RT Article
T1 Fetish Again?: Southern Perspectives on the Material Approach to the Study of Religion
JF Open theology
VO 8
IS 1
SP 79
OP 94
A1 Appiah, Simon Kofi 1964-
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1828260177
AB The material turn in the study of religions has opened new methodological vistas, rejuvenating the notion of fetish . Scholars in Africa must acknowledge and share in the successes of the material approach. At the same time, they cannot help but recall that in colonial Africa the notion of fetish was, par excellence, the mirror of primitive religion and the denigration of Africans in the missionary enterprise. Fetish was not only the medium for the fall of African religions and the enforcement of colonial authority, but also and especially, the genesis of the theory of primitive religions. This paradox looms large when the material turn is re-read from southern perspectives as a call for a radical intra-cultural critique of the epistemological positions and subalternity of knowledge production in Africa.
K1 Africa
K1 fetish
K1 Material Religion
K1 positionality
K1 southern
K1 subaltern
DO 10.1515/opth-2022-0197