discourse theory trumps discourse theory

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Discourse theory trumps discourse

theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's

Esotericism and the AcademyBernd-Christian Ottoa

Institute for Religious Studies, University of Erfurt, GermanyPublished online: 05 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Bernd-Christian Otto (2013): Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter

Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy , Religion, 43:2, 231-240

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Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: WouterHanegraaffs Esotericism and the Academy

Bernd-Christian Otto*

Institute for Religious Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany

ABSTRACT This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaffs Esotericism and theAcademy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as

discourse theory.

That the author is not willing to classify his own approach assuch is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad,who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hane-graaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaffs Esotericism and the

Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012) and von Stuckrads Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early

Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010)reveals that this is a misleading classification and that Hanegraaffs study comescloser to what discourse theory is all about. As a consequence, Esotericism andthe Academy is the veryfirst study on Western esotericism that offers a convincing

justification of this particular label as an overarching discursive category.

KEY WORDS Western esotericism; European history of religions; discoursetheory; Wouter J. Hanegraaff; Kocku von Stuckrad

Wouter Hanegraaffs Esotericism and the Academy is, no doubt, a masterpiece. It isthe culmination of many years of research into Western esotericism by an out-standing scholar who has shaped the field in the last two decades and, not least

by means of this monograph, advanced it onto new levels of theoretical, methodo-logical, and historical reflection. Let me just mention a few characteristics thatmake this book a landmark study:

(1) Hanegraaff impresses with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of a plethoraof authors, currents, and historical details reaching into the very last footnote.(A testimony of this is the 67-page bibliography.) Reading this book is a trulyeducational experience, even if one is already familiar with the field. Notleast through the consistent and persuasive structure of his overall narrative(and methodology), Hanegraaffs interpretation of many authors andcurrents significantly exceeds the current state of research. What is more,the book not only contributes to a profound understanding of the emergenceand complexity of the field of Western esotericism, but it also yields newinsights into many other fields of research such as the history of science,the history of philosophy, the European history of religions, the history of

Religion, 2013Vol. 43, No. 2, 231240, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.767610

*Email: [email protected]

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Renaissance, of Enlightenment, of Romanticism, and, last but not least, theStudy of Religions. Academic books very seldom cover so many diverseareas in such an erudite, sophisticated manner.

(2) The wide timespan of Hanegraaffs (extremely dense) narrative reflects theinterdisciplinary shape of the study of Western esotericism in an exemplary

manner. Due to the outstanding synthetic skills of the author and the incred-ible scope of reading, Hanegraaff manages to systematically transcend disci-plinary boundaries. What is more, due to his fluent reading of (among otherlanguages) Dutch, English, German, French, and Italian and the inclusion ofthe most recent literature in these languages, the author also manages toovercome the subtle voids between various national academic discourses.

(3) Hanegraaff likewise transcends the boundaries between academic and pre-or non-academic literature, thereby not only demonstrating the interrelated-ness of these textual corpora but also contributing to understanding theemergence and inherent problems of the very field of study of which he is

one of the main protagonists.(4) Hanegraaffs convincing distinction between two different approaches thathave shaped the perception ofWestern esotericism thus far namely, of differ-ent variants of the polemical approach on the one hand (such as anti-apolo-getic or enlightenment narratives) and the religionist approach on the other calls for a fundamental revision of the entire field. Hanegraaff is right to notethat only the rejection of both these (innately ahistorical) approaches rendersit possible to investigate thoughts and currents associated with Westernesotericism in a methodologically sound, unbiased, and indeed historicalmanner. With this theoretical restructuring, Hanegraaff brings the study ofWestern esotericism to terms with state-of-the-art methodology in Religiousand Cultural Studies, thereby advancing its academic acceptance and plausi-

bility. One can only wish that not only the usual suspects, but also outsidersof the field (such as historians of science, historians of philosophy or, why not,theologians) will lay their hand on this outstanding monograph.

(5) Hanegraaffs exhaustive analysis of the various discursive fields and strat-egies that have led to the emergence of categories of rejected knowledgein Western history offers the first convincing legitimization for using anoverall category that covers all these sub-discourses and -topics: Westernesotericism. Even though Hanegraaff himself appears to be cautious whileputting the label to use,1 he presents overwhelming evidence for the intercon-

nectedness of Western discourses about Plato, Hermes, Pythagoras, Zoroas-ter, or Orpheus, about the Chaldeans, Templars, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, orTheosophers, about magia naturalis, alchemy, astrology, mesmerism, occult-ism, or parapsychology from the 15th to the 21st centuries, be they frompolemical or religionist perspectives. Hanegraaffs fascinating synopsisof the entire field in all its complexity and diversity yields the conclusionthat there is a meta-structure that holds all these seemingly disparatestrings together. In this respect, Hanegraaff is right to note that a list ofsemantic essentials of Western esotericism ( la Faivre) cannot be the

1See for example Hanegraaff 2012: 254: Modernization is therefore the key to understanding the emer-gence of Western esotericism (or whatever alternative term one might prefer).

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adequate way to conceptualize this meta-structure (as they magically turnthe most disparate materials into species of esotericism, 3602); but as hisfinal discussion of what his book is all about remains somewhat vague(What is it, really, that we have been talking about? A definite answer isperhaps neither possible nor desirable, 367), one gets the impression that

Hanegraaff does not fully realize the impact and far-reaching implicationsof his own methodological approach.

With respect to the latter observation, I will argue here that this may be due toHanegraaffs own (unjustified) resentments towards a methodological clusterusually referred to as discourse theory a methodological cluster that, as wewill see, forms the very basis of his study. Before recollecting some evidence forthis hypothesis (that Hanegraaff is a discourse theorist par excellence, evenwithout acknowledging it), let us try to understand his resentments first.

Apparently, they seem to be derived from a dispute with a colleague, namelyKocku von Stuckrad, who has recently published his own revised perspective on

the Study of Western esotericism in a book entitled Locations of Knowledge in Med-ieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (2010). Ifone compares the two works (Locations of Knowledge and Esotericism and theAcademy) one notes many similarities, but also witnesses a seemingly fundamentalcontroversy over the way to conceptualize and investigate Western esotericism. Inhis Locations of Knowledge, Kocku von Stuckrad appears to cut the umbilical cord tohis own affiliation with the Amsterdam Center for History of Hermetic Philosophyand Related Currents (where he was Assistant Professor from 2003 to 2009) byrejecting the idea that Western esotericism is an objectively identifiable tra-dition or coherent system of thought and doctrine that can be studied as a sep-

arate topic

(2010: xi). After criticizing various former approaches, among themHanegraaffs (2010: 4554), von Stuckrad concludes that only a discourse-theoreti-cal agenda allows for a proper conceptualization and investigation of the authorsand currents in question. Accordingly, instead of perpetuating the label Westernesotericism, von Stuckrad proposes a (slight) terminological shift, claiming thatesoteric discourse is a useful term for addressing structural elements of Europeanculture in historical perspective (2010: 45). This novel phrasing (esoteric dis-course) would help to embed the authors and currents in question within thelarger framework of the Two-Fold pluralism (2010: 18 ff.) that would characterizethe European history of religions in general (see on the latter concept also Kippen-

berg, Rpke and von Stuckrad 2009). Furthermore, it would shift ones attention tothe interdependence of historical discourses (including esoteric ones) and, in par-

ticular, to the polemical and often arbitrary construction of religious identities inWestern cultural history. From this point of view, von Stuckrad criticizes Hane-graaffs reception of Assmanns concept ofmnemohistory due to its potentiallyfic-tional, ahistorical implications (2010: 51 ff.) and argues that discourse analysis [...]would provide a useful referential framework for Hanegraaffs position (2010: 52).

Interestingly, while returning the fire to von Stuckrad in one of the final chaptersofEsotericism and the Academy (362367), Hanegraaff uses almost identical words.3

2Here and in the following all unreferenced page numbers refer to Hanegraaff 2012.3See Hanegraaff 2012: 362: His [von Stuckrads] theoretical and methodological apparatus comes at aprice; and 364: Von Stuckrads agenda for the study of religion in Europe is ambitious and interesting,

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Basically, Hanegraaff rejects von Stuckrads claim that only discourse theory cansolve the riddles endemic in the concept of Western esotericism: The problemlies in an exclusivist and reductionist subtext that automatically devalues contentsand ideas in favor of structures, makes history subservient to theory, and endsup promoting discursive approaches as the only valid methodology in the study of

religion, esoteric or otherwise (365). Hanegraaff seems to identify von Stuckradsapproach as a discourse theoretical one and his own as a historical one when heclaims that discursive and historical approaches construct their objects of researchin very different ways (365). Accordingly, Hanegraaff portrays discourse theory asa rather destructive tool that stands in the way of true historical research. Whenapplying the method, he claims, it is not just the term esotericism that vanishesas a useful concept, but much of the historical material will vanish as well! (365).4

Finally, Hanegraaff maintains that history trumps theory (as if the two wouldexclude each other) and that good historians shouldnt allow philosophy to paral-yze them (366). Given these statements, one is not surprised to see Hanegraaff

bashing Foucault in various instances (see 190, n. 143; 366, n. 413).Now what are we to make of this dispute? As a matter of fact, if we compare thetwo books against the backdrop of discourse theory, we come up with a surprisingdiscovery: while Kocku von Stuckrad somewhat undermines his own discourse-theoretical agenda by adhering to the notions of secrecy and perfect knowledge(2010: 5464) and rather neglects the issue of power (a core concern of discoursetheory) by shedding little light on the powerful antagonists of esoteric discoursethroughout Western history (see my critique in Otto 2012), Hanegraaffs Esotericismand the Academy could quite rightly (and contrary to the author s own perception)

be interpreted as a materialization of von Stuckrads discourse-theoretical agenda.Hanegraaffs monograph systematically implements an observation only alludedto by von Stuckrad: that basic genres ofesoteric discourse such as the disciplinesof astrology, alchemy, and magic, [...] have been distanced awayby what I call theprocesses of disjunction since the 18th century and thereby functioned as asignificant Other of post-Enlightenment Western identities (von Stuckrad2010: 200). While von Stuckrad lacks a systematic elaboration of this phenomenonin his Locations of Knowledge, Hanegraaffs Esotericism and the Academy not onlyoffers overwhelming evidence for these processes of disjunction, but also falsifiesvon Stuckrads claim that they started only in the 18th century.5 To the contrary,Hanegraaff traces back polemics against the ancient-wisdom narrative to theearly 1500s (when, for example, the very nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,

Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, attempted to destroy what his uncle hadbuilt,6 by means of his Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium) and convincingly

but it comes at a price. Compare with von Stuckrad 2010: 53: [Hanegraaffs] falling back on Assmannsconceptualization of monotheistic and cosmotheistic mnemohistory comes with a price.4In this respect, Hanegraaffs claim that ifwhat von Stuckrad calls esoteric discourse were to take theplace of what others call Western esotericism, far too many of the historical materials that have barely

begun to return to the academic agenda would once again vanish from sight or lose much of their content,depth, and complexity (367), is certainly unjustified. One wonders how Hanegraaff would explain thatthe material has not vanished from the 240 dense pages of von Stuckrads study; in contrast, the latterindeed contributes to understanding the content, depth, and complexity of numerous esoteric currents.5See also von Stuckrad 2010: 54: What can be dubbed the process of distancing is a discursive eventthat took place during the past 200300 years.6Hanegraaff 2012: 80, with reference to Schmitt 1965: 312.

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unveils the complex discursive interconnections between these early polemicsagainst Platonism and various later polemics against offshoots such as magia natur-alis, alchemy, or the occult sciences (164207). Taking these observations intoaccount, Hanegraaffs study could indeed be understood as a genuine discourseanalysis of power relations in regard to the field of Western esotericism, of the

latters construction as the respective other of both European religions (mostlyChristianity) and science and, finally, of affirmative counter-reactions by peoplewho at some point started identifying themselves with these various forms ofrejected knowledge. It is also important to note that von Stuckrads Locations ofKnowledge mainly discusses emic sources traditionally associated with Westernesotericism (albeit, however, widening the field), whereas Hanegraaffs Esotericismand the Academy puts much more emphasis on the discursive opponents ofesotericcurrents, to the extent of even neglecting important emic protagonists (note, forexample, the almost total absence of Madame Blavatsky in Hanegraaffs narrative).It may overshoot the argument a bit but there seem to be grains of truth in consid-

ering, at least while comparing these two books, whether Hanegraaff comes closerto what discourse theory is all about.Now how is this possible? One may ascribe this unexpected discovery to the

dynamics of academic disputes which themselves sometimes imply processes ofothering, and, thereby, ofidentity formation, for example by negotiating method-ology. Be this as it may, the fact that Hanegraaffs Esotericism and the Academy epit-omizes, at least in my opinion, much of von Stuckrads discourse-theoreticalagenda, can only be explained by the fact that Hanegraaff indeed adopted (appar-ently without realizing) a vast variety of discourse-theoretical arguments (maybeeven from von Stuckrad himself). To illustrate Hanegraaffs discourse-theoreticalapproach, let us start with some basic observations:

(1) Hanegraaff uses the very term discourse extensively throughout the entirebook (there are many more instances than the four referred to in the indexon page 463), thereby not following an everyday understanding of theterm (in the sense of mere dialogue). In contrast, and in line with Foucault,Hanegraaff seems to employ discourse as a sum of statements (i.e., mostlytexts, in our case) that (to some extent) form a coherent terminological andargumentative structure and thus give sense to any single statement formu-lated by an individual author (a book is like a node within a network; seeFoucault 1972: 23). In line with this approach, Hanegraaff often assigns indi-

vidual authors to supraindividual (i.e., discursive) powers and strategies ofwhich these individual authors may not be aware.7 For example, Hanegraaffseems to suggest discursive dynamics that lead almost teleologically todiscursive counter-reactions (i.e., statements) when he argues that theEnlightenment construction of polemical waste-basketed categories of theOther of science and rationality (254) urged subsequent authors to identify

7See on this Foucault 1972: 2829: It is [...] to be able to grasp other forms of regularity, other types ofrelations. Relations between statements (even if the author is unaware of them; even if the statementsdo not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each others existence); relations

between groups of statements thus established (even if these groups do not concern the same, or evenadjacent, fields; even if they do not possess the same formal level; even if they are not the locus of assign-able exchanges); relations between statements and groups of statements and events of a quite differentkind (technical, economic, social, political).

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with these categories and engage in affirmative, religionist interpretations(every new development comes at a price, and therefore evokes areaction, 254).

(2) As already mentioned, Hanegraaff strongly focuses on the topic of power,on processes of exclusion and othering and, thereby, on the formation of

identities (see 254 ff.; 374 ff.) and he even does this in a much more systematicmanner than von Stuckrad in his Locations of Knowledge. Power and polemicsare commonplaces in discourse theory and form, according to someinterpreters8 (and the later Foucault himself9), the methodological core ofthe latter. In fact, compared to all those works on esoteric topics publishedin the last decades, Hanegraaffs Esotericism and the Academy appears as thevery first volume that systematically addresses the overall issue of poweringrained in the (discursive) field ofWestern esotericism, thereby outliningits inherent structure and problematics in a much more elaborate way thanhas been done thus far (especially by taking both polemical and religionist

narratives into account). When Hanegraaff writes that history shouldtrump

theory (366), he overlooks that his own narrative is the very outcome oftheory, namely, of his systematic adoption and deployment of numerousdiscourse-theoretical methologems.

(3) In this respect, Hanegraaffs frequent assertion that European discourses onWestern esotericism produced the very phenomena that they claimed tomerely describe is worth indexing. That discourses produce their objectsis one of the essential postulations of Foucauldian discourse analysis andone is stunned by the fact that Hanegraaff uses formulations very similarto Foucaults original phrasing.10 Hanegraaffs interpretation of a largenumber of authors in Esotericism and the Academy indeed shows his de-essen-tializing, constructivistic approach that finally leads to the claim thatWestern esotericism is an imaginative construct in the minds of intellec-tuals and the wider public, not a straight-forward historical reality outthere (377). Accordingly, Hanegraaff reveals the plurality and haziness ofhistorical semantics and thereby reconstructs multiple histories of varioussingular concepts associated with Western esotericism such as magic:the term could mean very different things to different parties, and each

8See for example Hall 2001.9

See for example Foucault 1977: 27:There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a

field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, powerrelations; see also Foucault 1980: 131: Truth isnt outside power [...] Each society has its regime of truth,its general politics of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true,the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means bywhich each is sanctioned [...] the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.10See 376377, where Hanegraaff speaks of the remarkable discursive power of mnemohistorical con-structs, which largely create the phenomena that they claim to describe while suppressing or distortingany evidence that would undermine the clarity of this evidence; if we understand Hanegraaffs mne-mohistorical constructs simply as semantic patterns inherent in a discourse, we can easily align hiswords with Foucaults description of the formation of objects: I would like to show that discourses,in the form in which they can be heard or read, are not, as one might expect, a mere intersection of thingsand words: an obscure web of things, and a manifest, visible, coloured chain of words; [... this] reveals aquite different task [...] that consists of not or no longer treating discourses as groups of signs (sig-nifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form theobjects of which they speak (Foucault 1972: 4849).

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participant in the discourse had a wide choice of connotations to highlight orplay down at will, according to his particular religious, scientific or philoso-phical agenda (177). Note (apart from the appearance of the term discourse)the rationale that lies behind this statement: throughout the respectivechapter, Hanegraaff does no more (and no less) than entirely dismantle

magic as a scholarly category, thereby giving credit to the (as a matter offact, discourse-theoretical!) agenda of deconstructionism.11

(4) Hanegraaffs critique of both polemical and religionist perspectives onWestern esotericism actually leaves him few other possibilities than employ-ing a de-essentializing, i.e., necessarily discourse-theoretical agenda thatresults in the de- and re-construction of the entire discursive field. In thisrespect, Hanegraaffs critique of former scholarly ways to conceptualizeWestern esotericism (especially in chapter 4) can likewise be interpretedin the framework of discourse theory. Other scholars (such as von Stuckrad)have submitted the insight that scholarly discourse is fundamentally inter-

twined with itsobjects

of research (the more so in historical disciplines)and that this interrelatedness demands a high level of self-reflection (includ-

ing continuous reflection upon and sometimes condemnation of ones taxo-nomies), as a crucial step while employing discourse theory in religiousstudies (see von Stuckrad 2013).12

As already mentioned, Hanegraaffs adoption of all these discourse-theoreticalarguments culminates in the stunning postulation that Western esotericism isitself a discursive product. Let me pick up an argument here: I think that byfalling back onto Jacob Thomasius Schediasma historicum as a potential model fora non-polemical, non-religionist, and non-eclectic study of Western esotericism in

the final chapter of the book (370 ff.), Hanegraaff does not fully realize (or evenundermines) the implications of his own discursive agenda (maybe because he isnot aware of it; while comparing his work with Olav Hammer s (2001) ClaimingKnowledge, though, Hanegraaff readily admits that discursive strategies pervadeall chapters of Esotericism and the Academy: 361). In fact, the semantic antagonismthat Hanegraaff derives from Thomasius narrative (creatio ex nihilo versuscosmotheism) is not consistently applicable to all of the complex discursive fieldthat he has described throughout the book. Instead of retaining such semanticnotions (the problems of which Hanegraaff has demonstrated while discussingthe work of Antoine Faivre: 339355), I would propose that Western esotericism

is a proper label for the discourses covered by the book precisely because itemerged from these discourses as an overarching label throughout 20th-centuryscholarship. In other words, Hanegraaffs meticulous analysis of European dis-courses about rejected knowledge since the 15th century has revealed the interre-latedness of these numerous discourses in such a convincing manner, that onecannot help but realize that an overarching category for these discourses isindeed justified and that Western esotericism may even appear as a good sol-ution here (partly because it is already established and recognized in the Academy).

11I may add that I have followed a very similar approach while tracing back the conceptual history ofmagic and indeed subsumed it under the label discourse theory (see Otto 2011, esp. 15 ff.).12See on this point also the articles of the forthcoming Religion issue on discourse theory, especiallyMoberg 2013 and his reflections upon first-level and second-level discourse-analytic approaches.

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Of course, as a discursive term, Western esotericism would not refer to anyintrinsic characteristics any more, but rather to the entire discursive field thatHanegraaff has outlined and analyzed so impressively in the present monograph.13

In this respect, Hanegraaff has convincingly demonstrated that the label shouldalso cover its own Other, namely all those polemical narratives described in

detail in Esotericism and the Academy as these have significantly contributed tothe field and the emergence of Western esotericism as a scholarly category. Infact, while employing Western esotericism as a discursive term, both polemicaland religionist approaches become superfluous for scholarship, as they them-selves now form the object of study (and this is precisely what Hanegraaff hasdone in the book). Finally, as a discursive term, Western esotericism has no fixednor final shape because both academic and non-academic discourses move onand thereby form new objects of research and scholarly reflection; this, ofcourse, also implies the necessity of continuously reflecting upon and revisingscholarly narratives on the subject.

The latter comment mayfi

nally lead me to utter some critical remarks (I restrictmyself to a few general observations). As a writer, Hanegraaff is an elegant, perva-sive, and very structured performer but he sometimes tends to employ overly strongnarratives. In this respect, he seems to follow the (understandable) desire to create acoherent historiographical narrative, thereby sometimes squeezing single authorsinto large-scale discursive developments. At times, one wonders whether theseauthors were really that representative, really exerted such a fundamentalimpact on the later debate, or whether they were really the pioneers of someargument (as in the case of the anti-apologist Jacob Thomasius, or the heresiolo-gist Ehregott Daniel Colberg; see also a formulation like it [magia naturalis] had

become well established by the end of the 14th [century], thereby referring toonly one author, namely William de Auvergne: 173). Hanegraaffs tendency tocreate strong narratives also becomes apparent in his final attempt to homogenizethe complex discursive field ofWestern esotericism by means of a few basic prin-ciples (derived from Thomasius), namely, the beliefs that the world was co-eternalwith God and that human beings could attain direct experiential knowledge(gnosis) of their own divine nature (370).

Precisely because Hanegraaff abandons his discursive approach here (I think, infavor of a strong narrative), his argument becomes vulnerable: first, his conclusivestatement the logical incompatibility of monotheism and cosmotheism has led toan endless series of creative attempts to resolve it (371) is certainly too vague

and imprecise to explain the complex disputes about magia naturalis, alchemy, orsomnambulism (to name only these) that he has so formidably described in theprevious chapters. Second, one wonders whether there have not always beencosmotheistic or mystic currents and arguments within mainstream religiousdiscourses (for example in medieval Christianity or Judaism), here being mostlydetached from any pagan influences or revivals (if this observation happens to

be correct, their later rejection can probably not be ascribed to some inherent con-ceptual opposition to monotheism). It is also to be doubted whether paganism, asclaimed by Hanegraaff in the final chapter, is really an overarching point of

13My interpretation ofdiscursive terms may therefore come close to Hanegraaffs perception ofWesternEsotericism as a historiographical concept (italics Hanegraaff) on page 73.

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reference throughout the book (a red thread: 369). Maybe paganism must be seenrather as one of several polemical or religionist patterns that make up thecomplex discursive field of Western esotericism. Hanegraaffs tendency to createstrong narratives also shines out in his somewhat stereotypical opposition

between we and they, for example when he describes our basic identity (378)

as being fundamentally influenced by othering concepts such as Western esoteri-cism (see, e.g., 3 ff.; 254 ff.; 378 ff.). Now who is the addressee of these formu-lations? Do we really inherit the same identity or could one also adopt a morenuanced approach towards potential readers? The discourse itself may decide ifthese aspects of Hanegraaffs (otherwise entirely convincing) narrative are expedi-ent or rather appear as small master narratives that tend to oversee the complexityof reality.

Finally, I should make a critical remark on the historiographical and terminolo-gical scope of the study. Apparently, Hanegraaffs analysis of discourses aboutrejected knowledge begins with the early-modern reception (George Gemistos

Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and others) of various ancient(mostly Platonic and Neoplatonic, but also kabbalistic) textual corpora. Thus,the discursive category of Western esotericism arises, according to Hanegraaff,

by means of counter-reactions to these ancient-wisdom narratives and therebyseems to constitute a genuine, if not unique, aspect of early-modern and modernEuropean history. However, taking Kocku von Stuckrads inclusion of medieval

Jewish and Arabic sources into account (see von Stuckrad 2010, especially parttwo), and also my own study on the conceptual history of magic (which, bothas a polemical and identificatory concept, already pervades ancient sources), onewonders about the peculiarities of early-modern and modern European discourseson rejected knowledge. Besides, the history of all major religions implies numer-ous processes of rejecting knowledge. It might be interesting to explore whetherthese are related to the processes described in Esotericism and the Academy. Thus,as far as I can see, future work would seek to complement Hanegraaffs outstand-ing monograph by further elaborating upon potential roots (or equivalents) ofEuropean processes of rejecting knowledge in related (e.g., preceding) histori-cal/religious contexts (such as in Antiquity, or in Arabic and/or Jewish discourses),or even in non-European contexts (what about processes of rejecting and rehabili-tating knowledge in Tibetan Buddhism?). The latter step would, of course, notonly mean discarding Western, but also esotericism as an analytical category(we have seen that, as a discursive term, Western esotericism is bound to its

early-modern and modern European history), thereby possibly contributing toadvanced scholarly taxonomies for processes of postulating, rejecting, or rehabili-tating different forms of knowledge. Wouter Hanegraaff has, with this very

book, shown that these are processes that scholars of Western esotericism shouldbe experts in; it would be worth a try promoting this expertise in the larger fieldof Religious and Cultural Studies.

Bernd-Christian Otto is postdoctoral researcher in Religious Studies at the Univer-sity of Erfurt, where he coordinates a project on the historicization of religion andis part of the organization committee of the IAHR Quinquennial Congress 2015.

His work on magic resulted in two recent book publications, Magie: Rezeptions-und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (Berlin: de

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Gruyter, 2011) and, together with Michael Stausberg (eds.), Defining Magic: AReader (Sheffield: Equinox 2013).

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Submitted: December 24, 2012Accepted: January 3, 2013

Final files received: January 15, 2013

240 B.-C. Otto

discourse theory trumps discourse theory

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