• DOI:10.1007/S11407-998-0001-9
• Corpus ID: 144929213

Questioning authority: Constructions and deconstructions of Hinduism

@article{Smith1998QuestioningAC,
  title={Questioning authority: Constructions and deconstructions of Hinduism},
  author={Brian Keith Smith},
  journal={International Journal of Hindu Studies},
  year={1998},
  volume={2},
  pages={313-339}
}

• B. Smith
• Published 1 December 1998
• Sociology
• International Journal of Hindu Studies

The title of my essay is taken from a well-known bumper sticker, spotted on vehicles throughout North America. The sentiment expressed is one that I find admirable, although it is practiced by most of us mainly in the breach. As scholars, however, questioning authority is one of the principal features of our professional enterprise; and for those of us who are scholars of religion, it is, in my opinion, the sine qua non of the discipline, t First and foremost, it is necessary for each generation to reevaluate the authoritative pronouncements of our intellectual ancestors. The self-evident truths of the past are perpetually contested and replaced by new 'facts' and 'better' interpretations and theories. This need not necessarily be positivistically envisioned as 'progress' but as an opportunity to reflect upon historical relativity and the interestedness of all knowledge. Our new truths, produced out of the nexus of current assumptions, interests, and concerns, will also inevitably be subjected to the same interrogation, criticism, and overturning by future scholars. For those of us in the academy who assume personae as nontheological scholars of religion, the mandate to question authority pertains additionally to other sets of discourses. Joined to the work of critically examining the assumptions and conclusions of our intellectual forebears, students of religious traditions are also faced with the task of questioning the bases of authoritative claims put forward by the religious themselves. For religions are characterized and possibly defined--by the particular kind of authoritative truth claims they make. The sources of authority that religions rely upon are not those of the merely human, the subjective, or the historically and culturally conditioned. Rather, the