Yahya Tirta Prewita, ICRS 2010, 6 September 2010.
What is “history”? What is “religion”? Why is it important?
a critical reading of: Preciosa de Joya, “The Task of Remembrance: History as the Burden of Inheritance and an Opportunity for Justice” (2006), Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System” (1966) and Talal Asad, The Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (1993).
Confession: It is my first reading on the philosopy of religion with the anthropology approach. From the first page, I know that my knowledges and understanding about the names and discourses in this topic is very limited. When I continue to read the reading material by rapid scan reading, I know that I need to read a simple introduction first about Durkeim, Weber, Freud, Malinowski, Russel, Radcliffe, and many thinker with their study on anthropology, religion, symbol, structure and function in society, cultural .... It bring hesitation in my mind, “Do I have time to check all entries of names and technical term in this subject?” And more than this is “Does the class in ICRS guide me personaly how to learn the basic theories and introduce me the way to go to?”
Geertz in 38 pages explains his definition about the religion:
“Without much further ado, then, a religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”. (p.90)
I thank Asad for his book “The Genealogies of Religion”, it shows me the way he reads and responds to Geertz, and explain more. He introduces me more names and discourses in the topic. And by reading his book I gain my stress: I must read and reread and reread again to understand their idea. Yes they are written in English, but I get the ideas in these reading as if come from the other world, very strange and difficult for me to absorb.
Thanks God for the simple article from Preciosa de Joya on Walter Benjamin. The keywords about memory, remembering, forgetting, official history, process of silencing, counter-history, anonymous toil, enshrined heritage, barbarity of the past, unfinished history, mourning.... are very familiar to our daily life in Indonesia. As an Indonesian, the article helps me to read our exsistency in a relation specially to the victims, in a mourning, for the bright future in our hope.
My last confession: it is not a critical reponse to the reading materials. Yes, it is a response, but to be critical I need understand and know the subject that I critizise. It doesn’t yet.
