American Religion and the New Materialism
Sonia Hazard
What’s so new about new materialism? New materialism is more than a buzzword or this Tuesday’s theoretical vogue. It’s a reconceptualization of material things—chairs, altars, books, robes, neurons—and how these chunks of matter move us, speak to us, and make incessant demands on our thought and practice. What is new about new materialism is its argument that things are agents, in their own rights, with
For this year’s American Academy of Religion in Atlanta (November
21-24), I’ve been involved (with the indefatigable Karen Bray) in
organizing a panel on new materialism in religion, called “Between
Philosophy and a Phenomenological Hard Place: New Materialism as a
Methodology in the Study of Religion.” It’s co-hosted by the Philosophy
of Religion Section and the Theology and Continental Philosophy Group.
American religionists will find much of interest in the panel: the point
is to convey an expansive sense of what new materialism—not only as a
philosophy but also as a method—can do throughout the various subfields
in the study of religion, including American religion. The panel is
designed not only for thing devotees but also the thing-curious.I will open the session by offering a lively introduction to new materialism, drawn from an essay in Religion and Society. I’ll describe its stakes and its relation to more common approaches to materiality in the study of religion. Even in religious material culture studies, the generative power of things receives short shrift. Things tend to be regarded either as secondary symbols of human culture, or as the background against which human subjects conduct their activities.
Three panelists, each representing different subfields in religious studies, will offer remarks that enact the first panelist’s methodological provocation in concrete, case-based ways that speak to the concerns of their subfields. Hillary Kaell will be the first to engage new materialism’s methodological provocation in her ethnographic work on wayside crosses in Quebec. Her remarks are titled, “Seeing the Invisible: Ambient Catholicism on the Side of the Road.” Karen Bray, a philosophical theologian, will follow her, with a paper on “Material Laments: Things that Pray and Temples that Feel.” Then, Peter Anthony Mena, a historian of late antique religion, will offer a reading of Origen in his called “Noetic Bodies: Origen of Alexandria, the New Materialist.” Whitney Bauman will respond and John Modern will chair.
American religion will be very much a part of this conversation, both at the American Academy of Religion meeting and in new materialist scholarship in the future. It is our hope that the panel’s multidisciplinary approach will inspire in a diverse audience an excitement around these new theoretical and methodological tools, and embolden them to put such ideas into practice concretely. No doubt, there also will be vigorous debate.
Comments
It would seem that justifying this premise itself would be the first order of business, then. Per the provided link:
To take seriously the efficacy of nonhuman fat is, then, not only to shift one's idea as what counts as an actor but also to focus one's attention away from individuals and onto actants in assemblages.
I take it this is a good thing.
"The New Materialism" is ~20 years old. At what point--is there a point?--must it justify its place [and bold new ontology!] at the philosophical table, subjected to the critiques and rigors to which all other systems, premises and propositions are also obliged?
Is the project at this point seeking some consensus [coherence] about what it even is? Or is this an umbrella term for an opposition to transcendence
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-body-knows/201309/dancing-the-new-materialism
sort of like "Protestantism," which [esp after 500 years of it] is most descriptive of what it isn't, namely Catholicism.
On a personal note, I do find Ms. Hazard's use of "bias" here
That is, they remain anthropocentric and beholden to the biases against materiality deeply entrenched in the study of religion.
disturbing because the pejorative "bias" begs the question, suggesting that "materiality" [New Materialism?] has established a legitimacy that to question would be "biased." As previously noted, it's not self-evident it's won legitimacy at the philosophical table; indeed, it's unclear it's even established a coherent table of its own.
It is our hope that the panel’s multidisciplinary approach
Until its bona fides as at least a coherent philosophical premise have been established, that its "new theoretical and methodological tools" should be employed by other disciplines is contraindicated.