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Summary
Examines how embodiment is conceived and experienced in South Asian religions.
Refiguring the Body provides a sustained interrogation of categories and models of the body grounded in the distinctive idioms of South Asian religions, particularly Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The contributors engage prevailing theories of the body in the Western academy that derive from philosophy, social theory, and feminist and gender studies. At the same time, they recognize the limitations of applying Western theoretical models as the default epistemological framework for understanding notions of embodiment that derive from non-Western cultures. Divided into three sections, this collection of essays explores material bodies, embodied selves, and perfected forms of embodiment; divine bodies and devotional bodies; and gendered logics defining male and female bodies. The contributors seek to establish theory parity in scholarly investigations and to re-figure body theories by taking seriously the contributions of South Asian discourses to theorizing the body.
“…Refiguring the Body makes for a dense but fascinating read. Scholars of Asian traditions should definitely read it, and it will probably have special appeal to scholars of yoga, dance and performing arts, as well as women’s and gender studies.” — Nova Religio
“The sheer weight of textually and ethnographically well grounded evidence speaking to distinctive South Asian paradigms of embodiment is this volume’s greatest contribution, and one that should inspire continued in-depth scholarship into both the traditions themselves and potential cross-cultural applications of their insights.” — Body and Religion
Barbara A. Holdrege is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the South Asian Studies Committee at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her books include Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti and Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, also published by SUNY Press. Karen Pechilis is NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Comparative Religion Department at Drew University. Her books include Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti Saint of India and The Embodiment of Bhakti.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Body Matters in South Asia Barbara A. Holdrege
Part I. Material Bodies, Embodied Selves, and Perfected Embodiments
1. Perfected Embodiment: A Buddhist-Inspired Challenge to Contemporary Theories of the Body Michael Radich
2. Body, Self, and Embodiment in the Sanskrit Classics of Āyurveda Anthony Cerulli
3. Bodily Gestures and Embodied Awareness: Mudrā as the Bodily Seal of Being in the Trika Śaivism of Kashmir Kerry Martin Skora
4. Bodied, Embodied, and Reflective Selves: Theorizing Performative Selfhood in South Indian Performance Harshita Mruthinti Kamath
Part II. Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies
5. Observations on the Bodies of the Gods in the Mahābhārata Kendall Busse
6. Bhakti and Embodiment: Bodies of Devotion and Bodies of Bliss in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti Barbara A. Holdrege
7. To Body or Not to Body: Repulsion, Wonder, and the Tamil Saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār Karen Pechilis
8. Bodies of Desire, Bodies of Lament: Marking Emotion in a South Indian Vaiṣṇava Messenger Poem Steven P. Hopkins
Part III. Gendered and Engendering Bodies
9. Defining Women’s Bodies in Indian Buddhist Monastic Literature Carol S. Anderson
10. Murderer, Saint, and Midwife: The Gendered Logic of Engendering in Buddhist Narratives of Aṅgulimāla’s Conversion Liz Wilson
11. Fruitful Austerity: Paradigms of Embodiment in Hindu Women’s Vrat Performances Tracy Pintchman
