Aesthetics and affects of power in the context of religion

Religious practices and discourses took and take an especially important role in creating sensory mechanisms that structure power relations by shaping perception via aesthetics and affects. The sensory power mechanisms outlive religious practices and expand beyond the religious sphere; they become alive in the body of the aesthetically affected. This workshop aims to understand—by case studies and theoretical reflection—how these sensory mechanisms function in different (religious) contexts, such as (post)colonial contact zones and global religious and spiritual practices and movements; how they relate and intertwine with intersectional discourses and practices, such as racism, whiteness, (s)exoticization, secularization; and how they affect the scholarly practice of the study of religion. We aim our workshop first and foremost to be a place of exchange on method, theory, knowledge to grasp aesthetics and affects of power and to evaluate possibilities to subvert them. For that we are also explicitly interested in aesthetics and affects of disruption and change of power relations and structures.