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Paper Short Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to outline the contours of visual ethnographic research that conceptualizes ritual interactions of devotees with their saints at shared pilgrimage sites.

Paper Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to outline the contours of visual ethnographic research that conceptualizes ritual interactions of devotees with their saints at shared pilgrimage sites. Supported by photographic and filmic accounts of different ethnographic instances of ritual interaction of devotees with their saints and their embodiments through images and objects, this paper aims to present an ethnography that visually elucidates the sensory perception as embodied in saint veneration rituals. The analysis of the ethnographic material dwells on such concepts as mimesis (Taussig), atmosphere (Boehme), and resonance (Rosa) to explicate how members of the different Christian and Muslim communities assemble at shared sacred sites in Hatay, how they become like one another, and dissolve marked differences into complex webs of relationships with the saint so that their veneration rituals become sensorily indistinguishable. By focusing on ritual as aesthetics, the proposed argument is developed through the analysis of saint veneration rituals in their dynamic interconnectivity and their specific modes of sensory perception. The objective of articulating such a framework for an aesthetic analysis is to integrate the sensory qualities of saint veneration rituals in interreligious contexts of shared sacred sites. By focusing on the aesthetics of visual perceptions of bodily gestures and movements, I aim to articulate an approach to the aesthetics of interrituality.