Page 164 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Practice 147

Marx’s contention that thought and action were necessarily interrelated, even in
the act of cultural and political criticism itself.
2 Marx discussed praxis primarily in his earlier “philosophical” writings. A
predominant strain of later Marxist theory, which often relegated culture,
religion, and other forms of human expression to a “superstructural” or secondary
position in relation to the primary importance of economic forces, did not draw
primarily from this notion of praxis. Many scholars who have revived its use in
cultural studies continue to relegate religion to a superstructural role or ignore
it altogether (see Hall 1980).
3 Inventive praxis could be helpfully paired with Judith Butler’s analysis of
performance (Butler 1993).
4 See Benjamin 1999; Collingwood 2005. For analysis of this trend, see Peters
1999.