Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: I am read ing, ab sorb ing, and reflecting on Talal's es say, "Thinking about Religion through Wittgenstein," in the midst of the coronavirus pan demic that has enveloped the world in spring 2020.COVID-19 has stopped or di nary ac tiv ity al most ev ery where, in clud ing the United States and North Carolina, where I live and from where I am writ ing.The beauty of Talal's es say is its fron tal en gage ment with big ideas, ma jor thinkers, and long-term pro cesses that most schol ars ig nore or deal with tan gen tial ly.Modernity is on tri al, as is Western phi los o phy, sci ence, and trans la tion.Linguistics is foregrounded, via Wittgenstein and oth ers, eth ics are redeployed through MacIntyre, and Qurʾanic id i oms are reinvested with fresh mean ing in En glish.In what fol lows, I want to ex plore four themes-name ly, mod ern thought, barzakh, con sci ence, and com mu ni ty-that of er the reader my deep read of Talal's es say.In ef ect, I am confirming the need for the gram mar of a tra di tion, at once Is lamic and glob al, that can be elab o rated based on what Talal's gram mar of Muslim tra di tion(alism) sug ests yet does not fully de vel op.At the out set, I con front the shadow of the curve.No one can es cape the curve.It is the prin ci pal im age dom i nat ing all Amer i can lives in spring 2020.It ex tends be yond America to the en tire globe, but here, as ev ery where, the ques tion is: How does the curve look for you, where you live, where you in ter act with oth ers, where you try to cope day by day with a vi rus that has no face, but al so, seem ing ly, no pre dict abil i ty?And so the im age of hope is "flat ten ing the curve," tak ing what ever steps are pos si ble, to limit the rate of the vi rus trans mis sion now and for the longterm fu ture."Flattening the curve," in an ironic twist, might also be seen as a met a phor for how the mod ern ist sub ject views the uni verse.In this case, flat ten ing the curve is not try ing to re duce the spread of a pan demic vi rus but in stead re duc ing de pen dency on a Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.
Source: Critical Times
Author: Bruce B. Lawrence
Language: English
Topic: Islamic Studies and History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3136847572