exam Flashcards
- “Oriental Monk”:
- A representative of alternative spirituality that draws from ancient eastern civilization and culture (his spiritual commitment, his calm demeanor, his Asian face, and oftentimes his manner of dress)
- (romantic stereotype): usually a lone/liminal/in-between/outside of society figure.
- Take in an individual from the west who acts as a bridge figure or saviour.
- includes a wide range of religious figures (gurus, swamis, teachers)
- Orientalism:
- field of study that studies the East
- style of thought (Allows the west to appropriate or dominate the east to their advantage)
- > “east” portrayed in distinction to the west
- way of domination (constructed identifies can be reclaimed by those objectified)
- divides the world into “two unequal halves, Orient and Occident.”
- rather than offering a clear and unbiased representation of Asian religions, this system of representation reveals the interests and concerns of the Occidental subjectivity from which it emerges
- Sacred Pain (according to Ariel Glucklick):
- transform the pain that causes suffering into a pain that leads to insight, meaning, and even salvation. Hurting the body for the sake of the soul
- argues that religious individuals have hurt themselves because the pain they produced was meaningful and is not only subject to verbal communication but also figures in our ability to empathize and share. In other words, the symbolic and experiential efficacy of pain derives from the way it bridges “raw” sensation with our highest qualities as human beings in a community of other humans.
- Body and pain are not connected as cause and effect (it’s more complicated)
- Pain is not just physical but It’s also psychological, social or cultural
- Pain forms the basis for solidarity and empathy
- Pain bridges “raw” sensation with our ability to communicate
- Pain is meaningful, often sacred, and can undo world and self
- Pain can “threaten” self as punishment or “heal” it as medicine
- cultural appropriation
-inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
- Communitas (and Liminality):
- A spontaneous heightened state of bonding with those in your community, characterized by liminality and Anti-structure.
Critiques of communitas:
-not particular to “pilgrimage”
-pilgrimage reaffirms hierarchy ->you can tell how much people own/how wealthy they are by what they’re wearing on the pilgrimage (there is still an obsession of products)
-pilgrimage is area of contestation/debate (instagramers vs real pilgrims)
-social relation vs individual experience
- Anti-Structure:
• An egalitarian/equal/fair, non-mundane field of social relations in distinction to normal structures of society
- Prosperity Gospel:
-God is good and wants prosperity for all
-Jesus died so we can live in abundance (atonement)
-> theology of the cross/atonement (he died and suffered so we don’t have to)
Word invokes power
-positive confession= speaking God’s power into existence
-Name it, Claim it (I want this much money, I want my business to be this much successful, and believing its gonna happen)
Material wealth and physical health are divine blessings
Critique= it says in the bible to pick up and carry our cross but the PG says that Jesus carried the cross so we don’t have to. This model requires you to have a certain faith, and if you aren’t prospering than your faith is weak and you have doubts. Attitude affects how you view reality but this model shames people for being poor and sick in that it is their fault that they are in that position.
- New Thought movement:
-Development in 19th century America
-prefer comic optimism (law of attraction) to dogma
-ultimate divine intelligence and divinity within
-spiritual healing leads to physical healing
-spiritual health leads to material wealth (financial wellbeing) -be optimistic about the universe and align yourself with it
Coming into consciousness with God produces health; likewise, coming into consciousness with God produces abundance. New Thought advocates shunned dogma and encouraged cosmic optimism
The law of attraction will heal you (“Disease is held in the body by thought”), it will make you prosperous (“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts”), and it will make you a beacon of positive confession (“When you think about what you want, and you emit that frequency, you cause the energy of what you want to vibrate at that frequency and you bring it to You!”)
- Nominalism:
-things don’t have meaning themselves, we place meaning onto them
William of Ockham (14th c.)
-Names are irrelevant to object
-Universals/ideas only exist in the mind, not in themselves
-denies ontological connection between thing and its name
-meaning is placed onto an object not inherently within
- Kon-Mari Method:
-method of organising with religious undertones. Spirits within the objects that need to be serviced to have their effect, remove the ones that shouldn’t be there and thank the ones that are there and give meaning (the ones that are high quality and beautiful). Japanese religion includes Kami (spirits involved with every object). I only want a few things but they are the best things and fit the best in our home. The better the object, the better. Every object sparks joy within you Commit yourself to tidying up Imagine your life Finish letting go first Tidy by category, not location Follow the right order Ask yourself if it sparks joy
- The “spirituality” advocated by Oprah:
- There is some sort of energy/vibration/God but it is very ambiguous and can be appropriated by the audience and make it apply to their own life.
- theism/belief that is non-dogmatic(open-minded), ambiguous and self-orientated
- internal transformation via external change
- products become “practice” (product is linked with some sort of advice to improve your life)
- gratitude and giving heal (through purchase) and become status -more you’re able to give, the higher status you have.
- Queer Theory:
Rejection of “essentialist” views of gender
a. Rejects that social gender and biological gender are the same thing
Biological “sex” is a continuum
b. Male – intersex- female continuum
Gender is a cultural, social performance/construction
Emphasizes de-stabilization of identity, norms and dichotomies
Applicable to other fields, including religious studies
- Drag (and the insights it offers according to Judith Butler):
- usually men who dress up as females and have exaggerated femininity for a performance
- Drag satires/mocks heterosexual norms and exposes boundaries by going past them and pushing them and points to itself as a performance (self-aware of its construction)
- reflects the performative aspect of all genders
- gendering occurs as a compulsory practice of embodying norms
- gendering is a continual, repeated practice and seeing a man dressed as a women reminds us of our norms and how we are always practicing to keep up with our gender (gendering) and how it is constructed
- All of us are in drag to a certain degree in our daily lives. Reflects all genders
- Hybridity:
The term:
- Bringing together of two distinct things (as in a species)
- Breaking and joining at the same time
The concept:
- Derived from post-colonial thought (India -Britain interdependence)
- Rejects essentialists view of race and identity
- > “Culture” and “race” is constructed via encounter
- > Not “mixture” of 2 essentialized things but continual “mixture” of all - there is no such thing as a pure culture(pure Canadian culture is not a thing))
- Culture itself is a mixture and is always changing and adapting and appropriating
example of “orientalism” in popular culture, such as a film or tv show. Who is represented? What specific stereotypes are portrayed:
- Aladdin: for its unfair representation of the Arab world (The town people, females are sexualized and violence is emphasized ‘we’ll cut off your head’)
- Buddhism/Hinduism -> Batman Begins Teaches ‘Asian martial arts’
How can “hybridity” be applied to “religion”? What connections can be made to “orientalism”?
The merging and separating of new religions
-Can always root back to these two essentialist religions which aren’t actually essentialist
-Therefore there is no essentialism .. everything comes from something!
• Everything comes from something else, religions are not totally independent
• The trinity within the church itself is articulated (religion has history just as culture as history as well as race, the categories themselves didn’t just come out of nowhere)
-there is no pure religion as there is no pure culture or race, rather they are constructions built from bringing together distinct things to form a hybrid. can take aspects from the east that would be valued in the west and misrepresent those aspects/ideas to suit the western desires (ex. how we treat yoga in the west, we take the idea of yoga from the eastern culture and combine it with our idea of physical stretching in our western culture)
critiques of hybridity
- Elitism of postmodernism (there is no truth, everything is constructed and its’ all abstract)
- Doesn’t recognize negative and harmful genealogy of “hybrid”
- Erases distinction between “colonized” in South-Asia, South America, Africa, etc
- Martyrdom (see reading and lecture notes from unit on Queer Theory):
- In ancient Christianity, transcends and re-inscribes gender
o Ex. Perpetua: “I became a Man” (early 3rd c.) - Demonstrates links between body, asceticism, and love
o Ex. Athletic, ascetic, and marriage crowns - Combines admiration and persecution
o Admired for devotion, courage, willingness to suffer
o Persecuted despite glorious character
o But in modern usage, perceived as a weak defeatist
Come on, don’t be a martyrdom, don’t sit back and watch it happen, lean in!
-Queer communities also feel under persecution
