The first book dedicated to media and mediation in domains of public guruship and devotion.
Illuminating the mediatization of guruship and the guruization of media, this book bridges the gap between scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs, and more.
The book’s interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the dramatic production of guruship and reflect on the corporate branding of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in instantiating notions of “absent-present” guruship and demonstrating the mutual mediation of gurus, caste, and Hindutva.
Gurus and Media foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and space. Thinking through the guru’s many media entanglements in a single place, this book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian religions and to the study of mediation more broadly.
Illuminating the mediatization of guruship and the guruization of media, this book bridges the gap between scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs, and more.
The book’s interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the dramatic production of guruship and reflect on the corporate branding of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in instantiating notions of “absent-present” guruship and demonstrating the mutual mediation of gurus, caste, and Hindutva.
Gurus and Media foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and space. Thinking through the guru’s many media entanglements in a single place, this book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian religions and to the study of mediation more broadly.
Reviews
Table of Contents
List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Gurus and media: An introduction *Jacob Copeman, Koonal Duggal and Arkotong Longkumer** 1. The Sonic Guru: Rewben Mashangva, Folk, Roots, and the Blues Arkotong Longkumer 2. ‘Non-human gurus’: Yoga dolls, online avatars, and meaningful narratives P.S.D. McCartney and Diego Lourenço 3. Governing with a Lockdown Beard: The COVID-19 Crisis as a laboratory for Narendra Modi’s Hindutva David Landau and Nina Rageth 4. ‘Immortal Gurus of Bha¯rata’. The Social Biography of a Contemporary Image Raphaël Voix 5. Languages of Longing: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1890-1940 Somak Biswas 6. Sabda-Guru: Conflicts of Guru-ship, Mediational Phenomenology and Sabda-Philosophy in Sikhism Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair 7. Hacking God. Ganesh Yourself as an experiment in divine media circuitry Emmanuel Grimaud 8. Flooding the Web: Absence-Presence and the Media Strategies of Nithyananda’s Digital Empire Amanda Lucia 9. When God Dies: Multi-Mediation, the Elsewhere and Crypto Futurity in a Global Guru Movement Tulasi Srinivas 10. Envisioning Silence: Ramana Maharshi and the Rise of Advaitic Photography Yagna Nath Chowdhuri 11. ‘Christ The Guru’: Artistic representations of Jesus Christ in South India and their mediated notions of guru-ness E. Dawson Varughese 12. The total guru: film star guru-ship in the time of Hindutva** Jacob Copeman and Koonal Duggal 13. Doing seeing: televised yoga, consumption and religious nationalism in neo-liberal India Srirupa Bhattacharya Index