Malory Nye On Deconstructing the Deconstruction of the Deconstruction of the Category of Religion 2018

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2018, Office 415,The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX
[IR 20.4 (2017) 413–421] Implicit Religion (print) ISSN 1463-9955
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.36143 Implicit Religion (online) ISSN 1743-1697
On Deconstructing the Deconstruction of the
Deconstruction of the Category of Religion
Malory Nye
University of Glasgow
Malory.Nye@glasgow.ac.uk
So, this is quite a stooshie1
going on, over the use of the term “religion.”2
In one corner there are some seemingly “fashionable” scholars. For
example, Teemu Taira (in this issue) argues that the term is historically
contingent and has meanings that have developed over time (see also Taira
2010; 2013; 2016). And there’s Russell McCutcheon (in this issue), who
has pointed out that when it is used the term “religion” is both political
and politicized.
On the other hand, there are others, in particular Paul Hedges (in this
issue), who wants to plainly speak and point out that a lot of people use
the term religion—about themselves and others—and so it is not wise for
scholars to avoid using the term too.
Here’s where I stand: I’m with the first group. I do get what the second
group are saying, but I think they are overstating the issue. I agree that we
cannot avoid talking about and using the term religion. But, the point is
that we need to be very, very careful how we use this term, to ensure that
we are not “native informants” in academic gowns.
In other words, a person may consider themselves to be religious, and
they can work with and engage with others who also think of themselves
as religious. But at the same time they can still engage fully in the process
of historically contextualizing the ideas, associations, classifications, and
1. “Stooshie” is a Scots term for conflict or disorderly commotion (something which
scholars do very well, it seems), see http://caledonianmercury.com/2011/03/04/use-
ful-scots-word-stooshie/0014661
2. This paper was first published on my Religion Bites blog in September 2016 (https://
medium.com/religion-bites/on-deconstructing-the-deconstruction-of-the-decon-
struction-of-the-category-of-religion-5620d7497802), in response to the discussion
that was set off by the interview with Teemu Taira and Paul Hedges’ response. For
simplicity I have removed the link to Rick Astley, but if anyone would like to be
“rickrolled” (intentionally or otherwise), then click on the first link in the blog post.

414 The Religious Studies Project: Comments
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2018
power relations that are at play when the term is used in public, popular,
and very often academic discourses.
And none of this is particularly helped by using the term “deconstruction.”
There is certainly a lot of talk going on about religion, across the world
but particularly in the English-speaking world. Thus, to take one small
example, in the US there is much discussion of “religious freedom,” par-
ticularly among certain protestant Christian groups. There is no doubt it
is an ethnographic term with very concrete points of reference, cultur-
ally,socially,and personally.To most liberal scholars,however,the religious
freedom that is being referenced in these debates appears to have very
little to do with “freedom” (a term which, of course, also needs to be very
carefully historicized), even if it does appear to have something to do with
what they think of as religion.
To put this very simply (or simplistically) there are many ways in which
the term “religion” is put to use. None of these uses are intrinsically “real,”
they are instead all uses of language to describe and try to understand
social and cultural contexts.
Thus, the use of the term “religion”in academic discourses is usually very
different to the uses of the term “religion”in popular discourses. As Teemu
Taira shows (in this issue), these can collide in public debates. The ques-
tions then become about what is going on, who benefits, and what power
issues are involved? For the academic at least, they are not about what is
“really” religious (or not).
When an academic engages in a discourse (writes,teaches,and/or speaks
in a podcast) about a group of people, s/he does not have to refer to “such-
and-such religion.”All that needs to be said is that this is what they do,and
this is what they consider what they call their religion to be about (and this
is what they consider to be their religious identity). Doing that is compli-
cated enough, we don’t have to do their work for them by using academic
authority to name all of this “their religion.”
We are talking about talking about what many people call religion.
And what is called “deconstruction” is part of this. The process is not
reductionism—since it is only talking about what is there. And what is
there is what people say and what they do.
“Deconstruction”
Indeed, the term deconstruction is itself a term that is used very loosely—
the word obviously has particular poststructuralist resonances and histories.
I don’t think it is being used in a “strictly Derridean” sense. Instead, this

On the Deconstruction of the Category of Religion 415
term deconstruction is being used in this context to refer to an analytical
process of pulling the term “religion” apart to analyse its history rather
than its hidden meaning.
At worst, perhaps, if there are some who argue that there is a hidden
meaning—or a sui generis essence of religion—then such deconstruction is
attempting to provide the counter argument,that the emperor has no clothes.
I agree with McCutcheon (in this issue),we are talking about historiciza-
tion here (not deconstruction). As Hedges (in this issue) says, we can all
(or most of us) agree with this.
So perhaps people on both sides3
need to stop using the term “decon-
struction” quite so freely. Clearly, its use is reflecting and deflecting par-
ticular political agendas.
Reconstruction
If we remove the term deconstruction, then the term “reconstruction”
should also be removed. I find the term problematic on two counts.
Firstly, if you have gone to the considerable theoretical effort of
“deconstructing”—i.e.,historicizing,in the sense of a Foucauldian-inspired
archaeology of knowledge—the term “religion,” then why on earth would
you want to put it back together (reconstruct it) and use it again?
That is,“deconstruction”/historicization does not require reconstruction.
Instead, it requires more political and discursive analysis, and more, and
then more again.
This is what Teemu Tairu (in this issue) was attempting to theorize
and demonstrate, albeit in the challenging context of a short podcast put
together in a quiet corner of an intense academic conference. If there is
any construction (not re-construction) it will be done with more (theoreti-
cally) appropriate materials.
There is an abandoned old hotel across the street from where I live,it has
been nearly derelict for years.And then,in July 2016,a major fire destroyed
most of the upper floors. When it is finally developed (and there is still no
sign of this happening),it will be demolished and then rebuilt—this seems
to be the preferred option to it being renovated and reconstructed. Indeed,
the option of reconstructing what is left of the derelict building could well
result in an unnecessary pastiche of the original. An interesting side issue
3. I am painfully aware that since I wrote this as a blog post in September 2016, the
term “people on both sides” has taken on quite a distinct meaning—following Presi-
dent Trump’s use of the phrase to defend white supremacists who marched in Char-
lottesville, Va in August 2017.

here is that on some local maps,the hotel is shown as “the Knox kirk.”This
is not because it is a place that Knox visited,but rather because a particular
Knox-aligned church group used the hotel’s upstairs room for many years
in the nineteenth century.
To make things clear, perhaps: if we wish to put the metaphor of decon-
struction to work, then for me the academic use of the term “religion” is
somewhat like that derelict hotel. If we take a historicising (or “decon-
struction”) approach,then we can look at the building’s title deeds,the his-
tory of the building,who has owned it,the way it has been used in the past,
ask local residents what they remember of the hotel, or what they think of
the building today, as well as making a structural survey of its condition.
Perhaps some scholars of religion are happy also to operate the dynamite
and the wrecking ball, to physically demolish the structure (or at least try
to do so). But most scholars would be humble enough to admit they do
not have that sort of power, that most scholarship is discursive and ana-
lytic. It helps us (and others) to rethink and reconsider, but not necessarily
to change or destroy (or deconstruct). And so, for me, there is no need
to reconstruct or rebuild anything. In some respects, it would be nice to
see the building finally taken down and replaced, but even then the work
of the scholar would be to look at the planning documents, the building,
the project management of construction, and the ways in which the new
building would be put to use. I might have a vested (aesthetic, environ-
mental, or even financial) interest in what is finally built, and that might
have some impact on how I seek to analyse and understand this building
and what happens to it. But that is not about a project of reconstructing
the deconstructed.
The further issue with reconstruction
On the other, hand, my second problem with the term reconstruction is
historical. It is a simple: *please do not use this term* if you have any sense of
American political history.
“Reconstruction’”most often refers to the time after the US Civil War
(roughly 1865–77),when the great societal transformation of the southern
US from a slave-based economy and society should have happened (Foner
2002). Instead, reconstruction quickly became about the disenfranchise-
ment and disempowering of the African American populations, into the
structural systems of segregation and disadvantage that became known as
Jim Crow. The white American marshalling of power against reconstruc-
tion and civil rights led to the endemic use of extra-judicial lynchings as

a form of terror directed act the newly emancipated African American
community.
The legacy of the failures of such “reconstruction” are still around in the
present day, with of course the urgent need to address the issues raised by
the Black Lives Matter movement. Most recently, there is the legacy of
a Vice-President who denies the existence of institutional racism,4
and a
President who has openly validated the Confederate general Robert E Lee
(who led the army that fought for the “right” to slave holding), equating
him with George Washington, as a major part of the “history and culture
of our great country.”5
This is not an extreme point of reference for the term reconstruction.
I raise it because words do have particular, often very powerful, associa-
tions. And the whole point of historicising the term religion is to bring
attention to such powerful references. As we have seen in the work of
David Chidester (1996, 2014) in particular, when the term religion is his-
toricized (not deconstructed) it is clear that it has particularly colonialist,
racialized connotations.
Or to put this another way, if we are all agreed that the process of exam-
ining the history of the term “religion” is alright (indeed necessary), then
the next step in the process of historicising the use of the term is not to go
on and de-historicize the term and its uses again.
Rather, we have to find ways of talking about the term so that we can
still communicate with others outside of the academy, without reinforcing
their own particularly native and political uses of the term.
Academics talk about discourses of religion.We may shorten that to a lazy
statement, that we talk “about religion.” But we don’t. We talk about how
others talk about (and practice) their discourses of religion.
What next?
In conclusion, I would like to add to the question asked of Teemu Taira
in the podcast interview –which comes from Kevin Schilbrack’s question
about “after deconstruction.”That is, “what next?” Schilbrack 2013). If we
take the project of historicization as “deconstruction,” then what should
happen next? Do we knock the building down completely and rebuild
(“reconstruct”)? Or using the analogy used by Russell McCutcheon (in
4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-racial-bias-police_
us_57e434bbe4b0e28b2b52f012
5. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/trump-neo-nazis-antifa-
moral-equivalence-tweets-charlottesville

this volume), is it necessary to put the camera back together or instead
simply try to understand why there is such an interest in taking photos?
As I’ve indicated above, I do not see this as a process of taking apart and
re-assembling (the idea of religion). As there has been no “deconstruc-
tion,” we do not have to rush to “reconstruct” (or reinstate) a concept that
has been historicized.
Instead, there are many more interesting questions of how and where
the analysis can be further developed. For this, as just a couple of possible
approaches, I will introduce two quite different writers.
If we are to accept that a critical historicization of the concept of religion
helps us to understand its colonial, racialized, and cis-male hetero-norma-
tive resonances, then we should also give some thought to Audre Lorde’s
well-known comment that:
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
(Lorde 1984, 110).
Here we are back again with the deconstruction metaphor, in this case it
is a dismantling of something. However, for Lorde the work to be done is
not the taking apart of a concept,it is the taking apart of a system – that is,
of systemic structures of power.Thus, Lorde goes on to say,
What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to exam-
ine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow
parameters of change are possible and allowable.
I interpret this to suggest that the concept of religion (how we and others
talk about religion) is not the thing to be dismantled or deconstructed.
Instead, this concept of religion is part of the “master’s tools,” in Lorde’s
terms it is a tool of racist patriarchy. If this is the case, then there is no
argument to “put it back together” again.
Or, to use the phrasing of the anthropologist Zodwa Radebe,
it is absurd to think that anthropology can be used as a tool to decolonize
because it was used to colonize. (Radebe 2016)
This brings me to the second writer, Raewyn Connell (2007)though its
contribution is often marginalized and intellectually discredited by the
metropole. Connell shows how social theory about the modern world from
peripheral societies is equal in intellectual rigour and is often of greater
political relevance to our changing world. Beginning with an examina-
tion of the hidden assumptions of modern general theory, Southern The-
ory looks to the “southern” social experience and the theories that have

emerged from Australia, Indigenous peoples, Latin America, India, Africa,
Islam and other post-colonial societies, as sources of important and vital
contributions to world social science. These myriad theories offer valuable
perspectives so crucial to the application of social theory in the contempo-
rary world, having the power to transform the influence of the metropoli-
tan hegemony on social thought by mutual regard and interaction. South-
ern Theory is a major new work in social theory, drawing on anthropology,
history, psychology, philosophy, economics and cultural studies, with wide-
ranging implications for the social sciences in the twenty-first century.
Publisher description from http://politybooks.com (Sep. 26, 2011, one of a
number of contributors to the developing debate on the decolonization of
knowledge—which impacts directly on questions about the decolonization
of the study of religion (Joy 2012; Nye 2017; Maldonado-Torres 2014).
Connell makes a distinction about theory to help us understand the dis-
courses of analysis that are prevalent in the academy. Thus she references
“Northern theory,” which is the large body of theory and knowledge (for
Connell, particularly sociology) that dominates metropolitan (European
and north American) scholarship. In contrast to this, she frames the scope
of “Southern theory,” emerging from the peripheries (the majority world)
not the metropole, not universalising but particular to localities, and thus,
embodying a view-from-below on a world scale, [having] a more com-
plex relationship with dominant systems of knowledge. Existing Southern
theory points to a more engaged relationship between knowledge systems,
and foreshadows a mutual learning process on a planetary scale.
(Connell 2007, 222)
Connell discusses the complexities of developing such an approach, with
Southern theories engaging with each other and with the metropole in
mutually creative and systematic ways. In many respects this overlaps with
what Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) discusses as “decolonizing method-
ologies,” and also the “global sociology” project of Gurminder Bhambra
(2014, 2009) that explores alternative modernities.
In the field of the study of religion, such an exploration of decolonising,
Southern theory would not entail a “reconstruction” of the universalizing
tools of the concept of religion. It would, I hope, continue to locate the
many global discourses on religion (and modernities) within historical and
political processes, in local and indigenous contexts
What would need to be constructed, therefore, is not a version of post-
deconstruction, reconstructed “religion 2.0.” “Religion” does not need to

be “put back,” reconstructed after historicization. And nor do we need to
“make sure we take it seriously.”
Rather, the aim should be to explore and build up a framework for
southern theories and decolonization, within which scholars of religion
can find a critical place.
References
Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2009. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the
Sociological Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2014. “Postcolonial and Decolonial Dialogues.” Postcolonial Studies 17
(2): 115–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966414
Chidester, David. 2014. Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chi-
cago/9780226117577.001.0001
———. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern
Africa. London: University Press of Virginia.
Connell, Raewyn. 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in So-
cial Science. Cambridge: Polity.
Foner, Eric. 2002. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.
New York: Perennial Classics.
Joy, Morny. 2012. “Revisiting Postcolonialism and Religion.” Journal for the Aca-
demic Study of Religion 25(2): 102–122. https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.
v25i2.102
Lorde, Audre. 1984. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s
House.” In Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 110–114. Berkeley, CA: Cross-
ing Press.
Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2014. “Race, Religion, and Ethics in the Modern/
Colonial World.” Journal of Religious Ethics 42(4): 691–711. https://doi.
org/10.1111/jore.12078
Nye, Malory. 2017.“Some Thoughts on the Decolonization of Religious Studies.”
Religion Bites Blog. https://medium.com/religion-bites/decolonisation-
of-religious-studies-993727c6d1bc.
Radebe, Zodwa. 2016. “On Decolonising Anthropology.” Savage Minds
(Anthro{dendum}). https://savageminds.org/2016/05/23/on-decolonis-
ing-anthropology/.
Schilbrack, Kevin. 2013. “After We Deconstruct ‘Religion,’ Then What? A Case
for Critical Realism.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 25 (1):
107–12. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341255
Taira,Teemu. 2010.“Religion as a Discursive Technique: The Politics of Classify-
ing Wicca.”Journal of Contemporary Religion 25(3): 379–394. https://doi.
org/10.1080/13537903.2010.516546

———.2013.“Making Space for Discursive Study in Religious Studies.”Religion
43(1): 26–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.742744
———. 2016.“Doing Things with ‘Religion’: Discursive Approach in Rethinking
the World Religions Paradigm.” In After World Religions: Reconstructing
Religious Studies, edited by After world religions: reconstructing religious
studie, 76–92. London: Routledge.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples. New York: Zed Books.

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