tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009-11-10:/journal/issue96/40 2011-07-20T18:05:26Z Fall 2008 Movable Type Pro 4.31-en tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1263 2011-07-13T16:06:36Z 2011-07-20T18:05:26Z

In this introduction and special issue we examine the role of contemporary media in the formation of religious communities, in particular when religious subjects, practices, and arguments are structured and enabled by processes of conflict and contestation, and by situations of marginality and war. Our belief is that to understand how religion, media, and politics intersect necessitates a close analysis of the forms and processes of circulation which in fact bring religion, media, and politics into being. Religions are constituted through an architecture of circulation and representation that it turn creates the pragmatic contexts for modes of practice and worship. It is through close attention to the materiality of religion forms - be they based in sound, image, or body - and their circulation as aesthetic and ritual forms that we can trace how religion becomes enfolded with the political. We assess how this assemblage of media, religion, and the political takes place.

Admin http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=40&id=1 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1262 2011-07-13T16:05:59Z 2011-07-20T18:06:17Z

The paper explores the billboards and murals of Jesus Christ that sprang up and proliferated across Ambon during the religiously inflected conflict that engulfed the Indonesian provincial capital in rampant violence from 1999 until 2002. During the war and since, popular Christian painters have been plastering the city's main thoroughfares and Christian neighborhood gateways with portraits of Jesus and Christian symbols. Monumental and assertive in public space, these artifacts perform in several capacities: as visible emblems of Christian territory, as a way of making manifest and presencing God, as a pedagogical mode of intervention in everyday Christian behavior, as a way of branding community identity, as a material counter to Islam's national and international visibility, and--one suspects--as a kind of huge amulet aimed at warding off the Muslim other. They are also part of a dynamic "interocular" field where apparitions, print media, and their painted spin-offs cycle seamlessly into each other. Additionally, the murals refract different scales and modes of visuality ranging from the evidentiary and bureaucratic State-seeing to the hypervisibility of media "spotlights" that single out "hot spots" around the globe. All of this, in turn, takes place within the play of visibility and invisibility that is one important legacy of the war. Homing in on the powers and hazards of public images in Indonesia today and the multiplicity of visual modes and discourses and perspectival fragmentation more generally characteristic of our times, the paper aims to expand our understanding of what the visual might be.

Admin http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=40&id=1 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1261 2011-07-13T16:04:31Z 2011-07-20T18:06:54Z

The great attention given to death and the afterlife within the popular media of the Islamic movement is a sign for many in the West of a diseased Muslim culture, one preoccupied with violence and destruction, and inexorably epitomized in the figure of the suicide bomber. In this paper, I challenge this widespread understanding through a close analysis of the way death is configured in everyday discourses of contemporary Muslim life in Egypt. Instead of focusing on the question of political violence, I explore how popular media on death treat the problem of providing appropriate medical care to the sick and dying. To highlight some of the unique dimensions of these discourses, I contrast them with arguments put forward in the context of the contemporary ethical and legal debate in the United States on the rights of the terminally ill. I give particular attention to how distinct conceptions of death inflect the way that the human body becomes an object of biomedical attention and management. The differences that emerge from these contrastive views, I want to argue, should not be understood in terms of an opposition between a "culture of death" and a "culture of life," as some have crudely suggested, but as the product of distinct sensibilities for the place and meaning of death and its structuring significance for human life.

Admin http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=40&id=1 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1260 2011-07-13T16:03:54Z 2011-07-20T18:07:26Z

This essay examines what a seemingly trivial bodily reaction such as goose bumps tells us about the relation between spirituality, technology, and voice. Based on ethnographic research, the article examines the media ministry of a Brazilian priest named Padre Marcelo Rossi. In particular, it addresses Padre Marcelo's popular "aerobics of Jesus," a regime of embodied prayer techniques that combines contemporary music with mediaeval Byzantine prayer techniques as means to awaken the spirit in practitioners. To make the point concrete, the essay examines how a popular hit, "Luz Divina" ("Divine Light"), is used in religious practice by Marcelo and his followers, who by singing along with the tune and regulating the intake and outtake of breath give rise to the magic-like, yet scientifically explained, somatic reaction of goose bumps. Examining this affective, bodily response, the paper attempts to examine the interpenetration between mysticism, immediacy, and spontaneity and technology, mediation, and rehearsal.

Admin http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=40&id=1 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1259 2011-07-13T16:02:14Z 2011-07-20T18:07:47Z

Since the invention of sound-transcription devices in the early nineteenth century, philosophers, linguists, inventors, audiences, and others have debated whether it is the meaningful act of speech or the material sound of the voice itself which defines the speaking subject in the person's absence. Though this question has a long philosophical history, it took on a directly political and practical turn in the United States on 12 November 2002. On that day, Al Jazeera broadcast a tape purported to contain the voice of Osama bin Laden. Programs for political action hinged on a classic philosophical question: How could anyone know for certain if the voice on the tape belonged to bin Laden? This paper offers a political and philosophical analysis of debates surrounding the voice on the tape. It considers the circulation of the tape, the press coverage it received, the techniques of verification used (and not used) to determine the tape's authenticity, and the relationship between bin Laden's voice and his face in American political discourse. The debates around the tape demonstrated that the relationship between the voice and a speaking subject is not simply a matter for epistemology and ontology, but also a crucial matter of power. In order for a bin Laden tape to have its "effects" in politics, action, and debate, it need not be real or validated; it must simply be the subject of belief.

Admin http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=40&id=1 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2011:/journal/issue96//40.1258 2011-07-13T16:01:30Z 2011-07-20T18:08:14Z

This paper examines the role of mediation and circulation in religious movements. Examining the evangelical work of the South African Muslim preacher Ahmed Deedat, it examines how the rise of Deedat in the 1970s and 1980s came about as a Muslim response to the emergence and dominance of new modes of transnational Pentecostalism. A central concern is how Deedat draws on forms of secular critique and biblical hermeneutics as part of his call for da'wa (religious awakening) among Muslims. It draws on close textual analysis of writings and video cassettes to tease out the formal properties whereby religious movements are articulated.

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This article explores the ways in which Pentecostal media, especially electro-acoustic media, are integrated in the everyday life of a favela in Rio de Janeiro. It argues that the popularity of Pentecostal radio has to be understood in relation to the sociocultural meaning of sound, the architecture of the favela, and the ways in which sound is employed to mark off space and express identity and alterity. Pentecostal broadcasts acquire their meaning against the background of sound that evangelicals define as "worldly" instead of Godly, and the cacophony of sounds in the dense urban space reflects the power struggles that are going on and the position that evangelicals try to maintain. People are inclined to listen to evangelical radio because it signals their "sanctified" position in the harsh and complex social conditions of the favela. By way of a discussion of the qualities of sound in relation to the built environment--its appearance as an extension of material and social boundaries and its manifestation as an immediate presence that defies boundaries--this article also explores some of the more intricate transformations that the use of electro-acoustic technology brings about in the nexus of religion, technology, and bodily dispositions. By many evangelicals, electro-acoustic technology is considered an important means to be "in touch" with God. This emotionally charged experience subjectively confirms the status aparte of the persons who adhere to the Pentecostal churches and, as such, authenticates the social distinctions they make between themselves and the other favela inhabitants.

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