Speaking Theory to Power

Abstract

Abstract Religious studies scholars invested in something called “method and theory” seem intent on remaining stuck in a conversation dictated by proving our political worth in the world. That desire to move outside the walls of the academy ironically keeps us trapped inside one of its smallest and most unfortunate corners, where a theory/praxis binary is manufactured and propagated, kept alive by our personal anxieties about our professional value. My comments here aim to address this proliferating anxiety that continues to have an overdetermined presence in the field – an anxiety that manufactures a moral panic out of critical theory, limiting our intellectual possibilities and keeping us talking in circles in the process.