ABSTRACT
In a 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion a spirited exchange took place that rivaled the scenes of academic give-and-take lampooned by the British novelist, David Lodge. Lamenting what he considered to be the disproportionate influence that Foucault’s earlier works (e.g., Discipline and Punish) have enjoyed among some scholars of religion, Ivan Strenski (1998b) took issue with, among others, the thesis of David Chidester’s Savage Systems (1996b) and the work of Gary Lease (1994; see also 1997). That same year, in a separate essay entitled, “On ‘Religion’ and its Despisers” (1998a), Strenski took aim at Lease once again, but this time along with the work of Tim Fitzgerald (1997; see also 2000b), and some of my own work. Although I escape most of his critique, Strenski outed me as part of what he called an “inbred clique,” “crowd,” and “gang,” represented in large part by the members of the IAHR-affiliated North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) and its quarterly journal, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR).2 This “nihilistic” and “polemical” group’s work is, in his estimation, “alternatively an exercise in naivete, bad faith, or ignorant mischief, or indeed, all of the above” (1998a: 118). Having read his critique I could not help but feel that my work ended up looking a little ridiculous.
