In this theoretically rich piece, Jean-Pierre Warnier discusses the entanglement of ‘things’ and their representations. In most religious traditions, this topic plays an important historical role in determining how devotees respond to imagery and materiality, especially as these media convey or embody their most important religious concepts. Cycles of iconophilia and iconoclasm relating to this issue form a central thread in the Abrahamic faiths, for instance. Warnier insists that scholars of religion need to be more circumspect regarding the ‘cognitive gap’ that exists between the praxeological ‘things’ of a religious tradition and the representations of those things.
