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“Have Animals Souls?”: Theosophy and the Suffering Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gauri Viswanathan
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Extract

The normative understanding of “the clash of religions” assumes external conflict: we think, for example, of christianity's historical struggle with Islam; of the clash between Hinduism and Islam in the partition of the Indian subcontinent; or, in the field of empire, of the imperial contest over the souls and bodies of colonial subjects, in which material rationales for control and expropriation appear as theological motivations, rendering religious conversion virtually interchangeable with cultural conquest. Viewed in this light, the notion of a clash of religions bypasses conflicts internal to individual religions, which are equally if not more important in shaping the content of religious thought. Internal conflicts often play out as debates over the meanings of key concepts in the religions.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 2 , March 2011 , pp. 440 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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