Locating the Past/Discovering the Present: Perspectives on Religion, Culture, and Marginality (review)

Locating the Past/Discovering the Present came about as a tangible postscript to a conference on marginality, religion, and culture held in May 2006 at the University of Alberta. In their introduction to the volume, editors David Gay and Stephen R. Reimer describe the collection as an exploration premised on fluidity, on dynamic identities and complex categories. There is an emphasis on cross-cultural contact, with case studies that bring into conversation disparate times and places. As such, the collection attempts to participate in ongoing conversations about liminal populations and concepts.

The volume consists of nine essays divided into two sections: “Locating the Past” and “Discovering the Present.” Despite these distinctions, nearly all of the essays have a strong focus on historical cases and issues. Authors come at the topic of marginality from a number of directions, making use of theories from continental philosophy to historiography. There is explicitly no overarching definition or understanding of “marginality” as such, meaning that each author grapples with the concept on his/her own terms and in light of his/her own case study. Beyond marginality, authors take up themes that range from subjectivity and agency to memory and orthodoxy.

Standout pieces include David Gay’s “‘The Writing on the Wall’: Rembrandt, Milton, and Menasseh ben Israel in Ken McMullen’s R” and Eva Maria Räpple’s “The Seductive Serpent.”

Gay and Räpple both manage to go beyond the confines of their particular topic and offer broader insights on the nature and function of marginality. Both authors deal with art and the visual, exploring the interplay of biblical text, tradition, and image, pointing to a tension between what is depicted and what is inferred. In addition, Paul Dyck’s “Reading from the Margins at Little Gidding, c. 1625–1640” offers an intriguing example of the use of an “iconic book” as both a means for constructing and ameliorating marginality. His work connects with the recent efforts of the Iconic Books Project headed by James Watts and Dorina Miller Parmenter. Those interested in material culture will benefit from Dyck’s analysis.

Typographical errors are not a substantial problem. It is helpful that the notes and bibliography for each chapter are located at the close of each chapter rather than at the end of the volume. The index appears to be adequate. Biographies provided at the end of the volume facilitate placement of each author in their respective fields, a useful resource given the nature of the work.

Despite the many strengths of the volume, it is not without flaws. One major weakness of the volume is an issue of timeliness. Some of the essays feel outdated or unoriginal as authors offer points of analysis which are not new or merely echo earlier trends without adding substantially to the conversation. Contributing to that problem is undoubtedly the time lag between the conference from which the volume came and the date of publication. The second major weakness is the issue of cohesion. While the themes of marginality, religion, and culture are meant to work together in a unified whole, the treatment of those themes is not at all consistent. The widely divergent approaches to the topic do not interact with each other, so the final product feels disjointed rather than interdisciplinary. “Marginality” is simply too vague of a concept to tie such disparate cases together by itself. If the papers could have been brought into conversation, perhaps by an anchoring conclusion, the overall success of the work would have been improved. In terms of general readership, the volume is again uneven; some essays would be accessible to non-specialists and others require deeper familiarity with the field of origin.

The result is that while many scholars might benefit from making use of one or two articles from the larger work, the entire volume as a whole is...