Abstract
Drawing on autoethnographic experiences, the author of this chapter explores the visceral moment of trauma as a source of embodied knowing within lived religion studies. She argues that the visceral impact of trauma uniquely elicits the religious impulse to making meaning in the aftermath. Trauma has a capacity thoroughly to disrupt what the author has described as “world-sense ,” the metaphysical foundation of one’s sense of the world, which in turn fosters moral injury as well as a desire to transcend and repair one’s meaning-making frame on an experiential level. This chapter explores implications of this for ethnographic methods as well as for ethics , power, and interdisciplinary approaches in the academy, including an expansion of the concept of “queerness ” to embodied knowing in the disciplines.
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Walsh, M.A. (2019). Significance of the “Visceral” in Lived Religion Studies of Trauma. In: Ganzevoort, R., Sremac, S. (eds) Trauma and Lived Religion . Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91872-3_4
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