Mpambu Nzila: José Bedia at the Crossroads

The article draws on the Kongo term mpambu nzila of crossroads, that equally signifies altar, to discuss the paintings and drawings of Cuban-born artist José Bedia. He is a practitioner of Palo Briyumba, a syncretic Afro-Cuban religion that combines Kongo religious beliefs, Regla de Ocha, Spiritism, and Catholicism. The article examines six works by the artist from 1984 to 1999 and how Bedia represents Palo in his art. Additionally, the centrality of the nganga (a cauldron that paleros use to work for and protect them) is discussed historically, philosophically, and religiously as a physical and spiritual embodiment of the crossroads. Bedia’s work is also analyzed using the Sankofa bird as metaphor (of flying forward and looking back) and as an example of the West African notion of coolness. The article also examines Palo as a de-colonial way of knowing and ends with the crossroads through the example of Lucero Mundo (Elegguá).

The innovative mode of music culture industry is explored under the background of “Internet Plus”

Culture is the embodiment of a country's social style, as a country’s spiritual embodiment, culture can not only bring economic benefits to a country, but also can show a country’s social style, the role of culture can not be underestimated. Therefore, this paper is mainly based on the “Internet plus” background of the music and cultural industry innovation model to explore. Mainly for two aspects of research and discussion, the first is the current music and cultural industry facing the development of challenges; the second is the current music and cultural industry innovation model and innovative thinking. At the same time, I hope that enterprises can play a certain role in innovation inspiration. It is hoped that this paper can provide a little reference for the relevant research, so as to lay a solid foundation for the development of the relevant music and cultural industry.

Introduction

The chapter introduces the Ndau communities at the center of this ethnography, the spirits who populate local ceremonial life, and the histories behind their emergence. The passage of ceremonial time, with the passing presence of one type of spirit to the next, is a truncated representation of the passing of local Ndau history. Madhlozi are spirits of encounter. They are the spiritual embodiment of encounter itself and the trauma, chaos, and violence that define it. Their emergence in ceremonial life is the continual emergence of history, ever unresolved and living in the spirits of the dead. But neither the history represented, the spirits who represent it, nor the practices used to engage with them are static or fixed in time.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Little Green Book, and the Dispute with Death

The most commonly recited anecdote regarding Dante Gabriel Rossetti recalls the incident surrounding the burial of his bound manuscript of poetry in 1862 alongside his wife Elizabeth Siddal. Buried in an act of contrition encouraged by his brother, the manuscript was retrieved from the exhumed coffin at Rossetti's behest in 1869 by his friend Charles Augustus Howell and returned to the poet in a severe state of decay and smelling of disinfectant. Three of the poems recovered would famously form an integral part of the 1870 Poems. This essay situates Rossetti's action in undertaking the exhumation as a trope for the way his poetry consistently revisits and reconfigures conceptualisations of life and death, often with regards to physical and spiritual embodiment. Without seeking to offer ethical justification for Rossetti's actions in retrieving his poems, I will focus rather on the ways in which his poetic vision is dominated by the language of exile and return, of burial and retrieval, and how these twin concerns are manifest in the poems of the little green book. These three long poems, which it appears he was most eager to recover through the distasteful act, are identified collectively as ‘the exhumation poems’: ‘Dante at Verona’, ‘A Last Confession’, and ‘Jenny’.

Explorations of spiritual embodiment in belly dance

This chapter examines how US belly dancers view the practice as a spiritual endeavour, particularly in light of the negative perceptions surrounding it. It discusses findings from a decade-long ethnographic study (2003–13) involving several data-collection methods: observations; journal entries; online statements; and qualitative interviews, a mixed methods design needed due to the lack of research on this topic and the complexity involved in understanding it. Research suggests that belly dance holds much potential as an embodied spiritual practice, particularly when premised on holistic health (integration of body, mind and spirit). As such, the chapter contributes to the critical examination of women's spirituality within contemporary contexts.

State and Church

Much nineteenth-century political theory was preoccupied with relations between state and Church. This chapter examines some of the leading European theories of Church and state many of which influenced and reflected broader public debates and institutional developments. In response to the French Revolution and to a series of liberal and democratic reforms various attempts were made to renew the Church by emphasizing its role as the spiritual embodiment of the nation. While in some contexts such as France this would provoke a secular reaction and ultimately a separation of Church and state, elsewhere increasing religious pluralization would generate pluralist state forms and corresponding theories of the plural state. The central themes covered include: ultramontanism to liberal Catholicism in France; the Hegelian theory of the state; liberal Anglicanism and the Broad Church movement; and theories of the plural state from the 1890s to the First World War.