UC Berkeley

The justification a speaker offers for a given action, stance, or identity may serve the discursive purpose of veiling motivating reasons or rhetorically appealing to the audience. This dissertation defines such speech as ‘pretext,’ presenting ten tests for identifying pretext rhetorically rather than psychologically, then demonstrates through the example of religion the stakes of treating such justifications as reflecting motivating reasons rather than constituting a rhetorical trick. I argue that the naturalized concept we call ‘religion’ is a modern European construct with ten identifiable characteristics; this ‘religion’ enjoys epistemic privilege that makes it a potentially dangerous basis for pretext. Examples from social, legal, and literary texts show that audiences tend to evaluate ‘religiously’ justified actions and ethical stances as valid or incontrovertible, even when those justifications fall into the discursive category of pretext.

Chapter One, “Fallacy of Justification: ‘Pretext,’” bridges rhetoric, epistemology, and linguistics to define pretext. Diverging from past scholarship, I define pretext rhetorically, by how that category of justification functions in spoken and written texts, rather than analyzing a speaker’s psychology. I design ten tests for identifying pretexts in discourse, conduct a discourse analysis of how scholars use the term in relevant literature, and read pretext against core rhetorical theory.

Chapter Two, “The Privileged Space of ‘Religion,’” responds to discourses of religion scholarship in arguing that the epistemically privileged world that ‘religion’ creates for itself is a historical and conceptual mistake with dangerous ethical implications. Beginning with evidence that what we call ‘religion’ is an Enlightenment European construct, I identify ten common characteristics of the construct, then proceed to argue that ‘religious’ justifications for imperialism are fallacious, the concept’s epistemic privilege is undeserved, ‘religious’ pretexts can have dangerous implications, and there are strong reasons to be suspicious of ‘religious’ pretexts.

Chapter Three, “Religious Pretext for Imperialist Violence in Science Fiction,” systematically applies the previous two chapters’ theoretical interventions to two objects of science fiction literature: Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (1996) and Octavia Estelle Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy (1987-1989). For each text, I analyze the discursive construction of a ‘religion’ with reference to my ten characteristics of ‘religion,’ then examine how these constructed ‘religions’ serve as sources of pretext for imperialism.

Chapter Four, “Clearing up Pretext and ‘Religion’ through Scientology,” echoes this methodology with a border case between ‘religion’ and science fiction: the Church of Scientology. In conversation with scholarship on New Religious Movements, science fiction studies, and American studies, I systematically trace the discursive construction of Scientology as a ‘religion.’ Presenting evidence of how Scientologists use the institution’s status as a ‘religion’ pretextually, and their ‘religion’ as a basis for pretexts for imperialism and other violence reinforces the dissertation’s overarching argument.

The conclusion suggests how readers can generalize the four chapters’ analyses and apply this dissertation’s central theoretical contributions that critique how audiences think about ‘religion’ and pretext.