scholarly journals Theorizing the (Un)Sounded in Sikhī: Anhad, Sabad, and Kīrtan

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1007
Author(s):  
Inderjit N. Kaur
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ethical Development ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Faith Traditions ◽  
Central Purpose ◽  
Ethical Virtues

Listening to sabad kīrtan (sung scriptural verse) is a core, everyday, widespread, and loved worship practice of Sikhs around the globe. Thus, it would be fair to state that sounding is central to Sikh worship. Indeed, the Sikh scripture considers kīrtan to be an eminent mode of devotion. Yet, the ultimate aim of this sonic practice is to sense the “unsounded” vibration—anhad—and thereby the divine and divine ethical virtues. Based on a close reading of Sikh sacred texts and ethnographic research, and drawing on the analytic of transduction, the paper explicates the embodied vibratory dimensions of the (unsounded) anhad and (sounded) sabad kīrtan. It argues that the central purpose of the Sikh (un)sounding perceptual practice is embodied ethical attunement for an unmediated experience of the divine and divine ethical virtues, and thereby the development of an ethical life. At the intersection of music, sound, religious, and philosophical studies, the analysis reveals the centrality of the body in worship and ethical development, and contributes to interdisciplinary conversations on sensory epistemologies in faith traditions.

People of the book, women of the body

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Raucher
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Advice Books ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

Jews have often been referred to as ‘People of the book.’ This is because books, specifically those that contain rabbinic legal discourse, are understood to be authoritative guides for Jewish life, and those who have achieved mastery in the content of the books are considered authorities. Although ‘people of the book’ is often used to refer to all Jews, book culture has been almost entirely constructed by men, particularly among ultra-Orthodox Jews. This article offers a different framework, one which sees women’s religious authority growing out of embodied experiences. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) women challenge the dominant paradigm for religious authority by insisting that their pregnant bodies replace books and rabbis. While a woman’s body might be seen as an impediment to her religious authority, I argue that women become capable of exercising religious authority through their embodied experiences of bearing children. During my two years of ethnographic research with Haredi women in Jerusalem, I found that after giving birth to two or three children, Haredi women felt authorized to make decisions about their pregnancies without consulting a rabbi. After a woman has two or three children, she develops what I refer to as ‘reproductive literacy,’ meaning she knows how to use her embodied reproductive experiences as knowledge, expertise, and thus authority over reproduction. Through a close reading of pregnancy advice books and an analysis of how Haredi women use these books, I show that how Haredi women embody authority to make decisions about the maintenance and continuation of Haredi life. 

Contesting Aristotle: Science, Theology and the Resurrection of the Body in Methodius of Olympus’ De Resurrectione and the Dialogue of Adamantius

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Dawn LaValle Norman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Entire Text

Abstract The contest over the resurrection of the body used the scientific authority of Aristotle as ammunition on both sides. Past scholars have read Methodius of Olympus as displaying an anti-Aristotelian bias. In contrast, through close reading of the entire text with attention to characterization and development of argument, I prove that Methodius of Olympus’ dialogue the De Resurrectione utilizes Aristotelian biology as a morally neutral tool. To put this into higher relief, I compare Methodius’ dialogue with the anonymous Dialogue of Adamantius, a text directly dependent upon the Methodius’ De Resurrectione, but which rejects arguments based on scientific reasoning. Reading Methodius’ De Resurrectione with greater attention to the whole and putting it in the context of its nearest parallel text retells the traditional story of early Christian resistance to Aristotle. Methodius of Olympus’ characters, although they view scientific knowledge as subordinate to philosophy, see it as neutral in and of itself.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

scholarly journals “Celebration of the Body”: Marshall McLuhan and the Sensory Conceptualism of N.E. Thing Co. Ltd.

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Lauder
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Art ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
Artist's Book ◽  
Livre D'artiste

Through a close reading of the 1976 artist’s book and exhibition catalogue “Celebration of the Body,” the N.E. Thing Co. Ltd.’s pioneering representations of the body’s “informationalization” are situated within the conceptual company’s creative reworking of Marshall McLuhan’s sensory media theories. In turn, McLuhan’s thought is located within a genealogy of physiological aesthetics that troubles conventional narratives of Conceptual art as a movement defined by its engagement with theories of cognition, language, and systems. Friedrich Kittler’s analysis of modernism as reflecting the decomposition of the body under a regime of psychophysical experimentation provides the framework for this article’s re-evaluation of the Toronto School theorist and his influence on the foundational Vancouver-based “critical company.”En utilisant une lecture attentive du livre d’artiste et catalogue d’exposition « Celebration of the Body », 1979, les représentations du corps numérisé de N.E. Thing Co. sont encadrées dans le remaniement créatif des théories médiatique de Marshall McLuhan entreprit par la compagnie.  À leurs tours, les pensées de McLuhan sont placées dans une généalogie d’esthétique physiologique qui dérange les récits conventionnels de l’art conceptuel comme étant un mouvement défini par son engagement avec les théories de la cognition et du langage. L’analyse de Friedrich Kittler de modernisme comme réflexion de la décomposition du corps effectuée par des expériences psychophysique fournit le cadre pour cette réévaluation du théoricien de l’École de Toronto et son impact sur la « compagnie critique » fondatrice de Vancouver.

scholarly journals Psychophysical Approaches and Practices in India: Embodying Processes and States of ‘Being–Doing’

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip B. Zarrilli
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Artistic Director ◽  
Asian Martial Arts ◽  
Yoga Practitioners

This essay articulates a South Asian understanding of embodied psychophysical practices and processes with a specific focus on Kerala, India. In addition to consulting relevant Indian texts and contemporary scholarly accounts, it is based upon extensive ethnographic research and practice conducted with actors, dancers, yoga practitioners, and martial artists in Kerala between 1976 and 2003. During 2003 the author conducted extensive interviews with kutiyattam and kathakali actors about how they understand, talk about, and teach acting within their lineages. Phillip Zarrilli is Artistic Director of The Llanarth Group, and is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical processes using Asian martial arts and yoga. He lived in Kerala, India, for seven years between 1976 and 1989 while training in kalarippayattu and kathakali dance-drama. His books include Psychophysical Acting: an Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski, Kathakali Dance-Drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play, and When the Body Becomes All Eyes. He is Professor of Performance Practice at Exeter University.

‘Till the whisper…You know…When you can't hear the words’: Narrated Memory and the ‘Fragmented’ Body in Samuel Beckett's Late Drama

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Michelle Charalambous
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
The Body ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Works

Samuel Beckett's interest in the experience of memory and the central role the body plays in the re-experience of the past has been most evident since the time he composed Krapp's Last Tape (1958), one of his most famous memory plays where the body can actually ‘touch’ its voice of memory. In this context, the present article provides a close reading of two of Beckett's late works for the theatre, namely That Time (1976) and Ohio Impromptu (1981), where the author once again addresses the relationship between the body and memory. Unlike his earlier drama, however, in That Time and Ohio Impromptu Beckett creates a ‘distance’, as it were, between memory and the body on stage by presenting the former as a narrative and by reducing the latter to an isolated part or by restricting it to limited movements. Looking closely at this ‘distance’ in these late plays, the article underlines that the body does not lose its authority or remains passive in its re-experience of the past. Rather – the article argues – the body essentially plays a determining role in these stripped-down forms as is shown in its ability to ‘interrupt’ and somatically punctuate the fixity of the narrative form memory takes in these works.

Pluralistic Tendencies in Healing Abantu Illness in the Contemporary South Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 986-1005
Author(s):  
Kholekile Hazel Ngqila
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Traditional Healers ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Biomedical Practitioners ◽  
Social Causes

Ukuhanjwa illness was used as an example to understanding abantu illnesses. With attributional theory ukuhanjwa illness is attributed to spiritual and social causes rather than biomedical causes, whereby causal link is socially constructed between ukuhanjwa illness and entry into the body by familiars. Issues explored included conceptualisation of ukuhanjwa illness. The focus of the chapter is on the reasons for continued pluralistic tendencies in healing regardless of the expectation by the West that people should be focusing on the use of the fast evolving biomedical healing methods. The ethnographic study took place among the Southern Nguni people of OR Tambo District Municipality (ORTDM) in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Data was collected using qualitative and ethnographic research methods amongst a sample group of 50 participants. The sample was composed of traditional healers, mothers of children who have experienced ukuhanjwa illness, elderly people (male and female), biomedical practitioners and nurses.

scholarly journals Stigmatisation of Indigenous Knowledge: The Case of Night-running in Western Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-392
Author(s):  
Tom Kwanya
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Western Kenya ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Geographic Setting ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Evil People

Abstract Night-runners are perceived as faceless, evil people who run naked in the darkness, thereby wreaking havoc in otherwise peaceful rural villages. This paper investigates the origins of night-running, the mysteries associated with it, the benefits and harms of night-running, and the impact of indigenous knowledge (IK) stigmatisation on this practice. Indigenous knowledge is the body of unique beliefs, attitudes, skills, and practices possessed by communities in a specific geographic setting. In spite of its potential value, scholars point out that indigenous knowledge has been neglected, vindicated, stigmatised, legalised, and suppressed among the majority of the world’s communities due to ignorance and arrogance. Night-running is one of the indigenous practices in Western Kenya that has been stigmatised. Given this, little is actually known about night-running. This study was designed as an ethnographic research through which the views of the residents of Homa Bay County on night-running were investigated, collated, and interpreted as a means of demystifying this indigenous practice. The findings of the study indicate that night-running is intrinsically a harmless practice. However, evil persons such as witches sometimes masquerade as night-runners and can hurt or kill people.

In Excess: The Body and the Habit of Sexual Difference

Hypatia ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalyn Diprose
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Social Unity

Through a re-reading of Antigone, I offer a critique of Hegel's use of the story to illustrate the unity which emerges from the representation of sexual difference in ethical life. Using Hegel's own account of habits, as the mechanism by which the body becomes a sign of the self, I argue that the pretense of social unity assumes the proper construction and representation of one body only. This critique is brought to bear upon contemporary moves towards a post-Hegelian ethics of difference.

Stranger and stranger: creating theory through ethnographic distance and authority

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Alan Fine ◽  
Tim Hallett
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Occupational Socialization ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Socialization Processes ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
The Stranger

Purpose – Classical ethnographic research begins with the recognition that the observer starts as a stranger to the group being studied, a recognition as evident in the analysis of formal organizations as of gangs or tribes. From this position of difference the researcher must learn the themes and dynamics of a setting of otherness. The researcher begins as an outsider, a stance that creates initial challenges, yet permits the transmittal of novel information to external audiences. This is particularly true while studying organizational worlds that explicitly focus on occupational socialization. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper relies on the close reading and analysis of three major ethnographies of occupational socialization. Findings – The reality that (many) ethnographers begin as strangers permits them to understand socialization processes while observing how group cultures change. The authors defines this as the “stranger paradigm.” This otherness is joined by the perspective of the scholar's discipline and awareness of comparable research that permits understanding of forces that are unrecognized by participants, but which can be profitably scrutinized by disciplinary colleagues within their own occupational worlds. The authors term this “ethnographic authority.” Originality value – To support the claim that distance and authority support the formulation of theoretical insights, the paper examines organizational ethnographies that examine the occupational socialization of doctors, morticians, and ministers.

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