CO-SPONSORSHIP: Cultural History of the Study of Religion Unit and Theology and Religious Reflection Unit

The Hermeneutics of (Neo)fascism in the Study of Religion
How does the present landscape of our field relate to terms and methods linked to fascist, Nazi, and authoritarian scholarship? From Carl Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty to Mircea Eliade’s sacred to Rudolph Otto’s science of religions, we invite proposals that probe how recent turns in scholarship – with its turn to the fugitive sacreds, unassimilable remainders, effervescent flights, and esoteric knowledges – inherit, disavow, repress, and/or reconfigure the hermeneutics of fascism.