In Interplay of Things Anthony B. Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences and the boundaries between people and other things. Rather than considering religion in terms of institutions, doctrines, and creeds, Pinn shows how religion exposes the openness and porousness of all things and how they are always involved in processes of exchange and interplay. Pinn examines work by Nella Larsen and Richard Wright that illustrates an openness between things, and he traces how pop art and readymades point to the multidirectional nature of influence. He also shows how Ron Athey's and Clifford Owens's performance art draws out inherent interconnectedness to various cultural codes in ways that reveal the symbiotic relationship between art and religion as a technology. Theorizing that antiblack racism and gender- and class-based hostility constitute efforts to close off the porous nature of certain bodies, Pinn shows how many artists have rebelled against these attempts to counter openness. His analyses offer a means by which to understand the porous, unbounded, and open nature of humans and things.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Definitions and Considerations  1
Part I. Meaning
1. Things  25
2. The Art of Placement  45
Part II. Interplay
3. Artistic Expression of Transience  59
4. The "Stuff" of Performance  83
5. The Art of Elimination  108
Part III. Restricting
6. Pieces of Things  133
7. "Captured" Things  148
8. Problem Things  172
Epilogue. Confronting Exposure, or A Psycho-Ethical Response to Openness  187
Notes  201
Bibliography  249
Index  265

Anthony B. Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author or editor of seventeen books including African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Fortress, 2003).
Gregory M. T. Colleton is a screenwriter, actor, and director. Born in Evanston, Illinois, Colleton attended Macalester College and later joined the Teach for America program, where he taught composition, history, and violin to middle-school kids while spreading the gospel of Michael Jordan. He resides in Los Angeles but dreams of living back near the Windy City.