Unexpected Sacredness: On Receiving Talismans As Gifts

This blog post is an extra-deliverable (ED3) of the WP3 "Material Decay as a Curatorial Conundrum" of the MSCA-CZ project "Processual Decay Paradigm: Problematizing Museums and Asian Religions," funded by the OP JAC Project "MSCA Fellowships at Palacký University II." CZ.02.01.01/00/22_010/0006945 at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. The blog post is part of the collective project Collecting Religion, a blog curated by Professor James S. Bielo (Northwestern University) and Dr Matthew Hayes (Duke University) and targeted to museum curators, heritage practitioners, scholars, and students. The blog reflects "on the proposal that collecting religious material culture is a valuable research practice". Abstract In this contribution, I sketched the relationship I have developed with a talisman I received as a gift from a key fieldwork collaborator. This is part of a broader attempt to negotiate my identity as a researcher and non-believer in Chinese folk religion with the talisman’s sacred forces and other sacred materials I received during fieldwork. Thanks to the talisman, I had the opportunity to reconsider other spiritually-charged gifts I received from fieldwork collaborators with new eyes, as well as my positionality as researcher and personal religious background.