Mysterium Materiae
Vital Matter and the Object as Evidence in the Study of Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v41i4.16Keywords:
material culture, images, objects, Mexican religionAbstract
This article examines religious image, popular devotion, and hybird religious identities by relying upon objects for analysis in the context of colonial and contemporary Mexican religion. In this article, I explore the risk and benefits of approaching the objects of material religion as evidence. I explore the variety of ways in which objects can be read/received as evidentiary. At the same time, I suggest that the meaning of objects is, like texts, fundamental unstable. At the same time, to regard objects as evidence disregards their most fundamental aspect and character: that is that they are not so much representation, that is symbols that can be read and interpreted, but PRESENTATIONAL, that is transubstantiated so that they often become the spirit itself.
References
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_____. 2012. “The Niño Jesus Doctor: Novelty and Innovation in Mexican Religion.” Nova Religio: The Journal of New and Emerging Religions 16-2.
_____ . In preparation for submission to History of Religions. “Cradling as a Ritual Posture: Image and Affect in Mesoamerica Religion.”
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_____. 2008b. “On the Materiality of Religion.” Material Religion 4.2: 230-231.
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_____. 2010b. “Prendas- Ngangas-Enquisos: Turbulence and the Influence of the Dead in Cuban-Kongo Material Culture.” Cultural Anthropology 25.3 : 387-420.
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_____. 2008. “Abundant History: Marian Apparitions as Alternative Modernity.” Historical Speaking September/October: 12-15.
_____.2005. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
_____. 2004. “Fair Game.” Bulletin of the Council of Society of the Study of Religion 33.3&4: 97-89.
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Savastano, Peter. 2010. “Changing St. Gerard’s Clothes: An Exercise in Italian-American Catholic Devotion and Material Culture.” Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives. Edited by Joseph Sciorra, 171-187. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press.
Tylor, Edward B., and Paul Radin. 1958. Religion in Primitive Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
Zedeño, Maria Neves. 2008. “Bundled Worlds: The Roles and Interactions of Complex Objects from the North American Plains.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 15.4: 362-378.
Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. “‘Animism’ Revisited: personhood, environment, and relational epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40(S1): 67–91.
Brown, Linda and William Walker. 2008. “Prologue: Archeology, Animism and Non-Human Agents.” Journal of Archeological Method and Theory 15.4: 297-299.
Bynum, Carolyn. 2011. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.
Carrasco, David, and Scott Sessions, eds. 2007. Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press; published in collaboration with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Chidester, David . 2000. “Colonialism.” In Guide to the Study of Religion. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon, 423-437. London/New York: Continuum, 2000.
Coole, Diana and Samantha Frost, eds. 2010. New Materialism: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Dean, Carolyn. 2010. A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Engel, Matthew. 2008. “The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14: S1-S21.
Hicks, Dan. 2010. “The Material Cultural Turn: Event and Effect.” In The Oxford Handbook of Material Cultural Studies. Edited by Dan Hicks and Mary Beaudry, 25-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad and Sari Westell, eds. 2007. Thinking through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London/New York: Routledge.
Hicks, Dan. 2010. “The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect.” In The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Edited by Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry, 25-98. Oxford/New York Oxford University Press.
Hodder, Ian. 2011. “Human-Thing entanglement: towards an integrated archeological perspective.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17.1: 154–177.
Holbraad, Martin. 2007. “The Power of Powder: Multiplicity and Motion in the Divinatory Cosmology of Cuban Ifá (or Mana, again).” In Thinking through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. Edited by Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell, 189-225. London/New York: Routledge.
Hoskins, Janet. 2006. “Agency, Biography and Objects.” In Handbook of Material Culture. Edited by Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, 74-84. London: Sage 2006.
Hughes, Jennifer Scheper. 2010. Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local Faith from the Conquest to the Present. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
_____. 2012. “The Niño Jesus Doctor: Novelty and Innovation in Mexican Religion.” Nova Religio: The Journal of New and Emerging Religions 16-2.
_____ . In preparation for submission to History of Religions. “Cradling as a Ritual Posture: Image and Affect in Mesoamerica Religion.”
Hurcombe, Linda. 2007. Archeological Artefacts as Material Culture. London/New York: Routledge.
Keane, Webb. 2008a. “The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14: S110-S127.
_____. 2008b. “On the Materiality of Religion.” Material Religion 4.2: 230-231.
Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Fetish-Factish.” Material Religion 7.1: 42-49.
McCutcheon, Russell. 2006. “It’s a Life. There’s No Truth in It! It’s a Sin!”: On the Limits of the Humanistic Study of Religion and the Costs of Saving Others from Themselves.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.3: 720-750.
McDaniel, Justin Thomas. 2011. “The Agency Between Images: The Relationships Among Ghosts, Corpses, Monks, and Deities at a Buddhist Monastery in Thailand.” Material Religion 7.2: 242-262.
Ochoa, Todd Ramón. 2010a. Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba. Berkeley: University of California Press.
_____. 2010b. “Prendas- Ngangas-Enquisos: Turbulence and the Influence of the Dead in Cuban-Kongo Material Culture.” Cultural Anthropology 25.3 : 387-420.
Orsi, Robert A. 2010. “Theorizing Closer to Home: Scholars of Religion Must Become Subjects Again.” Harvard Divinity Bulletin38.1&2: http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin/articles/theorizing-closer-to-home.
_____. 2008. “Abundant History: Marian Apparitions as Alternative Modernity.” Historical Speaking September/October: 12-15.
_____.2005. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
_____. 2004. “Fair Game.” Bulletin of the Council of Society of the Study of Religion 33.3&4: 97-89.
Pels, Peter. 1998. “The Spirit of Matter.” In Border fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Places, edited by Patricia Spyer, 91-121. London: Routledge.
Pietz, William. 1985. “The Problem of the Fetish, I.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 9: 5-17.
Savastano, Peter. 2010. “Changing St. Gerard’s Clothes: An Exercise in Italian-American Catholic Devotion and Material Culture.” Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives. Edited by Joseph Sciorra, 171-187. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press.
Tylor, Edward B., and Paul Radin. 1958. Religion in Primitive Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
Zedeño, Maria Neves. 2008. “Bundled Worlds: The Roles and Interactions of Complex Objects from the North American Plains.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 15.4: 362-378.
Published
2012-12-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Hughes, J. (2012). Mysterium Materiae: Vital Matter and the Object as Evidence in the Study of Religion. Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 41(4), 16-24. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v41i4.16
