Foucault & Religion
What consequences has Michel Foucault’s thought had for the study of religion?
THE MARTIN MARTY CENTER
FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF RELIGION
March 10-11, 2017 | Swift Common Room and Lecture Hall
For more information, contact conference organizers Daniel Schultz (danielschultz@uchicago.edu) or Maureen Kelly (makelly@uchicago.edu).
This two-day conference will bring scholars from a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences into a conversation about Foucault and religion.
How has Foucault’s thought contributed to the formation of “religion” as an object of inquiry in different fields? What are the points of contact between practices of the self (spiritual exercises) and the anthropology of ethics?
How do empirical studies of religious and spiritual practices provoke us to rethink Foucault’s corpus?
In what ways do genealogies of the secular trade on Foucault’s analysis of power-knowledge and his use of the concept of critique?
What productive tensions are generated by interdisciplinary appropriations of Foucauldian concepts and critical-genealogical methodologies?
The “and” in the conference’s title intends to evoke a number of possible conjunctures between the two stated themes: the significance of religion within Foucault’s conceptual architecture, as well as the ways in which Foucault’s work has recast anthropological, sociological, and historical discourses on religion as an object of knowledge.
Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center at the Divinity School, the Lichtstern Foundation, the France Chicago Center, the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, the Philosophy of Religions Workshop, the Graduate Council, and the Divinity Students Association.
9:30-10:00 Coffee
10:00 Welcome Remarks and Introduction to keynote speaker:
Arnold I. Davidson, University of Chicago
10:15-12:15 Keynote by Daniele Lorenzini, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / Columbia University: “
Pleasures, Desire, Concupiscence: The Christian Chapter of Foucault’s History of Sexuality”
Respondents:
Dawn Herrera Helphand, University of Chicago
Steve Collins, University of Chicago
12:15-13:15 Lunch for conference participants
13:15-14:45 Panel 1: Ethics, Self-transformation, and Political resistance
Jonathan Schofer, University of Texas at Austin: “Foucault’s Ethics, the Present Day, and Deuteronomy Rabbah”
Daniel Wyche, University of Chicago: “The Practice of Dignity: The Care of the Self, Relations of Power, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott”
Respondent(s): Maureen Kelly, University of Chicago
14:45-15:15 Coffee break
15:15-16:45 Panel 2: Askesis and the Spirituality of Thought
Jim Faubion, Rice University: “The Indecorous Ascetic”
Ann Burlein, Hofstra University: “A Passion of/for the Unlivable: Raymond Roussel and the Spirituality of Thought”
Respondent(s):
Daniel Schultz, University of Chicago
Xiao-bo Yuan, University of Chicago
16:45-18:00 Reception, Swift Hall, 1st Floor, Common Room
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