Conceptual Totemization from the Middle East to the West: Epistemological Rigidity and the Shared Architecture of Theological and Secular Extremism

This paper investigates the paradoxical coexistence of late modernity's high complexity and geopolitical instability with widespread epistemological rigidity rather than adaptive flexibility. It argues that religious fundamentalism and secular extremism are not opposing phenomena along a linear spectrum of modernization but manifestations of an identical cognitive-structural mechanism termed totemization—the extraction of historically contingent signifiers from dynamic contexts and their calcification into absolute, unquestionable totems. The central hypothesis is that theological and secular dogmatism share a common cybernetic pathology: the severance of epistemic feedback loops that enable adaptive learning and self-correction. Employing a transdisciplinary methodology integrating cybernetics, psychoanalysis, political theology, and systems theory, the paper applies a symmetrical topology across three domains: Middle Eastern political theology, Western secular dogmatism, and modern biopolitical governance. To prevent neo-colonial methodological asymmetry, it incorporates Mulla Sadra's Harakat al-Jawhariyyah (Substantial Motion) to demonstrate adaptive flexibility within Islamic thought. The analysis reveals that the terror of the Lacanian Real drives the mechanical closure of the Luhmannian system, requiring an ontological scapegoat—the infidel, the subprime borrower, or the terrorist—to absorb internal contradictions and justify systemic rigidity. The paper concludes that theological rigidity, secular financialization, and biopolitical securitization share an identical cybernetic failure, and that systematic desacralization and structural friction are necessary to restore genuine civic discourse and adaptive capacity.

کلیدواژه ها:

Conceptual Totemization ، Cybernetics ، Political Theology ، Biopolitics ، Epistemological Rigidity