The Semiotics of Aura: Copying Religious Images in Coptic Households

Abstract This article draws upon Walter Benjamin’s concept of “aura” to examine how the reproductions of religious images in domestic settings are (re)infused with spiritual power. Based on an ethnographic study of Coptic Christians in Upper Egypt, I argue that the “aura” of these paintings emerges through semiotic management that tightens a preexisting link, stemming from the minority status of Copts, between house and church. To this end, I discuss how patrons and artists reshape, modify, and enhance both the subject-matter of these reproductions as well as certain formal properties like surfaces and frames. This semiotic labor clarifies a privileged zone of interaction I refer to as “the near-sacred,” which can be compared to Benjamin’s understanding of the conceptual proximity of art to ritual. I conclude by proposing the near-sacred as a site for studying how circulating religious signs (re)acquire a spiritual valence at the periphery of institutional religious practice.