Full metadata
Title
A Subversive Gathering: Material Culture, Lived Catholicism, and the Occult
Description
This doctoral thesis utilizes a material culture approach of lived religion to analyze everyday practices resulting from past social interactions and discourses that alter the relation of things and actors within structured categories of thought and action. The case study for this analysis is a genealogical investigation of the icon of Death that attracts both lived Catholic and Occultist practitioners within the shared self-identification of folk magic. La Santa Muerte is an icon of Death that recently emerged as a Mexican folk saint over the last two decades, but appears to be a historical outcome of medieval Western European material depictions of a Good Death. My thesis addresses the question, what social and historical processes led to the Occultist adoption of the Mexican folk saint La Santa Muerte? I conclude that a Romantic counter-ideology denying both empirical rationality and Christian normativity gathers a diverse assemblage of people to the icon of Death. My methods include iconology, historiography, ethnography, and iconographic fieldwork. The result is a genealogy that traces a deep history of practices and materiality from the ancient Mediterranean through medieval Western Europe and the colonization of Mexico until the present moment on social media. My fieldwork examines what La Santa Muerte signifies or embodies in Nezahualcóyotl (Mexico City), Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, and on social media. In my dissertation, I outline how lived Catholicism and Occultism converge within a gathering of religious practitioners who seek to subvert dominant social narratives that accuse them of deviancy.
Date Created
2022
Contributors
- Breault, Eric Bruce (Author)
- Astor-Aguilera, Miguel (Thesis advisor)
- Arnold, Philip (Committee member)
- Avina, Alexander (Committee member)
- Bruner, Jason (Committee member)
- Clay, Eugene (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
298 pages
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.168750
Level of coding
minimal
Cataloging Standards
Note
Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2022
Field of study: Religious Studies
System Created
- 2022-08-22 06:50:58
System Modified
- 2022-08-22 06:51:20
- 2 years 2 months ago
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