On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study - James Dennis LoRusso

On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study - James Dennis LoRusso

8. Response: Historicizing Endurance

On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study - James Dennis LoRusso

Andrew Durdin [+-]
Florida State University
Andrew Durdin is assistant teaching professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. His work focuses on critical approaches to the study of religion with an emphasis on the Roman imperial period, the modern historiography of ancient religions, and magic and religion in the ancient and modern world.

Description

This chapter attempts to critically nuance Russell McCutcheon’s argument that little has changed in the study of religion in recent decades. McCutcheon argues that despite the “critical gains” made by scholars such as Jonathan Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, Tomoko Masuzawa, and even his own work, contemporary scholars of religion continue to deploy sui generis notions of religion and tired phenomenological pathologies from earlier generations. These are now simply repackaged under the auspices of various new and putatively innovative methods. Yet, if McCutcheon persuasively demonstrates the persistence of these ideas in the study of religion, this chapter raises the questions of how to explain historically this perceived persistence. In other words, noticing repetition over time is one thing, accounting for it historically is something else. What are the specific historical circumstances—social, cultural, and institutional—that might explain the continued appeal of sui generis ideas of religion and phenomenological approaches to scholars of religion? By way of an answer, this chapter suggests that critical scholars’ overemphasis on the late 19th and early 20th century historical origins and formative ideologies of the field has produced a rather procrustean view of these matters in discussing later historical developments. Such a view posits a long and unbroken arc of rather vague sentiments of Protestant prejudices and colonial chauvisms that sidesteps careful dissection of how the category religion, its field of study, and their specific relationship to wider institutional and social arrangements has changed in the mid-to-late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Notify A Colleague

Citation

Durdin, Andrew. 8. Response: Historicizing Endurance. On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 107-120 Oct 2022. ISBN 9781800502291. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=41078. Date accessed: 12 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.41078. Oct 2022

Dublin Core Metadata