Monika Hirmer

This Special Issue has been a long time in the making. Its seeds were first sown about three years ago, when Vimala, from her home in Hyderabad, India, and I, at that time based in London, United Kingdom, started envisioning ways in which we could bring the innovative publishing options offered by Decolonial Subversions to their full potential, in particular with respect to South Asian vernacular cultures.

Decolonial Subversions was envisioned as a platform for the dissemination of decolonial perspectives by implementing a model that subverts current practices of knowledge production, validation and dissemination—both within and outside of academia. It does so by departing from mainstream standards of communication (which privilege English as language, text as format and intellect as the locus of knowing) and implementing a multilingual and multi-format publication model. This is based on the understanding that epistemic violence is perpetuated linguistically in significant ways, such as when converting multidimensional and embodied knowledge into rigidly mono-dimensional scholarly articles. Authors whose first language is not English are often forced to write in English in order to reach a wider audience and for their knowledge to be accepted as intelligible and valid. In response to this dynamic, Decolonial Subversions enables authors to submit their manuscripts in their first and working languages, as well as in an English version they can produce with the support of a translator, assistant or co-author, in addition to accepting visual and acoustic formats. This strategy aims to minimise the epistemic violence inflicted via linguistic requirements, maintain the text’s original nuance, and simultaneously ensure that the work reaches and can inform Anglophone scholarship and thinking. In this essay, we discuss this approach in detail, how our contributors have engaged with the multilingual option we provide, and some of the challenges we have faced in moving towards a multilingual publishing model. The essay provides a publisher’s perspective as a way of complementing the growing dissemination of multilingual articles reflecting authors’ vantage points.

One of the primary aims of Śrīvidyā practitioners is to cultivate oneness with goddess Tripurasundarī through a complex ritual corpus. By engaging in divine identities, practitioners defy beingness as conceived by a modern, scientific framework. Across Western scholarship, such rituals are thus often described as ‘magic’—a term charged with mystery never endorsed by my informants. Departing from a positivistic existential outlook, I explore what ontological coordinates accommodate oneness with Devī cogently and unambiguously.
Suggesting that the domain of existentiality and its correlated knowledge do not occur but are produced, I propose a radical re-evaluation of the tenets of being. Bodies expanding into subtle realms and actions partaking in cosmic designs respond to ontological coordinates informed by transcendence. Embracing an existentiality rooted in transcendence, I illustrate how the world of Śrīvidyā—including practitioners, Devī and the entire cosmos—is permeated by the Śrīcakra, the “genetic code of the cosmos”. Bodies thus constituted are connected with Devī and the macrocosm so that their divinity is inherent in their ontological setup and their actions necessarily reverberate across, and affect, worldly and transcendent dimensions—irrespective of their positivistic verifiability.
The ontological dislocation I advocate is not only necessary for an emic understanding of the Śrīvidyā tradition analysed, but invites novel modes of approaching Tantric traditions generally. By undertaking this radical shift, identities and practices deviating from a positivistic framework need no longer be confined to the domain of ‘magic’, but can be appreciated in their ontological primacy and epistemic legitimacy. From this perspective, ‘to invoke the three celestial lights of Fire Sun and Moon into ourselves’ is not only plausible, but obvious. The question, then, arises: do Śrīvidyā practitioners perform magic, or is ‘magic’ yet another exoticising category exposing Western scholarship’s propensity to universalise modern epistemic and ontological assumptions?

Divinisation rituals establishing oneness between practitioners and divinities are common across Tantric traditions. While scholars largely argue that divinisation occurs through meditative practices, implying a clear demarcation between contemplative samayācāra rituals and body-focused kaulācāra rituals, I suggest that samayācāra divinisation rituals entail fundamental corporeal elements; furthermore, I argue that the distinction between samayācāra and kaulācāra rituals is not obvious, but negotiated on a continuum ranging between representational and embodied corporeality. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in the temple-complex Śaktipur, I first illustrate divinised Śrīvidyā bodies: they are permeated by goddess Tripurasundarī in her anthropomorphic form and as a diagram, or yantra (the Śrīcakra), and by the deities Gaṇapati, Śyāmā, and Vārāhī, and their respective yantras. Thereafter, I describe yantrapūjās, which are samayācāra rituals through which practitioners divinise their bodies, outlining, particularly, their corporeal elements. I also illustrate sirījyotipūjā, which is a ritual directly transmitted by Tripurasundarī to Śaktipur’s guru and is, therefore, unique to his disciples. Foreseeing the creation of a large Śrīcakra decorated with flowers, around and at the centre of which practitioners congregate, the ritual facilitates the superimposition of the Śrīcakra, Tripurasundarī and worshippers’ bodies; including both representational and embodied elements, sirījyotipūjā occupies the fluid intersection between samayācāra and kaulācāra rituals.

Negotiations between continuity and discontinuity have characterized Srividya traditions for centuries; these are primarily studied through texts or the juxtaposition of textual prescriptions with observed practices, leaving the process of how Srividya practitioners negotiate esoteric and orthodox tendencies unexplored. Building on extensive fieldwork among practitioners of a contemporary South Indian Srividya tradition, I present the dynamics animating such transformations. Focusing on kalavahana, one of the tradition's central rituals aimed at identifying with Devi, I trace the underlying forces that gradually replace its most esoteric aspects (centred around the body and pleasure) with conventional worship (external or meditative practices), refashioning the tradition as part of mainstream Saktism. While some practitioners conform to the new canon, others, for whom the changes diminish ritual efficacy, secretly continue embodied practices. Through a Foucauldian archaeologico-genealogical analysis, I investigate which regimes of truth and ontological coordinates allow the ritual to change, and which diminish its efficacy. While at first negotiations between continuity and discontinuity appear driven by socio-political motives, ultimately they are governed and legitimized by fundamentally diverging modes of being. A pre-objectified worldview demands embodied experiences (including unconventional practices invoking pleasure) while a dualistic framework endorses representational practices (such as meditation and idol-worship).

Thinking of linguistic justice and decolonisation brings me back to one humid summer afternoon – it must have been around 2010-11 – when, sitting in the living room of an apartment-block in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, I was engrossed in my first Hindi lesson. Having taught German to Indian students myself, the teacher’s immersive approach, whereby he communicated primarily in the language I aimed to learn, felt familiar and disorienting at the same time

In this essay I propose a reading of the female body in art as a locus for the display, the negotiation and ultimately the overcoming of gendered and racial dialectics of ‘othering’. First, from post-medieval until pre-colonial times, white female bodies depicted in European art largely represented a gendered, sexualised ‘other’ to the Western male gaze. Successively, with the unfolding of sexual politics of colonialism, non-European female bodies on canvas became metaphorical grounds for the unravelling of racial confrontations between colonisers and colonised. Finally, in the postcolonial era, it appears that women not only subvert, but entirely disregard the subject-object dynamics that for centuries constrained them to being passive objects. From paintings by contemporary female artists in Telangana (India), it emerges that women appropriate art, expressing their own subjectivities unapologetically and independently. Overcoming at the same time the gendered marginality conferred to women in European art, and the racial dialectics of ‘othering’ pursued through gendered colonial narratives, these artists represent an eminent example of decolonisation in praxis.

After providing a brief account of the evolution of the Indian feminist movement, I move on to analyse the development of the perception of Indian women, first through the lens of scholarly writings, and then through Indian films and TV series. Identifying distinct trends in the academic analyses of Indian women from the 1980s onwards, I collocate these writings within the larger framework of feminist discourses. The pervasive influence that scholars exert on the perceived identities of Indian women, shaping them in accordance with their own theoretical frameworks, becomes thus evident. Earlier studies, mainly adopting a structural paradigm and assuming the image of the Brahmanical woman as point of reference, allude to the dichotomy of ‘woman as goddess/woman as whore’, and can be associated with second-wave feminism; studies from the ‘90s onwards, endorsing an increasingly complex framework, have given voice to those women who do not conform to the Brahmanical value system, and have been correlated to third-wave feminism. While scholarly writings departed from the binary framework within which the image of Indian women is often caught, a similar shift cannot be distinctly observed in the film industry, which responds to the demands of the collective imagery. This poses queries about the extent to which academic discourses are representative of Indian women’s identities or rather of the current Western zeitgeist, and about the power imbalances that are perpetuated by ‘othering’ Indian women through making them repeated objects of study.

The recent choice of Indian settings for the production of Western music videos reaffirms the colonial gaze that has for centuries
defined who is the subject and who is the object. At the same time, however, the encounter of cultures is complex and dialogical, resting upon a continuous negotiation, redefinition and
reimagining of precarious “non-selves” and “selves”.

Convenors:
Dr Monika Hirmer and Dr Fabio Armand

Presenters:
Prabhavati Reddy - George Mason University, Virginia, USA
Stefano Beggiora - University Ca' Foscari, Venezia, Italy
James Mallinson - SOAS, University of London, UK
Lidia Guzy - University College Cork, Ireland
William Sax - Heidelberg University, Germany
Annette Hornbacher - Heidelberg University, Germany
Ruth Westoby - SOAS, University of London, UK
Lubomír Ondračka - Charles University, Prague,
Richard David Williams - SOAS, University of London, UK
Fabio Armand - Lion University, France
Monika Hirmer - SOAS, University of London, UK

SOAS, University of London, BG 01, Brunei Gallery
20-21 April 2023

In collaboration with:
European Association for South Asian Studies (EASAS)
SOAS Centre for Yoga Studies (SCYS)
Lyon Catholic University
SOAS, University of London

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OVERVIEW AND AIMS:

This two-day international workshop has brought together scholars from France, UK, India, Germany, Italy and Ireland to discuss their latest research in the field of tantric, shamanic and folk traditions in South Asia, with particular focus on these traditions’ relevance to contemporary times, also as potential resources.

In eschewing mainstream notions of (im)purity, making rituals accessible across genders and castes, and encouraging the partaking in cosmic energies, Tantric traditions occupy the margins of Hinduism. Scholars’ primary interest in ancient texts rather than current practices reinforces the idea that these traditions are, at best, concealed and, at worst, bygone. Resilience, then, appears as a matter of surviving in secrecy.
Observing a contemporary South Indian Śrīvidyā tradition, it however appears that, when confronted with mainstream expectations, instead of primarily resorting to secrecy, practitioners undertake a selective process of change that enables renegotiations of centre-margin dynamics. When accounting for change, then, resilience becomes a matter of adaptability.
Through extensive anthropological fieldwork among sādhakas in Śaktipur,  I observed transformations at the social (ritual practice) and geographical (temple use) level, aimed at negotiating the tradition’s marginality and acceptance among mainstream worshippers. While determining the tradition’s resilience, these changes were often contested. In fact, while many practitioners repeatedly transgressed Śaktipur’s reformulated ritual canon, more intransigent ones abandoned the temple and established new shrines where to uphold rituals in their esoteric form. Similarly, adjustments mitigating the erotic character of what was once Śaktipur’s most emblematic shrine, while enabling its promotion among a wide base of conventionally-inclined devotees, were heavily criticised and circumvented by a majority of sādhakas.
When factoring change into the analytical framework, it emerges that Tantric traditions present a propensity for adaptation, which determines their resilience vis-à-vis the mainstream. This adaptability, while not unchallenged, underlies Tantric traditions’ capacity to negotiate centre-margin dynamics, in the process not only refashioning their own positionalities, but also reshaping the centre and creating new margins.

Through bodily rituals aimed at identifying with goddess Tripurasundarī, female and male Tantric practitioners transcend gender binaries to experience ultimate femininity and participate in the cosmic renewal of life, questioning dichotomous bodies and an exclusively biological motherhood.

The workshop serves as a forum for discussion of female religious and ritual leadership The workshop serves as a forum for discussion of female religious and ritual leadership in South Asian religious traditions. in South Asian religious traditions.

Despite esoteric Hindu traditions often lifting gender-restrictions typical of mainstream Hinduism, such measures not always reflect a change in women's social status. I elaborate on this contradiction by examining the prospects of agency a Śrīvidyā tradition offers female ritual specialists. In doing so, I focus on concepts traditionally central to womanhood-being mothers and housekeepers-in their emic connotations. Notably, as my extensive praxis-oriented fieldwork shows, along with their common understanding, 'mother' and 'household' appear as transcendental notions, which I call 'metaphysical motherhood' and 'cosmic household'. Analysing priestesses' practices, I illustrate how women, independently of their status as biological mothers or wives, (re)-establish their identities as (metaphysical) mothers and (cosmic) housekeepers as part of their pursuit of mokṣa. While at first this can appear as a reaffirmation of patriarchal gender-dichotomies, when taking into account the local cosmology centred on the motherly goddess Tripurasundarī, 'metaphysical motherhood' and 'cosmic housekeeper' emerge as ultimate existential conditions pursued by female and male practitioners alike. Among other things, practitioners of any gender commonly address each other as 'Amma' (Mother). Instead of lack of agency, women's emphasis on motherhood and housekeeping expresses their inherent similarity to Tripurasundarī and superiority to men. In a cosmological setup where 'metaphysical motherhood' and 'cosmic housekeepers' are ultimate conditions, not only is women's presumed inferiority challenged philosophically and in (ritual) practice, but common gender binaries are questioned too.

"Devī needs these rituals!" Negotiating popularity and ritual efficacy in a Śrīvidyā tradition in flux
The degree to which Śrīvidyā traditions fluctuate between conforming to Brahmanical expectations and remaining at the margins of mainstream Hinduism has been extensively discussed (Goudriaan 1979; Brooks 1992; Padoux 1998). Such evaluations primarily build upon the analysis of texts from various epochs or upon the juxtaposition of observed practices with textual prescriptions, leaving the actual process of how a Śrīvidyā tradition negotiates its identity between esoteric and orthodox tendencies mostly unexplored. Building upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Śrīvidyā practitioners in South India, I will present an anthropological case study whereby the conflicting forces that underlie such a dialectic emerge prominently. Following the sudden demise of my informants' guru, a series of measures have been undertaken in the attempt to gradually reconfigure the tradition as part of mainstream Śaktism. The focus of my presentation will be on kalavahana, a ritual unique to the disciples of the erstwhile guru aimed at embodying the Goddess. The analysis of the ritual's transformation will serve as a starting point from where to trace the dynamics underlying the changes affecting this tradition at large. Firstly, I will ask what drives and political tensions such transformations respond to. Secondly, I will observe the degree to which rituals thus altered maintain efficacy; in doing so, I will reflect on the epistemological and ontological premises that practitioners must hold in order for kalavahana and the larger ritual body to still be efficacious. I argue that what appears as a negotiation between popularity (adopting mainstream traits) and continuity (maintaining esoteric qualities) is, ultimately, a contention between fundamentally diverging worldviews and modes of being, each endorsing particular conditions that determine the possibility of ritual efficacy.

Presentation at BASAS 2019, 3-5 April 2019
Part of the panel Perspectives on liberation and gender from the margins
of Hindu traditions

https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/conference.booking/BASASConferenceProgramme.pdf

This presentation focuses on kalāvāhana, a ritual crucial among the South Indian Śrīvidyā practitioners I lived with. Kalāvāhana is a so far undocumented adaptation of the more popular navāvaraṇa pūjā, and equally aims at establishing identity between the practitioner and Devī. However, differently from navāvaraṇa pūjā, where worship is directed at a ritual object (śrīyantra) as locus of the macro- and micro-cosmic correspondence, in kalāvāhana the practitioner is directly worshipped as Devī. Through the chanting of mantras, the touching of energy knots on the subtle body (cakras) and a sacred bath (abhiṣeka) of the physical body, the practitioner is first reconfigured and then venerated as Devī. Since it is female and male practitioners alike in whom the decidedly feminine—yet at the same time irreducible to any gender—Devī is awakened, kalāvāhana offers an important point of departure from where to reflect on conceptions of the body, gender and the ontology of personhood among Śrīvidyā practitioners.

BASAS (British Association for South Asian Studies), Durham University 3rd April 2019. This panel (in two sessions) aims to showcase recent scholarship on South Asian religious and philosophical traditions, with a particular focus on the notions of gender and liberation (mokṣa), and their reciprocal implications. Whereas great attention has been devoted to mainstream as well as esoteric Hindu traditions, it is often mistakenly assumed that the default practitioner is male (Shaw, 1994; Pechilis, 2004; Hausner and Khandelwal, 2006). This has led to partial understandings-if not misconceptions-about the philosophical underpinnings and the everyday aspects of Hindu practices. Despite common understandings, gender-be it in its tangible manifestation as social norms or as metaphysical principle underpinning Hindu philosophies-has deep repercussions on the journeys of liberation undertaken by women and men alike. By presenting themes that are usually confined to the margins of Hindu traditions, this panel contributes to critically review and expand the current scholarship. On the one side, narratives of female gurus and practitioners will be presented and, on the other side, the gendered elements that underlie the Hindu metaphysical domain will be explored. In challenging and enriching mainstream conversations on Hindu traditions, it becomes evident that common notions of gender, body, practice and mokṣa have to be reassessed.

Presentation at Conference "Approaching South Asia: Challenges, Connections and Creativity" - 29 June 2018
South Asia Institute, SOAS
https://www.soas.ac.uk/south-asia-institute/events/08may2018-approaching-south-asia-challenges-connections-and-creativity.html

Presentation at Conference "Recreating Spaces: Language, Culture, and Gender Issues" 8-9 December 2017
Andhra University, Visakhapatnam

Taking visual arts as a form of language, I will explore through a postcolonial lens how art, particularly by way of representing female bodies, has been a central locus for the propagation and the refusal of colonial imaginaries by European and Indian (male) artists respectively. Firstly, I will broadly outline some trends in Western art that proved crucial for the evolution of female figures, from being considered mere objects of art to becoming full-fledged subjects as artists. Subsequently, I will observe how the objectifying gaze of European male artists wandered towards ever wider and increasingly exotic horizons to discover brown female bodies as new objects for their canvases, at a time when white female bodies ceased to be undisputedly passive art material. I will discuss how, as white settlers shaped geo-politics, white artists moulded imaginaries, establishing a meta-narrative that posited a virile, white male at the centre, surrounded by an emasculated, Indian subject at the margins. This confluence of gender and race gave rise to a sexual politics of colonialisation, which ultimately was to be played out on the body of the Indian woman. On the one side, for the colonisers, the brown female body represented the 'other' to the prude and clean body of the Victorian woman. On the other side of the dialectic of 'othering', to the colonised, the body of the Indian woman became the main repository of purity and chastity. The extent to which Indian men succeeded in protecting it from the invaders' debauching gaze became a measurement and proof directly proportional to their disputed masculinity. Expanding from canvas to moving images, I will show how, fully appropriating and subverting the dynamics of the exoticising game, Indian producers are today returning the gaze at the Western man and challenging his virility, by exposing white female bodies in sensual item-songs or deploying them as irrelevant background actors. What remains intact in both, Eurocentric and Indiacentric narratives, is the notion of the female body as a repository of a nation and its (male) citizens' virtue, dignity and prowess. I will conclude the paper with a discussion on recent art works by female South Indian artists and argue that these not only overcome discourses oriented around an assumed centrality of Europe and the

This essay is based on an paper titled "Art as locus of origin and dissolution of the dialectics of 'othering': considerations on gender and race through the lens of Indian and European art", forthcoming in Colors of statehood-Contours of women's experiences in Telangana paintings, edited by Vimala Katikaneni and Kranti Chintakunta. Hyderabad: Mukta Publications, 2017.

Presentation at Conference "Gender Issues: Transcending Boundaries of Culture" 19-20 September 2014
Andhra University, Visakhapatnam

After giving a brief account of the evolution of the feminist movement in India since its inception, I will analyze the development of the perception of women in India, first through the lens of selected scholars’ writings, and successively through Indian films and TV-series.

Join our conversation around decoloniality and publishing with the founding members of Decolonial Subversions, a platform for the creation and dissemination of written, acoustic and visual knowledge from the margins.

This event tackles the politics of knowledge hierarchies from the vantage point of postgraduate students and early career researchers whose scholarship lies outside mainstream and western approaches. It brings to the fore the practicalities of publishing more critical, decolonial, heterodox, subversive or non-textual works.

This is open to CEU and external attendees, but pre-registration is required. Please sign up here: https://forms.gle/ScQxui26DsmZVJQZ6

Presentation at panel "Embracing the Goddess", Wellcome Collection, 5 April 2018
Part of "Ayurveda Man"

The talk will be a brief presentation of a contemporary Tantric goddess tradition in South India. In particular, I will talk about an ‘empowerment’ ritual through which the supreme goddess, Devi, is evoked in both, male and female participants. Mantras and bodily touch by ritual specialists, along with the right predisposition of the ritual receiver, are meant to awaken Śakti, lying dormant in the lowest cakras at the bottom of the spinal column in the form of Kundalini.
https://wellcomecollection.org/events/Wo1ZxioAAMLuZF_Q

Presentation at Department of Anthropology, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam
22 February 2017

Questions about the relatively dynamic or static nature of human societies have animated anthropological debates since the discipline’s earliest days and continue to do so even today. In this presentation, I wish to further reflect on this debate, in particular with regards to its applicability in the domain of gender relations, and how it may be observed in the field. Building upon a growing body of literature on gender, ritual and goddess traditions, I will look at transformations of the perceptions of femininity, female sexuality, body, kinship and motherhood amongst the female and male devotees of goddess Tripurasundarī, and how these impact gender behaviours in the everyday South Indian family life.

Goodenough College, Presentation
18 April 2016

Body, sex and gender are extraordinarily complex concepts, whose meanings have been formulated, disputed and reaffirmed in multiple ways in various contexts. Similarly, the notions of Hinduism and Hindu traditions have sustained constant flux, especially in recent times. In a scenario where identities are contested and continuously redefined, the task of tracing sex, body and gender across Hindu traditions necessarily calls for an attempt to discuss their origins and exegesis at the intersection of gender- and religious studies. 
In this talk, I wish to discuss divinity and sexuality in light of each other, and juxtapose brief overviews of how they have been elaborated in both, Hindu orthodox and esoteric contexts. It is only by grasping the significance of their complementarity and essential interrelation that the meanings of both, sexuality and divinity, can emerge in their complexity.
To begin with, I will elaborate on the epistemological underpinnings that shaped the development of notions of gender and sex in the human as well as in the divine spheres over time in India and the West. Thereafter, I will proceed to present an overview of how sexuality, gender and bodies have been perceived and constructed within orthodox Hinduism first, and in folk- and more esoteric traditions successively. In doing so, I will primarily refer to notions espoused in the Vedas, with regards to mainstream Hinduism (by drawing upon secondary sources); I will then explore ritual customs as they are practiced by the worshippers of goddess Lalita Tripurasundarī in a contemporary South Indian Tantric tradition, with regards to more esoteric traditions (by drawing upon my own fieldwork data). Before concluding, I will briefly touch upon change and reversal in the realm of gender.

Part of: A multidisciplinary look on sex, gender and health
18th April 2016, 08:00pm
Goodenough College London House, Churchill Room

In this presentation Monika Hirmer will take us through an engaging and informative overview of how perceptions of Indian women have changed over time across academic literature and popular Indian culture. Spanning from what has come to be known as second wave feminism up to today, the image of Indian women has evolved considerably: while in the 1970-80s prevailed a rather static notion of womanhood, primarily reflecting brahminical ideas of purity/impurity, literature from the 1990s onwards highlights more fluid and dynamic aspects of Indian womanhood, which do not necessarily conform to mainstream value-systems. Interestingly, the shift in the perception of Indian women that has occurred in (largely western) scholarly literature is not always traceable across Indian popular culture. This invites us to reflect, on the one side, upon the extent to which change in the condition of Indian women has effectively occurred, and, on the other side, upon the degree to which academic discourses are representative of Indian women’s identities.

Friday 17.03.2017
6:30pm, Hamburg Hall
Goethe-Zentrum,
Hyderabad (IN)