142083 UE Rethinking the Body in South Asia - Imagination, Representation, and Practice (2021W)

What is the body and what is the self in different South Asian contexts? How is it imagined, represented, and used in practice? How are notions of the body connected to cultural memory, biopolitics, and specific identities and worldviews at large? What is a (human) body made of and what constitutes an individual self? What are life and death in relation to the body Indic contexts? What about non-human entities and their interaction with humans? This seminar will delve into cultural questions related to representations of the body in South Asian traditions. We will explore how South Asians have unique perceptions and attitudes toward the body in religious and cultural contexts, as well as the processes of interpreting and representing notions of the body in different media: film, literature, and other expressions of popular culture.
Concentrating mainly on embodied practices such as yoga, ritual acts, chanting, eating, sex, asceticism, healing, possession, and performance in different settings, we will examine how the body is and has been experienced, imagined and represented in South Asia. We will also analyze the ways in which specific bodies have been "othered" as a powerful ideological discourse, which empowers or marginalizes specific communities thereby tackling questions of “race”, caste, class, religion, and gender. Utilizing an interdisciplinary perspective by means of textual study and array of disciplines (notably anthropology), we will explore both insider- and outsider perspectives and issues related to the body from the 2nd century CE up to the present-day.