Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions
Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions
Professor of Comparative Studies
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
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Abstract
Irreverence and the Sacred brings together some of the most cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and international scholars working today to debate key issues in the critical and comparative study of religion. The project is inspired in large part by the work of Bruce Lincoln, whose influential and wide-ranging scholarship has consistently posed challenging, provocative, and often irreverent questions that have really pushed the boundaries of the field of religious studies in important, sometimes controversial ways. Retracing the history of the discipline of religious studies, Lincoln argues that the field has consistently championed a “validating, feel-good” approach to religion rather than posing more critical questions about religious claims to authority and their role in history, politics, and social change. A critical approach to the history of religions, he suggests, would focus on the human, temporal, and material aspects of phenomena that are claimed to have a superhuman, eternal, or transcendent status. This volume takes up Lincoln’s challenge to “do better” by engaging in critical analyses of four key themes in the study of religion: myth, ritual, gender, and politics. A reflexive volume, the book also interrogates the “politics of scholarship” itself, critically examining the relations of power and material interests at work in the study as well as the practice of religion. The scholars involved in this project include not only some of the most important figures in the American study of religion—such as Wendy Doniger, Russell McCutcheon, Ivan Strenski, and Lincoln himself—but also European scholars whose work is hugely influential overseas but not well known in the United States—such as Stefan Arvidsson, Claude Calame, Nicolas Meylan, and others.
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Front Matter
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Introduction: Destabilizing the Sacred: A Critical History of Religions
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Part I Myth and Narrative
Hugh B. Urban andGreg Johnson-
1
(Mythical) Battles in Medieval Scandinavia: Battle Narratives and the Construction of Society
Nicolas Meylan
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2
Moscow, Third Rome, and the Uses of Ressentiment: An Essay in Myth Criticism
Ivan Strenski
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3
How the Arthashastra and the Kamasutra Got Away with Their Critiques of Dharma
Wendy Doniger
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4
Authority Apart from Truth: Superhero Comic Book Stories as Myths
Kevin J. Wanner
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5
Myths and Utopias, Critics and Caretakers: In Defense of Revisionist History
Stefan Arvidsson
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1
(Mythical) Battles in Medieval Scandinavia: Battle Narratives and the Construction of Society
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Part II Ritual and Practice
Hugh B. Urban andGreg Johnson -
Part III Gender and Sexuality
Hugh B. Urban andGreg Johnson -
Part IV Power, Politics, and the Politics of Scholarship
Hugh B. Urban andGreg Johnson-
12
Historicizing the Elephant in the Room
Russell T. McCutcheon
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13
What Is Religion? Between Christianocentric Paradigm and Anthropological Relativism
Claude Calame
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14
Rereading Charlie Hebdo: Of Irreverence and Laïcité
S. Romi Mukherjee
- Afterword: An Interview with Bruce Lincoln on Religion, Comparison, and the Politics of Scholarship
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12
Historicizing the Elephant in the Room
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End Matter
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