I have just finished reading my blogs and I am intrigued by this Melinda person who was writing blogs for me at the beginning of the year. It is not until I approached the more recent blogs that I began to recognize her a little more. I find it so interesting to read things from when I was younger and try to imagine the kind of person I was, the types of things I was thinking when I wrote those thoughts down. Going back and reading the blog entries, I was struck at how foreign my own thoughts can become in only a matter of months. It is not that I don't remember writing those blogs. It is just that the way I think, the way I write, etc. has changed enough so that approaching those same texts today I might have thought of something different to write. I might have arrived at similar conclusions, but I get the feeling that the process might have been a little different.

Writing these blog entries has been both frustrating and extremely useful/helpful for me. At times the subjects of the readings have undermined my confidence with being able to trust 'knowledge'. We have problematized the idea of really 'knowing' anything to the extent that sometimes I wondered if there was really anything I could really 'know'. Is there such a thing as knowledge in the sense that I can know something to be absolutely true? After reading and discussing the books and articles in this class, I am not so sure.

And yet it is that frustration, that lack of confidence that lead me to some conclusions about scholarship in general and a type of 'approach' I might use when writing papers (maybe not a methodology, but close to one). As I have discussed in some of my other blogs, I find it enjoyable to create art or music that can somehow speak for itself. Using my skills, materials, etc., I can create something meaningful and present it to others for them to interpret and experience. I am the creator of something, but at the same time, I give up a tremendous amount of power and control when I allow other people to experience it. I have come to see scholarship in a similar fashion. I have always enjoyed putting together a paper. Doesn't a paper look so nice when it is all printed out, stapled and ready to be handed in? (ok, maybe this is just me). But I have never made the connection to a creative process. The topics in this class, however, have raised some issues for me regarding research and scholarship. If there is no way to actually 'know' anything, then by writing a paper I am essentially creating something -- being creative-- being responsibly playful, if I may. I am using the skills and materials I have collected in my research and I am putting them together in a unique way with a specific style. Once that composition is presented to other people, as we discussed in last week's class, I give up a certain amount of authority and the text is open to interpretation. The frustration I initially felt, therefore, has given me a certain kind of perspective that I can employ while doing research. While I cannot be confident that my conclusions depict any sort of knowable truth, I can hope that they are at least communicating something. They may raise questions, provoke thoughts, encourage debate. So while my research and thoughts may not lead to any of sort of truth being discovered, could we argue that at least they will encourage more thoughts: 'thinking for the sake of thinking'?
(If anyone is interested in a good song on being productive with feelings of frustrations, see if you can find "There's a lot you can do with rage" by an artist called Waxmannequin". It's one of my favourites).

Another note on the blogs, regarding the useful/helpful side of them. As some of you may have noticed, speaking in public is not one of my strong skills. I have found these blogs useful in providing a forum where I can present the thoughts I have in a less-structured way than is normally expected in an academic paper. While I can find my voice fairly easily in a structured paper, I sometimes have trouble expressing it in a spontaneous conversation. These blogs have allowed me to present some unformed or tentative thoughts to other people and anticipate their comments, concerns, suggestions without being overwhelmed by other anxieties. I'd like to thank all my group members for such interesting blog entries over the year. It has been a pleasure reading them and also reading your comments to my blogs.

In conclusion, this class has allowed me to be uncertain about a lot of things. At the same time, it has taught me that being uncertain is a good methodology in its own right. It can allow for broad, intricate, and surprising inquiries that may not have been allowed to surface if one was too set in what one 'knows'. My next challenge will be to see where this attitude takes me when I attempt to record data for my thesis. Empirical data can seem so authoritative, but I am hopeful that with my skill of 'uncertainty' I might be able to approach that data with a lot of nuanced reflection.

In this week's blog entry I would like to discuss contextualism. I think it would be hard to suggest that a text emerged completely autonomously or that an author was operating in a vacuum. If one's intentions are to discover the circumstances - the 'why' - of the creation of a text, it is imperative to examine the soil from which the flowers grew. Indeed, as Derrida suggests "there is no pure originary text that has not been "touched by other texts" (Clark 132).

Yet it appears that some of the critiques regarding contextualism deal with using it to discover the author's intentions. This, as Clark shows, is somewhat problematic. Dominick La Capra points out that scholars have to choose which contexts to apply to a text (Clark 141). Depending on which contexts one chooses to accept, a specific kind of contextual environment emerges. Then, within that contextual environment the scholar makes an argument for what the author's intentions might have been. However, since the act of framing the author's context is based on the opinions of the scholar, what we are presented with might represent more of the scholar's sensitivities than the author's. Derrida points out that one can never really determine the context in which a text was written and, like La Capra, argues that there is no neutral selection of a context because the scholar invariably has his or her own agenda. (Clark 142).

If we equate the scholar with the 'reader', this type of activity would correspond to Roland Barthes' idea of the reader as " 'collaborating' with the text, themselves become in effect writers" (Clark 133). In this sense the scholar in the position of reader becomes a 'producer' rather than a 'consumer' or a 'liberator', to use Clark's terms (133). A text, once written, is not only influenced and derivative of the author's context, it is also fluid and malleable, taking on new meaning depending on the context and attitude of the reader. I might suggest that the scholar, perhaps even more so than the average reader, is a 'producer' when he or she reads a text, stemming from the scholar's motives -- to eventually create something new, drawing upon or analyzing what one has read. The scholar's motives, therefore, shape the text even before it is read.

I appreciate reading these critiques of contextualism. While it is simple to suggest that everything must be read 'in context', when such a theory is put into practice obstacles emerge, often stemming from the scholar's own inability to step out of his or her own context. This does not mean, however, that we must do away with contextualism. As with the deconstruction of some of the other terms discussed in class, making a method or a term problematic does not mean that it cannot be useful in someway. This, I think, is exemplified in Derrida's reading of Nietzsche's
undecidable" sentence (Clark 143). Derrida shows that contextualism can be problematic, but "undecidability, however, does not mean that we cannot make some determination among possible interpretations; undecidability need not leave the reader with no context" (143).

Indeed, it is possible to suggest a context for a text and argue from that context. What critiques of contextualism show is that extremely difficult to determine an author's intentions -- what the author meant to say when he or she was writing a text. Contextualism, however, can still be used if one is attempting to examine the circumstances surrounding the creation of the text and the possible influences -- explicit or implicit-- in the text. However I am inclined to return to my thoughts from my last blog entry about creativity. If scholars are the creators of meaning in their role as readers, then their research and output is essentially creative as well. Scholars are at work, using the 'rules' of scholarship to 'play' with the materials at hand and create something resembling authoritative documents. Contextualism, while useful as one of the tools scholars can use, can never be removed from its role as part of the creative and perhaps not so objective process of scholarship.

I would like to discuss the statement in Gill's article, "No Place to Stand" that "scholars do not simply objectively present their subjects; indeed they often do not even present a legitimate face of their subjects. What they do is to recreate their subjects in terms that meet their own needs, both personal and academic."

My first reaction to this statement is to have a moment of despair. If it is true that there is no objectivity, what is the point of scholarship? And I find no reason to disagree with the statement. The very act of entering into some sort of inquiry is to make the subject of one's study personal. The scholar is the one who perceives the subject, so anything that is said about that subject is the personal observation of the scholar. We may argue whether or not there is anything that is concrete and recordable, but the act of recording and presenting information is a subjective act based on the scholar's perspective.

If nothing is objective, however, does that mean nothing is a legitimate source of study? Is it the 'objectiveness' of scholarship that makes it legitimate? And by recognizing scholarships' 'lack of objectiveness', is one forced into silence?

I think Gill says it best in his concluding paragraph: "To take a stance...without recognizing its absurdity is either religious, narrowminded, or naive. To refuse to take any stance at all is either to indulge infinite regress...or silence. The alternative...is the perspective of play: seriously taking a stance while acknowledging its absurdity. Scholarship...is like life in that it must go on despite its absurdity" (191).

I have always found something quite beautiful about the concept of 'play'. There is a sense of innocence mixed with experimentation, testing or discovery of rules or standards. And by testing the limitations of one's surroundings, one is able to be creative, working within those boundaries and structures to create something meaningful or trying to go beyond those boundaries to create something completely new. Either way, creativity is often a reaction to the structures of one's environment.

Recognizing that scholarship is intricately linked with the structures of one's own experience does not make scholarship a futile endeavor. Perhaps looking at scholarship in terms of legitimacy is not so fruitful. Scholarship, seen in terms of play, is a creative endeavor. The vulnerability associated with presenting an opinion, the questions the scholar must constantly ask about his or her subject and about his or herself makes for an activity constantly in flux. Perhaps it is the fluidity of scholarship, the malleability of scholars' theses, the creativity of scholastic inquiry, that gives the scholar the will to persist despite the "absurdity" of making anything that resembles a concrete conclusion.

So...how does one really judge the 'legitimacy' of a creative act? One may agree of disagree, feel connected or disconnected, etc. but it is tricky to judge whether say, a sculpture or a piece of music for example, is legitimate or illegitimate. Is it possible, then, to treat scholarship the same way one treats other creative acts like art, for example? If so, what does that say about the authority tied up with academic scholarship?

hello!

I am presenting this week.
See you on Wednesday.

If you’ve ever read any Nikos Kazantzakis novel, you’ll know that the characters do a lot of weeping. One of most weeping - laden novels of Kazantzakis’ is “Saint Francis”, which follows the life of the saint. It follows Francis on his journey from disorderly, selfish, young man to sainthood by telling a series of stories from his life. Most of the stories involve Francis weeping (or another extreme emotion) at some point, usually following an encounter with God through a vision or dream or thought. If I remember correctly, Francis’ weeping was understood as displaying his profound personal experience with God and his inner torment surrounding how he should act as a servant of God. The weeping was always public. Onlookers could see Francis weep and could a) understand that they were witnessing a saint or b) could be provoked to ask why Francis was weeping and a sermon, lesson, or conversion might follow. When I first read this book, I read it with a friend and it became a joke between us regarding the frequency of Francis’ weeping. Looking back at the novel now, I can see how Kazantzakis might have used Francis’ weeping as a literary device to further the story, whether it was to show Francis’ continued and deepening involvement with God, or to encourage reflection or action from other characters in the story. (On a side note, it is interesting that Francis is always weeping and not crying -- a distinction I'd like to pursue, perhaps in another setting).

Indeed, I may have to stop making fun of Kazantzakis. His use of weeping appears to run along the same lines as some of the sensibilities discussed in this week’s readings. Seeing weeping as purely physiological and something with which, should it happen a lot, someone might want to seek help, dismisses the ‘rationality’ of weeping that Kazantzakis appears to be employing. While Greek born Kazantzakis, writing about a twelfth century Italian saint, arguably comes from a different perspective than early modern Spaniards, it was useful for me to make a comparison between the two examples. Seemingly overly emotional, irrational, excessive weeping (i.e. in Francis’ case, from being overwhelmed by an experience of God), seen in light of functionality can become rational emotion (i.e. Francis’ public display of emotion to establish his validity and elicit interest from his monks or potential lay converts). In Kazantzakis’ literary world and in William A. Christian’s description of Spanish ritual, weeping serves a function. As Christian says, “Emotions were serious business; provoked, collective weeping could be effective” (46). Earlier on the same page he suggests that “such weeping had to be public” (46).

As was discussed last week, ‘rationality’ may have a lot to do with one’s social context. Taking a quick definition of rationality from a ‘wikipedia’ search we find that rationality can suggest actions or thoughts that are ‘reasonable (having sound judgment/not extreme or excessive), justifiable, economical, not foolish, sane, good’. As we discovered last week, a definition of ‘rational’ may be problematic, but what appears to be at work here is that rationality is concerned with the purpose of an action, and whether or not there is a sound one. Indeed, it appears Christian is using a similar understanding of rationality insomuch as the weeping he describes plays an important part in negotiating social identities and soliciting divine intervention. In the context of early modern Spanish Christian ritual, weeping was a “learned behavior” (Christian 35). It was a skill one could use to display one’s experience and it could be used to elicit God’s favour or mercy (Christian 34). It was ‘rational’ to weep, then, because the activity of weeping was thought to bring about certain desired ends.

While I am still not sure how I feel about defining ‘rationality’ just yet, I think a discussion of weeping in this context leads us to recognize some key aspects of a nuanced study of religion. It is important, as Christian points out, to realize that ritualized weeping is real – it is not faked, the person is really crying. At the same time, it is a learned behaviour, one that fits into a larger social network of meaning. It is rational behavior because in context it serves certain desired functions. This reminds us that when studying religion one should be aware that religious practitioners are driven by religious convictions/beliefs/? ,but that they may also understand that one’s actions in a religious context can serve to construct social identities. There need not be a dichotomy between one’s actions done out of religious convictions and one’s actions in other contexts. The relationship is much more complex.

Stoller describes three approaches to rationality: universalist, relativist, and phenomenological. Universalist scholars (or ‘lumpers) suggest that is it possible to employ certain universally applicable techniques of reason in order to understand anything. Such techniques can also be used to evaluate other people’s level of rationality (Stoller 244). Relativist scholars (or ‘splitters) suggest that one cannot judge the rationality of another because there is no universal reality or reason from which one can make such a judgment. Instead, there are “many rationalities” (246). Stoller notes that contemporary relativist scholars have tended to mediate overly-relativist approaches by using “good sense” (247). While Stoller does not really explain what “good sense” might be (indeed “good sense” sounds a bit universalist, implying there is some sort of abstract “sense” which one can turn to in times of uncertainty) this implies that relativist scholars are aware that another way of approaching rationality might help their own efforts. Indeed the call for transformative experience as a way of tempering universalist tendencies Stoller (248) implies that there is a way to get around a universalist/relativist dichotomy.

Stoller next writes about phenomenology and its approach to rationality. Because I found the similarities between relativism and phenomenology somewhat confusing, I will attempt a small comparison to situate them in their respective corners and 'suss' things out, if you will. For those reading my blog, please feel free to expand on any of the statements I make to help with my further understanding of this distinction.

While relativists claim there are multiple rationalities, phenomenologists claim there are multiple realities and focus on experience (Stoller 249). Whereas a relativist might claim it is impossible to understand another’s rationality, a phenomenologist might look at experience and suggest that it is the key to sharing realities.

If I understand this correctly, I would tentatively have to choose phenomenology for my preferred look at rationality. I like Stoller’s suggestion that “one does not master sorcery, history, or knowledge; rather, it is sorcery, history, and knowledge that master us” (252). This implies that one needs to be open to all sorts of knowledge, open to experience as a means of acquiring understanding. Indeed it can actually be that “uncertainty and ambiguity” (Stoller 254) are the means to wisdom because being comfortable with being uncertain may lead to the retention of knowledge of which one might have otherwise been unreceptive or unaware.

Before I sat down to write this blog entry, I was finishing up an essay on Jewish-Christian dialogue that is due tomorrow morning. Reading about Stoller’s three categories I am reminded of how different scholars have suggested Jews and Christians should approach each other and other religions. Some suggest that the best way to communicate is by finding commonalities and searching for overarching themes. Some suggest that differences are irreconcilable and indeed dialogue should not even be attempted in case differences are forgotten and/or trivialized leading to conversion or syncretism. Increasingly, however, there has been a movement from within Jewish and Christian communities to formulate theologies of dialogue that acknowledge and account for differences between religions and strive for conversation with differences in mind without trying to overcome them. Dialogue has become an end in itself. The experience of dialogue, if I may, has become more important than the results.

While I don’t mean to completely equate dialogical theologies with the phenomenological approaches to rationality, thinking about them comparatively did help me understand both of these ‘third’ options. There seems to be a trend towards respecting differences of opinion and being open to new realities. While one cannot go into a situation hoping for something to happen, one can be open to the possibility that anything can. Being receptive and trying to relate to one another without preconceived notions of what we can expect or achieve can help us turn “knowledge into wisdom” (Stoller 253). Perhaps this is somewhat like the humility of which Stoller speaks

Daniel Dennett (and Robert Sharf) has a problem with qualia (Sharf 110). I like qualia. Maybe this is just my own experience (and maybe that is a good starting point for thinking about experience), but I have always felt that a lot of experiences are not communicable through language. Often my experiences are better communicated through music or visual art (oh, if only life were a musical). There is something that can be said through other media, something inexpressible, a silent understanding if you will. And yet we, as humans, are somewhat forced to exist in a world where we have to communicate through language. What then, if language is insufficient?

I believe that there are such experiences. And there are probably many more experiences like this than we can imagine. If this is so, how does one study experience? I think Robert Sharf’s point is a good one. There appears to be a problem with making “the inner experience of religious practitioners” the object of studying religion (111). At the same time, Sharf assures us that he is not “trying to deny subjective experience” (113). Indeed, Sharf is not discrediting subjectivity, but he is questioning how we use the category of experience in scholarship and he suggests that by approaching religious studies from areas that are fundamentally incommunicable through language, we are left with “well-meaning squirms that get us nowhere” (114). I agree that one must use caution when describing religious experience in an academic environment. One approach is to continually ask questions that surround the experience, rather than attempt to ascertain what is actually going on in the religious experience. I reminded of the performance/ritual debate here. Perhaps religious experience is something that cannot be reduced to text and scholars must approach the category of experience indirectly.

At the same time, I feel somewhat apprehensive with completely abandoning the study of ‘the inexpressible’ in religious experience. Religion, I would argue, is a subject that is largely inexplicable to many people, including those who practice it. Many people cannot explain why they believe certain things, why they act certain ways, what they experience when they are in ‘religious’ circumstances. If we are to truly study religion, can there not be room to directly study these kinds of inexplicable experiences? Is Sharf entirely correct when he suggests that such activity will “get us nowhere” (114)?

Perhaps it is too idealistic or naive to treat all mystical experiences as similar; to form a separate category where mystical experiences can be studied as understandable phenomena. And yet, who am I to say? By becoming scholars are we forced to suspend any notion of what we may experience as mystical within ourselves? Can we not believe that there is some sort of experience that sheds some light on some ultimate truth? It is difficult to find room in responsible scholarship for such thoughts, but can there be room?

Along those same lines: Who am I to say that one mystic’s experience cannot be compared to another mystic’s experience? I have not had such an experience. This brings us back to the seemingly ever-present insider-outsider debate of this class. By being an outsider of a mystical experience am I forced to admit that I can only study it indirectly? Indeed, in the case of mysticism, being an outsider appears to be particularly disadvantageous. Perhaps that is why Aldous Huxley felt he needed to experience something (through the use of drugs in his case) before he could write about mysticism. Perhaps there is something about those mystics that we cannot hope to understand without being mystics ourselves.

This also ties into what Kuriyama says in her discussion of Eastern and Western medicine. Each saw the body in different ways and when there were instances where those steeped in the Western tradition attempted to find the functions of the body illustrated in Chinese texts they were largely unsuccessful. Kuriyama hopes that his comparative study “compels us, ceaselessly to reassess our own habits of perceiving and feeling, and to imagine alternative possibilities of being – to experience the world afresh” (272). Kuriyama ends his book on this hopefully note. He hopes that by showing different ways of looking at things, he may inspire his readers to look at things differently – to “experience the world afresh” (272). He hopes that we will not ‘get stuck’ like some of our ancient Greek forerunners. In effect Kuriyama is suggesting that by his telling us about perceptions of the body, we may actually have new experiences. Is this possible? Likewise, can we imagine that by reading about mystical experiences we can hope to understand what such an experience is like, even to the extent that such knowledge may change how we experience life?

To conclude I must apologize for asking so many questions and not quite answering them. Perhaps I simply do not have the experience yet to do so.

For this blog entry I would like to discuss the concept of identity using Boyarin as a starting point. Boyarin's article was very entertaining. I think his was an interesting and creative way of approaching the gender issues in the New Testament. We read in one letter of Paul's that all are equal through baptism. We read in others that women should be quiet in the churches and submit to their husbands. I did not grow up with these letters being a part of my religious experience but I would imagine that, especially as a woman, it would be confusing to read these passages and interpret what it means for my own life. Ultimately one would like to hope that Paul was consistent in his ideals of equality, but it would seem that he was not.

Left with these contradictions, it must seem like an attractive alternative to suggest that Paul was consistent throughout all of his letters. It seems that Boyarin has chosen this alternative. As Boyarin suggests, Paul may have believed that "an eradication of male and female and its corresponding social hierarchy is only possible on the level of the spirit, either in ecstasy at baptism or perhaps permanently for the celibate" (123). Using his analysis we could see a consistency in Paul's logic. Of course there could be equality in baptism because that is the realm of the spirit where there is no sex/gender. (It is interesting then, that some interpretations of the 'spirit' have described it as representative of God's 'female' characteristics. Indeed, in some feminist theological literature it has been suggested that Christians need to re-recognize the feminine aspects of God and reclaim them so that Christian women may feel represented through God.) However, when Paul moves to more practical matters he does see a difference between men and women, especially if the women are married or widowed. They have already given up their androgynous position of virginity and have therefore subjected themselves to being under the authority of earthly categories of power. This is why Paul might suggest that the best way to be is unmarried, but if one must be married, so be it. By extension, if one chooses the path of marriage, one must realize that certain categories of status come along with it. If I was a Christian and was reading Boyarin's analysis I may be somewhat at ease with the way Boyarin has created a synthesis between Paul's seemingly contradictory views on women.

However, it appears that this logic is anachronistic. For the modern, liberally-minded individual, a community of essentially equal persons is ideal. How wonderful it would be if there was an early Christian community who believed in such equality, albeit only within the category of virginity and 'maleness'. Although Boyarin attempts to qualify his argument by saying that early Christianity's ideas of a genderless community depended on a category of essential 'maleness', there still appears to be an optimistic and creative reading of Paul's letters and the mentality of the early Christian movement. Can we really assume that categories of male and female, in the context of needing to be overcome, were important to early Christians?

I recently did a presentation in one of my other classes on religious identity among 12th-15th century European Jewish converts to Christianity. I discovered that the medieval concept of identity and the individual were much different from the modern concept of the individual which, it has been suggested, has roots in the reformation and the rise of humanism (see John Martin’s “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe”). The medieval mind was not concerned with how to define 'an individual', but rather saw people as essentially similar and constant, without a concept of relativity in regards to variants such as time or place or culture. As Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak says in her article “Medeival Identity: A sign and a Concept”, "identity...[referred] to human beings as members of an identical species, or to the person as a psychosomatic whole, a social agent identical to itself with respect to number, essence, or properties". The idea that one was an individual, with individual feelings, thoughts, and emotions, and that one could actually separate these 'inner' things from what was shown to others on the outside, was a later concept.

Clearly the time we are talking about, at least in Boyarin's case is not medieval Europe. However, I think the discussion of medieval identity as compared to modern identity is exemplary of the way concepts of identity have changed over time and our concept of an individual would be much different from an early Christian’s. Indeed, a modern, Western, Canadian concept of identity cannot be assumed to be the way identity has always been conceptualized, or is conceptualized in other areas of the world. Yes, it may seem attractive to look at early Christians and hope to see a glimpse of ourselves there, but it is more likely that identity for those early Christians meant something much different.

That said, can we conceive of a first century Christian concerning him or herself with the differences between sex and gender? If the concept of identity in early Christianity was anything like that of the 11th or 12th century European concept, we can assume that one would have seen him or herself as male or female and would not have been able to conceptualize a separation between one’s 'sex' and 'gender' – just as someone would not be able to conceptualize of a person being able to separate him or herself from what was on the inside in order to produce something different on the outside. One was a full being, without many different conflicting parts. If you were a female, you were a female. You acted like a female, you related to others as a female, your essence was female, you were treated as a female. Would there have been a feeling in the early Christian community of needing to transcend this? Was there a feeling that concepts of gender were detrimental to equality in the religious community? Would Paul really have been conscious of the potential for his Christian communities to be arenas where gender was not an issue? Perhaps reading a genderless drive onto early Christian movements is slightly catering to our own hopes and sensitivities. I more inclined to think that Paul would have been responding to specific situations in his letters and it is not necessary to formulate a theology that is consistent throughout his epistles.

Sharf suggests that viewing ritual as text is “tantamount to reducing music to its score” (250). In other words, it is possible to see ritual as scripted activities, just as it is possible to look at music in terms of its notation. However, we are only seeing part of the picture in this approach. There is so much to the experience of ritual and music that cannot be notated.

I think it is interesting that Sharf chooses ‘language’ as her comparison marker. I am not sure if ritual and music are mutually exclusive from language. Surely musical notation can be seen as a form of musical language. It may also be valid to approach scripted ritual as the language through which ritual is expressed. When approaching music and ritual, however, it is important to realize that the language being used is not necessarily representative of the entirety of the phenomena being described.

Perhaps Sharf is too quick to equate text with language in this context. Language itself is something that is much more than words arranged on a page. There is a process of interpretation that brings those words to life, sending them into the category of language.

Could we say then, that language is just as experiential as ritual or music? Can we actually separate the form from the content and still call it language?

I am inclined to say no. However, I do think there is validity in discussing ritual and music being in contrast to text insomuch as ritual and music are both phenomena that cannot be reduced to a textual analysis without convoluting the phenomena being discussed.

I had a chance this weekend to bounce these ideas off of some musician friends. These are the type of musicians who embody music, who feel music is integral to their identities and who experience music in a profound and transcendent sense. Who better to ask about music as it relates to ritual?

Interestingly enough, it was not necessary to define the term ‘ritual’ for our discussion, but the term ‘music’ was problematic. There was a tendency to define every sound as music but the same leniency was not granted to ritual. It was understood that ritual action had more meaning than other actions and should therefore be set apart. (I will suggest a reason for the tendency to treat ritual more rigidly than music below).

That said, it was generally accepted that the experience of music is similar to the experience of ritual in that it must be performed. Performance is what makes the music or ritual come alive. Incidentally, it was pointed out to me that some musicians claim to be able to experience the music simply by reading the score, but in our discussion it was generally assumed that the playing of music did not compare to the reading of it – that there was a difference between hearing a note played and reading that same note. Perhaps the same can be suggested for ritual. We may ask: can one extensively trained in a ritual have experience from the ‘text’ of the ritual or is it something that must be performed?

I would like to take this opportunity to comment on another part of Sharf’s music analogy, namely the suggestion that “exposure to and training in music is necessary to appreciate musical performance” (250). My musician friends argued that music was something that could be validly experienced without training. One friend pointed out that he had danced to Led Zeppelin while still in the womb. And yet it was also accepted that training could enhance one’s musical experience. Likewise, one can experience ritual in different ways depending on one’s knowledge of the experience.

One friend, who was once extremely active in church life, suggested there was a deep understanding between participants in Christian ritual, even if each participant experienced the ritual in a different way. He felt that this differed from the way music is experienced. However, I find some striking similarities. I could not relate to his experience of Christian communion because I was only familiar with the ‘text’ of it. However, we could both experience music on the same level, even if our personal experience of music was different. Perhaps music is so pervasive that it is somewhat impossible to be an outsider. We may be unaware of our insider status and therefore it seems proper to make a distinction between music and ritual because in ritual we are better able to determine who is an insider and who is an outsider. However, music is essentially a ritual to which all of us have been initiated, and therefore, to which we can all relate collectively, even if our individual experiences of the music differ. In sum, Sharf’s use of ritual and music is a useful one because in a sense, we are all practitioners of musical ritual and it is a forum where we can all get a sense of what it is like to experience the inexpressible collectively as insiders.

Ok Masuzawa – we get it. “World Religions” is a term much more complex than we originally thought. And yet, I can’t help feeling that Masuzawa did not go far enough. While she clearly states that her intention is to trace the history of the term ‘world religions’ through the nineteenth century, it seems slightly irresponsible for her to stop there (although perhaps her irresponsibility is the point of the book, as I will explain later). She briefly forays into the twentieth century at the end of the book, but fails to bring us to the present in our use of ‘world religions’. If we are to accept Masuzawa’s history, we must become aware of the fact that ‘world religions’ has undergone considerable change in its meaning since its conception. By extension of this, if we are to examine the term for our own use in the modern world an examination of its current use is needed. True, the term does have a long history of Christian European hegemony, but is it not possible for a term with such a objectionable background to lose its meaning? And if the people using the term – in popular discourse or in scholarly – fail to recognize the universalist tendencies inherent in the term, does that make the term inadequate?

It is funny how when we are considering large questions, opportunities arise for us to explore them in other arenas, giving rise to new questions. This weekend I went to Ottawa to visit my brother. For some reason, of which I can’t remember at this moment, we were discussing the term ‘manpower’. Being ever so equality-minded, I suggested he might want to use a different term (for lack of a better word) like ‘person-power’ or ‘people-power’ in order to include the possibility of women. As I tried to explain to him the power of language, and how using ‘man’ terms may say a lot about how he subconsciously differentiates between male and female, I could see a blank stare developing on his face. He countered me by arguing that when he says ‘man’ he doesn’t think of just men, but men and women. I suggested that he was missing the point – that using ‘men’ as category 1 suggests that women are in the subcategory. Later on however, it crossed my mind that perhaps my brother did have a point. Is it possible that the term ‘man’ had corroded so much in my brother’s mind that it genuinely did mean ‘men and women’ to him? Should I believe that he sees men and women as equals even if he uses male-centered language? This comes from the same person who suggested that he did not see God as male or female, but as some sort of “genderless spirit”. Is my brother an anomaly? Is he the product of growing up in a somewhat egalitarian household? Or is he somehow overlooking the fact that using gender specific language has a long history of oppression behind it, and needs to be revised? Does my brother not have the responsibility to assist others, who may not be as ‘liberated’ as he is, by using gender-neutral language?

I may be digressing here, but I think this makes an important point. Many of us would argue that when we are using the term ‘world religions’ we are literally talking about ‘religions of the world’ in that ‘here are some religions that people practice”. I would be hard-pressed to find someone in religious studies who is going about the study of ‘world religions’ with the purpose of setting one religion above another, or all others. Most of us are probably more inclined to think of ‘world religions’ in the sense that Max Weber does – world religions in terms of the number of their adherents (Masuzawa 306). In addition, most of us probably experienced religious studies first in “the public domain” as Masuzawa calls it (308). She suggests that in the twentieth century “world religions discourse is no longer contained in the sphere of intellectual history proper but abundantly spills over onto all other domains, into social and institutional history” (308). By Masuzawa’s own admission, the term ‘religious studies’ has morphed into something quite different in the twentieth century. It is a term with which most of us probably grew up with – a term with which we are comfortable, and one that does not necessarily connote any feelings of religious superiority. In addition, I would argue against Masuzawa’s claim that modern academic institutions assume that “religion should be studied…comparatively” (317). Granted insomuch as there is even a subject called ‘religion’ we are forced to concede that there is something called ‘religion’ that is common to all people and that it can be examined. However, beyond this, there seems to be a drive to treat each religion separately, not comparatively. Indeed, in my undergraduate experience, I was not even offered a course on ‘world religions’. Instead, we were able to choose from a variety of first year courses dealing with specific issues. (In effect by the time we reached third or fourth year, it was more difficult to have discussions as a group, considering we all had different educational backgrounds). Despite all this, should we not take seriously Masuzawa’s claim that using the term ‘world religions’ implies much more than studying the religions of the world? Is using the term ‘world religions’, even with all of our qualifiers behind it, comparable to my brother’s use of ‘man’?

After reading Masuzawa’s book I am left with unanswered questions and many uncertainties. I can now see the universalist tendencies woven into the term ‘world religions’ and it suggests to me that the term is somewhat outdated. In addition, perhaps the way we study religion is somewhat outdated. The classification system that has been passed down to us is just assumed to be the best way to go about classifying religions. While we not see them as ‘universal’ or ‘national’, we do tend to see something that can be called ‘Buddhism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Hinduism’, etc., as somewhat monolithic terms, or at least something that can be studied as such. By calling attention to categorization systems (and their inadequacies), we are able to analyze them and see if they are useful for our intellectual intentions. If our intentions are to treat ‘religion’ in a much more nuanced sense than has previously been the case, we need to assess the language we are using. In the end, I believe that Masuzawa’s book is an attempt to do just that – to open our minds to the idea that our categories may be biased and inadequate, to push us beyond the language with which we are comfortable. She is not guiding us into a new way of studying religion, but she is intentionally leaving us with unanswered questions so that we may begin to analyze ourselves and our role in ‘religious studies’.