Whose fetish?
Recognizing the influence of “Christian colonialist attitudes” on scholarly discourses about the value of sacred objects means understanding how we are all implicated by our field’s ongoing use of the term “fetish.”
Echoing the lessons from Breann Fallon’s interview with Prof. J. Lorand Matory, respondent Colby Dickinson calls us to account for the ways in which “we are all hypocritical in our assigning of values to certain things and downplaying the value in other things.” This includes, he writes, the theories of fetishism by Marx and Freud to which our field seems inescapably connected.
Colby Dickinson
Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. His work focuses on the relationship of contemporary continental thought and systematic theology, mainly focusing on the works of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Paul Ricoeur. He is the author or editor of numerous books: Theology as […]
The Fetish Revisited: Objects, Hierarchies, and BDSM
In this episode, Breann Fallon talks to Professor J. Lorand Matory about his book “The Fetish Revisited” and his more recent work on white American BDSM as an Afro-Atlantic spiritual practice.
The Fetish Revisited: Objects, Hierarchies, and BDSM with J. Lorand Matory [transcript]
The Fetish Revisited: Objects, Hierarchies, and BDSM with J. Lorand Matory Podcast with J. Lorand Matory (21 Sept. 2020). Interviewed by Breann Fallon Transcribed by Savannah H. Finver Audio and transcript available at: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/the-fetish-revisited-objects-hierarchy-and-bdsm/ KEYWORDS: fetishism, Europe, Enlightenment, Marx, Freud, BDSM, populism, social theory, hierarchy, objects Breann Fallon (BF) 0:06 Thank you, and I’m very […]
J. Lorand Matory
J. Lorand Matory is the Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and the Director of the Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Project at Duke University. The author of four books and more than 50 articles and reviews, he is also the executive producer and screenwriter of five documentary films. In 2003, the President of […]
Health, Wealth, & Spiritual Warfare: The UCKG from Brazil to Australia
Get a global perspective on the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), whose Australian branches were discussed in our recent episode with Dr. Kathleen Openshaw.
Describing the UCKG as a leader in a global Pentecostal vanguard influencing the Catholic Church, respondents Professor Andrew Chesnut and Dr. Kate Kingsbury outline how the UCKG’s focus on health, wealth, and spiritual warfare have been critical to its success with migrants in Australian and around the world.
Navigating stasis and mobility: The journey of anointing oil
How do material objects accrue spiritual capital? In this episode, Dr. Kathleen Openshaw shares a poignant story from a member of the Australia branch of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. As we hear about the global journey of a vial of anointing oil, she explains how we invest objects with significance and connect them to sacred spaces. Especially for the migrant community of UCKG members in Australia, these connections work to collapse the false binary between stasis and mobility that seems so stark in our present moment.
Discourse! The RSP on Current Events
The Religious Studies Project’s critical take on current events.
Navigating stasis and mobility: The journey of anointing oil [transcript]
Navigating stasis and mobility: The journey of anointing oil Podcast with Kathleen Openshaw (14 September 2020). Interviewed by Maxinne Connolly-Panagopoulos Transcribed by David McConeghy Audio and transcript available at: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/navigating-stasis-and-mobility-the-journey-of-anointing-oil/ Maxinne Connolly-Panogoupolos 00:15 I’m Maxine Connolly Panagopoulos and it’s a Thursday evening here in Glasgow and a chilly Friday morning in Sydney. I’m speaking to […]
Kathleen Openshaw
Dr. Kathleen Openshaw is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. She has a PhD from Western Sydney University (Australia), and a Master’s degree in Anthropology and Development Studies (Maynooth University, Ireland). Kathleen’s main research interests are Pentecostalisms from the Global South, local lived migrant religious expressions of globalised Pentecostalisms […]
How Ritual Reveals Margins and Marginalization in Buddhist Studies
Elaine Lai’s response to our roundtable on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Buddhist Ritual highlights the advantages of working across disciplines. In sum, Lai argues, this roundtable and all such interdisciplinary collaborations remind us of how embedded and contingent our terms can be. Those differences matter, especially as we work to decolonize the academy and democratize access to its efforts, for we must “remember that we are all first and foremost human… and it’s time to show up for one another with care,” she concludes.
Elaine Lai
Elaine Lai is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University specializing in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and in particular, the transmission of tantra from India to Tibet. Before Stanford, she spent ten years studying and living in China, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong and Nepal where she had laid out her foundation in Buddhist studies […]
Religious Studies Opportunities Digest – 9 September 2020
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Religious Studies Project Opportunities Digest! In this edition, you will find one chapter call for chapters, one conference call for papers, two workshop, one conference, one job and one research network call for papers opportunities. Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up to […]
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Buddhist Ritual
How does discipline impact the way we see Buddhist ritual? How can more diverse disciplinary conversations help scholars see ritual in new ways? Five scholars from four time zones come together from around the world to discuss the impacts of interdisciplinary approaches to Buddhist ritual.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Buddhist Rituals [transcript]
Podcast with Ralph H. Craig III, Hannah Gould, Youn-mi Kim, and Michelle C. Wang (7 September 2020). Interviewed by Matthew Hayes Transcribed by David McConeghy Audio and transcript available at: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/interdisciplinary-approaches-to-the-study-of-buddhist-ritual/ Matthew Hayes 01:52 Hello, I am Matthew Hayes for the Religious Studies Project. I’d like to welcome listeners to a roundtable titled “Interdisciplinary Approaches […]