Decolonizing Knowledges, Undisciplining Religion

The article engages in the undisciplining of the study of religion and proposes two central concepts/approaches for how to do so: the pluriverse and materiality. But what is undisciplining? And is it needed? To frame the undisciplining of the study of religion and render visible how I conceive of it as a needed practice, the article discusses the relationship between knowledge, materiality, power, and transformation. This relationship is concretized by prioritizing critical decolonial perspectives from the South African context. Here, I center materiality and the material effects of colonial discourse and epistemology as critical entry points. I also highlight the importance of embodied approaches to knowledge, illustrated through decolonial feminist engagements with post-qualitative methodologies. Informed by these critical insights, I unpack the concept of the pluriverse and highlight its epistemic and methodological relevance for the undisciplining of the study of religion. (Re-)turning to materiality, I foreground materiality as a creative and critical knowledge framework and argue for the varying ways it may function for rethinking and undisciplining the study of religion.