Deconstructing Materiality
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Deconstructing Materiality: a Phenomenological Ethnography of Darśan and Indian Story-Telling Scrolls in Western Museums Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Chester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Valentina Gamberi November 2015 Declaration I declare that the material presented for examination here is my own work and has not been submitted for an award at this or another Higher Education institution. Parts of this thesis appeared in significantly condensed forms in the following publications: Gamberi, V. (2013). Isabella Nardi, The Theory of Citrasūtras in Indian Painting: A critical re- evaluation of their uses and interpretations, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 190 pp. South Asia Research, 33(2), 177-178. Gamberi, V. (2014). Escaping from Rama: Portraits of Indian Women. Culture and Religion, 15(3), 352-372. 3 To my beloved grandmothers, Rosanna and Maria Luisa I'm flying far away to be really free Tried hard to build myself independently It's hard to always do what you expect from me Saying come home Come home […] You're holding back the tears when you kiss me Smile smile when I'm back again as you see me When years are passing by and you miss me You're saying come home […] My turn to understand what you lived through Today I only feel how I miss you so it's only fair, when it's hard to bear and you ask if I, I try to come home Come home Yael Naim, Come Home 5 CONTENTS Deconstructing Materiality: a Phenomenological Ethnography of Darśan and Indian Story-Telling Scrolls in Western Museums Acknowledgements 11 Photographic Acknowledgements 13 Abstract 15 Introduction 17 The problem of materiality 17 The patuas and the bhopas 23 Plan of the work 33 Chapter 1 Phenomenological deconstruction of the human and the nonhuman: a review of Gell’s material agency 1.1 Introduction 37 1.2 Experiencing the nonhuman: phenomenology 46 1.3 The position of phenomenology in the construction of the category of the nonhuman: Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on nature 54 1.4 Deconstructing Gell’s material agency 58 1.5 Some remarks and suggestions 68 Chapter 2 Looking at methodology: the anthropologist’s dwelling into material ethnography 2.1 Introduction 71 2.2 The practicality of a phenomenological ethnography 77 2.3 The encounter with the Other: phenomenological implications 79 2.4 Introducing the museums observed during fieldwork 85 2.4.1 Introduction 85 2.4.2 The Musée du Quai Branly 88 2.4.3 The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge 91 2.4.4 The Penn Museum 93 7 2.4.5 Some concluding remarks 96 Chapter 3 Transcending the notion of materiality through the darśan 3.1 Introduction 97 3.2 The magical touch: darśan and beyond 102 3.2.1 Introduction 102 3.2.2 Defining a visual phenomenon: the darśan and its application in the storytelling scrolls 103 3.2.2.1 The darśan 103 3.2.2.2 The application of darśan in the storytelling scrolls 108 3.2.3 Pop religion: how deities have been become superheroes 117 3.3 Comparing different visual-religious cultures: the icons 129 Chapter 4 Bracketing the astonishment of materiality: aesthetics and museography 4.1 Introduction 139 4.2 The disembodied beauty: Western aesthetics 144 4.3 Collecting the nonhuman and the Other: the rise of the museum, the Homo monstrum and Indian art 149 4.4 Temple or art gallery? Curatorial coming to terms with darśan 160 4.4.1 Introduction 160 4.4.2 Aesthetic appreciation of Indian folk artefacts between modern art and soteriology: the first exhibition 162 4.4.3 Indian storytellers as contemporary artists: the second exhibition 166 4.4.4 Two paṛs among Maharajas’ treasures: the third exhibition 168 4.4.5 Conclusions 170 Chapter 5 The overlapping of the sacred and the profane in religious artefacts within museum cabinets: the case of the Indian storytelling scrolls 5.1 Introduction 173 5.2 Three curatorial responses to the role of materiality 175 8 5.2.1 Introduction 175 5.2.2 The Museum der Kulturen 176 5.2.3 The World Museum 177 5.2.4 The Oriental Museum 179 5.2.5 Storage precautions 181 5.2.6 Concluding observations 182 5.3 A literature review on museums as sacred spaces 185 5.4 The resistance of materiality: curatorial difficulties in reconstructing religious contexts 191 5.4.1 Introduction 191 5.4.2 The Buddhist temple in the Penn Museum 197 5.4.3 The Buddhist altar in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 198 5.4.4 The Tibetan protective chapel in the World Museum 200 5.4.5 The reconstructions of Hindu shrines in the Oriental Museum 201 5.5 Concluding remarks 203 Conclusions 207 Appendix 1. The collection of Indian storytelling scrolls of the Kulttuurien museo 215 Appendix 2. A photographic documentation of reconstructions of altars within museum spaces 231 Bibliography 241 9 Acknowledgements I sincerely thank my supervisors, Dr. Alana Vincent and Dr. Suzanne Owen, for their thorough guidance during fieldwork and throughout my writing up of the thesis. I thank Prof. David Clough for being my Director of Studies with professionalism, Prof. Elaine Graham for her extreme kindness and availability, and Dr. Dawn Llewellyn for temporarily supervising me in a very difficult period of my life. I also thank the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Chester for having partly funded my doctoral studies. I am very grateful to the Kulttuurien museo, the Penn Museum, the World Museum of Liverpool, the Oriental Museum of the University of Durham, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge, the V&A Museum, the Musée du Quai du Branly, the Museum der Kulturen, the Völkerkundenmuseum of the University of Zürich, and the Museum Rietberg, without which this research cannot even start. I am grateful to Miss Eleonora Adorni, my friend and the scholar Roberto Marchesini’s assistant, for providing me with precious literature on posthumanism. A very warm thanks goes to my MA colleague in Bologna and friend, Dr. Alessandro Nannini, for guiding me in the aesthetic path and nurturing my initial intuition. A special thanks goes to my family, for trusting in me, however my life during the Ph.D. went, as well as for their extremely important psychological support. Lastly, I would like to express my appreciation for every cup of tea, for every bright smile, for every human word I received throughout these three years of the Ph.D. Bologna, November 2015 11 Photographic Acknowledgements I sincerely thank the Oriental Museum of the University of Durham, the Penn Museum, Kulttuurien museo, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge for allowing me to use the pictures I took in the appendices of this thesis. 13 Abstract Deconstructing Materiality: a Phenomenological Ethnography of Darśan and Indian Story-Telling Scrolls in Western Museums by Valentina Gamberi This study investigates Western curatorial practices towards the darśan, the visual contact established between the Hindu worshipper and the deity who is believed to give life to its material representation, expressed by two sets of Indian storytelling scrolls, the Bengali pats and the Rajasthani paṛs. Whilst the scrolls, especially the Rajasthani ones, are believed to be the temples and the icons of the deity depicted, Western curators appreciate them either as examples of ethnographic theories, or as pure art works. On the one hand, materiality is thus animistically empowered (see Faure, 1998), and, consequently, is treated as an anthropomorphic entity or fetish. On the other hand, materiality is considered as a reified idea, an objectification of a social structure, or of an ideal of beauty. Latour (2010) calls this phenomenon of reification a factish concept, which is revered in a semi-spiritual or post-secular way. Modernity, according to Latour, is characterised by this opposition between self-evident, abstract and intellectual notions –e.g. the categories of the sacred and of the profane –and the concrete and irrational reality. The differentiation between reality and ideas recalls the broader boundary between the human and the nonhuman. According to Merleau-Ponty (2003 [c. 1956]), materiality coincides with nature, one of the fundamental criteria of the categorisation of human/nonhuman. While human characteristics are highly rational, materiality, along with animality, is confined within the irrational realm and is considered as a passive actor, except for Gell’s (1998) theorisation of material agency. However, his conceptualisation depends upon an anthropomorphisation of the artefact by invoking the particular example of children’s play with toys. The present thesis explores the contribution of phenomenology, as the study of embodiments and incarnations, in problematising the role of materiality in its relationships with humans, and so the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. On the one hand, the study employs phenomenology as a methodological tool, according to which the researcher’s body reveals a particular and intersubjective appraisal of materiality. On the other hand, phenomenology, corroborated by posthumanist studies, is the theoretical approach by which the duality object/subject is problematised. By this logic, phenomenology challenges the ontological idea of the I or human as separated from the Other or the nonhuman, by replacing it with a hybridism and a fusion between the perceiving and the perceived. Fieldwork data problematises this anthropomorphisation of materiality. In fact, visitors’ responses escape from the curators’ control and reveal how museum artefacts possess an agency independent from any human projection. In addition, data emphasises the irreconciliability between epistemic categories and the empiric reality.