Cosmogony Today: Counter-Cosmogony, Perspectivism, and the Return of Anti-biblical Polemic
In this article I review critical thought about cosmogony in the social sciences and explore the current status of this concept. The latter agenda entails three components. First, I argue that, even where cosmogony is not mentioned, contemporary anthropological projects that reject the essentialist...
| Published in: | Religion and society |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Berghahn
[2015]
|
| In: |
Religion and society
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Cosmogony
/ Dualism
/ Criticism
|
| Further subjects: | B
Viveiros de Castro
B Essentialism B Ontology B Perspectivism B Non-dualism B Monotheism B Cosmogony B Cosmology |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In this article I review critical thought about cosmogony in the social sciences and explore the current status of this concept. The latter agenda entails three components. First, I argue that, even where cosmogony is not mentioned, contemporary anthropological projects that reject the essentialist ontology they ascribe to Western modernity in favor of analytical versions of relational non-dualism thereby posit a "counter-cosmogony" of eternal relational becoming. Second, I show how Viveiros de Castro has made Amazonian cosmogonic myth - understood as counter-cosmogony - iconic of the relational non-dualist ontology he terms "perspectival multinaturalism". Observing that this counter-cosmogony now stands in opposition to biblical cosmogony, I conclude by considering the consequences for the study of cosmogony when it becomes a register of what it is about - when it becomes, that is, a form of polemical debate about competing models of cosmogony and the practical implications that they are perceived to entail. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2150-9301 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and society
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2015.060104 |