Residues in the Secular: Whale Bones and Other Theological Relics1
This article develops the concept of the theological relic: a facet of secular life and culture that maintains traces of (and so remains bound in some way to) its genealogy in the theological. The theological relic, then, is something that fails to be either robustly religious or properly secular....
| Published in: | Dialog |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2015]
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| In: |
Dialog
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy KCD Hagiography; saints NBD Doctrine of Creation NCG Environmental ethics; Creation ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
religion and animals
B Save the Whales B ecopolitical B multispecies kinship B whales B environmental politics B Relics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article develops the concept of the theological relic: a facet of secular life and culture that maintains traces of (and so remains bound in some way to) its genealogy in the theological. The theological relic, then, is something that fails to be either robustly religious or properly secular. It is, instead, a product of the relations between these social spaces. The article illustrates this concept by examining a cultural history of the whale, highlighting this creature's complex bonds with the theological. The whale, in other words, is figured as a theological relic: a creature of the secular that remains shrouded enough by traces of the theological that these vestiges of divinity are implicated in the whale's powerful late-twentieth-century cultural reconfiguration. |
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| ISSN: | 1540-6385 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Dialog
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/dial.12208 |