Afterlife of Fetish: ‘Liminal Ethnography’ in the Study of Religion/s
The idea of studying religion/s from the material perspective has quickly gained importance, becoming one of the currently favored approaches in the discipline. At the onset of the study of religion/s, however, religious materials were characterized as fetish, a concept which, unfortunately, gained...
Saved in:
| Published in: | Religious Materials: Emic Perspectives - Etic Constructions - Museum Classifications. REDIM Conference 2021 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Contributors: | , |
| Format: | Presentation |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Video |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | The idea of studying religion/s from the material perspective has quickly gained importance, becoming one of the currently favored approaches in the discipline. At the onset of the study of religion/s, however, religious materials were characterized as fetish, a concept which, unfortunately, gained notoriety for representing everything wrong about (knowledge regarding) religion, especially, in Africa. However, with the rise of the material approach in the study of religion/s, the concept of fetish is being rehabilitated as a productive research approach. In this concept paper, I propose that the aim of scholars to improve knowledge production about religion/s by interpreting the relationship between religious materials and their users is better served by paying close attention to the subjectivity of religious materials (read fetish). I argue that the consideration of fetishes as active and living subjects (Hazard 2013), a thoroughly African view of religious materials, provides a curious intersection between the cultural other (positionality) and the epistemological other (liminality) in research. Liminality transforms the emic-etic binary into a threshold of an outsider-insider nexus and initiates a paradigm shift from “positional” to “liminal ethnography” in the study of religions. This shift is necessary for unpacking the pulsating and multi-dimensional layers of relations that religious materials evoke. |
|---|---|
| DOI: | 10.17192/es2022.0009 |