The Poetics and Politics of Sacred Space: Towards a Critical Phenomenology of Religion

Abstract

What is the sacred? In the study of religion, two broad lines of definition have been advanced, one substantial, the other situational. The former claims to have penetrated and reported the essential experience of the sacred, while the latter analyzes the practical, relational, and often contested dynamics of its production and reproduction. In this essay, I have set myself the task of weaving together the substantial and the situational through a critical rereading, against the grain, perhaps, of the influential work of the Dutch phenomenologist of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw. I hope to uncover, in the process, the situational, relational, and contested aspects that lie hidden at the heart of a classic substantial definition of the sacred.