Abstract
This article analyzes a form of spirituality known as New Age in Argentina and argues that the heterogeneous space of current spiritualties is the cause and effect of a sociocultural transformation that goes beyond the religious field in form and content, challenging both the supposed dominant position of Catholicism and secularism that characterizes Argentinean culture. To this end, and taking into account a historical dimension, our analysis indicates how these spiritualities condense a constellation of languages and experiences of energy, positive philosophy, ecology, vegetarianism, and personal growth, focusing on personal autonomy and immanence. Secondly, the work emphasizes how the phenomenon of massification of this type of practices forces us to rethink both the changes that have occurred in the “religious field” and the epistemological foundations that inspire this kind of analysis, and even the concept of religion itself as associated with explicit belief systems and the church as privileged traits.
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Notes
In institutional terms, the Argentinean State still recognizes Catholicism as the most important religious reference, with preeminence over other religions in public spaces and even in the National Constitution.
We understand New Age spirituality as the articulation of an “expectation of transformation that initially continues the autonomy aspirations of certain moments in the culture of the urban middle classes and their processes of individualization. All this in a framework in which the religious or spiritual are recovered in terms that emphasize their immanent character and their link with reflection processes that “rediscover” the sacred in interiority and in overcoming “psychic” conflicts, but, at the same time, they see them as a continuum that encompasses, in the here and now, bodies, emotions, nature and, often, material achievements (Carozzi 1999, 2000, 2002). For a regional perspective and the blurred frontiers between New Age and mass culture in general, far beyond class configurations, see De la Torre and Gutiérrez Zúñiga (2013). As these authors point out, the articulation between New Age and native cosmologies seems quite relevant in other parts of Latin America. In Argentina, however, although those articulations exist, the New Age Spirituality appears less open to include indigenous characteristics. The reasons for this are too extensive to describe here but are probably related with “Europeism” in national imaginaries of race and alterity.
The key to personal transformation is its closeness to a “psychological configuration,” so it is no coincidence that the proto-history of psychological knowledge has certain points in common with spiritual traditions. Two examples are as curious as they are significant. In the first place, it is peculiar that the Institute of Psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires, created in 1931, had a “paranormal psychology” department inspired by spiritualist metapsychic science (Gimeno et al. 2010, p. 265). Secondly, it is also worth noting that James Mapelli made one of the first references to Sigmund Freud in Argentina. He was a doctor of Italian origin, hypnotist, and specialist in telepathic phenomena and founder of the “psycho-enervation” technique he developed at Pirovano Hospital (Vezzetti 1996, p. 45).
The consequences for religious diversity in Argentina during that period are still little studied. From a general and institutional perspective, but possibly from a cultural one as well, without doubt, the birth of Peronism was closely associated with Catholicism and the control of non-Catholic religions. Nevertheless, as Caimari (1995) highlights, the final period of the Peronist era was open to and receptive of different religious movements, such as Pentecostalism and Spiritism.
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Semán, P., Viotti, N. New Age Spirituality in Argentina: Cultural Change and Epistemological Challenge. Int J Lat Am Relig 3, 193–211 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-018-0064-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-018-0064-3