Negotiating the Sacred II
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Negotiating the Sacred II
Blasphemy and Sacrilege in the Arts
Table of Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section I
1. Blasphemy and sacrilege: A challenge to secularisation and theories of the modern?
Freedom of expression and its development
Blasphemy and the framing of secularisation
Blasphemy, identity and exploration
2. ‘The devil’s centres of operation’: English theatre and the charge of blasphemy, 1698-1708
Blasphemous theatres and plays
A religious critique of dramatic language
The perceived attack upon God’s providence
Invoking devils
The plight of God-fearing Christians
Acknowledging modern providentialism
3. Madonna and piano accordion: Disrupting the order of the world
Definitions of blasphemy
Rules of depiction and the order of the world
The order of the universe
Blasphemy and homage
4. Materialising the sacred
The paintings
Sacred meaning
‘Materialising’ the sacred
The sacralisation of the aesthetic gaze
Conclusion
Section II
5. Blasphemy and sacrilege in the novel of magic realism: Grass, Bulgakov, and Rushdie
Grass
Bulgakov
Rushdie
6. Les fees ont soif: Feminist, iconoclastic or blasphemous?
Quebec decries
blasphemy
Les fees ont soif
: feminist iconoclasm and blasphemy
Defence against allegations of blasphemy
From outrage to acceptance
7. The body of Christ: Blasphemy as a necessary transgression?
Section III
8. The monologue of liberalism and its imagination of the sacred in minority cultures
Principles and pluralism in Indic civilisation
The challenge from the universalists
Critique and conflicts within Indic discourse
Indian arts and theatre, the
Natyashastar
Modernity and Indian arts
Behzti
, the contest of civilisations
The Gurdwara as the ‘sacred’
9. Blasphemy in a pluralistic society
Truth
Some limitations of the truth-based argument
From intellectual engagement to ridicule
Play, or the aesthetic use of blasphemy
Blasphemy in a pluralistic society
Section IV
10. Blasphemy and the art of the political and devotional
Locating ‘blasphemy’ in the polemical
The context of witnessing blasphemy
Religious law and sacred bodies
Beyond the dichotomies of abjection and transcendence
Conclusion
11. Negotiating the sacred body in Iranian cinema(s)
Where have all the bodies gone? Modesty in Iranian cinema
Embodying the nation
From embodied nation to embodied desire
Adolescent awakenings
Don’t tell the mullahs!
12. Silence as a way of knowing in Yolngu Indigenous Australian storytelling
The way of storytelling
The people, the place, the story
Protocols
‘Outside’ and ‘inside’ knowing
Silent embodying, dancing as re-enacting story
Bibliography
Other sources