Racial-religious genealogies in contemporary discourses
Généalogies racialo-religieuses dans les discours contemporains
Published on Monday, November 22, 2021
Abstract
The objective of this fourth workshop of the RelRace research program, Religions, Lineages, Races, is to document and analyze the most contemporary (21st century) expressions of racial-religious myths. These expressions remain marginal, however they nevertheless concern numerous religious sects, who very often develop a supremacist discourse.
Announcement
Argument
The objective of this fourth workshop of the RelRace research program, Religions, Lineages, Races, is to document and analyze the most contemporary (21st century) expressions of racial-religious myths. These expressions remain marginal, however they nevertheless concern numerous religious sects, who very often develop a supremacist discourse.
New constructs have appeared and the means of expression have diversified enormously. The space of faith and religion in our societies seems to have expanded, particularly in the on-line worlds, to the point that new religious communities are emerging on the Web, these “digital religions”, as Heidi Campbell has called them, requiring no contact between cyber-faithfuls (Campbell 2012). As early as the 1970s, revivalist pastors in the United States had already set up systems of faith dissemination that borrowed from the entertainment sector, with giant churches, televised sermons and billboard or television advertising.
This globalizing of the sacred, which is not limited to cyberspace, affects various cultural expressions, tending to attest to the fall of the boundaries between the attributes of the sacred on the one hand and art, leisure and everyday spaces on the other (Caron 2004; Cottin and Bazin 2003; Campbell 2012).[1] Music, particularly rap, is also a site where these phenomena assert themselves. For example, Shabazz the Disciple, in his album The Book of Shabazz (Hidden Scrollz), like many other artists, reworks religious myths of race from the Nation of Islam and its collateral branches.
During this workshop we propose to question the uses of racial-religious genealogies in the 21st century. We intend to analyze the contemporary dissemination and uses of this form of genealogy, and also to consider their evolution, from the time the myth first emerged. Their various circulations will be particularly scrutinized, on-line circulations, and also in other more unexpected forms, musical ones, strictly religious one with the case of sermons, or the ways public space can be made use of. White supremacists also take up these racist myths, and as we know, the alt-right’s privileged terrain is first of all that numerical (Ridley 2021; Greene 2019). It will also be possible to evoke the Nation of Islam, and its different variants such as the Five-Percent Nation, as well as the various forms of Kemitism, or the Black Hebrew movement (Lewis and B.f. 1995; Santamaria 1987; Collins 2020). These American examples should not overshadow their echos in Europe. Protestant evangelicalism is taking original forms in Europe that should also be questioned in the way they also invest the racial question and racial-religious myths (Mottier 2017).
Submission guidelines
Paper proposals with a short C.V. should be sent to relrace@univ-lemans.fr and maheo.prof@gmail.com by March 15, 2022.
They should not exceed 500 words.
Organization
Workshop organized by Vincent Vilmain (TEMOS) and Olivier Maheo (IHTP), part of the research program ReLRace, supported by the ANR, Thursday 06/23/2021 and Friday 06/24/2021, University of Le Mans, France.
Scientific committee
- Giulia Bonacci, chargée de recherche à l’Institut de recherche pour le développement, IRD, URMIS, Université Côté d'Azur
- Baptiste Bonnefoy, Maître de conférence, Paris Nanterre
- Olivier Maheo, Post doctorant IHTP, UMR 8244, CNRS-Paris 8
- Maud Michaud est maître de conférence en civilisation britannique à l’Université du Mans.
- Chrystal Vanel, docteur associé au GSRL (EPHE-CNRS) et membre associé au centre HDEA (Sorbonne Université)
- Vincent Vilmain, Maître de conférences, Le Mans, TEMOS, Coordonateur du projet ANR RelRace.
References
Burkhalter Brace, 1999, « Reading race online » dans Communities in cyberspace, London; New York, Routledge, p. 60‑75.
Campbell Heidi A, 2012, Digital religion: understanding religious practice in new media worlds, New York, Routledge.
Caron Nathalie, 2004, « La religion dans le cyberespace », Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 2004, vol. 75, no 1, p. 17‑27.
Collins Armondo R., 2020, « A Disciple of Malcolm X: Clarence 13X Smith’s Embodied Black God Rhetoric », Journal of African American Studies, septembre 2020, vol. 24, no 3, p. 337‑356.
Cottin Jérôme et Bazin Jean-Nicolas, 2003, Vers un christianisme virtuel: enjeux et défis d’Internet, Genève, Labor et Fides.
Greene Viveca S., 2019, « “Deplorable” Satire: Alt-Right Memes, White Genocide Tweets, and Redpilling Normies », Studies in American Humor, 2019, vol. 5, no 1, p. 31‑69.
Lewis Stanford et B.f., 1995, « The falsification of the Afrikan past: The European... », BLACFAX, Fall 1995, vol. 8, no 31, p. 4.
Moore Robert Laurence, 1994, Selling God: American religion in the marketplace of culture, New York; Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Mottier Damien, 2017, « Prophétisme et pentecôtisme africains en migration », Cahiers d’etudes africaines, 29 novembre 2017, n° 228, no 4, p. 973‑992.
Ridley Simon, 2021, « Les discours de haine et l’université : des flame wars à l’alt-right », Mots. Les langages du politique, 4 mars 2021, no 125, p. 93‑108.
Santamaria Ulysses, 1987, « Black Hebrews du politique au religieux: les ressorts d’une lutte pour l’identité », L’Homme et la société, 1987, vol. 83, no 1, p. 41‑51.
Note
[1] According to the statistics, after the use of emails, the consultation of financial and banking sites, religious websites are the most consulted, at least what the respondents are willing to admit.
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Society > Political studies > Political science
- Mind and language > Information > Information sciences
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology
- Society > Political studies > Political history
- Mind and language > Religion
- Periods > Modern > Twenty-first century
- Society > Sociology > Sociology of culture
Places
- Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société, Laboratoire TEMOS - MSHS-Le Mans. Avenue Olivier Messiaen
Le Mans, France (72)
Date(s)
- Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Attached files
Keywords
- religion, race, mythe, secte, suprémacisme
Contact(s)
- olivier maheo
courriel : raconterlesminorites [at] gmail [dot] com
Reference Urls
Information source
- olivier maheo
courriel : raconterlesminorites [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Racial-religious genealogies in contemporary discourses », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, November 22, 2021, https://doi.org/10.58079/17qs
