Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures

This book explores the material visualities of bhakti imagery, focusing on how it inspires, shapes, conveys, and expands the visual practices of devotional communities and possibilities for extending devotion in society. It identifies devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring, and immaterializing portraits, and shapes the return look, connecting material and visual cultures and illustrating modes of established and experimental image usage.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 19 October 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

This book is the first to explore the material visualities of bhakti imagery, which inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities and the possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. The book focuses on a wide range of communities, including Hindu bhakti groups, artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers, who interpret bhakti images in unique and diverse ways.

One of the key aspects of this book is its identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look. These practices connect material and visual cultures and illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti imagery is often associated with emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints, and this book explores how these images are circulated in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.

The book highlights the diverse ways in which bhakti imagery is used to express devotion, including in temples, shrines, and homes. It also explores the role of bhakti imagery in social and political movements, such as the Indian independence movement and the civil rights movement in the United States.

In conclusion, this book is a significant contribution to the study of bhakti imagery and its impact on society. It provides a comprehensive overview of the material visualities of bhakti imagery and their role in shaping contemporary religious and cultural practices. The book's identification of devotional practices of looking and its exploration of the diverse ways in which bhakti imagery is used to express devotion make it a valuable resource for scholars, artists, and anyone interested in the study of religion and culture.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350214187