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Vision and Embodiment: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling

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This introductory chapter discusses the importance of vision in relation to the act of embodiment. Seeing is a primary medium of social life. Given that communal relations are established and sustained in different kinds of looks such as shy glances, bold stares, rapt gazes, or averted eyes, seeing allows one to interpret an encounter, confirm a relationship, or signal an intention with visceral force. Thus, vision reveals authority and weakness, charisma and a host of other dispositions. On that note, seeing is watching from the circumstance of a body—not just one’s own biological or somatic body, but also any encompassing corpus such as a gathering of worshippers. This suggests that to look for a point of view is to look for a body from which, or in which, to see.

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... What role do material objects play in the formation of religious subjects? While, historically, scholars of religion have tended to focus on abstract beliefs and doctrines over concrete material things, recent scholarship has become much more attentive to the important place of material artifacts in the practice, experience, and organization of religious life (see, for example, Houtman and Meyer 2012;McDannell 1995;Morgan 2010;Stolow 2012;Vasquez 2011). ...
... The second perspective, while acknowledging the important symbolic functions of religious material culture, has focused more attention on how the physical characteristics of objects play an important constitutive role in forming and consolidating religious identities (e.g., Engelke 2007;Keane 2008;Kilde 2005;Konieczny 2009;Mahmood 2005;Morgan 2012;Orsi 2005;Promey 2005;Zubrzycki 2013). While the actual kinds of material investigated vary substantially from study to study, scholars who focus on the material characteristics of religious artifacts converge on the importance of what one might term the religious object's presentational dimension. ...
... By "presentational dimension," what I mean to denote is that the material artifact is not only important to identity construction in terms of what it represents symbolically (a saint, a deity, a shared religious heritage, etc.) but also in how the physical characteristics of the object make the representation of the religious realm literally present to the senses and thus open to forms of engagement and contemplation beyond the strictly cognitive. Materialized representations of religious reality such as icons, paintings, clothing, figurines, relics, etc. contribute an inescapably sensual, affective, and aesthetic register to religious identity and imagination, as material thingsunlike "pure" doctrines-can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled (McRoberts 2004;Morgan 2010). As such, when examining the formation of religious identities, many contemporary studies of material religion foreground how religious objects are inextricably "entangled" (Hodder 2014;Morgan 2010;Orsi 2005) with particular modes of bodily feeling, emotion, and engagement-the feel of wooden pews or prayer beads; the taste of bread at communion or the dates at the end of a Ramadan fast; the sight of a saint's countenance in an icon; the sounds of hymnals, scriptural recitations, or ecstatic worship, etc. Material objects, in short, help form the embodied, sensual substrate of religious subjectivity (Mahmood 2005;Meyer 2009;Morgan 2012). ...
... Nas tradições católicas e afro-católicas, essa transmissão exige um trabalho semiótico substancial, uma vez que os santos oficiais são por definição "ex" humanos, os mortos especiais, ao contrário do Islã ou das tradições hinduístas. Os santos católicos dependem de tecnologias visuais e materiais para se transformar da condição de falecidos a agentes presentes; para se re-apresentar, fazendo com que um favor especial seja percebido como ao alcance, em algumas circunstâncias (Engelke, 2007, p. 28;Morgan, 2012;Keane, 2007Keane, , 2013. É necessário um trabalho ontológico e econômico para mostrar como o mérito acumulado no passado por um corpo ganha crédito e, em seguida, é transferido para as atuais circunstâncias de muitos corpos. ...
... Consumar a morte de um santo requer um esforço igualmente material . Muitas formas de fazer contato com os santos imitam o toque e a fala entre 15 humanos (Morgan, 2012). Afinal, os santos são poderes sobre-humanos, mas também corpos totalmente humanos -tipicamente distantes e, na tradição católica, ao contrário de outras, sempre fisicamente moribundos -apresentados em forma tridimensional ou gráfica. ...
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A agência ativada por meio de trocas com os santos não está simplesmente presente ou ausente, mas se manifesta de acordo com a forma das configurações materiais e sociais dos santos e do estado de ânimo evocado pela manifestação de determinado santo. Neste ensaio, retomo a história de uma santa afro-brasileira, conhecida como Escrava Anastácia, e a forma como diferentes grupos étnico-raciais a representam, de acordo com diferentes efeitos sociais. Abordo a forma como os santos se manifestam e assumem determinado estado. O temperamento é inseparável da "presença" das entidades intangíveis. Neste ensaio, aproveito essas disjunções radicais entre as formas pelas quais um mesmo santo se manifesta - Anastácia como mártir sofredora, como companheira serena, como objeto erótico - para reconsiderar a manifestação dos santos na intersecção entre forma e temperamento. Enfocando os santos e sua personalidade, retomo termos conhecidos, como vontade e agência. Pensar por meio do temperamento nos remete a conjunturas materiais e reverberações emocionais cuja agência é difusa, mas, não obstante, gera predisposições para agir de certas maneiras.
... All these approaches aim -on different levels -to establish the meaning and the personal modulation of the related questions of life, values, social relationships and cosmologies, as depicted by Miller (2010) using material cultural case vignettes. Our approach is also related to the examination of popular everyday aesthetics (Gyr 2012;Maase 2010;Morgan 2012) with their questions concerning pleasure, decor and consumption. The wide range of items presented in DmH results in a wide range of scientific connectivity options. ...
... Colleen McDannell (1995: 163-197) considers the "rhetoric of bad taste" in the "kitsch" of Christian material culture in the USA since the 19th century and she is (together with Morrow Long 2011) one of the few people to also analyze mail-order catalogs from suppliers of specifically religious articles as a source. In the history of religion, devotional items such as good luck charms, traditional Christmas figures, jewelry, Easter symbols or holy water containers are associated with the intensification and cultivation of both positive and negative feelings and the attribution of powers (Morgan 2012). Not infrequently, they move between religion and popular culture in such a way that dichotomies such as religious -profane no longer apply. ...
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The article deals with a specific material-cultural segment of household and home furnishings as part of everyday experience and interpretation practice. It develops the thesis that these objects and their text-image marketing serve for an externalization and hiding of basic human problem potentials which are of social, practical, emotional and spiritual-religious nature. The focus is not on problems but on solutions. This strategy is analyzed as functional with respect to the regulation of vital issues and thus interpreted as part of a popular emancipatory everyday strategy: Always look on the bright side of life! Due to the breadth of needs mentioned above, cultural studies approaches which are influenced by folklore and religious studies co-operate and identify the popular everyday aesthetics style using the example of the mail-order catalog 'The Modern Housewife', which has existed since 1967. In this low-price range of goods you will find everyday household helpers such as decorative items around the kitchen, the home, the garden and the cemetery. The products are promoted in a mix of information, visualization and entertaining narrative framing which is typical of this market segment and which we conceptualize as enchantment and a promise of problem solving. The essay includes, as a contribution to research into material culture, references to living space, wall decoration and popular culture research as well as to religious economics and aesthetics. Keywords: everyday aesthetics, home decor, popular religion, material culture, mass taste, mail-order catalog
... "Lived religion" (e.g. Morgan 2007Morgan , 2010Morgan , 2012, and "digital religion" (e.g., Campbell 2010; Dawson and Cowan 2004;Helland 2016) are three examples of this kind. Each one of these sub-fields is in fact characterized by its own understanding of what counts as religion and how to competently study it, and most importantly, it is highly influenced by their proponents' positions in the broader field of the sociology of religion (e.g., head of departments, editors, leading figures in the field, and so on). ...
... The growing body of historical and anthropological literature on Catholic devotional art in the years after the Second Vatican Council (1962)(1963)(1964)(1965) has tended to focus on embodiment processes, or how the objects, liquids, images, and spaces through which Catholics engage divine presence constitute their subjective bodily attitudes, orientations, perceptual regimes, and overall sense of self (McDannell 1995;Morgan 1998Morgan , 2005Morgan , 2012Orsi 2003Orsi , 2005Young 2008;Van Rompay et al. 2015). Yet, anthropologists who study religion in Eastern Europe's formerly socialist societies have begun to question the universality of this focus on subjectivity in research on religious materiality. ...
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I examine Hungary’s Catholic arts industry and its material practices of cultural production: the institutions and professional disciplines through which devotional material objects move as they become embedded in political processes of national construction and contestation. Ethnographic data come from thirty-six months of fieldwork in Hungary and Transylvania, and focuses on three museum and gallery exhibitions of Catholic devotional objects. Building on critiques of subjectivity- and embodiment-focused research, I highlight how the institutional legacies of state socialism in Hungary and Romania inform a national politics of Catholic materiality. Hungarian cultural institutions and intellectuals have been drawn to work with Catholic art because Catholic material culture sustains a meaningful presence across multiple scales of political contestation at the local, regional, and state levels. The movement of Catholic ritual objects into the zone of high art and cultural preservation necessitates that these objects be mobilized for use within the political agendas of state-embedded institutions. Yet, this mobilization is not total. Ironies, confusions, and contradictions continue to show up in Transylvanian Hungarians’ historical memory, destabilizing these political uses.
... In studying the Busk, social space obviously includes the square grounds where the community comes together for rituals but, more broadly, it also includes the plants, animals, and even some aspects of the landscape itself (e.g., stones, shells, winds, etc.) that are perceived as living, conscious, social beings, thus increasing social space to include all of the natural world. Likewise, studies of material culture (e.g., Hallam and Hockey 2001, McDannell 1995, and Morgan 2012 are also relevant. The materiality associated with the Busk is not restricted to various fabricated objects associated with the Busk or with Creek identity (i.e., ritual objects, shell carvings, baskets, fingerweavings, etc.), although these items, and especially the crafting of them, are definitely important to community members. ...
Thesis
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This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation of the intersection between cosmology, worldview, ethnoecology, and traditional religious performance, particularly in terms of the relationship between subjective experience and intersubjectivity. It is a study of how people come to understand the world-an attempt to understand understanding. I explore the acquisition of social, cultural, and ecological knowledge through participation in the traditional religious ceremonialism of a Mvskoke ceremonial community, called the Busk. I write about living people and living religious traditions, but I am also a member of this community and, therefore, I am also telling my own story. Reflexivity, then, serves a strong methodological role in highlighting my own positionality and experiences within the community. I use a phenomenological approach that directs the research focus to people's actual experiences of the world around them in order to investigate how individuals come to perceive and understand the world differently as a result of participation in the Busks. The Busk ceremonials are the primary means of inculcation of the traditional teachings that inform and reinforce a distinctive framework of understanding, an intersubjectively negotiated worldview called the Mvskoke-Nene, or Muskogee Path. Walking the Mvskoke-Nene is a phrase used to describe a way of seeing and understanding the world, a way of being. As people walk the Mvskoke-Nene, the teachings of the Busk ceremonials are internalized and implemented into their daily lives, and give rise to new ways of perceiving and interacting with the world. In this dissertation, I examine the teachings of the Busk and explore the system of knowledge and natural symbolism that gives meaning to those teachings.
... Multisensory art (Meyer 2009;Morgan 2012) in exhibitions can also be understood as part of the ongoing move to decolonize the underpinnings of the exhibition, which disciplines the body and privileges the eye by requiring visitors to stand in front of vitrines, looking at objects and reading texts. Furthermore, new perspectives on personhood and sensoriality usefully reject the essentialist divisions between people and things, and consider different experiential embodied ontologies (Strathern 1988;Gell 1998;Tilley 2004;Latour 2005;Alberti et al. 2011;Houston 2014;Alberti 2016). ...
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This article reflects on the exhibition Arts of Resistance: Politics and the Past in Latin America, showing how the project challenged common representations of Central and South American art and history by displaying local, often Indigenous, ways of managing cultural heritage, as well as some of the ways that ancestral knowledge and popular arts are used to document and resist political realities. Furthermore, it argues for the overt politicization of museological and exhibitionary perspectives using radical cosmopolitical theory. Through this framework, I argue for the political significance of the art forms included in the exhibition that champion local philosophies and positions in the face of various forms of marginalization.
... This orientation aligns with earlier projects that subverted the authority of the institution and/or curator by introducing contradiction and multivocality into the space of representation. The championing of multisensorial (Meyer 2009;Morgan 2012) or participatory (Bishop 2012) art practices also expands perspectives and destabilizes the traditional role of museum material culture. Nevertheless, the critical or dialectical value of contemporary art projects has also been questioned, especially given the problematic relationship between elite or "Western" artists and the neoliberal art market. ...
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Anthropology and its institutions have come under increased pressure to focus critical attention on the way they produce, steward, and manage cultural knowledge. However, in spite of the discipline’s reflexive turn, many museums remain encumbered by Enlightenment-derived legitimating conventions. Although anthropological critiques and critical museology have not sufficiently disrupted the majority paradigm, certain exhibitionary projects have served to break with established theory and practice. The workshop described in this article takes these nonconforming “interruptions” as a point of departure to consider how paradigm shifts and local museologies can galvanize the museum sector to promote intercultural understanding and dialogue in the context of right-wing populism, systemic racism, and neoliberal culture wars.
... Jh. in den USA und als eine der wenigen (so auch Morrow Long 2001) analysiert sie auch Versandkataloge speziell religiöser Produktlieferanten als Quellen. Devotionalien wie Talismane, traditionale Weihnachtsfiguren und Schmuck, Ostersymbole oder Weihwasseraufbewahrungen sind religionsgeschichtlich mit der Intensivierung und Kultivierung positiver wie negativer Gefühle und der Zuschreibung von Kräften verbunden (Morgan 2012). Nicht selten bewegen sich diese in einer Weise zwischen Religion und populärer Kultur, dass Dichotomien wie die von religiös -profan nicht mehr greifen. ...
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Der Beitrag thematisiert ein bestimmtes sachkulturelles Segment der Haushalts- und Wohnraumausstattung als Teil alltäglicher Erlebnis- und Deutungspraxis. Er entwickelt die These, dass in diesen Objekten und ihrer Text-Bild-Vermarktung eine Externalisierung und Dethematisierung von basalen menschlichen Problempotenzialen betrieben wird, die sozialer, praktischer, emotionaler und spirituell-religiöser Natur sind. Der Blick wird nicht auf Probleme, sondern auf Lösungen gerichtet. Diese Strategie wird als funktional hinsichtlich der Regulation von Lebensfragen analysiert und damit als Teil einer populären emanzipatorischen Alltagsstrategie gedeutet: Always look on the bright side of life! Aufgrund der genannten Bedürfnisbreite kooperieren kulturwissenschaftliche Zugänge volkskundlicher und religionswissenschaftlicher Prägung und identifizieren den populären alltagsästhetischen Stil am Beispiel des seit 1967 bestehenden Versandkataloges “Die moderne Hausfrau”. In diesem Niedrigpreis-Warensortiment finden sich alltagspraktische Haushaltshelfer wie Dekorationsartikel rund um Küche, Wohnung, Garten und Friedhof. Die Produkte werden in einer für dieses Marktsegment typischen Mischung aus Information, Veranschaulichung und unterhaltender narrativer Umrahmung beworben, die wir mit den Begriffen Verzauberung und Problemlösungsversprechen charakterisieren. Der Aufsatz schließt als Beitrag zur Erforschung materieller Kultur an Bezüge der Wohnraum-, Wandschmuck- und Populärkulturforschung sowie der Religionsökonomie und -ästhetik an.
... Likewise, the emotional, sensory and material dimensions of religion and education are equally neglected (Crutchley, Parker and Roberts, 2019). In Religious Studies, these facets of religious life have received a good deal of attention (for instance on the emotions see Riis and Woodhead 2012; on material culture see Morgan 2009; on the visual see Morgan 2012), but in terms of R&E as a field, there is much more to be done in applying critical theories and methodologies to educational contexts. ...
... Likewise, the emotional, sensory and material dimensions of religion and education are equally neglected (Crutchley, Parker and Roberts, 2019). In Religious Studies, these facets of religious life have received a good deal of attention (for instance on the emotions see Riis and Woodhead 2012; on material culture see Morgan 2009; on the visual see Morgan 2012), but in terms of R&E as a field, there is much more to be done in applying critical theories and methodologies to educational contexts. ...
... 87-103). But, as a number of scholars of religion and media have pointed out, such common sense is confounded by even a very cursory survey of the multiple ways religious practices, affiliations, and ways of knowing the world are manifested in concretely material and embodied terms, such as through the training and tuning of the senses in order to "properly receive" spiritual gifts; through the codification of gestures that actors depend upon in ritual performance; or through the deployment of technological and material affordances that govern interactions between religious professionals and lay populations (Meyer, 2010;Meyer & Houtman, 2012;Morgan, 2012;Stolow, 2013; cf. Baker's discussion of evangelical Christian "technology stewards," 2015, pp. ...
... Examples of such affective investments are seen in the devotion to the sacred heart (Morgan 2012;Hann 2014). Here the devout working to touch Jesus and his heart, thereby beyond praying for salvation, also attempts to make him interfere in the mundane realm of the person praying. ...
Article
In this introduction the theme of prayer is brought into an anthropological discussion. Attending to prayers and how they are performed and seen to intervene in a social world is a significant way to engage with matters close to people. As argued in this introduction, prayers are a way to map affect and affective relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and care about. Here a social perspective on prayer taking its cue from Marcel Mauss is particularly relevant as it invites us to go beyond the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader landscape. The reason for honing in on the social life of prayers is that it entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse forms of Christianity that thereby pushes the anthropology of Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity. This introduction argues that attending to the social life of prayers can be seen as a way of mapping affect. Prayers in different ways attest to the implicatedness of human beings in a social world. Furthermore, prayer works as a didactic tool and is in itself an internal scale of comparison and evaluation in various Christian formulations.
... The importance of empathy in phenomenological film analysis is recognized by many authors, and often correlated with haptic knowledge. For instance, art historian David Morgan emphasizes the importance of empathy and correlation between seeing and touching in religious art and religious experience [10]. Another aspect of Manoussakis theses could be seen in a parallel between his idea of self-knowledge through co-suffering/empathy and Jennifer M. Barker's approach to film analysis. ...
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This article explores apophatic ways of presenting God (the Other) in two films of Andrey Zvyagintsev. The lens for this analysis is the phenomenological theology of John Panteleimon Manoussakis, using the following concepts: (1) God as personal Other; (2) the relational nature of God’s self-disclosure through prosopon; (3) God as revealed in space/sight; (4) God as revealed in hearing/time; and (5) God as revealed in touch/self-understanding. This analysis, pursued through close examination of Zvyagintsev’s The Return (2003) and Leviathan (2014), demonstrates the relevance of Manoussakis’s theology to the study of religion and film, particularly in its sensual and experiential themes and emphases.
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This ethnography explores the aesthetic dimension of religion and the sensational ways in which it contributes to shaping ordinary ethics on Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa. In the context of everyday social life on Long Street, homeless peoples’ claim of an ethical character is denied recognition. Long Street is a public space of conviviality and differences, a hybrid social reality marked with growing urbanization, globalization, and neoliberalism, and overseen by a continuous presence of security units. It is a street saturated with ever‐increasing social problems resulting from a revival of class differences. Ordinary ethics on Long Street is complex, unpredictable, dynamic, and vulnerable, and stands the risk of potential breakdown. Against this backdrop, this ethnography recounts the ways in which aesthetic formations of religion stimulate technologies of imaginations that offer homeless people sensory experiences of refuge, recognition, being, and belonging amidst social exclusion and a harsh lived experience. Aesthetics of religion are ethics made visible in public life.
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Os cultos da Brasa Church, ministério de jovens vinculado à Igreja Brasa, em Porto Alegre, RS, têm se destacado no cenário evangélico local pela implementação de uma tendência estético-musical denominada worship. A partir de uma abordagem material da religião, esta dissertação aborda as formas pelas quais o worship engaja sentidos e materialidades na produção de experiências religiosas cultuais. Tais experiências, dispostas em regimes de sensibilidade, promovem uma determinada “cultura” de adoração: uma “cultura do Reino”. Por essa disposição teológico-prática, os jovens são estimulados a transformar a “cultura” – instância que é situada no espaço do “mundo”, ou do secular. Os deslocamentos da “cultura” efetivados pela “cultura do Reino” evidenciam reconfigurações evangélicas quanto às relações entre sagrado e secular. Através de um trabalho etnográfico atento às mediações materiais da adoração, pretende-se demonstrar como o worship materializa a “cultura do Reino” e se constitui em uma estética da adoração estabelecida a partir de articulações materiais que fornecem um suporte para a transformação da “cultura” para o Reino.
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This article offers a model of conceptualising religion as taste. Using religion and food as a point of entry, it demonstrates how modelling religion as taste permits attention to such concepts as embodiedness, the place of the senses within religious experience, the relation of memory to experience, and the mediation of culture. I draw on the cognitive and biological science of taste, and argue that religion functions analogously to this sense, experienced through the brain, body, and mind. The article uses the intersection of religion and food, and religion and visual taste, to develop the theme of how culturally conditioned tastes emerge out of embodied experiences, with reference to memories, past experiences, and collective worldviews.
Conference Paper
This thesis explores how evangelical Protestants of two conservative churches in Austin, Texas make and experience intimate relationships, and how these relationships shape their ethical self-development. It focuses on interpersonal relations within their church communities, with people in need and relations with divine forces. Both the meetings of church small groups and organised occasions for evangelism reflect a local ideal of intimacy, as they aim at conversation that is spontaneous, non-instrumental and self-disclosing. Evangelical discourse about intimate interaction understands it as an ethical tool: It allows participants to discover moral faults in themselves and to enrol others for self-disciplinary support. Such an ethical tool depends on a model of personhood that in the thesis is called forensic. Evangelicals following this model understood themselves as autonomous individuals held accountable to biblical norms that are separate from them. Based on ethnographic material gathered from 15 months of fieldwork, the ethnography demonstrates that the performance of intimacy is often in contrast with the churches’ relational ideology. Rather than relations that aspire to mutual disclosure, they also include tacit or explicit acknowledgement of power relations, negotiated reciprocity and measured distance. Moreover, in additional to the forensic model, responses to intimate relationships were also understood with a contrasting logic of personhood, as indeterminate and contingent on powers that are distinct from both the acting ethical subject and social institutions. These statements connect with a growing anthropological literature on morality and relatedness that attempts to account for the richness and incongruity of ethical practice. Long-term participant observation makes it possible to understand personal striving for piety not only in terms of its ideals and inherent logic, but also its potentially contradictory outcomes. The ethnographic material suggests evangelical norms and means of self-formation are associated with frustration and ambiguity, particularly as they aspire to be the singular source for ethical direction for all life domains in a context such as Austin that is characterised by a diversity of life trajectories. The flexibility inherent to the relational approach to ethical life, including the potential to switch between forensic and indeterminate modes of action, is creatively used by participants to respond to this tension.
Book
The book examines the changing views of procreation, pregnancy and childbirth throughout the history of the West. Seeing how Christianity combines with law and biological theories to construct a bodily experience, that changes over time. Using pregnancy as a prism, the book investigates how ideas about the human body condition religious ideas about the human body (virgin birth, bodily ressurection, etc.) The book is a comprehensive study of the conceptualisation of pregnancy from the early Church to contemporary abortion debates.
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remarks welcoming participants to the first international conference sponsored by the journal Material Religion, held at Duke University, September 10-12, 2015.
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Book
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Richtet man die Aufmerksamkeit auf die materielle Seite von Religion, ist augenblicklich die andere, immaterielle Seite von Religion aufgerufen. Religion gilt für gewöhnlich auf Transzendentes gerichtet, wie jeder Religionsvertreter bestätigen würde. Religion hat demnach mit ‚Glaube an‘ und nicht mit ‚Wissen von‘ zu tun. Diese weitverbreitete Annahme führte dazu, Religion systematisch zu entmaterialisieren. Der Beitrag geht den fachwissenschaftlichen Gründen für diesen Vorgang nach und verdeutlicht die Konsequenzen, die der ‚material turn‘ und die Entdeckung der materiellen Seite des Religiösen für die Religionsforschung nach sich ziehen.
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Interdisciplinary studies have long become an integral part of modern science, but in the field of religious studies and studies in Western esotericism, they are still not sufficiently widespread. In the article, well-known methodology of the study of a cultural product, developed by the Birmingham school of cultural studies is applied to the Western esotericism. The object of study is in the extreme right spectrum of contemporary esotericism. The myth of esoteric (or rather alien) background of the Third Reich was widely popularized after the 1950s through the works of W. Landig, M. Serrano, etc. Since the 1960s, these ideas were spread not only in the circles of adepts of right wing esotericism, but in popular fiction literature also; later this story became a common theme of films and computer industry. Thus, aimed at a narrow circle of adepts, the idea transformed itself and became a part of the mainstream culture. On the example of genesis, target audience, conditions of its development, author demonstrate the complexity of the process of assimilation by popular culture the myths, born in the esoteric milieu.
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The Australian prime minister’s apology to the Stolen Generation in the national Parliament in 2008 was conceived as a spectacle, a visual act to be remembered, as a visible exclamation point in history. That moment was not just about the formal text of speeches, but about the ceremonial positioning of Aboriginal people who had been stolen and forgotten and their becoming visible and seen within the environment of the most powerful political space in Australia. One of the ten official photographers commissioned to assist in that process of creating a visual memory, Juno Gemes, said of her experience: “History … is about awakening. It is also about temporary blindness and how we regain our sight.”1 It is this observation that I would like to explore further in this chapter by looking at the aspect of visuality as a site for public theology and cultural analysis. This will involve an analysis of visuality as a form of touch, a form of looking that anticipates a meeting with the subject of one’s gaze, where detached observation moves toward a sensual meeting, and where theological reflection touches the skin of perception.
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To introduce this set of essays on visual ethics, I address the conceptual and methodological contours, as well as difficult theoretical questions, that might emerge with a visual turn in religious ethics. In addition I situate the work represented in this focus issue within ongoing conversations about moral perception, culture as a topic of normative analysis, and the various roles of visual culture in themoral life.
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In this introductory article to the special issue of Religion and Gender on gender, normativity and visuality, we establish the theoretical framework to discuss the influence of visual culture on gender norms. This introduction also provides a reflection on how these norms are communicated, reaffirmed and contested in religious contexts. We introduce the notion of visuality as individual and collective signifying practices, with a particular focus on how this regards gender norms. Two main ways in which religion, gender and normativity are negotiated in visual meaning making processes are outlined: on the one hand, the religious legitimation of gender norms and their communication and confirmation through visual material, and on the other hand, the challenge of these norms through the participation in visual culture by means of seeing and creating. These introductory reflections highlight the common concerns of the articles collected in this issue: the connection between the visualisation of gender roles within religious traditions and the influence of religious gender norms in other fields of (visual) culture.
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