Transgressing the father figure: performing queer theology as an act of liberation

ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the intersection of power, ritual, and the sacred through the lens of performing drag as a tool to subvert dominant notions of theological discourse. Grounded in Cheng’s assertion that queer theology is transgressive (Radical Love) and Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology, the foundational text which introduces the concept of theology as destabilizing and grounded in subversion, particularly in the realm of sexuality, we critique the forces of power operating within Catholicism. We ask: Whose bodies are allowed to play a powerful role in Catholicism? How has ritual performance perpetuated the colonization of the mind/spirit and how can it be used to undo that same colonization? In discussing a public drag performance using George Michael’s “Father Figure,” we suggest the possibility of liberation that exists in bringing theology into queer spaces, extending theology beyond the realm of religious institutions or the academy.     

Unlike a Fool, He Is Not Defiled: Ascetic Purity and Ethics in the Samnyāsa Upanisads

The authors of the Samnyāsa Upanisads, manuals of ascetic lifestyle and practice, recommend that wanderers renounce behavioral standards of their formerly Brahmin householder life, including ritual purity and familial duties. Patrick Olivelle argues that these ascetics are thereafter considered impure and corpse– or ghoul–like, clearly lacking in dharma. However, these Upanisads counsel pursuing mental purity and moral behavior, and modeling oneself after the perfection of the Absolute. This essay investigates ascetic notions of purity and identity, and virtues such as non–violence and kindness cultivated in forest isolation. Is ascetic dharma universal in intent, and is it conceptually opposed to householder dharma? What type of ethics is admired by the authors, what type deprecated? Olivelle’s position is reevaluated, as is Jeffrey Kripal’s notion that monistic mysticism does not support ethics adequately.     

The social psychological power of photography: can the image‐freezing machine make something of nothing?

Sontag ( 1990 ) proposed that taking a photograph imparts social significance to the moment being captured. Two experiments were conducted to examine how the experience of being photographed affects the social relations of those who are photographed. In Experiment 1 (N=92), unacquainted members of dyads who were photographed together and then saw the resulting image displayed greater social self‐categorization and greater affinity for each other than did dyads who were not photographed (p<0.05). In Experiment 2 (N=282), pairs of photographed strangers also displayed greater social self‐categorization and mutual affinity than pairs of nonphotographed strangers (p<0.05). This effect occurred whether pair members were explicitly framed together in photographs or not. This result was unaffected by whether the photographed strangers were shown or were not shown their photograph. Merely opening and closing the shutter of a camera was sufficient for the development of a photo‐bonding effect. Results are discussed in terms of how the experience of being photographed can affect interpersonal perception and relationship formation. The significance of being photographed (Milgram, 1977 ; Sontag, 1990 ) apparently is so strong that it promotes social self‐categorization (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987 ) both when people are photographed simultaneously and sequentially. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Devotion of a Jain minister: Discovering the complex identities of Vastupāla (13th century)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multidimensional poetics of devotion in medieval accounts of the Jain minister Vastupāla, who emerges as a paradoxical figure and defies the other characters’ expectations. It argues that the portrayal of Vastupāla as a model devotee of the Jina is contingent upon his affinity to a K?atriya king and god incarnate, as in Jain ritual culture celestial kings and queens embody the paragon of devotion. This depiction of Vastupāla, a bureaucrat (niyogin) and merchant (va?ik), ultimately re-inscribes the standard cultural paradigm in which heroism and divine status are solely the purview of a K?atriya king.     

Respect and the Confucian concept of Li (ritual propriety)

ABSTRACT

This paper specifically deals with the relation between respect and li禮in the Confucian context. Li has both negative and positive sources. On the positive level, ritual propriety enables one to express internal moral and religious feelings, especially respect, reverence and humility. Furthermore, this work investigates into the relevant feelings and acts of respect and ritual propriety, as well as meaningful critiques of ritual, in an attempt to clarify the genuine expression of ritual propriety that helps to actualize human inner moral and religious approaches.     

Soul pain and the therapeutic use of ritual

Abstract

This paper will explore the relationship between ritual and transformation. It will show how a therapist and a monk work together to create sacred spaces in which individuals can experience transformation of and through their personal histories, linking their past, present and future to address their soul pain through ritual.

It is illustrated with case studies which will demonstrate the phases of ritual work which are collectively important as part of the psycho-dynamic therapeutic process.     

Lived religion meets secular life: the dynamics of framing and the subjunctive power of ritual

ABSTRACT

In spite of the variety of often welcome everyday enchantments and empowerment that lived religion may bring to an individual in his/her personal life, it may become problematic in a person’s social life due to provoking tensions with significant others who hold different worldviews. This controversy necessitates the adoption of tactics and practices for adjustment and regulation, should that individual wish to enhance the benefits of religious enchantment and, simultaneously, maintain his/her position in the shared social lifeworld. This article argues that ritual theory, particularly in combining the notions of ritual framing and the subjunctive mode of ritual, offers a promising approach to researching this dynamic. The ritual studies approach helps shed light on the sometimes quite subtle ways in which moving in and out of the ritual frame makes it possible to regulate the often delicate balance of enchantment and disenchantment. This article examines the case study of women engaging in angel spirituality in Finland and the way they are able to navigate different ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ worlds. It argues that the dynamic combination of ritual framing and the subjunctive mode of ritual works as important possibility work in everyday life in a society which is uneasy about very strong expressions of lived religion.     

The Council of Newton: A Pedagogical Exercise for Understanding Conceptual and Historical Difference with Respect to Intra‐Religious Notions of Divinity

In this essay, I examine the following pedagogical question: how can we unlock students' mistaken notions that religious “traditions” are monoliths, and instead help them to recognize, puzzle over, and appreciate the complex multiplicity and vibrant set of doctrinal and ritual conversations that characterize religious traditions? More specifically, how can we teach students to recognize these differences with respect to a religion's notions of god? And how can we do so even when students are particularly stuck on, invested in, or trained to see homogeneity? In answer to these questions, I present an exercise that I have used in my World Religions courses. This exercise – which I call the “Council of Newton” (named for the building in which I first taught it) – is particularly effective because it helps students uncover and wrestle with this diversity at two levels: conceptually and historically.     

Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal Perspectives from the Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions have all attempted to define and prohibit blasphemy: insult or verbal attack against their religion, against its rites and symbols, against God and his human representatives. Such laws could be internal (prohibiting blasphemy by members of the faith group) or external (prohibiting insult by those outside the faith). This article will first briefly trace the former, looking at how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions from Antiquity and the Middle Ages define and prohibit blasphemy. The second part of the article will then focus on the second issue, looking at how Christian and Muslim legal traditions attempted to prohibit insults to the faith by adherents of other religions. We shall look, for example, at various Christian laws dealing with what was perceived as Jewish mockery of Christian ritual and sacred objects: from mock crucifixions allegedly practiced by Jews as part of Purim celebrations in the fifth-century Roman Empire to Jews who supposedly derided the Eucharist during thirteenth-century Corpus Christi processions. We shall in parallel examine prohibitions in Muslim legal texts (including the so-called Pact of ?‘Umar) of dhimmīs insulting the Prophet Muhammad or the Qur'an. This comparison will show that, while blasphemy was illegal and could be harshly sanctioned and there were lines that religious minorities must not cross, these lines were often not clearly delimited, and became the object of conflict and negotiation.     

Confucian Ethics and the Critique of Ideology

The debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas provides a fresh perspective from which Confucian philosophy may be approached. In this paper, focusing on the Lunyu (Analects), I argue that the sayings of Confucius reflect an essentially 'conservative' orientation, finding in tradition a reservoir of insight and truth. There is a critical dimension to it in that ethical reflection and self-cultivation would enable the individual to challenge particular claims of tradition. However, can self-cultivation transcend tradition as a whole and enable the individual to effect radical change? Following the strategy of Habermas' critique of Gadamer, what happens if tradition is systemically corrupt? In this discussion, rather than taking tradition generally I will focus on the concept of ritual (li) to suggest how the Lunyu seeks to crystallise the wisdom of the past into an ethical guide. The conclusion I draw is in the main a Gadamerian one. Committed to a critical appropriation of tradition, Confucian philosophy seeks ethical renewal from within, on the premise that through incremental change self-cultivation can make a real difference in the quest for moral excellence.     

Li (Ritual/Rite) and Tian (Heaven/Nature) in the Xunzi: Does Confucian li need metaphysics?

Ritual (li) is central to Confucian ethics and political philosophy. Robert Neville believes that Chinese Philosophy has an important role to play in our times by bringing ritual theory to the analysis of global moral and political issues. In a recent work, Neville maintains that ritual ??needs a contemporary metaphysical expression if its importance is to be seen.?? This paper examines Neville's claim through a detailed study of the ??ethics of ritual?? in one of the early Confucian texts, the Xunzi. This text has sometimes been read as offering a form of naturalism in its discussions of ??heaven (tian)?? as analogous to Western, even modern, concept of ??nature,?? while other interpreters insist that tian is a normative notion. Does this concept of tian offer a metaphysical ground for ethics of ritual advocated in the text? If so, what kind of metaphysics is it? Does Confucian ritual ethics need any metaphysical grounding? There is no specific metaphysical theory in the Xunzi and passages which could be referring to or implying metaphysical assumptions are open to hermeneutical debates. Even if metaphysical assumptions are necessary or beneficial to an ethics of ritual, the paper argues that the ??metaphysical flexibility?? of the text could work to its advantage in remaining relevant in contemporary context. The conclusion explores some possible directions for further exploring the metaphysics of ritual in a modern understanding of Xunzi.     

An outline explanation of how therapy heals

Therapists are unable to provide a comprehensive account of therapy as an intelligible activity. This is at least partly due to the unresolved problem of explaining how phenomenology is even possible. An alternative to providing a comprehensive account of therapy is to take the fact of phenomenology for granted and provide just an outline account of how therapy heals. One way this can be achieved is to set therapy in the context of medical anthropology which will facilitate a view of therapy as just another healing ritual. Insight into how healing rituals heal is provided in this paper by a long and in-depth look at the so-called ‘paradox’ of the placebo effect. This will reveal the so-called ‘placebo effect’ as a misunderstood, modern example of healing ritual self-healing. In fact, the single term ‘placebo effect’ will be abandoned and replaced by the two concepts of ‘SMCH’ (‘specifically modified consultation and health care’) and ‘RMH’ (‘response to modified health care’). These two concepts provide an outline explanation of how all healing rituals heal and so provide an outline explanation of how the healing ritual of therapy heals, also. At least one problem arises out of explaining therapy as healing ritual self-healing, namely that this conception conflicts with the idea in therapy circles that, in therapy, it is the relationship that counts. Nonetheless, it will be maintained that the purpose of therapy is healing, that the healing that is achieved is self-healing and that its fulfilment is not dependent upon one-to-one relationships. Finally, it will be argued that the further development of therapy requires a better understanding of what aids and obstructs psycho-emotional self-healing.     

The Use of Rituals in Grieving for a Miscarriage or Stillbirth

Abstract

Preparation for their changing roles in family and society, as well as readying their intimate space for the arrival of an infant, totally engage expectant parents. Miscarriage or stillbirth may bring on a grief storm that strips away many tender roots and branches of new life in the community that the parents have been nurturing. Creation and participation in a grief ritual can bring the grieving parents to a healing resolution. This article describes the healing efficacy of ritual, its elements, and how a compassionate therapist can create one in collaboration with grieving clients.     

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS AND BIOLOGICAL FINDINGS,PART I: HUMAN COOPERATIVITY,COMPETITION, AND AGGRESSION

This Part II of a two-part article illustrates how research in evolutionary biology, anthropology, archeology, and psychology illuminates questions arising in philosophy—specifically questions about René Girard's theory of aggression. Part I looked at: (i) how old the systemic practice of severe aggression is; (ii) how much of it results from humanity's mimetic/social and competitive nature and how much from ecological, resource, and cultural conditions; and (iii) if ecological, resource, and cultural conditions are important, might we adapt this information toward greater cooperativity today? Part II investigates Girard's theory of ritual sacrifice—especially human sacrifice—as a societal steam valve for the systemic aggression explored in Part I. It draws on theories of play, theater, and art to examine the role and function of such ritual sacrifice.     

DU DEDANS AU DEHORS: TRANSFORMATION DE LA POSSESSION-MALADIE EN POSSESSION RITUELLE

The conjunction of possession and sacrifice in the same therapeutic ritual evidences a paradox in that the spirit or divinity to whom the sacrifice is made is being embodied by the sacrificer whose aim it is to expel this spirit from the patient's body. The ritual process by which the Wolof of Senegal solve this paradox is described and analyzed. In the ritual, the internal and inclusive relationship with an anonymous rab (a body-within-a-body) is transformed into an external and exclusive relationship with a named rab (a body-to-a-body). The conversion of the possession-as-illness into a ritual possession entails both a spatial and temporal inversion of the bodily symptom-symbol. The diffusely and continuously acting agency from the inside is and must become an external agency of circumscribed and recurrent action. The patient's temporary decoration with internal parts of the immolated animal (such as a cap made of the paunch or peritoneum, a necklace or tulband of intestines, or anointing with blood) - typical of the initiatory sacrifices in many ‘possession-cults’ - acts as the symbolic operator of this inversion, i.e., of the amoeboid eversion of the body of the possessed. The analysis of some comparative data suggests that the metonymic assimilation between the possessed and the sacrificed is only a ritual artifact linked to the above-mentioned paradox. The cultic possession, which necessarily entails the reproduction of the ritual trance, is a specific form of the sacrificial mode of thinking and practice. The time and periodicity of the trance and of the sacrifice are comparable. Possession can be analyzed as a metonymic figuration of the sacrifice in that it re-inserts the bodily experience within the sacrificial communication. Possession gives bodily form to the symbolic efficacy and is, therefore, frequently associated with therapy.     

The Privilege of the Present: Time and the Trace from Heidegger to Derrida

ABSTRACT

One of the starting points of Derrida’s deconstruction is the idea that metaphysics is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present. It is well known that Derrida took up this thesis of the ‘privilege of the present’ in metaphysics from Heidegger. However, this thesis is mentioned without being developed by Heidegger. What is the meaning of this ontological position? How did it originate? Should we try to go beyond it? And if so, how? In this paper, I would like to start out from Heidegger’s view that the understanding of Being, in the metaphysical tradition, is dominated by the ontological primacy of the present: according to this approach, which goes back to Aristotle’s theory of substance (ousia), Being means constant presence; only that which is constantly present really exists. I will then show that Heidegger himself, in his conception of the past, has renewed the privilege of the present, favoring the ‘having been’ (Gewesenheit) over the past as ‘by-gone-ness’ (Vergangenheit). Finally, I will show how Derrida’s concept of trace may help us to go beyond the privilege of the present.     

Perception of threat and safety at work among employees in the Norwegian ministries after the 2011 Oslo bombing

Background and objectives: Terrorism can heighten fears and undermine the feeling of safety. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence threat and safety perception after terrorism. The aim of the present study was to explore how proximity to terror and posttraumatic stress reactions are associated with perceived threat and safety after a workplace terrorist attack. Design and methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was administered to employees in 14 of 17 Norwegian ministries 9–10 months after the 2011 bombing of the government headquarters in Oslo (n = 3520). Results: About 198 of 1881 employees completing the survey were at work when the bomb exploded. Regression analysis showed that this high-exposed group had elevated perceived threat (β = 0.36; 95% CI = 0.19 to 0.53) and reduced perceived safety (β = ?0.42; 95% CI = ?0.62 to ?0.23) compared to a reference group of employees not at work. After adjusting for posttraumatic stress reactions, however, proximity to the explosion no longer mattered, whereas posttraumatic stress was associated with both high perceived threat (β = 0.55; 95% CI = 0.48 to 0.63) and low perceived safety (β = ?0.71; 95% CI, ?0.80 to ?0.63). Conclusion: Terror-exposed employees feel more threatened and less safe after a workplace terrorist attack, and this is closely linked to elevated levels of posttraumatic stress reactions.     

Ridwan’s conversion: kandoeri giving,moral personhood,and the re-imagining of communal difference in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article brings religious conversion and religious giving under one analytic lens in examining how ‘Ridwan’, a Chinese–Indonesian convert to Islam from the Indonesian province of Aceh, describes the process through which he became a Muslim. Ridwan frames his account of conversion in terms of religious giving, with special reference to Acehnese ritual feasts known as kandoeri. He draws attention to the way kandoeri giving constitutes a mode of relationality, in which careful attention to difference is the basis for reciprocity. His approach rests on what the anthropological theorist of The Gift, Marcel Mauss, identified as ‘moral persons’, a category that contrasts with liberal ideas of the self and identity. It reflects an awareness of the dual nature of exchange partners, who are always potentially both enemy and friend. This subtly challenges prevailing Indonesian understandings of intercommunal, especially interreligious, relations as well as common perceptions of Chinese–Indonesian religiosity and belonging.     

A Queer Death: The Funeral of Diana,Princess of Wales

Abstract

Elizabeth Stuart opens her paper by commenting that she feels that the most significant part of Michael Vasey's book, Stranger and Friends, is the final chapter on death. Vasey, she notes is one of the very few people to address the question of sexuality and death and his call for the queering of death has to be taken seriously. Stuart goes on to explore what a queer death might actually look like by reference to the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Through a close reading of the event, combined with personal experiences of having been in Hyde Park, Stuart shows how the many different mixed and ambiguous messages were brought together in the one event. The overall effect of this ambiguity was to subvert what should have been a national establishment ritual to make it accessible to many different people, especially to those who are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Stuart sees this as a possible pattern for the future and calls for far more work on this neglected area of sexuality and worship.