Devotional Visualities : Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures

This book is the first to focus on material visualities of "bhakti" imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of "bhakti" images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu "bhakti" groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers.This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage."Bhakti "is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate "bhakti

"images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns. [Publisher's Text]

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