Spring Retreat for Faculty and Graduate Students, April 2004

Religion department graduate students, faculty, emeritus and alumni gathered at the Lincklaen House in Cazenovia for a Faculty-Student Spring retreat on "The Theory/Stuff Divide." Graduate Student Association co-presidents Shannon Grimes and Craig Martin and GSO representative Eglute Johnson organized the April 29 event in consultation with faculty members of the Graduate Committee. The day comprised two panels, one on "theory" and the other on "stuff." Click Here to see agenda.

The morning began with a welcome by Prof. Tazim Kassam, director of Graduate Studies. Prof. Kassam highlighted important milestones in the department, including the recent addition of two new faculty members, Prof. Gustav Niebuhr and Prof. John Caputo. These additions reflect the diversity in a department that already demonstrates a "surfeit of riches and talents," Prof. Kassam said. Stating that the lifeblood of the Graduate Program were its students, she announced that Juliana Finucane had been awarded the Master's Prize for the College of Arts and Sciences. Prof. Kassam said the Spring retreat offered faculty and students a forum where they might widen the smaller circles of exchange that regularly take place in a classroom over the semester. "Here we have the opportunity to meet as a learning community, and have conversations that reflect the dynamism, creativity, and intellectual interests we share in this department," she said.

The initial charge for the panelists was twofold. The first part was conceptual-to what do the terms "theory" and "stuff" refer, and what does it mean to say that there exists a "divide" between the two? To say that the theory/stuff divide was merely problematic for participants would be an understatement. Not only was there little consensus on what "theory" and "stuff" are, there was even less consensus on whether the purported "divide" between the two is heuristically useful, conceptually dangerous, practically misleading, or even actually anything.
The second part of the charge was oriented toward practical considerations concerning entering the job market. Panelists were asked to discuss whether Syracuse's reputation for "doing theory" was a liability, an asset or a nonfactor in the job market, especially in light of keener pressures to "cubbyhole oneself," as Gail Hamner put it, into disciplinary specialties.

Morning panelists were chosen to speak on behalf of "theory." The panelists included professors Gail Hamner, Patricia Miller and Joanne Waghorne, and department alum Jeff Robbins, who currently teaches at Lebanon Valley College. Graduate student Melissa Conroy and retired professor David Miller responded to the panelists. Some panelists were surprised at having been chosen to represent the "theory" side of the divide. Prof. Patricia Miller , for one, said that she "spoke as a historian on behalf of stuff," and that history is an inherently theoretical enterprise because "facts are constituted, not found. ..If facts are constructs, history is theory all the way down."

Some panelists resisted the theory/stuff divide. "I've been keeping score," Prof. David Miller said, "and it's three-to-two." Jeff Robbins resisted the dichotomy because of its limited utility. When people discuss theory, he said, often what they are really talking about is metatheory, and it's this kind of theory that has a bad name. Metatheory is "theorists talking with other theorists about theory," which is not the same as using "theory as a critical intervention when talking about stuff."

Other panelists also offered more nuanced distinctions within the broad category of "theory." Prof. Gail Hamner , for example, distinguished between theory and "capital-T Theory," which refers to a particular critical theoretical approach that grew out of continental philosophy. When people claim that the moment of theory is dead, it is "capital-T Theory" that they're talking about. Prof. Joanne Waghorne warned against the easy conflation of theory with categories of universal, general, and possibly also deity. She proposed the idea that "theory" is an inherently theological problem, only conceivable as a result of deity separable from the universe.

During the discussion, others offered different takes on theory. Melissa Conroy proposed the idea that theory is a place of seeing. "How we see religion," she said, "is always from some place of seeing, and what we need to do is investigate this place of seeing." Prof. Ed Mooney also saw theory in terms of vision--"theory is a stepping back to get a better vision." Other points of discussion included the theory/stuff divide as one among many misleading binaries, the comparative (academic) enterprise as inherently theoretical, the distinction between theory as method and theory as content, and why people have a problem with metatheory. Little consensus was reached, which was only appropriate for a department that continually queries how to define its own object of study. Prof. Patricia Miller succinctly summed up the morning's conversation when she said, "That's one of the exciting things about our department. Religion is the object of contestation that we all believe is interesting."

Afternoon panelists were chosen to represent the "stuff" side of the theory/stuff divide. The panel comprised professors James Watts, Ann Gold and Phil Arnold, and department alum Ken Lokensgard, who teaches at Gettysburg College. Retired professor and current director of the InterReligious Council Jim Wiggins and incoming professor John D. Caputo responded to the panelists.

Panelists representing the "stuff" side also differed over the terms of the divide and proposed various ideas about what constitutes "stuff." Prof. James Watts suggested that the theory/stuff divide was most relevant at the moment when one begins to ask questions, because "when you do your answers, you're going to have to have (both) theory and stuff." Phil Arnold approached the theory/stuff question by discussing ideas of exchange in indigenous religions, and analyzing a side-fold dress that possibly belonged to Sacagawea. The dress could be read, he argued, as a sort of religious text and understood as a representation of "global exchange networks, yet indigenous to specific local values and oriented to an array of cultural perspectives." The dress, then, is simultaneously material and theoretical.

Like Dr. Arnold, Ken Lokensgard's and Ann Gold's operational definitions of "stuff" revolved around the idea of materiality. Ken Lokensgard referred to "stuff" as "culturally locatable things" and "empirical reality." Prof. Ann Gold used the word "substance" instead of "stuff" and argued that from an anthropological perspective, the stuff/theory divide not only makes little sense, but is a deeply dangerous way to speak and think. "I don't like categories when used as boxes," she said, "and these are bad boxes." Anthropology has taken for granted the intertwining of theory and stuff, and religion's problem with the split arises from the "diseased language" resulting from the conflation of theory and theology, she argued.

During discussion, Prof. John Caputo contended that stuff is "content-oriented, first-order discourse" and theory is "second-order discourse, parasitic upon first-order discourse." Dr. Caputo said "theory reflects on the status of first-order discourse, its presuppositions, the status of its claims, the language in which the claims are being made." Theory, for him, is "stuff thinking about itself." The problem with this claim Prof. Tazim Kassam argued, is that stuff sounds "inert, waiting to be acted upon by theory." Other points of discussion included the claims that continental theory is elitist and eurocentric, that familiarity with this type of theory generates status in academics, that the deployment of theory is an act of power, and that theorizing is an inherently gendered enterprise.

Richard Pilgrim offered a "ceremonial closing" in which he likened the discursive activity of the department to the Japanese collaborative renge poetic tradition. It is "seriously disciplined poetry," not unlike a department in which each member contributes to an aesthetic and poetic act of creation.

Reported by Juliana Finucane