Response Paper to Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Academic Study of Religion: Introduction (Academic Study of Religion )

Identity and the politics of scholarship explain the correlation between science and study of religion according to identity’s perspective. This correlation arises among the scholars of religion by facing at least two conditions: the first is facing the universal value of scientific knowledge; the second is facing the problem within their identity itself.

The first correlation is facing universal value of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge as an official truth is based on the value of enlightenment, Reason. Reason is the essence of human being as universal value which exists within human life. The universal claim then bore the claim truth which only can be reached by scientific knowledge. The scientific knowledge has critics because its methodology excludes other form or aspect within its object of research. The historicity of every object of research is one of the earliest perspectives which criticize the universal value of scientific knowledge claims such as ahistoric and objectivity. The historicity shows that every object has their own history which determines their reality or identity. Therefore, historicity creates identity.

The second correlation happens especially after the need of identity as one of the factors for determining scientific work begins. Many people then discuss in what term “the identity” must be examined as the main role for scientific knowledge. First, human has many identities exist within themselves. One person can be identified by many identities such as from religion, race, sexual orientation, or nationality (for example; I am Muslim, Javanese, like woman and Indonesian). There is no single identity within human being, and this is the difficulty to examine in what identity they construct themselves and their reality.

Those problem above covered epistemological and socio-political debates which will challenge the correlation between identity and the politics of scholarship. For me, those debates are the sign of the problems of post-modernity. People tried to go back beyond their works of scientific method by examining the relationship between power and knowledge, between universality and locality, and also between the knower and the known. Although there are many critics also for examining the post-modernity, this is the main idea for understanding the problem between identity and politics of scholarship.