…should go to hell together with those who sell the Vedas or write it down!”
“Downcycling” and “pragmatic reuse”?
We need categories in order to think clearly about problems, but we do not want categories which block our thinking, nor artificial ones. And this applies all the more to an almost new field, like that of reuse.
What are the conditions for reusing texts? And what are the reasons for making reuse explicit? UPDATED
What determines the likelihood of textual reuse to occur? The genre, the time, the personality of the author? And what are the reasons for not naming one’s source?
Reuse in art: “adaptive reuse”, “simple re-use”, “recycling”, “conventional re-use” and “new life re-use” UPDATED
Are the categories we use while talking about textual reuse fit also for reuse in art?
EAAA conference in Olomouc
I just came back from Olomouc, where I attended the first conference of the European Association of Asian Art and Archaeology. It was my first conference entirely dedicated to Art and I found out some interesting things:
Hayagrīva in the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā
Hayagrīva previous to Veṅkaṭanātha seems to have a non-specific Vaiṣṇava iconography, with only his horse-head as a fixed element. He is, for instance, a standing figure in Khajurao, where he carries a club and has one hand in the dānamūdrā.
Hayagrīva at Khajurao
By contrast, after Veṅkaṭanātha, the iconography radically changes and two possibilities become fixed:
EAAA on reuse in visual arts
As you migh already know, I am leaving tomorrow for Olomouc where I will host on Friday the 26th with Julia Hegewald and Cristina Bignami a panel on reuse in visual arts. Here is the program of our panel:
Title: Re-use at the Borders of South Asia: Himalayas and South India
9-9:30 Elisa FRESCHI “Reuse in Texts and the Arts: The case of Hayagrīva’s Descriptions”
9:30-10 Julia HEGEWALD “The Theory of Re-use as a Method in Art-historical Research”
10-10:30 Gerald KOZICZ “The re-use of the nidhi iconography in the Tibetan context”
10:30-11 Verena WIDORN “The use and re-use of aesthetic concepts in the Himalayan area”
BREAK
11:30-12 Cristina BIGNAMI “The re-use of the iconography of the lion/tiger in the Karṇataka Medieval sovereignty
12-12:30 Tiziana LORENZETTI “Appropriation and re-interpretation of symbolic and architectural elements in the Lingayat religiosity”
12:30-13: Mallica KUMBERA LANDRUS “Sharing and reshaping collective memories in Portuguese Goa”
LUNCH + TOUR etc.
17-17:30 Elena MUCCIARELLI “The Plucking of different flowers: Re-use in Kerala theatrical tradition”
17:30-18 concluding session: DISCUSSION
Should you come to the conference, don’t forget to join the discussion (or to join me for a coffee break).
IABS, IDhC, etc.: which paper did you like more? UPDATED FOR THE THIRD TIME with further papers
UPDATE: I received further new suggestions per email or personally. You can add yours in the comments below.
I cannot help but enjoying papers dealing with Mīmāṃsā (especially if from a philosophical viewpoint, as it happened during the last IABS), they are just more interesting to me, but I asked friends and colleagues to forget about their personal interests and to tell me which papers of the IABS and IDhC they enjoyed more and why. The following ones are the results I collected.
Theology in a community of believers in methodology? (On Ram-Prasad 2014)
Can one speak of theology without partaking a given faith and belonging to a given community of believers? Religious texts can be read as historical or literary documents, but can they also be read as theological ones outside a community of believers?
I am often inclined to think that some battles have been won and that people will, like Brian Leiter notes, ignore Indian philosophy, but probably also feel they should not. Then, sometimes I am brought back to reality, in this case by the introduction of an otherwise interesting book about the function of images in Christian theology. The blurb says that
None, really? What about the so-called Hinduism? What about the importance of the localisation of deities in a precise icon in which God is not only re-presented, but actually present? Could not we stop using comparison to enhance the value of what we are doing? Could not we start saying that “Christian faith has had a deep relation to the images of God” without claiming what we do not know?