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Envisioning Identity: Deity, Person, and Practice in the Kathmandu Valley
Author(s) -
Owens Bruce McCoy
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2000.27.3.702
Subject(s) - polyphony , argument (complex analysis) , tantra , identity (music) , sociology , ethnography , aesthetics , anthropology , epistemology , gender studies , philosophy , literature , art , pedagogy , biochemistry , chemistry
Through an analysis of diverse accounts offered by those who perform "god's work" for a large religious festival in the Kathmandu Valley, I argue that the oppositional frameworks typically used to understand divergent perspectives are inadequate to understand the multifocal polyphony that these accounts(as well as most other ethnographic settings) present. The terms of argument upon which conflicting accounts agree suggest that esoteric concepts of visualization(sadhana) resonate with popular modes of constructing identities of gods and selves and that this shared understanding helps account for the reproduction and transformation of the many dimensions of contestation that have characterized this festival for centuries. [Nepal, Newar, hermeneutic contestation, multifocal polyphony, identity, religion, ritual, tantra]