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Introduction 7
(Shusterman 2002, see also Hirschkind 2006), or the “cinesthetic subject”
(Sobchack 2004; see also Hoek in this volume) signals a shift from the
study of imaginations in terms of representations toward more visceral and
material approaches of cultural forms in processes of binding (Morgan
1998, 2005; Meyer 2006a).
The fact that imaginations, most certainly in the sphere of religion, are
able to touch beholders and induce in them a sense of being true and pow-
erful—as many chapters in this volume show (see especially van de Port,
Hoek, de Witte, and Machado)—is well captured by the move toward
aesthetics as proposed here. At stake are, in other words, the modes through
which imaginations materialize and are experienced as real, rather than
remaining at the level of interchangeable representations located in the
mind. Imaginations, though articulated and formed through media and
thus “produced,” appear as situated beyond mediation exactly because they
can be—literally—incorporated and embodied, thus invoking and perpet-
uating shared experiences, emotions, and affects that are anchored in, as
well as triggered by, a taken-for-granted lifeworld, a world of, indeed,
common sense.
Why aesthetic formation, however, rather than aesthetic community? I
certainly do not discard the notion of community per se, but indicate that
we need to move beyond understanding community as a fixed, bounded
social group. In order to get a better grip on the making of communities as
a process, it is helpful to invoke the term formation, because it is more
encompassing and dynamic. Formation refers both to a social entity (as in
social formation)—thus designating a community—and to processes of
7
forming (see also Mahmood 2005, 17ff.). These processes of forming mold
particular subjects through shared imaginations that materialize, as
explained above, through embodied aesthetic forms. The term aesthetic
formation, then, highlights the convergence of processes of forming sub-
jects and the making of communities—as social formations. In this sense,
“aesthetic formation” captures very well the formative impact of a shared
aesthetics though which subjects are shaped by tuning their senses, induc-
ing experiences, molding their bodies, and making sense, and which mate-
rializes in things (see also de Abreu in this volume, and de Abreu 2009).
Again, my concern here is not so much to replace the term community, but
to launch a dynamic—indeed, performative—understanding of commu-
nity as an aesthetic formation. This is the way in which the notion of com-
munity is used in the contributions to this volume.
Another reason for opting against the notion of “aesthetic community”
lies in the fact that it is invoked in a confusing and, in my view, problem-
atic manner. Many authors attribute this notion to Kant, yet define it in
their own way, as a particular type of community aligned with Western