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Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Anthropology, Fabian says, is border control: “It patrols, so to speak, the frontiers of Western culture. In fact, it has always been a Grenzwissenschaft, concerned with the boundaries: those of one race against another, those between one culture and another, and finally those between culture and nature.”
Fabian thinks that this “liminal” preoccupation makes it difficult for anthropology to settle “in any one of the accepted domains of knowledge” other than the catch-all of “social science.”
Two comments: First, if Milbank is right, anthropology is an extension of earlier forms of social theory, which patrol the boundaries within Western civilization; second, Fabian is offering something of an anthropological analysis of anthropology, one that clarifies its role as a kind of priestcraft, making distinctions “between holy and profane, and between clean and unclean.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 11:17 am
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