Exploring the Senses: South Asian and European Perspectives on Rituals and Performativity

Description

This fascinating volume offers a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach to understanding the senses by exploring themes in anthropologies of sound, sight, smell, taste, touch, and movement as expressed through aesthetic, perceptual, religious, and spiritual experiences. In drawing upon comparative perspectives from Indian and Western theories, the essays demonstrate the integral relation of senses with each other as well as with allied notions of the body, emotion and cultural memory. Stressing the continued relevance of senses as they manifest in a globalized world under the influence of new media, this work will interest scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, ritual studies, psychology, religion, philosophy, and history. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface Exploring the Senses in Rituals and Performances: An Introduction Indian and Western Theories of Senses 1. The Windows on the World: The Senses and Inner Life 2. Sensory Perception and Notions of the Senses in Sāṃkhya Philosophy 3. Senses, Human and Divine 4. The Divine Embrace: The Role of the Senses in Puṣṭimārga 5. Managing the Senses in Sant Devotion The Anthropology of Senses 6. The Vision: Control, Desire, Perception 7. Seeing Ghosts in India and Europe 8. Sonic Perception and Acoustic Communication in Hindu India 9. “Noise” or “Silence?” Listening to Sacred Sound in 20th-century Europe 10. The Sonic Persona: An Anthropology of Sound 11. Taste as an Aesthetic Sense 12. Scent of a Flower: Notes on Olfaction in Hindu Worship 13. Untouchability and Tactility in Hindu Death Rituals 14. Senses of Movement: Kinesthetics and Synesthetics in Contemporary Dance Practices 15. Memory, Experience and Imagination in Performance 16. Family Constellation Therapy: Body Memory and the Sense of Space 17. Performative Ritual as Sensual Experience of Body, Place and Sociality The Unity of Senses 18. Unity of the Senses in Indian Thought 19. The Politics of the Senses: On Vision and Hearing in Hannah Arendt’s “Vita Activa” 20. The Sky Around Our Bodies: Climate and Atmospheric Perception About the Editors Notes on Contributors