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.
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