Kathleen Frederickson responds to Scott Thompson

Scott C Thompson focuses on two trends in Cultivating Belief: first, Lecourt’s identification of Eliot as “a fellow advocate for anti-suspicious approaches to texts”; second, Lecourt’s “use of terms such as “heterogeneous” and “many-sided” to describe subjectivity.” Without insisting that one necessitates the other, we might reasonably ask whether the book identifies a relationship between these two features. Does a commitment to heterogeneity and many-sidedness foreclose suspicion? Does, therefore, the book’s interest in religious practice over interiorized faith necessitate this commitment to the many-sided, or is this latter turn merely incidental? To what extent are religious doubt and suspicious reading a package deal?