Description
Book SynopsisAsks how the sensibilities of religious experience, which many people call spirituality, shape people's performance. By analysing performances of spirituality and what people experience as “spirit,” this book adds a new dimension to the paradigm of performance. The specific performances presented are meditative dance and shamanic drumming.
Trade ReviewIntellectuals have tended to dismiss people’s spiritual experiences by reducing them to public ritual spaces, to forms of cultural theft, to colonial history, to economics and capitalism, to narcissism and dilettantism. These processes are important to analyze, but is that all there is? The author’s answer is a definitive ‘No.’ The basic model here is performance studies, a field that assumes to know anything is to show it, so that others can see it happening. What to do, then, with the invisible, which, by nature, cannot be shown or known in a public way? Through detailed studies of two contemporary meditation practices and their founders, this book reveals how insufficient various materialist methodologies are to understanding the interior, life-changing, and often extreme experiences of the spiritual … Reckoning with Spirit is an especially powerful and effective tour de force.” —Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University
