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- Convenors:
-
Petar Bagarić
(Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Hrvoje Čargonja (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb)
- Stream:
- Body/Embodiment
- Location:
- A214
Short Abstract:
The consumerist environment keeps individual subjects in a state of hyperaesthesia - enhanced sensitivity to the sensory stimuli. Such affordances of hyperaesthticised postindustrial environment are conditioning hyperaesthetic embodiment of individual subjects along with its specific utopia.
Long Abstract:
The consumerist environment of Western neoliberal capitalism, according to Howes (2005), keeps individual subjects in a state of suspended hyperaesthesia, a state of enhanced sensitivity to the sensory stimuli. This increase in subject's sensitivity is demanded by neoliberal economies in order to accommodate for the progressive increase in the varieties and degrees of stimulation. In other words, the affordances of hyperaesthticised postindustrial environment are conditioning hyperaesthetic embodiment of individual subjects.
This vantage point, where, as Livingston (1998) asserts, stimuli tend to be decontextualized and purposeless, opens up a question of postindustrial metaphysics and utopian (or perhaps dystopian) vision of such hyperaesthecised reality. Although utopian visions are usually associated with transcendental intellectual projects, according to Johnson (2003), there are embodied roots of utopian tendencies wrought in the very architecture of our consciousness.
Having in mind these main points of departure for this panel, we propose further discussion along the lines of the following questions: What are lived aspects of hyperaesthetic utopia or, in other words, what configurations of our sensations, feelings, emotions and other bodily dispositions correspond to the affordances of hyper-stimulating environment of Western economies? Is hyperaesthetic utopia a metaphysical asymptote of free-market capitalism? What are ethical, social and psychological implications of such situation? What are the conditions for such hypeaesthetic experience?
We would like to invite speakers with various methodological and thematic orientations to participate with their case studies, theoretical insights, and other perspectives on this issue.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Petar Bagarić (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Paper short abstract:
The loss of transcendence in postmodernity left the subject without possibility to detach from the surrounding and to achieve bodily coherence. Subject is instead dissolved in his surrounding and compelled to incessant organic trade with it.
Paper long abstract:
Utopia is usually perceived as a transcendental category different from reality (cf. Mannheim 1978) which serves as a model for a social change. As such, utopia is deeply affected by the crisis of transcendence in postmodernity. Unlike the Cartesian ego, which maintained firm boundaries between himself and the world and searched for a contact with it through neutral abstract categories, the embodied subject of postmodernity needs to achieve that contact immediately, through his body, affects and sensations. In such a context, in which things do not exist if they can't be felt, utopia has to be achieved as a specific constellation of affects and sensations - as a certain bodily state.
Hyperaesthesia, explicated as the sensual logic of the late capitalism by david Howes 2005, is a means for achieving a specific utopian project. Namely, the project of free market, characterized as utopian by Karl Polany (1999), requires a subject without strict boundaries in order to secure constant and immediate flow of stimuli and goods. The hyperaesthetic state ensures dissolution of bodily coherence and release of perceptual possibilities (Livingston 1998) which allow for an undisturbed exchange of messages, sensations and affects. The embodied subject, therefore, is not faced with utopia as a regulative idea, but is, instead of that, directly immersed in a specific utopian state.
Hrvoje Čargonja (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb)
Paper short abstract:
In my lecture I will argue that embodied emotional aesthetics emphasised in the devotional theology and practice of Caitanya Vaishnavism can be seen as a form of religious hyperaesthetic utopia.
Paper long abstract:
As the notion of idealised state of being, utopia plays an important role in traditional cosmologies, especially religions. Many religions cultivate practices for attaining an ideal state of being and Caitanya Vaishnavism is one of them. It is a Vaishnava Hindu tradition that hails from 15th century Bengal, India. It is founded by Caitanya Mahaprabhu, an devotee of god Krishna whose incarnation he is traditionally believed to be. Caitanya preached the chanting and singing the names of God as the topmost soterological practice. Absorbed in the practice of calling for God with feelings of love and affection the exponents of the tradition, most of them highly educated individuals, provided a complex theology that aims to rationalise the ecstatic love of god or bhakti rasa.
In order to do that, these theologians used ancient Indian theory of drama, known as the rasa theory. Rasa is a Sanskrit word for emotional-aesthetic pleasure experienced when watching a play or reading poetry. Embodied in its character, this ancient theory accounts for intensification of emotions. Caitanya theologians used it to answer their question how to attain the state of blissful love of God, a hyperaesthetic state, both hyper-sensual and hyper-sensorial. Bhakti rasa is seen as the ever increasing and ever diversifying pleasure in loving, selfless and playful interaction with God.
In my lecture, I will use examples from my own research on the Hare Krishnas in Croatia and India and will try to point out the importance of emotional aspect of an hyperaesthetic utopia.
Iva Bulić (University of Zadar)
Paper short abstract:
Taking traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice of prostration as its case study, this paper would like to discuss the way in which this intense engagement, both of the body and the mind of the practitioner, could be considered as the embodiment of the hyperaesthetic utopia in its own right.
Paper long abstract:
Whether performed at the Buddhist pilgrimage places like Mahabodhi temple in Bodhgaya, India, or the privacy of one's own room anywhere in the West, numerous Tibetan prostrations drastically affect the practitioner's mind and the body, putting him/her in the specific relations towards him/herself as well as towards the cultural-religious symbols it tries to works with. With the unprecedented popularity which Tibetan Buddhism has been gaining it the West since the 1960s, this traditional religious practice has become common among the Western Buddhists too, however revealing and opening itself to new perspectives and interpretations.
Having this in mind, one is asked to consider in what relationship do we find body/mind, sensations, emotions and moods (and furthermore personal beliefs and interpretations) with the practice of prostrations? Anthropologists define the relationship between emotions and cultural-religious symbols in numerous ways. Evans-Pritchard explains that 'emotional states must differ not just from person to person but also within a person in different occasions, even during the same ritual.'
Using the analytical concepts of Leiba, Körpera as well as tantric symbols (cultural objectifications) such as the subtle body, the paper examines the possibility of the embodiment of a particular tantric body/mind as a different way of being (Csordas, Samuel). The paper will examine does and how traditional practice of prostration fall under the category of hyperaesthetic embodiment, in the Western environment of new-age practices as well as in the more traditional Buddhist setting and interpretation.
Jehona Hajrullahu (Independent Research)
Paper short abstract:
Based on studies done on this field, and data from researchers we have found out that Albanians had practiced rites and actions with elements of magic faith for curing different ‘disease’ of children, which were considered to have been effective.
Paper long abstract:
Actions with magical belief are considered to be still inherited in those places where the human mind, spirit of belief in the powers of the visible and invisible, something perhaps even nonexistent is present.
Methods and evidence of different popular magical- Religious actions have functioned many years ago for diseases of infants and children in various forms, some of which seem also to occur at this time.
Even though we are dealing with a period of a great socio-economic change accompanied with a high intellectual awareness, methods of healing magic formula for certain diseases or conditions acquired by children for various reasons are still being applied in our society.
We think that the issue of this kind of belief of Albanians, referring to the spiritual life is of interest to be studied in more detail to shed light on this phenomenon of tradition which is still valid today.