Moving Religion by Sound: On the Effectiveness of the Nāda-Brahman in India and Modern Europe

Wilke, Annette

doi:10.1515/9783110461015-014

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Accordingly, the ultimate cosmic oneness that comprises and pervades all, and causes the emergence of all entities, can only be heard, or sensed as vibratory motion, but not seen or thought. Such ideas about the supreme role of sound and music in making the divine and cosmic perceivable were anticipated by Indian scholars who developed the notion of Nada‐Brahman , or the Sonic Absolute, centuries earlier, most notably by the musicologist Sharngadeva (1175‐1247) (Wilke 2017: 325‐9). This sonic metaphysics first formulated by Indian theorists of music, and that Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Deleuze took up much later in European philosophy, also influenced Rudolf Otto's speculations about the intimate link between music and the sphere of the numinous (Lehrich 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Atmospheric resonance: sonic motion and the question of religious mediation

Eisenlohr

2022

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo‐phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half‐things, I propose a different understanding of religious mediation from the one developed in contexts where images, objects, and technical media dominate. Based on research on the recitation of Urdu devotional poetry among Mauritian Muslims, it is suggested that sonic religion does not function as a stable in‐between connecting humans and the divine. Instead, it operates through processes of resonant bundling, intertwining different strands of lived experience, including religious traditions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Atmospheric resonance: sonic motion and the question of religious mediation

Eisenlohr

2022

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…In the last decades, though, scholars have turned their attention to the role of the senses as well as the interplay between religious practices and developing media technologies. From these perspectives, all sensory dimensions can play a role: images, sounds (Wilke 2017), smells and fragrances (Guggemos 2020), body postures in dance or meditation (Koch 2017), each with its own specific mode of communication. The aesthetics approach to religious practices can also lead to insights into how religious forms permeate contemporary Western society by adapting to consumer culture and how a tradition of aesthetics of spirits is realized in New Materialism (Gautier 2017, Johnson 2017).…”

Section: Aesthetics Of Knowledge In Science and Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Angels and blue brains: aesthetics of knowledge in science and religion

Borrelli

2024

Artnodes

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This paper deals with the sensory and culturally situated dimension of knowing, which I refer to as “aesthetics of knowledge”, and focuses on knowing and knowledge in two fields of the modern and contemporary cultural sphere: science and religion. Since its emergence during the 19th century, science has been sharing many elements of the aesthetics of knowledge with modern Western religion. These are shaped by common heritage from the Romantic period and, while often dismissed as superficial borrowings, they contribute to construct scientific meaning. Based on existing literature, this paper endeavours to show how a focus on shared aesthetics of knowledge in science and religion can provide new insights in science, media and art studies by complementing other approaches.

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“…In recent years, the distinction between speech, stylised speech in particular, and music has been relativised as a modern, Western categorisation, which encouraged scholars of religion to study the relation between language, music and sound in ritual contexts (Engelhardt, 2012: 300; Hackett, 2012: 12; Laack, 2016; cf. Adams and Sheehy, 2020: 8; Wilke, 2017: 336).…”

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confidence: 99%

A psalm is always a memory: Nostalgia and sacrality in contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms

2023

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This article discusses the role of biographical memory in three contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms in Dutch and Flemish contexts. We observe that, in performances of psalms, participants (intend to) either forget or recall different biographical memories. Nostalgic narratives of religious, cultural and individual change and continuity inform both the way that they interpret their experiences of these psalm performances, and their motivations for attempting to forget or recall particular memories related to the psalms. By using the notion of sacrality — that which is set apart, non-ordinary — we show that particular non-negotiable desires and non-ordinary experiences recur multiple times in these nostalgic narratives. Analysis of these desires and experiences leads us to conclude that contemplative experiences are desired by many, but experienced by only a few. We suggest the combination of Aleida Assmann’s theory of forgetting and remembering with the notions of nostalgia and sacrality as a way to successfully overcome the unproductive dichotomy between religious and cultural heritage.

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Moving Religion by Sound: On the Effectiveness of the Nāda-Brahman in India and Modern Europe

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Atmospheric resonance: sonic motion and the question of religious mediation

Atmospheric resonance: sonic motion and the question of religious mediation

Angels and blue brains: aesthetics of knowledge in science and religion

A psalm is always a memory: Nostalgia and sacrality in contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms

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