Pub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2022.2045808
Pnina Arad
Abstract Three installations of the “Stations of the Cross,” established as stational urban exhibitions across London, Washington, D.C., and New York in 2016, 2017, and 2018 (respectively), are the focus of this article, which examines the significance of the Via Dolorosa in Western culture and the role that visual media embodying this sacred topography have played in pre-modern and contemporary Western societies. It studies the contemporary installations in relation to sixteenth-century trend of superimposing the Via Dolorosa upon Western towns, and shows that the contemporary installations used the paradigm of the fourteen stations to contextualize themes that are entirely unrelated to Jerusalem or the Gospels but are highly significant within twenty-first-century Western cultural discourse. It discusses the way in which these installations bridged the gap between religious and secular worldviews in a post-secular age, studying them as a form of post-secular art.
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Pub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2022.2048602
Jamie L. Brummitt
Abstract This essay examines how the American Civil War (1861–1865) transformed the material nature of the Bible such that some copies did not operate in the ways Anglo-Americans expected them to work as the inspired words of God. According to U.S. law, Bibles shipped to the Confederate States were contraband: illegal objects that should be confiscated before reaching enemy hands. Classifying Bibles as contraband led to the widespread notion that Bibles assumed national identities in their work for God. Protestants marked and printed Bibles as war objects that worked specifically for (or against) the Confederate States or the United States. They deployed these Bibles against other Protestants as powerful weapons of God. According to some, Bibles of enemy Protestants operated as immoral books that threatened to undermine God, God’s people, and the military victory of God’s favored nation. Thus, Bibles realized multiple and, sometimes, competing material natures. Confederate and Union Protestants put Bibles to work as powerful objects that mediated God’s presence on earth, materialized debates over slavery, killed enemies, and stopped bullets. Some Bibles functioned simultaneously as God’s Word, commodities, contraband, weapons, shields, and talismans. Each side attempted to hinder the progress and agency of enemy Bibles by capturing volumes as prisoners of war, stealing copies as souvenirs, and destroying books as powerful enemy weapons. The harsh and violent realities of the Civil War initiated a crisis in the material nature of Bibles such that some copies of the Good Book transformed into the Bad Book.
{"title":"“How Dare Men Mix up the Bible so with Their Own Bad Passions”: When the Good Book Became the Bad Book in the American Civil War","authors":"Jamie L. Brummitt","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2022.2048602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2022.2048602","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines how the American Civil War (1861–1865) transformed the material nature of the Bible such that some copies did not operate in the ways Anglo-Americans expected them to work as the inspired words of God. According to U.S. law, Bibles shipped to the Confederate States were contraband: illegal objects that should be confiscated before reaching enemy hands. Classifying Bibles as contraband led to the widespread notion that Bibles assumed national identities in their work for God. Protestants marked and printed Bibles as war objects that worked specifically for (or against) the Confederate States or the United States. They deployed these Bibles against other Protestants as powerful weapons of God. According to some, Bibles of enemy Protestants operated as immoral books that threatened to undermine God, God’s people, and the military victory of God’s favored nation. Thus, Bibles realized multiple and, sometimes, competing material natures. Confederate and Union Protestants put Bibles to work as powerful objects that mediated God’s presence on earth, materialized debates over slavery, killed enemies, and stopped bullets. Some Bibles functioned simultaneously as God’s Word, commodities, contraband, weapons, shields, and talismans. Each side attempted to hinder the progress and agency of enemy Bibles by capturing volumes as prisoners of war, stealing copies as souvenirs, and destroying books as powerful enemy weapons. The harsh and violent realities of the Civil War initiated a crisis in the material nature of Bibles such that some copies of the Good Book transformed into the Bad Book.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"129 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46588275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015928
Devaka Premawardhana
Abstract This response to the special issue synthesizes its contributions into an argument for disaggregating mobility and modernity. Indigenous modes of physical and religious mobility put the lie to conventional constructions of indigenous peoples, including academic constructions of indigenous religions, as stuck in place and stuck in time. This special issue offers a profound critique of religious studies and of all hegemonic paradigms that associate civilization with sedentarization, movement with domination, reality with rationality, and truth with transcendence.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2018849
Graham Harvey
Abstract Drawing on research at two Indigenous festivals – Riddu Riđđu and the ORIGINS Festival of First Nations – this article considers ways in which Indigenous performers present their belonging to (not in) places. They are globally mobile but affirm reciprocal responsibilities with homelands. These two festivals bring together participants from across the world and provide an opportunity to consider further the dynamics of trans-Indigenous creativity. Enthused by performers at these festivals, and inspired by the critical reflections of Chadwick Allen (2012) and Robert Jahnke (2006), I reflect on some of the ways in which Indigenous performers – musicians, artists, artisans, authors, film-producers, poets and others – entertain, educate, and inspire their audiences. The following sections introduce the two festivals and they expand on Allen and Jahnke’s key terms. A selected performance at each of the festivals will then be used to exemplify and highlight the mobility of Indigenous people, traditions, and activities.
{"title":"Belonging to (Not “in”) Land as Performed at Indigenous Cultural Events","authors":"Graham Harvey","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2018849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2018849","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on research at two Indigenous festivals – Riddu Riđđu and the ORIGINS Festival of First Nations – this article considers ways in which Indigenous performers present their belonging to (not in) places. They are globally mobile but affirm reciprocal responsibilities with homelands. These two festivals bring together participants from across the world and provide an opportunity to consider further the dynamics of trans-Indigenous creativity. Enthused by performers at these festivals, and inspired by the critical reflections of Chadwick Allen (2012) and Robert Jahnke (2006), I reflect on some of the ways in which Indigenous performers – musicians, artists, artisans, authors, film-producers, poets and others – entertain, educate, and inspire their audiences. The following sections introduce the two festivals and they expand on Allen and Jahnke’s key terms. A selected performance at each of the festivals will then be used to exemplify and highlight the mobility of Indigenous people, traditions, and activities.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"16 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42211306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015931
James S. Bielo
119 what Modern terms “evangelical secularism.” Apocalyptic Geographies cites Modern’s Secularism in Antebellum America when examining Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (2011, 203, n. 57), but does not engage with the concept of “evangelical secularism” as a framework or Modern as a significant interlocuter. Deeper engagement with religious studies scholars would have offered more nuanced ways of theorizing the American landscape as an apocalyptic, evangelical mediascape entangled in secularism and the Enlightenment.
{"title":"The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris.","authors":"James S. Bielo","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015931","url":null,"abstract":"119 what Modern terms “evangelical secularism.” Apocalyptic Geographies cites Modern’s Secularism in Antebellum America when examining Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (2011, 203, n. 57), but does not engage with the concept of “evangelical secularism” as a framework or Modern as a significant interlocuter. Deeper engagement with religious studies scholars would have offered more nuanced ways of theorizing the American landscape as an apocalyptic, evangelical mediascape entangled in secularism and the Enlightenment.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"119 - 121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46207382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015925
Seth Schermerhorn
Abstract Through exploring the physicality of movement in general and walking in particular—while also attending to O’odham discourses on these movements—this article arrives at a general, albeit a contested and historically contingent, sketch of an O’odham ideology of walking (and dancing, and perhaps movement in general) as political discourse. More broadly, students of ideology, including religious studies scholars who have historically neglected practice in their fixation on texts, would do well to more carefully attend to movement itself, as well as discourses on movement, in order to more effectively observe, analyze, and theorize ideology at work in both discourse and practice. A focus on both the politics and the poetics of “walking” and what it means “to be a good walker” may also be useful for scholars interested in articulating indigenous (and also non-indigenous) theories of movement that go beyond abstract reifications of “pilgrimage.”
{"title":"The Politics and Poetics of O’odham Categories of Movement: Movement in Discourse and Practice","authors":"Seth Schermerhorn","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015925","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Through exploring the physicality of movement in general and walking in particular—while also attending to O’odham discourses on these movements—this article arrives at a general, albeit a contested and historically contingent, sketch of an O’odham ideology of walking (and dancing, and perhaps movement in general) as political discourse. More broadly, students of ideology, including religious studies scholars who have historically neglected practice in their fixation on texts, would do well to more carefully attend to movement itself, as well as discourses on movement, in order to more effectively observe, analyze, and theorize ideology at work in both discourse and practice. A focus on both the politics and the poetics of “walking” and what it means “to be a good walker” may also be useful for scholars interested in articulating indigenous (and also non-indigenous) theories of movement that go beyond abstract reifications of “pilgrimage.”","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"61 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42191189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015924
D. Walsh
Abstract Since time immemorial, Indigenous Dene Peoples have traveled ancestral routes throughout what is currently northern Canada and interior Alaska. Tłįchǫ Dene have continued to cultivate an identity as travelers throughout a history of ecological change and the settler ideology of Canadian colonialism. In this article, I aim to contribute to scholarship on Tłįchǫ travel and history by focusing on an additional dimension of movement: materiality. I have previously written about Tłįchǫ ecological ontologies relating to Indigenous conceptions of personhood in a more-than-human-world. In this article I apply my understanding of Tłįchǫ ontologies to the material dimensions of movement on the land, past and present, revealing an ontological, ecological, and spiritual continuity despite—although adapted in response to—settler-colonialism and climate change.
{"title":"Indigenous Movement, Settler Colonialism: A History of Tlicho Dene Continuity through Travel","authors":"D. Walsh","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015924","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since time immemorial, Indigenous Dene Peoples have traveled ancestral routes throughout what is currently northern Canada and interior Alaska. Tłįchǫ Dene have continued to cultivate an identity as travelers throughout a history of ecological change and the settler ideology of Canadian colonialism. In this article, I aim to contribute to scholarship on Tłįchǫ travel and history by focusing on an additional dimension of movement: materiality. I have previously written about Tłįchǫ ecological ontologies relating to Indigenous conceptions of personhood in a more-than-human-world. In this article I apply my understanding of Tłįchǫ ontologies to the material dimensions of movement on the land, past and present, revealing an ontological, ecological, and spiritual continuity despite—although adapted in response to—settler-colonialism and climate change.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"46 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45663053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015930
Jamie L. Brummitt
117 strate how Tibetan texts become more sacred through ritualised interactions. The chapter by Yohan Yoo examines how Neo-Confucian scholars from the twelfth and sixteenth centuries promoted sensory readings of scriptures to facilitate religious experiences ‘in which they could see the sages and hear their voices’ (162). Yoo shows that the senses were inherent to the practice of reading Confucian scriptures, and highlights the need for further study in this area. The final chapter of the collection, by James W. Watts, brings together the study of these different ritualistic traditions. Watts uses Charles Pierce’s Sign Theory to explore the indexical relationship between sacred books and their users. In addition, he draws on Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual to demonstrate that holding or touching sacred scriptures ‘indexes’ a person’s religious identity. Watts also examines how such veneration can ‘manifest itself in a refusal to touch scripture’ (178), such as the handing of the Torah in antiquity and traditional Jewish practices. He concludes his chapter with an investigation of the representations of scribes, professors, and deities holding books, and the observation that touching and holding sacred books enables people to ‘feel like they can touch divinity’ (183). The collection of essays demonstrates the intrinsic relationship between the senses and sacred texts, highlighting the importance for further study in this area. Sensing Sacred Texts provides a fascinating array of studies from a wide range of religious traditions and historical periods. The broad contributions will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of fields, especially those of religion, materiality, art history, as well as ritual and performative studies.
117展示了藏文如何通过仪式化的互动变得更加神圣。Yohan Yoo撰写的这一章研究了12世纪和16世纪的新儒家学者如何促进对经文的感官阅读，以促进宗教体验，“他们可以看到圣人并听到他们的声音”(162)。他指出，感官是阅读儒家经文的固有习惯，并强调了在这一领域进行进一步研究的必要性。詹姆斯·w·沃茨(James W. Watts)撰写的文集的最后一章，汇集了对这些不同仪式传统的研究。瓦茨使用查尔斯·皮尔斯的符号理论来探索圣书和他们的用户之间的索引关系。此外，他还借鉴了罗伊·拉帕波特(Roy Rappaport)的仪式理论来证明，持有或触摸神圣的经文“表明”了一个人的宗教身份。瓦茨还研究了这种崇敬如何“表现为拒绝触摸经文”(178)，比如古代的托拉和传统的犹太习俗。在这一章的结尾，他调查了文士、教授和神拿着书的表现，并观察到触摸和拿着圣书可以让人们“感觉他们可以触摸到神”(183)。论文集论证了感官与神圣文本之间的内在联系，强调了这一领域进一步研究的重要性。感应神圣文本提供了一个迷人的研究阵列从广泛的宗教传统和历史时期。这些广泛的贡献将引起各个领域的学者的兴趣，特别是那些宗教、物质性、艺术史以及仪式和表演研究的学者。
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Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015932
Yuhong Han
Along with the analysis of religious publicity, I want to highlight two other dimensions of Oliphant’s work that material religion scholars across disciplines will find fruitful. First, four Chapters 3–6 respectively take up the Collège’s initial four art exhibitions. While the voices of artists and Collège personnel are integrated, these chapters are primarily focused on visitors’ receptions of the exhibits. Oliphant’s fieldwork entailed her volunteering as a docent for the exhibitions, which meant she was uniquely positioned to constantly interact with visitors and observe their interactions with the art and the building’s architecture. Material religion studies of tourism, pilgrimage, and museums always confront the question of how best to account for visitors’ engagements with place and onsite materialities. Oliphant’s methodology provides a useful model. Her access to visitors as a docent and patterned documentation of visitor practices figure centrally in the book’s argument. She learned that despite the Collège’s intentions toward inclusivity, programming ultimately catered to an elite demographic of Parisians who often appear more interested in re-creating Catholicism’s privileged banality than taking up artists’ challenges to critically reflect on identity, inequality, and exclusion. A second dimension closely observed by Oliphant is the treatment of the Collège building as an actor. New materialist theories mark a significant development among material religion scholars, attuning us to the agentive capacities of non-human entities and assemblages of networked relationships. Throughout the book, we encounter multiple kinds of actors who invest the historic monastic space with notable force of being. Founders, docents, artists, and visitors each celebrate the building as a powerful entity, as something intrinsically enchanting and valuable. Oliphant moves beyond the fact of these commitments to ask how such claims of material agency buttress the broader exclusionary politics being reproduced by the Collège. In her analysis, when people highlight the building as an agentive force they reflect and re-create a problematic insistence on valorizing the medieval past over and against France’s multicultural present. Studies of religious publicity have deservingly become a primary area of inquiry within and beyond the field of material religion. As religious actors, traditions, and materialities enter and occupy public life, we are continually reminded of why religion is an immense cultural force and why the critical study of religion is necessary for understanding matters of belonging, sociality, power, and change. The Privilege of Being Banal makes a distinctive contribution to this comparative scholarship, posing pressing questions about how the social power of religion operates and how religious heritage is negotiated. The positive imprint of Oliphant’s book will reach far beyond anthropologies of western Europe, secularism, and Catholicism,
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