Religious Difference and “The Human Spirit”: French Catholic Orientalism after Secularism

Postwar Catholic orientalism drew deeply from the traditions of primitivism and exoticism that had circulated in Paris’ interwar salons. But it accelerated after 1945, when the Western European heritage, including Christianity, was no longer the uncontested ideal for the rest of the world. New calls for truth located outside the West began to be heard. The classic Catholic response to these changes was often an appeal to “tradition,” to “Christianity,” to “Latin culture,” associated with a mythically pure past, recoverable only by silencing the new voices gaining recognition. This paper explores a community of French Catholic thinkers who offered a counter-narrative to that of restoration and purity. They worked loosely in the field of orientalism, and put forward an emphasis on “tradition” as connected with -- complementary to -- precisely the religious and cultural difference gaining recognition. They offered an interpretation that stressed the religiously plural origins of Christianity, its historical connections with other religious traditions, and forged thematic links between Christian writings and Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu texts. My paper focuses on Louis Massignon (1883-19620 and two of his letter-known colleagues Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny (1903-1991) and Marie-Madeleine Davy (1903-1998). In addition to their work as orientalists, these intellectuals possessed an abiding optimism in the power of empathy to reach what they called “l’esprit humain” behind diverse religious texts. The notion of “the human spirit” was the pivotal concept that enabled them to break through the predominantly binary way most Catholics and orientalists had viewed religious others: as fundamentally unlike Western Christians (exotic, highly sexualized, pure, or immature and incorrigibly polluted).  The story of this community presents us with a rich way to consider how human communities employ the dynamics of historical representation, and theology to cross chasms of religious and cultural difference, and imagine what binds us together as humans.