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Accepted Paper:

Aesthetics and Contexts. Visual Cultures of the Muslim World  
Juergen Wasim Frembgen (Munich State Museum of Ethnology)

Paper short abstract:

Examining the aesthetics and contexts of Muslim visual cultures in their multiplicity of perceptions, complexity and fundamental equality I call for a more inclusive understanding of their different genres. Drawing on aesthetic anthropology I argue that in various contexts objects engage multiple senses simultaneously.

Paper long abstract:

By examining Muslim visual cultures along an aesthetic-contextual axis I focus primarily on perceptual experience when discussing various genres of visual and material culture. After critically questioning terminology and classification I focus first on the magic of beauty in Islam as well on the perception of 'sensible objects' before investigating different cultural contexts. By contexts I mean not only utility, historical significance and the symbolic content of things, in short their cultural integration in societies marked by Islam stretching from North and West Africa to South and Southeast Asia, but also the questioning or responding setting in which things are located and which enables them to speak to us. Thus, communication, relational qualities, sensory perception, interaction with material things and agency are important categories of analysis when discussing contexts such as power and status, materialization of experience, popularity and commodification as well as subaltern visual cultures. In this paper I address the interrelatedness of aesthetics and contexts situated at the crossroads of art history, visual studies, media studies, anthropology of aesthetics and material culture studies mainly through an anthropological lens.

In view of the diversity and complexity of artistic forms of expression among Muslims, I advocate broadening the visual canon to include creations of neglected social groups and call for a more inclusive understanding of its different genres.

Panel Plen3
Plenary 3
  Session 1