Technologies of the spirit

Abstract

Users of contemporary media technology in religious settings often oscillate between immediacy in spiritual interaction and the increasing complexity and visibility of media technology as human artifacts. Drawing on approaches to mediation from philosophy and media theory, I examine Mauritian Muslims' uses of sound reproduction in performing a devotional genre to show how theological assumptions about mediation shape the domestication of media technology in religious settings in different ways. A semiotic approach can throw new light on the dialectics of mediation and immediacy that frequently result in searches for technical solutions to bypass established forms of interacting with the divine.

The limits of bodies: Gatherings and the problem of collective presence

“…In research in Mauritius, Eisenlohr (2009, 273) found a paradox: as new media technologies were gaining greater prominence, those same technologies were also being used to fulfill fantasies of unmediated interaction. Here we anticipate the possibility of another, related paradox.…”

“…Walking at pace with someone is not necessarily walking with them (Gilbert 1990). 3 Nor is the apparent brute fact of X amount of people in the "same" place ever enough; it requires some construal, some semiotic mediation to be recognized as such (see Eisenlohr 2009;Meyer 2011Meyer , 2012. The presence of a collectivity is always grounded in culturally specific notions of what counts as being "together" or "here" (Hanks 1990).…”

Making Meaning Present: Semiotics and the Ontological Life of Stones in West Africa

“…This materialist approach to presencing has much in common with the recent discussion of media and material religion that has come to anthropology through religious studies (see, e.g., Eisenlohr, 2009;de Vries, 2001;Engelke, 2007;Meyer, 2011). Accordingly, mediation is always part of religion in the sense that religion itself becomes "a practice of mediation" (Meyer & Moors, 2006, p. 7).…”

“…Meyer recognizes that media "'vanish' into the substance that they mediate" (2011, p. 32), thereby making the immaterial accessible to people in an immediate and experiential way. Questions of immediacy and mediation, however, remain thoroughly semiotic in nature (Eisenlohr, 2009;Kohn, 2013, pp. 30, 61;Leone & Parmentier, 2014), since they continue to make a difference between the medium and what they mediate.…”

‘Truly We Have a Good Heritage’: Musical Mediations in a Yoruba Christian Diaspora

“…My arguments here build on those of scholars who have begun to explore how electronic media technology is used in religious settings in contemporary Africa and its diaspora to enhance practices of devotion and worship, to enable interaction with the divine, and to produce various forms of interaction, interconnectedness, and transcendence (Brennan 2010, Buggenhagen 2010, Eisenlohr 2009, Engelke 2007, Meyer 2009, Schulz 2006. 7.…”