academics may be subsiding, giving way to a welcome return of comparative
studies. A recent example of this trend is The Presence of Light: Divine
Radiance and Religious Experience, a collection of studies edited by Matthew
Kapstein (2004). While aware of the points raised by Katz and some of
his collaborators, Kapstein defends the need for comparative studies. He
acknowledges some of the problems with the concept of ‘experience’, raised,
among others, by Robert Sharf; but he counteracts hyper-critical approaches
by paying attention to the inter-subjective character of aesthetic experiences,
especially of music.
Given the manner in which rhythms, melodies, and harmonies affect us,
regardless of cultural filters, it is impossible not to refer to music when seeking
to move beyond culturalist misconceptions. One hopes therefore that following
the example set by Staal, scholars of religion will make use of research on
music—for instance, of the essays found in The Origins of Music, the volume
edited by Nils Wallin, Björn Merker and Steven Brown (2000). In any event,
books such as The Presence of Lightsignal a welcome turning away from the
fixation on pure difference, a fixation that is as uncritical as the infatuation
with constructs such as homo religiosusthat prevailed not too many years ago.
Similarly, the distrust towards approaches to religion that paid attention to
emotion—understandable as a reaction against positions such as Rudolf
Otto’s—seems to be waning; as recent examples we may refer to Ann Taves’
Fits, Trances and Visions(1999) and to an anthology of previously published
articles, Religion and Emotion(2004), edited by John Corrigan, a volume that
one would hope will be followed by a collection of newly commissioned
studies, analogous to some of the ones found in Religious Organization and
Religious Experience, edited by John Davis (1982).
Because of the role played by the interplay between cognition and emotion
in their emergence and practice, music, dance, posture, and the aesthetic realm
in general, provide a privileged point of reference for understanding religion—
one can in fact understand religion as a form of applied aesthetics. Despite the
central role they play in the very fabric of religion, smell, taste, and touch have
been generally neglected by scholars, research on aesthetics having been
confined for too long to sight and sound. But that is changing. Besides
theoretical work by David Howes and Constance Classen, there are studies
such as Kathryn Geurts’ Culture and the Senses(2002), which focuses on the
Anlo of Ghana; most recently, in Scenting Salvation(2006), Susan Harvey has
studied the olfactory imagination in early Christianity in the context of the
role of smell in the ancient Mediterranean world. A couple of conferences on
this issue may also be mentioned: one at Princeton in April 1999 and one at
Yale in October 2006; finally, in November 2006, the Critical Theory and
Discourses of Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion sponsored
a session, ‘Religion Through The Senses’, at the Academy’s annual meeting.
The participation at that session of established scholars, such as Harvey, as
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