The Dissonant Bodies and Religion
Cambridge University Press eBooks December 31, 2025 DOI: 10.1017/9781009634984.007 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the body comprises three embodied systems — schema, image, and global — whose interaction can generate "systemic dissonance" and a corresponding bodily signal. Contends that religious practices such as spirit possession in India, body modification in the United States, Kavadi practice in Southeast Asia, and Bernard of Clairvaux's bodily phenomena are better understood as complex responses to internal body-self dissonance than as effects of a single cause. |
Abstract
Chapter 6 outlines three embodied systems – schema, image, and global – in order to explain the nature of systemic dissonance in the human body, along with the signal generated by this dissonance. The chapter discusses a number of religious cases of embodied dissonance, including spirit possession in India, body modification in the United States, the Hindu Kavadi practitioner in Southeast Asia, and the complicated bodily phenomena that characterize the life of the twelfth-century mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux. Systemic theory allows us to understand some embodied religious practices as complex responses to an internal body-self dissonance rather than the effect of a single cause.