The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
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Rekha Menon
Abstract
This paper is written inspired by looking at the hypocritical neocolonial/postcolonial Indians who claim to be the moralistic proper Hindu Indians. The paper discusses contemporary Indian aesthetic creations, specifically visual images and plastic arts, and correlates them with the excessive psychological, ethical, social, and gender judgments in which they are placed. Nakedness and naked bodies, the sensuous and the sacred body are judged within different hermeneutical contexts. By nakedness I do not mean just the nude body or the sexed body/body-ness, but nakedness in all its ambivalence. The paper focuses on various events in India to show how the domain of the expressive lifeworld of the sensuous and the sacred is still a question of debate, which has not changed since the Victorian moral codes.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Articles in the same Issue
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
Articles in the same Issue
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
