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period of time, through the reception and construction of the words, sentences, paragraphs and texts of the other tradition; he or she is reeducated, taught to speak and write differently. |
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If the series of such exercises in reading inscribes not simply conclusions or theories in the theologian, but also new memories and new habits of reading, then it is pointless to offer the expected audience a mere set of conclusions which bypass the requirement that one learn by experiment and practice. Detached from details, abstracted from the experimental context, mere conclusions will inevitably be received by the audience in terms of its general, already established categories; thus invited to enter the process at its end, without having been first prepared to receive what the comparativist intends to communicate, the community is unlikely to understand what is the purpose of all the effort. |
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If the preparation of the audience is intrinsic to the goal, the comparative theologian will have to determine how to go about "defamiliarizing" the discussion, frustrating the community's tendency to apply its already familiar categories, so as to engage the community in the actual practice of theological comparison. Examplesloci of thought and speech (articuli, adhikaranani)mustbe composed and introduced, and readers cajoled into taking them seriously and working them through.
41 The theologian has to enable the community to read comparatively, by writing into her or his text one or more such opportunities, cases which can be understood satisfactorily only by a working through of local details according to the possibilities of the local vocabulary. |
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The juxtaposition of UMS III.3.11-13 and ST I.13.4 earlier in this chapter is a smaller example of this construction of a local opportunity; readers are invited to journey onto unfamiliar terrain, without any single mode of procedure agreed upon in advance. Although Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this book serve primarily to introduce the Advaita Text in such a way as to explain and illuminate the particular mode of comparative theology that I have developed largely in response to that material, those chapters themselves comprise a detailed example, which may provide some readers with an extended opportunity to begin to think and read theology differently. |
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