The Monograph as Relic: Paratext and the "Autobiographical Refusal"

Jamie Brummitt’s Protestant Relics in Early America (2025) offers a vital exploration of "supernatural memory objects," arguing early American grief and politics were rooted in holy matter. However, Brummitt’s work also highlights a pervasive tension within Religious Studies: an "autobiographical refusal." While Brummitt illuminates the vibrant emotional lives of her subjects, the academic demand for "objectivity" often flattens the scholar's own life-narrative. I argue that scholars are constrained by a form of academic secular privatization, trained to excise personal histories from the page. Beneath the critical prose lies a Durkheimian "effervescence"—dreams, affections, and indeed a life woven through communion—that electrifies the writing yet remains unacknowledged. By examining the book itself as a memory object, I contend that integrating autotheoretic reflection would strengthen the critique against secular reductionism. Acknowledging the "life" beneath the scholarship renders the study of religion more compelling and only deepens the complexity of the book's argument.