Journal of the American Academy of Religion Advance Access originally published online on April 8, 2009
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2009 77(1):81-104; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfp012
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All Work and No Play: Chaos, Incongruity and Différance in The Study of Religion
Tyler Roberts, Department of Religious Studies, Grinnell College, 1120 Park Street, Grinnell, IA 50112, USA
E-mail: robertst{at}grinnell.edu
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Abstract |
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The last two decades have been fascinating and productive ones for theorists of religion. Recent work has offered a remarkably wide range of theoretical perspectives and possibilities that enrich our field even as they plunge us into vigorous theoretical debates. Amidst this contest—even confusion—some basic principles for guiding future work seem to be asserting themselves. Many think that, after a century of confusion and intermingling between theology and the study of religion, scholars of religion are finally in a position to establish the study of religion on properly academic, theoretical foundations. In this story Eliade's antireductionist discourse of the "sacred" becomes the epitome and, it is hoped, the last gasp of religious studies as a quasi-theological discourse. Yet despite their efforts to guide the study of religion away from Eliade, many remain Eliadan insofar as they accept Eliade's "locative" approach to religion. Yet is it really "theology" that is currently limiting the way we "imagine religion," or might it be instead the refusal to think beyond religion's locative function—a refusal very closely linked to the desire for academic respectability in a historicist age? Mark C. Taylor's After God provocatively disturbs the idea that religion is primarily locative and, in doing so, also disturbs the boundaries between the theological and the theoretical, religion and the study of religion. I consider the significance of this virtual map of religion, by reading After God with and against J. Z. Smith's early reflections or experiments with the ideas of chaos, incongruity, and location. I argue that Taylor's book leads us back to paths from which Smith turned in his early work.