Powerful objects and materials: embodying divinity in Hindu India
This talk is based on fieldwork with Hindu priests in Tamilnadu, India, where divinities inhabit specially crafted bodies and are worshipped in temples as embodied gods. I explore how divinities, materials, objects and human action all play a role in practices of presencing, i.e. practices by which entities become available in the world. Drawing on Merz’s (2017) description of ontonic entities that make meaning present and accessible in the world, I argue that particular practices of presencing may be deemed legitimate or illegitimate; they may discombobulate or enhance people’s capacities. A focus on presencing and on ontonic entities builds on and goes beyond semiotic analyses and the dichotomies of methodological animism and fetishism (Pels, 1998). It opens up a world in which human intention and action are both enabled and disabled by non-human entities that forcefully stake their own claims disrupting both ontological and semiotic certainties. I explore how qualities of material objects, such as solidity and hollowness, matter and also how even redundant objects continue to haunt people’s understandings and actions.
Dr Soumhya Venkatesan
Thursday 8th March
3.00pm Anthropology Seminar Room