About the Book
This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Oslo and Utrecht University.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are known to privilege words over images. This book shows, however, that the reality is more complex. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen explores the complex procedures used to render the invisible as visible and the elusive as tangible in these three traditions. Working from different disciplinary angles, contributors reflect on figuration and sensation in biblical culture, medieval Jewish culture, the imagination of the unseen in Islamic settings, Christian assaults on 'idolatry' in Africa, baroque and modern Church art, contemporary Eastern Orthodox tradition, photography on the East African coast, European opera and literature, and more.
The book shows that the three religious traditions have formed sensorial regimes: embodied habits, traditions and standards for seeing, sensing, displaying, and figuring that which could not, or should not, be seen. So, the desire for seeing the invisible and experiencing the beyond are paradoxically confirmed, contested and controlled, by the sensorial regimes in vogue. This carries over even into secularized use of religious figurations in arts and literature.
Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen is important reading for scholars of anthropology, religious studies, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Islamic studies, art history, cultural studies, biblical studies and archaeology.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Part I: Reconfiguring the Image Question
1. Imagining Solomon’s Temple: Aesthetics of the Non-Representable, Terje Stordalen (University of Oslo, Norway)
2. Seeing with the Ear, Recognizing with the Heart: Rethinking the Ontology of the Mimetic Arts in Islam, Wendy Shaw (Free University Berlin, Germany)
3. The Hypericon of the Golden Calf, Yvonne Sherwood (University of Kent, UK)
4. Idolatry Beyond the Second Commandment: Conflicting Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen, Birgit Meyer (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
Part II: Genealogies of Figuration
5: Beyond ‘Image Ban’ and ‘Aniconism’: Reconfiguring Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Religion(s) in a Visual and Material Religion Perspective, Christoph Uehlinger (University of Zürich, Switzerland)
6. Visual Images in Medieval Jewish Culture Before the Age of Art, Kalman P. Bland (Duke University, USA)
7: Real Absence: Images of God in Turco-Persian Painting, 1300–1600 CE, Christiane Gruber (University of Michigan, USA)
8. Celestial Desires: Figuration and Sensation in Persian Devotional Shiite Mural Paintings, Pedram Khosronejad (Oklahoma State University, USA)
Part III: Figurations and Sensations – Lives and Regimes
9: Aesthetic Sensations of Mary: The Miraculous Icon of Meryem Ana and the Dynamics of Interreligious Relations in Antakya, Jens Kreinath (Wichitia State University, USA)
10: Photographic Practices and the 'Aesthetics of Withdrawal' among Muslims of the East African Coast, Heike Behrend (University of Cologne, Germany)
11: Moulded Imaginaries: Icons, Idols, and the Sensory Environments of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Sonja Luehrmann (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Part IV: Desires for the Unseen: Art and Religion
12: From Ponte St. Angelo to the Cathedral of St. Peter: Figuration and Sensation in Bernini's Pilgrimage Path in Rome, Øyvind Norderval (University of Oslo, Norway)
13: Figuration and ?Aesthetics of the Sublime': Aspects of their Interplay in Christian Art, Else Marie Bukdahl (University of Aalborg, Denmark)
14: Seeing, Hearing, and Narrating Salome. Modernist Sensual Aesthetics and the Role of Narrative Blanks, Ulrike Brunotte (Maastricht University, the Netherlands)
15: The Art of Incarnation: Loss and Return of Religion in Houellebecq's Submission, Christiane Kruse (Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Germany)
Afterword, The Visual Culture of Revelation, David Morgan (Duke University, USA)
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Birgit Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Terje Stordalen is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Old Testament Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Law, Aalborg University, Denmark.
Review :
Ambitious ... highly interesting.
This is a bold and ambitious volume, not only in its conceptual scope, but also for its range of disciplinary perspectives and comparative focus. Taken together, the essays convey the vibrancy of religious studies today, as well as the centrality of approaches that take account of materiality and the senses. A must-have book for all serious students of the role of images within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions.
Combining theoretical sophistication with a vital awareness of historical diversity, this book provides a series of refreshing studies of the broad repertoire of mediations of, and contentions over, the unseen realm. It moves beyond the normative preference for the word as the singular canonical medium of Judaism, Christianity and religion and pictorial media.
In the study of visual culture, it is hard to imagine a subject of investigation more important and telling than the tension between invisibility and visibility. For the visual cultures of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, this book explores that tension with sophistication, precision, and aplomb. It is essential reading.
