Analysis and Implications
A Theological Investigation into Zomi Search for the Lost Paradise: A Southeast Asian Pentecostal Reflection View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rev Thang San Mung
This research proposes a Pentecostal pneumatological reading of the recent social-political story of Zomi, an ethnic Christian minority in Myanmar. In recent decades, Zomi felt the loss of their paradisal dreamland amid the ups and downs of modern Burman politics. In its origin, the “Paradise lost and found” is a biblical concept that has become a basic driving motif of some significant Christian movements, in which the Zomi are also no exception. Accordingly, this research observes how various social, political, and religious groups have read this biblical theme differently in the past and analyzes what implications they bear for Zomi, an ethnic minority group in Myanmar. The spatial geographical reading is the most prevalent motif of all those preceding movements is the observation at a glance. However, this research advocates Pentecostal/Charismatic spirituality as another missing link for Zomi in their search for the lost Paradise.
Bullfighting and Mysticism: A Few Notes Towards the Transmutation of the Soul View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jiri Mesic
The paper portrays relations between religion, spirituality, and mysticism existent in bullfighting. Principally, it focuses on the Spanish bullfighter Antonio Ferrera and takes into consideration last six years of his career in which he has revealed interest in spirituality not only through paintings and embroideries of his capes and costumes (the use colours and symbols decorating them), but more importantly in his way of performing a ritual ceremony during which he completely abandons himself with the goal of becoming the receptor of the bull’s power and divinity. The ritual is divided into several stages: a) physical and mental preparation before the bullfight; b) withdrawal when the bullfighter is dressing up; c) his entrance into the bullring when his face reflects uncertainty and bravery; d) the first part of the fight in which the bull manifests his power and totemic qualities, while the bullfighter looks for the point of connection with him; e) the second part, or the liminal point when the powers of the bull and the bullfighter become equalised; f) the last part, when the bull progressively loses his totemic and divine qualities, while the bullfighter obtains them and transmits them to the audience; g) ecstasy during the death of the bull. To understand psychological processes taking place in the bullfighter’s subconsciousness, we draw on the 16th-century alchemical treatise Rosarium Philosophorum (1550), which helps us to analyse the transmutation of the soul that the bullfighter experiences while he is performing the ritual.
Dislocation and Disorientation in the Worship of Dionysus
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luke Gorton
The worship of Dionysus in the ancient Greek world was fundamentally based around movement and spatial disorientation. In this study, I explore how this facet of the worship of Dionysus contributes to the experience of the god among ancient Greeks. First, the origin story of Dionysus is one of migration: the god was born in Greece, grew up far to the east, and then returned in a triumphant processional back to Greece. As such, worshipers also experience a foreignness as they follow in his footsteps, even if they remain in the land of their birth. Second, worship of Dionysus stereotypically takes place out in the countryside; this change of place (and concomitant change of pace) serves to take worshipers out of their comfort zone and to bring them face-to-face with the otherness all around them. Finally, worship of Dionysus involves the drinking of wine, the main purpose of which in this case is to spiritually relocate the consciousness of the imbiber from the world of the mundane to an altered state of consciousness. Taken together, these Dionysian experiences of dislocation and disorientation serve to dramatically remove the worshiper from his or her accustomed places and to cast him or her into a new space in which experiencing the divine is possible.
Translating Religious and Secularist Worldviews in the Public Sphere
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Salah Basalamah
This paper relies on a definition that conceptualizes translation in which opposed or differentiated worldviews and frames of references need to be inter-comprehended by competing or adversary groups within a single or among diverse societies. This approach to translation does not focus on the textual manipulations that betray the narratives already taken up in the literature; it actively engages in social and discursive negotiations in order to bring about change in the dynamics of intergroup and intercultural relations. As a result of this conceptual distinction between the approaches found in the existing literature and the proposed alternative, this paper addresses the notions of the religious, the political, the radical/extreme, the conservative, the secular and the social as the objects of the extended conceptions of translation as inspired by the works of François Burgat, Jürgen Habermas, and J-M Ferry, and repurposed in the context of the proposed reflection.
