engleski

Iconography and religious otherness, IKON, 15

The creation of Otherness is a process by which a dominant group (Self, Us) constructs one or more outer groups (Them, Others) by assigning them different features and attributes, real or imagined. This continuous process was not only directed towards the outside, but also towards the inside, that is, towards dissident groups. With recent political and social challenges, Otherness has become a highly relevant and frequently discussed topic among scholars from various disciplines, predominantly philosophy, anthropology, sociology, but also literature (philology), art history and others. This volume brings together scholars who discuss and reconsider the concept of Otherness from the iconographic and iconological points of view and analyze different topics related to the construction of Otherness with specific focus on the visualization of the religious Other throughout all historical periods. The themes discussed here include representation of Others in the medieval period, particularly representations on the medieval maps, as an authoritative synthesis of Classical geographical learning and Christian theological beliefs. The texts deal with the visual strategies in Christian-Muslim encounters, especially in the Western early modern art, where Ottoman enemy was often perceived, at a symbolic level, as the quintessence of threat and persecution against the Catholic faith. Figures of “Turks”, identified by easily recognizable attributes (such as the turban), were therefore substituted for other, radically different characters in a plurality of visual narratives. In a se- mantically significant anachronism, Turks populated Old and New Testament scenes as well as depictions of the martyrdoms of Christians persecuted by the Romans in the first centuries. In parallel, the same attributes were also sometime imposed to the figures of other, contemporary enemies of the faith, who lacked an established iconographic tradition of their own: the Protestant “heretics”. The authors discuss also the problem of conversion or how images were used as a mechanism for the conversion of the religious Other: the image of the “converso” versus images for conversion. Several texts problematize Otherness and the construction of the concept of race, ethnic and regional diversity and its reception in visual culture as well as sources (textual, iconographic) used to build and represent Otherness, such as exotic, oriental or monstrous. Of particular interest is the topic of political power and its participation in the process of constructing religious Otherness as well as some visual evidence of social transgressions in breaking norms and rules in the creation of religious Otherness. The volume closes with some interesting examples of visualizing Otherness in secular visual culture and marginal iconography within contemporary art and visual culture.

iconography, religious otherness, jews, muslims, christians, images

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