Wilful Gods: Divine Agency and Ritual Efficacy in South and East Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

What is the nature of gods? How do the vacillating subtleties of “good”, “bad” and “indifferent” constitute sacred potency? Such queries have become especially stimulating amidst the challenges posed by the protestantizing imperatives underpinning the religious dynamics of drastic social transformations in South and East Asia which privilege purification, rationalization and institutionalization. However, many deities remain defined by turbulence and ambivalence. Evading and exceeding the logics of iconic and institutional embodiment and the ethics of ritual transactions is a vital part of divine subjectivity. Arbitrariness itself defines their ineffability. Moreover, such amorality – eschewing ritual proprieties, transactional reciprocities, ethical conventions and human expectations – is fundamental to the subjectivity of deities. The deities’ power and productivity is contingent upon their devotees’ incapacity to fully grapple with, let alone grasp them. Uncanniness – the oscillations between familiarity and strangeness – which are elemental constituents of sacredness frame our analysis. This is echoed in the responses that they generate among their worshippers – repulsion and attraction, devotion and fear, and mockery and adoration. Paradoxical modes of worship involving – intimate extortions, awe-induced supplications, faithful ritual enactments, flippant interpolations, strict observances of taboos and sceptical commentaries – also manifest these contradictions. How is divine agency constituted amidst the amplified emphasis on the singular efficacy of human intentionality and the pressures to discretize the syncretic? Focusing on the incapacity of ontologies to contain recalcitrant deities, we make manifest the enigmas of divine presence so as to understand the vicissitudes, vitality and efficacy of sacred power in contemporary South and East Asia.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizers

• Indira Arumugam, National University of Singapore

• Keping Wu, University of California, Berkeley

Chair

• Robert Weller, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• The Insatiate Sacred: Sacrifice, Volatile Divinities and Vital Life-Forces in a Tamil Nadu Village - Indira Arumugam, National University of Singapore

• ‘Homeless’ Deities and Refugee Devotees: Hindu Temples, Divine Power and Sri Lankan Tamil Communities in the UK - Sidharthan Maunaguru, National University of Singapore

• Mountain Gods and Manipulable Spirits: Sacred and Secular Power in Southwest China - Keping Wu, University of California, Berkeley

• Capricious Gods, Dangerous Ghosts, and the Efficacy of Ritual Practice: Indigenous Theories from China - Michael Puett, Harvard University

Discussant

• Robert Weller, Boston University