Different affects? Intercepting orientalism through the affective encounters and ritualised mediations of a Shin Buddhist chanting tradition

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent ethnomusicological research concerning affect has mostly favoured contexts with lively and flexible performance standards at the expense of traditions that emphasise strict restraint and conformity to prescriptions. This gap in understanding risks erecting a new orientalism, and so this study aims to prevent such a possibility by demonstrating how a ‘restrained’ performance tradition does indeed affect. The forms and arrangements of mediators are highlighted as critical to producing the uniqueness of affective experiences, and subsequently, a more diversified approach to studying affect is proposed by introducing and delineating the term ‘shades of affective experience’.