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Accepted Paper:
Reading German Theosophists in West Africa: The Relevance of Global Entanglements for the Study of Religion
Judith Bachmann
(University of Heidelberg)
Religion is used as a universal category in the study of religion. However, specifically with focus on Africa, this idea has come under criticism. This paper proposes to locate global entanglements as a new way to study religion, not a natural but a promised universal and a shared common.
Paper long abstract:
Religion is taken to be a universal. Yet, especially taken the example of the category of African Traditional Religion, scholars have noted that “religion” (a separate domain, concerning transcendence, private practices etc.) as understood in the study of religion today is foreign to Africans. For some years, scholars of religion have also criticized that “religion” is a European term which supposedly cannot be transferred to other contexts. Comparison or rather: categorization as a core issue of the study of religion was thus perceived as obsolete. However, my own observation is that scholars on the continent seem to find “religion” useful to describe and analyze African contexts. The paper argues that this is due to the fact that “religion” today might not be a natural universal but it is a common, shared term that is transformed through this very quality. To call it European exclusively, blinds out how Africans have used the term and made it their own. The paper introduces the global entanglements of the West African intellectual J. A. Abayomi Cole and how he categorized “religion” with regards to traditional practices, negotiating science, missionary descriptions, and esoteric writings in his quest for an independent, yet true form of religion. These global entanglements draw together antecedents of today's German and Nigerian context. The paper proposes that these entanglements could serve as a new start to the study of religion where Africans have in fact (trans)formed its very subject matter and participated in the making of a globally shared term.