Sound affects: remaking Taiwan through traditional religious practices
Embargo Date
2027-06-12
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This dissertation problematizes the notion of “tradition” at the intersection of religion, gender, and nation-building in Taiwan through an ethnographic investigation of popular religion. Drawing on data collected during nineteen months in 2017 and 2019-20, I trace how younger generations of Taiwanese take ownership of religious practices, which are typically framed as traditional, and adapt them to a changing, modern environment. Having access to the means of producing cultural value enables these religiously active individuals to develop a sense of affective belonging to Taiwan as their geographical, political, and culturally grounded home.Theoretically, I engage popular-religious practices as forms of building affective relations both with the divine and with social others. This relation-building dynamic relies on the mediational capacities of material things to substantiate the co-presence of divine beings. My interlocutors, members of two voluntary religious associations, seek to actively foster such co-presence by building ongoing relationships with the divine, using the human body as an interface. I interpret embodiment as animating divine co-presence, that is, rendering it experientially real through a combination of spirit possession, playing music, and carrying items that contain divinity, such as sedan chairs. The dissertation unfolds the concept of mediation to highlight the affective and aesthetic components of such embodied practices.
The ability of material things to repeatedly mediate between divine intervention and its social affects renders them indexical or iconic signs laden with emotional significance. Having worked with religious musicians in Taipei, I pay particular attention to sound as a powerful but variable material index. While in the context of traditional religious festivals, music and the sight of animated divine beings produce a desired atmosphere and mediate affective place-making among participants, the same activities come to be perceived as unwanted noise in other settings.
Beyond their sonic imprint, religious practices often sustain gendered prejudices even while mediating reinterpretations of gender on the basis of the increasing diversification of gender expressions and sexual orientations in Taiwan. Religious opera offers a variety of gendered role archetypes through which my young interlocutors express—or animate—unconventional gender identities in negotiation with their social environment. Traditional religion thus shows itself adaptable to social change. In a case study, I investigate how the popular goddess Mazu becomes an intermediary adopted by a new generation of Taiwanese worshipers, a queer icon who embodies their unique contributions to the ongoing project of Taiwanese nation-building. While traditional practices like Mazu pilgrimages symbolically invoke a discourse of historic depth, in actual practice they instead take on a decidedly contemporary and Taiwanese face.
Description
2024
License
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International