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Religious Studies and Its Own End
12/07/2006 00:55:10
I have already written some on the sense that theology intends for itself it own end: here and here. But I want to talk about religious studies and its tendencies toward a similar pattern.
Work in the tradition of Mircea Eliade, I should mention, is a definite countercurrent. Eliade worked to erect religion as a sui generis thing to be studied in an ongoing way. For him, the study of religions is a necessary project for people.
The main current of work since him, however, directed in large part against him, has opposite consequences that may not have been fully recognized. By breaking down the thing-in-itself-ness of religion, understanding it integratively with wider culture and psychology, sociology, literature, and philosophy, the sensibleness of a religious studies department breaks down. We have come to understand religion as in important respects a false construct, one that can only be properly studied in constant connection with other things, more and more dissolving the borders around what is religion. We are realizing that we can understand religions more constructively by not focusing so much on religion, by permiting it porous borders.
Now, it seems, religious studies departments are most of all havens for philosophers, sociologists, historians, and so on, who are interested in religion and are willing to use it as an excuse to escape the disciplinary limits of their own fields. I, for instance, came to religious studies in part because the philosophy department at Brown didn't seem interested in producing philosophy about human beings, while people in religious studies did.
It may be that we won't last too much longer when this process takes its course. Perhaps religious studies was a necessary transition stage, a taking-stock period for modernity, a chance to come to terms with its shifting religosity. Working through a temporary fixation. Before too long we will all return from where we came, to being historians, or sociologists (perhaps in itself a dying breed as well), or philosophers, or theologians. If the present trends are correct, this will be a good move. The extension of the non-sui generis logic is that religion is best understood when seen undifferentiated from other things. We will be better historians of religion if we stop being that and just become historians, studying religious things alongside everything else. Religious studies was a good thing to do, to get over the Eliade hump and to look carefully at certain trends, but now it is back to business as usual.
On the other hand there is the possibility that we are all really theologians at heart (which is why we are drawn to religion) and as long as there are no theology faculties, we'll keep trying to keep the religious studies ghost alive.
I should say this, also, while admitting that I am getting into a massive Eliade reading kick. I am getting more and more convinced of the (albeit theological) beauty of his project.
My proposal for the only kind of religious studies that can possibly continue: continue the pseudo-theological project of Eliade, religion as a thing in itself to be explored, and write great, beautiful literature with almost no scientific value at all.
re:Crypto-Theology - 12/07/2006 03:13:05
Posted by David McConeghy
Oh, Nathan. I guess we'll have to part company after all. I'm totally convinced of the fundamental error of Eliade's central perspective. I just can't accept the notion that homo sapiens is actually at heart homo religiosus. I think the problem of denying an interpretative or explanatory insight to religious studies which is potentially "scientific" is that is forces theology upon the field. That is, it requires speakers to take a position on the divine. Many of us balk at this prospect because we see (propositionally oriented logic) boundaries which are trangressed by this position. I don't know what "science" I'll be practicing in my scholarship, but I'm quite sure it won't be speculation about the divine in the sense of our "right" relationship with it or toward it. If anything, pluralism has challenged us to deny crypto-theology a place in our scholarship because it is always and forever colonizing. I don't know that we can have a clean break in our scholarly perspectives, but we certainly don't need to approach the data as if there were hidden layers of meaning only accessible to specially-oriented and gifted viewers.
Anyhow, It's a spirited debate we can have until it makes us both rich (or hoarse or in need of a drink, etc.)
re:Crypto-Theology - 12/07/2006 11:55:06
Posted by nathan
Not so fast, my friend! I am just as indoctrinated as you in the high purpose of avoiding theology, if only to support the American overlapping consensus of secularism and also to protect the research. My point is, that if we are going to be theologically neutral, the whole point of choosing "religion" as a thing to study is problematic. Theologians understand pretty well what religion is, but scholars of religion have pretty much agreed that a final definition is impossible. I think this is for good cognitive reasons. My concluding this comes in part from reflection on a recent article by Benson Saler (Numen 2001) on the cognitive science underpinnings of comparison.
In fact I am all for scientific study. You might appreciate that my 200A final paper is about attempts to get evolutionary psychology a place in comparative religion.
When I talk about a future for religious studies, I am not assuming that my present work could be a part of it. I am scaring myself as much as the prospect might scare you. Basically what I am trying to ask for the purpose of discussion is: now that religious studies has come this far, wouldn't it be better if we just continued our work back in the old departments? I.e. you become an art historian and I study literature with a theology career on the side with no audience.
I like to read Eliade as literature, before bed maybe, but only rarely for my research. I've actually now been reading his novella Youth Without Youth, which I hear will come out as a Francis Ford Coppolla movie in 2007.
re:Religious Studies and Its Own End - 12/07/2006 12:33:25
Posted by nathan
Gosh, looking back on the original post I can see that the intended irony is totally absent. No, I identify myself with the mainstream now, the post-Eliade. At the same time, I am suggesting for the sake of discussion that Eliade may be the only way to really carry out something sensibly called "religious studies."
The only alternative to dissolution is finding a performative audience. Right now these departments exist because there are students who want to take the classes. Usually when they get in the classes they can't believe what religious studies people actually do. (What? This isn't Sunday school?)
Another alternative for self-preservation, I think, is for scholars of religion to find a living, breathing audience in the public. In the academy we have made great leaps but the rest of the world is still reading Eliade, or worse.
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