CALL FOR PAPERS

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The Religious Studies department at Stanford University and the Stanford Humanities Center are delighted to announce a graduate conference to be held 25-26 April, 2008. 

There, Where I Am Not:  Approaching the Discourse of Transcendence

In considering the possibility of a space beyond embodiment and language, attempts to deal with
transcendence in religious discourse often leap headfirst into some of the murkiest paradoxes of thought
and desire. This predicament has also been a tremendous source of creativity, particularly when that
discourse finds itself struggling with the limits of its own language and is forced to seek out new, even
heretical approaches that shuttle between the realms of philosophy, poetry, and silence.

Plotinus thought of it as that realm, accessible only through pure insight, that is beyond all being;
Dante understood it to be necessary to explain the motion of a simple smile; Dharmakirti saw it as the
distinguishing feature of pure mind; Chinese alchemists saw it as a way of being attained through the
production of a golden elixir. Transcendence can be understood as both movement and as a state of
being beyond all movement––rendered, to follow the vocabulary of just a few religious traditions, as
hyperousia, 離 li, 仙 xian, tanzih, ein sof. With each of these, as with its Latin etymological sense,
transcendence designates a going beyond, or the state of already being so. It implies both a to and a
from. To what does this transcendence lead? To scan responses from Luther to Laozi: it may be to
another realm; to the same realm differently; to the divine; or perhaps even to nothing. And from what
does it proceed? Very often it is the world, the everyday, the immanent here and now, temporality itself.
But whatever its characterization, this immanent world is contested ground; for it is here, in the makeup
of the world that religious thinking meets with philosophy and the sciences.

One might say, with Kant and the phenomenological tradition that followed him, that while the notion
of transcendence was all but completely destroyed, the notion of the transcendental was brought out of
theology and into the sphere of anthropology. Transcendence had little to no purchase as a name for a
reality independent of humans; if anything, it described the constant and inevitable activity of human
consciousness as reaching beyond itself, whether in perception, thought, or desire. And while
transcendence was being rationalized and relativized in this way as a category of everyday experience,
the notion of an absolute other, of an absolute beyond, came to be seen not just as implausible and
idealistic, but as potentially dangerous, manipulative, as a medium of oppression.

In and through all of these changes, the academic possibilities for talking about transcendence, both as
concept and as phenomenon in religious discourse, have transformed dramatically. As scholars who deal
with religion, we have decisions to make: Are we to ignore claims to transcendence or to leave them in
reported speech alone? Are we to explain all claims about a transcendent beyond as arising within and
dealing with issues of the ordinary world? If so, what languages and strategies do we have at our disposal
to enact this kind of explanation? What, if anything, does the opposition between transcendence and
immanence mean to us today?

The primary aim of this conference is to provide a forum in which transcendence––as theme, objective,
implication, and presupposition in religious discourse––can be considered from and within a wide array
of perspecives, methodological approaches, and traditions. In so doing, the conference also aims to
provide an opportunity to reflect on the conceptual and linguistic resources we have to approach
transcendence from within our scholarly landscapes.

Papers might consider (but are not limited to) the following themes and issues:

• Ritual and symbolic figurations of transcendence
• The transformative power of ritual objects, icons, relics
• Rational defenses for the notion of transcendence
• Apophasis and the role of genre and style in speaking about the ineffable
• Transcendence in the battle of faculties: A matter for conceptual thought? Faith? Eros? For the imagination?
• Transcendent v. transcendental
• Repetition and change
• Humor, laughter, and transformative moods
• Transcendence among the Transcendentalists: Thoreau, Emerson, et al.
• Implications of transcendence for the issue of embodiment
• Transcendence and poiesis: ways of going beyond the given
• Paradox as a form of worship
• Transcendence in and after postmodernity

And, of course:
• Critique our approach to the topic

We invite submissions that deal with the notion of transcendence from within all traditions and
through all disciplines and approaches. In addition to providing an opportunity to receive feedback on
works-in-progress, this conference aims at enriching the way we think and speak about the issue of
transcendence today. We seek papers that, whatever their particular historical focus and method,
will contribute to such a discussion.

The conference will feature presentations (of approx. 20 min. in length) and panel discussions with
professors from a variety of disciplines and universities. Select papers may be published in a special
compendium of conference proceedings. A small number of travel subsidies will be available.

Submissions should include a brief abstract/proposal (ca. 500 words), along with the presenter’s
institutional affiliation and contact information. Abstracts must be received by December 31, 2007 to
be considered. Full papers will need to be submitted by April 1, 2008 for advance circulation. Please
direct all submissions and inquiries to Peter Woodford at peterwd@stanford.edu.