Religion, Emotion, Sensation

Abstract

Religion, Emotion, Sensation asks what the blooming field of critical inquiry known as affect theory has to say about God or gods, religion or religions, scriptures, theologies, or liturgies. Contributors explore the crossings and crisscrossings between affect theory and theology and the study of religion more broadly. At once transpersonal and prepersonal, affect transcends and subtends the human. As such, it has affinity with divinity, but a divinity that is indissociable from materiality. Bringing together affect theorists, theologians, biblical scholars, and scholars of religion, this volume enacts creative transdisciplinary interventions in the study of affect and religion through exploring such topics as biblical narratives, Christology, animism, Rastafarianism, the Egyptian mosque movement, the unending Korean War, the Sewol ferry disaster, trans and gender queer identities, YA fiction, historiography, the prison industrial complex, debt and neoliberalism, and death and poetry, all in dialogue with such fields as postcolonial and decolonial theories, critical animality studies, secular theology, feminist science studies, new materialism, and indigenous futurism. Not only does the volume map affect theory and add breadth and depth to the study of affect and religion, but it demonstrates the political and social import of such study. Those desiring an introduction to affect theory, together with those eager to delve into its wide-ranging applications within religious studies, will find this volume to be essential reading.