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Image wars in Past and Present: Religious Studies and the Figuration of the Unseen
By Birgit Meyer, Utrecht University
Bio
Birgit Meyer is professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University. Trained as a cultural
anthropologist, she studies religion from a global and post-secular perspective, seeking to synthesize
grounded fieldwork and theoretical reflection in a broad multidisciplinary setting. She is vice-chair of
the International African Institute (London), one of the editors of Material Religion, and has
published or edited about 20 books and special issues about the rise and popularity of global
Pentecostalism; religion, popular culture and heritage; religion and media; religion and the public
sphere; religious visual culture, the senses and aesthetics. In 2015 she was awarded the Spinoza Prize
by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Academy Professor Prize by
the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Her most recent book publications are
Sensational Movies. Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015) and
Creativity in Transition. Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (edited
together with Maruška Svašek, Berghahn, 2016).
Abstract
The point of departure of this presentation is that human relations to images are culturally
constituted and are central to the politics and aesthetics of world making. Images, and human
attitudes towards them, are formidable entry points for cultural analysis devoted to understanding
the constitution of worlds of shared life experiences and clashes between such worlds. Evolving
around particular figurations of the unseen, religions play a central role in shaping human-image
relations, and that has longstanding repercussions for the secular sphere. In this presentation I will 1)
address the repercussions of the rejection of images as suitable harbingers of the divine in favour of
the biblical text on the part of Calvinists for the concepts and approaches developed in the study of
religion (and society), 2) point at the implications of the export of an iconoclastic stance by
Protestant missions to West Africa, where they kicked off an image war against the indigenous gods,
which were dismissed as pagan, and 3) by way of conclusion, speak to the current struggles over
images in a global, culturally, and religiously diverse setting.
Organizing committee
Prof. Dick Houtman, Prof. Stef Aupers, Prof. Katrien Pype & Prof. Peter Vermeersch
Free and open to the public, no registration needed
Please bring your own lunch