Institutional Histories, Identity Work, and Critical Theory:A Response to Markus Davidsen

In a response to Markus Davidsen’s article ‘Theo van Baaren’s Systematic Science of Religion Revisited: The Current Crisis in Dutch Study of Religion and a Way Out’, this contribution first reviews Davidsen’s claim of a crisis in the study of religion in the Netherlands, as compared to what he calls the ‘systematic mentality’ of the ‘Nordic countries’. It then turns to the prescribed cure for the alleged ailment that Davidsen develops as an identity work for the study of religion. Over against Davidsen’s attack on postcolonial and gender studies, this article argues for the necessity of critical theory and self-reflection in the academic study of religion. Attempts at uniting the study of religion under one conceptual umbrella are an indication of hegemonic processes that critical theory has rendered untenable. This article concludes that the academic study of religion should be embedded in an interdisciplinary frame of cultural studies

Undisciplining the study of religion:Critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing

Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recent naturalistic approaches to concepts of religion and combines them with discussions in critical animal studies and biosemiotics, as well as with Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, which forms the basis of a robust analytical frame of nonhuman agency. The author proposes a critical posthumanities study of religion, transforming and ‘undisciplining’ the humanities into a form of scholarly engagement that creates a transversal field of knowledge, consisting of human and other-than-human intra-actions—a study of religion that intentionally leaves behind the regimes of mastery and exploitation that are still operative today

Undisciplining the study of religion:Critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing

Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recent naturalistic approaches to concepts of religion and combines them with discussions in critical animal studies and biosemiotics, as well as with Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, which forms the basis of a robust analytical frame of nonhuman agency. The author proposes a critical posthumanities study of religion, transforming and ‘undisciplining’ the humanities into a form of scholarly engagement that creates a transversal field of knowledge, consisting of human and other-than-human intra-actions—a study of religion that intentionally leaves behind the regimes of mastery and exploitation that are still operative today

Troubled Distinctions:The Soul in Posthumanist Perspective.

In discussions about what it means to be human, concepts of the soul play a significant role. In European tradition, understandings of the soul and of consciousness have often been used to differentiate the human being from other animals and from the natural world. European philosophy and religion deemed nonhuman others “inanimate” (derived from the Latin word for soul, anima) and claimed that only the human being was endowed with a fully developed soul. The chapter reconstructs the genealogy of these demarcations from ancient, medieval, and early modern discussions to their new arrangements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While philosophical speciesism has been a central characteristic of these demarcations, the chapter shows that discourses on the soul and consciousness have also generated alternatives to these hegemonic orders of knowledge. Particularly the “undisciplining” of the soul in the twentieth century – along with a reassessment of animism and other-than-human agency – has opened up new avenues for critical posthumanist thinking. It turns out that concepts of the soul are multifaceted figurations of the posthuman

Esoteric discourse and the European history of religion: in search of a new interpretational framework

Often, when people nowadays talk of ‘esotericism’, they are using this word either as more or less synonymous with ‘New Age’, or as a term for movements that are based on a secret wisdom that is only accessible to an ‘inner circle’ of initiates. In academic discussions, however, during the past fifteen years, a field of research has been established that critically engages these assumptions and applies the term ‘esotericism’ in a very different way, namely as a signifier of a number of currents in Western culture that have influenced the history of religions in manifold ways. ‘New Age’ and secret initiatory knowledge are but two aspects of these traditions, and certainly not the most important ones. In this article, the author reflects on the various scholarly approaches to the concept of ‘Western esotericism’. He proposes an analysis that takes in­to account the manifold pluralisms that have shaped Western culture—not only in modernity. He argues that the academic study of Western esotericism should be understood as part and parcel of a broader analysis of European history of religion, with all its complexities, polemics, diachronic developments, and pluralistic discourses

Undisciplining the study of religion:Critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing

Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recent naturalistic approaches to concepts of religion and combines them with discussions in critical animal studies and biosemiotics, as well as with Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, which forms the basis of a robust analytical frame of nonhuman agency. The author proposes a critical posthumanities study of religion, transforming and ‘undisciplining’ the humanities into a form of scholarly engagement that creates a transversal field of knowledge, consisting of human and other-than-human intra-actions—a study of religion that intentionally leaves behind the regimes of mastery and exploitation that are still operative today

Undisciplining the study of religion:Critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing

Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recent naturalistic approaches to concepts of religion and combines them with discussions in critical animal studies and biosemiotics, as well as with Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, which forms the basis of a robust analytical frame of nonhuman agency. The author proposes a critical posthumanities study of religion, transforming and ‘undisciplining’ the humanities into a form of scholarly engagement that creates a transversal field of knowledge, consisting of human and other-than-human intra-actions—a study of religion that intentionally leaves behind the regimes of mastery and exploitation that are still operative today