resources—situations epitomized by colonialism—but it should also be easy to
see problems with a simplistic invocation of ‘epistemicide’. Like invocations
of ‘perspectivalism’, ‘incommensurability’, or ‘imperialism’, the specter of
epistemicide may lead to an argument that all local knowledges are equally
true. We all know that knowledge is always contextually embedded and that
we see the world from different perspectives. Nevertheless, it is impermissible—
by virtue of the genetic fallacy—to accept or reject claims to knowledge on the
basis of such embeddedness, as if British chemists two centuries ago were entitled
either to deny the existence of oxygen or to insist upon their right to hold the
phlogiston theory because the oxygen theory was French knowledge threatening
British knowledge with epistemicide. (The word ‘oxygen’ was coined by the
French chemist Lavoisier.) Scholars, including scholars of religion, do not set
out to destroy knowledge; they aim to create it. But they do set out to assess
claims to knowledge as critically as possible and to reject those claims that
cannot withstand testing. Without such an attitude, one can hardly pursue
knowledge seriously.
That is not to deny that the study of religion faces issues concerning objects,
methods, and theories that are global in scope, even if those issues have been
mis-stated or overstated, sometimes ludicrously so. A claim to be heard is not
a claim to have one’s views accepted but a claim not to be excluded from
the common pursuit of knowledge for arbitrary reasons. If this volume
demonstrates nothing else, it should demonstrate that there are scholars of
religions around the world whose thinking deserves attention by virtue of its
quality. As Vineeta Sinha has noted, along with many others, that is not always
the norm. To risk excessive generalization: keynote speakers at conferences in
Southeast Asia—and I suspect elsewhere—tend to be Western Europeans and
North Americans. Keynote speakers at conferences in Europe and North
America tend to be—Western Europeans and North Americans (Sinha 2003:
15). When scholars in, for example, Africa, South Asia, or Latin America
examine persons, events, and things in their localities or areas of interest, their
results tend to be taken as having local significance. When scholars in Europe,
North America, and to some extent Australia and New Zealand examine
persons, events, and things in their own localities or areas of interest, they
have a greater chance of ‘having’ universal significance (Sinha 2003: 16).
Theories that claim wide attention generally originate in Europe and North
America. Scholars elsewhere tend to apply those theories more than develop
their own. To the extent that they do develop theories, the impact of their
theories tends to remain local (Sinha 2003: 10–11).
As in the case of androcentrism, which Sinha also addresses, these
observations have a political edge—in her words, they issue a call to ‘open the
social sciences’ (Gulbenkian Commission 1996)—but they do so only because
they point to violations of the ideals of universality and equality implicit in
global standards of knowledge and scholarship. The same is true of the
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
TOWARD A GLOBAL VISION OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
317
