Beyond Genealogies: Expertise and Religious Knowledge in Legal
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Kamari Maxine Clarke BEYOND GENEALOGIES:EXPERTISE AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE IN LEGAL CASES INVOLVING AFRICAN DIASPORIC PUBLICS which the question to be posed was not so much Abstract that of religion as object and its systemic function This article considers the way genealogical in society, but instead that of religion as a product approaches to religion have not been able to take of knowledge and power through which subjects into account how the production of knowledge, are shaped. Yet, as groundbreaking as Asad’s including religious knowledge, affects global politics. genealogical approach to religion was in destabiliz- Specifically, it is concerned with the production of ing analytic assumptions about religious objects of expert testimony, which is used to provide the evi- anthropological study, a culture of expert testi- dentiary basis for a new industry of civil and human mony, in the 1990s, and an industry of refugee rights claims and protections. I explore how lawyers and claimants and US and Canadian con- genealogical approaches to religion offer a way to stitutional reforms around religious freedoms were see that the constructs we understand to be religion concurrently underway. These industry experts were produced and rendered legible through the for- sought various knowledge foundations through mation of contemporary constructions of knowledge which to procure equality and rights for subaltern — classes. They drew on essentialist definitions of and power. I demonstrate that through these 1 approaches—in order for religious protections to be religion grounded in symbolic anthropology. This acknowledged in legal domains, they also need to be essay is concerned with how Canadian and Ameri- rendered visible and legible to the law. Ultimately, I can mainstream legal systems, as well as particular argue that the production of these knowledge prac- tenets of the anthropology of religion, have cre- tices into portable knowledge packages enables ated a condition of illegibility of non-Western, courts to assess issues that have resulted from the especially African diasporic, religious subjects. migration of ethnic and religious groups; but they Such examples of definitional illegibility of African diasporic spheres span from Orisha Voodoo to also tell us a lot about the limits of genealogical approaches in understanding fully the complexities Obeah Santerıa and Candomble. of Black Atlantic religious practices. [genealogies of Beginning with a consideration of Talal Asad’s religion, obeah, Yoruba religion, law, Santerıa] seminal reframing of religious contexts through a “genealogical” trajectory, the essay argues for a fuller understanding of how law, anthropology, and colonialism can work together to erase reli- INTRODUCTION gious subjects and practices. In doing so, it In 1993, Talal Asad published the essay, “The demonstrates the ways that modernist taxonomies, Construction of Religion as an Anthropological including the tools used in expert testimonies, such Category” in his book, Genealogies of Religion,as as “technocratic productivity,” also contribute to a way to reject essentialist definitions of religion the creation of legibility and illegibility of African and to articulate the extent to which the legibility diasporic religious practices. We see that in order of religion itself is a product of historical and dis- for religious protections to be recognized in legal cursive practices. By rethinking Clifford Geertz’s domains, they must also be rendered visible and popularization of religion as operating within a legible to the law. It is more important than ever symbolic field, Asad’s intervention asserted a criti- to recognize that the religious claims before North cal break from symbolic anthropology of the American courts today are artifacts of the schol- 1980s to a Foucauldian poststructuralist one in arly imagination being excavated and rendered leg- ible within the lens of empirical certainty. For Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 25, Number 2, pp. 130–155, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2017 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. 130 DOI: 10.1111/traa.12101. example, the aforementioned African diasporic seen as “uncivilized” and demonic. In the case of religious practices are made legible in legal pro- African diasporic religions, the demonized associa- ceedings through the category of “the occult.” tions and designations of the occult have had a sig- This rendering of anthropological theory into legal nificant impact in everyday criminality and have categories raises new questions about the ways played a legitimizing role in legal proceedings. that social science knowledge has the power to Indeed, these formulations of religious categories produce packages of history and assemblages of and histories require that we take into account the culture that are disconnected from the conditions particularities of modernity, race, and inequality of their making and eventual circulation. The as they relate to the interpretive field of expert implications of this packaging are key to clarifying knowledge and its impact on rendering particular the contemporary nature of knowledge production practices legitimate or illegitimate. As I explore and the limits of genealogical approaches in under- here, symbolic anthropological definitions of cul- standing fully the complexities of Black Atlantic ture embedded in essential social system theory religious practices. from the 1930s to 1970s were being mercilessly For many invested in poststructuralist analy- revived by legal experts as a way to produce por- sis, genealogical approaches to religion offered a table knowledge packages and a type of Christian way to see that the very constructs we understand revivalism that celebrated itself against other reli- to be religion were produced and rendered legible gious traditions perceived as “occult.” through the formation of contemporary construc- Asad would view these knowledge practices, in tions of knowledge and power. We understood their construction as occult, as driven by institu- that religion itself is not a thing—a knowable tions of knowledge and power. They were being entity that remains untouched and unchanged and deployed to enable courts to assess the nature of that one simply converts into or claims in con- those “occult” religions, deemed occult, and the tradistinction to secular knowledge. Following range of related issues that resulted from the regio- Michel Foucault, what Asad demonstrated nal migration of persons from the ethnic and reli- through deconstruction is that the production of gious groups fleeing war or persecution, or seeking religious knowledge emerged with a concept of the better life opportunities. As a result of their mobi- secular that normalized particular “behaviors, lity and the growth of diverse challenges, increasing knowledges, and sensibilities in modern life” (Asad measures were taken by governments to understand 1993, 24), and “invisibilized” their alliances with the proliferation of religious claims as well as deter- contemporary Christianity. This construction of mine the limits on those freedoms (see also the secular as social knowledge, behaviors, and Richardson 2015 and Ingulli 1985–1986).2 The for- sensibilities—deemed absent of religious influences mats ranged from refugee commissions, human —shaped Asad’s point of departure and made an rights commissions, local regional civil and criminal important contribution to a growing set of schol- cases, to Supreme Court hearings throughout arly debates on the topic (For example, see Feld- North America, Europe, and Australia, and man 2005; Mahmood 2015; Taylor 2007; Weber engaged in the management and regulation of par- 1992 [1930]). ticular religious practices. These formations fos- However, even as this genealogical approach tered a new culture of experts with cultural and to religion and secularism emerged alongside post- religious knowledge tools engaged in the evaluation structural and postmodern interventions, a new and assessment of the practices under scrutiny (see industry was underway whose adherents needed Fortman 2012; Ridler 2010). desperately to derive from anthropological and But if the rise of genealogical approaches sociological expertise a particular knowledge highlighted the place of knowledge and power in domain that contained the very cultural and reli- shaping contemporary religion, this new industry gious spheres being deconstructed. Although con- of experts and their religious-cultural knowledge ceptualizations of secularism emerged against the tools emerged alongside the radically transforming production of explicit religiosities, what also public discourses that would reshape the contours emerged were new innovations around Christian of contemporary religiosity (see Jackson 2013; Ste- practices that made the presence of new Christian wart and Shaw 1994). A language of religious practices more pronounced, more visible but rights and protections promoted forms of entitle- dialectically tied to particular religious aka occult ments that shaped the way religion and tradition underworlds. These otherized occult religious were becoming popularized. What prevailed with worlds were defined against Christianity and were this new turn were individualized justice claims Kamari Maxine Clarke 131 and protections propelled by new forms of legal- These three shifts—the procurement of reli- ity. These ranged from the rise of constitution- gious expertise, the emergence of religious legal ally procured