrope Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and a member of the Committee on Social Thought. Her books include Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities; Other Peoples' Myths; The Cave of Echoes; and the English-language edition of Yves Bonnefoy's Mythologies. Her translations of such sacred texts as The Rig Veda are widely considered definitive.

Review :
A timely meditation on what comparative studies might mean... The Implied Spider wrestles with the problems of carrying out the kind of study represented by Splitting the Difference-a cross-cultural comparison of different stories from different areas of the world, different tribes, different languages. -- Margaret Anne Doody London Review of Books This is a racy, enjoyable book... Deriving from Plato an understanding of myth as both truth and lie, Wendy Doniger brings to her study a wealth of story and folklore from many different traditions, exploring creatively the enduring role of myth through time and across cultures. -- Alwyn Marriage Theological Book Review An entertaining and highly accessible look at how myths reveal what is common to all humanity. Parabola In these creative, often dazzling displays of erudition and insight, Wendy Doniger gives a ceaselessly engaged and always subject-filled view of myth. Another gem in the string of gems that mark Doniger's scholarly productivity. -- Bruce Lawrence, Duke University A book that is particularly worthy of the attention of readers in religious studies beyond the history of religions. Since it is Doniger's most methodological book, The Implied Spider is important, not for its analysis of myths, but for the arguments that it makes in support of the comparative study of myths. Religious Studies Review