Call For Papers: EASA 2024 conference, P062

We seek to explore diverse ethnographic accounts on how various contemporary religio-spiritual practices strive to develop techniques of emptying as their ultimate or ideal achievement. What one does so as not to be is the main 'metaphysical' question for which we seek anthropological answers to.

Long Abstract:

As social scientists, we seem to place too much emphasis on identity formation and not so much on how identities are not always and necessarily something positively desired and actively sought after. This panel seeks to explore diverse ethnographic accounts on how various contemporary religio-spiritual practices strive to develop techniques of emptying as their ultimate or ideal achievement. When identity is perceived as being intrinsically attached to affliction, counter-efforts of non-identity are not only presented as the ideal “sacred” state, but also experientially sought after towards a sense of wellbeing. Sometimes, this is presented as a 'mystical' or 'esoteric' approach to truth within and beyond an established religious tradition or as a 'spiritual' and therapeutic innovation of a return to a primordial essence, detached from this worlds identity fixations. We invite presentations which focus precisely on that, namely, detailed accounts on how some practices may have as a central objective to not just undo an identity to create another, but actively create 'spaces', 'moments', and experiences which desire to empty themselves from identity. Although this might sound counterintuitive, especially for Anthropology which seeks alterity precisely in 'local' manifestations of identity, we claim that there are positive and potentially rewarding ways to ethnographically account for a variety of instances in which identity presents itself as a problem or a peril, and something to liberate oneself from – even if desperately, partially, momentarily, in a limited and not necessarily wholly successful way.