ABSTRACT
‘It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality.’ Walter Benjamin is alluding to the way Dadaist art had exploded the solemnity and intellectual detachment that formerly characterised the reception of artworks (1937/1999, 231). Whatever the merits of this particular appraisal, we are interested here in the connection Benjamin establishes between impact and tactility. It is this kind of sensuous ‘drive-by shooting’ that I explore here, though its ammunition is sacred objects rather than art (notwithstanding some overlap between the two categories, as discussed in this chapter). Our central concern is what might be termed ‘modalities of perception’ and their experiential and social implications with regard to the sacred.
