SNF Research Project, 01.05.2023 – 30.04.2028
Dealing with the bodies of the deceased is a task that all societies face and for which different cultures found different solutions. The early modern diffusion and transfer of bodily remains, which was shaped by colonial asymmetries of power and transcultural dynamics, continues to have an impact today as we see from recent controversies over the restitution of human remains from colonial collections. GLOBO is the first project to investigate the handling of bodily remains on a global scale. It examines how Christian bodily relics were spread throughout various parts of the world in the course of the European expansion and the Christian missionary project in the Early Modern period. GLOBO investigates the extent to which the introduction of Christian relics set in motion specific local negotiation processes that manifested themselves in modifications of both Christian and local practices and forms of visualisation pertaining to dead bodies, and bones specifically. Furthermore, and as an overarching goal, GLOBO traces the global movements of Christian relics, which formed a dense network between the continents. The project explores and analyses the complex biographies of these mobile relics and their reliquaries. GLOBO is divided into five sub-projects. Four of these explore case studies from different spaces of correlation, i.e. regions where Christian relic cult was introduced and actors from different cultural and religious traditions clashed, intermingled or simply lived side by side. These are West Africa (Congo, Angola), South and Southeast Asia (India, South China, Philippines), South America (Brazil, Mexico), and Western Europe (Portugal, Spain).The fifth project establishes a database in which all data concerning relics and reliquaries collected by the researchers of the sub-projects is compiled and made accessible.In investigating early modern bodily remains and the containers that housed them, GLOBO bases its research on the understanding that human remains are not merely biological matter, but social forms of great semantic mutability. They can shift between commodity, gift, booty, treasure, sacred object and waste. Bodily remains are objects that can invoke questions of finitude, of social and individual memory, and notions of the afterlife. Venerated mortal remains are often understood to provide access and connection to ancestors or transcendent powers. They materialise places and ideas, they articulate identities and, as objects of spatial and cultural translation(s), they can act as catalysts of social and cultural change. Not only must the attribution of meaning to the mortal remains be explored as we can reconstruct them from written and pictorial sources, but the human remains themselves must also be considered as concrete physical objects that were stored and staged in reliquaries and altars. Since bones on their own are only capable of 'speaking' to a very limited extent, it is precisely the receptacles that contain them and the contexts in which they were situated that convey authenticity, value and meaning. GLOBO will, therefore, record and analyse the reliquaries and altars that housed Christian reliquaries against the background of the respective local contexts to the extent that they can be reconstructed. This art historical approach aims at a better understanding of the cultural negotiations, the demarcations, connections, appropriations, adaptions, translations and hybridisations that took place through the mobilization of human remains on artistic, formal, aesthetic and semantic levels. With reference to the studies of the function of images and artefacts in the Christian missions of the Early Modern era and to the more recent transcultural perspectives of art history, the project draws on a broad repertoire of methodological models and concrete comparative examples. These will define the parameters relevant for understanding the negotiation processes via bodily material in early modern spaces of correlation.GLOBO provides the first mapping, visualisation, and analysis of intercontinental networks constructed through bodily relics and promises to generate new insights into the economy, i.e. the distribution, management and valuation of relics. By linking the global perspective with local case studies, GLOBO opens up new perspectives on the manifold social and cultural roles of human remains and their artful presentations in the missionary and colonial contexts of early globalisation.
Projektverantwortliche
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IT-Verantwortlicher
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