Religion: Textualities and Metahuman Agency

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the concept of religion by addressing not what religion is, but what religion does, in other words, its power to address the world. The religious text (broadly understood) articulates the world beyond and in opposition to common sense, through hybrid (multi-code) and complex articulations, tending towards polysemy. It is a language of excess. However, religious subjects and communities resist the arbitrariness of the signs that make up their texts. After all, they are interventions in the world, which are only  possibledue to the configuration of these texts. Nothing in them is free, which is also because religion is not just about producing meaning, but also “producing presence”. This is the connection promoted by religious texts between human and metahuman agents, including deities, spiritual agents and ancestors, but also objects, animals, and spaces. This type of religiosity promotes connections among the most diverse agents, subverting conventional classifications in a total decentering of the human. We therefore believe that the study of this complex and hybrid textuality, with its magical power to connect agents from different orders should be a priority for understanding contemporary Latin American religiosities, including its syncretic aspects on the outskirts of urban centers.