- Title Pages
- [UNTITLED]
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Things
- Introduction: Material Religion—How Things Matter
-
Part I Anxieties about Things - The Modern Fear of Matter: Reflections on the Protestantism of Victorian Science
- Dangerous Things: One African Genealogy
- Things That Matter: The Extra Calvinisticum, the Eucharist, and John Calvin's Unstable Materiality
-
Part II Images and Incarnations - From Stone to Flesh the Case of the Buddha
- Rhetoric of the Heart: Figuring the Body in Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
- Idolatry Nietzsche, Blake, and Poussin
- “Has this thing appeared again tonight?”: Deus Ex Machina and Other Theatrical Interventions of the Supernatural
- Portraits That Matter: King Chulalongkorn Objects and the Sacred World of Thai-ness
-
Part III Sacred Artifacts - Material Mobility Versus Concentric Cosmology in the Sukkah: The House of the Wandering Jew or a Ubiquitous Temple?
- The Tasbirwol (Prayer Beads) Under Attack: How the Common Practice of Counting One's Beads Reveals Its Secrets in the Muslim Community of North Cameroon
- Miniatures and Stones in the Spiritual Economy of the Virgin of Urkupinña in Bolivia
-
Part IV Bodily Fluids - Fluid Matters: Gendering Holy Blood and Holy Milk
- “When you see blood, it brings truth”: Ritual and Resistance in a Time of War
- A Pentecostal Passion Paradigm: The Invisible Framing of Gibson's Christ in a Dutch Pentecostal Church
-
Part V Public Space - The Structural Transformation of the Coffeehouse: Religion, Language, and the Public Sphere in the Modernizing Muslim World
- The Affective Power of the Face Veil: Between Disgust and Fascination
- “There is a spirit in that image”: Mass-Produced Jesus Pictures and Protestant-Pentecostal Animation in Ghana
- The FedEx Saints: Patrons of Mobility and Speed in a Neoliberal City
-
Part VI Digital Technologies - Enchantment, Inc.: Online Gaming Between Spiritual Experience and Commodity Fetishism
- Fulfilling the Sacred Potential of Technology: New Edge Technophilia, Consumerism, and Spirituality in Silicon Valley
- In Their Own Image?: Catholic, Protestant, and Holistic Spiritual Appropriations of the Internet
- Contributors
- Index
“Has this thing appeared again tonight?”: Deus Ex Machina and Other Theatrical Interventions of the Supernatural
“Has this thing appeared again tonight?”: Deus Ex Machina and Other Theatrical Interventions of the Supernatural
- Chapter:
- (p.127) “Has this thing appeared again tonight?”: Deus Ex Machina and Other Theatrical Interventions of the Supernatural
- Source:
- Things
- Author(s):
Freddie Rokem
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
The appearance of the supernatural on the theatrical stage as well as on the movie screen, in particular through a deus ex machina, but also in the form of ghosts or dybbuks, is still, even after the declaration of God's death a frequent phenomenon in modern and contemporary art. The stage can be seen as a utopian site, an aesthetic ‘no-place’, where the supernatural can appear, even if the audience does not necessarily ascribe to the religious belief-systems this kind of appearance implies. The chapter explores the interactions between the ‘language’ of performance, through which a certain dynamics is activated in the space we call the stage, on the one hand, and religious discursive practices or belief-systems, on the other, creating a discursive encounter where the religious things (alluding to the ghost in Shakespeare's Hamlet as the thing that appears again tonight) enter and even invade the aesthetic sphere of the performance.
Keywords: Supernatural in theatre, performance and film, Deus ex machina, Ghosts, Dybbuk, Mimesis, Religious belief-systems, Aesthetic practices
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- Title Pages
- [UNTITLED]
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Things
- Introduction: Material Religion—How Things Matter
-
Part I Anxieties about Things - The Modern Fear of Matter: Reflections on the Protestantism of Victorian Science
- Dangerous Things: One African Genealogy
- Things That Matter: The Extra Calvinisticum, the Eucharist, and John Calvin's Unstable Materiality
-
Part II Images and Incarnations - From Stone to Flesh the Case of the Buddha
- Rhetoric of the Heart: Figuring the Body in Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
- Idolatry Nietzsche, Blake, and Poussin
- “Has this thing appeared again tonight?”: Deus Ex Machina and Other Theatrical Interventions of the Supernatural
- Portraits That Matter: King Chulalongkorn Objects and the Sacred World of Thai-ness
-
Part III Sacred Artifacts - Material Mobility Versus Concentric Cosmology in the Sukkah: The House of the Wandering Jew or a Ubiquitous Temple?
- The Tasbirwol (Prayer Beads) Under Attack: How the Common Practice of Counting One's Beads Reveals Its Secrets in the Muslim Community of North Cameroon
- Miniatures and Stones in the Spiritual Economy of the Virgin of Urkupinña in Bolivia
-
Part IV Bodily Fluids - Fluid Matters: Gendering Holy Blood and Holy Milk
- “When you see blood, it brings truth”: Ritual and Resistance in a Time of War
- A Pentecostal Passion Paradigm: The Invisible Framing of Gibson's Christ in a Dutch Pentecostal Church
-
Part V Public Space - The Structural Transformation of the Coffeehouse: Religion, Language, and the Public Sphere in the Modernizing Muslim World
- The Affective Power of the Face Veil: Between Disgust and Fascination
- “There is a spirit in that image”: Mass-Produced Jesus Pictures and Protestant-Pentecostal Animation in Ghana
- The FedEx Saints: Patrons of Mobility and Speed in a Neoliberal City
-
Part VI Digital Technologies - Enchantment, Inc.: Online Gaming Between Spiritual Experience and Commodity Fetishism
- Fulfilling the Sacred Potential of Technology: New Edge Technophilia, Consumerism, and Spirituality in Silicon Valley
- In Their Own Image?: Catholic, Protestant, and Holistic Spiritual Appropriations of the Internet
- Contributors
- Index