In the course titled Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion I took in the 2nd semester of 2014, I had to write several short essays. This is the first one. The first half of the course was taught by Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf. For those who are interested in religious studies, this can give you some ideas of the field.
What does religion have anything to do with map and territory? This is the main question I try to figure out in this essay. The main point to be focused and discussed here is about Jonathan Z. Smith’s oft-quoted dictum “Map is Not Territory.” I will point out how insightful his remark is for understanding our study of religion, and how he blunts his idea at the same time. Besides, I will touch a little bit about his critique on Mircea Eliade’s idea which relates to my main point. This essay is intended to be a reflection at first, but it looks more like an analytical one at the end.
How ‘map’ is not ‘territory’?
Let us trace back this idea first. In Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski, a Russian mathematician/engineer, explains the relation between map and territory like this. Map that we build upon an actual territory may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory. From his example, if we make a (road) map Dresden-Paris-Warsaw out of the territory Paris-Dresden-Warsaw (the direction normally found in a world map), traveling by such a map would be misguiding, wasteful of effort, and might be seriously harmful in case of emergencies. We could say that such a map was ‘not true,’ or that the map had a structure not similar to the territory. Thus, a map is not the territory.
It is impossible to build a perfect map, because we must make the map of the map, the map of the map of the map, endlessly. Korzybski also points out that language shares this characteristic of map. Hence, words are not the things they represent.
The idea presented by Korzybski resonates with Kantian paradigm of epistemology—we make sense of the world actively by our creative faculty rather than direct perception of the reality out there. As Jonathan Z. Smith puts it, we live in the world “in which man is defined as a world-creating being.” The conception that we create through our sensation and perception is not the real world. It is a ‘map’ of the world as we perceive it. The map in our mind is similar to the world at best, distorted at worst, but never the same. From this mindset, Smith distinguishes ‘religion’ from ‘the study of religion.’ How?
Smith insists that the notion of religion as we use in academic setting—as well as in everyday life, I infer—is “solely the creation of the scholar’s study.” In other words, there is only ‘the study of religion’ in academic world, not the real ‘religion’ as the believers know it. When we study religion, Smith says, we study “one mode of constructing worlds of meaning.” Making up a kind of meaning can be a religion, so to speak. He also says that religion is the quest for “the power to manipulate and negotiate one’s ‘situation’ so as to have ‘space’ in which to meaningful dwell.” Religion is also a quest for some kind of power, so to speak.
To apply Korzybski’s idea, this ‘religion’ is a map of some intended territory. What does Smith mean by ‘territory’ in this case? From his analogy, “there’s really no such plant as a weed,” a rose bush in a cornfield is a weed, but in a flower garden is not, we know that there is some plant out there which we apply a situational or relational category to it. So, ‘weed’ is a movable concept, as well as ‘religion,’ according to the situation related to one who applies the concept. By using this analogy, ‘religion’ can be anything depending on who defines the term in which situation. This shows insightfully why Western scholars and local people never see religion as the same picture.
But when taking a close look, ‘weed’ and ‘religion’ are quite different. While ‘weed’ is not an empty word, it means something unwanted, ‘religion,’ from my reading of Smith, is void of any specific entity, it can mean anything or nothing. This is, I think, what he means by “there is no data for religion.” There is no criterion at all which distinguishes ‘religious’ thing from ‘non-religious’ one. It depends on who to say in what situation. For Korzybski’s geographical analogy, map can be true or helpful, or map can be false, misguiding or even harmful. For Smith’s abstract idea of religion, there is no true or false representation of ‘religion.’ However, there can be a helpful or misguiding representation. I think Smith holds this practical usage.
There is a difference between Korzybski’s and Smith’s idea of map. While Korzybski sees there is really a territory out there to be mapped in some way, Smith sees none. For Jonathan Z. Smith, there is only map, no territory. I infer this stance from his ending: “but maps are all we possess.” He leaves it unexplained. I find some problem here, because we can interpret in two ways. The first is, as I mentioned above, that there is no territory to be mapped. This sounds absurd, because there must be something to be called ‘religion,’ at least by an academic way. By his own definition, religion is the quest for the power to make a meaningful living “through the use of myths, ritual and experiences of transformation.” We can say that myth, ritual and transformative experiences are territory of ‘religion.’
The second interpretation is that there are aspects of territory to be represented by maps. Though it is far from perfect, maps have to be used anyway for communication purpose in various perspectives. From my reading, I am not really sure which position Smith takes. It seems to me he takes the second but he presents it in both ways. So, I find him inconsistent or at least obscure here.
Should we eliminate the category ‘religion’? I think Smith does not go that far. Instead, he emphasizes the incongruity between map and territory, religion and things it represent, because “the perception of incongruity gives rise to thought.” Smith takes incongruity positively. He says the incongruity between myth and the real world in not an error, “it is the very source of its power.” When something unexpected happens or something expected does not happen, it “provides a ‘clues’ to which one’s thought and attention may be directed,” and this incongruity “serves as a vehicle of religious experience.” So, incongruity is good because it directs us to think about. Or put it another way, incongruity is inevitable, we should pay attention to it.
What then? This seems circular to me. When we recognize some discrepancy, say, if the West makes minor religions invisible and not a part of human history, what can we do then? Make the map ‘religion’ more precise, or make another map to depict this poor map. As Korzybski reminds us, incongruity is still there, so we have to make the map of the map of the map endlessly. When Smith uses ‘religious experience’ mentioned above, what this ‘religious’ in his mind looks like, I wonder—anything, something, or nothing.
What is wrong about Eliade?
I will talk about Smith’s critique on Eliade briefly, as long as it relates to the point mentioned above. For Eliade, religion has an essence, ‘the sacred’ as he calls it, that is irreducible to other thing else. Religious or archaic men are aware of the existence of the sacred because it reveals itself to them. The sacred is timeless and universal to all religious phenomena. Eliade posits the sacred as a primordial order, and makes chaos or disorder profane—the order that degrades in time and can only be restore through acts that repeat the pattern of the order.
Smith argues that “chaos is never profane in the sense of being neutral.” For Smith, only chaos is perceivable and comes first, the sacred or primordial order is a purely human construction. From my reading, we can understand chaos as incongruity in the map’s case. This can be confirmed that incongruity plays a central role in Smith’s methodology. I think we can understand his idea more clearly by understanding his use of incongruity.
Conclusion
Jonathan Smith’s works are difficult to understand. His profundity, or better—obscurity, makes my essay looks somewhat complicated. Still, I am not sure I grasp him rightly. It is unclear that he suggests any solution for the problem he points out. Let me express it simply. Yes, the Westerners make up ‘religion’ and they are unable to see other ‘religion,’ because they have more power than others. If we see it positively, this power also makes many religions visible and accessible to outsiders. The map we get may be distorted, but we have something to see at least. It is better than having nothing to see at all, because this can lead to harmful dogmatism. I think Smith’s solution is neither doing something new nor doing nothing. We, as students of religion, should recognize incongruity of maps we use and stay self-conscious ‘relentlessly’. Finally, I find his idea useful, despite its groundlessness.
Notes