Full Description
Ongoing debates about the "return of religion" have paid little attention to the orgiastic and enthusiastic qualities of religiosity, despite a significant increase in the use of techniques of trance and possession around the globe. Likewise, research on religion and media has neglected the fact that historically the rise of mediumship and spirit possession was closely linked to the development of new media of communication.
This innovative volume brings together a wide range of ethnographic studies on local spiritual and media practices. Recognizing that processes of globalization are shaped by mass mediation, the volume raises questions such as: How are media like photography, cinema, video, the telephone, or television integrated in seances and healing rituals? How do spirit mediums connect with these media? Why are certain technical media shunned in these contexts?
Contents
I. Media-Techniques of Trance 1) Erhard Schuttpelz (Siegen): Trance Mediums and New Media: The Heritage of a European Term 2) Rosalind C. Morris (New York): On the Subject of Spirit Mediumship in the Age of New Media 3) Ute Holl (Basel): Trance Techniques, Cinema, and Cybernetics 4) Anja Dreschke (Siegen): Possession Play: On Trance Rituals and Impersonation Among the Cologne Tribes II. Mediation and Circulation of Trance Mediums/Media 1) Dorothea Schulz (Cologne): Transmitting Divine Grace: On the Materiality of Charismatic Mediation in Mali 2) Martin Zillinger (Siegen): Absence and the Medialization of the Audio-Visual Unconscious 3) Emilio Spadola (New York): Rites of Reception: Mass-Mediated Trance and Public Order in Morocco 4) Laurel Kendall (New York): Numinous Dress/Iconic Costume: Korean Shamans Dressed for the Gods and for the Camera 5) Getrud Huwelmeier (Berlin): Mediating the Apocalypse: The Disaster of the Titanic in Vietnamese Pentecostal Discourse III. Manifestation, Transformation and Aesthetics of Trance Mediums/Media 1) Claudia Bohme (Mainz): "Look With Your Own Eyes!" Visualization of Spirit Media and their Viewing Techniques in Tanzanian Video Films 2) Heike Behrend (Cologne): Spaces of Refusal: Iconoclastic/Photophobic Spirits and the Technical Medium of Photography 3) Lidia Guzy (Berlin): Medial Transformations: Music, Goddess-Embodiment, and Politics in Western Orissa/India 4) Christopher Pinney (London): Manifestation and Media: The Aesthetics and Politics of Plenitude in Central India
