Preliminary Material / Margit Kern and Klaus Krüger -- Foreword / Margit Kern and Klaus Krüger -- Transcultural Imaginations of the Sacred. Changing Perceptions of Alterity in Processes of Transcultural Negotiation / Margit Kern -- “Americana Thebaida” / Julia Kloss-Weber -- The Tipping Point in Mimesis / Amrei Buchholz -- Cracks and Clefts / Gabriela Siracusano -- Conflict and Negotiation in Transcultural Processes in Colonial Brazil, or: / Jens Baumgarten -- Conceptions of Space in the Missionary Periodical / Ira Oppermann -- The Holy Man’s Cave / Amy L. Neff -- Charismatic Desert Saints / Christine Ungruh -- Borrowing Figurative Patterns / Alessandra Malquori -- Aesthetics of Resistance / Avinoam Shalem -- Being like Jesus and Mary / Ebba Koch -- Seeing Beyond Form / Alberto Saviello -- Plates / Margit Kern and Klaus Krüger -- List of Contributors / Margit Kern and Klaus Krüger -- Index / Margit Kern and Klaus Krüger.

Although we tend to suggest that clear constructions of identity are granted to religious symbols under the assumption that they distinguish between self and other explicitly, perceptions of alterity in fact play a vital role in sacral forms of representation. Markers of foreignness are used in a semantics of the exceptional that characterizes the sacral. Perceptions of difference are thus capable of making visible the remoteness of sacral forms from the profane world of experience. This book, therefore, asks: What role do traits of alterity play in the sacral context? How are various concepts of the sacred synthesized in situations of transcultural translation, for instance in the context of missionary activity? How did an artifact arrive at sacral potency in various cultures, and under what conditions did semantic shifts occur?

Description based on print version record.