Heterodoxy

 I read most of a book of interviews with Valente. He insists over and over on the distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.  (It is funny, too, how he repeats the same metaphors over and over. He is the "long distance runner" distant from his own contemporaries. It is striking how self-righteous he is and how ungenerous with other writers: he only saves a very few, and even comes down hard on some former friends.)   

It struck me that the concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy are devoid of content. They are purely relational. In other words, you can't tell whether a given belief is orthodox or heterodox unless you know who is in power, and what those in power happen to have decreed to be the right beliefs. So heterodoxy is not some marvelous thing in and of itself, and heterodox ideas might well be mistaken. It's still a bad idea to have an orthodoxy (a set of beliefs designated correct by who's in power). The reason is not that the orthodox views are wrong (they might very well be correct) but that power always puts its thumb on the scale. We don't know any longer whether a belief is true, or simply one favored in contingent circumstances by someone who happens to wield power.  

Because some heretics are wrong does not justify the existence of an orthodoxy, someone with the power to call someone a heretic.