Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Aušra Pažėraitė
(Vilnius University)
Eglė Aleknaitė (Vilnius University)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Eglė Aleknaitė
(Vilnius University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Eta room
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 5 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
The panel presents research on concepts of mediation of the sacred, mediation techniques and technologies and their relationship with conceptualizations of religion. When and where have they been recognized as a legitimate part of religion, and what implications has the recognition?
Long Abstract:
Modern conceptualizations of religion have been developed on the basis of the religiosity associated with Protestantism and focused on inner religious experience, the acquisition of religious truths, moral attitudes, as well as on existential and daily decisions and choices. The perspective approached religion through a mentalistic lens and devalued mediation of the sacred that involved materiality, senses, and body. Some of the mediation techniques and technologies, especially the ones that may be used by an individual to evade established religious authorities, tend to be seen as non-authentic religiosity, religiosity of a lower level, or are not considered as belonging to religion. Historical and contemporary rituals and practices termed sorcery, magic, parapsychology, spiritualism, astrology and the like are often treated as such suspicious techniques and technologies. This conceptualization of religion has been questioned, with added focus on practice, materiality, body and other aspects of religion that often-followed research on religion in non-Western contexts and dispute of the hegemony of Western Christianity. Shifts in focus happened at different times in different regions, and some conceptualizations of religion still may keep the mentalistic approach, in part because of politics of religion in society and academia.
The panel invites to present research that analyses historical and contemporary concepts of, and discourse on, religion, with critical focus on concepts of mediation of the sacred and mediation techniques and technologies. What mediation techniques and technologies are seen as legitimately belonging to the sphere of religion in academic, popular and emic discourses? How religion as mediation is included in conceptualizations and study of religion in particular historical, national contexts? How does the focus on mediation techniques and technologies change conceptualization and politics of religion? How emic, popular and academic conceptualizations of religion concur with each other or diverge in their treatment of various mediation techniques and technologies?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 5 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The Ars Inveniendi Veritatem, a combinatorial method of contemplation developed by medieval philosopher and theologian Raimundus Lullus can be understood as a paradigmatic religious form of artificial habit, and contribute to the understanding of religion as a social, embodied practice and exercise.
Paper long abstract:
The 14th-century philosopher and theologian Raimundus Lullus developed a combinatorial system of thought, an Ars inveniendi veritatem, consisting in the intertwinement of absolute principles, namely divine attributes, with logical categories, questions, subjects, virtues and vices. Devised as a contemplative and evangelical Ars, Llull stressed the importance of 1) learning how to produce questions and answers in accordance to its rules and principles, and of 2) imaginatively translating the process and product of the Ars into examples and metaphors accessible to the broadest audience. The Ars' spiritual logic pursued the coordinated movement of intellect, memory and will toward God's presence in the Creation, and can be understood as a paradigmatic religious form of an artificial habit.
The Ars, as a technological innovation in its historical context, serves to reorient the manner in which philosophical and theological thought is approached and organised: its principles stem from Islamic logic and dialectic, and from combinatorial devices of intermediation between the divine and the humane, such as the za’irjah, a divination instrument attributed to 13th-century Sufi Abu Al-Abbas Al-Sabti from Maghreb. A dynamic, practical and processual understanding of contemplation shines in Lullus' method, for the Ars is a process of homificatio that results from reading and applying its principles, to which the artist must habituate in order to disseminate them in word and deed.
The aim of this presentation is twofold: first, to describe the Ars inveniendi veritatem as a technological medium of relationship with the sacred focused on the active, practical actualization of the finite, humane essence through combinatorial, imaginative "poiesis". Second, to reassess religion primarily as a social, embodied practice and exercise in connection with similar contemporary poetic and philosophical proposals (from Anne Carson to Pierre Hadot or Pier Aldo Rovatti).
Paper short abstract:
The paper presents an analysis of the construction of the public discourse on religion in Lithuania in the 1990s-2000s. The analysis looks at how normative discourse constructed religion as not power-seeking realm of RELANTIONSHIP, opposed to ethnical and occult practices as unverified technologies.
Paper long abstract:
In Lithuania, the 2000s were marked by public discussions concerning the problem of occultism and esotericism. In 2002-2009 the Parliament discussed draft laws aimed to restrict public information concerning “paranormal phenomena” defined as “an event, phenomenon or fact that has a physical expression and cannot be not explained by science, and individuals’ abilities that have not been proven by experimental methods”. The purpose of the laws was to control and discipline the discourses in the public sphere, relegating so called occult and esoteric discourses to the private sphere. The analysis of the public discourses of the period suggests that the obsession with the danger of “esotericism and occultism” should be associated with the document on the New Age published by the hierarchs of the Lithuanian Catholic Church in 2003. Lithuanian public intellectuals who represented the intellectual discourse on religion at that time joined the discussion. Vilnius University organized a seminar focused on the topic. Gintaras Beresnevičius, a leading Lithuanian historian of religion, tackled the issue in his paper “Occultism and Pragmatic Thinking” criticizing modern occultism as the bourgeois, capitalist and consumerist endeavour eager for quick results, empirical accessibility and manipulation of the sacred that had resulted from the decline of religion. Occultism was also associated with the development of technologies in the 19th century. Both the Church documents and the discourse of the public intellectuals considered occult practices as an outcome or expression of the decline of religion and the rise technological development. The rhetoric employed two perspectives: 1) crediting the normativity to the seeking of power exclusively by the methods and technics verified by sciences; 2) normalisation of the concept of religion exclusively as a non-pragmatic, not power-seeking RELATIONSHIP with the divine realm.
Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at the Lithuanian Paganism that emerged in the public discourse related to folk culture revival in Soviet Lithuania, and the treatment of Pagan techniques and technologies of mediation of the sacred.
Paper long abstract:
The Soviet anti-religious policies not only attempted to suppress religion, but also shaped it. So far, most attention has been paid to the shaping of the dominant Christianity and Islam, while pre-Christian and pre-Muslim religions increasingly visible in the public discourse of the time mostly have been seen as an expression of anti-religious policies that were directed against the majority religions. The interest in Paganism and its depictions during the Soviet period found its expression in academic research, as well as in arts, literature and popular discourse related to folk culture revival, and also shaped understanding of religion and imagining of Paganism in particular. Among other aspects, the understanding and imagery of Paganism included a variety of views towards Pagan techniques and technologies of mediation of the sacred.
The paper looks at the Lithuanian Paganism that emerged in the public discourse related to folk culture revival in Soviet Lithuania. Produced by professional ethnographers, folk dance specialists, various amateur revivers and other authors and aimed at folk culture revivers and wider society, this discourse tended to include practices and notions that had been excluded from Paganism as conceptualized in the academic discourse focused specifically on Lithuanian/Baltic religion, mythology and worldview. Indeed, the analyzed discourse was abundant in terms related to magic and references to practices of magic that were considered as a pre-religious or para-religious technique of mediation of the sacred in academic research on Baltic/Lithuanian Paganism of Soviet and post-Soviet period.