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- Convenors:
-
Laura Feldt
(University of Southern Denmark)
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus (University of Bergen)
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- Discussant:
-
Erica Baffelli
(University of Manchester)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Theta room
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 5 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
The panel analyses and discusses forms of total devotion or radical religion in religious groups and how such groups make use of media – textual, material, and other – that exploit emotionality and narrativity as both externalised and embodied technologies for training and sustaining membership.
Long Abstract:
Understanding religion as a multi-facetted cultural phenomenon that invariably involves aesthetic-sensory-material mediation (Grieser and Johnston 2017; Meyer 2009, 2011; Morgan 2010, 2012, 2018), means that religion and technology can be understood as fundamentally entangled. Religious narratives, texts, materiality, or other sources cannot be used as a form of direct access to “religion” without consideration of concrete technologies, media, and forms of sensory and embodied experience. Narrativity and emotionality (and other forms of sensory experience) are foundationally formative of human experience and identity (Scheer 2012, Feldt and Geertz 2020). Sensory and emotional experience is deeply socialized and interlaced with narrativity, and both play crucial roles for religious identity formation and group cohesion. The contributions to this panel will analyse forms of total devotion in religious groups and how such groups make use of a variety of media – textual, material, and other – that exploit emotionality and narrativity as both externalised and embodied technologies for training and sustaining membership. We understand “total devotion” as a broad umbrella term. It can encompass forms of religious extremism and terrorism, fundamentalism, super-religiosity, and radical religion, but also non-violent forms of devotion that can be seen as all-encompassing or aiming at full perfection by either actors in the field, or by scholars based on etic definitions and understandings, or both. Stories and accounts of intense and total devotion and of idealised devout actors use emotional and narrative technologies to mobilise their audiences, striving to implant their ideals of devotion and intensify the religiosity of the group, training them for total devotion.
The work presented springs from the Total Devotion project, funded by the Independent Research Fund, Denmark: www.sdu.dk/radrel
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 5 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
In my contribution I will argue that the early Christian martyr acts contain important narrative and emotional technologies to mobilise their audiences to die for Christ.
Paper long abstract:
Although the exact nature of the Roman persecutions of the early Christians remains a source of debate, the fact itself is not in doubt. But why would early Christians be willing to die for Christ when there was no pre-existent tradition of people willing to die for a god? In a much-quoted article, Scott Atran has drawn attention to the phenomenon of the ‘devoted actor’, that is, people who are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for a cause. These ‘actors’ are often driven by sacred values that are embodied in tight social networks of ‘imagined kin’, and their self-identity becomes subsumed with that of the collective group. The total devotion to Christ constituted a truly sacred value for the early Christians, who often called themselves ‘slaves of Christ’ to denote their total devotion and their obedience to him. But how were they trained in this devotion? In my contribution I will argue that the early Christian martyr acts contain important narrative and emotional technologies to mobilise their audiences in this respect. These narratives showed the early Christians how to behave when faced with the choice to sacrifice to the pagan gods or to die for Christ. By giving examples of Christians who failed the test but also showing the rewards for those who endured, the acts illustrate the right way to perform the ideal total devotion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper studies the role of mountains as sites of total devotion in late antique Latin texts about desert Christians. Mountains appear as sites of competition and spatial withdrawal: two important technologies of total devotion, with implications for both inside and outside the narrative world.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the role of mountains in the expression and narrativization of total devotion ideals in Latin stories of desert saints. Withdrawal in wilderness (anachoresis) is crucial to the practice of desert asceticism. Building on scholarship in the history of religion and religious radicalism, the paper singles out religious competition and spatial withdrawal as two ‘technologies of the self’: in Foucault’s sense of the term, embodied instruments to reach perfection. More specifically, it highlights the potential of withdrawal in wilderness places (mountains in particular) as a space of religious rivalry allowing the ascetic to reach a more perfect stage of devotion. Taking a narratological approach, I will argue that mountains play a role at three narrative levels: firstly, the fabula level, as sites of competition of ascetics with others in the wider community; secondly, the story level, denoting the way in which mountains are focalized and emotionally experienced by ascetics, surrounding figures and narrators and endorsed (or not) as instruments of total devotion; and, finally, the text level, which applies to the significance attached to mountains as sites of competition and devotion in the interaction between author and audience in the extra-narrative world. Thus, the paper gives insight into the role of stories and emotions in the expression and encouragement of individuals to total devotion, while highlighting the role of spatial withdrawal and competition as embodied instruments to reach religious perfection.
Paper short abstract:
The paper is about techniques of eating and diet in Pachomian monasteries in Late Antiquity. It explores how diet and eating were framed at total devotion and became tools for personal transformation.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is about techniques of eating and diet in Pachomian monasteries in Egypt in Late Antiquity. The monastic sources sometimes link monasticism to the age of the martyrs and make equations with martyrdom in relation to types of food-consumption, which stresses that food and diet were important. The paper explores how diet and eating were framed as total devotion and became tools for personal transformation. Focus is on the descriptions of techniques of diet and eating in monastic rules and narratives, and, since eating is an emotional and socialized experience, especially on the ways narratives and emotions were intertwined with these techniques. How do monastic texts frame food-consumption as total and idealized devotion? Eating was an activity that was scaled, what are the scales of dietary devotion concerning intensity and perfection? How did monastics fail and excel, and which parameters, were they measured against? Types of food, times of food, quantity of food, and space of food are drawn into the discussion. What was the emotional repertoire, which was involved, how were emotions such as humility, happiness, fear, pride, disgust, and sadness connected to eating?
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses passages from Sifre Devarim, a 3rd century Palestinian interpretation to the book of Deuteronomy, as textual tools of narrative and emotional technology constructing God as an object of devotion, especially through analogies involving hierarchy.
Paper long abstract:
Approaching religion as a cultural system that can be described as an emotional regime, where diverse emotional relations connect the individual agent, the community, and a symbol as three poles of a triangle (Riis and Woodhead 2010), this paper looks at forms of total devotion in emerging tannaitic Judaism. The tannaitic text of Sifrei Devarim (3rd century Palestine) reflects both on the divine symbol as a human construction and on the collective context of this construction while at the same time marking the relationship between the agent, the community, and the symbol as all-encompassing. While this mere idea Is initially presented in a parable concerning the technology of building palaces upon ships (SD 346), additional parables and other kinds of narratives in SD can be seen as the reference of this parable, i.e. the cultural technology of consecration, or the construction of the divine symbol as an object of devotion. This paper will analyse the narrative and emotional technologies involved in this construction of an all-encompassing devotion between Israel and God, especially with regard to narratives and emotionality involving social superiority (God as a patriarch, Israel as a son or servant) and an explicit erotic dimension (husband-wife).
Paper short abstract:
The paper is about forms of devotion in Second Temple Judaism, comparing the First and Second Book of Maccabees, and how narrativity and emotionality functioned as technologies for training and mobilising the audience towards total devotion.
Paper long abstract:
As a contribution to the study of radical religion in the ancient world, this paper will analyse religious narratives from Second Temple Judaism that focus on perfecting religious practice and training and intensifying devotion. Using narrativity and emotionality theories, I will examine and compare the different ideals of devotion embedded in the first and second Book of Maccabees. The two books narrate differing perspectives on the Jewish struggle for freedom from Hellenistic rulers towards the middle of the 2nd century BCE and contain various stories about idealized devout actors. Both books utilize narrative and emotional technologies to mobilise their audiences, striving to implant their ideals of devotion and intensify the religiosity of their target audiences, but in different ways. In these two Books of Maccabees, forms of devotion are pictured as competing and/or conflicting with each other, some are compared, in emic discourse, to others deemed more perfect or admirable, whereas some types of religious practice and devotion are excluded or looked down upon. I discuss how ideals regarding the intensity, perfection, and total scope of religion are narrated, how distinctions are made between types of devotion, and how narrativity and emotionality are used as technologies for the mobilisation of the audience and an intensification of devotion. A comparison of differing ideals of devotion and how narrativity and emotionality function in the 1st and 2nd Book of Maccabees can bring out historical aspects of the entanglement of religion and technologies.