Revolting Fantasies: Reviewing the Cinematic Image as Fruitful Ground for Creative, Theological Interpretations in the Company of Julia Kristeva

Feminism, Religion and This Incredible Need to Believe: Working with Julia Kristeva Again

“…48 The real crisis as she sees it, is not that people identifying themselves as Christians or Muslims are in violent competition with each other or in a battle to the death with 'secularism,' but that increasingly, dehumanizing forces of technology and capital are failing massively to generate the kinds of encouragement or the kind of education people need creatively or more positively to deal with the displacement of idealizations she identifies as being wrapped up in these discussions about a return to Christianity, in forms of 'television' democracy; 49 or, in the kind of superficiality and lack of engagement in creative thought she has referred to elsewhere -referring to Guy Debord -as 'the society of the spectacle.' 50 In other words, the crisis that Kristeva detects in this book has little to do with a 'clash of religions' or with the perils of 'secularism' and much more to do with the threat of obscurantism, 51 the kind of opposition to enquiry that denies us the very possibility of belief in our own questions. Our future rests in our capacity to believe that we can ask questions and voice or express reflections on our experiences.…”