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The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling
David Morgan builds on his previous groundbreaking work to offer this new, systematically integrated theory of the study of religion as visual culture. Providing key tools for scholars across disciplines studying the materiality of religions, Morgan gives an accessibly written theoretical overview including case studies of the ways seeing is related to touching, hearing, feeling, and such ephemeral experiences as dreams, imagination, and visions. The case studies explore both the high and low of religious visual culture: Catholic traditions of the erotic Sacred Heart of Jesus, the unrecognizability of the Virgin in the Fatima apparitions, the prehistory of Warner Sallman’s face of Jesus, and more. Basing the study of religious images and visual practices in the relationship between seeing and the senses, Morgan argues against reductionist models of “the gaze,” demonstrating that vision is not something that occurs in abstraction, but is a fundamental way of embodying the human self.
- GenresArt
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 2, 2012
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About the author
David Morgan
224 books8 followersDavid Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, with an additional appointment in Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. Morgan served as the Chair in the Department of Religious Studies in Trinity College of Duke University from 2013-2016
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2021
Wow, this was one tough read. The ideas are interesting, even ground-breaking, but they're obscured by exceedingly dense language that circles back on itself so as to make even just 200 pages feel too long.
In short, The Embodied Eye argues that seeing is a physical act, and in religious studies, that means artwork and other things that rely on vision should be considered part of the material culture of religion. Fair enough, and Morgan includes a number of interesting histories to connect vision with touch, worship and other physical acts. But the difficult prose and the lack of a conclusion makes arduous any effort to further detail his arguments.
Organizationally, the book seems to be split between a more cohesive first half where the chapters cohere into a broader whole, and a more episodic second half, where each chapter feels like an independent essay on the same general theme. The result is that by the time the reader has slogged through the book, the original argument is further muddied and lost in the mists.
It's really a shame when overly academic and dense writing bogs down an interesting or provocative argument. The experience is arguably more frustrating than simply reading a bad book. Instead of something that can be easily dismissed, readers are left floundering in a sea of jargon, trying to grasp whatever pieces they can in hopes of understanding what the author was trying to convey. In this case, Morgan's arguments are interesting, even important, but not many people will ever read, let alone understand, them, and that seems like a real loss.
In short, The Embodied Eye argues that seeing is a physical act, and in religious studies, that means artwork and other things that rely on vision should be considered part of the material culture of religion. Fair enough, and Morgan includes a number of interesting histories to connect vision with touch, worship and other physical acts. But the difficult prose and the lack of a conclusion makes arduous any effort to further detail his arguments.
Organizationally, the book seems to be split between a more cohesive first half where the chapters cohere into a broader whole, and a more episodic second half, where each chapter feels like an independent essay on the same general theme. The result is that by the time the reader has slogged through the book, the original argument is further muddied and lost in the mists.
It's really a shame when overly academic and dense writing bogs down an interesting or provocative argument. The experience is arguably more frustrating than simply reading a bad book. Instead of something that can be easily dismissed, readers are left floundering in a sea of jargon, trying to grasp whatever pieces they can in hopes of understanding what the author was trying to convey. In this case, Morgan's arguments are interesting, even important, but not many people will ever read, let alone understand, them, and that seems like a real loss.
Displaying 1 of 1 review