Page 25 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

10 Birgit Meyer

Maffesoli thus coins the notion of “aesthetic style,” which he locates at the
“conjunction of the material and the immaterial” (33) so as to indicate the
importance of bodies, things, and images in bringing about new commu-
nities and even communion. Such an “aesthetic style” produces a particu-
lar subjectivity and habitus. 11
As I have already remarked, the emphasis Maffesoli places on the rele-
vance of aesthetics, and the concomitant importance of style, resonates
well with the concern of this volume to grasp the emergence of new kinds
of religious communities that evolve around mass mediated images and
other cultural forms by paying due attention to the material dimension.
Although his work is limited to images, it can be extended to include other
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cultural forms that appeal via sound, smell, or touch. However, whereas
Maffesoli observes a process of general reenchantment in which anything
that binds people to images and other cultural forms via a shared aesthetic
already qualifies as religion, the chapters in this volume are based on
research in settings in which actual religious groups assert their public
presence against other religious and nonreligious groups, or where specific
religious repertoires—or “sensational forms,” see next section—are
employed in addressing people. This implies that we need to pay close
attention to the specific ways through which particular religions and reli-
gious forms and elements feature in the making of communities via dis-
tinct aesthetic styles.
Although from a more conventional perspective it may seem counterin-
tuitive to bring together religion and style, I suggest moving beyond a view
of religion as primarily associated with content and style as primarily asso-
ciated with form. Such distinctions, Talal Asad has argued, echo the mod-
ern dualism of outward forms and inner self, according to which form is
inferior to substance and meaning (1993; see also Mahmood 2001; Engelke
and Tomlinson 2006). Privileging belief over objects and practices, and
spirit over matter, modern understandings of religion became “dematerial-
ized” (Chidester 2000; Keane 2007). By calling attention to aesthetics and
style I seek to overcome such unproductive distinctions, so as to grasp the
material dimension of religious modes of forming subjects and communi-
ties (see also Meyer 2006a).

As I have outlined in an earlier publication (Meyer 2004a), an emphasis
on style liberates us researchers from a sole focus on meaning—for a long
time one of the prime concerns of the anthropology of religion—and opens
up a broader field of inquiry that alerts us to the importance of appearance
and modes of doing things without dismissing them as mere outward, and
hence secondary, matters. Style is at the core of religious aesthetics exactly
because the adoption of a shared style is central to processes of subjectiva-
tion, in that style involves particular techniques of the self and the body