Friday, October 30, 2009

Ismism

"Ism" is today a marker for a school of thought. This is a classic exploration of the theme, which I first viewed in the Alamo Drafthouse out on highway 6, west Houston.

The new Biblical Archaeology Review (35.6) has Steve Mason's article on Ism. X-ismos comes from the Greeks, up to 2 Maccabees and Ignatius. When I was in school, I learnt this in the context of "Medism". It was the act of X-ising; becoming X. It was never the marker for the ideology of X. For that, the Greeks had the construct X-ia; "sophia" for the domain of the wise, for instance.

This article, being a BAR piece, riffs on "Judaism". It claims that the term applied to one who was not at first a Jew; but was Judaising into one. This didn't happen much in antiquity, the Jews then being a marginal bunch who didn't take to converts; but Hanukkah changed everything. That is why the word crops up in 2 Maccabees.

Mason blames the Ism-ism of Ism on Tertullian; which he used to define Christianity ("Christianism").

In that light I'm tempted to take back the Ism. The construct X-isation for the act of X-ising has never sat well with me; it's a mix of Greek -iz and Latin -atio. Now that I know, or have been reminded, that it's just -ism; I can put down that misbegotten seven-digit horror.

I might not even have to change a lot of what I've written about Islamism or Progressivism. Ism is inherently progressive. It never gets to Dr Utopia's promised land; it is always a Whig journey. Given that Marx never quite managed to define what the end state of his Ism should look like, even that old Communist might have got it right.

That still leaves the non-Whig ideologies - and we do need new words for them. Jew-hating, for instance, is not inherently progressive. The conservative mindset (as opposed to the sundry reactionary ideologies) is anti-progressive by all definitions; it cannot contain the "Ism". "AntiSemity" and "Conservaty" would be better, at least befitting the Latin, but these terms look like a joke even to me.

Labels: antiquity, linguistics, progressives

posted by Zimri on 18:00 | link |

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