Steeples and Spires: exploring the materiality of built and unbuilt temples
This article looks more closely at how the very material presence of Swaminarayan temples, whether completed or not yet built, generates discourses that point to the experiencing of these sites. These discourses are interesting to probe for the ways in which they translate an experiential response t...
| Published in: | Nidān |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Univ.
2011
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| In: |
Nidān
Year: 2011, Volume: 23, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-52 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article looks more closely at how the very material presence of Swaminarayan temples, whether completed or not yet built, generates discourses that point to the experiencing of these sites. These discourses are interesting to probe for the ways in which they translate an experiential response to a Swaminarayan temple into perceptions and assessments about the BAPS community, about Hinduism, and about religion more broadly. And, as these narrative responses and their internal logics are predicated on their authors' informing categories and prior experiences, ones that, for example, allow the assessment about the BAPS community, Hinduism, and religion, they become available discursive arenas for understanding BAPS's American neighbours. Together, the BAPS temples can be seen as structures that stimulate responses, experiences, and actions, all of which form a causal chain that upon re-tracing and tracing allow us to better understand how a contemporary Hindu community manages to settle into a new neighbourhood. The temples, as objects, thus provide a means to contextualise, through materialised discourses, the temple publics that arise and become visible during the course of a Swaminarayan construction project. I am using the expression "temple publics," in the same sense offered by Reddy and Zavos in their discussion of the ways that contemporary Hindu communities are creatively interacting with public space and thereby contributing to the reshaping of the public sphere (2009: 242). This public sphere is informed, supported, and shaped by existing discourses. And, how these intersect with the temple construction projects and stimulate further chains of narratives are what I shall explore. |
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| ISSN: | 2414-8636 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nidān
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.58125/nidan.2011.1 |