Paper short abstract:

Discussion of the pitfalls that arise when researching dichotomized knowledge controversies and the challenge of not confronting the injustice inherent in each othering of the actors involved with an othering under a reversed sign, but rather finding a position that remains open to differentiations.

Paper long abstract:

Based on anthropological fieldwork and in reference to David Bloor's symmetrical approach, I have examined the transatlantic entanglements of orthodox and heterodox knowledge practices, especially regarding what is called modern esotericism. In these controversies, the category science plays a central role and, in a tendency to dichotomize the different positions within these controversies, heterodox knowledge practices are usually unified and accused of being unscientific and increasingly also hostile to science and linked to political intentions. As this is usually a distortion in such a generalized way, the ostracized are often encouraged to return the accusations directed at them in an equally generalized way, thereby creating their own kind of symmetrization. With the SARS-CoV-2-pandemic, the history and present of modern esotericism has gone from being a marginal to a central topic with great political relevance and public attention. This current politicization of such knowledge controversies has also changed the conditions and circumstances of research and publicly talking about research on heterodox (or, according to the panel abstract, rejected) knowledge practices and has apparently made it even more difficult to promote an agnostic approach. In this presentation, I focus on the pitfalls that can arise in research due to the mutual symmetrical othering of the actors involved in such controversies and the challenge of not countering the injustice inherent in each othering with an othering under a reversed sign, but instead finding a position that preserves its agnosticism beyond any othering and is political precisely because of this.