Material Religion The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief Editorial statement (original) (raw)
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Material Religion 15, 5, 2019
Material approaches to religion are nowadays indispensable components of the study of religion.As long as the researcher sees herself as ontologically separate from the things she is investigating and exercises self-reflexivity on the social, bodily, and sensual engagement in her research efforts, we are on safe ground. However, if we are determined to take the consequences of the material turn to their logical extreme, this ground becomes shaky.
In recent years, the “material turn” has gained prominence in the humanities and social sciences, and it has also stimulated a shift toward a rediscovery of materiality in the scientific study of religion\s. The material turn aims to dissolve conventional dichotomies and, by emphasizing the concept of assemblage, insists that humans and things are fundamentally co-constitutive. This “New Materialism” addresses ontological alterity, and it radically decenters static anthropocentric arrangements and the position of the human subject as such. The insider–outsider distinction, however, as well as the emic–etic categorization, is based on fundamental dichotomies between the researcher and the researched, and between descriptive and analytical understandings of human beings. This article discusses the possibility and significance of a non-anthropocentric approach to religion, and examines to what extent it is analytically helpful to apply the insider–outsider and emic–etic distinctions while pursuing the goal of dissolving hierarchical and binary thinking. It furthermore argues that these issues can be properly answered only with reference to their methodological implications.
Beyond the Material: Toward a Proper Understanding and Engagement with the Material in Christianity
Tracing a thread through Plato's realms and Forms, a renaissance of Aristotelian thought within Medieval Scholasticism, and the turn away from viewing nature through the metaphysical via the Nominalist movement of Roscelin of Compiègne and William of Ockham, I lay a groundwork for the understanding the encounter of the transcendent through the material within the Christian tradition by way of examining iconoclasm. This traced thread is for the purpose of drawing an outline of historical Christian thought regarding veneration of material objects, and from there developing a proper understanding of veneration in relation to how the immaterial is reflected in the material, particularly in Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions.