Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India

Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India

By- Pallabi Chakravorty nd Scott Kugle (eds.)

The religious ideal of ecstasy is central to the cross-fertilization between Hinduism and Islam in South Asia. That is the basic theme of this volume, which explores how mysticism associated with rapture, ecstasy, eroticism, longing, and suffering were the human emotions which held the key to knowing the divine in both Hinduism and Islam. The performing arts (such as dance, music, poetry or the abstract concept of performativity) offer a potent lens to examine ecstasy and the ecstatic body.

By foregrounding the performing body in religious devotion, the essays in this volume reorient the discourse of the body as it emerged in scholarly disciplines such as anthropology and sociology. The essays draw from new theoretical research into the nature and importance of performance in imagining the cultural and religious life of South Asia.

From a South Asian perspective, these essays enhance the engagement of performance studies with the intellectual idea of embodiment. One common thread that ties together these essays is the linked concepts of sringara-rasa (erotic emotion) and bhakti (loving devotion). All of them draw from new theoretical research into the nature and importance of the body through evidence drawn from architecture, painting, drama, poetry, qawwali singing, dance, yoga, and religious texts.

Pallabi Chakravorty teaches kathak dance and academic courses related to the anthropology of performance in the Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College. Founder and artistic director of Courtyard Dancers, she is an anthropologist, dancer, choreographer, and cultural worker.

Scott Kugle is a Research Fellow at the Henry Martyn Institute for Research, Interfaith Relations and Reconciliation in Hyderabad, India, after having taught for several years in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore College.

ISBN  978-81-7304-814-2    2009   256p.   Rs.650/ pounds 45

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