Religious studies cannot agree on a common definition of its subject matter. To breakthe impasse, important insights from recent discussions about post-foundationalpolitical theory might be of some help. However, they can only be of benefit in conversations about “religion” when the previous debate on the subject matter of religiousstudies is framed slightly differently. This is done in the first part of the article. It is,then, shown on closer inspection of past discussions on “religion” that a consensuscapable, contemporary, everyday understanding of “religion,” here called Religion 2,is assumed, though it remains unexplained and unreflected upon. The second partof the article shows how Religion 2 can be newly conceptualized through the lensof Ernesto Laclau’s political theory, combined with concepts from Judith Butler andMichel Foucault, and how Religion 2 can be established as the historical subject matter of religious studies. Though concrete historical reconstructions of Religion 2 alwaysremain contested, I argue that this does not prevent it from being generally acceptedas the subject matter of religious studies. The third part discusses the previous findingsin the light of postcolonial concerns about potential Eurocentrism in the concept of“religion.” It is argued that Religion 2 has to be understood in a fully global perspective,and, as a consequence, more research on the global religious history of the 19th and20th centuries is urgently needed.
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 26 (2014) 246-286 265 266 Bergunder secular and has, in this function, no positive meaning. The same signifiers, then, have each a very different position in the fixing of meaning. The religious and the secular would be free floating signifiers and not simply related to each other as a contrasting pair as, for example, Fitzgerald claims (Fitzgerald 2007). 2.1.2.4 Laclaus concern is to show how political hegemony is produced, how the political is necessarily registered in the social, and how every naming is a fundamental political act, a discontinuous, newly-created and, at the same time, contingent process, which carries out an actually impossible closure and, with this, produces the social grouping and its identity. The political is here extricated from the narrowness of politics and is registered for society as a possible course of action, without falling back into essentialist reasoning.
id: 5590cbac20e879792bcf98c18230bfe3 - page: 20
History of the Name Instead of a History of the Concept This political intention does not lie behind the deliberations on the historicisation of religion described here. However, a promising option is to replace the conceptual history with a history of the name. This is possible through a change of perspective, in which the naming obtains a history. Up till now, with Laclau, we can explain the name religion only in its discontinuous and purely present formation, but not in terms of its continuity and history. Laclau has slight interest in the historical dimension of his theory. It only appears where he discusses the social in opposition to the political, and also when he takes and reinterprets the concept pair of sedimentation/reactivation from Edmund Husserl:
id: c3eaa0cf259bac2fd5446eef8ee03815 - page: 21
The way I am presenting the argument is that we live in a world of sedimented social practices. The moment of reactivation consists not in going to an original founding moment, as in Husserl, but to an original contingent decision through which the social was instituted. This moment of the institution of the social through contingent decisions is what I call the political (Laclau in Worsham & Olson 1999: 18). While Laclau is principally interested in how the social can again become political, the historical view addresses more the process through which the political becomes settled in social affairs (sedimented) and obtains a socioinstitutional existence. Laclau gives only a few indications as to how he imagines this sedimentation process. He highlights the moment of objectivization and the simultaneous concealment of the fact that this is about fossilized practices of power (Marchart 2010: 204): Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 26 (2014) 246-286
id: 94f0bc00d52e7919979ec31d879e1521 - page: 21
What is Religion? Insofar as an act of institution has been successful, a forgetting of the origins tends to occur; the system of possible alternatives tends to vanish and the traces of the original contingency to fade. In this way, the instituted tends to assume the form of a mere objective presence. This is the moment of sedimentation. It is important to realize that this fading entails a concealment (Laclau 1990: 34).
id: 11147fb5347db395d77ab6d44f4158d2 - page: 22