This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Savastano, P. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Gay Men as Virtuosi of the Holy Art of Bricolage and as Tricksters of the Sacred

savastpe{at}shu.edu

Organized around the anthropological concepts of `bricolage', `bricoleur', `cognitive mazeway' and `trickster', and partially based on ethnographic research, this article hypothesizes that: (1) by virtue of their exclusion from most of the world's religious traditions, queer men find themselves in a kind of spiritual `Diaspora'; (2) gay men have been forced by circumstance to forge a diverse array of spiritual practices, re-interpret or invent alternative sacred myths, produce their own mystical writings, and form diverse intentional spiritual communities; (3) in becoming masters of bricolage, queer men unwittingly function in the role of the trickster figure for each other and for the wider heteronormative culture in which they are embedded; and (4) sex is one of the central axes around which their spiritual practices and spiritual experiences are organized.

Key Words: gay men • bricolage • sexuality • spirituality • experiential anthropology • ritual • consciousness • trickster

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?