@mpgPhD begins with a summary of her paper: “The Field Which is Not One/The Body is Smart: Rethinking the Study of Religion. naasrreligion.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/gender…
@Naked_Nihilist Tenzan Eaghll is moderating this #naasr2018 panel.
“This paper is a performance of radical citation politics.” @mpgPhD discussing the importance of thinking whose cultural work counts as theory—especially in light of the gendered cultural politics of knowledge production.
Theory too often is a statement of who is legible to the academy (and not) rather than as a fundamental expression of scholarship at work.
Objectivity cannot be cited as protection or a boundary for what we might think about when our citations and conversation partners are so clearly gendered and radicalized.
How can theories of gender and sexuality help us think about what religion does (rather) than what religion is?
How might are forms of expressive performance (and genres of communication) transform our scholarship?
What impact does centering underrepresented and marginalized voices in scholarship but also the classroom? We’ll now learn about success and failures in the classroom in light of this.
Take a look at the volume just cited, books.google.com/books/about/Af…
How do we transpose the gender and political concerns of modern theory in ancient contexts? Comparison challenges us to refocus on action rather than essence—similar to what @mpgPhD proffers.
Worth noting that the sites of analysis for stars Baldrick-Marrone (here particularly early Xian modernism) gets imaged and how that might compare with the gendered action and gaze around Santa Muerte. What happens when we change the subject?
Who is used to help make observations (a la citations) and what happens as a result? Tara Baldrick-Marrone’s theorizing has shown efforts in attention to this but she admits room to grow.
One benefit of this is that our references also make statements about who is and stays in the room... classroom, guild, library.
@emilydcrews now responds to @mpgPhD and frames the importance of thinking about the semiotic layers of the paper and the social structure in which it is received.
@emilydcrews trains focus on this line from @mpgPhD : “Every piece of writing about religion offers a theory of what religion is and what it does.”
2 questions for discussion: (1) does de-centering and re-centering replicate the critiqued social framework. Are there other possibilities of social organization?
(2) must one occupy a marginalized subject position to do the kind of work being called for by @mpgPhD ? And what are the politics of this, limits, possibilities?
Is X best studied by people x? What does one make of the insider/outsider problem? Must our theory be legible to the people being discussed?
Where Tara Baldrick-Marrone discussed how @mpgPhD’s works in the classroom, @emilydcrews bring us to the question of fieldwork, particularly ethnography.
Consider the metaphors used to convey and conduct the work of ethnography... mining, taking, etc.? What might midwifery help us reimagine the relationships and significations of the scholar?
What do bodies come to mean in constitution of weak v. Muscle Jew in the Zi0nist movement and political imagining?
Interesting to note the similarities of boys and girl brigades across different laten19c and early 20c Xian denominations and then European Judaism (also the scout movement rises in different nations too).
Also interesting to see that Jews on various sides of the issue of Zi0nism appeal to Bar Kochba and the Maccabees. @mpgPhD’s discussion of action and bodies + @emilydcrews discussion of significations and subjectivities can help connect dots.
Note: Tim Langille is discussing how the Muscle Jew image of WW1 draws upon antique Jewish history (e.g. Bar Kochba).
