Religious Turn Research Articles

Non-philosophical Christ-poetics beyond the mystical turn in conversation with continental philosophy of religion

The religious turn in continental philosophy has opened the door for postmetaphysical mystical theology. Postmetaphysical mystical theology seeks to understand the non-relation relation of language (text) to the Other. Yet, this non-relation relation to the Other, who is every other, can also be interpreted differently to the mystical understanding. For example, Žižek argues that the Other, which is often experienced as the uncanny, the unpredictable and the contingent (lived spirituality), is not necessarily the result of some mystical unknowable Otherness but is a consequence of the way the subject’s own activity is inscribed into reality. These experiences of lived spirituality or experiences of Otherness can, rather than being interpreted as an in-breaking of the mystical Other, be interpreted otherwise, as a grammatological consequence of the inability and impossibility of language (Lacan). Therefore, in this article, Žižek’s thoughts function as a bridge to bring this mystical turn back into critical conversation with continental philosophy and particularly with the thoughts of Derrida, Laruelle and Stiegler. The contemporary mystical turn in theology rediscovers something of this non-religious religion. Derrida’s thoughts are in close proximity to negative theology and yet there is an important difference. This difference will be explored and further developed towards Laruelle’s non-philosophy, which does not translate into a non-religion religion or postmetaphysical metaphysics but remains a non-philosophy or maybe a science of Christ. This article will conclude with a tentative exploration of a postmetaphysical Christ-poetics beyond the mystical turn.

Christian Science and American Literary History

The religious turn in American literary studies has produced new interest in religious movements from the turn of the 20th century, and due to the opening of archives, Christian Science is one possible direction that research in this area might turn. Yet until very recently, literary scholarship related to Christian Science has been extremely flawed, due mostly to over-reliance on a few problematic sources. This article offers an overview of the issues that have impacted that research while suggesting that promising work is beginning to emerge.

The Kyoto School: An Introduction by Robert E. Carter

Reviewed by: The Kyoto School: An Introduction by Robert E. Carter Bret W. Davis Review of Robert E. Carter, The Kyoto School: An Introduction (with a Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis) Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013, 236 + xxii pages Over the past two decades, Robert Carter has played an important role in the reception of Japanese philosophy among Anglophone scholars and students. His role has been that of a bridge builder between the specialized research of scholars on the one hand and newcomers interested in getting a first foothold in the field on the other. Trained as a philosopher, Carter later spent some time in Japan, learning enough of the language to work with a Japanese counterpart to translate Watsuji’s magnum opus into accurate and fluid English prose. Yet the niche that Carter has so fruitfully filled is not so much that of a philological expert who delves into and excavates a narrow range of Japanese texts and scholarship. Rather, Carter works mainly with available translations and secondary literature spanning a wide range of traditional and modern Japanese thought, which for his readers he interpretively filters down into a digestible and engaging set of descriptions, explanations, theses, and arguments. This has resulted in a set of monographs that are very well suited to students and nonspecialist scholars, as well as to general readers who want to know whether and [End Page 301] why they should be interested in Japanese philosophy in the first place. Personally, the book of Carter’s I find most useful in the college classroom is the wide-ranging Encounter with Enlightenment: A Study of Japanese Ethics (SUNY, 2001). But his latest book, the one here under review, also admirably succeeds in achieving its aim. That aim is expressly not to provide a comprehensive survey of the major Kyoto School philosophies, the development and detail of which, he cautions, would each more than fill an entire volume. Rather, Carter intends his book to serve as an enticing entranceway into the field. As he acknowledges in his Conclusion, “A difficulty with any introductory text is that it must leave out a great deal if it is to truly serve as an introduction” (153). Letting other available works (especially James Heisig’s Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School [Hawaii University Press, 2001] and also my own “The Kyoto School” [in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]) orient those interested to the fuller array of the thought of and scholarship on the Kyoto School, Carter clearly states that “the aim of the present study is to introduce each thinker and to tie that account to a major, readily accessible, text.” The four thinkers he chooses to focus on are the three leading figures of the School: Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), and Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990), plus a noteworthy philosopher more tangentially related to the School: Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). For each of these four philosophers, Carter focuses his attention on one key book that is readily available in English translation: Nishida’s An Inquiry into the Good, Tanabe’s Philosophy as Metanoetics, Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness, and Watsuji Tetsurō’s Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan. Moreover, Carter makes no attempt to systematically or comprehensively analyze these books. Rather, he seeks to go straight to the heart of why he feels these works are interesting and important. Carter is right to warn us that his focus on one key work per philosopher does not allow us to see the development of their ideas. No matter how important the selected books may be, they are but snapshots in the overall trajectory of the authors’ paths of thought. For example, Tanabe is presented as a predominantly Shin (Pure Land) Buddhist thinker, who relies on faith and who is critical of the limits of reason, because the focus is on his 1946 Philosophy as Metanoetics. Yet this text represents a kind of religious turn in Tanabe’s path of thought. Before that time, as Carter notes, Tanabe had emphasized the power of dialectical reason and had been critical of Nishida for relying on what he considered to be transrational mystical experience. Moreover...

Action and Reflection (ii)

This is the second article in a series of two on the topic of “action” and “reflection”. The first article appeared last year in the fall issue of this journal (Vol. 79 (2), 140–171). This second article is divided into two sections. The first section deals with reflection, mainly in the form of reflexivity, a central notion in contemporary sociology and an attitude characteristic of the modern secular mind. The second section discusses second-order agency (soag), subdivided intospiritsandpowers. Most instances of (humanly engendered) spirits fall under an “as if” category: all these cases are about certain communalities expressing themselves in such a strong way that itseemsas if a supra-personal agent is at work.Zeitgeisterare a point in case. The only incidence of asoag-kind may be that ofmobs. Powers fit our model better than spirits and for that reason most of the second part of this essay is dedicated to that topic. The foremost distinction that will be made is that between incomplete and full powers. The thesis presented in the final section is that powers can only come to completion by taking a “religious turn”. The notion of “assent” as a basic ingredient of human action is what connects the first to the second part of the essay.

Robyn Malo Relics and Writing in Late Medieval EnglandRelics and Writing in Late Medieval England. Robyn Malo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. vii+298.

<i>Robyn Malo</i> Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England<i>Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England</i>. Robyn Malo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. vii+298.

Andrew Hadfield The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1500–1640The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1500–1640. Edited by Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. viii+744.

<i>Andrew Hadfield</i> The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1500–1640<i>The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1500–1640</i>. Edited by Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. viii+744.

ENCOUNTER, DIALOGUE, AND KNOWLEDGE: ITALY AS A SPECIAL CASE OF RELIGIOUS ENGAGEMENT IN FOREIGN POLICY

The “religious turn” in the study of international relations has started to break through and inform concrete policy discussions. The first part of this article briefly explains that breakthrough a...

“Oft in my face he doth his banner rest”

AbstractThis paper aims to shed light on the influence that metaphors of war as used in Pauline writings had on early English literature. The particular metaphorical exploitation of the semantic field of war fell on fertile ground in English contexts. For instance, the motifs of genuine English heroic poetry lent themselves well to be a canvas for a ‘religious turn’ in metaphor interpretation. To illustrate this process, selected examples from Old to Present-Day English are discussed from a cognitive linguistics perspective. The findings suggest that the forging of an English poetry tradition was accompanied by a continually recontextualising use of war metaphors. Finally, the analysis of the text samples is embedded into a model of general metaphor incorporation in literature.

Locke and the Fundamental Right to Preservation: on the Convergence of Charity and Property Rights

AbstractLooking to the relatively recent “religious turn” in Locke scholarship, this paper argues for an interpretation that reconciles two apparently contradictory aspects of his thought: on the one hand, property rights, thought absolute by many of Locke's readers; on the other hand, Locke's notion of duties of charity. On the basis of a rereading of the “Essay on the Poor Law,” I argue that Lockean charity may ground coercively enforceable distributive obligations. Nevertheless, I contend that the redistributive poor-relief system grounded on the principle of charity does not infringe property rights. The reason for this is that the right to charity and the right to property are both based on Locke's theological commitment to the right of each man to the means of preservation.

The Religious Turn: A Review Essay

The Religious Turn: A Review Essay

Arjakovsky, Antoine. Jerry Ryan John A. Jillions and Michael Plekon. (review)

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 526 literature’ (p. 114). Such occasional infelicities are understandable given the unfortunate absence of the author during the final editing stages, and they can be easily corrected in the second edition (which Slobin’s insightful study certainly deserves). UCL SSEES Maria Rubins Arjakovsky, Antoine. The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940. Translated by Jerry Ryan, edited by John A. Jillions and Michael Plekon. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2013. xiv + 766 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $65.00 (paperback); $45.50 (e-book). Antoine Arjakovsky’s The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and their Journal, 1925–1940 is a valuable work of remarkable erudition on a topic of considerable importance — the significance and legacy of the development of Russian religious thought outside the Soviet Union, which has important implications that extend well beyond Slavonic and East European Studies. At a time in which the humanities and social sciences are undergoing a religious turn, the notion of the post-secular is preoccupying a substantial number of philosophers and sociologists, and the relevance of religion to modern history and contemporary global society is more evident than it has been in decades, one can only welcome the translation into English of a work such as The Way. Arjakovsky’s main primary source base is the journal The Way (Put´), edited by Nikolai Berdiaev and published by the Academy of Religious Philosophy with YMCA support, and his ambitious task consists of situating and assessing the journal and its contributors — the ‘generation’ of The Way — in their own historical context, as well as exploring the contemporary memory and continuing relevance of this generation. Arjakovsky brings truly impressive theoretical sophistication and breadth of context to bear, turning to archival collections housed in Russia, France and the United States in addition to numerous print sources. He divides the journal’s existence into three distinct periods, ‘modernist’ (1925–29), ‘nonconformist’ (1930–35) and ‘spiritual’ (1935– 40), demonstrating the utility of this periodization through his analysis of how the key events and shifting concerns of the interwar period were reflected on the pages of The Way and in the lives and activities of its contributors. Moving human portraits of many of the latter — Berdiaev, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, Lev Shestov, Fr. Georges Florovsky, Mother Maria Skobtsova and others — emerge as Arjakovsky examines the ‘mytho-logical’ character of their thinking, tracing the external challenges and internal divisions they faced as REVIEWS 527 they grappled with theological, liturgical and jurisdictional questions, social and political issues and institution building in a tense and turbulent time. Arjakovsky’s narrative is rich in detail and illuminating analysis of important episodes (the Sophiology dispute, the Fedotov affair, Orthodox Action). One of the book’s most valuable contributions is its thorough cataloguing and assessment of the ways in which the Russian Orthodox intellectuals at its centre interacted with and influenced Western individuals and institutions. It will undoubtedly be required reading for those interested in such interactions or in tracing continuity and break across the Silver Age/émigré divide. In terms of flaws, however, within each long subsection devoted to one of the journal’s three periods, the text meanders to the point of losing a clear overarching narrative logic. All the while, Arjakovsky introduces a dizzying array of sometimes overlapping analytical terms without adequately defining them, probably a product of insufficient distance from his sources. These organizational issues hinder readability, particularly in light of the book’s considerable length. In the afterword to the English translation, Arjakovsky laments that the reception of the French and Russian editions of the book ‘remained confined to a narrow circle of specialists’ (p. 571). It is thus regrettable that the English translation does nothing to remedy this situation, which might have been addressed by turning the translation into a revised, updated and possibly abridged edition. As things stand, the only audience the English translation is likely to reach that would not be capable of reading the book in Russian and/ or French probably consists of a subset of English-speaking theologians with at least some pre-existing interest in Russian religious...

AN AWARENESS OF WHAT IS MISSING: VOYEURISM AND THE REMEDIATION OF TRANSCENDENCE IN ARNOLD STADLER'S SEHNSUCHT AND SALVATORE

ABSTRACTEngaging with the current debate on secularism and the new religious turn in contemporary German literature, my paper explores the interdependence of voyeurism and transcendence in Arnold Stadler's Sehnsucht. Versuch über das erste Mal and Salvatore. Stadler's works articulate a poetics of longing that encompasses both the carnal and the transcendental. While the first part analyses the enmeshing of the protagonist's sexually charged scopophilic curiosity with his desire for transcendence in Sehnsucht, the second part analyses the sublimation and remediation of voyeurism in Salvatore. Here Stadler draws on Pasolini's film The Gospel According to Matthew and on Caravaggio's The Calling of St Matthew to set in train a complex circuit of intermedial and intertextual exchange. The conversion of Biblical text into film and Renaissance art and the reconversion of visual images into fictional text emphatically appeals to the reader's imaginative participation for the recovery of transcendence. Salvatore envisages a model of participatory discipleship that aims to unleash an aesthetically engendered presence in the recipient. Faith is no longer a matter of doctrinal teaching but an intermedial experience based on the persuasiveness of aesthetic images.

The Problem of the Postsecular

What are we to do with the sacred? Jonathan Freedman recently posed this as “one of the great unanswered questions of contemporary literary criticism.” Readers of this special issue of American Literary History might frame the question differently, or dispute the largeness with which it looms, unyielding and intractable, at the horizon of our discipline. As early Americanists Justine Murison and Jordan Alexander Stein have noted, “the ‘religious turn’ in literary studies—taking place since the late 1990s but reimagined in more urgent terms following 9/11—has made a discipline-wide fashion of what had long been one of the most bread-and-butter concerns of our field” (1). Yet as Freedman voices it, the question of the sacred seems still to bewilder and hush, as though it were a daring, even destabilizing inquiry for literary scholarship to pursue. The sense that the “religious turn,” for those who do pursue it, marks the bold trespass of a tacit ban speaks to the enduring hold of the secularization narrative on American literary studies. The dominant narrative of secularization into which the academic study of literature in America fits its own emergence is a story of the West’s gradual but decisive emancipation from dependence on religious structures of organization, value, and meaning. In broadest outlines, the secularization story begins in the flowerings of intellection and creativity, within and against the structures of the Catholic Church, that have come to characterize the European Renaissance. The story continues in the Reformation, which upended the spiritual and political hegemony of Rome, and in the treaties that ended the so-called Wars of Religion by carving out separate domains of religious and political authority. Henceforward, the latter would be grounded in purportedly universal reason; the former, on Luther’s model, in inward, revelatory, and eventually discretionary forms of faith. This settlement lays the ground for democracy and

The Fate of Theology after the Speculative Turn

It will be our contention that the religious turn in continental philosophy has little to offer the domain of theology, despite the resurgence of interest in the latter on account of the historical trajectory of the former, and that, consequently, speculative theologians should welcome Meillassoux’s ‘critique of Critique’. We will come to see that Meillassoux’s work has opened up a space for theological discourse, albeit one limited on polarized ends: on the one hand, Meillassoux's rejection of dogmatic pre-critical metaphysics, and on the other, the judgment that contemporary continental philosophy of religion is an historical error based on the faulty reasoning of post-Kantian epistemological finitism. The former pole guards against the vampiric return of classical metaphysical theology, and the latter warns of the dangers associated with various contextual theologies, stemming as they do from the “religionizing of reason”. Our proposal will be that a specific form of theology can find its way through this narrow passage, and that a thorough rapprochement with Meillassoux’s critique of religious and theological thought in After Finitude can be had without completely abandoning theological discourse.

Book Review: Biblical Paradigms in Medieval English Literature: From Cèdmon to Malory

Biblical Paradigms in Medieval English Literature: From Coedmon to Malory. By Lawrence Besserman. New York: Routledge, 2012. ISBN 978-0-415-89794-5. Pp. xii + 219. $141.00. In this study of canonical literary texts, Lawrence Besserman, emeritus professor of English at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, continues an argument for imbricated nature of secular and sacred in English culture that also drove his editorial work on Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Besserman offers thorough readings of Caedmon's Hymn and two Middle English lyrics as well as detailed readings of portions of Old English Exodus, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and Green Knight, Troilus and Criseyde, and Le Morte Darthur. The volume is extensively documented, with notes and bibliography comprising 69 of 219 numbered pages. It would be useful to budding medievalist or any reader desiring orientation to these works and scholarship surrounding them, scholarship which has, as Besserman writes in contextualizing his study, recently taken a religious turn (especially in work of Nicholas Watson) that allows for new, post-Robertsonian ways of understanding role of religion in ostensibly secular works (3). For D. W. Robertson, Jr., a towering figure in Chaucerian studies, problem of interrelationship between sacred and secular in culture was only a pseudo-problem since the secular is always assimilated to sacred. For Besserman, however, such an astigmatic viewpoint assumes an orthodoxy among authors in question that is questionable (5). Besserman posits a fluidity between sacred and secular concerns, meaning that medieval English writers could appropriate derived sacred motifs to express secular themes, and vice versa (4). Paradigm is clearly a key term in study, a term that also served Besserman in his capacity as editor of 1996 Routledge volume The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives. For Besserman, a functions in English culture at most level in bifurcating world into godly and demonic. According to this dualistic shared religious-ideological horizon world is at once to Devil and a breeding ground for those well-known temptations to sin that, if succumbed to, will cause people to end up (if unrepentant) eternally damned, and home to Savior and those remedies for sin that lead people (if repentant) to eternal bliss (135). Within this overarching exist lesser paradigms derived from Bible, including Trinitarian and psalmic structures in Caedmon's Hymn and Davidic motifs in Beowulf. One could perhaps quibble at expansiveness of definition that acquires within Besserman's study, since biblical paradigm may mean essentially any selection from or combination of biblically derived diction, imagery, characterization, plot motifs, and themes (1). In Malory chapter, for example, Besserman argues that Kevin Grimm's observation in Malory's narrative of a parallel with deuteronomistic view of history that shapes much of Hebrew Bible is certainly valid, but far too general (123). It seems to me, however, that what Grimm observes is properly a and fully deserves that appellation, whereas association between King Pelles and Joseph of Arimathea that Besserman notes by way of extending Grimm's insight is merely an allusion. (Better is Besserman's next addition, which retells how Hermit who chastises Lancelot does so by means of exemplum of Christ's cursing of fruitless fig tree.) Forcing some rigid distinction between allusion and would be tendentious, however, as well as unfaithful to spirit of Besserman's project, which denies that secular and sacred occupy different spheres in English culture and concomitantly argues for profane use of sacred and sacred use of profane. …

МетанойяЛ. Толстого

While Tolstoy’s ideological and religious turn is often mentioned in the special literature, the turn in his poetics is hardly ever. The present study focuses on the latter phenomenon. After the turn in his ideology and poetics, Tolstoy searched for such new forms to express his moral and philosophical thoughts as the legend, the apologue, the parable, the hagiography and the confession, etc. He elaborated such a comprehensive form of the short story which approaches the novelette in its length but condenses the conflict in a dramatic manner at the same time. The works to be analyzed here are the following: What Men Live By?, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, Father Sergey, Master and Man, Posthumous Papers of the Elder Fedor Kuzmich, The False Coupon. It is possible to understand the deeper meaning of these parables only if one is able to discover the archetypal mythemes in the deep structure of the concrete text, and trace them back to their primal form, which universalizes the mystery of resurrection for...

Resurrected Bodies and Roger Bacon's Elixir

This article examines Roger Bacon's discussion of alchemical elixirs in the context of medieval religious literature, particularly the formal theology of Bacon's fellow Franciscan, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, and the hagiography of the Dominican friar, Thomas of Cantimpré. Focusing on Bacon's use of the resurrected body as the model for the alchemically enhanced human body, I suggest that Bacon's alchemical presuppositions, while reliant on recently imported natural philosophy, were also in dialogue with thirteenth-century religious discourses. Bacon's integration of religious ideas, particularly the Christian concept of the “dowries” (dotes), i.e. the gifts bestowed upon resurrected bodies after the Last Judgment, occurs prior to what some scholars have characterised as a “religious turn” in alchemy.

Beyond the ‘Religious Turn’? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History

Gender & HistoryVolume 25, Issue 3 p. 395-422 Introduction Beyond the ‘Religious Turn’? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History Joanna de Groot, Joanna de GrootSearch for more papers by this authorSue Morgan, Sue MorganSearch for more papers by this author Joanna de Groot, Joanna de GrootSearch for more papers by this authorSue Morgan, Sue MorganSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 October 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12030Citations: 11Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume25, Issue3Special Issue: Sex, Gender and the Sacred: Reconfiguring Religion in Gender HistoryNovember 2013Pages 395-422 RelatedInformation

Early American Religion in a Postsecular Age

A survey of the journalearly american literaturefrom the mid-1980s to today reveals a curious phenomenon: religion disappears from the tables of contents during the 1990s. Beginning in 2000, religion returns with measured consistency, culminating with a special issue devoted to “methods for the study of religion” in 2010 (Stein and Murison). This resurgence of interest in religion, not only as a topic of inquiry but also as an analytic category, coincides with the “religious turn” that for the past decade has shaped literary studies and the disciplines intersecting with it. In the wake of 9/11 and the political revival of the religious right, Americanists were surprised at the intense and exceptionally religious nature of the United States. Given the religious and political inflections of the war on terror to follow, the academic study of religion could not remain the “invisible domain” that it had been in American and literary studies throughout the 1990s (Franchot). The context demanded a critical response, particularly because the largely liberal and secular academy could not understand the visible fervor of the religious right at the turn of the twenty-first century. Across disparate fields and disciplines, scholars and critics have revisited religion as a serious topic of intellectual inquiry. Over the past decade, work on religion has focused on how literary forms mediate between the human and the divine, the role of a transcendent belief system in relation to political or social formations, and the conjunction between spirit and matter, the supernatural and the natural. In reflecting on such connections between the secular and the sacred, scholars also elicited a concomitant revision of the narrative of secularization that had long impeded the study of religion by defining modernity through religion's absence, irrelevance, and inevitable replacement by competing paradigms.

Soul Matters

Is there a new “religious turn” in early american studies? or do declensions and revivals in scholarly attention to Religious matters suggest something about how religion and spirituality are lived? Witness an episode from the life of Olaudah Equiano, as recorded in his Interesting Narrative (1789), one of the new classics of early American literary study. It is October 1773, and the twenty-eight-year-old Equiano finds himself once again home in London. London, of course, is home in name only. Where is home for Equiano, really? Is it Igbo West Africa, the Carolinas, Philadelphia, London, or the black Atlantic itself? Did Equiano himself even know?