Abandonment Issues: Reflections on Redescription, Rectification, and J.Z. Smith’s “Trading Places”

Abstract

I reflect here on Jonathan Z. Smith’s influence on my approach to the study of religion, interweaving these reflections into the outline of a larger argument for the continued critical study of the category of religion—a project central to Smith’s intellectual project. While many have pursued Smith’s denaturalization of the category of religion, few have tried to imagine what Religious Studies might look like without religion as its primary explanatory category. Here I argue that Smith’s notions of redescription and rectification offer clues for how such a methodological shift might work. I do so by looking specifically at Smith’s brief essay “Trading Places” where he explicitly recommends rejecting efforts to theorize “magic.” I argue that not only do his considerations apply to the category of religion but also that the procedures he discusses in “Trading Place” might be understood as a more radical view of redescription and rectification.