Sources of History

Myth and Image

Bibliographic Data

ID8204583
AuthorsNancy Levene (Indiana University Bloomington, corresponding author), Nancy K Levene
Year2006
Volume74
Issue1
Pages79-101
Publication date2006-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfj018
OpenAlexW2091141004
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited17

In the contemporary human sciences in general, and the study of religion in particular, history is a discourse of immense power and reach. But its role is paradoxical, for although it is charged with dissolving the uniqueness or transcendence of any given point of view, its own supremacy is often taken for granted, even in the post-Foucauldian world where it is common to attack the objectivist aspirations of historicist discourse. What I call for is not simply a more self-conscious concept of history but an investigation of what one might call, following Wallace Stevens, "the substance of [its] region": the history and scope of history itself as one particular way of being in, and seeing, the world. This is decidedly not to concede that there is something that escapes history but rather to pay closer attention to the myth that there is something that does, and to the ways in which this myth—far from being a mistake—is crucial to conceiving of the borders of history even insofar as everything comes (as everything does) under its critical gaze.

Art · Art history · Mythology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Study and Philosophy of Religion

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