Moving

the core of religion

Authors

  • Sam Gill University of Colorado, Boulder

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.34359

Keywords:

moving, religion, gesture, place, embodiment, coherence, meaning, hope, redemption

Abstract

Identifying hope and redemption with moving and vitality, the dystopian film Mad Max: Fury Road surprisingly inspires us to develop the implications of moving as the core of religion. For animate organisms life is synonymous with self-moving. Philosophy and biology connect moving with not only vitality, but also with experience, perception and conception. Hope and redemption are qualia of human living. Enduring academic standards tend to halt the moving richness of religions. Taking as radically as possible the primacy of self-moving, an alternative is presented that prefers kinesiology to autopsy. Seven propositions are developed, directed especially to the emerging generation of religion scholars.

Author Biography

  • Sam Gill, University of Colorado, Boulder

    Sam Gill, Professor at the University of Colorado, is the author of many books and articles, most recently Dancing Culture Religion. His research has engaged him in fieldwork in Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Latin America, and Native America. Recent completed book manuscripts include Into the Future: Making, Gender, Technology, and Religion from Adam to Androids & Galatea to Tomorrow’s Eve and Creative Encounters: Appreciating Difference; and How the Study of Religion Might Contribute. His current research is related to perception, conception, gesture/posture/prosthesis, movement, dancing, and body distinctively approached by integrating a wide range of academic and cultural perspectives as well as the experience he has acquired in his long career in dancing and moving.

References

Barbaras, R. (2005) Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception (trans. P. B. Milan). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Barbaras, R. (2010) Life and exteriority: the problem of metabolism. In J. Stewart et al. (eds) Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science 89–122. Cambridge: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014601.003.0004

Bergson, H. (1946) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (trans. T. E. Hulme). New York: The Knickerbocker Press.

Gill, S. (1998) Storytracking: Texts, Stories, and Histories in Central Australia. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195115871. 001.0001

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262134903.001.0001

Massumi, B. (2002) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383574

Orsi, R. (2005) Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Peirce, C. (1908) ‘A neglected argument for the reality of God’. Hibbert Journal 7: 90–112.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2001 [1999]) The Primacy of Movement. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2016) Insides and Outsides: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Animate Nature. Imprint Academic. Exeter, UK: Upton Pyne.

Smith, J. Z. (1998) Religion, religions, religious. In M. C. Taylor (ed.) Critical Terms for Religious Studies 269–84. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, J. Z. (2010) Now you see it, now you won’t: the future of the study of religion over the next 40 years. Lecture, 13 April, Religion in the 21st Century from University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado.

Stewart, J., Gappenne, O., and DiPaolo, E. (eds.) Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Tweed, T. (2006) Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674044517

Warner Brothers Pictures (2015) Mad Max: Fury Road – official main trailer [HD]. YouTube video, 2:31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJnMQG9ev8.

Published

2017-12-22

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Gill, S. (2017). Moving: the core of religion. Body and Religion, 1(2), 131-147. https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.34359

Most read articles by the same author(s)