{"id":5768,"date":"2013-06-27T14:52:10","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T20:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5768"},"modified":"2013-06-27T16:59:06","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T22:59:06","slug":"heathenry-and-the-politics-of-postcolonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5768","title":{"rendered":"Heathenry and the Politics of Postcolonialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thad Horrell, Heathen and graduate student, hurls himself against the issue of post-colonialism and reconstructed Northern religion in this article, “Heathenry as a Postcolonial Movement,<\/a>” published in the online Journal of Religion, Identity and Politics,\u00a0<\/em>written by students in his PhD program.<\/p>\n

His thesis is “that Heathenry is ‘postcolonial’\u00a0 in complex and contradictory senses of the term. It both acknowledges and offers resistance to the imperialism of Christendom, while simultaneously trivializing colonialism and making it seem merely a thing of the past.”<\/p>\n

I will argue that Heathenry is a postcolonial movement both in the sense that it combats and challenges elements of colonial history and the contemporary expectations derived from it (anti-colonial), and in the much more problematic sense that it serves to justify current social and racial inequalities by pushing the structures of colonialism off as a thing of the past (pro-colonial). Rather than promoting a sense of solidarity with colonized populations, Heathen critiques of colonialism and imperialism often serve to justify disregard for claims of oppression by colonized minorities. After all, if we\u2019ve all been colonized, what is there to complain about?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This trope of resistance is employed in academic writing as well as “insider” writing. It shines through Carole Cusack’s<\/a> recent Pomegranate<\/em> article on the emperor Charlemagne’s “jihad” (to borrow an appropriate term) against the Pagan Saxons: “Pagan Saxon Resistance to Charlemagne\u2019s Mission: \u2018Indigenous\u2019 Religion and \u2018World\u2019 Religion in the Early Middle Ages<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The ideas of invasion, colonization, and resistance were important in the first years of Wicca too, although not so much since the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Gerald Gardner played the nativist card as well, implicitly conflating the threatened invasion of southern England by the German army in 1940 with the “Gregorian mission<\/a>” that brought Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England in the sixth century. (The earlier Celtic-speaking post-colonial-Roman Britain had been heavily Christian as well by the end.)<\/p>\n

But the idea of resistance to “invasion” has put down deeper roots in contemporary Norse, Baltic, and Slavic Paganism than in the Anglosphere, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thad Horrell, Heathen and graduate student, hurls himself against the issue of post-colonialism and reconstructed Northern religion in this article, “Heathenry as a Postcolonial Movement,” published in the online Journal of Religion, Identity and Politics,\u00a0written by students in his PhD program. His thesis is “that Heathenry is ‘postcolonial’\u00a0 in complex and contradictory senses of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,21,131,130,134,5,4],"class_list":["post-5768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-england","tag-europe","tag-heathenry","tag-norse","tag-paganism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1v2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13245","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":0},"title":"A New Survey on Pagans’ Political Attitudes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 1, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"This survey, \"Pagan and Heathen Political and Sociall Metrics,\"\u00a0 comes recommended by several scholars whom I know. It is for respondents in the United States and Canada only. This survey is a means of gathering information about beliefs, behaviors, and demographics from Heathens and Pagans in the United States and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12100","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":1},"title":"Jefferson Calico, Author of “Being Viking,” Interviewed by Angela Puca","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Angela Puca, who recently earned a PhD in religious studies while still\u00a0managing to be a dominant figure in Pagan-studies YouTube, has interviewed Jefferson Calico, author of Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America, which I consider to be the best new study of Heathenry that is accessible to both scholars and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Asatru\"","block_context":{"text":"Asatru","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=asatru"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":718,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=718","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":2},"title":"The Troth republished","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Volume 1 of a new edition of Kveldulf Gundarsson's The Troth has been published. Volume 2 is expected this winter.Speaking of Heathenry, Wikipedia has a historically interesting entry.Tags: Asatru, Heathenry, Paganism","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12338,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12338","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":3},"title":"Jefferson Calico Talks Heathenry with Ethan Doyle White","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Click over to Ethan Doyle White's blog, Albion Calling,\u00a0 to read a new interview with Jefferson Calico, author of Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America. Since I acquired this book for Equinox Publishing's Pagan studies book series, I am happy to see it praised by an astute writer on Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/viking-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9426,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9426","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":4},"title":"Heathen Soldiers Can Wear Beards Now","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This is interesting: Sikh men in the US military had gotten permission to wear beards as part of their religion. (Normally, beards are not allowed except, for instance, for special operations personnel in the Afghan back country who want to blend in, or something like that.) Comes now a Norse\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Heathenry\"","block_context":{"text":"Heathenry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=heathenry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11651","url_meta":{"origin":5768,"position":5},"title":"What Female Heathen Instagrammers Reveal","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Another article from the new issue of The Pomegranate on the theme of Paganism, art, and fashion, guest-edited by Caroline Tully. \"Hashtag Heathens: Contemporary Germanic Pagan Feminine Visuals on Instagram,\" by Ross Downing. You can download the entire paper free at the link this summer. Here is the abstract: A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"Instagrammer Helheimen as the goddess Hel.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fig.-2-Helheimen-as-the-goddess-Hel300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fig.-2-Helheimen-as-the-goddess-Hel300.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fig.-2-Helheimen-as-the-goddess-Hel300.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fig.-2-Helheimen-as-the-goddess-Hel300.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fig.-2-Helheimen-as-the-goddess-Hel300.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5768"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5773,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions\/5773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}