Disenchantment, Re-enchantment, Magic, and Vestigial Mythologies

Abstract

This essay interacts with the call for papers for the “Magic and Mischief: Text and Practices in Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences” conference. It is a self-reflection on the theoretical frameworks and definitions guiding projects of reflection and theorising. Breaking the discourse of religion, theology, and science, as well as that of science and magic, down into its discourse-components to get at the speech acts performed, it shows the mythmaking inherent in particular historical understandings of religion and magic, and religion, magic, and science. By performing a kind of archaeology of discourse one gets to see the social, cultural, and political character of the discourse work. And thus, a study of discourse being a site for analysing social formations, the myths of Enlightenment, secularisation, and disenchantment become avenues for understanding the political and socially formative, and the culturally definitive, character of those acts we prefer to call thinking about religion.