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- Convenors:
-
Alessandro Testa
(Charles University)
István Povedák (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design)
Agata Ładykowska (Polish Academy of Sciences)
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- Formats:
- Panel Roundtable
- Stream:
- Religion
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
How sound is the concept of "re-enchantment" under the scrutiny of ethnographic evidence from different post-socialist countries? What kind of theorisation can reinforce its validity or weaken its explanatory power? If valid, does it signify a normal, exceptional, or transgressive state of things?
Long Abstract:
One of the possible ways to understand and conceptualise post-socialist religious transformations in largely secularised late-modern contexts is by appealing to the idea of "re-enchantment", which challenges a well-known Weberian interpretative paradigm. This concept has recently been theorised or re-thought in philosophy (Scruton 2014), cultural studies (Landy and Saler 2009, Partridge 2005), esotericism (Asprem 2019), sociology (Jenkins 2000) and ethnology/anthropology (Margry 2008, Testa 2017, Isnart and Testa 2020). How useful and convincing is such a concept when put under the scrutiny of empirical, ethnographic data from different post-socialist countries? What kind of evidence or theorisation can reinforce its validity or alternatively weaken its explanatory power? And if it does indeed bear validity in explaining social realities, does it signify a normal, exceptional, or transgressive state of things?
This panel intends to discuss these questions by looking at specific case studies of new or renewed religious practices in central-eastern Europe, and also at the conceptual and methodological entanglements and tensions that the notion of "re-enchantment" may trigger when problematised against empirical evidence and the irreducible diversity of specific examples. We invite contributions that look at how the concept of "re-enchantment" functions at the ground level of social practices concerning vernacular/local religiosities, new religious movements and "spiritualities", and civic rituality and religious heritages, whereas the final roundtable we further theorisation about the concept itself.
The geo-political scope of the papers, with the possibility of motivated exceptions, will be the Visegrád group (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
I compare three Hungarian new religious groups’ historical re-enactment: 1. a Neo-Pagan group organized by an urban shaman; 2. an esoteric New Age group with elements of Neo-Paganism; 3. a Charismatic Christian new religious movement. I focus on their referred historic age, groups, and value-system.
Paper long abstract:
I work with new religious groups as a social and cultural anthropologist since 2007. I chose three groups for my comparative analysis: 1. a Neo-Pagan group organized by an urban shaman, 2. a New Age esoteric group (with elements of Neo-Paganism), and 3. a Charismatic Christian new religious movement, established by a contemporary vernacular prophet from Transylvania. All of them have different ways of historical re-enactment. I outline the re-enacted Age and their references to the idealized social groups since they are all different. I focus on the visual signs, re-enacted time, the participants’ social environment, and the referred values in my comparison. The Neo-Pagan group has a special concept about the age of the equestrian nomad empires and the Hungarian conquerors in the Medieval Times. The New Age esoteric group has a kind of anarchic image of the idealized “organic” cultures and societies opposite to the “organized” and overregulated civilization, so they refer to a “timeless” primitive culture and – joining the self-supporting eco-village movements – the so-called “traditional peasant society”. The Charismatic Christian movement that I study re-enacts the Age of Apostles, and the early Christians, before Constantin the Great. The participants’ value-system, educational level, and social environment are all reflected in their re-enacted endeavours.
Paper short abstract:
Through the study of a contemporary pagan festival in Hungary, this paper explores phenomena of “re-enchantment” from the perspective of the forms of ritualization they draw on, arguing that they may be better defined by studying the formal particularities of the specific practices that compose it.
Paper long abstract:
In Hungary, contemporary pagan revival, a protean movement inspired by romantic nationalism and ethnogenetic theories, is emblematic of the emergence of new religious forms since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Persons engaged in (re)creating pre-Christian Magyar beliefs and practices creatively adapt historiographic and folkloric sources to craft new rituals and gatherings that allow them to act in the spirit of the nomad ancestors they claim to descend from. This, in turn, affords them a spiritual sense of national belonging. Attracting thousands of visitors, the Kurultaj festival is certainly the most conspicuous expression of this movement, especially as it is financially and ideologically supported by the current Hungarian government. The three-day event offers participants spectacular combat demonstrations, archaeological exhibits, neo-shamanic rituals, folkloric performances as well as lectures on the archaeology of the Huns and other Central Asian nomads.
Considering the Kurultaj as an instance of “re-enchantment”, this paper will attempt to understand phenomena categorized as such from a pragmatic standpoint, notably through the forms of ritualization it draws on. In order to do so, it will examine how ancestry is displayed in the festival’s exhibits and how changing the context of the objects exhibited, from a scientific to a religious one, establishes a ritual frame. The underlying hypothesis of this approach is that “re-enchantment” may be better defined by studying the formal particularities of the specific practices that compose it. Thus, it allows for an understanding of how archaeological objects may “enchant” and elicit a heightened sense of national belonging.
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces how paleoastronautic concepts appeared and evolved in Hungary during Communist times, and how UFO culture gained neo-nationalist characteristic after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Paper long abstract:
According to the concept of paleoastronautics, the evolution of human civilization occurred as a consequence of alien visitations to the Earth (Pauwels&Bergier, Däniken, Sitchin, Temple, Icke). Only few know that the concept appeared not only in the “West”, but also independently behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s, where it gained popularity in certain subcultures. In the countries of the Socialist bloc, the initial phase of the UFO-culture followed a somewhat different path from that of the “West”. Here the living conditions and the atheist cultural policy represented a major obstacle to any kind of spiritual movement. Such movements were regarded with suspicion and opposed as much as possible.
Nevertheless, belief in extraterrestrial astronauts did exist, and in certain periods – mainly for political reasons – it was even allowed to appear openly in the media in the late 1950s and 1960s. Accordingly, the directors of Soviet-style cultural policies allowed the spread of the ideology, but only as long as it remained on the level of popular science. Any attempts to give
it a religious character or to institutionalise it were firmly opposed. This way, paleoastronautic concepts had their limits, and from the 1970s, they spread mostly underground. In spite of these, paleoastronautic today has a Hungarian sub-stream that shows significant neo-nationalist features too.
My paper addresses the question of how folklorists can investigate these narratives. How do these Hungarian paleoastronautic myths fit into a more general frame and how do they correlate with basic transformations of our culture?