Paper Short Abstract:

Has the Ethnology of Religion been on a mission to silence or distort the emic and etic voices that populate the field? Who has the right to “unwrite” (read: cancel) what our disciplinary ancestors (or our disciplinary adversaries) wrote, and based on what scientific authority and moral grounds?

Paper Abstract:

Has the Ethnology of Religion been on a mission to silence, distort, or trivialise the emic and etic voices that populate the field? Who has the right to “unwrite” (read: cancel) what our disciplinary ancestors wrote, moved by intellectual curiosity, human sympathy, and the will to contribute to European and Western knowledge? And if the “unwriting” of the voices of our predecessors – or of those who do not agree with the current epistemological trends à la mode – should indeed happen, who decides what should be “unwritten”, and based on what scientific authority and moral grounds?

This paper offers examples, taken from the tradition of study of the Ethnology of Religion, that counter the current normative narrative that consider dissenting or old voices as deserving to be cancelled. As Christoph Brumann has showed convincingly with respect to the moral panic surrounding the notion of culture in the 1980s and 1990s, it appears to me that the presumed sins and guilts that should be “unwritten” are rather the product of the current ideological Zeitgeist, and do not stand analytical scrutiny. In so doing, the panel also intends to reflect on the actual mission of the Ethnology of Religion (and by synecdoche Ethnology at large).