Material Objects in Cosmological Worlds: An Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Of course, in Orthodoxy theology, for example, mediation between this world and the otherworld is much more solidly based on mimesis (iconism, hence the theological importance of actual icons) as well as metaphors involving light and illumination, all heavily indebted to a generally Platonic theological system (Kenna 1985 Kenna, Margaret. 1985. Icons in Theory and Practice: An Orthodox Christian Example. History of Religions, 24: 345–368. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Orthodoxy thus might be said to foreground the Peircean relation of iconism, when compared to Catholicism (which seems to prefer indexical motifs of incarnation instantiated proto‐typically in the dominant figure of the Eucharist ('Incarnationalism', see O'Connell 1995 O'Connell, Michael. 1995. "God's Body: Incarnation, Physical Embodiment, and the Fate of Biblical Theater in the Sixteenth Century". In Subjects on the World's Stage, Edited by: Dvid, Allen G. and Robert, White A. 62–87. Newark: University of Delaware Press. [Google Scholar], 2000 O'Connell, Michael. 2000. The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early‐Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Parmentier 1997 Parmentier, Richard. 1997. The Pragmatic Semiotics of Culture. Semiotica, 116: 1–113. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Bedos‐Rezak 2000 Bedos‐Rezak, Brigitte. 2000. Medieval Identity: A Sign and a Concept. American Historical Review, 30: 1489–1533. [Google Scholar]) or Protestantism (where the prototypical form of mediation is the symbolic [textual] sign (O'Connell 1995 O'Connell, Michael. 1995. "God's Body: Incarnation, Physical Embodiment, and the Fate of Biblical Theater in the Sixteenth Century". In Subjects on the World's Stage, Edited by: Dvid, Allen G. and Robert, White A. 62–87. Newark: University of Delaware Press. [Google Scholar])). 2. The two most influential of the critiques of Geertz are those offered by Asad 1993 Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Disciple and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar], discussed here, and Roseberry 1994 Roseberry, William. 1994. "Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology". In Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy, Edited by: Roseberry, W. 17–29. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. [Google Scholar] who draws attention to the fact that Geertz neglects how meanings may not be equally shared by all in society, that some people may have meanings imposed upon them, or may contest public meanings. Roseberry's critique also suggests that Geertz neglects the material contexts in which meanings are generated. 3. For some reason the discourse of the idol does not have the same fashionable currency as the discourse of the fetish in various circles, presumably partly because neither Freud nor Marx found it 'good to think', yet as a fantastic anti‐model of semiosis, the idol is more complicated than is usually assumed (see for example Mitter 1977 Mitter, Partha. 1977. Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]; Camille 1989 Camille, Michael. 1989. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image‐Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]; Pinney 2001 Pinney, Christopher. 2001. "Piercing the Skin of the Idol". In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, Edited by: Christopher, Pinney and Nicholas, Thomas. Oxford: Berg. [Google Scholar]; Salih 2003 Salih, Sarah. 2003. "Idols and Simulacra: Paganity, Hybridity and Representation". In Mandeville's Travels.In The Monstrous Middle Ages, Edited by: Bettina, Bildhauer and Robert, Mills. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Google Scholar]). 4. For example, studies of classical images have shown an internal division between a secularizing aestheticism characteristic of art historical approaches (the dominant approach), while appreciation of those same images in relation to their ritual contexts of manipulation or theology of images is relegated to experts on religion or ignored entirely (Elsner 1996 Elsner, John. 1996. Image and Ritual: Reflections on the Religious Appreciation of Classical Art. Classical Quarterly, 46(2): 315–531. [Google Scholar]). For similar points with respect to European responses to Indian images see for example Mitter 1977 Mitter, Partha. 1977. Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]; Pinney 2001 Pinney, Christopher. 2001. "Piercing the Skin of the Idol". In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, Edited by: Christopher, Pinney and Nicholas, Thomas. Oxford: Berg. [Google Scholar]; Jain 2006 Jain, Kajri. 2006. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]. 5. See Komaromi's (2004 Komaromi, Ann. 2004. The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat. Slavic Review, 63(3): 597–618. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) discussion of the Soviet genre of Samizdat (self‐publication), for an interestingly similar case where accidental qualisigns (wear and tear from circulation, bad quality of materials and assembly, etc.) become necessary to valuation of an object as authentic, in some ways as important as those qualisigns that establish a given document as a legible 'text'.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.