Description
Book SynopsisThis concluding volume of the Future of the Religious Past series approaches contemporary religion through the lens of practice: the rituals, performances, devotions, and everyday acts through which humans do religion. In spite of predictions about the inevitability of secularism, religion in the twenty-first century remains stubbornly resilient, and Gestures: The Study of Religion as Practice offers a new vantage point from which to see the religious as a category shaped and reshaped by modernity and to encounter religion not as something bounded by doctrines and sacred texts but as lived experience. Twenty-four globally based scholars look to practice to examine such diverse phenomena as human rights, memory, martyrdom, dress and fashion, colonial legacies, blasphemy, mass political action, and the future of secularism.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations | xiii
List of Credits | xv
Preface | xvii
Introduction: Practice Turns in the Study of Religion
MICHIEL LEEZENBERG | 1
I . RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY
1. Gesturing Toward Sacrifice: Aping the Scapegoat and Monkeying Around with the Lamb
YVONNE SHERWOOD | 47
2. Unpacking “Performance”: Felicity Conditions, Efficacy, and Indexicals in Islamic Actions
JOHN R. BOWEN | 106
3. “Thou Shalt Not Freeze-Frame”: How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate
BRUNO LATOUR | 119
4. Dorsal Monuments: Messiaen, Sellars, and Saint Francis
SANDER VAN MAAS | 141
II . EMBODIMENT AND MATERIALI TY
5. From Kama to Karma: The Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India
WENDY DONIGER | 173
6. Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street
JUDITH BUTLER | 194
7. Divine Impersonations: Transgressive Gestures in Hindu Devotion
ROKUS DE GROOT | 215
8. Islamic Dress and Fashion: A Religious and a Sartorial Practice Revisited
ANNELIES MOORS | 235
9. On Spirit Writing: Materialities of Language and the Religious Work of Transduction
WEBB KEANE | 249
III . EVERYDAY RELIGION
10. The Quotidian Turn: Interpretive Categories and Scholarly Trajectories
THOMAS A. TWEED | 279
11. Rhythms of Roots: Identity Politics in Religious Dance Processions in Bolivia
SANNE DERKS, CATRIEN NOTERMANS, AND WILLY JANSEN | 303
12. State Rituals in Turkey: Commemorating the Gazi and Kubilay the Martyr
UMUT AZAK | 322
13. Second Thoughts About the Anthropology of Islam
SAMULI SCHIELKE | 348
IV. TRANSGRESSIVE ACTS: HERESY AND BLASPHEMY
14. Eventual Blasphemies: Setting the Offensive Work of Art in Time
S. BRENT PLATE | 375
15. The Political Gesture of “Blasphemous” Art: Facing Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer
ANNE-MARIE KORTE | 391
16. On Silencing and Public Debates about Religiously Offensive Acts
CHRISTOPH BAUMGARTNER | 417
17. Offending Muslims: Provocation, Blasphemy, and Public Debate in the Netherlands
MARTIJN DE KONING | 445
V. VIOLENT RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES: SACRIFICE AND MARTYRDOM
18. Sacrifice and the Problem of Beginning: Meditations from Sakalava Mythopraxis
MICHAEL LAMBEK | 475
19. The Mass and the Theater: Othello and Sacrifice
REGINA M. SCHWARTZ | 502
20. Martyrdom, Religion, and Nation in Kurdish Literature
MARIWAN KANIE | 524
21. Suicide Terrorism and the Modern Nation-State: Antiliberal Protest or Biopolitical Performance?
MICHIEL LEEZENBERG | 546
VI . SECULARISM AND POSTSECULARISM
22. Good Religion, Bad Religion: Beyond the Secularity-Religion and Secularity-Piety Binaries
YOLANDE JANSEN | 579
23. Human Rights, Muslim Communities, and the Unintentional Secularization of Canada
ALI HASSAN ZAIDI | 605
24. The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism
RAJEEV BHARGAVA | 623
List of Contributors | 651
Index | 657
