Book Review: Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam by Talal Asad (1993)

Are anthropologists supposed to explore Western history whenever they set out along with history? Posing this pertinent question at the beginning of the introduction to the book ‘Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam’ (published in 1993), Talal Asad, one of the most potent critics of colonial cultural politics, has astonishingly cast an arrow over the prevailing frameworks of the discipline, particularly related to religion. In this book consisting of eight separate essays, though profoundly tied together, Asad explores the historical foundations of important anthropological (and more broadly intellectual) concepts, spanning from Christian monasticism to Saudi sermons to anthropological theory: subjectivity, religion, and ritual, agency, cultural translation, and multiculturalism. The introduction generally scans over what he already carved out in his previous book, ‘Anthropology and The Colonial Encounter’ (1973).

Not restricted to dispelling the overarching representations of Western historiography, he also takes on the problems laid out in indigenous history writing. The idea that colonized people were not the passive objects of their history, as many anthropologists have demonstrated, for instance, Marshall Shalins and Eric Fromm, has been put into question by saying that “this is not equivalent to claiming that they are its authors.” Therefore, our concern, he continues, must be with the question of ‘in what degree and in what ways are they agents or patients’ (Asad: 4). The critical engagements of Asad with reconceptualizing the way history and anthropology are perceived in academia get a more concrete grounding in his analysis of religion as a conceptual category used in anthropology. The first chapter, ‘The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category,’ is designed to substantiate the proposition that a universal definition of religion is impossible because all such definitions are themselves informed by and entangled in culturally specific programs and processes.

Having thought about deconstructing the existing definitions of religion, he starts to take up and challenge the famous definition of religion in anthropology put forward by Geertz, who observed religion as a system of symbols. Two problems are pointed out concerning Geertzian treatment. First, his definition seems to imply individual believers as a central locus of religion due to its emphasis on symbols, consciousness, dispositions, and affirmations. Secondly, it is indifferent to issues like institutional authority structures and disciplinary procedures, which are crucial to many non-Protestant religions. Asad questioned the 'thick description' of symbols and the contextual meanings that surround them that cultural anthropologists believed to constitute a semiotic activity in religion. 

Drawing on Wittengstaien's idea of ‘Forms of Life’ (1953), he further argued that the meaning of religion rests upon its usage in context. For him, an ethnographic approach must prioritize the voices and experiences of religious practitioners, challenging the prevalent focus on textual analysis and abstract theorizing. This emphasis on lived religion enables readers to grapple with the complexities, contradictions, intricacies, and fluidity that characterize religious phenomena, fostering a more nuanced understanding of religion. At the end of the first essay, Asad urges that “the anthropological student of particular religions should therefore begin by unpacking the comprehensive concept, which he or she translates as ‘religion,’ into heterogeneous elements according to its historical character” (1993: 54).

The other significant theme with which the author deals is the pain and self-abasement in medieval Christian rituals. In the section 'Archaism', the two chapters discuss how judicial torture and the main form of Christian discipline in the Middle Ages (the ritual of sacramental penance) have been played out within the terrain of power and authority that became conduits for ‘producing truthful discourses and making subjects respond to authority’ (p. 83). It is imperative to underline that Christians have long believed that compulsion and punishment are necessary to establish belief and nourish religious subjectivities. Asad traces it by looking back to Augustine and medieval monastic figures. The infliction of physical pain on the body has been one of how medieval Christianity extracted confession and truth.

The author has critically looked at the triumphalist argument that the official enactment of judicial torture marked in the Middle Ages a progressive move in the path of rationality and far from myth and religion. The use of anthropology as a historical tool for comprehending the significance of religious practice is powerfully illustrated in this chapter. It is also noteworthy that Asad draws here a good deal on Foucauldian themes to understand the disciplinary practices of the modern world and their distinctiveness from precedents.

In ‘The Limits of Religious Criticism in the Middle East’, he further interrogates the Enlightenment notion that non-western states are typically absolutist and the practice of public criticism is considered alien to them. Taking Saudi Arabia as a site of attention, Asad has shown that non-enlightenment traditions strongly pursue public criticism of the state, contrary to those prejudices and assumptions. The positions taken by Saudi's religious leaders are neither irrational nor traditionalist, but rather a reflection of the society's integration into global modernity, with its distinctions between state and non-state institutions. Asad goes to Saudi Arabia after sketching out the Kantian idea of public criticism on the one hand and legal compliance on the other. By examining the features of the Ulema's (religious scholars) Islamic criticism of the government during the Gulf War, he highlights how this tension manifests itself in a Muslim atmosphere there. Asad never confuses Muslims with the West, and instead, he sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the multifaceted and frequently complicated connection between Muslims and Westerners. Despite his justified criticism of Western attitudes toward Islam, he is aware of the pitfalls of romanticizing the “other” and denouncing the West.

The last section, ‘Polemics’ is mainly a response to Salman Rushdi's acclaimed novel ‘Satanic Verses’ and its props with freedom of expression. In the analysis, Asad specifically looked at multicultural implications and British identity in the wake of the Rushdie Affair. He makes a concerted effort to demonstrate that the liberal tradition of the Enlightenment, which cared about individual liberties like the right to free speech, has to be seen as a component of the historical growth of the nation-state and its coercive privatization of religion. It is argued that the selective identification of freedom of expression and tolerance underpins the modalities of liberal Western notions of multiculturalism. The pronounced anxiety on the part of the British government over processions to get the Satanic Verses banned and the absence of such fear in the case of racist protests can be understood as the continuation of the long-standing suspicion of Islam and other South Asian immigrants.

Extracting the essence from Said, Foucault, Derrida, and critical literary studies, the book meticulously exemplifies Asad's intellectual potential to deal with the textual study of practice and ritual. The main takeaway would be that we should regard our analytical frameworks both as lenses and as blinders and look at the connections between the history of our discipline and the history of how our civilizations have disciplined other regions of the world. Particularly, religion as a conceptual category needs to be employed, bearing in mind its specific historical progeny.