Blumer, Igor Alexander (2024) Sacred sites: a co-performance between worlds. Bachelor thesis, Bachelor Religiewetenschappen.
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Abstract
This thesis presents research on the formation and nature of sacred sites in the context of Nordic neo-shamanism. It takes a performative approach through a critical posthumanist lens to argue that sacred sites are co-performed by multiple subjectivities, human and more-than-human. In taking an approach that emphasises participation and agency it involves MTH subjects as active producers of knowledge and members of social networks beyond the human. To include the repertoire of more-than-human actions, performance is defined as broadly as possible using Erving Goffman and Richard Schechner. From this perspective it is argued that sacred sites are co-performed through movement, affect, and discourse. To theorise movement and affect as performative, performance theory is combined with Christopher Tilley’s experimental ‘phenomenological walk’ method, and concepts from spatial and affect theory, e.g., Tim Ingold’s ‘meshwork’ and Donovan O. Schaefer’s ‘beacon’ respectively. To theorise discourse as performative Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs processes of contextualisation and entextualisation are used. Critical posthumanist perspectives on more-than-human agency and subjectivity – agential realism and biosemiotics – are applied to extend performance as movement, affect, and discourse to the more-than-human. The data of the thesis is based on participant observation of two shamanic ceremonies: one at Øm Jættestue, a 5000-year-old passage grave in Denmark, and the other at Ale Stenar, a Viking Age ‘stone ship’ monument in Scania, Sweden. These experiences formed the core of further conversations and interviews with the two shamans whose relationships to these sites were researched, and with other shamans within the Scandinavian sphere. In summary, by taking a performative approach and expanding and nuancing it, this thesis highlights the fluid and intra-relational nature of sacred sites to reveal the entanglement of human and nonhuman worlds.
| Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) | ||||||||||||
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| Degree programme: | Bachelor Religiewetenschappen | ||||||||||||
| Academic year: | 2023-2024 | ||||||||||||
| Date of delivery: | 03 Feb 2026 11:14 | ||||||||||||
| Last modified: | 03 Feb 2026 11:14 | ||||||||||||
| URI: | https://rcs.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/810 |
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