Automatic Religion

Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France

Automatic Religion
Paul Christopher Johnson
RRP:
NZ$ 92.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 73.60
Paperback
Not defined - 312pg
3 Feb 2021 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780226749723
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What distinguishes humans from nonhumans? Two common answers- free will and religion-are in some ways fundamentally opposed. While free will enjoys a central place in our ideas of spontaneity, authorship, and the conscious weighing of alternatives, religion is less a quest for agency than a series of practices that relieve individuals of their will. What, then, is agency, and why has it occupied such a central place in theories of the human? Automatic Religion explores an unlikely series of episodes from the end of the nineteenth century, when crucial ideas related to automatism and, in a different realm, religion as a topic of study were both being born. Paul Christopher Johnson draws on years of archival and ethnographic research in Brazil and France to explore the consequential lines that were being drawn between humans, "nearhumans," and automata. As agency came to take on a more central place in the philosophical, moral, and legal traditions of the West, certain classes of people were being excluded as less-than-human. Tracking the circulation of ideas across the Atlantic, Johnson tests those boundaries, revealing how they were constructed on largely gendered and racial foundations. In the process, he reanimates one of the most mysterious and yet foundational questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?
"Automatic Religion is a work of sweeping ambition and true originality. Wide-ranging, erudite, and eloquent, Johnson compels us to rethink everything we thought we knew about religion, agency, machines, animals, and the human. The histories he tracks have uncanny relevance in the age of Amazon' s Alexa and the algorithm. "-- "Webb Keane, author of ' Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories' "
Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of history and Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan and editor of Comparative Studies of Society and History. His books include Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble and Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780226749723
Published: 3 Feb 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312

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