The Bloomsbury Handbook of The Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion 9781350066717, 9781350066748, 9781350066724

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
FIGURES
TABLES
CONTRIBUTORS
FOREWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE Introduction
WHAT IS AESTHETICS OF RELIGION?
STATE OF THE ART
WHY AESTHETICS OF RELIGION IS BOTH CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE
WHAT READERS MAY EXPECT
IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION: AESTHETICS WILL CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE
RECOMMENDED READING
PART I Approach
CHAPTER TWO A Historiography of Aesthetics in a Western Context
INTRODUCTION
PHILOSOPHICAL AESTHETICS
THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS AND THEOAESTHETICS (ROMANTIC)
ART HISTORICAL APPROACHES: ICONOGRAPHY AND ICONOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND NON-WESTERN AESTHETICS
INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER THREE Epistemology
INTRODUCTION: UNDERTAKING EPISTEMOLOGY AS AESTHETICS
THE DOUBLE AESTHETIC SUBJECT: HISTORICAL AND COGNITIVE
THE AESTHETIC COGNIZING SUBJECT
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER FOUR Aesthetics of Knowledge
INTRODUCTION
AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE
AESTHETICS OF KNOWLEDGE AS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ENDEAVOR
AESTHETICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE CONTEXT OF RELIGIONS
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER FIVE Methodology
INTRODUCTION: DEMARCATING THE FIELD OF STUDY
THE ROLE OF RESEARCH METHODS IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION
FIELDS OF RESEARCH IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION AND THE CODIFICATION OF BODILY SENSES
COMPARATIVE METHOD AND CONCEPT FORMATION IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION
UNIVERSALITY OF SENSORY PERCEPTION AND RELATIVITY OF RELIGIOUS AESTHETICS
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READINGS
PART II Analytical Categories
CHAPTER SIX Imagination
INTRODUCTION: AN IMAGINATIVE ACCESS TO IMAGINATION
TOWARD AN AESTHETIC UNDERSTANDING OF IMAGINATION
TOWARD AN AESTHETIC STYLISTICS OF IMAGINATION
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER SEVEN Ritual
INTRODUCTION: A COGNITIVE AESTHETICS OF RITUAL
FROM INSTRUMENTAL ACTION TO SYMBOLIC MEANING: THE AESTHETIC TURN
FROM MEANING TO ACTION: COGNITION AND RITUAL BEHAVIOR
SIGNS, INTERPRETATION, AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
CONCLUSION: THE MAKING OF SPECIAL OBJECTS
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER EIGHT Absorption
INTRODUCTION
CASE STUDIES
ABSORPTION: THE NATURE OF TALENT
INNER SENSE CULTIVATION: PRACTICE
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER NINE Aniconicity and Aniconism
INTRODUCTION
ANICONISM
DIVINE TRANSFORMERS: A SPECTRUM OF VISUAL MODES
BETWEEN ANICONIC SERIOUSNESS AND ANTHROPOPATHIC AGENCY
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TEN Sonality
INTRODUCTION
SOUND STUDIES
SOUND MATTERS: THE CASE OF HINDU INDIA AND THE SOUNDING OF SACRED TEXTS
THE CONTINUITY OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC
CONDUCTING AN AESTHETIC ANALYSIS: EIGHT THESES CONCERNING METHODOLOGY
CONCLUSION: THE VALUE OF AN AESTHETIC APPROACH TO STUDYING SONALITY IN INDIA AND BEYOND
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER ELEVEN Museality
INTRODUCTION: MUSEALITY, MUSEAL SPACES, AESTHETICS OF RELIGION
APPROACHING MUSEALITY, MUSEUMS, AND MUSEAL SPACE
CASE STUDY: THE MUSEALITY OF WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL
SENSATIONAL FORM AND MUSEAL SPACE
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
PART III Strategies of Aesthetic Formations
CHAPTER TWELVE Sensory Strategies
INTRODUCTION
SENSORY STRATEGIES: FIRST DISTINCTIONS
STRATEGIES CONCERNING THE BODY
CONSTRUCTING SENSESCAPES AND SENSORY DISPLAYS
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Narrative Strategies
INTRODUCTION
NARRATIVITY, ATTENTION, AND PREDICTIVE PROCESSING
STORYTELLING STRATEGIES: CAPTURING ATTENTION
IMAGINATIVE STRATEGIES: ACHIEVING IMMERSION
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES: AUGMENTING REALITY
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Text Acts
INTRODUCTION
TEXTS AS ARTIFACTS IN ACTION: AN OVERVIEW
DRINKING THE QURAN
CONCLUSION: AESTHETIC TEXTS AND LITERACY IDEOLOGIES
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Embodiment through Comics
INTRODUCTION
AESTHETICS OF COMICS
AESTHETICS OF COMICS AND RELIGION
MS. MARVEL: BRINGING ISLAM INTO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
THE SWAMP THING: EXPANDING THE SACRED THROUGH TRANS-CORPOREAL EMBODIMENT
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Gendered Performativity1
INTRODUCTION: GENDERED PERFORMATIVITY AND THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGIOUS FEMINISM
LITERATURE REVIEW
THE RED MOSQUE CASE STUDY
AESTHETICS OF RELIGION AND A GENDERED POLITICS OF PERFORMATIVITY
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Art
INTRODUCTION
PRODUCTION: CRITICAL PRACTICE AS KNOWLEDGE CREATION
RECEPTION: VIEWING ART AS KNOWLEDGE CREATION
SIMULTANEOUS THEORY AND PRAXIS
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Cinesthetics
INTRODUCTION: MOVING IMAGES AS RELIGIOUS MEDIUM AND AS RESEARCH MEDIUM FOR THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION
CAPTURING THE “WOW” IN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
FILM AND RELIGION: ELEMENTS OF AN AESTHETIC AND COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
FILMING RUSSIAN EPIPHANY ICE-BATHING
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
PART IV Aestheticscapes
CHAPTER NINETEEN Cult Images
INTRODUCTION
ENCOUNTERING HINDU CULT IMAGES
CLASSIFYING HINDU CULT IMAGES
MAKING CULT IMAGES
USING CULT IMAGES
EXPERIENCING CULT IMAGES
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY Smell as Communication
INTRODUCTION: IMAGINING THE WORLD OF SMELL IN CHINESE BUDDHIST BIOGRAPHIES
STUDYING SMELL IN BIOGRAPHIES
SMELL AS COMMUNICATION IN THE BIOGRAPHIES OF THAUMATURGE MONKS
INDUCED SMELL
SPONTANEOUSLY EMERGING SMELLS
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Sensing and Painting Knowledge
INTRODUCTION
STUDYING INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGIES AND SEMIOTICS
AZTEC SENSE OF REALITY
AZTEC EPISTEMOLOGY
PAINTING KNOWLEDGE IN DIVINATION ALMANACS
AZTEC SEMIOTIC THEORY
SENSING KNOWLEDGE IN PERFORMATIVE INTERPRETATIVE ACTS
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Protestant (An)aesthetics
INTRODUCTION
THE REFORMATION AND THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE AESTHETIC
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS: PURITAN ICONOCLASM, NOMINALISM, AND THE ATTACK ON MEDIATION
DEBATES OVER POLYPHONY AND OTHER FORMS OF MUSIC IN CHURCH
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Aesthetics of the Ugly
FACING THE DEAD: THE SOMATICS OF BUDDHIST DOGMAS
CASE STUDY: THE VISUALIZATION OF THE DEAD IN TWO INDIC BUDDHIST MEDITATION MANUALS
CONCLUSION: LEARNING DISGUST AND SOLIDIFYING DOGMAS AS AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Aesthetics of the Secular
INTRODUCTION: THE AESTHETIC PRODUCTION OF BEING “OTHER-THAN-RELIGIOUS”
RESEARCHING THE SECULAR: FROM SECULAR IDEOLOGY TO AN AESTHETICS OF LIVED SECULARITY
CONCLUSION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH TO SECULAR DIFFERENCE
RECOMMENDED READING
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Aesthetics of Spirits
INTRODUCTION: FROM ANIMISM TO INTERMEDIATE BEINGS
THE FORMATION OF GHOSTLY EXPERIENCES
CASE STUDIES
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
PART V Aesthetics of Religion in the Classroom
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Teaching Aesthetics of Religion
INTRODUCTION
TEACHING AESTHETICS OF RELIGION
DIDACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR THE CLASSROOM
PARTICIPATING IN THE FIELD
CONCLUSION
RECOMMENDED READING
NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX

Citation preview

THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF THE CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION

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Also available from Bloomsbury The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions Edited by Erica Baffelli and Fabio Rambelli with Andrea Castiglio The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature Edited by Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music Edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg

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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF THE CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION Edited by Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Anne Koch, Katharina Wilkens and Contributors, 2020 Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Cover image: Visoot Uthairam / Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6671-7 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6672-4 eBook: 978-1-3500-6673-1 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

L IST OF F IGURES

viii

L IST OF T ABLES

x

N OTES ON C ONTRIBUTORS

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F OREWORD BY B IRGIT M EYER A CKNOWLEDGMENTS 1

Introduction Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens

xvi xviii 1

PART I: APPROACH 2

A Historiography of Aesthetics in a Western Context Jay Johnston

13

3

Epistemology Anne Koch

23

4

Aesthetics of Knowledge Arianna Borrelli and Alexandra Grieser

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5

Methodology Jens Kreinath

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PART II: ANALYTICAL CATEGORIES 6

Imagination Lucia Traut and Anne Wahl

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7

Ritual Jesper Sørensen

73

8

Absorption T. M. Luhrmann

85

9

Aniconicity and Aniconism Mikael Aktor

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10 Sonality Annette Wilke

107

11 Museality Jens Kugele

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CONTENTS

PART III: STRATEGIES OF AESTHETIC FORMATIONS 12 Sensory Strategies Hubert Mohr

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13 Narrative Strategies Dirk Johannsen and Anja Kirsch

143

14 Text Acts Katharina Wilkens

155

15 Embodiment through Comics Chris Klassen

165

16 Gendered Performativity Shaireen Rasheed

175

17 Art Jay Johnston

185

18 Cinesthetics Adrian Hermann and Yulia Lokshina

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PART IV: AESTHETICSCAPES 19 Cult Images Brigitte Luchesi

207

20 Smell as Communication Esther-Maria Guggenmos

219

21 Sensing and Painting Knowledge Isabel Laack

229

22 Protestant (An)aesthetics Robert A. Yelle

241

23 Aesthetics of the Ugly Constanze Pabst von Ohain

253

24 Aesthetics of the Secular Stefan Binder

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25 Aesthetics of Spirits Peter J. Bräunlein

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CONTENTS

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PART V: AESTHETICS OF RELIGION IN THE CLASSROOM 26 Teaching Aesthetics of Religion Isabel Laack and Petra Tillessen with contributions by Peter J. Bräunlein, Annalisa Buttici, Anne Koch, and Brigitte Luchesi

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N OTES

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R EFERENCES

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I NDEX

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FIGURES

4.1a–c Examples of how diverse modes of knowledge imply aesthetic forms and practices

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4.2

Different types of religions favor different modes of knowledge

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5.1

Eastern Orthodox Christians kissing the right and left doorframe and the tomb at Mar ˙Ilyas Sanctuary in Hatay

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5.2

Arab Alawite Muslims kissing the right and left doorframe and the tomb at a Hz. Hıdır Sanctuary in Hatay

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5.3

Arab Alawite woman kissing a marble cylinder and the Quran at a Hz. Hıdır Sanctuary in Hatay

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Experience as a product of a weighted balance between an internal model and incoming sensory stimuli

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8.1

Hermes Trismegistus

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8.2

Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard

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9.1

The aniconic ´salagr¯ama (ammonite fossil) representing Visnu as Lord ˙˙ of Liberation (Muktin¯atha)

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Sensory deprivation: anchorite’s cell from the Holy Trinity Church in Skipton (North Yorkshire)

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12.2a Empowered by symmetry: National Socialist leaders marching up to the tribunes on the hill of Bückeberg near Hameln (Lower Saxony) during the Reichserntedankfest (“Reich Harvest Thanksgiving Festival”) in 1937

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12.2b Disempowered by criss-crossing: (disputed) plans of constructing a memorial at Bückeberg in 2018

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12.3

Synchronizing heartbeats: firewalking in San Pedro Manrique, Spain

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12.4

(De)constructing Jesus: monumental statue of Christ the King in Swiebodzin, Poland

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14.1

Writing Quranic verses onto a plate with red ink, Zanzibar.

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14.2

A West African Quranic writing board, Niger.

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16.1

Veiled female students of the Islamic seminary Jamia Hafsa

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18.1

Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast

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18.2

Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast

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18.3

Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast

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19.1

Devotee of goddess Braje´svar¯ı adorning her image at the exterior wall of her temple in Kangra Town

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Worship of goddess Hoi with the help of a poster

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7.1

12.1

19.2

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FIGURES

19.3

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19.4

Central cult image of goddess C¯amund¯a ˙˙ Domestic shrine

20.1

Donors presenting fruit and incense

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20.2

Apsaras presenting fragrant flowers

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21.1

Divination Almanac, Codex Borgia, folio 6

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21.2

Codex Borbonicus, folio 2

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22.1

Iconoclasm

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23.1

Meditating monk

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23.2

Toyuk (Xinjiang)

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24.1

Atheist orator delivering a speech at the annual conference of FIRA (Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations) in Brahmapur

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TABLES

20.1

Smell as communication in the SSZ

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23.1

Typology of dispositions and counter-practices

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23.2

Correlation of corpse visualization and subcategories of sexual desire

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CONTRIBUTORS

Mikael Aktor is Associate Professor at University of Southern Denmark. His research has focused on the study of classical Hindu law (dharma´s¯astra) as it pertains to social structure, and on aniconic objects of worship in the Hindu tradition as a topic of material religion. His publications include “Social Classes – varna” and “Impurity and Purification – ¯a´sauca” ˙ in Hindu Law (The Oxford History of Hinduism), edited by Patrick Olivelle and Donald R. Davis, Jr. (2018); a thematic issue on Exploring Aniconism in Religion 47 (3), co-edited with Milette Gaifman (2017); and “Grasping the Formless in Stones” in Aesthetics of Religion, edited by Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston (2017). Stefan Binder is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at University of Göttingen, Germany. His research interests include the anthropology of the secular, gender, religion, and media. He is currently working on audiovisual media practices, the aesthetics of time, and masculinities among Shi’i Muslims in Hyderabad (India). He has also published on subjectivity and the relationship of science and religion in the context of Buddhist meditation practices. Arianna Borrelli is a historian and philosopher of premodern and modern science working at the Centre for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation at Leuphana University in Lüeneburg, Germany (German Research Foundation Project KFOR 1927). The focus of her research is the relationship between scientific knowledge and the strategies employed to communicate it. She published the monograph Aspects of the Astrolabe: “Architectonica Ratio” in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century Europe (2008), and coedited with Alexandra Grieser a special issue of Approaching Religion on The “Beauty Fallacy”: Religion, Science, and the Aesthetics of Knowledge (2017). Peter J. Bräunlein is senior researcher at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He is trained in sociocultural anthropology and the study of religion. His research focuses on religious pluralism in Southeast Asia, Christianity (Western and non-Western), spirits, media, museums, and material religion. He has published “Thinking Religion through Things. Reflections on the Material Turn in the Scientific Study of Religion/s” in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 28.4/5 (2016), 365–399, Passion/Pasyon: Rituale des Schmerzes im europäischen und philippinischen Christentum (2010) and (co-edited with Andrea Lauser) Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Narratives, Cultural Contexts, Audiences (2016). Alexandra Grieser is Assistant Professor for the Theory of Religion at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research focuses on the history and theory of knowledge; European pluralism and the interrelation between religion, science, and art; method, theory and history of the study of religion; and aesthetics of religion. Her most recent publications in the field include a special issue on The “Beauty Fallacy”: Religion, Science and the Aesthetics of Knowledge in Approaching Religion 7/2 (2017), and (co-edited with Jay Johnston) Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept (2017). xi

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CONTRIBUTORS

Esther-Maria Guggenmos is Visiting Research Fellow at the KHC Erlangen (www.ikgf. fau.de). She specializes in Chinese Buddhism, aesthetics of religion, and processes of cultural exchange. She is author of Im Netz des Indra together with Annette Wilke, 2008, a study in aesthetics of religion of the Museum of World Religions in Taipei. In I Believe in Buddhism and Travelling (2017), she delivers detailed insight into contemporary lay Buddhism in urban Taiwan. Guggenmos serves as speaker of the working group “Aesthetics of Religion” in the German Association for the Study of Religions (DVRW). Adrian Hermann is Full Professor of Religion and Society and Director of the Department of Religion Studies at Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, University of Bonn, Germany. His work focuses on the global history of the concept of “religion,” the use of non-fictional media in contemporary religious movements, and the religious history of the globalized world. He is the author of Unterscheidungen der Religion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2015) and is currently working on a monograph on Philippine independent Catholicism around 1900. He teaches classes on visual anthropology and documentary film in the study of religion and in media studies. Dirk Johannsen is Associate Professor of Cultural History at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo, Norway. His research focuses on narrative cultures, popular religion in the nineteenth century, cognitive approaches, and trolls. Recent publications include “On Elves and Freethinkers: Criticism of Religion and the Emergence of the Literary Fantastic in Nordic Literature,” Religion 46/4, 2016, 591–610, and “The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in NineteenthCentury Norway,” Folklore 129/1, 2018, 39–57. Jay Johnston is an associate professor at the University of Sydney, Australia. Trained in religious studies, continental philosophy, gender studies, art history, Scottish and Nordic studies, her research examines concepts of materiality, embodiment, perception, desire, image agency, magic, and epistemology. Forthcoming in 2020 is Stag and Stone: Religion, Archaeology and Esoteric Aesthetics (Equinox). Anja Kirsch is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland, whose main interest concerns the relation between religion and “the secular” in contemporary and historical perspective. Recent publications include Weltanschauung als Erzählkultur, 2016; “Religious in Form, Socialist in Content: Socialist Narratives and the Question of Civil Religion,” Journal of Religion in Europe 10 (2017), 147–171, and “Red Catechisms: Socialist Educational Literature and the Demarcation of Religion and Politics in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Religion 48/1, 8–36. In her current project she examines the narrative cultures of secular and religious groups in nineteenth-century European religious history. Chris Klassen teaches in the Religion and Culture department at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She received her PhD in Women’s Studies from York University, Toronto. She is the author of Religion and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach (2014) and is currently working on the intersection of comics, nature, religion/ spirituality, gender, and disability studies. Anne Koch is Research Professor in the Study of Religion and Interreligiosity at the Private University College of Education, Linz, Austria. Her focus is on method and theory, religious pluralism, economics of religion and aesthetics of religion/embodied cognition.

CONTRIBUTORS

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In the field she recently published (as editor) The Aesthetics of Civil Religion in Journal of Religion in Europe 10.1/2 (2017); with Karin Meissner, “Sympathetic Arousal during a Touch-based Healing Ritual Predicts Increase in Well-being,” Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2015); and “Living4giving: Politics of Affect and Emotional Regimes in Global Yoga,” in Karl Baier, Philipp Maas, and Karin C. Preisendanz (eds.), Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (2018). Jens Kreinath is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Wichita State University, USA. He conducted ethnographic and historical research on shared pilgrimage sites and Christian–Muslim relations in the southernmost province of Turkey, Hatay. His fields of interest include concept formation in the study of ritual and religion with a specific focus on visual culture and historical discourse analysis. Kreinath is co-editor of Dynamics of Changing Rituals (2004) and Theorizing Rituals (2006–2007), and editor of Anthropology of Islam Reader (2012). He has authored entries on “Islam” and “Ritual” for the International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Hilary Callan (2018). Jens Kugele is Principal Investigator and Head of Research Coordination at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), JLU Giessen, Germany. His main research interests are the study of culture, literature, and religion; GermanJewish history; and cultural theories of memory and space. He is co-editor of the peerreviewed open access journal On_Culture. His publications include Migration: Changing Concepts, Critical Approaches (2018), co-edited with Doris Bachmann-Medick, and a special issue of the Journal of Religion in Europe titled Relocating Religion(s)—Museality as a Critical Term for the Aesthetics of Religion (2011), co-edited with Katharina Wilkens. Isabel Laack is Privatdozentin at the Institute for the Study of Religions at Heidelberg University, Germany. Her research interests focus on sound/music, visuality, rituals, and material text practices while specializing in Mesoamerican religions and contemporary European spirituality. She has published “Sound and Music in the Study of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 27/3 (2015), Religion und Musik in Glastonbury: Eine Fallstudie zu gegenwärtigen Formen religiöser Identitätsdiskurse (2011) and Aztec Religion and Art of Writing: Investigating Embodied Meaning, Indigenous Semiotics, and the Nahua Sense of Reality (2019). Yulia Lokshina is a filmmaker, student of documentary film directing at the University of Television and Film, and a research assistant at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, University of Bonn, Germany. She has directed and been involved in a variety of documentaries and visual art projects, in particular on contemporary life in Russia. Brigitte Luchesi was Senior Lecturer in the Department of the Study of Religion at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her research focuses on Hindu religions in North India and Germany. She has published various articles on questions concerning the use of visual material in the presentation of religions, the creation of religious spaces, and the making and use of Hindu cult images. The most recent one is on the worship of girls as representatives of the Goddess in North India in C. Simmons, et al. (eds.), Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navar¯atri Festival in South Asia (2018).

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CONTRIBUTORS

T. M. Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford University, USA. Her research interests include medical and psychological anthropology and the anthropology of religion. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. Recent publications include Our Most Troubling Madness: Schizophrenia and Culture (2016) and When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012). Birgit Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her main research interests focus on the rise and popularity of global Pentecostalism; religion, popular culture and heritage; religion and media; religion and the public sphere; religious visual culture, the senses, and aesthetics. Her recent publications include Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (2015), Taking Offense: Religion, Art and Visual Culture in Plural Configurations (2018, co-edited with Anne-Marie Korte and Christiane Kruse), and Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen: Contested Desires (2019, co-edited with Terje Stordalen). She chairs the research program Religious Matters in an Entangled World (www.religiousmatters.nl). Hubert Mohr is Guest Lecturer at the University of Bremen, Germany, and the University of Basel, Switzerland. Trained in History and Latin at the University of Tübingen, he worked on the Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe with Hubert Cancik and Burkhard Gladigow and as co-editor of the Metzler Lexikon Religion (4 vols., 1999– 2002). Among his main research topics are the religious reception of ancient cultures, especially forms and movements of “(Neo)Paganism,” aesthetics of religion, and religion and the media. Constanze Pabst von Ohain is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Indology and Tibetology at the University of Munich, Germany. She completed her PhD in 2018 with a thesis on the literary style, epistemology, and visualization practices in early Yog¯ac¯ara literature of North and Northwest India, third and fourth centuries CE . Trained in the study of religion, continental and South Asian philosophy, and Indic philology, she is interested in the theory and politics of knowledge, the history of epistemologies, and visual culture. Her historical research focus lies in Buddhisms in India and Central Asia and the Western reception of Asian religions. Shaireen Rasheed is Professor of Philosophical Foundations and Diversity/Social Justice in the College of Education at Long Island University, USA. She is currently a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Salzburg, and a visiting scholar in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. She has been a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, New York University, and the Columbia Law School. Her current research is due for publication in a monograph on Islam, sexuality, and the War on Terror. She received her MPhil and PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University. She works with educators to create inclusive pedagogies for diverse students, particularly exploring best practices to tackle issues of racism and Islamophobia in K-12 classrooms. Jesper Sørensen is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark, specializing in cognitive approaches to ritual and magic and cognitive historiography. He is the author of A Cognitive Theory of Magic (2007).

CONTRIBUTORS

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Petra Tillessen is a PhD student and research assistant at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, University of Bonn, Germany, with training in both archaeology and the study of religion. She is interested in questions of cultural heritage, plurality, and the formation of knowledge on prehistoric religion. Her publications include Archaeological Imaginations of Religion (2014, co-edited with Thomas Meier), Religionskompetenz: Praxishandbuch im multikulturellen Feld der Gegenwart [Competence in Religion: A Practical Guide for the Contemporary Multicultural Religious Field] (2013, with Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens) and Stonehenge: Kultstätte—Weltkulturerbe—Ausflugsziel? [Stonehenge: Cult Place, Global Heritage Site, Picnic Site?] (2007). Lucia Traut is a PhD student in the Department of the Study of Religion at the University of Münster, Germany. Her dissertation project focuses on imagination as a critical term for the study of religion. She has published on fantasy role-playing games as ritualized imagination and is co-editor (with Annette Wilke) of the volume Religion–Imagination– Ästhetik: Sinnes- und Vorstellungswelten in Religion und Kultur (2015). Anne Wahl is a PhD student and teaching assistant in the Department of the Study of Religions at the University of Münster, Germany. Her dissertation project focuses on narration, mysticism, and imagination in the Sister Books chronicling the lives of Dominican nuns in medieval Germany. Her other research interests include contemporary religion, economics of religion and aesthetics of religion exemplified, for example, in computer games and board games. Annette Wilke is a Emeritus professor and head of the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Münster, Germany. Her main research interests within the field of aesthetics of religion focus on language and sound in Hinduism, goddess representations, Tantric ritual, and techniques of imagination. She has published widely on the subject and among her publications are (with Oliver Moebus) Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism (2011) and (with Lucia Traut, eds.) Religion–Imagination–Ästhetik: Sinnes- und Vorstellungswelten in Religion und Kultur (2015). Katharina Wilkens is a lecturer and researcher in the study of religion at the University of Munich, Germany. Her research interests focus on the history of religions in East Africa with an emphasis on ritual healing as well as spirit possession. Her work on literacy ideologies, textuality in rituals, incorporation and, most recently, narrativity and imagination is inspired by the aesthetics of religion approach. She has published Holy Water and Evil Spirits: Religious Healing in East Africa (2011) and a special issue of the Journal of Religion in Europe titled Relocating Religion(s)—Museality as a Critical Term for the Aesthetics of Religion (2011), co-edited with Jens Kugele. Robert A. Yelle is Professor for the Theory and Method of Religious Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. His work focuses on the impact of the Protestant Reformation on secularization, religion in relation to law, politics, and economics from historical and philosophical perspectives as well as semiotics of religion. His most recent books include Sovereignty and the Sacred: Secularism and the Political Economy of Religion (2019), Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History (2014), and The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India (2013).

FOREWORD

Over the past two decades corporeality and materiality have received much attention in the study of religion. This applies on the level of individual scholarship, as well as on the level of joint scholarly projects and initiatives. The aesthetics of religion developed in Germany is distinctive for its ambitious attempt to theorize, in a systematic and integrated manner, the various “turns”—to the body, the senses, affects, images, objects—that have shaped the social and cultural sciences of which the study of religion is a part. Grounded in longstanding debates on the importance of perception and the senses, the aesthetics of religion working group was founded in 2007 as part of the German Association for the Study of Religion. When I became acquainted with this initiative around 2011, I felt excited because of the strong resonances between the themes addressed by the working group and my own attempts to develop an aesthetic and material approach in the study of religion around the notion of sensational form. But I also felt somewhat uneasy and ashamed because of the fact that this important initiative had escaped my attention for some years. Even though German is my mother tongue, I have long lived and worked in the Netherlands, with my back to German-speaking academia. So my ignorance was partly due to—and a symptom of—the fact that a great many of the scholars in the working group published their work mainly in German, whereas I myself, like many of my colleagues, tend(ed) to concentrate on Anglophone publications. This made me painfully aware that language boundaries block access to non-Anglophone discursive communities, making us overlook and neglect major high-profile initiatives and reinvent the wheel over and over again. Against this backdrop, I am all the more delighted about the publication of this handbook. While it is not the first joint English-language publication launched by scholars in the working group, it stands out for providing a systematic account of the aesthetics of religion as a new, interdisciplinary, and international study field, explicating its philosophical underpinnings, methodology and key terms. The marked appraisal of the body, the senses, affects and emotions, and human–object relations signals a shift in the empirical and conceptual orientations followed in the social and cultures sciences. At stake is not only the discovery of new foci for empirical research, but a broader theoretical challenge to think otherwise. While the term aesthetics is currently broadly embraced as an umbrella term and scholars pay a lot of attention to corporeality and materiality, all too often they remain indebted to the mind–body dualism by affirming its other, hitherto devalued, side. The contributors to this handbook take issue with this position, just as they criticize a facile lip-service paid to embodiment and the like. Their point is to redress the longstanding dominance of the mind–body dualism, and the failure to take seriously “sensorial knowledge” as it was understood by eighteenthcentury philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who launched aesthetics as the new science of perception and sensation. As the editors state poignantly in their introduction, “it does not suffice to state that prayer is embodied.” Instead they set out to unpack the black box as which embodiment all too often functions. Research on religious traditions lends itself to this endeavor, because they usually entail explicit theories and theologies xvi

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with regard to sensation and perception, the place of humans in the material world, the operation and morality of the body, and so on. Paying detailed attention to the concrete bodily aspects of practices through which religion becomes incorporated, the volume emphasizes the importance of carefully crafted case studies, as well as the need to transcend them through systematic, grounded theorization. Asking how somatics and semantics play into each other, the volume takes up one of the major theoretical issues we face today. Placing recent work at the interface of culture and cognition in the long-term perspective of Baumgarten’s “sensorial knowledge,” the volume engages with the cognitive study of religion (CSR), as well as with insights from medical psychology and related fields. Proposing to do so from the angle of situated cognition and learned patterns of perception ensures that the outcome of this engagement need not be reductive, thereby diffusing (realistic) anxieties concerning the dominance of sciences devoted to the study of “nature” over those devoted to the study of “culture” and “society.” Spelling out the potential of an aesthetics of religion conceptually and methodologically, the point of the volume is an integrated approach that is able to connect several dimensions—from biological to political—of human practice that, alas, due to path-dependent trajectories in the history of science, usually remain separate research foci. One of the major achievements of this volume is that it moves readers out of their carefully guarded comfort zones. It breaks new ground for scholarship, and points out emergent synergies between work developed in the aesthetics of religion in Germany and new incentives developed elsewhere. Challenging path-dependent boundaries and seeking to make new connections, it is an exciting, stimulating read for anyone who wonders about viable and fresh future trajectories in the study of religion, and opens up new possibilities for both concrete research and conceptual innovation. Birgit Meyer Amsterdam/Utrecht, December 28, 2018

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The publication was supported by the German Research Council (DFG). Copy editing was also supported with a grant of the LMU Mentoring Program for Excellent Young Women Researchers.

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction ANNE KOCH AND KATHARINA WILKENS

An introduction needs to gloss the name of the book. To do so for this handbook we will show what aesthetics of religion is about, what has already been accomplished in the field, and why the time has come to present the very first concise handbook of aesthetics of religion. Next, we will explain why and how research in cognitive sciences and cultural studies need to be connected in this endeavor, what readers may expect from the chapters to come and—warning!—how this might change the reader’s perspective of things. So, let’s go!

WHAT IS AESTHETICS OF RELIGION? A central goal of our handbook is to advance the study of religion by paying special attention to sensorial, perceptible formations in religious practices and institutions within their social environments and specific to their time and cultural area. Part of this task is to historicize perceptual categories and sensorial figurations, revealing a longue durée of the history of aesthetic formations and corresponding institutional features. To achieve this, we balance comparative approaches with area studies and historical approaches, as well as praxeological and philological approaches with cognitive and universalizing approaches. It is the Greek philosophical meaning of aisthesis as perception that the nomenclature of aesthetics of religion draws from. Human perception has been called the “doorway to the world,” or the interface between inner and outer experiences of the world. But this evokes unfortunate associations with a dualistic worldview, subject-centeredness, and black-box theories of the mind—ideas that aesthetics of religion strives to evade, because—as the essays in this book will show—these are inappropriate descriptions of how knowledge is produced. Aesthetics of religion focuses on the sensational, or perceptual, side of culture and of human interaction, and rests upon such highly constructed and wide-ranging concepts as “nature,” “environment,” the “artificial,” “cultural,” “fine arts,” or the “artistic.” Perception—in the wide sense of cognition–culture exchange—happens in specific cultural patterns (or “sensational forms,” Meyer and Verrips 2008). Nevertheless, these patterns follow rules that are open to comparative study. These can be investigated through an “aesthetics of knowledge” as conditions (limiting) cognitive processing, semantic conditions, and sociocultural conditions of production (Borrelli and Grieser, this volume). Put more generally, our considerations here are part of the attention currently being paid to the aesthetic realization of practices, text cultures, belief systems, their transmission and environment interaction. The qualifier “aesthetic” has been used so ubiquitously as to almost lose its meaning, because it is reduced either to a sensational aspect of art or to 1

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phenomenological descriptions of sensations without any further explanation. Against this, aesthetics of religion takes a stand. It is specific in its endeavor to systematically unfold a new field and to perform all the necessary tasks this requires. Why is aesthetics so en vogue in the twenty-first century? One reason may be the overall process of aestheticization, lifestyle, and design in consumer cultures. Aesthetics needs to be carefully differentiated from this societal process (see our example of museality and lifestyle, Kugele and Wilkens 2011). Why this current fascination with materiality and earlier fascination with the body in the humanities? Many of the claims concerning aesthetic formations are situated between anthropology, the natural sciences, and (Christian-influenced) art history and theology. From our base in cognitive and cultural studies, we present this collection of essays to elucidate some of the contingent historical circumstances that have prompted these path dependencies in academia. Many of the essays trace the interdependency of aesthetic research on the topic in question and the style of respective academic discourses to date. What makes aesthetics of religion special is its pronounced perspective on its subject matter. Specialized vocabulary is developed by drawing on and merging existing concepts and models for analyzing aesthetic forms and styles in religion; that is, how we do things aesthetically or how we are manipulated aesthetically in religious traditions. Aesthetics of religion adds to the methodological and theoretical pluralism in the study of religion, overcoming the focus on social theories that too often frames the debate. Aesthetics of religion seeks an expertise that is interdisciplinary and open to collaboration where necessary, that is willing to involve empirical research, that considers explanative and interpretive accounts, and advances the deconstruction of religion on a highly reflexive level. Aesthetics of religion is an umbrella concept for recent considerable and admirable work in a number of disciplines, bringing this research to a new coherence by theorizing it as a specific approach in the study of religion. This is necessary because it does not suffice to state that prayer is “embodied.” What exactly does this mean? How can we formulate more specific questions and single out aesthetic features that are more relevant to one situation than another? Would prayer be the same intense experience without a particular soundscape, or with the soundscape but without the individual chanting alongside the chorus? Would the benefit from the prayers be equal without moving the upper body back and forth, without kneeling down or without sharing a drink? Does it make a difference, and if so, what difference, if someone has learned the prayers in early childhood or only as an adult, participates daily or only monthly? On the one hand, the aesthetic side of religion seems quite obvious, but on the other hand it remains analytically opaque if we do not develop a set of analytical tools, and a specific theoretical approach. In this regard, we share the concern of Aaron W. Hughes, a scholar of religion, in respect of the inflationary use of “theory and method” when no nameable theory, let alone philosophy of science, is employed (2017: 5–6). From a theory of science perspective, a theoretical approach is an explicit philosophical anthropology, a methodology that reflects a variety of methods and their combinability on a meta-level, a self-reflexive historical clarification of key terms and their hidden convictions. This is not exactly a simple task for the aesthetics of religion and the authors of the essays in this handbook. May we invite you at this early stage to a preview of what aesthetics of religion allows us to see by mentioning the example of a practice known variously as “erasing” or “drinking the Quran” (Wilkens, this volume). This is a ritual of healing and blessing in which a specialized healer writes down verses from the Islamic scripture and then erases

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the ink by washing it off. This infusion of Quranic ink-in-water is drunk as medicine for any physical, mental, economic, or social ailment. Efficacy is achieved by literally embodying the word of God. The practice is deeply rooted in a knowledge of the effects that a socially sanctioned form of blessing can have on a person’s mind and body. But it also requires knowledge of the scriptural religious system. Without its foundation in Prophetic medicine and scriptural theology, this procedure would not be as popular as it is. It is surprising to note, however, that this practice has been neglected by Islamic studies scholars, who regard it as too “superstitious” (if it attracts their attention at all), as well as by anthropologists, who regard it as too “theological” and thus outside their field of competence (even though they see it practiced routinely). The aesthetic perspective binds together systems of knowledge that relate on the one hand to the body and materiality, and on the other to intellectual reasoning. Thus, we are interested in physical aspects of text usage: what layers of non-semantic (or semiotic) meaning are present? How do semantics and somatics interact and depend on each other? What do we know from placebo studies about the efficacy of the intake of a remedy compared to outward application? Many kinds of material text practices are present in a variety of scriptural traditions: how do they compare? We hope this appetizer will tempt you to continue reading.

STATE OF THE ART The Working Group “Aesthetics of Religion” and the AESToR Network A core assumption of aesthetics of religion in the German-language discourse from a very early phase declares that sensory-perception theory is indispensable for understanding cultural religious practices (Cancik and Mohr 1988; Mohn 2012). It is upheld that new theories of interpretation, philosophy of mind, and cognitive sciences are indispensable for understanding actors—if not as the only, at least as an important way of understanding cultural practices like sign production, symbol recognition, linguistic generalizations, emplacement, ritualization, and so on. This handbook is the outcome of more than ten years of work, starting in 2007 with a loose network of more than thirty scholars in the working group “Aesthetics of Religion” linked to the German Association for the Study of Religion. These scholars have regularly met for workshops, conferences, and panels at international conferences. Several publications illustrate our research collaboration (most prominently Kugele and Wilkens 2011; Traut and Wilke 2015a). This collaborative and often co-authored research culminated in a research network entitled Aesthetics of Religion (AESToR) supported from 2015 to 2018 by a grant from the German Research Council. The network’s latest book, Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept (Grieser and Johnston 2017), is highly reflective, binding together important dimensions of aesthetic formation. This trajectory, ranging from perceptive processing beyond semantics to analyses of form, style, and rules of formation, is an exciting endeavor within the study of religion, aiming to understand the sensorial, wo/man-made, and embodied side of religion. The potentials of the approach systematically relate to five fields: heuristics, history and politics, comparison, reflexivity, and connectivity (Grieser and Johnston 2017a: 20–32). Being a connective concept means addressing questions as to how the semiotic and aesthetic approaches relate to one another and how aesthetics adds to the decoding paradigm of semiotics. The authors of the essays in the volume apply themselves

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to the literary aesthetic of Expressionism, to emotion, form, and sensory effects of the Christian Bible, to religious documentary films in the US and the aesthetics of the nonfictional, and to the aesthetics of a reformed city. Others consider particular religious aesthetics like that of spiritual matter in esotericism or the fascination with blue brains in popular scientific images. Some, finally, develop conceptual categories of disfiguration, transfiguration and figuration, collective effervescence or a non-reductive materialism. In AESToR’s next joint publication, we will devote ourselves to studying narrative cultures aesthetically (Johannsen, Kirsch, and Kreinath 2019). Here, narrative cultures are established as a key concept in the study of religions, acknowledging the complex dynamics with which narratives unfold their social, ideological, and aesthetic potential, across narrative genres, boundaries of identity rhetoric, cultural domains, and social clusters. The concept of narrative cultures is useful for highlighting the vernacular storytelling settings, approaching the religious imagination from a theoretically informed perspective, and analyzing and theorizing narrative formations through aesthetic means with regard to their cognitive and social effects. The volume uses current narratological frameworks for analyzing aesthetic formations and sensations of storyworlds, in their varying historical and intercultural contexts and across narrative sources, from canonical texts to the dynamic, adaptive, multimedia, and polyphonic practice of vernacular storytelling. The essays will focus on how storytelling and narrations educate perception, how they affect the sensing of storyworlds, and the role of performative framings in experiencing the narrated world.

Further Afield Besides our own efforts, there are many research initiatives with similar aims. Recent studies of sensuous knowledge address a large number of heterogeneous topics, such as visuality and religion (Pezzoli-Olgiati and Rowland 2011; Morgan 2012), performativity and gender (Brunotte 2013), spatial religion (George and Pezzoli-Olgiati 2014), sensuous cultures (Promey 2014), comparative study of sensuous cultures (Michaels and Wulf 2014), material religion (Apostolos-Cappadona 2016), object history (Plate 2014), ritual (Bull and Mitchell 2015), cognition and ritual (Xygalatas 2014), body knowledge (Taves 1993), symbol theory (Lanwerd 2002), the persistence of ideas like supernatural agents, folk art and pop art, emotional images (King 2014), media (Morgan 2008; Meyer 2009a), dance and film (Meyer 2014), consumer goods, practices from healing to pilgrimage, or how gender regimes are aesthetically reproduced. We seek to connect with similar trends in the academic field, and have invited some renowned scholars to contribute to this handbook: Tanya Luhrmann writes about her long-standing anthropological research with Pentecostals and their mental states during prayer, Chris Klassen about body, the monstrous, and gender in the comic genre, and Shaireen Rasheed about her research in Pakistan on empowerment and engendered religious protest at the interface with political aesthetics and in line with the work of Saba Mahmood. Sally Promey, the director of the Yale University institute MAVCOR, was kind enough to attend one of our AESToR workshops and introduce us to testimonial aesthetics of billboards and signs in US public space as a form of visible religion.1 At the same workshop, Jesper Sørensen of the Centre of Religion, Cognition and Culture in Aarhus, Denmark,2 presented the cognitive study of religion as understood and elaborated by himself and his colleagues, Armin W. Geertz (2004), Uffe Schjoed, Jesper Jensen, and others.

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WHY AESTHETICS OF RELIGION IS BOTH CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE Study of Culture Aesthetics of religion as a new subfield of research within the study of religion is interlinked with other fields of cultural studies and natural sciences. Since the turn in the 1970s that marked the beginning of cultural studies (Ger. Kulturwissenschaft)—but less specifically defined than in the Birmingham school—various tendencies in academic research have been labeled “turns”—interestingly enough, most of them denoting aesthetic entities, such as the iconic, spatial, body, material, brain, or pictorial turns. We will not be able to pay respect to all achievements for the advancement of aesthetics of religion, from media studies to the anthropology of the senses (see Münster 2001; Traut and Wilke 2015b; Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 9–15 for more comprehensive overviews). Ritual studies and performance studies were among the first research fields to question the dominant paradigm of philology in the study of religions. Aesthetics of religion takes up the “material turn” and adds a specific focus: sensual or bodily ways of knowing. In the background of aesthetic theories, the Hegelian theory of art is a potent and evolutionary pattern in intercultural history, as in Aby Warburg’s reflections on similar religious, aesthetic, and economic developmental steps (Johnston, “Aesthetics,” this volume). A critical strand of aesthetic considerations at a time of mass communication and art beyond the representation of societal processes came from Theodor Adorno. Then, as a postmodern continuation of grounded theory, complex, praxeological, and particularistic social situations came to be considered central. They are conceived of as interacting with objects of material culture and environments in a way that agency is ascribed to the latter (e.g., Bruno Latour, Adele E. Clarke). As a consequence for social theory, practices and social relationships appear with an aesthetic dimension. Such debates over the evaluation of aesthetic issues are mirrored within the religion discourse. Religion has been seen, for example, as a symbol system within a semiotic model of culture, or contra-factually determined by visual religion versus book religion, iconic versus aniconic (Aktor, this volume), or as Greek versus Hebrew thinking, also characterized in aesthetic terms. Aesthetics of religion may disentangle various sensory ideologies and material practices included implicitly or explicitly in definitions of religion. To give an example: Emil Durkheim’s (1912) functional definition of religion based on an experience of collective effervescence takes recourse to a different set of emotional practices from Rudolf Otto’s more pietistic definition of the numinous as a feeling of being overwhelmed.

Study of Cognition A second essential goal is to rebuild, supplement, or inspire the cultural study of religion3 with knowledge about how to connect the cultural and cognitive aspects of world construction. Linking cultural and cognitive reasoning has a momentous prehistory. Our guiding principle is the turn in eighteenth-century philosophical aesthetics toward recognizing a “sensorial knowledge” that overcomes a long history of mind–body dichotomies by devaluating the pole of the body, the irrational, the lived, and the material-sensual side of culture and especially of religion in favor of the rational mind. The fresh start in the disciplinary history of the aesthetics of religion is very much indebted to philosophical

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aesthetics, starting with the new epistemology developed by Alexander G. Baumgarten (1714–67) which introduces “sensorial knowledge.” We may also refer to Kant’s judgments of taste and his concept of the sublime (for a more detailed appreciation see Johnston, “Aesthetics,” this volume), Frank Rosenkranz’s domain-specific aesthetics of the ugly (von Ohain, this volume), historical anthropology after the cultural turn with of its focus on bodies, senses and their histories within religion, as well as cultural semiotics and the theory of signs (Cancik and Mohr 1988). Heidegger’s being-in-the-world and his remarks on readiness-to-hand anticipate what later came to be the counter model to classical cognitivism in the anthropology of embodiment (e.g., Thomas Csordas). An interest in entangled and embodied cognition is also prefigured in philosophical phenomenology or philosophy of perception, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Bernhard Waldenfels, who take into account perception, Gestalt theory, and cognitive psychology, as far as they were developed in their time. Cognitive study of religion The most specialized work in this regard is provided by the cognitive study of religion (CSR) beginning in the 1990s. Reservations in respect of CSR concern its predominantly universal and mentalist assumptions. But, as the renowned CSR proponent Justin Barrett puts it: “CSR should reserve a special place for considering how human minds work such that humans entertain and communicate certain types of thoughts that become so widespread and stable as to become cultural” (2017: 194). Thus, culture is understood as institutionalized communication. As this approach starts with situated cognition in historically diverse situations, with their specific and diverging challenges, as cultural studies scholars we have nothing to oppose to this view. Since its beginning, CSR has extended its field of interest from evolutionary topics to action theory and social cognition (for a recent overview, see White 2017). We share with CSR an interest in (a) cognitive mechanisms and the “centrality of the role of the human mind” (White 2017: 95), (b) mind–environment interaction, and (c) cross-cultural comparison of recurrent features. Like cognitive sciences and CSR, aesthetics of religion has recourse to several methodologies and theories of the mind. Like CSR, we also seek to offer explanations and not just a collection of case studies. Our questions above concerning embodied prayer point exactly in this direction. They add analytical depth to the concept of embodiment and provide explanatory insights based on psychological, medical, and social cognitive psychological rules, as well as historical-interpretive explanations. With embodied cognition, we favor a model of mind that includes non-propositional elements. That is, cognitive mechanisms can to some extent be related to neuro-cognitive operations and recurrent features of interactions in research designs. But the argumentative force of these recurrent features lies in situated knowledge and patterns of perception that are learned, as the enactivist view spells out in more detail. Research in other disciplines Besides the specific and comparatively small field of the cognitive study of religion, the aesthetics of religion benefits from medical research, especially in medical psychology, psychosomatics, and placebo studies. We invite experts in these fields to add to our aesthetics approach and demonstrate how helpful their categories are. If scholars dedicated to the study of culture were to neglect the biological aspect of cognition, they would promote a simplified understanding of cognition. These fields have some axioms in common and diverge in others. A computational model of the mind, for instance, differs from the mind as a plastic organ. So, what is the mind? There is no single definition of cognition. We find it useful for our purposes to approach

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the mind as embodied cognition, with only slight differences from discourses on the encultured brain, situated agents, and embedded cognition (Taves and Asprem 2017). While several of the essays in this handbook make embodied cognition their main point of departure, Dirk Johannsen and Anja Kirsch adopt a different approach. They start with prediction theory from a computational model of the mind, and make this fruitful for explaining the crucial functioning of narratological gaps that are filled by firing off a stream of predictions through our cognition. This can explain the intensity and “realness” of our imagination predicting future actions following from a range of shifting interpretations of a complex situation still unfolding in front of us. To sum up, when we talk of cognition, we do not think primarily of the brain or neurological activity. Rather, cognition is distributed and performed throughout the entire body, and is a result of the entangled environment-interaction of agents. Cognition is a psycho-physiological dimension of the central nervous system (the brain) and equally of metabolism, inner organ states, and enervating and calming nervous systems (parasympathetic and autonomic nervous systems) (Koch, this volume).

WHAT READERS MAY EXPECT When Jonathan Z. Smith was editing the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, he engaged in a discussion of taxonomies of religion, and the specifics of a handbook as compared to an encyclopedia or a dictionary. He came to the conclusion that a handbook “is arranged by some stated principle of order” (1996: 390). It is this order that has been the subject of extensive discussions in our working group and research network AESToR. A handbook is not an encyclopedic project that needs to give a complete account of the field, nor is it an open-read-and-apply textbook for the classroom. This makes it easier to explain the order we finally decided to choose following current key features of the field of research and the methodological approach. We are convinced that we are witnessing the emergence of a new theoretical approach to the cultural study of religion and we will start by making a clear statement to this effect (Part I). We follow this up with Part II, dedicated to analytical categories with which we further profile the aesthetic perspective. Third, we all agree on the foundational importance of power and discourse analysis, and cannot close our eyes and ears to strategies, manipulation, and governance; in Part III, these will be uncovered in their aesthetic realization. In Part IV, the aesthetic categories introduced will be illustrated by those of us who are historians of religion with philological, regional, and comparative competences, describing aesthetic dynamics, interrelations, and rules of cultural production in specific aestheticscapes. In Section I, we show that in our understanding the Western tradition of aesthetics is not just about (fine) art, diverse religious aesthetics (as in Brown 2014), aestheticization, and politicization of aesthetics (fine arts as high culture), but about the theory of sensorial knowledge (Johnston, “Aesthetics,” “Art”). As such it engages in many more fields, and pushes to the front new questions, foremost in epistemology, about the aesthetic subject and today’s understanding of the world as being culturally dependent on perception and interaction with the environment (Koch, Mohr). In view of findings in recent research on the theory of mind, for instance, there cannot be a chapter on each of the “five senses,” as this would be to ignore the intermodality of perception, and to neglect sensorial loops of utmost significance, like pain, sexual stimulus, temperature, humidity, and other perceptive systems.

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A further consequence is that studies in embodied cognition in religious contexts have provided new ways of thinking about aesthetic knowing. This is one reason, besides advances in the theory of knowledge and science, why we elaborate an aesthetics of knowledge (Borrelli and Grieser). The cultural and historical shaping of human perception and knowledge systems is an exciting new topic. Also, the history of science is linked to the history of religions, especially in Europe and the US. Thus, certain aspects of Catholic and Protestant theology have shaped secular academic theory making. The validation of knowledge, even in the natural sciences, has aesthetic qualities, for instance symmetry, the plausibility of certain icons, or fascination with certain topics. Severe challenges arise for the aesthetics of religion approach when it comes to its methodology (Kreinath). The methods used range from specific tools for textual analysis, or cross-cultural comparisons, to using one’s own perceptual body as an instrument of investigation. In a chapter on teaching aesthetics of religion (Laack and Tillessen), we demonstrate how the diverse range of methods can be appropriated in specific projects changing the perception of the students on their topics. We decided to include a discussion of analytical categories to highlight interfaces with debates in other disciplinary fields. Our chapter here offers a list that includes mental states (imagination, Traut and Wahl; absorption, Luhrmann), and aesthetic forms that are at the same time formations in the history of science and an aesthetics of knowledge (aniconicity, Aktor; museality, Kugele; ritual, Sørensen; sonality, Wilke). The section on aesthetic strategies lays open the agencies of sensation. It is a duty of responsible scholarship to address power relations, referring here to aesthetic forces that reign in groups and institutions. Even if the social power relations are often only implicit, they may exert a powerful regime as explicit aesthetics (e.g., fasting, sexual behavior). Here, we may think of gender performativity of veiled, weapon-bearing women in Pakistan (Rasheed), visualization of (hero) bodies in comics (Klassen), film techniques (Hermann and Lokshina), or the manipulation of bodies and embodied mental states (Mohr). Aestheticscapes is the name we give to our panorama of aesthetic-sensory forms and elaborated codes. Continuing the language game of scapes (which started with Appadurai’s ethnoscapes and later produced mediascapes or soundscapes), we profit from this metaphor to denote the complex connectivity of sensorial layers which have relevance for further comparative studies beyond the frontiers of a single religion’s institutions. The aestheticscapes presented here clearly reveal specific historical constellations which can then be taken up by you, our esteemed reader, and used to re-think similar situations in other contexts. You will be fascinated to read about corpses in Buddhist meditation manuals (Pabst von Ohain), or communicating with believers through fragrance and stink in Chinese sources of the fifteenth century (Guggenmos), the theological debates implicit in musical harmonies (Yelle), atheist appropriations of Hindu rhetoric forms (Binder), or the sheer reality of spirits and ghosts throughout the world (Bräunlein). In our case studies, analytical categories and sensory strategies are always considered in delineating aestheticscapes. Textuality is discussed with a view to its sounding of ritual texts (Wilke), techniques of narration (Johannsen and Kirsch), literacy ideologies between medicine and hermeneutics (Wilkens), and pictorial semiotics in Aztec divination manuals (Laack). Images can be used in ritual practice (Luchesi), their iconic or aniconic form, or their graphic-scriptural form, can be reflected against a Western notion of what an image should be (Aktor, Laack), or image production and reception can be discussed as sites of critical enquiry and engagement with embodied knowledge (Johnston, “Art”).

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IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION: AESTHETICS WILL CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE Sometimes people are still surprised that religion has a material basis, and, more importantly, is processed through the senses. This is a basic fact that has to be addressed. How does aesthetics help us to better understand religion? And how does it change our perspective? With our focus on aesthetic strategies, our intention is to create an awareness of strategies of perception (Ger. Wahrnehmung) and sensation (Ger. Empfindung), while at the same time offering the necessary tool kit to unfold them in detail. Modalities of perception and sensation include social components. Thus, we can also contribute to social theory. Research results deriving from the aesthetics of religion approach contribute to debates on sensorial knowledge, taste judgment, or matter and form; we can gain historical insights into the relations between religious formations and secular aesthetics; or we can develop new kinds of interreligious comparison. Religious traditions have developed an impressive variety of theories on sensual perception, the materiality of the world and the functioning of the human body. Religious traditions throughout history have appealed to different senses in their rituals. Their myths make use of a huge array of different perceptional metaphors. The comparative aspect of descriptive research in this area is of paramount importance. Exploring and describing different sensoriums underscores the dynamic nature of culturally ordered perceptions. The comparative approach demonstrates the methodological necessity of developing abstract categories of analysis. As we have hopefully succeeded in showing, religion is a category of aesthetic knowledge, and a manner of cultivating perception. Thus, aesthetics of religion contributes to the analysis of religion and the self-reflexivity of scientific knowledge production. Compiling a handbook like this requires the help of many people. We have greatly profited from discussions over the years with our colleagues at international conferences, and in particular with Sally Promey, Emily Floyd, and Birgit Meyer who also kindly agreed to write the Foreword to this handbook, Ann Taves, Laura Feldt, Fred Cummins, Sebastian Schüler, Ulrike Brunotte, and Mareike Smolka. Several people have helped with editing the manuscript. Our warmest thanks go to Meg Bernstein, Ruth Schubert, and Maxime Klausing for all those hours spent on this book! Lalle Pursglove and Lucy Carroll from Bloomsbury acknowledged the potential of our proposal and were very supportive throughout the process. The conferences from which this handbook arose were generously supported by the German Research Council (DFG). Copy editing was also supported by a grant from the LMU Mentoring Program for Excellent Young Women Researchers.

RECOMMENDED READING Borrelli, Arianna and Alexandra Grieser (2017), “Recent Research on the Aesthetics of Knowledge in Science and in Religion,” Approaching Religion, 7 (2), special issue: The “Beauty Fallacy”: Religion, Science and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, guest edited by Arianna Borrelli and Alexandra Grieser: 4–21. An in-depth summary showing how aesthetic forms, and specifically religious aesthetic forms, render scientific knowledge plausible. Grieser, Alexandra K. and Jay Johnston (2017b), “What is an Aesthetics of Religion? From the Senses to Meaning—and Back Again,” in Alexandra K. Grieser and Jay Johnston (eds.), Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, 1–49, Berlin: De Gruyter. Provides the most recent overview of the history of aesthetics as relevant to the study of religion and details analytical categories and areas of relevance of the aesthetic approach.

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PART I

Approach

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CHAPTER TWO

A Historiography of Aesthetics in a Western Context JAY JOHNSTON

INTRODUCTION The aim of this chapter is to précis the diverse uses and interpretations of the term aesthetics within Western discursive contexts. Clearly any such attempt at a historiography for the term aesthetics is necessarily reductive and even more so when it forms a single chapter contribution to a handbook. Nonetheless, this account is designed to provide a foundation that subsequent chapters develop and challenge. It summarizes the “aesthetics” out of which aesthetics of religion has grown. In a brusque and entirely reductive generalization, the travels of the term “aesthetics” over the past few hundred years can be viewed as moving from enduring or “static” characteristics to those of flux: from the focus on proposed universal qualities to that of the quality/mode/affect of subject–object engagement. Yet, such a linear narrative masks the enduring appeal and utilization of particular aesthetic qualities—beauty, for example— in contemporary aesthetic examinations and serves to emphasize that the term aesthetics continues to be utilized in myriad ways. At the heart of this usage are relation, sensation, and perception—the sensation and perception of qualities internal to an object or the relation between subject–object–world. As such, this discussion includes examples of approaches examining aesthetic “qualities” and those that focus on the conditions of intersubjective aesthetic exchange. The chapter is divided into discrete sections aligned with specific theories or bodies of knowledge; however, in many cases the contents of each slip across these topic boundaries. Therefore, the divisions are used for heuristic purposes only: no hard and fixed borders are proposed as necessarily existing between the topics. Indeed, in many cases their development may be considered emergent from interaction with one another. The discussion considers aesthetics as deployed in a number of disciplines and research fields, especially philosophy and art history (the latter is also a feature of Chapter 17 “Art,” Johnston, this volume) but also includes anthropology, cognitive studies, and environmental humanities. In all cases particular attention is (unsurprisingly) paid to the term’s application in religious/spiritual discourses and theories.

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PHILOSOPHICAL AESTHETICS Philosophical denotation and debates on aesthetics is quite simply an enormous field that would burst the bounds of a many-volume study. The discussion, for the purposes of this chapter, will be restricted to more recent developments; or those which can be understood to have substantially informed aesthetics of religion approaches. The term “aesthetics” comes from the ancient Greek, aisthesis, and denotes “the perception of the external world by the senses” (OED ). The broadest view of its meaning and use pertains to the investigation and understanding of the relations between subject and object and the type of knowledge predicated upon, and generated by, those encounters. Numerous studies of the history of the term and its various philosophical interpretations and applications exist. For specific discussion of its philosophical heritage, including key figures such as Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762), Edmund Burke (1729– 1797), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and its development and usage in the academic study of religion, see Grieser (2015b). In modern philosophical discourse, aesthetics is usually understood to relate to concepts of beauty or of art as a specific category of production. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for “aesthetics” commences “[t]he philosophy of the beautiful or of art.” This emphasis on the beautiful reflects the continued prevalence of Alexander Baumgarten’s conceptualization and its development in Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) discourses, particularly the linking of the apprehension of the beautiful to the development of an attitude of disinterest: Everyone must allow that a judgement on the beautiful which is tinged with the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure judgement of taste. One must not be in the least prepossessed in favour of the real existence of the thing, but must preserve complete indifference in this respect, in order to play the part of a judge in matters of taste. —Kant [1790] 1982: §2; 43 Such a disembodied and disinterested perception was accorded the capacity to perceive the “pure, universal aesthetic validity” of the object under analysis (Johnston 2008: 126). As I have detailed elsewhere, this concept of the aesthetic considers it as internal to the object of contemplation and distinct from other realms of life: the experience of which should be eschewed in order to correctly undertake “judgements of taste” (ibid.). Such judgments are conceptualized as disembodied and as the purview of the “cultivated” individual, one who is suitably disciplined to take up the attitude of disinterested perception (such conceptualizations are also founded on—now critiqued—gender, race, and class distinctions). Kant postulated a certain faculty—reflective judgment—as core to this process; the process of evaluating the Imagination’s meeting with faculties of Understanding (beautiful) or Reason1 (sublime) as evoked by aesthetic engagement. Ideally devoid of subjective desire, such experiences were designated by Kant to evoke particular feelings (when correctly apprehended). In the case of the beautiful it “is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination” ([1790] 1982: §23; 91). On the other hand, a sublime aesthetic experience evoked a “negative pleasure” because it engendered relations of disharmony between Imagination and Reason, making the subject aware of their perceptual limits resulting in feelings of “admiration or respect” (([1790] 1982: §23; 91)—experiences understood as tied to uncomfortable experiences of subjective humility.

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Although (as indicated in the definitions given above) contemporary definitions of aesthetics emphasize beauty (if not the category of the beautiful per se), the “sublime” equally remains dominant in the characterization of aesthetic experience. Indeed, as David B. Johnson argues, the philosophical sublime was revivified by a number of “postmodern” philosophers in the late twentieth century, especially Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998). During this time, Johnson contends, the term “underwent a renaissance,” being used extensively to signify the inability of an individual’s cognitive capacity to represent objects understood to be inherently “unpresentable,” that is, alterity (2012: 118). The sublime in this usage continued to signal a limit to human perceptive schemas and often carried an implicit—if not always acknowledged—sense of meeting a metaphysical/ontological boundary. Kant’s aesthetic dyad—beautiful or sublime—bequeathed a lasting dualistic framework that accorded, reinforced, and developed along with other dualisms ensconced at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition, including those implicitly ascribing dimorphic concepts of gender to types of knowledge (Koch, Chapter 3, this volume; Lloyd 1993), aesthetic experience, and consciousness/materiality binaries. Numerous contemporary scholars have worked to trouble this dualism and its (often) unconscious biases (see, for example, Klinger 1997; Pillow 2000) as well as to expand aesthetic experience well beyond this framework. Aesthetics of religion approaches are inclusive of this agenda.

THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS AND THEOAESTHETICS (ROMANTIC) As Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen writes (following Richard Viladesau), theological aesthetics concerns itself with “God and issues in theology in the light of and perceived through sense knowledge (sensation, feeling imagination), through beauty and the arts” (2005: 1). This is inclusive of arguments for the divine’s relation to core concepts—proposed as universal—like beauty, form, goodness, and truth, as well as to artistic production more generally. In regard to artistic production, this encompasses both artist motivations, and evaluation of artistic forms as engendering or expressing the perception of the divine through individual experience. It should be noted that although the terminology “theological aesthetics” carries an often unacknowledged focus on Christian theological debates specifically, the contemporary usage has been expanded to consciously include a greater variety of religious diversity (including pan- and non-theistic traditions). These debates, from the ancient world to contemporary times, also consider the role of the image (two-dimensional or three-dimensional) in belief and practice: including the well-known charges of iconoclasm and idolatry. These are debates focused on the appropriateness or not of the intention to render the divine—or a relationship with the divine—in material/visual form. In such cases arguments and interpretation are built upon the practice’s relation to theological discourse or religious prescription: theoaesthetics. Aesthetics in this context is an aspect of experience and creative production tied to specific qualities or practices: the investigations consider or propose the degree to which aesthetics reveal or conceal, support or disrupt knowledge or experience of the divine. For example, in regard to the category of beauty, Viladesau summarizes: A primary area of concern for theological aesthetics has been the question of the relationship of God to beauty. In what way is God beautiful or sublime? Does earthly

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beauty—and the pleasures it affords—lead toward God, or is it an obstacle to spiritual progress? —Viladesau 2014: 32 Therefore, the aesthetic relation considered is between the conceptual category and the divine, as well as between the divine and the material formation and the human and the material formation. Boundaries are drawn and judgments made about what is, and what is not deemed appropriate within any given theological framework. Material formations of divine aesthetic qualities encompass not only visual arts, but also those of architecture, music, performance, and film. These are artistic forms that may be held as sacred within the belief framework of particular religious traditions as well as those that are interpreted as exhibiting specific qualities of the sacred. They may be the focus of veneration or devotional practices, indeed the process of their creation (and consumption) can also be considered an act of devotion. Theological aesthetics can also be understood to encompass “theoaesthetics”: an interrelation of religion with sensation developed in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Jena Group (Taylor 1992: 21). As Marc C. Taylor notes, this is not any, generic sense experience, but rather that “religion . . . involves a unique intuition in which the ‘original’ unity of subjectivity and objectivity is apprehended, and further, for Schleiermacher the divine was a particular form of ‘religious imagination’” (1992: 21–2). This tight interrelation between sensation and divinity became a core feature of Romanticism as generally conceived and its propositions have dominated (even in a secular context) the belief that there is some kind of implicit relation between creativity and spirituality. To Romanticism is attributed “canonized” features of subjective experience, creativity, and emotion, and it is these that underlie the tight interweaving of creativity, spirituality (especially mystical experience), and nature, i.e., artistic practices understood to be the result of unmediated, direct spiritual contact, especially of a mystical kind (viz. collapsing of subject–object difference). In contradistinction, Taylor proposes an A/theoaesthetic in which the agenda to unify the subjective and objective (the self and divine) that characterized Romantic relations is eschewed for experience understood to allow difference—alterity—to remain in place (1992). A claim for the ethical role of the incommensurate which also features in Levinasian, post-structuralist, and feminist philosophy.

ART HISTORICAL APPROACHES: ICONOGRAPHY AND ICONOLOGY Iconography and iconology denote specific art historical methods of analysis that focus on the interpretative meaning of signs and symbols (D’Alleva 2005). It embraces themes of metaphor and semiotic systemic analysis. As such it can be distinguished as providing a variety of hermeneutical approaches to reading artistic practice. Developing out of the work of Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), it advocates for a deeply contextualized historical interpretation of artwork. The practices involve, for example, the tracing of particular motifs within, and across, different genres of artwork. As Kurt Foster notes in relation to Warburg, this approach rejects the perception of any inherent internal aesthetic relation as revealing the meaning of the artwork. However, at the same time he notes that for Warburg this mode of analysis did enable the works to carry a type of ontological “force”:

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[Warburg] was prepared to treat the work of art as something historically transmitted, and often discontinuous and lacking in unity—thus abandoning the aesthetic ideal of a harmoniously self-contained, static, whole—and, on the other hand, he believed that in the artistic repertory of gestures and figures he could not only observe the mechanics of tradition but encounter the forces of human destiny itself. —1999: 38 As such, particular motifs were viewed as slices of cultural memory imbued with the beliefs and attitudes of the culture and time in which they were created, now drawn into another manifestation. Figuring out, tracing, the lines of these motifs, and their refigurations across time, was the work of the art historian: “Works of art were therefore fraught not only with untapped treasures of memory but also with misunderstandings and riddles” (Foster 1999: 36). Here is an interpretative aesthetic that both closely examined figuration and its reproduction but also argued that an immaterial, conceptual—even spiritual—force be carried in its rendering. Not only this, but the multiplicitous relations between the elements were also to hold especial significance.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND NON-WESTERN AESTHETICS As evident in Warburg’s own exploration of Hopi culture, anthropological approaches have had a distinct impact upon aesthetic discourses, notably the work of Alfred Gell and his now infamous Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1998) that delineated objects as social agents with, for example, the capacity for enchantment. His anthropological theory of art was defined as: “social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency” (Gell 1998: 7). He therefore claimed: Thus, from the point of view of the anthropology of art, an idol in a temple believed to be the body of the divinity, and a spirit-medium, who likewise provides the divinity with a temporary body, are treated as theoretically on par, despite the fact that the former is an artefact and the latter is a human being. —Gell 1998: 7 The emphasis of analysis is placed on capacity for agency and affect rather than issues of aesthetic properties manifested in visual representation and their apprehension. David Freedberg’s The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (1989) examined the reception of images specifically; or more accurately “the relations between images and people in history” (1989: xix), broadening the remit of analysis beyond the traditional focus of art history to examine response from a cross-cultural perspective. This was inclusive of cultural perspectives that attributed agency or “power” (divine or non-human) to objects. As Freedberg’s opening paragraph contends: “People are sexually aroused by pictures and sculptures; they mutilate them, and go on journeys to them” (1992: 1). These are sensorial relations of an intense, subjective kind far removed from the reasoned perception of Kant. They require an expanded concept of aesthetics—one embraced by aesthetics of religion approaches—that returns to considering how the sensation is conceptualized, cultivated, deployed, and reproduced, and the historical conditions of such. Both Gell’s and Freedberg’s work draw attention to the diversity of scopic regimes available (that is, how an individual perceives is not universal, but culturally

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conditioned) and the socioculturally determined boundaries that dictate normative forms of consumption and relation. These issues also feature in the Western approach and incorporation of non-Western aesthetic traditions. In a well-known essay, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” Norman Bryson adopted the Buddhist concept of ´su ¯ny¯ata (most commonly rendered as “emptiness”) as an interpretative framework for understanding subject–object relations as figured in visual art practice (1986). Bryson adopts ´su ¯ny¯ata for its potential to de-center the Western subject and their attendant vision. The examples he explores are those of the Ch’an style of flung-ink painting: As the ink is cast, it flies out of the enclosure or tunnel of the frame, and opens the image on to the field of material transformations that constitute the universal surround. . . . What breaks into the image is the rest of the universe, everything outside the frame. —1986: 103 For Bryson, ´su ¯ny¯ata is an active “emptiness” presenced by the purportedly random flungink gesture, which he further interprets as disturbing the function of the frame in delimiting the interior and exterior of the artwork. The correctness—or not—of his interpretations of ´su ¯ny¯ata or the aesthetic parameters of Ch’an flung-ink painting, while important, are secondary in this context. It aims to draw attention to the way in which aesthetic and cosmological categories have been utilized by theorists to critique both dominant Western aesthetic categories and the centrality of vision—and only certain styles of vision—in Western philosophical discourses.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS The development of philosophical phenomenology in the twentieth century had a marked effect on the conceptualization of aesthetics, and in particular on the proposition of radical forms of intersubjectivity, that destabilized subject–object boundaries, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1908–1961) concept of “intercorporeality.” While there are many concepts of intersubjectivity (Crossley 1996), “intercorporeality” can be taken as a radical form of intersubjectivity: the “lived body” is understood as inherently (and ontologically) interrelated with the world via the activity of perception. This phenomenological heritage can be gleaned in the work of many subsequent feminist and post-structural philosophers, for example that of Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze that I have discussed elsewhere (Johnston 2008). In general, a feature of these approaches is the emphasis on sensation, duration, dynamism, forces, and flows. As constitutional elements these “qualities” radically interrelate subject and object and, necessarily, comprise their relation. An aesthetic engagement therefore becomes one of actively perceiving the dynamics of proposed ontological interrelationships. This radical form of interrelationship has recently featured in the development of environmental aesthetics, particularly ecological views that emphasize the interdependence of environments and diverse life forms. However, as Emily Brady notes, the environment was a feature of eighteenth-century conceptualizations of the sublime. Indeed, she claims that until recently the “natural sublime” had been neglected because this heritage necessarily evoked “issues of a transcendental and metaphysical sort”, laying the blame

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firmly at the feet of Kant and Romantic theory/literature and its association with “religious and mystical experiences” (2012: 175). Here is an enduring legacy of the theoaesthetic relations outlined above (in the section “Philosophical Aesthetics”). Brady’s attendant critique of the eighteenth-century sublime also includes its anthropocentrism. In her perspective, however, the “natural sublime” remains of contemporary utility for its capacity to render more negative experiences positive (2012: 182). That is, while it is not an equivalent to “terrible beauty” or modernist forms of anti-aesthetic, it marks “threatening or overwhelming natural qualities” on their own terms (2012: 182). For Brady, that which exceeds perception is the very alterity—autonomy—of the natural world, and therefore it has both an aesthetic and ethical value. Preceding Brady’s analysis by twenty years, Suzi Gablik (1992) argued for aesthetic models founded in environmental and social justice frameworks that were inclusive of spiritual agendas (or experiences). This call for new aesthetic models was part of a broader cultural “New Age” agenda of re-enchantment. She writes that “reconstructivists [a trajectory of postmodern theory] are trying to make the transition from Eurocentric patriarchal thinking and ‘dominator’ model of culture towards an aesthetics of interconnectedness, social responsibility and ecological attunement” (1992: 22). As examples of such she discusses Lyn Hull’s “hydroglyphics,” symbols that were etched onto rock surfaces that could contain a water supply for use by desert animals, and also her “Raptor Roosts” sculptures designed as perches for raptors, aiming to reduce their electrocution on powerlines. These works are described as a “trans-species action,” or as “part of an on-going project of designing ‘art-for-animals’, works that will exist in the landscape in a beneficial way by making small improvements to the habitats of wildlife” (1992: 88–9). Here aesthetics is conceived of as a form of lived relations and interventions in the environment to support the care and wellbeing of its animal inhabitants. The relation—activation—of the work is constituted by these animal-others and therefore the aesthetics are—like the philosophical work previously noted—an aesthetics of engagement: mutually constituted.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES The turn to matter, affect, sensation, emotion, and aesthetics has featured strongly in humanities discourses in general over the past twenty years. However, developments in disciplines like Cultural Studies have often taken some time to filter into the field of Religious Studies, a possible exception being the focus on aesthetics which has been at the core of the German working group “Aesthetics of Religion” (or AESToR, from which this volume has developed) for over a decade. Nonetheless, rethinking materiality (and the attendant issues of ontology and ethics), affect, and aesthetics now feature in the study of religion. This is evidenced by the swathe of publications on these topics appearing in the last five years alone. Although various approaches may appear as distinct, such as “material religion” or “sensational religion,” there is considerable crossover and interrelationship of their agendas. In S. Brent Plate’s Key Terms in Material Religion (2015), Inken Prohl provides the entry on “Aesthetics” in which the approach to aesthetics of religion developed in “German-speaking regions” is positioned as an equivalent to “material” and “sensational” religion: Scholars have begun discussing “material religion” as a potent theoretical approach by using the German term, “Religionsästhetik, or “aesthetics of religion”. Rather than

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using the term aesthetics, in the English-speaking world, scholars who study the materialities of religion tend to talk about “religious sensations” (Brigit Meyer 2008) or “sensational religion” (Promey 2014) when referring to sensuous perception and knowledge of the world. —Prohl 2015: 11 The boundaries that Prohl draws between “English” and “German-speaking” worlds have been substantially more porous than this description may convey and, further, an aesthetics of religion approach (as this volume will hopefully demonstrate) encompasses a greater remit than just the study of “sensuous perception and knowledge of the world.” A more nuanced framework for considering the relation between these “labeled” approaches—their development being unsurprising given that disciplinary politics valorize the ability to claim the creation of conceptual territory and/or a position within it—is to view each as having porous boundaries (and thus defy disciplinary boundaryriding activities) while acknowledging their close conceptual agendas and interrelation (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 1).

Material and Sensational Religion S. Brent Plate defines a material religion approach as referring to: (1) an investigation of the interactions between human bodies and physical objects, both natural and human-made; (2) with much of the interaction taking place through sense perception; (3) in special and specified spaces and times; (4) in order to orient and sometimes disorient, communities and individuals, (5) toward the formal strictures and structures of religious traditions. —2015: 4 This focus has led to the publication of much insightful scholarship. However, while there was much discussion of “matter” and “material” there was very little debate about the definition of such. Indeed, as Plate notes, the approach is concerned with “physical bodies” and “physical objects.” The status of an empirical concept of matter was foundational and largely left unquestioned. Therefore, initially material religion (cf. the journal of same name) eschewed the more radical approach taken by New Materialism, which asked simultaneously ontological and ethical questions of matter, its agency and (inter)relations (e.g., Bennett 2010). These enquiries were also profoundly intertwined with issues of aesthetic exchange—even if that exchange took place outside of perception by the five senses. However, more recent religious studies endeavors have taken up New Materialist approaches (e.g., Ingman et al. 2016). Indeed, chapters in this volume that consider the aesthetics of the incorporeal, for example, engage with part of the same territory. The edited volume Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice (Promey 2014) includes studies by authors who engage with immaterial and imperceptible phenomena. It was the outcome of a collaborative project and is considered part of a broader field of sensory studies: a feature of the cultural studies landscape for well over a decade (at least). This broader, interdisciplinary field has often featured examinations of religious phenomena, for example Constance Classen’s The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (1998). This work examines the creation and “operation” of “sensory paradigms” and the attendant work of the “aesthetic imaginary” (1998: 2): an imaginary premised upon the “interplay” of the five senses (as conceived in

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Western thought). Topics explored included “The Breath of God” and “The Sensory Cosmologies of St. Hildegard, Boehme, and Fourier.” Eleven years later sensorial research ventured further to explore the “sixth” sense. The Sixth Sense Reader (ed. Howes 2009) discussed staple religious studies topics—mysticism, New Age healing, divinity, clairvoyance, etc.—from an interdisciplinary framework, including biology, with a focus on the scientific and spiritual construction of this (hotly debated) sense. Therefore, the cultural history of the senses in Western tradition, their construction and perception, is a well-developed area of scholarship that is founded upon an expanded concept of aesthetics, one that emphasizes the socio-cultural specificity of what counts as a valid sense or sense phenomena as well as the interrelationship of such with modes of being in the world.

Affect and Emotion Affect theory is another area of Cultural Studies which has more recently impacted upon the discipline of Studies in Religion. Its focus is the study of “affects”, which are usually broadly construed as the ontological “forces” of the Deleuzian type or, following the work of Silvan Tomkins, as a psychological concept denoting the experience of emotion (see, for example, Sedgwick 2003). In both cases affect is considered a non-linguistic phenomenon. Donovan O. Schaefer’s Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution and Power (2015) remains one of the most significant engagements between the academic study of religion and affect theory. Schaefer’s work also contributes to recent investigations of religion and emotion, such as John Corrigan’s Feeling Religion (2017), in which affect is rendered as the “prediscursive materiality of bodies” (2017: 9). Indeed, Corrigan notes that the way in which religion and emotion is studied changes to reflect developments in research on the human body, especially its physical and cognitive aspects. He observes different researchers heading different types of data or research, with biological approaches, for example, paying close attention to “biochemistry and neurons, adaptation and evolution” while “radical constructionists” push against assumptions that emotions are “natural” and “irreducible” and engage instead in critical investigation into the cultural modes of emotion performativity (2017: 7). Despite the various (and at times almost oppositional) approaches to emotion, their centrality in religious phenomena—from boredom to ecstasy—remains a crucial area of study. This is not simply an issue of “felt” or ritually generated emotional contagion, but, as Corrigan contends, develops new perceptions of familiar territory: “metaphysics looks different, and so do ethics, ritual, religious music and poetry, the environment, popular culture and the secular” (2017: 19). These are emotions that are structured and constructed by various aesthetic agendas (conscious and unconscious).

Aesthetics of Religion Following this swift jaunt over a range of ideas and analyses’ (see also Grieser and Johnston 2017b), the final point to make is that aesthetics of religion is distinct from— although may encompass aspects of—religious aesthetics. Broadly, its concern is analyzing—utilizing and developing different approaches—the way in which religion constructs, stimulates, disciplines, inhibits, etc. the senses. As the following chapters in this volume will exemplify, aesthetics of religion is not principally concerned with universal qualities or in delimiting aesthetics as pertaining

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only to sensorial relations with a designated “art” object. Rather, it understands the examination of aesthetic relations, imperatives, and agendas as generating theories that pertain to the “sensory and bodily aspects of recognition” and perception (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 2). As such, it is not a field of study but an approach of equal value for the study of yoga classes and medical scans as it is for artwork, sacred music, or ritual performance. As the following chapters exemplify—and following the conceptual schema previously presented (Grieser and Johnston 2017b)—it explores issues of heuristics, history and politics, comparison, reflexivity, and the connectivity between different academic disciplines. That is, both the experience of the senses and the perceptive and conceptual modes through which they are or can be known.

RECOMMENDED READING Grieser, Alexandra (2015), “Aesthetics,” in Kocku von Stuckrad and Robert Segal (eds.), Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, vol. 1, 14–23, Brill: Leiden. An overview of “aesthetics” pertaining to the academic field of religious studies. Grieser, Alexandra and Jay Johnston (2017), “What Is an Aesthetics of Religion? From the Senses to Meaning—and Back Again,” in Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston (eds.), Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, 1–50, Berlin: De Gruyter. An introduction to the main features and categorical groups in an aesthetics of religion approach. Promey, Sally M., ed. (2014), Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, New Haven: Yale University Press. An associated approach developed from sensory studies and pertaining particularly to religious studies.

CHAPTER THREE

Epistemology ANNE KOCH

INTRODUCTION: UNDERTAKING EPISTEMOLOGY AS AESTHETICS Epistemology’s significance arises from the fact that it declares what passes for knowledge within a specific theory, the limits of knowledge, justified belief, and acceptable ways of reasoning. Epistemology describes and indicates, in this sense, the production of knowledge in contingent historical situations or epochs. Various epistemologies, such as religious, feminist, Marxist, idealist, etc., are dependent on which principle is seen to be foremost for world building. Aesthetic principles and, above all, the aesthetic subject constitute the referential and binding frame for this aesthetic epistemology. The aesthetic subject relies on embodied and situated cognition—with cognition in its broad meaning of information processing within the central and peripheral nervous systems and therewith emotion, motivation, volition, ideas, and so forth. From there, the aesthetic subject is further sketched as situated cognition to address its cultural embeddedness and regular actions by which cultural institutions are grounded and more permanent forms of organizational fields emerge that still carry the trace of their aesthetic shaping during this making. Therefore, the approach developed here balances on a thin line between highly specialized research in cognitive sciences, psychology, and medicine, on the one hand, and cultural studies interests, on the other hand. This shaping of aesthetic cultural forms is not the outcome of pure taste and subjective prejudice but follows cognitive-aesthetic principles about which we learned a lot only recently from advanced theories of the mind. Aesthetic principles provide organizing rules—if not the only rules—for understanding vast cultural performances of all kinds. For this we will have to consider, for instance, the aesthetic organizing principle that people avoid sensorial monotony and search for variation instead. Nevertheless, this needs to be balanced with repetitive low-sensory activities, as has been shown by Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley with regard to rituals (2002). Otherwise, the acceleration of sensual pageantry may lead into the breakdown of the group’s performance over time. So, the interpretation of some situations will have to take into account this aesthetic reasoning pattern instead of, or as supplementary to, other explications (historical, circumstantial, power-driven, social, theological) of why the action sequences look the way they do. Another example is the aesthetic organizing principle of exaggeration (Mohr, Chapter 12, this volume). This is a recurrent—surely culturally adapted—feature of aesthetic formation, like in the colossal, the hieratic (Mohr 2017), or in sensory pageantry that exaggerates either size, obtaining space, self-segregation or intensity, and multi-modality of sensescapes. These are some of those aesthetic organizing principles that are regularly disregarded or 23

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underestimated in their significance for knowledge generation. It is the aim of this chapter to outline how they can and need to be integrated in the cultural study of religion.

Epistemology Reconsidered The terms and the endeavors of epistemology—the same as of aesthetics (Johnston, Chapter 17, this volume)—stem from ancient Greek philosophy and are located in a Western context. From a postcolonial—Western as much as transnational—perspective, there have been many changes relative to the purview of epistemology. Whereas once epistemology was considered only as Western—often only a Cartesian-dualistic knowledge system or a rational-masculine knowledge, set against indigenous epistemologies—it is now acknowledged to result from political practices. Scholarly language differences also play a crucial role: when epistemology translates to “a system of knowledge” it becomes (at least for German ears) too fixed to a specific meaning. This translation constricts the wider cognition (Greek: episteme; Ger.: Erkenntnis) to knowledge and system. Being a system implies that it could be substituted more or less easily through other systems and fixes the performance of cognizing something (Ger.: erkennen) to a stable inventory of knowledge. This said, we need to acknowledge that the proscribed Westernized epistemology is the framework for perceiving or adapting further epistemologies—either subsequently, complementary, or in altering the first. When strengthening the perspective of aesthetics and cognitive studies for “Westernized” epistemology, we first of all want to strike a blow to contemporary debated and differentiated theories of mind. One option within these advanced theories of mind rests upon an extended concept of cognition, and, through this, upon an alternative epistemology, “alternative” at least in regard to the Cartesian view. With this option of embodied, situated, and embedded cognition (see below) we have available an epistemology that regionalizes Europe. Therefore, we should not abandon too quickly the prevailing understanding of embodied cognition in favor of indigenous epistemologies, post-dominance approaches, and exoticism. This is because embodied cognition already connects the epistemological interests of cognitive and culture studies. This article is interested in an epistemology that helps us to understand both human behavior and cultural institutions. To achieve this aim, we may not need a general theory of reality or of the universal self but rather a historical-systematic reconstruction, as in Alexandra Grieser’s (2015b) overview of aesthetics of religion. She distinguishes seven respective topics that intersect, including religion and somatophobia in the history of the senses; particular religious aesthetics, like asceticism, festivities, or the significance of the color gold; aesthetics in religious studies; aesthetics in knowledge production; religious art; and social aesthetics and political aesthetics in religion. A corresponding epistemology would already have to cover more epistemological issues than can be discussed here, like a theory of discursive stereotyping, aesthetic formalizations across different modes of creation—such as fine arts and media—and transformative aesthetics in society. Also, the vast array of cognitive studies and philosophical theories of mind adapted to the study of religion allows for several theoretical executions, for instance the re-elaboration of narratology based in cognitive linguistics (Johannsen and Kirsch, Chapter 13, this volume), the “materialist shift” of ecological perception theory (Vasquez 2011), or evolutionary theory conflated with power analytical affect theory (Schaefer 2015). When we talk here of epistemology for aesthetics of religion in the singular, this does not mean, we found (or continue) the one and universal (only Western) theory of knowledge, but it puts forth a particular theoretical understanding of knowledge—based on the double

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aesthetic subject (see section 3). And, on top of this, it explains how various cultural-religious contexts are perceived in an aesthetic way. As such, it is not to intermingle or mistakenly take religious aesthetics of a historical and particular format, but rather as a tool of analysis, interpretation, and, at best, of explanation. Aesthetic principles organize institutions and the subject’s world perception. They, therefore, are apt means of analyzing cultural production.

Consequences for Forms and Validation of Knowledge As a consequence, distinctions of classical theories of knowledge—like semantic, conceptual, practical, explicit, ethical knowledge—have multiplied into tacit and implicit knowledge, diverse perceptual types of knowledge, body knowledge, “interactional expertise” (Schilhab 2013), “engrained procedural knowledge” (Wilson 2010: 182), and the like. It should be added that knowledge appears to adapt to culturally divergent rationalities in registers of different knowledge hierarchies and of taste and sensory orders. For classical Western philosophical epistemologies, only propositions would qualify as knowledge. This is another significant difference to aesthetic knowledge and indeed a theoretical and methodological challenge insofar as classical criteria for establishing knowledge—like justification, reliability, coherence, and so forth—are either not applicable or have to be adapted, as is done later on in this article. An adaptation of formal and rational rules here means that they are comprehended as well under coauthorship with aesthetic organizing principles. For example, let’s take the justification of a belief: symmetry may justify an impression or the congruence of cross-modal perceptions as much as reasoning by mirror inversion laws. By cross-modal perception, I mean that several items of sensory information within their culture-specific hierarchy and evaluation—as for instance comfortable, ugly, or too loud—are jointly evaluated for action. In our case, a congruence would be stated through several sensory registers that are relevant for a specific information. Adaptation of concepts for aesthetic reasoning may also have the effect that the successful re-actualization of a body scheme (i.e., the cognitive representation of bodily state) instills reliability into the “true” performance of a religious practice. For example, therapeutic touch healing or the Tibetan sound bowl healing ceremony where the body scheme (see 2.2.3)—learned during earlier participation—is activated through the binding of a specific body part touch or weight and coldness of the metal bowl with a specific sound- and odorscape through synchronization. This binding might have the effect of mediating and making present the healing force imagined as sound. To date, aesthetics of religion has reached a finely differentiated conceptual register for this aim to hint at aesthetic conditions of knowledge production, like stereotyping by simplification, formalization, exaggeration—as in the excessive increase of size to colossal objects—or by the hieratic—as in the specific kinesthesia of paces, like striding as opposed to sliding on knees (Mohr, Chapter 12, this volume). After this anticipation of the applicability of aesthetic categories and their huge explanatory benefit, we will start with a step-by-step introduction of the aesthetic subject.

THE DOUBLE AESTHETIC SUBJECT: HISTORICAL AND COGNITIVE There are two paths that will be taken to outline the aesthetic subject. In the first, subjects appear in historically conditioned forms of subjectivities. Subjectivities are abstract and

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institutionally shaped formations that interlink with the power structures of social status, economic performance, affect regimes, ethnicity, and gender. If we think of subjectivities, we do not think of individual agents but a formation that is highly influenced by aesthetic formation rules or—which means the same—aesthetic organizing principles. Apart from that comes the aesthetic cognizing subject or embodied cognition that is also encultured and, thus, also goes beyond the individual, making it a social cognition. Let’s first consider the historical subject! Subjectivities constantly alter with each agitation. Judith Butler, building upon Jacques Derrida, uses the linguistic metaphor of re-citation to denote what is new with each re-use, examining performative in contrast to stable identities with regard to gender (Rasheed, Chapter 16, this volume). With this approach she deconstructs the discourse of some original state, universalism, or biological ground (the position of naturalism) that is reiterated or actualized throughout a life. This comports with cognitive scientist Margret Wilson’s summary of cognitive psychology on the mind re-tooled through culture, which means that not only the content of cognition is culturally dependent (perceptual patterns, memories) but also the mode of cognitive procedures. The modes of cognitive procedures are reflected in the cultural variety of cognitive tools used to accomplish tasks, like representing time, space, and numbers and experiencing music, harmony, and beauty or supernatural beings (2010). In relation to abilities and individual skill profiles, a culturally dependent engrained procedural knowledge is acquired. This is extremely relevant for knowledge and familiarity in the context of religion: we hear music on a regular basis, we learn when to join into singing, dancing, or moving our bodies and how to pay attention to different emotions, depending on what comes next in a scriptural recital or other ritual. What we are interested in here are the aesthetic principles that guide, instruct, and trigger such developments and changes. A basic aesthetic principle is socialization via the acts of reward and repetition, resulting in habitualization of behavioral patterns and emotional styles. These habitualizations, in turn, are rewarded with pleasurable, varied, or just strong emotions. Language, cooperation, and body performance play crucial roles to inaugurate subjectivities into institutional biopolitics. The training and upkeep of particular subjectivities are everyday tasks religious groups have to master if they want to survive, for instance, the ideal of celibacy and 24/7 life-commitment. That said, we see how encultured and embodied cognition theory extends beyond the individual, which is an effect of interactive cooperation, whether it be social, economic, or cultural. In this way, an aesthetic theoretical foundation is linked with system theory or structural and network theories. Only from there can we distinguish alternative conceptions of (ideal) (religious) subjectivities that are now described in their aesthetic production and regulation, like the contemporary Western “mindfulness-trained” subject that lives in the here and now, feels whole, is at one with itself, open towards the environment of this present moment, and escapes complicated involvement. Another example would be the “non-self ” subjectivity within a (Western) Buddhist discourse that follows instructions and body and cognitive techniques to inaugurate an aesthetic subject that feels united or compassionate with all beings and freed from itself.

THE AESTHETIC COGNIZING SUBJECT We will not delve into these really fascinating histories of subjectivities at different places and within different milieus throughout the history of religion—this time from an aesthetic point of view. Instead I will turn to the aesthetic cognizing subject and, with this,

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to subfields of epistemology in which, thanks to new models and technologies of examining the human body, instructive insights have been gained over the past decades. These subfields are within the cognitive sciences, including psychological and medical research. How do we orient ourselves within the sociocultural world in 3D space or in 4D time-space structures? Why is a ceremony more touching when we cry or when the intake of drugs is involved? And are rituals always efficacious, or what are specific parameters of ritual efficacy? These and similar questions converge in the aspiration to understand the processes around the gain and loss of knowledge, the framing of perception, and meaningmaking.

A Selection of Categories The following categories are designed for understanding some basic aesthetic processes of the cognizing subject and allow for their analysis. This overview does not claim completeness, and the applicability to theoretical issues in cultural studies will vary with the sources and methods available. Complex cultural practices, like ritual, prayer, pilgrimage, dance, fine arts, renunciation, moving through architectural space, etc., rely on basic features of the human body’s entanglement with a materially and socially rich world. Some of the following categories are higher-order concepts that explain how several aesthetic dimensions (like a single sensory system) interrelate, frame, and produce emotional and semantic meaningfulness. The following categories give a small insight into the huge progress in the fields of medicine, psychology, and neurosciences and their relevance if applied within cultural aesthetics of religion. Embodied, Situated, and Embedded Cognition The most basic understanding of subjects is that of embodied cognition. Embodied cognition is itself a model that builds on a connection of embodiment and theory of mind. From this perspective, even linguistic, epistemic, and conceptual cognition are grounded in embodied cognition. Reasons for this are derived from acquisition history of learning language, which occurs while living in a practical relation within the world and from neuroimaging that displays the reactivation of sensorimotor areas even in language use and abstract processing. Following from the fact that all cognition is “derived embodiment” (Schilhab 2013), the aesthetic study of religion must recognize that aesthetic taste, aesthetic judgments, and epistemic knowledge are body-based because they involve basic cognitive, semiotic, and semantic categories that are shaped during developmental acquisition in a practical-sensorial environment. Embodied cognition is also embedded into social and material environments with which it interacts regularly on a non-propositional level. A good example of this is what ecological theory of knowledge calls “affordances.” Affordances are sensorial qualities in relation with and in the environment of the perceptual agent (Vasquez 2011: 173–209). Small passages between bushes, for example, may cause (i.e., “afford”) a passerby to crouch in order to move forward. Furthermore, with the example of emplacement, Manuel A. Vasquez rejects radical social constructionism and argues in favor of the agency of local places (2011: 313–15). A place arts towards agents by impressing them, for instance by the colossal size, the natural spectacle, the overwhelming sound, and the sparkling of a waterfall. The theoretical involvement of environments is maintained in post-humanist materialism, referred to as “agential realism” (Bräunlein, Chapter 25, this volume, on spirits’ agency). Situated cognition constitutes the framework of action, for instance by the mentioned emplacement (Sørensen 2007b).

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The Senses: Perception The idea that we have “five senses” is not adequate for aesthetics of religion. For one, we know that there are many more senses in the sense of basal sensorial perceptive patterns of knowledge generation, like thermoception, humidity perception, and covert simulation, like the facial muscle twinkling imitation. Secondly, senses in action are essentially intermodal, and this sensory teamwork is not equal among the senses but rather dominated by specific sensual interplays dependent on additional factors, like the body part in focus, the urgency of an action demanded, or the complexity of parallel tasks. Hands are, for example, better protected against harmful objects approaching them than the lower legs since the visual sense prompts an earlier reaction of withdrawal; sometimes the lower legs even have to be touched to recoil. Sensory systems are attuned to each other to establish varied sensory configurations for various reasons, including joyful perception or the best protection of body parts. In the same way, exteroception and interoception are interlinked and constitute several layers of sensuality. Exteroception addresses the perception of the “outer world,” while interoception is the permanent awareness of the feelings of one’s inner state. This inner state entails the degrees of tiredness, wakefulness, happiness, hunger, etc. Interoception includes nociception, the feeling of pain, the receptors of which, once again, are not evenly distributed across the body surface—meaning that the area of the body where pain is felt makes a difference. As such, flagellants are wise to hit their backs and not their fingertips, the latter having a higher density of nociceptors. Nociception is also a nice example of embodied cognition as it shows the inseparability of talking about and feeling pain. Another sense, the sense of time—the topic of chronobiology—is highly significant, for instance for rhythmic perception and the experience of euphony. It also impacts vigilance, as well as the fundamental ability to cooperate socially. Proprioception—the perception of oneself (proprium)—as part of interoception groups together balance (originating in a specific organ of the inner ear) and the relative position of body parts (indicated by muscle tension measured at specific points of the muscles) to locate one’s position in space. Proprioception is also linked to kinesthesia, the sense of moving through space. Intermodality includes cross-modal evaluations such as hearing specific sounds related to a specific body movement towards the source of the sound and, by this action, establishing a temporal sequence and improving orientation in a given surrounding. Like this, intero- and exteroceptive sensory systems are interdependent with emotionality. For example, we could focus on the human voice as a very particular sound. Psychological reasons behind voice disorders indicate the possibility of somatizing inner states; voices carry informal and non-propositional information or, to put it differently, they have agency in psychic and social relationships. To give another example, the demarcation of space can be performed by sound, often accompanied by the feeling of being at home. Church bells and the muezzin’s call are good examples of this. Integrity: The Body Scheme Perhaps you think it is odd to start with perception and then to proceed to the body because of the latter being the overall umbrella—which is correct. But now we arrive at the aesthetic second-order concept of the body that is a pattern of its own. Following from the discussion of the senses above, one can imagine that the human body is also more complex than embodiment literature would lead one to expect. Like human faces, the body in its entirety has a special cognitive representation that is called the body scheme. This maps the degree of momentary bodily integrity and the feeling of “I” (Holmes and Spence 2006). The body scheme provides precious information on the present state of emotionality, the degree of sexual excitement, and further

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interoceptive states, like intentions, fatigue, and hunger. At the present state of research, the body scheme is a hypothetical second-order concept that can be addressed in cultural interpretations, for example of how healing interventions affect the recipients’ wellbeing. There are also methods to prove or specify how the body scheme is relevant, like the psychological method of letting people make a drawing of their body figure. This indicates how this corresponds to the given body shape and posture, and may display subjective feelings in the body and, by this, psychological disturbances. Bedridden people, for instance, are known to lose their ability to estimate body boundaries after a while and will tend to draw themselves bigger and less contoured in shape. Processing: Body Knowledge The second-order concept of body scheme is grouped together with an even higher-order concept of body knowledge that comprises further subcategories, like peripersonal space, tattooing, muscle tone, and prosthetic perception (Koch 2017a: 391–9). It is only via this perspective that the psychophysiology of religion is paid necessary attention, and the involvement of human metabolism, body substances (like opiates, hormones, and neural transmitters), pain, tiredness, nervousness, and so forth are considered. To a large degree, feeling and experiencing are embodied and agitated through our body due to our afferent emotion, that is the emotion performed in our inner organs and such parameters as muscle tone, sweating, degree of vigilance, heart and breath rate, and digestive system activation levels. Afferent emotion is also closely linked with kinesthetics, like movement, motor skills, and movement-based contemplative practices (Schmalzl and Kerr 2016) or the aesthetic appreciation of kinesthetics, like in dance. Afferent emotions and their manipulation are salient in many spiritual performances, such as healing and praying. An interesting point of action for body knowledge is the autonomous nervous system because it is widely unconscious and—as the name says—autonomously steered. It regulates breathing, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, etc. Its various ways to manipulate emotional states are widely recognized. Let us look at just some examples from my interdisciplinary research with placebo studies to illustrate the significance of body knowledge in ritual healing practices. Placebo is a nonspecific effect grounded in expectation, learning, psychobiological processes, and the performative mode. More complex interactions have proven more efficacious, for instance, in increasing the pain threshold. Complex interventions, like symbolically loaded rituals, are of pivotal interest in religious studies. In a pilot study on spiritual healing through chakra cleansing and the sending out of colorful light into the body’s energy channels and centers, we found that the activation of the sympathetic system, the activating part of the nervous system, during the healing performance predicts improved subjective wellbeing (Koch and Meissner 2016). Sympathetic arousal is detectable in skin conduction, stomach motility, respiratory rate, heart rate, and heart-rate variability that are interpreted as strong involvement emotionally and imaginatively. This connects with relaxation via the anticipatory stress response that is known to precede relaxation. In the specific context of our pilot study it was especially the respiratory rate that increased, whereas other psychophysiological parameters did not change significantly in correlation. This very specific result begs further investigation into breathing techniques and their particular effects. Breathing is prominent in pop cultural spirituality associated with East Asia, like mindfulness, all kinds of meditation, and the yoga path of pranayama. It is common knowledge—and an easily accessible bodily experience—that slow breathing and deep exhaling has a calming effect. But why is this so? And how else can we manipulate

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our moods and mental states via breathing? Breathing exerts vagal stimulation and has circulatory effects. Several breathing techniques are differentiated and have been researched under a medical psychological perspective, like inverse breathing (called “kapalabhati” in yogic pranayama), which is an active exhalation (by strongly pulling the belly towards the vertebra) and passive inhalation (letting the belly go and by this slowly sucking in the air). The stretching of lung tissue causing inhibitory signals that reset the autonomous nervous system is one of the neural elements considered alongside nonneural elements in explaining the efficacy of inverse breathing (Jerath et al. 2006). It has also been shown that only deep and slow breathing can decrease pain susceptibility. However, this only seems to happen when the focus of deep and slow breathing lies on relaxation rather than attentive breathing (Busch et al. 2012). Another yogic exercise is the principle of double exhalation time in proportion to inhalation time (e.g., four seconds inhaling to eight seconds exhaling or ten to twenty seconds). This slows down the arousal level of the autonomous system as well. Beside this metabolic impact and the emotional effect of calming, often a strengthened self-confidence is reported. Some weeks after I returned from an intensive week of fieldwork in Fukui, Japan, with pranayama teacher Shri O. P. Tiwari (Kaivalyadhama Institute, Pune, India) and twenty very dedicated Japanese yogis fastidiously practicing pranayama, I went on a field excursion with my Munich students to a Catholic pilgrimage church in the Alps dedicated to St. Mary. It so happened that we had the chance to observe the rosary prayer performed by five elderly nuns in the Loreto chapel. After a while, I—or perhaps my “body knowledge”—recognized the same breathing rhythm of double exhalation as in pranayama exercises. Due to the monotonous and repetitive stimuli of the rosary speech song—a choral speaking—the praying person falls into an unmindful routine of breathing and singing. The speech parts of exhaling are longer than the short inhale in between the verses or even a couple of verses. It is the breathing that gives the rosary prayer its typical soundscape, so long as it is performed over a certain time span. I would hypothesize that the calming effect and the nervous, tissue, and fibroblasts regulatory circuits are comparable to, if not the same as, that of some of the double exhale pranayama exercises. This is a good example for demonstrating, first, how our trained body competence can be an instrument of research and, second, the potential of aesthetics of religion for a comparative research model (Kreinath, Chapter 5, this volume). Regarding the little case study of the rosary and pranayama double exhalation, one could further look into the breaks in between the breathing, the falling quiet of one group in the antiphonal murmuring of the rosary, and the pausing or laying down on the back between pranayama exercises. Are these kinds of interruptions comparable from an aesthetic point of view? In some regards they may be compared (like the routinization, the calming effect, the permanent soundscape of a chorus respective of other practitioners); in others, they are different (the sound of potentially meaningful syllables, the sound of breathing—that may be a meaningful sound if the om-philosophy is transmitted in the setting).

Social Cognition According to some scholars in cognitive study of religion, the strength of the cognitive study of religion is not to understand individual but rather group behavior (Barrett 2017: 194). Among the most momentous abilities—abilities that distinguish us from close evolutionary relatives—is cooperatively based social human cognition that allows for imitation (Wilson 2010), understanding others’ intentions, and behavioral change through

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learning in the eminent sense of cultural accumulation of knowledge and its cultural transmission. The older cognitivist view of sociality as mindreading in the sense of fully inferring the other’s state of mind (wishes, beliefs, motivations, errors, etc.) is today opposed by an enactivist view that emphasizes the social environment and embodied, extended, and embedded cognition as discussed above. Cognition is seen as relational meaning-making amidst co-agents and artificial social group settings (Schjoedt et al. 2011). Social cognition is basically cooperation oriented or, put differently, bodily copresence. Dimitrij Xygalatas and colleagues underscore the role of psychophysiological synchronization between agents as a marker of strong inner participation and empathy (Xygalatas et al. 2011). For instance, most of the ritual participants in a fire-walking ritual feel for the fire-walkers; however, close relatives empathize with their familial fire-walkers to such a degree as to even synchronize within some psychophysiological parameters to those performing the walk. This debate is perhaps better known in its popularized version of the mirror neurons debate. World-construction that is the outcome of meditation or specific forms of prayer, like trance and absorption (Luhrmann, Chapter 8, this volume), may be similar across cultures and situations in some regards due to the psychological state involved and to the (religious) narrative through which it is learned. It is interesting to consider how one might approach examining the social cognition in aesthetic settings, as was done in the breathing and rosary comparison. The rosary prayer has a clear “us”perspective in its textual content and is addressing the personal imaginary counterpart of St. Mary. Pranayama can be practiced alone (as can the rosary) or in groups; the latter occurs mostly in a teacher–pupil relationship. Analogous structures and differences should be followed up as suggested here and should be examined further for aesthetically relevant parameters.

CONCLUSION Many of the described phenomena are based on a complex interplay of various factors that are not yet fully understood. On one hand, the concepts introduced here are well established in cognitive science and will be further elaborated in the future. On the other hand, they remain hypothetical in historical interpretations, partly due to methodological challenges (Kreinath, Chapter 5, this volume). But this need not weaken their explanatory force. Nevertheless, the approach of aesthetics of religion described here already changes our comprehension of religion and will complement our understanding of cultural phenomena in the future as it concerns epistemology. These deliberations are also a rejoinder towards accusations of reductionism, biologism, naturalism, and universalism towards the cognitive interest in aesthetics of religion that goes beyond a pure psychophysiological reconstruction of collective and historical aesthetic formations. The epistemological aesthetic vocabulary is organized into a hierarchical order of conceptual complexity (and not the order of reality, as in Geertz 2010: 315). Social and communicative interactions rely on embodied cognition, symbol and language use, and learned mental states—all of which are grounded in specific aesthetic situations. First-order concepts such as attention can be elaborated into an anthropological concept such as “somatic modes of attention” (Csordas 1993) that address shared codes of directedness, and to third-order concepts that can connect aspects of body knowledge with aesthetic regimes. Epistemology in aesthetics of religion attempts to resolve conflict lines from cultural studies, such as those between hermeneutists and materialists or between Cartesian dichotomists and integral thinkers. With the trend of bringing culture and cognition

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together, cognitive aesthetic study of religion emphasizes psychological principles of culture over external materialist ones, like architectures, dances, and perfumes. The challenge is to strike a balance between our knowledge and explanations from both sides—the language and habits side and the ecological and embodied cognitive side.

RECOMMENDED READING Geertz, Armin W. (2010), “Brain, Body and Culture: A Biocultural Theory of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 22 (4): 304–21. DOI: 10.1163/157006810X531094. Outlines an understanding of cognition and of non-mentalistic but embodied cognitive studies of religion for which groundwork is shared here and extended to cultural institutions. Koch, Anne and Karin Meissner (2016), “Holistic Medicine in Late Modernity: Some Theses on the Efficacy of Spiritual Healing,” in Annette Weissenrieder and Gregor Etzelmüller (eds.), Religion and Illness, 414–35, Eugene: Cascade Books. Uses a case study to show how the placebo effect conceptually binds together mental states with performance sequences and the timely production of the body’s own substances. Mohr, Hubert (2006), “Perception/Sensory System,” in Kocku von Stuckrad (ed.), The Brill Dictionary of Religion Vol. 3, 1435–48, Leiden: Brill. Introduces the basic vocabulary of sensory perception relevant for religion, starting with the example of the complex and dense sensorial situation of a child kneeling during a Catholic Mass.

CHAPTER FOUR

Aesthetics of Knowledge ARIANNA BORRELLI AND ALEXANDRA GRIESER

INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on the aesthetic aspects of knowledge formation and, together with the previous two chapters, aims at framing the aesthetic approach introduced in this handbook. All three are meant to offer an opportunity to rethink what we study, and how we study when studying religion/s. Therefore, theoretical and epistemological considerations are presented in conversation with practical examples. Combining the two areas of aesthetics and knowledge might sound unusual, as in a common-sense understanding aesthetic forms would rather be associated with the “clothing” of knowledge, relevant for its communication alone; and knowledge would be seen as an outcome of abstract, cognitive processes, if not identified with scientific knowledge as such. Eschewing such distinctions between rational cognition and irrational sensory perception and imagination, this chapter focuses on the irreducible interplay between perception, imagination, and cognition in human knowing. In the first section, we briefly clarify what is meant by an aesthetic knowledge that differs from purely philosophical definitions of knowledge, and its relation with truth; second, we draw upon a range of existing studies to introduce an aesthetics of knowledge, providing a framework to study the relationship between knowledge and perception, and how both are organized by societal regimes. In the third section, two perspectives opened up by this approach are presented. First, religion/s can be studied as knowledge cultures producing and drawing on a range of knowledge modes. Secondly, the approach can be self-reflectively applied to academic knowledge production about religion, including the political aspects this may have.

AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE Asking about the specific aesthetic quality of knowledge has been at the center of most historical aesthetic projects, and for a long time this question was linked to binary models that set aesthetic knowledge (in Kantian terms: sinnliche Erkenntnis) in opposition to conceptual knowledge and reasoning (Verstandeserkenntnis) (Johnston, Chapter 17, this volume). In this context, rationality was usually regarded as a universal touchstone of knowledge, so that sensory knowledge appeared as a deficient form of knowledge, defined by its lack of rationality and content. However, the specificity of aesthetic knowledge could not be captured in this way, and scholars eventually made the point that, while it is important to pay more attention to the body and the senses in knowledge formation, this 33

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does not suffice as long as the notion of knowledge itself remains bound to the dominant ideal of rationality (Remmers 2015). This situation highlights the necessity of revising the notion of knowledge in such a way as to let aesthetic and rational knowledge appear as two different, yet equally valid forms of knowing. A first step in that direction taken independently by researchers in a diversity of disciplines has been to recognize that the role of aesthetic forms in knowledge formation is not confined to the transmission or communication of knowledge, and that the production of knowledge always implies aesthetic forms and practices. The widely held position is refuted that the senses merely provide “raw material” that is “refined” through higher cognitive processes. Research on the cultivation of sensing in artistic and professional contexts—for example, how midwives, medical doctors, and musicians train their professional ways of sensing—has shown that, indeed, “sensing is knowing” (Maslen 2015). Applying this to the study of religions, we can conclude that many aspects of being religious are based on sensory knowledge, learned through ritual training, routines, and emotional engagement impacting on the body, on brain plasticity, and on identity. Like an artist or a designer, the shaman, the priestess, and the average practitioner make use of different modes of knowledge. They learn how to interact with aesthetic “material” (which includes colors or food, but also imaginations and sensations), and they create a convincing balance between the universality and the specificity of aesthetic forms, resulting in a diversity of religious experiences. This view helps to explain, for example, the extraordinary “efficacy” religion can have when we think of moral strength or selfsacrificing actions; and it helps to correct the view that religions are based on beliefs and doctrines alone, or can be separated from an embodied existence. In the early phenomenology of religion, established by Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, and others, “religious experience” was central. It was understood as having a singular quality sui generis, not comparable to any other mode of experience. Consequently, the scholar was expected to share this unique experience to be able to appreciate the object of study. In contrast to this universalistic and affirmative understanding, today’s approaches consider experiences as an outcome of both bio-physical and sociocultural activities which can, and should be, studied from different disciplinary angles and in their entanglement with social and political structures. All experiences in religious contexts are considered worth studying, including peak experiences, but also routines that may go unnoticed in their formative power, or problematic experiences such as the power of religion to fuel violent actions. Another important point is to consider that experiences and aesthetic forms are not mere “expressions” of inner states, or “representations” of people’s beliefs. Rather, form and content are understood as mutually constitutive: we believe what we experience and vice versa. The main insight provided by the theories we draw on is that knowledge is not determined either by evolutionary features of the human sensorium, or by intellectual activity shaped by culture; rather, human interaction with the environment is based on the physicality and universality that human bodies share, and on the cultural and historical shaping of aesthetic forms and practice. We aim to study the relationships between the physicality and the historicity of knowing, and how knowledge is connected to what is rendered possible to sense, feel, and think within a culture. The question of how best to approach a study of these relationships—and the role of religion within them—has led to the recognition that a more systematic framework is needed to be able to study the aesthetic dimensions of knowledge, a framework we refer to as the aesthetics of knowledge.

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AESTHETICS OF KNOWLEDGE AS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ENDEAVOR In contrast to the notion of aesthetic knowledge, the aesthetics of knowledge is a framework that helps to systematically study the formative aspects of the production, circulation, and organization of knowledge. It builds upon the assumption that all processes of knowing, and any product or medium that carries and conveys knowledge, only exist in conjunction with aesthetic characteristics—there is no knowledge without the participation of imagination, affects, mediating or formative aspects, including those forms deemed most abstract or theoretical. These reflections apply not only to the human body and to simple material artifacts, but potentially concern all forms of communication, since media interact with the constraints and capacities that the human body and sensorium present. In sum, the aesthetics of knowledge can show how orders of knowledge within a society are interconnected with the orders of perception that dominate how humans not only understand, but also perceive and feel their worlds.

Examples With the help of the three images in Figure 4.1, we aim to make clear what an aesthetics of knowledge may address, highlighting three aspects that will help to develop further systematic questions. Media are inseparably connected to the aesthetic orders of societies, and with media changes, the communicational basis of a society changes. In contrast to the influential notion of media as a “vessel” or “vehicle” for transporting meaning, an aesthetic perspective emphasizes that a medium always carries its own aesthetics. This can be observed on a large scale, for example the shift between oral and scriptural cultures, or to digital media, but also on a smaller scale. As we show in the upper image in Figure 4.1a, in everyday life knowing is often performed in prefigured patterns. This is particularly obvious in digital media, such as design programs for presenting slide shows. For example, using “smart art” configurations that provide ready-made categories such as “hierarchy,” “cycle,” or “process” not only expresses a specific content; it also shapes the way people think, creates perceptual habits and valuation of a speaker based on styles and fashions, and might inhibit more interactive or creative forms of knowing. Second, in a wide range of disciplines non-knowledge has been addressed as an important and growing field of studies. Starting from the insight that any change or increase of knowledge necessarily induces new forms of non-knowledge, ignorance studies (Gross and McGoey 2015), for example, distinguish known non-knowledge (such as analyses of what we do not know and need to investigate in the sciences; or calculated risk-taking in applying technologies) from unknown non-knowledge, which is what we are not aware of we do not know, or what lies beyond the range of human knowledge. The example in Figure 4.1b refers to intuitive, unconscious knowledge, and creativity. Seen as a formative process, creation often relies on the play between figuration and defiguration. Producing unintentional, “meaningless” forms, or doodling while thinking or listening, are examples of intuitive synthetic processes that allow us to make new and unexpected connections. For example, research has shown that doodling not only represents steps on the phylo- and ontogenetical path to image-making and writing, but also relates to brain activities that seem chaotic, but are at work, and can be triggered through creative techniques (Sheridan 2002). This link between formation, deformation,

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FIGURE 4.1a, b, c: Examples of how diverse modes of knowledge imply aesthetic forms and practices: (a) throughout history, media used to transmit knowledge not only express, but also prefigure knowledge content, here seen in digital presentation slides widely used in education, business, and politics; (b) activities such as scribbling or doodling show how unintentional formation processes are linked to states of the brain that allow to produce surprising, intuitive or creative insights; (c) knowledge as an abstract concept made concrete through metaphors; an influential one for European history is taken from exploring unknown land. Maps from the sixteenth century depict the unknown as areas inhabited by sea monsters (“here be dragons”) that need to be tamed and civilized. In this way, knowledge is linked to conquering and colonizing the unknown as the dangerous wild land. Compilation: photo of computer screen by author; photo of “scribbling” by author; detail from Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina: Description of the Northern Lands and of their Marvels, 1539; © facsimile 1980 James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota; Wikimedia commons: “faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art”; complete image: derivative work © Volker Scheub.

and reformation can be applied to the study of religious rituals or to conversion as a reconfiguration of knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Third, the abstract concept of knowledge itself is made concrete through metaphors that denote the value and cultural role assigned to it. Knowledge has been identified, for example, with a specific medium, the book and the library. How books represent the

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value, materiality, and comprehensiveness of knowledge can be illustrated by the notion of the sacred book that contains revealed and divine knowledge. Another medium of knowledge that became an influential metaphor for knowing is the map and the exploration of unknown land (Figure 4.1c). Intrinsically linked with the history of colonization, early maps indicated unknown territory by dangerous dragons and sea monsters (“here be dragons”). As the picture from the sixteenth century suggests, acquiring knowledge of these areas meant conquering the monsters, taming them, and “civilizing” them (one monster is being fought with, and the other has been tied up, human figures apparently cooking on its back!). This notion impacted on the Enlightenment understanding of knowledge as conquering spatial territory, bringing light into darkness, and gaining control over nature. These examples show that aesthetic forms are never neutral but are crucial elements of the formation of realities, and both means and objects of power relations. By introducing the notion of an aesthetic ideology (Grieser 2017), this political character of the aesthetic can be made visible. Complementing rather than opposing rhetorical and semiotic approaches, this concept starts from the premise that ideologies consist not only of ideas or doctrines, but also of structures: how we make sense of our environment. Anthropologist Webb Keane has pursued this question by analyzing semiotic ideologies in the colonial Dutch East Indies (Keane 2003). While speaking about the sensuous qualities of things (Keane 2003: 414–5), however, the sensorium as the interface of human interaction with things is not addressed, and the analysis continues to concentrate on discursive practices (422). If we concede with Keane that semiotic ideologies regulate the economy of representations, then aesthetic ideologies can be said to regulate the “economy of affects.” Affects, however, are not limited to emotions, but are understood as a configuration consisting of sensations (hot, cold), perceptions (pleasant, disgusting), and affective responses (stimulating, boring, exciting, hampering or fostering movement). An exhibition in a museum, for example, can be guided by an aesthetic ideology which—on the basis of affects—creates affordances to consume the presentations, or to reflect on them or interact with them (Kugele and Wilkens 2011). In religious traditions, aesthetic ideologies are created by establishing specific ways of seeing, hearing, and perceiving, and by sacralizing some and rejecting other senses, media, or activities.

Multi-disciplinary Background The aesthetics of knowledge draws upon a wide range of research in the humanities and natural sciences, and should not be regarded as a fixed set of principles, but as a set of tools that may be employed, expanded, or discarded according to the specific context. An overview of relevant research can be found in Borrelli and Grieser (2017). Philosophical and sociological reflections from the second half of the twentieth century range from Michael Polanyi’s studies of “personal knowledge” to sociological works deploying aesthetics as an analytic concept for the study of culture in general and modern cultures in particular, such as those by Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Rancière, and Andreas Reckwitz, who expresses the need to link the traditional sociology of knowledge with embodiment theories and the tradition of an aesthetic analysis of modernization (Lash 1993). More recently, cognitive psychology and the neurosciences have explored the connection between knowing and bodily processes (Lakoff and Johnson [1980] 2003), with studies taking into account the cultural and evolutionary premises of cognition (Rusch and Voland 2013), and studying a wide range of affects beyond normative preferences, such

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as the neuroscience of pain and pleasure (Kringelbach and Berridge 2009) or the role of disgust in culture production (Menninghaus 2003). Results from these studies have been increasingly employed in the humanities, and in particular in the academic study of religion (see the research referenced in this handbook). Although this step has led to an enrichment, it has also caused tension within the humanities. Applying results from the natural sciences to the study of religion is a step which requires a special level of reflectiveness, because scientific results are presented as ahistorical objective facts based on standardized, quantitative instrumental practices. It is important to consider recent studies that highlight the aesthetic and performative dimensions of scientific knowing. They show how scientific facts are constructed by means of specific aesthetic strategies, such as rhetorical techniques of de-narrativation employed to present scientific results as detached from space and time, or what Bruno Latour has called “immutable mobiles”, i.e., printed text or maps which can be identically reproduced and circulated to both aesthetically define and communicate scientific knowledge. Scientific objectivity is a historically and culturally situated notion linked to specific modes of aesthetic knowledge which have emerged in the modern period, like photographs and other self-recording apparatuses (Daston and Galison 2010). On a more fundamental level, in his work on the history of molecular biology, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger introduces the notion of “experimental system” to characterize the material and performative research environment which is both premise and constraint for the coming-to-be of “epistemic things” as objects of research (Rheinberger 1997). It is not by accident, then, that in the nineteenth century adherents of religious undercurrents such as spiritualism and occultism performed experiments and used scientific instruments, understanding their conduct as science. Thus, the prism of an aesthetics of knowledge helps us to resituate modes of scientific and religious knowledge in their specific cultural and historical contexts. This, in turn, allows us to reframe the relationship between religion and science by eschewing the dichotomy of opposition or complementarity, a step which is important for appreciating the aesthetic entanglements of the two spheres in contemporary cultures. To make this claim more plausible, we will present two examples of how the aesthetics of knowledge perspective makes the modern opposition between objective, rational science and subjective, intuitive religion appear untenable. Case 1: Number and Gurrutu Western scholars have often framed the history of nonWestern mathematics in terms of how far their own notions can be found in other traditions. In postcolonial times, both Western and non-Western scholars underscored the similarities between the mathematics of large, literate, and territorially organized cultures and proposed a model of mathematical “progress,” placing smaller, oral, and less centrally organized cultures at the lowest level (Selin 2000). Yet the study of allegedly “primitive” mathematics brings to light the aesthetic dimensions of Western mathematical practices which are usually naturalized, becoming invisible to reflection. In her work with the Yirrkala community of the Australian aboriginal Yolngu people, Helen Verran has provided a striking example of the entanglement between politics, religion, and different aesthetic modes of mathematical knowledge (Verran 2000). The starting point of Verran’s analysis is a legal dispute over land ownership which ended in a ruling in 1975 that the Yirrkala community held no ownership rights to the land they had lived on since before the arrival of Western colonists. Although the ruling was later partially overturned, it testifies to how our notion of “land ownership” is based on conceiving land primarily as a quantifiable object, i.e., as something that can be grasped

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in terms of numbers. Yet counting, measuring, and quantifying are situated cultural techniques and not universally given procedures. In Western cultures, the practice of tallying with fingers to count living and nonliving features of the environment is repeated again and again and so internalized by children as the aesthetic moment which constructs the notion of counting. A key component of the learning process is the repeated performance of a counting ritual in which the names and sequences of numbers are memorized and internalized, together with rules for infinitely iterating the naming procedure. This aesthetic mode of knowing the outside world is taken for granted, but is in no way trivial. Among other things, it allows us to think of the landscape in terms of geometrically shaped and numerically subsumed “areas” that can be owned in their whole homogeneous extension. By contrast, for the Yolngu, the template for conceptualizing their relationship with the environment is a schematic, iterative two-dimensional pattern called “gurrutu” which entails a thoroughly different aesthetic mode of mathematical knowledge. The basic element of the gurrutu pattern is the marriage between first cousins from which a son and a daughter are born, who in turn marry their first cousins, and so on. Analogous to the core pattern of numbers, i.e., the digits from one to ten, the basic unit of gurrutu is a set of eight mutual relationships, each linking two members of the kinship structure and associated with two names, one for each direction (sister–brother, husband–wife, and so on). Yolngu children learn the names and places of the relationships in this two-dimensional pattern, just as Western children learn number names and counting. Each member of the community is in a clearly defined gurrutu relationship to other members, local flora and fauna, features of the landscape, rituals, and traditions. According to Verran, gurrutu is in many ways functionally analogous to numbers, but while numbers entail a linear, sequential ordering, gurrutu is linked to an aesthetic mode of mathematical reasoning based on a complex two-dimensional pattern. The two modes lead to different notions and practices of land ownership. Features of the landscape like rivers or hills “belong to” each Yolngu individual in the same way as their human relatives, establishing rights of use to different parts of the territory for the various clans, which cannot be expressed in quantified terms and were therefore dismissed by the Western legal system. Thus, different aesthetic modes of conceiving the world in terms of mathematical patterns are related to economic and political issues, giving rise to more or less powerful sociocultural constructs that we may term “aesthetic ideologies.” Case 2: Beauty and Truth In recent decades, scientists have increasingly made use of rhetorical and visual strategies borrowed from religious texts and imagery, while at the same time dismissing this practice as window-dressing to make complex notions palatable to a lay public. A prominent instance of this tendency are popular science publications presenting the symmetries of physical theories as both beautiful objects (in the eyes of informed beholders) and true representations of hidden structures of nature (Borrelli 2017). Titles like Why beauty is truth: The history of symmetry (Stewart 2008), or Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics (Zee 1986) may seem to be only metaphors exploiting the classical topos that “beauty is truth,” but when did mathematical symmetries become beautiful and true? Physicists started describing symmetries and the inner structures of nature as beautiful during the second half of the twentieth century. Observations that did not fit any symmetrical pattern started being modeled in terms of a combination of symmetry and symmetry breaking, and the success of this approach eventually led physicists to the belief that at a fundamental, hidden level, symmetries

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existed that manifested themselves in broken form, and the ultimate goal of theoretical research was to find hidden symmetries in nature. To express and motivate this belief, traditional aesthetic modes linking harmony, beauty, and the (hidden) divine were appropriated and repurposed, projecting back in time a connection between symmetry and beauty which had never existed in that form. The use of this aesthetic strategy in popular science writing is therefore no dumbed-down metaphor, but only a less technical exposition of shared beliefs of the scientific community.

AESTHETICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE CONTEXT OF RELIGIONS Applying the aesthetics of knowledge to the study of religion opens up perspectives for two areas of research: first, religions can be studied as knowledge cultures; and second, the approach can be reflectively applied to academic knowledge production about religion.

Religions as Knowledge Cultures Historians and sociologists have studied religions in their relationship with institutions and media of knowledge. They have mainly addressed relations between knowledge, society, and power (Guest and Arweck 2012: 5): the dynamics of competing knowledge claims, strategies of institutional knowledge control, or social roles of authority in religious practices, such as relationships between master and disciple. Adding the aesthetic perspective to these issues, we may add questions about the role of the body in teaching, learning, and “being religious,” or the function of media in knowing about non-empirical entities like the soul or spirits. We may distinguish between knowledge that religious traditions explicitly claim and promote, and what can be observed as knowledge that people engage with in religious contexts. Theological knowledge, in both cases, is seen as one of many modes of knowledge addressed. We outline here some research perspectives related to the three aspects introduced in the second section. The history of religions is intertwined with the history of media, which shape the aesthetic formations of religious knowledge. The so-called religions of the book prioritize text-based communication beyond their sacred scriptures, as can be seen in the photograph of a display of leaflets in a Catholic Church in County Donegal, Ireland (Figure 4.2). Using text and images, the leaflets resemble media of information in secular contexts, for example in a health institution. While the leaflets invite people to make a free, informed choice, at the same time they frame a normative body of knowledge necessary to become a member of this religion: ritual knowledge of how to perform in communal activities, hermeneutical knowledge of how to interpret actions and emotions, techniques of the self by “examining conscience,” and moral and social knowledge of how to perform roles. Yet in their language and images the leaflets formulate an ideal that differs from how people actually live their Catholicism. These ideals, and the focus on scriptural knowledge, have been criticized by people who ask for a stronger focus on experience, spirituality, and emotional engagement in their religious life. Since it is difficult for religious advertisement to present experiential knowledge, other media and communication channels are deployed, such as events or seminars in fields that are not necessarily core to a religion (yoga, baking competitions). Activities such as intensive meditation weekends

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FIGURE 4.2: Different types of religions favor different modes of knowledge and develop hierarchies of media that are privileged, restricted, or even banned (such as dance). A preference for text, however, does not mean that other, more embodied modes of knowledge are not just as important—as can be seen in this collection of leaflets that address practical, ritual, or moral knowledge. Considering the explanatory character and the anticipated audience, one can conclude that this knowledge cannot be taken for granted and that (re-) education is seen as necessary. Leaflets on display in a Catholic Church in County Donegal, Ireland, 2014; © photo by author.

are not only a response to a reduced willingness to engage regularly with a religious institution, but are also necessary to convince people on an affective level that this is the way to be religious, a way that “feels right.” Studying which individuals or groups produce and control knowledge, and who is limited to the role of “users,” clearly leads to a study of the role of elites in religious history. With media changes, however, structures of authority change, and with the omnipresence of the internet religious learning has shifted to what can be called “religious self-supply.” Today, new media determine the structures of participation through “crowd knowledge” and wiki-models with their shifting modes of authorizing knowledge; knowledge that was once precious and hard to access is now easily available and this changes its value, the time spent on it, and attitudes toward it. Religions today need to operate under conditions that are largely structured by commodity aesthetics and a changed economy of attention. The notion of non-knowledge, and the aesthetic forms of defining and dealing with the unknown in a society, offer a key to a wealth of material when studying religions. It might be thought that the core concern of religions is to provide knowledge of those spheres of life about which we cannot, by definition, know anything: the origin of existence, what happens after death and at the “end of history” (eschatology), or how to achieve a good reincarnation. While many would consider these issues as the main concern of religions— and may criticize them as delusion—field research has shown that providing positive

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knowledge about the unknown is only one religious mode of coping with the limits of human knowing. Instead of providing certainty, religion often helps negotiate the borderlines between domains one can control and those one cannot (Knibbe 2008). Leaving to God what is not in our hands, for example, or knowing what ritual has to be performed in respect of things we cannot know or control, relieves the modern subject of the burden of needing to know. Another task of religions can be to provide people with practical knowledge in respect of death and dying. For example, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, compiled by representatives of modern Western Buddhism in 1992 and sold in high numbers, provides not only ideas about dying and reincarnation, but also concrete advice for both the dying and the caring person. It has influenced Western practices of spiritual care by providing concrete visions of what happens while we are dying and how support can be given before and after the death of the body. In competitions within religious traditions or between religious and philosophical or scientific knowledge cultures, rationality or scriptural knowledge are countered by traditions rejecting “dead letters” and promoting modes of knowledge which transgress the limits of the ordinary human sensorium. Practitioners can, for example, experience “emptiness” or mystical visions, the unio mystica. These traditions are based on an intense cultivation of practical knowledge, as in ascetic and meditative practices, which provides an ideal of knowing that can be referred to without sharing the experience itself (Renger and Stellmacher 2018). Finally, given the increasing political relevance of non-knowledge in a world facing the consequences of industrialization and high-risk technologies, religious knowledge also plays a role in bioethics committees and environmentalist movements. Here, people rarely insist on doctrines, but see religious attitudes as resonating with ecological or political knowledge as, for example, with the anti-capitalist slogan “how much is enough?”, promoted in Buddhist environmentalism. Religions are associated with what we have referred to as aesthetic ideologies. These are different modes of seeing, sensing, and relating to objects (Morgan 2014), and are created by a diversity of strategies, such as sacralizing certain senses, media, or activities and naturalizing experiences that result from cultivating them. Aesthetic ideologies are not limited to the religious sphere, yet they are specific modes of legitimizing and authorizing knowledge that we regard as religious, for example by referring to “age-old traditions” or to the origin or founder (ad fontes), by sacralizing the source or the author (revelations), or by building upon spontaneous experiences such as visions, auditions, or intuitions, or a “cause-and-effect” mechanism, a prayer leading to an improvement of health. Aesthetic ideologies play out in concrete conflicts and decisions impacting on the everyday life of individuals, as in the recent debate on—and clash between—Muslim women’s clothing and aesthetic norms of how bodies should present themselves in liberal societies. On a larger scale, the aesthetic forms developed in diverse religious traditions may also be understood in relation to knowledge structures such as mono- or polytheism. A religion that organizes the world in a multiplicity of forms (Hinduism, for example) develops aesthetic strategies different from those of a religion that is built on a notion of unity and singularity (such as Islam or Christianity). Similarly, rituals that emphasize impermanence, such as mandalas in Buddhism that are destroyed after a long time spent creating them, differ intrinsically from rituals that support the notion of eternal existence, such as gravestones. Interpreting aesthetic forms always needs a wider and contextual knowledge, and the same aesthetic form may serve different purposes in different religious traditions.

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Aspects of religious knowledge can be analyzed in their multilayered interaction with other modes of knowledge. For example, in their area of the popularization of science, religious and scientific modes of knowing interact in many ways, and by no means only in a competitive or exclusionary manner. Case Study 3: “Blue Brains” and Religious Aesthetics in Popular Science In recent decades, the neurosciences have gained the status of a leading discipline and, since the 1990s, new technologies have led to visualizations of the activity of brains in living creatures. These images have had profound consequences within scientific debates, even prompting debates on what defines a human being, but they have also been circulated in popular media, contributing to a knowledge economy far beyond their function as medium of scientific evidence (Grieser 2017). Besides computer-generated scans of the brain, a specific style of representing “human heads” emerged in magazines, advertisements, and academic publications. Significantly, these images also dominate the websites representing the massively funded projects BRAIN Initiative in the USA and the European Human Brain Project (both launched in 2013). A particularly successful style emerged in the 1990s and still dominates the popular aesthetics of neuroscientific knowledge. Its basic features are a characteristic neon-blue color, with sparks, beams, and an effect of glowing from within, coupled with the computer-designed head containing different versions of a brain capture. There is a long iconographic tradition in which parts of the human body (often the head or the heart) are connected to the divine by means of sparks or beams. In our images, however, the heads send beams out into a black vastness that might be associated with the universe, especially when combined with the spectacular imagery of the Hubble Space Telescope (Grieser 2015a). The blue color on the shiny screen suggests that the brain has a glass or plastic surface. Blue is used in advertisements for businesses or institutions that emphasize cleanliness and competence (such as health care). Blue is literally a cold color that creates the effect of depth, and in religious contexts it is associated with the spiritual sphere, with the cloak worn by the virgin Mary in a Christian context, with godly figures in Hindu traditions, and with the heavens. The stylized blue brain can thus be linked to both a process of demystification of the brain, eliminating the soul through scientific research, and a process of re-mystification by aestheticizing the organ: what used to be the beautiful soul is now a beautiful brain. These images do not impart any aspect of the scientific knowledge about the brain they are associated with, so how did they gain the representative status for neuroscientific knowledge they have? The argument has been made that a specific understanding of ideal beauty has developed in European modernity that is part of what Winfried Menninghaus has called a strategy of rejecting disgust (Menninghaus 2003). In a bio-psychoanalytical perspective, disgust is seen as a mechanism that helps humans avoiding those aspects that make the human body a part of nature, transient, abject, and prone to sickness, aging, and death. The images suggest that the brain, rather than being a greyish, wet, and fatty organ, can be objectified by separating it from the rest of the body, and that humans can literally take the brain into their own hands (another frequent iconography) and improve it, or even replace human bodily existence, as in transhumanist visions of enhancement technology. In this way, the disembodied, objectified, and spiritualized brain stands at the center of modern subjectivity with its imperative of self-improvement. Together with utterances by famous scientists, an ideology of identification between the human brain and the

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development of the universe is alluded to, a figure we know from romantic and esoteric modes of spiritualizing nature, art and science. These images, we can conclude, are more than attention-grabbing ways to sell science; as an aesthetic formation that merges scientific knowledge with an idealized form of beauty they help to establish a perceptual ideology that impacts profoundly on how people understand and treat themselves and others.

Aesthetics in the Academic Study of Religion An aesthetics of knowledge perspective can greatly enhance reflectivity in the academic production of knowledge about religion, for instance by asking about the treatment of non-textual data, or by using images and movies in research (Hermann and Lokshina, Chapter 18, this volume). In this section, we will focus on how scholars have represented religion as a research object, highlighting the entangled history of aesthetic knowledge formation and the role of religion in the ideologies of modernity. As Hans G. Kippenberg (2002) has shown, religion stood at the center of the cultural crisis around 1900, and of the emerging social and cultural sciences. The deciphering of ancient and foreign languages was a starting point for the study of new religions “discovered” by the Europeans, and for modeling all religious cultures on the book religions. Similarly, in the late nineteenth century archaeology shaped the perception of religion as a point of access to the past, assimilating ethnic (“primitive”) religions to prehistoric life. Both perceptions persist until today, despite research undermining them. Critically assessing aesthetic ideologies within the academic study of religion reveals how knowledge about religion is inevitably entangled with ideologies of modernization and colonialism. In Friedrich M. Mueller’s introduction to Chips from a German Workshop (1882: vii–xxxiii), the higher purpose of the comparative study of religions is summarized as supporting the work of missionaries abroad, renewing European Christianity, and demonstrating its superiority (xix). Here religion became a figure on the chess board of modernization and its complex mixture of political, scientific, and religious ideologies. The perception of religion as “the other” of European modernity is inscribed in the academic motivation for studying it. Karl Heinz Kohl has formulated this relationship as a dynamic of simultaneous “rejection and desire” (1987), which places religion among other “objects of fascination,” such as “primitive” and exotic people, sexuality, or violence and death, areas of human experience that both excite the imagination and threaten the sense of a self-contained, stable self (Grieser 2009). Why would scholars study extraordinary religious experiences rather than everyday forms of religious life? Asking this question might help us to reflect on the role of the study of religion in secularized societies. Finally, in the framework of an aesthetic critique one has to be aware that, in the cultures scholars study, different, yet equally elaborate reflective aesthetic systems prevail, as in the case of the Indian rasa (see Wilke 2018). A naïve distinction between “emic” and “etic” perspectives ignores the fact that knowledge processes are never clearly divided into the subjective position of “the native” and the objective meta-position of the scholar. For an aesthetics of religion, it is important to understand the production of knowledge in its context dependency, and to recognize circular movements between different frames of relevance and agents as part and parcel of that production. What we might tentatively call an entangled aesthetics of knowledge has the task of conceptualizing and analyzing

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the differences between various forms and formation processes, and the way form is reflected in various cultures, including academic knowledge production, in order to better understand their interrelations.

CONCLUSION An aesthetics of knowledge, as introduced in this chapter, resonates with the efforts in other disciplines to rethink traditional concepts of knowledge, and can interconnect the study of religion with these debates, as well as contributing to them. By “overcoming” dichotomies and binary models of knowing, the aesthetics of knowledge supports the development of descriptive and analytical categories for the study of culture, and helps us to see links between otherwise distinct areas, such as emotion and cognition. This involves combining knowledge from a diversity of academic approaches. We can examine how emotions and affects follow their own rationality; or how cognition and reasoning might be linked to a regime of taste and a culturally rooted longing for “good news,” rather than critical insights. By providing a sketch of an aesthetics of knowledge, and showing how it might offer an analytical framework for studying religion, we have argued that focusing on knowledge as both a process and a product, and paying attention to the sensory forms of knowledge, does not devalue the knowledge we investigate, especially if we integrate academic knowledge in our analysis. Rather, examining the effects of aesthetic forms extends our understanding of how humans make sense of their world and themselves, including scientific knowledge production as a cultural endeavor. Accounting for how humans know, and not only what they know, in any given societal and historical situation, extends our understanding of human actions. Perceptual orders determine how people act, both in terms of everyday practices and on larger scales, such as the political organization of societies, and how orders of knowledge interrelate with orders of how we perceive. We have also argued that paying attention to aesthetic knowledge needs training and theorizing, especially in those areas we can call the blind spots of an academic culture that is entrenched in a history of separating the body, emotions, and the messiness of reality, on the one hand, from the mind and “cool reason,” on the other. Many scholars in a diversity of disciplines work on overcoming this limiting dichotomy, and yet religion is often missing when knowledge cultures and regimes of perceiving the world are examined, whether religion is identified with normative theologies alone, or seen as a matter of individual feelings and private decisions that do not impact on larger historical and cultural developments. We need to undermine the old binary patterns that separate rather than explain relationships, and to offer better distinctions and categories. An aesthetics of knowledge can help to develop methods and epistemologies beyond text hermeneutics, and notions of a knowing subject distinct from a knowable, objectified world. And it can serve as a link between the broader analysis of culture and the study of religion, as a way of discovering major, often surprising, factors that determine how humans feel, think, and act.

RECOMMENDED READING Belting, Hans (2011), Florence and Baghdad. Renaissance Art and Arab Science, translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Focuses on the discovery of perspective and the unexpected link between Arab geometrical and

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mathematical theory, and European art and subjectivity. By allowing for an entangled “mutual gaze,” Belting shows how a change in the perception and depiction of the world— from the viewpoint of the spectator—developed in completely different directions under Christian and Islamic cultural matrices. Should be read together with Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s book My Name Is Red (1998). Schaffer, Simon, John Tresch, and Pasquale Gagliard, eds. (2017), Aesthetics of Universal Knowledge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Takes aesthetics seriously by showing that a knowledge that claims to be universal never only depicts the world, but actually forms the world. Authors including Anke te Heesen, Bruno Latour, and David Turnbull discuss a broad variety of questions, such as the role of “indigenous knowledge” in the Anthropocene and in a “trans-modernist” perspective. Aby Warburg looks at changing configurations of knowledge, or the influence on knowing of museums. This book should stimulate readers to wonder why religion is not more prominent in it. Voland, Eckart and Karl Grammer, eds. (2003), Evolutionary Aesthetics, Berlin: Springer. Provides a range of articles on what we know about aesthetic preferences, for instance with respect to odors or habitats, and about the interlinkage between “neuronal aesthetics” and culture-historical norms and practices that go beyond “aesthetic judgments.” How these preferences determine modes of knowing, or how modes of knowing might modify aesthetic preferences remains to be discussed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Methodology JENS KREINATH

INTRODUCTION: DEMARCATING THE FIELD OF STUDY Aesthetics of religion presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion that utilizes multiple methods to address a distinct research objective: to study religion aesthetically. With this objective, it seeks to elaborate on the role that sensory perception and embodied cognition play in different formations of religious discourse. It steps out from embodied cognition, defined as knowledge gained through the bodily senses, and focuses on perceptual patterns in the study of a broad array of topics including the performance and choreography of rituals, pilgrimages, and festivals; the designs, styles, and arrangements of religious icons, art works, and architectural forms; the imagination of mythical narratives, historical accounts, and alternative worldviews. This chapter addresses methodological questions in conjunction with aesthetics of religion to outline its general research objective, explain its use of methods, and explicate its contribution to the ethnographical, historical, and comparative study of religion. In doing so, it aims to identify (a) what research questions guide the process of data collection, (b) what methods are used to collect and analyze these data, and (c) what concepts and approaches are developed to generalize findings for comparative purposes. It will become clear that research in the aesthetics of religion cuts across disciplinary boundaries and uses mixed methods to allow for the establishment of a holistic framework in the study of religion. With its cross-disciplinary approach to the study of perceptual patterns, the aesthetics of religion places emphasis on the sensorial dimension of religion. For this purpose, it refers to the Greek notion of “aesthesis,” which literally means “perception” and is taken as a key term to account for the conjunction of forms of sensory perception and embodied cognition, designated as sensory cognition. From there, it moves on to the study of highly complex forms of religious aesthetics and ideologies that shape and are shaped by different forms of practice (Mohr 2006: 1435–6; Grieser 2015b: 15–16; Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 1–3; see also Koch, Chapter 3, this volume). With this objective, the aesthetics of religion requires a new methodology firmly based on a cultural approach to the study of religion (Münster 2001: 61; Mohr 2017: 232). This implies that not only are questions of methodology relevant for the specific methods used in “aesthetics of religion” research, but also that the methods themselves are subject to scrutiny and critical assessment in more general terms. Although methodology and method are often used interchangeably, methodology encompasses the study of method, defines the type of information and data to be analyzed, and provides the analytical tools and conceptual framework necessary to perform research (Kreinath 2004: 103–13). 47

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While the use of methods may differ in individual case studies, the theoretical objective of the aesthetics of religion consists of the formation of analytical concepts that would allow for the creation of a holistic framework facilitating comparison across different areas and fields of research with considerable terminological coherence (Cancik and Mohr 1988: 142–7). Although the specific steps in the methodical procedure—from designing a research question to the analysis and interpretation of a specific set of data— are important components of research, the formation of analytical concepts is crucial for the delineation and establishment of an aesthetic approach as an academic field of research (Mohn 2004: 302–7). Aesthetics of religion is developed through the conjunction of systematic analysis, concept formation, and methodology, and therefore it “provides an informed and shared analytical framework for theorizing rather than a single theory of religions and perception” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 28). Since methodology is closely tied to a rigorous focus on the assessment of methods which themselves address a research objective, a set of general questions are established here to guide the discussion in the subsequent sections: (1) What research methods are used in the aesthetics of religion? (2) What empirical data sets are relevant for the aesthetics of religion and how can such data sets be collected and analyzed? (3) What is the role of concept formation in the aesthetics of religion and what does this mean for its use of comparative methods? (4) How does the aesthetics of religion account for the universality and relativity of sensory cognition?

THE ROLE OF RESEARCH METHODS IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION The main methodological issue in the aesthetics of religion is how research methods can be used to adequately collect and analyze data in an empirically valid and theoretically sound manner. Due to its interdisciplinary agenda, the aesthetics of religion utilizes an assortment of methods suitable for data collection and analysis pertinent to the respective research objective. Because of the multidimensional nature of its subject matter, it is paramount for the aesthetics of religion to approach its topic “in a polyvalent fashion with multiple methods” (Wilke and Moebus 2011: 16). Only such a combination of research methods can open new ways of discovering formerly unnoticed sensory qualities of religion and help inquire about different types of perceptual patterns as prevalent in different forms of religious practice and the interplay of multiple aesthetic dimensions, as further outlined below. Depending on the specific research objective, methods in aesthetics of religion research may include, but are not limited to: (a) multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork combining participant observation, film recordings, and qualitative interviews for studying religious practice such as prayer, sacrifice, pilgrimage, or festival; (b) narrative, rhetorical, and textual analysis for studying religious cosmologies and imaginary worlds; (c) sound recording and performance analysis for studying soundscapes, auditory dimensions of text recitation, and reading practices; or (d) photographic documentation and iconographic analysis for studying cult objects and religious icons. To enhance methods in aesthetics of religion research, the researcher needs to be equipped with research techniques that allow for the discovery, description, and analysis of the diverse aesthetic dimensions in different forms of religious practice. To study culturally and socially coded information and communication aesthetically requires the

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inclusion of methods that apply techniques of documenting of sensory perception. By utilizing different research methods—including refined techniques of data collection and analysis—research in the aesthetics of religion aims to better contextualize the data of perceptual patterns in various religious traditions. Quantitative surveys and structured, semi-structured, or open-ended qualitative interviews generally help to account for the practitioners’ points of view, spatial self-location, and sensorial embeddedness in their own words. However, aesthetically refined interview techniques that specifically inquire about perceptual patterns in religious practice help to grasp the different forms of sensory cognition that account for religious practitioners as sensory agents. Since research methods are techniques of refined sensory perception used to reconstruct modes of attention among religious practitioners, the researcher must be trained in discovering, identifying, and observing perceptual patterns by studying the different forms, formations, and configurations of religious practice and discourse. This implies that when “[d]eveloping aesthetic analysis as a repertoire of methods, a specifically trained attention is required, and results from conscious and unconscious training processes, as well as skills of collecting data and producing ‘thick descriptions’ of sensory practices, settings and regimes” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 21). To produce such a “thick description” of the different aesthetic dimensions of religion—a term for the method of interpreting cultures from a native point of view, as introduced by Clifford Geertz—it is necessary for the researcher to discover, describe, and decode the different aesthetic styles, codes, and conventions as apparent in diverse forms and formations of religious practice. This implies that researchers need to be skilled in identifying and interpreting the different modes of signification and forms of attentiveness made by embodied sensory agents. By framing its theoretical objective and refining its methods of inquiry through a holistic approach, the aesthetics of religion insinuates a modular approach. It concentrates on aesthetic formation and configuration of religious practices and discourses that unfold through forms of sensory cognition (Meyer 2009b).

FIELDS OF RESEARCH IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION AND THE CODIFICATION OF BODILY SENSES The aesthetics of religion approach is applicable to the study of a variety of research topics, such as altered states of consciousness in religious experience, the function of linguistic concepts in the perception and classification of religious phenomena, imaginaries, and metaphors in religious narratives, and the role of tangible objects or icons in ritual practice. To study somatic modes of attention involves the analysis of bio-chemical processes, as various forms of religion are not only informed by specific notions of the body but also “practiced through the body” (Koch 2015: 21). Such analysis includes data collected through psychophysiological measurements and blood tests to indicate altered states of consciousness as perceptible through changes in heart beat rates, breathing rhythms, and hormone levels (Koch 2017a: 395–402; Schüler 2017: 374–8). Qualitative methods that give an account of the perceiving subject are important for a holistic approach to the aesthetics of religion. In this regard, the aesthetics of religion refines research methods to collect data which originate through the physiology of the human body and are themselves not text- or language-based and yet often coded and communicated through various linguistic and non-linguistic media.

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The organization of the visual field and the role that material objects and their visual representations play in religious practice vary considerably according to different religions and cultures, and sight plays a different role in these respective practices and discourses. Aesthetic mediation relates not only to the reconstruction of perceptual forms in present religious practice, but also to the rhetorical and exegetical analysis of historical texts. As this approach to the aesthetics of religion is utilized in historical and iconographic research, the available sources are read and analyzed differently than is commonly done in the history of religion. For example, any textual, auditory, visual, or tactile accounts are examined and interpreted by applying generalizable theories of sensory cognition. Applied to the study of textual sources, the “aesthetics of religion” approach aims to analyze religious phenomena “in their aesthetic forms and contexts, and so religious media cannot be used merely as windows to religious representations” (Feldt 2017: 121). In Laura Feldt’s own textual analysis of the literary aesthetics in the Exodus narrative, this means that the medium of the literary form plays a significant role in producing its own sensory effects. Therefore, literary texts cannot simply be taken as windows to religious representations but must instead be analyzed in their aesthetic forms and contexts (Feldt 2017: 121). The study of figurative language and narrative forms are central to aesthetics of religion research. The importance of studying these forms in the aesthetics of religion is methodologically significant as it aims to reframe the study of texts and their canonical interpretation to the practice of vernacular storytelling by analyzing the aesthetic formations and sensations of story worlds and their audiences in different historical and cultural contexts. The aesthetic analysis of religious narratives thus requires considering the complex and adaptive dynamics of the culture in which such narratives work as multimedia and polyphonic phenomena that unfold their aesthetic potential both within and across narrative genres through diverse performative contexts and transference to different audiences (Feldt 2017: 139–40). In elaboration of the “aesthetics of religion” approach to the study of religious traditions, Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus argued for an “extended methodological approach to text” which focuses on “the performative aspects and with them the readers’ imagination and the everchanging flow of tradition. Texts are not static entities with a fixed meaning, and neither is their meaning exhausted in their semantic sense” (Wilke and Moebus 2011: 5). Therefore, it becomes important to “approach text as a source of data on people’s use of the senses and as a key to culturally determined perception” (29). An example of this is Wilke’s study on the role of sound in Sanskrit Hinduism of India and its transference to Europe that focuses on specific forms of sonic perception (see Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume). Starting with the analysis of the cultural framework of Hindu acoustic piety where “a word is an acoustic reality to which meaning is attached” (Wilke 2017b: 324), she demonstrates what role sonic perception plays in India and Europe and how important it is to account for the aesthetics of sound in studying Sanskrit literature. In her sonic analysis of such ritual and musical performances, she shows how the analysis of the effectiveness of aesthetic media through a cross-cultural inquiry of sensory symbols, atmospheric moods, and cultivated feelings can contribute to the aesthetics of religion (345). In grounding her methodology in the sonic analysis of Sanskrit literature and its reception and reinterpretation, she further develops a set of methods to enhance the historical and comparative analysis in the aesthetics of religion. The emphasis on sound recognition is significant for the study of other perceptual patterns relevant to a given religious tradition. Sound recognition is essential in deciphering

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coded messages, and differences in sound production may affect the meaning of a message. Specifically, the study of soundscapes plays a considerable role in the aesthetics of religion. Sound is not only a key feature in the codification of human communication, but it also mediates different forms of religious practice through rhythm and tempo. In its attempt to identify “how sound communicates” (Wilke and Moebus 2011: 18), sonic research in the aesthetics of religion employs the concept of soundscape to specify how sound is produced, how it is thus used to mark the beginning and ending of ritual sequences, and even to introduce and conclude altered states of consciousness. By inquiring as to the role of the production and perception of sound, “aesthetics of religion” research can demonstrate how the musical rhythms impact heartbeat, breathing patterns, and bodily movement. In doing so, it accounts for the synchronization of natural and cultural forms that lead to altered states of consciousness, as in the context of healing ceremonies (Koch and Meissner 2015: 132–3), rituals of spirit possession (Wilkens 2015: 112–15), or glossolalia (Schüler 2017: 378–84). Approaches to the aesthetics of religion that focus on visual and auditory forms of religious practice use ethnographic methods of participant observation to gain first-hand accounts from religious practitioners. Methods of data collection, photography, cinematography, and phonography are used to capture as much contextual information as possible. Because recording audio-visual media is primarily based on physical actions and sound, the technology for documentation and reproduction of that data is more advanced and easily accessible. Although sight and sound are the preferred senses serving as primary means of human communication, the aesthetics of religion aims to counter this trend by considering processes of mediation and codification in smell, touch, and taste. The aesthetics of religion places emphasis on the interplay of the different senses and conducts research on sensory perception along with the identification of various forms of sensation (Meyer 2009b). It applies methods utilized in related fields of research including methods related to the study of tactility, proxemics, kinesics, and other forms of non-verbal bodily communication and media use. In addition, other forms of sensory forms and formations must be considered, including trauma, pain, gender, sexuality, ascetism, and altered states of consciousness. The study of different modes of sensory perception and the codification of the different dimensions of sensory systems is of major significance for understanding how sensory cognition coincide in the study of religion (Grieser 2015b: 466–76, 2017: 243–7; Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 33). The ritual interaction with material objects is also an important aesthetic dimension of religious practice. The aesthetic study of the conjunction of materiality and the senses raises questions about the agency of material objects in religious practices. The consideration of material objects like tombs and trees as non-human agents with whom religious practitioners as embodied sensory agents interact is that field of study within the aesthetics of religion that deals with the transformation of human agency or the efficacy of the human imagination. The aesthetics of religion inquires as to the role of physical contact or movement patterns in religious practice as it, for example, becomes apparent in blessing or healing rituals during ghost dances and exorcisms or in saint veneration rituals during the visitation of tombs or touching of icons (Wilkens 2015: 119–27; Kreinath 2017b: 267, 270–2). Touch and tactile sensation are tied to forms of bodily movement and involve multiple senses and different forms of sensory perception. The physical contact established through touch and tactile sensation is of interest for the aesthetics of religion, as it presents a prevalent case for ritual interactions of human and

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non-human agents mediated and codified in religious practices. The study of smell and taste in religious practice are also important, but they are—for methodological reasons— more difficult to describe (Guggenmos, Chapter 20, this volume). Aside from sensory perception related to different bodily senses, the aspects of kinesthetics and ethology are central to the aesthetics of religion. This is because they study the ways in which forms of religious practice like prayer, sacrifice, dance, or pilgrimage are choreographed and also how bodily postures, gestures, and movements are coded. By using movement studies, historical anthropology, and historical discourse analysis, for example, in conjunction with visual depictions and tables of aesthetics styles, Hubert Mohr further aims to develop “a terminology, a typology, and a model, for a toolkit in the perspective of a larger comparative religious aesthetics, and a cultural understanding of somatic aesthetics as well” (2017: 212, 217–18). In this regard, the aesthetics of religion incorporates the study of sensory perception of varying bodily schemata as those forms of embodied cognition that “denote the self-representation of the body” (Koch 2017a: 392). The ways in which kinesthetics and ethology organize the perceptual field of the human body become particularly apparent when studied in the context of ritual interactions between human and other-than-human agents as mediated through postures, gestures, and movements (Kreinath 2017b: 259–62). As the bodily sense of orientation, distance, and rhythm in religious practice are related to these bodily schemata, the study of spatial and temporal arrangements in the performance of rituals becomes a central component in the aesthetics of religion. One example for the study of embodied cognition “as the place where perception and action coincide” (Schüler 2017: 377) elaborates on the aesthetics of bodily immersion and synchronization in the instances it occurs in the practice of glossolalia and prayer groups (ibid.: 215–20, 224, 374–81). Studying the aesthetics of immersion in these forms of ritual practice can help in gaining new insights into how collective effervescence applies to the micro-level of individual perception rather than on the macro-level of society (ibid.: 385). The study of bodily schemata also facilitates ways of understanding how the different forms of sensual perception and embodied cognition are organized differently in the respective religious traditions (Traut and Wilke 2015b: 34, 38–9, 56–7; Wilkens 2015: 114; Aktor 2017a: 60–4; Koch 2017a: 392–5).

COMPARATIVE METHOD AND CONCEPT FORMATION IN THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION Considering that the theoretical objective of the aesthetics of religion is neither defined by a specific type or class of objects nor delimited by a historical period or geographical region, the relative coherence of this field of research depends on the formation of a set of analytical concepts suitable for purposes of cross-cultural and trans-historical comparison (Guggenmos 2012; Kreinath 2018). It is for these reasons that the major contribution of the aesthetics of religion consists of collaborative work on concept formation to help establish an operational consistency in coordinating and complementing the diversity of research questions and methods addressed in specific projects within this field of study. Aside from the importance of concepts for analyzing sensorial data, the aesthetics of religion as a field of research is defined by the coherence of its terminology. Since the aesthetics of religion is not defined by a specific research question or method of analysis, concept formation is of central importance for outlining its field of research. This objective

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is met—aside from actual research of data collection conducted in this field—by articulating the conceptual framework of analysis and defining its canon of analytical concepts to make them suitable for comparative purposes. This conceptual work is made to fit the methodological objective in the aesthetics of religion; namely, to create concepts that can be used for critical analysis and controlled comparison of sensorial data collected through historical and ethnographic research (Kreinath 2018). The aesthetics of religion approach clearly supports comparative analysis on a microlevel. For example, when studying rituals of saint veneration at shared sanctuaries in the Levant it is helpful to compare specific ritual postures, gestures, and movements performed at these sites (Kreinath 2017b: 263–73). The visit to a sanctuary follows a precise choreography as practiced among Eastern Orthodox Christians and Arab Alawite Muslims in the southernmost region of Turkey, namely kissing first the right and then the left doorframe before entering a sanctuary and then kissing the saint’s tomb as a central part of the veneration ritual. I was able to capture this choreography in 2010, in Hatay, when visiting an ˙Ilyas sanctuary by Eastern Orthodox Christians (Figure 5.1) and the Hıdır sanctuary by Arab Alawites (Figure 5.2). The specific sequence of movements during saint veneration rituals is usually repeated in a rapid manner. It involves kissing the monumental structure and immediately touching it with the forehead; due to the sequential but fluid nature of these movements, they would be most accurately represented through cinematographic means. The distinctive choreography of these ceremonial gestures can also be observed in interactions with religious authorities—like priests or sheiks—to receive blessings during highly coded ritual gestures of greeting or leave-taking. They are also part of ritual interactions with

FIGURE 5.1: Eastern Orthodox Christians kissing the right and left doorframe and the tomb at Mar ˙Ilyas Sanctuary in Hatay. © Jens Kreinath.

FIGURE 5.2: Arab Alawite Muslims kissing the right and left doorframe and the tomb at a Hz. Hıdır Sanctuary in Hatay. © Jens Kreinath.

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FIGURE 5.3: Arab Alawite woman kissing a marble cylinder and the Quran at a Hz. Hıdır Sanctuary in Hatay. © Jens Kreinath.

sacred objects like holy books or icons that are performed as a sign of respect in interactions with sacred trees—to make wishes or seal vows—as well as with sacred marble cylinders— to receive healing and pain relief (Figure 5.3). Although the aesthetic features in the choreography of these ceremonial gestures are almost identical and barely distinguishable from one context to another, the sensory perception among ritual practitioners is radically different depending on context and power relations involved. Besides, it is necessary to consider that ritual interactions with sacred objects and religious authorities are perceived and coded differently among the Christian and Muslim communities; these differences are related to different notions of the physical presence of divine light or non-human agency in the respective objects or persons and the role that the visible and invisible realm plays in the performances of such ceremonial gestures (Kreinath 2017b: 269–75). Further advancements in the conceptual work of an aesthetics of religion approach are made by introducing aesthetics as “a connective concept” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 30–2) that integrates various types of data for comparative purposes. Considering that research conducted in the aesthetics of religion works across disciplinary boundaries and integrates its findings into a holistic framework of analysis, such concepts allow one to account for the recursive connectivity of such work conducted in the aesthetics of religion. As Hubert Mohr argued, it is important “to develop an aesthetic theory grounded in cultural studies and particularly in the comparative study of religion” which means “to build the analysis of religious phenomena as sensory phenomena on the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral social practices found in the respective culture to understand the religious arts, ritual design, and civil religious settings” (2017: 232). The ways in which concept formation works in this context can be illustrated with the concept of mimesis. In line with aesthetic theories like those introduced by Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Michael Taussig, and Alfred Gell, the concept of mimesis can be defined as the process of becoming and being made similar within and across different fields of religious practice. Used in this sense, this concept is applicable to the aesthetics of religion, as it can be exemplified in the case of saint veneration among Christians and Muslims by accounting for the similarity and differences in the imitation, representation, and imagination of religious beliefs and practices (Kreinath 2017a: 276–7). In this context, mimesis is used to refer to forms of imitation, representation, and imagination to account for what religious subjects do, think, or feel by way of imitating, representing, or experiencing

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something or someone else. Mimesis in this sense is relevant to the aesthetics of religion precisely because it opens possibilities for identifying subtler similarities and differences in the changing configurations of sensory perception and embodied cognition as they emerge in complementary and coordinated forms of religious practice and discourse (Kreinath 2017a: 273–8; 2017b: 263–73). Mimesis not only addresses the aura of objects, places, and persons as mediated in sensory perception, but also accounts for recurring patterns of similarity and difference on various scales of representation as codified in forms of embodied cognition through language and other forms of representation. It is concept formation that allows the establishment of aesthetics of religion as an independent field—or even as a subdiscipline in the study of religion that works across these very boundaries by integrating various research methods in the aesthetic study of religion. Since the aesthetics of religion is interdisciplinary and its collaborative research outcome is trans-historical and cross-cultural by design, the comparative method plays an important role in its research agenda in the formation of analytical concepts. Although the aesthetics of religion does not contest the value of comparative methods, it insists on the formation of analytical concepts to conduct rigorous and evidence-based research. Therefore, this approach to the study of religion supports methodologically controlled comparison, meaning that the comparison and concept formation is based on empirical case studies. In using the comparative method, research in the aesthetics of religion identifies the respective points of comparison along with the scope and scale of the given case study and thus establishes analytical concepts to help uncover configurations of sensory perception and embodied cognition that would otherwise pass unnoticed or remain unknown.

UNIVERSALITY OF SENSORY PERCEPTION AND RELATIVITY OF RELIGIOUS AESTHETICS Particularly as it relates to the interface between language, perception, and cognition, any notions of linguistic and aesthetic relativity are of methodological importance for the aesthetics of religion. Different languages use different terms and codes to identify variance in their perception and cognition, as applied to color, shape, size, smell, and texture. Similarly, the recognition of sound, tonality, volume, and rhythm differs across languages and cultures as well. Aside from these differences in the roles and values attached to the visible and invisible realms in religious practice, the organization of the visual and auditory fields impacts the sensation, perception, and cognition of religious discourses (Koch and Meissner 2015: 136–50; Meyer 2015a: 333–5). It is important to discuss the universality of sensory cognition in the context of the relativity of socially and culturally bound aesthetic forms and configurations. This also includes accounting for the specific historical, economic, and political conditions of processes of mediation and codification under which such forms of perception and cognition can be compared. Taking sensory perception as its methodological point of reference, the aesthetics of religion aims to open a field of inquiry that relates sensorial data to forms of social interaction, cultural performance, and cognitive appropriation as it is mediated and codified through different configurations of religious discourse. By identifying the different forms of social interaction and cognitive appropriation and their use of bodily senses in cultural performances, the aesthetics of religion facilitates the analysis of these discourses based on different data sets.

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Despite the universality of embodied cognition cutting across religions and cultures, the actual forms of sensory perception in religious practice are indexical, meaning that they are confined to specific historical, social, and cultural contexts. The aesthetics of religion accounts for the indexicality of sensory cognition and aims to inquire and reconstruct the relational configurations of sensory perception and embodied cognition in conjunction with the specific times and places and the social relationships involved with other human and non-human agents that emerge therein. Therefore, aesthetics of religion does not aim to make universal claims about religion as such but rather to contextualize configurations of embodied cognition in the context of sensory perception as they are shaped by tangible social, political, and economic conditions. The aesthetics of religion thus accounts for different forms of cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic relativism which other approaches to religion may ignore due to their aesthetic ideology. A key feature in the aesthetics of religion is its methodological universalism, and yet a considerable emphasis is placed on pragmatically supporting a commitment to the principle of aesthetic relativism as elaborated in the respective case studies, as it presupposes that the specific features of sensory perception can only be studied contextually, be it historiographic or ethnographic, text- or performance-based. The aesthetics of religion proposes a framework of analysis that accounts for both the universality and particularity of empirical data as integral to its research agenda.

CONCLUSION The aesthetics of religion proposes a holistic perspective on sensory cognition as those dimensions that mediate and codify religious practices and discourses. This approach combines explanatory and interpretative methods through contextual description and conceptual analysis. In doing so, it distinguishes between complementary perspectives while conjoining them into a conceptual framework of analysis. This allows for combining ethnographic, historical, and comparative research on different scales of generality. In other words, the aesthetics of religion helps “going beyond reproduction and appreciation of aesthetic forms and providing a systematic frame for comparing and analyzing the single case in light of more general questions” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 21). It is not through the specific type of sensorial data or the specific method of analysis and comparison that the main characteristics of the aesthetics of religion are demarcated as a field of research. The aesthetics of religion provides a methodology that facilitates research on the aesthetics dimensions of religion and thus it accounts for the interplay of sensory cognition in its various configurations by studying the aesthetic dimensions of religious practice and discourse holistically. This implies that the findings of any given empirical, comparative, interpretative, or explanatory research in the aesthetics of religion are put into the context of the respective society and culture. In this regard, research in the aesthetics of religion emphasizes that its findings are comparable and generalizable, and yet they are contextual and subject to critical scrutiny. This becomes evident not only in the necessity for empirical research and concrete evidence, but also with the situatedness of individual case studies in which the sensorial data was collected. It is for these reasons that the aesthetics of religion supports a methodological pluralism, as a combination of methods are needed to meet a given research objective. It therefore supports multi-sited research methods by taking different sources into consideration and fostering a theoretical framework through concept formation to refine

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research methods. It is this agenda that makes the aesthetics of religion holistic in its claim to integrate diverse research methods and agendas: by assembling different types of data on sensory cognition—the cognition of sensory perception and embodied cognition— into an overarching integral framework of analysis, this theory accounts for the specificity of sensorial data as aesthetically mediated through material objects and theoretical concepts and used by participating agents as they emerge in the respective religious practices and discourses.

RECOMMENDED READINGS Grieser, Alexandra, and Jay Johnston (2017), “What is an Aesthetics of Religion? From the Senses to Meaning—and Back Again,” in Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston (eds.), Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, 1–49. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Provides the most comprehensive overview of the different methodological approaches to the aesthetics of religion so far. Meyer, Birgit (2009b), “From Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms, and Styles of Binding,” in Birgit Meyer (ed.), Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses, 1–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Proposes a holistic perspective on the study of sensory perceptions in religion by introducing the concept of aesthetic formations.

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PART II

Analytical Categories

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CHAPTER SIX

Imagination LUCIA TRAUT AND ANNE WAHL

INTRODUCTION: AN IMAGINATIVE ACCESS TO IMAGINATION A cloister in Spain, in the 1600s. It is early morning. A young man awakes in his cell. He rises, dresses, seems deep in concentration. He doesn’t open the shutters; the room is dim and remains so for the rest of the day. An older man enters. The young man looks at him, greets him, then looks away. They both sit down. The older man has a book on him and occasionally looks something up as he talks to the younger one, who just listens. The older man leaves, the younger man remains still for a couple of minutes. Then he kneels down and stays in this position for an hour. He gets up again, strides through the room for fifteen minutes. When he leaves his room to go to the refectory or to attend Mass, he doesn’t lift his gaze and remains silent. At midday, the older man enters his room again and the procedure repeats. Likewise, in the afternoon, the evening, and even at midnight—five times a day, only interrupted by silent and meager meals, attending of Mass, supervisory talks with the older man, sometimes individual reading of the bible or devout literature, eventual walks, occasional mild self-flagellation, and some sleep. That drill is repeated for four weeks. After that the young man returns home. A few weeks later he enters the Jesuit order and becomes a missionary. Maybe readers have realized by now that our little narrative was a description of the Ignatian spiritual exercises in their long retreat form. Possibly these few words guided the readers’ imagination to create mental images and empathize with that fictitious young man on a bodily, sensual, and emotional level. Maybe readers remembered that the main task in the spiritual exercises is the disciplined and tutored exercising of one’s own imagination in order to find out God’s intention for one’s life. And if they didn’t know that, they probably assumed that there was some extensive and life-changing mental activity going on during the time the young man was kneeling motionlessly for an hour five times a day for four weeks. Let’s imagine that these fictitious events were true. That assumption is not too farfetched, because our narration is inspired by Ignatius of Loyola’s manual Spiritual Exercises (SE) (Spanish original: Ejercicios Espirituales, composed between 1522 and c. 1540).1 What would we have to say about these events from the point of view of an aesthetics of religion? Traditionally, we would begin with an analysis of the aestheticscape: the dim illumination of the room, the restricted and ritualized kinds of movements, the unnatural 61

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and exhausting abidance in one position for a longer time, the guidance of gaze, the limited and formalized interactions with other people—and the efficacy of these kinds of sensory deprivation, bodily and emotional discipline. We would describe the daily repetitions of the exercise, their interrelation with biorhythm, and their cognitive effects. We would have something to say about the physical effects of mild fasting, sleep deprivation, and flagellation. Furthermore, we would add some semiotic insight by highlighting how atmosphere and actions make certain theological concepts and Jesuit ideas perceivable, e.g., becoming a soldier for Jesus in the overall war of God versus Satan. We would even link a sociocultural perspective and analyze how these exercises initiate the subject into a distinct habitus of rational, emotional, and bodily discipline through embodied cognition. But nevertheless, we mostly would have left out the one dimension the spiritual exercises are about: imagination. If we introduce imagination as an analytical category, we take a whole universe of human experience and cognitive and sociocultural operations into account—all of which are very relatable to an aesthetics of religion perspective. For example, the subjective experiences provided by imagination are supremely aesthetic in the sense that they are sensual, they trigger emotions, and lead to physical reactions. The process of imagining is highly impressible to sensory input. It seems to be dependent on the subject having previous sensory or bodily experiences that correlate with the imagination (Schilhab 2013: 318–19). Even during reading or visualizing, when there is no actual perception or motion going on, neuroscientists have observed neuronal activities in the relevant perceptional and temporal brain areas; in other words, “imagination imitates perception both experientially and neurologically” (Modell 2003: 215). Individual imagination pushes through to a sociocultural aesthetic dimension: it is narrated, written down, acted out in theatrical ways and materialized in the form of pictures, objects, or whole aesthetic panoramas. Through these “mediations” (Meyer 2009b), individual imagination may become part of the cultural imaginary. Alternatively, individual imagination is triggered and directed by culturally mediated imaginaries and technologies of imagination. Therefore imagination tutoring plays an essential role for sociocultural critical processes like education or politics. For that reason imagination can form and reform society and is part of historical dynamics. This short overview shows that imagination is linked to cognitive and sociocultural dimensions that an aesthetics of religion is interested in. By taking imagination into account we can add an additional analytical layer to that perspective. In our essay we present some ideas on how to approach the category of imagination in religious contexts from the perspective of an aesthetics of religion. Groundwork on that has been done in the anthology Religion–Imagination–Ästhetik (Traut and Wilke 2015a).

TOWARD AN AESTHETIC UNDERSTANDING OF IMAGINATION Avoiding Reductionism In the following pages, we will clarify our comprehension of imagination and how it is related to religion. Before that we will briefly discuss some colloquial meanings of imagination in order to avoid usual reductions of the term (Traut and Wilke 2015b: 20– 1). Mostly, imagination has three possible meanings in colloquial language:

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1. subjective mental imagery like pictures in the mind’s eye, daydreams, or fantasies; 2. loss of sense of reality like irrational fancies, illusions, or delusions; 3. the artistic, creative genius and its original ideas. The mental reduction of imagination is rooted in a common concept of body–mind– dualism that has a long and complex history in Western philosophical and religious discourse.2 An aesthetics of religion perspective does not follow that dualism, but sees imagination as embodied cognition. That implies an intrinsic link between bodily processes, sensory input, and operations of the mind (Koch, Chapter 3, this volume). Additionally, aesthetics of religion transcends a pure subjective notion of imagination by taking sociocultural processes of imaginative meaning-making and aesthetic and semantic mediation into account. Mediation ultimately is the glue that binds cognitive and sociocultural aspects of imagination together, as briefly shown above. The common phrase “pictures in the mind’s eye” implies that imagination works mainly on a visual level. In fact, studies in cognitive modularity suggest that visual imagination is triggered more readily than other forms of imagination as our brains seem to process visual input some milliseconds faster (even if the visual information is presented in spoken word) (Lieberoth 2013: 167). Additionally, Western tradition tends to favor the visual in a culturally embedded hierarchy of the senses. Nonetheless, imagination entails holistic sensual and semantic qualities. An aesthetics of religion approach can help to keep that in mind. Furthermore, in colloquial language the term imagination is used for denying someone their common sense, marking them as deluded or deranged, taking fancy for reality. In context of religions, critics of religion and religious people themselves use that pejorative notion to psychologically disavow opposite beliefs (e.g., evangelical agitation about fantasy genre—Laycock 2015). It should be obvious that in the study of religion we do not follow that line of argument, but analyze the politics behind the pejorative notion’s use. Finally, in colloquial language, imagination refers to creative and innovative powers of artists or inventors. From this point of view, imagination seems to be a highly elitist phenomenon which tops the mundane everyday fantasies of ordinary people. That distinction of focused and powerful creative imagination from free-floating unproductive fantasy was first made by Paracelsus and since then has been deeply entangled with romantic and theosophic discourses about magic and soteriology (van den Doel and Hanegraaff 2006: 612–13). This is just one example of how imagination has become a subject in religious discourse. We should be aware of these kinds of entanglements when using the term imagination as an analytical category. We follow the assumption that creativity is an output of the mind’s imaginative faculty; but we include highly developed artistic performance as well as everyday problem solving—or in the context of religions: charismatic visionaries as well as ordinary practitioners. This leads us to our understanding of imagination: we understand imagination as the human mind’s faculty that enables us to decouple from present reality. We presuppose the existence of a mundane reality, which is empirically perceivable and established by cultural routine (and for that second reason probably not entirely universal). Humans use imagination to decouple from that reality framework occasionally by a conscious or unconscious switching into a “counterfactual,” “as-if ” or “what-if ” mode (Byrne 2005). That mode defines a new, imaginative frame as only relevant for a distinct period of time. Within the imaginative mode it is possible “to elaborate concepts, images, and ideas that

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do not correspond to current or past reality, and that may never be actualized” (Roth 2007: xx). Imagination therefore is the premise for every kind of handling of absent or abstract objects, for learning by description only, for empathy, for innovative or everyday problem-solving creativity, for counterfactual meditating. It is the only way we can deal with all kinds of life-world transcendancies, as sociology of knowledge on religion would put it—be it “small” (the past, the future, other places—everywhere and everywhen I am not right now), “medium” (sensations, thinking, experiences of other people), or “great” (the zones of reality which break daily routine) (Luckmann 1991: 164–83). Yet we differ from approaches that tend to classify every kind of human perception, cognition, and behavior as imagination. These theories often link a broad notion of culture with a wide epistemological concept of imagination. According to these approaches, every sensation is filtered by cultural paradigms and therefore automatically moves on to be an imaginatively interpreted percept (e.g., Warnock 1976; Pruyser 1983; Castoriadis 1987; Johnson 1987; Brann 1991: 366–73). To use “imagination” as an analytical category we prefer to define a distinct meaning of the term. Hence, we base our argument on the concept of (intentional or unintentional) mode-switching instead of arguing for a nonstop active cultural and epistemological imagination as in prediction theory of mind (Johannsen and Kirsch, Chapter 13, this volume).

Imagination and Religion: Suspension of Disbelief In contrast to the everyday imagination (like musing about absent things, past and future, the emotional life of other people or the temporary immersion into fictitious worlds), religious imaginations and religious imagining seem to have a particular ontological quality that makes them different. In this chapter, we offer some thoughts deriving from evolutionary and developmental psychology and cognitive science that can help to illuminate the complex and contradictory alliance of imagination and religion. From an evolutionary point of view the human mind’s ability to imagine is very helpful to prepare for and master complex situations. Studies in evolutionary psychology and archeology assume that 30,000–40,000 years ago increasing brain volume came together with growing size of social groups and evidence of high-order cognitive processes, semiotic capabilities, and shared mental representations (Dunbar 1996; Edelman and Tononi 2001). That was probably the origin of art and religion as forms of adaptive behavior as well, which helped our ancestors to deal with important but uncertain circumstances (Lewis-Williams 2002; Dissayanake 2013: 129–30). The desire to develop rituals in order to influence situations, however, implies the capability to imagine several outcomes and create methods of resolution. Thus, imagination and religion seem to be linked on a phylogenetic level in human history. Religious and imaginative-cognitive development seem to be codependent on an ontogenetic level. Developmental psychologists assume that growing empirical knowledge of the world stimulates sophisticated (religious) imagining. At a very young age (18–24 months), children begin to distinguish between pretend and reality (Leslie 1994). From there on they derive intellectual pleasure and cathartic emotions from the imaginative violation of key ontological principles delivered by pretend play and counterfactual thinking. This is culturally supported, e.g., by fairy tales, rituals, and religion, and continues in adulthood, too (Harris 2000: 161–83). That is one reason why humans occasionally take up a position that can be called “suspension of disbelief ” (Coleridge 1817, chapter XIV). That is another way to phrase the process of temporary decoupling from reality. In

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literary contexts, Coleridge calls this position “poetic faith” (ibid.). In the context of religious rituals, Roy A. Rappaport describes that attitude as “ritual acceptance,” which “makes it possible for the performer to transcend his own doubt, experience and reason by accepting in defiance of them” (Rappaport 1999: 283). Nonetheless, religious traditions do not usually refer to their religious activities as imaginings, pretense, or temporal acceptance since they are about creating an “aura of factuality” (Geertz 1973: 90). That is cognitively very challenging, as religious concepts are usually quite counterintuitive and clearly marked as non-empirical (Boyer 2001). Our brain is fully capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality and normally engages in constant input-monitoring (Johannsen and Kirsch, Chapter 13, this volume) that “weeds out notions too weird to fit in the everyday setting of life” (Lieberoth 2013: 174). Thus, in the context of religions we can find some semantic, cognitive, and aesthetic strategies that disguise imaginative and counterintuitive assets in order to create faith. First, there are semantic strategies, e.g., the use of cohesive links of argument which either ignore the fact that someone is imagining or sacralize the process of imagination. The latter we can find in the Ignatian exercises: the exercitant’s imagination is considered to be God’s communication to the exercitant in order to let him3 recognize God’s will for his life: “[w]hile one is engaged in the Spiritual Exercises, it is more suitable and much better that the Creator and Lord in person communicate Himself to the devout soul in quest of the divine will . . .” (SE 15). To ensure that stance, the exercitant has to frame every exercise by prayers in order to performatively and semantically feed the imaginative experience back to God (SE 46, 48, 54). But semantic strategies alone probably would not suffice to counteract our brain’s intuitive doubt in religious concepts. Therefore, we must take some sociocultural and cognitive aspects into account. Erving Goffman’s ideas about socio-cognitive frameworks can help us here (1974). Following his approach, religious activities seem to be keyed differently than fictitious activities, even though both adapt and modulate the realistic framework in similar imaginative ways. In religious communication (as in other forms of culturally constitutive communication), for example, we cannot find the use of rhetorical signs that usually mark fiction or fantasy (Iser 1993: 12). Thus, when a religious framework comes into play, humans seem to use another cognitive toolset to create meaning and organize their experiences than for fictive frameworks. That results in a very different social responsiveness to religious (or cultural) beliefs than to other kinds of imagination. For example, there is an elevated level of seriousness, a big pool of verbal information about religious ideas, and a high motivation to act according to the beliefs (Taylor and Carlson 2000). Cognitive scientists and developmental psychologists assume that as social beings our brains process this kind of sociocultural meta-information or “scope-syntax” (Lieberoth 2013: 174) preferentially. That makes us more willing to take a leap of faith, even though we usually recognize the non-empirical, counterintuitive quality of religious concepts. In the context of rituals, heightened cognitive demands of ritualistic behavior could be an additional factor that makes our brains more accessible to sociocultural interpretation (Sørensen, Chapter 7, this volume). Returning to the Ignatian exercises, this means the spiritual director plays a key role for turning the exercitant’s imagination into a meaningful faith experience. The exercises are very challenging due to their comprehensive and elongated conceptional design, so on a cognitive level the exercitant is deeply dependent on his or her spiritual director’s interpretational help. By creating an overall atmosphere of gravity built on careful supervision of the exercitant’s imaginative experiences, the spiritual director motivates

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the exercitant to take his imaginative experiences seriously and accept the interpretational frame of Jesuit spirituality. An aesthetics of religion analysis adds another layer of argument by recognizing that the experience of factuality depends a great deal on sensual and emotional tangibility. From an aesthetic point of view, religious spaces, objects, performances, etc. can be seen as building blocks of virtual realities that replicate and simulate—i.e., mediate—the imaginary on a tangible level (Meyer 2009). In the Ignatian exercises, for example, dimmed light, mild fasting, self-flagellation and sleep deprivation, restriction of laughter, lowered gaze, and staying inside should support the imagining of Christ’s passion (SE 79–86). On the other hand, when Christ’s resurrection is to be imagined, the exercitant is advised to change the lighting accordingly or make use of nice weather (SE 130). By that, the exercitant’s immersion into the atmospheres of biblical events is intensified by a highly suggestive aestheticscape. To sum up, aesthetic and semantic effort made by religions can be seen as a way to let religious imagination come to life empirically in order to disguise the counterintuitive imaginative character of religious concepts that would otherwise be discarded by our cognitive filter system. An aesthetics of religion can therefore provide an apposite analytical perspective to get hold of imagination in the context of religions. In the following section we will exemplify how an aesthetics of religion’s approach to imagination might work.

TOWARD AN AESTHETIC STYLISTICS OF IMAGINATION Aisthesis: The Interplay of Imagination and Senses Neuroscientists assume that in order to create mental scenes featuring visual, auditory, and tactile qualities, our brains are dependent on either actual sensual input or remembered (i.e. linguistically or emotionally labeled) sensory experiences (Lieberoth 2013: 162; Schilhab 2013: 318–22). Therefore, intentionally orchestrated sensory input not only creates an aura of factuality, but also activates and directs imagination. Such imaginative guides can be: suggestive aesthetical settings (light, sound, smell, atmosphere) or imaginative media (written or spoken language, music, pictures, architecture), use of body techniques (posture, movement, gestures, trance, fasting, breathing) or performative elements (special garments, masks, make up, props, role-playing). An aesthetics of religion will describe the character and collaboration of these imaginative guides, especially regarding the interplay of actual and imagined sensorial elements. In the Ignatian exercises, for instance, the exercitants are given daily the task to visualize a biblical or mythical scene (including sound, taste, smell), put themselves mentally inside this scene, and imaginatively perform in it, e.g. talking to biblical persons or God. The spiritual director usually provides just a short oral input outlining that scene, but offers no additional imaginative guides such as the manual’s text, Gospel verses to read, pictures to look at, etc. As mentioned above, some suggestive atmospheric arrangements and body techniques come into play in order to set the right mood. Apart from that the aesthetic atmosphere is very plain, so the exercitants can immerse themselves in their mental experience and inner sensations. Here, imagined sensation widely replaces sensorial perception. However, in religious traditions there can also be found more preset or guided imaginative settings, e.g., the Jhanki processions in Northern India (Luchesi, Chapter 19,

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this volume), meditating corpse (von Ohain, Chapter 23, this volume), or the performance of a tantric ritual just by meticulous imagining (Wilke 2015). These settings can be quite comprehensive, e.g., they supply a multimedia-based aesthetical staging of the content and process to be imagined, they make the practitioners act their imagination out with their bodies or verbalize it in certain ways, and in general leave very few gaps to let the practitioners’ imagination run freely. On the other hand, there are imaginative-aesthetic settings that take a middle course by providing just a few sensorial elements and encouraging the participants to actively complement these by use of imagination. By repetition and formalization, imagination can fade away into “conceptional blending” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). When Hindus, for instance, ritually feed a statue of a deity, they supposedly do not imagine realistic processes of eating and digesting food; the same goes for the veneration of stupas (Aktor, Chapter 9, this volume). Linking the concept “eating” to an inanimate object and linking this object to the concept of god as a living being seems to suffice. It may be that these kinds of rituals onto- and phylogenetically originate in an imaginative role-playing or pretense-play, but with ongoing establishment comprehensive imagination is replaced by following a formalized script. Harvey Whitehouse’s model of divergent religious modes can be helpful in grasping the difference between highly imaginative rituals (“imagistic mode”) and formalized rituals that do not involve imaginative effort (“doctrinal mode”) (2004). The first focuses on individual experience and emotion, and works with the episodic memory, whereas the second triggers the semantic memory and therefore works with schematic knowledge activation instead of creating an imaginative experience. Ignatian exercises obviously belong to the imagistic rituals.

Imaginative Modes, Media, and Methods: Technologies of Imagination The analysis of imaginative cognition brings us to the conclusion that there are (at least) three forms of imagination (which we will call “modes of imagination”—not to be confused with Whitehouse’s “modes of religiosity”). Imagination is either based 1. on the mental substitution or complementing of sensation (= sensual mode); 2. on the bodily mimicking of another being or of the (mental or actual) performing of a task (= performative-bodily mode); 3. or it is language-based, e.g., the immersion in narratives or descriptions (= linguistic mode). Of course, there are combinations and interdependences of these modes. For example, embodied simulation theorists suggest that language activates a mental simulation of the verbalized perceptions (Wheeler et al. 2008). Methods and media with sensual, bodily, or verbal components can serve as external triggers for activating a certain mode and content of imagination. In fact, these methods and media are often part of a culturally transferred and established routine to deliberately and intentionally create and direct certain imaginations. Therefore, they can be called “technologies of the imagination” (Koch et al. 2015: 75–9). An analysis of modes, media, and methods of imagination can help us to formulate a stylistics of imagination that contributes to a more accurate aesthetic description of various styles of imagination. A style of imagination also provides us with a link to the sociocultural dimension of imagination, as “style is the essential characteristic of a

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collective sentiment. It is its specific mark. In the strict meaning of the term, it becomes an all-encompassing form, a ‘forming form’ that gives birth to whole manners of being, to customs, representations, and the various fashions by which life in society is expressed” (Maffesoli 1996: 5). The technology of imagination in the Spiritual Exercises includes all three modes of imagination and several media and methods that form the distinct style of Ignatian or Jesuit imagination (Traut 2015: 275–313): 1. Sensual imagination of a biblical or mythical scene, e.g. the nativity scene. All five senses are applied to the imagination, beginning in great detail with the visual in some kind of zooming-in-technique, e.g.: “This is a mental representation of the place. It will consist here in seeing in imagination the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Consider its length, its breadth; whether level, or through valleys and over hills. Observe also the place or cave where Christ is born; whether big or little; whether high or low; and how it is arranged . . .” (SE 112). Then hearing follows (what the imagined characters are saying), and at the end of the day smelling, tasting, and touching (SE 123–5). Smell and taste seem to have some metaphorical quality in Ignatius’ sense system. They push through the body’s boundary into the soul, making it embrace divinity internally (Endean 1990). Apart from these imagined sensorial elements, the spiritual exercises widely abstain from additional sensual input in order to support the exercitants’ concentration and individual imagination, but they create a suggestive aesthetic atmosphere. 2. Performative-bodily imagination takes place at two levels: on the one hand, the exercitants are to imagine the actions of biblical persons out of a viewer’s perspective. On the other hand, the exercitants should become part of the imaginative performance, adopting a role inside the scene. For example: “I will make myself a poor little unworthy slave, and as though present, look upon them [Mary, Joseph, child Jesus], contemplate them, and serve them in their needs with all possible homage and reverence” (SE 114). At the end of every contemplation follows an imagined colloquy between the exercitant and the imagined persons. (SE 54, 61, 71, etc.) There the biblical or mythical script is left behind so that the exercitant can act out his thoughts, doubts, questions, and emotions in that special form of inner monologue. Every performance is purely imaginative: the exercitant has to remain silent and motionless during the exercise (SE 76). 3. That leads us to the verbal mode of imagination in the Ignatian exercises. As mentioned above, a short narrative input is provided orally by the spiritual director at the beginning of each exercise. Drafts for this input can be found in the addendum to the Spiritual Exercises (SE 261–312). These texts contain different Gospel excerpts, apocryphal material, and free elaborations (Maron 2001: 31–43) that serve as mnemonic devices for the director. Every scene the director has to outlay orally is broken down into three narrative focus points (SE 261–312), establishing a narrative rule of three as mnemonic device for the director and the exercitant. The director is admonished not to embellish his input, but to leave notable gaps that can be filled by the exercitants’ imagination (SE 2). By using oral narrativity as a medium, Ignatius puts his imaginative focus on persons, actions, processes—in contrast to words and doctrines. This technique is inspired by medieval monastic ways of imaginative memorizing (de Nicolas 1986; Carruthers 1998). The

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exercitants are engaged in hearing and talking, they immerse into the imaginative performance in order to achieve an autobiographically significant personal encounter with divinity. That would be harder to achieve by using more abstract imaginative methods like reading a written text (Traut 2015: 295–7). Nevertheless, that technique changed in the seventeenth century when some texts from the manual were printed and adorned with woodcarving ornaments or copper engraving illustrations. These were then given to the exercitants in the form of loose-leaf collections (Pfeiffer 1990).

Semiotics: How Imagination Becomes Effective A stylistic of imagination is always in danger of remaining purely formal. Thus, it is important to include a semiotic view that takes culturally established meanings and mental representations into account, too. To imagine also means to recombine existing imagery and concepts in a building-block-like manner, to create new connotations and mental connections. This may be the case in every kind of creative action, in art, science, or play; in theater or pretend play; in consecration rites or rites of passage; in educational settings where cultural symbols are learned; or in sociocultural movements of cultural changes, like reformations or revolutions. This opens our approach up for the personal and sociocultural efficacy of imagination. Imagination can induce (or prevent) personal and social change (Grieser et al. 2015). A history of imagination will analyze consistency and transformation of both cultural imagery and technologies of imagination in the long term (e.g., Jacques LeGoff ’s and the École des Annales, a twentieth-century French program of new historicism; Patlagean 1990). The process of transformation is quite mundane and often rather unconscious, but can be used deliberately, too. Here, the “politics of imagination” come into play (Rieck et al. 2015: 271–2). There is a permanent negotiation going on of how to integrate individuals into a collective shared imaginary space (i.e., cultural imaginaries and technologies of imagination) and how to protect or transform that space. These questions are vital, as imagination can support or destroy the sociocultural way of world-making or the cohesion of a moral community (Anderson 1983). In the context of religions, for instance, education, mission, and apologetics are sociocultural fields where people make use of imagination politically. This brings us back to the Ignatian exercises. They initiate the exercitant into the shared imaginary space of the Jesuit order and not only have a big impact on the exercitants’ biographies, but also create the mental backbone of the religious community that has been a force to be reckoned with in terms of policies of the Catholic church during the Counter-Reformation. On a semiotic level, the exercises provide a dramatic cosmological imagery that semiotically frames the exercitants’ spiritual process as conflict and decision-making drama. The overall setting is the fight of divine forces of good against Satan’s troops. That cosmological fight is reflected on an individual level by the subject’s struggle to free his soul from sin. In the spiritual exercises both scenarios are imagined very vividly on several sensual and performative levels. For example, the exercitants’ first imaginative exercises are to picture themselves as sinful in a very illustrative way: “I will consider all the corruption and loathsomeness of my body. . . . I will consider myself as a source of corruption and contagion from which has issued countless sins and evils and the most offensive poison” (SE 58). From this, the exercitants shall develop intrinsic motivation to save not only their own souls, but the souls of all men. In the second week’s “Mediation

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on Two Standards: The one of Christ, our supreme leader and lord, the other of Lucifer, the deadly enemy of our human nature” (SE 136), the exercitants then imagine Lucifer and Jesus giving addresses to their troops in order to fight for their respective aims. The exercitants are guided to imaginatively identify with the role of soldiers in Christ’s army. Their fight for Jesus takes place on a spiritual, rather than military, level. It entails spiritual and actual poverty, humility, and observance (SE 146). Ignatius installs the image of a knightly soldier in Jesus’ standard as imaginative role model for all members of the Societas Iesu. He complements that military image with some rationalized self-discipline techniques. So, in order to acknowledge the divine will for their lives, all members of the Jesuit order have to constantly evaluate and reflect themselves in a modern rationalized way. The exercitants learn not only the challenging Ignatian technology of imagination, but also several accompanying self-monitoring techniques, among them the famous Jesuit “discernments of spirits” (SE 313–51). As these imaginaries and imaginative techniques are exercised several times a day over four weeks, and constantly supervised and evaluated by the spiritual director, the exercises are very likely to have success in conditioning the exercitant. They are a comprehensive imaginative training for mental and bodily discipline, creating the human resources Ignatius needed for his program of expanding and reforming Catholicism.

CONCLUSION Imagination is an important analytical term for the aesthetic study of religion. It is not to be understood as only subjective imaginary, mental instability, or free artistic inspiration. Rather imagination is a cognitive ability to decouple thoughts from present reality and think about past and future, what-ifs and as-ifs—fictitious and religious things—in short, to make the absent present in our mind’s eye. Outside input, like sensory input, is needed not only for individual imagination but also to create collective imagination in a group. Religions use this ability. They design aestheticscapes to orchestrate sensory input und guide the imaginations of their believers. With our example of the Ignatian Exercises we showed how religion uses three modes of imagination: sensual, performative-bodily, and linguistic. Through different media like rituals or oral narratives and through methods like kneeling or prolonged periods of silence, the exercitant learns to imagine in a distinctive way. Religions train their believers in special “technologies of the imagination” (Koch et al. 2015: 75–9). With an analysis of the modes and technologies of imagination we presented the stylistics of imagination of the Ignatian exercises. To show the efficacy of imagination (personal and sociocultural), the inclusion of a semiotic point of view is necessary. Religions are able to establish meaning and shape a collective mental representation, a shared imaginary space, that influences people’s actions and their specific view of the world by using these politics of imagination.

RECOMMENDED READING Lieberoth, Andreas (2013), “Religion and the Emergence of Human Imagination,” in Armin W. Geertz (ed.), Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture, 160–77. London: Routledge. Lieberoth connects cognition, religion, and imagination and shows how cultural and sensory input plays an important role in imagination and how people imagine supernatural beings and think about religious ideas.

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Traut, Lucia and Annette Wilke, eds. (2015a), Religion–Imagination–Ästhetik: Vorstellungs- und Sinneswelten in Religion und Kultur, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Traut and Wilke lay groundwork for “imagination” as an analytical category for aesthetics of religion with sections on technologies, spaces, politics, and history of imagination. van den Doel, Marieke and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (2006), “Imagination,” in Wouter Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, 606–16, Leiden: Brill. They provide a comprehensive overview of the history of the term imagination.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Ritual JESPER S Ø RENSEN

INTRODUCTION: A COGNITIVE AESTHETICS OF RITUAL The relationship between ritual and aesthetics seems obvious for a number of reasons. Rituals contain aesthetic elements able to attract the attention of performer and observers alike. On the most general level, rituals are performances, that is, actions executed in a more or less stipulated manner that often, but not always, involve an “audience” or “congregation” witnessing or participating in the spectacle. More specifically, numerous modes of behavior and types of objects that have later congealed into distinct aesthetic genres are likely to have their origin in, or at least to have been intimately linked to, ritual performance. Among the former are theater, dance, singing, and perhaps poetry; among the latter we find music, rhetoric, plastic and pictorial art, architecture, and couture. In both historical and contemporary times, rituals are the arena of extravagant displays and tightly choreographed behavior, of wasteful expenditure and collective feast, of extreme simplicity, austerity, and behavioral elegance. In this respect, ritual can be said to comprise the primordial aesthetic domain of humanity par excellence. The deep historical relations between ritual and aesthetics are echoed if we turn our attention to the less obvious connections. Whereas the above-mentioned aspects rest on a notion of aesthetics grounded in conceptions of the beautiful, aesthetics has a broader reference dealing with sensory perception per se. Taking this point of departure, ritual, or more precisely, ritualized behavior, is characterized by a number of perceptual features likely to influence sensations. These special features influence cognitive processing in particular ways that explain the ubiquity of ritual in human cultures past and present. Rituals that survive cultural transmission are likely to contain ritualized elements that fit or tweak certain features of human cognitive systems in order to achieve salience in the ongoing competition between cultural expressions. However, numerous scholars have argued that ritualized behavior is not only found amongst humans (e.g., Lorenz 1966). Grasping ritual’s cognitive underpinnings, we need to analyze its biological functions and thereby understand its developmental history. In an evolutionary perspective, “ritualization” designates a general phylogenetic process that homo sapiens has in common with other species. According to an ethological definition, ritualization is a process by which functional action-sequences—actions causally specified by an instrumental goal—become disconnected from their familiar domain and are thereby able to function as communicative signs (Huxley 1966; Lorenz 1966; Eibl-Eibesfeldt 2007). This dissociation of the concrete actions that have been executed and their instrumental goals brings ritual close to intuitive conceptions of aesthetic objects as defined, not by their functional embedding, but by their direct sensory effect and salience. 73

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Investigating the aesthetic dimensions of ritual thus directs our attention to its formal aspects: what is actually done and how it impinges on cognitive processing. Following a discussion of previous approaches to the relation between ritual and aesthetics, this chapter discusses in detail in what manner studies inspired by ethology and cognitive science can clarify how ritualized behavior distinguishes itself from ordinary or canonical actions, and how these differences give rise to particular types of cognitive processing and interpretative strategies. Further, I will discuss if this process itself is connected to the creation of aesthetic objects, focusing on their ability to contain “force,” that is, if recent investigations into the construction of “specialness” in persons, actions, and objects (Taves 2009) can tell us something new about the intricate relation between ritual and aesthetics.

FROM INSTRUMENTAL ACTION TO SYMBOLIC MEANING: THE AESTHETIC TURN Even if it seems obvious to modern-day scholars that rituals contain aesthetic elements, this was not always the stance adopted. Couching ritual as an aesthetic genre only followed the reorientation of both anthropological and historical studies that took place around the turn of the last century. Earlier, the predominant understanding of the Victorian anthropologists belonging to the so-called Comparative School was that the explicitly expressed goal of a ritual should be understood literally, and that ritual was therefore best understood as a flawed technique used by “primitive people” or “religious believers” to control the environment or to appease powerful beings (e.g., Tylor 1871). Ritual was understood as a mode of action—as an instrumental way of reacting to and manipulating the environment. Naturally this essentially intellectualist approach triggered a reaction. A new breed of scholars adopted a symbolic approach that emphasized the hidden meaning of ritual elements and pointed to its function as its real raison d’être (e.g., Freud 1907; Durkheim 1912). Pioneered by Jane Harrison in her work on emotions and aesthetics of Greek ritual and tragedy (Brunotte 2017), ritual was conceived of as symbolic expressions of something: as constituted by signs pointing to a deeper reality, the interpretation of which would elicit their true function or meaning to an analyst equipped with the right hermeneutic tools. This semiological turn transformed the theoretical object from that of actions, aimed to achieve something, into signs aimed to mean something, and this simultaneously reshaped the analytical object of the scholar from one in need of an explanation to one that called for an interpretation. Even though these emerging symbolic approaches were not necessarily sympathetic towards religion, the change marked a shift away from a view of ritual as something inherently flawed and superficial, to one of something meaningful, revelatory, and possibly important. The symbolic turn was therefore a precondition for an incipient aesthetic understanding of ritual, even if this potential was not realized in the early decades of the twentieth century. By transforming the theoretical object from one of actions aimed to manipulate to one of performances with particular (emotive and communicative) functions, the study of ritual moved towards a consilience with the aesthetic disciplines in terms of methods (interpretation), at the very same time as artists belonging to the “primitivist” tradition effectively reclassified objects formerly described by their efficacious role in ritual actions into that of aesthetic objects. Fine arts became inspired by ritual objects and ritual objects became aestheticized in the process. Religious behaviors and

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objects became symbolic representations, and even if symbolists both then and now heartily disagree about what level of reality (social, cultural, psychological) the symbols isolated actually refer to, the very act of seeing ritual as inherently symbolic transformed them into representational objects in need of an interpretation (Handelman 2004) equivalent to the dominant conception of aesthetic objects. As mentioned, understanding ritual objects as essentially aesthetical came about gradually. During the reign of structural-functionalism, rituals were generally argued to be symbolic means to address social crisis and recreate social homeostasis, and little attention was given to the surface features or materiality of the very symbols themselves. The “totemic emblem,” to use Durkheim’s celebrated concept, was considered relevant because it condenses social sentiments, presents a locus of attention, and gives rise to collective emotions, but little attention was given to the exterior properties of its concrete manifestation, let alone its materiality. In this respect, Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer Religion and in particular his chapter “The Problem of Symbols” marks a transitional point (EvansPritchard 1956). In his detailed treatment of Nuer symbolism, Evans-Pritchard zooms in on the specific importance of the copula in utterances such as “crocodile is kwoth,” used in descriptions of the totemic relation between a particular clan and a refraction of spirit symbolically represented as a crocodile, or “the cucumber is an ox,” describing the occasional symbolic substitution of the sacrificial animal with a cucumber. Rather than being propositions of identity, Evans-Pritchard interprets these utterances as symbolic statements, the meaning of which only becomes clear if understood in the correct contextual situation and embedded in its proper semantic structure. But Evans-Pritchard does more than that. Towards the end of the chapter, he directs readers’ attention towards the aesthetic qualities of Nuer expressions, arguing that “the poetic sense of primitive people has not been sufficiently allowed for,” and that “[l]acking plastic and visual arts, the imagination of this sensitive people finds its sole expression in ideas, images, and words” (1956: 142–3). Thereby, Evans-Pritchard paved the way for an understanding of ritual expressions and ipso facto ritual elements as aesthetic objects in their own right, and for an explicit recognition of the fact that aestheticism is not restricted to Western modern societies but constitutes a universal behavioral repertoire that, amongst other places, finds its expression in ritual practice. This approach was carried on by Victor Turner. In particular his work on symbolism in initiation rituals and his understanding of ritual as a way to redress the conflicts and tensions arising in so-called social dramas laid out a domain of inquiry explored by others following his death in 1983 (e.g., Schechner and Appel 1990; Droogers 2004). Turner understood ritual as a “cultural-aesthetic mirror” (1990: 8) that was activated in situations of crisis, granting societies a certain degree of self-reflexivity. He further argued that societies at different degrees of complexity would have distinctive aesthetic mirrors. Whereas cultural ritual is the predominant reflexive genre of pre-literate, non-industrial society for addressing local and often pragmatic concerns, in industrial, pre-electronic societies, theater became the predominant aesthetic genre, even if this development involved a growing insensitivity to particular local contexts in favor of more generalized, political and economic concerns. In both cases, the redressive function was achieved through the ritual creation of a liminal (or liminoid) space—an experiential domain characterized by the communication of the central symbolic structure of society. Participants’ playful, creative, and therefore “ludic” interaction with these central symbols allows their continuous reconstruction and reinterpretation, at the same time as social bonds between participants are created or renewed, generating a sense of communitas.

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Thus, by means of its aesthetic features, ritual constitutes a “social metacommentary” (ibid.: 8), or an instance of “public reflexivity” (ibid.: 9). By placing the ritual novice in a subjunctive mood (in contrast to the everyday conjunctive mood), that is, in a position characterized by possibility, flux, and potentiality, it entices individual participants to perform a cognitive reappraisal of already existing symbolic structures and, thereby, enables culture to reinvent itself and its basic values in reaction to the crisis at hand.

FROM MEANING TO ACTION: COGNITION AND RITUAL BEHAVIOR The development described above can be summarized as a movement in the understanding of ritual from instrumental behavior to symbolic display. This, obviously, brought ritual studies into close vicinity of the more traditional aesthetic disciplines that focused on the “meaning” expressed, and in this sense it blurred the distinguishing features of ritual behavior itself. Ritual became just one among many possible aesthetic mirrors, a development clearly expressed in Clifford Geertz’s call for the understanding of ritual, not just as a social drama on par with other types of cultural performances, but as a form of “text” in need of interpretation (Geertz 1973). However, as the turn towards performativity inherent in Turner’s symbolist approach gained traction from the mid-1970s, dissenting voices became encouraged by its implicit interest in the more formal aspects of ritual. Despite its simplistic nature, Turner’s reintroduction of van Gennep’s formal approach to ritual was one among many studies again focusing on the importance of ritual as a specific type of action, a particular aesthetic genre, with its own distinct features. Already in 1975, Dan Sperber directed attention to the role of ritual in prompting symbolic interpretations in ritual participants. He suggested that anthropologists should address how certain actions evoke specific types of cognitive processing, rather than collecting or reconstructing symbolic encyclopedias of local semantic structures. According to Sperber, symbols are not so much something found inside the ritual waiting to be deciphered, as a mode of cognitive processing prompted by the semantic indeterminacy inherent in ritual itself (Sperber 1975). The same year saw the publication of anthropologist Roy Rappaport’s “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual,” reprinted in his influential book Ecology, Meaning, and Religion in 1979, the very year that historian of Indian religion Frits Staal published an article with the provocative title “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” thus positioning himself in direct opposition to prevalent symbolist accounts of ritual. Even if the two authors disagreed about the ultimate function of ritual (Rappaport pointing to its role in facilitating truthful communication; Staal to its role in the evolution of grammatical structure), both Rappaport and Staal emphasized the numerous ways that ritual actions are distinct from ordinary actions and both argued that this fact should have priority over attempts to decipher any inherent symbolic meaning. In the year 1979, two further important works both calling for a biological, or more precisely, ethological approach, to ritual were published: classicist Walter Burkert published the book Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, the second part of which, “The Persistence of Ritual,” deals exclusively with ritual, and scholar of aesthetics Ellen Dissanayake published the article “An Ethological View of Ritual and Art in Human Evolutionary History.” Both argued that we need to understand ritual’s deep evolutionary history, a history that involves not only homo sapiens, but other species as well. Cultural rituals are derivatives of a more general process of ritualization, and by emphasizing this

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underlying process, both authors directed attention toward the question of how certain actions, by means of their peculiar aesthetic features, elicit particular types of cognitive processing–a fact that, in turn, enables their transformation from instrumental to communicative acts. Together with the formal theory of religious ritual authored by Lawson and McCauley (Lawson and McCauley 1993), the studies mentioned above formed some of the background assumptions underlying investigations of cognitive characteristics of ritual behavior within the past twenty-five years. A fundamental assumption of these studies is that ritual actions are processed by cognitive systems normally dedicated to processing ordinary actions. It is further argued that ritualization introduces a number of non-trivial deviations from the canonical actions this system evolved to process. Ritualized actions violate certain cognitive expectations to actions and identifying these is a crucial step towards understanding the evolutionary role of ritual, as well as how ritual relates to cultural development in general and religious systems in particular. Even though assessments differ as to whether the apparent similarities between animal ritualization and human cultural rituals are based on an evolutionary homology (e.g., Sosis and Alcorta 2003) or is a mere behavioral analogy based on common surface characteristics but involving different causal structure (e.g., Boyer and Liénard 2007), the ethological definition of ritualization has proven useful. Features such as stipulation, repetition, iteration, stereotypy, exaggeration, goal demotion, extreme focus on detail, and anxiety about purity have all been raised as distinguishing features of ritualized behavior (see Boyer and Liénard 2007, for an overview). More recently, cognitive theories informed by neuro-cognitive models of action-parsing and predictive processing have pointed to the role of representations of intentions and causal expectations in action processing and it has been hypothesized that ritualized behavior systematically skews cognitive processing (Sørensen 2007b; Nielbo and Sørensen 2011; Nielbo et al. 2013; Schjoedt et al. 2013). These approaches claim that human action processing is structured in a hierarchical system, in which overarching mental models “predict” lower-level sensory stimuli, thereby reducing energy spent on processing sensory information. As long as our internal, overarching model is not violated by incoming stimuli, it delivers sufficient information for the organisms to interact with their environment by predicting what comes next (Figure 7.1). When stimuli do violate the model, error-signals ascend and incite either an update of the model or its substitution by another model that lowers the number of error-signals, or, in case one is the agent of the action, a modification of the motor-actions in order for them to comply with the predictions following the model (Clark 2013; Zacks et al. 2007). A simple example might help clarify this rather technical distinction between ordinary and ritualized actions. When preparing and eating a meal, we go through a large number of coordinated and causally interdependent action-sequences. Different types of raw materials go through specific processes (e.g., peeling and cooking potatoes, cutting and broiling meat, washing salad, cutting tomatoes) that should end up in a more or less successful gastronomic unity that is then consumed, an activity that in itself contains a number of coordinated but distinct action-sequences (e.g., putting food on the plate, grasping knife and fork, cutting mouth-sized pieces off). At a coarse level of actionparsing, we might distinguish two canonical actions, “cooking” and “eating,” and it seems obvious that the sensory stimuli related to “eating” are sufficiently distinct from those related to “cooking” that a strong error-signal will mark the transition point between the two activities, inciting an update of the overarching internal model. It is also obvious

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FIGURE 7.1: This figure illustrates experience as a product of a weighted balance between an internal model and incoming sensory stimuli. The internal model leads to predictions of incoming sensory stimuli (descending arrow). Sensory stimuli lead to error-signal (ascending arrow) only if there is a mismatch between the internal model and the incoming stimuli. If the error-signal is strong enough, the internal model will be updated or even replaced by a new model that significantly lowers the weight of ascending error-signals.

from the example that terms such as “cooking” and “eating” in fact subsume a large number of subroutines, each specified by an internal model that predicts outcomes of actions, and incoming sensory information that will elicit error-signals when not in concordance with the ongoing model, as well as mark the transition between these. If the knife fails to cut the tomato, then we can modify our behavior in order to achieve the effect predicted by the model, and when the pan is placed on the stove, the actions performed are unlikely to involve making salad. We can thus zoom in on particular subactions and parse action-sequences at ever-finer levels depending on need, skill, and interest. As a default, though, our action representation will tend to be at the highest possible level that both allows seamless predictions of future actions and frees cognitive resources, without generating too many error-signals. To summarize, the prediction-model proposes that actions (in fact, experiences in general) are the product of processing within a complex, hierarchical structure where predictions generated by internal models descend, and error-signals generated by a mismatch between sensory information and predictions ascend (Clark 2013). Further, in contrast to events, canonical actions are defined by being causally determinate and intentionally specified. Thus, in order to contribute to the overall goal, the sub-routines involved in cooking a meal need to follow a particular causal structure (e.g., turning on the stove in order to cook the potatoes). The overarching goal-structure is, in turn, specified by the intentions of the agent performing the action (“I am hungry, therefore I cook potatoes”). This means that individual action-sequences can be modified or even

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replaced, as long as they contribute to the fulfillment of the current intentions of the agents. If the goal is to eat in order to satisfy hunger, the agent might change the menu into a few loaves of bread and thereby simplify the whole action sequence, without changing the ultimate intention. If the goal of the meal is to impress a potential mate, this strategy might be ill-conceived if not replaced with another means of signal dedication. The underlying assumption justifying this everyday example is that ritualized behavior violates at least some of the assumptions presented above. The stipulated nature of ritual action, its degree of repetition, iteration, stereotypy, and exaggeration does not only contribute to both goal-demotion and causal opaqueness (i.e., the causal disconnection of actions performed from the overarching goal-structure, see Boyer and Liénard 2007; Sørensen 2007b; Liénard and Boyer 2008; Legare et al. 2016); it also entails that the actions performed are intentionally underspecified. At most, the intentions of the performing agent can specify when and what ritual to perform, whereas they have minimal influence on the mode of performance and its constitutive elements as these are more or less strictly stipulated by tradition (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994). For instance, even if the Eucharist and Communion of the Roman Mass obviously involve the script of a meal, it systematically violates the canonical model. The wafer will never satisfy hunger, it does not taste like much, it is fed to the congregant by another adult, it is manipulated in a special manner (lifted and bowed to several times), and it is talked about as containing a special essence—in fact as being something its perceptual appearance obviously negates (hoc est enim corpus meum, “this is my body”). Finally, these and other actions are performed following a strictly stipulated script. What is important in this context is that such ritualized elements prevent a seamless application of the canonical model of a meal, and therefore evokes a sustained error-signal. And this is by no means a singular example. Rituals (understood as the full procedure) are generally recognizable because they contain numerous ritualized elements that prevent the application of strong, causally integrated models. The difference between ritual as a whole and the ritualized elements it contains is quite important. Some rituals will for instance be less regulated than the Roman Mass. These, however, are likely to employ other means of ritualization, such as exaggeration, iteration, or redundancy that will detach the action from any directly conceived instrumental function. Sweeping, where no dirt is present, repeatedly cleaning already clean statues, or moving between two locations on one’s knees are examples of such “singular ritualizations.” In fact, without any of these markers, it is unlikely that an action-sequence would be recognized as a ritual in the first place. But how does ritualization relate to the model presented above? In a series of experiments and computer-simulations, we found a quite consistent pattern (Nielbo and Sørensen 2011; Nielbo et al. 2013). First, ritualization entails an increase in errorsignaling. The inability to predict the actions, by means of an internal, causal model, entails that attention is redirected to the actions themselves, to the so-called “gestural level” of the actions. If you are the performer, this is the only level at which you can monitor correct execution of the ritual action (ritual success is only specified by correct performance), and if you are an observer, the gestural level enables you to extract information that could help elicit a useful model. Simply put, ritualization makes it more difficult to integrate single actions into an overarching model that would predict its result. This might seem a bit counterintuitive. Are rituals not exactly recognized by the predictability resulting from their scripted nature? Yes, but learning the correct sequence by rote is time-consuming and, even when acquired, it demands continuous monitoring of

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all behavioral details. No intuitive causal models are immediately available that can help predict coming actions, and no loop exists that connects the purported ritual effect with the action performed—all in contrast to the causal structure inherent in functional actions. Whereas one grasps the knife before peeling the potatoes, a significant number of actions involved in the Eucharist must be learned by rote, as their proper execution and sequence only arise as a function of being a part of this specific ritual. Like the game of chess, rituals are defined by constitutive rules; if you don’t follow the rules, you might still perform an action, but you no longer play chess or perform the Eucharist (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994). Even though, over time, rituals might become routinized by expert performers, all the features of ritualization described above seem to counter extensive routinization. Rituals demand performers’ attention, and in contrast to the advantage gained when functional actions are routinized (freeing cognitive resources), the immediate goal of ritual action is opaque and success can thus only be evaluated by correct performance. The cognitive function of ritual seems to be to direct attention to the gestural level of behavior, thus emphasizing its perceptual features, and thereby depleting higher, executive cognitive functions (Schjoedt et al. 2013).

SIGNS, INTERPRETATION, AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS If ritualization depletes higher-level cognitive functioning, what are its potential effects and how do these relate to aesthetics more broadly? Rituals are prone to numerous, possibly independent effects, a characteristic that is likely to have enhanced their cultural success (Hobson et al. 2017). Even though it is unlikely to be the motivating factor behind ritual performance, it seems obvious that ritual performance, similarly to works of art, often elicits an interpretative process in participants and observers alike. As Sperber has remarked (1975), due to its semantic under-determination, ritual sometimes provokes an evocative cognitive process according to which ritualists search for potential cues to the meaning or purpose of the actions they perform. However, in order to grasp how this interpretation comes about, we need to distinguish between different modes and different levels of interpretation, first of all between conscious and unconscious, between symbolic and non-symbolic, and between online and offline interpretations. If we start with the unconscious mode, it has been argued that rituals function as signals of commitment and as means to install emotional states that become objects of interpretation. Following up on Rappaport’s seminal work, a number of recent studies have pointed to the role of ritualized behavior in stabilizing cooperative groups by sending hard-to-fake signals of social commitment through participation (Sosis and Alcorta 2003; Xygalatas et al. 2012). Further, we intuitively understand bodily postures and facial expressions as indices of emotional states. I look sad because I feel sad. However, the system might work in the opposite direction as well. I will become sad, if I have to look sad (Briñol et al. 2009). Rituals involve tightly choreographed bodily motions, postures, and facial expressions, and it is likely that these feed back into the emotions of the actors. In short, the emotional states of performers are influenced by the bodily postures and facial expressions stipulated by the ritual (Schechner 1990) and, as many rituals are performed in groups and involve synchronous actions, they are able to align emotional states between individual participants (Scheve 2011). If we turn our attention to the observers, bodily and facial displays are easily and more or less automatically interpreted, thereby forming a basic level of largely unconscious communication between humans. Basic emotions have distinct bodily and facial markers (Ekman 1997), and emotions have

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a contagious effect, spreading between actor and observer (Hatfield et al. 1994). Thus, rituals are likely to align emotional states not just within performers, but between performer and observer, adding to an alignment of moods within a group. The social and emotional aspects of ritual both point to direct, unconscious interpretations of behavior that have a potentially huge impact on social coordination and feelings of “groupishness” (Brubaker et al. 2004). These interpretations are directly emerging, but largely unconscious results of the non-functionality of ritual and its concordant redirection of attention to the perceptual features of the actions. These are, however, not the only effects of this redirection. More than a century ago, James Frazer pointed to the role of perceptual features, in particular perceptions of similarity and contact, in magical rituals (Frazer 1911). In line with the model presented above, the hypothesis is that ritual in itself prompts magical interpretations as the perceptual relations of similarity and/or contiguity establish “pseudo-causal” links between the actions performed in the ritual and its purported result. Piercing a doll following a prescribed script might not evoke a strong causal schema itself, but by redirecting attention to the perceptual features of the actions, ritualization causes the similarity between the effigy and the “victim” to become salient (Sørensen 2007a, 2013). The tendency of ritualization to prompt magical interpretations is, of course, emphasized in cases where the ritual is embedded in pragmatic event-frames, that is, series of actions with a specific goal (e.g., an abundant harvest), where rituals are often explicitly claimed to be mandatory in order for a goal to be attained). Thus, even if these perceptual connections are likely to be unconsciously processed online (during ritual performance), they are available to conscious, offline reflection and methodical, pragmatic embedding. In this sense, they take part in the ongoing construction of cultural systems that, in some cases, take the form of institutionalized religions. This points to the role of symbolic interpretations, more strictly defined. If we follow an understanding of ritual informed by the semiotics sign-trichotomy of C. S. Peirce, the interpretations described above relating to signals of social commitment, emotional alignment, and magical efficacy are all based on iconic and indexical signs. At the same time, in numerous cases rituals give rise to verbalized, symbolic interpretations, and are often tightly interwoven with established religious beliefs as well as priestly institutions. So, what are the relations between more or less formalized doctrinal structure and ritual performance? As noticed by Frits Staal, ritual is a very inefficient way to convey information—hence its asserted meaninglessness (Staal 1979). Dogmas and beliefs must be conveyed through other means, but this raises the question of the ubiquity of ritual in doctrinal religious traditions. Why do religious doctrinal religious traditions continue to employ ritualized behavior? One answer is that it serves a purely social function and has no impact on the transmission of religious ideas. Rituals are, however, notoriously related to doctrinal elements and this calls for a deeper investigation into their mutual relation. Again, the very characteristics of ritualization lend a helping hand. If we accept that rituals open an evocative field as argued by Sperber (1975), the question is how this field is stabilized and what role ritual can play in subsequent transmission of symbolic content. The short answer might be that ritual supplies an experiential scaffold for widely held beliefs. According to the model defended here, rituals in effect deplete participants’ higher cognitive functioning by redirecting attention to the gestural level of processing and preventing the formation of causal models (Schjoedt et al. 2013). One cannot think of abstract meaning while paying attention to the minute details of the execution of causally opaque behavioral sequences. At the same time, rituals are usually surrounded by strong social expectations, regarded as important or even mandatory, and dire consequences are

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often alleged to follow if they are not performed. Thus, they are regarded as important by participants and we often find well-established connections to particular social institutions as well as to widely distributed cultural beliefs. The hypothesis is that the combination of depletion of higher cognitive functions, high emotional investment, and strong cultural beliefs in fact enhances the ability of rituals to communicate already established cultural meanings. As rituals are both deemed important and, at the same time, difficult to integrate into meaningful causal sequences, this enables the formation of strong post hoc interpretations usually established by drawing on a stock of available cultural models. In short, ritual meaning emerges as the combined result of expectations existing prior to performance and reconstruction following it, and little in the ritual performance can counter the prevalence of the cultural model over the sensory input. This not only allows ritual meaning to emerge in a social context (facilitating the construction of collective memory); it also enables these constructions to be aligned to already established cultural models sanctioned by religious authorities.

CONCLUSION: THE MAKING OF SPECIAL OBJECTS To conclude, I shall return to one of the core properties relating the process of ritualization to aesthetic objects: that ritual is a method to transform persons, objects, or actions into something special, something powerful. Thus, both artistic and ritual objects are considered “powerful” and “special.” Dissanayake has emphasized the similarity between ritualization and the process; that is, the specific manipulative behavior by which objects are made into aesthetic objects by means of “artification” (2009, 2017). In both cases, objects, actions, or even persons are removed from their functional domain, and this not only enables them to function as communicative devices, as emphasized by Dissanayake, but also inscribes them with a particular “force.” A genuine Rembrandt painting is treated with awe and is worth a fortune but if revealed as a fake, it is treated with contempt and is suddenly worthless, even if experts have had a hard time establishing its status. In a similar manner, a hair originating from the beard of Muhammad is treated with reverence and respect and is ascribed particular power, but should its authenticity be seriously doubted, all these positive ascriptions immediately vanish into thin air and are replaced by outbursts of disgust. Both examples illustrate the importance of source, whether it be the artistic genius or the direct relation to superhuman agents. It is of particular importance in this context that in both domains things can change their status due to particular types of behavioral processes. Ready-mades, such as Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, become works of art, and ritual procedures inscribe specialness, force, or what used to be called mana, into otherwise mundane objects (Taves 2009). Rituals are means of transformation, whether of persons or objects, and it would seem that processes involved in ritualization, in particular iteration, redundancy, and stereotypy, are means to produce representations of force, that become inscribed in ritual objects, persons, tools, buildings, etc. The non-functionality of the actions themselves—the fact that the energy spent does not produce any visible result—creates cognitive representations of diffuse energy that cling to the entities involved. The apparent futility of the artists’ actions, combined with the exertion and diligence he or she invests in the work of art, is quite similar to the both meticulous and causally opaque actions found in ritual. Both are means to create powerful objects subsequently circulating in the social system of exchange. Differences aside, the reverence and sense of awe expressed by the visitor facing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre are much akin to the feelings arising in the faithful when exposed to an

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icon of the venerated god or goddess. Both objects are treated with a special respect, involve particular behavioral rules and procedures, and are represented as containing a special force that, more or less temporarily, unites a group of people by forming a joint locus of attention. The point of this comparison is to emphasize that both ritual and institutionalized art are instances of aesthetic genres, or cultural techniques, aimed to modify cognitive processing, emotional states, and create social sentiments by inscribing force into certain objects or persons.

RECOMMENDED READING Clark, Andy (2013), “Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3): 181–204. http://doi.org/10.1017/ S0140525X12000477. Clear, thorough, and not too technical discussion of predictive processing. Schjoedt, U., J. Sørensen, K. L. Nielbo, D. Xygalatas, P. Mitkidis, and J. Bulbulia (2013), “The Resource Model and the Principle of Predictive Coding: A Framework for Analyzing Proximate Effects of Ritual,” Religion, Brain & Behavior, 3(1): 79–86. http://doi.org/ 10.1080/2153599X.2012.745447. Discusses three aspects of ritual—emotion suppression, goal demotion, and charismatic authority—in the light of predictive processing accounts. Sørensen, Jesper (2007b), “Acts That Work: A Cognitive Approach to Ritual Agency,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 19(3): 281–300. http://doi.org/10.1163/ 157006807X240118. Presents a cognitive model of how ritualized behavior is distinct from ordinary behavior and how this affects cognitive processing.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Absorption T. M. LUHRMANN

INTRODUCTION Many people assume that training and talent are important in many areas of life: ballet, violin playing, tennis. It seems awkward, however, to talk about talent and training when it comes to knowing God; doing so seems to suggest that the human, not God, gives rise to the experience. Talk of talent or training can seem to explain God away. Prophets in the Hebrew Bible vowed that they had neither. This denial was the narrator’s way of insisting that what prophets heard and saw was truly from God. “Then the word of the Lord came unto me,” says Jeremiah, “saying, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child” (Jeremiah 1:4–6). And yet it may be the case that hearing God speak and having other vivid, unusual experiences that seem like unambiguous evidence of the supernatural might be like becoming a skilled athlete—at least in some respects. I have found that something like talent and training facilitate the kinds of experiences that humans often “deem” religious, to use Ann Taves’ (2009) useful phrase. I suggest here that there is a human capacity for absorption—a capacity to be immersed in the world of the senses, inner and outer—and that those who have a talent for it and who train to develop it are more likely to experience invisible beings as present. Those who have this proclivity are more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experiences. They are more likely to say that God is present. This is not the same as being religious. In fact, a well-known paper (Saucier and Skrypin ´ska 2006) showed that someone’s subjective sense of spirituality is significantly different from their commitment to traditional religious beliefs—and in fact, that commitment to traditional religious beliefs and spiritual experiences were even correlated with different personality traits. We use the term “spirituality” to refer not to beliefs, but to a felt sense of what William James ([1902] 1985) called “the more” or, as he famously defined religious experience, “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men, in their solitude, as far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relationship with whatever they may consider the divine.” More precisely, the term “spirituality” has come to stand for religious experience without dogma or doctrine; Jeffrey Kripal defines spirituality as “a modern orientation to religion that locates religious authority within, as opposed to outside, the individual” (2014: 63). My work has found a consistent relationship between absorption and the events that individuals identify as spiritual, and between absorptionrelated practice, which I call inner sense cultivation, and those spiritual events. 85

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This chapter begins with two case studies before discussing absorption, inner sense cultivation, and the implication of proclivity and practice for understanding the cultural and cognitive aesthetics of religion.

CASE STUDIES Case Study #1: Learning Magic I had gone to graduate school because I was fascinated by the problem of mind: how humans think, what constrains our thought, and in particular the problem of apparently irrational thought—the problem of how apparently reasonable, pragmatic people can accept beliefs which skeptical observers simply don’t believe. I had decided to do my fieldwork among educated white Britons who practiced what they called magic—a twist on more traditional anthropological fieldwork about the strange ways of natives who clearly were not “us.” I took this to be a problem of interpretation, knowledge, discourse. A man puts a special amulet in his field to keep people from stealing his crops, the skeptical observer can’t believe that the amulet works, and yet the man puts the amulet in his field year after year. What is he thinking? But what I saw in London was that magic involved deliberate training (Luhrmann 1989). In the world I had entered—a secrecy-shrouded London society whose members were computer programmers and speech therapists by day and initiates of the Western Mysteries by night—people apprenticed to learn what they considered to be basic skills to recognize, to generate, and to manipulate magical forces. The exact purpose of the training varied from group to group, but all groups recognized the need for training, and all groups identified some people as more skilled than others, with a smaller group of people considered experts. Some groups even had formal classes. Before I could be initiated into the most elaborately hierarchical and secretive of magical groups, I was required to take a nine-month home-study course complete with a supervisor and monthly essays. Lessons in these classes typically demanded that students learn specific kinds of knowledge (what is magical power, who are the gods, what are their symbols), and they generally asked students to personalize that knowledge, to see it as relevant to and embedded in their lives. Each course also demanded the acquisition of two skills of attention—meditation and visualization—and each course required that the student learn to quiet the mind and to focus on some internal experience (an image, a word, or the apparently empty mind itself). Here is an example from one of my early lessons, which I did, in some form, for fifteen minutes a day for nine months: You should perform a meditation building up an inner picture of a walled garden (initially make it foursquare with an expanse of empty lawn in its center) . . . After an initial centering and when the bubbling of your consciousness has to some extent quietened and abated, begin to seed the center point of your consciousness with inner pictures of the Garden using all the senses if you wish. Then withdraw a little inward and let these images become wrapped around your inner point of soul, then reseed the inner picture if you need to. Allow a space for the forms to grow and develop as they will . . . —Unpublished source The idea behind this was that if you could learn to see mental images clearly, with borders, duration, and stability, those images could become the vehicle for supernatural power to

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enter the mundane world. To do this, people deliberately engaged all their inner senses in the exercise. I came to think of this as “inner sense cultivation.” What startled me, as a young ethnographer, was that this training worked. At least, it seemed to change the way I experienced mental images. After about a year of this kind of training, my mental imagery did seem to become clearer. I thought that my images had sharper borders, greater solidity, and more endurance. I began to feel that my concentration states were deeper and more sharply distinct from the everyday. I got better at focusing during rituals. And I began to have more “anomalous experiences.” By this, I mean events that are unusual in the everyday world: visions, voices, a sense of presence, out of body experience—what Ann Taves (2009) calls the “building blocks” of religious experiences (see also Cardeña et al. 2013). Early one morning I had a vision with what felt like sensory perception. I had been reading a novel about King Arthur’s England written by this kind of magical practitioner, really trying to imagine what the characters were experiencing, and one morning I awoke to see some Druids standing by my window. I shot up in bed when I saw them, and they vanished. But for a moment, I really saw them. And I felt different in rituals when we shut our eyes, sank into contemplative states, and visualized what the group leader told us to. At those times, when I was trying so hard to see with my mind’s eye and to be completely relaxed but mentally alert, it seemed as if there was something altered about the way I experienced the world—in my sense of self, sense of time, sense of focus, but also, and less metaphorically, in what I sensed: in the way I saw, heard, and felt, even when I knew that what I sensed was internal and imagined. This was not true for all ritual gatherings, but during some rituals the difference was striking. Of course, I was socially immersed in this world, and I was learning new ways to interpret my awareness and my experience. But it didn’t feel to me that I was just acquiring knowledge and narrative. I felt that I was acquiring new skills, and that the skills could be taught and mastered. And as I acquired those skills, the world became drenched in meaning. Nothing happened by accident anymore. A phone call, the kind of fruit the greengrocer sold, a book I glanced at in a window—everything seemed connected to my thoughts, my visualizations, and my dreams. This did not just happen to me. Other people in these groups talked about daydreams that had grown more intense and images that had become more vivid. They spoke about losing time, about dreams drenched in symbolism, about going on walks and encountering gods. They told stories about moments when they saw or heard or felt invisible beings, and moments when a dream felt real in the world. Sometimes they spoke of “journeying on the astral plane,” experiencing themselves as flying over London, long before the Harry Potter movies showed wizards on their brooms. They attributed this to becoming skilled in magic. They all thought that training was important. They all thought it was hard and took work, and they all thought that it changed the way that they experienced their world. Moreover, what they did in the training could be found in other spiritual practices around the world: in Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, shamanism, even spirit possession. We know that meditation and visualization are learnable skills, and that mastery of those skills is associated with intense spiritual experience. I saw that the following was taken to be common-sense knowledge in the magical world: If you want to do magic, you have to practice magic. If you wanted to feel power flow through you and to direct it towards a source, you had to do it again and again, and you had to train, preferably under a seasoned elder. Some people were naturally better than others. Magicians distinguished between people as if they were natural kinds. They spoke as if there were people who were naturally good

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FIGURE 8.1: Those who I met who called themselves “magicians” often traced their philosophy and practice back to texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Once thought to be an ancient sage, he—or at least his writings—are now understood to have been written in the second century CE . This illustration is by Johann Theodor de Bry, c. 1580. © “Hermes Trismegistos, from Stolcius, Viridarium Chymicun, 1624.” Wellcome Collection. CC BY.

at being psychic, and people who were naturally good at doing magical rituals. The psychics did not feel things in their body. They had, in effect, “vulnerable” minds. Knowledge would enter their minds in uncanny ways and it would not come to others. They simply knew things and had insights that others did not. Those who were good at doing magic were able to have the distinct sense that power was present. They could feel it moving through them, and they felt as if they could direct it. They had what we might call “causal” minds. Their intentions—properly framed and focused—would (they thought) affect the world directly. Those who practiced would get better. People routinely stated that over time, they experienced power more intensely. Those who were better found that their mental images grew sharper, and they were more likely to report unusual phenomenological events: they felt the power, they heard the gods, they saw the spirits.

Case Study #2: Charismatic Evangelical Christianity Many years later, I saw more or less the same structure in charismatic evangelical Christianity (Luhrmann 2012). To be sure, people thought about their experiences

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differently. When they felt a force moving through their bodies, they attributed it to the Holy Spirit. They did not talk about training. They talked about prayer, and while they certainly talked about needing to practice praying, they focused on what they took to be its practical outcomes and attributed those outcomes to God. And yet, what these Christians did when they prayed was really quite similar to what the magicians did. They too were doing inner-sense cultivation. Their prayers were not rote, but more like active daydreams. One book even called them “God-dreams.” People told me that when they prayed, they sat on God’s lap, or stood in God’s throne room. They described talking back and forth with God in their minds. These are acts that use the inner senses to represent God in the mind. And in many ways, what they experienced was similar to what the magicians experienced, and they said remarkably similar things about talent and training. The Christians sometimes said that after they began to pray actively, they not only experienced God more vividly, but their inner world became sharper and more realistic, as if those features were side effects of training. They knew that that practice mattered. They thought that powerful experiences were more common in the lives of those who prayed actively. They also knew that proclivity—capacity and willingness—mattered. They were clear that some people had a hard time hearing God, even when they prayed, and they knew that some people had spontaneous experiences that came out of the blue. Moreover, those observations had deep roots in the Christian tradition. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul pointed out that only some people are able to speak in the language-like utterances identified as “tongues.” Others have different gifts (1 Cor 12:8–11). Paul also repeatedly exhorted people to pray and suggested that people are more likely to experience God if they do. In a famous passage (1 Thess 5:16–20) he wrote: “Pray without ceasing; in every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings.” From the author of Luke/Acts (Luke 11:10): “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” One might imagine that gifts are really preferences: I could sing in the choir, but I prefer to bake for the church supper. Yet these Christians did not talk as if they preferred to do one rather than another. Some explicitly and repeatedly told me that they deeply desired to hear God speak out loud to them and they could not. “Please pray that I will hear God speak with a booming voice,” one man asked plaintively in a house-group meeting. And another: “I don’t have these super-powerful experiences that make me fall to my knees.” At the same time, they thought that if you wanted to know God, you had to pray, that prayer was a skill that had to be taught and that it was hard, that some people were naturally better than others, and that those who were naturally good and well trained would change. Here some active pray-ers describe what they had learned: What does God’s voice sound like? It takes practice. There were times when I just sat back and I was like, okay guys, I don’t hear anything. [Then] I felt like I was starting to hear from him more. A small voice sounds very vague but it’s such a good description, kind of like the impression words make on a page. I realized that I was going at it the way you would practice throwing the ball, because I didn’t know what else to do . . . [Now] I feel it as well as—not hear it, but it feels like—it’s not a physical thing but it feels like more than just in my head.

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Another: It’s just like an infant learns how to put sentences together, and then to have a conversation with someone and not just like be talking the whole time or just listening the whole time—to learn how to speak and respond and listen, speak and listen and respond. Just to like be there and be focused. I’m seeing how people have moved from praying where their mind would wander off to learning to pray so that they can focus more and just pray. I’ve seen this in my own life too. It sounds a lot like tennis. Some people are naturally better than others, but if you want to be good, you have to train. People who prayed actively said that their sensory world became richer, more alive. Here are two people: Disciplining myself to pray . . . It was like just opening it up, opening up your perceptions and tuning them up in a different way so that even just walking down a street and looking at flowers took on new significance. My senses are heightened when I’m feeling especially close [to God], when it’s like a joyful, a really joyful time. They described shifts in their mental experience. They said that their mental images became sharper: “[Over time, as I have continued to pray], my images continue to get more complex and more distinct.” Or: “I see images. I would say that I didn’t until I came to [this kind of church].” They talked about developing better focus, about “going deeper” and of feeling that God became more present as they prayed. They also reported that they experienced more perception-like events that felt sensory but had no material cause. Here are two more people: I was walking up the lake and down the lake and I was like, should I go home now? And he [God] is like, “sit and listen.” [Did you hear that outside your head or inside your head?] That’s hard to tell, but in this instance it really felt like it was outside. [How many times do you think you’ve heard his voice outside your head?] Two or three. I remember praying for a job and I interviewed and I didn’t know whether I was going to take it or not. Then when I was cleaning out my room, I heard a voice say, “that’s not the one.” And then I said, what? I looked around, and I’m like, maybe that’s someone outside. Then I realized: I clearly heard God say, “that’s not the one.” I have no doubt in my mind that it was God. Prayer experts spoke as if what they were learning to do was to take their inner sensory world more seriously, to treat their thoughts and images and sensations as more meaningful, and deliberately to blur the line between what they might once have attributed to an internal cause and what they might now wish to attribute to an external one. That, after all, is the point of experiential evangelical spirituality: to experience God—an external invisible presence—interacting with one through phenomena one would ordinarily interpret as internal and self-generated. It seemed that as these congregants lovingly attended to their internal sensations, those sensations took on a life of their own, and become more and more vivid until the congregants occasionally experienced some of them as if they were located in the external material world, so that they saw and heard and smelled and felt sensations not caused by material things.

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FIGURE 8.2: This image, the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, is dated 1480. It currently resides in the Badia Fiorentina, a church in Florence. It represents the kind of visions that Christians report. © Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

ABSORPTION: THE NATURE OF TALENT What, then, makes some people “better than others” at magic and at prayer? The Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974) has thirty-four statements which one marks as “true” or “false,” for the person filling out the scale.1 A subject gets a point for every answer they mark as “true.” The scale does not measure religiosity per se; it has only one statement which could be construed as religious. The sentences which someone marks “true” or “false” ask whether you can “see” the image of something when you are no longer looking at it, whether you sometimes experienced things as a child, whether you

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sometimes find that you have finished a task when your thoughts are elsewhere, whether different smells call up different colors, whether you often sense the presence of a person before seeing him or her, whether you can become oblivious to everything else when listening to music. There are statements that describe the experience of nature and color and music and texture and smell, statements about music and the fascination of a voice. When Tellegen and his students first drafted the questionnaire, they were trying to develop a pen-and-paper measure of hypnotic susceptibility, a term that refers to how likely it is that someone will respond to hypnosis. Yet the way people answered the absorption scale correlates only modestly (if significantly) with the way they responded to the gold standard measure of hypnotizability, the “Stanford C.” Tellegen and his coauthor Atkinson concluded that absorption was a character trait, a disposition for having moments of total attention that somehow completely engage all of one’s representational resources—perceptual, imaginative, conceptual, even the way you hold and move your body. “This kind of attentional functioning is believed to result in a heightened sense of the reality of the attentional object, imperviousness to distracting events, and an altered sense of reality in general, including an empathically altered sense of self ” (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974: 268). In other words, when you get absorbed in something, it seems more real to you, and you and your world seem different than before. From this perspective, absorption is the mental capacity common to trance, hypnosis, dissociation, and perhaps imagination itself. Later, Tellegen (1981) decided that the real distinction the scale pulled out was the difference between the instrumental and the experiential. There is the way one is when one is pragmatic and effective, focused on what is realistic, making decisions, and pursuing goals. Then there is the way one is when one is open, receptive, and in the moment. That, he thought, was the heart of absorption: the mode of the beach-walker gazing at the sunset, caught up in imagination or appreciation. All this suggests that absorption is the capacity to focus in on the mind’s object—what humans imagine or see around them—and to allow that focus to increase while diminishing one’s attention to myriad everyday distractions that accompany the management of normal life. You let a daydream unfold, or you become absorbed in watching the purple finches at the birdfeeder, and your to-do list fades away. The absorption scale seems to pick up the enjoyable dimension—imaginative involvement, the delight we take in letting a story or sensation carry us away. In study after study, I have found that people who score highly in absorption—as measured by this questionnaire—are more likely to say that God speaks to them; that they experience God with the senses; that they have had intense spiritual experiences; that they have seen, heard, or felt God or ghosts or spirits; that the world of invisible others is phenomenologically real to them and alive. In the first of these studies, I sat down with twenty-eight people I had met through the Chicago church which I had been visiting for several years (Luhrmann et al. 2010). First I asked them to fill out the absorption scale, and then we spoke. I asked them all the same questions (for example, do you speak to God freely throughout the day? Would you describe God as your best friend, or like an imaginary friend, except real?) but I also let them talk. I was struck that not everyone was able to know God as a person who spoke with them, even when they tried. I compared the answers people gave to the absorption scale to the answers they gave to the questions I asked about their spiritual experience. A person’s absorption score was not related to the length of time he or she prayed on a daily basis. But the way a person answered the absorption questions was significantly related to the way they experienced

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prayer. The more absorption statements someone marked as true, the more time seemed to change when they prayed; the more they had images and sensations during prayer; even the more they were able to experience God as a person. You might think that my questions (do you speak to God freely throughout the day?) would lead people just to parrot back what the pastor and the books and the conferences said about God. Yet those who with high absorption scores were much more likely to report that they experienced God as if God really is a person—someone they could talk to easily, who talked back, with whom one could laugh, at whom one could get angry. People with low absorption scores said that they couldn’t. When I held the absorption score constant, the time spent in prayer turned out to be significantly related to how person-like God was for someone. It looked like there really was something like talent, and something like training, and that both mattered to the way someone experienced God. There was another interesting thing the absorption scale predicted. If people answered “true” to at least half the items on the absorption scale, their chances of reporting that they had heard God’s voice or felt God’s touch or seen the wing of an angel or had a sensory perception of something supernatural (like hearing God say “I will always be with you” from the back seat of a car) was six times as high as for those who said “true” to less than half the statements. It turned out that slightly over a third of the subjects reported one of these sensory overrides. They heard with their ears, or saw outside their head. Again, practice made a difference. If I held absorption constant in the analysis, the length of time someone prayed every day was significantly related to whether they said they had seen a vision or heard a voice. That too was striking. These basic findings hold up in study after study.

INNER SENSE CULTIVATION: PRACTICE It turns out that deliberately cultivating the inner senses—the practice at the heart of evangelical prayer and modern magic—has more or less the same effect. Inner sense cultivation is the deliberate, repeated use of inner visual representation and other inner sensory experience. It often involves three features: interaction, interweaving, and sensory enhancement. By “interaction,” I mean that the practitioner interacts with what she or he imagines. The person who prays imagines Jesus as vividly as possible—and talks with him. The shaman vividly imagines the spirit of the jaguar—and has a dialog with him. By “interweaving,” I mean that these practices commonly interlace scripted prayers (like the “Our Father”) with private, personal reflection. You think about the scripture, and then about yourself in relation to the scripture, and then about the scripture in relation to yourself. By “sensory enhancement,” I mean that the practitioner uses many of their inner senses to engage the story. The most explicit example of this “application of the senses,” as it is called, is in the contemplation of Hell, in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola2 (see also Traut and Wahl, Chapter 6, this volume): This is a representation of the place. Here it will be to see in imagination the length, breadth, and depth of hell. I should ask for what I desire. Here it will be to beg for a deep sense of the pain which the lost suffer, that if because of my faults I forget the love of the eternal Lord, at least the fear of these punishments will keep me from falling into sin. First Point: This will be to see in imagination the vast fires, and the souls enclosed, as it were, in bodies of fire.

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Second Point: To hear the wailing, the howling, cries, and blasphemies against Christ our Lord and against His saints. Third Point: With the sense of smell to perceive the smoke, the sulphur, the filth, and corruption. Fourth Point: To taste the bitterness of tears, sadness, and remorse of conscience. Fifth Point: With the sense of touch to feel the flames which envelop and burn the souls. Loyola always wanted people to see, hear, feel, touch, and taste the scripture with their mind’s senses. He wanted his participants to see the characters of the texts they used, to envision the details of how they stood, held their shoulders, where they rested their arms. This practice—inner sense cultivation—blurs the boundary between what is external and what is within. The mental muscles developed in prayer work on the boundary between thought and perception, between what is attributed to the mind—internal, selfgenerated, private, and hidden from view—and what exists in the world. The practice focuses attention on the words and images on one side of the boundary, and then treats those words and images as if they belonged on the other. Inner sense cultivation seems to train the capacity which the absorption scale identifies. In another study, we assigned Christians different spiritual practices, among them guided imagination on the Gospels and an intellectual exploration of the Gospels. When people came in (128 of them), they spent time filling out various standard psychological scales, including the absorption scale. Then they sat in front of a computer and did a series of exercises to see how they used their mental imagery and other exercises. Finally, we interviewed them, for at least an hour and often longer, about how they heard from God and how they prayed and what other spiritual experiences they had. When the interviews were done, the subjects then picked up one of several identical brown packages sitting on a side table. Inside each package was an iPod. Some of those iPods—the inner sense cultivation condition—had four tracks of thirty minutes each, in which a biblical passage was read to background music, and then re-read while inviting the subject to use all his or her senses to participate in the scene. (“See the shepherd before you. . .”). Others had thirty-minute lectures on the Gospels. The lectures teach the listener to pay attention to the differences between the Gospels, and the way they are constructed as narratives. People were asked to play the iPod for thirty minutes a day for a month. When our subjects came back, we found that those who had done the inner sense cultivation practice had scores on the subjective measures of mental imagery vividness that were significantly higher, compared to their initial scores, than those who had listened to the lectures (Luhrmann et al. 2013). They said that their images had more detail. They were more likely to say that they had begun to experience God as like a person. They also reported more sensory overrides, those odd moments when someone hears a voice while alone, or sees something that isn’t there—not in a table-and-chairs kind of way—or feels, tastes, or smells something that is not materially present. These experiences were not, in general, very dramatic, and there weren’t many of them, but they were meaningful and often moving. One subject, for example, had a powerful experience of God holding her hand. Another woman saw her beloved dead dog. Another had a session in which she closed her eyes to visualize the angel Gabriel and found that the angel’s light was so bright that she opened her eyes because she thought someone had turned a lamp on in the room. It is as if this intense inner attention makes the world of the mind more vivid, and the vividness leaks into the world and perhaps allows the mind to perceive subtleties that are

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often ignored. People with higher absorption scores reported more of these events before they started their discipline, and the inner sense cultivation affected how much they experienced during the month.

CONCLUSION At the heart of the religious impulse—as Maurice Bloch (2008) reminds us—lies the capacity to imagine a world that is not the one we see before us. To do so requires a narrative, but it also requires the capacity to hold in abeyance the intuition that the world of the senses is all there is of the world. That is why absorption and inner sense cultivation are central to religion. Those who say “yes” to the absorption questions, and those who practice experiencing the narrative with their inner senses, are more likely to be and become comfortable with blurring the boundary between that which is within and that which is without, between an image held in the mind and an object that stands on its own in external space. An invisible spirit can be made more real by this sensory blurring: it can be imagined and felt to be more than mere imagination. That can allow the invisible other to come alive.

RECOMMENDED READING For those who wish to read further into the issues of spiritual experience, sensory engagement, absorption, and the ethnography which forms the background of this chapter, I recommend these works: Abram, David (1996), The Spell of the Sensuous, New York: Pantheon. Luhrmann, T. M. (1989), Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft, Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Luhrmann, T. M. (2012), When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, New York: Vintage. Taves, Ann (2009), Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tellegen, A. and Atkinson, G. (1974), “Openness to Absorbing and Self-Altering Experiences (‘Absorption’), a Trait Related to Hypnotic Susceptibility,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(3): 268–77.

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CHAPTER NINE

Aniconicity and Aniconism MIKAEL AKTOR

INTRODUCTION In works on the visual cultures of different religious traditions, the notion of the aniconic comes up from time to time. Not only is the rejection of images of divine characters in certain historical periods and branches of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam frequently categorized under the label “aniconism” but so are also some Hindu, Daoist, and Shinto cults. Aniconism is also addressed in works on Greek and other ancient Mediterranean religions. This diversity of traditions is one reason that the concept of the aniconic is attributed with different meanings in the scholarship of different religious fields. What is considered aniconic in one tradition is not the same as the aniconic in another. In addition, the notions of the icon and the iconic that the aniconic is supposed to negate tend to create further confusion. Different branches of scholarship ascribe different meanings to these terms. Clarification is needed in order for these concepts to be of value in a more general aesthetics of religion. The present chapter starts out with a discussion of the concept of “aniconism,” its history, and use in different branches of scholarship. This leads to a critique of the terminology and the invitation to be more careful about terminological distinctions. It then addresses the notion of the icon in its semiotic sense and the problems this sense creates for a consistent understanding of aniconicity (Laack, Chapter 21, this volume). The second part of the chapter introduces a typology of aniconic religious objects in terms of their relationship with iconic and anthropomorphic imagery. What emerges is a spectrum of mutual relationships between visual styles rather than a clear separation between the aniconic and iconic. Lastly, the chapter discusses the question of how the aesthetic qualities of these various objects trigger the sense of ritual efficacy and evoke certain ideas about the religious prototypes that are made present though these objects.

ANICONISM In her studies of ancient Greek aniconic cult objects, Milette Gaifman (2012: 18–23, 2017: 336–7) has traced the origins of the concept itself. The idea of the aniconic as referring to a non-figural cult object was introduced by the German classical archaeologist Johannes Adolph Overbeck (1826–95). As technical terms for an object that is not an image (which in German is bildlos) and for the abstract idea of Bildlosigkeit, Overbeck coined the Greek-sounding foreign words anikonisch and Anikonismus, both based on the Greek word eikon, “image.” He did this in his works on the development of Greek art in which he hypothesized an original imageless era that only later developed into the typical 97

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Greek anthropomorphic style. By basing his terminology on the Greek language his readers might get the idea that such concepts reflected an articulated idea in ancient Greek literature about an imageless visual mode; however, that is not the case. Words like aneikon or its derivatives do not occur in ancient Greek texts (Gaifman 2012: 19). The earliest incidence of a related word appears as part of the anti-idolatrous arguments found in Clement of Alexandria’s Christian apologetic text Stromateis (1.24.163.6). Here he coins the Greek word aneikoniston, “not representable in an image,” for the idea that it is essentially impossible to represent the divine visually. Gaifman concludes: “Overbeck’s adoption of this early Christian concept and the transmutation of the Greek word into the German ‘anikonisch’ and ‘Anikonismus’ were used to bolster his view of an initial [imageless] phase of Greek art and religion” (Gaifman 2012: 19). The idea of an original imageless era of Greek religious art had a contemporary appeal among German intellectuals. Gaifman writes: Questions of indigenousness and evolution in art were central to ongoing discussion of the history of Greek art, religion, and culture among German intellectuals and neohumanists, a conversation not only motivated by the wish to understand the past better, but also the locus for contemplating German identity through discourse on classical antiquity. In this context, acknowledgement of indigenous elements in ancient Greek culture implicitly signified the identification of precursors of fundamentals of German identity. —Gaifman 2012: 22 In this sense, the words “anikonisch” and “Anikonismus” have from their very origin been associated with a certain visual ideology or normative program. The associations with an anti-idolatrous discourse made it obvious for biblical scholars to apply these words to the anti-idolatrous agenda of the Hebrew Bible. Here “biblical aniconism” is understood in terms of the second commandment as the prohibition of images. While some biblical scholars prefer historical explanations of this biblical visual program, others apply a “conceptual” explanation referring to the “inherent incompatibility between the notion of Yahweh and iconic images” (Jensen 2017: 400); or in the words of Clement, the aneikoniston (non-representability) of Yahweh. However, both types of explanations “are normally based on a fundamentally positive attitude among the scholars involved toward the biblical prohibition of images; few or none would regard it a weakness or failure. The normal thing in biblical scholarship has been to side with the biblical authors themselves against their opponent” (ibid.). Similarly, in studies of Islamic visual culture, aniconism has mainly been understood as the so-called Bilderverbot according to which there is a strict division between a prohibition against images in religious buildings and a rich use of figurative art in palaces and other secular settings (for an interesting critique of this sharp division, see Ali 2017). The notion of aniconism as a prohibition against images of divine beings makes only very little sense in many non-Abrahamic traditions. The major Hindu gods are all represented in both anthropomorphic and non-figural forms. In S´iva temples, S´iva is worshipped both in the sanctum in his aniconic form, the S´iva Lin ˙ga (a carved stone pillar or a natural stone), and in side-altars as stone or bronze statues showing his various anthropomorphic forms (Davis 2017). Visnu is present in his temples both as his ˙˙ anthropomorphic images and his aniconic stone manifestation, the S´¯alagr¯ama (an ammonite fossil) (Narayanan 1985). The presence of a village goddess is often marked by a stone or a tree, but in the temples, goddesses have a multiplicity of anthropomorphic forms. All

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three are also represented in more esoteric aniconic geometric designs (yantras). The idea is that gods can assume and be represented in a multiplicity of forms, and images are certainly in the majority (Davis 1997). Aniconism has therefore been used as a reference both to the anti-iconism of the Hebrew Bible and to the non-figural representations of gods in Greek, Hindu, or other religious traditions.

Terminology and Definitions The -ism suffix often denotes a program, a norm, or an ideology associated with the word to which it is attached. Therefore, there are good reasons to distinguish between “aniconism,” a program or an ideology about the visual representability of a god, such as the anti-iconism of the Hebrew Bible, and on the other hand, “aniconicity,” the mere fact of representing or marking the presence of a divine entity in a non-figural form as in Hinduism, Shinto, and many other polytheistic religious traditions. I shall observe this distinction for the rest of this chapter. Definitions before Gaifman’s work on Greek aniconicity are rather simple and only roughly tuned to the huge stylistic diversity of objects described by scholars as “aniconic.” The definition that is most frequently referred to is Tryggve Mettinger’s in his book on Israelite aniconism. In aniconic cults, Mettinger maintains, “there is no iconic representation of the deity (anthropomorphic or theriomorphic) serving as the dominant or central cultic symbol, that is, where we are concerned with either (a) an aniconic symbol or (b) sacred emptiness” (Mettinger 1995: 19). The (a) category could for example be a stone pillar, and the (b) category could be an empty throne. The definition is clear but as we shall see, the distinction between what is iconic and what is not is more fluid than it appears from this definition. Another problem is that cult objects are not necessarily visual representations of the deity but rather visual markers of a visually indefinite divine presence that is ritually performed; they do not represent a definite visual form of the deity but mark the deity’s presence for the sake of ritual transactions. Gaifman acknowledges the importance of the ritual practice in which aniconic objects are used. She therefore adopts Alfred Gell’s semiotic notion of a cult object as an “index of divine presence,” and explains: “In the context of religious ritual, an index of divine presence is the physical recipient of acts addressed to the deity, such as prayer, gestures of salutation, or the making of offerings” (Gaifman 2017: 338). On this basis, she defines an aniconic monument as “a non-figural index of divine presence” (ibid.). But from a semiotic perspective, the “non-figural” is the same as the non-iconic. The problem here is that aniconicity is more ambiguous than that. While Mettinger’s emptiness does not have iconic qualities that refer to an anthropomorphic god, it cannot be represented alone but depends on the iconicity of a visually recognizable object, the throne (or the circle, as in Buddhist art).

Iconicity Generally, the tendency in much scholarly writing has been to equate “aniconic” with “non-anthropomorphic.” Hence, pictograms like the fish (representing Christ), the wheel or the Bodhi tree (representing Buddha), the trident and the spear (representing S´iva and Murukan respectively) have all been described as aniconic representations of these gods ¯ and holy men despite the fact that they all are clearly figural. Similarly, a modern S´iva Lin ˙ ga may appear as a smooth, undecorated pillar. But the iconographic history of the S´iva Lin ˙ga reveals a gradual development from a clearly recognizable phallic design to a gradually more abstract appearance (Mitterwallner 1984).

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In this respect, all these aniconic representations are iconic in the semiotic sense of the word. In Peircean semiotics the icon is a sign that represents its object by way of likeness. It may be by visual similarity as in an image or more abstract as in a diagram, or it may be conceptual as a metaphor in language (Peirce 1932: 275–9). From this point of view, much of what has been labelled aniconic is, in fact, iconic. That such objects do not seem to look like the gods or holy persons they represent does not mean that they are devoid of iconic visual qualities. How to react to this semiotic perspective? We could call for a revolution and rule that henceforth objects like the aforementioned ones should no longer be labeled or described as aniconic. But that would miss the point, which is that aniconicity is rarely, if ever, absolute. Iconic elements are involved in most of those objects that have been described as aniconic by scholars of various traditions. What I am interested in doing is to develop a terminology that better catches the fluid and relational character of various visual modes of representation.

DIVINE TRANSFORMERS: A SPECTRUM OF VISUAL MODES When the aniconic is equated with the non-anthropomorphic this is because we base our understanding of divine beings on certain genres of texts, typically narrative texts like myths, and on the iconographic designs that such narratives have engendered. But what is the true or primary form of a god? Is it the anthropomorphic appearance known from mythological narratives or some more subtle form? That seems to depend on the rituals in which these gods are addressed and on the genres of texts where their appearance is articulated. Interacting with a god in ritual activities like offerings, prayers, and salutation, and telling stories about gods in a diachronic, narrative mode, constrain the concept of godhead. Tord Olsson (1999; see also Aktor 2017a: 59–60) has studied how different textual genres produce divergent perceptions of the godhead. In Maasai myths the god enkAi is represented in anthropomorphic terms and interacts socially with humans, whereas this is vaguely described in the much more agnostic genre of exegetic speech situations (Olsson 1999: 78–9). Likewise, in Egyptian myths the gods appear as anthropomorphic or theriomorphic1 beings or as a blend of both, whereas in revelation texts, where gods become present among human individuals, they are only known by a certain divine fragrance. A similar distinction has been noticed in Homeric hymns between an “Olympian” mythical perspective where the gods assume human form, and a personal perspective where human encounters with gods are expressed in direct speech in vague terms, as for instance as an indefinite light (ibid.: 87–90). But even in mythological texts the gods have the capacity to change their appearance and assume different forms. They are not constrained by any one particular shape, but may manifest themselves pretty much as they wish (or as their human worshippers may imagine them). In Hindu mythological texts, especially, this capacity of the gods to assume different forms pushes the narrative forward again and again at the same time as we are told by the god himself/herself that, ultimately, he/she is formless and undifferentiated. Visnu descends and takes birth as an animal or a human being, he changes his sex and ˙˙ becomes a seducing beautiful woman, or he becomes manifest in a mountain or as the ammonite fossils from the Gandaki River in Nepal. Other gods transform themselves just as much.

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These movements between different shapes that are determined by ritual and narrative needs are reflected in the relational character of different visual modes of representation. Non-iconic manifestations like a river or a stone are overlaid with more or less anthropomorphic elements gathered from the iconography of the anthropomorphic aspects of the gods. Hindus worship the River Ganges by throwing flowers in the actual river in the landscape, and they offer flowers in front of her anthropomorphic image in her temple. The aniconic B¯ana Lin ˙gas, which are oblong stones gathered from the ˙ Narmada River that are regarded as direct manifestations of S´iva, are classified according to the specific colors and patterns of lines on the stones with reference to iconographic elements of specific anthropomorphic S´iva epithets (Aktor 2015: 28–9). Inspired by Gaifman’s proposal to examine the relationships between different visual modes in a “spectrum of iconicity” (2012: 13) or a “spectrum of aniconisms” (2012: 28), I have tried to sketch out how such a spectrum could be organized (Aktor 2017b: 506–9). Applying Gell’s definition of objects of worship as indices of divine presence (Gaifman 2017: 338), the spectrum moves from non-iconic, through aniconic, to iconic indices with cults for luminaries (sun, moon, planets), and fixed elements of the landscape like rivers, rocks, or mountains at the one end of the spectrum and anthropomorphic face icons or full body images at the other. In between we have place markers like erected menhirs, manuports like stones or shells, artifacts like carved pillars, geometric designs like petroglyphs or yantras, metonymic pictorial symbols like sandals or the cross, carved or painted footprints, and carvings or paintings of single body parts like an eye, hand, and phallus. What is central is the fluidity that runs through the whole spectrum. Thus, one god may combine more or less the whole spectrum. Worship of the sun like it is done by Hindus during the morning river bath is not a worship of a heliomorphic object—that would be a ridiculous pleonasm: the sun is a sun, not a sun-shaped object that looks like the sun, and likewise for the worship of a river or a mountain. Such objects of worship existing in the landscape and the sky independent of human beings have been classified preliminarily and, I think, imprecisely, as “physiomorphic” by both Milete Gaifman and myself, but just as the sun is not sun-shaped, these elements of nature are not nature-shaped. Here we must distinguish between matter and form. The sun, rivers, and mountains are characterized by their physicality as a luminary and as topographic elements, not by an iconic sign relation—to say that the sun god looks like the sun is as redundant as it is to say that the sun is sun-shaped. For this reason, these non-transportable elements of nature are classified here as non-iconic.2 Nevertheless, sun, rivers, and mountains have been heavily mythologized during religious history. Whatever the origin in prehistorical cults, the worship of such elements has been associated with the gods of later mythologies and attributed with the ability to transform. Like Gan ˙g¯a, the Hindu sun god, Su ¯rya, is worshipped both as the actual sun and in his anthropomorphic image form in the temple. Su ¯rya like Gan ˙g¯a therefore combines both the non-iconic and the iconic-anthropomorphic ends of the spectrum. In fact, Su ¯rya is represented in the middle parts of the spectrum as well. He assumes a stoneform as the Sphat ika (a roundly cut and polished quartz crystal) used in the Pañc¯ayatana˙ pu ¯j¯a where five gods, S´iva, Visnu, Su ¯rya, Gane´sa, and Dev¯ı can be worshipped in the forms ˙˙ ˙ of five different stones (Aktor 2016: 18–19), and he is also worshipped as a geometrical design, the Su ¯rya Yantra. Apart from the anthropomorphic image in the Su ¯rya temple, all these forms (sun, stone, and yantra) have been classified as aniconic objects of worship. From ancient Egypt, Jørgen Sørensen points to another interesting example of a blend between divine matter and form. This is the so-called corn-Osiris or Osiris-bed which is

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a mold in the shape of Osiris filled with sand. Corn was sown in the sand and soon it would sprout. Thus this “semi-iconic” representation of Osiris “would come to life and accomplish a ritual epiphany, denoting the vegetal, regenerative rhythm of nature” (Sørensen 2017: 372). Close to the category of fixed elements of the landscape are menhirs or carved stone pillars erected as place markers, objects that are not supposed to look like a certain divinity and therefore are non-iconic but that mark its presence at a certain location and therefore may receive offerings or be objects of other kinds of ritual. Often the distinction between ritual object and landmark can be unclear. In my proposal here, aniconic objects differ from non-iconic in that they are overlaid with iconic associations. Manuports like the B¯ana Lin ˙ gas or S´¯alagr¯amas, both natural ˙ stones of the landscape, are associated with certain gods due to the similarity of certain visual elements—lines, colors, or cavities—to specific iconographic elements of those gods. We do not know their prehistory, but it would be reasonable to assume that these objects were vested with ritual agency before they were associated with S´iva and Visnu ˙˙ respectively. The selection would typically be due to some extraordinary property: an especially smooth and regular shape, a shining surface, or other quality. As we move further along the spectrum toward the anthropomorphic end it becomes increasingly difficult to isolate the aniconic. As mentioned, metonymic3 pictorial symbols like the cross, carved footprints or paintings of body parts are all iconic in the sense that they actually look like crosses, footprints, or body parts, although they do not look fully like an anthropomorphic being. Ultimately, as has been noticed by Robert Bednarik in his study of prehistoric art, it is difficult to uphold a clear separation between the three classes, the non-iconic, the aniconic, and the iconic. He refers to the phenomenon of pareidolia, “an integral element in the operation of the visual system,” that is, the tendency to see iconography in objects “that are not iconic at all, such as the exterior of a house or a piece of toast on which a face is detected” (Bednarik 2017: 356). Many cases of religious art could be mentioned as example of the deployment of this fluidity. It is interesting, for instance, to see how God the Father is represented visually in combination with the two other parts of the Trinity in Christian churches, typically at the top of the apsis. I have come across single triangles, sometimes with the Hebrew letters of Yahweh inscribed within, but most frequently with an eye. In other churches God is represented by a single hand, an all-seeing triple face, or fully anthropomorphically as an old bearded man.

BETWEEN ANICONIC SERIOUSNESS AND ANTHROPOPATHIC AGENCY The coexistence of iconic and aniconic visual modes and the deliberate choice between them are two of the insights that appear in a comparative study of aniconicity initiated by Milette Gaifman and myself (Aktor and Gaifman 2017). The next question is what motivates the aniconic choice. To pose a general answer to this question would be unwarranted, but in several cases the aniconic choice seems to be “the more weighty, mature and sacred mode” (Bednarik 2017: 361). In his study of prehistoric visual culture around the world, Robert Bednarik first notes that figural representations, such as those we know from European cave art, are exceptions in comparison to the global situation where aniconic designs are much more plentiful than the documented iconic forms.

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Aniconic designs also appear to be more complex in evoking a certain knowledge: “Whereas in figurative or iconic symbolism, the connection between referent and referrer is largely via iconicity, the symbolism of non-iconic art is only navigable by possessing the relevant neural ‘software’ furnished by culture” (ibid.). Bednarik connects this to the finding that much of the figurative cave art from France and Spain seems to be produced not by adults but by youngsters. The evidence is based on measures of finger strokes, footprints, and hand stencils in the caves. It is supported by anthropological studies of natives from Australia and the Andaman Islands where a similar preference for aniconicity is prevalent not because these people cannot draw in a figurative mode, but because they regard the aniconic mode as the more serious (ibid.: 361–2). We may see here a connection between aniconic designs that are only interpretable by a transmitted cultural code, esoteric knowledge, and initiation into adult life. In Sørensen’s examination of various representations of Osiris, it also appeared that the aniconic Djed-pillar that symbolizes Osiris in the so-called “raising the Djed-pillar” ritual, by being “exempt from any iconic restrictions [. . .], transcends all specific meanings in an abstract expression that has not yet settled for a specific symbolism” but rather represents “Osiris at large” (Sørensen 2017: 375). Also, according to Davis (2017: 464), the abstract aniconic S´iva Lin ˙ga, by being regarded in the S´aiva Siddh¯anta school as an “undifferentiated” (niskala) form unlike his “differentiated” (sakala) anthropomorphic ˙ images, “is the material form that corresponds mostly closely to S´iva in his most encompassing and transcendent aspect, as Parama´siva or Supreme S´iva.” Most radically, this weightier quality of the non-figural is expressed in the biblical anti-iconism, which is seen by Jensen as a mental program, an antidote for the Israelites to the temptation of being carried away by the religious festivity and fun among the neighboring polytheists when splendid “statues of Marduk, Nabu, and Ishtar” would be carried in procession; as such the biblical anti-iconic aniconism is an early case of the Weberian inner-worldly asceticism in the form of a visual program and thus “the possible birth of religious seriousness” (Hans Jensen 2017: 405 and title). This weightier mode of the non-iconic and aniconic is perhaps rooted in its distance from the human sphere. Luminaries, mountains, rivers, trees, and stones in the landscape are more direct indices of a manifestation of the sacred than elaborate, manipulable figurative fabrications by humans. Likewise, the aniconic geometric designs of prehistoric visual culture which resist easy interpretation represent a more exclusive type of exograms of sacred knowledge than the easily recognizable figurative images. But there is a paradox here. While the unwrought, non-iconic or aniconic mode is privileged as a more direct manifestation of the sacred, what we see in many cases is that such objects as stones and trees nevertheless tend to become panels of added anthropomorphic elements. Facial features are added to the rough stones (Aktor 2017b: 512–17) (Figure 9.1), and trees that in their natural form are regarded as the principal manifestations of the goddess are supplied with painted face masks (Haberman 2017: 493–5). I think this anthropomorphizing of the non-iconic must be understood in terms of ritual agency. As noted earlier (Aktor 2017a: 66), a basic cognitive distinction made by humans is between inanimate objects that cannot move or act on their own, artifacts, which are inanimate objects processed by humans, and living beings. Stones belong to the two former categories but can also share the agency of the last one when they are appropriated in ritualized behavior. What triggers the attribution of such agency can be visual qualities like a crystal formation (symmetry being a general visual feature of living organisms), prehistory (fossils being imprints of extinct life forms), but also some extraordinary aesthetic quality

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FIGURE 9.1: The aniconic ´s¯alagr¯ama (ammonite fossil) representing Visnu as Lord of ˙˙ Liberation (Muktin¯atha), here as an unbroken ´s¯alagr¯ama concretion decorated with facial features. It is placed at the center of the pu ¯j¯a table in an adjacent building (S´r¯ı Muktin¯atha Yajña´s¯al¯a) within the precinct of the Muktin¯atha Visnu Temple, Muktinath, Nepal. The stone ˙˙ is painted with Visnu’s forehead mark, and the wide-open eyes are painted particularly sharply. ˙˙ He wears a shawl with the text “Victory to Lord Muktin¯atha!” (jaya ´sr¯ı muktin¯atha), and he holds a print with the Muktin¯atha Temple triad: Lord Muktin¯atha (center), Sarasvat¯ı (left), and Bhu ¯dev¯ı (the Earth; right). Photograph by Mikael Aktor, September 6, 2014.

like a shining surface or strong colors, which both mark these objects as rare and as kindred to human artefacts. When such inanimate objects are appropriated in ritualized behavior they are formally invested with agency, and hence, efficacy. Water, for instance, only becomes holy water by having already been ritually sacralized (Lawson and McCauley 1993: 96–8), just as the worship of holy rivers in India and their assumed purificatory qualities are two elements of the same phenomenon. In principle, anything can be ritually sacralized, but objects with properties like the aforementioned ones invite ritual appropriation more readily than aesthetically more neutral objects. When inanimate objects are invested with properties characteristic of living beings they can be addressed as partners in a social interaction. Psychologists have found that

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one factor in the tendency to anthropomorphize non-human objects or beings is the “sociality motivation,” the wish to form social connections. The wish and the resulting anthropomorphization increase with increased social isolation (Epley et al. 2007: 875–7). This, obviously, has implication for studies of religion, as indicated by cases like the visions of desert or jungle ascetics and vision seekers. To attribute non-iconic ritual objects with anthropopathic qualities, as for instance the ability to respond to a prayer, is a result of the ritual appropriation process. These anthropopathic qualities are emphasized visually when such objects are painted with facial features or other anthropomorphic elements. Hinduism may be an especially strong case because of the historical development by which the domestic ritual, the pu ¯j¯a, was popularized. The idea of this ritual is to generate a level where gods and humans can meet. This is done by treating the god as a very important human being like a king or a special guest, and by elevating the human worshipper to an almost superhuman level through bodily and mental purifications. The god, whether as an anthropomorphic image or an aniconic object like the S´¯alagr¯ama fossil, is worshipped through a series of sixteen services such as offering water for bathing, offering food, perfume, incense, etc. (Fuller 1992: 57–82). In the pañc¯ayatana pu ¯j¯a, for instance, where five stones are worshipped as five gods, the stones are “dressed” by twisting a small piece of cloth around each (Aktor 2016: 6–9). Likewise, Haberman (2017) reports from his fieldwork on the worship of Neem trees and stones from Mount Govardhan in India that his ethnographic data suggests that the anthropomorphization is done “to enhance a relationship with the tree [and stone] as a person” (ibid.: 495). Thus, [T]he adornment of a tree or a stone, then, is not only a way of honoring the entity as a divine person and drawing out its personality; tree and stone worshippers report the addition of the face and ornamentation make [a] stronger and more intimate relationship or connection possible with a nonhuman entity. —Ibid.: 497

CONCLUSION In conclusion, let me summarize the main findings of the recent comparative study of aniconicity that are listed in Gaifman’s introduction to our joint thematic issue (Gaifman 2017: 348–50). The terminology of the former studies of aniconism needs to be differentiated and more finely tuned to the diversity of the material (Luchesi, Chapter 19, this volume). “Aniconism” as a visual program that promotes an anti-iconic or antianthropomorphic visual mode is different from “aniconicity,” the use of aniconic objects of worship or indices of divine presence. Also, it seems appropriate to distinguish, on the one hand, between non-iconic objects that are not defined by an iconic semiotic relation of visual likeness to anything else but by their primary physicality—like the luminaries of the sky and immovable elements of the landscape—and, on the other, aniconic objects and designs that integrate elements of iconicity; these aniconic objects could be those that are associated with certain divine beings due to links between their inherent visual properties and iconographic features of these gods (e.g., the S´¯alagr¯ama fossil with its lined pattern that is recognized as the marks of Visnu’s discus), and an example of the ˙˙ aniconic designs could be sacred diagrams like Hindu yantras or Buddhist mandalas that ˙˙ relate to their prototypes by more abstract visual links. These terminological distinctions are motivated by the fluidity of visual modes in which neither non-iconic, aniconic, nor iconic elements exist independent of each other.

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On the contrary, visual modes appropriate elements from the whole spectrum, either by being associated with these other modes or by actually adding them, as when a non-iconic stone is classified according to its visual similarities with visual iconographic features of certain gods or becomes a panel for anthropomorphic elements like eyes and other facial features. We also need to distinguish between an informative and a ritual use of images (Sørensen 2017: 367), or, especially in a Christian context, between narrative and iconic imagery; that is, between images that are created as illustration of a narrative, and images that are supposed to be worshipped or used ritually, the latter being more constrained by restrictions than the former (Robin Jensen 2017: 408). The idea of aniconicity as a historically earlier stage than iconicity which was implied in early studies of Greek and Buddhist visual cultures needs critical examination. At least it must be recognized that aniconic and iconic styles became a matter of deliberate choice, indicating that each mode was thought to evoke distinct attitudes to the sacred prototype that could be visualized by each mode. The question of whether it is possible to link non-iconicity and aniconicity to a certain weightier and more sacred mode of representation compared with figural images also needs to be tested further. It might be specific to distinct traditions although the prehistoric material seemed to confirm this link. There may exist a certain tension between aniconic and anthropomorphic styles when such objects are used ritually, because ritual, especially worship, implies a kind of social interaction with the object of worship. Anthropomorphization of otherwise non-iconic and aniconic objects can be related to this kind of ritualization. Finally, it makes a methodological difference whether the material at hand is accessible for fieldwork studies—whether it can be studied in its living ritual context—or is from an ancient culture where there is little possibility for knowing how people thought about these rituals. In fieldwork situations observations can be checked against verbal accounts of informants.

RECOMMENDED READING Gaifman, Milette (2012), Aniconism in Greek Antiquity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Critically discusses the concept of aniconism tested against the great variation of forms in Greek antiquity that together constitute a full spectrum of aniconism. Grieser, Alexandra K. and Jay Johnston, eds. (2017), Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Places the sensory qualities of religious phenomena in the foreground and argues for the importance of this focus for our understanding of religious cultures. Jacobsen, Knut A., Mikael Aktor, and Kristina Myrvold, eds. (2015), Objects of Worship in South Asian Religions: Forms, Practices, and Meanings, Abingdon: Routledge. Shows how objects as a material dimension of lived religion are shaped by traditions of religious aesthetics and emphasizes sensory, performative as well as social meanings.

CHAPTER TEN

Sonality ANNETTE WILKE

INTRODUCTION Aesthetics of religion, with its focus on sensory perception, has become a vibrant new field of research among German-speaking scholars of the study of religion. In the context of this “aesthetic turn,” questions are addressed such as how images, sounds, gestures, material culture, movements, and the expansion or reduction of sensory stimuli socialize, channel, and form religious identities, experiences, and knowledge cultures, and create social effervescence and emotional bonds. The aesthetics of religion approach is highly connective, being related not only to what has been called the “sensory or sensorial turn,” but also to the entire series of transformative “turns” within the study of religions over the past three decades, including the spatial turn, the literary turn, the feminist turn, the material turn, the visual turn, the performative turn, the corporal turn, and the cognitive turn (Hackett 2014). Sound or sonality is of particular interest in the aesthetics of religion. It has to do with materiality, i.e., physicality and embodiment, as well as performativity, cognition, and spatiality. At the same time, by its very nature sonality connects the tangible sensorial and the intangible, vibrational, and extrasensorial or “acousmatic” (Kane 2014) and symbolic qualities of sound and voice, and thus connects the outer and inner worlds, the somatic and the symbolic, nature and culture (Dolar 2006, 2007; Wagner-Egelhaaf 2017). Sonality is an effective and “natural” way of communicating, producing, and strengthening ideas about the divine, the ineffable, spiritual, and transcendent, and making them experiential realities. While sound can communicate intellectual knowledge, it is primarily related to feeling, emotion, and the senses; it creates corporal knowledge and “emotional intelligence” in which culture-specific intellectual and doctrinal notions are ingrained. In many ways, sound (musical and non-musical) or sonality constitutes a central category of analysis in the study of religion and culture, relating to collective and individual social identity formation, moral disposition, behavior, and worldview, as well as direct communication with the (postulated) sacred. Sounding and audible texts pervade the entire religious history of India including village and tribal cultures, and also Buddhism and Sikhism. In Sanskrit Hinduism this sonic paradigm is all-pervasive. It determines performances, habitus forms and dispositions, the production of symbols, and whole world-interpretations and worldviews. We will therefore look at it more closely in this chapter.

SOUND STUDIES In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in sound and auditory phenomena in various disciplines (Schafer [1977] 1993; Smith 2004; Schulz 2008; Bull and Back 2015). 107

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However, as Hackett (2014: 447–8) rightly points out, the bulk of sound and soundscape studies are found in cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, rather than in the study of religion, where, as she remarks, an “auditory or acoustic turn” is only now taking shape. She also notes a methodological shift: An attention to the auditory domain [i.e., to the broader category of sound than merely to music] can counteract Western aesthetic, textual and visualist biases. [. . .] The methodological shift [. . .] to listening practices and experiences raises new questions about religious identity, memory, authenticity and mediation. [. . .] The soundscape concept lends itself to research on the role of music and sound in constructing and reconfiguring physical and imagined sacred spaces. —Hackett 2014: 447 The American Academy of Religions (AAR) has set up a research group entitled “Sound as Religion” to trace how widely sound occurs in religion, and how religion might be constituted by sound. Discussing sonic and auditory cultures on their own terms encourages sound-specific questions (see also Hackett 2016, 2017). Some religious texts, for instance, are not only meant to be recited or chanted, but should be understood as becoming fully active only as sound. In other cases, vocal, instrumental, or aural practices may generate religious institutions. This includes the possibility of receiving sound and music as religion or religion-like spirituality, without formal dependence on any specific religion. Research in this field has tended to be dominated by the narrower theme of (spiritual) music, including oral–aural practices, often from a general cross-cultural or comparative perspective (Graham [1987] 1993; Beck 2006; Guzy 2008a). The most innovatory studies to date are those focused on specific regions, traditions, and religions (Schmidt 2002; de Witte 2008; Weiner 2009; Laack 2011; Partridge and Moberg 2017; Porter 2017). Pioneering studies of sound perception in the Muslim world, for instance, have been made by Navid Kermani ([1999] 2014) and Charles Hirschkind (2006). Kermani maintains that there is no true understanding of the Quran without an appreciation of its aesthetic dimensions; i.e., its literary quality and sonic realization. He argues that its beauty is primarily appreciated in its sonic dimension. Listening to Quranic recitals is a deeply stirring emotional and aesthetic experience for many (even secularized) Muslims. More recently, Hirschkind’s ethnographic field research in Cairo has revealed the strong impact of (reform Islamist) cassette sermons which function as “ethical soundscapes.” He relates auditory experience to ethical dispositions and shows how the sermons uphold forms of public life in changing social and political contexts. He draws attention to the fundamental role of modern mass media, tracking their use and circulation in markets, on public transportation and in domestic spaces; social media help transition sacred soundscapes into the future. Indeed, engagement with sensory experiences outside of writing, and attunement to the religious dimensions of sound and listening, seem particularly timely given the influence of digital media. However, paying more attention to sound also offers new modes of inquiry into the past. In all premodern religious cultures—including Europe—sonic and auditory practices were key aspects of religiosity, a fact which the Protestant Reformation’s sole focus on scripture has made us forget. Hindu India might be called a highly sonic culture, and as such can offer insights for a study of sonality. Guy Beck (1993) describes sound as the central mystery of Hinduism. In our study (Wilke and Moebus 2011) we go a step further by discussing the historical material in a broader contextual framework, and tackling systematic questions such as the

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historical fluidity of texts (their constant reinterpretation), the vexed question of the meaning of rituals, forms of verbal and non-verbal communication, and culture-specific world orientations and hierarchies of perception. Our study emphasizes the fact that the exceptional value of sound in India pervades not only religion and theology, but all segments of culture, from profane poetry to highly sophisticated premodern sciences like grammar and mathematics, as well as contemporary audio of Vedic chanting, Bollywood songs, and everyday speech. The essential thesis is that for centuries, and in ever new variations, sound has been a key medium of cultural representation and reproduction in Hindu India and Sanskrit culture, and that “acoustic piety” is a fundamental feature of Hindu religiosity, including vernacular, local, and tribal cultures (Guzy 2008b; Pande 2017). We argue that an aesthetics of religion perspective is indispensable, as strictly speaking the philologist’s “text” does not exist as a text type in the Indian tradition. Texts need embodied performance and exist only as audible texts and aesthetic events. The sound of the text cannot be separated from its message and may even appear itself as the message. Philologists elect to forgo an important source of information about Hindu culture if they insist on reading their literary sources as books in the modern, post-Reformation, Western sense, as disembodied, non-sensuous thought(s) and teachings, as discursive bodies of data, without any audible form or any aesthetic and emotional effect. However, it is clear that form and content must not be torn apart. A cultural semiotics perspective shows that symbolic formation and worldviews based on sound are an important part of the Hindu sonic culture. Our methodology breaks with the traditional dichotomy of “the oral” and “the written” by including the realm of sound and sounding texts. It has been widely acclaimed as an inductively developed “applied aesthetics of religion” (Wilke and Moebus 2011: 25–38). Finnian Gerety (2015) employs our approach to open up new possibilities for understanding the emergence of the Hindu mantra, the “sacred syllable” OM. For a long time, it was only known that OM appeared as a world-pervading and world-transcending syllable and linguistic model of the universe in the late Vedic Upanisads, while in the ˙ early Veda it did not seem to have a central place. However, if we take into account the ritual prescriptions (in the S´rauta Su ¯tras) and the actual performance, as Gerety did, the situation changes fundamentally: the last day of Soma sacrifice, the most ancient and paradigmatic Vedic ritual, vibrated with an all-pervading resonant soundscape made up of the syllable OM (in different variations). The ritual rules generate recitational OMs that are otherwise not attested in the Vedic corpus, thus suggesting that practices of mantra recitation and ritual performance shaped Vedic doctrines, and not the other way around as is often believed.

SOUND MATTERS: THE CASE OF HINDU INDIA AND THE SOUNDING OF SACRED TEXTS Of course, vision and the other senses play important roles in Hindu India, starting with the deities’ icons and the service to the gods (pu ¯j¯a), which involve all the senses but lay most emphasis on vision (dar´san)—seeing the god or goddess and being seen by him or her (Luchesi, Chapter 19, this volume; Aktor, Chapter 9, this volume). However, sonality and (mental) visuality cannot be separated. In fact, the mantra of the deity is regarded as more important than the icon. It is supposed to contain the deity’s powers, and is safeguarded as esoteric knowledge requiring initiation. Mantras and litanies also pervade

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the exoteric pu ¯j¯a. The Veda, the most ancient sacred literature of India, illustrates the continuity of hearing and seeing, but with a clear preference for the sonic. The Veda is known as S´ruti, a term that Thomas Coburn (1984) rightly glosses as “holy hearing.” We may also speak of an oral–aural or sonic canon which was transmitted by highly exacting and sophisticated mnemonic techniques and not by writing (Wilke 2011). However, it is also known as a divine, unauthored revelation which was directly “seen” by the Vedic Rishis, the visionary “seers” who “saw” the Veda as a sonic canon containing pre-reflexive or even pre-semantic knowledge of the world, divinities, and dharma ethics (Halbfass 1991). Typically, sound is in the forefront of Veda reception and the Veda’s sacred power, although it is clear that the Veda became substantially altered in its reception over the course of time: one and the same text was initially understood as a normal “semantic text” (although its expressive sound was important even in the oldest layers), then as an esoteric formula (what the world is all about), and, finally, in an essentialist manner, as sacred sound substance. The latter is already firmly established in the ancient epic R¯am¯ayana. The R¯am¯ayana’s depiction of the “holy noise” (brahma-ghosa) of the resonant ˙ ˙ ˙ three-tone Veda recitation, as it emanates from the simple straw huts of modest Brahmins, suggests the Vedic aura and solemn sacredness which today is still linked to Veda recitation. The sound of the Veda imparts a meaning associated with a particular cultural “habitus” and ideology: when a Hindu hears the characteristic three intervals of a Veda performance (distinguishing the Veda from any other sacred literature, i.e., any other vocalization of sacred text), this transports him to the peaceful, pure, and strictly vegetarian world of ideal Brahminhood.

Performances Hinduism—in all the various traditions covered by this generic term—is a very pronounced performance culture, in which texts are embodied in the voice even when they are written down. As they are recited, chanted, ritualized, preached, danced, and staged, texts appeal not only to the intellect by their teachings and doctrines, but also to the senses, the body, and the emotions. Often, the authors were very sensitive to sonic patterns (like alliteration), and also to emotive contents and the communication of moods. “Reading” out loud (p¯atha) a religious text in Sanskrit means “reciting” it in a musically pleasing way, paying ˙ utmost care to correct pronunciation. Simply listening to the sound of a religious text is held to be auspicious, purifying, and liberating. In ever new variations, this cultural pattern has remained surprisingly consistent from ancient times to the present day, pervading all the different traditions and historical changes like a red thread, and even surviving media changes. In this culture, writing and printing have not had the same sweeping effects as in Europe. A word (´sabda) is defined as an acoustic reality or sound pattern to which meaning is attached. Sonality, or the vocalization of textual sources, is a powerful factor connecting the oral and the written, which has stimulated not only religious practice, but also linguistic, poetic, philosophical, and theological reflection.

Habitus Forms and Dispositions Widespread forms of acoustic piety are mantra repetition or devotional bhajan song, and deities like the Vedic goddess “Voice” (v¯ac) or the great god S´iva of classical Hinduism, who creates the world through the sounds and rhythms of his hand-drum, are also part of the sonic paradigm. Sarasvat¯ı is known as the goddess of language, poetry, music, and wisdom, and she grants skills in this area. Acoustic piety comprises religious forms in

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which the act of recitation itself ranges first, while the exact meaning of the words is not necessarily important or known. Rather, for the practitioners, the religious text and its sonality is an icon of the divine charged with special power, an animate reality. This is particularly true of mantras and devotional music. These practices connect with specific forms of cultural knowledge, such as the belief that mantras have intrinsic power independent of the intention of the speaker, or that music is a devotional language better than words and tunes directly into the divine. The sonic paradigm also affects daily life. There is a widespread belief that the spoken word is more reliable than the written word, and that sonic dimensions such as intonation or speed of speech are guarantors of authenticity. Education is not associated with libraries but with learning by heart and always being able to quote the appropriate verse.

The Production of Symbols There are many symbolic forms centering on sound which express religious ideas and the comprehension of the divine, ranging from the goddess “Voice/Speech” and the “language cow” (Wilke and Moebus 2011: 288–95) in the Veda to the great gods in classical Hinduism—the V¯ına-playing goddess Sarasvat¯ı, the dancing Lord S´iva, the flute-playing God Krsna, or the tantric mantra deities, each of them associated with religiously encoded ˙˙˙ sound. Sonic symbols, however, are not only religious and “mythical,” nor do sonic practices lead only to mental absorption, magical efficiency, and emotional fusion with the deity. They also force the practitioner to think in structures and abstractions. Here it is remarkable that sensing the world through sound is not confined to religious life only, but pervades even the most complex and abstract areas of linguistics, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy. At the core of P¯anini’s ingenious grammar (c. fifth century BCE ), for ˙ instance, lie certain sound codes which rearrange the Sanskrit alphabet. Not by chance is P¯anini viewed as the father of analytical science in India; he introduced what would be ˙ called today symbolic logic and linguistics. Mathematicians also made use of phonetic codes, and instead of diagrams and numeric code systems we find poetic diction full of alliteration and difficult meters. Surely this helped easier memorization and emotional appropriation of the subject, but the aesthetic brilliancy reflected the brilliancy of the startling new scientific ideas, and had a socially legitimated function.

The Role of Sound in the Formation of World-interpretation and Worldview In various ways, sound with its subtle yet very physical quality has been a powerful medium of communication, chosen to invoke ordered relationships, furnish ritual effectiveness, generate sources of power and value, and, not least, to construct “the sacred,” to embody assumptions about people’s place in a larger order of things and bring about emotional identification and absorption. “Sonic awareness” forms perception and informs interpretation of the universe. Sound itself is a symbol of non-dual reality, of diversity in unity. One of the most striking examples of this is the N¯ada-Brahman, the “sonic absolute.” Its inventor, the musicologist S´¯arn ˙ gadeva (thirteenth century), and his commentator Kallin¯atha (c. 1430) used this term to express a sonic or musical view of the world-whole. From S´¯arn ˙gadeva’s music classic San ˙ g¯ı tasratn¯akara we can distil the metaphysical view that the world is (based on) sound and sound is God. He also gave music a practical and soteriological role by proclaiming it as a pleasant form of yoga for everybody, and as a way of directly experiencing the soul of the universe, the cosmic whole, and divine bliss. He claims no less than that music makes the abstract Brahman

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(absolute being or universal spirit proclaimed in the Upanisads) and the cosmic sound ˙ (n¯ada) that pervades the universe (proclaimed in the S´aiva Tantra) accessible to the senses. R¯aga music helps empathic and deep listeners to feel the divine and non-dual nature of all reality, and can give them supreme beatitude and liberation. Like S´¯arn ˙ gadeva, many succeeding musicians took a substantialist view of the N¯ada-Brahman embodied in music. Others, like Kallin¯atha, hastened to declare that music was not itself the Brahman, but the most perfect symbol, metaphor, or metonym for it, and the best door to Brahman experience. They claimed that it shared common structural features with the Brahman, such as the inseparable relation of cause and effect; sound as the material ground of its own products, its notes, scales, and rhythms; the intrinsic liveliness (caitanya, literally, the “consciousness”) of sound; and its ability to convey intensive joy, trance-like rapture, and bliss.

THE CONTINUITY OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC It has often been rightly said that focusing on sound is more comprehensive and inclusive than focusing on music. Music can be seen as a realm of its own, which not only plays a vital role in enhancing religious belonging and emotional bonds, but can also become a critical, anti-religious, and rival force, or take on the role of a functional (quasi-)religion. In certain religious traditions and cultural contexts, music was perceived as a threat to religion and good behavior, as for instance in Muslim orthodoxy or in ancient China. In Hindu India, however, the relationship between religion and music has been symbiotic since classical times, with its music-making and dancing gods and its hyperbolic concept of a sonic absolute. Even profane music may be seen as divine service or, the other way around, as invisible religion, this being the outcome of a sound-based culture in which language and music are not strictly separated. Typically, the popular goddess Sarasvat¯ı is the goddess of language and of music. Music is pure sound and its primary model is the voice as song. Song is a corporal and sensory-emotional reality. S´¯arn ˙ gadeva says that it is anchored in the body and related to emotions and aesthetic moods, which in turn are part of the subtle body—the psychophysical cakras. Music, expressed in r¯agas or melody models, is thought to color (rakti, rañjana) the mind, to bring about emotions quite naturally in a transpersonal manner. Emotions, aesthetic sentiments (rasa), and atmospheric moods are conveyed and triggered not only by the lyrics and rhetoric of the narrative, but foremost by sensing the audible text. Adding a temporal dimension, r¯agas (perceived as sonic personalities) are also related to specific times of the day. In Hindu India, music and language are perceived as a continuity, coinciding in expressive (communicative) sound as well as pre-reflexive dimensions of meaning. There is a fundamental awareness that sound reaches out into the pre-terminological, and that language is effective not only in its discursive and logical dimensions, but also in its acoustic, sensory, and emotive dimensions. It is important to take this into account analytically, as non-semantic sounds are central media of religious communication, and are often regarded as powerful and sacred. There are many examples of this, from the Veda as oral canon and “holy hearing” and the S¯ama Veda’s meaningless stobhas, to the tantric non-lexical seed-mantras, the sonic cosmologies of the S´aiva Siddh¯anta which view sound as the very basis of the universe, the N¯ada-Brahman of the musicians, and the fundamental role of music and singing the divine name in Hindu mainstream devotional

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traditions (bhakti). Typically, devotional texts, i.e., bhakti literature, are poetic songs or poems set to music, often in vernaculars and not in Sanskrit. In India, language, voice, and text, are closely connected with music because they share a sound-based approach to text, making a strict distinction impossible. Characteristically, voice in this cultural area is not only a mediator of semantic meaning. Rather, while sound and voice do enjoy their own domains and valences of meaning, they are also closely connected to linguistics. Their materiality is integrated into linguistic reflections of structured and unstructured sounds incorporating and extending the human voice. A good example is the deification of voice/speech/language (v¯ac) in the late Rgveda ˙ (Staal 1977; Wilke and Moebus 2011: 370–5). Typically, the Vedic goddess V¯ac played an eminent cosmological role and included non-human voices like thunder, the lowing of a cow after her calf, or the croaking of frogs heralding rain. She had a complex history in later classical Hinduism. The popular goddess Sarasvat¯ı, for instance, may be seen as a transformation of the old goddess V¯ac in a new garb—now known as the goddess of language, learning, poetry, and wisdom, and as the goddess of music. Sarasvat¯ı is also the popular exoteric alter ego of the esoteric language goddess V¯ac in the (S´aiva) Tantra (Padoux 1990). The tantric V¯ac refers to four language levels: (1) the spoken and heard language, (2) discursive thought, (3) intuition or sensory and affective overall impression of an object, and (4) all-pervading consciousness or the integral perception of the worldwhole—the vision of God and of the enlightened self. It is noteworthy that in Hindu India sounds (be it mantra sounds or r¯aga sounds) are regarded as personalities, containing caitanya, “consciousness” and “sentiency.” Typically, in the Tantra, the deities exist only in and as sounds. They are not mythical beings, but mantra deities; all their powers are contained in the mantra and a person who recites it can absorb these powers. For musicologists, from the Middle Ages up to modern times with musicians like Ravi Shankar, r¯aga music is thus a perceptible, audible form of Brahman, or as they would basically claim: the world is sound and sound is God, a contemporary catchphrase derived from established musicological texts. In contradistinction to r¯aga music and classical song, (semi-musical) recitation, Vedic chanting, and simple devotional bhajan singing are regarded as non-artistic, because they follow conventionally fixed pre-figured patterns. R ¯aga music, in contrast, is based on a high degree of improvisation and individual ornamentation (of the rudimentary, basic r¯aga skeleton) which alone are seen as “real art.” This native aesthetic theory certainly does not coincide with the aesthetics of religion perspective which includes any sensory expression without normative judgment. But it would be of great interest to analyze the different sonic practices as important sources of information. Due to the singer’s high degree of personal engagement and interpretation when “awakening” a r¯aga and its emotional flavor, his or her way of singing becomes a very individual theology if the song is a religious one (which is very often the case). Each singer will realize the correlation of melody and lyrics in different ways. This theology does not result primarily from the words, such as the beautiful verses of the Great Goddess hymn Saundaryalahar¯ı . Rather, it is a highly individualized, purely sonic theology in which the singer melodically ornaments the lyrics of the song by accentuating certain words, adding tremolos, or coloring the phrases by singing them loudly or softly, dynamically or gently, quickly or slowly. An aesthetics of religion approach provides methods to uncover such personal theologies. But even more importantly, emphasizing the sonality of recitations, chants, and bhajans leads us to the very heart of Hindu text reception, the “acoustic piety” described above.

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CONDUCTING AN AESTHETIC ANALYSIS: EIGHT THESES CONCERNING METHODOLOGY Sound studies provide valuable instruments for investigating the universal features of sound, its relation to society, social resonance, individual and collective belonging, and its particular impact on emotion. However, to a large extent such features are shaped by the cultural background. A comparative approach considers that sound and emotions have different cultural validations and play different roles in the perceptual orders or hierarchies of sociocultural perception. This is not insignificant, as different sense stimuli mobilize, cultivate, and channel perceptions, experiences, and feelings in different ways and produce different forms of (cognitive-intellectual, bodily, sensorial, and emotional) epistemic knowledge. In many ways, sounds produce special sensory data. We can easily close our eyes, but not our ears. Certainly, we may consciously decide not to listen, but in everyday life hearing all the different sounds and silences around us is an unconscious, natural act—yet producing feelings that result in bodily dispositions. The following eight theses lie at the core of the aesthetics of religion approach. They move from specific observations on Hindu India to more general principles which can and must be applied to other sound cultures (Wilke 2014a: 121; see also 2014b: 110–11): 1. The fundamental thesis is that texts in Sanskrit Hinduism—whether they occur in everyday religious culture or in the traditions of scholars—are always meant to be heard, and this aspect has been incorporated by us into the hermeneutics of texts and the hermeneutics of culture (Wilke and Moebus 2011). 2. As the focus in India remained on the spoken and sounding word, even after the introduction of writing, a purely philological approach misses important information. In India, one can only speak of texts in a sense that includes audible words. This requires an awareness that the medium (voice and sound) is part of the message. 3. There is a need for expanded methods of text interpretation which include sensory aesthetic dimensions, such as sound patterns, rhymes and rhythms, diction, intonation, or pitch and color of the voice. By including the self-communicating message of the text, we can better understand its poetic function and performativity. 4. The aesthetic approach automatically implies observing practices, i.e., ritual, meditative or musical performances, considering the context, the expected results, and the agents, including possible social restrictions or expansion to non-human agents. Texts are often regarded as icons of the divine, and sounds, particularly mantra sounds, as personalities and agents in their own right. 5. The content of theological abstractions and processes of semiosis must be considered, including cultural imaginations, collective and subjective interpretations of language, sound and voice, their cosmological framing and religious coding. There is a need to contextualize the role of language and sound in cultural symbol systems and the multidimensional constitution of meaning. 6. A very important axiom of the aesthetic approach is the recognition that language produces effects through its discursive and logical dimensions as well as through its sensory and emotive dimensions. It is vital to consider that the creation of sense and significance takes place on many levels, both semantic and non-semantic, verbal and atmospheric. As outlined above, non-semantic sounds can be of the utmost religious

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importance in India and elsewhere, and they are often considered to be particularly sacred. As in the case of text and language, we have to expand our understanding of communication to include sound as an independent medium of expression which is perceived in a sensuous and emotional way. 7. The concept of “acoustic piety” as developed for Hindu India is applicable to other sonic religious cultures. Recitals, chants, and musical liturgies exist everywhere. How can listening practices be described? For example, if merely hearing a Quranic or Talmudic recital can be spiritually efficacious, then this will apply all the more so to deep listening with sensory, affective, and behavioral engagement. Aesthetic studies should encompass not only oral–aural performances, but also auditory practices and ideologies, including sonic symbols and worldviews (Yelle, Chapter 22, this volume, on Protestant ideologies of music). 8. The inclusion of culturally specific knowledge production is fundamental (Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume). In Indian history of ideas, divine sound and music have been a means of structuring abstract ideas in the traditional sciences and of training formalistic thinking. This example raises our awareness that styles of doing science are contingent upon validations attached to certain sensory data.

CONCLUSION: THE VALUE OF AN AESTHETIC APPROACH TO STUDYING SONALITY IN INDIA AND BEYOND The strength of the sonic-aesthetic approach described here is that it reveals not only independent communicative and meaning-generating aspects of sound, but also the (postcolonial) insight that there is a unifying bond between the pluralistic Hindu cultures, cutting across traditions, historical changes, and even media transformations. Sound is a key medium of cultural reproduction. A “sonic cultural history” is able to expose ongoing themes and common patterns, while at the same time recording diversity and socioreligious change in a cultural continuum. It shows that the term “Hinduism,” which has often been criticized as an orientalist and essentialist construction, can be retained with good reason in postcolonial discourses, due to its persistent emphasis on voice and sonality rather than written texts. Hindu India makes us aware that the value attached to written texts, especially in contemporary Western societies, but also in ancient China, is culturally contingent. The Indian case demonstrates the value of an unbroken continuity of the relationship between the oral and the written in sonic practice. This challenges established theories of orality and literacy, and gives the debates new fuel (see also Wilkens, Chapter 14, this volume; Laack, Chapter 21, this volume). A major task of comparative studies in aesthetics of religion is to elaborate theories of sound, voice, and hearing in the context of religious cultures around the world, and thus to contribute to critical aesthetic theorizing. The culturally specific example of Hinduism encourages us to assess global religious history anew in terms of sound, calling to mind, for instance, the importance of sonality in Quran and Torah recitation. The thesis that sonality opens our ears to other forms of meaning beyond the lexical and semantic certainly holds true for other knowledge cultures. In the context of such an “auditive turn,” it is important to analyze not only the manifold uses of sound in religions (from muezzins to church bells), but also how sound appears as religion, from sonic and auditive practices creating institutions to sound and

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music as invisible religion. The Indian N¯ada Brahman may serve as an example of both, in the first case by enhancing the production of religious music and viewing music-making and listening as a form of yoga and as a possibility of merging with the divine, and in the second case by giving joyful entertainment a spiritual dimension and fusing the profane and sacred spheres, to the extent that the famous Carnatic musician-composer Ty¯agar¯aja could say: “The joy of music is itself the bliss of Brahman that the Ved¯anta speaks of ” (Jackson 1994: 224, trans. by V. Raghavan).

RECOMMENDED READING Hackett, Rosalind (2016), “Sound,” in Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg (eds.), The Oxford Handbook for the Study of Religion, 316–28, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Offers an introductory overview to the field and discusses some pioneering (English) works on sound and soundscapes. Hackett, Rosalind (2017), “Sounds Indigenous: Negotiating Identity in an Era of World Music,” in Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft (eds.), The Brill Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), 108–19, Leiden: Brill. Brings together the author’s expertise on African culture and religion, sound studies, and identity politics in public media. Wilke, Annette and Oliver Moebus (2011), Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism, Berlin: de Gruyter. Demonstrates the indispensability of an aesthetics of religion perspective, as strictly speaking the philologist’s “text” does not exist as a text type in the Indian tradition.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Museality JENS KUGELE

INTRODUCTION: MUSEALITY, MUSEAL SPACES, AESTHETICS OF RELIGION The term museality has been employed in academic fields such as museology, heritage studies, and museum studies to discuss the relationship between material culture, acts of exhibition, individual experience of objects on display, and their meaning for the collective imagination. Engaging with the term museality in the context of the study of religion, an aesthetics of religion approach sheds light on this very nexus of materiality, social praxis, exhibition, display, and the collective imaginary. Annette Wilke and Esther-Maria Guggenmos (2008) were among the first scholars to apply the aesthetics of religion approach to the study of museums. Based on an excursion with university students and grounded in extensive fieldwork, their pioneering research project explores the Museum of World Religions in Taipei, Taiwan, in its multimedia and interactive design. This project resulted in a collection of research papers focusing on the museum’s strategies to offer its visitors an aesthetic experience in the sense of a tangible and sensorial experience of religion while expressing a Buddhist notion of interreligious dialogue. Offering a combined perspective of cultural anthropology and aesthetics of religion, Hubert Mohr delineates the theoretical contours of museality as an analytical term (Mohr 2011) and provides a conceptual framework for further research on the topic. As Mohr argues, “museality” and “museal” can be viewed as “perceptible qualities of a complex of forms of expression, representation, and action,” which have become consolidated in modern times in Europe in the institution of the “museum.” A “museal principle” permeating both social and individual action is thus not restricted to the European tradition and can be described by the term “museality” (Mohr 2011: 14). Mohr’s fundamental essay was an integral part of a collaborative research project that studied the multiple interfaces of religion and museal spaces (Kugele and Wilkens 2011). The multi-authored publication put forward a conceptual approach to museality as an exemplary critical term in the emerging field of aesthetics of religion. At the core of the project is the conviction that this aesthetic study of museums and museality sheds new light on sociocultural dynamics outside of traditional religious institutions and thus makes a central contribution to the history of religion in Europe and beyond. In what follows, this essay further explores the potential of the concept of museality for an aesthetics of religion perspective with a particular focus on the spatial nexus of materiality, social praxis, exhibition, display, and the collective imaginary mentioned above. After a discussion of the terms museality and museal space as analytical tools, the 117

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display of national history in the National Cathedral of Washington, DC will serve as an example. Drawing on Birgit Meyer’s theoretical work on the interrelation between materiality, practice, and collective imagination, I will argue that a focus on the specific museality of this cathedral allows for a better understanding of the powerful aesthetics at work in this monumental space.

APPROACHING MUSEALITY, MUSEUMS, AND MUSEAL SPACE In his 2000 article, Austrian museology scholar Friedrich Waidacher presents a notion of museality that, in his view, characterizes a specific relationship between people and (material) reality. For Waidacher, this relationship crystallizes in “authentic” objects; it is the task of museums to select and to present such objects that are able to bear testimony of a specific reality. Arguing for the legitimacy of museums as important cultural institutions and consequently for the importance of the academic discipline of museology, Waidacher’s notion of museality is thus linked to what he postulates as a specific, unique relation that human beings have with their (material) reality. However, while engaging, through the very term museality, in a dialogue with such museological approaches, a conceptualization of museality informed by the aesthetic of religion approach does not conceive of museality as a “fundamental human attitude” (Waidacher 1997: 10) and does not seek to implicitly or explicitly ascribe “authenticity” to “museal objects.” On the contrary, an aesthetics of religion approach to museality is interested in examining the very strategies and forms at work in creating what might then be perceived as an aura of authenticity. It thus shifts our focus away from postulated human attitudes to an analysis of aesthetic regimes in museal spaces. Employing museality as a heuristic tool, this approach departs from normative understandings of the term and rather advocates exploring the potential of museality as an analytical term. The materiality of the museal space itself—including its architecture, design, size, lighting, acoustics, and climate—plays a central role in constructing collective knowledge in these spaces. Museality as a concept for aesthetics of religion includes this materiality while reaching beyond the museum as a physical building and cultural institution. It thus does not limit its scope to the institution of the modern museum as it was invented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a new space of representation. Museal spaces gain additional significance as an arena for the negotiation of individual and collective memory. In this vein, museality has often been conceived of in close interrelation to (collective) memory and preservation. Maria Cristina Oliveira Bruno consequently sees the field of museology in the context of cultural heritage, situated between academic reflection and pedagogy (Bruno 2007: 139). Museality, in her view, “is therefore the genesis of the museological fact that, in its turn, is the essential cell for heritage preservation regarding the objects and collections” (ibid.: 136). Museal spaces are mapped and defined with attention to their materiality, social praxis, and collective imagination—the “presentation and utilization of heritage,” for example, being an important notion in the context of musealization processes (Nelle 2000: 85f.). In her study of world heritage towns, Nelle employs museality as an analytical term in her discussion of musealization in the urban context. Nelle develops a heuristic conceptualization of museality and distinguishes between two main aspects of heritage towns: “ ‘The loss of presence of local everyday life’ and ‘the transformation of the town into a consumer product’ ” (ibid.: 88).

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Museal spaces as arenas of individual and collective memory constitute spaces where visitors or members of a public meet with an institutional space. As Susan Crane has poignantly phrased it, when members of publics find that their memories of the past or their expectations for museum experiences are not being met, a kind of “distortion” occurs. The “distortion” related to memory and history in the museum is not so much of facts or interpretations, but rather a distortion from the lack of congruity between personal experience and expectation, on the one hand, and the institutional representation of the past on the other. —Crane 1997: 44 The rise of the museum and the increasing number of museum buildings during the nineteenth century was closely linked to nation-building processes, first in Western Europe and then beyond (Macdonald 2000: 123). In clear distinction from other forms of re-presentation, new buildings were constructed to defend this new space of representation as a rational and scientific one that was, in the words of historian Tony Bennett, “fully capable of bearing the didactic burden placed upon it, by differentiating it from the disorder that was imputed to competing exhibitionary institutions” (Bennett 1995: 1). Museality as a concept for aesthetics of religion extends to these competing exhibitionary spaces as well. Fairgrounds, displays of the wondrous, and other exhibition spaces that Michel Foucault famously counted among the more fleeting, transitory, precarious spaces are as much the object of study of aesthetics of religion as the modern museum with its monumental, permanent structure (Foucault 1986: 26). This approach to museal spaces is thus informed by the theoretical work of the socalled spatial turn and puts forward a notion of space that reaches beyond a mere physical container. In this view, emphasis is placed “on the social production of space as a complex and often contradictory social process, a specific localization of cultural practices, a dynamic of social relations that points to the mutability of space” (Bachmann-Medick 2016: 214). An emphasis on the social production of space bears potential for critically reflecting epistemological and political implications of the cultural dynamics being studied as well as for being employed as analytical tools. Social geographer Edward Soja (1996) famously advocated such a perspective in the academic research of space, drawing particular attention to the interconnectedness of physical construction and culturally imagined space. In Soja’s view, this interconnectedness adds a third dimension to the analysis of space: “Thirdspace too can be described as a creative recombination and extension, one that builds on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the ‘real’ material world and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through ‘imagined’ representations of spatiality” (Soja 1996: 6). Museal spaces are often highly political spaces of extraction, re-location, documentation, display, and exposition. Any (religious) object transferred into the new environment of a museal space has been extracted from its former context or, as Klementina Batina phrases it, “ ‘selected’ from its reality in order to become its document” (Batina 2009: 272). It is this very idea of documents having value that Batina sees as the basis of her notion of “museality” developing “along the line of the relation between time and space” (ibid.). Inextricably linked to the practice of display is the dimension of exposition in museal spaces. As cultural theorist Mieke Bal has argued, the gesture of exposing constitutes an integral part of the “museal discourse” (Bal 2001: 164). The use of the term “discourse” for the analysis of museums necessitates, in Bal’s view, a “multimedialization” of the concept of discourse beyond the realm of language. As part of this “museal discourse,”

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Bal’s notion of exposition connects two aspects: on the one hand the visual availability of the exposed object through a “gesture that points to things” (ibid.: 165) (potentially objectifying it) and on the other hand an epistemic authority. She points to the ambiguity that results from the possible discrepancy between the object that is presented and the statement that is made about it. Following Bal’s argument, such gestures can be considered “discursive acts, like (or analogous to) speech acts of a specific kind. [. . .] These acts are not necessarily linguistic in terms of the medium in which they are performed, but rather are based on the communicative possibilities offered by language” (ibid.). As much as the conceptual work on museality requires analyses of extraction, re-location, documentality, display, and exposition, it also warrants an analysis of the various groups of people involved. This includes such distinct social worlds as those of professional scientists, amateur naturalists, patrons, hired hands, administrators, and visitors (e.g., Star and Griesemer 1989 for natural history research museums). These worlds are brought together through a constant process of translation, interpretation and re-interpretation. During this process, positions are being negotiated, knowledge is being constructed and—in what Latour and Callon have called “interessement”—scientific authority is being created (Star and Griesemer 1989: 389f.) Latour’s theoretical work also informs research such as Berns’s (2015) work on the interactions between visitors, objects, and religion in the museum or Patraka’s (1999) analysis of visitors’ engagement and positioning in museum narratives. In her comparative study of two Holocaust museums in the United States, Patraka uses two main concepts— discursive space and performance. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s distinction between place and space and Victor Turner’s concept of performance, Patraka examines the extent to which the visitor is actively engaged in the museum’s narrative. The aesthetics of museal spaces in combination with the content exhibited in them frames not only the narrative but also the visitors’ expectation and behavior. As architectural historian Gretchen Buggeln reports from her visit to the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, DC, “this space felt sacred, rendered so by the weight of human tragedy and the promise of hope, as well as by the lofty and luminous architecture and a verse from Genesis inscribed on the wall” (Buggeln 2012: 33). The fact that many visitors engaged in silent contemplation in the museum’s Hall of Remembrance suggests that the signage and architectural cues encouraged this behavior. More generally speaking, conceptual work on museality requires an analysis of the politics of spectatorship in the sense that art theorist Claire Bishop (2012) calls for. Her goal is to create a “more nuanced (and honest) critical vocabulary with which to address the vicissitudes of collaborative authorship and spectatorship” beyond conceptualizations of merely passive spectatorship (Bishop 2012: 8). Beyond “traditional” museum audiences, new audiences and new publics deserve our attention (Black 2005) as well as new methodologies adequate for a changing media landscape, for changing social delineations, politics, and transnational as well as transcultural collective imaginaries. Museal spaces engage in boundary work—with regard to the boundary objects exhibited as well as to the conceptual level. “Boundary objects” inhabit several intersecting social worlds and “satisfy the informational requirements of each of them” (Star and Griesemer 1989: 393). They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is “common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation” (ibid.). Thus, the creation and management of boundary objects is “a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds” (ibid.).

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In the context of religion, the boundary work museal spaces engage in also includes the discursive boundaries of the very concept “religion.” As Bräunlein (2004) reminds us, in the study of religion, the object of analysis as well as the very notion of “religion” ought to be a topic of continuous negotiation. And this negotiation is not limited to the realm of academia but rather includes non-academic discourse—especially in the context of museal spaces (Bräunlein 2004: 61). Museal spaces will always be actively involved in constituting a realm for the discourse and material construction of “religion,” “sacredness,” and “the Other.”1 Through defining, interpreting, preserving, and exhibiting artifacts, they will bring concepts of “religion” and “the sacred” into a dialogue with changing understandings of the sacred and sacred artifacts among museum visitors (see Brooks 2012). This is particularly true for the Western context, where, as Buggeln has suggested, “a sacred/not sacred tension in Western museums is a product of specific historical relationships between culture, art, and museums” (2012: 31).

CASE STUDY: THE MUSEALITY OF WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL In its display of national history, the National Cathedral of Washington, DC bears parallels to the tradition of national museums. In the following case study, the particular interplay of the building’s materiality, acts of display, and narrative framing will serve as an example for the inextricable link between museality and collective imagination. Between the years 1907 and 1990, an enormously ambitious project, the Washington National Cathedral, was constructed. The term “constructed” is suggestive here in a twofold sense: in reference to the physical building itself as well as to the discursive aspects of this project. Over 60 million US dollars were raised over the course of the twentieth century and, after eighty years of construction, the church is counted among the six largest cathedrals in the world (Fallen 2001: 94)—a monumental house of prayer “open to all faiths” erected on the geographically highest point of the capital city of the United States of America (see Hewlett 2007). Visitors to the National Cathedral encounter a space that is striking in its museal dimension. Through various media in its interior, the building presents a narrative of US national history: stained-glass windows depict cornerstones of the nation’s past and historical events such as NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the American worker, and the Declaration of Independence. Life-size statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are positioned in the side aisles, and in the so-called “War Chapel,” a cross joining two original concrete fragments of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon building in 2001 is on display. The American history portrayed in the building evokes images from the Declaration of Independence through the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Civil Rights movement up to the most recent US American history. Due to its elevated position in the topography of Washington, DC, the cathedral overlooks the nation’s capital with its government buildings, universities, and apartment complexes. However, the cathedral also, and more importantly, overlooks the capital’s famous museums and memorials that portray and commemorate central events and aspects of the US history, forming central museal and memorial spaces for the narrative construction of the national past. From the hilltop of Mount St. Alban, the cathedral overlooks what can be called the museal memory topography of the US capital. Two examples shall illustrate the specific characteristics of the building as a museal space: the “Pentagon Cross” exhibited in the cathedral’s “War Chapel” and the “Space

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Window” in the southwest aisle. Made of two original fragments from the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon, the so-called “Pentagon Cross” puts one of the most traumatic events in the US history on display. A small plaque at the bottom of the cross provides the visitor with some background information: This cross was presented by the Chief of Chaplains of the U.S. Army to the National Cathedral in recognition that we are united in memory, freedom, and faith, and in hope and love for God, our nation and all mankind. The cross was made by Alvin Neider from fragments from the face of the Pentagon attacked on 9/11/2001. The “Pentagon Cross” not only qualifies as an exhibition object and an artistic representation of the terrorist attacks, it even bears a material relation between the object on display and the historical event, thus constructing an aura of authenticity. Choosing the shape of a cross, the artist Alvin Neider combines this material quality of the fragments with the most iconic symbol of the Christian religious tradition. This combination of display, representation, material relation to the event, and religious symbol is developed further through the integration of the cross into the religious ritual context of the Episcopalian church building. Following the Episcopalian tradition during the Holy Week, the cross is draped in cloth like all the other crosses in the church, on Good Friday in red cloth to mourn Jesus’ death with the red color representing Jesus’s blood shed during the crucifixion. We thus encounter an entanglement of the national and the religious realm in the National Cathedral and a sanctification of the national narrative presented in this house of prayer combined with dimensions of individual and national worship in a memory cult of the traumatic events of September 11, 2001. The so-called “Space Window” features a similar combination of material relocation and physical representation of an historical event. Located in the southwestern aisle of the cathedral, the window counts among the most popular tourist attractions. In light of its renown, its specific materiality, and its relation to one of the most famous national events in US history, the window plays an important part in most guided tours offered to visitors. It not only depicts the successful Apollo mission to the moon, it also contains a physical moonrock that Neil Armstrong and his crew brought back from their space mission. Artfully integrated into the window, the moonrock was officially presented during a dedication ceremony at the cathedral. Parallel to the “Pentagon Cross,” the window thus bears a material relation to the historical event and combines the display of the authentic object with the artistic depiction. As Timothy Luke in his study on museum politics pointed out, [w]hich images and objects are mobilized, how they are displayed, where they are situated, and why they are chosen all constitute powerful rhetorical strategies for governmentalizing maneuvers, especially at those sites [. . .] where the authoritative pretense is maintained that these sites are where “the nation tells its history.” —Luke 2002: 226f. Moreover, the window is embedded in what can be described as the aesthetic formation of the national as well as the religious realm. To illustrate this embedment, I will dedicate the remaining part of this essay to the analysis of a multimedia event, the memorial service held in honor of Neil Armstrong at the National Cathedral on September 13, 2012. Focusing on the service through the lens of Birgit Meyer’s concept of “aesthetic formation” will illustrate the interplay of materiality, social praxis, exhibition, display, and the collective imaginary captured by the concept of museality.

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SENSATIONAL FORM AND MUSEAL SPACE Based on her critical discussion of Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” and Zygmunt Baumann’s notion of “aesthetic community,” Meyer (2009b) introduces the term “aesthetic formation” to foster an understanding of religion as media and practice of mediation. Meyer’s approach aims to integrate the material and physical dimension for the analysis of media and religion in the context of collective imagination as well as “the role played by things, media, and the body in actual processes of community making” (ibid.: 6). Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of “aisthesis,” Meyer directs our attention to the role of all senses in the aesthetic perception and collective production of collective imagination: Imaginations, though articulated and formed through media and thus “produced,” appear as situated beyond mediation exactly because they can be—literally— incorporated and embodied, thus invoking and perpetuating shared experiences, emotions, and affects that are anchored in, as well as triggered by, a taken-for-granted lifeworld, a world of, indeed, common sense. —Ibid.: 7; italics in original text Meyer suggests the term “formations” to accentuate the dynamics of forming and shaping vis-à-vis the more static connotations of the term “community.” The term aesthetic formation, then, highlights the convergence of processes of forming subjects and the making of communities—as social formations. In this sense, “aesthetic formation” captures very well the formative impact of a shared aesthetics though [sic] which subjects are shaped by tuning their senses, inducing experiences, molding their bodies, and making sense, and which materializes in things [. . .]. —Meyer 2009b: 7 At their core, aesthetic formations are anchored in and created by what Meyer calls sensational forms, a term reflecting the variety of medialization and mobilization through the aesthetic realm. Particular focus lies here on the relation between an individual experience and its context of religious power structures, symbols, and normative orders. These are relatively fixed, authorized modes of invoking and organizing access to the transcendental, thereby creating and sustaining links between believers in the context of particular religious power structures. Sensational forms shape both religious content (beliefs, doctrines, sets of symbols) and norms. —Meyer 2009b: 13 On September 13, 2012, a memorial service was held at the National Cathedral to honor the life and legacy of Neil Armstrong.2 At the beginning of the ritual ceremony that lasted a little more than one hour, elite soldiers of the US Navy carried the American flag into the silent church building. The people who had gathered that day to participate in the event rose in honor of the flag, some of them demonstrating their patriotic commitment by resting their right hand on their chest (Washington National Cathedral 2012, min. 5:30 f.). In a procession following the flag, members of the cathedral choir and of the Navy choir entered together, symbolically uniting the US Navy (of which Neil Armstrong had been an officer) and the realm of institutionalized religion. Acoustically, the members of the audience joined this union by singing the introit during the procession. After the introit, interim dean of the National Cathedral, Francis H. Wade, opened the

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commemoration service with the following words emphasizing the national meaning of this event and relating the Apollo mission directly to the realm of religious imaginary: Good morning. Grace and Peace to you from God our father. My name is Frank Wade, I am the interim dean of this Cathedral and it’s my honor to thank you for allowing Washington National Cathedral to fulfil part of its mission as a spiritual home for the nation. It is important in times like this to have places like this where we can in fact hold before God our grief, our joy, our thanksgiving and our hope. For all of us, as a nation, have participated no matter how vicariously in the great explorations of Neil Armstrong and his companions and so it is important for us as a nation, as a community, as a people to gather here in this place to consider the mysteries of creation, of life, of death, also to give thanks for a life well lived and for service boldly rendered. That’s what we will be doing in this time, and I thank you for sharing in it. May I call your attention to the order of service in front of you. —Washington National Cathedral 2012, min. 8:10 f. In a following short liturgical performance, Dean Wade actively includes the congregation fostering the relation between the Apollo mission and the religious tradition: [Dean Wade] Glorify God, all the works of God, [Audience] and give praise and give honor forever. [Dean Wade] In the high vault of heaven glorify God. [Audience] In praise and in honor forever. [Dean Wade] God of grace and glory, you create and sustain the universe in majesty and beauty. We thank you for all in whom you have planted the desire to know your creation and to explore your work and your wisdom. Lead us, like them, to understand better the wonder and mystery of creation, through Christ, your eternal word through whom all things are made. —Washington National Cathedral 2012, min. 9:40 f. Rhetorically and ritually, Dean Wade thus created a direct relation between the NASA program, Neil Armstrong’s life achievements in their meaning for national history, and the religious imaginary of the Episcopalian host institution framing the exploration of outer space as the exploration of God’s “mystery of creation.” The footage of the ceremony that allowed the entire nation to witness the event and that is available on DVD in the cathedral gift shop adds another dimension to the ceremony in the context of the aesthetic formation. Cuts from speakers to prominent members of the audience, including Carol Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew members Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, blend the ritual performance, the religious leader, and the audience in an aesthetic production. Moreover, the visual composition also includes the materiality of the building itself: just as Dean Wade utters the words, “Lead us, like them, to understand better the wonder and mystery of creation, through Christ, your eternal word through whom all things are made,” the camera cuts to the “Space Window” and connects the materiality of the building, the material fragment of the moonrock, and the representation of the Apollo mission with the ritual performed in the nave. A few seconds after that, the voice of former US president John F. Kennedy pervades the church building through the loudspeaker system. As Dean Wade leaves the pulpit, the people in the audience hear a play-back of a recorded passage from Kennedy’s speech that he gave at Rice University in 1962 presenting to the students as well as to the entire nation his national project of a space program in the nuclear strategic race with the Soviet Union:

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Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. [enthusiastic applause] For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. —Washington National Cathedral 2012, min. 10:15 f.

CONCLUSION In its very name, the National Cathedral points to an intriguing conjunction of the national and the religious realm. Its physical structure, its iconography, its guided tours and highly mediatized public events offer narratives of a national past and present them within a sacred space. The visitor encounters a narrative of US national history through various media in the interior where stained-glass windows depict the Apollo mission to the moon, the ideal American worker, and the Declaration of Independence, and where life-size statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson decorate the side aisles. In light of its complex interplay of media, materiality, and collective imaginary, the National Cathedral presents a particularly intriguing case of national memory discourses as well as the narration, representation, and sanctification of national identity in a museal space. The two examples described above illustrate the aesthetic work of such “relatively fixed, authorized modes” that Birgit Meyer has called “sensational forms.” From an aesthetics of religion approach, the specific museality of the National Cathedral can be characterized as the interplay of at least three key elements: first, the museal space selecting, presenting, displaying, and exhibiting central aspects of national history; second, the specific materiality and monumentality of the church building; third, the sensational forms and aesthetic regimes that integrate the museal objects into the Episcopalian ritual, thus merging the aesthetic formation of both the religious as well as the national realm.

RECOMMENDED READING Mohr, Hubert (2011), “Reflections on ‘Museality’ as a Critical Term in the Aesthetics of Religion,” Journal of Religion in Europe 4(1), special issue: Relocating Religion(s) in Museum Space, guest edited by Jens Kugele and Katharina Wilkens: 14–39. Profound and systematic reflections of the concept of museality in general and its heuristic potential for an aesthetics of religion approach. Wilke, Annette, and Esther-Maria Guggenmos, eds. (2008), Im Netz des Indra: Das Museum of World Religions, sein buddhistisches Dialogkonzept und die neue Disziplin Religionsästhetik. Münster: Lit. Pioneering study based on an excursion with university students and grounded in extensive fieldwork at the Taipei Museum of World Religions; among the first to apply an aesthetics of religion approach to the study of a museum, exploring its interactive multimedia design.

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PART III

Strategies of Aesthetic Formations

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Sensory Strategies HUBERT MOHR

INTRODUCTION Sensory strategies are perceptive acts, body techniques, material devices, and aesthetic designs that create somato-aesthetic, bodily, and mental stimuli, persuasive scenarios and experiences (imaginations, emotional modes) within cultural and also religious formations. By these means, actors (the faithful, clerics, communities) can use, regulate, and stimulate (or diminish) the connection between the human sensorium, the body, and its natural, cultural, and medial environment. There are two main formative strategies: 1. On the one hand, player-generated strategies: in this case the faithful use their perceptive faculties in an active way both to observe the environment and to enhance or modify their own perception. Body-oriented strategies are a special case: stimulation of the body, for example by techniques of asceticism, of pain, or of effervescence and intoxication. 2. On the other hand, display-generated strategies: inventing and constructing performative and material displays by which the senses of the faithful are directed and formed—along ways of devotion or toward sacred orientation marks like minarets or church towers. The two strategies are interconnected and subjected to the dynamics of tradition, trial, and error. The believers are both agents and users of religious displays. Their bodies are on the one hand subjects and actors performing religious practice, as in processions, and on the other hand objects, as ritual staffage, or as a field of experimentation for self-induced activities. Depending on the circumstances, the believer’s perception functions as activity, reaction, or passive receptacle. Sensory strategies, as all cultural activities of human societies, are complex sensation-signification processes combining “raw” data input with cultural semiosis. When the bells toll, the Christian faithful know, because of their religious socialization, that it is time for the service. Correctly decoding, the faithful will act according to their role. Thus, sensory strategies are not an isolated corporeal process and activity, but part of an interrelationship between cognitive processing and input (memory, habituation, learned knowledge), other bodily sensitivities (fitness, fatigue, illness), and mental states such as emotionality. This article is an attempt to broaden the term “sensory strategies”,1 adapting it to the fields of cultural studies and, especially, the study of religions in the context of a systematic, rather than a historical, overview. For this purpose, religious phenomena will be interpreted as faits sociaux totaux in the tradition of the sociology of the Durkheim school, and then connected with approaches from historical and cultural 129

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anthropology, the cognitive sciences, the ecological psychology of James J. Gibson (1979), and art history (Warburg school).

SENSORY STRATEGIES: FIRST DISTINCTIONS Types of Sensory Strategies When discussing sensory strategies, one has first to decide what is meant by “strategies,” and with what typology they can be classified. The focus on the classical five senses has been considerably broadened in recent years by contextualizing the senses and integrating them into “soundscapes” (Schafer [1977] 1994), smellscapes, sensescapes, etc. (Porteous 1990), an anthropology of the senses (Classen et al. 2014), material religion ( Journal of Material Religion, 2005–), and, within the study of religion, into the body, healing practices and Körperwissen (Koch 2015) with the first empirical studies of the sensory status of participants during rituals (Meissner and Koch 2015). As mentioned above, sensory strategies can affect, strengthen, or alter the perception of religious actors, and, consequently, the way they behave and feel about their faith. Sensory strategies are related to three main areas: techniques, devices, and designs. The first involves actions, the second media and apparatus, and the third environment and ornamentation. In other words, they are strategies related to the body (or other bodies), materiality, and aesthetics. In addition, it may be helpful to classify sensory strategies according to their intentionality. Intentional strategies are experience-oriented. The believer (de)activates his/her senses by engaging in ritual techniques that are sometimes exhausting, such as the eighty-eight-day pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku in Japan. These religious actors are actively experience-oriented, or even sensation-seeking; they gain stimulation from visiting a celebration, a healer, or a special event (such as the European Youth Meeting of the Taizé community). But there are also implicit strategies, strategies proved by long periods of trial and error: how to select und design “good locations” for ritual or meditation, how to imagine gods and spirits, and how to transgress the borders of everyday aesthetics by religious means. This kind of habituation takes place during the individual’s socialization phase, or during the group’s long-term practice. Implicit strategies are inscribed in the materiality of religious displays: appropriate behavior is directed and even provoked by the aesthetic structure of the religious site, the opportunities it offers to move on steps, through alleys and doorways, to go up or down, or to have a line of sight onto a sacred building (Cancik 1985/86). All these elements are “actionable properties” (Gibson 1979) summing up the affordances of a holy place, building, or environment.

Dynamics of Sensory Strategies Sensory strategies in religions can be categorized according to perceptual and aesthetic dynamics that affect unintentional cognitive processes (input, intensity, receptiveness) and so alter the experiences and actions of the faithful. Activating Perception The senses are stimulated by external information. There is an activation scale of human responses to stimuli, ranging from startle responses to the exploratory reflex to habituation. Being startled is a physiological warning that danger is at hand, an alert program necessary for survival. In religions, it can be found as an aesthetics of shock (“terror and awe”) in the context of initiation rites, often with dramatic

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results for the participants, who achieve adulthood at the price of long-term traumatization. A weaker kind of response is the “orienting response” or “exploratory reflex” (Sokolov et al. 2002). It is a response to unusual but not dangerous signals, such as a Muslim prayer call in a European city. This reflex heightens the attention by lowering the stimulus threshold and blocking the alpha waves (state of relaxation) in favor of beta wave activation (states of focused attention). Bells, voices, or gestures are used as communicative signals (signs), or, psychologically speaking, as triggers for “scripts” (sequences of action). Finally, at the level of habituation, there are socially common signals, such as the smell of incense sticks around a Shinto temple. As a result of their religious education, these signals make up the aesthetic profiles—often unconsciously perceived—of the faithful. One could compare the above-mentioned levels of stimuli response with the three elements of the “soundscape” model proposed by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (1977): “sound signals” (as of Tibetan horns), “soundmarks” (typical sounds of an area or of a community), and “keynote sounds” (background noise). Filtering Mechanisms Cognitive information processing provides unconscious-automatic and learned strategies for distinguishing important from unimportant sensory input (Witkin 1993). Filtering mechanisms help to focus attention and are key elements of mental strategies. Sensory input can be regulated not only by internal cognitive processes, but also by means of designing religious displays, such as filtering the light in medieval cathedrals, or shutting out ambient noises in cloisters or meditation retreats. Enhancing Enhancing strategies in religions are based on a wide range of techniques and devices. They are used in order to increase the intensity of perception. They differ according to each sense. Sound intensity, for instance, can be increased by at least five parameters: (1) pitch—a voice can heighten or lower its vocal range; (2) duration—the period of time a church bell is rung; (3) loudness—the sound pressure, often increased by mechanical devices such as musical instruments (trumpets, drums) or electronic means (loudspeakers); (4) spatial location—the preacher stands on the pulpit in a Christian church; and (5) sonic texture—adding a choir to a solo voice, then adding drums or even cannon shots and fireworks on the occasion of a saint’s feast. In the latter case, monosensory techniques (sound) are intensified by multisensory impressions: the noise, visual ornaments, and colors of the fireworks, the touch and smell of the believers’ bodies in the crowd. The combined perceptions result in “superadditivity” due to the enhancement of sensations, and may lead to euphoria, feelings of effervescence or a “flow experience,” or, conversely, to a rescue or shock reaction (Holmes and Spence 2005). Multisensory strategies are popular in connection with religious and political mass events, such as festivals or church congresses, where they are often used to produce a sophisticated performance. In another type of enhancing strategy, primarily used in initiation rites, the subject’s body is exposed to cold or heat. These sensory effects have been popularized and commercialized in the neo-shamanic practices of sweat huts and firewalking (Danforth 1989). Deprivation Opposed to these enhancing techniques are strategies of sensory deprivation. Such strategies are common in ascetic or meditation practices all over the world. Reducing or even excluding external stimuli is a well-known ritual practice in Christian as well as in Buddhist monastic orders, for instance in the Carthusian and Zen Buddhist traditions. This strategy enables the practitioner to focus on the mind alone during meditation or ecstatic experiences. Driven by the wish to block out everyday noises and interactions as

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FIGURE 12.1: Sensory deprivation: The anchorite’s cell from the Holy Trinity Church in Skipton (North Yorkshire, fourteenth to fifteenth century) is a scene of radical willpower representing a special sensory strategy. The hermit, mostly a female reclusa, decided to withdraw herself from normal life and to live in a tiny room attached to the church portal until her death. After she entered, the entrance at the left was blocked and freedom to move or to perceive things was reduced to a minimum. One window only allowed her to look outside—toward the high altar. The immured anchoress could (or had to) center herself on prayer and meditation while being visible to everybody entering the church. She could be visited for counselling. Source: Simon Peter Sutherland: The Anchorite’s cell.

much as possible, some religious virtuosi have allowed themselves to be locked in caves or hermitages for months, or, as in the case of the English reclusa (“anchoress”) Julian of Norwich, for a lifetime. For this type of strategy, the choice of place is crucial. A desert is ideal, as in the case of the early Egyptian anchorites. Anchoresses in medieval England retreated into a special room inside or beside the church building (Figure 12.1). In the late twentieth century, “psychonauts” of the New Age movement, such as John C. Lilly or Timothy Leary, entered the so-called samadhi tank, a closed bathtub filled with brine to float the body without any perceptions, in order to let their imagination run wild or, idealiter, peacefully chill in paradisiac phantasies (Mohr 2003). Hierarchization of the Senses Our sensory systems have not evolved equally. Usually, one or at most two senses function as the main organs to help us cope with the dangers and difficulties of our particular environment. This predisposition is not only an outcome of evolutionary biology, but is shaped by societies and religious groups. In the history of Christian Europe especially, strategies to promote visuality at the expense of speech and word (verbality) were prominent during the Catholic Counter-Reformation. These strategies were overtly developed in opposition to Protestant Reformation theology and aesthetics, which acclaimed the superiority of word and speech, reducing or even excluding (as in reformist churches) visual items or ornamentation. In Protestantism, seeing the faith was transformed into the act of reading the scriptures, albeit there has been a considerable production of devotional pictures in religious education (Morgan 1999).

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Semiotic Encoding The most important strategy is the semiotic encoding of perception, or connecting sensory input with the cultural signs, symbols, and meaning belonging to a special religious community or tradition. Religious groups try to establish a sensory environment which is encoded as far as possible: songs, melodies, rhythms, clothing, hair, building designs, food—they all contribute to the community’s identity and belief system, which is embodied in its own typical and idiomatic aesthetics. Religions strive to establish total control over their adherents’ sensescape. For this purpose, the sensory stimuli need to be interpreted, decoded, and thus perceived by the faithful in a manner that is appropriate to the “way of the righteous”—in conformity with the reading and viewing instructions prefabricated by tradition or dogmatic statements. The adherent then sees the world with the eyes of his god, guru, or shaman. Immersion The total sensescape is one in which a person is totally absorbed, put into an artificial environment, isolated from outside in a sensorially controlled, media-related setting. Normal, everyday awareness is substituted by an artificial one which enables the faithful to immerse themselves in an otherworld, a universe of phantasy (Traut and Wahl, Chapter 6, this volume), a “virtual reality” (see augmented reality, Johannsen and Kirsch, Chapter 13, this volume), as in Palaeolithic pictorial caves.

STRATEGIES CONCERNING THE BODY Somato-aesthetic Stimuli and Experiences Sensory strategies can be differentiated as “body techniques” (as proposed by Marcel Mauss, but in a broader sense, [1934] 1979), the body’s environmental orientation, strategies to activate or manipulate the so-called inner senses (mental imagination: visions, auditions, etc.) or to induce altered states of consciousness, and group-oriented strategies. There is a wide range of techniques, such as dancing, fasting, prostrating, or walking, which religions provide to stimulate and alter the perception of one’s own body, the socalled proprioception and interoception. Psychologically, these techniques influence body and self-awareness (and, moreover, emotionality and other cognitive modes). Rituals of movement and locomotion are prominent in sensing the body: in religious festivities and other rituals people can act out repressed feelings and, transgressing everyday behavior, reach emotional states of euphoria, effervescence, or flow. Strategies employed in order to attain such “peak experiences” (Abraham Maslow) include methods by which body sensations are intensified, for instance, when the body itself is stimulated by selfinflicted sensations, such as nocturnal vigils, fasting, self-castigation, or a physical or mental shock (or both). Especially male or female puberty rites are notorious for painful procedures: penis circumcision (Jews, Muslims); penis or tongue incision (Australian Aborigines); female infibulation (parts of Africa); aggressive ants in gloves (Indians in Amazonia). Christian baptism can be an unpleasant occurrence for the little candidates, too. The psychological intention of these rites seems to be to make the initiands undergo a traumatic experience by sensorial means, in order to mark their change of status. The painful, dreadful, or embarrassing memory is inscribed in their bodies forever. Ideally, the pride of being received into a new age group, together with presents and acknowledgments received from family and community, will prevent a possible posttraumatic stress disorder.

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Strategies of desensitization can also be spectacular. These are based on two different techniques: on the one hand, the body’s sensorium is permanently stimulated until the threshold of perception is lowered and the (mal)treated sense undergoes a habituation effect—pain, hunger, or cold are no longer felt. This method is a good one for religious virtuosi seeking to overcome their bodily sensations, such as sadhu ascetics in Hinduism, or medieval Christian mystics and saints. On the other hand, there are techniques for entering into a state of ecstatic trance, especially dance rituals, drum rhythms, and hypnosis. Ultimately, the actors are able to achieve a state of total insensitivity to pain (analgesia) while piercing themselves with knives or skewers. Though cognitive processes are often unintentional or automated, as in daydreams or phantasies, mental phenomena can be actively produced, reinforced, or even learned through experimential strategies. Religions have developed a series of techniques of the inner senses, or body–mind strategies, that favor the inner life of the mind over the input

FIGURE 12.2a: Empowered by symmetry: In 1937, the National Socialist leaders who marched up to the tribunes on the hill of Bückeberg near Hameln (Lower Saxony) during the Reichserntedankfest (“Reich Harvest Thanksgiving Festival”) used geometry strategically for self-empowerment. The axial symmetry of the procession way turned the central axis into a triumphal pathway while arranging the mass of followers—who amounted up to 1.3 million participants—on both sides. Hitler’s favorite architect, Albert Speer, designed the site. The middle way, called the Führerweg, was an embankment of 800 meters of length, 5 meters of width and 50 centimeters of height (Dokumentation Bückeberg—Die Grundelemente der Platzgestaltung; available online: www.dokumentation-bueckeberg.de/ns-reichserntedankfeste/ info-6/die-grundelemente-der-platzgestaltung.html). The axial symmetry as a symbol of power was furthermore accentuated by the cordon sanitaire of SS men between the crowd and the procession of the officials and reinforced by the visual dynamic of the believers’ outstretched arms in the Hitlergruß. The masses were displayed in such a way that the participants standing on both sides were able to look at one another and so should mirror and double themselves in their effervescence. Source: Photo: Privat; Archive: Collection Bernhard Gelderblom; available online: www.dokumentation-bueckeberg.de/ns-reichserntedankfeste/info-4/ undquotmarschkolonnenundquot-auf-dem-mittelweg.html.

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perceived by environmental stimuli. They are helpful when seeking inner images or speech, like the vox Dei. Prominent methods are: visualization and imagination, focusing attention by prayer techniques and meditation, and changing awareness toward an altered state of consciousness (trance, ecstasy). All these techniques are meant to help the person abandon the normal vigilance of everyday perception. The process of trance induction by sound and rhythmic patterns, as well as the “self-hypnotizing” strategy of meditation (and other absorption states), have in common that they decouple perception from the brain’s internal activity (Hove et al. 2016). Environment-perceiving strategies are often devised to integrate the cosmos. The believer’s gaze is directed to cosmic events like the midsummer or midwinter solstice, for instance by huge constructions such as the stones at the prehistoric site of Stonehenge (Great Britain). This type of strategy requires specialists, and sometimes huge efforts in terms of human resources and material. But it can also function with very simple optical means, as when midsummer fires are lit on the top of Alpine mountains. Strategies of coordination and synchronization are at work when the believers’ bodies interact with one another in a crowd or in a communicative play between performer(s) and audience. A crucial element is that the participants reduce the social space between their bodies, often transgressing the tabooed social proxemics by making immediate body contact, as at festivals or other ritual gatherings. Processes of psycho-physiological synchronization can evolve into a sudden emergence of affective and physical arousal

FIGURE 12.2b: Disempowered by criss-crossing: In 2018, (disputed) plans for constructing a memorial at Bückeberg exist for the purpose of historical learning. The winners of the architectural competition focus intently on the middle axis. By having an educational path criss-crossing the straight Führerweg, they adopt a strategy by which the visitors, walking along, will (and have to) symbolically cancel out the aesthetic backbone of this National Socialist cult place with their own feet. Source: Dokumentation Bückeberg—Auswahlverfahren zur Gestaltung eines historisch-topographischen Informationssystems. https://www.dokumentationbueckeberg.de/de/projekt/gestaltungsentwurf.html, graphic design © Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jung | Ermisch | Dröge + Kerck Landschaftsarchitekten; online: https://static.competitionline.com/ upload/images/f/3/e/2/7/7/5/7/f3e277578e192f182fefa9c6c0f65c80_1.jpg.

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FIGURE 12.3: Synchronizing heartbeats: In the night of St. John (June 23 to 24) one can visit a rare religious ritual in the little village of San Pedro Manrique in Spain (province of Castile and León), a firewalking. Women are carried over burning embers. For the audience an arena of 3000 seats is built. The dense atmosphere of the scene is literally embodied in the interplay. As an empirical study shows (Konvalinka et al. 2011), the heartbeats of spectators and actors synchronize with each another during the event. Source: El Mundo, June 24, 2011; Photo © FRANRUMAR—Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index. php?curid=18257894.

and effervescence, as at the Nuremberg Parteitage or the Bückeberger Harvest Festival of the National Socialist Party (Figures 12.2a and b), as well as at evangelical mega church services in the USA, or an Italian saint’s day celebration. The “aesthetic of immersion” is grounded on embodied and social cognition, by which the intersubjective synchronization of movements (and even heartbeats: Konvalinka et al. 2011, Figure 12.3) is made possible and an emotional entrainment is induced, indicators of Victor Turner’s state of communitas.

Strategies of Extension and Exteriorization All cultures, from the beginning, have used techniques and instruments to enhance the sensory faculties of humans. These strategies of extension and “exteriorization” (LeroiGourhan [1964/1975] 1993) establish a “prosthetic perception” (McLuhan 1964: 7), foremost in the form of medialization. By means of prosthetic techniques and tools, such as a hammer, bow and arrow, telescope, or microscope, humans have enriched and enhanced their capabilities. In religions, sensory enhancement was first developed in communication, enlarging the range of the voice by signaling instruments such as bells or trumpets. The golden age of prosthetic sensory strategies begins with the mass media in the nineteenth century and the global medialization of societies in the late twentieth and

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twenty-first centuries. The former prosthetic artifacts were transformed into sensory machines, multiplied in their functions by the possibilities of diffusion, reproduction and storage of sensory data, and integrated into an institutionalized apparatus. The electrification and amplification of the human voice was the precondition for events such as Pope John Paul II’s World Youth Day, the organization of mass pilgrimages to Mecca, and the sonication of metropolitan areas (Tamimi Arab 2017). This also applies to the visual sense. By the prosthetic media technique of “tele-vision” (and even more so by the generalizing medium of the internet), today’s believers are able to look into the farthest and most marginal edges of the religious landscape. The media apparatus produces its own sensory environment, a mediascape with its own rules and sensory filters (audio-visuality as “bi-sensoriality” in TV and internet). Contemporary religious groups are thus involved in an ongoing process of building up artificial, media-generated, “virtual” sensescapes beside the “real world” and coexisting with it. Every medium has its own quality of immersion and “strategies of sacralization” (Böhm 2009).

CONSTRUCTING SENSESCAPES AND SENSORY DISPLAYS The word sensescape is derived from “landscape,” a term first applied within European aesthetic traditions to an art genre (Pieter Breughel the Elder, Claude Lorrain, Caspar David Friedrich) and, in a wider sense, to a gaze that socially and religiously preforms how to look at the environment. Landscapes are “perceived and embodied sets of relationships between places, a structure of human feeling, emotion, dwelling, movement and practical activity within a geographical region which may or may not possess precise topographic boundaries or limits” (Tilley and Bennett 2004: 25). With the term sensescape, this concept is extended to all kinds of perception. Sensescapes comprise three elements: material points of attention (cave, minaret, proskinitaria shrines in Greece, a table laid for a feast), symbolically coded perception (cultural and mental maps), and action patterns (ritual performances). Though not every sensescape is culturally functionalized, establishing sensescapes is a favorite means used by religious communities to produce identity and even to claim (or contest) territoriality. Controversies over the muezzin’s call in non-Muslim cities are only one example of how such a sensory strategy can be problematic in multi-religious environments, and how balances have to be established between concurrent sensescapes (bells vs. adhan calls). A special case are visual displays, objects, or performances that are exhibited and shown to the people. Strategies that use such aesthetics of museality have a wide range of functions (Mohr 2011): gestures of showing are educational (the church or temple as a museum of relics), entertaining (ritual dramas as narrations of mythology), or commemorative (cemeteries as “deathscapes”: Maddrell and Sidaway 2016). Sensory strategies in religions are found not only in techniques of directly changing or framing the faithful’s perception, but also indirectly in the arrangement of material objects, performing, and constructing religiously significant landscapes. Displays are sets of material objects to be touched, manipulated, ingested, dislocated, and relocated for liturgical reasons, such as bread and wine in the Christian mass, or blood and gin in a Vodou healing rite in Benin or Bahia. Displays frame the believer’s body in walkable boundaries, stage a space of ritual action, direct the gaze to the adyton of the temple, and exclude the ears and eyes of non-members. Displays are containers structured by the affordance of their objects, whose openings are the objects of special strategies of appearance and disappearance, generally related to sensori-motor conduct (Warnier 2006).

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Material and Environmental Sensory Rhetoric Sensory rhetoric consists of material devices and practices which generate specific environments for supporting the religious belief system and ritual requirements. Such rhetorical means strengthen the belief of the faithful in their religion’s truth, myths, and theologies, by impressing them and, at the same time by increasing the plausibility of their religious worldview. Being crucial to environmental orientation, visual strategies prevail in sensory rhetoric: ornaments as in Islamic architecture, or the Gothic and Baroque European Christian tradition; colored temples and sculptures of deities and saints in Ancient Greece and Hinduist Southern India. These visual markers are complemented by auditive markers, primarily music. Sensory rhetoric can also be experienced (or sometimes suffered) in the design of holy spaces and sacred sites. Often one finds rhetorical strategies embedded in narrative or didactic areas, like Ways of the Cross where people bodily and mentally live through the passion of Christ. But it is in building up aesthetic atmospheres and persuasive settings that the devices of sensory rhetoric develop their real potential. Most spectacular are sites or devices that are made for overpowering the public by sheer size or breathtaking loudness. The monumental statues of Buddha and Jesus erected even now in the twenty-first century (Figure 12.4) are cousins of the colossus of the Roman emperor Nero in the first century CE . They are connected by an aesthetics of power and the masses: the supersized hero and god-king had to be supplemented by its counterpart, the geometrically marshaled crowd of believers. Symmetrical displays seem to be popular with kings, tyrants, and Führer of political movements (Figure 12.2a and b)—and popes, the latter fact shown by the famous Saint Peter’s Square with Bernini’s two colonnades designed to embrace the enthusiastic pilgrims.

Entanglement of Sensory Strategies Affordance Sensory strategies function in a sensory entanglement between believers and religious specialists, as agents and active players, and the display (architecture, ritual site design, sacred objects, and landscapes) as playground. The faithful perform according to what they perceive through their senses, which means they have to cope with strategies that are “emplaced” in the material and formal structures of the natural or artificial environment: technical designs of space organization, such as paths, bridges, alleys, or default ritual spaces within South Indian temple cities. These structures are perceivable elements of the “affordance” (Gibson 1979) of this particular religious place. Affordances are options to act, “actionable properties”—a portal to enter (a church or a temple); a “via sacra” to perform a procession. Accumulative Strategies There are at least two kinds of strategies for making the sensescape more complex. One technique is to enrich the perceived experience by adding more and more senses, with a climax of total immersion in sights, sounds, smells, movements. A good example is the traditional liturgical mass types of the Catholic church before Vatican II, which were organized through a very effective accumulation of sensory inputs, raising the number and intensity of senses addressed from the silent mass to the service of the word up to the high mass with its multisensory atmosphere. At this high end of sensory investment, it is the information overload that produces a totalizing bodily experience. The other technique adds layers of semiotic surplus. The sensory signals are more and more superimposed and aestheticized. Such an accumulative strategy ranges from pure attention-seeking signals to aesthetics. A good example is the Islamic prayer call (adhan):

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FIGURE 12.4: (De)constructing Jesus: In 2010, the monumental statue of Christ the King was built on a hilltop near the village of Swiebodzin in Western Poland. Designed by the artist Mirosław Patecki, the statue measures 33 meters from head (without crown and pedestal) to toe (according with the legendary thirty-three years of Christ’s life), being at that time the biggest Jesus statue worldwide. The statue is made of reinforced concrete but is hollow to minimize the weight, which is still 470 tons. The medium of photography is thoroughly unable to exhibit the dimensions of this kind of monumental architecture (the span between the hands is 24 meters, the head is 4.60 meters high, plus 2 meters for the crown). The statue is a landmark, religious territorial symbol, and tourist goal at the same time. By the way, it seems that a Wi-Fi transmitter was installed on the head within the gilded crown, an efficient enterprise. Source: T-Online.de: Post “Foto-Show: Polen hat jetzt den größten Jesus”; photo: © Reuters.

consisting of a physically perceivable sound signal, it is in the first place a sign that creates and structures (religious) time, being heard five times a day; second, it is a means of communication, a call to a religious community to come and pray and confess their faith; third, it is an aesthetic device: the cognitive message is artfully sung by the muezzin, who may playfully ornament it. In this case the religious community, the ummah, is produced via the hearing sense: the auditory space generates the religious space and, what is more, a social space which can be linked to ideologies of cultural identity and hegemony and territoriality. Moralizing Strategies In many traditions, sensory strategies are subjected to moral regimes. In this function they may be transformed into anti-sensory strategies of moral control and moral enforcement. More than anything else they often become antihedonistic and their main target is sexuality. The cultural-religious matrix of this

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devaluation is the equation senses equal sensuality equals sexuality. In a fatal mixture of social reproduction control in agricultural societies and religious contempt of the body, we find anti-sensory tendencies throughout the history of Christianity and Islam. A moral discourse devaluing sensory perception and sensuality has been established since Paul and Augustine (Brown 1988). It is shored up by mystical and ascetic tendencies, showing skeptical and fearful attitudes to the material and sensory sides of religion in favor of invisibility, pure intellectuality, and mystical disembodiment: the body is something to be left behind and transcended. It was not until the mid-twentieth century with new neo-pagan religions like Wicca that a deliberately pro-sensual religion emerged as the spin-off of an anti-Christian and anti-bourgeois occultist movement. Here, the body and its sensorium became the positive core of a religious world, and, particularly, of an attitude to nature, culminating in ritual nakedness in field and forest. An anti-sensory prejudice might also underlie the theological and cultural devaluation of West African and Caribbean Vodou: the handling of raw or bodily substances (blood, spittle, water, fire) or artifacts, the prevailing strategy of touching things and persons, the “aesthetics of ugliness,” were too much for clean European Christianized eyes to be regarded as religious (see Pabst von Ohain, Chapter 23, this volume, for an Indian Buddhist aesthetics of the ugly).

CONCLUSION Religions can be seen as social fields to create, provoke, and undergo bodily, perceptive, and aesthetic experiences within as well as beyond everyday action and understanding. On the one hand, agents of sensory strategies (the faithful, religious virtuosi, social bystanders) actively enhance their faith by fasting, flagellating, or performing a strenuous pilgrimage. On the other hand, religious agents are passively subjected to sensory strategies: they use buildings, they are exposed to soundscapes, they participate in mass choreographies. Religions have to hold their ground within an economy of attention. Attention is a rare cultural resource so that eventization, theming, and hyper-reality were already aesthetic strategies of the Jesuit counter-reformation, as shown by the “New Jerusalem” theme park at Varallo (Piedmont, Italy). On the one hand, religious groups and specialists use special sensory strategies or special clothing as signal devices to draw attention to their activities. In multireligious societies, religious communities either compete for public attention or even sensorial superiority, or, if marginalized and endangered (as Jewish communities often are), they reduce their level of public and sensorial visibility. There is a growing understanding in cultural studies that sensorial perception and sensory strategies within religious contexts are not restricted to the “classic” (European) five-senses system, but that they also include the proprioceptive senses of balance and kinesthetics, the sense of pain (nociception), the senses of interoception (like visceroception): hunger, thirst, muscles; and sexual sensuality (stimulation, arousal, orgasm). Sensescapes, visual ones, but also those of smell and sound, are key elements of religious phenomena.

RECOMMENDED READING Sattouf, Riad (2004), Ma circoncision, Rosny-sous-Bois: Bréal. Autobiographical bande dessinée that humorously narrates the hopes, fears, and pains of a Muslim boy who is to be circumcised.

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Schönhammer, Rainer (2013), Einführung in die Wahrnehmungspsychologie: Sinne, Körper, Bewegung, second edition, Vienna, Stuttgart: facultas.wuv; UTB . Integrates cognitive, psychological, and cultural data in a convincing way, and thus the work is interesting especially to the scholar of cultural studies. Schönhammer is Professor of Psychology of Art and Design. Vodun, Voodoo, Vodou—Spirits: die Kraft des Heilens (2013), [Film] dir. Christoph Henning, Leipzig, Germany: Zweitausendeins. Personal portrait of a religious aesthetics with sensory strategies quite different from those in European Christianity.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Narrative Strategies DIRK JOHANNSEN AND ANJA KIRSCH

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact. —Lévi-Strauss 1983: 12

INTRODUCTION “[N]arrative, by its very nature, is strategic,” philosopher Ajit Maan posits (Maan 2015: 11), arguing with Jerome Bruner that stories are never “merely expository, but rather, partisan” (Bruner in Maan 2015: 85). Accordingly, the study of narratives cannot be separated from the study of their social and cultural context. Every act of narration is intentional. But stories are hard to govern, for no story can be reduced to one specific strategic aim, function, or effect. While a good story can be as convincing as a good argument, stories persuade by providing gaps for listeners to fill with their own ideas, memories, and emotions (Iser 1989). They persuade when they come alive to a recipient, and in this very process they often take a life of their own. Already the early study of folklore has followed migratory legends around the world, studying how static motifs would adapt to diverse cultural settings. The study of religions has traced myths throughout history, showing how they were utilized for conflicting, or even incommensurable, agendas. And the cognitive turn has allowed narratology to take seriously what many writers report: that sometimes, in the creative process, storyworlds seem to develop their own dynamics and “write themselves” in directions that the author did not (consciously) envision. In Narrative as Virtual Reality, Marie-Laure Ryan discusses how metaphors of a narrative “world” into which one is “drawn” to witness “characters coming alive” may actually be rather precise with regard to the cognitive faculties involved in story processing (Ryan 2015: 61–84). Growing evidence suggests that our ability to empathize with fictional characters, to follow storylines, and to immerse ourselves in narrative worlds is based on many of the same cognitive mechanisms by which we engage with our world, real events, and actual people. Just like our experiences affect us, stories operate in our minds. In the following discussion, we approach narrative strategies as a way to theorize the aesthetic formation and effect of both cultural narratives and narrative cultures from a cognitive perspective.1 Predictive processing-based models of story processing allow us to rethink the role of narration in religious discourse. Based on these models, we suggest a narratologically informed cognitive theory of religious perception, according to which religious worldviews 143

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can be understood as specific “augmented realities,” blends of narrative and experiential reality created by immersion into a narrative culture. As a first step, we argue that attracting attention is the most fundamental narrative strategy as it is the requirement for all other cultural, partisan, or individual storytelling strategies to develop their potential. After giving a limited account of the predictive processing framework’s concept of attention, we illustrate means and devices by which cultural narratives gain access to the mind. In a second step, we discuss imaginative strategies that further immersion into storyworlds. In the final step, we exemplify implementation strategies used for a lasting augmentation of reality with elements from these storyworlds.

NARRATIVITY, ATTENTION, AND PREDICTIVE PROCESSING With the cognitive turn, narratology has broadened its scope from a study of narratives and acts of narration to a study of narrativity (Fludernik 1996). Narrativity can be understood as a formative principle of thought, the mental strategy that links the way we think and perceive to the narrative culture we are a part of. In this line of research, narratives are seen as “the ‘glue’ [. . .] between cognition and culture” (Geertz and Jensen 2011: 2). Instead of approaching them from a minimal definition2 as structural units, emphasis is put on the aesthetic aspects of storytelling as a social practice (e.g., Grieser 2013). On the most general level, the foundational question of classical narratology— what counts as a narrative?—is now sidelined by the question of the sociocultural functions of storytelling in relation to the cognitive faculties involved: why do we tell stories? In his major synthesis of evolutionary approaches, Brian Boyd argues that narratives matter culturally because of their capacity for socio-cognitive alignment. Whether we identify the efficient exchange of complex information, the entertainment value, or the ability to see into other people’s minds as the crucial benefit of communicating in narrative formats, the common core is that a shared narrative imagination creates a shared presence. For Boyd, narratives are key in creating, directing, or diverting attention and, thus, instantiating coordinated behavior (Boyd 2011). Capturing, maintaining, and administering the recipient’s attention is a general aim of any act of storytelling. The most fundamental narrative strategies are those that aim to make a story heard in the first place. But attention is somewhat of a riddle. While “everyone knows what attention is,” as William James famously pointed out (1890: 403), we seem unable to fully grasp it in philosophical terms or to reliably control it as a cognitive faculty. Among recent trends in the cognitive sciences, predictive processing provides a pronounced new take on the phenomenon of attention (Wiese and Metzinger 2017: 9–10). Compatible with established mental simulation theories of narrative processing, this cognitive theory allows us to shed new light on the role and dynamics of sensation and perception in narrative cultures, the experiential character of storyworlds, and the ways in which stories operate in our minds, where elements of the storyworld blend with our experience of everyday reality. Predictive processing (PP) turns the common understanding of the relationship between sensation and perception upside down. In the PP framework, the mind/brain is understood as a hierarchical, multi-layered “prediction generator” that proactively anticipates (or predicts) sensory input, while constantly striving to minimize the errors

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in these predictions, which become apparent in the feedback provided by sensations. The prediction is a top-down activation of those neuronal structures likely to be activated by sensory data, leading to the actual sensory activation being mostly canceled out. Only sensory data that does not match the prediction is processed (bottom-up) until it can be canceled out by a corrected prediction. Perceiving the world means predicting it, and the prediction occurs prior to sensation. The mind’s/brain’s constant generation of falsifiable hypotheses on every cognitive level describes a highly efficient learning mechanism, possibly suited to counter lack of stimuli arguments for both lower-level (Willard van Orman Quine) and higher-level (Noam Chomsky) cognitive faculties, while still potentially allowing the accommodation of empirical evidence for “modular” structures in the form of so-called hyperpriors (see Hohwy 2013; Clark 2015; Metzinger and Wiese 2017).3 While the idea that we actively infer (or “hallucinate”) the world is all but new, the strength and beauty of the PP framework lies in its unmatched ability to reduce various multi-level cognitive tasks, ranging from perception to higher cognitive faculties and even action, to one unifying principle: a universal prediction-error minimization mechanism to maximize Bayesian model evidence, i.e., the constant attempt to maximize predictive efficacy while minimizing redundancy, complexity, and surprise (Friston and Frith 2015: 390; Fernandez-Velasco 2017: 74). Attention, therefore, plays a pronounced role in the PP framework: it denotes the general process of precision optimization. PP assumes a “constant kind of second order assessment” (Clark 2015: 5) of prior knowledge used to build predictions. This precision estimation is used to weight prediction error arising from the sensory units. Stimuli or inferences that are expected to give more precise errors are amplified, while signals from sensory units that are expected to give imprecise errors in relation to an expected pattern are toned down. In other words: attention is directed toward those sensory inputs or cognitive inferences that are most likely relevant to optimize the precision estimate of a given prediction and, thus, to reduce error signals. Accordingly, we can distinguish between exogenous and endogenous attention, “where the first is controlled by the [sensory] stimulus, while the second is internally controlled” (Watzl 2011: 846). Exogenous, stimulus-driven attention is the reaction to sensory cues conflicting with a prediction (i.e., error signals with regard to the mental model or “prior” of a situation), while endogenous, “motivationally” driven attention is the result of changes in the precision estimate of a prior leading to an active focus on sensory cues suited to increase precision. To illustrate: You are walking alone through a forest. Exogenous attention may be triggered when you hear an unexpected noise. Your attention will be directed toward the noise in an attempt to align the mental model of your surroundings with the sensory data. If you were told a legend about the spirits of the place before heading out, this may already have impacted the precision estimate of your mentally modeled forest. Primed with an element of uncertainty, you might find yourself actively monitoring the surroundings for sensory cues suited to confirm your prediction. No matter whether your prediction assumes the presence of spirits as likely (if you are a believer) or unlikely (as an unbeliever), the precision estimate of your prediction was altered by the story, leading to an increased sensitivity or even an active search for sensory cues suited to confirm or debunk the mental model. The idea of the mind as a prediction generator can also be applied to sentence and story processing, although the scope and dynamics remain subject to empirical enquiry (e.g., Kamide 2008). For now, it allows us to approach narrative strategies to capture

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attention, elicit a lasting influence on the attention economy, and shape cultural regimes of attention.

STORYTELLING STRATEGIES: CAPTURING ATTENTION Good stories can be “attention magnets.” Where we approach attention as the process of precision optimization, however, it becomes obvious that stories gain this efficacy only against the backdrop of their cultural and cognitive context: to be attention magnets, they must impact the precision estimate of given priors. Narrative cultures and cultural narratives are fundamentally shaped by techniques and devices meant to capture and direct a target audience’s attention, e.g., by triggering error signals regarding preconceived notions or, on the contrary, increasing estimated precision by confirming them; emphasizing selected error signals by minimizing distractions; and, in general, by eliciting revisions and refinement of mental models. “Canonicity and breach” (Bruner 1991: 11), the interplay of confirming and violating expectations, shapes culturally established narrative formats on both the text-external and the text-internal level. Text-external strategies have largely been beyond the scope of narratological analyses but are of considerable importance especially for the study of religious storytelling and reading cultures. In religious narrative cultures, formalized storytelling events are often sensually appealing and elaborately staged (see Johannsen et al. 2019). An aesthetics of religion perspective highlights how ritual enactments, body techniques, and multi-sensory stimulation affect perception, processing, and verisimilitude of narrative content. In abstract terms, we can distinguish between text-external strategies meant to attract exogenously driven attention, e.g., by providing salient and unpredicted stimuli, and strategies meant to direct endogenously driven attention, e.g., by catering markers of relevance. In (religious) practice, however, both strategies tend to overlap. A ritual performance of a story or a storytelling event might begin with a sudden sound of a horn or some other salient form of sound branding, changes in lighting, visual cues, etc. Down to the level of speakers audibly clearing their throat, these surrounding circumstances of acts of storytelling can be described as parts of a cultural regime of attention. While these salient stimuli are exogenous attention cues, once conventionalized and internalized, they become codified markers of relevance that can trigger endogenous attention as well. In Western print cultures, for example, the visual saliency of artfully bound, ornamented, and embossed books have long been codified as a means to valorize their content as being of high inferential potential. But attention “is volatile and has its own rhythm” (Lu 2003: 66); shifts in what is perceived as salient change what is perceived to indicate relevance. When printed books were still rare, manuscripts would frequently be designed to mimic the typography and ornamented makeup of printed books to suggest value (see Ohrvik 2018). In “Age of Technological Reproducibility” (Benjamin [1936] 2008), by contrast, the plain manuscript became the symbol of authenticity, hidden layers of meaning and even occult efficacy, as in the case of Aleister Crowley’s Liber AL (The Book of the Law), which he decreed to be printed only including copies of the handwritten “original” (see Markússon 2017). These dynamics of the attention economy become visible on the text-internal level as well. Narrative conventions and their violation work “with and against the drive to stability in the predictive coding of our natural and cultural environments” (Kukkonen

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2014: 737), a delicate balance that stories need to provide in order to capture and maintain a recipient’s attention. There is no need to delve deep into a specific text to start an exploration into the strategic use of narrative practices and devices employed as textinternal exogenous and endogenous attention cues. The “first sentence” has become a topos of popular culture for showcasing artistry and the craft of storytelling while unmasking narrative artifices and techniques used to capture attention. It signals the story’s scope of relevance (“In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth,” Bible, Gen. 1.1), activates generic storyworld priors (“Once upon a time in a land far away . . .”), triggers strategic empathy by inviting target group-specific identification (see Keen 2008), or prepares for the breach of expectations (“It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” George Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour). Directly addressing the recipient by stating intent (“Hearing I ask”—Völuspá) and prompting a reaction (“Listen!”—Beowulf ) is a social convention that many literary works simulate. Studies in oral storytelling show that such exogenous attention cues, even the seemingly redundant “I am now telling a story,” already constitute an essential part of the act of narration. Not only do they allow the actors to synchronize minds and bodies in a face-to-face storytelling situation, they also introduce the narrator. By implicitly or explicitly announcing a story, the speaker’s (or author’s) voice is transformed into a communicative role: The narratorial “I” is no longer bound to the individual who actually tells the story. This transformation marks the shift into a storyworld. With the narrator’s voice, a new set of strategically used narrative devices come into play. Based, for example, on genre convention, the narrator may claim a different authority than the actual storyteller, be it in social rank, knowledge, or insight into the thoughts and feelings of others. In stories, we are able to plausibly convey alleged motivations or emotional reactions of others in much greater detail than in a propositional account of the same event. Shifting focalization from one character to another or describing events from the perspective of an uninvolved or omniscient observer is a merit of the narratorial voice. In religious narrative traditions, this formal trait first conveys the marked difference in ontological status that allows narratives to be read as inspired (Martínez 2004: 150–4) once an author/speaker-narrator conflation takes place (Davidsen 2016a: 524). Already the omniscient voice suggests the story’s relevance to extend beyond the described events and the storyworld’s realm. In their analyses of the religious affordances of supernatural fiction, Davidsen and others identify further textual features that make (especially counterintuitive) elements from the storyworld transferable by endowing them with a general relevance and a compatibility to the actual world (Davidsen 2017). With these “evidence” and “anchoring” mechanisms, the storyworld can gain the potential to “intrude” in the lifeworld of the recipients and invite to tell one’s own life in continuation of the narrative (Davidsen 2005; Davidsen 2016b: 489; Petersen 2016). Initial attention cues and the narrator’s voice persuade the recipient to invest in the narrative by strategically “messing” with the precision estimate of mental models, including hypotheses about the actual world applied to the storyworld. The efficacy of a narrative structure in maintaining the interplay of attracting and directing attention rests on the narrative’s “probability design,” as Kukkonen points out. Translating Sternberg’s (1978) narrative universals—surprise, curiosity, and suspense—into a predictive processing framework, Kukkonen shows how plot structures need to balance triggers of exogenous attention (in the element of surprise) by textual elements triggering endogenous attention (in the form of curiosity). Traction is kept throughout the text by allowing the reader to experience one possible model of the related events gaining likelihood until

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it is debunked by a new element of surprise that leads to the search for evidence for alternative models of higher inferential potential (or: Bayesian model evidence). Kukkonen suggests this dynamic is necessary to better understand the aesthetic effect of individual narrative works: A Bayesian perspective on narrative therefore investigates [. . .] the ways in which the feedback loop between the probabilities of the fictional world and the pacing of new observations through the plot is constructed so that it keeps readers involved in making sense of the events of the narrative. —Kukkonen 2014: 725 This perspective helps to understand the flow experienced in following the course of an appealing story, up to the degree of immersion into a storyworld.

IMAGINATIVE STRATEGIES: ACHIEVING IMMERSION As a specific form of absorption (Luhrmann, this volume), immersion can be understood as an effect of the mimetic art where a narrative text is no longer perceived as an artifact or utterance, but is “entered.” The text triggers “a simulative process, more precisely a specific form of the pervasive phenomenon of mental simulation” (Schaeffer and Vultur 2010: 238) that Ryan discusses as “the virtual reality of a textual world” (Ryan 2015: 69). Cognitive literary studies have widely come to emphasize the aesthetic character of storyworlds as more “than reconstructed timelines and inventories of existents” but rather experiences of “mentally and emotionally projected environments in which interpreters are called upon to live out complex blends of cognitive and imaginative response” (Herman 2010: 570). With regard to the mental dynamics, narrative immersion therefore describes a highly active state. “[P]re-attentional ‘errors’ [are] [. . .] bracketed” (Schaeffer and Vultur 2010: 238) and interfering external stimuli or bodily signals are down-regulated in favor of a relatively stable focus on the higher-level predictions that constitute a narrative space. There is no need to assume a dedicated cognitive module for processing narratives in this way. Filling in blanks, producing inferences that bridge discontinuities or address incoherencies while, at the same time, connecting own memories, mind-reading the characters, and monitoring their intentions involve many of the very same cognitive mechanisms as an actual world interaction. As a proactive and self-organizing system, PP’s mind/brain functions “to reduce discrepancies between the ways it predicts the world to be, and the way the world (i.e., sensory input) actually is,” making perception and imagination essentially two sides of the same coin, “continuous and deeply unified” (Kirchhoff 2018: 752). While following the text and the linear narrative unfolding through it, readers or listeners constantly adjust their prediction to new information. Immersion in a story can be understood as the result of ordinary mental mechanisms interacting and corroborating each other in a “self-fulfilling loop” (Velasco 2017: 77). Models created in response to narrative scripts trigger or reinforce other priors in a complex interplay of feedback loops. With regard to literary narratives, immersion is often understood as a state limited to the duration of the act of reading. But already common reading experience indicates how being immersed in a story can have broader and more lasting effects. Even where the reader’s sensitivity to external stimuli is down-regulated in immersed reading, attention will frequently be diverted. But fetching a drink or visiting the bathroom is hardly

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perceived as a major distraction. The “virtual reality,” once simulated, is actually quite stable. When finishing a captivating novel one might experience the reality effect wearing off in a brief period of disorientation and dissociation. This residue of states of immersion is quite telling: For example, after watching an immersive horror film, one might experience a certain “jumpiness,” the hypersensitivity of one’s agency detection still triggered. In the PP model, this effect can be understood to be the result of the storyworld’s indeterminacy (for example with regard to the precise location of a fictional killer) still resonating in a temporarily lowered precision estimate for actual world predictions of the presence of agents and a resulting amplification of sensory signals suited to detect agency. Stories can already alter our experience of the world by impacting the precision estimate of specific priors. Once a state of immersion into a particular story has been achieved, the storyworld can quite easily be reentered. Serial formats in novels or television shows demonstrate how the mental simulation of a storyworld remains somewhat latent until it is reactivated with little effort. Text-external storytelling strategies such as sound branding in a ritual or a television series serve this purpose. That the step from fan cultures of immersion enthusiasts, such as Star Trek or Tolkien fans, to religious narrative cultures may not be a fundamental one has often been discussed (e.g., Jindra 2017) and is shown in detail in Davidsen’s study of fan cultures that birthed fiction-based religions (Davidsen 2019). As discussed above, stories that become crucial to religious contexts tend to afford telling one’s own life in continuation of the narrative. The predictive processing account of the imaginative strategies underlying immersion adds to this argument: immersive experiences “bridge the gap between plausibility and believability” (Bielo 2017: 140). Well-crafted stories are capable of triggering higher-level mental processes to (temporarily) simulate— by way of prediction—the virtual reality of a storyworld. Where these virtual realities connect to the actual world, the stories do not just afford the opportunity to tell one’s own life in continuation of the story, they also afford the opportunity to experience (at least aspects of) one’s own life in continuation of the story. Besides altering precision estimates of given priors and, thus, changing the individual’s attention economy, the PP model suggests that elements or entities from the storyworld can be transferred to enrich mental predictions of actual world situations. Inferentially rich narrative elements such as minimal counterintuitive agents seem especially suited to maximize Bayesian model evidence in a wide range of contexts, in that they are easy to process and come with a high inferential potential (Boyer 2001). Where narratives collaborate with the mind to create a virtual reality, a narrative culture can instantiate and perpetuate an augmented reality that, from the outside, may appear to indicate a different mentality.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES: AUGMENTING REALITY Perpetuating an augmented reality as a shared reality, religious and other large-scale narrative cultures are shaped by a third set of narrative strategies: where storytelling strategies aim primarily to direct attention toward acts and content of narration and imaginative strategies afford immersion into the storyworld, implementation strategies induce a lasting augmentation of shared mental models by narrative content. Understanding the modes of implementation into a societal context requires a dialog between narratological approaches, cognitive studies, and socio-historical expertise.

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The classical example of large-scale narrative cultures shaping a collective mentality are the rural storytelling cultures documented by nineteenth-century folklorists. The folkloristic endeavor found its political motivation in the rise of the nation state with a strong demand for formative and unifying master narratives in the form of “national” histories and “folk” stories. Early folklorists specialized in what former generations of learned commentators had disregarded as raw expressions of popular superstition (e.g., stories about ghosts, elves, and nature spirits) but now suggested itself to be the key to the “Volksgeist,” poetic expressions of a popular imagination rooted in the mythic past of the nation. Following the (idealized) lead of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, all over Europe professional and lay folklorists went into the field to hunt down stories. Oral performances were textualized, the stories extracted, anonymized, categorized, and filed according to the logic of the emerging archives. For publication, the material was often synthesized and refined to illustrate the new collective singular “tradition.” In the folklore archives, however, there are no master narratives, no “Urformen” or originals to be found. Every story written down or, later on, tape recorded, is a variant referring to previous performances, co-narrated by informant and collector, and sharing motifs, traits, or stylistic features with thousands of other variants (Johannsen 2014). It is this sheer amount of material preserved that still allows insight into the narrative cultures that the folklorists entered, and, in the course of their documentation, altered. While the folklore archives as institutions document nineteenth-century nationbuilding efforts, their contents document narrative attractor positions: a multitude of intertwined small stories, stabilized over generations by conventionalized stylistic features and recurring narrative ploys. These formal traits turn out to be relatively static. They are crucial to ensure the narrative format’s long-term adaptability to shifting social and cultural circumstances in that they afford connections between the storyworld and local lifeworlds. Mythical legends in particular would always be adapted to deal with places and characters familiar to the respective audiences, and begin with descriptions of some everyday experience or activity. In the course of the stories, these familiar settings are made strange when the supernatural seems to manifest itself in one form or the other. Characteristic to the narrative style of these legends is, however, that they often do not explicate the supernatural. It remains to be inferred, either by the narrator in a concluding sentence (“This must have been the elves”), or is left to the recipient’s interpretation. The latter is primarily guided by the excessive use of discontinuity in the narrative presentation. Legends tend to maximize processing effort by skipping crucial information, surprising the recipient with sudden changes of setting, leaving causal connections to guesswork or obscuring the passage of time within the narrative. All predictions about the course of the narrated events are subverted until the assumption of a supernatural happening remains the only coherent model for a comprehensive explanation (Johannsen 2011). The “willing suspension of disbelief ” (Coleridge 1853: 365) while listening to a supernatural tale may be nothing more than the mind inferring a model suited to minimize error signals when coping with a causally opaque and highly capricious text. In the case of the legends, however, the stories are interspersed with (local) real world references that serve as anchoring mechanisms, suggesting the storyworld to be a representation of the actual world. Honko (1964) has already theorized the lasting impact of traditional forms of storytelling on people’s attention economy. According to Honko, legends suggesting the existence of ghosts, elves, and other nature and house spirits provide “cultural explanatory models” suited to augment quite ordinary real world experiences.

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The spread and wealth of variants leading up to the same conclusion connect diverse aspects of everyday sensory, social, and emotional experience to the legends’ mythical reality. For example, in Honko’s empirical material from Finland, many legends describe supernatural encounters as the result of cultural norm violations (such as falling asleep while heating the barn to dry grain). The narrative culture shapes “subconscious expectations” that lead people to readjust their attention. Where a real-life situation matches the familiar narrative script, an exogenous attention trigger such as a creaking sound in the old barn to which one “ordinarily would have paid no heed” becomes a “releasing stimulus” that provokes the prediction of a spirit approaching. Given perceptual and psychophysical conditions such as twilight and tiredness, Honko emphasizes, this may even lead to visionary “hypnagogic images,” interpretations of ambiguous sensory input in line with the “learned supernatural tradition” (Honko 1964: 11–18). This augmentation of reality is not a matter of “popular belief ” but rather of an interpretative drift, as Luhrmann (1989) calls it, resulting from the immersion into a narrative culture. Stories shape our perception by altering the attention economy and, thus, giving rise to new percepts that lead to the formation of new narrative accounts, debates, and the reconfiguration of beliefs. In the context of the PP model, augmented reality is not an evaluative term to expose a “false reality” based on superstition or, in Marxist terms, a religious “false consciousness.” In PP, conscious perception simply denotes “the overall most probable hypothesis” (Hohwy 2013: 4). All perception can be understood as augmented insofar as predictions are modeled on prior experience and shaped by cultural content. Stories play a key role in the generation of shared mental models because they “engage our attention so compulsively [. . .] that over time their concentrated information patterns develop our facility for complex situational thought” (Boyd 2011: 48). From vernacular storytelling guiding the interpretation of ambiguous sensory input to stories that shape the perception of social roles, groups, and societal phenomena or even, in foundational myths, our understanding of the world: religious narrative cultures generate an encompassing regime of attention. But this systematic education of the attention economy is not exclusive to religious contexts. Even a firmly secular societal model meant to “naturalize” the experience of reality and to counter religion’s “false consciousness” such as socialism can be analyzed in terms of an augmented reality built on myth. Twentieth-century socialist states exemplify the implementation of a highly standardized, state-controlled, and enforced narrative culture. Among the broad spectrum of media used to convey the key message of socialism’s ultimate triumph, literary and anecdotal narratives played an essential role. Tales of the persuasive power of socialism experienced as a worker’s gradually growing insight or overwhelming revelation were omnipresent in school books, newspapers, and film and referenced in public displays, banners, monuments, and ceremonies. Disseminated in large scale, these stories witnessed socialism’s life-changing potential for humankind in general and for each individual in particular. Schematic in their plot structure, figuration, and setting, the stories often took the form of conversion narratives by recounting the birth of a working-class hero or the evolution of a good socialist (Kirsch 2017). The development of a narrative character was supposed to exemplify the Marxist-Leninist worldview by showing general principles at work in the particular (Clark 1981). The stories formed a narrative tissue encoded in symbols, jargon, images, and music to make every notion, every sensation—be it a street name, the sounds of a factory or the smell of products—ultimately a reference to the socialist success story. The aim was to create the sense of an encompassing socialist reality

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in which all aspects of life were imbued with political meaning. Immersion into the socialist storyworld would, in the hope of socialist activists and politicians, ultimately lead to the development of conviction. Regardless of whether the aim to convince has been achieved, the attempts document the range of participation in a narrative culture. Stories shape the attention economy whether they are approved of or criticized. In tacitly auto-completing (or predicting) narrative scripts and attributing additional layers of meaning to everyday experiences and sensations, both supporters and critics are made co-narrators. As in the case of religious narrative cultures, doubt and criticism are articulated in variations of the same scripts and integrated into the regime of attention. Vernacular criticism is forced to refer to the same percepts shaped by the narrative models, but endows them with an alternative evaluation. The augmented realities created by immersion into narrative cultures thus still allow for a range of interpretation. Stories are hard to govern.

CONCLUSION In the history of religions, narration rarely takes the form of dyadic communication. In vernacular storytelling, “audiences” are participants, recipients serve as co-narrators, different media and voices interact and blend when speakers, by necessity, “align their words to the words of others – other texts, other genres, other performances” (Bauman 2004: 128). The same dynamics are at work in institutionalized narrative cultures. Storyworlds featured in foundational and officially approved religious narratives are woven into “webs of intertextual resonance,” inexhaustible streams of legends, devotionals, testimonials, jokes, songs, poems, and micro-narratives of individual experience. Understanding the way these “stories operate in our minds” (Lévi-Strauss 1983: 12) means taking account of the full spectrum of narrative strategies—ranging from storytelling techniques triggering cognitive mechanisms to political measures—as they are employed in specific sociocultural settings. For an aesthetic approach to narration in religious contexts, PP is a promising framework in that it highlights the impact of narratives on the attention economy. It allows us to theorize how narratives are processed against the backdrop of culturally shaped mental models, how stories can change perceptions and augment reality where they become part of a societal regime of attention. As a holistic cognitive framework, PP invites a balanced reconsideration of classical approaches to alternative perceptions of reality such as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s “participation mystique,” Rudolf Otto’s “numinous apperception,” or Clifford Geertz’s “models of.” A source of long-term fascination for scholars of religion, the exploration of the sensual and social reality of our narrative imagination remains a major task for the aesthetics of religion.

RECOMMENDED READING Davidsen, Markus A., ed. (2017), Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Fiction, London: Routledge. Explores the relationship of religion and fiction through a range of analyses of textual features that make it possible for fictional narratives to inspire religious beliefs and facilitate ritual interaction. Johannsen, Dirk, Anja Kirsch, and Jens Kreinath, eds. (2019), Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion: Storytelling, Imagination, Efficacy, Leiden: Brill. Collects studies on

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the dynamic and polyphone practices of vernacular storytelling in diverse religious contexts, analyzed from an aesthetics of religion perspective. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2015), Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Based on the metaphor of virtual reality, Ryan discusses the “poetics of immersion” and the “poetics of interactivity” to develop a phenomenology of narrative experience.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Text Acts KATHARINA WILKENS

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the focus will lie on texts in their written form. The historical and philological analysis of religious texts is foundational to the academic study of religion. The aesthetic approach to studying religions was developed as a counter-movement insisting on opening up perspectives on the body, the senses, and materiality to academic inquiry. The catchphrase “anything not to do with texts or philology” became a pithy definition of the aesthetics of religion approach. But, as a common metaphor suggests, texts have bodies, too. While the term body refers to the central part of the text between title and coda, the metaphor reminds us of the material form of texts. Texts can be grasped, both intellectually and materially. Texts are collections of words and sentences that are given some kind of fixed form either through repeated oral performances or by being written down. In writing a text many different scriptural systems may be employed. They may be complex images in themselves, as in the case of Aztec writing (see Laack, Chapter 21, this volume); script may be arranged as an image, as in artful forms of calligraphy; or images may be added to a text as distinct media of communication. Walls, clay tablets, palm leaves, papyri, parchment, sticks, paper, coins, sand, cake icing, and digital pages, among many other materials of differing durability, are used to fix texts upon. Texts are written with a view to the information conveyed by the (icono-)graphic symbols, which can be stories and myths, instructions, philosophical arguments, explanations, or descriptions.1 They thus function as tools of communication between the producer (author, writer) and the receiver (reader, listener), with scribes, media technicians, and perhaps also performers being involved. The semantic content of a text may be clear, but it may also be difficult to understand, requiring performance and interpretation to make the text meaningful (on the sonality of ritual texts with clear and opaque meaning, see Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume). People do things with texts; they act upon them and react to them.2 Written texts can be looked at, learned by heart, discussed, and recited (Ware 2014). Books, as long scrolls or as a collection of bound pages, can be stored, displayed, and covered in clothes (Watts 2013a). They can be carried around or chained to a lectern (Cordez 2006). They can be written, erased, and illuminated. They can be cheap, expensive, and collectible. They can be perfumed, their ink can be drunk (Wilkens 2017), and their paper can be touched (Ganz 2017). They can be regarded as persons and thus underlie rituals of purity, rituals of birth, and rituals of death (Myrvold 2010). 155

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In the study of religion, the semantic content of religious texts, or scriptures, was given precedence in accordance with ideals of text criticism and linguistics being developed in theology and other disciplines in the nineteenth century. Texts preserved on some kind of durable writing material can be read long after the producers have died, and are thus one of the most important historical sources. They can be transported from Arabia, India, and China (and elsewhere) to metropolitan universities, to be studied there by “armchair” philologists such as Friedrich Max Müller. Written texts can also be studied by EuroAmerican scholars independently of the guru–disciple relationships common to many scriptural traditions. Textuality, meaning, and doctrine were seen as more essential to religions than other media. Therefore, media other than textual media were disparaged in many ways. The academic preoccupation with texts mirrors the power of scribal elites in religious hierarchies. However, the semantic content being communicated is always aesthetically situated and it is of paramount importance to take this into account (see also Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume, and Laack, Chapter 21, this volume). The semantic knowledge encoded in texts is not readily available to everybody—education for all being typical only of contemporary information societies. It takes an active effort to make this knowledge available through texts that are read, listened to, or performed in rituals. Children have to be taught reading skills over a period of several years, and even listening to recitals requires a certain degree of habituation. Conversely, certain rituals or social actions make use of texts without referring directly to their semantic content. These can include public presentations of charters between countries or companies, or the fumigation of paper inscribed with verses from sacred texts. An aesthetics of religion approach to texts— both religious and secular—makes it clear that a semantic, or even a socio-linguistic, understanding does not comprehend the full range of performative, iconic (Watts 2013b), or embodied aspects of the ways in which people interact with texts (see also Graham [1987] 1993). It is my aim to move away from common dichotomies such as literacy versus orality, reading versus feeling, or—typical of some religious discourses—from the distinction between the semantic, “rational” interpretation of texts, on the one hand, and “magical” or “superstitious” text practices, on the other, as when amulets and the like are derided by certain theologians. As pointed out by the anthropologist Annette Hornbacher (2016a: 1) and James Watts (2013c: 414), a biblical philologist, action and interpretation need to be connected. An aesthetics of religion approach to knowledge (Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume) provides us with the necessary epistemological tools (Koch, Chapter 3, this volume) to fully appreciate texts as embodied actions.

TEXTS AS ARTIFACTS IN ACTION: AN OVERVIEW Johannsen and Kirsch (Chapter 13, this volume) argue that narrative cultures are based on specific traditions of narrative form. At the same time, people’s cultural perceptions are formed by the narrative tropes they are familiar with, such as man and woman being created in the image of god (Klassen, Chapter 15, this volume), or thunderstorms presaging the apocalypse. Narrative texts arouse emotions, create affects, allow for multivocal interpretations, and shape moral valuations through the images provided in them. Narratives are created in their telling and re-telling, their forms, meanings, and interpretations shifting gradually from one performative context to another. The transmission of written texts often requires not only abilities in reading and writing, but also performative knowledge of recitation, forms of spiritual preparation,

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and permission by a teacher. In Islamic theology, for example, it is argued that the Quran’s sonality has redemptive powers (Kermani [1999] 2014), which is why Quranic education and scholarship is based largely on memorization and recitation (Ware 2014). In Bali, esoteric texts in the traditional Kawi script (that survives Latinization in specific religious and secular literary contexts) require the teacher and the student to perform Yogic exercises because their semantic dimension would be incomprehensible otherwise (Hornbacher 2016b). When texts are written down, their material form may also act upon people. In ancient cities—just as in contemporary ones—monumental inscriptions with legal, political, or religious content have spatial and temporal attributes directing the gaze of people walking by; at the same time, these public texts change the character of the space in which they are placed (Berti et al. 2017). The academic field of book history looks into the development of materials, techniques, scripts, and storage of books across centuries and cultures (Barnard 1999–2011). Also, changes in readership, literacy rates, and the social function of books are reconstructed through various sources. Watts (2013b) has distinguished between three dimensions of books, the semantic, the performative, and the iconic. Books usually have a semantic content that can be read and interpreted. Both the material books and the texts contained in them may be handled in specific ways, such as being read out loud, displayed, or consulted during prayers (the performative dimension). And some books are iconic of specific religions, nations, or classes, and as such they embody collective values. In the religious context, these latter books are generally scriptures such as the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, or the Tripitaka. In national contexts, constitutions and founding charters have an iconic dimension. For the Bildungsbürgertum (educated bourgeoisie/middle class), “classical” novels and poems are icons of cultured learning. Iconic books are treated differently. Especially in religious contexts, they are surrounded by rituals of purification and veneration. Their materiality alone brings blessing. Beautiful copies with gilt illuminations and studded with jewels may be displayed, no costs having been spared in their production. In modern schools, children are taught to read from books, but they are also quite emphatically taught to take good care of their books. Books should not be written in, their pages must not be torn and, ideally, they should not be left lying open to avoid cracking the spine. In learning to read and write, children are given access to the semantic content of texts. Over time, they are expected to be able to understand and interpret the texts independently. But the effort put into teaching children how to correctly handle books demonstrates a cultural valorization of book learning that goes beyond their semantic content. When visiting friends in other environments or other cultures, I might see dirty and crumpled books, and realize that adults and children alike attach no importance to their material condition. This little moment of shock tells me that I appreciate books not only for the semantic message printed in them, but also aesthetically. This also means that in other cultures, and in other educational milieus, other aesthetic perceptions of books (and texts) exist. Ways of handling books and the iconic value attached to them differ greatly. In academic discourses and in middle-class educational elites (to which the writer of this text belongs), it is often forgotten that a philological approach to the semantic dimension of a text is not only academically motivated, but also culturally habituated. I will return to the ideological consequences of this observation in the last section of this chapter. But what does it mean to analyze a text (or a book) aesthetically? A person perceives different dimensions of a text cross-modally through several senses simultaneously.

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Certain bodily and emotional reactions are triggered when a written text is looked at, touched, listened to, perhaps smelled, or even tasted. It is perceived within threedimensional space and at certain times. Conceptual metaphors link “high” and “low” in spatial perception to other categories such as “valuable” and “less valuable”: the Quran and most other holy books must not be laid on the ground or even carried below the waist line (Suit 2013). Thus, sensory-spatial-temporal perception is foundational even for the seemingly simple task of reading and understanding semantic content. Not only writing, but also reading is a bodily activity whose styles vary over time (Schön 1987). Texts can be read out loud or quietly; they can be read in groups or individually; they can be the basis for a theater performance, an academic debate, or a bedtime story. All these different bodily postures and states of arousal affect the understanding of a text by giving its semantic meaning added layers of aesthetic knowing. Pietistic self-awareness is enhanced by holding a small book close to one’s body and reading silently. Reading aloud from the family Bible requires a large representative book. This also reinforces the social status of the (male) reader as the patriarch. Environment, posture, and attention span are quite different when reading texts in the digital social media. Yelle (2013a, Chapter 22, this volume) has demonstrated that the performance of mantras for ritual purposes is comparable to old English legal formulas: their specific linguistic features, such as poetic language, rhyme, or repetition, ensure their efficacy beyond their semantic content. These are features, well known to rhetoricians, that convey affective information even without comprehensible words (Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume). Some religious scripts and “mystic syllables” cannot be read out loud (e.g., Hornbacher 2016a: 18; Cantwell 2017). Their efficacy lies in their shape, their traceability, their sheer existence on a carrier medium. Laack (Chapter 21, this volume) argues that the Aztec image-script reflects a semiotic system in which reading cosmological almanacs involved “activating different kinds of knowledge, including sensory impressions, intuitive understandings, emotions, and body knowledge.” The following case study of drinking the Quran is a particularly striking example of the sensory perception of a religious text, which is literally incorporated by people seeking a cure for an illness.

DRINKING THE QURAN Adherents of scriptural traditions, such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and many ancient religions, can make use of their texts as medicine. They can be turned into somatically effective cures by being consumed. The paper on which they are written can be swallowed, or it can be burnt and inhaled, or the ink with which they were written can be dissolved in water and drunk. Generally speaking, messages promising transformation through salvation or intervention by the gods on a semantic level are combined with an action associated with transformation in the sense of medical treatment—swallowing pills, drinking infusions, or inhaling smoke. The Islamic custom of drinking verses from the Quran (“erasure” or “washing,” Arabic: mahw) is the most widespread such practice ˙ to my knowledge, and common to almost all regions of the world where Islam is practiced.

A Zanzibar Case Study The most in-depth study to date has been conducted by Hanna Nieber (2017). She carried out fieldwork among healers and patients on the island of Zanzibar, Tanzania.3 In Swahili

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FIGURE 14.1: Writing Quranic verses onto a plate with red ink, Zanzibar. © Hanna Nieber.

the word for the practice is kombe, which carries associations with a bowl or a plate. Currently an unornamented, white porcelain plate is preferred on which specific verses from the Quran are written in ink made from red food coloring reminiscent of saffroninfused liquid ink (Figure 14.1). The male and female healers Nieber interviewed each had a different method of choosing the most appropriate Quranic verse: by randomly opening the Holy Book, through spontaneous inspiration of memorized verses, or by consulting published lists of verses particularly suited to specific ailments. Some male healers were familiar with Islamic scholarship and emphasized the groundedness of the practice in Islamic Prophetic medicine. All female healers and the other male healers offered kombe as part of traditional medicine based on various herbal remedies. After the verses have been meticulously copied on the plate, the ink is carefully washed off into a bottle and given the patient to drink at regular intervals until she or he feels better. Some healers prepare large amounts of kombe to be distributed to patients at a later time. The infusion has a characteristic pink color and cannot be confused with the herbal infusions prescribed alongside kombe. The color of the ink is important, as the best ink, according to most healers, is made of saffron. But because saffron is very expensive and not readily available in Zanzibar, the healers improvise by approximating its yellowish to reddish color with food dye. Kombe is prescribed for all kinds of ailments, including physical illnesses, mental distress, economic failure, demonic attacks, and the like. The three essential steps of the procedure (writing, washing, and drinking) have varied over time, as well as from healer to healer and from region to region. Different emphases can be laid on the education and gender of the writer, the writing techniques, the writing materials, the water used, and the distribution of the final infusion. What matters most is that the disembodied words of God, which are present in the material form of the Quran, are made available for ingestion. The transformative powers of the words are unfolded not only spiritually, but actually in the bodies of the patients.

The Body, Hygiene, and Ingestion The reaction of many Westerners to the notion of drinking ink is one of disgust. A central question is thus: how is the aesthetic subject (Koch, Chapter 3, this volume) informed and

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affected by notions of taste, wellbeing, and disgust in the act of ingesting scripture as medicine? For patients not to be nauseated, basic attributes of drink (or food) have to be fulfilled. Sometimes, initial reactions of disgust must be overcome by increasing standards of hygiene. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the healers I met produced kombe in a different way from those on Zanzibar.4 They wrote Quranic verses with pens (often marker pens) on a piece of scrap paper which was then placed in a bottle of water. The ink gradually dissolves from the paper and infuses into the water. In an online forum, a healer from London reacts to the tastes of his patients by giving the following advice: “Note: don’t use normal ink, use eatable or drinkable water such as saffron water, rose water and not on normal paper, as the common sheets of paper contain chemicals, find non-chemical that is not harmful to write on, or maybe a cloth could be used.”5 Nieber (2017: 463–5) discusses how kombe is thought to unfold its efficacy in the body of the patient. One healer speaks of the heart through which kombe must pass after entering the stomach. While the stomach is referred to in its physical sense, the healer shifts to metaphoric language when referring to the heart, thus introducing the semantic fields of belief and spirituality. One of the patients quoted by Nieber, however, remains firmly in the field of medicine, aligning kombe with similarly prepared herbal concoctions. The words of the Quran, as a central text of Islam, are imagined as acting on the bodies and souls of the believers. Ingesting holy texts is neither a dietary injunction nor a culinary experience. Cathy Cantwell has correctly pointed out that the “primary aim [. . .] of sensual bodily engagement with the holy books [. . .] is not the sensory experience in itself, but rather the physical experience of a transmission and incorporation of the sacred qualities from the books into the person” (Cantwell 2017: 154–5). This basic aesthetic efficacy of the text is adapted by practitioners to regionally and historically different conceptions of the body and bodily functions, as I will show.

Comparative Aesthetics of Ingesting Scripture Culturally specific aesthetics of linking a text to the body become apparent when looking to other countries. In most Turkish and Arab countries (and diasporas), emphasis is laid on the breath as a carrier of the life-force. Thus, when preparing a text from the Quran as medicine, it is spoken aloud and breathed onto a jug of water. While the Quranic text still enters the human body through drinking, it is infused into the water through breath.6 In India, fumigation is preferred. Incense and similar perfumes are burnt in all Hindu temples to honor the gods. In Islamic communication with God, this is mirrored by a preference for fumigation, as well. Indian healers write Quranic verses on paper which is then burnt so that the patient may inhale the smoke. Drinking the Quran is closely linked to other, more common Quranic practices performed by scholar-healers: the preparation of amulets and the incantation of ruqya. The latter is a practice for healing and blessing in which Quranic verses are recited aloud either by the healer or by the patient as a form of prayer. The efficacy of the words is thought to be transmitted through the air and by being infused into a water medium. Similar practices exist in more or less all scriptural traditions. Ancient Daoist texts provide instructions for writing certain formulas to be ingested in cases of illness. These are addressed to gods living in various regions of the body, and ingesting the texts is a way of reaching them (Bumbacher 2012: 65–80). In contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, mantras called “lettering to eat” are written on thin paper, often rice paper, and activated by specialists (lamas) through tantric rituals (Cantwell 2017: 148–53). The patients then wrap them in dough and eat them. In other cases, the ink is washed off with saffron water and

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drunk or applied to afflicted body parts. Hymns from the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, can be spoken over water sweetened with honey; the water is then stirred with a sword. Honey and sword are thought to represent the softness/humility and hardness/ strength expected from all Sikh men. The amrit thus prepared is drunk on various occasions, such as initiation or healing ceremonies (Myrvold 2013: 212–13). In traditions laying emphasis on images, such as Greek Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, icons or images from pilgrimage sites can be copied (or printed) onto paper and ingested for healing purposes (Flood 2014). Catholic Schluckbildchen (images for swallowing) were common into the early twentieth century. Kühne-Wespi (2019) discusses various healing rituals as well as an inthronisation ritual during which texts and images were incorporated through drinking and eating. In medieval England, charms against a number of illnesses were written onto foodstuffs to be eaten or were drunk as in the Quranic example (Hindley 2019). I cannot hope to provide a complete list of comparable practices within the limits of this article. Let it suffice to point out that they are much more common than one might think, both in the past and in the present. For a comparative aesthetics of religion (Grieser 2015b: 5–6), it must be kept in mind that aspects which are essential in one case may be uninteresting, or even offensive, in another. Conceptualizations of the human body and the textual body inform many of the differences brought to light by such a cross-cultural survey, and further research is needed here.

Scholarship, Semantics, and Somatics In West Africa, a unique tradition of writing materials connects the practice of ingesting verses to Quranic school teaching. In Quranic schools, wooden boards are employed on

FIGURE 14.2: A West African Quranic writing board, Niger. © Katharina Wilkens.

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which the children learn to write Quranic texts with black ink (Figure 14.2). At the end of the lesson, the board is wiped clean. But the ink is not simply thrown out; it is collected and drunk by the children as a blessing (Ware 2014: 57–8). Quranic school teachers are almost always dispensers of Quranic infusions. They consult with patients and prepare infusions with ink from their own boards. Drinking the Quran is not universally accepted. Indeed, it has always been seriously contested with regard to both legitimacy and medical efficacy. While many Islamic theologians and historians of religion delegitimize erasure as forbidden magic or superstition respectively, it is a practice that has been deeply embedded in scholarly traditions of Prophetic medicine for at least eight centuries. On the other hand, the very idea of any medical efficacy deriving from drinking a text is thought risible by all who give precedence to the semantic dimension. An interesting connection between the semantic and the medical aspects of erasure can be seen in commentaries insisting on the necessity of perfectly shaped handwriting for the infusion to work (Nieber 2017: 461; Wilkens 2019). While many patients do not know what has been written, either because the chosen verses must be kept secret in order to be effective, or because they cannot read the Arabic script themselves, they know that the scholar-healer is able to write correctly. This is in fact the reason why Quranic school teachers are in great demand as healers, as other healers are not always sufficiently skilled in Quranic writing. It is interesting to note that drinking the Quran is popular among non-Muslims. Flueckiger (2006: 106–35) recounts how Hindu and Christian patients consult an Islamic female healer in southern India because of the perceived efficacy of the Quranic fumigation treatment. In Zanzibar, Christians also go to Muslim healers. Nieber (2017: 465–7) comments that though this behavior might be frowned upon by fellow Christians, as well as by Muslims, they do it because of what they perceive as the obvious medical efficacy of kombe. The medical dimension of kombe is thus placed before its specific religious dimension. In Tanzania and Kenya, kombe is also very popular in areas adjacent to the Islamic coastal areas (Langwick 2011: 98). Traditional healers include this treatment in their repertoire, even though neither they nor their patients may be familiar with the Arabic script or language. They use graphic symbols resembling Arabic script and the treatment does not lose its perceived efficacy. It seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that script and scripture have a dimension of aesthetic knowledge encoded in their sensual and material form that is perceived independently of the semantic content. This dimension of knowledge may be related to the prestige attached to the cultural technique of writing, the divinity of the specific text, or a wish to gain access to a dominant milieu. Specific sensory and emotional perceptions of the text vary from region to region, and among individual persons. Further in-depth study is required in order to better understand this kind of aesthetic knowledge (see Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume). Rudolph Ware (2014), a historian of Islam, has written extensively on Islamic scholarship in Senegal. For the contemporary period, he makes out two types of ideology with regard to the question which dimension of the Quranic text should be given precedence over the others. These schools of thought were already opposed to one another in early Islamic theology (Zadeh 2009). One ideological line insists on the semantic dimension, on rational theological debate, and, in modern times, on a type of schooling that foregrounds independent writing and reading skills. The other school grants the somatic dimension equal importance with the semantic dimension, meaning that the text directly affects the body. In this case, memorization, learning by heart, is the preferred method of instruction for young children in Quranic schools, and for scholars

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at institutions of higher learning, with emphasis on a strong teacher–student relationship. It is only within this pattern of thinking that drinking the Quran becomes a potentially efficacious medical practice.

CONCLUSION: AESTHETIC TEXTS AND LITERACY IDEOLOGIES An aesthetic approach to drinking the Quran and similar practices opens up new perspectives for historical and comparative studies across the disciplines, with particular emphasis on the combination of philological and anthropological methodologies. Aesthetics of religion connects linguistics with actor-oriented approaches—specifically semiotics and pragmatics—to social action, postcolonial theory, embodied cognition, and affect theory, which allows us to recognize dimensions of literacy from a number of different angles. The existence of texts alone does not mean that people can access the information they provide. From an early age, children in modern, Western-type schools are taught to read silently, their bodies are disciplined, and their emotions are curbed, while their ability to develop arguments from the texts they have read is trained. Thus, the idea that the information provided in texts should be available to everybody, and that the texts should be reflected on critically and independently, is a political ideology closely bound up with enlightenment philosophy as well as economically independent and technologically advanced middle classes. In the history of Arab and European medicine, there have always been close links with religious concepts and practices, whether Hellenistic, Islamic, or Christian. These links were gradually broken in Europe and America with the development of scientific medicine, while religion was relegated to the sphere of private reflection with no scientific relevance. With the concurrent rise of philology and text-critical methods, all links between scripture and practical medicine were severed in the academic study of religion and culture. Any attempt by practitioners to change this was—and still is—generally regarded as magic or superstition and thus ineffective by definition. Anyone who continues to drink the Quran in the hope of amelioration is considered to be incapable of rational thought. But if we accept that texts are embedded in a historically and culturally specific aesthetic ideology, then we must reappraise the academic understanding of texts and textuality. The idea that texts represent disembodied thoughts must be recognized as just one possible approach to texts. It is this link between semantics and rationality that is modeled in the rational subject. The aesthetic subject, as suggested by Koch (2015, Chapter 3, this volume), is a subject perceptive of aesthetic knowledge. It is not the materiality or immateriality of texts that is in question here (Keane 2013a)—because everything is materially mediated—but how we train our senses to perceive different kinds of materiality, how we interact with them, and how our perception of them shapes and is shaped by the knowledge we have of the world in which we live. Luhrmann (2004, Chapter 8, this volume) has observed how people communicate with God in evangelical churches by learning to enter into a mental state of absorption or metakinesis. Similarly, people are attuned cognitively to perceiving texts in their written, spoken, and tactile forms. Every culture and milieu has specific forms of attention to texts which can be taught through formal schooling, but which are usually transmitted through everyday non-verbal habituation.7 Efficacy of communication (e.g., bureaucratic documents, theological treatises, divine scripture) and transformation (e.g., acting on information received, prayers, healing) can only

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be achieved when the right kind of perceptual attention is actively directed toward the text in question.

RECOMMENDED READING Fox, Richard and Annette Hornbacher, eds. (2016), The Materiality and Efficacy of Balinese Letters: Situating Scriptural Practices, Leiden: Brill. Takes a closer look at sensory and ritual aspects of traditional Balinese script that continues to be used alongside the Latin alphabet. In her introduction, Hornbacher argues lucidly for an aesthetic re-evaluation of semiotic ideologies attached to script traditions. Myrvold, Kristina, ed. (2010), The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions, Farnham: Ashgate. The recognition that many sacred scriptures are ritually treated as people led to this collection of essays focusing on how to approach old books whose aesthetic efficacy is still in place. Ware, Rudolph (2014), The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Reconstructs the history of Islamic scholarship in Senegal, focusing specifically on the educational ideology of embodied learning underlying the strong emphasis on memorization. Watts, James, ed. (2013), Iconic Books and Texts, Sheffield: Equinox. Deals with the materiality and iconicity of scriptures in various religions, including ritual handling, clothing, and questions of secrecy and visibility.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Embodiment through Comics CHRIS KLASSEN

INTRODUCTION “The picture-story fantasy cuts loose the hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender spots of universal human desires and aspirations [. . .]. Comics speak, without qualm or sophistication, to the innermost ear of the wishful self. William Moulton Marsten, the creator of Wonder Woman (1943: 36) Comic books are an art form that integrates pictures and words in complex images that require reader participation to form a narrative. The most commonly repeated definition of comics comes from Scott McCloud, who claims that comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (1993: 9). The use of these images on paper makes comics a visual experience, which Christine Hoff Kraemer and A. David Lewis insist “is aesthetically unique and also potentially emotionally powerful” (2010: 3). Religious themes and practices have been present within the world of comics since their inception.1 In some cases, comics have deliberately told religious stories. For example, the Amar Chitra Katha series of comic books, which began in 1967, tell the stories of various Hindu gods and goddesses. In other cases, such as that of Superman, we get religious themes without explicit religious content, i.e., salvation, sacrifice, and questions of good and evil. Much of the work done on religion and comics has focused on narrative and meaning. However, the nature of comics as imagery requires a consideration of more than just ideas, but other sensory input allowed by the genre. This chapter will introduce the study of aesthetics of comics and how religious studies scholars are drawing on aesthetics to understand the religious experiences of comics. I will use two examples to show some of the potential for understanding aesthetics of religion in and through comics. Ms. Marvel is an example of a religious superhero marketed to a broad secular audience. As such, the series allows a consideration of the outward appearances of Islam within American culture and the aesthetics of spiritual quest through the practice of heroism. The second example comes from The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Here the embodiment of the Swamp Thing allows for a rethinking of “othered” bodies and the relationship between nature and cultures within the sacred. In both cases we have an engagement with ideas of embodiment, as well as expectations of embodied consumption of the cultural product. 165

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AESTHETICS OF COMICS Though comics are a visual medium, they typically encourage an engagement with other senses as well. The use of imagery invokes sound, smell, texture, taste, and emotional responses. As we engage with these images we, as readers, are required to use our imaginations, as shaped by our cultural expectations, to see, hear, and experience elements of the story that are not actually on the page. The page cannot screech at us, yet the word “screech” can be drawn in a specific way to indicate the sense of the sound: block letters with jagged edges to indicate the shrillness; an elongated style of lettering to indicate the length of sound; bold coloring bringing our attention to something imposing on the background. Each of these drawing styles brings to our ears, through the visual experience, the sound of a screech, though we cannot physically hear it. The drawing style of a word can bring meaning that the simple text, as typed on this page, cannot provide. Beyond the use of manipulation of letters into meaning-laden images, comics also use a system of frames and voids to prompt reader participation. These frames are the panels which contain moments of time and space; the voids are the gutters between the panels. Each panel can tell us some part of the narrative, but the gutters are also full of information. Something happens in the gutters, a movement from one panel to the next. How do we know what should be there? Our cultural imagination (see Traut and Wahl, Chapter 6, this volume) fills in the information by supplying what the most likely scenario is to get from one panel to the next. For example, the first panel may depict a root jutting out of brackish water. The second may be a bird flying among moss-covered trees. The third, a frog. We, as readers, put these images together to get a sense of the whole: a swamp. Scott McCloud calls this “closure”: “observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (1993: 63). Closure may be about putting images together into a spatial whole; or it may be about time and plot. McCloud continues, The comics creator asks us to join in a silent dance of the seen and the unseen. The visible and the invisible. This dance is unique to comics. No other artform gives so much to its audience while asking so much from them as well. This is why I think it’s a mistake to see comics as a mere hybrid of the graphic arts and prose fiction. What happens between these panels is a kind of magic only comics can create. —1993: 92; italics original The integration of pictures and words, in the context of panels and gutters, makes comics a unique visual experience. The sequence of images moves us in the direction the creators want us to go, but we are also implicated in the story. We make things happen in our imagination that we are not explicitly told must happen. As Douglas Rushkoff (2010: x) remarks, “the reader is asked to participate, willfully, in the assembly of a whole from the parts. It is the reader who makes sense of the narrative, connecting the panels and turning them from separated moments into a living story.” The kinds of stories found in comics have often been dismissed as simply the domain of children, with simplistic and predictable plots and characters. However, in the past few decades comics have been given significantly more attention in academic circles. As Mark Waid has pointed out, [c]omics aren’t just lines on paper; they’re a barometer of the times, a mirror reflective of culture. They’re a living chronicle of how we as a society view race and gender and fairness and equality, and they do so in a way that’s as entertaining as it can be sobering. —2015: x

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Sure, some comics are simplistic; some are predictable; some are for children, certainly. But they are cultural productions that engage readers in the issues of the day, often in much more sophisticated ways than they are given credit for. In looking at the relationship between comics and religion, we can see that many comics raise issues and present images that address the concerns of ultimate reality and the practices of religious being.

AESTHETICS OF COMICS AND RELIGION In his foreword to the anthology Graven Images: Religion in Comics Books and Graphic Novels, Douglas Rushkoff insists that “Comics have always been about mythic narratives and beings” (2010: ix). This is particularly the case with the superhero genre of comics. The superhero genre is full of moral imperatives and a search for goodness, even as it tends to focus on the insidiousness of evil. Ben Saunders explores this genre in his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? (2011). He argues that superhero comics are necessarily religious because they address the same concerns raised in many religious contexts. He argues, Superheroes do not render sacred concepts in secular terms for a skeptical modern audience, as is sometimes claimed. They do something more interesting; they deconstruct the oppositions between sacred and secular, religion and science, god and man, the infinite and the finite, by means of an impossible synthesis. They are therefore fantasy solutions to some of the central dichotomies of modernity itself. —2011: 143 Saunders points to the possibility in superhero comics to move beyond the sacred/profane dichotomy so popular in some religious studies theories, to see the potential of religious importance in places not typically seen as religious. In fact, he suggests that superhero comics belie a concern with the decrease of religious sensibilities. Whether people are attending religious institutional gatherings or not, they are engaged with mythic narrative and asking the big questions of life. Don LoCicero (2008) and Greg Garrett (2008) make similar claims. Each of these scholars points to similarities in religious mythology and superhero narratives in terms of themes, imagery, and reader engagement. While the exploration of the mythic narratives found in comics is important within the context of religious studies, as Nathan Gibbard points out, “the focus on comics as myth, though, has meant that the textual narrative has been the main focus of study, to the virtual exclusion of careful and sustained analyses of the visual religious elements of the graphic narrative” (2017: 164). The aesthetic engagement with comics within religious studies is heavily weighted on the written narrative. But as we have already seen, comics are so much more than a text. They engage multiple senses to draw readers/audience/fans into a more encompassing sensory experience. The rest of this chapter will explore some ways that religious studies scholars can engage with the full experience of comics through image and cultural imagination and formulations of new images and narratives of embodiment in the sacred.

MS. MARVEL: BRINGING ISLAM INTO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE Ms. Marvel joined the Marvel universe in 1977. The original Ms. Marvel was a blonde, blue-eyed poster girl for American identity: Carol Danvers, one-time officer in the United

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States Air Force. She worked in conjunction with Captain Marvel, at that time an alien on earth by the name of Mar-Vell. Later in 2012, after the death of Mar-Vell, Carol Danvers took on the moniker of Captain Marvel herself. In 2014 a new Ms. Marvel was created, Pakistani-American Muslim teenager, Kamala Khan. Kamala was created by Sana Amanat, G. Willow Wilson, and Adrian Alphona. She is the first Muslim main character in an American comic book. As a Muslim young woman of color, Kamala is faced with numerous challenges, not only in the form of supervillains, but also of social hierarchies, and juggling her religion, family, school, and superpowers. Her transition into superpowers, in the first volume of the new Ms. Marvel, also incorporates a series of questions about moral and visual identity: What does it take to be a hero? What does a hero look like? Kamala’s transition into a superheroine comes after she is caught in a cloud of Terrigan Mist. Terrigan Mist is a substance that affects Inhumans, a group of people living on earth with alien DNA. The Terrigan Mist causes powers in Kamala, who has Inhuman ancestry, to develop. She is able to shapeshift, including turning her hands into enormous fists that she first uses to pull a classmate out of the river. Elsewhere she uses her fists to fight. When Kamala is overwhelmed by the Terrigan Mist she encounters Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers), Captain America, and Iron Man. In this encounter the three older superheroes are drawn in a style Ernesto Priego (2016) sees as reminiscent of Christian depictions of saints and angels:2 Captain Marvel is floating in clouds with her hands up at her sides, palms up. Captain America and Iron Man are on either side of her, slightly behind. There are approximately ten birds flying around them, along with a few other animals (including a fish on Captain America’s shoulder). Captain Marvel is reciting a poem in Urdu: Sakal bun phool rahi sarson, Sakal bun phool rahi. . . Umbva phutay, tesu phulay Koyal bolay daar daar, Aur gori karat singaarn Iron Man and Captain America provide the English translation: “The yellow mustard is blooming in every field, the yellow mustard is blooming . . . Mango buds click open, other flowers too, the koyal twitters from branch to branch and the maiden tries on her adornments.” Sophia Rose Arjana and Kim Fox suggest that this image, if one is aware of the cultural imagination of Muslim poetry, is not Christian, as Priego suggests, but rather very Muslim. They make this claim based on both text and picture. The text is from thirteenth-century Indian Sufi poet Amir Khusro. The inclusion of the birds is tied to the imagery within another Muslim poet: Farid ud-Din Attar. The combination marks the image, for Arjana and Fox, as one of “someone embarking on a spiritual quest, much like Attar’s birds” (Arjana and Fox 2017: 48). In this analysis, Kamala becoming Ms. Marvel is analogous to beginning a spiritual quest to come closer to God. This idea is reinforced when Kamala is faced with her first challenge: deciding to actually take on the mantle of Ms. Marvel. She says to herself, “There’s this ayah from the Quran that my dad always quotes when he sees something bad on TV. A fire or a flood or a bombing. ‘Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind—and whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.’ ” Kamala draws on her Muslim teachings to understand her role as Ms. Marvel: God has given her this task and she must accept. For Arjana and Fox, this makes Ms. Marvel “an Islamic teaching text” (2017: 65).

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Related to the Muslim base of Kamala’s heroism is the eventual image of her Ms. Marvel persona. When first encountering Captain Marvel, Kamala wants to be just like her. Kamala is a superhero fan; she is a bit starstruck when she encounters Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Iron Man. When it turns out that she is also superpowered, her first shape-change takes the form of a blonde, buxom, scantily clad Ms. Marvel, à la 1970s Carol Danvers. This is what she thinks a superheroine should look like. However, she is uncomfortable in this flesh. The outfit is more revealing than she is comfortable with. The whiteness and blondness are denials of her Pakistani family and history. She does not feel like “herself ” in this body. Miriam Kent suggests this is indicative of the themes of this comic book: intersectionality and diversity. Kent writes, Interestingly, Kamala’s powers are an externalization of Kamala’s inner conflict: if only she could change herself, then she would be happy and fit in. However, she soon realizes that in order to fit in, she would have to compromise her own identity. This crucial development in Kamala’s character resonates with issues of assimilation and arguably represents an embrace of her “otherness.” —2015: 525 In order to claim her identity, Kamala learns to keep her Pakistani image and incorporates a burkini, a swimming outfit with long sleeves, pants, and a short “skirt,” in her superhero costume. She is, after all, a Muslim girl, and a Muslim superheroine. Kamala Khan, as Ms. Marvel, challenges the normative image of an American superheroine. In her gradual acceptance of both her powers and her identity as a PakistaniAmerican Muslim she incorporates her religious, racial, and familial identity into her superheroine identity. The visual representation of a brown girl, body covered, without explicit sexualization, pushes readers/audience to consider the diversity within American people and to rethink stereotypes of Muslims in general, and Muslim women specifically. Kamala is not a stereotype. As Arjana and Fox point out, Ms. Marvel does not provide us with orientalist assumptions about Muslim women. Kamala’s best friend is veiled, but Kamala herself is not. The specifics of Muslim dress are varied in the comic book, just as in real life. In fact, as Sarah Gibbons has suggested, “the comic eschews normality in favor of embracing alterity and celebrating hybridity” (2017: 451). Gibbons’ examination of Kamala’s powers of flexibility and shape-changing focuses on the context of American discourses of diversity and the Other. She argues that “the series uses Kamala’s nonconforming body, which changes shape from panel to panel and sometimes extends beyond their confines, as a means of exploring social, political, and economic issues” (452). As such, Gibbons compares Ms. Marvel to the X-Men series that questions normalcy and the need to conform. X-Men places mutants in the category of the Other, and parallels their experiences with those of “real-life” Others: racialized people, queer people, disabled people. While Kamala is not a mutant, she is Inhuman. The connection is made when Ms. Marvel encounters Wolverine, who takes on a mentor-type role for her. Like the mutants of X-Men, Kamala is faced with discrimination and pressure to “fit in.” Also, like many of the X-Men, she resists this call to normalcy. Gibbons suggests, Ms. Marvel takes up similar themes of marginalisation and alienation in its depiction of freaked and Othered bodies, but it represents diverse individuals in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and ability; the comic in this way moves beyond solely using fantastical mutation as a metaphor for realistic forms of difference. —2017: 453

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THE SWAMP THING: EXPANDING THE SACRED THROUGH TRANS-CORPOREAL EMBODIMENT When the story of the Swamp Thing begins in 1972, we are introduced to an American gothic scene, or, more specifically, what Bernice M. Murphy (2013) calls the rural, or backwoods, gothic. This rural gothic reflects an American fear of the wilderness tied to colonial experiences and desires to control nature. Nature that was uncontrolled, or uncontrollable, was perceived as evil, the devil’s playground. Stories of the wilderness having consciousness, and desiring to harm humans, or humans who identify too fully with the wilderness desiring to harm civilized society, are common in American literature. These stories often include occult elements: the devil, demons, witches, secret rites, etc. They also often include hapless urbanites going into the woods to relax or work in an isolated cabin, with little understanding of the dangers that may face them. The Swamp Thing starts out with very clear clues that it fits within this American rural gothic genre. The colors are dark greens, suggesting a deep wilderness in which “the darkness cries.” We have images of animals, but they are implicated by the captions. The herons are “screaming” and heading towards the “angry heavens.” The bullfrogs sing their “nightsong in eager anticipation” (of what, we are left to imagine). The reptiles are “uncaring” under a “cloud-cloaked moon.” Overall this swamp is described as “primitive,” “desolate,” “forsaken by civilized man.” In the final panel of the page we see the intruders—a red car driving through the swamp on a “rainy, wind-swept night.” Can it be more cliched? We are clearly prepared now for a gothic story of man meets beast in the unknown wilds. Turn the page, and there’s the beast: “the misshapen monstrosity” of the Swamp Thing (Wein et al., issue 1). The first episode takes us through the origin story. Dr. Alec Holland and Dr. Linda Holland have come to a secret facility in an old barn out in the Louisiana swamp to work on their bio-restorative formula that, if they are successful, would enable people to grow crops anywhere, including the inhospitable climate of the desert, thus ending world hunger. While working on their project, the Drs. Holland are visited by representatives of the Conclave (the bad guys that we do not learn much about until later in the series) who try to pressure them into selling their formula. Our friendly scientists nobly refuse. One night while working alone Alec finds a bomb in his lab just as it explodes. He runs, burning, out of the explosion into the swamp where his bio-restorative formula mixes with his own cells and that of the swamp to create . . . the Swamp Thing: a humanoid made of green matter. Everyone else thinks he is dead. Much of the first series of The Swamp Thing involves Alec coming to terms with being the Swamp Thing. He believes himself to be monstrous, a “muck-encrusted shambling mockery of life.” He has been “deformed” by a scientific/industrial accident and initially does not want to accept his new reality. Yet, even as he struggles with his own body, he is also bound by his sense of justice to help others. And so, we have a monster in a rural gothic context who is, in fact, the hero of the story—a twist on the typical gothic tropes. In popular cultural representations the monster is typically the symbol of the Other: that which we fear will harm us, but more importantly that which we fear to become. As Alexa Wright reminds us, “within a world-view that understands the ‘normal’ body as an ideal physical and symbolic expression of certainty and order in society, the body of the monster has historically represented that which is disproportionate, or out of place” (2013: 48). Often that “out of place” monster is signified by a deformed, mutilated, or mutated body, thus implicating those without so-called normal bodies as monsters. This

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is perhaps most poignantly seen in the nineteenth-century freak shows that epitomized the uncertainty of the boundaries of human life. Viewers were both fascinated and horrified by the possibilities of the human body that did not fit their idea of the norm: dwarfs, bearded women, pin-heads, the fat lady, the man with no arms, etc. The horror, of course, lay in the possibility that the audience, or their progeny, might become monstrous too. These cultural representations both entertained and regulated the borders of human normality. Disability studies draws on the history of these representations of the monstrous body as well as current-day assumptions of the problematic disabled body as needing fixing. Rosemary Garland-Thomson, working within feminist disability studies (e.g. 2005), asserts, the stories we collectively know shape the material world, inform human relations, and mold our sense of who we are. Because prevailing narratives constrict disability’s complexities, they not only restrict the lives and govern the bodies of people we think of as disabled, but they limit the imaginations of those who think of themselves as nondisabled. —2005: 1567 Categories of the disabled body limit our understanding of the human body: disability is used to define the norm by being on the outside of the border. Stories like The Swamp Thing suggest a new norm: the “monstrous” as an essential part of the community of life in its varying embodiments. Len Wein’s monster is a hero. He is good, though complicated. He does hate his monstrous body at first, as he falls into the assumption that he can no longer be “human” in the way he conceived of humanity. However, he uses his monstrosity to challenge evil and oppression. In The Swamp Thing we are enticed to like the monster, to rally in his defense, to dismiss the fears of him as misunderstanding. After Len Wein stopped writing The Swamp Thing, the original series began to decline in popularity and ended in 1976. In 1982, DC renewed the character in The Saga of the Swamp Thing, largely to capitalize on Wes Craven’s cinematic adaptation of The Swamp Thing. By 1984 the new series was ailing, and DC brought in Alan Moore as a new voice to try to breathe new life into the comic. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing goes through a radical renovation altering the original story, which has some interesting consequences. It takes about four issues to fully set out this new story, but the gist of it is that the Swamp Thing never was Alec Holland. Alec Holland died in the explosion of his lab. However, his memories were somehow embedded into the swamp life around his corpse. The organic life of the swamp developed a body based on those memories and thought itself to be Alec Holland. Rather than a deformed, mutated human, the Swamp Thing is actually a personification of the life force of nature; he is a nature god. He is connected to all of the “green” world. Eventually he even learns how to let go of his current body and regrow a new body in another part of the globe. The change in origin stories can be read as the Swamp Thing misunderstanding who he was originally, but now coming to see that he is not human at all (see Cortsen 2014). However, I believe this to be a narrow interpretation. I am more inclined toward Robin Alex McDonald and Dan Vena’s interpretation as the change being “from conceiving of the monster as Alec trapped within the swamp to imagining the swamp as merging with the traces of Alec’s human subjectivity and memory” (2016: 198; italics original). The Swamp Thing comes to realize that he incorporates both the human and the green within a sacred whole; he embodies the trans-corporeal intra-action of all life.

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Trans-corporeality is a concept I have drawn from Stacey Alaimo’s material feminism. It is a recognition of the permeability of boundaries that leads to a rethinking of categories of “me,” “you,” “us,” and “them.” Alaimo writes, “Imagining human corporeality as trans-corporeality, in which the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-human world, underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’ ” (2010: 2). When we recognize that our bodies are not distinct units of matter separate from the rest of the world around us, we begin to move away from a self-centered, human-centered worldview that allows for categories such as “norm,” “deviance,” and “other.” All of us are part of each other, and by “all of us” I do not just mean humans. Because of this, Karen Barad suggests a discursive framework of “intra-action” rather than “interaction.” In her essay, “Posthumanist Performativity,” Barad argues, “matter does not refer to a fixed substance; rather, matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing, but a doing, a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (2008: 139; italics original). The Swamp Thing of Moore’s storytelling is, in many senses, a posthuman hero. Margrit Shildrick suggests that monsters typically do move into a posthuman position. She writes, “the issue is not so much that monsters threaten to overrun the boundaries of the proper, as that they promise to dissolve them” (1996: 2). It is this dissolving of boundaries of the “proper,” or the “normal,” that leads to the posthuman. Posthumanism is essentially a perspective that suggests the modern Cartesian concept of the human— individual, autonomous, self-defined by rationality and control of bodily function—is not only outdated, but never has been reflective of the realities of life on earth. The only humans who ever fit the model completely were wealthy, white, heterosexual men, and even they could rarely claim complete autonomous rationality or bodily control. This definition of the ideal human left most in the category of “deviant”; this is particularly true of people with disabilities, as well as women, racialized, and/or queer people. In a later writing, Shildrick suggests, “the issue is not one of revaluing differently embodied others, but of rethinking the nature of embodiment itself ” (2002). The Swamp Thing of Wein begins to revalue the differently embodied. The Swamp Thing of Moore rethinks the nature of embodiment itself. What is a body? The Swamp Thing’s body is unbounded; he can regrow himself. The Swamp Thing’s body can be shared, in the eating of his fruit as evidenced by the sexual encounter between the Swamp Thing and Abby. Each of these actions disrupts the notion of the autonomous self. This unboundedness also fits within a queer positionality, challenging norms of gender and sexuality. Alec Holland starts off as a white, heterosexual man. He ends up incorporated into a plant-based thing in sexual relations with a human woman. The sexuality represented is not analogous to heterosexuality though. This is because it is unclear how the Swamp Thing fits into the category of man (or any “normative” gender). Francisco Sáez de Adana (2015) points out that the Swamp Thing does not epitomize normative masculinity in that he often chooses dialogue over violence in confronting those who are unjust. An example here is his convincing the Floronic Man to stop his genocidal attack on all humans, rather than engaging in a physical fight as you would find in most superhero comics. McDonald and Vena (2016) also point out that in the sexual relationship between the Swamp Thing and his lover, Abby, we have a sharing of the body that is non-phallic. In fact, the Swamp Thing does not seem to have a penis. Though some commentators, such as Sáez de Adana (2015) and Matthew Candelaria (2012), suggest that means his sexual relationship with Abby is not fully physical, clearly that is a phallocentric opinion. McDonald and Vena suggest thinking of the Swamp Thing as

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“thing” rather than “man” or “human” helps to conceptualize the challenge to normative embodiment and allows for a critical queering of the posthuman monster. They write, [e]ven in consideration of the creature’s frequent masculine gendering and anthropomorphism, the possible coding of his relationship with Abby as conventionally monogamous and cisheterosexual is effectively destroyed when we reread Swamp Thing as a thing, a materiality that cannot meet the stringent morphological demands that constitute traditional able-bodied, reproductive, monogamous, cis- and heteronormative frameworks of sexuality. —2016: 199 The Swamp Thing grows fruit for Abby to eat, which leads to an orgasmic melding of the two. Their boundaries are disintegrated, and they become each other. The queerness of this relationship, again, points to a disruption of the norms of human autonomy and normality and a trans-corporeal posthumanism. In each of these origin stories we see a challenge to the normative human body, and a sacralization of the monstrous. In Wein’s Swamp Thing, this sacralization leads to a growing acceptance of the monstrous body as one of value, contribution, and community participation. The heroic monster pushes readers into rethinking what is normal and what is good. Sacred value lies in the acceptance of those who may seem different than the norm, in expanding the norm to include multiple variants of embodiment. Moore pushes the challenge further. Now readers are asked to rethink the idea of a norm, not just what makes up the norm. The trans-corporeality of the Swamp Thing requires a rethinking of the human and the place of humanity within the larger world. It is not just that this new nature god version of the Swamp Thing re-sacralizes the “green”; it rethinks the very relationship between nature and culture and any other binaries tied to that relationship. The sacred is the intra-action, it is the process of being. This story makes narratable a kind of sacred inclusion that dissolves the very categories of “normal,” “natural,” and “human.”

CONCLUSION Ms. Marvel and The Saga of the Swamp Thing are comics that require engagement with embodiment and reconsideration of norms and Othering. The use of picture and words in sequential imagery, while primarily a visual experience, pushes readers/audience/fans to fully immerse their senses into the comic experience, and to think about the relationship between the senses of their body and the world around them. We can embrace the spiritual journey of Kamala through both the imagery presented and the narrative of self-discovery, as Arjana and Fox do by naming Ms. Marvel an “Islamic teaching text” (2017: 65). We can challenge the normative white, Christian, American identity and politics though our immersion into Kamala’s world, through the necessary participatory nature of comic book reading. We can embrace the spiritual connections amongst all life if we identify with the Swamp Thing, as both Wein and Moore would like us to do. Again, we can challenge the normative rational, independent self through our immersion with the Swamp Thing’s trans-corporeal intra-action. Though our primary sensory input is visual, our participatory experience has the potential to bring the feeling of a plant—green, swampy, mucky—into our own embodiment. In both cases, these sensory experiences allow us to partake in a sacred world that is not just on paper, but potentially lives within our own imaginations and within our further embodied engagement with the world beyond the comic book.

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RECOMMENDED READING Lewis, A. David and Christine Hoff Kraemer (eds.) (2010), Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels, London: Continuum. Collects a variety of studies of the intersection between religion and comics. McCloud, Scott (1993), Understanding Comics, New York: HarperPerennial. The go-to text for an introduction to comics, covering the artistic style and cultural significance of the genre. Shildrick, Margrit (2002), Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self, London: Sage. Foundational text on the importance of analyzing the use and place of the monstrous in popular culture.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gendered Performativity1 SHAIREEN RASHEED

INTRODUCTION: GENDERED PERFORMATIVITY AND THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGIOUS FEMINISM The current politicized view of an Islamic identity in South Asia and the Global South presents one model for Muslim women and the so-called Western emancipatory liberal view presents another. Acting as two contradictory poles of desire reinforcing a structured ambivalence within the notion of the “ideal Muslim woman” reduces her to the same symbols and icons. Western stereotypical views offer a descriptive and devalued essentialist imaginary of Islam through articles of faith, including the hijab as a vehicle of oppression. Moreover, stereotypically, views from an interpretation of political Islam by contrast address the needs of contemporary women and present so-called “Islamically” inspired solutions though persuasion and, at times, coercion. It is important to emphasize that what is being silenced in this discussion is the Muslim woman discussed here. Her particularized agency has been taken away from her in the absence of institutional state support or ideological support from secular feminists who are often critical of “a visibly Muslim feminist identity.” Consequently, certain grassroots women’s movements in the Global South are forced to make alternative alliances by realigning themselves within civil society in performative and aesthetic ways to justify their feminist identities. In this essay, I explain the limitations of the argument that Muslim women in these situations are making a political and/or a religious choice to conform to Islamist norms, for example with their dress and their “moral policing” of values. By destabilizing normative constructions of what it means to be pious and a feminist, I explain how Muslim women in certain religious contexts are performing their religious-political identity by subverting aesthetic norms of gender, religion, and violence in politicized public spaces. The aesthetic approach that is being proposed asks: how are the senses stimulated, governed, and disciplined in the context of religious practice? How are religious experiences, emotions, and attitudes created, memorized, and normalized? How do religious perceptual orders interact with those of a larger culture? Focusing on the process of aisthesis, and how humans understand their world through the senses, is not an overall critique directed against text and belief or questions of meaning. On the contrary, sensing, perceiving, and meaning-making are viewed as a continuum that we distinguish for analytical purposes, not for making ontological statements (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 2). What I want to elucidate with the help of the Red Mosque case study in Islamabad, Pakistan is the nuanced performative discourse and actions that emerged in the outwardly religious, political, and gendered images and aesthetics of the Jamia Hafsa women as they 175

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reclaimed the narrative of piety, empowerment, and agency in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad. On July 3, 2007, a battle ensued between the Pakistani Security forces and students of Lal Masjid when law-enforcement agencies extended the barbwire around the Masjid. The events surrounding the Red Mosque were couched in the discourse of religious rights and identity as they related to the burqa-wearing and fully veiled women from the Jamia Hafsa school for women who took up arms inside the mosque. Using the Red Mosque siege as a case study, I argue that these women used a variety of visual and performative narratives to negotiate their identities as feminists within the larger political, religious, and social framework of which they were a part. The aesthetic spaces created by the religious-performative narratives of the Jamia Hafsa women, centering on body and land/nation discourse, are fluid and sophisticated in their presentation and ritualization. Finally, I want to emphasize that their religious narratives are often “ritualized” and performed in various spaces and styles, and that they remain crucial to the “everyday” politics of the Jamia Hafsa women. The Red Mosque violence was shaped by the aesthetics of the nation and the body, and this aesthetics offers us a new lens to understand how everyday notions of gender and cultural performativity in these spaces are constructed.

LITERATURE REVIEW Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnson formulated an aesthetics of religion to include a “repertoire of practices—ways of seeing or listening, cultivating the body, implementing embodied values and imaginations—and the repertoire of products that developed in the context of religious traditions—images, architecture, texts and dances, and the institutions that teach, traditionalise and evaluate them” (2017b: 21). Similarly, Akanksha Mehta articulated that the “aesthetic turn” (for political theory, see Bleiker 2001) as a methodology has contextualized the study of violence and gender as it relates to war and conflict outside the mainstream understanding of extremism and fundamentalism (Mehta 2015). However, Mehta correctly identified that there exist silences and gaps in the literature on aesthetics and politics when it comes to aesthetic sources produced, constructed, and appropriated by the female perpetrators and enablers of “everyday” violence. In her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler claimed that what we think of sex and its connections to gender as masculinity and femininity is often a reflection of a person performing gender in a way that is socially recognizable (Butler 1990). People, through their visual, sensual, verbal actions, use the materialized body to designate themselves as women or men. Consequently, they adhere to social constructions of gender at the same time as they reinforce societal expectations for men and women. Butler claimed that gender performances that subvert normative discourses on gender expression show the ways in which gender is culturally constructed. They also disrupt what has been seen as somehow inherently natural (Helman 2015). Butler’s main argument, in addition to deconstructing the culturally constructed nature of the sex and gender formulations, also explores the role of individual agency to perform gender in ways that disrupt the power of natural notions. For Butler, subversive gender performance creates more freedom in society, hopefully undermining misogyny and disrupting patriarchal power. Butler suggests and Helman concurs that religiosity building on performativity is another way of marking gender identity.

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Saba Mahmood is a renowned anthropologist who called for greater scrutiny of notions of freedom, agency, and emancipation, which in liberal/Western discourse have come to be “naturalized in the scholarship on gender.” She further expressed concern that, despite the post-structuralist decentering of concepts, normative agency for women has always meant resistance to established norms (Mahmood 2001). In her book The Politics of Piety (2005) Mahmood argued in her analysis of the women’s mosques in Egypt that women participating in religious movements should lead us to reconceptualize constructions of human agency in the current feminist discourse She asserted that existing notions of agency as comprehended in current feminist discourses are too limited for understanding the lives of devout Muslim women. She proposed that despite their inclusionary intentions, existing feminist accounts of agency of religiously defined women may obfuscate rather than clarify our understanding of these gendered subjects. Even as post-structuralist accounts disrupt the ungendered autonomous subject of liberal social and political thought, Mahmood argued, they tend to reinstate the secular subject of feminist thought in ways that erase the religious subjectivity and agency of the Islamic woman (2005). They do so by continuing to rely on secular discursive frameworks built on ideas of resistance, autonomy, and self-fulfillment to explain the agency of Muslim women, including Islamic feminists. Mahmood’s book is an anthropological study of a women’s piety movement that is part of a larger Islamic movement in Egypt. She based her study on fieldwork conducted over two years, from 1995 to 1997, in three mosques in Cairo. Each of these sites, where the da’iya or female preacher adopts a distinctive pedagogical style, is deemed to represent a different socioeconomic section of the city. In this movement of piety, women from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds take up lessons for one another on the proper reading of the Quran, the Islamic scriptures. The sociological significance of this is that it marks the first time in Egyptian history that women in large numbers have taken on a task historically appropriated by men, altering, as Mahmood argued, the male character of the mosque and the Islamic pedagogic practices associated with it. However, she cautioned against a feminist interference that would understand these changes as modes of gendered resistance to patriarchal structures. Such a conception of a pious women’s agency would reinstate the normative liberal discourse of politics based on freedom and rights. Instead, she argued that agency must be thought of not necessarily in secular terms of selffulfillment and empowerment, but also in terms of hope, fear, and religious virtue; this requires a different subjectivity from the secular liberal discourse of right. In her introductory essay titled “Revisiting Civil Religion from an Aesthetic Point of View,” Anne Koch explores the multifaceted analysis of civil religion as it manifests itself in varied cultural and social contexts, often in combination with the aesthetic perspective (Koch 2017b). As Koch correctly articulated, this understanding of aesthetics, and the reasons why scholars consider it as providing a pool of descriptive terms, analytical concepts, and systematic questions, allows us to understand the role of religions because they in “their variety become ‘effective’ on the levels of intellect, emotions, intuition and sensation” (Koch 2017b: 13). The recent understanding of aesthetics has changed from a normative philosophy of art and beauty into an analytic concept for the study of culture. Moreover, what has been achieved by applying aesthetic concepts to the existing study of religion allows us to differentiate between a repertoire of religious aesthetics to be investigated, and an aesthetics of religion that provides a platform for theorizing religion in light of perceptions of time, space, and self (Koch 2017b).

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THE RED MOSQUE CASE STUDY In 2007, women students belonging to a religious school or madrassa called Jamia Hafsa, which is part of the Lal Masjid mosque in the capital city of Islamabad, illegally occupied the premises adjoining the mosque land in protest against the government’s threat to demolish and reclaim it as a suspected hotbed for terrorist indoctrination. The Jamia Hafsa students, who saw themselves as the safeguards and vigilantes of the religion, engaged in policing practices, such as selling music, improper attire, and demanding that video shops shut down. They also kidnapped a woman from the neighborhood suspected of running a prostitution business and only released her once she “repented.” A few months later, in July 2007, General Musharraf, the army chief, was instructed to dismantle the religious school and the mosque where the militant women of Jamia Hafsa were living. On his watch and under his guidance, the state troops stormed the seminary, leading to the death of many in the mosque. While the government denied that any female students were killed in the shootout, there has been no transparent inquiry or report on the action. During the siege, the government security forces alleged that the women and two other clerics in the mosque compound were armed with sophisticated weaponry and bombs, and that suicide bombers were living among them. “Television pictures of a young woman carrying an AK-47 rifle inside the library shocked many Pakistanis” (Qandeel 2008). Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, one of the two clerics, was killed in the attack by the security forces, while his brother, Maulana Abdul Aziz, came under police detention after trying to escape the building in disguise—wearing a burqa— even before the security forces launched their attack (Parashar 2010). Many women died in the attacks, although precise numbers have been withheld. Swati Parashar in her essay “The Sacred and the Secular” asked: how do we understand agency, empowerment in the lives of these women? As she wrote, “If religion and religious politics are understood to be upholding patriarchal values that can very often deny women public presence and even visibility, how does the gendered religio-political space respond to women’s activism and participation including in the violence and in the militancy?” (2010: 436) The gendered religio-political space as witnessed in the Jamia Hafsa episode pushed “the militant discourse” of women in the conservative religious parties to the forefront and highlighted in the media the women’s radical religious activism, which would break all boundaries and also embrace violence in the pursuit of ideology. However, it is worth remembering that the women in the Jamaat-e-Islami party of Pakistan have for a long time considered Islam to be central to their political activism and don’t see themselves as militants who need to be rescued by the militants (Parashar 2010: 436–7). Openly sympathetic to the Taliban and tribal militants fighting Pakistan’s army, the two cleric brothers who headed Lal Masjid—Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi—were supported by the Jamia Hafsa women or the “burqa brigade,” as they are called in Pakistan, which was composed of women wielding sticks and fully clad in black burqas to hide their faces (see Figure 16.1). Analysts suggested that the stick-wielding, burqa-clad women shown in the photo who had illegally occupied the compound were being used as human shields by the clerics of the Lal Masjid, but the women told a different story. To quote one “rescued” woman who was interviewed after the military operation, “We were here of our own free will and of the desire of martyrdom. We spent five years here and cannot leave our madrassa. We were ready to sacrifice the last drop of our blood for our teacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz Sahib” (Parashar 2010: 441).

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FIGURE 16.1: Veiled female students of the Islamic seminary Jamia Hafsa hold bamboos as they chant slogans during a protest demanding the release of their teachers, Wednesday, March 28, 2007 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Authorities arrested four of the seminary’s teachers in connection with the abduction. With jihadist songs playing on the loudspeakers of a neighboring mosque, about 200 students staged a protest at the school demanding their release. AP Photo/Anjum Naveed.

What is evident from the Jamia Hafsa episode has been the policing of women’s bodies and sexuality, carried out by women themselves. As Parashar states: Women’s political activism in religious projects which enforce a patriarchal agenda offers opportunities as well as challenges to feminists. Opportunities, because women’s politics and support to ideologies opens up spaces for engaging with feminist aspirations and agenda challenging. Challenges, because within religio-political projects, women’s access to public spaces and politics is governed by a desire to achieve patriarchal ends. So, while these are opportunities available to women to participate in public debates and politics that shape the lives of people and states, the aim of such politics is to ensure an ‘ideal’ patriarchal state and societal system, where women are domesticated, silenced and rendered invisible as they uphold the conservative norms of subdued femininity. The critical question then is about the kind of agency and empowerment these women may exercise (if at all). —2010: 451 Women, as elucidated in the Jamia Hafsa example, have acquired a new social mobility through their gendered performance of their religious politics in an aesthetic dimension/

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with aesthetic means/media. As Parashar articulated, they use their “status of ‘religious warriors’ to negotiate on specific gender issues; they physically threaten men and often collectively secure benefits for the slum women. They have creatively deployed violence to their advantage. Although basic poverty remains unchallenged in the lives of these women living in slums, the minimum concessions they have secured through their violence and activism have been used to their advantage” (Parashar 2010: 453). Faisal Devji’s essay on the Red Mosque points out that what we see in the case of the Lal Masjid is an example of the gradual transformation, or at least “flattening out, of Islamic militancy,” which in many parts of the world has been weaned from its dependence on highly organized or institutional forms to become yet another kind of voluntary association that individuals join for personal reasons, often as part-time members rather than full-time radicals (Devji 2008). What Devji finds interesting about this flattening out of militancy as it spreads through society is the fact that it changes not into a popular or national movement as much as into a relatively open and undisciplined sort of activism within civil society. Devji’s essay makes an important point that the language deployed by the mosque’s teachers and students during the controversy was strongly marked by the vocabulary of development, transparency, and accountability that is the vocabulary of NGOs and other civil society organizations. They made use of this common and “secular” language during the controversy rather than employing the usual sectarian tirades. This language was matched in its “secularity” by the fact that the female students in the complex were taught English and science, thus departing from the usual stereotype of a radical madrassa, given that English and science are the very subjects that “secularists” insist upon when talking about madrassa reformation. When Al-Jazeera reporter Rageh Omaar described the Lal Masjid as a “conservative” institution, Ghazi rejected this appellation precisely by pointing to the institution’s women’s madrassa, which he claimed was not only the world’s largest but also included English and science in its curriculum (Devij 2008: 22–3). Devji’s point is that we might be able to account for these phenomena by seeing the Red Mosque crisis as one of traditionally organized “fundamentalism” of the militant kind, by its gradual opening up to the forms and vocabulary of civil society actors like NGOs, especially in the kind of part-time and extracurricular activism that differs radically from the closed and cult-like character that is so often said to mark radical groups. For one, Devji noted that the women’s kidnappings and forcible closing of immoral businesses were attempts to court publicity that resulted less in meting out any Islamic punishments, but in the almost Maoist “re-education” and subsequent release of alleged prostitutes. For another, Devji noted that the presence of large numbers of armed and veiled women at the Red Mosque harked back to the images and participation of women in the revolutionary Shiism of Iran or Lebanon rather than to the masculine character of Sunni militancy, especially of the anti-Shiite kind that we are told dominated the Red Mosque. In statements and interviews before its siege, the residents of the Red Mosque mentioned such civil society issues as the lack of security, transparency, and equal opportunity in Pakistan instead of any specifically religious subject. This suggests the mutation of Sunni militancy into the kind of mobilization that is neither nationalist nor in fact militant in any professional way, but perhaps nongovernmental. What Devji suggests thus implies that the Red Mosque was linked more to the everyday and even secular practices of modern life in the region than to any religious or cult behavior (see Binder, Chapter 24, this volume). This is made clear because it was the supposedly traditional Maulana Abdul Aziz who tried to escape the besieged institution,

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not his more modern brother, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who had studied history at Pakistan’s most prestigious university and worked for UNESCO (Devij 2008: 25).

AESTHETICS OF RELIGION AND A GENDERED POLITICS OF PERFORMATIVITY Engaging in the dichotomizing dominant/resistance discourses when it comes to Jamia Hafsa women is not very helpful, and current feminist theorists are moving away from such analyses to more nuanced exploration of how gendered performativity is played out in public spaces. Scholars studying religious politics are now reworking ways of understanding religion and religious beliefs in a manner that moves away from liberal, rights-based discourse. That is where Mahmood helps us make feminist sense of the activities of the women in the aesthetics of the theaters of war with which this essay has engaged. It is not uncommon for women’s religious groups from Jamaat Islamia and Jamia Hafsa to use a civil religious framework to take up various causes to promote better living conditions for women, protect their civic and legal rights and free education, and set up Islamic universities. An important aspect in the Jamaat Islamia and Jamia Hafsa activism has been their protests and activism against the perceived secularization of the state of Pakistan. The women of the Jamia Hafsa, who were “rescued” by the state security forces, expressed their anger at a state and government (then led by General Musharraf) that was moving away from Islamic principles and adopting a secular/pro-Western idiom. Of course, all of the activities undertaken by these women were conducted under a strict Islamic religious code of conduct. According to Amina Jamal, it is in the process of making entitlements and claims on the nation state that feminists, including women’s movements in Muslim majority societies such as Pakistan, must come face to face with those women and men who claim an authoritative relationship to scriptural interpretations and “Islamic” bodily practices (Jamal 2008). Thus, even though the siege at Red Mosque may have been an unprecedented occurrence of violence, the Jamia Hafsa women’s support for conservative, patriarchal, and even misogynistic religious politics has a long history in Pakistan to which parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami have substantially contributed. The “secular” nature of the state, as Parashar correctly states, is seen as a threat to the stability and security that can come to women only within the confines of religion and religious politics. These politically active women see religion as the lowest common denominator that can unite men and women, despite differences in their aspirations. The “other” is not patriarchy per se but either a religion or religiopolitical movement or “secularism” that destabilizes traditional gender roles. An important aspect in the Jamia Hafsa activism has been women’s struggle against the perceived secularization of state. —Parashar 2011: 446 They use their status of “religious warriors” to negotiate on specific gender issues. These women in religio-political movements impose a normative femininity, but their own lives and lived experiences are not representative of model femininity. Scholars are now reworking ways of understanding religion and religious beliefs in a manner that moves away from a liberal, rights-based discourse to an aesthetics of religion framework. The political experience in the Pakistani context, especially as elucidated by the Red Mosque case, however, has shown that faith-based agency of women in religious parties

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is not often used just for feminist ends. It is also used increasingly to support a patriarchal and Islamic agenda. Women like those in Jamia Hafsa embrace the idea of the modern while seeking to domesticate it within a religious discourse. Yet, at the same time, it also challenges the idea that Islam or an Islamic state is oppressive for women, as defined by orientalist literature, or that women’s resistance, agency, and autonomy must be the opposite of subordination. This is why the Jamia Hafsa women have been a conundrum to feminists, according to Amina Jamal. They have some feminist aspirations, especially in terms of more rights in marriage and divorce and economic and social empowerment, but they adopt conservative religious ideology to achieve these ends, advocating segregation of the sexes and a complete reliance on the Islamic way of life (Jamal 2009).

CONCLUSION What the Red Mosque case study elucidates is that, to a large extent, the negotiations of Muslim women (as seen in the Red Mosque incidence) of their subjectivities are shaped by an aesthetic discourse of the sacred to legitimize their authority. In reacting to the Western discourse on liberal rights, they tend to align themselves with anti-Western, anticolonial cultural paradigms often invoking an aesthetics of performativity, increasing social and sexual control of the “symbolic and chaste woman” centered at the core of an identity politics (Moghadam 1991; Helie-Lucas 1994). Whatever their interpretations of religion and the symbols that they have adopted, Mehta claimed that these Muslim women in Pakistan have brought their familial responsibilities into the public domain (Mehta 2015). Very often, their public activism is considered an extension of traditional roles in families, but, most importantly, the women have demonstrated a desire to influence politics not just through their domestic skills but through their ability to organize publicly and embrace violence as a political tool. The women in the Jamia Hafsa siege demonstrated the willingness to embrace “martyrdom” for the politics they believed in; Muslim women in Kashmir and Hindu women in Jammu, Gujarat, and the slums of Mumbai have utilized the tools of gendered performativity to articulate that religious ideology and politics are integral to their identity and their overall message (which includes mobilization to violent acts) (Parashar 2010). The gendered religious performativity of the Jamia Hafsa women demonstrated that aesthetics of religion cannot be confined to either a philosophy of art or a theory of perception and sensory knowledge. According to Grieser and Johnston (2017b), aesthetics of religion further pushes the limits of a traditional understanding of religion. It offers a new perspective that includes the analysis of cultural, visual, sensory, and performative practices within religious traditions as a way to “facilitate the analysis of how perceiving and meaning-making is influenced by religious cultivation and judgment of the senses, independent of whether people see themselves as adherents, or not” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 15). Failing to study these aspects means missing the opportunity to understand the “efficacy” of religion(s) that is rooted in layers beyond the dichotomizing discourse of secular vs. religious, fundamentalist vs. moderate, and liberal vs. militant as elucidated in the Jamia Hafsa women in the Red Mosque case study.

RECOMMENDED READING Charania, Moon (2017), Will the Real Pakistani Woman Please Stand Up? Empire, Visual Culture and the Brown Female Body, Jefferson: McFarland. Explores the portrayal of

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Pakistani women in Western media through different case studies and problematizes the question of fetishizing Muslim women in media and its racial and political ramifications. Jamal, Amina (2013), Jamaat-e-Islamia, Women in Pakistan: Vanguard of a New Modernity, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Digresses from the traditional argument of pitting the Eastern vs. Western dichotomy in the discussion of feminists in the Global South. Amina Jamal, a sociologist, explores the position of the women in the Jammat-e-Islami, an Islamic party established in 1941 in pre-partition India. The book challenges assumptions that Muslim women’s agency can only be restricted to emancipation from or resistance to patriarchal values.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Art JAY JOHNSTON

INTRODUCTION The dominant understanding of the relation between religion and art views art as a mode through which theological/spiritual beliefs are made manifest in creative form and/or as a reference to artistic practices that induce religious or spiritual experience (see discussion on “theological aesthetics,” Johnston, Chapter 2, this volume). Following the strong influence of Romantic discourses, a tight conceptual relation between artistic practice and spirituality is often uncritically assumed. This is especially the case for the rendering of qualities—such as the “numinous”—or experiences—such as “rapture”—understood as impossible to be adequately captured in normative discursive form. In contradistinction to such an agenda, this chapter—focused primarily on contemporary visual art—discusses creative practice (including performance) as knowledge production, and also the reception of creative practice as knowledge production. Taking into account an expanded concept of aesthetic relations as germane to the aesthetics of religion approach, the emphasis is on the practice of making art and consuming art as sites of critical inquiry and knowledge production. This approach differs significantly from scholarship on religion and art presenting a “special” relation between creative practice and art production and claiming these to be implicitly tied to communicating and cultivating a religious subjectivity. This link is exemplified in the structure of the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics and Religion (Brown ed. 2014) which includes a section on “Artistic Ways of Being Religious” in which are found essays pertaining to specific media, including dance and music, etc. This is then followed by another section entitled “Religious Ways of Being Artistic” in which specific religious traditions are examined, such as “Islam and Visual Art” and “Confucianism and the Arts.” In a similar vein, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona eschews substantive engagement with critical practices of production and frameworks of analysis that emphasize agency and intersubjectivity, favoring instead iconological and iconographical approaches to religion and art in the tradition of Panofsky. In her recent monograph Religion and the Arts: History and Method (2017), she sees “Future Challenges” for her approach: To further the dialogue between religion and the arts, we need to establish a new language and methodology specifically designed to examine the religiousness of the arts and the aesthetics of religion. [. . .] Art is an imaged reflection, prophecy, and witness to human experience and religious values as well as an expression of culture. —Apostolos-Cappadona 2017: 55 185

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Here, art is viewed as functioning as a repository of knowledge upon which humans can reflect. The overall presentation of art is a passive or static one—although the “prophecy” claim is perhaps excitingly agential. A sense that art “makes”—effects, creates, engenders— on its own terms, and in unforeseeable ways, is not contained within this characterization. But exactly this will be the focus of the following discussion.

PRODUCTION: CRITICAL PRACTICE AS KNOWLEDGE CREATION Understanding art production as a critical, reflective practice—sometimes also termed “practice-led research”—has flourished in modern universities. This no doubt stems partly from the utility of such a framework which allows art production to be placed on equal terms with standard academic output; that is, research reports in various academic formats. However, the approach also, and significantly, highlights the practice of artmaking as a site in which new knowledge—with potential application in many fields of life—can be produced. As Suze Adams summarizes practice-led research, “constitutes the active exploration of critical concepts in practice: a process that draws on phenomenological experience as well as conceptual understanding, a process continually open to question, re-negotiation, re-interpretation and ultimately re-presentation” (Adams 2014: 218). Therefore, this is a process that brings conscious awareness to embodied experience concurrently with theoretical reflection. It utilizes both in the process of developing artworks and performances. Adams continues, noting further that: Practice becomes a critical and creative development tool—not aimed at any definitive or predetermined outcome but instead as a means through which to explore multisensory understandings and to address the efficacy of cross-disciplinary methodologies and the theoretical concepts that underpin them. —Adams 2014: 218 This very description contains many corollaries with the aesthetics of religion approach; especially the emphasis on multisensory knowledge and utilizing (and creating) crossdisciplinary methods of analysis and practice. Indeed, Adams describes her own visual art practice as “a process informed by corporeal as well as conceptual understandings and performed via text and image” (Adams 2014: 219). This framework also identifies the individual artwork—whether painting, performance, or composition—as both a cohesive “object” in its own right and a distinct point of inquiry, without it being a “closed,” finite statement. Works of art are, in Adam’s words, “critical explorations of conceptual and corporeal understanding” and not merely “illustrations of a research practice” (2014: 226). The practice of critical inquiry has been employed in many different contexts, both as specific artists’ individual projects, and in collective, community-based engagement. An example is The Blackwood Project developed by artists Timothy Martin Collins and Reiko Goto in collaboration with David Edwards from Forest Research, Scotland. The project involved the participation of local communities, academics, scientists, and local government in the exploration of an ancient woodland, its history, and current conservation debates and dilemmas. Accordingly, the discrete artwork produced was the outcome of the dialog between all the participants, including the forest. In particular, it raised questions and explored the potential for increased human interrelationship with

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the forest in dialog with conservation practice. The artists considered this a significant intervention, as human access to, and interrelationship with, the forest had historically been “dominated by scientific interests” (Collins et al. 2017: 209). The practice of exploration and experimentation with a broad remit of stakeholders engendered potential new paths of access and a shared understanding of place. Discussion—including between dissenting opinions—was an integral part of the process. This project is exemplary for the dialogic nature of critical practice which has been noted by Adams as a characteristic feature: When research moves back and forth between practice and theory and when corporeal as well as conceptual concerns are paramount, the demands, tensions and contradictions of the process become apparent. As a result, valuable new insights are produced and become embedded within artworks—new understandings that form an integral part of the research process and require alternative dissemination strategies in word as well as in image to reflect, and include, their contribution to the project. —Adams 2014: 221 That is, artworks are understood as crystallizing crucial elements of this process and enabling new “ways” of letting knowledge emerge and disseminate. Norman Shaw’s Nemeton, which consciously explores spiritual themes, is another example of such a project. Shaw traveled through the Highlands of Scotland visiting historic sacred sites of the “Gaelic Otherworld,” places steeped in vernacular and historical tradition designated as especially associated with metaphysical experiences, beings, or deities. In his explanation of the term Nemeton, Shaw references F. Marian McNeill’s definition—“the name anciently given to a Druidical grove in which there was a stone shrine, a magic tree or well, or a fairy mound” (2017: 7)—but expands this remit to encompass liminal locations, places considered sacred and/or known to operate as “thresholds” between different states or dimensions (ibid.). Locations investigated included Glen Lyon (Gleann Lìomhann) where the tigh na cailleach (house of the old woman) is found. This is a small shieling, in which the Cailleach (goddess: wisewoman/hag) and her family are housed in the summer months, according to local custom. The family is a group of stones which are placed in their home on the spring equinox and which reside there until the autumn (Shaw 2017: 208; Johnston 2017b). Another site Shaw worked with was Doon Hill, in Aberfoyle. In this place, as local legend identifies it, the clergyman, folklore enthusiast, and author of the text that came to be titled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies ([1933] 2008), Robert Kirk, reportedly died and was taken into the fairy hill. In contemporary times visitors continue to leave wishes and prayers to the fairies by way of tying colored ribbons, trinkets and images to the “clootie tree” (fairy tree). At locations such as these Shaw embarked on a multisensory exploration of the location’s agency and its interrelationship with his own. In response to embodied experience developed in dialog with local histories and residents, collaborations with other artists and unexpected events, Shaw developed a range of artworks that included drawings and photography. The compilation of the journey overall was encapsulated in a publication which not only recorded the travel and presented reproductions of the artwork, but was also a vehicle for self-reflection and analysis of the embodied process and its theoretical parameters. An aesthetics of religion approach to analyzing Shaw’s artwork in relation to religion/ spirituality acknowledges and critically investigates relevant cultural historical or societal

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discourses as part of the art practice. In the case of the Scottish Highlands, site of Shaw’s projects, this requires a closer look at the stereotypes traditionally associated with this region. Understood as a Celtic region, the Highlands have been associated with clichés of the “Celts” both positive and negative. Nineteenth-century ideologies viewed the region either as remote and inhabited by uncultivated peasants, or as site of the so-called Celtic Twilight that claimed some innate relation of Celtic peoples and their lands with spiritual or mystical consciousness. Marked as an “Other” in either case, the Highlands and its local cultures have been celebrated and castigated, depending upon the political and social biases of the dominant culture, and so these beliefs have been mapped onto an interpretation of the landscape, including claims about its ecological fecundity or barrenness. It is also a landscape and cultural history deeply scarred by The Clearances (mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century), the forced removal of tenant crofters, many of whom emigrated to the US, Canada, and Australia. A closer analysis of a project such as Shaw’s thus highlights how knowledge from other disciplines is used in the production of art. Indeed, approaches that are experimentally based, dialogic, and focused on exploring multisensory knowledge acquisition necessarily open out to interdisciplinary collaboration. Shaw’s work, for example, considers the landscape–nature–spiritual experience–vernacular matrix. As such it participates in a much broader utilization of the arts to explore the relationship between spirituality and place in the Highlands of Scotland. In a volume that analyzes poetic creativity, On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands ([1995] 2014), James Hunter considers the politics of contemporary environmental conservation in the Highlands through the prism of the area’s cultural heritage, and in particular what he terms “Bardic politics.” His exploration of creative practices ranges across the early Celtic Church (for example Iona’s monastic poetry), the Gaelic bards in the time of the Lordship of the Isles, and modern poets of place like Sorely Maclean and Norman McCaig. It is this creative tradition, according to Hunter, that engenders relations between diverse belief traditions and landscape use. However, he is critical of much conservation practice in the Highlands, perceiving it to be infused with attitudes of mystical Celtic Twilight orientation. While denuded mountains are venerated for their epic grandeur, colored by scree and swathes of bracken, the deforestation that created such landscape aesthetics tells more of cultural imposition and a history of exploitation. Alastair McIntosh, an author who has argued for an implicit relation between spirituality (“traditional” belief) and Christianity in the Highlands and Islands, sees continuities between academic discourse and art production: In A Single Ray of Sun John Carey, an Irish-American medievalist at the University of Cork, speaks of an “imaginative reconciliation” between the gods of “faerie” and the new God of Christianity in the Celtic world. Similarly, On the Other Side of Sorrow is a book that calls us to an imaginative reconciliation between old and new expressions of our culture. —2004: xxxviii Thus, part of Hunter’s project is to argue for an implicit spirituality and environmental awareness as a mode of viewing the world characteristic of Highland and Islands identity, while at the same time it also works to draw together vernacular and institutionalized belief. Hunter’s argument, that the foundations of contemporary environmentalism were laid in these specific poetic traditions, is worth recounting in the context of discussing art

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practice as a mode of critical investigation and knowledge construction, because it exemplifies an artistic practice as the crystallization of broader social ideas that have utility for current debates. Environmental conservation as an attitude implicit in Highland tradition and identity is maintained via creative practice. A further aspect of these modes of thought identified by Hunter is an approach to cultural and environmental policy that does not position “culture” and “nature” as separate entities or aspects of life (such a binary division and categorization has been roundly critiqued in feminist and post-structural philosophy; see, for example, the work of Donna Haraway). Hunter argues that creative practice can provide a way forward for politics which would allow contemporary policy makers to rethink standard policy division and enable innovative developments and novel solutions (2004: 211). Here again, creative practice is understood as producing emergent knowledge which has an application in finding alternatives for a range of life issues. This is indeed a multi-modal and interdisciplinary undertaking. Similarly, Norman Shaw’s work—although resolutely on the “mystical” side of spiritual experience (not favored by Hunter)—weaves together myths with historical, linguistic, and geographic information to explore the way belief is marked on a landscape and lived out via embodied engagement, whether via a secular touristic activity or daily local immersion. Through visual mediums and textual reflections, this project created and reflected upon what Collins and Goto would term a place’s “cultural ecology,” in the case of Shaw an ecology of both the physical and the metaphysical variety.

RECEPTION: VIEWING ART AS KNOWLEDGE CREATION My intention is not to improve on nature but to know it—not as a spectator but as a participant. I do not wish to mimic nature, but to draw on the energy that drives it so that it drives my work also. My art is unmistakably the work of a person—I would not want it otherwise—it celebrates my human nature and a need to be physically and spiritually bound to the earth. —Goldsworthy 1994: 50 Amid the dry stonewalls that formerly penned sheep in Wasdale, Cumbria, emerges a mound of sheep fleece. Dark at its base, it tapers upward to a frosty white point forming a geometrically symmetrical cone. This is wool set to imitate stone and ice by the artist Andy Goldsworthy in the installation Wool Cairn (July 20, 1997). While not a work of religious art per se, this sculpted form, as others in his Sheep Painting series (1990s), will form a loose point of reference for this next section that considers the reception of critical art practice as aesthetic knowledge creation. As explicated in the quotation from the artist above, these artworks have sought to engage with landscape history and nature to develop a multifaceted, multisensorial relation with it. As I have argued elsewhere (2008, 2016, 2017a), this requires a methodology of engagement, a way of perceiving to be cultivated by the viewer: an esoteric aesthetics. In this mode of engagement, unseen agencies—whatever the source or attribution of their generation—are engaged with via the cultivation of perception along with an embodied response to a physical, material stimulus. Viewers are asked to reflect on their own socioculturally specific practice of “looking” and perceiving the world and the relations—seen and unseen—between diverse objects and agencies. The necessary limits of any particular individual and culture would then be allowed to “come into view.”

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Utilizing an active embodied engagement with artworks can facilitate such recognition in viewers by acknowledging the empirical content of an artwork simultaneously to its explorative potential to change, develop, and create new modes of knowing themselves and others. This is perception as critical knowledge production. Goldsworthy’s Sheep Paintings can be read as elucidating one aspect of esoteric aesthetic exchange: the exploration of expansive concepts of the self (including concepts of spiritual matter) and the dynamics of intersubjective relations. This approach to engagement and analysis, I have argued, is as much ethical as it is aesthetic: indeed, the two realms cannot be neatly drawn apart in its practice. Attributing material agency (physical and metaphysical) to objects and environments more broadly (a common perspective in esoteric and spiritual traditions) has been a popular theme in recent Cultural Studies debates, for example New Materialism, and in religious studies in propositions of “new animism” and enchanted matter (see also Bräunlein, Chapter 25, this volume). As I have previously argued, this scholarship incorporates issues of other-than-human ontology and agency directly or indirectly (Johnston 2016, 2017a). As I have also claimed, it privileges a distinct form of subject– object engagement with an emphasis on the kinesthetic/synesthetic relations between artwork and viewer. This is no mere passive viewing, but an embodied encounter in which the viewer actively cultivates modes of engagement in order to perceive these other agencies: even if such perception is difficult or challenging both physically and conceptually (ontologically). Central to this approach is an exploration of the subject–object encounter as enabling reflective space on issues of ontological constitution. This is only one element of the exchange, although it is often subservient to concerns of interpretation or definitive identification of “meaning” as attributable to iconographic (or textual) content of an object/artwork. As anthropologist Christopher Tilley writes with regard to interpretations of rock art: “Iconographic approaches are usually primarily cognitive in nature. They grant primacy to the human mind as a producer of the meaning of the images through sensory perception” (2008: 18). Tilley pays particular attention to the way that perception (whole body) is crafted in dialog with the environment. This advocates for “emplaced” knowledge: a hermeneutics of reading self–object–environment in relation to each other. What is “seen” is empirical matter, the limits of its perception and its possibilities, intersubjective exchanges (whether attributed to physical, psychological, or spiritual causation), and ideological contexts. It is a process that holds corollaries with Kirk Pillow’s “interpretative sublime,” a re-reading of the Kantian sublime, aiming to “achieve a unified meaning from diverse material into a sense-making network of affinities” (2000: 288). The designation of “unified” in this argument is not taken to mean resolved, but references the simultaneous conscious perception of networks of sensation. This type of “unified” meaning, I contend, would necessarily be transitory and always partial. Goldsworthy’s Sheep Paintings centrally engage with a range of other-than-human agencies. Indeed, they are actually produced by sheep as they amble across pieces of canvas laid on the ground and on which a circular feeder is placed. When removed, the feeder renders a clear sphere on the canvas. Around this “clear” disk are splatters of sheep “being” accompanied by encrusted remnants of the land and the weather (especially mud). When removed from their context of production and vertically hung in a gallery space the works also dialog with the established tradition of modernist painting, that is both formal and abstract exploration of shape, color, and line, as well as concepts of chance. Further, the relatively pristine figuration of a geometrically precise circle conjures

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reflections on other globes, spheres, and the shape’s attendant range of meanings and interpretations, extending to metaphysical concepts of the void itself. The Sheep Paintings challenge traditional “Western” concepts of authorship, insisting that a work of art—especially valorized art—must have a singular artistic human origination. Critics reporting on these paintings in the popular press consider them as “collaborations with nature” (Glazebrook 2007: n.p.), listing the sheep’s hooves as the artwork’s “medium.” But are the sheep not themselves part of the authorial agency that created the works? Recent anthropological scholarship on other-than-human agencies is of relevance for considering this issue. Among prominent examples is anthropologist Eduardo Kohn’s engagement with the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon which is detailed in How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (2013). In this work he investigates what it means for anthropology and its research methods to recognize other-than-human beings and their attendant knowledges. For Kohn it is the recognition that “we” are perceived by other beings in ways over which we have no control that is crucial to a revision of anthropological practice: “Such encounters with other kinds of beings force us to recognize the fact that seeing, representing, and perhaps knowing, even thinking, are not exclusively human affairs” (2013: 1). Goldsworthy and Shaw can thus be understood as creating their very distinct styles of artmaking in acknowledgment of perspectives that are other-than-anthropocentric. Kohn’s study is one among a plethora of publications on ecological other-than-human studies that has emerged over the past ten years. It exemplifies how methods in other disciplinary fields are also grappling with issues of the ethical recognition and representation of other-than-human agencies, all of which require specific types of aesthetic orientation and the development of multiple and experimental modes of communicating their experiences and insights. An esoteric aesthetics strives to apprehend all forms of agency from the most ephemeral to the most commanding. It also takes within its remit the process of reflecting on, and potentially changing, one’s habitual modes of perception. This is done in order to consciously activate an expanded field of perceptual literacy.

SIMULTANEOUS THEORY AND PRAXIS While this chapter has not been a standard “survey” of the art-and-religion relation it has aimed to exemplify the ways in which an aesthetics of religion approach incorporates both the activation of unfamiliar sensory regimes and a critical analysis of specific sociocultural practices that go well beyond the disciplinary boundary of fine art. It has incorporated aspects of historical and environmental knowledge and considered art production and analysis that seeks to exemplify the wider remit of the arts intervention. In particular, art production as practice-led research was selected as a focus because of the way in which its very premise confounds simplistic dualisms between theory and practice. They are understood as necessarily interwoven aspects of any aesthetic engagement in both the production and reception/perception of artwork, as indeed they are in life experience. An aesthetics of religion approach considers both the unspoken presuppositions this relation is founded upon and the historical specificity of their deployment. It considers theory–practice as embodied knowledge. It seeks to understand the contingencies through which the theory–practice nexus is utilized and reproduced, with especial attention being paid to conscious and unconscious frameworks of religious/ spiritual belief directing its formation, articulation, and reception.

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RECOMMENDED READING Adams, Suze (2014), “Practice as Research: A Fine Art Contextual Study,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 13 (3): 218–26. A succinct overview of Critical Practice as a method for art production and its uses; authored by an artist. Elkins, James and David Morgan, eds. (2007), Re-Enchantment: Transcription of Seminar Held April 17, 2007, School of the Art Institute Chicago, New York: Routledge. Presents a variety of diverse and contested perspectives on the relation between art and religion. Johnston, Jay (2016), “Enchanted Sight/Site: An Esoteric Aesthetics of Image and Experience,” in Peik Ingman, Terhi Utriainen, Tuija Hovi, and Mans Broo (eds.), The Relational Dynamics of Enchantment and Sacralization: Changing the Terms of the Religion Versus Secularity Debate, 189–206, Sheffield: Equinox. Provides a summary of disciplinary approaches toward aesthetic engagement and offers an analysis of artwork with an aesthetics of religion approach.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cinesthetics ADRIAN HERMANN AND YULIA LOKSHINA

INTRODUCTION: MOVING IMAGES AS RELIGIOUS MEDIUM AND AS RESEARCH MEDIUM FOR THE AESTHETICS OF RELIGION What role does film play in an aesthetic approach to religion? In this chapter, we will reflect on moving images as both a religious medium and a research medium for the aesthetics of religion, with a focus on the latter. In her essay “How to Capture the ‘Wow,’ ” anthropologist of religion Birgit Meyer engages with the work of R. R. Marett to propose that one of the tasks of the study of religion is to develop approaches able to both capture the “awe or the ‘wow’ effect [. . .] generated in the interplay between the material world and bodily sensations” and analyze “its role in the politics and aesthetics of religious world-making” (2015b: 10). Such a perspective on what she calls the “sacred surplus” (2015b: 18), in her view, should serve as the basis of an analytical study of religious groups, traditions, rituals, and events. She understands her own concept of “sensational form” as an analytical tool “that points towards various procedures or ‘methods’ through which sensations of ‘awe’ or ‘wow’ effects arise” (2015b: 21). The tension implicated in such a perspective she describes as follows: “[h]ow . . . to develop an approach that allows us to ‘capture the ‘wow’ without either taking for granted the existence of the god or ‘beyond’ to which the sense of ‘wow’ refers or dismissing it as an irrational illusion?” (2015b: 8). If we understand religion as a “practice of mediation”—providing “a linkage between people and the realm of the invisible,” as Meyer and Jojada Verrips (2008: 25) suggest— such questions of capturing the “wow” are not only of concern for scholars, but rather are also faced by religious actors in their use of various forms of media in religious contexts. It can thus be seen as a problem in religious mediations as well as in the use of any medium for doing scholarly work on religion. While this is also true for text, which has been a medium of central importance both for the history of religion and for the history of scholarship (Wilkens, Chapter 14, this volume), in the following we will investigate these questions in regard to moving pictures. A short case study of an audiovisual installation dealing with the Russian-Orthodox ritual of Epiphany ice-bathing (produced by Yulia Lokshina in 2017) will serve as a tool to think with.

CAPTURING THE “WOW” IN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY Meyer’s reflections on capturing the “wow” in the study of religion show certain parallels to problems discussed in visual anthropology in relationship to film as a medium of 193

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ethnographic research. For Christian Suhr and Rane Willerslev (2012: 283) the question can be put as follows: “[c]an film show the invisible, or is it trapped within the visible surfaces of the social world?” They argue that it is possible for (ethnographic) film to “evoke hidden dimensions of ethnographic reality” (2012: 282) through an effective use of montage. By taking the “camera eye” seriously as a means of “transcending the limitations of human vision” and embracing its “mechanical, nonhuman nature,” they claim that a filmmaker can “reveal the invisible aspects of social life.” In finding the right balance between providing a “strong sense of reality” in the tradition of observational cinema and “its occasional, and therefore only then effective, disruption through montage,” audiovisual research becomes possible that is both immersive and analytical (Suhr and Willerslev 2012: 283). These issues are closely connected to longer debates regarding ethnographic filmmaking and the use of film as a research medium in the filmic representation of “social aesthetics” (MacDougall 1999). Recent discussions in visual anthropology about an “ ‘aesthetic’ turn” (Grimshaw 2011) have given these debates a new intensity. The well-known films of David MacDougall, for example, are mostly situated in a classical observational tradition and have aimed at an ethnographic investigation of societies as “complex sensory and aesthetic environments,” particularly in the case of small communities such as schools (MacDougall 1999: 3). Building on MacDougall’s work (cf. Taylor 1998), recent productions of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University (directed by Lucien CastaingTaylor) like Sweetgrass (2009) and Leviathan (2012) by Castaing-Taylor, Ilisa Barbash, and Véréna have drawn on the “synesthetic, spatial, and temporal properties of film to open a space of suggestive possibilities between the experiential and propositional, between the perceptual and conceptual, between lived realities and images” (Grimshaw 2011: 257–8) to open anthropology up to what members of the SEL, using a phase of James Agee, call “the cruel radiance of what is” (Castaing-Taylor et al. 2016). Recently, other visual anthropologists like Suhr and Mattijs van der Port have produced films about Islamic exorcism and Danish psychiatry (Descending with Angels, 2013) or the Brazilian tradition of spirit possession in Candomblé (The Possibility of Spirits, 2016) and have reflected explicitly on the problems of representing religious traditions and their “invisible aspects” through moving images (Suhr 2015; van der Port 2018). What can these recent debates in visual anthropology (Bräunlein, Chapter 25, this volume) contribute to an aesthetics of religion approach concerned with the problem of “capturing the ‘wow’ ” in moving pictures, especially if we also take into account recent cognitive studies on film reception?

FILM AND RELIGION: ELEMENTS OF AN AESTHETIC AND COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE Much of the literature on “film and religion” is mainly concerned with fictional films (e.g., Grace 2009; Plate 2009; Parker 2012). In a recent overview, S. Brent Plate (2005) identifies three strands of existing research: “film in religion” (traditionally religious topics as the subject matter of filmmaking), “film as religion” (largely theological investigations of the supposedly “religious” nature of film), as well an emerging focus on the “cinematic experience” (the reception of moving images by an audience, both in religious and in scholarly contexts). The latter is of most interest for us here in discussing film as a medium of scholarship.

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An aesthetic perspective on religion is concerned with reconstructing religious communication in “all its media,” linking sensation and interpretation (Grieser 2015b). This leads us to focus on a cognitive-cultural investigation of visual and auditory perception and in particular on the contribution of moving images toward “establish[ing] what people perceive as real” (Grieser 2015b). From a media-ethnographic perspective, film is a central medium for constituting aesthetic habits and perceptions of “possible lives” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Appadurai 1996: 53, 63–4). Therefore, while much scholarship on religion and film is interested in the representation of religious narratives in (fictional) film (Radovic 2014), as such subject matters have been central to film history from the beginning, an aesthetics of religion perspective on film is primarily concerned with the relationships between audiences and films, not an analysis of particular films per se. In addition, more than the long history of religious fictional filmmaking (cf. Plate 2017), religious documentary films seem to be of particular interest here. The use of the documentary form for example by Christian filmmakers in the context of US Charismatic Christianity (Hermann 2017), but also the wide presence of short religious videos on platforms like YouTube that purport to mediate and thus demonstrate and “document” religious realities like the possession by jinns (Suhr 2015) or the healing from illnesses (Goh 2015), point to the importance of documentary moving pictures as a medium of contemporary religion. Current debates about immersion and the aesthetics of representation in visual anthropology as well as recent work on the “filmic body” (see below) and what we could call cinesthetics in cognitive studies can contribute to an aesthetic perspective on such contemporary religious mediations. If we want to make use of moving pictures as a research medium in the study of religion (Kreinath, Chapter 5, this volume), however, rather than investigate and analyze the religious uses of film, our own practices of filmmaking become the subject of reflection. How to represent religion and capture the “wow” without ourselves producing a “religious” film? In their reflections, Suhr and Willerslev (2012: 284) call filmic montage—“along with other forms of cinematic manipulation”—“a precondition for evoking the invisible in its own right.” Through certain shooting techniques and the process of editing, a film is produced out of moving images recorded by a camera. In this larger sense, montage can be understood “as cinematic rearrangement of lived time and space” (Suhr and Willerslev 2012: 285). What can result from this process, is (as Suhr and Willerslev argue, drawing on Dziga Vertov) a “Film-Truth,” “views on reality of a super-real quality, emerging from the juxtaposition of otherwise incompatible perspectives” (ibid.). It is montage, therefore, that allows, according to Suhr and Willerslev (ibid.), “the production of superhuman vision that pushes the frontiers of the observable world into uncharted regions.” In the “multispatial and multitemporal viewing experiences” provided by film, new forms of “thick description” might emerge (ibid.: 288), based on the disruption of naturalistic observation through montage. This disruption, however, for Suhr and Willerslev (ibid.) has to be a break in an existing form of observation and not a complete deconstruction of the subject matter. It is this balance between immersive observation and reflective disruption that positions the viewer as an audience for the “magico-religious reality” (ibid.: 293) of “the invisible” that ethnographic film can attempt to present to the audience, positioning the viewer in the right balance between “realism and constructivism, simplicity and complexity, resonance and dissonance” (ibid.: 294).

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This approach, despite some of its problematic aspects, can be supplemented by a closer engagement with long-standing debates on cognitive film theory (Bordwell 1989, 2010; Plantinga 2002), cognitive media theory more generally (Nannicelli and Taberham 2014), and in particular recent advances in discussing embodied spectators of moving images. As Joerg Fingerhut and Katrin Heimann (2017: 354) argue, from the perspective of an embodied, embedded, enactive, extended, and affective (4EA) cognitive science, we can investigate how film may be involved in expanding our perceptual capacities, and how, by “habituating ourselves to the medium of edited film, we may also have transformed some of our more general ways of experiencing the world.” The idea of a “filmic body,” constituted through the ways in which “the succession of moving images interlocks with our bodily (neuronal, muscular, etc.) responses” (Fingerhut and Heimann 2017: 365), points toward a learning-based theory of film perception in which moving images extend cognition as part of an “extended mind” (Fingerhut 2018). Combined with an increased focus on the bodies and senses of the audience in film studies (Sobchack 2004; Barker 2009) and renewed attention to the emotional engagement with film (Plantinga and Smith 1999; Hagener and Ferran 2017), an aesthetic perspective on religion and film takes the act of spectating as its starting point. These cognitive and neuroscientific studies can be directly connected to questions of montage and of the balance between experiential immersion and analytic distance. This is of central importance for an analysis of religious uses of moving pictures as well as for making use of film as a research medium. Experimental results suggest that the “embodiment of the camera by the viewer” (Heimann 2016: 84), for example through steady-cam shots, and in general the expectations generated by our experience of the spatial movement of our bodies, preconfigure our experiences of spectatorship. Film is bound to particular embodiments to achieve both immersion and reflection (Heimann 2016: 88). At the same time, we are habituated into developing a “filmic body,” not only changing our experience of watching moving pictures over time, but also bleeding over into the rest of our engagement with the world. The viewer’s body enters into a relationship with the perspectives represented and the bodily movements presented on screen, a point we will take up below by drawing on the work of Hans Belting. In the following discussion we want to connect these theoretical reflections with a case study of using moving pictures as a medium of research in an aesthetic perspective in the production of a three-channel video installation (moving images presented on three screens) on the Russian Orthodox ritual of Epiphany ice-bathing.

FILMING RUSSIAN EPIPHANY ICE-BATHING The Past and Present of Epiphany Ice-bathing in Russia Our case study is concerned with a popular bathing ritual in the Russian Orthodox tradition. The practice of ice-bathing on the day of Epiphany (celebrated on January 19 in Russia) has seen an explosive increase in popularity since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reemergence of the public nature of Russian Orthodoxy in the twenty-first century. In 2017, in Moscow alone more than 130,000 people attended the wide variety of events held on this occasion (Russia News Today 2017). The increasing numbers of people immersing themselves in ice-cold water three times on this night in a ritual context

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draws on the traditional popularity of winter ice-bathing in Russia (Bodin 2015) as well as the increased public role of the Orthodox Church in post-Soviet Russia (Garrard and Garrard 2008; Burgess 2017; Davis 2018). As an extraordinarily visceral and physical religious performance (Mohr, Chapter 12, this volume), it is also part of the rising event culture connected with Russian Orthodox religiosity (Bodin 2015; Rouhier-Willoughby and Filosofova 2015). While many participants refer to their immersion in the cold water as an instance of being cleansed from sin, the official Orthodox theological position often distances itself from this interpretation.1 Being a rather controversial contemporary matter, over its long history the genesis and evolution of the current Epiphany ice-bathing was continuously linked to power struggles between the church and successive heads of the Russian state.2 First introduced in the first half of the sixteenth century, the ritual involved the blessing of the water by the patriarch in the presence of the tsar and his court, followed by the dipping of the sick into the water. Disseminating over the country and becoming increasingly public over time, by the end of the seventeenth century and the reign of Peter I, the Epiphany ritual “had become a nonpolitical folk ceremony in which the Tsar was a minor figure” (Bushkovitch 1990: 16). “It was no longer an occasion of state” (Bushkovitch 1990: 17), but became “a folk religious festival,” combining the commemoration the baptism of Christ with the popular “pagan” tradition of Sviatki (a variety of folk celebrations during the Christmas season). During the years following the Revolution of 1917, popular expressions of Orthodox religiosity were suppressed and outlawed, so while small groups of Russian Orthodox Christians continued to celebrate and practice their faith and its holidays, it became a less public affair (Bodin 2015: 52). In 1949, the Epiphany ice-bathing became an issue of political controversy, when the feuilleton of Pravda, the organ of the central committee of the CPSU, published a satirical comment on the festivities in the city of Saratov of that year. The author describes the event as a mixture of “blind religious fanaticism” (a remnant from the dark kingdom of old Russia) and “pornographic curiosity,” and blames the local authorities for having allowed the “pagan” tradition to take place and mix with the voyeuristic and commercial intervention of attendant photographers, and recounts a number of health hazards that he claims have occurred among the bathers (cf. Stone 2008 and Huhn 2014: 222 for a more detailed interpretation of this controversy). Were it published today, the tone of the article would probably provoke strong reactions in the public sphere and the author would possibly be accused of publicly offending the feelings of religious believers. Within the last two decades in post-Soviet Russia, ice-bathing has become a dominating feature of the annual Epiphany celebrations and has regained its political dimension (Bodin 2015; Rouhier-Willoughby and Filosofova 2015). It has become a podium for proof of personal bravura and exposure of the depth of religious feelings and patriotism, from regular citizens to high-ranking politicians, including president Vladimir Putin (Henley 2018). As mentioned above, in January 2017 one of us went to Moscow to attend and film (together with a cameraperson) the Epiphany ice-bathing, and in the subsequent months produced a three-channel video installation. In the following, drawing on the aesthetic perspective on film and religion laid out in the preceding section, we want to reflect on our audiovisual approach to studying and filming this event. How can we represent the immersion of naked bodies in ice-cold water taking place within a complex religious and sociopolitical structure, without providing a simple causal explanatory perspective or neglecting the multidimensionality of the event?

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Feast: A Three-Channel Video Installation on the 2017 Epiphany Ice-Bathing in Moscow On the basis of audiovisual material produced on the night of ice-bathing on the occasion of the 2017 feast of Epiphany, our video installation attempts to transport some of the experience of the event and to serve a basis for an analysis of how this event combines various elements of the pre-Christian roots, institutionalized religion, popular spirituality, commercial commodification, carnivalesque festivity, and personal performance, that all are crystalized in an increasingly popular public ritual. The question for the scholar of religion when engaging with the event’s various aspects—performance, acoustics, visuality, structure, pronouncements, etc.—from an aesthetic perspective and through moving pictures as a research medium is: how to keep our analytical distance while still attempting to capture the “wow,” in Meyer’s words. This question can of course be asked

FIGURE 18.1: Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast showing the composition of a neon-lit cross of ice, a portrait of a male bather in the moment of crossing himself, and a female bather giving a military salute to the security forces after the bathing. © Yulia Lokshina.

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regardless of the medium in which scholarship is being carried out, but—as can be seen in regard to the debates in visual anthropology presented above—seems to be of particular interest when making use of moving pictures. In our attempt to grapple with these questions, we focus on the simultaneity of montage, the material surfaces of the images, and the relationship between the bodies of the ritual participants and the filmic body of the viewer. The vertical three-channel video installation Feast attempts to capture and represent the simultaneity of the spiritual, emotional, and sociopolitical aspects of the ritual of icebathing. On three screens we see simultaneous shots of the bathing place with a giant cross of ice in neon colors bathed in LED lighting, of ecstatic bathing bodies, and of the space surrounding them, which opens up the carnivalesque, “popular-pagan” elements of the ritual and the post-Soviet landscape in which the festivities take place (see Figures 18.1 and 18.2). The images are organized as a vertical triptych, in an attempt to escape any

FIGURE 18.2: Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast showing a wide-angle shot of the cross and the ice hole decorated with blinking LED lights and the urban landscape in the background, a female bather in shock, and surrounding carnivalesque decorations. © Yulia Lokshina.

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singular structure of narrative hierarchy by highlighting their parallel arrangement and transitory nature. The three screens allow the spiritual, the posing, the insecure, and the voyeuristic to appear at the same time and to alternate, without one aspect taking precedence. It represents the celebration of the moment, in which different impulses and emotions are present simultaneously and always seem to contradict each other. The soundscape consists of original recordings on location, a supporting industrial loop in the rhythm of a heartbeat, and the epiphany troparion, which was played over and over again during the night of the bathing. Its sound is slowed down and mixed with recordings of underwater sounds from the ice hole. The visual form of the triptych refers to Christian iconography and the soundtrack appropriates its pathos. The vertical arrangement eludes the one-dimensionality of a singular interpretation of the meaning of the event and emphasizes the direction of movement from above to below as well as the bodily experience of immersion in water. The simultaneity of the images thus opens up sensible interstitial spaces which are not made sense of immediately, but variously come together in the act of spectating, providing a multilayered sensory experience. The night of the Epiphany in Moscow in January 2017 offered a wide range of surface material. In Feast, the combination and mirroring of simultaneous gestures addresses the very surface of what is happening in front of the camera, trying to generate new variable elements of meaning that can be perceived in a multiplicity of facets. Gestures of piety, gestures of pride, gestures of shame and panic, as well as military poses, are placed next to each other to produce a mosaic of controlled and uncontrolled human emotion. It is this variety that in the moment of its presence needs to be seen and organized by a spectator, who is able to decode or at least recognize the movement of the images. How can we attempt to “go beyond” the surface, without running the risk of overlooking its rich complexity? Beyond superficiality, the surface remains the only available working material, like in a sculptural or architectural process unveiling the traces of time or layers of emotion. In the much-discussed film Leviathan by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, a similar focus on the surface aspects of the material is taken to its utmost consequence. It opens up an immersive experience of the mimetic dimension of the lived experience of working and living on a fishing trawler. The unexpected nonhuman, material-centered perspective of the film challenges the audience’s singular interpretations. Over the course of the night of Epiphany, the hole in the ice receives a variety of bodies of different size and age, and a diversity of faces, carrying expressions of pain, trembling, stoicism, and joy (see Figure 18.3). The individual bodies are covered with anonymity. Though appearing as part of a massive group of several thousand people over the course of the night, there is also a sense of them being alone by themselves during the performance of the bathing. The sequence of immersions is reflected on the three vertically ordered synchronized screens of Feast that offer the projection of a continuous chain of bodies entering the water one by one, within a changing context. The bodies and faces of the participants thus remain the central subject of the non-verbal flow of the moving images, resonating with Béla Balázs’ ([1924] 2010: 10) account of the astonishing popularity of early silent film: The whole of mankind is now busy relearning the long-forgotten language of gestures and facial expressions. This language is not the substitute for words characteristic of the sign language of the deaf and dumb, but the visual corollary of human souls immediately made flesh. Man will become visible once again.

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FIGURE 18.3: Still image from the three-channel video installation Feast showing a male bather in the moment of bathing, with a mixed expression of devotion, shock and sense of accomplishment. © Yulia Lokshina.

Above and below the central panel of Feast, the bathing bodies are framed with moving images of the immediate geographic surroundings, explicitly and implicitly linked to the event of the ice-bathing, creating a multifaceted representation of the local “aesthetic environment” (cf. MacDougall 1999: 3). This also resonates with Balázs’ ([1924] 2010: 51) idea of a milieu becoming visible as the “aura” of a character on screen, allowing the facial expressions and bodily gestures to serve as “the emanation of his own soul.” According to him, the character’s physiognomy thus “expands beyond the contours of his own body.” It is in the body and the human face that the surroundings are given meaning, as Balázs (ibid.) argues: “[t]he human play of gestures and expressions continues to prevail over that of objects and his facial expressions become an interpretation of the expression of objects. For, in the final analysis, it is only human beings that matter.” In this way, in Feast the urban landscapes of old Soviet high-rise slabs, ice sculptures of angels and beasts, neon lighting arrangements, and post-performative moments become part of the mise-en-scène and are “illuminate[d]” (ibid.). And still, in order to persist, these screen images rely on the individual bodies as a medium, since they would be “empty” without this reference point. On both sides of the screen, the submerging and the spectating bodies act as the conveyors of meaning, both as projectors and receivers of images, as can be argued by drawing on the writing of Hans Belting (2012: 189). Reflecting the movement of the immersion in the water, the vertical arrangement of the screens in Feast requires the viewer to stand in front of it, facing it full size, placing him- or herself physically in the setting. As spectators, our gaze, as Belting (2012: 188) puts it, serves as an agent of our body, interacting with the narrative aspects of a presented image, working both as censor and carrier of its own images. If “mimesis” in observational filmmaking, rather than being a simplistic “mirroring” of everyday reality, is understood as “a process of merging the object of perception with the body of the perceiver” (Suhr and Willerslev 2012: 284)—the primary perceiver being the person

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behind the camera—the question of “filming the invisible” could thus be understood as referring to the merging of the so-called “object of perception” with the secondary perceiver: the spectator of the resulting moving images. How can the viewer’s “filmic body” interact with the filmic object? And what forms of knowledge result from this process? Discussing the fictitious nature of the image, Belting (2012: 188) highlights the balance between mental and physical images that is responsible for a particular society’s imaginary and that is (re)produced from generation to generation. An image of the world is always a combination of perception and interpretation: “[o]ur images anyway come to existence in a double act of analysis and synthesis. We analyze the media in which we search for images before we form our own images in an act of synthesis” (ibid.: 195). The attempts of filming the “invisible,” the “wow,” or the “cruel radiance of what is”—as the “religious real” to be “captured” in moving images—echo the “image belief ” that Belting (ibid.: 188) understands as a central aspect of our symbolization of the world in collective images. In our tendency to “animate” the image, by ascribing life to a lifeless object, we want the image to excess itself. Belting (ibid.) refers to Egyptian rituals and the Christian tradition of “living pictures,” which carry the ability to heal or to punish, where images are seen as able to develop a quality of their own and transgress the border to the viewer. So how do we deal with this tendency toward image belief—our ability to animate the image—when attempting to capture the “invisible” beyond the image, particularly when it comes to religious contexts, as discussed by Suhr, Willersev, and Meyer among others? In Feast, we invite the viewer to decode and resynthesize the various aspects of the ritual in the act of spectating. The images of the ice-bathing arrange themselves around the body of the viewer, displaying the multitude of emotional and sensory qualities as well as their contextual elements. The natural flow of the observation, disrupted by an unsettling co-presence of incongruent elements, is supposed to invoke a certain experiential quality of the image as an inner representation. In this, we follow Grimshaw and Ravetz (2009: 549), who argue in regard to observational filmmaking that “the work of interpretation and analysis . . . is held to be ongoing, embedded in and inseparable from the moment of filming and the moment of viewing.”

CONCLUSION Meyer has suggested that we understand religion as a “practice of mediation” and media therefore as intrinsically connected to religion. In the case of moving pictures, this points to an analysis of the roles played by film next to more “traditional” religious media (e.g., books and images) and of how film can, under certain conditions, take precedence over them. As “sensational forms” (Meyer 2008) for invoking and producing a “religious real,” newer media, according to Meyer, should therefore be seen not as antithetical to religious experience but rather as forms of representation that can become “authorized to be suitable harbingers of immediate, authentic experiences” (Meyer 2008: 712). One question that remains open in this perspective, of course, are possible discontinuities between different media and specific forms of images. Should the history of mediation practices be understood as a continuum with no clear distinctions? Are there any “paradigm shifts”? Do all media have similar basic characteristics? We suggest that when looking at the use of newer media (print, photography, film, TV, radio, internet) in contemporary and historical settings by religious actors and groups (as “religious media”), documentary audiovisual media are of special interest. Their particular involvement in

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the creation of a “religious real’ ” may allow us to rethink classical questions of theorizing religion from an aesthetics of religion perspective. When making use of moving images as an analytical medium of scholarship (as “research medium”)—as demonstrated above with regard to our case study Feast— similar, but slightly different questions have to be asked. An aesthetics of religion perspective can—particularly with regard to images and moving pictures—draw on a rich tradition of debates in other subdisciplines of cultural studies disciplines, like visual anthropology, to reflect on the particular challenges and possibilities of researching religion from an audiovisual perspective. The delicate balance between analytic distance and experiential immersion features heavily here, and—we argue—might be particularly problematic when the subject matter is religious, that is when a representation of ontological claims is at stake. This is one reason why the rich literature on “representing reality” (Nichols 1991) in documentary film theory might provide an interesting and thought-provoking resource for the further development of an aesthetics of religion perspective. Finally, existing debates in cognitive film theory, but in particular newer cognitive and neuro-scientific studies from an embodied perspective, as preliminarily discussed in this chapter, have the potential for strong influence on the ways in which we discuss particular religious uses of audiovisual media, as well as the use of moving pictures as a research medium.

RECOMMENDED READING Fingerhut, Joerg and Katrin Heimann (2017), “Movies and the Mind: On Our Filmic Body,” in T. Fuchs et al. (eds), Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World, 353–77, Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. An introduction to recent results on the cognitive and neuroscientific study of the perception of moving images and including the proposal of a “filmic body.” Grimshaw, Anna (2011), “The Bellwether Ewe: Recent Developments in Ethnographic Filmmaking and the Aesthetics of Anthropological Inquiry,” Cultural Anthropology, 26 (2): 247–62. An exploration of the “aesthetic turn” in ethnographic filmmaking and the roles of art, the senses, and aesthetic knowledge in visual anthropology. Suhr, Christian and Rane Willerslev (2012), “Can Film Show the Invisible? The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking,” Current Anthropology, 53 (3): 282–94. A discussion of the possibilities of using the disruptive effects of filmic montage as the means of conveying the “invisible” aspects of social reality in ethnographic filmmaking.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Cult Images BRIGITTE LUCHESI

INTRODUCTION The term “cult images” refers to images which are meant to represent divine beings and are used in acts of worship directed toward these beings. Although images that meet this definition can be found in many religions, this chapter confines itself to Hindu images in India. The Indian subcontinent abounds in cult images and therefore offers an especially rich field for the study of religious images. In the Hindu context they are commonly called mu ¯rti (form, embodiment). Worship centering on mu ¯rtis is a form of religious practice attested for nearly two millennia. The images that may be used for worship are not only numerous, they also vary widely with regard to shape and material. While art historians tend to concentrate on ancient and elaborately crafted specimens, often made from durable and valuable material and housed in temples, this essay attaches equal importance to images used in acts of worship (pu ¯j¯as) in domestic contexts, which are often fabricated from less valuable and less durable substances. The way images are encountered and treated in private pu ¯j¯as not only adds to the understanding of the everyday religious practices of Hindus, but also calls attention to the affective states of the devotees, which may differ from those experienced during temple pu ¯j¯as. The sensory perception of devotees is affected in both settings. The design and course of temple pu ¯j¯as are likely to engage all the sensual faculties of those taking part in the proceedings conducted by the temple priests; their senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching are repeatedly addressed. The involvement of the various senses can likewise be discerned in domestic worship, although its extent seems to depend on the form and degree of elaboration the worshipper chooses for the pu ¯j¯a. A particular feature of privately performed pu ¯j¯as, however, is the noticeable affection with which many cult images are treated. Apart from the due respect given to them, they are frequently handled like persons to whom the worshipper has a special emotional relationship, i.e., like a family member whom he or she loves and cares for. This aspect—the sensual perception of Hindu cult images and their emotional experience, which is of special interest for the study of aesthetics of religion—will be taken up in greater detail after several other general topics have been discussed: the distribution and great diversity of Hindu cult images, the possible types of murt¯ı s, their fabrication, and the ways they are used.

ENCOUNTERING HINDU CULT IMAGES For scholars interested in cult images the Indian subcontinent offers one of the most fruitful fields. No visitor to India will fail to notice the ubiquitous colorful mass-produced 207

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posters, depicting Hindu gods and goddesses, which are to be found practically everywhere in the public space, in shops, restaurants, and buses, but also in private surroundings. In many cases they are not simple decorative elements but part of religious arrangements, if not themselves objects of worship (Joshi 1994). Three-dimensional images are equally widespread in public places, among them carved stones erected at roadsides, underneath trees, on boulders in streams, and near springs. Certain trees are specifically marked by scarves and other signs, thus being made recognizable as sacred trees associated with certain deities. In villages it is common to have depictions of a deity near or above the door, most often the image of the elephant-headed god Gane´sa, popularly known as the ˙ protector of entrances. Temples housing divinities are of course the places where visual representations of deities can be found. In larger temples the innermost shrine (garbhagr ya) ˙ (Michell 1988: 62) accommodates the mu ¯rti of the main deity, sometimes accompanied by that of a divine partner. More images of the same deities as well as of other gods and goddesses may be found inside and outside the building. The various temple styles that developed in the different regions of the subcontinent all provide spaces for additional images. Temples in the so-called South Indian style typically encompass a number of buildings, each dedicated to a deity related to the main one; this sacred area is often surrounded by walls interrupted by gate towers (gopuras) which are covered with images (see, e.g., the figures of the west gateway of the M¯ın¯aks¯ı temple, Madurai, in Dehejia ˙ 1997: 235f., 240). Other temple types present images of deities in niches in the outer walls or in the courtyard; they are often also worshipped with flowers and other items. Festive occasions, when the images of the deities of certain temples are brought out in processions and parades, offer further opportunity to have visual contact with them outside their normal abode. Pious Hindus nearly always have a separate space in their homes where the images of their most revered gods are kept. This may be a niche which can be closed by a curtain or door, a small structure fixed to the wall, or a miniature wooden temple containing the images as well as all objects necessary for pu ¯j¯a (rites of worship). If possible it may even be a separate room. Households with courtyards often have an additional small shrine for special deities outside the house. Many high-caste families keep, for instance, a pedestal for Tuls¯ı, the sacred basil plant, which is believed to embody goddess Brind¯a, wife of the great god Visnu. Engraved stone footprints represent local holy men; in southern ˙˙ Himachal Pradesh it is B¯ab¯a B¯alak N¯ath, one of the most popular saints of the area. Devotees of S´iva usually have a separate small temple-like structure outside their house, where the god is worshipped in the form of a lin ˙ga (a cylindrical stone shaft).

CLASSIFYING HINDU CULT IMAGES Hindu gods and goddesses are depicted in many ways, while the individual deities may be given different forms, too. The great variety of forms has prompted scholars to classify the images according to their appearance. A frequent distinction is the one between iconic and aniconic representations (see Aktor, Chapter 9, this volume). The latter term is often applied to non-anthropomorphic depictions in contrast to iconic images presenting the deities in human or animal shape or as a composition of both features. S´¯alagr¯ams, the fossil ammonites said to represent the god Visnu, are usually cited as examples of the ˙˙ aniconic variety. The lin ˙ ga, S´iva’s representation, is frequently called aniconic, too, especially when it is left in its natural condition. It should be noted, however, that these stones seldom remain in this untouched condition when used in worship but are painted

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or covered with a silver cap that shows one or more faces (Eck 1998: 6, 12). The same holds true for wayside icons and unhewn stone representations of certain village deities which are frequently furnished with a pair of eyes (Mookerjee 1987). These additions raise doubts as to whether a hard and fast distinction between aniconic and iconic images is really useful. Aktor suggests a distinction between non-iconic, aniconic, and iconic images, and stresses the “fluidity that runs through the whole spectrum” (Aktor, Chapter 9, this volume). Indeed it seems more fruitful to highlight the interrelationship between the different visual modes of representing divine entities. These modes comprise whatever a beholder can actually see, be it a three-dimensional anthropomorphic statue, a natural stone, a river or mountain, a print, a sacred plant, or a yantra (geometrical design). In case a classification of appearances is intended, it is usually sufficient to distinguish between figural and non-figural representations and occasional combinations of the two. Anthropomorphic statues and drawings, carved stones displaying snakes or footprints, and a number of attributes which may stand for a deity—as for instance a trident for the Goddess—would then be understood as figural, while cult objects lacking any figural features, like fossils, trees, and rivers, would belong to the latter category. Man-made lin ˙ gas, set in a yon¯ı –like base, or unhewn stones to which eyes are applied, exemplify transitional forms. The same holds true for the sacred Tuls¯ı plant when it is covered with a bridal scarf. However, these different categories are of minor or no importance when the closer examination of cult images is directed at their actual use. So the god Visnu may ˙˙ be worshipped figurally in the form of one of his avat¯aras (divine incarnations)—for example as the infant Krsna—and at the same time in the form of an ammonite, as is often ˙˙˙ the case in the homes of the upper castes. In temples, too, one may find a ´s¯alagr¯am side by side with an anthropomorphic mu ¯rti, as for example in the Laksm¯ı–D¯amodara temple ˙ in Chamba Town (see figure 13 in Luchesi 2011: 188). During the Dasahr¯a festivities in the Himalayan city of Kullu, the Vaisnava deity Raghun¯ath takes residence in a tent in the ˙˙ middle of the fairground. The daily morning ablutions are performed not only to his humanlike metal image but also to a black ´s¯alagr¯am which normally cannot be seen as it is kept in a golden capsule placed underneath the deity’s garments, where it receives the same attendances as the anthropomorphic image. The temple of the goddess Braje´svar¯ı in Kangra in the North Indian state of Himachal Pradesh is erected above a small stone (pind¯ı ) which is believed to have appeared by itself. This stone in the innermost shrine is ˙˙ her chief image. The priests present it to the visitors covered in yellow powder, with black stripes on the upper part, a pair of small sea-shell eyes, and a large nose ring. The devotees, who often have to stand in line for a long time until they are able to bow or kneel in front of the mu ¯rti, usually have to move on quickly. Touching or photographing the image is not allowed. After leaving the inner shrine by a side door and turning to the right, a niche in the outer wall of the sanctum attracts immediate attention (Figure 19.1). It contains a half-relief depicting the goddess in the anthropomorphic form which, according to a wellknown myth, she had adopted when fighting the buffalo demon Mahisa: riding a tiger ˙ and holding weapons in her sixteen hands. People reverently touch the image, apply red colored powder to it, offer flowers and sweets, and wave incense in front of it. A distinction that proves useful when looking at the usage of religious images is the one between permanent and mobile images. Central cult images in major temples are usually permanently installed, i.e., erected in the course of a ceremony which includes their fastening to a specially prepared pedestal or the ground. Many temples own a second image of their chief deity, most often in figural form, that can be brought out of the temple and taken in a public procession through the neighboring streets. Especially South

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FIGURE 19.1: Devotee of the goddess Braje´svar¯ı adorning her image at the exterior wall of her temple in Kangra Town, 2018. © Brigitte Luchesi.

Indian temples are known for the grand processions on festive occasions when these mobile images (utsava mu ¯rtis) are carried on palanquins or pulled in huge carts (raths) along streets which often were especially constructed for these enormous vehicles (see plan in Harman 1989: 30). The public presentation of mobile images provides all those beholders who are barred from entering the temple of the deity—whether these are adherents to other religions or people considered to be temporarily or permanently impure—to have the beneficial sight of the deity. A special variety of mobile cult images can be met with in the lower Himalayan regions. In addition to an immobile image a great number of village deities are depicted by mask-like objects (mohre) tied to a palanquin— likewise called rath—which is carried on the shoulders of two or more men (Luchesi 2006: 69–78). The mobile images are assembled for a number of occasions: when invited by a villager to grace his home, when visiting a deity in the neighborhood whose temple festival is being celebrated, and, most importantly, when joining the great yearly assemblies of village deities. After the events in question the raths are taken apart and stored away. From the point of view of usage yet another distinction proves meaningful: the one between images made from durable material and those whose durability is limited. Various types of rocks would count as durable materials, preferably black granite and marble; the same holds true for metals like gold, silver, brass, and astad¯atu (an alloy of eight metals), ˙˙ precious stones, and hardwood. Nondurable material on the other hand would comprise unbaked clay, soft wood, bamboo, cow dung, paper, and human bodies. As a rule, longlasting material is chosen for images which are permanently installed in temples. The preference given to durable and generally high-quality material for temple images is undoubtedly due to the notion that the representation of the deity in question should be

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in line with his or her elevated position. A more practical although not unimportant aspect is that the image should be suited for regular ceremonial handling, especially for actual bathing with water and a variety of other substances. Most of the nondurable materials mentioned above cannot withstand such treatment. Accordingly, the use of such materials is in most cases limited to those images which are not meant to last longer than the period of worship for which they were made. Typical examples are small lin ˙gas formed out of mud that are prepared on the spot for the immediate worship of S´iva (Eck 1998: 50). Many images that are used by women for the celebration of yearly religious festivals are made of either unbaked clay or cow dung. As the latter is produced by the holy animal it is thought to be ritually pure and therefore especially well suited. Alan Entwistle (1984) has documented wall-pictures of the goddess, made from cow dung by girls. Clay is used for instance for the figures which girls fashion in the Kangra region of Himachal Pradesh for Ral¯ı Pu ¯j¯a. They represent the deities P¯arvat¯ı and S´iva, who are worshipped by the young devotees for a full month, at the end of which the figures are immersed in water, where they dissolve (Luchesi 2002). Similar figures are made by adult married women for Harit¯alik¯a T¯ıj in early fall, an occasion when P¯arvat¯ı’s ascetic efforts to gain the attention and love of S´iva are remembered. These comparatively unspectacular events bring to mind the grand, well-known goddess representations made for Durg¯a Pu ¯j¯a in Kolkata, which at the end of the festive season are immersed in the Hoogly, or the images of Gane´sa for Vin¯ayaka Caturth¯ı in Maharashtra, which finally are turned over to the sea. ˙ All these images that are made for a specific occasion may be called ephemeral or “temporary” images (Preston 1985: 10). They are used for a limited timespan after which they are “dismantled” or “disposed of.” Temporal cult-images may also be found in twodimensional formats, as self-produced drawings or ready-made prints. In rural North Indian households, it used to be common to paint depictions of deities directly on an interior wall (Mitter 2001: 159). The depicted deities were offered food and flowers by pressing them onto the picture. With the increasing utilization of modern building material these drawings are vanishing. Instead a certain type of colorful, industrially produced prints appeared: posters for special occasions. As opposed to most of the other so-called god-posters their use is limited to the occasion at hand; the offerings are now applied to the posters (Figure 19.2). “Feeding” deities on posters is, however, not limited to those deities whose worship is confined to specific days. Offering food and applying sindu ¯r (auspicious red powder) to deities depicted on posters which surround a house shrine or a pu ¯j¯a shrine in a shop is quite common. A special case of temporary cult images are so-called jh¯an ˙ k¯ı s, i.e., tableaux vivants. One or more persons—most often young boys—are dressed up and made to represent Hindu gods in public places where devoted beholders may receive and worship them (Luchesi 2014). Jh¯an ˙k¯ı s show all the characteristics of temporary cult images. Their display usually starts with a formal act of worship performed by a religious expert and ends with the same kind of act. As in all the other cases the gods are thought to be present only as long as they are invoked, that is, actually worshipped and ritually treated. Similarly, young unmarried girls may be worshipped as representatives of Hindu goddesses. This ritual, known as kany¯a pu ¯j¯a in the Hindi-speaking part of India, may be performed in domestic as well as in public settings (Luchesi 2018). While the private form of worship usually takes place in individual households engaging known and often related girls, the public one is to be found at goddess temples where small girls hold themselves ready during major festivals to represent dev¯ı s (goddesses) for visitors who prefer to honor the deity in an embodied form.

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FIGURE 19.2: Worship of goddess Hoi with the help of a poster, 2008. © Brigitte Luchesi.

MAKING CULT IMAGES With the exception of images which are found in natural surroundings and are believed to be svayambhu ¯ (“self-arising”) most cult images are man-made in one way or another. The above overview already pointed to the fact that their production is not confined to artisans and professional image-makers. Quite a large proportion of cult images may be fashioned by the devotees themselves. They are often meant for temporary use only. The nondurability of the chosen material determines their lifespan. Durable images for temples, however, are usually made by trained and highly skilled experts—metalworkers, goldsmiths, stonemasons, and other specialized artisans—who follow strict guidelines. Their knowledge and skills are often handed down within the family and caste group, as is the case with many craftsmen and artists (´silpin, sthapati) in South India whose ancestors have fashioned images from dark granite for centuries. Jaipur in Rajasthan on the other hand is famous for the production of marble mu ¯rtis. The expertise of the artisans comprises knowledge about the various forms of a particular deity, important iconographic features like body measurements, body and hand postures, number of arms and heads, emblems, clothing, headdress and ornaments, weapons, and animal mounts (v¯ahanas) (Rao [1914]

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1985). Aside from the technical skills, they must know about the manifold prerequisites for the successful creation of an image, as for instance the choice of suitable material and its proper handling as well as the ritually correct preparation of their instruments (Kramrisch 1958: 226; Link 1999). In addition, they have to observe certain rules pertaining to their conduct while at work: frequently they have to stay in a temporary work camp away from home and normal family life and partake of a reduced diet. The culminating point of their work is netronmil¯ana, the “eye-opening” ceremony, i.e., engraving the eyes of the image and thereby bestowing sight to it. This act is part of a multitude of ceremonies, performed together with priests, which lead to the consecration of the image (Davis 1997: 33–7; Eck 1998: 85–92; Wilke 2017a: 329). Central parts of this are pr¯anapratisth¯a, the bestowal of life-breath to the mu ¯rti by the main priest, and ˙ ˙˙ the ritual transference of divine power, which is invoked in a grand fire ceremony, to the installed image. A mu ¯rti which has been properly installed and consecrated, usually at the same time as the consecration of the temple in which it is housed, is thought to be imbued with the permanent presence of the deity. This entails that the acts of worship owed to it have to be regularly and continuously performed by a rightfully appointed priest. The fashioning of temporary images, however, usually does not require special preconditions on the part of those who fashion them. Sometimes a bath is recommended; menstruating women, who abstain from worship while in this condition, may refrain from making images, too. It seems that in most cases the chosen material need not be purified. Cow dung is per se ritually pure. Likewise, young girls represent the goddess in Kany¯a Pu ¯j¯a or boys are dressed and set up as representations of gods in religious tableaux vivants, because prepubescent children are considered to be ´suddh (pure). Materials like sand, bamboo, or wood may be sprinkled with purifying Ganges water; it is also poured over grains that are made to sprout and represent the Goddess during the Navar¯atra festivals. Women in Kangra informed the author that p¯ancaratna (“five precious things”) should be inserted into the clay figures that are fashioned for Ral¯ı Pu ¯j¯a and Harit¯alik¯a to make them suitable for worship. To meet this demand, they use a coin or a pearl. In most cases temporary cult images need not be consecrated in grand style either. Like in any worship (pu ¯j¯a) in domestic surroundings the deities are invited at the outset to be present and are formally dismissed at the end. The farewell acts (visarjana) usually consist of devotional gestures like bowing and greeting them deferentially; in the case of an immersion the image is publicly brought to the water, where it may be seen off with singing and dancing.

USING CULT IMAGES Cult images are made and consecrated with the aim of approaching and worshipping the deities in question in a tangible, physical form. According to a widespread belief, images are “seats” or “vessels” of the venerated deities, either for a short period or a longer amount of time. The prevailing idea in all cases is that the revered divinity is willing to take a manifest form which the worshipper can see and experience and which lends itself to a number of concrete practices and services. These practices make up what is usually known as a pu ¯j¯a (worship). A pu ¯j¯a is modeled on the notion that the deity is a superior being, similar to a king or a “distinguished and adored guest” (Fuller 1992: 57). All the up¯acaras (“services” or “attendances”) which belong to a proper pu ¯j¯a therefore express utmost respect and deference. For this reason, Diana Eck has rightly called them “honor offerings” (1998: 47). For pu ¯j¯as both at temples and at domestic shrines, usually sixteen up¯acaras are listed (Bühnemann 1988: 102f.; Falk 2005). They form the core of temple

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services, which may be extended according to the temple in question and the occasion. After the deity is offered a seat, water is applied to the image for washing the feet and rinsing the mouth; it may then be offered water for a symbolic bath or be actually bathed, anointed with unguents, and eventually dressed, decorated, and scented. Nearly always flowers, incense, and food are offered, and a lighted lamp is waved before it. At the end the worshipper bows or prostrates himself or herself before the image; if possible he or she also circumambulates it. Temple images that are thought to contain the divine presence permanently are offered various additional services, starting with a ceremonial awakening in the morning and putting them to bed in the evening. In the course of the day a number of elaborate pu ¯j¯as may take place, while music programs and dances may be performed for the entertainment of the deities, or rides or drives inside or outside the temple premises. As a rule, the consecrated images in temples are carefully and lavishly dressed and covered with ornaments and flowers, so that the body of the statue is often not discernible. Their eyes, however, are generally visible, as is the case with the highly revered cult image of C¯amund¯a ˙˙ Dev¯ı in the North Indian Kangra Valley (Figure 19.3). Dressing and decorating the images

FIGURE 19.3: Central cult image of goddess C¯amund¯a, Ca¯mund¯a Dev¯ı Mandir near Dadh, ˙˙ ˙˙ Himachal Pradesh, 1998. © Brigitte Luchesi.

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are imperative up¯acaras. Rich garments, jewelry, and garlands express respect and devotion, whereas their lack points to the contrary. Respect and propriety forbid presenting consecrated images “naked” in public, which is why the dressing of images is normally not done in front of onlookers. All those who are in immediate contact with the temple images usually belong to the temple personnel; most often they are priests. In general, lay people are not allowed to touch the images or even come close to them. In fact, consecrated temple images are rarely installed in places where they may be easily approached. Often a door, a gate, or bars hinder devotees from coming close. In many temples, especially those in South India, the central cult image is kept enshrined in the garbagr ya (“womb chamber”). As this ˙ protective chamber is closed on three sides, a sight of the mu ¯rti is only possible from a certain angle in front. At times when the deity is thought to be in an unpresentable state— while being dressed or fed or while sleeping—the chamber is temporarily closed. The priestly prerogatives with regard to the cult images together with the architectural preconditions leave lay devotees only limited room to establish direct contact with the mu ¯rtis. They depend entirely on the priests who act as mediators between them and the divinities. The priests are the ones who pass on the offerings and donations of the lay people to the mu ¯rtis and who return divinized substances and sanctified food (pras¯ad) to them. They also determine the time of the only possible direct contact which is offered to the devotees: the eye contact with the mu ¯rti. It seems that it is due to these restrictions that the moments of being able to see the sacred images became so important in temple worship. But not only seeing them is of high import; to be seen by them is equally essential. As a rule, central temple images are fashioned and positioned in such a way that they come to stand vis-à-vis the beholder, both eyes directed at him. “Beholding the image is an act of worship,” writes Eck (1998: 3) in her influential book on dar´san (“seeing”), and to be touched by the gaze of the deity is thought to be highly auspicious and beneficial, a blessing on the part of the deity. The importance given to the eyes of images cannot be overemphasized. Great care is taken to make them conspicuous by constantly lining them with additional paint. As mentioned above, non-figural cult images are frequently given sight by painting eyes on them or applying two eye-shaped objects. The effect aimed at is the impression of an all-seeing and wide-awake divine being. The connection between the clearly discernible eyes of an image and its coming to life can be observed in the treatment of processional images, too. Not in use for most part of the year, they have to be “brought to life” by applying marks to their foreheads and embellishing their eyes whenever they are needed for a religious event.

EXPERIENCING CULT IMAGES The appearance, positioning, and treatment of images in temples follow acknowledged conceptions of adequate worship. At the same time the ways they are dealt with can be understood as attempts to influence and shape the sensory perception of the beholders. The stimulation of visual perception by emphasizing and enlarging the eyes of images is one of the central means of these efforts. A similar effect is brought about by their colorful garments and costly ornaments, and by the use of dramatic lighting, be it natural or artificial. When lay people are allowed to witness the intricate ceremonies performed by the priests, especially the bathing ones, they are given the opportunity to visually participate in the auspicious performances—to worship by seeing. The denial, on the other hand, of the opportunity to witness the ensuing dressing creates suspense and eager

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anticipation. When the curtain is pulled open and the deity is displayed again, decked in beautiful robes and ornaments, this epiphany, as it may be called, is usually greeted with special intensity, exclamations of joy, and gestures of deference. Besides the visual sense the senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch are affected as well. A person visiting a temple will hear the ringing of various bells, the recitations of the priest(s), the background noise produced by fellow visitors, and the performances of professional musicians on drums and wind instruments (Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume). In modern times music, whether live or prerecorded, is usually amplified by loudspeakers, which intensifies the auditory event. Visitors will also smell the incense and camphor offered to the deity, the oils and perfumes with which they are anointed, and the fragrance of the flowers used for decoration and offerings. They will be aware of the odors of the various substances given to them by priests to apply to their own body, like sandalwood paste or perfumed ash. Devotees finally taste the food (pras¯ad) passed to them by the priests. Pras¯ad is the food that, having been offered to a deity, is believed to be sanctified by his or her tasting before being returned to the devotees as a blessing. Visitors often touch the threshold of the temple door and, as bodily contact with consecrated images is forbidden to them, the floor or steps in front of the shrine. They may reach for other representations like images in recesses on the exterior walls of the womb chamber or of the temple. Shoes have to be taken off in temple spaces, so their feet are in constant contact with the ground—perceived to be set apart from ordinary ground—thereby feeling its texture and temperature. Further contact comes from kneeling and touching the ground with one’s forehead or prostrating oneself. The various sensory perceptions are experienced in the course of actions that constantly demand the use of the body and certain bodily movements: walking along a prescribed route, standing still in one place for a certain time, stretching to reach a bell, bending down, kneeling, and the like. Temple spaces are of course constructed in such a way as to facilitate and/or elicit a number of these movements. The worship of cult images at domestic shrines follows essentially the same sequence of upac¯aras that can be encountered in temples, although it may be shorter and occasionally not as clearly structured. The decisive difference is that the devotees have to perform the different rites of pu ¯j¯a themselves. Pu ¯j¯a in domestic contexts is usually performed by only one family member; the others may join at the end for pran¯ama (devoted greeting) and the partaking of pras¯ad. Which services are thought to be imperative often depends on the family traditions and the occasion of the worship. As the venerated deities are usually seen as merely temporary present guests, the acts of ¯av¯ahana (invocation), i.e., bidding them to be present, and of visarjana (dismissal), are essential. Offering water (¯acaman¯ı ya), flowers (puspa), incense (dhu ¯pa), food (naivedya), and a burning lamp (¯arat¯ı ) is nearly ˙ always carried out. These and all possible further attendances are performed with care and respect, and the gestures, which express humility—bowing, greeting with raised hands put together—seem a matter of course. But in addition, another feature may be discerned: a special emotional state, which pervades the treatment of the images. Eck (1998: 47) calls it an “attitude of affection.” It is especially noticeable in the upac¯aras of bathing and dressing. Devotees of both genders usually perform these intimate services as they would handle a beloved child—gently and affectionately. This is especially the case when the image depicts Krsna as infant or a pleasant-looking small Gane´sa. The affection ˙˙˙ ˙ is also obvious in the cases where the images are made by the devotees themselves. The above-mentioned Ral¯ı figures, for instance, are fashioned, painted, dressed, and treated by the young devotees with unambiguous expressions of love and fondness. Cult images kept in family shrines are a way of connecting certain chosen deities in a visible, tangible

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FIGURE 19.4: Domestic shrine, 2004. © Brigitte Luchesi.

form with the family in question and their home. They are given a fixed space within it (kept apart from the other mundane spaces by doors or curtains) and special attentive behavior (Figure 19.4). Although the presence of the deities has to be constantly invoked anew, their “seats” or “supports” are always available for the performance of the pu ¯j¯as, in which this presence is realized in material form.

CONCLUSION This essay chose to look at cult images as tangible representations of deities which enable a sensuous contact between the worshipper and his or her divine counterpart. Seen from the perspective of aesthetics of religion, an image which is made for and used in worship may be understood as an intermediate entity. It instigates an encounter that evokes various sensory perceptions as well as emotional experiences on the part of the worshipper. The deity, too, is actively involved in the interaction, as according to Hindu belief it is willing to be encountered in images.

RECOMMENDED READING Davis, Richard H. (1997), Lives of Indian Images, Princeton: Princeton University Press. A stimulating series of case studies on the making and use of Indian religious objects and the new meaning they take on when placed and used in non-devotional contexts. Eck, Diana L. (1998), Dar´san: Seeing the Divine Image in India, Third Edition, New York: Columbia University Press. Highly influential essay on the power and importance of seeing

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(dar´san) the sacred in the Hindu religious tradition. This and later editions include a notable afterword on “Seeing the Divine Images in America,” taking note of the establishment of Hindu temples in the West. Waghorne, Joanne Punzo, Norman Cutler, and Vasudha Narayanan, eds. (1985), Gods of Flesh, Gods of Stone: The Embodiment of Divinity in India, Chambersburg: Anima Publications. An inspiring collection of essays on the creation and destruction of temporary embodiments of the divine, e.g., on ephemeral cult images of Gane´sa, humans thought to be possessed by ˙ deities, and holy men seen as abodes of God.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Smell as Communication ESTHER-MARIA GUGGENMOS

INTRODUCTION: IMAGINING THE WORLD OF SMELL IN CHINESE BUDDHIST BIOGRAPHIES This contribution attempts to highlight how a religious aesthetic approach can generate significant new insights into well-researched textual material. It does so by looking at Chinese Buddhist biographies from the perspective of how the world of smell is communicated. There is a long history of academically established ways to approach biographies. We identify places, people, and historical events. We seek patterns that shape biographies and ask for the history of the textual genre. We apply methods of textual analysis that concentrate on distilling the plot and reconstruct the narration and its agents. In the following discussion, we will go beyond these forms of interpretation and exemplify the new approach through an in-depth look at the role of olfaction (smell) in the Biographies of Thaumaturge Monks (Shenseng zhuan ⾎‫ۣܗ‬, T. 2064, in the following SSZ). This textual corpus was assembled in 1417 CE by the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor, and collects material from standard biographical corpora like the Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan 儈‫ )ۣܗ‬as well as from secular records or popular collections of miracle tales. The aim of the compilation is to distil the convincing aspects and strength of Buddhist belief. From fragrance to stink, smells cover a broad range within these biographies. Through our inductive approach, we see odors as shaping the meaning of social interaction. By concentrating on smell, we adopt an aesthetics of religion approach to this corpus, intending to shed light on how religion is mediated through the senses: the interest in sensual perception and communication is what unites our approaches in the field of religious aesthetics. I will introduce the material by selecting a biography from the corpus and illustrating established ways of explaining and contextualizing it. I will then screen through the 208 biographies of this corpus, bearing in mind the question of how smell occurs in and forms part of the communication process. The results reveal two modes of action in which olfaction plays a role: we find in the corpus, on the one hand, odors that are intentionally induced and, on the other, spontaneously occurring. Both of these modes carry a specific message and it becomes obvious that deciphering the communication happening in the narrations requires decoding the cultural context and the meaning of the social practices established within it. Through the analysis, we therefore gain an understanding of the world of smell and its links to the cultural context. I will conclude with an outlook on areas of knowledge that touch upon and include aspects of the olfactory codes 219

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occurring in the biographies, such as transformation processes across Asia and along the Silk Road.

STUDYING SMELL IN BIOGRAPHIES Biographical collections are an important genre of Chinese historiography that has been well established over centuries, from the first dynastic history around 100 BCE onward. Biographies strive for authenticity in collating various sources, like eulogies, memorials, and family records. They attempt to illustrate historical development by expressing moral aspects that contribute to the rise or fall of a dynasty, a family, or other parts of society (principle of praise and admonition, baobian 㽂䋦). By imperial order, Chinese Buddhist biographies were compiled to demonstrate the power of Buddhism and emulate the recognized, mostly Confucian, stereotypes of intellectual qualities, moral behavior, and life conduct.1 In the Indian context, Buddhist biographical writing took the form of narrations about previous lives of the historical Buddha, ja¯takas, while in the Tibetan context, we know about biographies written in the mode of imitating the Buddha’s life, experiencing ascetic hardship and forms of awakening. In contrast, Chinese Buddhist biographies follow established Chinese patterns, start with the name, geographical ancestry, and family of the monk (or less often the nun), and possibly his/her unusual career as a child prodigy according to Confucian ideals. They might also draw a counterimage of somebody with arcane knowledge but socially inept behavior. Episodes from his or her life will follow. Also, Buddhist biographies tend to end by mentioning the person’s death, including the circumstances, age, place, and possibly an account of posthumous fame as well as preserving variations of the episodes told. A Chinese Buddhist biography is therefore a text that is dense with information and compiled from different textual genres, linked by the compiler. At times, the procedure of combining the material is reflected in an uneven reading experience. Such material remains unintelligible without proper explanation and it is the merit of outstanding and extensive translations that we are able to gain a deeper understanding of these works within a short time today.2 Decoding the locations, times, and setting of the episodes as well as the historical relevance of the narrations is a time-consuming task through which the historical situation is elucidated. In the field of (mainly Western) literary studies, biographical writing has been analyzed on the broad basis of narratological and other textual studies, but less so with regard to Chinese material. John Kieschnick was among the first to reflect on the Biographies of Eminent Monks by identifying different types of biographies, such as those of the ascetic, the scholar, or the thaumaturge (Kieschnick 1997). Recently, textual analysis was applied to the SSZ to identify semantic patterns that shape the narrations and show how far these are constructed in order to generate trust and belief in Buddhism (Guggenmos 2019). While these established ways of looking at biographies reveal rich information that significantly contributes to our understanding of historical developments, the field of religious aesthetics offers fresh insights into an otherwise well-researched genre. Religious aesthetics provides a multitude of ways by which we could approach the SSZ. In the following, we will focus on olfaction. This does not imply that we deny that the world of odors orchestrates situations together with other sensual occurrences that can be much more dominant. Textual, visual, and auditory moments shape situations and are also, on an academic level, reflected more intensively. By venturing into the realm between fragrance and stink, we concentrate on a sensory world that, in East Asia

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and Europe alike, often remained and even to date remains unconscious and unreflected but is strongly bound to emotion and long-term memory.3 In many cases, we are missing a distinct vocabulary to refer to and differentiate between odors and the interaction and communication that take place on the basis of the occurrence of smell. Olfaction has been and continues to be researched in a variety of fields. The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded in 2004 to Richard Axel and Linda Buck for clarifying the mechanisms that control the way in which odors are perceived at the molecular and cellular levels and, since then, we have known that it is not only the nose but also other organs of the human body that can perceive smell. In 2010, the cell physiologist Hanns Hatt from Bochum received the Robert Pfleger Foundation prize for identifying the smell of egg cells that attracts sperm. Hatt dedicated his whole academic life to deciphering the cognitive and emotional connections of certain smells in their biological context. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and linguists have explored the relationship between olfaction and cognition (e.g., Rouby et al. 2002). Aroma research is a field closely connected to the food industry. At our university in Erlangen, in 2018, after years of intense research, a Chair for Aroma Research was established. Even in fields like architecture, with works on “Invisible Architecture” (Barbara and Perliss 2006), olfaction is acquiring fresh relevance. In the humanities, scholars of European history have focused on how the world of smell was mediated in the early Christian context (Harvey 2006). The medieval imaginatio of spices and the spice trade was the research focus of Paul Freedman and Gary P. Nabhan (Freedman 2008; Nabhan 2014). In anthropology, mainly Western-oriented sources have been assembled by David Howes (1991, 2005) and Jim Drobnick (2006). The cultural historian Constance Classen established the research field of the history of the senses and started out with a joint publication on aromatics (Classen et al. 1994) while, regarding India, the cultural history of smell, especially its ancient roots, has been analyzed by James McHugh (2012). Chinese sources on fragrance and perfume have recently attracted the attention of Sinologists, through tracing individual aromatics like ambergris (Borschberg 2003a, b), and especially through the French project “Parfume en Chine: Pour une histoire des parfums et des substances aromatiques en Chine . . . et ailleurs” (Perfume in China: Towards the history of perfume and aromatic substances in China . . . and elsewhere; recent exhibition: Lefebvre 2018). This systematic concentration on religious aesthetics adds to the spectrum of studies a new perspective by identifying culturally variant patterns of smell communication.

SMELL AS COMMUNICATION IN THE BIOGRAPHIES OF THAUMATURGE MONKS The SSZ is, as mentioned above, mainly a collation of Chinese Buddhist biographical material. It has been the focus of a long-term joint research project by the Buddhologist Li Wei and myself (Guggenmos and Li 2019). Its 208 biographies are arranged in nine chapters, with a focus on what makes Buddhism an efficacious and powerful religion. Buddhist monks are convincingly demonstrating this strength through deeply understanding the concrete implications of the law of cause and effect, by having insight into cosmic patterns and the patterns of stimulus-response (ganying), and by being able to perform wonders in the eyes of the general public (Guggenmos 2019). Looking for smell in the SSZ is not the first thing one would normally do when reading through the various biographies of monastic thaumaturges. Indeed, one finds simple instances of smell: a chair as a present from the emperor made from aromatic aloeswood

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shows his special favor (ᖼ⸕⦴ትᆹ഻ሪDŽᠯᇇ㿚㠘⌅ᑝDŽ䌌⊸俉⛪ᓗDŽ; biography of Zhixuan ⸕⦴, seventh century CE , T. 2064, L: 1007b23–24)—a fact that is also known to us through other sources. In another instance, a monk is able to appear in two places simultaneously and a certain kind of frankincense is offered (xunlu xiang 㯠䲨俉, boswellia thurifera; biography of Beidu ᶟ⑑, who is hard to date but famous for crossing water in a wooden cup, 962b7). Both aloeswood and frankincense were imported via the Silk Road (Nabhan 2014). They are applied naturally in the actual Buddhist context. The biographical records do not necessarily distinguish between smell and taste, which is in line with the common knowledge of experimental research. Food from different regions smells nice and tastes pleasant (⛪䵸ᵏㅹ䁝伏DŽ伏ણᱟ㨌DŽ㘼俉㖾н਼ц伏DŽ, biography of Beidu ᶟ⑑; 962b22–23). Already the ancient Chinese term “wei ણ” holds the double meaning of “smell-taste.” Similarly, the term “xiang 俉” is applied to render the Sanskrit “gandha” into Chinese, reflecting a broad range of meaning and commonly designating one of the six sense organs, sada¯y a¯tana, which are messengers of the Buddha ˙˙ and able to generate faith and devotion—a connection that is expressed through the use of incense and incense burners. Naturally, fragrance as an attribute of something or somebody deserving veneration and respect occurs in the names of both places (especially temples), and people. In the SSZ, we find a “fragrant and majestic chapel” (Xiangyan dian 俉೤⇯, biography of Yanshou ᔦ༭, tenth century CE , 1011b16), the “temple of the fragrant mountain” (Xiangshan si 俉ኡሪ; biography of Song Toutuo ᎙九䱰, hard to date but established the temple, 971b4; and biography of Faxi ⌅ௌ, who died in this temple in the fourth century CE , 979c11; also Gu xiangji si ਔ俉ぽሪ; biography of Sengjia ‫ܗ‬խ, fl. around 700 CE , 992a20) and monks bearing references to fragrance in their names (biography of Xiangduli 俉䯽Ộ, 971a9–20). Incense burners (xianglu 俉⡀), either held in the hand or placed on the ground, together with the fragrance emanating from them, are mentioned in relation to the veneration of Buddhist statues (ԕ⡀俉⬼≤㖞, biography of Amoghavajra, Bukong нオ, eighth century CE , 1001b29). Igniting incense is part of daily veneration behavior, combined with kneeling (❊俉䮧䐚, biography of Zhi[bian?] Ც税, date unknown, 1005b13), washing one’s hands, and invoking Buddha’s name (␵ᰖⴕ᡻❊俉 ᘥ᝸∿ྲֶ, biography of Congjian ᗎ䄛, date unknown, 1008c19). Remarkable is the usage of sandalwood for carving Buddhist statues. In one of the early biographies, the monk Falan (first century CE) visits China, bringing not only textual material but also a painted statue made of sandalwood by a royal master of his craft from the “Western regions” (948c18). The statue is painted and the paintings are exhibited in Luoyang. This narration illustrates nicely the hypothesis of McHugh that Chinese Buddhists imported sandalwood statues from India (McHugh 2012: x, 203ff.). It is much later that in the Chinese context not only painted copies but also real statues of sandalwood can be found. Such an enumeration of the different occurrences of smell—although interesting—does not seem to deliver any systematic insights into a culture of smell but is of sporadic character, similar to collecting insights into the usage of different substances. The aesthetics of religion approach aims to go farther and explore the role that smell plays in the narrations, seeking a language of smell that might be found behind the individual occurrences of odors.

INDUCED SMELL In a review of all of the episodes in which odors feature, a basic distinction can be drawn regarding how smell is perceived and operationalized (Table 20.1): On the one hand,

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TABLE 20.1: Smell as communication in the SSZ Induced smell

Spontaneously occurring smell

fragrance: – preparation for a miracle or for death – maintain a connection to god and deceased

(a) stink (b) fragrance – dissatisfied mummy – context of death: virtuous relocation monk – sign of illness: – monk changing location: localized in body and vague message that he left acting against the and that “things are ok” power of Buddhism – feeling connected to each other – sign of Buddhist teaching – sign of purity ➔ used to enforce sincerity in ➔ counter player to ➔ sign of the presence of special situations Buddhism something esteemed as Buddhist ➔ incense as language of humans ➔ language of the dead ➔ language of the dead and the absent virtuous being for directional communication with god and the deceased and for mutual social bonding

there are odors that are intentionally produced through burning, which are often found within the context of veneration. On the other hand, there are smells that emerge spontaneously and convey messages. Induced smells occur in the SSZ (a) on the occasion of preparation for an expected miracle and for death, (b) to maintain a connection to a god or deceased monk, and (c) to promote a sense of connection: (a) The monk Sengyi is awaiting a wonder and, in order to prepare properly, he bathes, burns incense, sits in silence, and starts to wait. The incense is, in this context, part of a preparatory purification awaiting the reaction by the principle of linggan 䵸ᝏ which is connected to the idea that sincerity will cause an effect (⍇⎤⠂俉ㄟ඀䶌 ᇔ, biography of Sengyi ‫ܗ‬᜿, probably fifth or sixth century CE , 966a25). Another monk is preparing for death: he rises at dawn, burns incense, talks to the assembled crowd, sits down for meditation with crossed legs, and passes away (䮻ሦ‫ޛ‬ᒤҼᴸ Ҽॱ‫ޝ‬ᰕᲘ䎧❊俉੺⵮࣐䏪㘼ॆ, biography of Yan-shou ᔦ༭, tenth century CE , 1011b19). (b) As a god bids farewell to yet another monk, he hands him three boxes of incense, so that he will be able to maintain contact even in his absence (ሻ䚴ኡ䲠ᔏDŽ 㠘ࡕว᡻䌸⥧俉йྙDŽᯬᱟ匤䷎੩䀂߼䴢㘼৫DŽ, biography of Tanqiu ᳷⥧, fl. around 400 CE , 955b8–9). It seems safe to say that, through incense, a directional communication occurs between the one who ignites the fire and the one who is addressed by it. This resonates with classical theories of sacrifice, since Marcel Mauss (Mauss and Hubert 1899). Also, in the realm of venerating the dead, fragrance is present: following a cremation, the ashes are collected, a white stu ¯pa (originally a burial mound) is erected, and in spring and autumn the deceased is offered a fire of fragrance (᱕⿻ཹ俉⚛ѻ㯖✹Პ㚎, biography of Congjian ᗎ䄛, ninth century, 1008c27). Fragrant substances are not always burnt: the monk Jianzhen 䪂ⵏ (688– 763), mainly known due to his mission to Japan, is venerated after his death by the

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Japanese king and the aristocrats. They clean his statue with fragrance (ަ഻഻⦻䋤 Ӫؑ༛DŽᱲሷሦ俉ງѻDŽ, 1000c15–16). (c) Two people can feel connected through the offering of incense: the monk Lu Fahe 䲨⌅઼ and Emperor Yuan of Liang ằ‫ݳ‬ᑍ (508–555) share a karmic connection through a fragrant fire of incense as the empty seat for the monk is decorated with burning incense (ቊнᐼ䟻ụཙ⦻඀㲅DŽ䉸㾿ѫսDŽնᯬオ⦻֋ᡰDŽ㠷ѫкᴹ俉 ⚛ഐ㐓DŽ 974b02–4).

SPONTANEOUSLY EMERGING SMELLS Regarding spontaneously emerging smells, it is characteristic that, while induced smells are pleasant, spontaneous smells can be fragrant but also awkward. After the monk Sengjia passed away, his mummified body was placed on an altar until an unpleasant smell began to disseminate from it (‫״‬㘼བྷ付ↈ䎧㠝≓䙽┯DŽ, 992c4). This smell was interpreted as the dissatisfaction of the monk with the choice of location. As soon as he was transferred elsewhere, the mummy began to emit a fragrance. At this new location, a stu ¯pa was erected and incense was offered to it (ަ㠝乃᚟DŽ丳࡫ѻ䯃ཷ俉䛱⛸ণԕަᒤӄᴸ䘱㠣㠘 ␞䎧ຄ‫׋‬伺DŽ992c7–8). The corpse is interpreted as the transformation body (huashen ॆ䓛) of Bodhisattva Guanyin, whose language changed into the language of smell as a means of communication. An unpleasant smell can also be a sign of illness: of the monk Qi Yu 㘶ฏ (fl. around 300 CE ), it is said that he traveled everywhere in China and did not have a fixed dwelling place. An easy happiness accompanied him and he could perform miracles. By nature, he looked down upon customs and led an unsteady life. [. . .] In summer, somebody got sick in the workshop of the palace and was about to die. Qi Yu placed his begging bowl on the belly of the sick man. He covered the whole belly with a white fabric and murmured magical formulae of several thousand words. Instantly, an unpleasant smell filled the whole room. The sick man said: “I am living [again].” Qi Yu ordered somebody to lift the fabric. In the begging bowl were several sheng [about one liter, an old hollow for grain] of mud. They smelled so badly that none could draw near. The sick man was healed thereafter. (㘶ฏ㘵DŽཙㄪӪҏDŽઘ⍱㨟ᠾ䶑ᴹᑨᡰDŽ㘼ٌ‫ཷ⾎ݫ‬DŽ[. . .]ቊᯩ ᳁ѝᴹаӪ⯵ⲕሷ↫DŽฏԕ៹ಘ㪇⯵㘵㞩кDŽⲭᐳ䙊㾶ѻDŽચ予ᮨॳ䀰DŽণᴹ㠝≓ ⠫ᗩаᇔDŽ⯵㘵ᴠDŽᡁ⍫⸓DŽฏԔӪ㠹ᐳDŽ៹ಘѝᴹ㤕␔⌕㘵ᮨॷDŽ㠝нਟ䘁DŽ⯵ 㘵䙲ⱕDŽ 950c4–5, 950c25–29) The power of Buddhism makes it possible to remove the illness from the body in the form of a stinking substance and thus to overcome it. It enables the monk to control and direct bad smells and the corresponding substances. Also in another story, a malodorous illness occurs. Through being washed by another monk, the skin of Zhihui ᲪᲹ (around 900 CE ) began to give out a scent and emit light (ᡁԕᇯᾝⲭⲙDŽᑛ㜭⛪ᡁ⍇᪙DŽᲹ⛪ѻ❑䴓㢢DŽ‫״‬ᴹ⾎‫⮠ݹ‬俉DŽᯩ䁍ѻDŽᘭཡᡰ൘↨ 㿆ⱑ⯲ӖⲶ⮠俉ҏ, biography of Zhihui, 1013a18–21). Fragrance and light are combined into a unit repeatedly in the SSZ. Returning to the world of pleasant scents, numerous narrations tell about suddenly emerging fragrances in the context of death. A fragrant corpse in general hints at a spiritually advanced monk who is able to perform wonders: when Fachong is about to

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die, it is summer, but his corpse neither stinks nor decays. Its fragrance is that of an “overripe melon” (㘼ችн㠝⡋DŽ俉ྲ⡋⬌DŽ, biography of Fachong ⌅‫ݵ‬, sixth century CE, 979a26). On the occasion of the death of another monk, he knew about it in advance and died without disease, smiling. His body was sweet-smelling and soft, his facial expression happy (ᵚ৺ᰜᰕ❑⯮㘼㍲DŽች僨俉䔏ᖒ䊼⟉ᚵDŽ㠘ӑ❦а⠝ԕԈᖼ䯔㠽Ӫ੣ឦDŽ, biography of Baozhi ሦ䂼, 418–514 CE , 971a1–3). Several times, the SSZ mentions a “special scent” that emerges once a monk leaves his body: the monk Beidu announces his death, disappears, and leaves behind a “special scent” (yixiang ⮠俉, 962a10). He is found dead. Close to his corpse, lotus blossoms grow, and he smells fresh. After one night, this stops and he is buried. A pleasant scent can also appear if an outstanding monk is simply changing his location: the monk Sengjia placed his clothes on the wooden floor of a building and left. People smelled a “special scent” afterwards (992b5). Through that, they knew that the monk had left, without knowing where he went. As in the case of the monk who was dissatisfied with the location of his corpse, the language of smell expresses a general message, the details of which have to be figured out by the witnesses. Just as fragrance can be a sign of the presence and virtue of a divine monk, it can also be a sign of the Buddhist teaching or of purification: Tansui ᳷䚳 is secretly explaining to his disciple the Buddhist teaching. People passing by see two seating platforms for the master and his pupil and they hear voices. The air is filled with a strange fragrance (৸㚎ᴹཷ俉ѻ≓DŽ, biography of Tansui, date unknown, 960c3–4). The monk Fuhong ‫ڵ‬ᕈ is considered special because sometimes his breast emits golden rays of light. A special scent floats up from his palms and his body is sometimes of an abnormally large size (ᡆ䠁㢢㺘ᯬ㜨㟶DŽ⮠俉⍱ᯬᦼ‫ޗ‬DŽᡆ㾻䓛䮧и佈㟲䙾ᯬ㟍DŽ㝊䮧Ҽቪᤷ䮧‫ޝ‬ረ, biography of Fuhong, sixth century CE , 975b25–27).

CONCLUSION Looking at the biographies from the perspective of smell reveals fresh insights: the text-specific language of smell emerges, which goes beyond the enumeration of single substances. Smells and the production of smells serve specific functions. Incense is consciously applied in preparation for an outstanding event in a process that is orchestrated with other elements of purification. It is commonly used in the context of veneration as a means of directional communication, but also in order to sustain social bonds by representing an absent monk. Intentionally induced smells have a positive connotation, while spontaneously occurring smells can be either pleasant or disgusting. Stink is the language of the deceased through which he or she can express dissatisfaction with a certain situation. Stink can also be the sign of an illness that is materializing in a body as foulsmelling mud. The power of Buddhism causes the local concentration of the illness so that, in consequence, it can be literally removed. While the things Buddhism overcomes—like sickness—stink, everything associated with Buddhism, like a sign of its teaching, its purity, or a previously present virtuous monk, even his corpse, are fragrant and hereby signify the presence of Buddhism. Additionally, fragrance can be a means of communication for a deceased virtuous monk. Through this code of smell, the world of Buddhism, as presented in the text, is designed as olfactorily distant from average smell realms. This can also be seen beyond the Biographies of Thaumaturge Monks: to avoid any misleading associations Buddhist nuns are not allowed to wear perfume; in the Dharmaguptakavinaya, the monastic discipline for nuns in East Asia, it is counted as an offence to adorn oneself with

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FIGURE 20.1: Donors presenting fruit and incense, Mile jingtu tu ᕼं␘൏െ, Five Dynasties, 940 CE (Tianfu wu nian ཙ⾿ӄᒤ), painted on silk, 76.5 x 53 cm, EO.1135. Courtesy of bpk | RMN, Grand Palais | Ravaux / Paris, Musée Guimet, Musée national des arts asiatiques.

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perfume as a nun.4 Assembling all of these observations, one might put forward the preliminary hypothesis that Buddhism in China constructs a distinct world of scent and codes it in accordance with its intentions. This is an analytical insight that can only be gained through a systematic screening of sources and by embedding the occurrence of smells in their narrative contexts. Enumerating single instances of smells can only constitute the first step in working with the texts to gain culturally specific sensorial knowledge. Sometimes, cognitive insights help us to understand better certain connections, but mostly the applicable data are more general—like the connection between smell and taste, or between smell and long-term memory. In future research it might be tempting to tailor concrete cognitive studies to questions emerging from the textual material. Let me conclude with a very short final observation: working on the Silk Road and its artifacts, especially the art found in the region of Dunhuang which flourished as an oasis in the second half of the first millennium CE , we often discover incense and see incense burners, mostly as handles in the hands of donors (Figure 20.1). Sometimes, a couple is donating and, while the husband is holding the incense, his wife is presenting a plate of fruit. They cover the aspects of fragrance and freshness one might interpret. When one remembers the major translated Buddhist texts, like the Lotus Su ¯tra, fragrance is also abundantly present. What is different is that it is often presented in the form of fresh flowers. Flowers are delicate and easily decay, but they combine their fragrance with their transient freshness and beauty. In the Indian context, wall paintings rarely show incense burners, but include female figures like Apsaras presenting flowers (Figure 20.2).5 It might

FIGURE 20.2: Apsaras presenting fragrant flowers, rock painting in Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, fifth century. © Yves Picq, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index. php?curid=35598090.

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be that, as a foreign religion, common veneration behavior in Chinese Buddhism developed a tendency to be more associated with the dried wood and gum used for incense that were imported along with Buddhism from India via the Silk Road, while presenting flowers appeared in more specific contexts, such as in Chinese esoteric Buddhist practices like flower-offering rituals. At this point, this thought is highly preliminary. As such, it is hoped that this will increase the reader’s sensitivity to matters of smell and inspire further explorations into the realm of olfaction.

RECOMMENDED READING McHugh, James (2012), Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fascinating study of smell in Indian culture concentrating on early India. A Chinese pendant of such a study unfortunately does not yet exist. Schafer, Edward H. (1963), The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics. Berkeley: University of California Press. The classic on exotics in the golden age of Chinese history, Tang dynasty China. Aromatics are given a chapter of their own. While highly interesting to read, this approach is very different from an approach that concentrates on sensorial knowledge and perception.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sensing and Painting Knowledge ISABEL LAACK

INTRODUCTION This essay presents a case study about sensing and painting knowledge in Aztec divination almanacs and reconstructs Aztec concepts of epistemology and semiotics. The aesthetics of religion approach involves two different perspectives on epistemology and semiotics. On one hand, the analytical approach inspires new insights for epistemology as an academic and scientific theory about human knowledge production (see Koch, Chapter 3, this volume; Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume). On the other hand, the perspective of religious aesthetics opens our eyes to the diversity of indigenous epistemologies that have been developed in the different cultures and religions of the world. For this purpose, epistemology is understood as a label for different conceptualizations of human forms of knowing, understanding, and orienting oneself within the world. Analogously, the analytical approach inspires new academic semiotic theories about the relationship between signs and reality, while we also turn our attention to indigenous concepts of meaning and practices of meaning-making with regard to representations in different media. As a case study for the analysis of indigenous aesthetic epistemologies and semiotics, this chapter focuses on the pre-Hispanic Aztecs. Although no indigenous written reflections on the issues of epistemology and semiotics have survived from this culture, we can reconstruct implicit theories from indigenous sources and colonial testimonies. After briefly analyzing foundational aspects of the Aztec sense of reality, epistemology, and semiotics, a particular focus is given to Aztec ways of painting and sensing knowledge in the divination almanacs.

STUDYING INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGIES AND SEMIOTICS All cultural and religious traditions are characterized by aesthetic profiles (Grieser 2017), which include cultural habits of perception and interpretation, as well as by aesthetic formations and sensational forms (Meyer 2009b), which include specific ensembles of media, forms of aesthetic expressions, and modes of embodied living. Within this context, some traditions gave rise to cultural hierarchies of the senses favoring one sense over the others. Major approaches in Western philosophy and sciences, for example, emphasize 229

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the visual sense, while schools of Sanskrit Hinduism allot the aural sense a foundational role for understanding ultimate reality (Wilke and Moebus 2011). All traditions implicitly or explicitly evaluate the role of the individual senses and of all bodily senses for acquiring knowledge about reality, a reality sometimes divided into the perceptible world on the one hand and layers of reality not perceptible by everyday human senses on the other hand. Even if intellectual and verbally expressed reflections on these issues have been created only within some traditions, every tradition incorporates implicit and lived cultural epistemologies, the same way people in every tradition share implicit philosophies (Maffie 2014: 4) or intentional beliefs understood as kinds of “commitment or attitude” that every human person “must have in order to be an agent” and to “feel, calculate, act, or speak with an understanding of one’s environment” (Schilbrack 2014: xiv, 61, 71). Despite the foundational role of epistemology in human life, the commonalities or differences between distinct cultural and religious epistemologies have not been studied extensively, thus far; and the scholarly field of comparative epistemology still lies at the margins of academic research. Most studies come from the rather small group of scholars working on comparative philosophy (see Littlejohn 2017), while major introductory works of epistemology—such as Steup (2005) or Bernecker and Pritchard (2011)—focus exclusively on Western ideas about epistemology. There is, however, considerable work on the philosophies of specific cultures (e.g., Emmanuel 2013) done in the respective area studies. Many traditions refer to different genres and kinds of knowledge. Within the European tradition of epistemology, knowledge genres are typically derived from different culturally defined fields of inquiry into and engagement with reality, producing scientific, aesthetic, ethical, or religious knowledge (Bernecker and Pritchard 2011). Sometimes, representatives of these different fields engage in ideological debates about the validity and accuracy of the others’ knowledge. Modern Western science, for example, is known for disregarding religious knowledge acquired in visionary experiences (see, e.g., Obeyesekere 2012), while religious traditions might devalue scientific knowledge for being superficially engaged with this-worldly, illusionary appearances. In addition to these genres of knowledge, many traditions also know different kinds of knowledge, such as propositional, practical, implicit, tacit, and emotional knowledge along with body knowledge. In recent years, Western scholars have increasingly realized the social, cultural, and historical relativity of any knowledge and also begun to theorize aspects of non-propositional knowledge. This includes different forms of body knowledge and its interrelationship with body schemes, emotions, perception, interpretation, and abstract cognitive thinking (see Koch, Chapter 3, this volume). A famous example of the latter is the theory of embodied cognition by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson ([1980] 2003). Although large parts of non-propositional knowledge are primarily implicit, aspects of it can be made more or less explicit in textual, verbal, or symbolic media (Koch 2016: 67). Consequently, different media such as images, sounds, scents, tastes, or body postures and movements do not (only) communicate propositional religious knowledge but are used in complex ways to feel, generate, and negotiate meaning on aesthetic and embodied levels of existence. Rituals, for example, can be regarded as characteristic practical and embodied forms of thinking (Schilbrack 2014: 63–8; Köpping et al. 2006). Following this line of thought, Schilbrack (2014: 43) understands religious practices and interactions with material objects and environments not as “thoughtless” or “mere expressions of thought done elsewhere” but as “constitutive parts of a cognitive process.” Material objects and practices can be used as “cognitive prosthetics” that help the practitioner

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“remember, process information and solve cognitive problems” (2014: 40) and learn about themselves, others, the environment, and reality (2014: 45). In these processes, the interaction with material objects and sensory media is shaped by the specific affordance structure of the respective item or medium, that is, by its physical and other characteristics with which the human being interacts. With respect to sound, musicologist Tia deNora (2008) pointed toward musical features as a resource of parameter and patterns, which human agents might use through their bodies as maps and frames for their selforganization; for example, influencing and synchronizing the rhythmic organization of bodily processes such as breathing and pulse, managing moods and emotions, or stimulating motivation and perseverance. With respect to visuality and pictures, Western scholars have developed elaborate semiotic theories (see, e.g., Peirce 1955). Similarly, many religious traditions have voiced specific semiotic theories defining the relationship between signs or images and reality. Within Christianity, for example, substantial disputes about the ontological nature and representational function of images led to several schisms. In Plate’s estimation (2002: 55), no other religion has spent so much time on these questions and established such a “vast theological corpus of doctrines on images.” Other traditions, such as many indigenous American cultures, did not explicitly discuss semiotic theories but nevertheless created elaborate semiotic understandings and practices. Semiotic theories from different cultures are not necessarily compatible. The colonization of American indigenous cultures by Europeans from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onward resulted in severe clashes of representation, image theories, and practices (see Gruzinski 2001).

AZTEC SENSE OF REALITY The people currently known as the Aztecs lived in Central Mexico from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. In the early thirteenth century, Nahuatl-speaking groups had migrated from their semi-mythical homeland of Aztlan in the northern deserts to the Central Highlands, where they founded many competing city-states and formed a unique and rich culture based on earlier Mesoamerican traditions. After only two centuries, the so-called Aztec Empire controlled large parts of Mesoamerica (see Davies 1973; Berdan 2014). What we call Aztec civilization typically refers to the dominant Nahua culture of this empire in the fifteenth century, with most sources surviving for the Mexica from Tenochtitlan. While the Aztecs had developed a unique identity and sense of mission as the People of the Sun, they also drew on foundational parts of a larger Mesoamerican cosmovision and sense of reality. Within their empire, there was considerable local religious diversity, but many religious aspects were shared, among them a basic cosmovision and cosmological principles, attributes of deities, specific rituals, the organization of the priesthood, and concepts and practices of divination according to a shared ritual calendar. We could therefore assume that basic epistemological and semiotic ideas were also shared within this region. The Aztecs lived a thriving culture with highly advanced political, economic, and educational systems and a complex social structure, which supported many intellectual professionals. Among them were scribes, historians, poets, orators, interpreters of books, astronomers, and astrologers, who produced large libraries of books. According to Miguel León-Portilla (1992: 163–8), there was even a fully fledged school of philosophy at Texcoco, whose wisdom survived in some of the indigenous and historical sources. Sadly, only a few of the many indigenous books withstood the profound destruction of

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Aztec culture through the European colonization. Consequently, we cannot be sure whether the Aztecs explicitly debated issues of epistemology and semiotics. However, we can reconstruct implicit worldviews from the surviving indigenous sources and from the many references to a severe clash of the indigenous with European semiotic theories in early colonial sources. Aztec cosmovision was decidedly complex. According to the cosmogony, the world had already experienced several cosmic eras with specific characteristics. The Fifth Sun, in which the Aztecs believed themselves to be living, was characterized by movement. The cosmos was formed by the movement of complementary forces producing constant change and instability (see López Austin 1997), which influenced everything that existed including place and time. Humanity was part of this movement; the vital energy of human beings was created by the cosmic forces affecting bodily functions, emotional experiences, cognitive processes, and behavior as much as personality traits, social status, and profession. The Aztecs understood themselves to be living in a dense and complex network of cosmic relationships between human beings, the earth, the skies, natural elements, deities, plants, and animals. These relationships were established through shared energies and cosmic forces, most poignantly expressed in the concept of the nahualli, referring to relationships based on “coessence” (Monaghan 1998). Living in a cosmic era characterized by movement, the Aztecs felt it their duty to constantly balance the dynamism of complementary forces in order to maintain the flow of cosmic energy. Humanity was nourished by the sun and earth and, in return, needed to nourish the earth and feed the sun to ensure its continuing movement. The Aztecs experienced living in the unstable cosmos of the Fifth Era as difficult, like walking on slippery ground with the constant danger of falling (see Burkhart 1989). To prevent falling, they lived according to strict codes of conduct and performed a large range of rituals to stabilize the dynamism of moving forces. Consequently, many different rituals formed important parts of everyday life, both as small-scale personal rites and as largescale, public ritual performances held each month of the solar year (see Quiñones Keber 2002b).

AZTEC EPISTEMOLOGY In order to stabilize the dynamism of moving forces and thus to improve human life and counteract diseases, starvation, social conflict, and other miseries caused by an excess of cosmic forces, the Aztecs exerted considerable effort into manipulating the forces. This was only possible with extensive knowledge about the patterns of movement both in regular changes—such as the seasons of the year—and in seemingly chance happenings and contingencies. One important way to acquire this kind of knowledge about the underlying structure of the cosmos was to closely observe nature. In doing so, the Aztecs placed particular emphasis on detecting semblances between entities from different natural spheres. These semblances included surface appearances as much as particular behavior: The rosette markings on a jaguar’s skin, taken along with the jaguar [sic] fondness for hunting by water, recalled the formal roundness of water lilies. In view of the creature’s nocturnal and solitary habits, and its superbly indifferent demeanour, those ambiguous signs also pointed to the stars which studded the night sky, and so to the secret doings

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of night-walking sorcerers and of their divine patron Tezcatlipoca, the “Smoking Mirror” of the seer’s scrying glass. —Clendinnen 1991: 224–5 Semblances like these, observable by the human sensory organs, were interpreted as signs for a shared coessence of cosmic forces. The Nahuas communicated their knowledge of many of these relationships in linguistic metaphors and idioms as much as in their arts such as sculpture, architecture, painting, costume, tools and material objects, music, and dance. The Aztecs experienced reality as immanent, material, and temporally and spatially concrete. They believed in the ability of their everyday corporeal senses to experience and understand the very basic structures of this reality. The Aztecs also had a very complex concept of the human body and person (see López Austin 1988). They visualized the body as essentially formed by and filled with life force, which was particularly concentrated in several animistic centers such as the head (cuicatl) with its tonalli-energy, the heart (yollotl) with its toyolia-energy, and the liver (elli) with its ihiyotl-energy. Understanding and consciousness were primarily attributed to the animistic centers of the heart—understood as a prime center of reasoning—and the head as carrier of the most important sensory organs. Apparently, the Aztecs did not separate between sensation and higher-order cognition such as interpretation leading to judgment and decision. All these cognitive acts were grouped under the umbrella of knowledgeable perception. Among the senses, visual and auditory perception were regarded as the most important, and people possessing the ability to see/watch and hear/listen carefully were considered very wise. Nevertheless, the eye was apparently placed at the top of a cultural hierarchy of the senses. In addition, sight was experienced as an active operation, an intentional projection from the eyes that was able to affect things and beings. Indigenous manuscripts contain many eye glyphs, and “human eyes, and by extension, human vision, were bound into a series of metaphoric and metonymic relationships that implicated representation in sight” (Leibsohn 2007: 398). One of the most important early colonial dictionaries, compiled by Alonso de Molina ([1571] 1977), includes a multitude of terms referring to seeing and, by extension, terms linking vision with insight and knowledge (see the analysis by Leibsohn 2007: 400). The famous Mesoamericanist Burr C. Brundage (1979: 52) was so impressed by the importance of visual perception that he believed it “played the same role in Aztec religion as does dogma in the history of western religions.” Notwithstanding this, the Aztecs believed that for good perception and understanding all sense organs and animistic centers needed to collaborate with one another. Furthermore, sense impressions from several organs were very often linked in a “near-synaesthetic fashion” (Houston and Taube 2000: 261); and culturally coded cross-modality was prevalent in the different media used in Mesoamerica. Sensory impressions, however, could sometimes be distorted and produce a blurred vision of reality, as in the “smoking” obsidian mirror carried by the deity Tezcatlipoca. In the night, for example, or at especially potent places such as peripheral areas, nothing was necessarily as it appeared to be. Consequently, people needed specialists for the interpretation of their experiences at those times and places. Similarly, specialists were needed for the interpretation of dream experiences. Dream experiences were considered to be real and as providing expanded visions of the structures of reality, visions transcending the sensory experiences of waking states. In addition, some elements in the cosmos were believed to present the underlying structures of reality in an intensified way, making it easier for people to notice and

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understand these structures. These were things of natural beauty and grace like precious gemstones, flowers, or bright birds and their iridescent plumage as well as elements of the natural world containing strong powers, such as the flames of fire, flowing water, or the light and heat of the sun. Furthermore, human artists were believed to be able to accentuate the natural beauty of things and thus to intensify their radiating reality. Creating art from natural objects emphasized their beauty and well-ordered arrangement and revealed more clearly the underlying interrelationships between all things. Thus, the arts became a medium for human beings to find the really real, to “retrieve the original unsullied sacred vision from the blurred and shifted images before them” (Clendinnen 1991: 215). This was also true for performative rituals, in which material objects and human deity impersonators emphasized certain facets or qualities of these relationships in personified and material forms. Most probably, these media served to make the relationships more easily perceptible and understandable for the human individual. In addition to these insights gained from the ordinary human senses, the Aztecs also valued the visions of reality gained by using techniques that expanded everyday waking consciousness and opened the vision for realms of reality that were normally imperceptible (yet immanent). The Aztecs knew several techniques to intentionally create situations of trance and ecstasy, body techniques such as fasting, blood sacrifice, physical penitence, and prolonged dancing, as well as sensory overload in the elaborate public performances along with the ingestion of cocoa, psychotropic mushrooms, or alcohol (see Clendinnen 1990). The Plumed Serpent so prevalent in the Central Mexican Postclassic visual arts was almost certainly a powerful symbol for trance-induced visionary experiences. The Aztecs had specialists with particular talents and training for entering into trances and interpreting non-everyday experiences. These nahualli shamans were believed to embark on shamanic travels through the normally unperceivable realms of the cosmos, to see and feel the influences of cosmic forces on different time units, and to talk to the forces of the cosmos in their personified forms in the “language of the hidden,” the nahuallatolli (López Austin 1988: I, 346). Sometimes, the shamans were so strongly permeated by a particular cosmic force that their identity turned completely into these forces, for example, in the personification of deities in public rituals. In addition to the shamans, also the artists were believed to have the power to see the underlying structures of reality more clearly than other people. This was attributed to the “divine” inspiration of knowledge. In this process, artists felt the influence of strong cosmic forces in their hearts, that is, in the animistic center of the heart, the teyolia. The talented artist was believed to have a “deified heart” (ioteutl) and to be able to divine things with it (tlaiolteuuiani) (Sahagún 1961: 28).

PAINTING KNOWLEDGE IN DIVINATION ALMANACS A large proportion of the indigenous manuscripts from pre-Hispanic Central Mexico are skillfully painted, elaborate divination almanacs (most importantly, the Codices Borbonicus and Borgia, see Figure 21.1) based on the different qualities attributed to time units in the ritual calendar tonalpohualli. The almanacs come in many different forms, among them sequential lists, complex tables, and diagrams. The information they contain is organized according to directional features of place, specific topics such as marriage or agriculture, or according to time units and usage for multiple purposes. Characteristically, the different time units of the calendar were thought to be influenced by specific cosmic forces, qualities, or deities; and the almanacs show those qualities in

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FIGURE 21.1. Divination Almanac, Codex Borgia, folio 6. © public domain. Source: 1898 Loubat facsimile edition. Digital reproduction: Provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library, New York City.

many different forms. The Codex Borbonicus, for example, gives one table for each indigenous week of thirteen days (see Figure 21.2). Each day is presented with several defining qualities, its day sign and number, deities related to the calendric number, further deities called “Lords of the Night,” and a specific type of volatile (from twelve birds and a butterfly). In addition, there is a larger space devoted to the qualities of the respective week in total. It typically shows one or two major deities, believed to shape the character of the week, in a specific costume and concrete activity, complemented by ritual instruments, flowers and fruits, animals, material objects, and abstract culturally coded symbols (e.g., for stone, war, abundancy, life, or the call to war). Most probably, these items show the most characteristic rituals to perform in the respective week, as well as objects, living beings, activities, and abstract qualities associated with the specific cosmic forces believed to rule the week. In sum, the divination almanacs present complex cultural

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FIGURE 21.2. Codex Borbonicus, folio 2. © public domain. Source: 1899 Hamy facsimile edition. Digital reproduction by Isabel Laack.

knowledge about underlying structures of reality and the movement of cosmic forces through time and place. According to Elizabeth H. Boone (2007: 65), the diviners, who had produced the almanacs, “mastered time, in all it uncertainties, by transforming it into readable and knowable images, spaces, and locations.” Using several pictorial strategies, the knowledge was depicted as lucidly organized with a great quantity of precise information “in a structure that facilitates ready inspection of individual data and quick comparison between potentially related phenomena” (2007: 75). Because of the nature and substantial depth of their contents, Boone (2007: 3) compares the almanacs with European “books of philosophy, theoretical physics, astronomy, and astrology,” since they served in ancient Mexico much as the graphic expressions of scientific thought do for us today. Like the various notational and modeling systems used in science—the charts, graphs, diagrams, and algebraic and other notational systems—they were intended to reveal the structure and functioning of the cosmos in all its complexities. —Boone 2007: 238

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The deciphering of these almanacs is still very much in its infancy. By now, most names of the deities believed to influence the different time units have been reconstructed based on information from early colonial documents; similarly, most of the material objects and actions related to specific time units have been identified. In addition, Boone (2007) presented a very thorough analysis of the surviving codices with extraordinary interpretations of the symbolic vocabulary and visual structures. Notwithstanding, we are far from comprehensively understanding the deep cultural symbolism or the profound meaning of the elements associated with specific time units, let alone the elaborate interpretations and recommendations given by the diviners to their clients.

AZTEC SEMIOTIC THEORY In our attempts to understand the divination almanacs, we might go one step further and ask about the semiotic theories related to the manuscripts. How did the Aztecs conceptualize the relationship between the painted signs and extra-textual reality? The most important cultural concept serving to reconstruct an implicit indigenous semiotic theory is the teixiptla, typically translated as deity impersonator or (human) image of the deity. The description as image, however, might be misleading, if we project the popular European image theory on it that distinguishes between the signifier (the sign) and the signified (the object or concept it refers to), in this case between the human material body and the divine spiritual deity. As Serge Gruzinski (2001: 51) convincingly argued, the Aztecs did not “distinguish between divine essence and material support.” Rather, the teixiptla was something like a localized concentration and intensified form of specific cosmic forces. Following this line of argumentation, James Maffie summarizes: The metaphysical relationship between teotl [the “divine,” I.L.] and teotl’s ixiptla, therefore, is one of strict identity. Ixiptla and teotl are numerically one and the same. Teotl’s medium of presentation is itself. There is neither ontological nor constitutional distinction between representation (signifier) and represented (signified). —2014: 114 In colonial times, the Aztecs projected this semiotic theory inspiring the concept of the teixiptla to the newly introduced Christian images of saints, a process that led to a clash of representations and a multitude of mutual misunderstandings (see Gruzinski 2001). As it seems, the Aztecs did not only use the semiotic theory of the teixiptla for their later interpretation of Christian images. Rather, it was a kind of root semiotic theory underlying all sorts of medial representations in Aztec culture including linguistic signs (Laack 2019). Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the Aztecs understood the paintings of the divination almanacs in a similar way. In contrast with the Aztec writing system, European phonographic writing systems use abstract and arbitrary signs to signify the also arbitrary sign system of language. Thus, they separate the signifier (sign) from the signified (the object or concept it refers to) or the text from extra-textual reality. In contrast, the Aztecs used visual paintings believed to participate in extra-textual reality and merged the signifier and the signified into one. With regard to the divination almanacs, this means that the paintings were not just abstractly and arbitrarily chosen signs to denote the content understood as something existing in the mind. Rather, the paintings in their colors and forms were believed to directly present the visual aspects of the qualities of reality depicted in the respective part of the almanac.

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SENSING KNOWLEDGE IN PERFORMATIVE INTERPRETATIVE ACTS After this sketch of indigenous semiotics, I come back to the question of how the Aztec diviners interpreted the almanacs. In the surviving sources, there are many references to different types of soothsayers, astrologers, and diviners, who were highly esteemed in Aztec society. Most likely, a large part of Aztec society knew the very basics of calendric divination from their school education; the detailed esoteric interpretation, however, was left to trained specialists. These specialists were consulted and asked for guidance with respect to all major decisions in life, including the timing of birth rituals, marriages, journeys, and agricultural activities. Reading the omens and interpreting the divination almanacs, the diviners indicated auspicious and inauspicious times for any activity. Contrary to early colonial interpretations, however, the fates of the days corresponded not to a simple threefold system with good, bad, and indifferent days. Rather, the almanacs presented complex tendencies for all sorts of things and happenings, and it was left to the interpreter to make sense of them (see Quiñones Keber 2002a). Correspondingly, the future was not understood as an unchangeable destiny to which people could only bow fatalistically but as a complex system of cosmic movements, which people could use to their advantage (see Laack 2019). Sadly, there is little information in the surviving sources on the actual acts of interpreting the divination almanacs. Indications suggest that divination from the almanacs was a highly complex and elaborate ritual performance activating the extensive knowledge of the diviners. The almanacs were not simply read but extensively interpreted in a flexible and complex procedure by taking the many details given in them about the many qualitative details of the days into account. Considering the visual intricacy of the almanacs, I suggest that the diviners used many levels of their cognitive and bodily abilities to interpret this information. They did not read the almanacs as we might read an alphabetical text. Rather, the interpretation was a process activating knowledge associated with many different sensory levels in a cross-modal way. Most probably, the diviners did not only abstractly decipher the written signs but meditated on their visual appearance. Thus, they did not merely use cognitive reasoning but also activated emotional, aesthetic, and body experiences along with memories of the effects of specific cosmic forces on many aspects of human life. “Reading” the almanacs was more than the rational, intellectual, semantic interpretation of contents by a disembodied mind. Rather, it was probably a kind of material and sensory text practice activating different kinds of knowledge, including sensory impressions, intuitive understandings, emotions, and body knowledge. The cosmic forces were believed to influence human beings on all levels of their existence, the body, the basic drives, the emotions, inclinations for behavior, and cognitive understanding. Consequently, I suggest that the diviners drew on their own experiences of the underlying structures of reality and patterns of cosmic movements and combined them with the cultural knowledge acquired through generations. In the act of interpretation, the diviners used their visual sense to read the almanacs and related this to cross-modal knowledge stored in their bodies and minds to reach extensive recommendations for the future activities of their clients.

CONCLUSION The above interpretation of Aztec epistemology and semiotics rests fundamentally on the perspective of the aesthetics of religion understood as a connective concept interlinking

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the specific perspectives of several cultural disciplines. It draws on the highly abstract perspective of epistemological and semiotic analyses in the traditions of cultural semiotics and epistemology. Its approach is typically associated with the “comparative” strands of these traditions while being more closely related to the area studies analyzing the philosophies of the respective cultures they are devoted to. Expanding these perspectives, it also includes historic aesthetics and focuses on the roles given to the senses and the body in the culture of the Aztecs. It also expands its theoretical interest from disembodied rational philosophical reflections to include issues of bodily and sensory activities and the many approaches to body knowledge. Furthermore, it combines questions of knowledge and the senses with the use of media; that is, it includes the intersections between sensorial perception, knowledge, and forms of expressing, materializing, and interpreting knowledge in human-made media such as the painted divination almanacs. These media are not analyzed exclusively with regards to their contents or semiotic ideologies but also with respect to the performative activities with which human individuals and groups use these media. In sum, this analysis is characteristic of the approach of the aesthetics of religion because it combines all these perspectives and interrelates the body and the senses with the use of media and more abstract cognitive concepts such as semiotic theories and epistemology. Finally, the surplus value of the perspective as an aesthetics of religion does include a cross-cultural perspective aiming at using analytical meta-language and crossculturally applicable concepts as much as awareness of different cosmovisions and ideologies about reality while at the same time refraining from evaluating the truth value of the analyzed visions and interpretations of reality.

RECOMMENDED READING Gruzinski, Serge ([1990] 2001), Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492–2019), Durham: Duke University Press. A groundbreaking study of image concepts and practices in Mexico including reconstructions of pre-Hispanic indigenous semiotic theory. Laack, Isabel (2019), Aztec Religion and Art of Writing: Investigating Embodied Meaning, Indigenous Semiotics, and the Nahua Sense of Reality, Numen Book Series 161. Leiden: Brill. The author’s own study about the Aztec sense of reality including re-examinations of Aztec ontology, epistemology, aesthetics and pragmatism, language theory, semiotics, and concepts of writing. López Austin, Alfredo (1988), The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, 2 vols., Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Profound and pioneering analysis of linguistic and ethnographic material on Aztec cosmovision and concepts of body and person by one of the most distinguished Mesoamericanists.

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Protestant (An)aesthetics ROBERT A. YELLE

INTRODUCTION The question raised by the present essay is whether, and if so in what sense, we are justified in speaking of a “Protestant aesthetic” in addition to a Protestant ethic. In an earlier publication (Yelle 2017), I suggested that the aesthetics of religion would benefit from incorporating some of the theoretical developments that have transpired in linguistic anthropology, where the focus has shifted away from the search for universal processes of communication and toward the recognition of the presuppositions and explicit regulations that establish and enforce an ideal for linguistic and other forms of mediation within a given culture. The set of such norms has been labeled a “linguistic” or “semiotic ideology,” in order to indicate its normative status and to separate it from any claim to describe an objective or universal reality (Keane 2007: 2, 16–18). Adopting such an approach would, in my view, complement and qualify alternative approaches that prefer to model the aesthetics of religion on the natural sciences. The present essay exemplifies such an approach, and stems from my background as a historian of religion and a cultural semiotician. The ideology that this essay aims to analyze might more properly be called the “Protestant (an)aesthetic” given that, as we shall see, it was characterized primarily by a rejection of a range of practices and forms of expression across various modes of semiosis, which Cancik and Mohr (1988: 136) referred to in their groundbreaking contribution as the “deodorizing of religion” in modernity. The argument moves from a general account of Protestant iconoclasm and related attacks against the material, embodied, and sensory aspects of religion to a case study of polemics against liturgical music in late seventeenth-century England.

THE REFORMATION AND THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE AESTHETIC Reflecting a familiar narrative, Robert Orsi’s History and Presence (2016) traces the “disenchantment” of the West back to Protestant attacks against images and other signs, in particular against their ability to mediate “real presence.” He illustrates this history through the sixteenth-century Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli’s demotion of the Eucharist to a bare sign that cannot, in fact, embody but only represent or signify Jesus’s flesh and blood (Orsi 2016: 4, 19; see also 32, 34–5, 250). There is little that is new in this history, which serves Orsi merely as background for his main objective, namely to recount more recent including contemporary Catholic experiences of divine presence in daily life. Orsi is a masterful storyteller, and the succession of vignettes throughout the book is intended 241

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to serve as a kind of cumulative refutation of the Reformers’ project of disenchantment. If Zwingli and Calvin thought they could corral and contain religious experience, well, then, the ongoing failure of their attempt vindicates an unstated equation of Roman Catholic lived religion with “real” religion, defined as presence. As Orsi confesses, “I am inclined to believe that presence is the norm of human experience, including in religion, and absence is an authoritative impossibility” (2016: 6). This is a version of what Charles Taylor called a “subtraction story” of secularization, only with a happy ending, given that efforts to delete divine presence from the Eucharist, saintly images, and elsewhere was never truly successful.1 Orsi’s narration of the experience of contemporary lived religion among American Catholics is one example of a recent movement in certain subfields of religious studies, including material religion and aesthetics of religion, which have attempted to recuperate the material, sensory, and embodied dimensions of religion. Scholars in this movement are conscious of some of the historical repressions of these dimensions that have necessitated their efforts of recuperation. David Morgan, for example, notes that the neglect of the material has proceeded hand in hand with an emphasis on belief: “Focus on ‘belief ’ as a set of teachings derives from the creedal tradition of Christianity, which was intensified by Protestantism” (Morgan 2010: 1). Colleen McDannell argues (1995: 5, 9–10) that the radical separation of sacred from profane, and accompanying devaluation of material religion, emerged from ancient Israelite iconoclasm and was accentuated by Puritans. Sally Promey likewise depicts (2014: 2, 10, 13) the disembodiment of religion as a key consequence of secularization that emerged out of Protestantism. Like Orsi, each of these scholars tries to show how the sensorium mediates religious experience or, as Orsi terms it, “presence,” despite and against the tendency of post-Reformation Christianity to deny or reduce such mediation. The touchstone or point of reference—what Orsi calls the “norm”—is the status quo ante, namely pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Christianity, which Matthew Milner has described in remarkably similar terms: Focus on the incarnation gave Christians the precedent and means to depict and mediate the divine physically through artwork, dramatic and literary forms, in all aspects of religious life. . . . Peter Brown has . . . described “the physical presence of the holy” as praesentia. Modern scholars have come to describe this as an “incarnational aesthetic” or “embodiment”. . . . This, aside from the particular instance of the Eucharist, was not substantive, but participation in divinity. Religious objects and actions were not proxies of the sacred, but actively displayed and re-presented it time and time again as sensible “portals” or material “access points” to greater, insensible and eternal truths. —Milner 2011: 69–70 If the medieval Catholic aesthetic of presence and its contemporary survivals serve as the (sometimes uncredited) protagonist of such accounts, the antagonist or foil is the (attempted) disenchantment of this aesthetic that occurred during the Protestant Reformation. Orsi, like many others, begins (2016: 37) with Max Weber’s work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In the 1920 edition, Weber added in some passages about the “disenchantment” (Entzauberung) of the world, and connected this phenomenon with two historical moments: proximately, the Puritan attack on Catholic sacramentalism and, remotely, ancient Israelite monotheism. The denial of the efficacy of ritual means to salvation began already with Luther, but Calvin’s rigorous adherence to

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FIGURE 22.1: Iconoclasm: woodcut image from the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Source: Wikimedia commons, public domain, reproduction of Lippinscott’s The Protestant Reformation in England, 1954, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foxe-martyrsiconoclasm-1563.png

predestination was the decisive step toward the rejection of the magical thinking of ex opere operato and the elimination of any form of intercession with the deity. The Christian God became increasingly disembodied or, at any rate, inaccessible: a development reflected most graphically in iconoclasm, or physical attacks on plastic and pictorial images (Figure 22.1), as well as on other material or aesthetic modes of religion. As noted in Yelle (2013a: 15), although “disenchantment” refers primarily to a shift in discourse or ideology based on older Christian narratives, “there was also some social reality to the phenomenon of disenchantment. Protestant iconoclasm itself was real enough. Its most noticeable effects were on the liturgy, ritual practices, symbolism, and aesthetics of the Catholic Church.” Much more than simply iconoclasm, this movement constituted a wholesale attack on various paths of access to the deity. Representative is a passage from Richard Baxter

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(1673: 179), one of Weber’s sources for knowledge regarding the Protestant ethic, which I have quoted and discussed previously (Yelle 2013a: 105–7). Baxter attacked one by one each of the ritual means used to intercede with the deity, as well as each of the sensory paths to the aesthetic experience of the sacred. Not only the ideas of transubstantiation and saintly intercession came under fire, but also holy water and oil, pilgrimages, fasting and feasting, etc. were condemned as irrational and without biblical warrant. Baxter also referred to the “vain repetitions” used by Catholics when praying (see below). Cumulatively, Baxter cut off all ritual means of communication with the deity: what Milner called “portals” or “access points.” The sociologist Peter Berger (1967), following Weber, characterized such developments as a form of disenchantment that “cut the sacred umbilical cord connecting heaven and earth.” The Reformation, in its more extreme and Puritanical manifestations, led not only to iconoclasm against statues, pictorial images, and stained glass, but also to simplicity in clerical vestments and a stripping of the altars, as historians have detailed (see, e.g., Eire 1986; Aston 1988; Duffy 1992). Even in the wider world outside of church, there were movements against theatrical performances (e.g., Rainolds 1599), extravagant attire, gambling, and sports. In 1618, James I published the Book of Sports (a.k.a. Declaration of Sports) to vindicate the pursuit of certain amusements on Sunday and other holidays against Puritan attacks—although the king elsewhere came out against smoking, in A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604). The declaration was promulgated again in 1633 by Charles I and after the Restoration in 1660 by Charles II, but during the English Civil War the Puritan ban was enforced. Such movements have long been documented. However, the range and complexity of theological motivations underlying this shift in aesthetic ideology have seldom been appreciated. It should be apparent that by “disenchantment” we are describing a norm or ideology as much as an historical event. As we have already seen, many contemporary scholars reject the notion that we can afford to ignore the material, sensory, and embodied dimensions of religion. It may have been a Protestant norm to repress such dimensions, but this norm does not accord with the objective reality of many religious traditions, which do not share the iconoclastic tendencies of Puritanism. Birgit Meyer has argued that Weber “privilege[d] a particular view of Protestantism as a rational, disenchanting religion that transcends the body, the senses, and outward religious forms” in a manner that reflected “the antiaesthetic approach of Protestantism” itself (2010: 741–63 at 743, 749). Weber’s ostensibly scientific account of the subordination of aesthetic expression within salvation religions reflected Protestant theological presuppositions that fail to account for the important role of the sensational forms of liturgical experience even in some forms of Protestantism, including Pentecostalism, where music and oratory are means for sensing and expressing the Holy Spirit.2 As my own work has shown, Weber’s theoretical accounts of modernization, up to and including the master narrative of disenchantment, were certainly deeply indebted to earlier Protestant theological narratives. This is not in question here. What is needed is a better account of the Protestant aesthetic as, precisely, an ideological or normative movement, including more caution in describing the limits of this movement. There is and has always been great internal diversity within what we call “Protestantism.” As Catherine Pickstock notes, “Pentecostalism is not a straightforwardly Protestant phenomenon” but a form of “post-Protestantism” that “accepts, as the magisterial Reformation did not, the possibility of postapostolic miracles” and “is concerned with recovering and reworking a premodern Catholic sense of the fusion of the theoretical and

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the practical aspects of faith . . . most of all . . . in liturgy” (2010: 720). In other words, Pentecostalism was a move to re-enchant what had previously been disenchanted, especially through a recuperation of the sensory, embodied, and material dimensions of worship. Part of what is at stake is the semantic extension of the term “Protestantism.” This need not concern us especially here, so long as we recognize that we are not claiming that the Protestant aesthetic was reflected equally in all groups that emerged in the wake of the Reformation and that we refer to by this label. (Indeed, even Roman Catholicism included moments of “Protestantism” in this sense.) As has already been noted, the tendencies we are describing were most closely associated with what is often called “Puritanism,” which could be said to stand at a point on a continuum opposite Pentecostalism. Even to put things in this way is misleading, for it ignores the connection that links Puritanism to Pentecostalism, which reacted against Puritanism’s anaesthetic and disenchanting tendencies. Pentecostals explicitly rejected one of the theological sources for Weber’s own narrative of disenchantment, namely the ancient Christian idea, redeployed by Protestants in the early Reformation and culminating in Deism, that miracles and other charismata have ceased.3

THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS: PURITAN ICONOCLASM, NOMINALISM, AND THE ATTACK ON MEDIATION To focus our discussion, we might pose the question: Why did the Pilgrims wear black? As Owen Chadwick noted in his classic history of the Reformation, simplicity in attire and a rejection of colored in favor of black clothing was not only part of an overall disdain for ornament that characterized many of the reformers, but was also in some cases associated with the idea that the distinctions between clergy and laity, especially outside of church, ought to be minimized (Chadwick 1972: 422–3). The democratic and the iconoclastic tendencies of Reformation coordinated. The oldest code of laws in Puritan New England, the Massachusetts Body of Laws and Liberties, tells a slightly different story. This fascinating code based partly on a direct incorporation of Old Testament laws included provisions against gaming, dancing, and observing Christmas, as well as sumptuary laws prohibiting that men or women of mean condition, should take upon them the garb of Gentlemen, by wearing Gold or Silver lace, or Buttons, or Points at their knees, or to walk in great Boots; or Women of the same rank to wear Silk or Tiffiny boods [bodice or boot?], or Scarfes, which though allowable to persons of greater Estates, or more liberal education, yet we cannot but judge it intollerable in persons of such like condition. —Cushing 1976: 5 Infractions carried a potential fine of the then enormous sum of 200 pounds. The stated rationale for the rule against fancy apparel was a classist or economic one, namely that one should not dress above one’s status. This was exactly opposite to the choice of black as a democratic uniform. However, the code also refers to fancy dress as being inappropriate to the “Wilderness-condition” of the residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, thereby invoking not only the meanness of the colonialists’ material circumstances but also one of the central theological conceptions of the Puritans: that humanity is in a fallen or depraved condition and should dress the part, at least until the Second Coming. As we shall see, the same argument was also sometimes advanced against the ornamentation of the liturgy.

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Puritanism approached the complete denial of any mediation between the human and the divine. In the Hebrew Bible, attacks on false gods and on ritual means of manipulating the deity—through oaths and divination, for example—did not go so far as to exclude what have been the two most common means in the history of religions of mediating with the deity: namely, sacrifice and prayer. Protestants limited both of those means as well, as I have shown elsewhere (Yelle 2013a: 103–36, 2013b: 113–36, 2019a). Protestants denied the power of petitionary prayer to influence the deity; the critique of “vain repetitions,” advanced originally by John Calvin, was advanced partly on this basis. Protestants condemned repetitive prayers that used various stylistic devices such as tautology and alliteration. They rejected the idea that God could be influenced by rhetorical persuasion, like a human being. Nor could petitionary prayer cause the deity to work within the world, as if by magic. The theological roots of the critique of vain repetitions lay in iconoclasm and Nominalism. The attack on the poetic and performative dimensions of liturgy was articulated with an emphasis on literalism, and on the insistence that prayers ideally should be spontaneous and sincere expressions of inward intention. Both Webb Keane (2002, 2007) and Richard Bauman 1984) have described aspects of this linguistic ideology. Also influencing this critique was a shift toward the use of a uniform, vernacular printed liturgy, The Book of Common Prayer (1549), which encouraged an emphasis on the semantic dimensions of ritual language. In comparison with ancient Israelite religion, then, Puritanism went much farther in the direction of a denial of mediation, and of a disenchantment of the sign. And this despite sharing with other branches of Christianity the doctrine of the Incarnation. According to Melford Spiro’s well-known definition of religion as “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings” (Spiro 1966: 96), Puritanism would perhaps not even qualify as a religion. Such developments were not the result only of a more fervent adherence to the prohibition against idolatry, although iconoclasm, directed against language as well as against pictorial and plastic images (see Yelle 2013a), was certainly one theological ground. Contemporary scholarship has pointed also to a Protestant emphasis on belief or sentiment, at the expense of the embodied dimensions of religion; although this may just be a shorthand way of describing the broader effects of iconoclasm. There were additional grounds, however, that have received less attention. One such was Nominalism (Milner 2011, 45–51). This is the name given to an earlier movement in medieval scholasticism. The Nominalists were opponents of the Realists. Unlike the latter, who regarded certain abstract or class terms as having a real existence apart from the members of the class in question, Nominalists regarded terms such as “whiteness” as merely ways of picking out and denoting a class. Such words were nomina: mere conventional names, not substantial realities. A number of historians of philosophy argue that Nominalism, which grew increasingly prominent in the late Middle Ages, precipitated a crisis in logic and epistemology that ultimately unraveled the Aristotelian system incorporated into Catholic philosophy by Thomas Aquinas. If there are only discrete entities, and no universals, then there exists no stable order, and no law, other than that given by an arbitrary will. All signs become a matter of convention alone. There is no way of proceeding from language to a knowledge of reality. Hence the crisis. Nominalism was not merely a doctrine about the meaning of words and the limits of logic. It was also an attempt to vindicate the biblical idea of a sovereign deity, who retained the power to remake the world at any moment. The Nominalists’ rejection of the reality of universals was an entailment of their insistence on a divinity who works

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immediately; and it was this insistence that necessitated the demotion or denial of any stable, lawful, cosmological order interposed between human beings and God. Peter Harrison connects (2015: 74–81) the rise of Protestant literalism and the demise of images and allegory with the Nominalist destruction of the Platonic and Aristotelian cosmologies. The book of nature was no longer regarded as encoding a necessary order in which one could glimpse, as in a mirror, the unfolding of the mind of God. Nature instead reflected a set of arbitrary laws imposed by God, yet amenable to empirical study. What does any of this have to do with the Protestant disenchantment of the sign? The Reformers’ demotion of the Catholic sacraments and other rituals to mere signs, rather than efficacious causes, was deeply influenced by earlier Nominalist views, as is wellestablished in Luther’s case. Luther already reinterpreted a number of sacraments as signs and, in accordance with his idea of sola fide, sola gratia, rejected their power to grant salvation, which was in God’s hands alone. The doctrine of predestination, which was developed systematically by Calvin, depicted salvation as the result of the direct operation of divine will. The idea that God acts directly, rather than through intermediary causes, had been central to Nominalism. Predestination is, of course, the idea that Weber identified as central to the disenchantment of the Catholic ritual apparatus. Developing further Zwingli’s argument that the “est” in “Hoc est enim corpus meum” means not “is” but “signifies,” Thomas Hobbes applied (1651: chap. 8, sec. 27) Nominalist ideas against the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Words, like laws, are conventional determinations of the singular sovereign and accordingly are arbitrary. From such theological debates emerged the idea, characteristic of modern semiotics, that we refer to as “the arbitrary nature of the sign.”4

DEBATES OVER POLYPHONY AND OTHER FORMS OF MUSIC IN CHURCH Criticisms of metaphysical language, informed by Protestant literalism and iconoclasm, as well as by Nominalism, extended also to the language and music of the liturgy. Such developments exemplify a key aspect of what we call “disenchantment.” Weber himself identified harmony, notation, and certain orchestral arrangements as characteristic of Western art music and as a unique development of European rationality (1958: 14–15). Yet he also connected other, especially “stereotyped” forms of music with magic and ecstasy, i.e., with primitive modes of religiosity. With the development of more advanced salvation religions, such outward forms were viewed negatively: Especially music, the most “inward” of all the arts, can appear in its purest form of instrumental music as an irresponsible Ersatz for primary religious experience. . . . The well-known stand of the Council of Trent may in part have stemmed from this sentiment. Art becomes an “idolatry,” a competing power, and a deceptive bedazzlement; and the images and the allegory of religious subjects appear as blasphemy. —Weber 1946: 342–3 Meyer (2010) counters that music is a very important form of expression within Pentecostalism, a fact that violates Weber’s posited opposition between aesthetics and salvation religions. Yet European Christianity, beginning before the Reformation, did witness a series of polemics against different forms of liturgical music, which came under attack for being too ostentatious, idolatrous, or distracting. Polyphony, or the use of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, was a common target. Weber’s

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reference to “the well-known stand of the Council of Trent” concerns a debate over the propriety of polyphony that supposedly occurred at this most important of CounterReformation Councils. The remainder of this essay explores what was at stake in these controversies over liturgical music, as a case study in the Protestant aesthetic. Rob Wegman (2008) describes the debates that occurred over the use of various forms of polyphonic music within the Church during the period leading up to and through the early Reformation. I will summarize some of the key findings of his richly documented account. During this period, when polyphony had made serious inroads into the traditional liturgy (Milner 2011: 114–15, 130–1), there arose a series of objections, in part aesthetic but mainly moral and theological, against the new forms of music. Older modes of Gregorian chant or plainchant were believed by many to be more appropriate to the serious occasions of the liturgy. In part, it was the excessive ornamentation of polyphony, devoid in itself of meaning or semantic content, that was the basis for condemning this musical form. Such charges could arguably be directed even against plainchant itself, as indeed they were by more radical reformers, such as the English Lollards prior to the Reformation, one of whom stated “that the singing or saying of mass, mattens, or evensong, is but a roring, howling, whistling, murmuring, tomring, and juggling; and the playing at the organs a foolish vanity” (Wegman 2008: 126). The proto-reformer John Wycliff (1324–84) complained that fancy musical rhythms promoted sound over sense (Wegman 2008: 20–3), in keeping with his emphasis on the importance of reading and comprehending scripture that informed his early English translation of the Bible. Although during the Reformation such complaints were strongest among extremists (ibid.: 34), as among the Puritans in England (ibid.: 105), even many Catholics expressed similar concerns, both before and after the Reformation. Indeed, so venerable a Father of the Church as St. Augustine had argued that music was justified insofar as it gave voice to the words of scripture, which alone gave the music meaning (ibid.: 35). As Weber alluded, the Council of Trent early on faced proposals to ban polyphony, but in the end avoided directly considering such a ban and instead advocated “moderation as the answer to abuses in musical worship” (Wegman 2008: 105). Although this compromise therefore appears to have been a remarkably durable one, Wegman argues that these earlier debates had a substantial impact: Although the European backlash against polyphony had not resulted in a universal prohibition of the practice, . . . it had nevertheless effected a paradigm shift . . . The key to this paradigm shift lies in the oft-repeated charge that polyphony was devoid of substance and permanence—that it was empty and fleeting, a vain thing. . . . [T]he underlying tension between compositional ambitions and textual constraints would persist throughout the sixteenth century. It was one of several dialectical tensions that the crisis of music bequeathed to European society and that would continue to define the framework for musical discussion and debate: between sound and substance, between moderation and excess, between sensuous pleasure and rational understanding, and, ultimately, between virtue and sin. That is why the crisis could never be fully resolved . . . . —Wegman 2008: 167, 179 The contrast between sound and sense, or between poetic, musical form and semantic content, describes a certain tension within the Church that retains relevance as it bears upon the question of salvation in relation to liturgical performance. There is a close parallel to the previously mentioned Puritan critique of “vain repetitions” in prayer.

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Craig Monson (2002) has debunked the legend that held that Giovanni Pierluigi di Palestrina, through the beauty of his composition, convinced the Council of Trent not to prohibit polyphony. However, both before and after the Council, there were local prohibitions against using polyphony, e.g. in Modena, either in general or in masses for the dead (Chemotti n.d.: 107). The apex of such developments was reached once again in Puritanism. As Weber stated (2009: 107): Even at funerals the genuine Puritan scorned every trace of magical ceremony and buried his loved ones without song and ceremony. He did so in order to prevent the appearance of “superstition” in any form; that is, any trust in the efficacy for salvation of forces of a magical-sacramental type. Chadwick, who mentions in passing the Council of Trent’s reforms, notes that, despite the variety of opinions, Every reformer or Reformer agreed that the old music was too elaborate and ought to be simplified. The destruction of the meaning of the words by the convolutions of the composers had at times reached a pitch of absurdity and extravagance comparable to that of the later caricatures of grand opera. . . . The puritan strand in Christianity, evoked or encouraged by Reformation and by Counter-Reformation, suspected music as it suspected useless ornaments in a church. Luther did not share these views, and as is well known wrote many hymns. Yet “as late as 1640 four out of the eleven churches in Zurich had no congregational singing,” during the early Reformation in England the Psalms were the only hymns permitted, and Anglican single chant was not common until the early seventeenth century (Chadwick 1972: 435–7). Debates over the propriety of music in church continued in England much longer, and often went beyond polyphony to question also instrumental and indeed all forms of music in liturgy.5 Opponents drew on familiar tropes, including: the condemnation of “set forms” of music in favor of sincerity and spontaneity; the opposition between bodily and spiritual modes of worship; and the idea that the Gospel had abolished many Jewish ritual practices, including music.6 This last objection was based on the ancient Christian typological idea that the ceremonial laws of Moses had served a symbolical function that, with the advent of Christ, was now obsolete. The classification of liturgical music as part of Jewish ceremonial was most closely associated with Puritan factions, or as one opponent called them, “those men who side with the men of Geneva” (Battell 1694: 11). John Newte attributed this opinion regarding instrumental music to Calvin, and contrasted it with Luther’s much more favorable opinion (Newte, “The Preface to the Reader,” in Dodwell 1700: 52–5). A note to Psalm 81:1 in the 1599 Geneva Bible articulated the Puritan position.7 Like Baxter’s wholesale condemnation of embodied ritual, these polemics did not generally succeed in their objectives. (Baxter, it should be noted, did not go so far as to argue for the prohibition of instrumental music in the liturgy: see Battell [1694: 14–15, quoting Baxter, Christian Directory, annex, Cases of Conscience]). However, they represented an “ideal type” that, through its extreme nature, helps to clarify what was at stake in such theological debates. We now focus more closely on a selection of these theological debates. The extreme Puritanical point of view was represented by Isaac Marlow, who in 1690 rejected all liturgical music, even singing, on typological grounds. He would have the church remain silent, or at least unmusical: “the Essence or Being of Singing consists in an inward Spiritual Exercise of the Soul or Mind of Man. . . . If the Essence of Prayer be inwardly in

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the Spirit, why not of Singing also?” (Marlow 1690: pages 7, 7*8). To the standard theological arguments against music noted above, Marlow added others, including the idea that music was associated with the gifts of the holy spirit that, according to Paul, should be exercised with restraint and were already disappearing in the primitive church (ibid.: 8). This connected the attack on music with some of the precise Protestant tropes that informed the idea of “disenchantment.” Music should be inspired, not a mechanical performance of “a prescribed . . . [or] pre-composed humane Form” (ibid.: 20). This was to follow the “Letter” instead of the “Spirit” (ibid.: 17). Marlow cited biblical provisions prohibiting singing by women (ibid.: 21). He argued further that, as music was an expression of joy, it was inappropriate for Christ’s church, which (like the Jews during the Exile) was “now in a Wilderness, Mourning, Sackcloth-State” (ibid.: 12; see also 39). As we see, the Massachusetts Puritans’ citation of their “Wilderness-condition” as a basis for their sumptuary laws was not merely a reference to the material hardships of early colonial America; it had theological significance. The “wilderness” referred to our present, fallen world, before the Parousia. Marlow’s opponents were equally forceful. Joseph Wright admitted (1691: 8) that, while there was no biblical basis for the “Pedobaptists” (infant baptizers in the Roman Catholic mode), there was plenty for church music. “Social singing,” not merely inward and silent, was one of the “permanent standing Ordinances” of the church (ibid.: 32). He specifically rejected the idea that singing should come “by miraculous Power” or not at all. By this standard, all of the practices of the primitive church, including baptism and communion, would have to cease as well (ibid.: 33–5; see also 70). Benjamin Keach, rejecting the argument that music was merely “legal and typical” and therefore part of the Mosaic law that had been abrogated (1691: 130–1, 165–8), also accused Marlow of perpetrating a reductio ad absurdum by making the essence of singing “a Heart-service only without the Bodily Organs,” as such false logic would “overthrow all external Acts of Religion” (ibid.: 123–4). Marlow replied to his conservative critics in a series of publications, mainly reiterating his earlier arguments. He doubled down on the claim that singing in the primitive church was no “absolute Ordinance,” but was performed “by the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Although such gifts had “ceased for ever,” he allowed that “for the extraordinary Gift of Singing, there may be greater Occasions for it than ever when the Church of Christ shall have fresh additional Mercies, as to arrive to the Redemption of their Bodies as well as of their Souls; and when the Mountain of the Lord’s House shall be established” (Marlow 1692: 89–90). In other words, such joys should be reserved for the Last Days, after the Lord’s return. We can see now how such disenchantments opened the door for later modes of reenchantment, such as those represented specifically by Pentecostal prayer and singing. Pentecostals accepted many of the same theological positions as their Puritan forebears: the rejection of formal, prescribed modes of worship; the association of such ecstatic modes as music, dance, and speaking in tongues with inspiration by the Holy Spirit— even, potentially, with the advent of the Second Coming. The Puritan attack on “set forms” and “vain repetitions” in prayer was not contradicted by the charismatic revival of glossolalia, as this behavior is supposedly spontaneous rather than prescribed, and is one of the “signs and wonders” that proves inspiration. The principal difference between the Puritan and Pentecostal positions, then, turns precisely on the question of whether the world is “disenchanted” or “re-enchanted.” Pentecostalism actually reinforces our evidence for an earlier Puritan movement of anaestheticism, to which Pentecostalism is related historically as a counter-reaction and structurally as an antipode.

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CONCLUSION Various aspects of the Protestant aesthetic—such as vernacularization, the stress on reading scripture, the attacks on images, polyphony, and ornamented prayer—suggest a general emphasis on the content of liturgy over its poetic, repetitive, musical, or otherwise sensuous form. I have characterized this, in semiotic terms, as a devaluation of the pragmatic in favor of the semantic dimensions of communication (Yelle 2013b: 160–1). As we have seen, however, this was only one aspect of a more complex, theologically articulated ideology in which an emphasis on inwardness, on the manner in which religion had supposedly transcended embodiment and superseded prescribed form, also played an important role. Such developments may also be amenable to an approach from cognitive science. According to Harvey Whitehouse’s “two modes of religiosity” theory—the imagistic and the doctrinal—what many Christians, especially Protestants, did was to emphasize the doctrinal at the expense of the imagistic. Steven Hrotic (2012) has applied Whitehouse’s typology to the now-disproved story that Palestrina saved polyphonic music at the Council of Trent. Hrotic sets out to explain why this false story, despite the lack of evidence, was circulated for so long. His explanation is that polyphony, being repetitive and highly stimulating, violates our expectations regarding what a Catholic Mass should be: namely, focused on the transmission of doctrine. Polyphony in church represents an illegitimate combination of both of Whitehouse’s two modes. It is the cognitive dissonance that this thought produces that, according to Hrotic, made the Palestrina story both believable and memorable. This argument is ingenious but not terribly convincing. What needs explaining is not so much the (idea of the) combination of modes, which in fact characterized most medieval church practice, but rather the rise of a new aesthetic ideology that attacked images, repetitive chants, polyphony, or even all music. This historical development, as we have seen, was closely linked with Puritan theology. It is always important to take into account such cultural and historical differences, including those that reflect a specific aesthetic ideology.9

RECOMMENDED READING Bauman, Richard (1984), Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This classic of linguistic anthropology focuses on the history and theology of Quaker practices of restraint in expression. Keane, Webb (2002), “Sincerity, Modernity, and the Protestants,” Cultural Anthropology, 17: 65–92. This groundbreaking article explores how Protestant ideas regarding the subject informed the semiotic ideology of Dutch missionaries in their encounter with native Sumbanese Indonesians, and can serve as an introduction to the author’s 2007 book Christian Moderns. Meyer, Birgit (2010), “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 109: 741–63. A leading contemporary practitioner of the anthropology of religion critiques Weber’s disenchantment thesis as applied to the aesthetics of Protestant Christianity by highlighting the expressive dimensions of Pentecostal liturgy.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Aesthetics of the Ugly CONSTANZE PABST VON OHAIN

FACING THE DEAD: THE SOMATICS OF BUDDHIST DOGMAS Key Concepts: Aesthetic Repertoire of the Ugly Since the advent of the aesthetics of religion in the German-speaking sphere, the aesthetics of the so-called ugly (“das Hässliche”) has occupied a limited place in the overall discussion (Cancik and Mohr 1988: 131f., 148–52). Indeed, scholars have been decidedly uninterested in exploring the ugly as the converse of the art historical, literary, or philosophical topos of the beautiful, despite it already being advocated by Karl Rosenkranz in his book Aesthetik des Häßlichen (Eng. Aesthetics of the Ugly) of 1853, where it was defined and devalued as the negation of the beautiful (Ger. “das Negativschöne”) or the hell of the beautiful (Ger. “die Hölle des Schönen”). For Rosenkranz, the ugly and the beautiful are inextricably linked; his emphasis on the ugly, situating his ideas between that of the beautiful and the comic (Ger. “das Komische”), was aimed at completion and was a reaction to—but still in line with—prevalent European conceptions of the beautiful, such as that of Hegel, which Rosenkranz regarded as “incomplete” and as lacking due attention to their “ugly” converse (Cancik and Mohr 1988: 131f.; Rosenkranz 2015: 11, 15). Diverging from these lines of argumentation, the approach of the aesthetics of religion conceives the ugly as an analytic category and more precisely as an aesthetic and moral category. It calls for a set of culturally contingent criteria and rules that may be employed when assessing and defining sensory impressions as ugly, grotesque, or disgusting, and ostracizing them as “others” (Cancik and Mohr 1988: 148f.),1 and it questions the function of the ugly within a particular discourse and the logic of practices that establish body knowledge as knowledge that is executed and achieved through the body (Koch 2007, 2015: 23f., 2016: 66f.). In addressing the entire aesthetic subject (see Koch, Chapter 3, this volume), it is concerned with the way in which the senses are controlled and restricted, creating a particular experience via the ugly in which certain beliefs and doctrines are evoked, established, and maintained as aesthetic knowledge (see Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume). An aesthetics of the ugly presupposes the concept of imagination, a critical term in the study of religion and the aesthetics of religion (Traut and Wilke 2015b; Traut and Wahl, Chapter 6, this volume), and body knowledge (see Koch 2007, 2015, 2016). Imagination, defined as the interplay between inner perception and sensory impressions, is of particular import here, since it is an essential participant in the process of making 253

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religious meaning for the aesthetic subject. Personal and collective imaginations of cultures, which include metaphors, cosmologies, narratives, and religious semantics, are produced and reiterated through manifold imaginative techniques. They serve as an instrument of making the transcendent present and perceivable, of giving meaning, and as a means of translating sense systems into the sensory sphere (Traut and Wilke 2015b: 18). The deliberate application of imaginative techniques in practices of visualization is often explicit, as seen for example in Buddhist Tantric visualizations (see Wilke 2015). Such body techniques control perceptions and often result in conceiving the body in a new and different way. These analytical categories are particularly fruitful when applied to the so-called visualization of the dead, or corpse meditation, a body technique that is widespread in ancient Indic Buddhist literature and also occurs in contemporary Therav¯ada Buddhist practice. In this practice, the ugly, defined as the dead and disgusting body in Buddhist literature, is made present through the deliberate evocation of horrifying imagery. Combined with a control of the body, the practices serve as the emic mode of aesthetic knowledge. I argue that through this body technique, specific Buddhist dogmas are not merely actualized and established as rational knowledge but are solidified as aesthetic knowledge.

The Horrible in Indian Buddhism2 Popular depictions of Buddhism tend to evoke images of the peacefully meditating monk, seldom a nun, engaged in the observance of breathing in and breathing out, as exemplified in the typical depiction of the meditating Buddha; instances that do not quite fit these stereotypes are often thought of as exceptions. Belonging to these more dissonantsounding occurrences are certain body techniques that have been appropriated and popularized to a far lesser extent than, say, Zen meditation: self-immolation among monastics, writing su ¯tras in one’s own blood, or sitting next to corpses whilst observing, and indeed visualizing them slowly decomposing. This latter, seemingly “morbid” practice is the topic of this case study in the aesthetics of the ugly. It is presented in two meditation manuals (see below) from North India/Pakistan, third to fourth century CE . The categorization of this practice as ugly is based on both emic and etic criteria, as will become clear in the discussion. The observation and visualization of the dead belongs to a set of meditative practices that are widespread in Indic Buddhist literature.3 “The dead” refers here not to personifications of death but to actual human corpses. Corpse meditation does not form a part of funerary or deathbed rituals, and is typically described as a psychophysical technique that evokes deeper states of meditation or that serves as an antidote to sexual desire. The topos of the dead occurs not only in Indic Buddhist literature; ancient artworks in Central Asia also depict corpses, skeletons, or skulls alongside meditating monks (Figures 23.1 and 23.2) (Howard and Vignato 2015). However, the precise context of these latter depictions remains unclear at present; a connection with the practice of corpse meditation is a central, but nevertheless problematic, hypothesis (Greene 2013). The widespread occurrence of the visualization of corpses in various kinds of literature suggests that it might have been enacted in ancient India and was more than mere literary fiction. Be that as it may, it is evident that the dead had their peculiar place in the collective imagination and were widespread literary and pictorial phenomena (see also Cuevas and Stone 2007). Leaping forward from South and Central Asian antiquity into contemporary accounts of Buddhist practice, corpse meditation is also widely documented among the Therav¯ada

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FIGURE 23.1: Meditating monk, Kizil Cave 212 (“Cave of the Seafarers”), c. sixth century CE , mural painting, 56.6 × 27.2 cm, Inv Nr. III 8401 c. © Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen Berlin/Jürgen Liepe.

Buddhist communities of Southeast Asia. It is fairly well represented in Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, as revealed, for example, by the fieldwork of Alan Kimal (2002: 169–230). Ordinarily, photographs, for instance of autopsies from hospitals, are used, rather than real corpses, although sometimes corpses of monastics or others are put on display as meditative objects (Kimal 2002: 204f.). Apart from this, notable philological research on corpse meditation has been conducted, focusing on rendering the relevant source material accessible, on questions of intertextuality, and on the social dimensions of this practice (Schmithausen 1982; Wilson 1996; Collins 2003; Greene 2006; Dhammajoti 2009; Kritzer 2017).

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FIGURE 23.2: Toyuk (Xinjiang), Cave 42. Photograph taken August 8, 2015. © Robert Arlt, with kind permission by the Turfan Research Academy.

CASE STUDY: THE VISUALIZATION OF THE DEAD IN TWO INDIC BUDDHIST MEDITATION MANUALS The two Sanskrit meditation manuals on which this essay is based are the Sam¯ahit¯a Bhu ¯mih [henceforth: SamBh] and the S´r¯avakabhu ¯mi [henceforth: S´rBh].4 They likely ˙ originate from the third or fourth century CE and form two chapters of the Yog¯ac¯arabhu ¯mi´s¯astra, a voluminous collection and systematization of Buddhist doctrines and a foundational text of Yog¯ac¯ara Buddhism.5 Questions of authorship and school attribution are generally problematic in ancient India, but even more so in the case of this text, since not only its size but also its heterogeneous content indicate that it is the product of a complex compositional history spanning the first centuries CE until its redaction in the fourth century CE . This process probably took place in Gandh¯ara (modern-day Pakistan/Afghanistan), a region situated at the interface of the Silk Roads of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and consequently characterized by a very complex social history, which incorporates an array of diverse cultural influences from, for example, the Iranian, Hellenistic, and Indic worlds. The Yog¯ac¯arabhu ¯mi´s¯astra mirrors much of this

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circumstance and this, despite causing several hermeneutical problems, makes the text an even more interesting and important historical document (see Kragh 2013). Judging from their conceptual and direct parallels, the S´rBh and the SamBh belong to a close textual or oral tradition. The S´rBh contains systematic theoretical discussions as well as detailed instructions on a set of five meditations, and is often regarded as the counterpart to the fifth-century CE Visuddhimagga, the most prominent meditation manual of the Therav¯ada school (Deleanu 2006: 13). The SamBh, on the other hand, reads like a comprehensive collection of texts on various topics concerning meditative theory and practice, while being extremely abbreviating in its presentation; one may conjecture that the text represents an examination document or a transcription of instruction. The fragmentary state of knowledge regarding the text’s precise historical context should be emphasized at this point, as this makes it quite impossible to determine whether the instructions for meditation depicted within these texts are accounts of actual meditative practice or whether they are literary narratives, some of which are unique and others widespread in Buddhist literature.

Collective Imaginations: The Equivalence of the Macro- and Micro-Cosmos The conceptual framework of our two texts is based upon ideas that are widespread in early Buddhist literature. These predominantly concern the conception of the cosmos and the notion of corresponding cosmological and mental states (Gethin 1998: 119).6 Common to these texts, and systematized in greater detail within Buddhist scholastic literature, is the notion of the periodic sequence of world systems and its counterpart, the doctrine of rebirth. Buddhist cosmology shares a cyclical conception of rebirth with other ancient Indian cosmologies (see Gombrich 1975) but strikes out on its own in distinguishing every world into three spheres: (1) the lowest realm, i.e. the “realm of desire” (k¯amadh¯atu), which is placed around Mount Meru in a space-time structure and in which the traditional five or six classes of sentient beings are reborn (gods, semi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, residents of the hells); (2) the “realm of subtle materiality” (ru ¯padh¯atu), in which only classes of gods reside; and (3) the “formless realm” (¯aru ¯pyadh¯atu), where, again, only classes of gods, i.e., the highest and subtlest ones, reside. Principally, beings can be reborn in all three realms, but rebirth in one of the upper two realms requires great merit, depending on one’s karmic condition or progress in spiritual practice. Humans, physically existing in the realm of desire, have the possibility to temporarily access the upper two realms by entering certain states of absorption (dhy¯ana, sam¯apatti) in which some senses are temporarily restricted.7 The upper two realms are hence accessible via both rebirth and peculiar states of the psycho-physical complex. These states of absorption (see also Luhrmann, Chapter 8, this volume) were systematized from the early phases of Buddhism and consequently are present in a substantial amount of Indic Buddhist literature: both of the upper two realms consist of four absorptions, making eight absorptions in total, which gradually build upon each other. The instructions and technical discussions in both our texts mainly serve the purpose, from the emic perspective, of providing tools by means of which one can attain states of absorption or train oneself in concentration (sam¯adhi) for the sake of various kinds of spiritual progress.

Body Techniques to Cultivate the Ugly The visualization of corpses and skeletons is part of a practice called a´subhabh¯avan¯a in Sanskrit, which literally translates as “cultivating (bh¯avan¯a) the unbeautiful/impure

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(a-´subha)” or “making the unbeautiful/impure come into being.” The term ´subha entails the senses of both “beautiful” and “pure”; in most instances both resonate and it is rare that one can be dismissed in favor of the other. No term in the English language adequately captures this double meaning, and therefore when rendering ´subha and its negation a´subha respectively with “beautiful” and “ugly,” as we do here, the aspect of “purity/ impurity” should be borne in mind. The “cultivation of the ugly” (a´subhabh¯avan¯a) concerns particular techniques of the body, in which one concentrates on the ugliness of the human body and visualizes corpses in their different stages of decomposition. There is a tendency in Indic Buddhist literature to conceptualize the human body, especially the female one, as “ugly” (see Wilson 1996; Collins 2003), even though the body as a vehicle for spiritual practice has some value (see Satha-Anand 2007). Exempt from this are the bodies of spiritually advanced figures, including the historical Buddha as well as other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Physical encounters, visualizations, and visions of these figures are conceptualized as spiritually positive (see Mrozik 2004; Gayley 2007). Famously, the historical Buddha is depicted as extremely beautiful and desirable, “a bull of a man” (Powers 2009).8 The S´rBh presents the cultivation of the ugly as the first of a set of five meditative practices that are mentioned throughout the text and explicated in three longer passages.9 These five are preparatory practices, either leading directly to the attainment of the first absorption or serving as a preparation for its pre-stages. The first emic function of the cultivation of the ugly is thus to strengthen the practitioner’s capacity for “attention” (manask¯ara) and “concentration” (sam¯adhi). The meditative objects of the set of five practices are called “meditative objects that purify the conduct,” i.e., each counteracts a specific tendency of human personalities. The cultivation of the ugly is said to counteract the temperament of passion/desire (r¯aga), therefore making up the second emic function of the practice: the concentration on the ugliness of one’s own body (Table 23.1) reduces desire for sensual pleasure and the concentration on the ugliness of corpses diminishes the desire for sexual intercourse (Table 23.2).10 If we look more specifically at how the beautiful and the ugly are defined, we find more or less traditional accounts. The SamBh presents the five main hindrances for absorption, the first one being the desire for sensual pleasures, i.e. the desire to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think about the desired object.11 In this specific case, a metaphor of food is employed to express its condition: what nourishes the desire for sensual pleasure is the beautiful (´subha). The beautiful is defined as the summit of all objects of sensual desire. Once one has mastered this highest form, the affection toward all lower forms is easy to relinquish, just as a wrestler can easily beat all weaker enemies after having overcome the strongest. This highest form of beauty is identified as the beauty of women, a common topos in descriptions of the hindrances to salvation (see Wilson 1996; Valent 1997),

TABLE 23.1: Typology of dispositions and counter-practices Disposition of/tendency for

Counter-practice

passion ill-will delusion pride/self-conceit restless thinking

cultivation of the ugly cultivation of benevolence analysis of the principle of dependent origination analysis of the constituents of personality mindfulness of breathing

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which captivates men through eight characteristics. It is noteworthy that the SamBh knows a second concept of the beautiful which is conceptualized as spiritually positive. This latter does not arise in the context of the cultivation of the ugly but is part of a complex meditation theory that details how to enter deeper states of absorption.12 The ugly is divided into the internal and the external. A list of impure body parts is referred to most frequently as the internal ugly, including organs and bodily fluids (thirtysix in the S´rBh). The external ugly consists of a list of sixteen corpses and two places filled with ugly substances. The first ten of these corpses are described in the narrative passages of the instructions of the visualization:13 1.

a corpse turned blue

2.

a decomposing corpse

3.

a corpse that gets eaten and destroyed by worms

4.

a swollen corpse

5.

a corpse devoured by animals

6.

a red corpse

7.

a corpse torn asunder

8.

the bones

9.

the bone-chain

10.

the entire skeleton

11.

a feces-smeared corpse

12.

a urine-smeared corpse

13.

a phlegm-smeared corpse

14.

a corpse smeared with nasal mucus

15.

a corpse covered in blood

16.

a corpse covered with pus

17.

a urinarium

18.

a drain

As presented above, the visualization of corpses serves as the antidote to the desire for sexual intercourse.14 This rather technical material is used in three more narrative accounts of the instruction of the visualizations in the S´rBh. In the first one,15 a discussion on “discernment” (vipa´syan¯a) (see below), the practitioner is told to reflect upon what he—the text is clearly addressed at and written from a male perspective—has heard about the meditative object: it is foul, stinking, and unpleasant. He directs his attention to his body and should

TABLE 23.2: Correlation of corpse visualization and subcategories of sexual desire Meditative object

Counteracting the sexual desire for

corpses 1–5 corpse 6 corpse 7 skeletons 8–10

color shape treatment/being served upon touch/contact

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understand it is made out of the elements of water and earth. He then visualizes a corpse that has been seen, heard of, or thought about. The source of the mental image of the corpse he has seen can be either a real corpse, a picture, or a corpse made out of stone, wood, or slime. It can be that of any person, of a friend, an enemy, female, male, of a young or an old person. He visualizes how the corpse slowly changes in time: after one day, two days, seven days. He directs his mental attention to the skeleton: each discrete bone, the skull, and the bone-chain, and finally the entire skeleton. After that, he examines all corporeal substance under its aspect of change, in addition to his own beauty, as it turns into something ugly, just as the external ugly. He should understand that one generates attachment to the beautiful because one does not understand its true (ugly) nature, an ignorance that leads to pain, sorrow, distress, and misfortune. The second passage16 details how to engage with the visualized image, for which the ugly serves as an example for the meditative object. The practitioner is advised to focus on the meditative object, here designating the mental representation of the external object. With this image the practitioner alternates between the two bodily modes of “calm abiding” (´samatha) and “discernment” (vipa´syan¯a) that denote the mental activity of conceptualization: during discernment the mind conceptually engages with the mental image, and during calm abiding no conceptual activity is enacted toward the image. The former is an analytical activity of the mind and the latter consists of a “calm” mind and a mere presence of the object—“it has not been given up, but also not taken up.” This specific technique should be conducted not only with the meditative object of the ugly, but also with the other four meditative objects, following the same principle of alternating between analysis and calming the mind. The technique is said to gradually lead to a change of the whole psychophysical existence, i.e., the “basis” (¯a´sraya): the practitioner gradually purifies and replaces the old corrupted basis with a new one filled with ease. If conducted fully, an “immediate perception” and “non-conceptual insight” of the object is said to be attained, a state which is equated with the attainment of the first absorption.17 The third passage18 expands the instruction of the technique with more details and descriptions of social behavior. The practitioner first “frightens the mind” by repeatedly directing his thoughts to all the sickness and death that he sees in his village or city, the factors that make up the nature of the cycle of rebirth. There is always the loss of health, the loss of kinsmen, the loss of enjoyment, and disease and death are everywhere. Beings in the present live in suffering, and the future is full of misfortune; pleasant things are impermanent. He then analyzes his moral conduct, and when it is “purified,” joy arises. These first two moments are the basis of the practice of ´samatha and vipa´syan¯a (see above). They aid the practitioner in maintaining his meditative object, while attaining bodily and mental ease, and in having a concentrated mind. He is then able to proceed with imprinting the visual appearance of the corpse, either from a real specimen in a cemetery, more specifically “a place where corpses are thrown out,” or from a fabricated one. Having “grasped” the image, he goes to the forest or into an empty house, cleans his feet, sits cross-legged with a straight back, and starts to concentrate, while also being aware of “what is distraction and what is non-distraction.” As a result, the mind becomes tranquil and free of conceptualizations. The teacher continues with a simile, known also to canonical literature: a group of people gathers around the most beautiful woman in the country who is singing and dancing. He approaches them while carrying an oil-vessel. Following him from behind is a “horrifying man with an upraised knife” who will behead him if he spills but a drop of the oil on the ground. He now has the choice to either let himself be distracted by the beautiful woman, by the people, by the horrifying man, or to

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focus instead on the oil-vessel. Of course, since he is a “clever man,” he opts for the latter and focuses on the oil-vessel, which stands for meditative concentration. The instruction continues with starting vipa´syan¯a: the practitioner should now overcome the images of one particular corpse or skeleton and expand the imagery by visualizing the whole universe—in the past, future, and present cycles of rebirth—as being filled with thousands of millions of corpses. He should understand that he himself has been and will again be a corpse a myriad of times. After that, he returns to the practice of ´samatha, not focusing on the image but calming the mind. It is said that this helps to clarify the image when one visualizes light in between ´samatha and vipa´syan¯a. This technique is repeated many times. After that, he imagines the internal impure body parts and again imagines his own process of dying or the state of being dead. The instruction ends with advice on how to behave in public: one should eat food and receive alms with a tranquil mindset. One should speak according to the Buddhist teachings and not aggressively.

CONCLUSION: LEARNING DISGUST AND SOLIDIFYING DOGMAS AS AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE The analysis of the aesthetics of the visualization of the dead allows for a shift in focus from the broader social dimensions of this practice—the context of a male monastic celibate and against the backdrop of ancient Indian conceptions of purity (Wilson 1996; Collins 2003; Dessein 2013: 124f.)—to the somatics and function for the aesthetic subject. We have seen the centrality of the ugly in the detailed description of the “internal” and “external ugly,” and how distinctly the external ugly is constructed and enacted in order to produce concrete and vividly horrifying images by making use of bodily resistance toward dead and stinking objects and creating an “unpleasant” emotion. This resistance is observed by cognitive psychologists in a very similar way (McCorkle 2013). This specific emotion is then shifted to the internal ugly: to one’s living body—whose determination as being ugly certainly also reflects ancient Indic notions of purity versus impurity. The cultivation of the ugly is a very illuminating example of how the feeling of disgust, here toward one’s body, is learned: through the repeated quasi-perceptual experience of the vision of the decaying human body, disgust is cultivated in respect to one’s body and the bodies of others via sensory pathways. However, the ideal state, as explicated in the theorization of absorption, is to have no emotional reaction at all, not even disgust. The peculiar knowledge that is produced through this body technique goes still further than cultivating disgust and distance toward one’s body: Buddhist norms regarding the evaluation of the phenomenal world—being identified with impermanence, suffering, cosmological narratives, or the doctrine of rebirth—are solidified through sensory experience as aesthetic knowledge. The world is “seen as” and “perceived as” if being a key feature of imagination (Traut and Wilke 2015b: 21). It is also interesting to note how the inclination of Indic Buddhist scholastic literature to systematize and create lists is visible even in the visualization of the ugly, whereby lists of desires and corpses are created and juxtaposed with one another. One might wonder whether corpse meditation reflects some kind of fascination for the morbid or desire for death; based on our source material this is hard to answer, since the two texts lack any concrete historical context. There are, however, narratives in monastic

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codices in which monks are reported to have committed suicide after having practiced the visualization of the dead to excess (Collins 2003: 195; Dessein 2013: 135f.); here the narrative is used prohibitively against suicide. During fieldwork conducted in Thailand, Kimal (2002: 203f.) also observed that the practice is not without its dangers—he witnessed meditators experiencing mental breakdowns as a result of corpse meditation. It is clear, however, that the practice makes use of the trauma or impact of seeing death and of the corresponding bodily resistance. When repeatedly cultivating the ugly the practitioner may very well become accustomed to ugly imagery and thereby diminish its horrifying aspect.

RECOMMENDED READING Gayley, Holly (2007), “The Soteriology of the Senses in Tibetan Buddhism,” Numen 54: 459–99. Investigates the concept of liberation through sensory contact in Tibetan Buddhism with an emphasis on “liberating through touching” and “liberating through seeing.” Greene, Eric M. (2016), “Visions and Visualizations: In Fifth-Century Chinese Buddhism and Nineteenth-Century Experimental Psychology,” History of Religions 55: 289–328. Discusses Western and Chinese Buddhist concepts of visualization with numerous references and develops useful terminologies. Mrozik, Susanne (2004), “Cooking Living Beings: The Transformative Effects of Encounters with Bodhisattva Bodies,” Journal of Religious Ethics 32 (1): 175–94. Analyzes selfcultivation among Indian Mah¯ ay¯ana Buddhism and the role of the bodies of Bodhisattvas in the ethical development of other beings, based on the medieval Indian S´iks¯asamuccaya. ˙

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Aesthetics of the Secular STEFAN BINDER

INTRODUCTION: THE AESTHETIC PRODUCTION OF BEING “OTHER-THAN-RELIGIOUS” This essay explores how an aesthetics of religion approach offers a way to study hitherto neglected aspects of “lived secularity” in the specific sense of claims to and practices of being “other-than-religious.” As a first step, the essay briefly reviews why a focus on aesthetics is crucial to enlarge the methodological setup of scholarship on the secular beyond normative accounts of secularity as based on disembodied reason. After engaging with the existing literature on the aesthetics of non-religion, the final section demonstrates the potential of this approach in a case study of organized atheism in South India. It engages lived secularity as an aestheticscape by exploring a specific historical imaginary of “Indian Atheism” in relation to material culture, rhetorical practices, emotional habitus, and representational economies. Since the 2000s, questions related to the secular have become a major theme across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. As a variety of academic disciplines with divergent research agendas and methodologies have been involved in this project of reappraising the relationship between the religious and the secular, the research field is highly diversified and no consensus exists about definitions of even its most central categories. While several authors have attempted to produce taxonomical clarity for terms like secularism, secularity, secularization, or the post-secular (Casanova 1994; Taylor 2007; Lee 2015), the disciplinary perspectives and actual themes of existing scholarship are too diverse to allow for a single, authoritative vocabulary. This essay limits itself to the secular as it appears in an emerging field in religious studies, sociology, and anthropology that deals with people, discourses, and practices that are marked or consider themselves as different from and often opposed to religion: atheism, secular humanism, rationalism, disbelief, religious indifference, etc. (Bullivant and Lee 2012; Quack 2014; Blanes and Oustinova-Stjepanovic 2015). In approaching the secular as other-than-religion, the intention is not to postulate an essential difference between the religious and the secular; rather, the aim is to explore the means by which certain groups of people constitute themselves and their ways of living as an aestheticscape that is other-than-religious.

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RESEARCHING THE SECULAR: FROM SECULAR IDEOLOGY TO AN AESTHETICS OF LIVED SECULARITY The “Absence” of Secular Aesthetics It is not coincidental that the turn toward aesthetic approaches to religion is more or less contemporaneous with a renewed interest in the secular in the wake of deconstructions of the modernist secularization paradigm. A common theme in both developments has been the critique of a tendency to construe religions primarily as disembodied, intellectual, and textual phenomena concerned above all with questions of meaning and belief. The aesthetic and material turns in religious studies have retraced the origins of this truncated understanding of religion to a specifically modern episteme and semiotic ideology of “disembedding” (Giddens 1991: 21–9). Within this framework, the secular has been identified as the “ontology” (Asad 2003: 21) and conceptual grammar which undergirds the “moral narrative of modernity” (Keane 2013b: 159) telling of the liberation and purification of human reason and agency from supposedly superstitious entanglements with material, bodily, affective, or social constrictions (see also Latour 1993; Connolly 1999). While the critical scholarship on the secular/modern remaking of religion has been immensely productive in uncovering the hitherto neglected aesthetic dimensions of lived religions, it has tended to equate the secular with its normative accounts of disembodied reason. As a consequence, scholarship on the secular has dealt with aesthetics predominantly as a question of how secular/modern epistemologies, legal structures, and forms of governance have misconstrued, ignored, or regulated the aesthetics of religion. In other words, it has been unable to address the materiality and embodied nature of secularity as anything other than a contradiction of the secular’s own normative insistence on disembeddedness, universality, and autonomy from the material, bodily, social, etc. Within this methodological setup, to describe the embodied and material dimensions of the secular is to describe what it is not—or what it claims not to be. However, explicit disavowals of aesthetics, or projects of anaesthetics (see Yelle, Chapter 22, this volume), within certain secular discourses do not foreclose the analysis of the aesthetic forms and strategies through which such disavowals are put forth and made sensible. This replicates a problem well known from the study of religions, where the concept of religion was based to a large extent on the discourse of religious professionals and “lived” or “popular” forms of religiosity were measured by the extent to which they conformed to theological normativity. This is more than a mere analogy, since theology— especially in its Protestant variant—is routinely identified as the major driving force of (secular) modernity (Keane 2007). By equating the secular with its normative selfrepresentation, the study of secularity has been circumscribed by a conceptual grid reconstructed almost entirely on the basis of early modern European intellectual history. This Eurocentric bias presents a serious methodological problem for studying secularity outside the ambit of European languages or narratives of European diffusion. This has prevented existing research on issues of religious critique, doubt, skepticism, or withdrawal in area studies from being integrated into a systematic comparative and postcolonial perspective on the secular (for the situation in African Studies see Engelke 2015b). Here, a focus on aesthetics can offer a way forward beyond normative accounts and European conceptual history.

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Aesthetics of Science and Politics Since the secular has been closely linked to rationality, the intellect, and science, it falls squarely within the central epistemological concern of an aesthetic approach as developed in this volume, which shows how the body, the senses, figuration, and material media are intrinsic to processes of intellectual reasoning and knowledge. Here, an aesthetics of the secular overlaps with an aesthetics of science, which analyzes how scientific claims to objectivity and rationality are not only represented but also constructed through rhetorical strategies, sensorial engagements, material assemblages, assumptions about the body and the senses, as well as aesthetic judgments inherent to culturally shaped and historically changing epistemologies (Borrelli and Grieser 2017). It is important to note, however, that the science/religion binary is historically related to but cannot be collapsed into the secular/religious binary, as aesthetic forms associated with religious traditions may very well be employed in scientific practices and vice versa (Grieser 2017). Another core area of boundary work with regard to the secular besides science is of course the relationship between the state and religion, which is the subject of debates on political secularism (Calhoun et al. 2011) and the post-secular (Braidotti et al. 2014). While recent debates have tended to focus on how secular states condition or suppress aesthetic dimensions of religions, an earlier stream of scholarship in the tradition of the Frankfurt School has examined the aesthetics of political regimes themselves. Critical theory has focused especially on how the confluence of changing technological and media environments in a capitalist “culture industry” is linked with projects of totalitarian politics (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002: 94). Beyond descriptive collections of tropes and themes associated with specific historical regimes, this research has approached political and social formations of fascism and socialism as fundamentally aesthetic projects, grounded in what Walter Benjamin called the “aestheticizing of politics” (2008: 42). While this implied a critical perspective on the reduction of politics to aesthetics—as opposed to democratic or parliamentarian process—more recent perspectives stress the inherently aesthetic character of politics (Rancière 2004). A phenomenon like “socialist realism,” for example, is of particular interest for an aesthetics of the secular, as it was understood less as a classificatory category of style or genre than an artistic-political program and aesthetic method meant to construct and usher in the communist future of Real Socialism—rather than merely representing it (Gutkin 1999; Cai Xiang 2016). It is, however, precisely on the basis of such aspects of “applied aesthetics” that fascism and socialism have been interpreted as pseudo, political, civil, or secular religions, thus raising again the question of what exactly is secular about their aesthetics other than the rejection of historical religions. Anja Kirsch (2017) shows that such interpretations are grounded in normative concepts of “good” and “bad” religion and proposes instead to focus on formal aesthetic criteria, in her case narratological structures, which may occur in both secular and religious contexts of world making without therefore being themselves either religious or secular. Aesthetic dimensions of socialism, and other phenomena perceived as secular, can thus come under analysis in comparison to religion and further our analytical understanding of the aesthetic efficacy of the secular/religious binary. Thus, potentially normative concepts like political or civil religion can be reappraised for their analytical value with regard to the larger project of an aesthetics of religion and the secular (Koch 2017b).

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Is There a Secular Body? One of the first attempts to explicitly tackle the task of bringing together the aesthetic turn and the secular turn within scholarship on religion is Charles Hirschkind’s essay on the “secular body” in the sense of “a particular configuration of the human sensorium—of sensibilities, affects, embodied dispositions—specific to secular subjects” (2011: 633). Hirschkind addresses the problem that the mere absence of religion would inflate the category of the secular to an extent where it loses its analytical specificity. His solution is a turn toward genealogy and narrative, as he proposes to conceptualize a secular sensorium as those bodily and sensorial dispositions which contribute to instituting and legitimizing “the secularist narrative of the progressive replacement of religious error by secular reason” (ibid.: 641); following Talal Asad, he calls this the “triumphalist narrative of secularism” (ibid.). An important area of research takes this line of inquiry as a starting point to explore secular sensibilities with regard to bodily practices like veiling (Amir-Moazami 2016), or gender and sexuality (Cady and Fessenden 2013; Wiering 2017). While this solution is elegant, the secular remains here fundamentally marked by traces of absence, insomuch as “every secular practice is accompanied by a religious shadow, as it were” and, therefore, “will always be subject to a certain indeterminacy or instability” (Hirschkind 2011: 643). Based on a case study of North American immortalism, i.e., techno-scientific attempts at prolonging human life through cryonics, biogerontology, and artificial intelligence, anthropologist Abou Farman (2013) emphasizes the historicity of the secular and thus argues that the secular can emancipate itself from a relational dependence on the religious. Farman shows that materialist or rationalist worldviews, their initially oppositional stance toward religion notwithstanding, have by now established their own “traditions” (ibid.: 738), which generate identifiably secular bodies and notions of personhood at the nexus of institutional, legal, and technological discourses. Similarly, sociologists and anthropologists have described how self-declared non-religious people in contemporary Britain engage with ethical questions of pleasure (Engelke 2015a), the troubling presence of material objects (Engelke 2015c), or “banal” everyday practices of dress and food (Lee 2015: 70–105). Materialist, humanist, or rationalist worldviews emerge here as frameworks for secular ways of living that refuse to be defined solely in negative relation to religion. In simplified terms, these studies do not ask how the secular/religious binary has been created or enforced through various state apparatuses but what happens once it has been put in place and is actively appropriated by people in their everyday lives. As the following case study illustrates, such a pragmatic approach makes room for collecting empirical narratives and aesthetics beyond those of triumphalism, pseudo-religion, or anaesthetics—and hence room for more complex and plural genealogies as well.

Case Study: Organized Atheism in South India In this case study, based on ethnographic research on an atheist movement in the two mainly Telugu-speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (Binder 2017), I explore a specific narrative of Indian atheism prevalent in South India. I mainly focus on how this narrative and its social imaginary relates to practices of materialization and verbal articulation in order to illustrate an aesthetic approach to what it “feels like” to be secular in a given place and time. Despite some doctrinal differences and the absence of an overarching institutional structure, the members of this movement recognize a shared goal of their secular activism: the reconstruction of a moral, just, and rational society through the eradication of “mental slavery” (bh¯avad¯asyam) manifesting itself most

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directly—though not exclusively—in religious beliefs and practices. While some members of the movement prefer to label themselves as humanists or rationalists, I refer to this larger movement as capitalized Atheism due to the centrality of the term “atheism” and its Telugu equivalent “n¯astikatvam” for its history (see the section “From Narrative to Material Culture” below).

Another Narrative of Secularism Due to Orientalist and anti-colonial ideas about an essentially religious nature of Indian civilization (King 1999), Atheists today see themselves regularly confronted with allegations that their worldview is a “Westernized” product of European colonialism and thus foreign to Indian culture and history. While the colonial history of Indian Atheism and the influence of European rationalist and imperial discourses is well documented (Quack 2012), its pre-colonial roots are highly contested and difficult to historically reconstruct (Quack and Binder 2018). It is those ancient and pre-historical roots of Indian Atheism that are of crucial significance to contemporary Atheists, who try to establish their “indigeneity” primarily in two ways: first, by harking back to materialist, empiricist, and skeptical schools within classical Indian philosophy (Gokhale 2015); and second, through recourse to the so-called Aryan migration theory (Bryant and Patton 2005). Based on linguistic evidence gathered by European Orientalists in collaboration with South Indian pundits (Trautmann 2006), the Aryan migration theory posits that the origin of Hindu civilization dates back to the second millennium BCE , when so-called Aryan migrants from Central Asia brought Vedic culture and religion to India and encountered there an indigenous Dravidian civilization. Most contemporary Atheists, especially those speaking Dravidian languages of the South, link themselves and their worldview genealogically to this presumed indigenous Indian culture, which they tend to describe as atheist, materialist, rationalist, or proto-communist (Pandian 2007). In Atheist iterations of this theory, Aryans do not figure as migrants but as violent invaders, who willfully and strategically destroyed the original Atheist culture of the subcontinent by importing not only Vedic religion but religion as such—what Atheists call mental slavery. It is crucial to retain that for many Atheists in India, the “triumphalist” narrative of secular dominance mentioned above is spliced with, at times superseded by, a narrative of decadence, destruction, and corruption. There are moreover concrete historical agents, namely Aryan invaders, who make this narrative of secular decadence tellable as an intentional, strategic, and political process rather than a “natural” devolution. From the perspective of an aesthetics of the secular, what is at stake are the sensorial, material, and affective1 aspects which transform this spliced narrative from a mere “story” to a potent “imaginary” that conditions what it feels like to be an Atheist in South India (see Johannsen and Kirsch, Chapter 13, this volume).

From Narrative to Material Culture To refer to Atheist retellings of the Aryan migration theory as an “imaginary” is not a comment on its historical facticity but stresses the role of imagination in structuring the perceptions of those who seek to practically realize that theory by living Atheist lives in the present (Traut and Wilke 2015b). Since one of the core features of this imaginary is the willful destruction of Atheist culture and its material remains, it conditions how contemporary Atheists can experience the absence of “traditional” forms of Atheist material culture, rituals, or social institutions. It allows them to reconfigure “absence” not

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as lack but as the source for atheist acts of heroism and resilience, which consist in either reinventing Atheist traditions or bravely facing their absence by developing the strength to do without them; after all, most Atheists claim that it is precisely the inability to let go of “tradition” which leads to mental slavery. A substantial part of Atheist activism therefore consists of re-materializing Atheism by, first of all, writing down and narrating its history of destruction, secondly, by re-interpreting and thus re-appropriating certain parts of Indian cultural history—like folklore, art forms, moral principles, or philosophical insights—as purloined achievements of original Atheism (for a famous example see Ramasami 1972) and, finally, by re-inventing Atheist culture in the form of songs, plays, or commemorative festivals. Atheists have also constructed physical structures, ranging from educational institutions, to venues for Atheist gatherings, to commemorative sculptures of past and present Atheist luminaries. Such material structures scaffold concrete “spaces of imagination” (Hermann et al. 2015), where the history of Atheism can be narrated and manifested in a present community. An aesthetics of the secular would have to inquire into the concrete history of the visual and narrative figurations at play in these attempts at cultural reconstruction in order to carve out an “aesthetic ideology” (Grieser 2017: 261–5) specific to Indian Atheism. Another common form of Atheist activism consists in the re-enactment of alleged supernatural miracles performed by religious practitioners, like the spontaneous materialization of objects or certain forms of bodily mortification, and their subsequent exposure as “mere” conjuring tricks. Jacob Copeman and Johannes Quack have described such performances as an instance of secular material culture based on a semiotic “retooling of sacred objects for non-religious purposes” (2015: 42). In a similar way, Atheist practices of and discourses around body and organ donation become sites for pedagogic realizations of public materialism, where the utilitarian “gift” of one’s own (dead) body for the sake of medical science becomes not only the authenticating climax of an Atheist biography but also a heroic act of civic virtue and enlightenment (Copeman and Reddy 2012). Besides actual material culture and things, the imaginary of Atheist destruction and heroic resilience may also be enacted in and through the aesthetics of speech. A crucial site for this enactment is the ongoing controversy around the name of the movement as well as individual professions of Atheism. As mentioned above, there is no commonly agreed upon label for the movement, with atheism (n¯astikatvam), rationalism (h¯etuv¯adam), and humanism (m¯anavav¯adam) being the most widely discussed alternatives. Beyond the diversity of arguments for one or the other option, their common thread is a concern with the public efficacy of labels. The bone of contention is the term atheism and its standard Telugu translation: n¯astikatvam. While atheism/n¯astikatvam is considered a taken-for-granted philosophical foundation, it is not necessarily considered appropriate as a public label. Both terms have historically been used as exonyms and invectives for ideological adversaries and have therefore accumulated a powerful negative affective charge—to the point where they may evoke suspicion, contempt, or even fear. Some within the Atheist movement argue that this negative affective charge will prove detrimental to the overall aim of the movement, because it alienates “ordinary people” and thus prevents the movement from making its socially transformative message heard. Others, however, contend that the power of those negative affects even among Atheists testifies to the continuing legacy of Aryan invasion, whose prime strategy of cultural warfare was to slander their opponents as atheists/n¯astikulu. Hence, to reappropriate and revalue that name is tantamount to heroically liberating oneself and others from mental slavery. Some of my interlocutors have reported intense anxiety and severe social or

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familial repercussions surrounding their open self-identification as atheists/n¯astikulu, yet they have also described feelings of pride and heroism as well as forms of recognition and praise by peers once they had taken that step. The debate around labels also extends to the realm of personal names, where especially committed Atheist activists change or modify their or their children’s names by including surnames with references to Atheism, or by removing all elements that may evoke caste or religion. Copeman has analyzed such “secular onomastic experimentation” (2015: para. 6) as speech acts “designed to iteratively produce a particular kind of intersubjective sensibility” (ibid.: para. 34). Thus, what is at stake here are not merely issues of terminology, definition, or individuals’ dis-/beliefs but the way in which names, or rather sociocultural categories, are able to encode and evoke an “emotional habitus” (Trawick 1990: 154). Margaret Trawick coined this term to describe how the literal and figurative use of kinship categories can mobilize and manipulate a repertoire of emotions as well as their appropriate expression or suppression. Such repertoires are acquired through processes of socialization and manifested, rehearsed, and negotiated through cultural imaginaries transmitted in folklore, pop culture, or formal and informal educational systems. Furthermore, the effects to which and by whom a given imaginary can be mobilized and appropriated in contemporary India are conditioned by its colonial and postcolonial political history. An important task for an aesthetics of the secular is thus to describe and analyze the production, reproduction, and transformation of such emotional habitus as well as their sensorial deployment and manipulation. Though a crucial aspect of Atheist activism appears to consist of toppling the affective implications of historically and culturally entrenched social categories, that activism has to work on and with existing emotional habitus to get its message across and make its “secular mark.”

Atheist Propagation as an Aesthetics of Persuasion Insofar as onomastic experimentations or practices of naming are speech acts intending some sort of individual or social transformation, they are part of the main modus of Atheist activism: written and oratorical propagation. Atheists in India are known for giving speeches, to the point where some critics complain that they do nothing but talk. They are moreover frequently accused of being arrogant, haughty, or condescending, as they relish in ridiculing religious scriptures and beliefs. Critics sometimes attribute this simply to a psychological personality trait of arrogance that Atheists are supposed to share. I propose instead to analyze it as an aesthetically produced affect and a counterpart to the affect of heroism involved in naming oneself an atheist and facing the absence of material culture. I focus here on the way it is produced in oratorical speech and historically conditioned by aesthetic criteria and rhetorical devices like fluency, hyperliteralism, or decorum. A common way to praise gifted and influential orators among Atheists is to say that their oratory is “like a stream” (prav¯ahaml¯ag¯a); speakers are lauded if they are capable of spontaneously commanding knowledge about as vast an array of topics as possible. They should be able to speak continuously without having to search for words or arguments and, if possible, with a substantial number of verbatim citations from various sources— preferably in a classical language like Sanskrit. Success or failure of Atheist speech acts is thus intimately connected to an aesthetic criterion of fluency, which can override questions of content or message: orators may be considered right, even bright, but nonetheless judged incapable of persuading others due to their lacking skills of rhetorical delivery.

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The art of memorization is fundamental to this form of fluent, stream-like speech and has a long history in South Asian pedagogy. Most famous in this regard are traditions of Vedic recitation (Knipe 2015), which link forms of contemporary Atheist speech to a larger aesthetic dimension of sonality in South Asian and especially Hindu culture (see Wilke, Chapter 10, this volume). Atheist propagation has an ambivalent relationship to this sonal tradition, as Atheists never fail to reject it as stale rote learning and mindless production of sound. It is important to note, however, that the fluent rejection of religious fluency is not just an argument about denotational content (or the lack thereof) but has itself an aesthetic form. Despite the great value placed on oratorical mastery in Indian culture and especially politics, scholarship of South Asian rhetoric beyond ritual speech in religious contexts is scarce (for an exception regarding Tamil oratory see Bate 2009). Even in its most informal settings, Atheist oratory usually involves some sort of stage or dais which produces a frontal visual relationship between orator and audience and tends to corporeally immobilize the latter into seated positions, which can be physically demanding since oratorical events may stretch over a few days with individual speeches lasting up to several hours. Propagational events may occur indoors as well as outdoors, which further modulates the focus on the stage through different degrees of perceptual distraction or “noise” (e.g., largely unconscious humming of fans or air-conditioning in closed rooms versus the visual, olfactory, and aural sensescapes of an urban outdoor setting). Speeches tend to be amplified, often irrespective of the actual acoustic requirements for audibility in a given venue; in fact, excessive volume, overmodulation, or audio feedback frequently impede audibility. A comprehensive analysis of Atheist oratory thus requires not only a historically sensitive and comparative contextualization of aesthetic properties like gestural repertoires, forms of staging, practices of rhetoric pedagogy, or “hearing cultures” (Erlmann 2004) but also an investigation into the cognitive, perceptual, and physiological affordances and effects of material environments and technological infrastructures (architecture, seating arrangements, ambient sound, amplification, lighting, etc.). In the following discussion I focus on a specific rhetorical strategy of “hyperliteralism” (Richman 1993: 190), where religious scriptures are interpreted in an extremely literal fashion so as to expose—or create—inconsistencies and absurd conclusions. This rhetorical-cum-hermeneutic strategy has historical antecedents in inter-religious polemics (Hudson 1995) and is inseparable from a larger shift from scribal to print culture in colonial India. Hyperliteral rhetoric has been enabled by printed texts because an increasingly literate public could access scriptural material that had hitherto been restricted to and at times jealously guarded by circles of specialized readers/reciters trained in particular hermeneutic and exegetical technologies (Narayana Rao 2001). Hence, Atheist “arrogance” is not merely a psychological trait based on an alleged conceit of intellectual superiority, but an affect that is aesthetically produced as Atheists literally “arrogate” the social power that comes with the right to rhetorically appropriate, manipulate, and reproduce (religious) knowledge as printed and thus publicly accessible “text.” As Bernard Bate (2009) has shown for the case of Tamil oratory, modern technologies like print and language ideologies based on denotation have therefore not simply replaced existing notions of poetic efficacy. One example is the Sanskrit poetological concept of “decorum” (aucitya), which grounds the efficacy of literary and ethical discourse in a careful balancing of content, form, and performative and social context (Chari 1990: 231–7; Prasad 2012: 168–77). Despite an emphatic commitment to the denotational dimensions of language, it is within the confines of historically entrenched and often implicit aesthetic criteria like

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FIGURE 24.1: Atheist orator delivering a speech at the annual conference of FIRA (Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations) in Brahmapur, 2014. © Photograph by author.

decorum that Atheist orators deploy strategies like fluency or hyperliteralism in order to produce secular difference within changing media environments. As Atheist rhetoric is firmly grounded in print culture and the physical co-presence of audiences, the expansion of satellite television and digital media since the early 2000s present entirely new challenges for both secular and non-secular oratorical aesthetics. In other words, the efficacy of Atheist verbal propagation is not exhausted by the intellectual or logical persuasiveness of arguments but also depends on the historically conditioned ways in which Atheists manage to produce secular difference by aesthetic means.

CONCLUSION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH TO SECULAR DIFFERENCE The chapter proposed to approach the aesthetics of the secular by examining phenomena that are understood or declare themselves to be different from and possibly antagonistic

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toward religion. This is indeed meant as a starting point and an alternative to outright dismissals of such a project on the basis of a reduction of the secular to its ideological self-representation as disembodied reason. The chapter’s aim was to demonstrate that a focus on aesthetic themes may function as a heuristic that enables us to expand scholarship on the secular beyond the immediate ambit of the conceptual grid and genealogy of the secular/religious binary. The example of Indian Atheism sketched how a civilizational imaginary of Indian Atheism conditions the ways in which forms of and attitudes about material culture and rhetorically produced affects are constructed, enacted, and contested within larger, historically shaped representational economies. Instead of circumscribing a priori what secularity refers to, for instance by postulating a singular secularist narrative of triumphal antagonism toward religion, an aesthetic approach attends to the historical and cultural plasticity of secularity as an aestheticscape, i.e., as a form of producing aesthetically mediated secular difference in specific social settings. The surplus of this approach consists of conceptualizing secular difference as a question of aesthetic efficacies rather than (only) conceptual classification or semiotic ideology. Such an aesthetically grounded comparative approach to the secular can feed back into the analytical apparatus of the larger project of an aesthetics of religion; not by juxtaposing substantialist notions of secular and religious aesthetics but by making our analytical categories (see second section) and conceptualizations of aesthetic strategies (see third section) sensitive to yet another dimension of differentiation: secular difference.

RECOMMENDED READING Asad, Talal (2003), Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Remains one of the most complex analyses of the secular and a solid foundation for exploring more explicitly aesthetic approaches. Copeman, Jacob and Johannes Quack (2015), “Godless People and Dead Bodies: Materiality and the Morality of Atheist Materialism,” Social Analysis, 59 (2): 40–61. One of the few contributions to aesthetic scholarship on explicitly irreligious people outside of Europe, North America, and former Communist regimes. Hirschkind, Charles (2011), “Is There a Secular Body?,” Cultural Anthropology, 26 (4): 633–47. Kicked off the emerging debate about aesthetic approaches to the secular by exploring the topic of a secular body and sensorium within an “Asadian” framework.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Aesthetics of Spirits PETER J. BR Ä UNLEIN

INTRODUCTION: FROM ANIMISM TO INTERMEDIATE BEINGS Spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, revenants, etc. are categorized by scholars as intermediate beings, Zwischenwesen (Lang 2001), which may be malevolent, benevolent, capricious, or morally ambivalent. According to an evolutionary perspective, the “belief in spiritual beings” was considered by Edward B. Tylor to be the origin of religion. His influential term “animism” referred to the belief that both creatures and inanimate objects have souls and that the human soul can separate from its body during dreams and after death. Over time, animism as an analytical concept declined in importance, but it continued to be used as a general descriptive, though superficial, term for “primitive,” “indigenous,” and “tribal” religions (Bowie 2006: 13). In recent years, however, animism has attracted new academic interest because it “concerns the nature of human-being and the nature of our world,” as Graham Harvey put it (2013: 1). The ambitious theoretical concept of a New Animism promoted by Philippe Descola, Nurit Bird-Rose, Tim Ingold, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, among others, demands a relational ontology that allows for rethinking the relation between humans and nonhumans. The growing interest in animism or animistic worldviews coincides with a “spectral turn” in the humanities that was set in motion by Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (1994). Derrida was fascinated by the logic of haunting and the essential feature of the specter as being simultaneously present and absent. Ghosts and uncanniness became a fashionable trope in literary studies and the social sciences (Blanco and Peeren 2013). The academic fascination with ghosts and spirits coincides with a pop-cultural fascination with the subject, mainly observable in literature, movies, and TV series (Blanco and Peeren 2010; Bräunlein and Lauser 2016). The presence of ghosts and spirits in the imaginary repertory of Western cultural theory and everyday culture has consequences for the topic of this essay—the study of the aesthetics of spirits. From the nineteenth century to the present, ghosts and spirits have been deployed in a multitude of arguments in cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive theories. They have been associated, for example, with the universal fear of death and the origin of religion, pre-animistic, magico-religious concepts of impersonal power (Max Weber), a certain developmental stage of adolescents (Jean Piaget), the return of the repressed (Sigmund Freud), non-anthropocentric ontologies (New Animism), the uncanny presence of the absent (Jacques Derrida), an intuitive mind–body dualism (Paul Bloom), religion as a systematized form of anthropomorphism (Stewart Guthrie), the human capacity of hyperactive agency-detection (Justin Barret), or supernatural agents as fullaccess strategic agents (Pascal Boyer). Such theoretical arguments have effects on models 273

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and concepts of how humans perceive, sense, and imagine supernatural agents. Furthermore, they also transmit ontological statements on the nature of spiritual and human beings. Such scholarly theories can be described as “semiotic ideologies” as elaborated by Webb Keane, in so far as they contain tacit assumptions about words and things, humans and agency. They function as a “reflection upon, and an attempt to organize, people’s experiences of the materiality of semiotic form” (Keane 2007: 21).

THE FORMATION OF GHOSTLY EXPERIENCES Ontological statements and instructions of ghostly experiences are also transmitted by Western pop-cultural, vernacular knowledge of what spirits and ghosts are and what they look like. This folk knowledge has been heavily influenced by romantic and gothic literature as well as by spiritualism, the ritualized and entertaining communication with the dead. Although religious studies and sociocultural anthropology have provided abundant material on how spirits and ghosts are conceptualized at various times and in different cultures, Western folk knowledge on spirits and ghosts has both had a clear impact on the scholarly discourse on this subject and been formative through the global mediascape. The folk concepts and scholarly concepts that reflect upon and organize experience also facilitate that experience. Thus, in the words of Peter Antes, “we experience very deeply what we have learnt” (Antes 2002: 341). Culturally specific discourses on spirits, ghosts, and the aesthetics of spirits are inseparable. Therefore, if we want to learn something about the aesthetics of spirits and ghosts, we have to study culturally specific concepts of such beings, social structures, interpretive communities, and religious authorities such as trance-media, shamans, or theologians. Ghosts and spirits come into existence because of ascriptions, communication, and experience. Thus, in the same way that Ann Taves proposes the term “experiences deemed religious” instead of “religious experience” (2009: 18, 57), it makes sense to use phrases such as “encounters deemed ghostly” or “apparitions deemed spectral.” These social-scientific assertions are based on a model of humans as social beings and makers of symbols. They stand in contrast with evolutionary and cognitive approaches, which are based on models of humans as intelligent apes. While the latter seek to explain why human beings perceive ghosts and spirits, the former seek to understand how human beings perceive ghosts and communicate with spiritual beings. Both sides contribute to the aesthetics of spirits. This is why the discussion that follows pays attention to such models.

Ghosts and Spirits as Side Effects of the Evolutionary Process Most approaches within the cognitive science of religion, which explores the natural foundations of religion (Barrett 2000), conceive of human beings, Armin W. Geertz proposes, as intelligent apes that are highly emotional, easily spooked, very superstitious, extremely sensitive to social norms and virtual realities, and equipped with nervous systems that are vulnerable to influence from conspecifics and their symbolic worlds. These traits are prerequisites for religious behaviour. —2013: 19 The whole sensorium of this intelligent ape, being both predator and prey since its origin (Barrett 2005), developed out of its struggle for survival. Additionally, and for the

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same reason, skills for communicating with other members of the species developed. Viewed within a Darwinian cognitive account, spiritual beings are byproducts of our natural history as intelligent apes. Spirits are animated by our psyche because of “our need to discover any agents in an uncertain environment,” as Stewart Guthrie states, concluding that “animism is basic to religion, if not sufficient for it” (2013: 357). Further, he states that the agency of invisible supernatural agents is produced by intuitive folkpsychology consisting of five aspects: body–mind dualism, priority of mind, teleology, unconsciousness, and low threshold for perceiving. Such theories, which explain the widespread, cross-cultural tendency to postulate the existence of anomalous or counterintuitive agents are, according to Ann Taves, cognitive and affective in nature (Taves 2009: 43). For example, one cognitive theory argues “that human beings ascribe counterintuitive agent-related properties to objects because they have a basic tendency to overattribute agency, particularly in situations of ambiguity” (ibid.). This tendency has evolutionary adaptive value according to the principle that it is better to be safe than sorry. That is, from an evolutionary point of view it is better to assume that rustling leaves indicate an unseen predator than to assume that it is just the wind and possibly get eaten as a result. Another cognitive theory explains the widespread conception of bodiless agents such as ghosts, spirits, fairies, or demons through an intuitive and commonsense dualism which separates bodies and persons. These cognitive characteristics predispose human beings to postulate counterintuitive agents (Taves 2009: 44). Affective theories (e.g., Kirkpatrick 2012) explain such cognitive dispositions as grounded in “affective dynamics, including attachment processes, kinship relations, and hierarchical relations of dominance and subordination that are common to most primates” (ibid.). Such broad statements are plausible and there is hardly a counter-argument to be found. We learn something about ontological categories processed by the human brain and about why so-called “counterintuitive beings” are generally “good to think.” However, such statements tend towards overgeneralization and reductive simplification. It is therefore important also to consider theories that account for culturally specific modes of conceiving of and experiencing spirits and ghosts.

How Humans Connect with Invisible, (Mostly) Intangible Spirits Approaches of the cognitive science of religion are not interested in actor-centric perspectives and diversity. For the exploration of multiple aestheticscapes the socio-cultural anthropological approach seems therefore to be more appropriate. When we study “intangible” phenomena such as spirits and spirit encounters, it seems to be more productive and valid “to begin from the premises of their influence, extension, or multiplication in the world than from substantive ontological predefinitions” (Espírito Santo and Blanes 2014: 7). Spirits produce effects by their repeated “coming into presence” (Lambek 2010: 17ff.). However, their presence is paradoxical “since any kind of spiritual contact, however abstract and conceptual, required at the same time a worldly/material instantiation, thus rendering the theoretically immaterialisable, material” (Espirito Santo and Tassi 2013: 1). Ancestor shrines, images, offerings, animals, objects, relics, incense sticks, candles, flowers, etc. refer to the material side of spiritual contact. A routinization of spiritual contact takes place in rituals, and through participation in such rituals people learn from childhood on how to discern the presence of spirits. In this ritual pedagogy of spiritual encounters, the material, the sensual, and the social merge. The reason why spirits

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generally do not cause cognitive dissonance but are easily understood as “natural” is because “they are largely consistent with the category of ‘person’ but lack bodies (the property of physicality). Given that spirits are often presumed to be like persons in most other regards, the content of spirit concepts is readily transmitted” (Cohen 2007: 16). In this essay, I understand the aesthetics of spirits as effects of communication, sensory activities, bodily mediation, and imagination (see Traut and Wilke 2015b). I am guided by the ambition to better understand the “interplay between sensory, cognitive and sociocultural aspects of world construction, and the role of religion within this dynamic” (Grieser and Johnston 2017b: 2). To this end, I will present three case studies. All are based on ethnographic fieldwork, and all tell us something meaningful about the “aisthesis” of spirits in a local culture and demonstrate the usefulness of the anthropology of the body, senses, and emotions. Furthermore, they make clear how important specific epistemologies of supernatural encounters are for the aesthetics of spirits.

CASE STUDIES “Soul Encounters” in a Bornean Village During her fieldwork in a Bidayuh village in Sarawak, Malaysia, Liana Chua came across an emotion that English speakers would characterize as having “a knot in the stomach.” There is no specific Bidayuh term for this emotion. In such cases informants press their fist against their diaphragm and, when asked about their feelings, explain that they feel susah, that is distressed or sad, or that they cannot tolerate what is going on (t¯an). Such gestures were frequently observable in the context of death and offered the anthropologist insights in the unseen world of ghosts and spirits. In her paper “Soul Encounters” (2011), Chua describes and analyzes the somatic modes through which ghosts, spirits, and other unseen beings are apprehended as felt experiences. Chua recognizes a local epistemology of supernatural encounters “that associates vision with normality and its suspension with both sensory and social liminality” (2011: 1). During mortuary rituals, ghosts and spirits are present in certain behavior rules, in the conversations of bereaved people and in their emotions. The souls of recently deceased people are able to smell and are drawn to young children and even the unborn, whom they make ill or cause to lose their souls. Therefore, children are not allowed to attend such events. The atmosphere of funerals, thoroughly convivial affairs, usually resemble parties. However, it changes suddenly from hilarity to despair when the coffin is taken to the graveyard and the nails are hammered into the lid. As Chua observed on the occasion of an old lady’s funeral, in the very moment of the final farewell, the deceased’s children began sobbing and crying plaintively. A distant relative of the deceased looked at the anthropologists with moist eyes and murmured: “ ‘You can bear [t¯an] this,’ [. . .] clenching her fist to her diaphragm. ‘I can’t; this is susah’ ” (Chua 2011: 3). After the final nails were hammered, the faces of the lady’s daughters were streaked with tears and contorted with what seemed to be a desperate, almost animalistic grief. Their cries were joined by a crescendo of howls and sobs from the younger children, who looked terrified and bewildered. A wave of intense something— fear, sadness, despair?—spread palpably across the crowd. [. . .] As the coffin disappeared through the doorway, the weeping daughters collapsed into the arms of relatives and neighbors. —Chua 2011: 3

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After the emotional climax and the lowering of the coffin into the ground, the crowd started smiling and chatting “as if nothing had happened” (ibid.: 4). Before the crowd dispersed, it was obligatory for everyone to wash faces, arms, and legs with water in which flowers floated. This procedure had the necessary effect of cooling down the intensity of the burial and it prevented, the people supposed, the dead person’s spirit from following them into their houses. “The relief I felt on both counts was indescribable,” the anthropologist notes (ibid.). In her analysis of this specific “clenched-fist” or “knot-in-the-stomach-feeling” that occurred at every Bidayuh funeral, Chua had to realize that this feeling could encompass many things, “ranging from worry for the bereaved and wistfulness about the past to the fear of ghosts. This was borne out by my own experiences, which, entailing that same physiological sensation, would lurch from confusion to sadness to pure alarm in the space of a few minutes” (ibid.). Chua refuses to reduce the clenched-fist sensation to an outward expression of grief and emphasizes that the salience of this sensation does not lie “in its specificity but in its indeterminacy, that is, in its capacity to subsume different responses within a single recognizable feeling” (ibid.: 4–5). The meaning of physiological sensations but also the ability to produce such sensations are culture-specific. This plain and simple insight is well illustrated in Chua’s case study. The existence of invisible beings is taken for granted among the Bidayuh. Ancestors, local water and jungle spirits, guardian spirits of the mountains and rivers, ghostly animals, and tree- or rock-dwelling demons are distant features of village life, except in the event of death. Although people occasionally encounter those entities, only few have actually seen those beings or the souls of deceased people. Seeing ghosts is dangerous and frightening. The shock of the confrontation, expressed in the clenched-fist gesture, causes sickness. A particular feverish illness called t˘aru—literally fear—is associated with ghost encounters. While ordinary human beings cannot see ghosts, their presence can be experienced through the ears and the nose and as material vestiges. For John, a Bidayuh Catholic prayer leader, these interactions are reasonable because “humans have two ways of seeing things: through their eyes and through their soul. The latter, he said, can perceive things that humans ordinarily cannot see with their eyes” (ibid.: 6). Once, when he had to retrieve the decomposing body of a young man who had died in a motorcycle accident, he was overwhelmed by the smell of the corpse. He could not get rid of it for two weeks and always felt ill und upset. He attributed this state “to his soul having encountered something invisible. ‘Even if our eyes don’t notice anything,’ he explained, ‘our soul does’ ” (ibid.). Interaction between humans and invisible beings happens at the level of the soul. As Chua concludes, what their souls may see, humans can detect only through non-visual means, such as olfactory, tactile, auditory, corporeal, or emotive occurrences. The association, moreover, works in both ways. Invisible spirit presences may cause altered sensory state, but shifting sensory states—such as reduced visibility—also increase the possibility of encountering such presences. —ibid. From her observations and the information provided by her interlocutors, Liana Chua derives a peculiarly Bidayuh epistemology of supernatural encounters in which the senses are deeply implicated. Ocular-centrism prevails in the safe everyday life where visible things are encountered. Ghosts and spirits are not abnormal but considered to be

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invisible. But when things go wrong and cracks in normality occur, a chance encounter may happen that leads to a jungle demon accidentally becoming visible. This causes shock and illness. In this way, vision—eye(-level) sight—acts as boundary marker between normal and uncanny occurrences and situations. Moving on to the unseen, somatic plane on which human–spirit interactions take place, however, the distinction between thought, sensation, and emotion become increasingly blurred. —ibid.: 7 This becomes accessible through the Bidayuh concept of a human person, which combines the cognizant soul (simangi), breath or spirit (roh), life force or vitality (ashu ˘ng), thought or reason (akar), physical bodies (pu ˘ru ˘ng), emotion of feeling (yang), and sensation (nyam). The Bidayuh describe these components as distinct, but they are actually constantly interacting. A shift in one affects all others, and this is especially common when the soul, the most important and enveloping of these components, is disturbed. People whose souls encounter spirits often feel unwell, distressed, and “hot” (p˘aras) all at once—a state associated with instability, danger, and illness that can be remedied with “cooling” (madud) mechanisms, such as the flower water offered to attendee at a burial. —ibid. Soul encounters, Chua states, engage every part of the human being, manifesting themselves as simultaneously corporeal, cognitive, and affective states. In the absence of vision, such somatic states serve as humans’ chief means of apprehending what is otherwise invisible, ambiguous, and intangible. At these points, the body becomes the living, breathing index of a tutelary presence: rather than standing for that entity, it is actually consubstantial with it, becoming the material trace of a person’s encounter with a spirit. —ibid. Finally, Chua answers the question of what spirits are: spirits are not simply disembodied ideas or entities floating beyond the human plane; instead, they are better thought of as tangible, embodied, felt experiences that are instantiated in human bodies. Put differently, it is both in and as these non-visual jumbles of corporeality and emotion that souls, ghosts, spirits, and other invisible beings become real and relevant to Bidayuhs [. . .]. —ibid.

Rituals, Possessing Spirits, and Bodily Transformation The next case study refers thematically to the phenomenon of possession, theoretically to ritual, performance, and aesthetics, and regionally to Zanzibar. The ethnographic study conducted by Kjersti Larsen demonstrates the value of ritual and performance theory for the aesthetic of spirits. And it illustrates the methodological value of participant observation for that purpose, acknowledging “the importance of embodied knowledge, lived experience, and intersubjectivity” (Larsen 2014: 26).

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Possession makes invisible beings visible and gives them physical appearance. Unlike incidental encounters with spirits and ghosts, spirit possession is structured by means of ritual and performance. Larsen studied various rituals in Zanzibar over several years. In her paper “Possessing Spirits and Bodily Transformation” (2014), she focuses on so-called ngoma ya sheitani rituals and starts with the common distinction between “the one embodied and the one embodying; between humans and spirits” and she maintains that when Zanzibari women and men embody spirits, their bodies become, for a period of time, those of the spirits. Still, the spirits’ identities are never totally confused with those of the persons whose bodies they indwell. Moreover, the spirits are understood as not interfering with the persons’ mind or identity—although the relationship between them is acknowledged [. . .]. Spirits and humans are seen as different beings despite the fact that both do, temporarily, share a body in the human world. —Larsen 2014: 17 Ngoma ya sheitani rituals are means to welcome, interact with, and please spirits. Ngoma ya kibuki rituals welcome especially Christian spirits from Madagascar, masheitani or majinni. Establishing a good relationship with the spirits will generally pay off and ensure prosperity and contentment in life (Larsen 2014: 17). The rituals take place in and around the house of the ritual leader. Other participants are of different age groups and genders, “members of the ritual group [. . .], relatives and friends of the one holding the ritual, women and men embodying spirits of the given kind, and people of the neighborhood, who often bring their children along with them. In this sense, the ritual and the ritual group—humans and spirits alike—attract an audience” (ibid.). Significant ritual artifacts are incense, scepters with silver ornamentation, silver bracelets, a bucket with healing water, incense jars, plates with Maria Theresia coins, limestone, honey, bottles of imported brandy, tobacco, and betel nut. Music and rhythm are made by rattles, accordion, electric piano, and clapping. In recent years, cassettes and CDs with Malagasy music and songs are increasingly being used. The ritual space is constructed through the singing of participants as well as interactions between humans and spirits that confirm the presence of the latter. The acts of censing of the attendees, smearing of a water–limestone mixture on people’s heads and chests, and drinking of the spirits’ special herbal infusion are all regarded as protection from illness. Material objects and sensual media such as textiles, food, words, sound, incense, and colors mark the ritual space. Following Edward Schieffelin (1993), Larsen maintains that people take the reality of spirits for granted less because of what they believe is happening than “how what they believe is brought to life in a continually recreated ritual space” (Larsen 2014: 20). The arrival of a spirit is signaled by a person shivering, jumping, and having restless legs. Since the spirit enters the body through the feet, the legs are rubbed with brandy to facilitate the process. When a spirit has eventually arrived on the head (kichwani), the spirit’s specially prepared water is sprinkled onto the head and only then is calmness regained. The spirit, not the person, is then said to inhabit the body. The spirit is materializing in the human world through the human body. —Larsen 2014: 18 In her analysis, Larsen underlines the character of this ritual as a special kind of social action which provides space for extraordinary relationships and experiences: “the ritual

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makes possible the material presence of spirits and interactions between humans and spirits, as well as human experiences related to ‘becoming’ spirits” (ibid.: 20). This potentiality of the ritual, and its effects, are based on basic assumptions and understandings within which the performance is embedded, as Strathern and Stewart assert in their embodiment theory (2008: 69, quoted by Larsen 2014: 20). Additionally, the capacities of mimesis, aesthetic and bodily enactment, are realized in such rituals and performative acts. In Zanzibari society it is assumed that “the body is experienced as temporarily transformable and as a potential seat of different persona. Thus, the question of the authenticity of spirits as such or the potential simulation of human beings is, in this society, not a problem in itself ” (Larsen 2014: 20). Since Zanzibaris observe possession rituals from their childhood on, they learn gradually “about the various kinds of spirits: their appearance, movements, habits, behavior, likes and dislikes” (ibid.: 24). In the Zanzibaris’ understanding, spirits are able to experience sensuously, and humans respond to the spirits’ senses: sight through colors and jewelry; flavor, by serving and consuming food and drink; sound, through the use of certain sorts of instruments, music, and songs; and smell, through the use of incense and perfume. Smell, sight, taste, and sound involve aesthetics, and aesthetics carry the potential for crossing barriers and invoking transformations. —ibid.: 20 The appearance of spirits in the ritual should be understood in terms of awareness of knowing grounded in a particular experiential, social, and cultural life-world. [. . .] Meanings assigned to aesthetic representations are not intrinsic, but depend on the meanings that are assigned to or associated with various bodily movements and facial expressions in different socio-cultural contexts [. . .] Embodying spirits implies a process of knowing and reflection. —ibid.: 24

Audible Spirits and Graspable Ghosts The last example comes from my own fieldwork in the Philippines, which I undertook together with my wife Andrea in the late 1980s among an Alangan-Magyan community in the mountains of Mindoro Island (Bräunlein and Lauser 1993). According to these swidden agriculturalists, the world is inhabited not only by humans and animals but also by various non-human beings that are either malevolent or benevolent. Benevolent spirits are important for the local healers—balaonan. The characteristic attribute of a healer is his ability to gain spirit helpers—kumuruan. There is neither formal training nor a period of apprenticeship. Preconditions for becoming a healer are a mature personality, moral integrity, and the strong will to establish contact with such spirits. First contact happens in dreams, which prompt the future healer to chant for the spirits. Initially, he has to chant on eight consecutive nights to lure them. In that time period, during his dreams, he has to face challenges and temptations. Beautiful ladies will appear and demand sexual intercourse, or scenarios of a blaze or terrifying beasts will frighten him. In such cases he has to withstand his sexual desire and must not run away from danger. After eight days and nights, having gracefully overcome these challenges, he can start to acquire kamuruan. The appropriate technique to call spirits and communicate with them is continuous chanting at night—agbalaonan. During the chanting, the balaonan sits in a crouched position and sways his upper body back and forth. This body movement “phrases” the

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melody line and sets the rhythm. The combination of singing and a swaying body is a common experience to every Mangyan; all newborns and infants are comforted in the hammock and by lullabies of their mother or siblings. In his chants the balaonan narrates his journey to certain mountains, rivers, and waterfalls, where he visits the spirits there and invites them to accompany him. His swaying—moving without moving—imitates this journey. When the invitation of the balaonan is accepted and spirits arrive, the character of the chant transforms. The balaonan’s voice changes and becomes the voice of the spirits. Now, he sings with two or more voices—the narration becomes a dialog. Sound and intonation are highly individual and are determined by the relationship between healer and his helpers. The balaonan is not in trance or possessed: he always keeps control of his ego consciousness and is able to interrupt the chanting at any time to ask for betel nuts or rebuke noisy pigs under the stilt house. Spirit helpers are needed to search for an abducted soul, the most common cause of sickness. The courageous and cunning kamuruan set out to rescue the soul from the hideout in which the evil spirit, bukaw, has imprisoned it. Almost every night, one or two balaonan were chanting in the village, each session lasting between forty-five minutes and five hours. The dialog between healer and his spirits are carried out in an esoteric language and are incomprehensible to the villagers. Nevertheless, numerous spirits are present in the nighttime village, perceived by everyone’s ears through the healers’ voices. With the exception of the healer’s perception during dreams, humans cannot see or feel the spirits. By contrast, a special category of non-human beings is sometimes visible and even tangible: the undead—kablag. The first time we heard this word was on our veranda while chatting with children. For them, talking about the undead was associated with hushed voices, goosebumps, and shudders of fear. Soon we learnt that the kablag were the most terrifying beings in the world of the Mangyan and that everyone was afraid of their ambushes. It is the destiny of every dead person to become a kablag after death, unless the living render it immobile by fettering the corpse or prevent the corpse from becoming a kablag by using holy water, since the Catholic missionaries strongly recommend this magical device. The decomposition of a corpse is understood to be a transformative process through which the human body inevitably becomes a kablag—a living corpse which seeks out the living in order to bite and kill them. Surprisingly, the realm of the dead is anything but horrible; on the contrary, it is characterized by affluence, and hunger is unknown. It is loneliness and separation from its family that the kablag finds unbearable, and thus its aggressive behavior is driven by the desire to be reunited with spouse and children. Kablag are described as human-like but monstrous, half rotten and without eyes, smelling like burning car tires. Many horror stories describe encounters between men and kablag as physical encounters. Whenever I doubted the physicality of the kablag and dematerialized them as dream figures, projections of fears, oral traditions, or discourses, my interlocutors stubbornly insisted on the materiality of the undead. One interlocutor recommended that I visit the cinema in the provincial town of Calapan. “Watch a zombie movie,” he explained, “and you will understand what the real kablag are.” Another informant showed me huge scars on his left upper arm and asserted that they had resulted from a terrifying fight with a kablag that he had luckily survived. An anthropologist living among people who are convinced of the concrete and deadly reality of returning undead faces a particular hermeneutical problem. After all, the anthropologist knows that there cannot be such undead beings, and even if s/he avoids

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constructing hierarchies of knowledge (see Borrelli and Grieser, Chapter 4, this volume) or opposing magical thinking and a scientific worldview, it is impossible to avoid aporias (see Bräunlein 1996). The certainty that the dead do not bite is an irreducible one. The example of the kablag on Mindoro Island thus demonstrates a clash of ontologies. It points to the limits of both our epistemology and analytical tools in our attempts to translate the experienced reality of ghosts and spirits into our academic universe.

CONCLUSION In this essay, the aesthetics of spirits were unfolded as effects of communication, sensory activities, bodily mediation, and imagination. Evolutionary and cognitive approaches to religion explain why the conception of bodiless agents such as ghosts and spirits is widespread, why animism is basic to religion, why the human sensorium perceives spiritual beings, and why spirits are “good to think.” Such explanations are helpful for understanding the aesthetics of spirits in a very general sense. However, to explore aesthetic complexities within the multifaceted spiritscapes around the globe, anthropological approaches to studying the body, the senses, and emotion are more productive. This was demonstrated by three ethnographic case studies that illustrated three different modes of spirit “aesthesis”: through bodily affects such as the “knot-in-stomach” sensation (among the Bidayuh, Borneo), through performative events such as rituals of possession (in Zanzibar), and through the singing of a spirit-medium or through direct, physical encounters with the undead (among the Alangan-Mangyan, Philippines). The case studies also illustrate the diverse ways that spirits are ontologically conceptualized and sensed: as being visible through the medium’s possessed body, being invisible but real through somatic affects, or even being physically present in encounters with the living dead.

RECOMMENDED READING Barley, Norton (2009), Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Exploration of the aesthetics of Vietnamese mediumship and an impressive depiction of the transformative power of the musicscape for the ritual evocation of the spirit world, which is essential for mediums, the audience, and the invited spirits, by an ethnomusicologist and filmmaker. Kramer, Fritz W. (1993), The Red Fez: Art and Spirit Possession in Africa, London: Verso. Starting from the question of how colonial Europeans were represented in ritual art, drama, and masquerades and inspired by Erich Auerbach’s mimesis theory and Godfrey Lienhardt’s concept of “passiones,” Kramer teaches us a great deal about the aesthetics of spirits through research on visual perception, experience, and the mimetic capacities of the human being. Traut, Lucia and Annette Wilke, eds. (2015a), Religion-Imagination-Ästhetik: Vorstellung und Sinneswelten in Religion und Kultur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Includes several instructive and stimulating contributions on the topic of spirit perception and communication.

PART V

Aesthetics of Religion in the Classroom

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Teaching Aesthetics of Religion ISABEL LAACK AND PETRA TILLESSEN WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY PETER J. BR Ä UNLEIN , ANNALISA BUTTICCI , ANNE KOCH , AND BRIGITTE LUCHESI

INTRODUCTION This final chapter discusses the challenges of implementing the aesthetics of religion approach in classrooms of higher education. The predominant focus on texts in the study of religion has largely been reflected in the pedagogy and didactics of teaching this discipline; many classes are based on reading, writing, analyzing, and discussing texts, both primary sources and secondary literature. Dealing with these texts will surely remain one of the most important techniques to teach students in the humanities. Nevertheless, expanding the research interest on the use of the body, the senses, materiality, and all kinds of media should also stimulate the diversification of teaching materials and a shift in pedagogical methods. The most pressing questions are, in a nutshell: How do we inspire students to engage with sensory stimuli in the context of religion? How do we impart the experience and embodied knowledge of religious rituals? How can we teach the multisensory, multimedia, and multidimensional atmosphere of, for instance, a Hindu temple? How do we draw a line between teaching about religion and teaching religion, and with which kinds of assignments do we cross the line? By reflecting the teaching experiences of several scholars of religion, including some authors of this handbook, this chapter aims to stimulate the discussion about appropriate didactic methods to teach aesthetics of religion in higher education. We see ourselves only at the beginning of creating, reflecting, and revising effective teaching methods for this scholarly field and hope to inspire our readers to do so themselves. In the following sections, we focus on teaching contents and objectives, didactic approaches, and assignments and training involving the multiple dimensions of religious aesthetics.

TEACHING AESTHETICS OF RELIGION Studying aesthetics of religion involves two perspectives on the same material. First, the analytical perspective discusses methodologies, creates comparative reflections, and develops theories within the context of contemporary academic and scientific research. Second, the material perspective focuses on religious aesthetics, that is, on culturally shaped sensory perceptions, bodily experiences, and practices involving all kinds of 285

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media. Correspondingly, several possibilities exist for how to teach aesthetics of religion. First, teachers may focus on the analytical approach by reading, debating, and creating academic perspectives on aesthetics of religion with their students. Second, teachers may study the actual sensorial, bodily, and media practices in religious contexts all around the world and throughout history. Classes can be designed as introductions to religious aesthetics in general, to specific aesthetic practices, or to aesthetic practices within one specific religious tradition. Reflecting the breadth of the approach, classes may adopt cultural, historical, or biological perspectives, to name but a few. Finally, aesthetic practices and concepts may be included in all classes teaching religion, for example in those introducing specific religious traditions or their history, because aesthetics play a role in every religious tradition. This perspective on the aesthetics of religion has the potential to enrich all teaching about religion, especially because it coincides with insights from the learning sciences.

Aesthetics of Teaching The learning sciences have witnessed two vital paradigm shifts within the last decades. First, learning is no longer understood as the superficial acquisition of bare knowledge facts but as a process resulting in comprehensive, multidimensional knowledge and competencies that are available in the long term and can be transferred to new situations (Ramsden 2003; Biggs and Tang 2009). Second, teaching is no longer understood as the mere delivery of facts from the brain of the active teacher to the brains of the passive students but as an active change in the students’ perspectives on the world initialized by themselves. This learning is more effective if it has an experiential dimension, if students are emotionally involved, and if new knowledge is practically implemented. With regard to religion, this means that “students develop a more complex and nuanced understanding of the experiential dimensions of religion than what is available to them through textual studies alone” (Pinault 2007: 80). Many scholars of religion respond with some internal resistance to the expectation to include practical assignments and particularly to involve emotions. Some scholars fear breaching the wall that has been erected in a long process of theoretical reflection between teaching religion and teaching about religion (see Pinault 2007: 78) and it appears to contradict the ideal concept of academic work being value-neutral and consisting primarily of rational discourse. The idea of the detached researcher has consequently produced many learning environments that impede the active appropriation of long-term multidimensional knowledge. However, it is possible to teach characteristically academic content with didactical tools engaging the students on the emotional level and including practical implementation as long as the following criteria are met: the topics are chosen from those discussed in academia, every assignment is contextualized within the academic discourse, and a high level of critical reflection and reflexivity is involved (see for further criteria, Pinault 2007: 78–81). Based on these premises, higher education leaves room for experiential assignments that correspond to aesthetic aspects of religions. Students may, for example, be assigned to produce a piece of art inspired by a religious concept from a specific tradition and to reflect the process critically and in relation to the respective academic discourse. Using examples from religious aesthetics thus provides the opportunity to design creative and experiential assignments for any class on religion. These pedagogical ideas above touch upon core questions in the study and teaching of religion, including questions about the foundational conception of the discipline and its

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research subject. This is not the place to provide answers on these questions—individual teachers of the aesthetics of religion will position themselves on widely diverging standpoints depending on their cultural and academic context and their individual conviction. This is, however, the place to raise awareness among teachers that any conscious or unconscious decision regarding these issues fundamentally shapes our choice of appropriate methods and didactic techniques for teaching aesthetics of religion. Among these core questions relevant for teaching are: What learning objectives do we consider paramount for the academic study of religion? How much do we account for the different career paths students are going to take after their studies, which require diverging competences? Is it part of our objectives to inspire the personal development of our students or their (inter)cultural competences necessary to act as responsible citizens in our contemporary globalized world? Does the latter include the awareness for the cultural imprinting of sensory perception and a(n emotional) sensitivity for the diversity of cultural experiences? We might even go one step farther: Does this also include the development of a personal sense for the emotional or bodily experiences of religious practices and the transformative power of some religious experiences? Do we want to encourage students “to cultivate inner self-awareness and outward compassion for other life forms in a dialogical, interdisciplinary, and multireligious context” and are we willing to use “nontraditional modes of active, contemplative learning to stimulate greater cognitive and emotional growth among students” as Pinault did in his class on religion and ecology (2007: 76)? Or does this go beyond the boundaries of our understanding of the study of religion?

Teaching Religious Aesthetics The aesthetics of religion is a very broad research perspective focusing on the interrelationships between the many different layers of human perception, cognition, and interpretation. Teaching religious aesthetics therefore includes many dimensions related to the body, the use of media, and comprehensive forms of meaning-making. It includes all kinds of bodily functions and ways of being and acting in the world as well as processes of sensory reception and interpretation. It includes dealing with firstorder media such as sound and music, images and visual stimuli, odors, tastes, human bodily interaction, and tangible three-dimensional objects of art or everyday usage; with different semiotic systems and second-order media such as books, art installations, electronic media, and mass media; and finally with multi-sensorial settings combining several or all of these media, involving complex forms of interaction between individuals and with these media, and resulting in many kinds of bodily, sensory, intuitive, emotional, cognitive, or social experiences. Religious aesthetics also involve more comprehensive concepts and experiences such as space, time, rituals, embodied identities, or symbolism and semiotics. One of the major challenges for studying and teaching religious aesthetics is to transcend semiotic hermeneutics primarily interested in decoding any (assumed) fixed and propositional meaning of those media and experiences. These hermeneutics are prevalent in large parts of the academic literature on religious media and many students have internalized them as a result. In sum, religious aesthetics include a vast array of non-textual subjects resulting in a large variety of appropriate didactical methods to teach students some understanding of them and to train them to use their bodies as media for data collection in combination with descriptive and analytical tools.

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DIDACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR THE CLASSROOM The following sections give a first impression of this variety by drawing on the teaching experiences of several scholars of religion including some authors of this handbook. First, an overview of the range of possible didactical techniques and assignments for the classroom is presented; and second, some examples are discussed in more detail. Didactic strategies relevant for aesthetics of religion include relatively simple methods to analyze religious media such as images (e.g., Engler and Naested 2002). In expansion, it may involve more complex exercises of introspection that focus on the personal effects and impacts of specific media on students, for example effects of particular sounds and pieces of music (e.g., Carp 2007). Another example might be to teach students awareness of proxemics (use of space) and kinesics (body language) as Sherry Jordon (2001) did. Some scholars actively build on the students’ prior knowledge and personal experience of academic and civic rites. To inspire some understanding of the experience of pilgrimage, Susan E. Hill (2004) and her students designed pilgrimages around the campus to places the students experienced as especially significant in their academic lives. Richard M. Carp (2007), on the other hand, introduced his students to the subject of body techniques by drawing on their own experiences of the academic body, that is, of body techniques they had already learned in school. Beyond this, scholars of religion may look for creative inspiration from therapeutic disciplines or practical trainings in the arts that include some degree of verbal reflexivity. Cia Sautter (2005), for example, incorporated techniques of movement analysis from dance therapy into her classes on religious dance. She also found it helpful to teach students specific dances practically in movement lab sessions. Through this, students not only developed an embodied understanding of the respective movements but also significantly improved their skills to analyze dance verbally and on an academic level. Similarly, Sam D. Gill (2007: 51) combined traditional teaching methods with experiential learning in a dance studio, where artists from different religious traditions demonstrated and taught some basic elements of their dances. Michel Mary Lelwica (2009) decided to train students practically in Aikido and to combine this with critical verbal reflection to form a new kind of embodied pedagogy. Going one step further, teachers may also reenact rituals in the classroom as Victor and Edith Turner (1982) did in their synthesis of the anthropological seminar and postmodern theatrical workshop (Schechner 2007: 22–3). In his classes on ritual, Richard Schechner even “guided PhD students and assistant professors into light trances by instructing them on how to whirl Mevlevi (dervish) style” followed by discussion and reflection of their interior experiences (2007: 16). Highly experimental teaching methods like these, however, may bring forth certain problems and dangers. The boundary between the two different intentionalities of theatrical reenacting and religious conducting of a ritual might be crossed and its position disputed. The reenacting of specific religious rituals might be not allowed in statesupported schools or regarded as disrespectful by adherents of the respective tradition. The ritual might “draw students into intensely personal experiences accompanied by deep emotions,” which might fail “to maintain boundaries appropriate to the modern academy and to the usual training of the faculty,” and manipulate students “beyond standards of academic acceptability” (Gill 2007: 47). Finally, it may be naive “to think one understands another’s experience by briefly imitating his actions” (Gill 2007: 48). Consequently, the

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advantages and dangers of experimental teaching methods need to be carefully considered and weighed against the learning objectives.

Approaching Material Text Practices To illustrate some of the many possible teaching approaches, the following section discusses the subject of material text practices. One learning objective may be to sensitize students to the materiality of books and the many forms of material text practices in religious traditions (e.g., Plate et al. 2016). As one form of assignment, Mirko Roth (2017: 27) took several editions and translations of the Quran “that differ in various respects (language, size, materiality, typology, ornamentation, etc.)” to the classroom. The students were asked to identify their first impressions of these editions and the results were discussed in the plenum. In many cases, students first drew on their internalized scholarly habit to check academically relevant information (e.g., the copyright page, potential registers, or annotation apparatus) or differences in translation. Revealing and reflecting these habits in the discussion and constructively confronting the students with contrasting aesthetic and material ways to engage with books can produce compelling “aha” moments. Building on these reflections, teachers may introduce a further assignment to identify the material aspects of the respective books and to open the students’ perspectives to the many bodily ways of engaging with religious texts. In one assignment, Jawad Anwar Qureshi (2017) first sensitized students to the fact that the memorization and recitation of the Quran is much more relevant for everyday Muslim practice than the exegesis of the text by screening the documentary film Koran by Heart. Then, the students read and discussed the analysis of the soundscape of quranic recitation by Michel Sells (2007) and listened to the recitations recorded on the accompanying audio CD. This prepared them for the final assignment, to memorize one Arabic verse of the Quran, e.g. the short chapter surat alQadar (Q. 97), by imitating the sound recording supported by the transliteration provided by Sells. After this last assignment, the students were asked to reflect on their experiences, to analyze the bodily practices they intuitively used to memorize the sounds, and to compare these practices with their usual ways of learning in higher education. This set of assignments may raise awareness for acoustic and bodily forms of engaging with texts.

Developing Critical Auditory Skills (by Annalisa Butticci) As various sound scholars have noticed, the major challenge in taking sound seriously—in research, theory, and teaching—is to overcome the dominant ocular-centric approach of Western aesthetics of social knowledge. Consequently, students need to cultivate listening skills and train their “ethnographic ear” (Clifford 1986: 12). It is through “agile listening” that we tune our ears to the multiple layers of meaning potentially embedded in the sound (Bull and Back 2015: 3). In my teaching of multimedia anthropology, I complement lectures and practical workshops on sound recording, editing, and analysis with assignments that develop the necessary auditory skills to engage sound as ethnographic register. Inspired by the “auditory turn” in critical theory, I am particularly interested in the multiple dimensions of sound that shape the politics of aurality, particularly how people use sound to negotiate their social power in a given historical and geographical context. The theoretical concept “soundscape” (see Samuels et al. 2010) offers a way to record and listen to sound as a composite sonic assemblage of natural and cultural, fortuitous and composed, improvised and deliberately produced sounds and noises.

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In my classes, I use an edited audio file of three different soundscapes that I personally recorded in Utrecht (Netherlands) in 2014 with three-minute captures of each of the following events: the Party for Freedom rave parade by an independent youth movement with the motto “Rave, Resist, Revolt,” the Catholic church procession of the relics of Saint Willibrord, and the anti-racist protest of activists fighting for the abolition of the prominent Dutch Christmas character called Black Pete. I usually do not give students any introduction about sound or the three groups and block visual stimulation as much as possible by switching off the lights and closing the curtains. Students are thus forced to listen carefully to capture the various information about the space, subjects, and objects generating the soundscape. The soundscapes of the three groups are very diverse in terms of composition, intensity, propagation, sonic mobility, assemblage, and interaction of sounds produced by the attending crowds, the usual urban movements of people, goods, and public transport. Students are invited to reflect on social differences, performances, and social messages embedded in the various soundscapes, on the information that soundscapes provide about the people who are producing them, and on the ways soundscapes relate to the Dutch social, religious/secular, and political moment. This analysis of the aesthetics of soundscapes highlights the peculiar entanglement of religious traditions, political movements, heritage, and urban spaces and reveals how peculiar and powerful city sounds are governed by specific religious and social urban actors.

Discovering Museum Spaces (by Peter J. Bräunlein) This section presents a seminar that focuses on sensory forms of perceiving religious objects and artwork within museum spaces and the processes of encoding and decoding such objects by the institution and the visitors. In this seminar, museum spaces serve as a laboratory to experience and reflect upon aesthetic perception within religions. “Religion” or religious themes can be found in any kind of museum or relevant temporary exhibitions at religious places. The general focus of the seminar on aesthetic perception in museum spaces is deepened by a specific theme depending on the local opportunities. In Leipzig, for example, galleries, museums, and temporary exhibitions inspired courses such as Religion and Art, “Religious Experience” in Art (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century), Religion and the Leipzig School, and Piercing and Tattoo. Parts of the seminar take place in the classroom and others in museum spaces, and sections with readings and discussions are complemented by experiential assignments. First, students are encouraged to develop their theoretical understanding about the origin and history of the museum in Western modernity, the invention of public museums as a response to the political and spiritual aspirations of the nascent bourgeoisie; the sacralization of history and nation; museum spaces as facilitators of extraordinary experiences vis-à-vis objects of the past and artworks; and museums as functional equivalents to religious institutions along with the question, What makes a museum object “religious”? In addition, the objectives and ambitions of the respective institution and its curators are addressed as well as the exhibition display techniques, sensitizing students to the essential process of object transmutation through the institution, the museum display, and the perceptions of visitors. Based on these theoretical reflections, the seminar uses two key assignments. In the first, students experience themselves as “bodies in movement” walking through the museum and “reading” it “in terms of psychogeography, sensorium and narrative aesthetics” (Albano 2014: 2). They are asked to discern the guidance system, natural and artificial light, room temperature, and tactile, olfactory, and audiovisual dimensions of the museum space.

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During (or shortly after) the visit, each student drafts a protocol of their subjective, affective sensual experiences and observations. These protocols are afterwards presented and discussed in teams and in the plenum. In the second exercise, students explore the visuality of the museums’ objects by focusing on the practice of seeing—“religious seeing” in particular—which is “comprised of the seeing body–mind, the image, and a four-part scaffolding in which the seer–seen relation is set: textual, architectural, memorable, and ritualistic ways of seeing” (Plate 2016, abstract). Several models reflecting the activity of seeing, theories of visuality, and visual methodologies provide the foundation for the assignment. Each student chooses one object/artwork related to the course subject. For sixty to ninety minutes, the students first observe the ritualistic visual behavior (“Beschaugestus”) of other visitors and then enter into a “dialog” with their chosen objects through the sense of sight and contemplate the context of the display as well as the specific ways of seeing (gendered, possessive, immersive, voyeuristic, analytic, doubtful, etc.) invited by the object itself. This rests on the assumption that the relation between objects and viewers is an essential part of the process of visual sense-making. The students consider the event of seeing (Belova 2012) in all its dimensions (emotional, technical, critical analytical) and record the encounter between object and viewer in a protocol. Afterwards, the results are discussed and reflected in teams and in the plenum. In conclusion, seminars focusing on sensory forms of perceiving religious objects and artwork aim at the acquisition of multidimensional knowledge. Students are encouraged to do practical assignments and reflection as well as to discover their own sensorial reactions, even emotions, triggered by facing religious objects in museums, and to make these a subject for discussion. In this way, the seminar serves as an exercise to explore what “aisthesis” means in the study of religion. In my experience, students appreciate the differing learning environments of museum and classroom as well as the focus on sensual experience/immersion and reflection/discussion. Difficulties often arise when students draw conclusions and weight both fields of inquiry. In many cases, they expect to get “meaning” as the final result. Consequently, the challenge (and fun) of this teaching format lies in what Alexandra Grieser (personal communication, spring 2018) terms the “experiential ‘unlearning’ of representational/semantic approaches.”

PARTICIPATING IN THE FIELD Introduction (with Contributions by Brigitte Luchesi) Beyond teaching methods and assignments for the classroom, another didactic approach to teach religious aesthetics is to inspire students to participate in religious contexts and to study potential sensory or emotional experiences both through their own bodies and by observing the impacts of those experiences on the behavior of other people. By virtue of their aesthetic qualities, field trips offer opportunities to see and experience the religious life of communities in ways that books and audiovisual material never could. This section focuses on field trips as parts of regular classes visiting off-campus sites where religious practices may be witnessed in action. These sites could be places of worship of different denominations as much as public events like processions, gatherings, the inauguration of sacral buildings, or religious congresses. Participating in these events is a multi-sensual experience not limited to the visual realm but often including acoustic and olfactory impressions as well as bodily perceptions stimulated by the general layout of the visited sites and other local conditions. These multi-sensorial experiences during field

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trips provide a new component of knowledge about the visited religious traditions and also a heightened awareness for the process of gathering scholarly data. At the most basic level, any confrontation with unfamiliar religious settings can sensitize students to the diversity of religious practices and performances and to the fact that religions are actually living traditions. If different kinds of methods are introduced and practiced, students can furthermore develop competence in the analysis and reflection of their experiences, which may stimulate their personal growth and be the seedbed for later, more elaborate academic research competences. Field trips, however, also involve certain problems and dangers, similar to those of the experimental method described above. They can be physically challenging and the confrontation with less familiar religions can be daunting, overwhelming, or even threatening (see Bell 2007: 5; Pinault 2007: 57) depending on the denominational background of the students, their openness for the unfamiliar, and their personal abilities to adapt to those situations. It may also lead to total immersion and experiences of personal conversion, and teachers need to reflect their ethical responsibilities in this respect (see Schecher 2007: 23–4). Most importantly for the academic context, students need to learn the “analytic reflex, with a basic sense of theorizing in order to assess experiences” (Bell 2007: 6), which is the touchstone of academic reflexivity. Finally, the specifics of the practices witnessed in one visit need to be contextualized within the larger context of the respective tradition. Anthropological literature is rich with guides to learn how to conduct participant observation and create ethnographies (see, e.g., Faubion and Marcus 2009). The following two sections provide examples specifically relevant for aesthetics of religion: exercises and catalogues to train the students’ bodies as analytical instruments and to record the aesthetic dimensions of religious practices experienced on field trips.

Training the Students’ Bodies There are several ways to train students to use their bodies as tools to analyze the aesthetic dimensions of religious practices (Kreinath, Chapter 5, this volume). Richard Shustermann (2012) suggests to train body awareness through the method of the body scan, while Jay Johnston (personal communication, spring 2018) conducts experiences of aesthetic sensitization, in which students are asked to look out of the classroom window and to note what they see and sense. The latter exercise might appear simple, but the discussion of the results in the classroom immediately shows the large degree of diversity among the students’ perceptions; some produce inventory lists, others do not pay any attention to sound but notice scenes with subtle social interactions. Andreas Feldtkeller (2013) developed several exercises to train the students’ perception of their own emotions and of those of people around them as well as their competences to verbalize these experiences. He first raises awareness for the problem with a simple assignment of image viewing followed by more extensive studies of emotions triggered by ethnographic films. Only then do students actually start participant observation in the religious field itself and continuously refine their descriptive and analytic instruments to study emotions in religious contexts. Similarly, David Pinault created the assignment of a fieldwork journal for students requiring: (1) description of the rituals they witness—the setting, the participants, the sequence of actions, and so on;

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(2) interviews with at least two members of each congregation [. . .]; (3) a discussion of links between field experiences and texts assigned for the course; (4) an analysis of media coverage (newspaper, radio, etc.) of pertinent local religious communities [. . .]; and (5) personal reflections, in which students compare the experiences they had at the various sites and analyze the field trips in light of their own personal histories and prior experiences with ritual (Pinault 2007: 59). A similar method designed specifically for studying aesthetics of religion is discussed in the following section.

The Aesthetic Field Record (by Anne Koch) The aesthetic field record is a notation system for aesthetic dimensions in the fieldwork situation. This booklet of guided field notes has been developed over a number of years in collaboration with my students mainly in Munich but also in Basel, Berlin, and Salzburg. The aesthetic field record offers a matrix of categories ranging from basic observations on movement and the color value of light to second-order and third-order concepts on the interrelation of specific values and parameters regarding efficiency, deprivation, intermodality, extinction of stimuli, engenderedness, or emotionality. The record can be complemented and expanded with every new field visit, which leads, over time, to a comprehensive collection. The resulting dynamic nature of the record allows further comparison, the identification of any changes in ritualized performances (e.g., ritual mistakes, habitualization, innovation, exceptional procedures), and an elaboration of the awareness, empathy, and aesthetic skills of the researcher. The header of the aesthetic field record resembles an inventory card: who, when, where, for how long, what question of research, general course of events, duration, etc. The second section reflects the scholarly debate on the positionality of the researcher inspired by critical postcolonial awareness about the asymmetries of power and cultural aesthetic biases. In this section the researchers note, as in a diary, how they are becoming aware about the course of their impressions and the progress of subjective feelings (these, naturally, can change over the course of participation). Researchers should also analyze their own hierarchies of senses, the points at which they feel resistance, whether there are tensions and if so, whether they feel inhibited or ashamed at any point. They subjectively evaluate material value (preciousness, aura) and include any autobiographical references that cross their minds and memories. Last but not least, researchers should pay attention to whether they notice any impact of their presence on the situation. These two first sections already show that using such a record has several benefits: (a) it makes all aesthetic dimensions explicit, (b) it allows one to paint increasingly differentiated pictures owing to the subtle distinctions within the notes, which (c) may result in a strong interpretation based on detailed aesthetic analysis. Finally (d), the record allows a scholarly objectification of the subjective influences on large parts of the data, which is also adapted to available systems of aesthetic categorization or allows the formation of new ones. In doing so, the aesthetic field record is more than just a tool and synopsis of common aesthetic categories, since it offers second-order and third-order concepts. For example, the list for observation and data collection does not simply enumerate the five classical senses. Research in the cultural and cognitive aesthetics of religion has discerned many more types of senses, e.g., pain susceptibility, temperature

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and humidity perception, and the cross-modality of sensory systems including the intertwinement of hand tactility with vision, which is a particularly essential characteristic of perception and situated cognition (see Koch, Chapter 3, this volume). Further sections of the record reflecting the many levels of sense perception are, for example: sensory systems (with the subsections of exteroception, interoception, intermodality, and secondorder categories for interoception of nociception, the feeling of I and of personal integrity); the body (with body parts, peripersonal space, skin, movement, voice, texture, or clothes); perception (with attentiveness, vigilance, perceptive constants, or expectation as one from several second-order categories); ritual action (with ritual sequences, dynamics, or efficiency); space (with time-space structure, therapeutic landscape, or interspatiality); emotionality (with emotional styles, feeling of ambivalences, release of deep emotions, or interpersonal emotionality including the subsections of empathy or congruence). The idea of such a diverse list of categories is to represent many different kinds of knowledge reflecting the general broad scope of the aesthetics of religion approach. In conclusion, the aesthetics field record is always open to be complemented and expanded. In specific research contexts, the research may also choose some parts of the entire record depending on the objectives and research questions, the accessible data, and the methodology employed.

CONCLUSION This chapter discussed fundamental aspects of teaching aesthetics of religion in higher education. It examined different teaching contexts and correlated the scholarly interest in sensory dimensions of religions with insights from the learning sciences about the positive effects of experiential teaching methods on the learning process. It also introduced selected teaching strategies, for both the classroom and participating in the field, by reflecting the teaching experiences of scholars of religion. The intention of this exemplary introduction is to open the field for further discussion and to inspire readers to experiment with teaching strategies beyond reading, discussing, and writing texts. Choosing appropriate teaching strategies depends on many things, among them local understandings of the study of religion, requirements of individual universities, colleges, and departments, the design of specific learning objectives, the openness and interest of students to experiment with unconventional teaching methods, and personal convictions and preferences of the teachers and their workload. Highly experimental teaching strategies and field visits usually require a lot of time and energy on the part of the teacher but are often highly rewarding. Notwithstanding this, it should be easy to include some simple teaching methods or assignments based on aesthetics of religion even in the confined context of everyday teaching, and we hope that this chapter gives some initial ideas for how to do so.

RECOMMENDED READING Bell, Catherine, ed. (2007), Teaching Ritual, Oxford: Oxford University Press (AAR Teaching Religious Studies Series). Collection of personal experiences of teaching ritual and rich source for a large variety of teaching methods and assignments. Lang, James M. (2016), Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Excellent analysis of recent insights from the learning sciences with handy ideas for their implementation in everyday teaching.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.

2. 3.

Salley Promey, “Testimonial Aesthetics and Public Display,” published on The Immanent Frame, https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/02/08/testimonial-aesthetics-and-public-display/. MAVCOR (Centre for the Study of Visual and Material Cultures of Religion) at Yale University, US, https://mavcor.yale.edu, offers a journal and an open access material objects archive with valuable descriptions and academic articles on the history of objects. Aarhus University, Denmark, http://rcc.au.dk. AESToR profits greatly from being the object of research by Mareike Slomka, Science, Technology and Society Studies, University of Maastricht. For her study of our group discussions, visions, and heterogeneity concerning the compatibility of CSR and culture studies, see: “Going Cognitive? How Conflicting Visions Fuel Controversy and Perform the Future of the Aesthetics of Religion,” submitted to Science as Culture.

CHAPTER 2 A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF AESTHETICS IN A WESTERN CONTEXT 1.

Capitals are used here to signal that this refers specifically to the Kantian concepts of imagination, understanding, and reason (not any general notion).

CHAPTER 6 IMAGINATION 1.

2. 3.

In this essay we use the SJ English autograph translation by Louis J. Puhl SJ (1951), available online at http://spex.ignatianspirituality.com/SpiritualExercises/Puhl (last accessed June 18, 2018); Spanish original on es.wikisource.org (last accessed June 18, 2018). Van den Doel and Hanegraaf (2006) present a history of the term imagination with special regard to history of religions. In Ignatius’s time, only men performed the exercises, though today both men and women meditate in the Ignatian tradition.

CHAPTER 8 ABSORPTION 1.

2.

The scale is under copyright protection, although about half the items have been previously published. It is available through the University of Minnesota Press and is usually available online. The items listed are abbreviated and published with the permission of the University of Minnesota Press. In this essay, I use the SJ English autograph translation by Louis J. Puhl SJ (1951), available online at http://spex.ignatianspirituality.com/SpiritualExercises/Puhl.

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CHAPTER 9 ANICONICITY AND ANICONISM 1. 2.

3.

“Theriomorphism” or “zoomorphism” denotes a visual representation that is fully or partly in the shape of an animal. I want to thank Christoph Uehlinger for drawing my attention to this distinction between the matter and shape of an object of worship in his peer review of one of my earlier articles (Aktor 2017b). “Metonymy” denotes a sign relation where the sign is associated with the idea it represents as a part of a whole, like the crown for monarchy.

CHAPTER 11 MUSEALITY 1. 2.

An earlier version of the following analysis has appeared in Kugele (2016); see especially section 5. For a discussion of visual representation in the public space, specifically in the context of art, museum, and religious symbols, see Pezzoli-Olgiati (2015).

CHAPTER 12 SENSORY STRATEGIES 1.

The term “sensory strategies” was developed by occupational therapists and educationalists to cope with sensory processing disorder (SPD) in children, for instance, autism, sensory over- and under-responsivity. SPDs are caused by dysfunction of the “sensory integration” (Ayres 1972) of the (multi-)sensory input of one’s environment; in other words, difficulties in keeping a balance between sensory experiences.

CHAPTER 13 NARRATIVE STRATEGIES 1.

2. 3.

We use the term cultural narratives analogous to Dan Sperber’s “cultural representations”, i.e., representations that are “widely distributed” and (relatively) lasting, being comprised of “many versions, mental and public ones” (see Sperber 1996: 26 and 33). Cultural narratives refer to certain narrative structures and motifs that serve as attractor positions in triggered distribution, with the resulting public representations recognized to be the same. Narrative cultures is used as a heuristic term to highlight narrative reservoirs, storytelling practices, locations and settings, genre-understandings, and narrative devices within specific cultural contexts, often shared across the boundaries of self-identified communities (see Johannsen and Kirsch 2017). Along the lines of: a linguistic expression of a sequence of at least two causally related events that describe a change of state in the diegesis. To relate the predictive processing framework to a massively modular model of the mind—as postulated in the “standard model” of the cognitive science of religion—is subject to debate (Asprem 2017; Dreyson 2017). Several approaches to predictive processing assume “hyperpriors,” defined as “an expectation about the world that is stable, and often at a high degree of abstraction” (Wilkinson 2014: 142). This assumption provides a functional equivalent to modular processing.

CHAPTER 14 TEXT ACTS 1.

The history of writing is closely linked to administration and trade for which short notational systems were needed. While such lists and receipts are of immense importance to historical

NOTES

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3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

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studies of any kind, I will focus on more cohesively conceptualized texts commonly met with in religious contexts. The examples and discussions in this chapter are specifically related to religious contexts, although the principle of aesthetically effective textuality holds true for other texts and contexts, as well. The following description is summarized from Nieber (2017: 458–63). For an overview of research on this topic, I also refer to my previous work (Wilkens 2013, 2017, 2018). I conducted fieldwork among Islamic healers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I discuss this point at greater length in Wilkens (2018). Comment posted by Muhammad Sajad Ali on eShaykh, a platform of the Islamic Supreme Council of America (ISCA) on December 1, 2010, http://eshaykh.com/quran-tafsir/ayat-ashshifa/. The comment section is available through internet archives. This procedure is shown, for example, in Christian Suhr’s film Descending with Angels (2013). Hardaker and Sabki (2014) make a convincing case for Quranic schooling in the UK, pointing to differences in perception and habituation to regular schools.

CHAPTER 15 EMBODIMENT THROUGH COMICS 1.

2.

There is debate among comics scholars as to when to place the beginning of the art form. Some look back to examples of sequential art, such as that found in ancient Egyptian murals, as the earliest forms of comics. Others suggest that comics, as we understand them, began with the work of Rodolphe Töpffer in the early nineteenth century. Religious themes have been present throughout the history of comics, regardless of when one thinks comics began. Unfortunately Marvel Comics denied permission to include images from Ms. Marvel and DC Comics denied permission to include images from Saga of the Swamp Thing.

CHAPTER 16 GENDERED PERFORMATIVITY 1.

A variation of this essay was originally published in 2016 as “Antigone, Irony, and the Nation State: The Case of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and the Role of Militant Feminism in Pakistan” in the special issue Religion and Women of Religions/Adyan, 84–96, DOI 10.5339/rels.2016. women.11. It has been reprinted by permission of the editor.

CHAPTER 18 CINESTHETICS 1.

2.

See, for example, the address “Православный календарь” [The Orthodox calendar] on the topic by the Russian Orthodox bishop of Diodor in 2017: “I will tell you responsibly, there is no forgiving of sins in the ice hole, even in consecrated water, for no one and at no circumstance” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=81CcIVNBUGs). For a detailed historical investigation and contextualization of this ritual see Bushkovitch (1990) and Flier (2015).

CHAPTER 20 SMELL AS COMMUNICATION 1. 2.

On Confucian biographical writing see Wright (1962). For more on Chinese biographical writing, also Buddhist, see Guggenmos and Li (2019). Chinese Buddhist biographical writing has been translated and studied in the past by French Sinologists such as Robert Shih, Édouard Chavannes, Michel Soymié, and Jacques Gernet

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and in English by Alan Berkowitz, John Kieschnick, Walter Liebenthal, Arthur Link, and Arthur Wright (see the overview by Marcus Bingenheimer, http://mbingenheimer.net/tools/ bibls/transbibl.htm, accessed August 8, 2018). The produced works belong to the established forms of East Asian Buddhological scholarship and provide a thick contextualization of the translated texts. They introduce the historical setting, assemble material on the person from other sources, situate them in the religious historical development, draw the network of monks in communication, or attempt to reconstruct the ancestry of Indian and Central Asian monks. The translations are highly annotated, discussing writing variants, possible emendations, and semantic choices, giving historical, religious, or other cultural background information, tracing textual parallels and engaging in terminological discussions. They locate historical places, seek traveling routes, and try to identify people throughout Chinese literature. Even in very recent standard works, like The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts (Brown 2014), Buswell’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004), or journals in the field of the cognitive study of religion such as Religion, Brain & Behavior, there are to date no separate entries or articles on smell-related subjects. The connection between memory and smell is commonly discussed as the Proust effect (see van Campen 2014). An excursion into the connection between memory and smell is undertaken by Hatt and Dee (2011: 169ff). For single cognitive studies on memory see Rouby et al. (2002: 209–90). “If a bhiksun¯ı rubs her body with perfume, she [commits] a p¯acittika” (㤕∄шቬԕ俉ງ᪙䓛 ˙ ˙ 㘵⌒䙨ᨀDŽ); “If a bhiksun¯ı adorns herself just as a wife and rubs her body with perfume, she ˙ ˙ [commits] a p¯acittika” (㤕∄шቬDŽ֌႖ྣ㦺೤俉ງ᪙䓛⌒䙨ᨀDŽ); “If a bhiksun¯ı has a non˙ ˙ Buddhist woman rub her body with perfume, she [commits] a p¯acittika.” (㤕∄шቬDŽ֯ཆ䚃 ྣ俉ງ᪙䓛⌒䙨ᨀDŽ), T. 1428, XXII: 768c23; 777c4; 778a1, translation following Heirman (2002: 893. 960. 962). A p¯acittika is a minor offence which does no lead to exclusion from the monastic community, but has to be confessed and requires expiation. One single biography in the whole corpus of the SSZ mentions flowers: the monk Tansui (origin unknown) asked his community to take a scented flower in their hand when reciting the Lotus Su ¯tra (䚐䚷ഋ⵮೤ᤱ俉㨟 960c9).

CHAPTER 22 PROTESTANT (AN)AESTHETIC 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

When Orsi cites the standard interpretation of disenchantment as consisting of a banishing of the gods (2016: 37) and of miracles (2016: 28), he fails to note that each of these ideas was originally an early Christian trope that had been taken up and redeployed by Protestants early in the Reformation. Rather than a simple “absence,” this represented a new mode of religiosity, one that affirmed an essential identity between disenchantment and evangelization. See discussion below. See also Ezzy (2016: 266–79 at 271), citing McGuire (2008), who criticizes Weber’s reliance on similar theological ideas and also the inaccuracy of his diagnosis of disenchantment. For a discussion of the Protestant idea that miracles and other charismata have ceased see Yelle (2019b: 37–73). Aarsleff (1982: 25–7, 57–65) traces this doctrine back to John Locke’s insistence that “Words are about ideas, not about things” and to Locke’s rejection of the then-current idea of a magical, Adamic language. For more recent echoes of these debates in Roman Catholicism see Yelle (2018). Arguing against this last point, and classifying singing and instrumental music as practices of natural religion rather than survivals of the abrogated ceremonial laws of Moses, is Wetenhall

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8. 9.

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(1679: 208, 303, 427–35). See also Battell (1694: 2, 8, 11). Wetenhall, however, allowed that singing in the primitive church was “very plain” (1679: 275), and that “Great care . . . ought to be taken in all our Church Musick, that the Musick as little as may be, prejudice the distinct perceiving of the words, and of attending the sense. For whether the Hymn, or Psalm, become unintelligible to the Commonalty by the strangeness of the language, or curiosity of the Musical form, in which it is performed, devotion is equally destroyed . . .” (ibid.: 241). Commenting on Psalm 81:1, “Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob,” the note reads: “It seems that this psalm was appointed for solemn feasts and assemblies of the people to whom for a time these ceremonies were ordained, but now under the gospel are abolished.” A bookbinder’s error led to a duplication of page numbers 5–7; I have designated the second set with an asterisk. Yelle (2013b: 113–36) makes the case that the Protestant critique of vain repetitions in prayer was also associated with the rise of print culture and concomitant decline of oral poetic forms. Material culture may therefore have been another factor in the rise of a Protestant aesthetic.

CHAPTER 23 AESTHETICS OF THE UGLY 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

Cancik and Mohr (1988: 149–52) systematize the aesthetics of the ugly under six aspects: (1) monstrosity (“Monstrosität”), (2) mingling (“Vermischung”), (3) amorphousness (“Amorphität”), (4) destruction (“Destruktion”), (5) excessiveness (“Excessivität”), (6) poverty/kitsch (“Armut/Kitsch”). As this essay is brief and designed for a broader audience, all philological detail and much of the texts’ complexity have been left aside. The Indological reader is kindly advised to refer to Pabst von Ohain (2018), where these matters are discussed in detail and with further references. Accounts of a´subhabh¯avan¯a are widespread in Indic Buddhist literature: it occurs on various occasions in the P¯ali Canon, its locus classicus being the Satipatth¯anasutta, and also in ˙˙ the Visuddhimagga, Prasadan¯ı yasu ¯tra, Pratyutpannasam¯adhisu ¯tra, *Mah¯avibh¯as¯a, the ˙ Yogalehrbuch, or the Abhidharmako´sabh¯asya, to name but a few. For an overview of the ˙ literary sources see Lamotte (1970: 1312–14); for a discussion of a´subhabh¯avan¯a in Sarv¯astiv¯ada and related literature see Dhammajoti (2009) and Dessein (2013); for the depiction in the S´rBh see Schmithausen (1982); for a comparison of the accounts in the S´rBh and the *Mah¯avibh¯as¯a see Kritzer (2017). ˙ Conventions: For the S´rBh the critical editions of S´r¯avakabhu ¯mi Study Group 1998/2007/2008–2013 are used, for the SamBh the critical edition of Delhey (2009). On the composition, dating, contents, and manuscripts of the Yog¯ac¯arabhu ¯mi´s¯astra—which is attributed by East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist religions to the highly mythologized figures of Maitreya and Asan ˙ga—see the standard works of Kragh (2013) and Delhey (2013). On the S´rBh see Deleanu (2006), on the SamBh see Delhey (2009) (all with numerous further references). The S´rBh and the SamBh contain almost no distinct Yog¯aca¯ra, but rather Sarv¯a stiv¯ada material. However, attributions to particular Buddhist “schools” are extremely problematic in this time and region since the notion of Indian Buddhist schools or sects is complex and not understood (see Bechert 1973, 1993; Kiefer-Pülz 2000). For a detailed outline of Buddhist cosmology see chapter III of the Abhidharmako´sabh¯asya, ˙ Gethin (1997, 1998: 112–32), Kloetzli (1983), and Dietz (2003). On ancient Indian cosmology and cosmography see Kirfel (1967) and Gombrich (1975).

300

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

NOTES

The descriptions vary; in the Abhidharmako´sabh¯asya, a locus classicus for the Sarv¯astiv¯ada ˙ cosmological system, it is said that three of the five senses no longer exist in the realm of subtle materiality, leaving only beings with sight and hearing. For Powers (2009) consult also the review of Ciurtin (2010/11). Cf. S´rBh (II)-A-II-3-b; S´rBh (III)-C-III-1-b-(2)-ii until (III)-1-b-(2)-vi (translated in Cheung 2013: 94–146); S´rBh (III)-C-V-4. These five practices are known also in canonical literature and are contained in an interesting form also in the Yogalehrbuch; see Schlingloff and Hartmann (2006). Cf. S´rBh (II)-A-II-3-b-(1)-a. Cf. SamBh § 2.2.2.1. Cf. SamBh § 4.1.1. Cf. S´rBh (II)-A-II-3-b-(1)-i-(a). Cf. S´rBh (II)-A-II-3-b-(1)-ii; for the discussion of this concept in the Abhidharmako´sabh¯asya ˙ see Dhammajoti (2009: 258f). Cf. S´rBh (III)-C-III-1-b-(2)-ii. Cf. S´rBh (II)-A-II-3-a-(1). On the concept of the “transformation of the basis” (¯a´srayaparivrtti) in the Yog¯ac¯arabhu ¯mi´s¯astra ˙ see Sakuma (1990). Cf. S´rBh (III)-C-V-4-a.

CHAPTER 24 AESTHETICS OF THE SECULAR 1.

Although there is no clear-cut definition of affect in the recent surge of “affect theory” (Gregg and Seigworth 2010), one of its main themes is the way in which affects are said to circulate between bodies and things and stimulate certain responses. I am using the term affect in order to stress this intersubjective and stimulating aspect.

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340

INDEX

Note: Page numbers for figures are given in italics, and for tables they are given in bold. Notes are given as: [page number]n. “absence”, the secular 264, 266–8 absorption 85–95, 257–8, 260 see also immersion abstract concepts 36–7, 36 academic study 44–5 accumulative strategies 138–9 acoustic piety 109–11, 113, 115 action-sequences, rituals 73–80, 82 “actionable properties” 130, 138 activation of perception 130–1 actor-oriented approach, texts 155–64 Adams, Suze 186–7 Adorno, Theodor 5 aesthetic cognizing subject 26–31 aesthetic field record 293–4 aesthetic formations 122–4, 229 aesthetic ideologies 37, 39, 42, 44 aesthetic knowledge aesthetics “of ” knowledge and 33–5 dogmas as 261–2 text acts 162 aesthetic objects 75, 82–3 aesthetic perspective, film 194–6 aesthetic profiles 229 aesthetic relativism 56 aesthetic subject 23, 25–6 aesthetic texts 163 aesthetic turn 74–6, 107, 176 aesthetics characteristics 13 definitions 14–15 principles 26 aesthetics “of ” knowledge 33–46 aesthetics of religion concept formation 52–5 defining 1–3 methodology 8, 47–57 overview 24 recent developments 21–2 religious aesthetics distinction 21 teaching 285–94

Aesthetics of Religion (AESToR) Network 3–4, 19, 295n aestheticscapes 8, 61–2, 272 AESToR network see Aesthetics of Religion Network affect 21, 37, 275, 300n “affection”, cult images 216 afferent emotion 29 affordances 27, 138 Agee, James 194 agency anthropopathic 102–5 artworks 190–1 ritual 103–4 women 177 aisthesis 66–7, 123 Aktor, Mikael 209 Alaimo, Stacey 172 almanacs 234–8, 235 altered states of consciousness 49, 51 anaesthetics 241–51 analytical perspective, teaching 285–6 anchoresses 132, 132 Anderson, Benedict 123 aniconicity 97, 208–9 aniconism distinction 99 anthropopathic agency 102–5 definitions 99 terminology 99 aniconism 97–106 aniconicity distinction 99 definitions 99 terminology 99 animal habitats 19 animism 233, 273–4 “anomalous experiences” 87 Antes, Peter 274 anthropological aesthetics 17–18, 191, 193–203 anthropomorphic images 98, 100–3, 105–6, 209 341

342

anthropopathic agency 102–5 anti-idolatrous discourse 98 anti-sensory strategies 139–40 Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane 185 Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard 91 Aquinas, Thomas 246 “arbitrary nature” of signs 247 Arjana, Sophia Rose 168–9 Armstrong, Neil 122–3 aroma research 221 “arrogance” 270 art 185–92 from nature 234 production 186–9 theory of 5 “art-for-animals” 19 art historical approaches 16–17 artifacts, texts as 156–8 “artification” of objects 82–3 artisans, cult images 212–13 Aryan migration theory 267–8 Asad, Talal 266 a´s ubhabha¯vana¯ 299n atheism 266–7 Atheists 267–71 A/theoaesthetics 16 Atkinson, Gilbert 92 attention 140, 144–9, 152 attentional functioning 92 “attitude of affection”, cult images 216 audible spirits 280–2 “auditive turn” 115–16 auditory experiences see sonality auditory skills development 289–90 augmented realities 144, 150–2 “authentic” objects 118 autonomous nervous system 29–30 Axel, Richard 221 Aziz, Maulana Abdul 178, 180 Aztec people 229–39 Bal, Mieke 119–20 Balázs, Béla 200–1 Barad, Karen 172 Barbash, Ilisa 194 Barrett, Justin 6 Bate, Bernard 270 bathing rituals 193, 196–202 Batina, Klementina 119 Bauman, Richard 246 Baumann, Zygmunt 123 Baumgarten, Alexander G. 6, 14

INDEX

Baxter, Richard 243–4 Bayesian model 145, 148–9 beauty 14–16, 39–40, 43–4, 253, 258–9 Beck, Guy 108 Bednarik, Robert G. 103 behavioral modes, rituals 73 belief intentional 230 justification of 25 knowledge and 34 Belting, Hans 196, 201 benevolent spirits 280 Benjamin, Walter 265 Bennett, Tony 119 Berger, Peter 244 Bernecker, Sven 230 Berns, Steph 120 biblical aniconism 98 biblical anti-iconism 103 Bidayuh people 276–8 bilderverbot 98 biographies 219–28, 297n Biographies of Thaumaturge Monks (SSZ) 219–28 Bishop, Claire 120 The Blackwood project 186–7 Bloch, Maurice 95 “blue brains” 43–4 bodily activities, reading 158 bodily motions see body movement bodily schemata see body scheme bodily transformation 278–82 the body in comics 170–3 filmic 196, 200–2 knowledge 232–3 “secular body” 266 students’ using 292–3 text acts 159–60 body knowledge 29, 253 body–mind dualism 63 body–mind strategies 134–5 body movement 80, 280–1 body scheme 25, 28–9, 52 body techniques corpse meditation 254, 261 cultivation of the ugly 257–61 sensory strategies 133–7 books 36–7, 40, 155–64 see also texts Boone, Elizabeth H. 236–7 Borneo, Bidayuh people 276–8

INDEX

boundary objects 120–1 Boyd, Brian 144 Brady, Emily 18–19 brain activity 43 Bräunlein, Peter J. 121 breath/breathing 29–31, 160 Brent Plate, S. 19–20 Bruno, Maria Cristina Oliveira 118 Bryson, Norman 18 Buck, Linda 221 Buddhism 219–28, 253–61, 297n Buggeln, Gretchen 120–1 Burkert, Walter 76 “burqa brigade” 178, 179 Butler, Judith 26, 176 calm abiding, meditation 260–1 Calvin, John 242–3, 246, 249 Cancik, Hubert 241 Candelaria, Matthew 172 canonical actions 78–9 Cantwell, Cathy 160 Carp, Richard M. 288 Castaing-Taylor, Lucien 194, 200 cathedral spaces 121–2 Catholicism 70, 241–5, 247–8 causal opaqueness 79 causal structure, rituals 78, 80 Chadwick, Owen 245, 249 Ch’an flung-ink painting 18 chanting 280–1 charismatic evangelical Christianity 88–91 Charles I/II 244 children imagination 64 text acts 157, 161–2 Chinese Buddhism 219–28, 297n Christianity denial of mediation 246 evangelical 88–91 iconoclasm 243 music 247 norms 242 rituals 54 sensory strategies 132, 139, 140 spirituality relation 188 text acts 162 see also Catholicism; Protestantism Chua, Liana 276–8 church music 247–50 “cinematic experience” 194 cinesthetics 193–203

343

Classen, Constance 20–1, 221 classroom studies 285–94 Clement of Alexandria 98 closure, comics 166 Coburn, Thomas 110 Codex Borbonicus 235, 236 codification, bodily senses 49–52 cognition aesthetic subject 23 cultural-cognitive reasoning 5–6 study of 5–7, 30–1 see also embodied cognition cognitive aspects imagination 63, 65 narrative strategies 144, 145 ritual 73–4, 76–80 cognitive perspective, film 194–6 cognitive study of religion (CSR) 6, 30–1 cognitive theories, ghosts 274–5 cognizing subject 26–31 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 65 collective imagination 257 collective memory 118–19 Collins, Timothy Martin 186, 189 comics 165–74, 297n communication, smell as 219–28, 227 community, aesthetic formation 123 comparative approach aesthetics of religion 52–5 breathing exercises 30–1 epistemology 230 secular difference 271–2 sensation 9 Comparative School 74 concentration 258, 261 concept formation, aesthetics of religion 52–5 “conceptual blending” 67 “conceptual” explanation, aniconism 98 conceptualization, calm abiding 260 Confucianism 220 congruences 25 connective concept aesthetics as 54 religious studies 3 conscious perception 151 consciousness, altered states 49, 51 consecrated cult images 213–14 “constructed” term 121 Copeman, Jacob 268–9 corpse decomposition 281 corpse meditation 254–5, 255, 261–2 corpse visualization 257–61, 259

344

Corrigan, John 21 cosmology 232–4, 257 Council of Trent 248–9 counterfactual thinking 63–4 counterintuitive agents 275 Crane, Susan 119 creative imagination 63 creative practice, knowledge production 185, 189 criss-crossing strategies 135 critical auditory skills 289–90 criticism, narratives 152 cross-diciplinarity 47 cross-modal perception 25 CSR see cognitive study of religion cult images 207–18 classifying 208–12 encountering 207–8 experiencing 215–17 making 212–13 using 213–15 cult objects 99, 101 “cultivating the ugly” 257–61 cultural-cognitive reasoning 5–6 cultural narratives 146, 296n cultural paradigms 64 cultural ritual 75, 76–7, 82 culturally-specific knowledge production 115 culture, study of 5 dance therapy 288 Davidsen, Markus A. 149 the dead/death Buddhist dogmas 253–6 fragrance and 223–4 non-knowledge 41–2 spirit encounters 276, 281 visualization of 256–61 decomposition of corpses 281 “decorum” 270–1 deities see divine beings; gods/goddesses Deleuze, Gilles 21 deNora, Tia 231 deprivation, sensory 131–2, 132 Derrida, Jacques 26, 273 desensitization 134 developmental psychology 64 Devji, Faisal 180 devotional music 111, 113 didactical teaching strategies 286, 288–91 differentiation, the secular 271–2 digital media 35

INDEX

disability studies 171–2 discernment 260–1 discourse, museality 119–20 “disembedding” framework, secular ideology 264 “disenchantment” 241–5, 250, 298n disgust 43, 159–60, 261–2 display-generated strategies 129, 137–40 dispositions, mantras 110–11 Dissanayake, Ellen 76, 82 divination almanacs 234–8, 235 divinity/divine beings aniconism 98–9 cult images 207–18 material formations 16 mediations 246–7 theological aesthetics 15 transformation 100–2 see also gods/goddesses “doctrinal mode”, rituals 67, 81 documentary films 195 documents, museality 119 dogmas 253–6, 261–2 domestic contexts, cult images 207–8, 211, 216–17, 217 doodling 35, 36 drawing words 166 dreams 87, 233 “drinking the Quran” 2–3, 158–63, 159 dualisms, Western tradition 15 durable cult images 210–12 Durkheim, Emil 5, 75 Eck, Diana L. 215–16 Edwards, David 186 Egypt 100–2, 177 embodied cognition 6–8, 23–4, 47, 49, 52, 55–6 embodied spectators 196 embodied spirits 279 embodiment theory 165–74, 280 embodying spirits 279 emic perspective, the ugly 257–8 emotion atheism 269 cult images 216 kinesthesia 29 music 112 religious studies 21 ritual signals 80–1 sound perception 114 the ugly 261

INDEX

emplacement 27, 190 “emptiness” see ´Su¯nya¯ta encoding sensory strategies 133 endogenous attention 145–6 engagement, artworks 189–90 enhancing strategies 131 Entwistle, Alan 211 environment-perceiving strategies 135 environmental aesthetics 18–19, 188–9 environmental sensory rhetoric 138 ephemeral images see temporary cult-images Epiphany ice-bathing 193, 196–202 Episcopalian tradition 122 epistemology 23–32, 229–31, 232–4 “erasing” practice 2–3, 158–63 error-signals, action-sequences 77–9, 78 “ethical soundscapes” 108 ethnic religions 44 ethology 52, 77 Eucharist ritual 79–80 Eurocentric bias, secularity 264 European modernity 44 evangelical Christianity 88–91 Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 75 evolutionary process animism 273 ghosts/spirits 274–5 ritual 76–7 evolutionary psychology 64 exaggeration principle 23 exhibition spaces 119 exogenous attention 145–7 experience-oriented intentional strategies 130 experiential assignments 286 “experimental system” 38 exposition 119–20 extension/exteriorization strategies 136–7 external ugly 259, 261 exteroception 28 eye contact, cult images 214–15 eye representations 233 facial expressions, ritual signals 80 factuality 66 family shrines 216–17 Farman, Abou 266 Feast video installation 198–9, 199–201, 201, 203 Feldt, Laura 50 Feldtkeller, Andreas 292 feminism, performativity 175–6, 181 festivals 211

345

fictional films 194–5 fictive frameworks, imagination 65 field trips 291–4 figural representations 102–3, 209 figurative language 50 film 193–203 “filmic body” 196, 202 filtering mechanisms, sensory strategies 131 firewalking 136 first-order media 287 flowers 225, 227, 228, 298n Flueckiger, Joyce B. 162 flung-ink painting 18 folk knowledge, ghosts 274–5 folkloristics 150 force representations, ritual 82–3 form, divine transformation 101–2 “formations” 123 see also aesthetic formation formative strategies, sensory 129 Foster, Kurt 16–17 Foucault, Michel 119 Fox, Kim 168–9 fragrance 222–5, 227 see also smell Frazer, James 81 freak shows 171 Freedberg, David 17–18 Freedman, Paul 221 functional action-sequences 73 funerals 276–7 Gablik, Suzi 19 Gaifman, Milette 97, 99, 101–2, 105 Garrett, Greg 167 Geertz, Armin W. 274 Geertz, Clifford 49, 76, 152 Gell, Alfred 17–18, 99, 101 gendered performativity 175–83 Gerety, Finnian 109 gestures 79, 200 Ghazi, Maulana Abdul Rashid 178, 180 ghosts 273–6, 280–2 Gibbard, Nathan 167 Gill, Sam D. 288 God’s presence absorption scale 92–3 inner sense cultivation 89 mental imagery 90 talent/training 85 gods/goddesses language 113

346

ritual activities 100 symbolic forms 111 see also divinity/divine beings Goffman, Erving 65 Goldsworthy, Andy 189–91 gothic scenes 170 Goto, Rieko 186, 189 “graspable” ghosts 280–2 Greek art 97–9 Grieser, Alexandra 176, 182, 291 Grimshaw, Anna 202 group behavior 30–1 Gruzinski, Serge 237 Guggenmos, Esther-Maria 117 gurrutu pattern 39 ¯ Guthrie, Stewart 275 Haberman, David L. 105 habitualizations principle 26 habituation, sensory strategies 130–1, 134 habitus forms, sonality 110–11 Hackett, Rosalind I. J. 108 handbooks 7 Harrison, Jane 74 Harrison, Peter 247 Harvey, Graham 273 Hatt, Hanns 221 healers/healing 158–63, 280–1 hearing sense 216 Hebrew Bible 98–9 Hegelian theories 5, 253 Heidegger, Martin 6 heritage 118 hermeneutics 287 Hermes Trismegistus 88 hierarchization of senses 132 higher education teaching 285–94 Hill, Susan E. 288 Hinduism 98–101, 105, 108–16, 207–18 Hirschkind, Charles 108, 266 historical aesthetics 25–6, 33 historiography 13–22 holistic approach 49 Honko, Lauri 151 Hornbacher, Annette 156 the horrible 254–6 households, cult images in 208, 211 see also domestic contexts Howes, David 221 Hrotic, Steven 251 Hughes, Aaron W. 2 Hull, Lyn 19

INDEX

humanity–cosmic relationships 232 human–divine mediations 246–7 Hunter, James 188–9 hygiene 159–60 “hyperliteralism” 270–1 “hyperpriors” 296n hypnotic susceptibility 92 ice-bathing tradition 193, 196–202 iconic dimension, texts 157 iconic imagery 106, 208–9, 212 iconicity 97, 99–100, 102 iconoclasm 243, 243, 245–7 iconography 16–17, 190 iconology 16–17 ideal beauty 43–4 ideologies aesthetic 37, 39, 42, 44 “disenchantment” 244 linguistic 246 literacy 163 secular 264–71 semiotic 37, 241, 274 Ignatius of Loyola 61–2, 65–70, 93–4, 295n illness and smell 224–5 images in comics 166 cult images 207–18 iconic 106, 208–9, 212 mental imagery 86–7, 90, 94–5 role in religion 15 semiotic theories 231 imagination 61–71 access to 61–2 material culture 267–8 modes/media/methods 67–9 narrative strategies 148–9 sensory strategies 135 the ugly 253–4, 257 understanding 62–6 “imagistic mode”, rituals 67 immersion 133, 136–7, 148–9, 152 inanimate objects 103–5 incense 222–3, 225, 226 indexicality, sensory perception 56 India atheism 266–9, 272 Buddhism 220, 254–61, 299n cult images 207–18 sound perception 108–15 Indic meditation manuals 256–61 indigenous Aztec studies 229–39

INDEX

induced smell 219, 222–3, 225, 227 ingestion, scriptures 159–60 ink-drinking 159–62 inner sense cultivation 85, 87, 89–90, 93–5 instrumental action, ritual 74–6 instrumental music 249 intangible spirits 275–6 integrity, cognizing subject 28–9 intentional beliefs 230 intentional strategies 130 interactions, sensory experience 93 “intercorporeality” 18 interdisciplinarity 47–8 “interessement” 120 intermediate beings 273–4 internal ugly 259, 261 interoception 28, 133, 140 interpretative acts 238 interpretative aesthetic 16–17, 80–2, 202 intersubjectivity 18–19 interview techniques 49 interweaving 93 intra-action 171–2 invisibility filming 202 spirits 275–6, 279 Islamic culture aniconism 98 comics 167–9 gendered performativity 175–83 sensory strategies 138–40 text acts 157–63 see also Muslims Jamal, Amina 181–2 James I 244 James, William 85, 144 Jamia Hafsa women 175–82 Jena Group 16 Jesuit order 62, 70 Jesus, statue of 139 Jewish practices 249 Johannsen, Dirk 7, 156 Johnson, David B. 15 Johnson, Mark 230 Johnston, Jay 176, 182, 292 Jordon, Sherry 288 Kant, Immanuel 6, 14, 19 Keach, Benjamin 250 Keane, Webb 37, 246, 274 Kennedy, John F. 124–5

347

Kent, Miriam 169 Kermani, Navid 108 Kieschnick, John 220 Kimal, Alan 255 kinesthesia 28–9, 52 Kippenberg, Hans G. 44 Kirk, Robert 187 Kirsch, Anja 7, 156, 265 Klassen, Chris 4 knowledge aesthetics of 8, 33–46, 162, 261–2 creation 189–91 cultural production 115 forms/validation 25 genres 230 kinds of 230 magic and 86, 88 production 115, 185, 189 sensing/painting 229–39 system of 24 theory of 24–5 knowledge cultures 40–4 known non-knowledge 35 Koch, Anne 177 Kohl, Karl Heinz 44 Kohn, Eduardo 191 kombe practice 159–60, 162 Kraemer, Christine Hoff 165 Kripal, Jeffrey 85 Kukkonen, Karin 148 Laack, Isabel 158 labeling practices, atheism 268–9 Lakoff, George 230 Lal Masjid mosque 178–80 land ownership 38–9 landscapes 102–3, 137, 188 language mosques 180 music and 112–13 sound contexts 114–15 Larsen, Kjersti 278–80 Latour, Bruno 120 Lawson, E. Thomas 77 learning sciences 286 see also teaching legends 150–1 see also myths Lelwica, Michel Mary 288 León-Portilla, Miguel 231 Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor) 200 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 152

348

Lewis, A. David 165 Li Wei 221 liminal space 75 linguistic ideology 246 linguistic imagination see verbal imagination linguistics norms 241 rituals 158 voice 113 listening practices 115 literacy ideologies 163 literalism 247 literary narratives 149 liturgical music 247–9 “lived secularity” 263–71 LoCicero, Don 167 Locke, John 298n Lollards 248 Loyola see Ignatius of Loyola Luchesi, Brigitte 291–2 Luhrmann, Tanya 4, 151, 163 Luther, Martin 242, 247, 249 Lyon, Glen 187 Lyotard, Jean-François 15 Maan, Ajit 143 McCauley, Robert N. 77 McCloud, Scott 165–6 McDannell, Colleen 242 McDonald, Robin Alex 171–3 McDougall, David 194 McHugh, James 221 McIntosh, Alastair 188 macro-cosmos 257 Maffie, James 237 magic 81, 86–8 “magicians” 88 Mahmood, Saba 177, 181 mantras 109–11, 113, 158 maps 36, 37 Marett, R. R. 193 Marlow, Isaac 249–50 Marsten, William Moulton 165 Marvel comic series 165, 167–9, 173 Marxism 151–2 Massachusetts Body of Laws and Liberties 245 master narratives, folklore 150 material agency 190 material culture 267–8 material objects 51, 137, 230–1 material perspective, teaching 285–6 material religion 19–21

INDEX

material sensory rhetoric 138 material text practices 289 materiality divinity 16 museal spaces 118, 124 the secular 264 sensory perception 51 texts 157 mathematical practices 38–9 matter divine beings 101–2 intra-action 172 meaning in ritual 74–80 media cinesthetics 193, 202 imaginative 67–9 knowledge 35–7, 36, 40–1, 41 religion as 123 sensory strategies 136–7 teaching strategies 287 mediations attack on 245–7 human–divine 246–7 imagination 62–3 practice of 193 medical research 6 medicine 158–63 meditation 86–7, 254–5, 255, 256–62 Mehta, Akanksha 176, 182 memorization 270 memory 118–19, 298n Menninghaus, W. 43 mental imagery 86–7, 90, 94–5 mental slavery 266–8 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 6 metaphors, knowledge 36–7 metonymy 102, 296n Mettinger, Tryggve 99 Meyer, Birgit 125, 193, 198, 202, 244, 247 micro-cosmos 257 micro-level analysis 53 militancy 180 Milner, Matthew 242, 244 mimesis 54–5, 201–2 mind defining 6–7 as prediction generator 145, 148–9 theories of 24 see also mental... miracles 298n mirror neurons debate 31 mobile cult images 209–10

INDEX

mode-switching, imagination 64 modernization, knowledge 44 “modes of imagination” 67–9 Moebus, Oliver 50 Mohr, Hubert 52, 54, 117, 241 monastic biographies 219–28 monastic meditation 255, 255, 261–2 Monson, Craig 249 monstrous body 170–3 montage 195–6 Moore, Alan 171–3 moralizing strategies 139–40 Morgan, David 242 mosques 175–83 motifs 17 movement, cosmic relationships 232 moving images 193–203 Ms. Marvel comic 165, 167–9, 173 Müeller, Friedrich Max 44, 156 multidimensionality 48 multidisciplinarity 35–40 multisensory strategies 131, 291–2 Murphy, Bernice M. 170 mu¯rti images 212–13, 215 museal spaces/museums 117–21, 123–5, 290–1 museality 117–25, 137 music 108, 111–13, 116, 247–50, 298n Muslims as comic characters 167–9 gendered performativity 175–83 rituals 54 sound perception 108 see also Islamic culture myths 100–1, 150–1, 167, 189 Nabhan, Gary P. 221 Nahua culture 231 see also Aztec people naming practices, atheism 269 narrative cultures 4, 296n narrative forms 50, 68–9 narrative imagery 106 narrative of secularism 267 narrative strategies 143–53 narrative studies 220 narrative texts 100–1, 155–74 narrativity 144–5 narratorial voice 147–8 nation-building strategies 150 national museums 121–2 National Socialist Party 134, 136

349

“natural sublime” 18–19 nature arbitrary laws 247 bodies and 171 knowledge 232–4 rural gothic scenes 170 Neider, Alvin 122 Nelle, Anja B. 118 Nemeton (Shaw) 187 neuroscience 43 New Materialism 20 Newte, John 249 niches, cult images 208–9 Nieber, Hanna 158–60, 162 nociception 28 Nominalism 246–7 non-anthropomorphic representations 99–100 non-figural representations 209, 215 non-functionality, action-sequences 82 non-iconic images 209 non-iconic objects 102–3 non-knowledge 35, 41–2, 230 non-propositional knowledge 230 non-Western aesthetics 17–18 nondurable material, cult images 210–12 normative body 170–1, 173 norms, Protestantism 241–2, 244 Nuer symbolism 75 number, knowledge 38–9 object of perception 202 objects of worship 101, 106 observational filmmaking 202 odors 219 olfaction 219–28 see also smell Olsson, Tord 100 OM mantra 109 optimization, predictive processing 145 oral narrativity 68–9 orality 115 see also sonality orators 269–71, 271 organized atheism 266–7 Orsi, Robert 241–2 Orthodox traditions 193, 196–202 the other comics 169–70 modernity 44 other-than-human agencies 190–1 “other-than-religious” 263

350

Otto, Rudolf 152 Overbeck, Johannes Adolph 97–8 painting knowledge 229–39 Pakistan case study 175–83 P¯anini 111 ˙ Panofsky, Erwin 16, 185 Parashar, Swati 178–9, 181 Paravel, Véréna 194, 200 Patraka, Susan 120 Peirce, C. S. 81, 100 “Pentagon Cross” museal space 121–2 Pentecostalism 244–5, 247, 250 perception activation of 130–1 aesthetics as 1, 47 artworks 190 cross-modal 25 film 202 interview techniques 49 modalities 9 narrative strategies 148–9, 151 object of 202 senses and 28 sensescapes 137 subject–object relationship 13 see also sensory perception perceptual features, ritual 81 performances museal spaces 120 recitations 110 rituals as 73, 76, 79–80 performative–bodily imagination 68 performative dimension, texts 156–8 performative interpretive acts 238 performativity, gendered 175–83 permanent cult images 209 personal efficacy, imagination 69 persuasion 269–71 phenomenology 18, 34 Philippines case study 280–2 philology 109, 155, 163 philosophical aesthetics 14–15 phonetic codes 111 Pickstock, Catherine 244 piety movements 177 Pilgrim dress 245 Pillow, Kirk 190 Pinault, David 292–3 placebo studies 29 Plate, S. Brent 194, 231 player-generated strategies 129

INDEX

Polanyi, Michael 37 political knowledge 42 political secularism 265 politics gendered performativity 175, 178, 181–2 of imagination 69 polyphony 247–50 popular science 43–4 possession, spirits 278–82 postcolonialism 271–2 posters 211, 212 posthumanism 172–3 power relations 8 PP see predictive processing “practice of mediation” 193 practice-led research 186 pranayama practice 30–1 prayer 89–90, 92–3, 246, 248, 250 precision optimization, predictive processing 145 predestination 247 prediction models, rituals 77–80, 78 prediction theory 7 predictive processing (PP) 143–5, 148–9, 151–2, 296n preservation, museal spaces 118 pretend play 64 priests, cult images 215 “primitive” religions 44 “primitivist” tradition, ritual 74 Pritchard, Duncan 230 processing, cognizing subject 29–30 production of art 186–9 Prohl, Inken 19–20 Promey, Sally 4, 242 propagational atheism 269–71 proprioception 28, 133, 140 prosthetic sensory strategies 136–7 Protestantism 132, 241–51 psychics 88 public domain, Muslim women 182 pu¯ja¯s (rites of worship) 207–8, 213–14, 216–17 purification, fragrance 224 Puritanism 242–7, 248–50 purity 258 Putin, Vladimir 197 Quack, Johannes 268 queer positionality 172–3 Quran 2–3, 157–63, 159 Qureshi, Jawad Anwar 289

INDEX

r¯aga music 112–13 Rappaport, Roy A. 65, 76, 80 Rasheed, Shaireen 4 rationality 33–4 Ravetz, Amanda 202 reading bodily activity 158 comics 166 divination almanacs 238 immersion 149 Realists 246 reality augmented 144, 150–2 Aztec sense of 230–4 reality framework, imagination 63–4 reasoning, cultural-cognitive 5–6 rebirth concept 257 reception of art 189–91 recitation 110–11, 156–7 Reckwitz, Andreas 37 record of field trips 293–4 Red Mosque case study 175–83 reductionism 62–4 reflective aesthetic systems 44 reflective judgment 14 Reformation 241–5, 248–9 relativity 55–6 religion academic study 44–5 definitions 5 interpretation 80–2 as knowledge culture 40–4 as medium 123 recent studies 19–22 as sound 116 theoretical approaches 2 religious aesthetics aesthetics of religion and 21 in popular science 43–4 relativity 55–6 teaching 287 religious behaviors, ritual 74–5 religious experience definition 85 phenomenology 34 religious imagining 64–6 religious medium, moving image as 193 “religious seeing” 291 research fields 49–52 research medium, moving image as 193, 195, 198, 203 research methods 48–9

351

research objectives 47–8 Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg 38 rhetoric 138, 270–1 ritual agency 103–4 ritualization 73, 77 ritualized behavior 73 rituals 73–83 aesthetic ideologies 42 aniconistic objects 99–100, 102, 105–6 Aztecs 232, 234 body techniques 133 imagination 64–5, 67 knowledge 230 mantras 109 Russian-Orthodox 196–202 saint veneration 53, 53–4 sensory perception 51–2 spirit encounters 275, 278–82 teaching religion 288 text acts 156, 158 visualization 87 Roman Catholicism 242 Romanticism 16, 19 rosary prayer performance 30–1 Rosenkranz, Frank 6 Rosenkranz, Karl 253 Roth, Mirko 289 routinization of rituals 80 rural gothic scenes 170 Rushkoff, Douglas 166–7 Russian-Orthodox tradition 193, 196–202 Ryan, Marie-Laure 143, 148 sacralization, monstrous body 173 sacred texts 109–12 sacredness 121 Sáez de Adana, Francisco 172 The Saga of the Swamp Thing 165, 170–3 saint veneration rituals 53, 53–4 ´Sa¯lagra¯ma fossil 104 salvation 247 ´Sama¯hita¯ Bhu¯mih (SamBh) 256–9, 299n sandalwood 222˙ Sanskrit Hinduism 50 S´¯ar˙ngadeva 111–12 Saunders, Ben 167 Schaefer, Donovan O. 21 Schafer, R. Murray 131 Schechner, Richard 288 Schieffelin, Edward 279 Schilbrack, Kevin 230 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 16

352

scholarship, texts 161–3 schooling 162–3 science, secularism 265 scientific knowledge 38, 43–4, 230 Scottish Highlands project 188 scriptures 156–64 SE see Spiritual Exercises second-order concepts 287, 293–4 the secular 263–72 “secular body” 266 secular difference 271–2 secular ideology 264–71 “secular” language, mosques 180 secularism 267 secularization Pakistan 181 Protestantism 242 “seeing” museum objects 291 SEL see Sensory Ethnography Lab Sells, Michel 289 semantic dimension, texts 156, 158, 161–3 semantic strategies 65–6, 76 semblances, nature 232–3 semiotic ideologies 37, 241, 274 semiotic surplus 138 semiotics aniconism 99–100 imagination 62, 69–70 indigenous Aztecs 229–32, 237 sensory strategies 133 Sengjia (Buddhist monk) 223–4 sensation 1–2 codification 49–52 divinity relationship 16 historical conditions 17 indigenous studies 229 modalities 9 museal space 123–5 subject–object relationship 13 sensational religion 19–21 sensation–signification processes 129 senses Aztec knowledge 233 Chinese Buddhism 219–28 hierarchization of 132 imagination interplay 66–7 inner sense cultivation 85, 87, 89–90, 93–5 sonality 107–16 teaching religion 293–4 sensescapes 133, 137–40 sensorial knowledge 5–6 sensorial/sensory turn 107

INDEX

sensory data, predictive processing 145 sensory deprivation 131–2, 132 sensory displays 137–40 “sensory enhancement” 93 Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) 194 sensory knowledge 34, 229–39 sensory overrides 93–4 sensory perception 28 cult images 215–16 embodied cognition and 47, 49, 55 religious objects 291 research fields 51–2 ritual interactions 54 ritualized behavior 73 texts 157–8 theory of 3 universality 55–6 sensory processing disorder (SPD) 296n sensory stimuli, prediction models 78 sensory strategies 129–41 distinctions between 130–3 dynamics 130–3 entanglement of 138–40 types 130 sensual imagination 68 sexual desire 258–9, 259 sexuality 139–40, 172–3 shamans 234 Shaw, Norman 187–9, 191 Sheep Paintings (Goldsworthy) 189–91 Shildrick, Margrit 172 shrines, cult images 209, 216–17, 217 Shustermann, Richard 292 sight, Aztec knowledge 233 signification, sensory strategies 129 signs rituals 80–2 salvation 247 Silk Road artifacts 225, 228 singing 249–50, 298n “singluar ritualizations” 79 situated cognition 23 smell 216, 219–28, 227, 298n Smith, Jonathan Z. 7 social aspects, ritual 81–2 social cognition 30–1 social interaction, inanimate objects 104–5 social production, space 119 socialism 151–2, 265 socialization principle 26 sociocultural perspectives 62–3, 65, 69 Soja, Edward 119

INDEX

somatics 161–3, 253–6 somato-aesthetic experiences 133–6 sonality 107–16, 270 see also sound song 112, 113 sonic absolute 111 sonic perception 50 Sørensen, Jesper 4 Sørensen, Jørgen 101–3 “Soul Encounters” (Chua) 276–8 sound 50–1, 107–9, 116, 131, 139, 289–90 see also sonality soundscapes 51, 200, 289–90 South Asia, rhetoric 270 South India, atheism 266–7 space, social production 119 see also museal spaces “Space Window” museal space 122, 124 SPD see sensory processing disorder special objects, ritual 82–3 “special scent”, death 224 spectatorship 120, 196, 200–1 “spectral turn” 273 spectrum of visual modes 100–2 speech acts, atheism 269–71 Sperber, Dan 76, 80–1 spirits 273–82 Spiritual Exercises (SE) (Ignatius of Loyola) 61–2, 65–70, 93–4, 295n Spiro, Melford 246 spontaneously-occurring smells 219, 223–5, 227 spirituality 85, 185, 188 ´Sra¯vakabhu ¯mi (´SrBh) 256–9, 299n SSZ see Biographies of Thaumaturge Monks Staal, Frits 76, 81 startle responses 130–1 state–religion relationship 265 stereotypes, Muslim women 175 Sternberg, Meir 148 Steup, Matthias 230 Stewart, Pamela 280 stink 225 see also smell storytelling 4, 50, 143–53 storyworlds 4, 50, 147–8, 149 “strategies”, types 130 see also narrative strategies; sensory strategies Strathern, Andrew 280 Stromateis (Clement of Alexandria) 98 students’ bodies, using 292–3 study of religion 285–94

353

stylistics of imagination 66–70 subjectivities historical 25–6 imagination 62 subject–object relationship 13, 16, 18, 190 the sublime 14–15, 18–19, 190 Suhr, Christian 194, 195, 202 suicide 262 ´Su¯nya¯ta 18 superhero comics 167–9 supernatural agents 273–4 supernatural events 150–1 “suspension of disbelief ” 64–6, 151 The Swamp Thing 165, 170–3 symbolic forms, sound 111 symbolic interpretations, ritual 81 symbolic meaning, ritual 74–6 symmetry 39–40, 134, 138 synchronization 135–6, 136 “system of knowledge” 24 talent 85, 89, 91–3 Tantra, mantra gods 113 taste smell distinction 222 temple images 216 Taves, Ann 85, 274–5 Taylor, Charles 242 Taylor, Marc C. 16 teaching aesthetics of religion 285–94 religious aesthetics 287 teaching about religion–teaching religion distinction 285–6 “technologies of imagination” 67–70 teixiptla theory 237 Tellegen Absorption Scale 91–3 temple images 207–10, 210, 213–16 temporary cult images 211–13 text-external strategies 146, 149 text-internal strategies 146–7 texts acts 155–64 aesthetics of religion 50 as artifacts 156–8 Indian traditions 109–12, 113, 114 interpretation methods 114 mediations 193 studying religion 285, 289 see also books; media; narrative texts textual analysis, biographies 219–20 theoaesthetics 16, 19

354

theological aesthetics 15–16 theology 245–7, 264 theoretical approaches, religion 2 theories of mind 24 theory–practice nexus 191 therapeutic disciplines 288 theriomorphic beings 100, 296n “thick description” 49 Tibetan Buddhism 220 Tilley, Christopher 190 time divination almanacs 234–7 perception of 28 Tiwari, Shri O. P. 30 “totemic emblems” 75 touch, temple images 216 training 85, 86–7, 89 trance-states 234 trans-corporeality 171–2 transformations, divine beings 100–2 Trawick, Margaret 269 truth 39–40 Turner, Edith 288 Turner, Victor 75–6, 120 “turns”, cultural studies 5 Tylor, Edward B. 273 the ugly 253–62, 299n unconscious mode, ritual 80–1 the undead 281–2 “unified” meaning, art 190 universality, sensory perception 55–6 unknown non-knowledge 35, 41–2 van Gennep, Arnold 76 Veda, mantras 109–10 Vena, Dan 171–3 verbal imagination 68–9 Verran, Helen 38–9 Verrips, Jojada 193 video installations 197–202, 198, 201 Viladesau, Richard 15–16 village deities 210 virtual reality 149 vision, Hinduism and 109 visual anthropology 193–203 visual behavior, museum visitors 291 visual field, organization of 50 visual imagination 63 visual modes aniconism 97–106 spectrum of 100–2

INDEX

visual perception 215–16, 233 visual strategies, rhetoric 138 visualization 86–7, 91, 135, 254, 256–61, 259 vividness, mental imagery 94–5 Vodou, sensory strategies 140 voice 112, 113, 147–8 Wade, Francis H. 123–4 Waid, Mark 166 Waidacher, Friedrich 118 Waldenfels, Bernhard 6 Warburg, Aby 16–17 Ware, Rudolph 162 Washington National Cathedral 121–2 Watts, James 156–7 Weber, Max 242, 244–5, 247–8 Wegman, Rob 248 Wein, Len 171–3 West Africa, text acts 161–2, 161 Western context aesthetics 13–22 epistemology 24–6 mathematical practices 38–9 Whitehouse, Harvey 67, 251 wilderness 170, 250 Wilke, Annette 50, 117 Willerslev, Rane 194, 195, 202 Wilson, Margret 26 women, performativity 175–83 word drawing 166 world-interpretation/worldview, sound in 111–12 worship of cult images 207–18 objects of 101, 106 “wow” factor 193–4, 198 Wright, Alexa 170 Wright, Joseph 250 written practice–orality relationship 115 written texts 155–64 Wycliff, John 248 X-Men comics 169 Xygalatas, Dimitrij 31 Yelle, Robert 158 yoga exercises 30 Yog¯ac¯ara Buddhism 256–7, 299n Zanzibar 158–9, 159, 162, 278–80 zoomorphism see theriomorphic beings

355

356

357

358