Robert A. Yelle

To Perform, or Not to Perform? A Theory of Ritual Performance Versus Cognitive Theories of Religious Transmission

One of the more exciting recent developments in the study of religion has been the discovery of the relevance of cognitive science to religion. Anthropologists, psychologists, and even some historians of religion have applied the theories and findings of cognitive science to explain such important religious phenomena as the belief in supernatural beings and the regularity of certain forms of religious ritual. Although cognitive theories of religion have significant implications for our understanding of such widespread aspects of traditional religion, and have become increasingly sophisticated and powerful, the awareness of these theories within religious studies remains confined to a small (but growing) cir cle of scholars.2 The present essay attempts to widen that circle, out of a conviction that both cognitive approaches to religion and more tra ditional historical and humanistic approaches would be enriched by cross-fertilization.

Poetic justice: Rhetoric in Hindu ordeals and legal formulas

Abstract The Divyatattva, a Hindu treatise on ordeals, uses folk etymologies and other rhetorical devices to structure its rituals. This paper suggests that such forms of repetition, and particularly ‘exhaustion,’ or the enumeration of an entire paradigm class, may naturalise or, in Saussures term, ‘relatively motivate’ rituals and diminish the appearance of their arbitrariness. Ordeals and other rituals may respond to situations of uncertainty by using rhetorical devices to promote confidence in their outcomes. This contribution of poetic form to the pragmatic function of ritual is neglected in J. L. Austins influential theory of ‘performative utterances.’

The Trouble with Transcendence: Carl Schmitt’s “Exception” as a Challenge for Religious Studies

The Weimar- and Nazi-era legal theorist Carl Schmitt was one of the first to recognize that Max Weber’s theory of “disenchantment” encoded Protestant presuppositions. Despite his unsavory politics, I argue that Schmitt’s thesis—namely, that secular liberalism is a disguised and disenchanted “political theology” which depends on an exclusion of charismatic ruptures in the natural and moral orders—must be taken seriously. A genealogy of the prohibition of the miracle by the radical Reformation provides evidence for Schmitt’s contention that an ostensibly secular modernity, no less than its theological opponents, has had its own trouble with transcendence or the “exception.”

Coda and counterpoint

Abstract This essay responds to several of the issues raised by the various review essays on the authors book, Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History, while simultaneously offering some observations on the nature, current state, and future prospects of the semiotics of religion; on the explanatory ambitions and methodological limitations of this field; and on the location of semiotics in the human sciences and in historical and cultural studies, as distinguished from universalizing or Cartesian approaches.

Ritual and Religious Language

This article addresses some of the key issues presented by ritual language, including its classification into different types such as spells and prayers; its relation to nonverbal forms of ritual such as gesture; and its sociological dimensions. Special attention is given to the structure and function of ritual language, particularly the problem of nonsensical magic words. The contribution of poetry to ritual performance or pragmatic function provides the basis for a reevaluation of J L Austins theory of performative utterances. Another featured discussion is the historical decline of certain types of ritual language in post-Reformation culture, and the connection of this development with both writing and particular religious doctrines.

Images of Law and Its Others: Canon and Idolatry in the Discourses of British India

This essay uses Jonathan Z. Smiths concept of ‘canon’ to explore the structural and historical relations among British ideas of law, rel igion, and language in nineteenth-century India. Colonial projects of legal codification paralleled, and were influenced by, the Protestant valorisation of a canon of scripture, as opposed to the idolatry of custom. The British applied such ideas to privilege, alternatively, Hindu or Christian scriptures, legal codes, and even the English language itself. The idea of canon is the dream of a perfect language able to translate between universal and particular. As the colonial context illustrates, this translation is often coercive and asymmetrical: a mode of verbal violence.