Religious revelation, secrecy and the limits of visual representation

This article seeks to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the adoption of modern audiovisual mass media by contemporary religious groups. It does so by examining Pentecostal-charismatic churches as well as the Christian mass culture instigated by its popularity, and so-called traditional religion in Ghana, which develop markedly different attitudes towards audiovisual mass media and assume different positions in the public sphere. Taking into account the complicated entanglement of traditional religion and Pentecostalism, approaching both religions from a perspective of mediation which regards media as intrinsic to religion, and seeking to avoid the pitfall of overestimating the power of modern mass media to determine the world, this article seeks to move beyond an unproductive recurrence to oppositions such as tradition and modernity, or religion and technology. It is argued that instead of taking as a point of departure more or less set ideas about the nexus of vision and modernity, the adoption of new mass media by religious groups needs to be analyzed by a detailed ethnographic investigation of how these new media transform existing practices of religious mediation. Special emphasis is placed on the tension between the possibilities of gaining public presence through new media, and the difficulty in authorizing these media, and the experiences they induce, as authentic. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference

Le synthétique sacré

ArtScroll, une maison d’édition juive orthodoxe de premier plan située à New York, est un cas d’école pour étudier la dimension matérielle des pratiques éditoriales concernant les textes religieux. Cet essai explore l’« agentivité matérielle» des publications phares d’ArtScroll que sont les livres de prières, les bibles et les livres de cuisine, en montrant de quelle manière ces artéfacts jouent un rôle actif dans les différents cercles de la vie sociale juive, de la prière publique à l’exposition domestique du travail dans la cuisine. En s’intéressant au rôle des couvertures de livres, des matériaux de reliure et des icônes graphiques dans la constitution de l’agentivité matérielle d’ArtScroll, cet essai explore la façon dont ces éléments contribuent à définir des schémas de performance rituelle et de styles de vie des utilisateurs, ainsi que leur rôle dans les affrontements portant sur l’identité institutionnelle et les enjeux politiques liés à la question de l’authenticité juive. En examinant la réalité de la répartition des actions entre personnes et livres, l’analyse proposée nuance l’image stéréotypée des juifs comme « peuple du Livre » et remet en cause les affirmations péremptoires sur le textocentrisme juif.ArtScroll – a major contemporary Orthodox Jewish publishing house based in New York – offers a compelling case for studying the role of materiality in religious print culture. This essay examines the “material agency” of key ArtScroll publications, such as prayer books, Bibles, and cookbooks, showing how these artifacts play an active role within various arenas of Jewish social life, from public prayer to domestic display to kitchen labor. By focusing on the role of book covers, binding materials, and graphic icons in the constitution of ArtScroll’s material agency, this essay explores how these devices help to define patterns of ritual performance and consumer lifestyles and how they contribute to struggles over institutional identity and the politics of Jewish authenticity. By examining the actual processes of distribution of actions among people and their books, this analysis complicates the stereotypical image of Jews as a “people of the book” and challenges sweeping claims about Jewish text-centrism