Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West

by Rachel Fell McDermott, Jeffrey J. Kripal (Editor)

Encountering Kali explores one of the most remarkable divinities the world has seen―the Hindu goddess Kali. She is simultaneously understood as a blood-thirsty warrior, a goddess of ritual possession, a Tantric sexual partner, and an all-loving, compassionate Mother. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the West in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon, this volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous South Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnations. Using scriptural history, temple architecture, political violence, feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, autobiographical reflection, and the goddess's recent guises on the Internet, the contributors pose questions relevant to our understanding of Kali, as they illuminate the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross-cultural interpretation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, India, Hinduism, Mythology, Philosophy, Spirituality

321 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2003

Reviews

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kali!
The word is small, rather soft, as if it would melt away in the wind if you are not paying attention. But the reality is very-very diferent. For a devout, that word contains unimaginable power. With images full of black and red, stirring up emotions from the very depth of conscious and subconscious, the word can move mountains and stir a slob into frenzied action.
Because it's not just a word. It's not just a name given to a Goddess. The word, the name, the Goddess is special.
Why? Now that's a mystery that truly intrigues Western scholars. This well-curated collection tries to find out the answer. To do so, it relies upon the following essays~
* Introducing Kali Studies— Introductory essay from the editors trying to explain the 'Kali' conundrum.
Part I— Kali in the Texts and Contexts of South Asia
1. "Kali" by David R. Kinsley;
2. "Kali the Terrific and Her Tests: the Sakta Devotionalism of Mahabhagvata Purana" by Patricia Dold;
3. "The Domestication of a Goddess: Carana-tirtha Kalighat, the Mahapitha of Kali" by Sanjukta Gupta;
4. "Dominating Kali: Hindu Family Values and Tantric Power" by Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder;
5. "Kali in a Context of Terror: The Tasks of a Goddess in Sri Lanka's Civil War" by Patricia Lawrence;
6. "Kali Mayi: Myth and Reality in a Banaras Ghetto" by Roxanne Kamayani Gupta;
Part II— Kali in Western Settings, Western Discourses
7. "Wrestling with Kali: South Asian and British Constructions of the Dark Goddess" by Cynthia Amm Humes;
8. "'India's Darkest Heart': Kali in the Colonial Imagination" by Hugh B. Urban;
9. "Why the Tantrika is a Hero: Kali in the Psychoanalytic Tradition" by Jeffrey J. Kripal;
10. "Doing the Mother's Caribbean Work: On Shakti and Society in Contemporary Trinidad" by Keith E. McNeal;
11. "Margins at the Center: Tracing Kali through Time, Space, and Culture" by Sarah Caldwell;
12. "Kali's New Frontiers: A Hindu Goddess on the Internet" by Rachel Fell McDermott.
* Appendix— "Documentary Film and Video Resources for Teaching on Kali and Fierce Goddesses" by Sarah Caldwell
* Bibliography
The essays are very lucid and compact. Unfortunately the book has been dragged down by very-very poor production values of this Indian edition, where miniscule font-size against the yellow paper had made reading a real pain. Also, in terms of cultural impact of Kali and the reimagination of her with newer aspirations and ambitions, Hugh B. Urban does a vastly superior job in his Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Essays in that book allows for a more focussed study of the phenomenon that is 'Kali', instead of getting mired in politics.
Nevertheless, this is a very good book full of nuanced essays that try to understand and describe 'Kali' to the readers in the West. Can it fully capture the 'essence' of Kali? That would be an impossible task. But it definitely does a valiant effort.
Recommended.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I (mostly) really enjoyed this collection of essays on Kali. While claiming to be "cultural studies" it actually combined essays that were mostly historical and anthropological with a few literary studies thrown in. This book while not necessarily an introduction to the field does a good job of presenting both the history of the worship of Kali, modern religious practice in Asia, and how Kali has been viewed and assimilated by the west. I've been fascinated by Kali since I first saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when my dad told me, "That's not really how they used to sacrifice people to Kali you know". I've read a few books, but this is definitely not an area I feel that informed about. So this was a good introduction to the myths, history and practice of Kali and her followers. The articles in this book go quite a long way to debunking some of the myths around the goddess and looking at her place in main stream Hindu society. To me the most interesting essay was Lawrence's essay "Kali in the context of terror" which looked at how Tamil's in Sri Lanka were increasingly turning to Kali worship. How this worship frequently involved some form of ritual bodily sacrifice such as fire-walking, inserting hooks into the bank, and suspension. A lot of the people who'd made pledges to perform these rituals for the goddess had done so in prison while being tortured. Kali took away their pain, and gave them back control over their body's suffering. Lawrence also looked at the way mediums' were asked about relatives who'd disappeared to find out if people were alive or dead. The descriptions of the mediums trances were also quite violent, giving voice to people's torture, and being physically sick. The opposite end of this was an essay by Urban that looked at the ways westerners looked at Kali. Nearly everything he discussed seemed to be discounted as "orientalism" whether the Western authors were writing about the same things as Indian authors or not. The worst offence in this essay was when he looked at prominent Victorian writers writing about Kali, one of he talked about writing in 1927! Now the late 20s hardly count as Victorian!!!! (To be fair he did seem to get this misconception from an article by two other authors who were discussing "Victorian novels between 1880 and 1930". Now I've heard of the "long Victorian era" but surely this is taking things a little too far! Society and culture was totally different and looking at different issues then, we'd had the "Great war"... He also seemed to be upset that these "Victorians" were writing about evil Kali cults acting politically and how this was a terrible bit of Orientalism focused on the "other". When 2 pages later he discusses how the exact same plot was used 50 years earlier in the 1880s by an Indian author, writing about a politically motivated Kali cult! The rest of the articles were all interesting and informative. I was particularly interested in the way Kali's religious practice has changed over time. In the second to last essay Caldwell discusses how earlier mediums and people acting in religious possession rituals had all been women, now they were all men. Likewise another essay discussed how the tantric image of Kali had changed from representing anger to representing shame for having stepped on her husband. This was a very interesting set of articles and I feel like I learned a lot. Definitely recommended for those interested in the history of religions, goddesses and possession.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the scholarly works I have read over the last couple of years, Encountering Kali is without doubt one of the most impressive. Divided into two seconds, covering respectively - Kali in the texts and contexts of South Asia and Kali in Western settings and discourses - the various contributions highlight the widely diverse contexts within which Kali appears.

Contributions to this collection range from Patricia Lawrence's fascinating field research on Kali worship in Sri Lanka against the backdrop of civil war to Hugh B. Urban's review of Kali in the Colonial imagination, and Cynthia Anne Hume's Wrestling with Kali which focuses on British Colonial-era and South Asian portrayals of Kali and focuses in particular on Kali's imagery with respect to the so-called Thuggee cult. Also of interest is the fieldwork of Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder, in investigating the local meanings of Kali iconography in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in 1991, and how those meanings have come to become associated with narratives that uphold Hindu family values - especially those encouraging female self-restraint and self-control.

Roxanne Kamayani Gupta's Kali Mayi: Myth and Reality in a Banares Ghetto offers a poignant account of her meetings with a female Kali devotee; and how this illustrates the differences between how Kali is thought of by Western and Indian women. The final essay in the collection, Kali's New Frontiers by Rachel Fell McDermott, reviews how Kali is presented on the Worldwide Web, and discusses how the representation of Kali by Western feminists and New Age groups is, by turns, fuelling the rise of a new wave of critique of inappropriate cultural borrowings.

This is an excellent collection of essays and as such, deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone with a serious interest in Tantra or Goddesses in general.

[Sylvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I will update this review when finished with the book, I have only been able to read this book on-and-off due to grad school schedule)
I am on page 171 of an almost 300 page book, and I am loving what I am reading so far. I enjoy the critical look on Kali and how her "image/meaning" has changed throughout history in India. This book provides information on the historical aspect of Kali, rituals, how she is to devotees, and how the west has viewed her (and often romanticized her).

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say Encountering Kali was a book I read in 2009 is to understate it entirely. It wasn’t a book—it was a conversation I had with the cosmos. A moment when the fierce feminine, whom I’ve always known as Ma Kali, revealed Herself in unexpected mirrors—on Western shores, in hybrid tongues, through exiles and mystics and seekers who were not born of Her, but were, inevitably, devoured by Her. Because such is Her nature.

By the time I picked this up, I already knew Her—not from footnotes, but from the pulse beneath my ribs. I had whispered Her name in fear, in gratitude, in storm. But Encountering Kali offered something different. It opened up a world where She wasn’t just the ‘Other’ to be studied by Occidental eyes; She was the Source around which meaning constellated, even in postmodern contexts. This book walked into the temple of Her paradox, not to tame Her, but to sit in awe.

The essays inside are textured—academic, poetic, raw, sometimes strange, but never superficial. One moment, we’re in Bengal’s cremation grounds, the next, in a Californian woman’s apartment where Kali dances on the fridge door in sticker form. In one passage, She is the blood-smeared tantrika’s goddess; in another, She is embraced by trauma survivors as the only deity who does not flinch from pain. And in every moment—She is there. Unreducible. Irreducible.

For a devotee, especially one who sees Her not as archetype but as actuality, reading about the appropriation, exoticisation, and recontextualisation of Kali in the West can be disorienting. But this book didn’t offend me—it deepened me. Because the central question it dances around is not whether Kali can be “translated” across cultures, but how we are all already walking the rim of Her skull-cup, east and west alike. As the poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, "There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.” For many, Kali is that Someone.

What I loved—and feared—in equal measure was how this book placed Her on the edge: of academia, of feminist discourse, of diasporic longing. She was not at the heart of institutional power, but She was always there, in the shadows. That, too, is so utterly Her. Like Audre Lorde’s erotic, like Arundhati Roy’s “cracks in the dam,” Kali enters where the polished gods refuse to tread.

And yes, some essays wrestle with Her image—her “terrifying” form, Her nudity, Her violence. Western eyes try to make sense of Her, as though She were a symbol to be decoded. But to those who know, She is not metaphor. She is the one who eats your metaphors alive. She is not the goddess of destruction—She is the goddess of truth, and sometimes truth looks like destruction when we are clinging to lies.

In 2009, I was still unravelling threads of identity, faith, form. Reading Encountering Kali felt like a psychic combustion. I wrote Her name on mirrors. I dreamed of Her sword. I felt the grounding comfort of knowing that She, who walks naked with skulls, has disciples in every language. That I am not alone in my worship. That the world has room for a goddess who is not soft, not safe, not sweet—but sacred in her storm.

If The Sword and the Flute taught me how Kali coexists with Krishna, Encountering Kali showed me how She survives colonialism, capitalism, and cultural mistranslation. It was a map of Her diaspora. And yet—through every page—I heard the same chant:

“She comes, She comes again,
The terrible, the tender,
The black void of truth,
Wearing time as Her anklet.”

I met my Ma again in this book. And She was everywhere. Especially in the margins.

ॐ क्रीं कालिकायै नमः।

[Sarbajit Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book could have done more!
I loved most of the essays; Kripal's psychoanalysis, the essays on Kali in Sri Lanka and Trindad, as well as Kali in a dingy street in Banaras. The journey this book took me on inheres exactly the type of symbolic journey across an Indian/South Asian landscape that I wish was portrayed more often.
The various violent and non violent co-optations of Kali surprised me, and I'll be sure to revisit this at some point.

[Farouk Gulsara · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.riflerangeboy.com/2017/09/...

[Chandan]

dd

[Foxglow · Rating 4 out of 5]

My daughter suggested I read this after her "Warrior Goddesses of India" class. It is a compilation of scholarly essays about the goddess, ranging from the first contact by British Colonials to the current discussion about her on the internet today. Fascinating.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting overview of the worship of the Mother from the Devi Mahatmya to the Caribbean.