Paper by Gail Hamner

Theory/Stuff Divide
Gail Hamner, Department of Religion, Syracuse University

I suppose I am a theorist. In part, of course, I'm not sure what that means, to assent to your positioning me on the theory side of this theory/stuff divide. I say 'of course' because the implosion of binaries is part and parcel of what theorists do-you might even say it's the stuff of theory. But of course I do know what a theorist is, at least well enough to generalize one of their functions as imploding binaries, well enough to know the cultural-or academic-caché of Continental philosophy of a certain stripe, at least among some circles, and well enough to be able to say 'Theory' in such a way that registers both the capital "T" and the sophisticated disdain that acknowledges the persistent but troubled 'translation' of these Continental thinkers onto the pragmatic, analytic, and anti-intellectual American terrain.

I thought about discussing theory and stuff through the rubric of Bergson's false problems, or Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. That might be fun, and even right, but not helpful. It would be like responding to a divided household with a pretty theoretical bouquet; that gift would not address the substantive mess that created or sustains the divide. And you all know that, being formed by pragmatism, Marxism and peace-and-justice Christianity (all very material discourses that beg to ally themselves with the 'stuff' side of this battle), being formed by these matter-stuffed theories, I cannot very well avoid substantive mess.

So let me go on record as saying that I not only think the theory-stuff divide is real (well, now, reality is a slippery theoretical term, yes?), I think it is central to study of religion and imperative for anyone facing the job market to consider.

How is this divide central to the study of religion? By pulling away from theology on the one hand, the genealogy of the study of religion shows scholars affirming that religion is not about doctrine or metaphysics or cosmology, so much as about ritual and practice and communities and institutions-all that stuff stuff-and yet on the other hand, by resisting a full commitment to the social sciences, the genealogy of the study of religion evidences a continued attraction to and treatment of such non-quantifiable or un-chartable things like transformation, the sublime, beliefs that can't quite be put into words, the reasons why certain myths will not dissipate, wish fulfillment, compensation, trauma, and…even…doctrine, metaphysics and cosmology. Badiou suggests that the 20th century was swept up in a "passion for the real" (la passion du réel), and certainly producing knowledge about religion did not escape this desire to "deliver the thing itself", as Zizek would say. Scholars simply remained divided on whether the thing of religion was best grasped philosophically (i.e., theoretically or theologically) or, for lack of a better term, practically (i.e., by engaging its material components or getting practitioners to talk about their activities).

In 1898 Peirce, addressing an off-campus roomful of Harvard men professed, "Now, Gentlemen, it behooves me, at the outset of this course, to confess to you that…I stand before you an Aristotelian and a scientific man, condemning with the whole strength of conviction the Hellenic tendency to mingle philosophy and practice" (I.619). He even goes so far as to rephrase scripture, saying, "Now the two masters, theory and practice, you cannot serve" (I.642). Clearly for Peirce, theory is God and practice is Mammon. He mediates this staunch divide between theory and practice through the category of belief, which is, as any good pragmatist knows, that concept upon which one is prepared to act. But that's a different lecture. I want to pause a moment on the fact that Peirce quotes scripture to make a philosophical point, because I think that decision, however (un)conscious it may have been, is perfectly apropos of our agenda here today. I submit to you that the force of the struggle within the study of religion between these two poles (sometimes even within a single scholar) comes from the transcendent aspects of the object of religion calling to, shaping, and eluding the subject of the scholar herself or himself. I do not mean that we are crypto-believers, or that in being believers our study of religion can be reduced to our religious identity. But who better than religion scholars know full well the illusions of 'objectivity'? Who better than we know how studying religion puts us in situations where we feel addressed by what we are studying, made to consider its propositional claims or ethical conundrums or affective pull or practical satisfactions. Some out there are already thinking, 'but religion is no different in this respect than any other object or field of study'. I grant it's probably not unique. But killing 100 rats in an afternoon in order to pull out their kidneys and perform assays that tested their diabetic deterioration did not call for my response the way that watching Gibson's Passion did. The performance of scientific research is easily separable from reflections on scientific practice, perhaps too easily separable. The separation is less easy and less clear with religion research. I used to say, 'I am a scientist' and now I say, 'I teach religion and pop culture', but the latter is much more formative of my subjectivity and ramifies more thoroughly through the stuff of my everyday life than biochemistry ever did.

This is because religion-or one of the things that occasions something being labeled religion-is about transcendence, not because it's about a god or the supernatural, but because it's about a universalizing or at least totalizing thrust. This is so implicitly and ritually even if not explicitly or propositionally. What is universalized or totalized might be quite local, earthy, and embodied; it doesn't have to produce a pantheon or cosmology or creed. But to study religion is to be, on some level, a comparitivist. Does what this person or group or school holds as religious measure up to what I hold to be religious? Is that practice something I could do? If so, what would it feel like? What would it teach me about religion that I haven't learned already? What priorities does this philosophy or community hold and how do they speak to me? And so on. In short, the central tension in religion, the tension between theory and stuff, stems from its evident link to the self-reflexivity or autopoesis that some label an organism's deepest motivation, namely, to recreate itself. Autopoesis is immanent to religion scholarship-it is the 'truth', if you will, about religion that transcends the facts before us-but that self-reflexivity is accessible only from a particular position that takes seriously the stuff thrown up before us by our studies.

That's why the "theory/stuff divide" is central to the study of religion. And now that I've got you all riled up by using words like truth and transcendence, let me turn to the other question I posed:

Why is it imperative for anyone facing the job market to consider this theory/stuff divide? I confess, theorist though I putatively am, I turned for an answer to this question to the crassly quantitative evidence of the current Openings. Of the 20 positions advertised, 17 could clearly be put on the stuff side of things, with one of those 17 arguably sitting on the fence. To justify this claim fully would require going into what counts as 'stuff', which I presume is the task of this afternoon's session, but let me state briefly that I consider stuff to include everything that is not philosophy or theory: In this list of 17 it includes religious traditions, comparing traditions or social or geographical areas, relating religion to society, textual traditions, and yes, even moral theology on sex (as opposed to general moral theology). The theory column includes a search for "generalists", a search for "a theoretically-inclined scholar" (in New Testament and, preferably, Hebrew Bible and Rabbinical literature), and a search for someone "specializing in fundamental moral questions" (as opposed to sex, presuming sex is not fundamental, which is of course wrong). The cross-over job description is, predictably, the one that sounds most like my own work, which simply indicates again how this theory/stuff divide shapes each of us, our self-conceptions as well as our relations to others in the AAR/SBL.

Let me be more theoretical about this job stuff. It's not just a cliché: fields of knowledge are breaking down, more and more scholars are reaching out, over and across 'traditional disciplinary boundaries', asking different sorts of questions and sparking new debates. Design cannot just be physical anymore; citizenship is not the sole purview of the social sciences. Theory (did you note the capital 'T'?), that is, Continental philosophical and political-economic approaches to religion are not isolated or protected from this knowledge vortex. If I hear anyone today discussing 'theory' per se, they do so in the mode of its obsolescence-or they are naïve. The 'moment' of theory is over. From some perspectives, it's been over for a long time. From another perspective, of course, theory in this sense has always and only been an American mutation of Continental reflections on complex social, political, cultural, philosophical, psycho-analytical, and economic situations, a mutation catalyzed by an American dive into the jouissance of theory-for-theory's sake, thereby abandoning our culture's mandate to focus on the personal, the practical and the profit-line. But if you read Hegel or Peirce or Lacan you will find that theory or philosophy or logic or psychoanalysis has never been simply for theory's sake (even Peirce cannot maintain his strong condemnation of this mingling of theory and practice). Theory is always pursued and performed for some discernible, and lived and material problem or problematic.

If you do theory, do it on something that matters.

In taking this advice to heart, you will not only reap the best of what this department has to offer, you will shine on a job market that clearly wants 'stuff' and in a world that equally clearly needs sophisticated theorization.