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New academic paper: Seeing “Apostates” Clearly: Reconsidering the Legitimacy of Ex-Member Testimony in Documentary Representations of Scientology, by Michael Thorn
Journal of Media and Religion
Seeing “Apostates” Clearly: Reconsidering the Legitimacy of Ex-Member Testimony in Documentary Representations of Scientology
Michael Thorn
Published online: 09 Mar 2021
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/15348423.2021.1875661?scroll=top&needAccess=true
https://doi.org/10.1080/15348423.2021.1875661
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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes popular and academic reviews of the book and film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief in relation to scholarly debates over the status of “apostate” testimony in the study of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Using a Foucauldian discourse analysis – an examination of contested statements of “truth” – it accounts for the significance of ex-member testimony in recent Scientology exposés and argues the tendency to dismiss such testimony as automatically unreliable needs to be reassessed. Using these exposés and the debate surrounding them as a case study, we can see that considering ex-member testimony as disputed but productive discourse, documentary and journalistic representations of controversial new religions can operate as important sources of information, helping us better map a larger discursive domain wherein allegations of harm intermix with claims of benefit in remarkably complicated ways.
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Journal of Media and Religion
Seeing “Apostates” Clearly: Reconsidering the Legitimacy of Ex-Member Testimony in Documentary Representations of Scientology
Michael Thorn
Published online: 09 Mar 2021
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/15348423.2021.1875661?scroll=top&needAccess=true
https://doi.org/10.1080/15348423.2021.1875661
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes popular and academic reviews of the book and film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief in relation to scholarly debates over the status of “apostate” testimony in the study of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Using a Foucauldian discourse analysis – an examination of contested statements of “truth” – it accounts for the significance of ex-member testimony in recent Scientology exposés and argues the tendency to dismiss such testimony as automatically unreliable needs to be reassessed. Using these exposés and the debate surrounding them as a case study, we can see that considering ex-member testimony as disputed but productive discourse, documentary and journalistic representations of controversial new religions can operate as important sources of information, helping us better map a larger discursive domain wherein allegations of harm intermix with claims of benefit in remarkably complicated ways.
* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
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