Feeling the Guru’s Body: Affective Responses of Adoration and Disgust

This paper attends to the materiality of the guru’s body, considering devotional responses to guru corporeality through theories of affect. The relation between guru and disciple is one of physical attention, through sevā (selfless service), meditation, and devotional adoration. This inquiry highlights the importance of the guru’s body as a material site for devotion, arguing that the generative effects of haptic contact between guru and disciple create generate feelings of love, affection, and deference. In contrast, in the undesired context of sexual abuse, the demand for bodily adorations that are sexual in nature generate a confusing amalgam of emotions, including fear, shame, and disgust. Building on Sianne Ngai’s engagement with such “ugly feelings,” this paper interrogates the material conditions of and affective responses to sexual abuse in the guru-disciple relationship. This paper engages the affective impacts of guru corporeality on devotees’ psyches and the construction and destruction of faith.