Pub Date : 2019-06-25DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341450
P. Sabo
This paper reads Gil Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity with the question of the animal in mind. The first section looks at the blood prohibition of the Hebrew Bible and Anidjar’s reading of the relevant biblical texts; the second section uses Acts 10 as an example of the New Testament’s view of eating and how this applies to the practice of the eucharist; the third, and final, section offers a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (in light of Anidjar’s reading of it) and returns to the question of the animal in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose throughout each section is to display how Blood opens up fruitful areas of exploration in connection with the question of the animal, eating, and (animal) blood.
{"title":"Food for Thought: The Question of the Animal in Gil Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity","authors":"P. Sabo","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341450","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper reads Gil Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity with the question of the animal in mind. The first section looks at the blood prohibition of the Hebrew Bible and Anidjar’s reading of the relevant biblical texts; the second section uses Acts 10 as an example of the New Testament’s view of eating and how this applies to the practice of the eucharist; the third, and final, section offers a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (in light of Anidjar’s reading of it) and returns to the question of the animal in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose throughout each section is to display how Blood opens up fruitful areas of exploration in connection with the question of the animal, eating, and (animal) blood.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341450","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49281688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-06-25DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341448
B. Iqbal
This essay reads Anidjar’s “critique of Christianity” to confront the history of Western rhetoric, in its separation of figure from referent. He reads blood as catachrestic—catachresis not as abuse of language but its actualization. From the perspective of the tropological system, one might track the different meanings of blood (metaphorical, metonymic, symbolic) of historical Christianity. But from the asymmetrical perspective of catachresis, blood maps out the divisive activity of Christianity, even in its institution of the propriety of figure. Blood thus does not deliver a revolutionary program somehow “against” Christianity so much as demonstrate its impropriety. In so doing Blood partakes of the temporality of besiegement expressed in the Darwish poem with which the essay opens, where the possibility of escape is neither relinquished nor celebrated but endured. A postscript takes up Anidjar’s reading of Moses and Monotheism in order to raise the question of Islam.
{"title":"Disfiguring Christianity","authors":"B. Iqbal","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341448","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay reads Anidjar’s “critique of Christianity” to confront the history of Western rhetoric, in its separation of figure from referent. He reads blood as catachrestic—catachresis not as abuse of language but its actualization. From the perspective of the tropological system, one might track the different meanings of blood (metaphorical, metonymic, symbolic) of historical Christianity. But from the asymmetrical perspective of catachresis, blood maps out the divisive activity of Christianity, even in its institution of the propriety of figure. Blood thus does not deliver a revolutionary program somehow “against” Christianity so much as demonstrate its impropriety. In so doing Blood partakes of the temporality of besiegement expressed in the Darwish poem with which the essay opens, where the possibility of escape is neither relinquished nor celebrated but endured. A postscript takes up Anidjar’s reading of Moses and Monotheism in order to raise the question of Islam.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341448","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44339741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-05DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341441
Christopher B. Zeichmann
Since 9/11, there has been a surge in interest in the topic of violence both among scholars of religion and in the humanities more broadly. This article suggests that such works operate with a “hermeneutics of the spectacular” that functions to legitimate the liberal status quo by concentrating its focus upon the most visibly heinous forms of state violence under the aegis of a politics of “resistance.” This article uses the New Testament and its depiction of the military as a site for thinking about how folk definitions come to classify certain activities as “violent” and not others, both today and in antiquity. If biblical scholarship—or the study of religion more broadly—is to be something other than an ideological repository for late capitalism, it is necessary to reconsider the issue. This article, by point of contrast, discusses three theoretical approaches to violence that may be useful: Objective-Structural Violence, Symbolic Violence, and Violent Subjectivities.
{"title":"Liberal Hermeneutics of the Spectacular in the Study of the New Testament and the Roman Empire","authors":"Christopher B. Zeichmann","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341441","url":null,"abstract":"Since 9/11, there has been a surge in interest in the topic of violence both among scholars of religion and in the humanities more broadly. This article suggests that such works operate with a “hermeneutics of the spectacular” that functions to legitimate the liberal status quo by concentrating its focus upon the most visibly heinous forms of state violence under the aegis of a politics of “resistance.” This article uses the New Testament and its depiction of the military as a site for thinking about how folk definitions come to classify certain activities as “violent” and not others, both today and in antiquity. If biblical scholarship—or the study of religion more broadly—is to be something other than an ideological repository for late capitalism, it is necessary to reconsider the issue. This article, by point of contrast, discusses three theoretical approaches to violence that may be useful: Objective-Structural Violence, Symbolic Violence, and Violent Subjectivities.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341441","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48083281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-05DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341434
Markus Dressler
This paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as a starting point for an investigation into epistemology and theorizing in the contemporary study of religion. It discusses various strands of scholarship in dialogue with social constructivism and questions in particular the reductionism of radical constructivist positions. Exploring the boundaries of the classical social constructivist paradigm, the article argues that students of religion should consider the implication of social, historical, embodied and material structures in the production of knowledge about religion. For that purpose, it draws on various soft realist approaches to stress the importance of remaining attentive to positionality (reflecting on the sites from where we theorize) and contextuality (reflecting on the inter-relation of discourse and materiality) in theorizing “religion”. Finally, the article suggests that soft realist positions can be integrated in a slightly broadened social constructivist framework for the study of religion.
{"title":"The Social Construction of Reality (1966) Revisited: Epistemology and Theorizing in the Study of Religion","authors":"Markus Dressler","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341434","url":null,"abstract":"This paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as a starting point for an investigation into epistemology and theorizing in the contemporary study of religion. It discusses various strands of scholarship in dialogue with social constructivism and questions in particular the reductionism of radical constructivist positions. Exploring the boundaries of the classical social constructivist paradigm, the article argues that students of religion should consider the implication of social, historical, embodied and material structures in the production of knowledge about religion. For that purpose, it draws on various soft realist approaches to stress the importance of remaining attentive to positionality (reflecting on the sites from where we theorize) and contextuality (reflecting on the inter-relation of discourse and materiality) in theorizing “religion”. Finally, the article suggests that soft realist positions can be integrated in a slightly broadened social constructivist framework for the study of religion.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341434","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46057153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-05DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341437
Hugh R. Nicholson
Characteristic of the recent cognitive approach to religion (CSR) is the thesis that religious discourse and practice are rooted in an inveterate human propensity to explain events in terms of agent causality. This thesis readily lends itself to the critical understanding of religious belief as “our intuitive psychology run amok.” This effective restriction of the scientific critique of agent causality to notions of supernatural agency appears arbitrary, however, in light of evidence from cognitive and social psychology that our sense of human agency, including our own, is interpretive in nature. In this paper I argue that a cognitive approach to religion that extends the critique of agent causality to the folk psychological experience of conscious will is able to shed light on several characteristically religious phenomena, such as spirit possession, ritual action, and spontaneous action in Zen Buddhism.
{"title":"Religion, Cognition, and the Myth of Conscious Will","authors":"Hugh R. Nicholson","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341437","url":null,"abstract":"Characteristic of the recent cognitive approach to religion (CSR) is the thesis that religious discourse and practice are rooted in an inveterate human propensity to explain events in terms of agent causality. This thesis readily lends itself to the critical understanding of religious belief as “our intuitive psychology run amok.” This effective restriction of the scientific critique of agent causality to notions of supernatural agency appears arbitrary, however, in light of evidence from cognitive and social psychology that our sense of human agency, including our own, is interpretive in nature. In this paper I argue that a cognitive approach to religion that extends the critique of agent causality to the folk psychological experience of conscious will is able to shed light on several characteristically religious phenomena, such as spirit possession, ritual action, and spontaneous action in Zen Buddhism.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341437","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64840456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341456
Andrew Durdin
I reflect here on Jonathan Z. Smith’s influence on my approach to the study of religion, interweaving these reflections into the outline of a larger argument for the continued critical study of the category of religion—a project central to Smith’s intellectual project. While many have pursued Smith’s denaturalization of the category of religion, few have tried to imagine what Religious Studies might look like without religion as its primary explanatory category. Here I argue that Smith’s notions of redescription and rectification offer clues for how such a methodological shift might work. I do so by looking specifically at Smith’s brief essay “Trading Places” where he explicitly recommends rejecting efforts to theorize “magic.” I argue that not only do his considerations apply to the category of religion but also that the procedures he discusses in “Trading Place” might be understood as a more radical view of redescription and rectification.
{"title":"Abandonment Issues: Reflections on Redescription, Rectification, and J.Z. Smith’s “Trading Places”","authors":"Andrew Durdin","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341456","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000I reflect here on Jonathan Z. Smith’s influence on my approach to the study of religion, interweaving these reflections into the outline of a larger argument for the continued critical study of the category of religion—a project central to Smith’s intellectual project. While many have pursued Smith’s denaturalization of the category of religion, few have tried to imagine what Religious Studies might look like without religion as its primary explanatory category. Here I argue that Smith’s notions of redescription and rectification offer clues for how such a methodological shift might work. I do so by looking specifically at Smith’s brief essay “Trading Places” where he explicitly recommends rejecting efforts to theorize “magic.” I argue that not only do his considerations apply to the category of religion but also that the procedures he discusses in “Trading Place” might be understood as a more radical view of redescription and rectification.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341456","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42186367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341454
Michael J. Altman
Jonathan Z. Smith’s essay “Religion, Religions, Religious” is a foundational essay in the study of “religion” as a taxonomic category. The essay itself makes three interrelated arguments that situate religion in Western intellectual history and argue that “religion” is a term scholars define to suit their own intellectual purposes. Though the essay, and Smith’s work overall, have had a major influence in religious studies, that influence has not reached deeply into the study of American religious history. Using Smith’s essay as a guide, this essay offers a brief application of his arguments in “Religion, Religions, Religious” to American religious history and, specifically, to the category “evangelicalism.”
{"title":"“Religion, Religions, Religious” in America: Toward a Smithian Account of “Evangelicalism”","authors":"Michael J. Altman","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341454","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Jonathan Z. Smith’s essay “Religion, Religions, Religious” is a foundational essay in the study of “religion” as a taxonomic category. The essay itself makes three interrelated arguments that situate religion in Western intellectual history and argue that “religion” is a term scholars define to suit their own intellectual purposes. Though the essay, and Smith’s work overall, have had a major influence in religious studies, that influence has not reached deeply into the study of American religious history. Using Smith’s essay as a guide, this essay offers a brief application of his arguments in “Religion, Religions, Religious” to American religious history and, specifically, to the category “evangelicalism.”","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341454","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44124608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341461
Nancy K. Levene
In working to understand myths, rituals, and the human beings who craft and use them, Jonathan Z. Smith involved himself in a debate located primarily in anthropology. What is one to make of cultural and linguistic differences? How do differences come to matter? Are there barriers to understanding between one culture-group-tribe and another that surpass the power of translation? Smith’s stance in this debate was partly negative. It cannot be the case that there are differences between cultures that entail ranking some higher than others. More constructively, Smith posed the question of the relationship of two approaches that shape the debate: on one side, the approach of structuralism, which seeks to identify what all cultures share, and on the other, the approach of history, which looks for anomalies and outliers, specificities and accidents. One must commit to both, he claimed. The question is, how?
{"title":"Structure and History and X","authors":"Nancy K. Levene","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341461","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In working to understand myths, rituals, and the human beings who craft and use them, Jonathan Z. Smith involved himself in a debate located primarily in anthropology. What is one to make of cultural and linguistic differences? How do differences come to matter? Are there barriers to understanding between one culture-group-tribe and another that surpass the power of translation? Smith’s stance in this debate was partly negative. It cannot be the case that there are differences between cultures that entail ranking some higher than others. More constructively, Smith posed the question of the relationship of two approaches that shape the debate: on one side, the approach of structuralism, which seeks to identify what all cultures share, and on the other, the approach of history, which looks for anomalies and outliers, specificities and accidents. One must commit to both, he claimed. The question is, how?","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341461","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43826901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341462
N. Meylan
There are numerous difficult issues inherent in translating Jonathan Z. Smith’s work into French, among which is the selection of essays to translate. In this piece, I discuss the reasons that led the translators to opt for his essay ‘Here, There, and Anywhere’, a text that not only brings together many of Smith’s lifelong intellectual concerns but also showcases his pedagogical skills.
{"title":"Here, There, and Anywhere","authors":"N. Meylan","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341462","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000There are numerous difficult issues inherent in translating Jonathan Z. Smith’s work into French, among which is the selection of essays to translate. In this piece, I discuss the reasons that led the translators to opt for his essay ‘Here, There, and Anywhere’, a text that not only brings together many of Smith’s lifelong intellectual concerns but also showcases his pedagogical skills.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341462","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46628030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341455
Emily D. Crews
This article considers the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, with particular focus on his essay “When the Bough Breaks.” After a brief summary of the essay, I will place it and its contributions within the broader context of my interactions with Smith and his work, reflecting on the ways in which Smith’s scholarship has allowed me to understand the vital relationship between the questions we ask as scholars and the answers we offer.
{"title":"Always Know What You’re Asking When You Ask It: Questions, Answers, and the Enduring Legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith","authors":"Emily D. Crews","doi":"10.1163/15700682-12341455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341455","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article considers the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, with particular focus on his essay “When the Bough Breaks.” After a brief summary of the essay, I will place it and its contributions within the broader context of my interactions with Smith and his work, reflecting on the ways in which Smith’s scholarship has allowed me to understand the vital relationship between the questions we ask as scholars and the answers we offer.","PeriodicalId":44982,"journal":{"name":"Method & Theory in the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700682-12341455","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46803873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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