Panel: TALES OF POSTSECULAR PERFORMANCE



761.5 - WH(I/E)THER THE POSTSECULAR - RESPONDING TO SITES OF POSTSECULARITY IN THE WORLD AND IN ART

AUTHORS:
Vaidyanathan I. (Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru ~ Bengaluru ~ India)
Text:
Beginning with an array of seemingly unrelated instances, this article seeks to identify and typify concrete sites of the postsecular both in the world and within artistic practices. The list of sites, curated by members of the network, includes an abandoned church in Manhattan, a vegan communion, a scenic riverside, a radio play overlaid on rock music, a ritual jade disc, a syncretic folk dance, a public mourning, and a prehistoric hymn. Spread across time and space, what these sites have in common is a shared sense of purpose, their capacity to nurture or care for a community, and a promise of transcendence. As artists and scholars increasingly move beyond the impasse of postmodern cynicism and search for modes of re-enchantment grounded in attentiveness and hope, this article formulates a response to encountering such sites: a performative engagement that involves embodied awareness, ethical determination, and an active orientation toward the world. While this response may resemble a sense of calling, it remains deliberately detached from any rigid or institutional religious framework. Instead, it affirms the spirituality of nature, the formative power of aesthetic experience, and the ethical imperative of enabling collective flourishing. Read together, these encounters suggest understanding the postsecular not as a settled category, but as an open, ongoing question—one that is continuously negotiated through artistic, communal, and embodied practice.