Author Archives: Naomi Goldenberg

“Becoming Recognizable: Postcolonial Independence and the Reification of Religion” – comments on Maria Birnbaum’s thesis

19 Tuesday May 2015

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I just finished reading “Becoming Recognizable: Postcolonial Independence and the Reification of Religion,” an outstanding doctoral thesis by Maria Birnbaum, who recently completed graduate work in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. Birnbaum’s work will be of interest to anyone engaged in analysis and critique of religion as a category of public policy because:

  1. it advances theorizing about how religion becomes constructed in the discourse of international relations about the recognition of states and because
  2. it illustrates why such theorizing matters in the practical functioning of international statecraft.

I expect to cite Birnbaum in my work and will recommend her dissertation to graduate students and colleagues.

Before proceeding any further with a short summary of the thesis and a brief discussion of how it relates to my project, I want to indicate a significant lacuna in what Birnbaum has written: with the exception of works by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, there is very little mention of current critiques of the depiction and use of religion in IR. Most notably, Birnbaum makes no reference to Timothy Fitzgerald’s 2011 benchmark book, Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth (Continuum). This is unfortunate since Fitzgerald’s substantial interrogation of themes and authors Birnbaum engages in her text would enrich her own analysis considerably. I hope that she will remedy this omission as she proceeds with publication of her important work.

The thesis is a clear and concisely written argument for practicing what Birnbaum calls “genealogical sensitivity” in international relations theory (IR). She uncovers major flaws in the work of Daniel Philpott, Scott Thomas and Jurgen Habermas – three authorities in IR who argue for the recognition of religion in global politics. Birnbaum shows although religion is assumed to be an “already present and intelligible” phenomenon that is a powerful determinant of identity and agency, none of the three can identify what it is that ought to be recognized. Furthermore, she argues that the process of recognition they support works to create that which it purports to be acknowledging. She claims that, in general, IR theory tends to be unaware of the contingencies of history, economics and power relations that underlie what gets labeled and institutionalized as ‘religion.’ Thus, Philpott, Thomas and Habermas exemplify what Birnbaum sees as forgetfulness and naivete in IR – forgetfulness (her word) about the processes of history that have brought about social groupings and classifications and naivete (my word) about how the very rhetoric of difference and particularity functions to produce the groups that governments aspire to manage.

Birnbaum condenses a great deal of complex theory and analysis in her text. Philosophical and political discussions pertaining to “being and becoming” are summarized and evaluated. She favors an approach that would balance the necessity of stabilizing social and governmental entities – i. e. “being” – with attentiveness to constant change that requires flexibility of boundaries and group definition – i.e. “becoming.” She reviews debates and literature related to the foundation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland and Israel as a Jewish state to show how religion emerged during the twentieth century dissolution of the British Empire as a “taken-for-granted juridical, cultural and political category” that affected the lives and deaths of millions. Her moving conclusion restates her argument that religion ought not to be used as a stand-alone analytic category because such a practice represses and thus disguises what is at issue in the struggles for power and resources that continue to fuel global conflicts.

Presently, I am at work on developing theory about how the category of religion is used strategically in technologies of statecraft to at times support existing orders of authority and at other times to undermine them. I argue that ‘religion’ has emerged rather recently as a placeholder for conquered and marginalized groups that are allowed to exist with some degree of cohesion within the jurisdictions of dominant sovereignties. The dominated group is allowed a circumscribed degree of autonomy as a religion if it agrees to abide by certain limitations chiefly in regard to a renunciation of the forms of violence – i.e. police and military functions – that the ascendant state reserves for itself. Thus, I understand religions to operate as the weakened vestiges of former states within fully functioning states. However, the very fact that religions are accorded some degree of sovereignty within dominant governments gives them a platform on which to strive for increased power and recognition. Religions are always restive to some degree and therefore behave like once and future states. Likewise governments habitually aggrandize religions by invoking theistic traditions as honored predecessors in order to glorify authority wielded in the here and now with a mantle of mystified and ancient grandeur. Examples abound in the preambles of contemporary legal and quasi-legal documents that make vague reference to a divine power as the ultimate justification for the present governing order. Because such theistic antecedents are almost always male, such contrived practices of nostalgia result in the shoring up of patriarchal ruling structures that characterize current governing regimes.

The thrust of the theory I am proposing undermines difference between so-called secular and religious orders of governance. Instead, I posit the existence of two unequal registers of government that eye one another with alternating degrees of competition and collusion, that jockey each other for domains of influence and that make use of one another to maintain and increase power.

I am developing such arguments along with several colleagues in a series of essays, edited collections and a monograph in progress. Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty, edited with Trevor Stack and Timothy Fitzgerald, will to appear this year from Brill. My essay in the volume, titled “The Category of Religion in the Technology of Governance: An Argument for Understanding Religions as Vestigial States” is an overview of my position.)

By showing how theorists in international relations articulate ideology that first reifies religions under the guise of recognition and then works to create and solidify contemporary state apparatuses to manage what is imagined as already there, Birnbaum enhances understanding of how ‘religion’ is linked to processes of governmentality. She also documents a sinister side to the whole business by pointing out some of the ways in which reified religions have become carriers of rigid and policed identities that exacerbate inter-group tensions and undermine progressive politics. Her work contributes to a growing and urgently necessary body of theory that is unraveling confusions propagated in the narratives of government in which we are all enmeshed.

NB This blog was first published on the NAASR site, 11.5.15.

Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s “Before Religion”

06 Monday May 2013

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Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven and London: Yale, 2013).

In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale: 2013, Brent Nongbri makes a significant contribution to Critical Religion that will be useful to both students and theorists. This is a clear and carefully written book, well researched and informatively referenced. Nongbri’s strength lies in his feeling for antiquity. With precision and skill, he reviews English translations of the word religion in influential early Greek, Roman and Arabic texts to argue that the term is an anachronism supporting the conventional notion that ‘religion’ refers to a recognizable and timeless phenomenon. Although such insight will be familiar to readers of the works of Timothy Fitzgerald, David Chidester, Richard King, Russell McCutcheon et al., Nongbri’s account is particularly notable for its sustained clarity and judicious selection of ancient source material.

Nongbri tells us that his questioning of the universality of “religion” began when he realized that the word did not exist in the Khasi language his father grew up speaking in northeastern India. Instead of referring to specific “religious” ideas or behavior that could be distinguished from “secular” varieties, “ka niam”, the Khasi term his father offered as an equivalent to religion, simply means “customs” in a broad sense. Further inquiry revealed that niam is actually a Bengali term signifying “rules” or “duties.” This discovery about his paternal tongue forms the paradigm that Nongbri identifies again and again in his investigation of ancient sources. As he leads his readers through myriad texts of early history, he points to the absence of “the modern concept of religion” and how the insertion of the word misrepresents authorial intentions.

Nongbri structures his arguments memorably around a few well-articulated themes. His chapter titled “Some (Premature) Births of Religion in Antiquity” is especially effective. Under this heading, he refutes claims that “religion” emerged in reference to the Maccabean revolt, in Cicero’s rhetoric, in Eusebius’ texts, or in Muhammed’s innovations. He also does an impressive job of showing that the tenets Tomoko Masuzawa identifies in the nineteenth century as formative for a discourse of world religions are actually well underway in the seventeenth century in the work of Alexander Ross et al.

Nongbri is convinced that the study of antiquity could be improved if “students of the ancient world [were] … to work on generating a better vocabulary for talking about the various ways that ancient peoples conceptually carved out their worlds, a better means of describing the clusters of practices and beliefs outlined by ancient authors…”(p.53). He writes that the task is not one of finding a better word for “it” – i.e. of uncovering what “religion” meant in antiquity – but rather of realizing that there never was an “it” in the first place. Nongbri believes that if his advice were heeded, we would not wind up with more “slightly tweaked” books about early religions, but rather with more specific and insightful studies on such subjects as “Athenian appeals to ancestral tradition, Roman ethnicity, Mesopotamian scribal praxis, Christian and Muslim heresiological discourses, and other topics that will encapsulate and thoroughly rearrange those bits and pieces of what we once gathered together as ‘ancient religions’ ”(159).

I suggest that Nongbri’s counsel for reforming the study of ancient history should be applied throughout the field of Religious Studies. Nongbri hesitates to recommend such an approach to scholars of contemporary “religions.” Instead, he concludes his book with what I find to be a contradictory and confusing call to “think outside of our usual categories” (159) by being aware that whenever we use the word ‘religion’ we are employing a “second-order” redescriptive concept. Surprisingly, Nongbri says that such a conscious – yet, to my mind, impossibly acrobatic – use of the term could even have some benefits in the study of antiquity. Thus, he momentarily argues against the thrust of his own conscientious analysis in his conclusion.

Despite this brief retreat from the implications of his critique, Nongbri succeeds in building a solid case for historians of antiquity to purge their intellectual toolbox of a distorting anachronism. In addition, his book also points to similar confusions and misrepresentations that occur with the use of ‘religion’ in reference contemporary times when the word is imposed on non-Western cultures like his father’s or when scholars continue to use rhetorical ploys such as “embedded religion” to reinscribe religion as “eternally present” (152).

The argument that Nongbri frames so clearly and competently in relation to ancient history is applicable in present times and possibly more urgent. By assuming that religion is an eternal and universal “it” that identifies a bounded sphere of human life, distinct from what we term “politics” or “economics” or “the secular,” we are doing more than hampering our understanding of epochs in the past. We are also obscuring our ability to see through the veils of ideologies that currently surround us. The task of lifting these veils, or, at least, of making them less opaque is one way to conceive of an objective for “Critical Religion” – an aim that Nongbri’s work helps to further.

Gender and the Vestigial State of Religion

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

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This is a guest posting by Prof. Naomi Goldenberg, introducing some of the themes she will be addressing when she visits the UK in late April 2012.

 

My interest in critical religion originates in my wish to restart the radical feminist work that used to be done in the subfield of “women and religion.”  For years I had been attending academic meetings in which scholars who spoke about the topic saw themselves as representatives of their own traditions or as apologists for traditions that were the subjects of their research.  Far-ranging critiques of sexist ‘religious’ beliefs, policies and practices, such as that of Mary Daly, had fallen out of favor.  In its place was a quieter, more respectful spirit of reform.  ‘Religious’ history was searched and mined for accounts of women who could be seen as clever agents within their traditions, as heroines who made the best of what was at hand, and as creative interpreters who found sustenance and inspiration in the seemingly oppressive texts and rites of their ‘faiths.’  Although the field of women and religion was flourishing in both divinity schools and secular universities, I was losing interest in an enterprise that I thought had abandoned the objective of political critique and embraced what I consider to be an attitude of advocacy for traditional thought and behavior.

I now think that feminist critical analysis in “women and religion” was blunted because the category of religion was not interrogated.  While deconstruction of concepts and politics related to gender and sex continues to foster exciting theory with significant social impact, religion itself remains largely an under-theorized given.  I believe that this tacit reification of  ‘religion’ works both to undermine women’s recent political achievements and to hinder further advancement.

Consider just these two examples: 1. From the U.S.: Citing the right to ‘religious’ freedom, Republican candidate Rick Santorum proposed allowing states to ban women’s access to contraception, a right won by means of court decisions in the late 1950’s.  Similarly, both Santorum and Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the nomination, objected to the new US health care law’s funding of legal abortions on the grounds that it could cause employers’ to compromise their religious beliefs.  Several newly-enacted state laws now restrict women’s access to health care related to reproduction on religious grounds.

And 2. – From Afghanistan: According to reports from the Guardian News Service, in March of this year, the Karzai government issued a statement asserting that women are subordinate to men, should not mix with men in work or education and must always have a male guardian when they travel.  The statement thus suggests that the Afghan constitution that enshrines the equality of men and women is flawed from a religious perspective.  Furthermore, violence against women as long as it is “sharia compliant” appears to be condoned.  Such news supports the opinion of Fawzia Koofi, the brave woman campaigning to be Afghanistan’s first female president, who says that David Cameron and Barack Obama are supporting the Karzai government in talks with people who want to bribe the Taliban by limiting women’s freedom using ‘religious’ justifications.

By proposing that religions be considered vestigial states at least in regard to law and public policy, I hope to suggest one way of countering arguments that restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms for ‘religious’ purposes deserve more respect and attention than if such limits were to be put forward for merely ‘political’ reasons.  Throughout most of history, governmental organizations have been based on masculine hegemony.  According to the argument I am advancing, when governments are displaced they can persist within contemporary states as ‘religions’ that maintain their patriarchal origins and character.  Since women’s challenges to male domination have only met with some success in recent times within fairly contemporary forms of statecraft, if earlier states known as ‘religions’ are allowed too much authority over domains such as ‘the family’ or ‘the home,’ women will be the losers.   The two examples from the US and Afghanistan provide support for this line of theory.

An Argument for Thinking of Religions as Vestigial States

12 Monday Mar 2012

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This is a guest posting by Prof. Naomi Goldenberg, introducing some of the themes she will be addressing when she visits the UK in late April 2012.

 

My work at present is focused on developing the hypothesis that religions can be productively thought of as vestigial states.  I consider this to be one way of de-essentializing, demystifying and deconstructing the category of religion.  In general, the concept directs theory along two trajectories: one is the analysis of particular histories in which ‘religions’ are formed or solidified in distinction to ‘states’; another is a focus on classifications which current governments use to delineate spheres of power.  I understand that if the term vestigial state has any resonance, that it will be as a temporary, partial and provisional tool for building theory in critical religion.

My work draws on James Crawford’s discussion of what defines a state in the latest edition of The Creation of States In International Law (Oxford: 2006).  Although not without its critics, Crawford’s articulation of the contingencies attached to the idea of a ‘state’ remains an important touchstone in international law. I also refer to texts by Max Weber and Louis Althusser to make my argument that the control of violence is a basic tipping point between what I want to call a vestigial state and a fully empowered government.

Vestigial states tend to behave as once and future states.  They are always somewhat restive and are generally eager to take on whatever social, cultural and/or managerial functions the recognized state cedes to them.  For example, presently in contemporary nation states, categories of custom and law pertaining to the ‘family’ are considered proper spheres for ‘religious’ authority.  In contrast, economic policies and most forms of violence are currently placed outside of religious control.  Nevertheless, in some jurisdictions ‘domestic’ violence done in the name of religious practice is tolerated at times.  In general, whenever religions, i.e. vestigial states, claim rights in regard to police or military action, they risk being delegitimated in relation to the category of religion.  Thus, in regard to Islam, for example, terms such as ‘political Islam’ or ‘Islamist’ are invented to cordon off appropriate forms of Islam from those that contemporary nation-states consider inappropriate. I argue that Islam is in the process of being turned into a ‘religion’ – i.e. of being made ‘vestigial’ – within some contemporary nation states at the same time that it functions non-vestigially in other parts of the world.  Debates about Islam illustrate how ‘religion’ as a discursive category is employed as a means of control in Western democracies.

My hope is that scholars who specialize in particular historical periods and geographical regions might find the concept of vestigial state to be useful in a range of contexts.  Currently, I have a particular interest in the shrewd initiative by the Dalai Lama to separate his ‘political’ functions from his ‘religious’ ones by encouraging the democratic election of a political leader of the Tibetan people.  Thus is Tibetan Buddhism being constructed to conform ever more coherently with the category of ‘religion’ as a way of limiting the powers of future Dalai Lamas whom China will try to name and control.  In my terms, the Dalai Lama is defining himself as a leader of a vestigial state in order to create a separate sphere of ‘political’ leadership that might escape Chinese influence.

The hypothesis that religions be thought of as vestigial states works well when applied to Jewish history in a manner consonant with the work of Daniel Boyarin in Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Un. of Pa.: 2004) and Seth Schwartz in Imperialism and Jewish Society 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton: 2001).  Boyarin argues that ‘Judaism’ as a religion is created over the centuries in dialogues with Christian theologians.  I argue that such discursive production is perhaps secondary to the machinations of state powers that had to deal with Jews as a conquered ethnic group within their jurisdictions.  Schwartz’ hypothesis that the village evolves as a ‘religious community’ within a state supports my argument that ‘religions’ arise as ways of granting attenuated powers to displaced governments.

Groups aspiring to have the status of ‘religions’ often use narratives that identify with former sovereignties both real and/or semi-fictional. Contemporary forms of Wicca, for example, posit an ancient history in which governments were organized according to the principles Wiccans now follow.  Thus, Wiccans might be seen as imagining their covens as vestigial embodiments of previous sovereign governments.

The nostalgic reference to a former deity or deities as a means of supporting current governmental power is a common theme in Western history and literature.  I draw on my background as a classicist to highlight this trope in the Theogony of Hesiod in regard to how the reign of the Titans is cited when the Olympians triumph over them.  I also mention Athena’s treatment of the Furies in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.  In both cases, although the term ‘religion’ is somewhat of an anachronism in ancient Greece, the succession of sovereignties is nevertheless marked by relegating former ruling orders to the status of a cult, i.e, a vestigial state.

Examples of the ritual citation of religious vocabulary as a way of authorizing so-called secular governments abound.  President Eisenhower’s move in 1954 to add the words “under God” to the US pledge of allegiance is one instance of how religion is conjured as a type of previous sovereignty on which present powers are based.

Conceptualizing religions as vestigial states has value for clarifying matters pertaining to supposed qualitative differences between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ law.  According to my reasoning, such a distinction is more productively thought of as occurring between two forms of ‘states’ with markedly similar processes involving contingency, debate and compromise, something I will draw out further in my forthcoming presentations.