The symposium seeks to combine theoretical issues developed in the work of the graduate school “Hermeneutic Hegemony and Hermeneutic Conflict in Religion and Belief Systems” with questions of cultural and social difference and inequality reflected upon in the theoretical field of intersectionality. The task is to investigate practices of religion and other forms of belief as categories of cultural difference together with social-cultural categories such as race/ethnicity, nationality/citizenship, class/social position, education, gender, desire, health/ability and age among others.

The symposium is designed to generate discussion and intellectual exchange about the benefits and possible disadvantages of ‘intersectional’ approaches to the study of hermeneutic hegemony based on such categories of distinction. It emphasizes the performative aspects of “knowledge objects” and scientific knowledge production in order to reflect on the entanglement between scientific description/analysis and the formation of inequalities.

Critical attention will focus on
- how constructions of subject positions become hegemonic and how collective and individual agency counters such ascriptions/interpellations;
- how to assess the relationship between agency-oriented and structuralist theories of power;
- which mobilizing effects interpretation may have on the emergence and consolidation of social/cultural power;
- which strategies counter-hegemonic representations may take in order to generate visibility/audibility.

The hermeneutic power of “religion” and other cultural discourses will be analyzed with reference to particular examples such as conflicts between Christian and ‘pagan’ beliefs, hegemonic relations between science and (other) belief systems, representations and visualizations of social inequality, enactment of bodies, constitution of (gender) identities, processes of othering, among others.
Next to interrogating the uses of intersectional approaches themselves, the symposium wants to bring together scholars skilled in cross-disciplinary and multiperspectival approaches to phenomena of cultural and social inequality. Disciplines include cultural studies, legal studies, religious studies, theology, literature, history, sociology, and anthropology. The aim is to collect case studies showing the analytical potential (i.e. the hermeneutic power) of such intersectional approaches both in the historical and contemporary humanities.

Confirmed speakers include Laura Donaldson, Rebecca Tsosie, John J. Kucich, Michael Meuser, Paula-Irene Villa, Shulamit Volkov, Ina Kerner.

We invite papers that speak to one or more of the mentioned aspects. Please send a 300 word abstract to the organizers below.