“GRAND, UNGODLY, GOD-LIKE MAN”: The Symptomatology of Fanaticism

The aim of this chapter is to propose a symptomology of fanaticism through the use of historical, literary, and philosophical understandings of the myriad ways in which fanaticism becomes an englobing and enactive view of the world. Beginning with a historical overview of how Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers located “fanaticism” - at the time, a relatively novel term - at the center of their indefatigable philosophical efforts in the name of toleration, reasonableness, and enlightened human existence, this chapter maps the multi-faceted social, cultural, and psychological manifestations of fanaticism. Among the symptological features described in this clinical conceptualization, emphasis is placed on the process of individual and collective “fanaticization,” the constitutive function of narratives for the becoming of fanaticism, the role of charismatic agitators, and the rhetoric of resentment. The chapter concludes with Moby Dick as exemplifying the apotheosis of fanaticism’s becoming. Melville’s Shakespearean narrative is read as a literary discourse on fanaticism, charting its passage, in its englobing journey around the world, from revenge through ressentiment to rage.