A Conversation on Aesthetics and Affects of Power

Authors

  • Lina Aschenbrenner Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
  • Gerrit Lange Philipps-Universität Marburg
  • Micaela Terk Embodied Knowledge Bureau

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/

Keywords:

subject, body, material, relation, emotion, domination

Abstract

In May 2022 we held a workshop at the University of Erfurt titled Aesthetics and Affects of Power in the Context of Religion. The workshop was born out of a shared personal interest in the implicit, unconscious, material, and embodied negotiations of power, specifically as they take place in religious fields and discourses of religious participation. We observed that religious practices and discourses have historically taken, and continue to take, an especially important role in creating sensory mechanisms that structure power relations: shaping perception via aesthetics and affects. These sensory power mechanisms outlive religious practices and expand far beyond the religious sphere. They become alive in the body of the aesthetically affected. This conversation is an attempt to approach, grasp, and frame aesthetics and affects of power as a starting point for any future exchange and discussions.

Author Biographies

  • Lina Aschenbrenner, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

    Lina Aschenbrenner is scholar of religion with a cultural studies background and a dance creator based in Munich. Her research and academic interest concentrates on material, embodied, performative, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of contemporary religious phenomena and their social and cultural embeddedness, with a specific focus on neo-spiritualities. In her spare time, she creates dance with and for children and people of all ages and abilities.

  • Gerrit Lange, Philipps-Universität Marburg

    Gerrit Lange is a scholar of religion and storyteller living and teaching in Marburg. In his filmic and ethnographic research on the feelings, subjectivities and myths surrounding a Himalayan serpent goddess, he is mainly interested in the manifold explicit and nonverbal ways people live in stories and by metaphors, and in what we are actually looking for when we study feelings and emotions.

  • Micaela Terk, Embodied Knowledge Bureau

    Micaela Terk is an artist, facilitator, and writer-publisher based in Amsterdam. Her performative research into and against choreographies of power looks to mend correlations between moving, sensing, and making within institutional environments. Using formats such as workshops, performances, publications, and event curation, Micaela aims to question traditionally valued forms of knowledge production and emanation. She is the founder of Goodbye Books and director of the Embodied Knowledge Bureau.

References

Blake, Alexis. “Artist Talk.” De Ateliers, Amsterdam, September 23, 2022.

Boddy, Janice. 1994. “Spirit Possession Revisited. Beyond Instrumentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407–434. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.23.1.407

Chajes, Jeffrey Josef. 2003. Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Elior, Rachel. 2008. Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore. Jerusalem: Urim Publications.

Sax, William. 2009. “Performing God’s body.” Paragrana 18(1): 165–199.

Scheer, Monique. 2012. “Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion.” History and Theory 51(2): 193–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x

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Published

2024-10-07

Issue

ADVANCE ACCESS TO FORTHCOMING ARTICLES

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Aschenbrenner, L., Lange, G. ., & Terk, M. . (2024). A Conversation on Aesthetics and Affects of Power. Implicit Religion, 315–329. https://doi.org/10.1558/