Entangled worlds : religion, science, and new materialisms /
Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate "materiaphobically." Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over practice, in line with the distinction between a disembodied God and the inanimate world "...
| Other Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Fordham University Press,
[2017]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Transdisciplinary theological colloquia.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate "materiaphobically." Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over practice, in line with the distinction between a disembodied God and the inanimate world "He" created. Like all other human, social and natural sciences, religious studies imported these theological dualisms into a purportedly secular modernity, mapping them furthermore onto the distinction between a rational, "enlightened" Europe on the one hand and a variously emotional, "primitive" and "animist" non-Europe on the other. The "new materialisms" currently coursing through cultural, feminist, political and queer theories seek to displace human privilege by attending to the agency of matter itself. Far from being passive or inert, they show us that matter acts, creates, destroys and transforms-and, as such, is more of a process than a thing. This book examines the intersections of religion and new and old materialisms. Calling upon an interdisciplinary throng of scholars in science studies, religious studies and theology, it assembles a multiplicity of experimental perspectives on materiality. What is matter, how does it materialize and what sorts of worlds are enacted in its varied entanglements with divinity? While both theology and religious studies have over the past few decades come to prioritize the material contexts and bodily ecologies of more-than-human life, this book sets forth the first multivocal conversation between religious studies, theology and the body of "the new materialism." |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 333 pages ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9780823276219 082327621X 9780823276226 0823276228 |