Syncretist Theory

Having gone through a few WGS classes already, I thought I pretty much had a good grasp on gender theory. Obviously there would be more complex theories I hadn’t heard of yet, but I thought I had a decent understanding of the basics, and that the novels and information presented in this course would simply expand upon that. After the first few days of classes, I realized how little I had already known. I’d learned about intersectionality, and the male gaze, and invisible privilege, but that was probably as complex as my gender theory understanding went. The first few days of class challenged that completely. I went from thinking I had a leg up in discussion to being in way over my head with just a few pages of notes. It was intimidating. There …show more content…
One of the first ones was syncretism. I wrote my first paper on syncretism in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on an essay before. I spent so long thinking about it, rethinking points and examples, because I really didn’t know if the view I had come up was accurate. While the theoretical line between syncretism and hybridity is quite clear, when put into practice, it’s a much more difficult theory to hammer down. I had to pause after every paragraph to ask myself whether what I had just written actually was syncretism or hybridity. My favorite part about that, though, besides the fact that I had learned a new theory and actually understood it enough to recognize the imperfect example of it in Father Damien‘s gender identity in The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, was that I found myself looking for it in every subsequent novel we read this semester. That’s because every novel wove together the major theories we were talking about throughout the year, and applied them in vastly different ways. Syncretism directly relates to the concept of the boarder dweller, but not every boarder dweller experiences syncretism (whether that be of culture, religion, personal beliefs, etc.) That same dilemma I was having with my original paper, of whether I was looking at syncretism or hybridity, was …show more content…
Not only was it completely applicable to a number of the novels and characters we’d focused on throughout the course, but unlike a lot of other theories, it seemed to be applicable to humans as a whole. Normally, our theories focused on groups of oppressed peoples, or rather we looked at those theories through a lens of intersecting oppressions. While we tried to put aside or at least think critically of a binary idea, we often found many of our conversations focusing on a binary of oppressors and oppressed, and many of our theories looked at how the actions of the oppressors affected the oppressed. However, Adichie’s idea of a single story was applicable to everyone. She talked about how a single story negatively affected her privileged, white college roommate’s perception of Africa, while simultaneously using it to discuss how a single story affected her vision of England and America as an impressionable, black child. This idea of a single story was visible in Ifemelu’s journey in Americanah, as well as the boys aspiring to be soccer stars in Belly of the Atlantic. What I liked so much about this concept of a single story was not that it provided any sort of excuse for prejudice, bias, or ignorance, but provided an explanation, a point of understanding of how these things might come about. In reality,