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Rationale:
There is a complex relationship between religious experience and language which requires considered exploration. This special theme of SSR welcomes papers which explore the relationship between religion and spirituality, and semiotic systems or applies semiotic analysis to practices and experiences in any tradition. Also welcome are semiotic approaches to transcendental and extra-sensory experiences in any cultural tradition. The invitation to inquiry into religious and spiritual traditions – including indigenous – can afford use of and even return to varieties of semiological methods – structural, symbolical, ritualised – methods that might seem to have been outpaced or displaced by post structural focus on empowered discourse as a determination of language patterns. We neither seek nor sanction any preferred or universal outcome to inquiry – except in as much as each tradition can provide insights that are universally applicable – although we remain curious if this inquiry can offer perspectives to traditional theological questions that are share by many faiths, and also complete and resolve some of the dilemma faced by structural semiology in the twentieth century.
In contradistinction to the emphasised forms of cultural and communicative semiotics that are often used to circumscribe the study of religion, we welcome an extension of sign concepts to explore symbology, ritual, mythology and human-nature relations, in meta-cultural phenomenon and methodology that could approach traditions of transcendentally or extra sensorially motivated signs, as well as ethnography that dwells on deeply subjectified form of religious experience. We also value inquiry about the possible relevance of faith traditions to the environmental challenge we collectively face. Finally there is the contribution of faith traditions to perspectives on contemporary social change, communities, media and democratic politics.
In the Abrahamic traditions, language has often been regarded as a necessary, but limited tool for talking about a God who is transcendent, beyond all human knowledge and comprehension. Most religious traditions acknowledge the possibility of signs and wonders in which divine presence is made manifest (catholic miracles, Protestant signs of grace, the illumination of God’s nature through Scripture etc, the manifestation of Divine Providence in economic and other communication systems ). Many religious traditions also celebrate practices of reading, speaking and interpretation which transform the individual, bringing them closer to god (Jewish hermeneutics and practices of reading Torah, spiritually inspired oration, apophatic discourse and processes of self-emptying). We adopt a slightly arcane and nuanced key term – semiotic theology- to sublate or embrace a diverse, tolerant inquiry into religion and spirituality under the rubric of sign systems.
Hermeneutics: Ricouer’s argument that translation is a form of hospitality has also inspired many to think about the challenges of inter-religious hospitality and inter-faith dialogue in hermeneutic or semiotic terms. Papers which explore social relations, cross-cultural dialogue and inter-religious understanding in these terms are also encouraged. We feel attention to mythological basis of pre modern and indigenous rituals are not merely ‘academic’ in nature and provide windows for re-evaluation, appraisal and reformulation of our current social and even political structures. That is today, religion or the spiritual is not regarded in any narrow disparate sense as a part of life that is increasingly optional, but as an embrasive, diffuse layering of shared qualities and practices that have inhabited human cultural and individual experiences from the first human cultures some 60,000 years ago. We seek interpretative and nuanced inquiry using a consensual and open semiotic or semiological understanding of language, not as an end in itself, but as a tool for tolerance, understanding and social understanding and change.
This special issue will argue for a meta-semiotic perspective based on an interdisciplinary inquiry of semiotics and theology, one that offers a fresh perspective and relevancy for both traditions. For political, historical, theoretical and cultural reasons, semiotics as a child of modernity has had a steadfastly secular focus, seeking to explain, in terms of human behaviour and culture, phenomena that were previously attributed to supernatural causation. Theology has retained a basis in apologetics, dogma and individual subjectivity, a pursuit of truth that can seem at odds with the scientific, empirical and philosophical assumptions of semiotics. In brief, semiotics has been focused on epistemology, theology on various kinds of ontology. For these traditions to merge, both need to be progressive, inclusive, and broadened. Theology needs to become more philosophical, ecumenical and tolerant in approach: semiotics needs to be open to non-human and naturalist motivation, and deepened ethical and truth based approach to human behaviour. The result of a semiotic/theology interdisciplinary merger could be enriching for both traditions, and indeed essential to their contemporary development and relevance.
A wide variety of religious and spiritual experience can be addressed. Authors should be dispassionate, even if sympathetic, about their subject, and comparative studies are welcome. Anthropological, scientific, cultural and metaphysical perspectives can be used, with application to various fields such as indigenous practices, contemporary and orthodox spiritual/religious expression, sacred spaces, cosmology, media, ethics, well-being and environmentalism.
Additionally, there is a long history of arts (visual arts, music, performance, literature, etc.) based on the theologically codified imagination – from the European Middle Ages to the reinterpretation of its legacy during the Renaissance and many centuries after that. Also, there is a very interesting cultural crossroad(s) between the European theological legacy and other religious, artistic and literary traditions of the world, from the Middle and Extreme East, from Africa, from pre-Christian Europe itself, etc.
Reviewers include Garry Trompf, Emeritus Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Sydney Australia
Ivan Capeller, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Nicoleta Blanariu, University “Vasile Alecsandri”, Romania
Clive Pearson, Associate Professor, School of Theology, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Geoffrey Sykes, Editor, Southern Semiotic Review. University of New South Wales, Australia.
Send abstract or complete paper to southernsemioticreview@gmail.com