Page 17 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

2 Birgit Meyer

The rearticulation of religion necessarily implies some kind of transfor-
mation, which entails shifts of its position in relation to the state and the
market, as well as the shape of the religious message, structures of author-
ity, and modes and moods of binding and belonging. In other words, one
of the reasons why religion remains a vital, appealing force lies exactly in
its propensity to transform by incorporating new media and addressing
and linking people in new ways. Of course, this transformation does not
stand by itself, but occurs within broader processes, such as the much-
discussed reconfiguration of postcolonial nation-states that struggle to
bind citizens into “the imagined community” of the nation (Anderson
1991), the concomitant emergence of alternative religious, ethnic, and life-
style communities (Appadurai 1996; Castells 1996–1998; Ginsburg, Abu-
Lughod, and Larkin 2002), and the global spread of neoliberal capitalism
(Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Ferguson 2006). These processes effect,
and are up against, a pervasive sense of distraction and fragmentation
(aptly captured by the German term Zerstreuung, Benjamin 1999[1936]),
which entails a dissolution of the taken-for-grantedness of lifeworlds, yield-
ing experiences of loss of certainty and security, as well as new opportuni-
ties (Bauman 2001) and a pertinent quest for truth and authenticity
(Houtman 2008; Lindholm 2008; Taylor 1989; Van de Port 2004).
The purpose of this introduction is to map out the intellectual space in
which the contributions to this volume evolved in the context of our col-
laborative research program on the relation between media, religion, and
1
the making of communities (as mentioned in the preface). I use the notion
intellectual space so as to emphasize the fact that our research program was
not intended to develop one overarching theory and methodology. Our
concern was to build a new conceptual setting from which to interrogate
theoretical notions relevant to the religion-media-community nexus in the
light of our research findings, and vice versa. While the ten chapters
address different, albeit closely interrelated, aspects of the role of media
and religion in the making of communities in our time, I will here spell out
the central ideas that characterize the approach that I have developed in
the course of directing this program. Discussing the potential and limita-
tions of Anderson’s notion of the “imagined community” (Section I),

introducing the alternative term “aesthetic formation” (Section II), and
pleading for an understanding of religion as a practice of mediation that is
centered around distinct “sensational forms” (Section III), this introduc-
tion stresses the importance of taking into account the role of bodies, the
senses, media, and things in the making of religious subjects and commu-
nities (see also Meyer 2008a). While both media and religion have long
been located in the sphere of the imagination and virtuality, I advocate an
alternative approach that takes their material dimension seriously, so as to