Mimesis as Method: Historical Materialism in the Anthropology of Religion - ARL500108

• Title: Mimesis as Method: Historical Materialism in the Anthropology of Religion
• Guaranteed by: Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies (21-UFAR)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2018
• Semester: summer
• Points: 0
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (14)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Additional information: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=5889
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: Mgr. Milan Kroulík
• Class: A – Mezioborová nabídka VP: Filosofie, náboženství

Annotation

Last update: Mgr. Milan Kroulík (25.01.2018)

The aim of this seminar is to serve as an opening up of Michael Taussig's theoretically dense anthropology classic “Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses”.To develop an understanding of this work entails two things: becoming familiar with the mostly Marxist philosophical background of this book and learning how to apply the proposed methods in one's own work. It also means to learn to understand how a materialist approach differs from others and why it is important.

This course is designed for advanced students. In case of excessive enrollment, preference will be given to religious studies students.

Active participation in class discussions will be the basis for graded evaluation. After the end of the semester there will be an oral examination for which you will have to write an abstract (as if for a scientific paper) on the seminar theme. Further specifications will follow in class.

Literature

Last update: Mgr. Milan Kroulík (25.01.2018)

Primary:

Benjamin, Walter. “On the Mimetic Faculty,” in M.W. Jennings, H. Eiland and G. Smith (eds.), Selected Writings, 1926–1934 (tr. by R. Livingstone et al.). Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999, p. 720–722.

Boon, Marcus. In Praise of Copying. 1st Edition edition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. 1st edition. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.

Buck-Morss, Susan. Origin of Negative Dialectics. Trade edition. New York: Free Press, 1979.

Farquhar, Judith, and Margaret Lock, eds. Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life. 1st edition. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007.

Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” in K. Marx. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: Prometheus Books, 1998, pp. 569–574.

Plate, S. Brent. Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts. 1 edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London – New York: Routledge, 1993.

 

 

Ethnography:

 

Baires, Sarah E. “A Microhistory of Human and Gastropod Bodies and Souls During Cahokia’s Emergence.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27, no. 2 (May 2017): 245–60.

 

Bubandt, Nils, and Rane Willerslev. “The Dark Side of Empathy: Mimesis, Deception, and the Magic of Alterity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 1 (January 2015): 5–34.

 

Gonçalves, Marco Antonio. “Sensorial Thought: Cinema, Perspective and Anthropology.” Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 9, no. 2 (December 2012): 160–83.

 

Ishii, Miho. “Playing with Perspectives: Spirit Possession, Mimesis, and Permeability in the Buuta Ritual in South India.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19, no. 4 (December 1, 2013): 795–812.

 

Lund, Julie. “Connectedness with Things. Animated Objects of Viking Age Scandinavia and Early Medieval Europe.” Archaeological Dialogues 24, no. 1 (June 2017): 89–108.

 

Mary Weismantel. “Seeing like an Archaeologist: Viveiros de Castro at Chavín de Huantar.” Journal of Social Archaeology 15, no. 2 (June 1, 2015): 139–59.

 

Nakamura, Carolyn. “Dedicating Magic: Neo-Assyrian Apotropaic Figurines and the Protection of Assur.” World Archaeology 36, no. 1 (2004): 11–25.

 

Nakamura, Carolyn, and Peter Pels. “Using ‘Magic’ to Think from the Material: Tracing Distributed Agency, Revelation, and Concealment at Çatalhöyük.” Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society: Vital Matters, January 1, 2012, 187–224.

 

Peter Vail. “Making the Mundane Sacred Through Technology: Mediating Identity, Ecology and                Commodity Fetishism.” Visual Communication 3, no. 2 (June 1, 2004): 129–44.

 

Snodgrass, Jeffrey G. “Imitation Is Far More Than the Sincerest of Flattery: The Mimetic Power of Spirit Possession in Rajasthan, India.” Cultural Anthropology 17, no. 1 (February 1, 2002): 32–64.

 

Taussig, Michael. “History as Sorcery.” Representations, no. 7 (1984): 87–109.