scholarly journals READING THEYYAM AS AN ARCHIVE OF THE SUBALTERN COMMUNITY OF NORTHERN KERALA

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
Divya Menon ◽  
Sreejith D
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Theyyam is a ritual art form exclusive to Northern Kerala, performed by the Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes. It is the socio-religious movements that gave them a platform to put forth their problems and change the attitude and treatment of upper castes towards them. Until then, it was a medium for them to present the trauma and victimhood long endured by their community under casteism. This is well fabricated in various elements surrounding Theyyam, such as Thottam Pattu. Theyyam also projects the kinds of ritual and spiritual practices of their community. So, this research attempts to read Theyyam as an archive of the subaltern community by borrowing the Archive concept defined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay 'The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives.' As the art form is linked with religious beliefs, it has survived over the years, recognising the community's struggles under casteism and their heroic figures. Thus, this research also attempts to have a close reading of each element surrounding it.   

My Reference Is Prejudiced: David Lamelas's Publication

ARTMargins ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Quiles
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The West ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
Written Responses ◽  
Art Form ◽  
West European

This article addresses David Lamelas's 1970 work Publication, arguing that it represents a subtle critique of the internationalization of conceptual art by a recent entrant into the West European milieu. Exhibited at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London after the artist's 1968 relocation from Argentina, Publication consists of thirteen written responses to three statements about the possible use of “language as an Art Form” that were sent by Lamelas to international figures in conceptual art such Daniel Buren, Gilbert and George, Lucy Lippard, and Lawrence Wiener. A close reading of this and others of Lamelas's experiments works leading up to this moment reveals affinities with earlier artistic experiments in Buenos Aires, the artist's original context, that have anything but membership in a preexisting movement or the adoption of an established genre as their goal. Between the years 1965 and 1968, Lamelas was part of a group of artists associated with the Torcuato di Tella Institute and the writer Oscar Masotta, who advocated an analytical and antagonistic “dematerialization,” in which prevailing tendencies were to be systematically examined, voided from within, and superseded. In Buenos Aires, Lamelas experimented with breaking his works into sections as a way of calling attention to given objects of attention—a practice of “signaling” that is also present in Publication. Invariably, these works were positioned in critical relationship to those of his peers, applying Masotta's model to each new milieu. In what follows, I compare select works of Lamelas with his contemporaries in Buenos Aires and abroad between 1964 and 1970, contending that Publication represents one of the first appearances of a specifically Argentine, and highly critical, mode of conceptualism in the international art field.

Conversion and the Idea of the Secret

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Gauri Viswanathan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
African History ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Dynamic View ◽  
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ◽  
The Individual

Gauri Viswanathan, “Conversion and the Idea of the Secret” (pp. 161–186) Obsessed with the notion of the secret in his writings on religion, Jacques Derrida uncannily evokes a predecessor with whom he has rarely, if at all, been compared—the Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This essay argues that Blavatsky’s occult writings set the stage for the kinds of speculations on crypto-conversion, conscience, and responsibility that subsequently engaged Derrida. Like Blavatsky, Derrida saw conversion not as change but as retaining whatever it displaces in the form of a secret, persisting as an enduring reminder of supplanted religious beliefs. While Derrida was more interested in conversion as a form of repression that mutually constitutes the old and the new, Blavatsky held a broader and more dynamic view of conversion-as-repression: in describing Christianity’s battle against the heterogeneous belief-systems it eventually supplanted, she sought to illuminate conversion as a larger process well beyond the individual and involving religious expansion and consolidation. The essay culminates in a close reading of an occult text, W. B. Yeats’s “The Manuscript of ‘Leo Africanus,’” that exemplifies the problematics of crypto-conversion as delineated by Blavatsky and Derrida in their respective ways. “Leo Africanus” stages Yeats’s encounter with a dead spirit alternatively grasped as his anti-self and historical conscience. A breakthrough in understanding allows Yeats to acknowledge an occluded history—his as much as that of his deceased interlocutor—that can only be told in the terms of crypto-conversion, in this instance of a sixteenth-century African slave forcibly converted to Christianity and turned into a native informant of African history and geography.

Measuring Innovation

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-176
Author(s):  
Natalia Lidova
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Form

Pūjā is often perceived as a predominantly Hindu form of veneration of gods, as it is currently the main ritual for almost one billion followers of Hinduism (about 15 per cent of the world’s population), with approximately 800 million of them living in India. It is less known that pūjā is also used as the main ritual in other religious communities, specifically different groups of contemporary Buddhists and Jains, as well as of Sikhs and various India-orientated spiritual practices and religious movements such as ISKCON. This makes pūjā not only a pan-Indian form of worship but the worldwide ritual that crossed the borders of its native country and gained many adepts all over the world. This chapter examines the genesis and development of this religious practice.

‘Por una gentil floresta’: Invention, Discovery and Desire in a Fifteenth-Century Villancico

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-469
Author(s):  
E. MICHAEL GERLI
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Rich Source ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Human Understanding

We persistently fail to appreciate the very status of cancionero poetry as an innovative art form, as literature worthy of serious analysis, and as an intellectual and humanistic pursuit. The villancico ‘Por una gentil floresta’, attributed to both the Marqués de Santillana and Suero de Ribera, is a case in point, a composition that is very well known but grossly underappreciated as a work of art, a cultural commentary, or for its social significance. It exists in multiple incarnations, in both the manuscript and early printed traditions of the cancioneros, attesting to its ample circulation and popularity. While the object of intense philological enquiry regarding issues of authorship, transmission, and possible influence, the numerous studies dedicated to this villancico do not foreclose further discussion of it to achieve greater appreciation of its artistic and human complexity. Close reading illustrates the abundant literary, thematic and cultural possibilities it offers, and allows us to articulate the wealth, intricacy, human understanding and artistic significance of fifteenth-century Castilian courtly verse; possibilities that reach well beyond philology and textual criticism and prove it a rich source for fruitful interpretation that exemplifies the kind of poetry and hermeneutical potential that can be found in the cancioneros.

New Religious Movements

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Abuse ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Shame And Guilt ◽  
Emotion And Affect

New religious movements (NRMs), which are often popularly and pejoratively labeled “cults,” frequently become the sites for a multitude of conflicting emotions; they are cultural lightning rods as much for anger, shame, and guilt as for joy, excitement, and a sense of release and relief. Throughout NRM narratives, however, whether primary sources or secondary, whether affirmative accounts of one's affiliation and conversion or post-affiliation critiques of the group in question, two principal affective aspects emerge: emotional fulfillment and emotional abuse. As a heuristic framework to consider these more specific aspects of emotion in NRMs, this article uses the trajectory of participation suggested by David Bromley's affiliation-disaffiliation model. In particular, it examines the roles played by emotion and affect in the recruitment processes of different groups, focusing on affective enticement, affective coercion, and affective bonding. It also explores the link between affect and religious practices, the confirmation of religious beliefs, disaffiliation, and post-affiliation.

Eating for Unity: Vegetarianism in the Early Unity School of Christianity

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
jeremy rapport
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Thought ◽  
City Area ◽  
Integral Component

This essay examines the role of vegetarianism during the formative period of the Unity School of Christianity (1895-1938). Unity, based in the Kansas City area, taught that vegetarianism was an integral component of regenerating the body. Scholars studying the New Thought movement have only recently begun to recognize the body's role in salvation in these religious movements. By examining the interaction between the practice of vegetarianism and Unity's belief that the body must be regenerated, I show both how vegetarianism was integral to defining and putting into practice Unity's religious beliefs and how it helped to develop religious identity by marking the behavioral boundaries of a Unity member.

scholarly journals Popularity of India’s Regional Comic Strips: A Study of the Stylistics of Narayan Debnath’s works

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rima Namhata ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Digital Natives ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Habit ◽  
Visual Medium ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Generation Z ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Indian Academia

Though celebrated amongst the western literati and the intelligentsia thereof, Comic strips, especially the Indian produce with regional flavours in them, are seemingly juxtaposed, in the acceptance of their stylistic essence, if placed next to their western counterparts. This is also the reason why they have been infamously disregarded in the Indian academia. This paper proposes to study the stylistics aspect of the comic strips from Bengal especially the ones written by Shri Narayan Debnath, and the coming into vogue of this printed visual medium. This article aims to identify the uniqueness and the formal aspects of the stylistics of Indian Comic tradition from Bengal. Additionally, it aims to leaf through the popularity markers through Debnath’s stylistics aspect of the three comic strips that have kept the imagination of his audience alive for more than five decades. He successfully addressed the first objective through a systematic literary review with inclusion and exclusion set as a benchmark. The identification of the stylistics through close reading of the texts along with their systematic review of secondary literature, formed the basics of the second objective. Particularly those stylistics were considered which were typical of their prominence and were integral across the literature and the texts. Furthermore, a matrix was also successfully designed to map the identified stylistics. A couple of implications portray that the said interpretation may help the Post-Millennials or the Generation Z to examine and consider the sublimity and allegiance of reading, and shape the imagination prowess of young minds, apply their intellectual faculty and develop a comic disposition in life. Development of creativity in any narrative style and development of conversational mechanisms are often found to be an added bonus. However, making today’s generation read this form of narrative and chisel their fertile imagination remains a challenge for the digital-natives. There is no doubt however, that this age-old art form can be tremendously advantageous as an academic endeavour and become an integral part of children’s systematic reading habit.

The Clockmaker’s Cosmos

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-152
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Protestant Books

On one level confessional distinction began to define material culture in the first decades of the seventeenth century, but a microhistorical approach reveals the persistence of plural devotional practices and beliefs. A close reading of the 1635 inventory of a court clockmaker, Kúndrat Šteffenaúr, reveals the complex intersections of confessions in Central Europe. It indicates an environment in which a wide range of devotional options were available. Analysis of Kúndrat’s possessions as individual items, and how they were kept together, shows the need to think across and beyond confessional boundaries of Protestant versus Catholic in order to understand lay religious beliefs and practices at this historical moment of confessional rupture. This chapter examines the inventory from two perspectives: first, it surveys the confessional spectrum of objects—Protestant books, Catholic devotional jewellery, clocks, and charms—contextualizing them and exploring why they may have come into Kúndrat’s possession; second, it offers an interpretation of the objects as items that formed Kúndrat’s individual cosmos, as ‘fragmented religion’.

George Fox and Some Theories of Innovation in Religion

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Claire Disbrey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
George Fox

The histories of religions are notable for stories of innovators – people who feel compelled to rebel against the religious beliefs and practices of their time, who come up with novel religious ideas, and, whether intentionally or not, start new religious movements. Theories about the nature of religion need to give an account of religious innovation that accommodates these stories, and most claim that they do, even if only in retrospect. The baffling discovery is that the same historical characters are used to exemplify quite incompatible theories of innovation.

Environmental aspects of Religious Beliefs and Ritual Practices of the rural Population of Siberia (the 1920s. - Beginning of XXI Century) (Экологические аспекты религиозных воззрений и обрядовых практик сельского населения Сибири (1920-е гг. - начало xxi в.)

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-138
Author(s):  
Galina Lyubimova
Keyword(s):  
Rural Population ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Environmental Discourse ◽  
Environmental Aspects ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Ritual Practices

Radical changes in the structure of rural population of Siberia became the result of transformation of peasant economic and ecological traditions in the xx century. Modern villagers, mainly engaged in the problems of survival, perceive environmental problems as something unrelated to them. However, the valuable relation to the natural environment is now a subject of reflection not only in traditional for Siberia Christian denominations, but also in the new religious movements. Being a response to the ecological utilitarianism which prevailed in the policies of the Soviet state since the 1930s, as well as to present-day worsening environmental problems, the mainstreaming environmental discourse in religious life of rural population is currently taking place. Based on the author’s field materials, archival documents and local periodicals the paper discusses the environmental aspects of religious beliefs and ritual practices of different groups of rural population of Siberia in Soviet and post-Soviet period.

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