September 15, 2022 • 55 mins
This installment of ReligionWise features Kocku von Stuckrad, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
In this conversation, we discuss discourse analysis and its utility in the academic study of religion. In particular, we consider examples from Professor von Stuckrad’s two most recent books: The Scientification of Religion (2015) and A Cultural History of the Soul (2022).
Show Notes:
- A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the Present (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-cultural-history-of-the-soul/9780231200370)
- The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800–2000 (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781614513490/html)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Chip Gruen (00:03):
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
Director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege, and I will be the host
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(00:24):
continue to consider a broadvariety of religious and
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(00:48):
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you will find our contactinformation and also have the
opportunity to support thispodcast and the work of the
Institute. Today's guest isKocku von Stuckrad who is
professor of Religious Studiesat the University of Groningen
in the Netherlands. I first metDr. von Stuckrad when Muhlenberg
(01:11):
College was arranging amemorandum of understanding with
the University of Groningen forstudent and faculty exchange and
generally cooperate on jointventures. At the same time, as I
was getting to know him throughthose channels, I was also
starting to use his work inseveral of my classes, and I
just want to take a second tosort of share how instrumental
(01:33):
his work has been. I teach anumber of classes that serve as
an introduction to comparativereligions. Two that I'll
mention, one is called Religionand Popular Culture. The other
is called Animals and theSacred. And in both of those
courses, and even a few others,I start off with Kocku von
Stuckrad on "Discourse." And oneof the reasons I do that is
(01:57):
because it serves as a reallygreat starting point in thinking
about topics of religion. So howI like to describe it is when
we're talking about religion,what are we talking about? Or
how do we talk about religionwhen we're talking about
religion, and his discursiveanalysis. So in his two most
recent book discursive "Historyof the Soul," the other is on
(02:19):
the conjunction of thediscourses of science and
religion. He doesn't talk aboutwhat is the soul or what is
science, but how we go abouttalking about those things and
how we talk about those things,the narratives we build around
those abstract concepts, holdpower and hold influence on how
we both navigate and describeour own world. So it becomes a
(02:42):
really great starting point forthinking about any number of
things that we've dealt with onother episodes of the podcast.
So in addition to his thinkingthrough the lens of discursive
analysis, some of Dr. vonStuckrad's work, and some of his
earlier work in particular, hasto do with secrecy and histories
(03:03):
of esotericism or discourses onesotericism. And I think it's a
really interesting additionalavenue of his work to think
about the idea of public andprivate knowledge of religious
systems that use discourses ofprivacy to enhance their own
cachet, or credibility. And inparticular, if we think about
(03:27):
contemporary ideas aboutconspiracy and secrecy, that his
work is really relevant to someof those conversations as well.
So it's really exciting for me,to have this world renowned
scholar of religious studies,one of the leading voices, not
only in in Western Europe, butin global academic study of
(03:49):
religion, to come and talk aboutthis really important concept
with us today. So Kocku vonStuckrad, welcome to
ReligionWise Thanks for coming.
Kocku von Stuckrad (04:00):
Thanks for inviting me.
Chip Gruen (04:02):
So I wanted to sort of start off broad and then get
a little bit more specific withour conversation today. And one
of the developments I think inthe study of religion and
culture over the last I don'tknow decade you can you can
correct me a couple of decades,I suppose, is the idea of
(04:23):
discursive analysis and thinkingabout discourse. Now, we've all
heard the word discourse before,but I've heard it used in the, I
hesitate to say incorrect way,right? But as a synonym for
conversation or a synonym forfor talking generally, how do
you understand this worddiscourse in your work?
Kocku von Stuckrad (04:44):
Yeah, you're totally right there. There has
been a lot of discussion aboutdiscourse and also very
different ways of doing the termboth in their study of religion
but also in cultural studies allover the place. Many people talk
about discourse but there arevery different different
understandings involved there.
And, and in the study ofreligion, and we can also use
(05:05):
that same question for otherthings. We might be interested
in science or law or whatever,it's the ultimate question is do
you talk about the thingsthemselves? Religion is
something? Or are you talkingabout what people think religion
(05:26):
is? So, do you talk about ideasabout religion or science or law
or whatever, what have you, andthat is exactly what the
difference is in the study ofreligion or in other disciplines
as well. Between the discursiveapproach and other approaches,
(05:47):
because discursive approachesare interested in discourses on
something, and discourses onreligion, what people think
about religion, what, how dothey define religion, so you
don't come up with a definitionyourself to start with, but you
are interested in, okay, thesepeople talk about religion in
(06:09):
this way, and it's notspirituality, it's not science,
it's something and, and youstudy how these uses are set up
in a certain context. And whatmakes discourses interesting,
it's not only the term or thelanguage that you study, like in
text analysis or something, butdiscourses are practices, that
(06:33):
means that discourses alsoestablish orders of knowledge
and therefore they are alsolinked to some kind of
hegemonial dimension. So whatwhat is possible to think about
religion, for instance, is adiscourse, we cannot think maybe
(06:54):
out of the box, you might say,but this is made mainly then
kind of controlled or directedby knowledge that we just share
through what we call discourses.
And these are then alsopractices in the sense that what
(07:15):
we think about the world, theseorders of knowledge about the
world are also legitimized, theyare made plausible, because
there is maybe there arechurches, so that must be
religion, or something that canbe in architecture that can be
disciplines at university aboutsomething that gives like
(07:36):
legitimacy to something in acertain context. And these are
all discourses on and if youstudy discourses, then you're
interested in how orders ofknowledge are set up. And these
are shared basically, in a, in agroup in a society in a large,
large section of society. Andthey can also change, but they
(08:02):
are basically shared opinions.
And in this understanding ofknowledge, opinion and knowledge
is not not a big difference. Soit's not about it's not about
what is true knowledge, but whatis kind of understood as
reality, or as truth in acertain context. Sorry, for the
long, long answer.
Chip Gruen (08:26):
Yeah, no, no, that's good. And I want to push on a
couple of things, because I knowand I'm sort of torn as to
whether to read your formaldefinition or not. Because I
don't want to read your own workback to you. But there are a
couple of aspects of it that Ireally want to push that I
always call out to students thatI'm reading this with. And I
(08:46):
want to get your your take on onthe relationship between the
two. The first is the idea thatthese are social, right, so that
if I'm just going through, okay,I've teased it, I need to read
it now. So the formal definitionyou give in a couple places, is
"Discourses are practices thatorganize knowledge in a given
community. They establish,stabilize and legitimize systems
(09:09):
of meaning and providecollectively shared orders of
knowledge in aninstitutionalized social
ensemble statements, utterancesand opinions about a specific
topic, systematically organizedand repeatedly observable form
of discourse." And the thingthat I always point out to
students is if you just gothrough that community,
(09:31):
collectively shared, socialensemble, you know, that the
idea of sort of group is soimportant here, right, to
really, you know, to reallyemphasize what the
anthropologist will call sort ofa cultural component of
discourse. So that's the onething and then the other thing,
(09:53):
and you don't use power in here.
But I'll have you know, I groupyou with Asad sometimes on my
syllabi, but you don't use powerhere, but the idea of
legitimization, an organizationand so forth. And so, you know,
I want I would like to your takeon, on the one hand, the idea of
(10:13):
the communal aspect of this. Andon the other hand that there is
this cultural power, right, thatis not 1984 authoritarian style
power, but it is sort of thepower of something that is in
many ways ineffable the waterthat we, you know, that we that
we drink the air that webreathe, that's all around us.
Could you talk a little bitabout the relationship between
(10:33):
community and power there?
Kocku von Stuckrad (10:36):
Yeah, yeah, these are two very, very
important components of thewhole discursive approach. The
one, like you said, it's, thereis no discourse without groups,
there is no discourse withoutkind of communication across
individuals. So you can haveindividual experiences, all over
the place, of course, but totalk about a discourse or
(10:58):
meaningfully, to talk about adiscourse, would need some
shared understandings ofsomething. So there must be a
shared understanding, and thatcan be like Foucault talked
about, that can be tacitknowledge, that can be something
you don't realize, you think,for instance, that Christianity
(11:22):
is better than Islam orsomething, or that magic is not
as good as science, somethinglike this, most people don't
really think about it, but theystill have certain
understandings of of the world,in certain context. I mean, that
in different countries thatmight be different, in different
(11:42):
contexts might be different, butit's always the kind of
understanding that is shared ina group context. And this is
also these can be large groupslike states, or like, like whole
parts of nations and so on. So,these are very influential
orders of knowledge that thenalso resonate with, with what
(12:06):
these communities do, thepapers, they read, the
disciplines, they study, orwhatever, is part of the sharing
of certain understandings of, ofthe world. And a lot of research
in discourse, researches alsointerested in power, like you
(12:27):
said, And Foucault as well, whatwas one of that, and then part
of the discursive approaches iseven calling itself critical
discourse analysis. And thiscritical discourse, inevitably,
that is, this focusesparticularly on the question,
Who is behind whose interestsare these these discourses
(12:51):
serving, who is behind this, forinstance, in the colonial
context, you could say thatcolonizers were very interested
in having certain understandingsof religion over against any
animism or magic which theindigenous peoples do, but they
are not yet religious, they arenot as civilized as we are. And
(13:12):
that would be an example thatdiscourse analysis would be very
critical to kind of reveal thehidden power structures that are
involved there. And that is oneimportant aspect of it, but I
would in my own work, I do notthink that it is all about this,
(13:35):
deconstructing and revealing ofpower structures, it is also
just like, what the sociology ofknowledge does, just describing
what's going on what peoplethink, and they are competing
discourses may be and you can,you can reconstruct the history
of a certain involvement or acertain discursive development.
(13:58):
And these can change, dependingon power relations, but not
only.
Chip Gruen (14:04):
Yes, so I want to give just one I want to stay
here, just one more minute andthen I want to get into some
more specific discourses thatyou deal with in your work. But
I want to talk a little bit I'vegot two objections, one I'm
going to share with you now, theother one I'm going to share
share later on in the podcast,because it's, it's a little
more, I don't know, a littlemore confrontational, I guess.
(14:29):
But the first one is, you yourefer to this actually, in your
article, "Discursive Study ofReligions - Approaches,
Definitions and Implications,"as the death and furniture
argument or the death andfurniture objection, and I will,
I'll get you explain what thatis. But I will say just in
(14:50):
passing that I am guilty of thisbecause when I'm teaching
postmodernism, I very often willuse a chair as my example of
what do we perceive to be achair or not. And of course,
I'll hop up and sit on a desk orsomething and say, Well, is it a
chair, then right and talk aboutit. So could you describe? So
I'm guilty of the furniturepart, not the death part. Um,
but could you describe a littlebit about the death and
(15:12):
furniture objection?
Kocku von Stuckrad (15:14):
Yeah, I mean, that's this is part of a
important discussion in thesocial sciences, in general, and
in religious studies, as wellabout the level of
constructivist elements in ourin our theorizing, and then
there are extreme poles, saythat, that the realist pole
(15:36):
would be set, okay, there isreality, and we can actually
describe it. So a chair is achair, right. And then there's
the other extreme, it saysthere's, there's nothing can be
taken for granted, take taken.
for granted or taking the we cantake nothing as real because
everything is only sociallyconstructed. And that would be
(15:59):
the other extreme, like, if yousit on a table, then it's the
chair. And, and these, these arethe two extremes that are
theoretically, and there are afew people who have this
position. But the majority issomewhere in the middle. And
discursive approach hascertainly come out of this, this
(16:20):
constructivist trend in thesocial sciences and the
humanities, that was very, verydominant, since the 1970s,
basically. Before that, it wasmore of a realistic thing. But
the critical deconstruction orthe construction of knowledge as
(16:40):
socially shared and constructed,it's something that was a very
strong paradigm in the in the,in the second half of the 20th
century. And discourse researchcertainly comes out of that. And
it's more interested in howpeople construct chairs, or
religion or magic, rather thanwhat this really is. I mean,
(17:04):
we're not really interestingdeciding for them. What if this
is true or not? So there areless ontological kinds of
statements in this. And that's,that's part of all these
constructivist approaches. Letme say one interesting thing
(17:25):
that has happened over the last10, 15 years is that the
pendulum is, is in the socialsciences and the humanities is,
is swinging a little bit to theother side again, and that comes
with these new materialisms withthese with these not necessarily
realistic in the philosophicalsense, we know about the true
(17:49):
reality. But but there's acounter critique thing that,
okay, you run into something andyou bounce. So there's some,
there's some resistance in thereal world that that you cannot
just construct. And there issome kind of level of ontology
or reality out there that wehave to take into account as
(18:15):
maybe not exactly the thing thatwe can describe with our models
of reality, but there'scertainly we there that is
robust in the sense that wecannot make up anything. And
there is a kind of move also indiscursive study of religion to
(18:39):
say, Okay, how do we deal withwhat today often is called
agency of the material world?
How do we deal with kind of theworld talking back somehow, the
nonhuman world talking back tous, and how do we include that
in our discursive analysis? AndI think that is a very, it is,
(19:04):
it is possible to include that,in discursive approaches, I
don't think that is that we needto give up a discursive
analysis. But it is interestingto, to see what happens when we
include the agency of nonhumans,for instance, in our discursive
analysis.
Chip Gruen (19:24):
So, I want to go back just just a little bit to
put a finer point on somethingbecause you talk about sort of
from the 70s on the postmodernturn, you mentioned Foucault,
etc. And I think the majority ofour listeners, whether they
would put it in these terms ornot, would probably be modernist
(19:45):
in some way. Right. I think andactually, that's that that will
end up being a question as well,right is how much of this is in
the academy and how much of thisdoes this trickle out into
affecting, you know, publicdiscourse as well as as well as
academic discourses? But um, Youknow, when we think about
modernism, you know, I like tothink particularly about, you
know, the turn of the 19th intothe 20th centuries, where we had
(20:08):
things like the examples Ialways used or something like
encyclopedia companies goingcrazy, right? Wanting to do a
compendium of human knowledgeand put it in 26 volumes or what
have you, and then be able tohave it on your shelf. And know,
you know, that this thingdescribes the nature of reality.
Or the other one that I, that Ipoint to is the American Kennel
(20:30):
Club, right? In breed standards,it's the idea that, you know, a
German Shepherd or somethingdidn't exist, you know, as a
breed until people decided toget together and decide what a
real German Shepherd is, it'sgot to be this tall, and it's
got to have this color coat, andit's have to have this
disposition. But then it wassort of determined that this is
(20:52):
now the nature of reality ofthat of that breed, you know, so
that there's that modern, and Icould mention things like the
Miss America Pageant doingsomething very similar. But
that's really kind of kind ofgross, so I won't. But this idea
of describing and catalogingsort of the perfect sort of
specimen or exemplar of a thing,right is I think, at the heart
(21:13):
to some degree of the modernistmove, or, for example, the
world's fairs or the worldparliament of religion, like all
of these things that are lookingto catalog and put in one place,
and then post modernism reallyturns that move on its head, but
that modernism is still verymuch around in public come
public conversation, right?
People really do believe in thefirmness of their own reality, I
(21:35):
think in most, most cases, wouldyou would you agree with that?
Kocku von Stuckrad (21:41):
I think that's a, that's an apt
description of what's what'swhat was going on and what is
still going on. And I think itis also interesting to see this
as part of a larger developmentthat has to do with what self
(22:02):
work on what what does it meanto be modern, right. And it's in
this cataloguing and thisdescription and this organizing
knowledge, objective knowledgeabout the world is is a kind of
identity marker for fordiscourses on modernity, in the
sense that everything istheoretically understandable
(22:29):
about the world and we only haveto look for it and then we find
it and then we catalog it andalso secure it somehow and
control it. So, there are allthese kinds of understandings of
knowledge as and description ascontrolling something and being
in power and so on. So, that iscertainly part of the modernist,
(22:54):
and also the understanding ofwhat is the progress of
modernity over against earlierperiods. And that's also then
linked to what what happened toreligion or to metaphysics or to
all to mysticism or all thesethings that are allegedly non
(23:19):
describable in that exact sense,not you cannot set up an
experiment for it and all thesethings. So there this
reductionist approach to realityis not easily applicable to
these phenomena. And that alsochanged the status of religion
(23:41):
or the discourses on religionover the over against other
other phenomena in the 20thcentury.
Chip Gruen (23:51):
Yeah, and so Okay, let's so let's let's make the
move into talking aboutparticular discourses that
you're interested in that you'veyou've published monographs on
and and I'll start with the thefirst volume I want to talk
about It's entitled "TheScientific... The
Scientification of Religion -Historical Study of Discursive
(24:12):
Change from 1800 to 2000." Andin particular, I want to talk
about what you describe, youknow, sometimes as a discursive
knot and tell me if you thinkthat this a knot k n o t, right,
like two ropes tied together, Ialways think of it in my mind
like a braid like they'rebraided together. That science
(24:32):
and religion right and and Ithink that a lot of us, you
know, if we pay attention topublic conversation or political
conversation, that our, ourculture our society, the
dominant discourse, wants toview to some degree science and
religion as being antitheticalto one another, and that one
(24:56):
should not use one in describingthe other yet the cultural
history that you do sort ofdescribes that this wasn't
always the case doesn't have tobe the case. And, you know, may
not actually be as good adescription of reality as people
think it is. So can you talk alittle bit about the
scientification of religion?
Kocku von Stuckrad (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, when one thing about this, this
knot or the braid, discoursivebraid, that it's a quite simple
idea basically, that if youthink of one thing, like
religion, or like, whatever, thesoul or something or nature or
something, then then it does notreally carry much meaning by
(25:40):
itself, it only receives itsmeaning if you link it to
something else, and that is thatis what I call a discursive,
knot so or what we sometimescall strands, discourse strands,
and they are woven together orthey meet or something. And
these, these strands change overtime, and like Islam and
(26:04):
fundamentalism, that changed thewhole understanding the origins
of knowledge about Islam, if youlink it to terrorism, if you
link it to, like what Mozart didto, to opium, or to to the Haram
or whatever, in Orientalistfantasy, it's a completely
(26:24):
different order of understandingof order of knowledge of Islam,
and none of that is the realIslam, but these are these are
very powerful knowledgestructures, and they come
together in these kind ofbringing together discursive
strands like, like science andreligion in the in the case you,
(26:47):
you mentioned, and theinteresting thing about the
science religion dichotomy isthat, that in the 18th 19th
century, not many people talkedabout that, it was not, it was
not a language that was actuallyused, even the English term
scientist, as a kind ofprofession was first introduced
into English language in around1850. Before that, they were all
(27:11):
different. They were scholars,or they were philosophers, or
that that was a differentlanguage game, and therefore a
different, there was nodiscourse on science and
religion, because nobody talkedabout that. They there was
discourse on religion, ofcourse, but then that was linked
to philosophy to metaphysics toall kinds of other other to
(27:35):
knowledge about nature, maybethat later in the 20th century
became science. So that's,that's one thing that I find
interesting, if you look atthese, look at these
developments, and thescientification of religion has
then several aspects, one islinked to the kind of emergence
(27:59):
of all these academicprofessional disciplines that
study religion, like the studyof religion, obviously, but also
anthropology, sociology ofreligion, then all these
folklore studies, that allemerged, and Indology,
tibetology, all thesephysiological, and this studies
(28:20):
that all emerged at the end ofthe 19th century, and became
legitimized knowledge, if youwant, by by their kind of
institutionalization, inuniversities. And the same is
true for psychology, forinstance, but also for
theoretical physics or othersciences. So you have a kind of
(28:42):
scientific occation of thisknowledge about religion in
very, very interesting ways. Andit is not at that time, it was
not necessarily theunderstanding that the more
science you have, the lessreligion you'll get. So, that is
that is something that basicallycame in more recent, recently in
(29:07):
the middle of the 20th centurywith, with this very strong kind
of behavioristic approach inthis in the sciences, but also
in psychology, and sociology,and so on. So the experimental
focus that is only science isbasically a method that we
(29:27):
apply, and that is, that it's amethod of experimentation. And
if you don't have thatexperimentation, then there is
no science. And, and that, ofcourse, is bad news for
everything that's religion, ormetaphysics or philosophy or
even quantum physics. And some,I mean, there are also problems
(29:47):
with experimentation in some ofthe hard sciences. But, but
these that was a kind of whatyou could call a decustomization
somehow of science and religion,and that basically started this
kind of conflict theory thatthere were already in the 19th
(30:10):
century, there were people whothought about the conflict
theory of science againstreligion, but that was one, one
camp of many others. And therewere also many, it was not
determined yet how this willturn out. And many people till
the 1920s and 30s, wereinterested in merging the
(30:31):
sciences and the humanities. Andthey were looking for universal
systems of knowledge anddisciplines. And these were
famous people I mean, like CarlJung in psychology, for
instance. But also, biologistslike Ernst Haeckel, who looked
(30:51):
for a bringing togetherscientific knowledge about the
world with religiousunderstandings of, of the
cosmos. And this, this verystrong dichotomy of science
against religion was a paradigmthat was actually not not very
long in as a as a leadingparadigm after the Second World
(31:14):
War. And then soon, it alsobecame critiqued as a sign
because if you look at the realworld, then you don't really see
this strong, strongdifferentiation between religion
and science. There are manyscientists as well. I mean,
Albert Einstein is a goodexample. Who said , Religion, is
(31:38):
nature, right? I mean, he's, andhe's, of course, a fiercely
celebrated scientist so there'sno doubt about that. But at the
same time, he, he was one of theearly, early representatives of
nature based spirituality in the20th century. And there are so
many other examples of that aswell.
Chip Gruen (31:59):
Yeah, so you mentioned the word,
spirituality. And I, I'd liketo, I don't know, maybe it's my
strange fascination with theturn of the of the 19th into the
20th centuries. But when youtalk about that these were
strands that were not alwaysimagined as a dichotomy as a
binary, I think of thedevelopment of the spiritualist
(32:21):
movement, both both in the USand in Europe, right. And the
idea that if you look at a lotof these people who are so keen
to demonstrate the sort of thereality of a spiritual world or
a spiritual presence or lifeafter death, I mean, how many of
them are scientists who areusing their new their new toys,
right, their are new instrumentsthat had been developed for the
(32:41):
purpose of studying the naturalworld, to also try to, to
demonstrate, catalogue, provethe existence of a, of a
spiritual world or somethingother than the material world.
And I see also and if you couldrespond to that. And then also,
(33:01):
at the risk of using sort of aTyler Frazier-ism, there's kind
of a survival of that. I mean, Ithink about, you know, from
popular culture contemporary,like ghost hunting shows and
things like that, where there'sthis idea that, you know, one
needs to marry together, youknow, scientific instruments in
(33:22):
order to say something aboutabout a non material world or a
world beyond what we can see.
So, I mean, so one, you know, isthat the right track of
development that I'm seeingthere? And then and then two, is
this a marginal thing? Or do youthink that this in the public
discourses, has got legs isgoing to continue to grow?
Kocku von Stuckrad (33:39):
I think that that is spot on, what you
describe for for in both partsof the, of the question that you
that you raised. And that'sactually also what fascinated
me, and that what what broughtme to write this most recent
book about the cultural historyof the soul, because it's a
(34:00):
cultural history, it's, you canalso call it a discursive
history. But that doesn't sellvery so so we opted for cultural
history, but it's not about thesoul as such, and some readers
are disappointed that they stilldon't know what the soul is at
the end of the book, but it isthe book about exactly what you
(34:21):
what you describe that 100 yearsago or 120 years ago it was
there was a huge debate aboutwhat we today and people at that
point already are calledoccultism. So there is there
they are occult, which is justhidden the Latin word for
(34:42):
hidden. So occultism is knowingis knowledge about the occult,
the hidden powers of nature. Andyou may think of radioactivity,
for instance, isn't called powerof nature. We don't see it but
it's very powerful. Magnetism,electricity, all these things
that were discovered, orinvented if you want, but but or
(35:07):
were came into being somehow atthe end of the 19th century, and
people were fascinated. And thatis also the kind of environment
where spiritualism grew. And theinteresting thing is that if you
look at the first movement toset up psychology as a
professional discipline at theuniversities, it is exactly this
(35:32):
interest that that directed thisthese moves, people were
interested in what you can dowith your soul. How you can
materialize something, can youget in touch with invisible
layers of reality with with withdead people or with different
civilizations somewhere? Or canyou can your thoughts
(35:53):
materialize in distant andactivity and all these all these
questions and the firstexperimentation that they did
were with these psychics werewith these kind of spiritualist,
and they they were. So there wasa long and very interesting
discussion about that. And thatwas part of a larger frame, I
(36:15):
think also in philosophy, thatis the mind matter thing. And
that was a major, majordiscussion at the point in art,
in psychology, in physics, inhow how, how is the relationship
between the material world andthe spiritual world, basically,
(36:39):
and there were all kinds ofdifferent, different approaches.
For an even in science, like thebiologist I already mentioned,
Ernst Haeckel, in his latestbook 1914 was the title, the
souls of crystals, kristallseelen, that's a book title, and
(37:00):
that the you have to in the booktitle that he was a celebrated
one of the leading scientists atthe time. And he, for him, it
was very clear that allcrystals, all stones, not all
stones, but crystals, and thenhe categorized all the different
crystals had souls, so they wereanimated, and that this life was
(37:22):
basically a component ofmaterial world. And that that
was like that that's the secondpart of your question what. So
we have this very, very strongand influential occult kind of
occultism debate at the time.
And I agree that continuites aremuch stronger than you might
(37:42):
expect. Until today, and in mybook, I have one important
phenomenon I see as an importantjuncture between this and that
is particularly in the US, it'sa transpersonal movement, in the
60s 70s and 80s were, wherethese where these threats, or
(38:05):
these discursive kind ofentanglements were, were coming
together. And that created whatwe now today call, or some
people call the New AgeMovement, for instance, where
what mind and matter are thoughttogether again, and we're Carl
Gustav Jung, one of the heroesof the earlier period was
(38:25):
revived and reapplied toquestions of, for instance,
nature and the cosmos as beingalive and all these all these
questions. So yes, I think thatthere is a strong continuity.
And I think if you look atdiscourses about soul animism,
(38:47):
so nature is animated whichanima is the Latin word for word
for soul. So in a discursiveperspective, everything that is
animated is about the soul. Soit's a discursive, not that that
links up with, with ideas aboutthe soul, and that gives life so
(39:07):
the life force in biology, forinstance, 100 years ago, they
were thinking about it, whatwhat what is the inherent power
of life that makes a tree grow?
That's not just measuring thebark and that that's, that's not
(39:30):
that's part of what we do. Butthe real interesting thing for
many people is what drives thistree what what is the life
power, the life essence in itand so on? And that that there's
some continuity and what we seetoday, I think is a revival.
Particularly when it comes toanimated nature. If you look at
(39:53):
the all these bestsellers abouttree consciousness, like Richard
Powers', "The Overstory" aPulitzer Prize and everything.
So there are so many phenomenathat revive this kind of
spiritualization of nature, evenin the, what we used to call the
(40:16):
hard sciences.
Chip Gruen (40:18):
Yeah, and I would guess that particularly say,
particularly in the US, I wouldguess that this gets
supercharged, by sort ofliberalisation of immigration
laws in the United States in the60s as well, right, that some of
these ideas are sort of beingreinforced by, you know, for
(40:39):
lack of a more specific term,Eastern spiritual ideas.
Kocku von Stuckrad (40:42):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what
what you also see, and that'sanother dimension of
scientification of religion, isthat, that if you look at these
new spiritualities, that come upin the context of what sometimes
it's called the New Agemovement, in Esalen, for
(41:02):
instance, and basically inCalifornia, and from there
spread out in other areas aswell. Also, before that, before
the 60s already in the 50s, and40s I was already so it's about
was not necessarily new thing.
But there are new new practicesand spiritutalities coming up.
And what you see in some ofthese is a very strong influence
(41:24):
of scientist. And so these arealso scientifically informed new
spiritualities. If you look, forinstance, at shamanism, or
paganism, or let's takeshamanism, that if you look at
all the major representativesstill today, or since the 1970s,
(41:47):
till today, have a PhD inanthropology, or have at least
Master's in anthropology, or inreligious studies, or sometimes
psychology. And so these are,these are academic experts,
some, then they explain tobroader audience, and that adds
(42:09):
legitimacy to what they say in asecular context. They know what
they're talking about, and yetthey are very into the spiritual
dimensions and they want to so,so, it is even the case that
science can and I include thehumanities here, that secular
science says, knowledge systemscan produce new, new spiritual
(42:35):
activities and convictions andpractices. And the same is true
even for the for for the hardsciences, if you look at quantum
physics, for instance, the wholequantum mysticism that again,
was very prominent in the, inthe 70s, and 80s, in Esalen, and
(42:55):
elsewhere. But and FritjofCapra, for instance, who merged
this quantum understanding, andhe was also a scientist, but he
was he spent time in, in inAsia, and in Japan to to learn
the non western philosophies,like what you said. And that
(43:15):
these are all examples of peoplewho were breeding these
discursive strands togethersomehow with their science and
religion and spirituality. Andthat that was gave a boost to
new kinds of identities. Andwhat we see today, particularly
(43:36):
and since 1990s, maybe with achange of ecology, and that has
everything to do with climateclimate crisis, of course, but
so there's a sense of urgency ofcourse, but at the same time,
there is an interest in in a nonreductionist body. And what
Richard Powers describes in hisnovel for instance, "The
(44:03):
Overstory," is something that isnew forestry, and that is new
biology that's non non nonreductionist, more holistic,
that that can easily be blendedto understandings of tree
consciousness, which is a hugeboom, all over the place, that
the trees are not only and otherlife forms as well are having
(44:27):
their own intelligences. So theyare animated, which is a
discursive link between the souland nature again, so they, they
are somehow agents, they arepersons, and there is a movement
across the world to givepersonhood to nonhumans also
(44:49):
legal standing like to riversand, and forests and so on. So
that I would think that is a newdevelopment. That's that's,
that's quite influential insearch, certainly not marginal,
like you said, I think, BronTaylor, it's hard to measure
this kind of exact numbers. ButI think there's a lot to say, to
(45:13):
confirm what Bron Taylor callsit, the global greening of
religion. That these, what Iwould do, I would call this as a
growing discursive blend ofnature and spirituality. And
that even enters kind ofpolitical documents, like the
UNESCO treaties and so on, wherethere's talk of kind of the, the
(45:39):
age old veneration of theoceans, indigenous cultures, for
instance, that is not that isnot politics only, or science or
you know, that, that is alsovery spiritual discourse that's
going on there. And in a secularcontext, but but these are
brought together somehow, andthat is not, that does not
(45:59):
represent a kind of dichotomybetween science and religion
anymore. This this is a mesh of,of identities that come together
in very, very complex ways.
Chip Gruen (46:15):
So do you think? Do you think that these discourses,
I mean, like, so for example,you mentioned your, "Cultural
History of the Soul" and youmake in the subtitle the
distinction, Europe and NorthAmerica from 1870, to the
present? How much do you thinkthe discursive, you know, arena,
or the public discourse on theseconversations is shared is
(46:40):
similar in in Europe and inNorth America? And how much do I
don't know, say, the rise ofkind of an anti intellectualism
in the United States make thesedifferent conversations?
Kocku von Stuckrad (46:55):
Yeah, I think there's there's both
there's overlap. And there,there are differences. And
overlap is certainly in theseintellectual traditions that are
shared. And also in you see,this also, in many biographies,
actually, of migrants comingfrom, from Europe and then
during the war are refugees andto, to the US, so you can
(47:20):
certainly see some continuitiesthere. And you can also see
differences, like what you saidthat it is quite unique, US
context with this with apolitical tradition with a
cultural tradition and all that.
And at the same time, you cannotalso say there is one European
(47:43):
tradition. I mean, there's, ifyou look at Europe today, there,
it's a whole kind of patchworkof different, different
understandings there. And if Iwould be hesitant, saying that,
there is a European discourse,that is in a clear way distinct
from the US. And there is whenit comes to these spiritual
(48:10):
practices, for instance, there'scertainly a lot of overlap. In
the sense that shamanism, forinstance, in particularly in
Western Europe looks, I mean,this kind of new shamanism looks
very much like, like the US. Imean, it's also even imported
(48:30):
from the US through the MichaelHarner's. Foundation. And then
it is it is makes in many otherways. The same is true for Neo
pagan groups, for instance,where in where in Europe,
particularly, but also indifferent ways that can be
connected to old Celtictraditions in the UK, or to
(48:53):
Viking traditions. And, and it'salso used in in, in central
Europe as a kind of identitymarker that is pre socialist,
but also pre Christian. So thereis a kind of nationalist
movement that goes thatreconstructs this kind of roots
(49:13):
of the almost völkisch way insome in some contexts. So there
are all kinds of different waysof looking at that, but, but I
think that these discursiveworlds are very, very entangled,
actually.
Chip Gruen (49:34):
So and I promised and I'm coming back to it,
because I promised anotherobjection. And so this is this
is this is my object, not myobjection, an objection that
I've been thinking a lot aboutand, and actually, while it I
want to frame it in reference tothe methods of sort of
discursive analysis, I thinksome of what you're talking
(49:55):
about the resurgence of sort ofidentity markers, and you know,
whether those be pre Christian,nationalistic etc tie into this.
And so here it is that in thebeginning, right, the postmodern
turn was really a very leftistkind of a thing, right that it
was emerging in the 60s and the70s as being sort of a
(50:18):
questioning of institutions ofsocial patterns of authority,
you know, in sort of in stepwith the counterculture a little
bit, or more than a little bit,actually. In the past several
years, though, the tools of postmodernism seem to be sort of
creeping into the toolbox of anddiscursive analysis for that
(50:40):
matter, seem to be creeping intothe tool box of authoritarianism
in lots of different contexts.
So questioning the nature ofreality describing, you know,
the denial, denial, denial offacts on the ground, right in in
with an argument that there arealternative versions of the same
history. I mean, is thisinevitable that this is not just
(51:03):
sort of a toolkit of the leftbut then ends up being sort of
spread? I mean, what, I'm notgoing to ask you for the answer
to this, but just you know, am Ireading that phenomena right,
are those phenomena right thatthis is something that is that
is sort of spreading and beingused in various various other
cultural contexts than the oneit grew up in?
Kocku von Stuckrad (51:26):
Absolutely, I fully agree with that
observation, what we what we seeis that these tools and these
critical deconstruction orwhatever you want to call that,
that has that had a certain kindof root in countercultures, and
critical leftist kind ofreadings of, of hegemonic
(51:49):
discourses and so on that thatare also used in in other milieu
and apply to other questions aswell and use as legitimization.
And it's a, you, you hear thesediscussions, very often in one
example of that is also I mean,if everything is, is
(52:12):
constructed, then we cannotreally attack fake news. So
there is no, there are no fakefacts, if all facts are
basically fake, like, like, whatthe radical postmodernist
Nietzsche said, I mean, nobodyreally said that, but that it's
also misreading of a lot what'sgoing on in that, but then it's
(52:36):
turned into anything goes,right. And that is not what
these people actually thetheorist said, but which is how
how much of that comes acrosseasily, and then it can be can
be used like that. And theanswer, then is not okay, well,
then we have to pretend that weknow the truth. I don't think
(52:57):
that that is very, very useful.
But I think what what isimportant is to to understand
that it does not mean thatanything goes that that it does
not matter what I claim, it onlymeans that whatever I claim is
coming from a certain positionof prospectivity and a certain
(53:18):
perspective, title kind ofunderstanding of reality. And I
still, as a scholar, I amaccountable of what I do, and as
a journalist and as thepolitical political leader, you
know I am accountable to what Isay and that the then the
interesting question is, whatare the what are the criteria of
(53:40):
accountability? And that's, Ithink, what we need to talk
about, and that's what LauriePatton writes about, and the
institutional responsibilitythat we have, as scholars, for
instance, that we always have tomake clear that our privileged
situation or more or lessprivileged situation has certain
(54:03):
influence on what we are saying,which does not mean that we that
we make things up. And that'salso this nice distinction
between making things up doesnot mean that things are made.
They are made, things are made,but they are not made up. That's
(54:25):
so the these distinctions areimportant to, to keep I think.
Chip Gruen (54:33):
All right, well, Kocku von Stuckrad, thank you
very much for this. This hasbeen super fun and super
enlightening, and I reallyappreciate you coming on
ReligionWise.
Kocku von Stuckrad (54:43):
Thank you so much for the conversation. I
really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Chip Gruen (54:50):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
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(55:11):
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We look forward to seeing younext time.
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
Director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege, and I will be the host
for this podcast. In this seasontwo of ReligionWise, we will
(00:24):
continue to consider a broadvariety of religious and
cultural beliefs and practices,and try to understand their
place in the contemporaryconversation. If you like what
you hear, I encourage you toexplore the 12 episodes from
season one that are available inyour favorite podcast app. Also,
we would love to hear from youwith your questions, comments,
or suggestions for futureepisodes. To reach us, please
(00:48):
visit our website atreligionandculture.com. There
you will find our contactinformation and also have the
opportunity to support thispodcast and the work of the
Institute. Today's guest isKocku von Stuckrad who is
professor of Religious Studiesat the University of Groningen
in the Netherlands. I first metDr. von Stuckrad when Muhlenberg
(01:11):
College was arranging amemorandum of understanding with
the University of Groningen forstudent and faculty exchange and
generally cooperate on jointventures. At the same time, as I
was getting to know him throughthose channels, I was also
starting to use his work inseveral of my classes, and I
just want to take a second tosort of share how instrumental
(01:33):
his work has been. I teach anumber of classes that serve as
an introduction to comparativereligions. Two that I'll
mention, one is called Religionand Popular Culture. The other
is called Animals and theSacred. And in both of those
courses, and even a few others,I start off with Kocku von
Stuckrad on "Discourse." And oneof the reasons I do that is
(01:57):
because it serves as a reallygreat starting point in thinking
about topics of religion. So howI like to describe it is when
we're talking about religion,what are we talking about? Or
how do we talk about religionwhen we're talking about
religion, and his discursiveanalysis. So in his two most
recent book discursive "Historyof the Soul," the other is on
(02:19):
the conjunction of thediscourses of science and
religion. He doesn't talk aboutwhat is the soul or what is
science, but how we go abouttalking about those things and
how we talk about those things,the narratives we build around
those abstract concepts, holdpower and hold influence on how
we both navigate and describeour own world. So it becomes a
(02:42):
really great starting point forthinking about any number of
things that we've dealt with onother episodes of the podcast.
So in addition to his thinkingthrough the lens of discursive
analysis, some of Dr. vonStuckrad's work, and some of his
earlier work in particular, hasto do with secrecy and histories
(03:03):
of esotericism or discourses onesotericism. And I think it's a
really interesting additionalavenue of his work to think
about the idea of public andprivate knowledge of religious
systems that use discourses ofprivacy to enhance their own
cachet, or credibility. And inparticular, if we think about
(03:27):
contemporary ideas aboutconspiracy and secrecy, that his
work is really relevant to someof those conversations as well.
So it's really exciting for me,to have this world renowned
scholar of religious studies,one of the leading voices, not
only in in Western Europe, butin global academic study of
(03:49):
religion, to come and talk aboutthis really important concept
with us today. So Kocku vonStuckrad, welcome to
ReligionWise Thanks for coming.
Kocku von Stuckrad (04:00):
Thanks for inviting me.
Chip Gruen (04:02):
So I wanted to sort of start off broad and then get
a little bit more specific withour conversation today. And one
of the developments I think inthe study of religion and
culture over the last I don'tknow decade you can you can
correct me a couple of decades,I suppose, is the idea of
(04:23):
discursive analysis and thinkingabout discourse. Now, we've all
heard the word discourse before,but I've heard it used in the, I
hesitate to say incorrect way,right? But as a synonym for
conversation or a synonym forfor talking generally, how do
you understand this worddiscourse in your work?
Kocku von Stuckrad (04:44):
Yeah, you're totally right there. There has
been a lot of discussion aboutdiscourse and also very
different ways of doing the termboth in their study of religion
but also in cultural studies allover the place. Many people talk
about discourse but there arevery different different
understandings involved there.
And, and in the study ofreligion, and we can also use
(05:05):
that same question for otherthings. We might be interested
in science or law or whatever,it's the ultimate question is do
you talk about the thingsthemselves? Religion is
something? Or are you talkingabout what people think religion
(05:26):
is? So, do you talk about ideasabout religion or science or law
or whatever, what have you, andthat is exactly what the
difference is in the study ofreligion or in other disciplines
as well. Between the discursiveapproach and other approaches,
(05:47):
because discursive approachesare interested in discourses on
something, and discourses onreligion, what people think
about religion, what, how dothey define religion, so you
don't come up with a definitionyourself to start with, but you
are interested in, okay, thesepeople talk about religion in
(06:09):
this way, and it's notspirituality, it's not science,
it's something and, and youstudy how these uses are set up
in a certain context. And whatmakes discourses interesting,
it's not only the term or thelanguage that you study, like in
text analysis or something, butdiscourses are practices, that
(06:33):
means that discourses alsoestablish orders of knowledge
and therefore they are alsolinked to some kind of
hegemonial dimension. So whatwhat is possible to think about
religion, for instance, is adiscourse, we cannot think maybe
(06:54):
out of the box, you might say,but this is made mainly then
kind of controlled or directedby knowledge that we just share
through what we call discourses.
And these are then alsopractices in the sense that what
(07:15):
we think about the world, theseorders of knowledge about the
world are also legitimized, theyare made plausible, because
there is maybe there arechurches, so that must be
religion, or something that canbe in architecture that can be
disciplines at university aboutsomething that gives like
(07:36):
legitimacy to something in acertain context. And these are
all discourses on and if youstudy discourses, then you're
interested in how orders ofknowledge are set up. And these
are shared basically, in a, in agroup in a society in a large,
large section of society. Andthey can also change, but they
(08:02):
are basically shared opinions.
And in this understanding ofknowledge, opinion and knowledge
is not not a big difference. Soit's not about it's not about
what is true knowledge, but whatis kind of understood as
reality, or as truth in acertain context. Sorry, for the
long, long answer.
Chip Gruen (08:26):
Yeah, no, no, that's good. And I want to push on a
couple of things, because I knowand I'm sort of torn as to
whether to read your formaldefinition or not. Because I
don't want to read your own workback to you. But there are a
couple of aspects of it that Ireally want to push that I
always call out to students thatI'm reading this with. And I
(08:46):
want to get your your take on onthe relationship between the
two. The first is the idea thatthese are social, right, so that
if I'm just going through, okay,I've teased it, I need to read
it now. So the formal definitionyou give in a couple places, is
"Discourses are practices thatorganize knowledge in a given
community. They establish,stabilize and legitimize systems
(09:09):
of meaning and providecollectively shared orders of
knowledge in aninstitutionalized social
ensemble statements, utterancesand opinions about a specific
topic, systematically organizedand repeatedly observable form
of discourse." And the thingthat I always point out to
students is if you just gothrough that community,
(09:31):
collectively shared, socialensemble, you know, that the
idea of sort of group is soimportant here, right, to
really, you know, to reallyemphasize what the
anthropologist will call sort ofa cultural component of
discourse. So that's the onething and then the other thing,
(09:53):
and you don't use power in here.
But I'll have you know, I groupyou with Asad sometimes on my
syllabi, but you don't use powerhere, but the idea of
legitimization, an organizationand so forth. And so, you know,
I want I would like to your takeon, on the one hand, the idea of
(10:13):
the communal aspect of this. Andon the other hand that there is
this cultural power, right, thatis not 1984 authoritarian style
power, but it is sort of thepower of something that is in
many ways ineffable the waterthat we, you know, that we that
we drink the air that webreathe, that's all around us.
Could you talk a little bitabout the relationship between
(10:33):
community and power there?
Kocku von Stuckrad (10:36):
Yeah, yeah, these are two very, very
important components of thewhole discursive approach. The
one, like you said, it's, thereis no discourse without groups,
there is no discourse withoutkind of communication across
individuals. So you can haveindividual experiences, all over
the place, of course, but totalk about a discourse or
(10:58):
meaningfully, to talk about adiscourse, would need some
shared understandings ofsomething. So there must be a
shared understanding, and thatcan be like Foucault talked
about, that can be tacitknowledge, that can be something
you don't realize, you think,for instance, that Christianity
(11:22):
is better than Islam orsomething, or that magic is not
as good as science, somethinglike this, most people don't
really think about it, but theystill have certain
understandings of of the world,in certain context. I mean, that
in different countries thatmight be different, in different
(11:42):
contexts might be different, butit's always the kind of
understanding that is shared ina group context. And this is
also these can be large groupslike states, or like, like whole
parts of nations and so on. So,these are very influential
orders of knowledge that thenalso resonate with, with what
(12:06):
these communities do, thepapers, they read, the
disciplines, they study, orwhatever, is part of the sharing
of certain understandings of, ofthe world. And a lot of research
in discourse, researches alsointerested in power, like you
(12:27):
said, And Foucault as well, whatwas one of that, and then part
of the discursive approaches iseven calling itself critical
discourse analysis. And thiscritical discourse, inevitably,
that is, this focusesparticularly on the question,
Who is behind whose interestsare these these discourses
(12:51):
serving, who is behind this, forinstance, in the colonial
context, you could say thatcolonizers were very interested
in having certain understandingsof religion over against any
animism or magic which theindigenous peoples do, but they
are not yet religious, they arenot as civilized as we are. And
(13:12):
that would be an example thatdiscourse analysis would be very
critical to kind of reveal thehidden power structures that are
involved there. And that is oneimportant aspect of it, but I
would in my own work, I do notthink that it is all about this,
(13:35):
deconstructing and revealing ofpower structures, it is also
just like, what the sociology ofknowledge does, just describing
what's going on what peoplethink, and they are competing
discourses may be and you can,you can reconstruct the history
of a certain involvement or acertain discursive development.
(13:58):
And these can change, dependingon power relations, but not
only.
Chip Gruen (14:04):
Yes, so I want to give just one I want to stay
here, just one more minute andthen I want to get into some
more specific discourses thatyou deal with in your work. But
I want to talk a little bit I'vegot two objections, one I'm
going to share with you now, theother one I'm going to share
share later on in the podcast,because it's, it's a little
more, I don't know, a littlemore confrontational, I guess.
(14:29):
But the first one is, you yourefer to this actually, in your
article, "Discursive Study ofReligions - Approaches,
Definitions and Implications,"as the death and furniture
argument or the death andfurniture objection, and I will,
I'll get you explain what thatis. But I will say just in
(14:50):
passing that I am guilty of thisbecause when I'm teaching
postmodernism, I very often willuse a chair as my example of
what do we perceive to be achair or not. And of course,
I'll hop up and sit on a desk orsomething and say, Well, is it a
chair, then right and talk aboutit. So could you describe? So
I'm guilty of the furniturepart, not the death part. Um,
but could you describe a littlebit about the death and
(15:12):
furniture objection?
Kocku von Stuckrad (15:14):
Yeah, I mean, that's this is part of a
important discussion in thesocial sciences, in general, and
in religious studies, as wellabout the level of
constructivist elements in ourin our theorizing, and then
there are extreme poles, saythat, that the realist pole
(15:36):
would be set, okay, there isreality, and we can actually
describe it. So a chair is achair, right. And then there's
the other extreme, it saysthere's, there's nothing can be
taken for granted, take taken.
for granted or taking the we cantake nothing as real because
everything is only sociallyconstructed. And that would be
(15:59):
the other extreme, like, if yousit on a table, then it's the
chair. And, and these, these arethe two extremes that are
theoretically, and there are afew people who have this
position. But the majority issomewhere in the middle. And
discursive approach hascertainly come out of this, this
(16:20):
constructivist trend in thesocial sciences and the
humanities, that was very, verydominant, since the 1970s,
basically. Before that, it wasmore of a realistic thing. But
the critical deconstruction orthe construction of knowledge as
(16:40):
socially shared and constructed,it's something that was a very
strong paradigm in the in the,in the second half of the 20th
century. And discourse researchcertainly comes out of that. And
it's more interested in howpeople construct chairs, or
religion or magic, rather thanwhat this really is. I mean,
(17:04):
we're not really interestingdeciding for them. What if this
is true or not? So there areless ontological kinds of
statements in this. And that's,that's part of all these
constructivist approaches. Letme say one interesting thing
(17:25):
that has happened over the last10, 15 years is that the
pendulum is, is in the socialsciences and the humanities is,
is swinging a little bit to theother side again, and that comes
with these new materialisms withthese with these not necessarily
realistic in the philosophicalsense, we know about the true
(17:49):
reality. But but there's acounter critique thing that,
okay, you run into something andyou bounce. So there's some,
there's some resistance in thereal world that that you cannot
just construct. And there issome kind of level of ontology
or reality out there that wehave to take into account as
(18:15):
maybe not exactly the thing thatwe can describe with our models
of reality, but there'scertainly we there that is
robust in the sense that wecannot make up anything. And
there is a kind of move also indiscursive study of religion to
(18:39):
say, Okay, how do we deal withwhat today often is called
agency of the material world?
How do we deal with kind of theworld talking back somehow, the
nonhuman world talking back tous, and how do we include that
in our discursive analysis? AndI think that is a very, it is,
(19:04):
it is possible to include that,in discursive approaches, I
don't think that is that we needto give up a discursive
analysis. But it is interestingto, to see what happens when we
include the agency of nonhumans,for instance, in our discursive
analysis.
Chip Gruen (19:24):
So, I want to go back just just a little bit to
put a finer point on somethingbecause you talk about sort of
from the 70s on the postmodernturn, you mentioned Foucault,
etc. And I think the majority ofour listeners, whether they
would put it in these terms ornot, would probably be modernist
(19:45):
in some way. Right. I think andactually, that's that that will
end up being a question as well,right is how much of this is in
the academy and how much of thisdoes this trickle out into
affecting, you know, publicdiscourse as well as as well as
academic discourses? But um, Youknow, when we think about
modernism, you know, I like tothink particularly about, you
know, the turn of the 19th intothe 20th centuries, where we had
(20:08):
things like the examples Ialways used or something like
encyclopedia companies goingcrazy, right? Wanting to do a
compendium of human knowledgeand put it in 26 volumes or what
have you, and then be able tohave it on your shelf. And know,
you know, that this thingdescribes the nature of reality.
Or the other one that I, that Ipoint to is the American Kennel
(20:30):
Club, right? In breed standards,it's the idea that, you know, a
German Shepherd or somethingdidn't exist, you know, as a
breed until people decided toget together and decide what a
real German Shepherd is, it'sgot to be this tall, and it's
got to have this color coat, andit's have to have this
disposition. But then it wassort of determined that this is
(20:52):
now the nature of reality ofthat of that breed, you know, so
that there's that modern, and Icould mention things like the
Miss America Pageant doingsomething very similar. But
that's really kind of kind ofgross, so I won't. But this idea
of describing and catalogingsort of the perfect sort of
specimen or exemplar of a thing,right is I think, at the heart
(21:13):
to some degree of the modernistmove, or, for example, the
world's fairs or the worldparliament of religion, like all
of these things that are lookingto catalog and put in one place,
and then post modernism reallyturns that move on its head, but
that modernism is still verymuch around in public come
public conversation, right?
People really do believe in thefirmness of their own reality, I
(21:35):
think in most, most cases, wouldyou would you agree with that?
Kocku von Stuckrad (21:41):
I think that's a, that's an apt
description of what's what'swhat was going on and what is
still going on. And I think itis also interesting to see this
as part of a larger developmentthat has to do with what self
(22:02):
work on what what does it meanto be modern, right. And it's in
this cataloguing and thisdescription and this organizing
knowledge, objective knowledgeabout the world is is a kind of
identity marker for fordiscourses on modernity, in the
sense that everything istheoretically understandable
(22:29):
about the world and we only haveto look for it and then we find
it and then we catalog it andalso secure it somehow and
control it. So, there are allthese kinds of understandings of
knowledge as and description ascontrolling something and being
in power and so on. So, that iscertainly part of the modernist,
(22:54):
and also the understanding ofwhat is the progress of
modernity over against earlierperiods. And that's also then
linked to what what happened toreligion or to metaphysics or to
all to mysticism or all thesethings that are allegedly non
(23:19):
describable in that exact sense,not you cannot set up an
experiment for it and all thesethings. So there this
reductionist approach to realityis not easily applicable to
these phenomena. And that alsochanged the status of religion
(23:41):
or the discourses on religionover the over against other
other phenomena in the 20thcentury.
Chip Gruen (23:51):
Yeah, and so Okay, let's so let's let's make the
move into talking aboutparticular discourses that
you're interested in that you'veyou've published monographs on
and and I'll start with the thefirst volume I want to talk
about It's entitled "TheScientific... The
Scientification of Religion -Historical Study of Discursive
(24:12):
Change from 1800 to 2000." Andin particular, I want to talk
about what you describe, youknow, sometimes as a discursive
knot and tell me if you thinkthat this a knot k n o t, right,
like two ropes tied together, Ialways think of it in my mind
like a braid like they'rebraided together. That science
(24:32):
and religion right and and Ithink that a lot of us, you
know, if we pay attention topublic conversation or political
conversation, that our, ourculture our society, the
dominant discourse, wants toview to some degree science and
religion as being antitheticalto one another, and that one
(24:56):
should not use one in describingthe other yet the cultural
history that you do sort ofdescribes that this wasn't
always the case doesn't have tobe the case. And, you know, may
not actually be as good adescription of reality as people
think it is. So can you talk alittle bit about the
scientification of religion?
Kocku von Stuckrad (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, when one thing about this, this
knot or the braid, discoursivebraid, that it's a quite simple
idea basically, that if youthink of one thing, like
religion, or like, whatever, thesoul or something or nature or
something, then then it does notreally carry much meaning by
(25:40):
itself, it only receives itsmeaning if you link it to
something else, and that is thatis what I call a discursive,
knot so or what we sometimescall strands, discourse strands,
and they are woven together orthey meet or something. And
these, these strands change overtime, and like Islam and
(26:04):
fundamentalism, that changed thewhole understanding the origins
of knowledge about Islam, if youlink it to terrorism, if you
link it to, like what Mozart didto, to opium, or to to the Haram
or whatever, in Orientalistfantasy, it's a completely
(26:24):
different order of understandingof order of knowledge of Islam,
and none of that is the realIslam, but these are these are
very powerful knowledgestructures, and they come
together in these kind ofbringing together discursive
strands like, like science andreligion in the in the case you,
(26:47):
you mentioned, and theinteresting thing about the
science religion dichotomy isthat, that in the 18th 19th
century, not many people talkedabout that, it was not, it was
not a language that was actuallyused, even the English term
scientist, as a kind ofprofession was first introduced
into English language in around1850. Before that, they were all
(27:11):
different. They were scholars,or they were philosophers, or
that that was a differentlanguage game, and therefore a
different, there was nodiscourse on science and
religion, because nobody talkedabout that. They there was
discourse on religion, ofcourse, but then that was linked
to philosophy to metaphysics toall kinds of other other to
(27:35):
knowledge about nature, maybethat later in the 20th century
became science. So that's,that's one thing that I find
interesting, if you look atthese, look at these
developments, and thescientification of religion has
then several aspects, one islinked to the kind of emergence
(27:59):
of all these academicprofessional disciplines that
study religion, like the studyof religion, obviously, but also
anthropology, sociology ofreligion, then all these
folklore studies, that allemerged, and Indology,
tibetology, all thesephysiological, and this studies
(28:20):
that all emerged at the end ofthe 19th century, and became
legitimized knowledge, if youwant, by by their kind of
institutionalization, inuniversities. And the same is
true for psychology, forinstance, but also for
theoretical physics or othersciences. So you have a kind of
(28:42):
scientific occation of thisknowledge about religion in
very, very interesting ways. Andit is not at that time, it was
not necessarily theunderstanding that the more
science you have, the lessreligion you'll get. So, that is
that is something that basicallycame in more recent, recently in
(29:07):
the middle of the 20th centurywith, with this very strong kind
of behavioristic approach inthis in the sciences, but also
in psychology, and sociology,and so on. So the experimental
focus that is only science isbasically a method that we
(29:27):
apply, and that is, that it's amethod of experimentation. And
if you don't have thatexperimentation, then there is
no science. And, and that, ofcourse, is bad news for
everything that's religion, ormetaphysics or philosophy or
even quantum physics. And some,I mean, there are also problems
(29:47):
with experimentation in some ofthe hard sciences. But, but
these that was a kind of whatyou could call a decustomization
somehow of science and religion,and that basically started this
kind of conflict theory thatthere were already in the 19th
(30:10):
century, there were people whothought about the conflict
theory of science againstreligion, but that was one, one
camp of many others. And therewere also many, it was not
determined yet how this willturn out. And many people till
the 1920s and 30s, wereinterested in merging the
(30:31):
sciences and the humanities. Andthey were looking for universal
systems of knowledge anddisciplines. And these were
famous people I mean, like CarlJung in psychology, for
instance. But also, biologistslike Ernst Haeckel, who looked
(30:51):
for a bringing togetherscientific knowledge about the
world with religiousunderstandings of, of the
cosmos. And this, this verystrong dichotomy of science
against religion was a paradigmthat was actually not not very
long in as a as a leadingparadigm after the Second World
(31:14):
War. And then soon, it alsobecame critiqued as a sign
because if you look at the realworld, then you don't really see
this strong, strongdifferentiation between religion
and science. There are manyscientists as well. I mean,
Albert Einstein is a goodexample. Who said , Religion, is
(31:38):
nature, right? I mean, he's, andhe's, of course, a fiercely
celebrated scientist so there'sno doubt about that. But at the
same time, he, he was one of theearly, early representatives of
nature based spirituality in the20th century. And there are so
many other examples of that aswell.
Chip Gruen (31:59):
Yeah, so you mentioned the word,
spirituality. And I, I'd liketo, I don't know, maybe it's my
strange fascination with theturn of the of the 19th into the
20th centuries. But when youtalk about that these were
strands that were not alwaysimagined as a dichotomy as a
binary, I think of thedevelopment of the spiritualist
(32:21):
movement, both both in the USand in Europe, right. And the
idea that if you look at a lotof these people who are so keen
to demonstrate the sort of thereality of a spiritual world or
a spiritual presence or lifeafter death, I mean, how many of
them are scientists who areusing their new their new toys,
right, their are new instrumentsthat had been developed for the
(32:41):
purpose of studying the naturalworld, to also try to, to
demonstrate, catalogue, provethe existence of a, of a
spiritual world or somethingother than the material world.
And I see also and if you couldrespond to that. And then also,
(33:01):
at the risk of using sort of aTyler Frazier-ism, there's kind
of a survival of that. I mean, Ithink about, you know, from
popular culture contemporary,like ghost hunting shows and
things like that, where there'sthis idea that, you know, one
needs to marry together, youknow, scientific instruments in
(33:22):
order to say something aboutabout a non material world or a
world beyond what we can see.
So, I mean, so one, you know, isthat the right track of
development that I'm seeingthere? And then and then two, is
this a marginal thing? Or do youthink that this in the public
discourses, has got legs isgoing to continue to grow?
Kocku von Stuckrad (33:39):
I think that that is spot on, what you
describe for for in both partsof the, of the question that you
that you raised. And that'sactually also what fascinated
me, and that what what broughtme to write this most recent
book about the cultural historyof the soul, because it's a
(34:00):
cultural history, it's, you canalso call it a discursive
history. But that doesn't sellvery so so we opted for cultural
history, but it's not about thesoul as such, and some readers
are disappointed that they stilldon't know what the soul is at
the end of the book, but it isthe book about exactly what you
(34:21):
what you describe that 100 yearsago or 120 years ago it was
there was a huge debate aboutwhat we today and people at that
point already are calledoccultism. So there is there
they are occult, which is justhidden the Latin word for
(34:42):
hidden. So occultism is knowingis knowledge about the occult,
the hidden powers of nature. Andyou may think of radioactivity,
for instance, isn't called powerof nature. We don't see it but
it's very powerful. Magnetism,electricity, all these things
that were discovered, orinvented if you want, but but or
(35:07):
were came into being somehow atthe end of the 19th century, and
people were fascinated. And thatis also the kind of environment
where spiritualism grew. And theinteresting thing is that if you
look at the first movement toset up psychology as a
professional discipline at theuniversities, it is exactly this
(35:32):
interest that that directed thisthese moves, people were
interested in what you can dowith your soul. How you can
materialize something, can youget in touch with invisible
layers of reality with with withdead people or with different
civilizations somewhere? Or canyou can your thoughts
(35:53):
materialize in distant andactivity and all these all these
questions and the firstexperimentation that they did
were with these psychics werewith these kind of spiritualist,
and they they were. So there wasa long and very interesting
discussion about that. And thatwas part of a larger frame, I
(36:15):
think also in philosophy, thatis the mind matter thing. And
that was a major, majordiscussion at the point in art,
in psychology, in physics, inhow how, how is the relationship
between the material world andthe spiritual world, basically,
(36:39):
and there were all kinds ofdifferent, different approaches.
For an even in science, like thebiologist I already mentioned,
Ernst Haeckel, in his latestbook 1914 was the title, the
souls of crystals, kristallseelen, that's a book title, and
(37:00):
that the you have to in the booktitle that he was a celebrated
one of the leading scientists atthe time. And he, for him, it
was very clear that allcrystals, all stones, not all
stones, but crystals, and thenhe categorized all the different
crystals had souls, so they wereanimated, and that this life was
(37:22):
basically a component ofmaterial world. And that that
was like that that's the secondpart of your question what. So
we have this very, very strongand influential occult kind of
occultism debate at the time.
And I agree that continuites aremuch stronger than you might
(37:42):
expect. Until today, and in mybook, I have one important
phenomenon I see as an importantjuncture between this and that
is particularly in the US, it'sa transpersonal movement, in the
60s 70s and 80s were, wherethese where these threats, or
(38:05):
these discursive kind ofentanglements were, were coming
together. And that created whatwe now today call, or some
people call the New AgeMovement, for instance, where
what mind and matter are thoughttogether again, and we're Carl
Gustav Jung, one of the heroesof the earlier period was
(38:25):
revived and reapplied toquestions of, for instance,
nature and the cosmos as beingalive and all these all these
questions. So yes, I think thatthere is a strong continuity.
And I think if you look atdiscourses about soul animism,
(38:47):
so nature is animated whichanima is the Latin word for word
for soul. So in a discursiveperspective, everything that is
animated is about the soul. Soit's a discursive, not that that
links up with, with ideas aboutthe soul, and that gives life so
(39:07):
the life force in biology, forinstance, 100 years ago, they
were thinking about it, whatwhat what is the inherent power
of life that makes a tree grow?
That's not just measuring thebark and that that's, that's not
(39:30):
that's part of what we do. Butthe real interesting thing for
many people is what drives thistree what what is the life
power, the life essence in itand so on? And that that there's
some continuity and what we seetoday, I think is a revival.
Particularly when it comes toanimated nature. If you look at
(39:53):
the all these bestsellers abouttree consciousness, like Richard
Powers', "The Overstory" aPulitzer Prize and everything.
So there are so many phenomenathat revive this kind of
spiritualization of nature, evenin the, what we used to call the
(40:16):
hard sciences.
Chip Gruen (40:18):
Yeah, and I would guess that particularly say,
particularly in the US, I wouldguess that this gets
supercharged, by sort ofliberalisation of immigration
laws in the United States in the60s as well, right, that some of
these ideas are sort of beingreinforced by, you know, for
(40:39):
lack of a more specific term,Eastern spiritual ideas.
Kocku von Stuckrad (40:42):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what
what you also see, and that'sanother dimension of
scientification of religion, isthat, that if you look at these
new spiritualities, that come upin the context of what sometimes
it's called the New Agemovement, in Esalen, for
(41:02):
instance, and basically inCalifornia, and from there
spread out in other areas aswell. Also, before that, before
the 60s already in the 50s, and40s I was already so it's about
was not necessarily new thing.
But there are new new practicesand spiritutalities coming up.
And what you see in some ofthese is a very strong influence
(41:24):
of scientist. And so these arealso scientifically informed new
spiritualities. If you look, forinstance, at shamanism, or
paganism, or let's takeshamanism, that if you look at
all the major representativesstill today, or since the 1970s,
(41:47):
till today, have a PhD inanthropology, or have at least
Master's in anthropology, or inreligious studies, or sometimes
psychology. And so these are,these are academic experts,
some, then they explain tobroader audience, and that adds
(42:09):
legitimacy to what they say in asecular context. They know what
they're talking about, and yetthey are very into the spiritual
dimensions and they want to so,so, it is even the case that
science can and I include thehumanities here, that secular
science says, knowledge systemscan produce new, new spiritual
(42:35):
activities and convictions andpractices. And the same is true
even for the for for the hardsciences, if you look at quantum
physics, for instance, the wholequantum mysticism that again,
was very prominent in the, inthe 70s, and 80s, in Esalen, and
(42:55):
elsewhere. But and FritjofCapra, for instance, who merged
this quantum understanding, andhe was also a scientist, but he
was he spent time in, in inAsia, and in Japan to to learn
the non western philosophies,like what you said. And that
(43:15):
these are all examples of peoplewho were breeding these
discursive strands togethersomehow with their science and
religion and spirituality. Andthat that was gave a boost to
new kinds of identities. Andwhat we see today, particularly
(43:36):
and since 1990s, maybe with achange of ecology, and that has
everything to do with climateclimate crisis, of course, but
so there's a sense of urgency ofcourse, but at the same time,
there is an interest in in a nonreductionist body. And what
Richard Powers describes in hisnovel for instance, "The
(44:03):
Overstory," is something that isnew forestry, and that is new
biology that's non non nonreductionist, more holistic,
that that can easily be blendedto understandings of tree
consciousness, which is a hugeboom, all over the place, that
the trees are not only and otherlife forms as well are having
(44:27):
their own intelligences. So theyare animated, which is a
discursive link between the souland nature again, so they, they
are somehow agents, they arepersons, and there is a movement
across the world to givepersonhood to nonhumans also
(44:49):
legal standing like to riversand, and forests and so on. So
that I would think that is a newdevelopment. That's that's,
that's quite influential insearch, certainly not marginal,
like you said, I think, BronTaylor, it's hard to measure
this kind of exact numbers. ButI think there's a lot to say, to
(45:13):
confirm what Bron Taylor callsit, the global greening of
religion. That these, what Iwould do, I would call this as a
growing discursive blend ofnature and spirituality. And
that even enters kind ofpolitical documents, like the
UNESCO treaties and so on, wherethere's talk of kind of the, the
(45:39):
age old veneration of theoceans, indigenous cultures, for
instance, that is not that isnot politics only, or science or
you know, that, that is alsovery spiritual discourse that's
going on there. And in a secularcontext, but but these are
brought together somehow, andthat is not, that does not
(45:59):
represent a kind of dichotomybetween science and religion
anymore. This this is a mesh of,of identities that come together
in very, very complex ways.
Chip Gruen (46:15):
So do you think? Do you think that these discourses,
I mean, like, so for example,you mentioned your, "Cultural
History of the Soul" and youmake in the subtitle the
distinction, Europe and NorthAmerica from 1870, to the
present? How much do you thinkthe discursive, you know, arena,
or the public discourse on theseconversations is shared is
(46:40):
similar in in Europe and inNorth America? And how much do I
don't know, say, the rise ofkind of an anti intellectualism
in the United States make thesedifferent conversations?
Kocku von Stuckrad (46:55):
Yeah, I think there's there's both
there's overlap. And there,there are differences. And
overlap is certainly in theseintellectual traditions that are
shared. And also in you see,this also, in many biographies,
actually, of migrants comingfrom, from Europe and then
during the war are refugees andto, to the US, so you can
(47:20):
certainly see some continuitiesthere. And you can also see
differences, like what you saidthat it is quite unique, US
context with this with apolitical tradition with a
cultural tradition and all that.
And at the same time, you cannotalso say there is one European
(47:43):
tradition. I mean, there's, ifyou look at Europe today, there,
it's a whole kind of patchworkof different, different
understandings there. And if Iwould be hesitant, saying that,
there is a European discourse,that is in a clear way distinct
from the US. And there is whenit comes to these spiritual
(48:10):
practices, for instance, there'scertainly a lot of overlap. In
the sense that shamanism, forinstance, in particularly in
Western Europe looks, I mean,this kind of new shamanism looks
very much like, like the US. Imean, it's also even imported
(48:30):
from the US through the MichaelHarner's. Foundation. And then
it is it is makes in many otherways. The same is true for Neo
pagan groups, for instance,where in where in Europe,
particularly, but also indifferent ways that can be
connected to old Celtictraditions in the UK, or to
(48:53):
Viking traditions. And, and it'salso used in in, in central
Europe as a kind of identitymarker that is pre socialist,
but also pre Christian. So thereis a kind of nationalist
movement that goes thatreconstructs this kind of roots
(49:13):
of the almost völkisch way insome in some contexts. So there
are all kinds of different waysof looking at that, but, but I
think that these discursiveworlds are very, very entangled,
actually.
Chip Gruen (49:34):
So and I promised and I'm coming back to it,
because I promised anotherobjection. And so this is this
is this is my object, not myobjection, an objection that
I've been thinking a lot aboutand, and actually, while it I
want to frame it in reference tothe methods of sort of
discursive analysis, I thinksome of what you're talking
(49:55):
about the resurgence of sort ofidentity markers, and you know,
whether those be pre Christian,nationalistic etc tie into this.
And so here it is that in thebeginning, right, the postmodern
turn was really a very leftistkind of a thing, right that it
was emerging in the 60s and the70s as being sort of a
(50:18):
questioning of institutions ofsocial patterns of authority,
you know, in sort of in stepwith the counterculture a little
bit, or more than a little bit,actually. In the past several
years, though, the tools of postmodernism seem to be sort of
creeping into the toolbox of anddiscursive analysis for that
(50:40):
matter, seem to be creeping intothe tool box of authoritarianism
in lots of different contexts.
So questioning the nature ofreality describing, you know,
the denial, denial, denial offacts on the ground, right in in
with an argument that there arealternative versions of the same
history. I mean, is thisinevitable that this is not just
(51:03):
sort of a toolkit of the leftbut then ends up being sort of
spread? I mean, what, I'm notgoing to ask you for the answer
to this, but just you know, am Ireading that phenomena right,
are those phenomena right thatthis is something that is that
is sort of spreading and beingused in various various other
cultural contexts than the oneit grew up in?
Kocku von Stuckrad (51:26):
Absolutely, I fully agree with that
observation, what we what we seeis that these tools and these
critical deconstruction orwhatever you want to call that,
that has that had a certain kindof root in countercultures, and
critical leftist kind ofreadings of, of hegemonic
(51:49):
discourses and so on that thatare also used in in other milieu
and apply to other questions aswell and use as legitimization.
And it's a, you, you hear thesediscussions, very often in one
example of that is also I mean,if everything is, is
(52:12):
constructed, then we cannotreally attack fake news. So
there is no, there are no fakefacts, if all facts are
basically fake, like, like, whatthe radical postmodernist
Nietzsche said, I mean, nobodyreally said that, but that it's
also misreading of a lot what'sgoing on in that, but then it's
(52:36):
turned into anything goes,right. And that is not what
these people actually thetheorist said, but which is how
how much of that comes acrosseasily, and then it can be can
be used like that. And theanswer, then is not okay, well,
then we have to pretend that weknow the truth. I don't think
(52:57):
that that is very, very useful.
But I think what what isimportant is to to understand
that it does not mean thatanything goes that that it does
not matter what I claim, it onlymeans that whatever I claim is
coming from a certain positionof prospectivity and a certain
(53:18):
perspective, title kind ofunderstanding of reality. And I
still, as a scholar, I amaccountable of what I do, and as
a journalist and as thepolitical political leader, you
know I am accountable to what Isay and that the then the
interesting question is, whatare the what are the criteria of
(53:40):
accountability? And that's, Ithink, what we need to talk
about, and that's what LauriePatton writes about, and the
institutional responsibilitythat we have, as scholars, for
instance, that we always have tomake clear that our privileged
situation or more or lessprivileged situation has certain
(54:03):
influence on what we are saying,which does not mean that we that
we make things up. And that'salso this nice distinction
between making things up doesnot mean that things are made.
They are made, things are made,but they are not made up. That's
(54:25):
so the these distinctions areimportant to, to keep I think.
Chip Gruen (54:33):
All right, well, Kocku von Stuckrad, thank you
very much for this. This hasbeen super fun and super
enlightening, and I reallyappreciate you coming on
ReligionWise.
Kocku von Stuckrad (54:43):
Thank you so much for the conversation. I
really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Chip Gruen (54:50):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
Christine Flicker. For moreinformation about additional
programming, or to make aninquiry about a speaking
engagement, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. Thereyou'll find our contact
(55:11):
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We look forward to seeing younext time.
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