Conveners: Matthias Hayek (EPHE-PSL, CRCAO) & Agnieszka Kedzierska Manzon (EPHE-PSL, IMAF)

The post-colonial worlds in the broadest sense – including former satellite countries of the Soviet Union and those in the so-called “global South”– are witnessing a religious revival reflected in the proliferation of various « back-to-the-roots » discourses and currents. From an anthropological perspective, the practices promoted in their frame share many formal characteristics of the global New Age and Modern Paganism. From a historical perspective, these new developments are reminiscent of the « indigenist » movements that flourished in post-romantic Europe, or in Japan, and which aimed to « rediscover » a (true or authentic or ancestral) culture, or even an « original » religion, predating Christianization /Westernization (or Buddhization/sinization in the Japanese case). This re-appropriation of the past implies in fact its re-imagining.

While trying at once to grasp the particularities of each given case under study and to highlight sometimes unsuspected convergences between discourses and practices in African and Asian postcolonial contexts, we intend to contribute both to a better understanding of the new forms of ritualization expanding globally and to that of the articulation between religion, collective identity constructions, (the return to) tradition and the rise of nationalism more generally.

INHA, 2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris, amphitheater

Program and Abstracts