RT Article
T1 The business suit: transitional phenomena and religious comparison
JF Religion
VO 55
IS 2
SP 435
OP 447
A1 Seales, Chad
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1922492582
AB This article invokes the analytical concept of transitional phenomena, as inspired by the psychoanalytical theories of Donald Winnicott, to develop a materialist model for comparing religion. Transitional phenomena are persons, places, or things that mediate material reality and discursive representation. The article focuses on the case study of the business suit at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions to show how the psychological duality of transitional phenomena in the creative construction of ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ is related to material and spatial distinctions in the discursive invention of ‘religion’ and ‘not-religion’. The goal of the issue is to show how the comparison of religion is not just a discursive problem of defining categories and classifying accordingly. Rather, it requires attending to the materialist connections between the categories of religious comparison and the social order of persons, places, and things that generate the possibility of comparison.
K1 Donald Winnicott
K1 Transitional objects
K1 Race
K1 Material Religion
K1 Comparison
DO 10.1080/0048721X.2024.2444126