As I browse publisher’s web sites for forthcoming volumes on religion, anthropology, sociology and other topics relevant to my research, I’m struck by one of the categories frequently used: Indigenous Religions.  Listed with categories for books on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Comparative Religions, etc. this Indigenous genre stands out.

The other genres are, for the most part, what have been historically called “World Religions.”  This category sometimes refers to the many “religions of the world” as in Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions” but usually it mean something more like “religions of the majority.”  Tomoko Masuzawa (University of Michigan, and currently a scholar at the IAS School of Social Science) problematizes the construction of this category in her book “The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism.”  The book has been waiting on my shelf for a careful reading but I’ve had a quick look at the introduction in which she notes “everybody, in effect, seems to know what ‘world religions’ means, more or less.”  Discussing the role of the phrase in the academy, she observes that the list of  world religions “almost invariably include Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism, and also typically count among their number Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto . . less typically but still very frequently included are Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Sikhism.”

Masuzawa argues that the demarcation between “Eastern” and “Western” religions is “articulated from the point of view of the European West.”  An observation that while seeming initially quite obvious, has a profound consequence when you consider, say, a Buddhist in California talking about their practice in an “Eastern religion” from a geographic position in which Asia lies directly to their West.  Of course, they might practice in a line that considers itself rooted more in Colorado than India. But clearly “Eastern” means something else here. Masuzawa proposes this positioning is rooted in the nineteenth-century origins of early linguistic studies (philology), which identified the “Semitic”, “Aryan” and “Oriental” languages as matching up with contemporaneous ”racialized notions of ethnic difference.”  Amazingly, these divisions persist in religious studies departments (and publishing houses), without much attention to their  basis in colonial logic.

And so, returning to the “Indigenous” question: with this oddly positioned binary of religious categories in hand, the academy categorizes everything else – whatever doesn’t fit in East or West – into “Indigenous” or “Tribal” religion.  This includes the “animism,” shamanism,” and any other practice once called “primitive religion.”  What do we make of the essentialism and universalism of this category? Certainly it persists in part because of the continued centering of Mircea Eliade (and Émile Durkheim, and others) in religious studies curricula.

After all, Eliadean methodology attempts to locate “original,” “archaic,” and “primary” religion in historical or existent “primitive man” and extrapolate a broader understanding of all religious belief and practice from the resulting monolithic construction. Eliade names this monolith “archaic religion” and his dialectic places it in opposition to the “highly evolved” religions.  I’ve been working on a critique of the Eliadean Community of Practice from linguistic anthropology, especially considering Joseph Errington‘s notion of a “Colonial Linguistics.” Reviewing the literature, I’ve found a range of critiques of Eliade which I’ll include here.

Previous critiques of Eliadeʼs dialectic of binary oppositions include feminist (Christ 1991, King 2002), postcolonial (Kehoe 1996, Bilimoria 2000, Joy 2001), theories of religion (Smart 1978, Alles 1988, Segal and Wiebe 1989), postmodern (Olson 1999, King 2002), and methodological (Leach 1966, Strenski 1973, Allen 1978, Werblowsky 1989).

In a feminist critique, Christ points to Eliadeʼs practice of giving grandiose names to male gods but referring only to unspecified (and lower-case) “goddesses” (1991:84) and draws attention to Eliadeʼs valorization of the “Indo- European” conquest over “sedentary populations,” a conquest Eliade compares to “carnivores hunting” (1991:88). Christ uncovers gendered features of Eliadeʼs discourse, the particular (female) versus the universal (male), and Eliadeʼs claim that hierarchical relations of the sexes are an essential characteristic (1991:93). Christ (1991:93) and King (2002:373) both argue that Eliadeʼs history of religion is flawed by its dualism and universalization of male experience.

In a postcolonial critique, Kehoe accuses Eliade of cultural imperialism and labels his “new humanism” as a “very old primitivism” (1996:377). Kehoe takes issue with Eliadeʼs labeling of contemporary societies “archaic” and his misrepresentation of those peoples (1996:383,384). Eliadeʼs primitivism, in Kehoeʼs view, is a “yearning to shed bourgeois clothing and partake” of the “archaic ecstasy” (1996:388). In Kehoeʼs reading, Eliade may lead an “inauthentic [life] of spurious culture” (Sapir 1924) but by constructing the “primitive shaman” he can reassure himself that “archaic ecstasy” is still possible (1996:38). Bilimoria (2000:171,198) and Joy (2001:177) both critique Elaideʼs binaries (true/false, transcendental/totemic, belief/myth, sacred/profane).

In a theories of religion critique, Smart proposes a “grammar of religion” to replace Eliadeʼs sacred/profane polarity (1978:176). Alles sees Eliadeʼs dialectic as a totality, and calls on Saidʼs (et al.) critique that totality is “an instrument of Western colonial domination and cultural imperialism” (1988: 115,117). Segal and Wiebe critique Eliadeʼs claim to the sui generis character of religious phenomena (1989:600).

Olsonʼs postmodern critique draws from Foucault (1967:189) to dispute Eliadeʼs assertion that history is a “body of facts” arguing that there is no untainted “primal” historical material (Olson 1999:360). Olson contrasts Eliadeʼs linear, hierarchical hermeneutics with Deleuze and Guattariʼs de-centered rhizomatics (Olson 1999:366,383). King is critical of Eliadeʼs “transcendental pretense of modernity” which she says universalizes thinking and attempts to impose that system on others (2002:371).

Leachʼs critique of Eliadeʼs methodology points out the use of “exotic ethnography” in order to construct Eliadeʼs notion of “archaic religion” (1966:279). Strenski criticizes Eliade for searching for “higher,” “trans-historical,” “primary,” “original” “prehistoric” meanings (1973:303-306). Strenski argues that Eliadean methodology makes religion “independent of culture” (1973:310). Allen argues that Eliade seeks an “invariant core,” an “essential meaning” of symbols (1978:273). Werblowsky critiques Eliade for finding commonality disparate non- western, non-modern experiences (a “paleolithic hunter and the Buddhist monk” for example) (1989:297).

All references can be found in my Critical Reading of Eliade bibliography.

The recent discovery of a possibly Earth-like planet, Gliese 581g, had me thinking about exo-/xeno-/astro-anthropology again and about the possibility of studying cultures on other planets.  Since the early 90s when I started my undergraduate education in biology and philosophy, I’ve been interested in the relatively easy acceptance of the ”hard sciences” approach to studying theoretical life on other planets. The astrobiology field has some internal debates about their own nomenclature, some arguing that xenobiology should refer to the study of life unlike that on Earth, and astrobiology be reserved for the study of carbon based life on Earth-like planets, including Earth. Either way, it’s considered a legitimate field in biology and astrophysics, NASA even has an astrobiology institute. So why not anthropology and religious studies?

I would propose, for now, that exoanthropology refer to the study of culture on other worlds (or other non-terran environments), including the interactions of terran and non-terran cultures – whereas astroanthropology refer to the study of terran culture as it moves into space.  I realize this delineation calls on some problematic othering, but I think it’s useful for now as the exo field is theoretical and speculative, while the astro field has some more concrete examples to work from, such as the existing space station projects and the study of UFO religions. One might ask if it’s premature to talk about how we would approach a study of culture (and especially the religions) in extra-solar civilizations. And without a “subject” to look at, we might wonder: what’s the point in even naming the field yet?  But these questions haven’t stopped astrobiologists from spending a great deal of time and energy looking at how life might form on other planets, especially in the theoretical consideration of what shape it might take given variation in environment. Why not apply this approach to religion and culture as well?  In many ways this is exactly what speculative fiction has done for a century, authors writing about alien civilizations often include detailed accounts of religions.  Some especially well crafted examples include Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series.  And of course, Philip K. Dick has his own special way of bringing the the exo into religion.

These authors’ approaches aren’t far off from what exoanthropologists might do, especially exoethnographers – using what we know about Earth cultures and our own species to imagine how changes might result in differentiation and variation. So, for example, how different would Earth cultures be if our day was 225 hours long, as it is on Pluto. What if one half of our planet was always dark, facing away from the sun?  What if gravity was lower, atmospheric pressure higher, the sun closer?  What if our civilization was entirely underwater, how different would our concept be of the “sky?”

I’m not proposing we use the methods or epistemology of the astrobiological sciences. Lévi-Strauss’s periodical chart of cultural elements, or anything similar, need not apply here. But if, as Geertz suggested, part of the process of our exploration of culture is trying to understand as many “imaginative universes” as possible, isn’t a speculative, theoretical, exoanthropology a valuable tool in that endeavor? There is also an argument to be made for the role that this kind of imaginative “play” has in formulating new theory about culture and religion here on Earth.

I suggest that we start imagining sooner rather than later.  There is a long history here on planet Earth of failed first-encounters, which we would certainly do over and do better if given the chance. Anthropology, and the precursors to religious studies have a long history of being put to work for the project of colonialism, starting with linguistics and continuing as anthropologists, theologians and missionaries provided imperialist powers with the information they needed to manipulate, control and commit genocide against indigenous people. The sooner we start considering how to prevent this from happening “next time,” the better. It seems inevitable that one day, maybe not for a while but eventually, scholars of religion and culture will be called on to interpret the elaborate religious significance of a welcoming ceremony staged by visitors from the Gliese system. Perhaps it will be up to us to mediate the beginnings of a respectful relationship and prevent interstellar conflict. And if we aren’t preparing for that day, who will be there in our place? Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer at the vatican, might be. “Any entity” he says,”no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.”

“The forms of knowledge that technologies mediate is integral to both a society’s cultural information pool, and to the extramental reality in which they live. Technology itself constitutes an alteration of that relationship — especially as it intervenes in the experiential aspects of that relationship . . . Technologies are in a sense ‘artifacts of knowledge’ (Laughlin 1988b) — they are alterations in material reality that, accompanied by meaning in peoples’ minds, facilitate intentional acts. As such technologies become part of the extramental reality in which we are embedded and to which we must adapt.” (p. 158)

“We would suggest that a society’s technical knowledge is precisely that aspect of their information pool that facilitates an alteration of the relationship between experience and extramental reality through the mediation of techniques and artifacts. In other words, technologies combine information from the culture pool (as meaning) with material and energy in extramental reality that have been purposefully altered in order to afford novel intentional acts.” (p. 159)

I looked forward to hearing Andy Letcher speak at Horizons.  I hadn’t heard of his work or his book “Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom,” but the synopsis for his presentation sounded interesting:

For those who have encountered the sacred mushroom, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.

Here, I want to draw attention away from the mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit – to a consideration of the ways it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. I shall ask a fundamental question: does the mushroom bring genuine transcendence, or are the experiences it occasions forever bound by culture?

(Horizons Conference Program, 2009)

Letcher began by situating himself in academia and describing how he arrived at religious studies.  He had started with an interest in ecology and direct action and was then invited to pursue a PhD in religion.  He explained that he was looking critically at the beliefs of the psychedelic community and we might not like his findings.  He discussed hermeneutics and told the audience that they to, even if they didn’t know what it meant, were hermeneuticists.

He made it clear that his is a scholarly approach, and he won’t give a pass to any of the myth making that is going on in the psychedelic community.  In fact, he wants to debunk those myths.  He expressed his intent to “debunk” the UFO cults, the 2012 movement, the valorization of R. Gordon Wasson, and other mythologies constructed within the psychedelic community.  He discussed the problem of ‘seeing’ mushrooms in ancient art when they aren’t there – and suggested that this can be debunked because they are not in fact mushrooms.  Why?  Because they don’t look like mushrooms.

I agreed with his main point that our interpretations of experience are based (to some degree) in culture, and that we are always engaging in a process of meaning making when we interpret, describe, recount and mythologize experience.  But what wasn’t clear to me is why he seemed to be so hostile toward the mythologies that were being constructed within the psychedelic community. So I asked:

“I understand why you would like to see a more rigorous academic discourse on psychedelics, but aren’t the myths being constructed around Terence McKenna and the 2012 communities not something to be debunked, but something we should look at using that same academic rigor?”

He took this question (which I realize now I should have phrased more precisely) as an opportunity to discuss why he didn’t like the 2012 movement – an answer that boiled down to two things: because it’s millenarian, and that it doesn’t leave room for free will (this answer seemed to exclude the Daniel Pinchbeck brand of 2012ism/mayanism).  If I’d had a chance for a follow up, I would have been more specific and a little more forceful in my critique, asking:

“Why would a scholar of religion be interested in debunking ANY myths?  Isn’t myth the object of our study?  Are you also, for example, interested in debunking the myth systems of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam or is your interest in debunking restricted to these specific new religious movements and myths developing around the psychedelic community?”