No Bosses, No Gods : : Marx, Engels, and the Twenty-first Century Study of Religion / / Matthew Day.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2023 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Day, Matthew,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Religion and Reason : Theory in the Study of Religion , 68
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XIII, 280 p.)

Flagging enrollments. Disappearing majors. Closed departments. The academic study of religion is in trouble. No Bosses, No Gods argues that Karl Marx is essential for reversing course—but it will take letting go of what most scholars think they know about him. The book’s first half draws on the scholarship of international specialists—as well as new translations of the original German texts—to present Marx the anti-theorist, a political journalist deeply skeptical about what happens when the professoriate sits down to "theorize" about social worlds. The second half appeals to this modified portrait of Marx and charts a new course beyond both actually existing religious studies and contemporary genealogies of the religion category. The result, perhaps, is an academic study of religion worth having in the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Common Abbreviations -- Note on Translations -- Note on Religion and “Religion” -- Contents -- Overture. Left Out in the Cold War -- Part One. Putting Marx in His Place -- Chapter One Carbuncles and All: The Difficult Life of a Difficult Man -- Postscript Unreading Marx in the Twenty-First Century -- Chapter Two Age of the Living Dead: Marx and the Political Economy of an Upside-Down World -- Postscript Marx and the End of Marxist “Ideology” -- Chapter Three False Friends and True Comrades: Engels on the Limits of Christian Socialism -- Postscript Marx and Engels? Marx or Engels? Marx vs. Engels? -- Chapter Four Vanguard of the Revolution: Plekhanov, Russian Marxism, and the Peasant Question -- Postscript How Heavy is a Nightmare? -- Interlude Capital Red in Tooth and Claw -- Part Two Taking Marx to Work -- Chapter Five Which Side Are You On? Religion as Contentious Cosmopolitics -- Postscript Interwar Fascists, Post-War Boomers, and the Study of Religion -- Chapter Six Real Enough to Count: Critical Criticism and the Genealogy of “Religion” -- Postscript Class, Contention, and Capital in Eighteenth-Century England -- Coda A World of Trouble -- Bibliography -- Index