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P R A C T IC E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E
K1MERER E. L a M o THE
This article engages the dancing and writing o f the American modern dance pio-
neer, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), and the phenomenology o f religion and dance
authored by the Dutch phenomenologist, theologian, and historian ofreligion, Gerardus
van der Leeuw (1890-1950), in order to argue that “dance” is a valuable resource
for developing theories and methods in the study ofreligion that move beyond belief-
centered, text-driven approaches. By setting the work o f Duncan and van der Leeuw
in the context o f the emergence o f the field o f religious studies, this article not only
offers conceptual tools for appreciating dance as a medium o f religious experience
and expression, it also plots a trajectoiy for the development o f a theory o f religion
as practice and performance. Such a theory will benefit scholars eager to attend more
closely to the role o f bodily being in the life o f “religion.”
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Teiden, 2005 Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
Also available online www.brill.nl 17, 101-133
ا92 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
3 D ance traditions appear, for example, in Islam (the M evleri O rder of Sufis),
South Asian Hinduism (Bharata Natyam, Orissi, Kathak), Tihetan Buddhism, Jewish
Hassidism, and nearly all indigenous religions. For an explanation and critique of
why dance has heen largely ignored hy western thinkers attem pting to theorize
religion, see K im erer L. LaM othe, Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious
Studies (2004). See also, Ju d ith Lynne H anna, To Dance is Human (1987). See Dils
& ^lh rig h t (2001) for a recent anthology of dance and culture.
4 For hiographical information on D uncan, I rely primarily on Daly (1995), Blair
(1986), and Kendall (1979) as well as on D uncan’s own writings, represented in
her m^tohiography. My Life (1928b, hereafter “M L ”); and her essays collected in
The Art of the Dance (1928a, hereafter “A D ”) and Isadora Speaks (1981, hereafter “IS”).
5 See Lowenthal (1980). D uncan perform ed in her “fine little H olland ^ u n t r y ”
(227) in April 1905, O ctober 1905, April-May 1906, Jan u ary 1907, D ecem ber 1907
W H Y DANGE? 103
(with students from her Berlin school), and 1921. She went there to await the hirth
of her first child in 1906.
6 G erardus van der Leeuw, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art (1963, here-
after “SPB”), 70-1. T he English version is translated from a G erm an translation
of a D utch edition that was edited and puhlished after van der Leeuw’s death. See
Wegen en grenzen. Studie over de verhouding van religie en kunst (1948, 1955: 94). For a
discussion of this translation history, see LaM othe, “W ith D ance in M ind” (unpuh-
lished dissertation), chapter 2. In the plates that accom pany the D utch editions,
van der Leeuw includes a drawing of Isadora Duncan.
7 Jacques W aardenhurg, “T he ?rohlem of Representing Religions and Religion,”
in Religionswissenschaft سKulturkritik: Beitrage zur Korifrenz The History of Religions and
Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeeuw (1890-1950), Hans G. Kippenhurg
and Brigitte Luchesi, eds. (1991: 53-4, footnote #40).
8 For ^ c o u n ts of D uncan’s mception and legacy, see Daly (1995), Jow itt (1987),
and Blatr (1986). For characteristic attitudes towards van der Leeuw, see Sharpe
(1986), Twiss & Conser (1 و(ةووW ichc (1999), as well as the Freface by N inian
Sm art included in the Frinceton edition of van der Leeuw’s Religion in Essence and
Manfestation (1986, hereafter “R E M ”).
104 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
وT he refleetions I have in m ind include wnrks such as: K ippenherg (2002),
W asserstrom ( رووول, W ichc ( رووول, Jan tzen ( وول5ر, Asad ( وول3ر, as well as works
hy Penner (1 و8 ر( وPreus (1 و(?ةوand Sharpe (1986). This impulse and critique are
also evident in essays from Critical Terms ׳ارمReligious Studies, edited by M ark G.
Taylor (1998). See in particular the essays on ،،Belief” (by Donald Lopez), ،،Experience”
(by R ohert Sharf), ،،Performance” (by C atherine Bell), and ،‘Religion, Religions,
Religious” (by Jo n ath an z. Smith), as well as the “Introduction” by Taylor. See
also, Sullivan (1990).
10 O ne implication of the following analysis is that moving heyond a helief-cen-
tered, text-driven approach to religious studies will involve embracing “theology”
as an integral if contested resource in the study of religion. See LaM othe (2004),
Part I, for further discussion.
11 To assert that dance has not appeared as a resource for theoretical thinking
in religious studies does not discount the growing hody of ethnographic, anthro-
pological, and theoretical literature on dance in world cultures. R ather, I suggest
that theorists of dance and theorists of religion have m uch to offer one another in
the comm on project of attem pting to nam e that which eludes verhal representa-
tion. Among dance theorists, Sondra Eraleigh (1987) hegins such a conversation.
Roger G araudy (1972) is the only scholar I know who argues that American mod-
ern dancers, D uncan included, m ade dances that offered philosophical reflections
on the nature and value of religion.
W H Y DANGE? 105
1. Forces o f Forgetting
T h e perspectives from which dance, D uncan, and van der Leeuw appear
as m arginal to religions studies are governed by three forces o f forget-
ting th at have d om inated w estern theoretical thinking about religion
since the end o f the eighteenth century: rationalization, inwardization, and
textualization.12 T hese forces not only helped birth the category o f “reli-
gion” as an object o f scientific study, they also represent the principle
strategies upo n w hich scholars continue to rely as they process religions
phenom ena, regardless o f w hether they consider themselves “hum anists”
or “social scientists,” em pathetic interpreters or objective foct-findersT
In revisiting form ative m om ents o f each, 1 call attention to the role
played by the practice o f w riting in its authorizing and note the impli-
cations for acknow ledging dance as religion.
Rationalization. T h e force 1 am describing as rationalization finds a
crystallizing m o m e n t in Im m an u el K a n t’s sem inal essay, “W h at is
E nlightenm ent?” (1784). H ere K an t honors reason or rational thinking
as the key to h u m an “enlightenm ent,” described by him as a p erson’s
em ergence from “self-incurred im m aturity” (54). W hile K a n t defines
“reason” as operating over and against “experience” (i.e., sensory infor-
m ation), he denies th at fois privilege is simply given. H u m a n beings
m ust exercise an d develop their reason in order to be able to reflect
u p o n the contents an d enabling conditions o f th eir experience and
acquire knowledge. M oreover, as K an t insists, “matters o f religion [are]
the focal poin t o f e n lig h te n m e n t. . . because religions im m aturity is the
m ost pernicious and dishonourable variety o f all” (59). Religious phe-
nom ena, in fois sense, are the m eat on w hich people cut their rational
teeth. Exercising his own reason, K an t concludes th at the essence of
religion lies in “rational belief”— that is, a belief (which cannot rationally
12 In identifying these three, I do not claim that they exhaust the held of influences.
There are others implied hy one or more of these, such as individualization. However,
I consider these three dom inant for reasons that follow.
13 For discussions on the emergence of “religion” as a category of study in the
m odem west, see w.c. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion ( 1 ;) وولand Jo n ath an
z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms (ed. M ark c. Taylor,
8) وول. See also Smith (1982).
١^ KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
14 K ant encapsulates his riew on rational belief and the idea of infinite order in
“W hat is O rientation in l i n k i n g ? ” ( ﺟﻮل0] ? لfifi]); he discusses the rational belief
in absolute goodness in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone ( 3 ﺟﻮل0] )] و ? ل. See
“Freface to the First E dition” for a concise summary. W hile scholars such as
Wollstonecraft ( 2 وول2] )] و ? ل, Lloyd ( 8 4 ) ولand Nicholson ( 8 ) وولchallenge the ways
in which K ant identifies this rational capacity with men, much work remains to
be done in developing an philosophy of religion that incorporates this critique. Eor
one approach, seejantzen. Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion{ 1999).
W H Y DANGE? ل)ل
7
15 See Jan tzen ( 5 ) وول: “ [Tjhe idea of such a mystical core of religion derives in
large p art from Schleierm acher’s attem pt to circumvent K antian strictures on reli-
gious knowledge” (338). Jan tzen also exposes how the move to privilege a mystical
core of religion represents one of the “technologies of patriarchy.” See note #21
helow.
16 I disagree with Sharfw hen he descrihes the experience invoked hy Schleiermacher
(and others) as im mediate, suhjective, and unexamined. For S hleierm ach er, as
S harf notes, the “mysterious m om ent” of religion represents an inextricahle fusion
of suhject and object; it “occurs in every sensory perception” before “intuition and
feeling have separated, where sense and its objects have, as it were, flowed into
one another and hecome one” (in Taylor 1998: 31). T he implication of this for-
m ulation, however, is th at any representation of this m om ent as an intuition
(object/it) and a feeling (subject/I)— that is, as my experience— has already lost the
mom ent. As a result, “I” can never know my own experience fully or immediately,
for “it” always already includes the self I was in that mom ent. V an der Leeuw
amplifies this implication of Schleierm acher’s work in the design of his phenom e-
nological method. See Part IV helow.
17 See atso: “T he universe exists in uninterrupted activity and reveals itself to us
every mom ent. Every form that it brings forth, every being to which it gives sep-
arate existence according to the fullness of life, every occurrence that slips forth
from its rich ever-fruitful womb, is an action of the same upon us. Thus to accept
ewrything individual as a part of the whole and everything limited as a representation
of the infinite is religion” (25).
KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
to speak of religion, the thing that thus drives me crushes these petty notions with
its heavenly pow er” (5).
20 D onald Lopez notes the i^ e d e p e n d e n c e of rationalization and inwardization
in his critique of helief: “T he prohlem, then, is not w hether helief exists . . . but
w hether religion must be represented as something that derives from belief, as
something with external manifestations that can ultimately he traced back to an
inner assent to a cognitive preposition, as a state of m ind that produces practice”
(in Taylor 134 : ) ووو. fie identifies the roots of this nexus in “an assumption deriv-
ing from the history of Christianity that religion is ahove all an interior state of
assent to certain truths” (31), and calls for an understanding of helief as arising
“from a specific set of m aterial interests” (28). My critique reaches for the histor-
ical, m aterial interests driving this “assumption.” I seek to move beyond a con-
textual approach to religion (i.e., linlting belief to a set of material interests) to a
relational, dynamic approach descrihed in Part IV helow.
21 As Asad notes, dance is not the only aspect of hum an life that suffers from
this perspective. By defining religion as a rationally defensihle, inw ard event, he
notes, scholars m isinterpret medieval Christianity (45-6, and in general. Chapters
1-4). “It is preeminently the [^^-E nlightenm ent] Christian church that has occupied
itself with identifying, cultivating and testing helief as a verhalizable inner condition
of true religion” (48).
Grace Jan tzen ( 5 ) وولagrees and elahorates. Descrihing how m odem philoso-
phers of religion rely upon the example of medieval Christianity to defend their
attempts to identify an inner (mtio^lfy-defensihle) core of religion, she writes: “Eor
such projects to be possihle, it is essential that mysticism he seen as an ineffahle,
private state of (onsciousness” (320-1). She also notes how the privatization of mys-
ticism serves a patriarchal agenda, domesticating the religious experiences of women:
it “keeps G od (and women) safely out of politics and the puhlic realm; it allows
mysticism to flourish as a secret inner life” am ong those who prop up the status
quo (346). She concludes: “the idea of an essence of mysticism is a patriarchal con-
struct” (347).
I would add th at the yoking of mysticism with a private, inw ard belief has
encouraged scholars to ignore the hodily dimensions of medieval life including
occurrences, however rare, of dancing. For an example of an attem pt to correct
titis bias in medieval studfes, see Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late
Medieval spirituality (1) ووو, edited hy M ary A. Suydam & Jo a n n a E. Ziegler.
110 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
22 See also the “Freface” that Hegel wrote for the Phenomenology of spirit ( 1 7 7 و
[1806]).
W H Y DANCE? Ill
25 See Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992) and Ritual (199?) in particular. See
Grimes (1996) for an overriew of developments in ritual studies. See also MacAloon
(1984) for a focus on studies of ritual as perform ance. See Csordas (1994) for
approaches to the study of em hodim ent in culture generally. See atso Bourdieu
(19??) and de C erteau (1984).
W H Y DANGE? 113
culture are seen ،in action5” (quoted in Schechner & Appel, 1990: 1).
T u rn e r is critical o f G eertz, for exam ple, for reading social dram as as
“texts,” as m ere records or explanations. H e intends to access the “liv-
ing core” o f ritu al.^ W h at attention to dialectics o f flow and reflexivity
helps isolate, as R ich ard Schechner elahorates and is transformation: the
rhythm o f flow and reflection transform s those w ho ^ r tic ip a te in it.
T h e question w ith w hich T u rn e r and those w ho follow in his ١٧^ ^
wrestle is how to articulate the nature o f these transform ations. W hen
faced w ith this question nearly every scholar poses yet evades the issue.
T h e collection o f essays edited hy Schechner and Appel, By Means of
Performance (1991), still at the growing edge of the field, offers the fol-
low ing exam ples . وجB arh ara M yerhoff notes th a t anthropologists are
“w eak” w hen it comes to discussing ritual tm m f o ^ a tio n s : “T h e m ore
pow erful altered states: trance, ecstasy, possession, ohsession, conver-
sion, and the hke are often regarded as ineffahle” (245). In his essay
S chechner dem onstrates this weakness. H e descrihes how hum ans “are
ahle to absorb an d learn hehavior so thoroughly th a t the new ‘per-
form ed5 behavior knits seamlessly into ongoing ‘spontaneous5 action,”
b u t he docs not give an account o f how such absorption and knitting
occur (45). Bhillip Z arrilli, in his study o f A sian bodily disciplines,
describes an “encoding o f b o d y ^ n s c io u s n e s s ’’ th at occurs through rep-
etition, and then invokes a “subtle interior psychophysical process” to
account for the “interiority55 th at an actor in kathakali is able to develop
(134). M onica Bethe and K aren Brazell, in discussing the training for
noh theater, write: “T h e underlying rules m ay never be explicitly stated
or taught, b u t they are s u b ^ m c io u sly internalized during the course
o f training” (176).
In these and m any other instances across the field, scholars outline
the limits o f their ability to articulate the nature o f transformation— bod-
ily, em otional, itoellectual— th at can occur in and through the act of
perform ance. T hese limits represent the logical outcom e o f em ploying
the three strategics (or forces o f forgetting) described above. In an
28 V ictor T urner, “Are there universals of perform ance in myth, ritual, and
dram a?” in Schechner & Appel ( 6 وول0 : ) ل.
2 وT he essays in By Means of Performance ( 0 ) وولdocum ent foe written dimension
of a conference given in honor of Victor T urner. T he conference included per-
formances as well. Some of foe essays in foe collection attem pt to detail foe expe-
rience of perform ing as a way to grasp foe efficacy of ritual. As such this collection
witnesses to foe need for foe kind of development in scholarship I am advocating,
in which scholars mine foe perform ance arts for conceptual tools and not just for
cases or examples of certain ideas.
W H Y DANGE? 115
؟٠ Daly (2-31 :5 ) وول. See also “ [I]n D uncan’s day, such inrisihle power . . . was
accorded dirine dimensions” (38). Franko ( 5 ) وولdiscerns a theory of emotional
expression em hedded in D uncan’s work.
31 Note: “ [S]he analyzed her discovery of the solar plexus as the crater of all
m otor power (even if she did, at times, flower it by saying that the soul was in
the solar plexus)” (Terry 1963: 95).
W H Y DANGE? 117
cern w ith heliefs and texts. By yoking it w ith dance, D u ncan reim ag-
ines “religion” as practice and perform ance— as a practice o f aw akening
“soul,” and a performance th at ^ m m u n ic a te s participation in the dan cer’s
experience o f m oving from an awakened soul. A hrief survey of D u ncan’s
soul language suggests th at van der Leeuw ’s own definitions o f dance,
religion, an d their ^ in c id e n c e build on D u n can ’s ^ in c ip le s, and fur-
th er delineate the ways in w hich attention to (her) dancing as religion
can help scholars o f religion resist the forces of forgetting.
Soul language. For D u ncan the ‘،first basic theory” o f her art is th at
m ovem ent m ust flow from an aw akened soul (AD 76). As such the
“first step” in learning to dance is to aw aken fois “soul” (AD 52). W hile
D u n c a n ’s “soul” talk m ight suggest a dualistic n th ro p o lo g y , van der
L eeuw ’s analysis illum inates how she uses the w ord to stretch and
reweave the webs o f m eaning generally associated with the term. D uncan
uses to “soul” to nam e a tm m form ation in a perso n ’s sense o f her bod-
ily being. A person can com e to sense m ovem ent impulses arising in
w hat D uncan calls the “tem poral hom e” of the soul, the beating, breath-
ing rhythm s o f the solar plexus (ML 341).35 In fois experience, then, a
dan cer feels h er body differently. She develops a physical consciousness—
not an im age o f h er body b u t a bodily sense o f her self as (knowing
herself through) m ovem ent.
Further, “soul,” for D uncan, nam es an ability not only to sense move-
m en t impulses, b u t to m ove w ith them and give them kinetic expres-
sion. As a dancer develops fois ability he begins to appreciate how the
impulses seem to originate and pass beyond his bodily boundaries. H e
comes to sense his solar plexus as the site w here he is open to receive
and amplify currents of force and flow connecting him w ith w hat is.
H e undergoes w hat D u ncan describes as a “conversion” in w hich he
experiences him self as ^ r tic ip a tin g in w hat she calls “a “rhythm ic unity
which runs through all the manifestations of N ature” (AD 102), a “divine
continuity.” As D u n can phrases it, a dancer senses in and through his
own m ovem ent a “pow er w ithin” w here th at pow er consists in the ahil-
ity to m ove in ways th at enact or hring into heing his “relationship to
the universal rh y th m ” (AD 52).
M oreover D u n can avers, a dancer w ho has ^ a c tic e d receiving and
m oving w ith such impulses, can learn to recreate the forms o f these
experiences in designing and executing choreography. In so far as she
docs, h er perform ance com m unicates at several levels. First, her move-
m ents represent the physical consciousness she has cultivated ־her hours
o f physical an d m ental practice. Second, as recreations o f the shapes
in w hich m ovem ent impulses have appeared to her, her dancing rep-
resents kinetic images o f “the divine continuity” she has developed the
ahility to perceive. As kinetic, such images appear only in m ovem ent
as the unseen patterns o f physical consciousness anim ated in malting a
given shape. ث؛ةT h ird , in so far as her dancing presents such Itinetic
images, it also represents h er particular hody as “one with the great
m ovem ent th at runs through the universe” (AD 68)— she appears as
the individual w hose hodily m ovem ent com m unicates ^ r tic ip a tio n
in w h at app ears th ro u g h h e r m ovem ent as a “universal D ionysiac
m ovem ent” (AD م(ﻟﻮD u n can calls such dancing a “p ray er” and a “rev-
elation.” In other words, a dancer w ho moves from w hat D u ncan calls
an aw akened “soul” can m ake visihle and visceral h er active partici-
pation in the generation o f religions ideals. As D u ncan hymns: “her
m ovem ents will hecom e godlike, m irroring in themselves the waves, the
winds, the m ovem ents o f growing things, the flight o f hirds, the passing
o f clouds, and finally the thought of m an in his relation to the universe”
(AD 63).
In sum, D u n can affirms th at through the practice and ^ rf o rm a n c e
o f (his) dance, a dancer develops a paradoxical ability: H e is able to
represent his individual body as a m edium for generating kinetic images
o f (his dissolution in) a rhythm ic unity o f life. His dancing com m unicates
^ r tic ip a tio n in w hat his practice enables him to know: th at a dancer
w ho moves from an aw akened soul speaks out o f him self and some-
36 For D uncan, such Itinetic images appear in the form of wave movements. A
wave is hoth form and movement; it is call and response: ،‘foe rhythm that rises,
penetrates, holding in itself foe impulse and foe after-movement; call and response,
bound endlessly in one cadence” (AD ) وو. D uncan observed wave forms in “all
energy” around her in classical music as well as foe natural world, in foe figures
of Greek art and foe pulsations of desire (IS 45). Nearly all of her dance creations
feature m ovem ents th at pulse and flow, even w hen crisply punctuated. “Blue
D anube” and “W ater Study” were two of her early crowd-pleasers.
W H Y DANGE? 121
thing greater (AD 52), out of his particular em hodim ent and (his sense
of) ultimacy.
In this vision for dancing, then, D u ncan offers a notion o f “religion”
th at moves heyond helief and its corollaries. D u ncan uses the nam e
“soul” in ways th at resist inwardization: it is the experience o f hodily
m ovem ent th at opens and represents a sense of inw ard depth as the
source for the m ovem ent.^ In her description o f dancing as generat-
ing “thoughts” o f h u m an in relation to the universe, she resists ration-
alization: she roots theology in the experiential possihilities opened hy
hodily practice. By descrihing her perform ance as prayer and revelation,
she resists textualization: w hat religions acts com m unicate is participa-
tion in the physical consciousness they represent. Thus, D u n c an ’s reli-
gion language sketches a theory of religion as practice and perform ance.
Religion involves ^ a c tic in g patterns of physical consciousness, educating
sensory awareness, and cultivating vffnerahility to currents of will, desire,
and idea. It involves generating, perform ing, and thus enacting kinetic
images o f self in relation to others and world. From the perspective
D u n can opens, theories of religion th at privilege textual ohjects, models,
or m etaphors p erpetuate an ignorance o f w hat renders religion effective,
nam ely the ways in w hich its ideas and actions express and choreograph
a logic o f hodily becom ing.^
A Curious Coincidence. V an der Leeuw ’s own definitions of dance, reli-
gion an d their ^ in c id e n c e resonate uncannily w ith D u n c a n ’s principles
o f dancing, an d produce similar patterns o f resistance to the forces of
forgetting. In fact, he appears to draw inspiration from her w ork not
4. An “Indirect Method”
Parallels hetw een D u n can an d van der Leeuw extend heyond their
accounts o f dance as religion to the m ethods o f training they develop
for dance and for phenom enology o f religion, respectively. Exploring
that eludes the distinction hetween secular and religious. “Power” works for him
by articulating the difference. Moreover, van der Leeuw’s notion of power is dynamic
and relational in a way th at draws upon H egel and Nietzsche and prefigures
Foucault. Like Foucault, van der Leeuw rejects a top-down model of pow er’s oper-
ation. Power works through the forces of discipline, practice, and perform ance that
exercise and open our capacity to know (what appears as Other) in particular ways.
At the same time, van der Leeuw goes farther than Foucault in his ahility to artic-
ulate the positive contrihution of hodily becoming to the life of power. V an der
Leeuw’s work, in fact, could be helpful in further developing the implications of
Foucault’s work for theories of religion. For an introduction to Foucault’s notion
of “power”, see Power/Knowledge (1980); for an example of its application, see Discipline
and Punish (19??).
124 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
صIn this respect, D uncan’s work in dance echoes that of Schleierm acher as
described above and parallels the work of her contem porary R udolf O tto ־both
of w hom also influenced van der Leeuw. In O tto ’s Idea of the Holy (1 و58 ( رhe denies
that he can comm unicate an experience of the numinous to his readers, h e writes
his book as a “schem a” which may stir in his readers an awareness of their own
capacity to sense and respond to the “strange harm ony of contrasts” that, for him,
characterizes the “wholly other.”
W H Y DANGE? 125
to religion, no “thin g ” out there to exam ine. Instead his phenom enol-
ogy is in ten d ed to guide scholars in ^ a c tic in g understanding— in dis-
cerning w hy som ething appears to them , in the course o f w ork as
historian or theologian, as “religion.”^ For van der Leeuw, “phenom -
ecologists” practice im aginatively and em pathetically recreating appear-
anees of meaning. T hey are constantly interrogating the web of “strnetnral
relations” th at any given appearance of ،،religion” calls into being. T he
three non-linear m om ents o f van der L eeuw ’s “indirect m eth o d ” align
w ith his D uncan-inform ed account o f dance as religion in resisting the
forces o f forgetting. I describe each in turn.
1. First, w hat D u n can describes as an aw akening o f soul and van
der Leeuw theorizes as a rhythm of ecstasy and affirm ation finds a par-
allel in the two-fold rhythm o f imaginative empathy van der Leeuw describes.
T o recreate for herself the structural relations u n d er w hich som ething
appears to h er to ap p ear to som eone else as w hat she recognizes as
،،religion,” a scholar m ust exercise em pathy and im agination. V an der
Leeuw describes “em pathy” as an act o f setting aside o n e’s own expe-
riences in o rd er to ju m p into the living stream o f a n o th e r’s world,
“transposing oneself into an object or re -e ^ e rie n c in g it” (SRA 401 ).وه
At the same tim e, however, a scholar m ust draw upon her own expe-
riences in order to imagine for herself w hy dim ensions o f th at other per-
son’s living stream ap p ear as they do to the natives as well as to her.
In o th er words, van d er Leeuw identifies a rhythm o f seizing and dis-
carding o n e ’s lived experience as the enabling condition for under-
standing; lived experiences are resources on w hich scholars draw, whose
influence they m ust always interrogate in ‘،giving birth out o f o n e’s own
m ind to w hat stands already th ere” (SRA 404). For van der Leeuw,
claims to “objective” results m ask a scholar’s vital role in courting and
recreating appearances o f m eaning.
44 In using this te ™ van der Leeuw makes reference to Husserl, only to dis-
tance himself from H usserl’s quest for essences. In his “Preface” to Religion in Essence
and Manifestation Ninian Sm art writes that, for van der Leeuw, “epoche” or hrack-
eting means suspending one’s worldview in the nam e of ohjectirity. Sm art then
criticizes van der Leeuw for failing to produce ohjective results. However, for van
der Leeuw, the epoche refers to the suspension not of hiases per sc, hut of the desire
to make claims to ttuth. W hat is suspended is an attitude towards what appears
a need to pursue it, pin it down, in its nature. Phenomenology resists the temp-
tation of asserting truth, fact, or realily. In fact, the epoche that Sm art evokes
would not provide grounds for imaginative em pathy at all. Imaginative empathy
as van der Leeuw descrihes involves interpolation into one’s own experience, not
ahstraction from it (R EM xii).
9 £ا KIMERER L. EAMOTHE
the event lay in inw ard experience), we ask how are his practice and
perform ance bringing into being as real a desired relation to tradition,
to m em bers o f his com m unity, to his sense (or lack thereof) o fg o d /d e ss,
to his own self? W h at networks do a given practice o f bodily move-
m ent bring into being as the condition enabling the ^ rfo rm a n c e ? W hat
webs o f social relations (political, econom ic, familial, social) or webs of
symbols an d beliefs does the perform ance o f a dance or ritual allow
^ r tic ip a n ts (a n d /o r scholars) to grasp and ^ m p re h e n d ?
In short, instead o f looking to find a text to explain w hat a phe-
nom enon m eans, ١٧^ ask: w hat bodily m ovem ents enable the tex t’s pro-
duction? W h at practices an d ^ rfo rm a n c e s docs the existence o f the
text and the privilege accorded to it (by ^ a c titio n e rs a n d /o r scholars)
represent?
A rlington, M A
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آلﻣﺂورلم؛
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