Page 38 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Introduction 23

how the viscerality of bodiliness seduces, but also how it may be eschewed.
As she points out, it is exactly because female actresses are aware of the
visceral power of cinematic images that they seek to exempt themselves
from being eaten up through male desire. They seek to do so by adopting
a practice of porda that severs the link between their own voices and bodies
and the cinematic image. Far from taking the body as the ultimate, as it
were natural, resort of truth, this volume emphasizes that the body itself is
not just there, but inscribed via religious and other sensational forms, and
via structures of repetition. The point is that as scholars we need to under-
stand how and why the body has become such a powerful repository of
truth and authenticity in our time (see also Shusterman 1997), which can
be mobilized against experiences of loss and insecurity by being loaded
with spiritual power. Thus we seek to grasp, on the one hand, the appeal of
bodiliness and viscerality in appearing as harbingers of truth beyond dis-
course, and, on the other hand, the actual mobilization of the body into
social formations and projects of binding and bonding. In short, this vol-
ume strives to understand how the body is subject to formation, and yet
vested with an aura of ultimacy that denies being formed—just as imme-
diacy also depends on mediation and its denial.

V This Volume

As stated at the beginning, our research program was not intended to pro-
duce one binding framework or paradigm to be adopted by all researchers.
Instead, our collaboration created a highly stimulating intellectual space
for engaging in conversations, whilst also leaving ample room for the spec-
ificities of the research locations and individual research interests. In this
Introduction I have sought to reveal myriad connections and resonances
between the ten chapters, and to draw out my perspective on the relation
between aesthetic formations, religious mediations, sensational forms and
styles of binding. While this perspective has been generated by digesting
all the research taking place under the auspices of our research program, it

should be pointed out that the authors themselves do not necessarily
employ exactly the same conceptual terms. Engaging in common research
together need not, and indeed should not, imply that everything is placed
in the same framework. In this sense, this introduction can best be read as
a discussion, which seeks to pull out certain threads that link the work of
scholars who work together on a similar theme.
The volume is organized in three parts. Part 1 evolves around
“Boundary Politics,” and addresses the difficulty in drawing boundaries