The Politics of Religious Repetition
Otherwise diverse genealogical critiques of the discursive category “religion” share a concern to highlight the complicity of this category in colonial and neo-imperial projects, which are effected through the depoliticizing of non-Western subject populations. I argue that countering such depolitici...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2014
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| In: |
Method & theory in the study of religion
Year: 2014, Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 287-307 |
| Further subjects: | B
Jacques Derrida
secularism
colonialism
genealogy
religion and politics
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Otherwise diverse genealogical critiques of the discursive category “religion” share a concern to highlight the complicity of this category in colonial and neo-imperial projects, which are effected through the depoliticizing of non-Western subject populations. I argue that countering such depoliticization is more difficult than it may appear, and that some such critiques fall into a form of transcendental historicism that, in fact, further depoliticizes the subjects of colonialism and neo-imperialism. I develop this point through a specific consideration of two such studies, suggesting that their failure owes to their adoption of a mimetic understanding of cultural identity. As an alternative, I theorize the global “resurgence of religion” in terms of Jacques Derrida’s notion of “religion without religion,” arguing that such phenomena represent non-identical, as opposed to mimetic, repetitions of religion which disrupt colonial and neo-imperial legacies. This alternative theorization overcomes the depoliticization inherent in genealogically historicist approaches. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0682 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Religion, Politics, History, and Culture (2020)"
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| Contains: | In: Method & theory in the study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341321 |