Tag Archives: scholarship

On Misreading ‘Triumph of the Moon’

An earlier post of mine about writings on Wicca that lacked authority generated some responses around the Pagan blogosphere.

Some bloggers, however, simply do not understand scholarly writing. For instance, this:

For over a decade, Professor Ronald Hutton’s study on the history of Wicca, Triumph of the Moon, has been considered by most Pagan scholars to have closed the book on the issue of the survival of elements of Paganism from Pagan antiquity.

Let’s think about that. Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is probably the one book on the topic that every educated person has at least heard of.

It was published in installments between 1776 and 1789. It is a classic. By the blog writer’s standards, therefore, it should have “closed the book” on writing about ancient Rome.

Yet new books on ancient Rome are published every year. How can that be?

No topic is ever “closed.” Historical works—which is how Prof. Hutton would describe Triumph—are not holy scriptures. New thinkers and new generations bring new scholarship and new interpretations.

But what Hutton has done is establish a standard. Anyone who challenges his conclusions (and given that ten years have passed, he has challenged some of them himself, I expect) must do at least as much in-depth research as he has done. They can’t just snipe from the sidelines.

Rhetoricians talk about “invented ethos,” by which a speaker or writer displays their qualifications to engage a topic: I have studied such-and-such at this or that level. I have done such-and-such. I have experienced such-and-such. (“Invention” does not imply falsification in this context.)

It is that level of ethos I see lacking in his critics—so far.

Another problem, probably too big to tackle here, occurs when people approach a book like Triumph looking for “right answers” or for information on which to base their personal religious practice.

Oh, you can do that. “The reader constructs his own text,” as all the postmodernists say, sure. You can also use a Stradivarius violin for a canoe paddle.

But I think one is better off reading a Triumph as a history of ideas, a history of the ways that English people, in particular, thought about and constructed the idea of “witchcraft.”

Arguments without Evidence—or without Ethos?

I spent a big chunk of yesterday afternoon reviewing a book that purports to prove the existence of a self-conscious, Goddess-worshiping Paganism in 19th-century America. The evidence? An idiosyncratic reading of one writer’s literary output, writing that never uses the words “witch,” “Pagan,” “fairy,” “goddess,” or anything like that, but openly espouses Protestant Christianity.

If I did not feel the obligation to walk the reader through through my thinking—and if the journal’s book review editor involved had not argued persuasively that “to the degree that popular or self-published books inspire us to think more critically and innovatively then perhaps we should be more inclusive”—I would have just written one sentence: “[The writer] is delusional.”

Call it wishful thinking, call it unverifiable personal gnosis, call it “I know that I am right even though there is no evidence.”

Another example of UPG-fueld writing appears to be a book called Trials of the Moon, which purports to challenge Ronald Hutton’s historical books on Paganism without, y’know, actually having to do the depth of research that he does.

It’s sort of like wanting to bat against the San Francisco Giant Tim Lincecum’s pitching but demanding that you get to keep swinging and swinging until you hit one over the fence—none of that “three strikes and you’re out” stuff.

Some people like it even while admitting that it “offers no alternate theory or proposes any possible history” for Wicca.

At The Witching Hour, Peg starts out gently,

But I also noted a number of statements that don’t inspire confidence. By his own admission Whitmore is not an historian, nor even an academic. And this shows in his failure to observe the most rudimentary rules of objectivity and neutrality of stance.

But by the end of her review, she is reduced to “HUH? HUH?”

If you can’t offer evidence, at least try for a believable enthymeme. Truly ancient Pagans, along with inventing the academy, invented a wide range of persuasive tools.

As a Pagan in academia, I like learning those tools and using them.  Of the old persuasive trilogy—logos, pathos, ethos—maybe it is really ethos that is in short supply. UPG has a place, but this kind of writing is not it.

Is Anthropology a Science?

Politicized anthropologists gain ground against archaeologists and physical anthropologists after their chief American professional organization rewrites its mission statement.

The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between researchers in science-based anthropological disciplines — including archaeologists, physical anthropologists and some cultural anthropologists — and members of the profession who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as advocates for native peoples or human rights.

According to the AAA’s new long-range plan, anthropology is about “public understanding,” not “science.”

Some public understanding occurs no matter what, but the dispute seems to favor those who want anthropology to favor their political agendas.  These are the same postmodern folks who argue that anthropology always served a political agenda, so perhaps they are simply being more up-front about it.

Until now, the association’s long-range plan was “to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.” The executive board revised this last month to say, “The purposes of the association shall be to advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects.” This is followed by a list of anthropological subdisciplines that includes political research.

Anthropology is easily politicized because it deals with social structures, kinship, war, death and burial—everything to do with identity at various levels. And yes, anthropologists have often served larger, powerful interests. Think of Ruth Benedict researching The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, studying Japanese culture to benefit the American occupation.

But I still think that there is a place for “science” and objectivity as ideals, even while keeping one’s eyes open (“reflexivity”).

The “Thinness” of Pagan Culture

Stephanie Drury’s blog Stuff Christian Culture Likes (which, she admits, refers mostly to evangelical Protestant culture) is up to to 204 posts (the numbering is confusing because she sometimes recycles older posts).

In contrast,  the blog Stuff Pagan Culture Likes seems to have hit a wall last March, with no new posts for six months. Too bad.

Our “culture” is just a lot thinner, despite the fact that contemporary  Pagans have been engaging in self-parody since Day 1. Consider some of the material that Isaac Bonewits produced in The Druid Chronicles in the 1970s, for example. (Isaac, amazingly prescient, was already paying attention to chronologies and sources, knowing that future scholars would use his material.)

Right now, on  the academic side, I am feeling the “thinness” all too much. Submission to The Pomegranate are down. (That could be related to the economy, as another journal editor told me that they have the same problem—it’s a general gloominess.) I am reduced to sending plaintive emails halfway around the world: “Won’t you please revise and re-submit your papers?”

And let’s not even talk about the academic job market.

Mapping Pagan Religious Identity

At Witchful Thinking, a practitioner-scholar’s blog, a model for a scheme of Pagan religious identity development.

Take a look and let her know what you think.

Idolatry as a Category in Pagan Studies

I have spent all afternoon squeezing out a thousand words on the topic of idolatry, a sort of cross between an encyclopedia entry and a summary of four essays appearing in the upcoming issue of The Pomegranate (which is almost finished, thanks be!).

Michael York

Michael York

In a paper given during one of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s sessions during the 2009 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Michael York summed up the issue:

The corporeal spirituality that distinguishes Pagan religiosity from the approaches of other religions supports both idolatry or the adoration of physical images and a love of nature that merges into veneration as well as efforts towards ecological restoration as a sacred mandate.

That paper, slightly revised, will appear in the forthcoming issue.

There is a bit of tension between those practitioner-scholars who want to reclaim and redefine the word, in the same manner as “witch,” “pagan,” and so forth.

Others, such as Amy Whitehead, a PhD candidate at The Open University who published on the topic two years ago in Pomegranate, think that trying to reclaim the word is a tactical error—and also that it fails as a discursive category:

[Idolatry is] one of the most loaded and problematic terms in contemporary Western discourses and … is continually understood (and misunderstood) in Abrahamic and modern discursive contexts.

She likes “materiality” as a neutral substitute. “Material sacrality” has also been used. Both differ from any discussion of material culture within a religious tradition, since here we are talking about objects—or nonhuman nature—that serve as “windows” into sacred dimensions.

Speaking of tactical errors, I now think that we on the Contemporary Pagan Studies steering committee made one last year. We were so happy with the lively discussion and attendance at our idolatry session that we scheduled an immediate follow-up—a panel discussion—at this year’s AAR meeting a month ago.

Unfortunately, this year’s session was more uneven. One presenter had to cancel for medical reasons, which further diminished it.  Now I think that when you have a great session and want a follow-up, you should wait at least two years for people to reflect and write and build up new material.

Since I have just agreed to serve a term as co-chair of Pagan Studies, I can have more say in how sessions are planned, and hence enthusiasm will be tempered.

Religion, the Internet, and Cyberspace

Michael Oman-Reagan has collected and organized a bibliography of references about religion online and online religion at his blog. Various scholars of new religious movements contributed to it.

Good stuff, if your research interests lie there.

Pagan Conference CFP Deadline Extended

The deadline for the call for papers (CFP) for next January’s Conference on Current Pagan Studies at Claremont Graduate University has been extended to November 26.

New Co-Chairs Chosen for AAR Pagan Studies Group

One outcome of the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is that the two co-chairs of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group, Michael York and Wendy Griffin, came to the end of their terms.

Stepping into those positions are Jone Salomonsen (University of Oslo) and me.

You don’t campaign for these positions; you get them because everyone in the room is looking at you.

One of the chief duties of the (co) chair is writing the call for papers for next year’s meeting (Nov. 19-22, San Francisco), which I am working on right now. Jone supplies the brainpower, and I do the paperwork.

The rest of the committee: Shawn Arthur, Helen Berger, Graham Harvey, Nikki Bado, Michael York.

Keeping Up with Buffy Studies

Buffy in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching with the Vampire Slayer has now been released by McFarland.

Essays describe how Buffy can be used to explain—and encourage further discussion of—television’s narrative complexity, archetypal characters, morality, feminism, identity, ethics, non-verbal communication, film production, media and culture, censorship, and Shakespeare, among other topics.

Jason Winslade, a scholar in Pagan studies (via performance studies) and a contributor to the volume, notes, “I used the show first in my occultism and pop culture course at DePaul, back when I first published about Buffy in 2001, then wound up doing an entire class on the show as a popular freshman seminar for several years. “