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Some musings into theology: Doniger's Implied Spider

© Michelle Powell-Smith

After throwing out article after article on the practices of the church it seems relevant to verge into the realm of modern analysis and theology for a bit. The next few weeks will be taken up by a series of short reviews of interesting books in the field of theology.

Wendy Doniger's The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology explores myth using a largely comparative approach. She seeks in myth specific themes that cross both time and space. Doniger's work is the most recent we've read this semester, and it incorporates the work of many late twentieth century scholars including David Tracy and Bruce Lincoln.

In seeking a thesis for Doniger's The Implied Spider I was drawn to several different passages; however, I have settled on a single passage that I believe represents the core of this book. "My aim is an expansive, humanistic outlook on inquiry that enhances our humanity in both its peculiarity and its commonality. I am unwilling to close the comparatist shop just because it is being picketed by people whose views I happen, by and large, to share. I have become sensitized to the political issues, but I do not think that they ultimately damn the comparative enterprise".

While this passage does not deal specifically with the data discussed in The Implied Spider, it delves into both the theory and the method Doniger uses. Doniger's goal in The Implied Spider is to develop a perspective that enables us to see the world through both a microscope and a telescope, to use Doniger's own metaphor. She relies on a comparative method for her study, even though comparative studies have fallen out of favor in the scholarly community. She acknowledges the weaknesses of the comparative method, and attempts, quite successfully to correct these flaws and create a useful paradigm for the study of myth. As I have stated, Doniger's method is primarily comparative; however, it is also anthropological and structural. She acknowledges her debt to both David Tracy, a scholar of theology, and Bruce Lincoln, a scholar of politics in her own work on myth. Doniger has also been influenced by "universal" studies on myth, such as the work of Mircea Eliade. She is indebted, in some of her theory, to the structuralist work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Both Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis play a role in her study of myth as well. Doniger also incorporates feminist theory into her study, seeking to find women's voices in the myths that are her data. She has incorporated a number of major scholarly movements of the twentieth century into her own work and research, and used them to develop a new variant on an old method of study.