The Postcolonial condition for the Study of Religion

We hosted a highly successful meeting on the study of religion in post-colonial contexts in Cape Town, South Africa (March 2015). The meeting was attended by researchers from India, Pakistan, Portugal, the USA and South Africa. Altogether thirteen papers and positions were presented over two days in Cape Town. There was plenty of time for discussion on each paper, and enough time for discussion and debate during tea, coffee and meals.

At this our first meeting on thinking about religion education in a post-colonial context, the workshop was very successful. It raised crucial questions about the politics of post-coloniality and scholarship, the subject positions of researchers, and the terms that ought to be used in our intellectual work. Notable success was recorded around some issues for future collaboration and exhange.

Firstly, it was clear that much more needs to be done about intellectual exchange in the Global South. Sigificant progress may be mentioned in networks and associations like CODESRIA and the African Association for the Study of Religions (est. 1992). However, the weight of exchange had hardly tilted in favour of a true South-South exchange and collaboration. The meeting resolved to work for greater effort towards a true foundation of exchange, and the development of a critical mass of scholarship that would begin to address key issues facing scholars based in the global South.

There was a general realization that scholars working in the Global South had often one clear focus in common: their common dissatisfaction or unease with the North in one form or another. This dependency was often expressed in a great rejection of the North, making it our True North! This issue opened up a number of debates on the value of the canons produced. In our meeting in particular, the value of Emmanuel Kant became a bone of contention. There were some insightful suggestions of re-reading Kant and also reading against him, but also suggestions that a Foucaultian reading of Kant was liberatory. Others accused presenters of ignoring an African reading of Kant. All these were valuable points, but underlined the fact that a Global South Network often turned around the ills and opportunities of reading the Western canon. Surely, we concluded, we must be prepared to read and create new classics. We must read each other as critically as we read the European canon!

As far as the study of religion is concerned, there were a some specific suggestions and contributions. From my side, I want to close this short report with an observation. Scholarship on religion had made strides in the study of religion in post-colonial perspective. In particular, such scholarship had found the value of Marx (class and hegemony), Foucault (regimes of truth and genealogy, Bakhtin (theatre and play) and Homi Bhabha (hybridity). But is also interesting that most of the contributions on the religious experience of humankind emanating from the Global South has been bracketed as insider privileged musings. Would it not be a great idea to rethink the dichotomy of insder/outsider distinctions? Should such insights be rehabilitated as insights into the human condition, and not merely “religious” or “theological” positions that can be appraised by Western frameworks? Can we another look at Tutu or Ibn al-Arabi or Mencius as observers of human behaviour, rather than mere participants in the human journey?