In “Philology and The Discovery of a Fissure in the European Past,” Masuzawa provides a detailed account of the role played by language in the nineteenth-century’s ranking of world religions. Drawing on evidence presented in a number of different sources, she argues that the period’s esteem for inflection (over agglutination) led to a biased evaluation of the religions (163). According to the West, belief-systems belonging to geographical areas characterized by an inflectional language were worthy of distinction and subsequently, these religious traditions were given positions of prominence within the hierarchy of world religions that European/Western scholars were busy constructing (163). While I am interested in Masuzawa’s attempt to thoroughly underscore the ways in which this practice was/is unjustifiable, I find that after having read her book, what I am inclined to continue thinking about with regard to this issue of language is something else.
In the same chapter, Masuzawa quotes from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s On Language often, providing the reader with a variety of controversial ideas that the bulk of contemporary thought may (or may not) find foreign. One such example is when Masuzawa cites Humboldt as having written, “The comparative study of languages … loses all higher interest if it does not cleave to the point at which language is connected with the shaping of the nation’s mental power” (159). Notably, Masuzawa goes on to use this statement as further evidence of the kind of thinking that both created and sought to justify the unfounded subordination of the Semitic (and Turanian) language families to Aryan ones (163-170). Without intending to undermine the significance of this argument, I do want to say that the level of importance attached to language in Humboldt’s statement is what especially interests me.
Humboldt’s reverence for language in terms of what it illuminates about a particular culture or humanity in general is clearly outlined throughout the chapter. I would like to divorce some of his statements from their context by looking at them on their own, independent of the racially-charged theory that they were meant to propagate. Given what was said last class about the complications surrounding the c(C)ontext of a text, I wonder if what I am proposing is technically possible or even fair. In spite of all of this, however, I would like to “break the rules” and view two of his statements as simply a grouping of words that yield an interpretation of language that interests me. The first statement occurs when Humboldt refers to language as “the outer appearance of the spirit of a people” and the second occurs when he helpfully begins to unpack it with another:
The bringing-forth of language is an inner need of human beings, not merely an external necessity for maintaining communal intercourse, but a thing lying in their own nature, indispensable for the development of their mental powers and the attainment of a world-view, to which man can attain only by bringing his thinking to clarity and precision through communal thinking with others. (160)
When I read these two assertions as a pair, Humboldt’s regard for language as a deeply spiritual dimension of the human experience appears evident. Words like “spirit,” “bringing-forth,” “inner need,” and “nature” all connote a sense of organic-ness with respect to language’s relationship to the human condition and religious experience and I find this organic linking attractive. But why exactly? What do I find appealing about imbuing linguistic acts (verbal communication) with a kind of fundamental or basic religious significance? In finding this appealing, am I in some way exhibiting this so-called “inner need of human beings”?
I feel unsure of how to think about these things especially given my general frustration with the role that I find language often plays in discussing religion and religious experience in particular. In Varieties of Religious Experience, William James talks about the ineffability that so frequently defines religious phenomena and while I am fascinated by this ineffability, how do I talk about something that cannot be articulated? As the readings for last week and our class discussion demonstrated, I use and will continue to use terms like, “spiritual” and “religion” even though I am unable to define them. What is more, despite this imprecision, I plan to go on and generate scholarship on these topics. These realities confuse me but they have crystallized my awareness of the special place or function that language occupies/fulfills within the study of religion.
Reading Masuzawa has been challenging because while she is very good at outlining the philological dilemma of the discipline, she does not go as far to suggest a way of dealing with it. After having finished her book, I can say that I have benefited from her perspective on the genesis of the study of world religions and yet, still feel the absence of an appropriate vocabulary with which to articulate my own thoughts on the subject. What “language,” if any, is she advocating the use of in her critique of the “world religions” dialogue, I wonder? What “language” is she herself using to speak about her particular interest in the study of religion? How did she formulate it? Moreover, is it possible to develop a “language” or a way to speak about religion and religious experience that is both academically responsible in its objectivity and experientially responsible in its sensitivity towards the insider? These are just some of the questions that I find myself thinking about currently.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Masuzawa, Smith and Van Voorst: The Questions
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Defining “Religion, Religions, Religious”
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As Tomoko Masuzawa and Jonathan Z. Smith point out, the meanings of the term “religion” are various (Masuzawa 60; Smith 270). While Smith in particular offers several critical analyses of some of the ones that have been posited (see pages 280-281 for two such examples), the definition that he himself offers is for me, the most thought provoking. He says, “‘Religion’ is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define” (281). Arising out of this short (and seemingly transparent) sentence is a host of difficult issues that leave me with difficult questions. If Religion is in fact a term that is “imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture” and can differ as often as each scholar’s “intellectual purpose” differs, then what exactly is the value of the term, “Religion”? Can the academic really use this term to signify his/her own academic agenda? Does this change what individuals and communities can mean when they refer to themselves as “religious” even if they constitute a native culture (i.e. are “insiders” of a particular faith group) rather than an outside, purely scholastic entity? Are they too capable of imposition in the way that Smith discusses it and if so, what exactly are they imposing and on what?
Evidently, the problem of defining Religion introduces certain methodological issues for individuals engaged in its study. The fact that I find Smith’s suggested reading of the term challenging in what it implies/potentially makes possible does not change the fact that I also find it helpful and (perhaps ironically) compelling. In thinking about my own areas of research, I find Smith’s definition describes a practice that I have already chosen to adopt. My interest in how popular icons are directly/indirectly fostering religious experiences in a secular environment is loaded with categorical problems. To talk intelligently and intelligibly about this topic, I need to define what it is that I mean by “religious experiences” and “secular environment” and to do this, I will ultimately have to state what it is that I mean by Religion. I will have to impose my own “intellectual purpose” on it. But what bothers me now is to what or to whom will I be held accountable in formulating these definitions? If every scholar engaged in religious studies is able to come up with their own meanings for these terms, who or what regulates what does and does not legitimately fall under the discipline of Religious Studies? I know that Smith states that Religion is an anthropological category and not a theological one but, then, what is the underlying “thing,” for lack of a better word, that will identify my work as predominantly “religious” and not “anthropological” (269)?
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The Problem of “Insider/Outsider”
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Van Voorst’s essay and Masuzawa’s chapters prove interesting in their discussion of “insider/outsider” relationships with respect to the study of religion. Framing his analysis within the context of Eastern Scripture and some of the disadvantages facing North American readers, Van Voorst writes that “we [North American readers] lack the living context of scripture when we encounter only its textual form [… We] cannot directly see the broad ways that scripture is reflected in religious life, or the more specific ways it is used in worship, devotion, or law” (12). I find this a particularly interesting observation as it relates to geography and notions of being an “outsider.” Related to my particular area of interest is the idea that North American Christianity is in someway distinct from the Christianity being practiced overseas. Despite so often being labeled as a “Western religion,” Christianity originated in the East. Is the New Testament an Eastern Scripture then? And if it is, are North American Christians (in being geographically separated from the East), somehow “outsiders” as far as readership goes even in spite of their being privy to Christian reflections in “worship, devotion and law”?
Speaking specifically about “insiders and outsiders” as initiates or non-initiates of a particular religious tradition, Van Voorst suggests that academics adopt both perspectives in studying religious traditions. He advocates that we read scriptures “as outsiders, in an objective, scholarly, noncommittal way” but then also attempt to read them “as much as possible as insiders, with the eyes, minds, and hearts of those for whom these texts are much more than the object of scholarship” (16). This dual-approach strikes me as valuable in its “holistic” aims: it seeks to accommodate the scholar with objectivity, the particular religious community with sympathy and the actual texts with both of these strengths.
I do wonder how these two sides of scholarship are to be harmoniously integrated in one study though. Van Voorst posits this dual-approach in terms of what to do first and what to do second: our interaction with a text as an outsider should precede our reading of it as an insider (16). But this model suggests that the two categories can be easily separated in all cases, as if the only thing required to make a shift between the two is a change in one’s state of mind. Taking the case of an insider, for example, I wonder whether or not s/he can ever be an outsider in the “noncommittal way” that Van Voorst talks about. Can we really shut off and turn on parts of ourselves in this way? If we can, how will the questions that we ask of texts be changed and how will this effect what answers we choose to accept or reject?
Related to this same question of the “insider and outsider” relationship to religious studies, Masuzawa says that the reader automatically tries to assess the scholar’s “status” (i.e. insider or outsider) in order to evaluate the extent to which his/her argument is credible (69). She goes on to largely dismiss this pursuit by saying that “even if such a measurement should prove reliable, it can reveal the nature of the writing only in one register” (69). Initially, I was assuaged by this comment in the way that it undermines the importance of a scholar’s status as being nothing more than revelatory of one aspect of his or her writing (69). Yet, as I revisit it, I find that my interest in this question is not so much about how people’s “insider/outsider” perspectives affect their writing as much as it affects their research and choice of methodologies. I look forward to discussing this more in class with everyone.
Defining “Religion, Religions, Religious”
_____________________________________________________
As Tomoko Masuzawa and Jonathan Z. Smith point out, the meanings of the term “religion” are various (Masuzawa 60; Smith 270). While Smith in particular offers several critical analyses of some of the ones that have been posited (see pages 280-281 for two such examples), the definition that he himself offers is for me, the most thought provoking. He says, “‘Religion’ is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define” (281). Arising out of this short (and seemingly transparent) sentence is a host of difficult issues that leave me with difficult questions. If Religion is in fact a term that is “imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture” and can differ as often as each scholar’s “intellectual purpose” differs, then what exactly is the value of the term, “Religion”? Can the academic really use this term to signify his/her own academic agenda? Does this change what individuals and communities can mean when they refer to themselves as “religious” even if they constitute a native culture (i.e. are “insiders” of a particular faith group) rather than an outside, purely scholastic entity? Are they too capable of imposition in the way that Smith discusses it and if so, what exactly are they imposing and on what?
Evidently, the problem of defining Religion introduces certain methodological issues for individuals engaged in its study. The fact that I find Smith’s suggested reading of the term challenging in what it implies/potentially makes possible does not change the fact that I also find it helpful and (perhaps ironically) compelling. In thinking about my own areas of research, I find Smith’s definition describes a practice that I have already chosen to adopt. My interest in how popular icons are directly/indirectly fostering religious experiences in a secular environment is loaded with categorical problems. To talk intelligently and intelligibly about this topic, I need to define what it is that I mean by “religious experiences” and “secular environment” and to do this, I will ultimately have to state what it is that I mean by Religion. I will have to impose my own “intellectual purpose” on it. But what bothers me now is to what or to whom will I be held accountable in formulating these definitions? If every scholar engaged in religious studies is able to come up with their own meanings for these terms, who or what regulates what does and does not legitimately fall under the discipline of Religious Studies? I know that Smith states that Religion is an anthropological category and not a theological one but, then, what is the underlying “thing,” for lack of a better word, that will identify my work as predominantly “religious” and not “anthropological” (269)?
________________________________________________________
The Problem of “Insider/Outsider”
________________________________________________________
Van Voorst’s essay and Masuzawa’s chapters prove interesting in their discussion of “insider/outsider” relationships with respect to the study of religion. Framing his analysis within the context of Eastern Scripture and some of the disadvantages facing North American readers, Van Voorst writes that “we [North American readers] lack the living context of scripture when we encounter only its textual form [… We] cannot directly see the broad ways that scripture is reflected in religious life, or the more specific ways it is used in worship, devotion, or law” (12). I find this a particularly interesting observation as it relates to geography and notions of being an “outsider.” Related to my particular area of interest is the idea that North American Christianity is in someway distinct from the Christianity being practiced overseas. Despite so often being labeled as a “Western religion,” Christianity originated in the East. Is the New Testament an Eastern Scripture then? And if it is, are North American Christians (in being geographically separated from the East), somehow “outsiders” as far as readership goes even in spite of their being privy to Christian reflections in “worship, devotion and law”?
Speaking specifically about “insiders and outsiders” as initiates or non-initiates of a particular religious tradition, Van Voorst suggests that academics adopt both perspectives in studying religious traditions. He advocates that we read scriptures “as outsiders, in an objective, scholarly, noncommittal way” but then also attempt to read them “as much as possible as insiders, with the eyes, minds, and hearts of those for whom these texts are much more than the object of scholarship” (16). This dual-approach strikes me as valuable in its “holistic” aims: it seeks to accommodate the scholar with objectivity, the particular religious community with sympathy and the actual texts with both of these strengths.
I do wonder how these two sides of scholarship are to be harmoniously integrated in one study though. Van Voorst posits this dual-approach in terms of what to do first and what to do second: our interaction with a text as an outsider should precede our reading of it as an insider (16). But this model suggests that the two categories can be easily separated in all cases, as if the only thing required to make a shift between the two is a change in one’s state of mind. Taking the case of an insider, for example, I wonder whether or not s/he can ever be an outsider in the “noncommittal way” that Van Voorst talks about. Can we really shut off and turn on parts of ourselves in this way? If we can, how will the questions that we ask of texts be changed and how will this effect what answers we choose to accept or reject?
Related to this same question of the “insider and outsider” relationship to religious studies, Masuzawa says that the reader automatically tries to assess the scholar’s “status” (i.e. insider or outsider) in order to evaluate the extent to which his/her argument is credible (69). She goes on to largely dismiss this pursuit by saying that “even if such a measurement should prove reliable, it can reveal the nature of the writing only in one register” (69). Initially, I was assuaged by this comment in the way that it undermines the importance of a scholar’s status as being nothing more than revelatory of one aspect of his or her writing (69). Yet, as I revisit it, I find that my interest in this question is not so much about how people’s “insider/outsider” perspectives affect their writing as much as it affects their research and choice of methodologies. I look forward to discussing this more in class with everyone.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Bynum and Huntington
At the beginning of “In Praise of Fragments: History in the Comic Mode,” Caroline Walker Bynum asserts that the historian’s task “precludes wholeness” (14). Like fish of the sea, she says, men and women engaged in such labour are only ever able to “regurgitate fragments” of a whole and while I find that this perspective articulates what can be frustrating about the historical approach, I also think that it presents what can be liberating (14). In the midst of research, I think that knowing when to accept that certain elements of the past remain inaccessible to even the most determined of historians is sometimes difficult. Yet, the “limitation” that this realization places on what one can understand about the past simultaneously creates an environment where Bynum’s “comic stance toward doing history” is made possible (25). All of the benefits of this particular method—the embrace of contradictions, objections and even re-evaluations of what it means to “do history,” for example—are invitations to engage in the historical task without being crippled by an unspoken expectation that demands the presentation of a whole, indisputable truth (25). The comic mode of history accepts “the partial as partial” and consistently makes room for the possibility that what any given historian posits may be wrong (25).
I find this philosophy consoling in its generosity towards the historian, in its willingness to all at once entertain various versions of the same historical occurrence. But I also wonder what this generosity and this willingness do to the ways in which historians and their audiences view/practice the historical task. Does the comic mode of history, in having pluralism instead of “the total” as its goal, change the “responsibility” of the historian and what one can reasonably expect from him or her (25)? Does the comic mode of history attempt to overwhelm the discipline’s emphasis on accurate information about the past with something else? If so, does this effort matter?
In discussing the relationship that their twentieth-century vantage point bears to the pursuit of their historical interests, both Bynum and Huntington present methodological outlooks that help one in thinking further about what contemporary historians are “responsible” for. I found each author’s espousal of meeting subjects of interest on their own terms informative. Bynum’s refusal to read medieval devotional fasting as a branch of anorexia nervosa, for example, displays the same commitment to faithfully reconstructing a particular socio-historical context as Huntington’s decision to adopt a methodology that he feels openly exhibits a “Buddhist hermeneutics” (Bynum, Holy Feast…4-5; Huntington, “Methodological…” 8). Notably, each author prioritizes (and searches for) an interpretive framework that sympathizes with the historical-cultural context of the subject matter.
Coupled with Bynum’s and Huntington’s more explicit advocacy of understanding texts within their own contexts, this practice betrays a kind of anxiety regarding how modern methods and theories are to be employed in the study of historical phenomena. When Bynum asks whether or not we can intellectually extend beyond our own “twentieth-century perspective” and get at the intentionality of a particular historical text, her question suggests that our own historical-cultural situation has the ability to blind us to the authenticity of the past (“In Praise…” 21). Similarly, Huntington’s reference to D.S. Regg cautions scholars against imposing their own historical circumstance and subsequent worldview on an era that existed outside of that particular frame of reference (“Methodological…” 8). Given these concerns, I wonder whether or not assuaging anxiety over the application of modern methods and theories is part of what Bynum and Huntington directly (or indirectly) attribute to the historical task?
Although neither of these authors go as far to say that the concerns that motivate twentieth-century methods and theories make them irrelevant to subjects in the historical past, I am interested in the amount of room that some of their methodological concepts leave for establishing meaningful connections between the practices of “then and now.” For example, in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum states that she prefers “understanding the [medieval] women by their context and the context by the women” (Holy Feast… 7). I do see the value of this approach in terms of the historically accurate findings that it aims to produce, but I wonder whether or not it would support an in-depth comparison of contemporary and medieval devotional fasting (Holy Feast…7). While it may teach the reader to think “medievally,” will it teach one about what to do with this new way of thinking? If Bynum says that one is to avoid drawing “direct answers to modern problems” from an examination of medieval practice, what is one to do about those instances where such a thing may actually be possible (Holy Feast…9)? How might Bynum’s approach discourage adopting certain forms of medieval practice into contemporary ones?
In reading these articles and thinking about historically approaching the study of religion, I am prompted to ask (more generally) what one is to do about the role that tradition plays in religious practice? Does a specific religious tradition somehow extend beyond the scope of historical particularity and make it possible to speak of contemporary and non-contemporary religious society on common ground?
I find this philosophy consoling in its generosity towards the historian, in its willingness to all at once entertain various versions of the same historical occurrence. But I also wonder what this generosity and this willingness do to the ways in which historians and their audiences view/practice the historical task. Does the comic mode of history, in having pluralism instead of “the total” as its goal, change the “responsibility” of the historian and what one can reasonably expect from him or her (25)? Does the comic mode of history attempt to overwhelm the discipline’s emphasis on accurate information about the past with something else? If so, does this effort matter?
In discussing the relationship that their twentieth-century vantage point bears to the pursuit of their historical interests, both Bynum and Huntington present methodological outlooks that help one in thinking further about what contemporary historians are “responsible” for. I found each author’s espousal of meeting subjects of interest on their own terms informative. Bynum’s refusal to read medieval devotional fasting as a branch of anorexia nervosa, for example, displays the same commitment to faithfully reconstructing a particular socio-historical context as Huntington’s decision to adopt a methodology that he feels openly exhibits a “Buddhist hermeneutics” (Bynum, Holy Feast…4-5; Huntington, “Methodological…” 8). Notably, each author prioritizes (and searches for) an interpretive framework that sympathizes with the historical-cultural context of the subject matter.
Coupled with Bynum’s and Huntington’s more explicit advocacy of understanding texts within their own contexts, this practice betrays a kind of anxiety regarding how modern methods and theories are to be employed in the study of historical phenomena. When Bynum asks whether or not we can intellectually extend beyond our own “twentieth-century perspective” and get at the intentionality of a particular historical text, her question suggests that our own historical-cultural situation has the ability to blind us to the authenticity of the past (“In Praise…” 21). Similarly, Huntington’s reference to D.S. Regg cautions scholars against imposing their own historical circumstance and subsequent worldview on an era that existed outside of that particular frame of reference (“Methodological…” 8). Given these concerns, I wonder whether or not assuaging anxiety over the application of modern methods and theories is part of what Bynum and Huntington directly (or indirectly) attribute to the historical task?
Although neither of these authors go as far to say that the concerns that motivate twentieth-century methods and theories make them irrelevant to subjects in the historical past, I am interested in the amount of room that some of their methodological concepts leave for establishing meaningful connections between the practices of “then and now.” For example, in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum states that she prefers “understanding the [medieval] women by their context and the context by the women” (Holy Feast… 7). I do see the value of this approach in terms of the historically accurate findings that it aims to produce, but I wonder whether or not it would support an in-depth comparison of contemporary and medieval devotional fasting (Holy Feast…7). While it may teach the reader to think “medievally,” will it teach one about what to do with this new way of thinking? If Bynum says that one is to avoid drawing “direct answers to modern problems” from an examination of medieval practice, what is one to do about those instances where such a thing may actually be possible (Holy Feast…9)? How might Bynum’s approach discourage adopting certain forms of medieval practice into contemporary ones?
In reading these articles and thinking about historically approaching the study of religion, I am prompted to ask (more generally) what one is to do about the role that tradition plays in religious practice? Does a specific religious tradition somehow extend beyond the scope of historical particularity and make it possible to speak of contemporary and non-contemporary religious society on common ground?
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