The Discourse on Primal Religion

This article presents a formalized way to distinguish different regimes of truth in the historiography of religion. By focusing on the nineteenth-century European discourse on the origins of humanity and its (primal) religion in Africa, I will show how narratives of the origin always oscillate betwe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Method & theory in the study of religion
Main Author: Atwood, David (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2016
In: Method & theory in the study of religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religion / History / Africa / Prehistoric religion / Discourse / Truth
IxTheo Classification:AA Study of religion
Further subjects:B history of science religion Africa Europe discourse
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:This article presents a formalized way to distinguish different regimes of truth in the historiography of religion. By focusing on the nineteenth-century European discourse on the origins of humanity and its (primal) religion in Africa, I will show how narratives of the origin always oscillate between a scientific and a religious regime of truth. The article further outlines a possible method to formally differentiate between insider and outsider positions by redefining them as the assignment to a certain way of organizing a discourse or a semantic field according to a regime of truth. A discourse analysis and sociology of knowledge approach reveals possibilities to distinguish different constructions of insider perspectives by heuristically identifying codes, rarefactions, rules of formations, and regimes of truth.
ISSN:1570-0682
Contains:In: Method & theory in the study of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341363