@MiriamJoy I am not sure what you mean by "interrupt intersectionality" but I do have some thoughts about what counter-hagiography might look like when applied at the three levels (personal, social, and mythological) I had forgotten that breakdown in the paper (I think I had flattened it to two levels) but I do like the model so here goes (gonna let Matt weigh in on whether SM as substructure fits into an emergentist paradigm):
My piece on counter-hagiography grew out of my desire to work through how to relate to and think about (primarily academic, theological, and spiritual) influences in my life whom I have come to regard as "problematic" in some way or another, and the essays themselves mostly stay in that domain. In subsequent conversations about the essays (both irl and online) I have found myself thinking and discussing a lot more about what counter-hagiography looks like when applied more broadly but I think it is worth keeping the origin of the idea in mind at least so that I can recognize that I will need a lot of help applying it outside of that context (though I am already pretty convinced that the application is there to be made).
The tricky or fiddly element in doing CH on the personal level is, I think, the relationship. CH is fundamentally critical and that is always awkward. Still I think it is a necessary step somewhere along the way to healthy relationships. After all, I want my friends to like me for who I am, being idolized (subject to hagiography) is not a secure situation for a relationship since it provides no assurances of what will happen once the bloom is inevitably off the rose. This if I want my friends and family to put me through CH, then I have to believe that it is in our shared interest for me to put them through it as well. It seems to me that CH on the personal level looks a whole lot like forgiveness. In his essay On Forgiveness Lewis makes a distinction between forgiveness and excusing. Where excusing means pretending the offense never occurred—overlooking it—forgiveness means recognizing the offence and still moving forward/deeper into relationship. I think personal CH will only strengthen a relationship a forgiveness-not-excusing rich environment. I should caveat though that in the case of some relationships (abusive relationships being top-of-mind here) CH will (and probably should) simply lead to the diminution of relationship between the two parties. When an abused spouse finally "wakes up" to the real sins of the abuser the prescribed action is to leave the relationship. Forgiveness will someday be part of that story (my universalist leaning) but it need not be immediately tied to the initial CH; in fact insisting on preemtory restoration of an abusive relationships has all the hallmarks of necromanitic re-animation disguising itself as resurrection.
I think the next two are a little more straightforward. On the social level, CH is an antidote to nationalism and tribalism. CH undermines the tendency to turn our "us" groups and "them" groups into binary "good guy" and "bad guy" groups. Here my biggest caution is to remember that CH is counter-hagiography it isn't piling on to things we already don't like. If you don't like something—if you already think that it is evil and no-good—then you are in no position to counter-hagiography on it. So as a U.S. citizen I can and should do CH on the United States, I don't really have any business trying to do CH on, say, Russia because I am under no particular temptation to do hagiography on Russia and I am fairly immune to the propaganda which claims that Russia is the greatest nation in the world. One last not about CH at this level is that the process of decolonizing X is, I think, largely counter-hagiography and is critical. On that front I think the only thing my concept has to add is to ask what resurrection looks like and what we should pay attention to in order to avoid necromantic re-animation.
On the mythological level I think we are looking at doing CH to the Powers and Authorities which have so much power over the way we make sense of, and structure, our world. This form of CH is probably the heaviest intellectual lift since it requires us to see the flaws and cracks in our own lenses. It is probably a good idea to read and listen to people whose -isms we disagree with significantly. Marx will probably give me better material for a CH of Global Capitalism (which I totally think is also Mammon) than Adam Smith. If I go back to Lewis, it may be worth a mention that he liked to recommend the reading of Old Books, not because they were written at better or worse times than our own, but because they were written by people whose temptations and blind spots were different and who were therefore better positioned to see our own blind spots.
