Interruption: From Theology to Anthropology—And Back Again?

Joel Robbins wishes to renew anthropological theory from a transformative dialogue with theology. There, he looks for actors’ categories which may assist him in anthropologically interpreting his ethnographical data on Christian life. One of these categories is the notion of interruption which he borrows, among others from my theological work, in order to describe the radical conversion of the Urapmin and, more broadly, radical change in religion. In my contribution, I first examine how Robbins uses the category of interruption to enrich his anthropological theory. In a second and third part, I explain how I have conceived of interruption in my theological work and, afterwards, how that concept itself has gained significance from a transformative dialogue with philosophy. Finally, I evaluate Robbins’ use of the category of interruption and engage in conversation with him again about how the interaction between theology and anthropology can be mutually interruptive. The twofold lesson to be drawn from this interdisciplinary dialogue appears to be (a) that our categories, vocabularies and approaches are caught up in a ceaseless game of borrowing and reinterpretation between disciplines and language games and (b) that we—each in our own discipline—have every interest in allowing our own theory formation to be interrupted by dialogue with other disciplines.